My kids got me a 1-year subscription to Netflix. Before that I rarely watched movies.
As it currently stands, the selection for streaming is barely adequate to keep my interest. If things stay as they are I will probably renew on my own when the subscription runs out. However, if the price goes up or the selection drops then I won't. renew.
One alternative to high-priced movies is to not watch them at all. Netflix changed me from a non-movie consumer into at least a small revenue stream. I suspect there are a lot more people like me who will pay something to be able to watch movies, but won't pay exorbitant amounts.
The movie industry has fallen into the trap of thinking that everyone is willing to pay them a lot of money for their product. I don't think that they are capable of understanding that not everyone wants to pay them a lot of money. They don't seem to grasp the fact that some people will just ignore their product because the price is too high. Consumers also don't care what studio produces their movies, and they don't want to have to subscribe to several different services to get a selection of movies. Netflix does understand this. Netflix is based on getting modest payments from a lot of people who send them money every month. As long as Netflix can keep its customers, it will keep sending checks to the studios.
I think that the studios will kill the goose that is laying golden eggs for them. I expect that I won't have to decide what to do when my annual subscription to Netflix runs out. I think the studios will have managed to effectively kill it off by then and deny themselves a revenue stream. And all the studio execs will congratulate themselves and get large bonuses for doing it.
My kids got me a 1-year subscription to Netflix. Before that I rarely watched movies.
As it currently stands, the selection for streaming is barely adequate to keep my interest. If things stay as they are I will probably renew on my own when the subscription runs out. However, if the price goes up or the selection drops then I won't. renew.
One alternative to high-priced movies is to not watch them at all. Netflix changed me from a non-movie consumer into at least a small revenue stream. I suspect there are a lot more people like me who will pay something to be able to watch movies, but won't pay exorbitant amounts.
The movie industry has fallen into the trap of thinking that everyone is willing to pay them a lot of money for their product. I don't think that they are capable of understanding that not everyone wants to pay them a lot of money. They don't seem to grasp the fact that some people will just ignore their product because the price is too high. Consumers also don't care what studio produces their movies, and they don't want to have to subscribe to several different services to get a selection of movies. Netflix does understand this. Netflix is based on getting modest payments from a lot of people who send them money every month. As long as Netflix can keep its customers, it will keep sending checks to the studios.
I think that the studios will kill the goose that is laying golden eggs for them. I expect that I won't have to decide what to do when my annual subscription to Netflix runs out. I think the studios will have managed to effectively kill it off by then and deny themselves a revenue stream. And all the studio execs will congratulate themselves and get large bonuses for doing it.
Re: Re: Is Reddit and 4chan the a model for a new form of "Investigative News"?
>>Which is nice, but the research as a result would be entirely one sided, attempting to prove what the community wants to know, while ignoring contra indications.
Pretty much like a lot of the reporting done by traditional news organizations.
None of these look like they are strong patents and there is a strong possibility that they would be tossed out if they had to face scrutiny in court.
It looks like Reddit, at least, is willing to fight the suit. However, I doubt they will actually go to trial. If any of the defendants hold out for a trial it is likely that the plaintiffs will be the ones to fold rather than risk invalidation.
My biggest concern is that governments around the world will use the excuse of cyberwar to do lots of other things such as imposing more intrusions into personal freedoms and enhancing IP protections.
There actually was a reason for the old policy. The labels would release to radio first so that demand would build up and and when the song was released it would jump to a high position on the sales charts.
Position on the sales charts isn't as important as it used to be, so it makes a lot of sense to drop the policy. Of course it would have made sense to do this a long time ago. In a free market this kind of delay would have been punished, but when you are running a government-protected business little things like rationality and market demand don't matter very much.
I can think of three reasons that the studio execs like the 28 day delay.
1) They are probably getting a cash payment of some kind from the immediate release companies like Blockbuster. It is always hard to give up an existing income stream, even if giving it up opens up the option to make much more money elsewhere.
2) Like Charlie Brown, managers like to manage. They think they are doing something, and things like this can make impressive entries on a resume or vitae.
3) Executives have fed themselves on myths about the industry and now they have a hard time giving them up. The "we make more money because we have release windows" is going to be a hard one to loose. It is much easier to ignore the Paramont data or come up with reasons that it doesn't apply to their own studio because it would call the whole windowing paradigm into question.
Google is doing this with Chrome which is not in a monopoly position. I don't see how Google is leveraging it's search engine muscle with this move. The fact that Chrome is not a monopoly should be sufficient to protect them from antitrust action, at least from this action. Of course, an entire industry has grown up dedicated to causing trouble for goggle, and bogus antitrust charges has been the favored tool.
Abolishing the patent system entirely would, at the very least, be better than the existing system. The existing system is doing a lot more to impede the progress than it is to promote it. I am not saying that this is the best reform, just pointing out that the patent system is currently doing very bad things, and cutting it out entirely would be better than leaving it in place.
Short of abolishing the patent system, here are some reforms that could would improve the current system
1)Eliminate software and business practice patents entirely. There are many reasons for this, but in my mind the fundamental problem is that software development and business practices progress at a speed that is much too fast for the patent process. Patents are designed for things that take years to develop and which will remain in demand for decades. Software and business practices are often developed in days or weeks and will probably be outdated by the time the patent period ends. Another reason for eliminating these types of patents is that they are choking the system, and examiners simply do not have the time or expertise to evaluate them.
2)Put the burden of proof on the patent holder when patents go to court. There is currently a presumption that the Patent Office has carefully examined the patent and found that its claims are valid. We have seen time and time again that this is not true. Examiners don't have time to adequately examine patents, often do not have expertise in the area, and they are subject to unending appeals and revisions from the applicant. So in effect we need to assume that a patent is not valid until it is vetted in court. This isn't how it should be if the patent system was working properly, but it isn't so the burden has to be shifted to the courts.
3)Invalidate patents automatically if the applicant fails to reveal prior art. This would have to be worked into regulations carefully, otherwise patent applications would start listing tons of irrelevant data to bury their revelation of prior art.
4)Allow the defendant move the case to a district where they have a legal presence. This would prevent venue shopping. The downside is that it could seriously damage the 4-H program in the eastern Texas.
5)Revise the patent approval process to take pressure off of examiners. Allow only written communication with examiners and prohibit phone calls or personal visits from applicants and their attorneys. The ability to significantly change the application after filing should also be restricted to a single resubmission to fix technical problems or answer questions raised by the examiner. When questioning the validity of a patent, the defendant should be able to question the approval process for the patent with revisions considered damaging to the quality of the patent.
6)Severely limit damage awards. It looks like we may be finally getting rid of the 25% rule; let's hope that it is replaced by something more rational.
7)Broaden the operational definitions of "obviousness."
I like the fact that youtube credits The Dispatch for the notice. I hope The Dispatch learned a lesson about turning god publicity bad. I hour some others did too, but I doubt it.
In the process of getting nothing they managed to waste a whole lot of taxpayer money.
If the new Republican Congress really wants to make cuts they should get the government out of the job of morality cops. Of course that won't make some parts of the party happy, but it would be refreshing to see the party truly return to its small government ideology.
While they are at it they could stop DHS from being a wholly owned subsidiary of the MPAA. That would save money, protect democracy, get DHS back to doing what it is supposed to be doing, and poke a stick in Obama's eye all at the same time. That ought to appeal to them.
For the last year I have fed myself on a steady diet of self-published books. I read them on my Nexus One; even my 50-plus year-old eyes can handle it.
The price is certainly attractive. I also like the fact that you can read a significant portion of the book (sometimes up to 50%) before you pay for the rest of it. In the past there have been a lot of times that I paid good money for a dead tree book and then discovered that I didn't like it. That hasn't happened to me yet with self-published books. By the time I decide to pay I have a pretty good idea about whether I will like the rest of it. And, at $3 to $5 I am not going to feel bad even if I decide I don't like the book after I pay for it.
Editing quality varies greatly among self-published books. From reading the blogs of various authors it looks like a lot of authors do find editors. They are often amateur editors, but some of them are quite good. Spouses, faculty members at local colleges, coworkers, and fans of previous books seem to be doing a lot of the editing. There is also a "crowd sourced" type of editing where an author releases a book and fans send in editorial comments. The author implements the changes they want to make and re-releases the book. The neat thing about all of these amateur editing systems is that the author retains total artistic control. It is different with a contract with a major publishing house; unless you are a really big author there are generally contractual commitments or at least a great deal of leverage that forces most authors to accept editorial changes.
Personally, I find myself gravitating to the mid-range editorial styles. I like books that tend to have an earthy, wild-west feel to the editing. I find that I like to have the really rough edges knocked off by some editing, but I still like to feel that I am reading the author's own words, not the totally proper style that some editors seem to force on writers.
If you want very polished books, they are also available. The reader comments published with most books is a good place to start.
Why do industry hacks always portray one type of music as the only or best type?
One formula for essays by industry advocates is to pick on type of music and explain how piracy is killing that type of music. But there are many different types of music, and there are a lot of different types of jobs in the music industry. At any given time certain types of music and certain jobs within the recording industry are going to be more profitable than others. Circumstances changes, and so do the types of jobs that you can make a living at.
Perhaps Steven Foster didn't like writing music for minstrel shows. But, if he wanted to make money writing music during his time then he had to do it. Nothing said that he couldn't write the type of music he liked on the side, but the minstrel music put food on the table.
During the golden era of the CD you could make money making big production studio pieces. It isn't reasonable to think that would last forever, any more than writing for minstrel shows should have remained a profitable profession forever.
Times change. Tastes change. No style of music or music occupation is guaranteed to last forever.
In the process of getting nothing they managed to waste a whole lot of taxpayer money.
If the new Republican Congress really wants to make cuts they should get the government out of the job of morality cops. Of course that won't make some parts of the party happy, but it would be refreshing to see the party truly return to its small government ideology.
While they are at it they could stop DHS from being a wholly owned subsidiary of the MPAA. That would save money, protect democracy, get DHS back to doing what it is supposed to be doing, and poke a stick in Obama's eye all at the same time. That ought to appeal to them.
The art of reading twitter is filtering out the 99.9% that is useless to you and finding the 0.1%. It's not that hard, but it requires effort. The art of writing for twitter is getting yourself into the 0.1% of your intended audience. That is considerably harder.
Magazines usually cater to a specific audience that is willing to seek out (and often pay for) the content. They often have content that is found nowhere else. Other readers of the magazine have shared interests, so it should be fairly easy to build up a community of people around that fact. In other words, if anyone could take advantage of subscription apps, it should be magazines. From the ones that I have looked at, they tend to be based on the consumption model where the publisher pushes things out and buyers consume it. I haven't seen any of them really do a good job of building a community of loyal ipad users. There might still be a glimmer of hope for them if someone can figure out how to do that.
General circulation newspapers that had been hopping for salvation in subscription apps lack a lot of what the magazines have going for them. Even most local papers have very little local content. As we have discussed before, local newspapers have decreases local reporting and used more and more filler material from syndicates or fluffy and cheap human interest pieces. At one time they had good local classifieds, but now you can find most of that on local craigslists. In short, most newspapers don't have much left to sell. Again, there may be hope in building local communities. However, I doubt that newspapers can give up their old ways in the manner that is needed to build them. It is possible that local communities could be build just as well by local TV and Radio stations or even unexpected source.
Some national publications do have some things like columnists that people will pay to read. The propblem the national newspapers have is that they are charging prices based on the assumption that consumers are willing to pay for all of the content they put out, and they are grossly over charging. They also have week attempts to build communities.
Once again, the analogy of physical property to IP breaks down, but let's try to at least get this one as close as possible.
First the car itself is not carrying any drugs, and the owners of the car are not selling drugs. What the car is doing is driving up and down the street, keeping track of where people are selling things. You can stop the car and ask "Hey, where is a hot dog stand?" for example. The car also hands out newsletters that the owners of the car put together with commentary about what is happening on the street, and they also hand out newsletters that people along the street give them.
Now, as it happens, there are a lot of drug dealers and prostitutes along the street along with the hot dog carts, street-corner preachers, and other legitimate activities. The owner of the car is just collecting information on location and doesn't really have a way to know which operations are legit and which are not. Some are clearly illegal, but how is the driver to know whether the hot dog vendor has a forged health department certificate, or if that person who looks like a prostitute is actually handing out free condoms and pamphlets on preventing STD's?
What they have done here is to seize the car and pretend to have shut down the illegal activity on the street. True, they have taken away a popular method for people to get information about where illegal activity was going on. However, there are several other cars driving up and down the street doing the same thing, and the driver of this car has another car up and running within hours. Old patrons of the car might not recognize the new car at first, but they will either catch on eventually or find another car to provide information. Either way, the vendors keep on vending and the customers are only mildly inconvenienced.
By seizing the car, however, the police also shut down information about legitimate businesses. Now it so happens that most of those legal businesses were competing with a cartel of the traditional hotdog vendor industry. The Police Chief and assistant chief are pretty cozy with the established vender cartel, so shutting down the competition was a plus as far as the police are concerned.
The police hardly noticed the newsletters that were being distributed, although some of the beat cops noticed that a few of the newsletters happened to mention other newsletters that sometimes talked about illegal activity. Some of the other contents of the newsletters were very important to people who live along the street, but the cops thought it was unimportant because they themselves didn't really understand it.
This is one reason news aggregaters are important. I don't follow one newspaper now. Because I use an aggregater I see news from all over the world. That avoids some of the bias you get with a small selection of sources.
On the post: Will Hollywood Kill The Golden Goose By Squeezing Netflix Dry?
New to Netflix
As it currently stands, the selection for streaming is barely adequate to keep my interest. If things stay as they are I will probably renew on my own when the subscription runs out. However, if the price goes up or the selection drops then I won't. renew.
One alternative to high-priced movies is to not watch them at all. Netflix changed me from a non-movie consumer into at least a small revenue stream. I suspect there are a lot more people like me who will pay something to be able to watch movies, but won't pay exorbitant amounts.
The movie industry has fallen into the trap of thinking that everyone is willing to pay them a lot of money for their product. I don't think that they are capable of understanding that not everyone wants to pay them a lot of money. They don't seem to grasp the fact that some people will just ignore their product because the price is too high. Consumers also don't care what studio produces their movies, and they don't want to have to subscribe to several different services to get a selection of movies. Netflix does understand this. Netflix is based on getting modest payments from a lot of people who send them money every month. As long as Netflix can keep its customers, it will keep sending checks to the studios.
I think that the studios will kill the goose that is laying golden eggs for them. I expect that I won't have to decide what to do when my annual subscription to Netflix runs out. I think the studios will have managed to effectively kill it off by then and deny themselves a revenue stream. And all the studio execs will congratulate themselves and get large bonuses for doing it.
On the post: Will Hollywood Kill The Golden Goose By Squeezing Netflix Dry?
New to Netflix
As it currently stands, the selection for streaming is barely adequate to keep my interest. If things stay as they are I will probably renew on my own when the subscription runs out. However, if the price goes up or the selection drops then I won't. renew.
One alternative to high-priced movies is to not watch them at all. Netflix changed me from a non-movie consumer into at least a small revenue stream. I suspect there are a lot more people like me who will pay something to be able to watch movies, but won't pay exorbitant amounts.
The movie industry has fallen into the trap of thinking that everyone is willing to pay them a lot of money for their product. I don't think that they are capable of understanding that not everyone wants to pay them a lot of money. They don't seem to grasp the fact that some people will just ignore their product because the price is too high. Consumers also don't care what studio produces their movies, and they don't want to have to subscribe to several different services to get a selection of movies. Netflix does understand this. Netflix is based on getting modest payments from a lot of people who send them money every month. As long as Netflix can keep its customers, it will keep sending checks to the studios.
I think that the studios will kill the goose that is laying golden eggs for them. I expect that I won't have to decide what to do when my annual subscription to Netflix runs out. I think the studios will have managed to effectively kill it off by then and deny themselves a revenue stream. And all the studio execs will congratulate themselves and get large bonuses for doing it.
On the post: Still Trying To Track Down Who Controls Patent Used Against Reddit, Digg, Fark, Slashdot & TechCrunch
Re: Re: Is Reddit and 4chan the a model for a new form of "Investigative News"?
Pretty much like a lot of the reporting done by traditional news organizations.
On the post: Still Trying To Track Down Who Controls Patent Used Against Reddit, Digg, Fark, Slashdot & TechCrunch
Let's hope Reddit et. al. stand up
It looks like Reddit, at least, is willing to fight the suit. However, I doubt they will actually go to trial. If any of the defendants hold out for a trial it is likely that the plaintiffs will be the ones to fold rather than risk invalidation.
On the post: OECD: Concept Of Cyberwar Is Overhyped
Ask the Iranians
My biggest concern is that governments around the world will use the excuse of cyberwar to do lots of other things such as imposing more intrusions into personal freedoms and enhancing IP protections.
On the post: Big Record Label 'Innovation': Actually Release Songs For Sale The Same Time They Hit The Radio
Reason
Position on the sales charts isn't as important as it used to be, so it makes a lot of sense to drop the policy. Of course it would have made sense to do this a long time ago. In a free market this kind of delay would have been punished, but when you are running a government-protected business little things like rationality and market demand don't matter very much.
On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week
On the post: Redbox Realizing That Caving To Hollywood On 28-Day Delay Was A Bad Idea
Lots of reasons
1) They are probably getting a cash payment of some kind from the immediate release companies like Blockbuster. It is always hard to give up an existing income stream, even if giving it up opens up the option to make much more money elsewhere.
2) Like Charlie Brown, managers like to manage. They think they are doing something, and things like this can make impressive entries on a resume or vitae.
3) Executives have fed themselves on myths about the industry and now they have a hard time giving them up. The "we make more money because we have release windows" is going to be a hard one to loose. It is much easier to ignore the Paramont data or come up with reasons that it doesn't apply to their own studio because it would call the whole windowing paradigm into question.
On the post: Rock & A Hard Place: Will Google Dropping H.264 Lead To Antitrust Questions?
Chrome is not in a monopoly position.
On the post: It's January, Which Means Congress Promises Patent Reform That Will Never Come
Re:
Short of abolishing the patent system, here are some reforms that could would improve the current system
1)Eliminate software and business practice patents entirely. There are many reasons for this, but in my mind the fundamental problem is that software development and business practices progress at a speed that is much too fast for the patent process. Patents are designed for things that take years to develop and which will remain in demand for decades. Software and business practices are often developed in days or weeks and will probably be outdated by the time the patent period ends. Another reason for eliminating these types of patents is that they are choking the system, and examiners simply do not have the time or expertise to evaluate them.
2)Put the burden of proof on the patent holder when patents go to court. There is currently a presumption that the Patent Office has carefully examined the patent and found that its claims are valid. We have seen time and time again that this is not true. Examiners don't have time to adequately examine patents, often do not have expertise in the area, and they are subject to unending appeals and revisions from the applicant. So in effect we need to assume that a patent is not valid until it is vetted in court. This isn't how it should be if the patent system was working properly, but it isn't so the burden has to be shifted to the courts.
3)Invalidate patents automatically if the applicant fails to reveal prior art. This would have to be worked into regulations carefully, otherwise patent applications would start listing tons of irrelevant data to bury their revelation of prior art.
4)Allow the defendant move the case to a district where they have a legal presence. This would prevent venue shopping. The downside is that it could seriously damage the 4-H program in the eastern Texas.
5)Revise the patent approval process to take pressure off of examiners. Allow only written communication with examiners and prohibit phone calls or personal visits from applicants and their attorneys. The ability to significantly change the application after filing should also be restricted to a single resubmission to fix technical problems or answer questions raised by the examiner. When questioning the validity of a patent, the defendant should be able to question the approval process for the patent with revisions considered damaging to the quality of the patent.
6)Severely limit damage awards. It looks like we may be finally getting rid of the 25% rule; let's hope that it is replaced by something more rational.
7)Broaden the operational definitions of "obviousness."
On the post: Columbus Dispatch Issues Takedown On Famous YouTube Video Of Homeless Guy With Great Radio Voice
On the post: How The FCC Got Millions To See Charlotte Ross's Naked Behind... And Then Lost In Court
If the new Republican Congress really wants to make cuts they should get the government out of the job of morality cops. Of course that won't make some parts of the party happy, but it would be refreshing to see the party truly return to its small government ideology.
While they are at it they could stop DHS from being a wholly owned subsidiary of the MPAA. That would save money, protect democracy, get DHS back to doing what it is supposed to be doing, and poke a stick in Obama's eye all at the same time. That ought to appeal to them.
On the post: Have We Reached A Tipping Point Where Self-Publishing Is Better Than Getting A Book Deal?
Why I like self-published ebooks
The price is certainly attractive. I also like the fact that you can read a significant portion of the book (sometimes up to 50%) before you pay for the rest of it. In the past there have been a lot of times that I paid good money for a dead tree book and then discovered that I didn't like it. That hasn't happened to me yet with self-published books. By the time I decide to pay I have a pretty good idea about whether I will like the rest of it. And, at $3 to $5 I am not going to feel bad even if I decide I don't like the book after I pay for it.
Editing quality varies greatly among self-published books. From reading the blogs of various authors it looks like a lot of authors do find editors. They are often amateur editors, but some of them are quite good. Spouses, faculty members at local colleges, coworkers, and fans of previous books seem to be doing a lot of the editing. There is also a "crowd sourced" type of editing where an author releases a book and fans send in editorial comments. The author implements the changes they want to make and re-releases the book. The neat thing about all of these amateur editing systems is that the author retains total artistic control. It is different with a contract with a major publishing house; unless you are a really big author there are generally contractual commitments or at least a great deal of leverage that forces most authors to accept editorial changes.
Personally, I find myself gravitating to the mid-range editorial styles. I like books that tend to have an earthy, wild-west feel to the editing. I find that I like to have the really rough edges knocked off by some editing, but I still like to feel that I am reading the author's own words, not the totally proper style that some editors seem to force on writers.
If you want very polished books, they are also available. The reader comments published with most books is a good place to start.
On the post: Music Piracy = The Death Of The Recording Artist?
Why do industry hacks always portray one type of music as the only or best type?
Perhaps Steven Foster didn't like writing music for minstrel shows. But, if he wanted to make money writing music during his time then he had to do it. Nothing said that he couldn't write the type of music he liked on the side, but the minstrel music put food on the table.
During the golden era of the CD you could make money making big production studio pieces. It isn't reasonable to think that would last forever, any more than writing for minstrel shows should have remained a profitable profession forever.
Times change. Tastes change. No style of music or music occupation is guaranteed to last forever.
On the post: How The FCC Got Millions To See Charlotte Ross's Naked Behind... And Then Lost In Court
If the new Republican Congress really wants to make cuts they should get the government out of the job of morality cops. Of course that won't make some parts of the party happy, but it would be refreshing to see the party truly return to its small government ideology.
While they are at it they could stop DHS from being a wholly owned subsidiary of the MPAA. That would save money, protect democracy, get DHS back to doing what it is supposed to be doing, and poke a stick in Obama's eye all at the same time. That ought to appeal to them.
On the post: Are Tweets And Text Messaging Actually Increasing The Appeal Of Long Form Writing?
Re: Long form writing
On the post: As Predicted: iPad Magazine Subscriber Numbers Plummeting
Newpapers are in an even worse position
General circulation newspapers that had been hopping for salvation in subscription apps lack a lot of what the magazines have going for them. Even most local papers have very little local content. As we have discussed before, local newspapers have decreases local reporting and used more and more filler material from syndicates or fluffy and cheap human interest pieces. At one time they had good local classifieds, but now you can find most of that on local craigslists. In short, most newspapers don't have much left to sell. Again, there may be hope in building local communities. However, I doubt that newspapers can give up their old ways in the manner that is needed to build them. It is possible that local communities could be build just as well by local TV and Radio stations or even unexpected source.
Some national publications do have some things like columnists that people will pay to read. The propblem the national newspapers have is that they are charging prices based on the assumption that consumers are willing to pay for all of the content they put out, and they are grossly over charging. They also have week attempts to build communities.
On the post: Should MySpace Friends & Photos Be Enough Evidence To Convict Someone Of Criminal Gang Activity
Surprised
On the post: Full Homeland Security Affidavit To Seize Domains Riddled With Technical & Legal Errors
Re: Re:
First the car itself is not carrying any drugs, and the owners of the car are not selling drugs. What the car is doing is driving up and down the street, keeping track of where people are selling things. You can stop the car and ask "Hey, where is a hot dog stand?" for example. The car also hands out newsletters that the owners of the car put together with commentary about what is happening on the street, and they also hand out newsletters that people along the street give them.
Now, as it happens, there are a lot of drug dealers and prostitutes along the street along with the hot dog carts, street-corner preachers, and other legitimate activities. The owner of the car is just collecting information on location and doesn't really have a way to know which operations are legit and which are not. Some are clearly illegal, but how is the driver to know whether the hot dog vendor has a forged health department certificate, or if that person who looks like a prostitute is actually handing out free condoms and pamphlets on preventing STD's?
What they have done here is to seize the car and pretend to have shut down the illegal activity on the street. True, they have taken away a popular method for people to get information about where illegal activity was going on. However, there are several other cars driving up and down the street doing the same thing, and the driver of this car has another car up and running within hours. Old patrons of the car might not recognize the new car at first, but they will either catch on eventually or find another car to provide information. Either way, the vendors keep on vending and the customers are only mildly inconvenienced.
By seizing the car, however, the police also shut down information about legitimate businesses. Now it so happens that most of those legal businesses were competing with a cartel of the traditional hotdog vendor industry. The Police Chief and assistant chief are pretty cozy with the established vender cartel, so shutting down the competition was a plus as far as the police are concerned.
The police hardly noticed the newsletters that were being distributed, although some of the beat cops noticed that a few of the newsletters happened to mention other newsletters that sometimes talked about illegal activity. Some of the other contents of the newsletters were very important to people who live along the street, but the cops thought it was unimportant because they themselves didn't really understand it.
On the post: Why Are US Publications Downplaying The Significance Of Some Of Wikileaks' Leaks?
Sources
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