Claire Ryan's Favorite Techdirt Posts Of The Week
from the keep-calm-and-carreon dept
Hello there, dear Techdirt readers! Gather 'round, and let me tell you of my favorite posts on this fine day.
There's nothing like starting the week off with a marketing disaster of truly epic proportions. Charles Carreon once again steps up and delivers, in a way that only the namesake of the Carreon Effect can, by filing more pointless paperwork to get back at Matthew Inman and The Oatmeal's BearLove Good Cancer Bad charity campaign, then dismissing it and declaring victory. At this stage, you really have to wonder what exactly is going on in dear Charles' head. Is there a customer base out there for his services who don't know of his status as the laughing stock of the entire Internet (or, a more depressing possibility, who actually know but take it as a point in his favor).
He seems to think so, according to Ars Technica. When a man persists in digging himself into a hole at this speed, all one can really do is sit back with some popcorn and watch the dirt fly.
Sometimes it's quite interesting to see how online marketing works in unexpected ways. Ginger Wildheart's recent album success is a case in point, where loyal fans, crowd-funding, and word-of-mouth have catapulted his music onto the charts ahead of other, much bigger, label artists. It's certainly a testament to the new paradigm of advertising and marketing, where being real and accessible to fans is far more powerful than a billboard every hundred feet, and it simply wouldn't be possible without the Internet making communication effortless.
The naysayers will jump on the story and declare that crowd-funding can't make everyone a success. To me, that's always sounded a bit like complaining about how people climb a mountain. Some strap on the snowshoes and walk, some wait in line for a ski lift to become available, and some lucky ones catch a passing helicopter and get there in minutes. How they do it, though, isn't as important as just reaching the top at all, and at least they have options now.
Speaking of music, Tim Cushing makes a great point in this article about its history -- that it's been largely about participation, not about being paid.
Many argue that today's world will be the death of any form of artistic expression that can be converted to ones and zeroes, but what they're really saying is that the very brief moment when art and commerce merged successfully is over.
It's interesting to see how things have essentially come full circle. Before modern technology stepped in, playing and singing was just something people did as a natural byproduct of being human, like dancing or complaining about the weather. Then it could be recorded and sold, and the technology to make this happen needed experts, and the infrastructure to distribute it needed money, and the modern recording industry rose up to handle all of it. But music never stopped being something that people just did, and now that technology has progressed to the point where no experts are needed and the infrastructure is free, we're left the curious case of the musical tradition of thousands of years being in direct competition with an industry that's about one hundred years old.
My money is on the thousand year old tradition, by the way, in that particular fight.
I'm usually astonished and amused in equal measure by the actions of the various entertainment companies reported on Techdirt, but for once I got my giggles from someone other than them in an article about Netflix. Industry analyst Todd Juenger delivered a report that the big media giants should divert kids from Netflix to more long-term profitable avenues such as... traditional TV. Yeah, go ahead and try selling the idea of serial, static programming to a generation who have grown up with Youtube videos and BitTorrent. Let me know how that works out for you.
Go look at the original article, though. The analyst firm based all this on focus groups they conducted with more than a DOZEN parents. Wow, you guys! That's like... more than TWELVE! Can you imagine the kind of calculations they had to do to extrapolate the opinions of over TWELVE parents to an entire demographic of millions? Personally, I am in awe of their analytical prowess.
Finally, the news that Matthew Inman may have lost his ability to form complete sentences with proper grammar and spelling is truly shocking. Let this be a warning to anyone who launches major charity campaigns after being sent frivolous legal threats.
This has been your weekly dose of the best of Techdirt, according to my rather vague definition of 'best'. I shall now retire to the comments, and enjoy this brief moment of having the blue author box around my inane ramblings - I mean, my clever and insightful witticisms.
Re:
You know you live in a society, right? Around other people, right? And being around them and sharing in communal things like the military that protects you and the roads that let you move around easily and laws that give you recourse against crimes etc etc means that you give up some of this 'freedom'?
That's the bargain. If you want to be around other people, then you fucking well follow the rules laid down by society that are designed to protect you and everyone else in it. If you don't agree with the rules, then you can advocate for change or go somewhere else with different rules. That's what the whole "your right to throw a punch ends at my face" saying means - if you live in a society, you can do what you want until you start to fuck it up for everyone else. So, you're not allowed to drive while being drunk. You're not allowed to attack people and take their stuff because you need it. And, ffs, you shouldn't be allowed to go without vaccinations just because you feel like being a contrary little shit.
The combined lives and health of many other people should be ranked higher in the grand scheme of things than your ignorant opinion on science you don't understand.
If the rules or the society don't work - and let's be honest, big chunks of them don't - then that's a good reason to strive for change and improvement. But this 'I'm free and you can't tell me what to do nyah nyah' bollocks is ridiculous.
Honestly, I know most Americans are fine, normal people, but stuff like this makes the country look like it's populated by nutballs.
Re: Did you get out of the bed the wrong this morning?
so (a) while the science shows that vaccines are largely a good thing for society, a minute number of allergic reactions notwithstanding, and
(b) the outbreaks of these diseases can be directly traced to scientifically-illiterate individuals who refuse to vaccinate on grounds that are shaky at best and downright fucking stupid at worst:
Your surprise at G Thompson getting irritated and calling you names is a little weird.
(untitled comment)
All the innovation you can pay for is partly wasted when you're locking out millions of potential customers with regional restrictions.
Why settle for making {bunch o' money x United States online population} when you could be, I dunno, using the GLOBAL COMMUNICATION NETWORK to make {bunch o' money x the whole online world}?
This has three major issues:
The second is that they may not have any standing to demand this. Who the authors license their work to in other territories, and under what conditions, is none of Hachette's business. But they can apply pressure, with the implicit understanding being that the authors will not get another book deal if they don't comply. Strong-arm tactics at their finest.
The third is that they are actually asking authors to take a hit on their livelyhood just to please them. We know DRM is ineffective. We know that it's so trivial to remove that there's no 'hardcore' stuff involved; the mainstream can do it easily, if they want. (And they will, if they find out that their books are restricted in stupid ways.) So they don't really have a leg to stand on here - they're essentially saying to authors, "You have to tell your other publishers to do something that will likely piss off your readers and damage your hard-won reputation for no benefit whatsoever, because we say so and we'll take our ball and go home otherwise."
This is honestly all kinds of ridiculous, and should be a giant red flag to authors everywhere that Hachette don't know what the hell they're doing and are not worth pitching their books to in future.
(untitled comment)
What nonsense. She can moan all she likes, but she can't stop self-published authors from pricing their books however they want. Those authors are presumably reading and taking note of J.A. Konrath's blog posts on the matter, and pricing at $2.99 - that apparently being the price at which revenue is maximized.
It's getting to a point where it looks like wilful ignorance. The market has spoken. Authors are routinely bypassing publishers and making a nice profit on their own. It's not going to change because she, or any other publisher, wants it to change or has a couple of arguments as to why it should change. Frankly, if that's all they've got, they deserve to go out of business.
Are you surprised?
You're talking about a number of companies that have spent the best part of a hundred years or more selling to a particular market: bookstores. Their whole focus has been on selling paper books into businesses who then sell them to readers. Now they're being asked to sell to readers directly - and it's largely thrown them for a loop, because while they were trying to avoid getting into the whole messy digital thing, Amazon did exactly that and whipped the whole market out from under them.
They haven't a clue how to deal with that. They know how to sell to stores and to book critics. Tor and Baen know their stuff, but the rest of the big publishers wouldn't know an online marketing campaign if it jumped up and bit them in the face. Authors do their own online marketing - they have to, because (excluding Tor and Baen, like I said) there is no way for them to connect to an online reading audience through their publisher.
The publisher is not the brand. The publisher is the manufacturer and delivery service, at best. The author is the brand who makes use of them. No small wonder then, that bestselling authors (Barry Eisler, for example) just walk away when the deal isn't good enough, and take their brand recognition with them.
You think the music industry had it bad... The big publishers make them look clued-in in comparison. They have literally nothing to offer a new author bar some vague sense of legitimacy that's meaningless when it comes to sales, and they seem completely intent on keeping it that way - right up to the point where they go out of business.
Re:
Anonymous? Not so much.
Anonymous don't threaten. You start doing something they don't like, they don't say 'stop that shit or we'll attack', like, say, a terrorist would. That implies a level of organizational control that they clearly don't have. They just attack, using whatever seems like a good idea or whatever will get the most laughs.
There is no intent, no logic, no consistency, and your only defence is avoiding their attention. There are no consequences to leaving them the hell alone and plenty of consequences to annoying them like this. The worst part of it is that the more you dig in and try to go after them, the more attention you draw and the more Anons get involved - as if poking a bear with a stick makes it harder to kill as well as angry enough to rip your head off.
Anyway - that whole 'hunting down terrorists' strategy seems to be doing a pretty good job of making lots more terrorists, so maybe you shouldn't be recommending it as a solution here.
I just want to say
"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" - what the hell ever happened to that? America used to be the ideal, the promised land; a place where any man could be judged on his merits, not his bloodline or his history or his religion. Now? It's like the whole country is eating its own tail, so wrapped up in being The Best Place in the World(TM) that it can't accept that today's immigrants could be just as worthy as the ones who built it.
I had to figure out where I wanted to go, when I decided that I had to leave Ireland. The US wasn't an option, not for a second. I couldn't put my future in the hands of a fickle bureaucracy who seem bent on looking down on me, who could make me jump through hoops for years and STILL deport me on a whim. I have friends who've been there for more than six years, working in fields that require Phds, and yet have no hope of getting a green card. Everything I know about or have heard of says the same thing: if you want to immigrate somewhere else, prove yourself, and build a better life, then forget about America. They don't want you there.
I went to Canada instead, probably the best decision I've ever made. The money that I'll be spending in the economy, the taxes I'll pay, the house I will buy, the children I will raise; it'll all be in the fine city of Vancouver BC.
As for the US? I'll visit, but I sure as hell wouldn't want to live there.
Re: Side show while we wait for Carreon's next move?
(It's spelled 'defamation', I think, not deformation.)
Re: Re: Re:
If anything the ACTA defeat showed that people were ready, and had become more watchful. The rise of the Pirate parties in Europe are a good sign of that. It's demonstrated that this is something people care enough about to vote that way, and politicians are fools if they don't pay attention to that.
So... yeah. I am still hopeful. I don't think I'll be losing my money any time soon. I don't think there's enough money in the world to quash the natural inclination of seven billion people to create and share in the same way they've done for generations.
Re: Re: Re:
Re:
While I can
*insert witticisms here*
Re:
Chin up, anon. It ain't all about the money - not yet at any rate.
(untitled comment)
Dotcom would have to be drowning kittens or something to make people root for the American government.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Merit
I didn't say anything about organizations or groups. All I said, that he was responded to, was that white guys have it easier than others in a world that's largely run by and for white guys. I didn't bring up anything to do with groups automatically being racist because they work for white people, because:
That. Is not. My opinion.
-and-
It's tangential, at best, to this discussion.
So, again, where are you going with this? Where's he going with this?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Merit
The problem is that trying to separate and quantify the effects of each factor is very difficult. I think there's enough to suggest that bias has a significant influence, but this does not mean that bias is the ONLY factor at play here. It's also not enough to say that men have it just as bad - we do need more data in that respect, and I'm sure I read something on the effects of the recession on male employment a while back, but damned if I can remember what it was called.
One thing I would note is that whatever factors we can examine (apart from bias) to explain the gap between men vs women don't hold up as well when comparing white men vs black men. For example, if we are to explain the gender pay gap by positing that women are more likely to take part time work because of social or familial obligations, that same reason may not be a satisfactory explanation as to why black men are paid less overall than white men.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Merit
You mean... all of them that ain't specifically working for non-whites, seeing as 'white' is seen as the default?
"would automatically be a racist hate filled group"
You said it, not me. I don't share that opinion.
"funny how "ONLY" whites can be guilty of "racism""
Again, you said it, not me. Not sure what point you're making here.
"look in the mirror buddy, your a racist"
It's spelled "you're". Just FYI.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Merit
No. Let us be civil. I apologise for my flippant tone; let's move this back to a proper discussion. Here are some studies on the existence of bias of various types:
http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2008/08/09/study-black-man-and-white-felon-same-chances-for-hir e/ - a study that shows white men were twice as likely as black men to receive a callback for a job, given equal skill and experience. Only in 2008, not that long ago.
http://scholar.harvard.edu/mullainathan/files/emilygreg.pdf - another study from 2004 showing a similar trend based on names that are identified as African American.
http://www.ncrw.org/news-center/in-the-news/study-spoiled-milk-experimental-examination -bias-against-mothers-who - bias against breastfeeding mothers in the workplace
http://hbr.org/2010/03/women-in-management-delusions-of-progress/ar/1 - women still discriminated against in higher level positions even after controlling for other factors like motherhood
http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpswom2009.pdf - the old faithful, the income wage gap between men and women
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1985377 - racial disparity in criminal charges; prosecutors are twice as likely to charge blacks with crimes that have a minimum sentence
The disproportionate number of blacks and Hispanics in prison is, of course, so well known that I don't think I need to cite any papers there.
Now, on affirmative action - those laws were put in place to combat decades of discrimination. They're not a perfect solution, and they wouldn't be needed in a perfect world, but we've only got this world to work with and it is a flawed place.
That white guys may experience discrimination as a result of affirmative action simply does not compare to decades of discrimination that has happened and continues to happen to non-white non-males, and it also does not have the same kind of negative effect in light of the fact that white males hold the vast majority of the world's power and economic wealth. So although your point may have merit, you have not presented anything to suggest that affirmative action results in discrimination against white men (all else being equal) nor that it produces a major negative overall on white males' lives in the same way as actual discrimination has on non-white non-males.
There are so many intersecting variables here that separating how much of an effect each one contributes to various different statistics is a nightmare, but I think it's clear that bias does still exist.
Re: Re: Merit
Guess the white guys will just have to settle for majority control over the world's money, governments, mass media, etc etc etc.
Seriously. White guys are not systematically denied jobs because the employer is worried they'll want to start a family or take time off to take care of their kids. White guys are not systematically paid less or passed over for promotion just because they're male and white. White guys are not systematically targeted by police just because they're white.
Denial ain't just a river in Egypt, mate.
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