Category: Internet

Bear Stearns Says Studios are Full of It on Writers Strike

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Of course, given their track record recently, I have put them in my investment bank dead pool because of their missteps on the credit crisis, but they have issued a report explicitly stating that the writers demands would have a negligible impact on the industry (Original is sub reqd, excerpt is from Hollywood United):

“From Wall Street’s perspective, we estimate the impact of accepting the [writers’] proposal is largely negligible,” Bear Stearns wrote in a report last week.
The firm estimates that the $120 million figure would carry an average impact of less than 1% on annual earnings per share for the media companies. That does not factor in any concessions by the writers’ side (the WGA), where the principal issue is a desire for a piece of ad dollars from new-media distribution.
The potentially small financial impact suggests that studios (Alliance of Motion Pictures and Television Producers) are more concerned about setting a precedent in new-media revenue sharing. However, Bear Stearns wrote that the writers’ forecast for that market “strikes us as fairly aggressive.” The firm hinted that studios are looking to the future. They are concerned that a favorable settlement would embolden directors and actors in their coming renegotiations.

From the reports that I’ve read, it appears that the chief negotiator is the same guy who suckered the writers on DVDs many years back, and he’s operating on his own need for legacy, and some of the studios, particularly those heavily into TV production, are not happy with him.

Facebook Has Not Jumped the Shark, It Is In the Tank, Being Devoured

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Josh Quittner has a very well written essay on Facebook, and I loved the opening ‘graph:

A lot of people say that Facebook has jumped the shark. That’s flat out wrong. In fact, Facebook is now being devoured by the shark. There’s so much blood in the water, it’s attracting other sharks. And if Facebook’s not careful, one of them is bound to come along and finish it off. I’ve never seen anything like it in the annals of fast-rising tech companies that fail.

Love the devoured by shark bit. Go read the essay, and the comments.

AT&T/NSA Hoovered the Entire Bloody Internet

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Mark Klein is an American hero.

For those of you who don’t know, Mark Klein is a retired technician at AT&T, and he was responsible for running wires to a splitter for the benefit of Room 641A of 611 Folsom Street, the secret room set up by the NSA at AT&T’s offices in San Francisco. He is Now lobbying congress not to grant retroactive immunity to the Telcos over the illegal NSA spying.

“That was my ‘aha!’ moment,” Klein said. “They’re sending the entire Internet to the secret room.”

The diagram showed splitters, glass prisms that split signals from each network into two identical copies. One fed into the secret room, the other proceeded to its destination, he said.

“This splitter was sweeping up everything, vacuum-cleaner-style,” he said. “The NSA is getting everything. These are major pipes that carry not just AT&T’s customers but everybody’s.”

The illegal wiretapping that most telcos did on behalf of the NSA was far more extensive than previously revealed.

This was not targeted at foreign calls routed through the US. Nor was it calls where one party was overseas. The NSA is actively collecting ALL THE DATA going through AT&T internet exchange point. Everything. Every email, every google query, every music download, every IP telephone call (and BTW, pretty much all long distance telephone calls at some point use TCP/IP these days.)

They took everything.

The telcos are claiming that they need immunity, because they were just being good citizens, and that they were not clear on the law.

There is one problem with argument, as Mr. Klein noted on Olbermann, THESE ENTITIES WROTE THE LAWS INVOLVED. They were heavily involved in drafting the laws at every step of the way.

They knowingly broke the laws, and they did because they saw the example of Qwest, where the government retaliated by denying and pulling contracts, and they chose to break the law because it was profitable.

Free Market Gets Us Slower More Expensive Internet

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No surprise, the U.S. is lagging in broadband penetration, performance and price, and it is falling further behind. The free market shills claim that it’s bad data, but every study confirms this.

This is not surprising. Telcos are not in the business of providing good service. They are in the business of making money, and it is far more profitable to use their natural monopoly, the ownership of the last mile of wire to the home, to keep competitors out than it is for them to invest in new equipment.

Given recent deregulatory decisions by the FCC, the level of competition, and hence the level of innovation are low, and prices are high. They will remain that way until the government steps in.

Municipal Wi-Fi and Broadband Bans Overturned in Senate Markup

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There are a number of states in which the pig felching greedheads in the phone companies have managed to make municipal broadband and WI-Fi illegal, and a number of other states where they are trying to.

We have good news, the Senate Commerce Committee has passed a bill out to the floor that overturns these laws with broad bipartisan support.

Bad news is that there is no similar effort right now in the house, so call your congresscritter, and tell them to support the Community Broadband Act.

Appeals Court Puts Small ISPs Out of Business

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It said that the FCC ruling that no requirement for access to the list mile wiring stands.

Ma Bell has lived for years by using monopolistic techniques to ice out competition. It’s more profitable than supplying a better product, which is why the US is behind the rest of the industrialized world in broadband.

The FCC claims that this will give more competition. Why should it, when anti-competitive behavior is more profitable than competing.

The Fight Over White Space

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Microsoft and Google, on the same side for once, are in in a tussle with commercial TV stations over “white space”, the unused channels in broadcast TV.

Basically, Microsoft sent a prototype to the FCC which was supposed to automatically detect white space, and use the spectrum for (very) high speed connectivity, but it failed because Microsoft never gets anything right the first time.

Broadcaster’s heads are exploding over this proposal, with claims of severe interference, technical problems, and that it will make your daughter date a biker.

While part of this is no doubt a result of the proprietary feelings that broadcasters have regarding “their” (it belongs to all of us) spectrum, I think that another part is that they do not want to have a competing use.

If there is a competing use, at some point regulators might give priority to that use, as opposed to broadcasting reruns of “my mother the car”.

Gambling Dispute With a Tiny Country Puts U.S. in a Bind – New York Times

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The US-Antigua dispute over Net gambling is escalating, and it’s hit the NY Times, which means that it’s really hit the mainstream, but before I get into that, I have to acknowledge Dean Bakers incisive analaysis, and the magnificent snark therein, where he says “Antigua Threatens the United States with Free Trade“, which is absolutely true. IP restrictions are restrictions on trade through exclusive licensing.

A brief recap on the whole Internet gambling business, the US implemented an internet casino gambling ban. It still allows for other internet gambling, “including the online purchase of lottery tickets*, participation in Web-based pro sports fantasy leagues and off-track wagering on horse racing.”

Online casinos are a big part of the Antiguan economy. It’s the 2nd largest employer on the Island.

So Antigua takes it to the WTO, Antigua wins. Big whoop. Really….Who cares. If they are allowed to place tarrifs on US cars, or toothpaste, what difference does it make? Their population is around 70,000, so it’s a negligible impact, right?

Wrong

What the Antigua asked for, and received as a sanction was the right to ignore US IP restrictions, and to distribute US IP protected products without restriction.

While the drug manufacturers have nothing to fear, it’s not like they are going to become a Viagra® manufacturing powerhouse, the makers of non-tangible items, like movies, music, software, etc. are in the process of freaking out, which looks something like this: , because the island is well wired (from the online Casinos), and can set up an operation that would make AllofMP3.com look like a Sunday social.

Truth be told, the consequences will not be as dire as IP companies will make out. I expect that very few people who would otherwise pay for these products will download them, and my guess is that these companies know that.

The reason that they are concerned is that if I am right, and the consequences will be minor, then you will see another argument against draconian IP restrictions, because the sky did not fall.

This may be of particular interest to the Chinese too, as this ruling could be extended to the “Great Firewall of China.

*On the matter of state lottery tickets, I believe that they should be treated differently, being a state run activity and a revenue generator, but when we signed onto the WTO, it specifically forbade this.

Why Network Neutrality Matters

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AT&T censored anti-Bush lyrics on a webcast by Pearl Jam. This is why we want to put net neutrality into law.

Note: I am quoting the press release in its entirety, because permission is implied by posting a press release.

LOLLAPALOOZA WEBCAST: SPONSORED/CENSORED BY AT&T?

08.08.07
After concluding our Sunday night show at Lollapalooza, fans informed us that portions of that performance were missing and may have been censored by AT&T during the “Blue Room” Live Lollapalooza Webcast.

When asked about the missing performance, AT&T informed Lollapalooza that portions of the show were in fact missing from the webcast, and that their content monitor had made a mistake in cutting them.

During the performance of “Daughter” the following lyrics were sung to the tune of Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall” but were cut from the webcast:

– “George Bush, leave this world alone.” (the second time it was sung); and

– “George Bush find yourself another home.”

This, of course, troubles us as artists but also as citizens concerned with the issue of censorship and the increasingly consolidated control of the media.

AT&T’s actions strike at the heart of the public’s concerns over the power that corporations have when it comes to determining what the public sees and hears through communications media.

Aspects of censorship, consolidation, and preferential treatment of the internet are now being debated under the umbrella of “NetNeutrality.” Check out The Future of Music or Save the Internet for more information on this issue.

Most telecommunications companies oppose “net neutrality” and argue that the public can trust them not to censor..

Even the ex-head of AT&T, CEO Edward Whitacre, whose company sponsored our troubled webcast, stated just last March that fears his company and other big network providers would block traffic on their networks are overblown..

“Any provider that blocks access to content is inviting customers to find another provider.” (Marguerite Reardon, Staff Writer, CNET News.com Published: March 21, 2006, 2:23 PM PST).

But what if there is only one provider from which to choose?

If a company that is controlling a webcast is cutting out bits of our performance -not based on laws, but on their own preferences and interpretations – fans have little choice but to watch the censored version.

What happened to us this weekend was a wake up call, and it’s about something much bigger than the censorship of a rock band.

The complete version of “Daughter” from the Lollapalooza performance will be posted here soon for any of you who missed it. We apologize to our fans who were watching the webcast and got shortchanged. In the future, we will work even harder to ensure that our live broadcasts or webcasts are free from arbitrary edits.

If you have examples of AT&T censoring artist performances around political content, it’s a good thing for everyone to know about. Feel free to post examples on the official Pearl Jam Message Pit.

Will No One Rid Me of This Meddlesome Spammer?

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It appears that MySpace has gotten a court injunction to keep Sanford Wallace out of their service.

The preliminary injunction came in a lawsuit MySpace filed in March. It claims Wallace created more than 11,000 MySpace profiles that churned out private messages, comments and bulletins that directed users to spoofed MySpace pages seeking their login information.

The ruse allowed him to hijack at least 320,000 accounts, which he used to send 400,000 private messages and post 890,000 comments, both of which redirected MySpace users to the sites freevegasclubs.com and realvegas-sins.com. The sites are owned by Feeble Minded Productions, an aptly-titled firm affiliated with Wallace.

He’s not going to change. Can someone just send him to Gitmo or something?

It looks like he is covered under CAN-SPAM, and the least the judge thought it was likely enough that he granted the injunction, and there is potential jail time ther.

Favorite comment of the piece:

We were unable to find a phone number for Wallace and were reluctant to email him.

I gotta go clean my screen now.

Only the Jesuits Would Think of This

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It appears that the Society of Jesus (Jesuits)will be venturing into Second Life saving virtual souls from their virtual sins.

OK………

I got nothing here beyond the title.

I had a friend who wanted to carry the papal favor into battle in the SCA (Medieval combat), and he wrote the Vatican. He got back something like a 12 page letter full of questions from a Jesuit asking about the SCA. (His request was denied)

They are an eclectic bunch.

Internet Radio Reprieve a Trojan Horse

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It appears that the olive branch that was offered by SoundExchange contained a hornet’s nest.It comes with a requirement that they use DRM (digital rights management)

Along with the myriad of software issues, particularly across operating systems, that come a DRM scheme, it also reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of Internet radio.

If people want to store songs on disk, the go with P2P solutions. They tune into Internet radio because they want to listen, not rip.

Does Privacy Sell?

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I just read this story aboutAsk.com devising an aggressive privacy policy. It was couched as a way to compete with Google.

I’ve also heard about Microsoft doing the same (in the case of the Borg, however, I won’t trust them to follow through).

This is not an outbreak of corporate ethics, but rather an attempt to capitalize on a perceived weakness of Google, the Elephant in the room, regarding privacy.

My guess is that this will not make a big difference, and we’ll see relaxation of the new policies over the next 18-24 months.

A new Twist on Peer-to-Peer: Telephone Service

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A company called Ooma has a new setup to make VOIP work. It will the phone lines of its subscribers to actually complete phone calls

While this is presented as reducing completion charges, the real reason for this is that it is a way of avoiding the frequently infernal machinations of the incumbent local service providers.

The baby Bells are absolutely bone headed about this, because they do not want to see real competition in their markets.

Where the Net Really Makes a Difference

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The first place that I noticed the net making a difference in real life was when I moved to Baltimore, and I found out how much easier Mapquest made it for me to find a home where I wanted, because I knew were each address was instantly.

It’s now entering politics, where you have someone setting up a searchable database of Debra Jean Palfrey’s (aka the DC Madame) phone records.

You have also found this in the turnaround of massive document dumps by the Bush administration on the US Attorney scandal, frequently in a matter of hours.

The ability to being hundreds, if not thousands, of people together to do the scut work of investigative journalism has the real possibility being a major game changer for journalists, particularly those who don’t have the resources of the NY times behind them.

Microsoft rigs Live Search traffic

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Remember those stories about Microsoft gaining on Google in the search business?

Turns out it was all a scam.

Microsoft has successfully rigged its search traffic. The company recently introduced several online games than shamelessly bribe people to query its moribund Live Search Engine, and according to web research firm comScore, these games gave the engine a significant traffic boost last month.

….

When users play games like Chicktionary, Dingbats, and Seekadoo, they automatically generate Live Search results. The more results they generate, the more points they win. And if they win enough points, they win prizes. Like a Microsoft Zune player. OK, it’s not much of a bribe. But it’s still a bribe.

Love that bit of snark at the end.