Yani's On Your Lawn

The Constant Battle Between New Media and Old

SOPA and Protect IP

I’ve avoided SOPA/ProtectIP because it’s been covered to death, and most others can do a better job than I can. But at this point, it’s getting scary and I need to say something.

 

These bills are not necessary, at all. The entertainment industry already has more power than it needs to defend itself against infringement and regardless of the sob story it tells Congress, is doing incredibly well financially. The fact they want the power to shut down a site because of something posted by a 3rd party in the comments proves that they don’t understand how the Internet works. If someone drops a stolen watch in your lawn, you aren’t responsible for stealing it. If the police find it before you do, that’s not your fault, and you did nothing wrong. Why should things be different on the Internet? A site like Tumblr or Facebook would need to double or triple their current staff to monitor the activity of every user on the site. They’d need to ban every user that even remotely infringes on anything. After a short time the Internet will be a desert and then guess what will happen? 

 

Nobody will discover new music. Fans won't discuss the latest movies. Memes wont bring an old movie back into the limelight and reignite sales. None of this will happen because everyone will be too afraid to post. As regular citizens we are ignorant to the majority of laws, especially the far overreaching ones relating to copyright and intellectual property. How many people know that the "Happy Birthday" song is copyrighted?  How many people know that “Lets get ready to rumble” is trademarked?  Probably 1% of 1% know this, but guess what? You can get sent to jail if these bills pass for infringing on those.

 

Depending on how you feel about Justin Bieber, SOPA could be a good thing or a bad thing. Had this bill passed earlier, Justin Bieber may never have become famous, and even better/worse he may have been sent to prison. Bieber was discovered because he sang covers of famous songs and posted them on YouTube, the right people saw it and the rest is history. SOPA would make that a felony.  

 

Life Hacker has a good article and video explaining more about SOPA.

 

TechDirt has been non-stop SOPA coverage for a few days now.

 

The EFF is always a great source for information on laws that threaten the Internet. 

 

How I Decided Between Battlefield 3 and Modern Warfare 3

First things first. I’m not a gamer. I’ve never owned a Call of Duty or Battlefield title. I’m not very good at FPS games, but the hype surrounding these releases has piqued my interest. Being a relatively broke college student and pretty busy as well, buying both games is not an option. I spent a couple of days reading reviews and watching game play videos and what did I conclude?  EA's Battlefield 3 looks amazing, it’s the game I want to play. I’m buying Modern Warfare 3.

But wait Yani... that makes no sense, WTF?!?

Gather round kids, and jump in the Way Back Machine as this story dates to a much more innocent time in gaming’s history. Fall 2008.

Some of you might remember the mega hyped and ultimately disappointing title released by EA around that time, a little game called Spore. It promised to revolutionize gaming, bring happiness to lonely gamers and bring world peace. What it actually did was piss off everyone that had the decency to support EA and actually pay for the game. Take a look at the reviews on Amazon. Yea, that’s over 2600 one star reviews.

Why all the hate? Well, the game basically sucked, but this isn’t a gaming blog so why am I even writing any of this? Because EA locked the game down with some amazingly draconian DRM. I preordered the game and was excited to play it on the release date, and seeing how it was a digital copy, I figured it would be available at midnight. Wrong. The EA servers didn’t unlock the game until that afternoon, so anyone that bought it at a brick and mortar store played the game before the loyal fans that pre-ordered direct from the manufacturer. Even so, that’s not the DRM problem. The problem with the DRM was that once I finally got my digital fingers on the digital bits, I realized I didn’t own this game. Actually, EA was kind enough to lend me this game for a while at the price of $50usd. That was so generous of them.

The game came with a limit of 3 installations, which they later, ever-so-kindly, raised to 5 . Right now I can take a walk around my house and count about 8 computers. Why can’t I install this game I own, on each machine I own, for personal use? But wait, there’s more. Even relatively minor hardware changes would count as a new installation in EA’s mind. At the time, I was heavy into PC modding, and as you’d guess, I went through those 3/5 installations mighty quickly. The game I paid $50 for was now useless. What did I do then? I turned to torrents. I had to crack my own game so I could play it. I had to break the law to play the game I owned. Luckily I was in good company.Spore quickly became the most pirated game in history. Thank you EA for supporting your customers. This experience left me with a strong dislike for EA, and I’m sure I’m not the only one.

When it came time to choose a game in 2011, this experience in 2008 was the ultimate deciding factor. I don’t know Activision’s history with DRM and customer support, but I do know they haven’t burned me yet, so they’ll be getting my cash this holiday season.

 

Major Media = Credible? Not Quite.

It’s pretty sad that someone so out of touch with Internet culture can actually be a technology correspondent for a major media company’s blog, but that’s the case with Ned Potter of ABC News. Earlier this week a Google Easter egg was discovered in the companies search service.  If you typed the words “do a barrel roll” in to the search box, it would make the screen rotate like if it did a, gasp, barrel roll.

Now, any self-respecting geek can tell you where this comes from. It’s clearly alluding to StarFox 64, the classic Nintendo 64 game.

Just incase that didn’t make it obvious enough, the query “z or r twice” gave the same barrel roll animation. As you can see in the video, z or r twice is the combination you need to press on the N64 controller to execute the demanded barrel roll maneuver.

Now that we got the background out of the way, can anyone please explain how this could possibly allude to Apple? HOW CAN THIS POSSIBLY ALLUDE TO APPLE?! 

It can’t. But our buddy Ned Potter obviously thinks so.  He has since edited his original post, but it’s OK, because I figured he would and took some screen shots.

 

Screen_shot_2011-11-03_at_7
The original post read:

“Is it a takeoff on Apple’s iPhones and iPads with their built-in accelerometers – those little gizmos that tell a device when it’s been moved, turned on its side, propped up with one end on top? One blogger suggested Google is invoking Nintendo’s ‘Star Fox.’”

But now the post reads:

"Many Twitter posts asked if it was a takeoff on Apple’s iPads, with their built-in accelerometers so that their screens turn if you turn the device (the New York Times’ Bits blog called the effect “Siri-like”). At least one blogger suggested Google was invoking Nintendo’s 'Star Fox.'"

That’s very different. He’s trying to deflect the poor research onto Twitter users. He mentioned “one blogger” in the original post, yet no mention of twitter users. The first line clearly reads like his own idea. Also, if he only saw this mentioned by one blogger, then that must mean he only read one blog. Almost every blog I follow had a short post about the html5 trick, and recognized it as a reference to StarFox. Potter is the only one that didn’t. I also have no idea what the NYT guys mean by “Siri-like.” Seems like another case of major media getting technology wrong since a screen flipping after a manual text input has no connection to a voice operated personal assistant. The only loose connection I can gather is that Siri responds to certain queries with geeky responses, like saying the meaning of life is 42, a reference to The Hitchhikers Guide.  

Neddy goes on to tell us that Google denied this was a reference to StarFox:

"Today’s fun query, ‘do a barrel roll,’ was created by a Google software engineer with the primary goal of entertaining users — while showcasing the power of CSS3, a presentation feature of modern browsers. The “do a barrel roll” query, which causes the search page to spin, will remain in place for a while."

I don’t know about you, but that’s not how I read that. Google explained why they created the effect, but never denied it being a reference to StarFox. If it wasn’t the “z or r twice” wouldn’t produce the same effect.

Either way, it seems like both writers used Apple as a way to attract more eyes to their stories. A pathetic attempt at link baiting. 

 

The White Hat Versus The Big Bad Bank

In the realm of network security you have two (it’s more complicated than that, but that’s not the point here) possible types of hackers, the black hats and the white hats. Black and white like the black knight and the white knight, evil and good. The black hat hackers are trying to break into your network for personal gain, whether it is monetary gain, notoriety, or just to be a PITA. The white hats are the other side of the coin; they’re trying to break into your network in order to tell you what’s wrong with it so you can fire your entire IT department, hire someone competent, and fix it. 

Today’s story is about a white hat trying to do good and the big bad bank that just doesn’t get it. Patrick Webster, a well regarded security expert from Australia, was checking his account on First State Superannuation and noticed a security flaw, and by flaw I mean a huge mistake that even greenest IT drone could detect. He noticed that his account number was in the URL and all he had to do was change the last digit and he could see someone else’s account.

Ok, let me give you an idea of how basic this is.  We used to do this 5 years ago to hack Photobucket accounts, and I use the term hack very loosely, because I’m at several orders of magnitude below even a script kiddies. If someone’s picture URL ended with img_591.jpg, all you had to was change the 1 to a 2 and you had a great chance of seeing another picture. Photobucket caught wind of this pretty quickly and changed the URLs to randomly generated codes. Problem solved.

You’d think a large financial institute with what I assume is a large, well educated security department would know about this very basic security flaw, right? But I digress.

When Webster notified FSS about the flaw, they fixed the problem within 24 hours and even thanked him. End of story?  Not quite. Risky Biz, with an awesome use of a direct reference object URL, brings us the full scoop here.

"The annoying part is that I contacted First State straight up. I gave them my number, email... and full details in my email including LinkedIn and they called the cops," Webster said.”

Yea, they called the cops on him. He uncovered a major flaw, a total lack of security in their system. He didn’t circumvent any security, because you can’t circumvent what doesn’t exist. I’m sure charges, if any were pressed, will be dropped because they obviously don’t have any case against Webster. The proper response here is to apologize to Webster, notify EVERY account holder of the error, and possibly even compensate Webster for doing their job for them. And yes, notify EVERY account holders because I assure you that Webster wasn’t the first person to notice this very basic hole, he was just the first one to be decent enough to notify them.

The lesson here kids? 

Direct-object URL on your blog = Good

Direct-object URL on your bank account = BAD

Lady Gaga Switches Teams. Goes To Bat Against Moshi Monsters

After praising her a couple of weeks ago, I’m sorry to report that Lady Gaga is now batting clean up for the Curmudgeons. Via TechDirt and The Guardian, I learned of this disappointing story.  Moshi Monsters, a UK based company that allows kids to adopt “pet monsters” on their website recently posted a music video on YouTube featuring an animated character named Lady Goo Goo. This is clearly a Lady Gaga parody, and even manages the impossible... to be more annoying than Lady Gaga herself!

The original video has been pulled from YouTube, but according to an article in The Guardian the video must have been pretty popular since Michael Acton Smith, the founder of Mind Candy (Moshi Monsters’ parent company), claims it had millions of views

 

"It's pretty obvious that kids will be able to tell the difference between the two characters," he said. "The shame is that millions of kids fell in love with Lady Goo Goo's debut single on YouTube and now won't be able to enjoy her musical exploits. It was all done in the name of fun and we would have thought that Lady Gaga could have seen the humour behind this parody.”

 

Gaga won an injunction against Moshi Monsters. The Lady GooGoo character can still appear in the Moshi Monsters game, but can’t play the song. Lady Gaga claims this was needed to protect her image because the parody could lead to confusion, and cause people to think she is linked to the parody. If you’re brave enough to watch the video, I’m sure you’ll see there is no confusion and I have to side with Smith in stating that it’s obvious kids can tell the difference. Unfortunately the courts didn’t see it this way and this can set a scary precedent for other parody or tribute bands. We’ll see where this rabbit hole leads.

Kornheiser Isn't Always Wrong

As much as I hate to praise this guy, Tony Kornheiser isn’t dumb. However, the owners of ESPN 980 clearly are. Kornheiser’s show is delivered as a podcast to out of town fans that want to listen to the show, and up until this spring, the podcast was offered on the same day as the show. Now the station decided that it wants people to listen on the radio, because that’s how they get ratings. So they implemented a 24-hour delay {} on the podcast.

Brilliant!

We all know how much fans love to be denied access to the content they want, especially when they’re already used it getting it. If they’re listening via podcast, it usually means they aren’t able to listen live, either because they’re not in the region or because they have something they value more happening at that same time slot. Denying them timely podcasts won’t make someone alter their schedule for you; it’ll make them find a new show to listen to. Kornheiser seems to understand this “phenomenon” as noted by Dan Steinberg

 

 “The policy is gonna kill the show,” he said, with typical subtlety and restraint. “It’s simply going to kill the show....That is the problem. You’re listening to this a day late. That’s the solution around here, the solution to getting more people listening live. And by the way, there’s a great glee with which I am told that my ratings are bad. There’s a great glee. The people around here seem to think that this is charming, and that if I only did what they wanted, everything would be right in the world.

“But it doesn’t work that way. It doesn’t work that way, because of the way audio is delivered to America. It’s delivered on demand. And if when you demand it you can’t get it, you’re not going to listen to it.

“Here’s what’s going to happen in the next five or 10 years, boys and girls. There’s not gonna be football on television any more. It’s all gonna be in your computer. That’s the way it’s gonna work. It’ll be brought to you by people like Google, brought to you by people who are search engine people, and I know nothing about this. There’s no way to make any money any more doing it the old way. The old way is not just old, much like me — it is dead.

“That’s the old way. People don’t want that any more. They’re not going to sit around and wait for things....The people who run radio stations, they’re apparently not adapting to the new culture and don’t truly understand how it works and what people want….Management believes differently than I believe. I still do the show. I’m not running away from the show. I just wish it were more accessible, quicker, to more people.”

I find it amazing that someone who advocated on the radio to run down cyclists can have such a down to Earth opinion on this matter.

 

Lady Gaga Gets It

Troy Carter, Lady Gaga’s manager, also gets it. I probably couldn’t name a single Lady Gaga song, but the mentality I’m seeing displayed here makes me more inclined to listen.  Carter, speaking at the Facebook F8 conference, told the audience that he would give away the next Gaga album if he could.

 

“What we’re looking to do is not just about selling the CD or the digital file. It’s how many people can we get the music to. How many people can experience it?”

 

Clearly this will never fly at a major label, but Carter understands that the business isn’t just selling albums, and if you introduce more people to the music, you will make a lot more money. Even as popular as she is, not everyone has had access to her music, but if you give it away, someone that may not have cared before will be more willing to listen to it now. That’s how you grow a fan base that has probably reached the majority of fans the current system allows. Those fans that freeloaded on the free album could turn into potential concertgoers and merchandise purchasers. Making a lot more profit for the Gaga than the potential income she lost by giving away the music.

 

Earlier in the year, Amazon sold the Lady Gaga album for $.99. A price that wasn't set by Lady Gaga or the studios, but she still supported it. At that price even I bought it, mostly to get the extra storage for the Amazon Cloud Player and gave the music to my girlfriend. I’d bet many other people did the same; actually I’m sure of it since the sale crashed Amazon’s music servers.

 

Carter also shows that he gets it when he talks about what concertgoers do at concerts.

 

“People watch concerts like this now,” he said, holding up an imaginary mobile phone. “For us, it’s how do we extend that experience? Right now it’s very simple: people are tweeting from the concert, they’re uploading their YouTube video… how do we layer into that experience? In the next year or so, something we’re working on internally is going to make it a much more interactive experience… not just how you share the experience on the outside of the concerts, when you go home, but how you share it on the inside of the concerts too.”

 

While many try to block these videos, Carter realizes that these are the fans. Not just the regular fans that may buy an album, but the fans that go to concerts and care enough to try to share that experience. By sharing that experience they can expose others to it, which can be another new fan. Why try to stifle that potential connection?  

We'll Pay, But We Need a Good Reason

 Mike Masnick, the prolific blogger on Techdirt has a running series of case studies, mostly revolving around his CwF+RtB (connect with fans + reason to buy) business model. Mike uses these examples to show that while record labels want you to think that piracy is destroying music, it’s really just destroying their legacy business model. The CwF+RtB model may put an end to million-dollar recording artists, but it opens the door to the long tail of music. The larger population of artists that had no outlet before, because they weren’t deemed worthy by the major labels, can now go out and find a global audience on the Internet. They may not become millionaires, but many have already proved that they can make a living from it. The big secret is to not treat your fans as criminals.

 Mike writes about a few services that help independent artists market their music and merchandise to fans. One of them is Bandzoogle, a band website hosting company that allows bands to setup websites, sell merchandise, create email lists, helps promote the artist, and of course, sell music. Bandzoogle claims that artists using the site have already made in excess of $5,000,000. This is obviously a small amount of money compared to what the major record labels make, but this is money the artists on Bandzoogle would not have been making otherwise since they’re not signed. The service also provides music to an audience that may not have heard it through traditional music distribution.

 Like the report shows, customers on average are spending more than the cost of a CD to support bands they like. The music market obviously still exists, and piracy hasn’t killed it. It’s just shifted it. When the audience has a reason to want to support the artist, they will. While it may be legally correct to think that you should be paid for every download, the reality is that it’s not going to happen. Adapting is necessary and these results show that it can work out for the artists. They aren’t getting rich, but they are getting paid for their art.

 Piracy hasn’t killed music; it’s just changed the market. The artists that can adapt are going to succeed, the ones that can’t, will fail. Should we adapt to the legacy model, or should the legacy model evolve to better serve its clients?

 

 

Arrington vs "Journalism" - Ver.5Billion

“Along the way, he ridiculed the enterprise he worked for with a seemingly endless stream of Twitter posts, all but begging to get fired.” -David Carr
As many have heard, Mike Arrington’s TechCrunch is on the brink of a major... something. As of right now, nobody is sure whats going to happen. The writers are just as confused as the readers, about the immediate future of the blog. Some quick background for those that don’t stay up to date with the constant bickering around the start-up scene. Mike Arrington and AOL (who owns TechCrunch for now) CEO Tim Armstrong partnered up to form a venture capital firm called CrunchFund. Many in the tech industry have been up in arms about this, citing the conflict of interest since Tech Crunch specializes in start up companies, and often what they write can lead a new company towards success or failure.
 
The New York Times broke the story, and this was how many on the TechCrunch staff came to learn about it. Ironic because TechCrunch is notorious for breaking stories before the major news outlets. “The $20 million CrunchFund is the latest example of Mr. Arrington’s casting aside one of traditional journalism’s cardinal rules — that reporters should avoid conflicts of interest by maintaining distance from the people, organizations and issues they cover — and raises questions about whether industry bloggers are journalists.” writes Miller for the NYT. By the second paragraph of the article, old media is already showing that it’s confused. She says that TechCrunch is casting aside a rule of TRADITIONAL journalism.  I’ll give her that, but the problem is that TechCrunch isn’t traditional journalism, and it definitely does not function like the NYT newsroom. This is the typical problem with old media, they can’t fathom that their industry can evolve, and even improve without them.

Unlike a major newspaper's work-flow, TC writers work autonomously, coming up with their own ideas for articles, writing what they want to write, and editing what they post themselves. This autonomy allows them to crank out tons of posts before the news becomes stale. It also means that Arrington has little, or no influence, regarding what MG Siegler, Paul Carr, or any of the many TechCrunch writers post about on TechCrunch. The CrunchFund might be regarded as a conflict of interest in traditional media circles, but TechCrunch is different and the article in the NYT even states that they’ve written negatively about companies that Arrington invested in.

Old Media loves to mention how blogs aren't journalism due to poor fact checking and rushing to publication with inaccurate information, yet another NYT writer, David Carr, posted about the CrunchFund debacle and managed to get plenty of information wrong. Notice the corrections posted at the bottom the page (4 days after the original post, and 3 days after it went to print), they even claimed Scoble is a venture capitalist. Every self respecting user of Google+ knows that Scoble doesn’t invest anything, but time, in the tech industry. I would think a tech “journalist” would know this basic bit of information as well. I guess that’s asking for too much from the NYT. Carr’s piece is posted in the business section of the NYT site but it’s almost purely an opinion piece. Any reader can tell Carr doesn’t like Arrington, and in Carr’s defense, it’s an opinion shared by many. But this almost sounds like a conflict of interest to me: Carr doesn’t like Arrington so he writes a purely negative piece attacking his character and tries to pass it off as journalism.

The problem is that while trying to be negative, he manages to convey exactly why Arrington CAN run TechCrunch and CrunchFund without a conflict. “Along the way, he ridiculed the enterprise he worked for with a seemingly endless stream of Twitter posts, all but begging to get fired.” Since TechCrunch was acquired by AOL, Arrington and the TechCrunch writers have constantly bashed AOL, the way they run the company, internal policies, and just about anything they don't like about it. Mike and his staff have never held back how they really felt about anything, why would they start now?

Hopefully you don’t run into the NYT paywall trying to see these articles, I’d hate for them to suggest that you should pay to read these poorly fact-checked articles.