Publishing and speech issues

Comcast, which has been criticized of late for apparently trying to throttle peer to peer (P2P) file sharing traffic, seems to be shifting focus by investing in a P2P business start up. This is a good sign. As I and others have argued for a long time, we need to shift away from the "bucket of bits" model of broadband and move toward a service-oriented business and network model. P2P file sharing is just another service. It is not inherently bad, and in fact, can be used very efficiently to move large files (like TV programs and movies) around various parts of the Internet.

While some of the content providers simply want to outlaw P2P software because it is sometimes mis-used, that's also silly. It would be equivalent to outlawing cars because they are sometimes used to commit bank robberies. P2P, as a service, has real value, and if used to deliver licensed and legitimate content, it can be a service that people are willing to pay for. But the key is to have networks designed to deliver services, not just a bucket of bits. And that means changing not just the technology that manages network (relatively straightforward), but also changing the business models of broadband companies--that is also straightforward, if the company culture is willing to change--that is the tougher challenge.

A lengthy discussion on SlashDot highlights a new tactic by Amazon. The book distribution giant is trying to muscle out other print on demand services by forcing authors who use print on demand to use Amazon's print on demand (POD) service or else--the "else" being Amazon won't list their book.

Amazon has every right to do this, but it will be interesting to see if this works in their benefit or not. It would appear that with this new approach, Amazon wants to be both book distributor and book publisher. The two are not necessarily compatible, and it is not clear to me that this heavy-handed tactic will work.

Authors who use POD are either "vanity" authors without any identifiable audience or have some valuable information with an identified niche audience. In both cases, marketing will be up to the author; Amazon is not going to be able to add any value here, so the author can just as easily use some other POD service. In the end, book buyers who have made a buying decision by landing on the author's Web site or through some other route are going to click on a link to make the purchase. Most buyers won't care if the link goes to Amazon or to some other POD service.

Google has announced a new "search within a search" option that has online retailers worried that the search behemoth will steal customers. The new option lets you use Google to search only pages that are part of a single site. So if you want to buy a digital camera and go to Google to start the search, you get the usual search results page. If you click on a Best Buy site, as an example, Google will now do an extended search only on the Best Buy site.

Sounds handy, right? Except that the search results are likely to include ads from Best Buy competitors. So the pages that Google returns from the customized search may be larded with ads from Circuit City.

For Google, this is a good thing, as it will likely increase ad revenue from click-throughs. And you could argue it is good for the person trying to buy something, as Google gives you more information about prices and competition.

But there is a certain "goose and the golden egg" situation here. While in my example it appears that Circuit City may be the winner, it could just as easily go the other way on the next search, where Circuit City came up first, and subsequent search results are plastered with Best Buy ads. Circuit City and Best Buy both end up paying Google while Google tries to push potential customers somewhere else. This is also known as "wanting your cake and trying to eat it too."

At some point, some big Google advertisers are going to say, "Enough is enough," and take their ad dollars elsewhere.

There are reports that Toshiba has decided to cut its losses and discontinue manufacturing HD-DVD equipment. Microsoft is the other loser in this battle, as the company had been a backer of the HD-DVD format. Christmas 2008 will be a good time to invest in the high def players and recorders, as by that time there will be plenty of competition and lower prices.

The somewhat elderly Eagles rock band has given record companies the boot with the band's latest album. The Eagles simply skipped working with a record company at all, and went straight to Wal-mart to sell their new CD. The two CD set is priced at a very reasonable twelve bucks. The artists get a bigger share of the sales, and music lovers spend less and get more.

Even more interesting, the two CD set is priced low enough that some music stores are simply going to Wal-mart, buying a bunch of the CDs, and then marking them up and selling them in their own stores.

This kind of deal probably frightens the music industry more than iTunes. Music publishers managed to retain much control over artists and their music despite the much lower distribution costs (virtually zero) of iTunes. But the Eagles have simply ignored the music publishers entirely.

Senator Ted "the Internet is made of tubes" Stevenson is at it again, calling for "universal" filtering of the Internet to protect us all from pornography. The Internet pornography problem is a serious one, and deserves serious attention, but Senator Stevens is not making a serious proposal.

First, the Federal government has no business filtering and checking everything we look at; it is as if the government planned to put an agent on our doorstep and insisted on looking at every book, magazine, and letter that we tried to carry in the house, and had the power to arbitrarily remove any item without explanation, including the pictures of your one year old niece in the bathtub that your sister in law sent in the mail (it would classified as child pornography).

Second, Senator Stevens reveals that his understanding of the Internet has not evolved much past the "tubes" analogy. There is no one central location for the "Internet." It is everywhere and nowhere. It does not stop at national boundaries. U.S. laws have no effect on servers and content providers in other countries. Stevens' proposal smacks of political grandstanding ("...it's for the children") at a time when there are much more serious issues that beg for attention.

Those of us that have been watching how people use public networks (I started in 1982) know that there is a certain "newbie" phenomenon that takes place when some new feature or service is introduced. I have always been skeptical of the "social networking" trend, which is best represented by sites like FaceBook and MySpace.

As James Lileks has noted, the notion that it is "cool" to post pictures of ourselves in compromising situations is a new and somewhat baffling concept to anyone who has worked for more than a few years. But today's college students have somehow decided putting pictures of themselves doing profane or illegal things is cute/funny/cool.

But we may have reached the tipping point as the MySpace and FaceBook newbies begin to see that actions have consequences. The University of Minnesota has kicked several players off the football team for posting pictures online that do not meet the team standards of conduct. And as more and more reports surface of employers rejecting job applicants who have posted inappropriate material online, the somewhat juvenile appeal of exposing one's self (literally) online is going to diminish.

This editorial from the LA Times discusses rumblings from the FCC that the agency may try to regulate "violence" on television, and may try to extend the agency's control to cable and satellite broadcasting--entirely new for the FCC.

The FCC is apparently using the recent catastrophe at Virginia Tech (right here in Blacksburg) as justification for extending its reach. But the editorial has it right. The FCC is not our "mommy and daddy." With hundreds of cable channels and millions of IP TV choices, and the rapid growth of alternative video programming, what the FCC should be discussing is getting out of the business.

When TV was available only via the scarce resource of over the air radio spectrum, there was some justification for having a watchdog agency. But with so many ways to get video programming today, the notion that a) oversight and control is still needed is archaic, and b) how on earth does the FCC propose to monitor literally thousands and thousands of "channels?"

This is a fundamental failure of government to adapt to change. Recall that this is the same FCC that believes if a single person in a zip code has broadband, everyone does. And we want these folks telling us what we can watch on TV?

It is tawdry for the agency to be using the deaths of my friends and neighbors as an excuse to expand the power of the Federal bureaucracy. If we don't like what is on a TV channel, we can change the channel ourselves, or just turn off the TV.

And I can tell you that in Blacksburg, most of us did just that once NBC started airing the demented ravings of the lunatic murderer and tried to call it news. We had better things to do, like attending funerals. The OFF button is a wonderful thing.

The blow up over Imus' idiotic remarks and a raging debate among bloggers about the need for civility online may just be the tipping point for a long overdue honest appraisal of the lack of civility in our social discourse. There is no question that over the past decade, the way we speak to each other and the language that we use has been coarsened to the point that sometimes I think we need to cover our ears. Shock jocks on the radio, the heavy use of profanity online, and a general lack of respect for viewpoints that differ from our own has made talking about issues difficult, if not painful.

The online debate focuses on the tendency of some bloggers and those that comment on blog articles to engage in what can only be described as childish diatribes, ad hominem attacks, and often just plain incoherent rants.

How did we get this way? It is not just the Internet--it is just as easy to be civil online as uncivil, so let's not shoot the messenger. But writing anonymously does seem to loosen our social inhibitions. Even if someone is posting a comment with their real name, in an online universe of a billion people, most of whom will never meet you, it is much the same as being anonymous. Somehow we have to pull ourselves back from the brink.

As always, it's not about the technology, it's about helping people learn to use it--respectfully and thoughtfully.

There are several stories about blogging making the rounds of the news sites, as well as an ongoing discussion in the business world about employee blogging.

Item One: Katie Couric is in the news because she tried to pass off a producer's made up story as her own thoughts. Couric is supposedly blogging, but as it turns out, other people write her blog. And those other people, as it turns out, did not have much to say either so they were cribbing from the Wall Street Journal.

Blogging Rule Number One: Don't bother to blog if you can't think of anything to write. Blogging, fundamentally, is writing and nothing else. Some people like to write, some people are actually good writers, and other people, like Couric, have some other talent they should be pursuing.

Item Two: An obscure blogger who had a comment posted by a reader has become the focus of a huge discussion on the Internet. The reader's comment made a disparaging remark about a firm called JL Kirk. The Kirk firm served an order on the blogger to take the comment down. But there is just a tiny problem; the Supreme Court has already decided that bloggers are not liable for the comments posted by readers. The bullying tactics by JL Kirk have guaranteed that the Kirk firm will be remembered for a long time as clueless bullies. A better tactic would have been to ignore the whole thing. By overreacting, they have probably caused irrepaparable damage to the firm.

Blogging Rule Number Two: Even if you don't read blogs, at least know what they are, how they work, and their immense power to focus both positive and negative publicity on an issue. I still meet many people who thinks blogs are insignificant because they personally don't bother with them. Big mistake, and from a community and economic development perspective, huge lost opportunities.

Item Three: Are your employees blogging about your company or organization? Do you even know how to check? If they are blogging, are they writing positive or negative things?

Blogging Rule Number Three: Have an employee or organizational policy about blogging about the company, have it in writing, and make sure it is enforced fairly and consistently. Employees and staff have every right to blog on their own time about non-work topics and interests, but you don't want a disgruntled employee slamming your firm online.

For communities, blog-type Web sites can be a critical marketing tool--done right. Few community leaders and economic developers understand the potential of blogs for economic development, and even fewer get good advice on how to design and manage a blog strategy.

Remember that most business relocation research is being done on the Web. If your community or region is not using modern tools to tell the right story in the right way, you are losing jobs and business opportunities to other areas.