Don't do it

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When the web started, I used to get really grumpy with people because they put my poems up. They put my stories up. They put my stuff up on the web. I had this belief, which was completely erroneous, that if people put your stuff up on the web and you didn’t tell them to take it down, you would lose your copyright, which actually, is simply not true.

And I also got very grumpy because I felt like they were pirating my stuff, that it was bad. And then I started to notice that two things seemed much more significant. One of which was… places where I was being pirated, particularly Russia where people were translating my stuff into Russian and spreading around into the world, I was selling more and more books. People were discovering me through being pirated. Then they were going out and buying the real books, and when a new book would come out in Russia, it would sell more and more copies. I thought this was fascinating, and I tried a few experiments. Some of them are quite hard, you know, persuading my publisher for example to take one of my books and put it out for free. We took “American Gods,” a book that was still selling and selling very well, and for a month they put it up completely free on their website. You could read it and you could download it. What happened was sales of my books, through independent bookstores, because that’s all we were measuring it through, went up the following month three hundred percent

I started to realize that actually, you’re not losing books. You’re not losing sales by having stuff out there. When I give a big talk now on these kinds of subjects and people say, “Well, what about the sales that I’m losing through having stuff copied, through having stuff floating out there?” I started asking audiences to just raise their hands for one question. Which is, I’d say, “Okay, do you have a favorite author?” They’d say, “Yes.” and I’d say, “Good. What I want is for everybody who discovered their favorite author by being lent a book, put up your hands.” And then, “Anybody who discovered your favorite author by walking into a bookstore and buying a book raise your hands.” And it’s probably about five, ten percent of the people who actually discovered an author who’s their favorite author, who is the person who they buy everything of. They buy the hardbacks and they treasure the fact that they got this author. Very few of them bought the book. They were lent it. They were given it. They did not pay for it, and that’s how they found their favorite author. And I thought, “You know, that’s really all this is. It’s people lending books. And you can’t look on that as a loss of sale. It’s not a lost sale, nobody who would have bought your book is not buying it because they can find it for free.”

What you’re actually doing is advertising. You’re reaching more people, you’re raising awareness. Understanding that gave me a whole new idea of the shape of copyright and of what the web was doing. Because the biggest thing the web is doing is allowing people to hear things. Allowing people to read things. Allowing people to see things that they would never have otherwise seen. And I think, basically, that’s an incredibly good thing.

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"How many SEO experts do you need to change a lightbulb lightbulbs buy light bulbs neon lights sex porn"

"I post on reddit often. I usually don’t mention my gender. Sometimes I will mention my family and it will be clear I’m male. Once or twice I posted a picture and I was in it, outing me as a white guy. I’ve never not been taken seriously as a result. Never had to worry about it. Actually – I never thought about worrying about it. Shouldn’t EVERYONE who posts on r/atheist (or other informational subreddits) have the same privilege? I just used the word “privilege” – should that even BE considered a “privilege”?"

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Live with the WikiLeakable world or shut down the net. It’s your choice

Western political elites obfuscate, lie and bluster – and when the veil of secrecy is lifted, they try to kill the messenger

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Caledfwlch writes with a followup to news we discussed a couple days ago about a study that found only 0.3% of torrents to be legal. (A further 11% was described as “ambiguous.”) TorrentFreak looked more deeply into the study and found a number of flaws, suggesting that the researchers’ data may have been pulled from a bogus tracker. Quoting:

“Here’s where the researchers make total fools out of themselves. In their answer to the question they refer to a table of the top 10 most seeded torrents. … the most seeded file was uploaded nearly two years ago (The Incredible Hulk) and has a massive 1,112,628 seeders. The torrent in 10th place is not doing bad either with 277,043 seeds. All false data. We’re not sure where these numbers originate from but the best seeded torrent at the moment only has 13,739 seeders; that’s 1% of what the study reports. Also, the fact that the release is nearly two years old should have sounded some alarm bells. It appears that the researchers have pulled data from a bogus tracker, and it wouldn’t be a big surprise if all the torrents in their top 10 are actually fake.”

They also take a cursory look at isoHunt, finding that 1.5% of torrent files come from Jamendo alone, “a site that publishes only Creative Commons licensed music.”

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The arguments for why the US can’t provide the same [braodband] speeds for the same price as European countries have been retold so many times that many Americans believe them. No, it’s not because the US has such a low population density, or rural areas are so hard to reach. The Scandinavian countries have a by far lower population density, and more difficult terrain (only 2% of Norway is arable land, for example. Mountains and fjords don’t make cable stretching easy, but they manage.)

The real reason is that here in the US, we are allergic to government regulations, and (incorrectly) believe that corporations do a better job. So we allow de-facto monopolies and duopolies to choose their own price and level of service, and the consumer has to take it or leave it. This is called freedom of choice.

In contrast, in socialist Norway, the typical customer can choose between several broadband providers, and owns the last few metres themselves. A cable or phone company can’t claim that they own the wires and refuse others to use them. So you get real competition, higher service levels, and lower prices.
And I haven’t read that any phone or cable providers over there have gone bankrupt over that either. Which means that ours are lying. Which shouldn’t come as a big surprise.

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"Chile has become the first country in the world to approve, by 100 votes in favor and one abstention, a law guaranteeing net neutrality (Google translation; Spanish original). The law states [submitter’s translation]: ‘No [ISP] can block, interfere with, discriminate, hinder, nor restrict the right of any Internet user of using, send, receive or offer any content, application, or legitimate service through the Internet, as well as any activity or legitimate use conducted through the Internet.’ The law also has articles that force ISP to provide parental control tools, clarify contracts, guarantee users’ privacy and safety when surfing, and forbids them to restrict any liberty whatsoever. This is a major advance in the legislation of the country regarding the Web, when until last year almost anything that was performed online was considered illegal."

"This morning, representatives from various front groups launched a new coordinated campaign to kill net neutrality. Speaking on Capitol Hill, these front groups took turns decrying the evils of the principle of a fair and unbiased Internet. LULAC, which is funded by AT&T, called Net Neutrality “Obamacare for the Internet.” Americans for Prosperity — a corporate front group founded by oil billionaire David Koch but also funded by telecom interests — unveiled a new ad smearing net neutrality as a “government takeover” (the initial ad buy is $1.4 million dollars). And Grover Norquist, representing his “Americans for Tax Reform” corporate front group, said net neutrality is like what China does, “putting policemen on every corner, on the street or on the Internet."

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Here’s the thing though: no amount of legislation will put that particular genie back in its box. Or at least no amount of legislation that is either acceptable in a democratic society (Yes, the Digital Economy Act arguably crosses that line already, but it’s easily circumvented by technological means and I certainly don’t believe we can go much further beyond the line.) or cost-effective to enforce. Content has never been a rival good and recent technological progress has made it, for all intents and purposes, non-excludable. It’s time to face the music: Content is a public good.

Here’s what this doesn’t mean: It doesn’t mean content is free (Cleverer people than me have explained why information doesn’t want to be free.), or cheap to make (though it can be), or that content creators should not get rewarded for their efforts.

And here’s what it does mean: It means that old business models based on content being a club good simply don’t work. It means we have to rethink our relationship with content - as creators, as distributors and as consumers. It means that there are a lot of giants in the content distribution industry whose livelihoods (profit margins) are being pulled out from under them faster than they can say “illegal downloads”, and they are fighting it. Of course they’re fighting it. They’ve had an incredibly profitable business model for about a century and suddenly they don’t. Let’s face it, human beings don’t like change at the best of times, and we sure as hell don’t like it when it means less cash in our pockets.

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Several European telecoms companies have decided to take issue with Google and the delivery of video content from its YouTube site.

Telefónica, France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom have all decided that it is unfair Google pays nothing towards their network infrastructure costs, but at the same time provides popular high-bandwidth content in the form of video across their networks. The solution, according to those companies, is for Google to start giving them a share of the advertising revenue it generates from such content.

The telecoms companies are willing to discuss compensation with Google, but are also attempting to get media companies to join in the fight. In doing so, it is hoped revenue streams can be established from Google to both the network operators and media providers beyond what they already get. If that doesn’t work, then the networks will turn to regulators to provide a solution.

Such thinking is made clear by Rene Oberman, Deutsche Telekom’s chief executive, who simply said:

There is not a single Google service that is not reliant on network service. We cannot offer our networks for free.

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From the comments:

“All Google need do is stop providing any services to the IP ranges handled by said Service Providers.

I think a week would do it.

Redirect users to a page explaining that the telecom providers want to start taxing companies for providing content on their networks; and that Google believes in Net Neutrality. Then provide telephone numbers to Telco call centers and national legislators and government officials.

It’d be interesting to see how quickly the Telco companies drop their demand.”

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