<![CDATA[ Last month's launch of Amazon's e-book reader, Kindle, has people talking about ebooks again, with some questioning whether or not the potential popularity of the reader combined with the ease of viewing unauthorized ebooks on it would lead to an increase in e-book „piracy.“ Reader Carolyn writes in to point to a terrific rant about how this assertion is misplaced. The writer, Kassia Krozser, notes that it's not the Kindle's fault that people will use unauthorized content – it's the fault of publishers for making it inconvenient for people to do what they want with content. It's the same thing that we said when JK Rowling refused to offer the Harry Potter books as ebooks out a fear of unauthorized copies getting out. That's ridiculous of course. In doing so, you guarantee that the only digital copies are unauthorized, even if someone wanted to pay for them. It's this thinking that helped screw up the recording industry as well. If the industry had recognized early on how Napster showed how people wanted to consume music, they could have offered a compelling solution that people would have paid for. Instead, they resisted and fought it, and now the problem is much worse. The problem isn't with the device, but with publishers not giving people the content in a format they want. As Krozser says (and we used for the headline of this post): „Devices don't make pirates. Unreasonable barriers make pirates.“

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Adult dating site AdultFriendFin­der, rumored to have been acquired in November for $1 billion is on the wrong side of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) with a settlement that restricts AdultFriendFin­der’s promoti­onal activities.

The FTC said in a statement that AdultFriendFinder affiliates used pop-up ads to drive traffic to the site, and exposed consumers, including children to sexual explicit images when search for terms including “flowers,” “travel,” and “vacations.” More seriously the FTC alleged that the ads were also distributed with spyware and adware.

The FTC found that “the practice of displaying graphic pop-up ads without consumer consent was unfair, and violated the FTC Act;” essentially saying that porn pop-ups are illegal.

AdultFriendFinder agreed to a settlement with the FTC which sees the company admitting no guilt in return for not displaying sexually explicit ads to consumers unless they’re looking for that sort of content (or are already on an adult site) and to cease using pop-ups. AdultFriendFinder must also force affiliates to comply with the settlement or terminate them should they not comply. The last point is the interesting one because AdultFriendFinder has one of the bigger affiliate programs online, and would certainly have the largest affiliate program of any dating company; affiliate promotion is their bread and butter and if suddenly affiliates left the program or were restricted in ways that dramatically reduced clickthrus to AdultFriendFinder, the $1 billion sales price starts to look a little high; perhaps the later rumored price of $300 million at 3× EBITDA was such a low multiple because they saw this coming?

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<![CDATA[ Almost exactly a year ago, we wrote about some new research showing how violent video games impacted the brains of children as monitored using fMRI equipment. The end result was basically that there was an effect – but it was basically what you'd expect. Violence made stimulated parts of the brain corresponding to being „emotional,“ which is what anyone would expect. Slashdot is now reporting on a similar study that really doesn't seem all that different (even if the press release about it claims that there hasn't been such evidence „until now“). Basically, the finding shows that when viewing violent media, the part of the brain that suppresses inappropriate aggression is less active. Again, though, that seems perfectly reasonable. If you're witnessing violence, it seems perfectly natural that your brain would prepare you to be ready for violence yourself if needed. What it doesn't show is that it actually does make you more violent. Unlike some research, this seems like perfectly good research and the researchers don't seem to be pretending it says more than it actually does. However, for those looking to support the idea that violent video games makes people violent, they won't find it here (unless they extrapolate out well beyond what the study covers).

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<![CDATA[ Rich Kulawiec writes in to let us know about a Boing Boing post about some fairly ridiculous limitations on Western Digital's networked drives. Apparently, once you've set up the drive, you can subscribe to a service that will allow others to access your drive from the internet (rather than on the local network). You can set up accounts for specific people, including highlighting what is available to be shared with that person. However, Western Digital has simply decided that under no circumstance can you share a variety of multimedia filetypes, such as mp3s, wmvs, aac or others. Its reasoning is that this is „due to unverifiable media license authentication,“ which is basically a gibberish way of saying that you might be infringing on someone's copy­right. Of course, you might not be either. There are an awful lot of media files out there that are perfectly legitimate to share with others. Certainly, this sort of action makes this service useless to a musician who records tracks and makes them available to his record label using such a drive. The key question, though, is why Western Digital should bother at all. There's certainly no legal reason for Western Digital to do such a thing – and all it does is make their drives a lot less useful for perfectly legitimate activities.

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<![CDATA[ After writing yesterday's post about politics on Wikipedia, I came across a copy of the actual email Durova sent purporting to demonstrate that the Wikipedia user she subsequently banned was a „troublemaker.“ What it boils down to is that the user in question was too good at contributing to Wikipedia, and so must not really have been a new user when she signed up in July. Basically, Durova thinks that she's made a suspiciously large number of helpful edits, including familiarity with relatively obscure Wikipedia features, and so she must be an experienced user creating a „sock puppet“ to help unspecified co-conspirators gain control of the site. Now, it's pretty clearly paranoid to think this proves there's some kind of conspiracy going on; there are any number of reasons an experienced Wikipedian might want to start a new account, and as long as the new account isn't being used as a „sock puppet“—and Durova offered no evidence that it was—it's not really a problem.

But at the very least, Durova is right about one thing: the way you gain power and influence within the Wikipedia community is by making thousands upon thousands of helpful edits to Wikipedia articles. To the extent that there are competing factions battling for control of the site, they conduct their battle by competing to make the best contributions to the site, thereby earning the respect of other Wikipedians and enabling them to win election to leadership positions like the site's Arbitration Committee. If you peruse the comments people make when they're voting, you'll see that a lot of people vote against individuals because they haven't been on the site long enough or haven't made enough contributions. What this means is that it doesn't matter very much how paranoid, vain, or power-hungry the senior leadership of Wikipedia is, or that there might be factions plotting to seize control of the site away from the current leadership. In fact, it might actually be good for the rest of us if that's true, because it will spur each faction to re-double their efforts to do more editing in the hopes of earning the support of rank-and-file editors.

There's an obvious parallel to real-world human societies here. People often criticize capitalism for promoting greed, but that's not quite right. Greed has always existed in human societies. In pre-capitalist societies, the way greedy and ambitious people got ahead was largely by conquering new countries, enslaving their inhabitants, assassinating political rivals, lobbying the government for monopolies, and engaging in other wasteful and destructive activities. The rise of capitalism didn't abolish greed and ambition, but it harnessed it for the public good. Now, if you want to become rich and powerful, one of the best ways to do it is by creating a company that produces goods and services consumers want. (You can also still get ahead by lobbying the government for special privileges, so the system's not perfect) The better you are at serving your customers' needs, the richer you get. In a competitive market, it doesn't really matter if our elite businessmen are nice people, the system is set up so that they're driven by their own self-interest to do things that benefit their customers. By the same token, it doesn't matter if, as critics claim, Wikipedia is run by a paranoid cabal; the system is organized so that they have to continue contributing positively to the site in order to maintain their positions of authority.

Tim Lee is an expert at the Techdirt Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Tim Lee and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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The strange days of post-thanksgiving excess and crushed consumers are over. Of course, that means that the pre-holiday rush has begun, and CG’s holiday recommendations are coming fast and furious. But there’s been some controversy: old man Dvorak trashed the OLPC, our own Peter Ha alleged that the PS3 “stinks,” , and also that Leopard should die, causing an influx of fanboys to leave their folky brand of wisdom in the comments, and Mr. Biggs stirred up the PR kids when he suggested a little truth on their part. On the tech side, some small towns in the UK are demanding to be removed from GPS maps, and we found that the Pleo robo-saurus is actually pretty fun, not to mention cheaper than an Aibo. If you’re looking for gadgets, keep an eye out for the 32GB Creative Zen  — it’s cheap, spacious, and pretty good-looking too. In phones there was an outpouring of information from Blackberry users here, so if you have or want tips, drop by. Doug also found this cool Linux phone for under three bills. Keep an eye out for more CG recommendations if you’re trying to think of gifts for your geek.

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“A professional community of top global brands dedicated to promoting best practices in corporate blogging” have formed The Blog Council, a “forum for executives to meet one another in a private, vendor-free environment and share tactics, offer advice based on past experience, and develop standards-based best practices as a model for other corporate blogs.”

Initial members include AccuQuote, Cisco Systems, The Coca-Cola Company, Dell, Gemstar-TV Guide, General Motors, Kaiser Permanente, Microsoft, Nokia, SAP, and Wells Fargo.

The crux of the idea is that big businesses can get together and talk blogging, from the challenges corporate blogging presents from a governance perspective, through to management and policy development .

The reaction to the formation of the Blog Council has been mixed; some such as Lionel Menchaca, Digital Media Manager at Dell and Rick Calvert at BlogWorldExpo think its a great idea, where as others including Dave Taylor thinking its a poor idea, with Taylor writing

My translation: “we’re all clueless, but don’t want anyone to realize just how unplugged our organizations have become from the world of “marketing 2.0″, so we created a club so our ignorance can be shielded from public eyes.”

I’m not so sure. My natural reaction against the Council is based on its name; “The Blog Council” sounds like it owns blogging or has some sort of superior position over the medium, where as it is nothing of the sort. Something such as the Corporate Blogging Association or similar would have suited the purpose far more better than what they’ve picked. In terms of big companies getting together under a formal structure to discuss blogging they’re entitled to do so but you’d have to ask why? Are they, as Dave Taylor suggests, soo clueless that they need to set up a separate body to understand new media marketing?

The Blog Council’s website is here; ultimately you can be the judge.

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<![CDATA[ Back in 2003, Disney's brilliant idea to „compete“ with TiVo and Netflix was to start MovieBeam. Just the fact that Disney felt it needed to compete with TiVo and Netflix shows you how backwards the thinking was at the point. Moviebeam was a terrible idea from the start. People were expected to buy (yet another) expensive set top box from Disney, which would basically be a very limited DVR. The hard drive would come packed with about 100 movies, and each week some would disappear and others would magically „beam“ into the box. Despite the fact that you already had to pay for the box, you still had to pay each time you wanted to watch a movie – and, you were only given a 24-hour time period in which to watch that movie. Two years into the program (with only a few small test markets) Disney shut down the program. At the time, we figured it was gone for good, but somehow, some VCs and Cisco were convinced to pony up $50 million to bring this idea back to life as a spinoff from Disney. Yet, when the offering was relaunched (with a few small improvements) people still didn't care. Earlier this year, the company was basically sold off for next to nothing, and now the company has announced that it's shutting down operations next week. Who knows, though, maybe it'll rise from the dead again, so that it can fail a few more times.

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<![CDATA[ The recent announcement that Verizon Wireless will support Android, Google’s new software platform for mobile devices, is an early warning sign that the traditional network operator model is fast becoming obsolete. To some this move seems to contradict a widely held presumption that two previous announcements (the choice of LTE with Vodafone and the inclusion of non-Verizon phones on the Verizon Wireless network) were a competitive strike at Google’s position in the upcoming 700 mHz auction. In conjunction, these three publicly declared commitments to openness are indicators that fundamental changes to the Verizon Wireless business model are set to occur over the next 3 – 5 years.

Verizon Wireless is preparing to compete in an industry that will resemble more of a free-for-all where innovation and customer value are the rule of the day. Verizon can no longer afford to maintain strict boundaries between the devices and applications “inside” and “outside” their networks. By embracing openness on several different fronts the company is seeking to offload a large chunk of the costs associated with developing devices to a wider ecosystem of participants. Inclusive device policies will retain the same effect that outsourcing the development and support costs for new phones would. It is no longer tenable to develop devices and support customer issues for every single customer on its network, so the company is looking to basically exchange network access for ownership of support issues, with a larger group of handset and application providers.

Particularly, the Android move is to ensure that an assortment of niche devices powered by Google’s platform will have a home on the Verizon Wireless network. The company should begin to feature an increasing number of programs and incentives for an increasing number of handset makers and wireless application developers. Meanwhile Verizon will begin to slash the high costs associated with developing phones with the Samsung and LG types. As a result, the number of phone models actually supported by the company (currently at around 50) is set to drop significantly by 2012 even as the total number of models running on the network will escalate.

As the most profitable U.S. cellular business, Verizon Wireless also has the most impetus to begin the process of expanding a revenue base limited to subscribers who are content to choose from 50 or so the company’s handsets. Spurred by a shrinking number of first time customers it is fast becoming critical to find ways to attract subscribers from rival carriers and open access policies are a good start towards that end. Along the same lines, the aforementioned Vodafone LTE announcement is key to the company’s strategic play for subscribers who, in the past, shunned Verizon Wireless for carriers that enable easier roaming. The goal is to extend the availability of “America’s most reliable network” to both sides of the Atlantic to boost the value proposition of becoming a Verizon wireless customer.

Verizon’s open evolution is a response to the limited growth opportunities faced by US mobile carriers in the face of market saturation (250 million across the country already have cell phones). Over the next 2–3 years what is now a rumbling from consumers will expand into smoldering demand for choices on wireless networks that reflect the nature of those provided on landlines. In effect the company realizes that it must adapt to an open-centric marketplace to compete and survive over the long haul, not just in the upcoming 700 MHz auctions. In doing so, Verizon has begun the transformation from staunch gatekeeper of a closed network into the heart of a more open wireless ecosystem.

Alex Fletcher is an expert at the Techdirt Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Alex Fletcher and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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<![CDATA[ Like many bloggers, we get inundated with ridiculous press releases about stuff we'd absolutely never write about. While we won't go to the level of Chris Anderson's decision to publicly shame and block every emailer who spams him, sometimes we do try to give some advice – such as the time we tried to remind PR people that we don't want press releases. Seriously. Don't send them. Ever.

Of course, the real problem is that the annoying PR people don't read the site, so not only do they have no clue what we write about, they also don't see the messages trying to tell them how to better communicate with us. But, still, sometimes it does help to get PR people talking about these things, and if we have to do it, we might as well try to do it constructively. I'd been meaning to post a note about „the most boring PR pitch in the world,“ but kept letting it slip. However, I'm reminded of it after seeing the bizarre situation (from the same firm) between Valleywag and MWW, a PR shop. Apparently, one of the folks at MWW sent a PR spam to Valleywag, but left in all the edits showing that it was a copied template. Amusing, but not too surprising. However, in response, the PR person who sent the email is now threatening legal action (over what, we have no clue). More interesting, though, is that Valleywag (in that same post) highlights an email that got sent around MWW about how to pitch bloggers, including things like „Don't pitch, talk“ and „Be brief.“

Well, it appears that some of the folks at MWW take that second one a bit too seriously. For a few months now, the folks at MWW send me a regular stream of PR spam that often has a totally unintelligible subject line, such as the model number of a new mobile phone that I don't recognize and don't care about. It's also just sent from a general email, rather than a person's name. Then, the crux of the message itself is to not tell me why I should possibly care:

Greetings,

We have posted recent news to our media site. Below is the link and abstract for the announcement. Please go to our site if you would like to learn more or to download images or specs.

Best,
MWW Group – Dallas

Click here to view article.

The „click here to view article“ is the entire „abstract.“ I have no idea what this pitch is about or why I should care. The messages from MWW all appear this way, though sometimes it will actually include a one sentence snippet from the press release as the „abstract“ way at the bottom while others just ask us to click for no good reason. Now, to its credit, MWW isn't technically sending us a press release. However, if you are going to try to engage with bloggers (or real reporters, for that matter), what's wrong with actually (1) appearing human and (2) giving the person a reason to read what you've got to say? „We have posted recent news to our media site, click here“ without any reason why I should care at all is hardly a compelling pitch. We're getting spammed all day long with pitches we already don't care about. To not even tell us what you're actually pitching seems beyond ridiculous. So, again, do not send us press releases, but if you must communicate with us, at least give us a reason to care.

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