IPcentral Weblog: January 2005 Archives

January 2005 Archives

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01.31.2005

Quotation of the Day

From IraqtheModel:

I walked forward to my station, cast my vote and then headed to the box, where I wanted to stand as long as I could, then I moved to mark my finger with ink, I dipped it deep as if I was poking the eyes of all the world's tyrants.
I put the paper in the box and with it, there were tears that I couldn't hold; I was trembling with joy and I felt like I wanted to hug the box but the supervisor smiled at me and said "brother, would you please move ahead, the people are waiting for their turn".

Yes brothers, proceed and fill the box!
These are stories that will be written on the brightest pages of history.

posted by James DeLong @ 3:45 PM | General

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IP & Counterfeit Industrial Products

Business Week (Feb. 7) has a cover story FAKES!, which describes the problems U.S. industry is having with counterfeit products, ranging from auto parts to fashion goods.

One major issue, of course, is quality. Brand names and trademarks are important precisely because they encourage investment in maintaining high quality and provide consumers with guarantees, and an inferior fake damages both consumers and the legitimate manufacturer.

But counterfeits are evil even if they are not inferior. A knock-off manufacturer avoids many of the costs involved in creating a product -- R&D, design, advertising, and risk of failure. By free riding on the creator, the knock-off can set a lower price -- at marginal cost, as a matter of fact. In the long run, the logical culmination of uncontrolled knockoffism would be that no one would make initial investments because these could never be recovered, and, barring some other mechanism of protection, production would stagnate.

The basics of the problem are very similar to the evils of unauthorized P2P downloading. The harm is not just in quality, though as MPAA and RIAA will happy to tell you, P2P can be a Trojan Horse for viruses and spyware. The more fundamental harm is that this mode of distribution does not bear a share of the overhead costs, which, in an investment-heavy world, is a road to disaster.

Many elements of the industrial world, especially in tech, have been slow to see that their interests and those of the content providers are akin. But perhaps the burgeoning problem of counterfeits will drive the point home.

posted by James DeLong @ 10:07 AM | Big Tent

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Globalization

A useful rule of thumb from Cafe Hayek:

There's a positive correlation between someone's vigor in protesting international trade and that person's ignorance of definitions, facts, history, and analyses.

posted by James DeLong @ 10:02 AM | International

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Capitalism in Norway

IPcentral is voyaging next week to Milan and Brussels, but perhaps we should take a detour to Norway. USA Today notes that the country's Supreme Court is requiring a student to reimburse the music industry for creating a site that linked to infringing MP3s.

posted by Patrick Ross @ 10:01 AM | Internet: P2P, Search Engines...

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01.28.2005

More on Consumer Reps

I received an answer to my query here the other day, the one that said "You and I are consumers, but can you remember the last time you voted for a 'consumer representative'?" A senior Hill staffer told me yes, last November 2nd, in voting for a variety of state and federal candidates.

Continue reading More on Consumer Reps . . .

posted by Patrick Ross @ 4:40 PM | Free Culture Movement

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Advertising Parodies

Bob Kohn, who has written such learned tomes as Kohn on Music Licensing, discusses parody on the Internet.

posted by James DeLong @ 3:06 PM | Access: Commons, Fair Use, Orphan Works, Public Domain

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Orphan works

There are times where I am sympathetic with the views of the Free Culture Movement. For example, I join with Larry Lessig in welcoming the examination by the U.S. Copyright Office of so-called "orphan" works. These are works of some vintage whose owners are difficult to find, and thus they can't be used even by someone willing to pay the rights-holder. As a free-market advocate -- and as someone who enjoys a lot of music recorded in the 1940s and 1950s by labels long since vanished -- I have a problem with that. My gut says if someone holds rights and abandons them, then the content should be fair game if society would benefit from its use. Still, this is property we're talking about. I can buy a field, let it become covered with weeds, and that doesn't give the neighbors on either side of the field the right to seize it if they can't reach me to complain. I don't envy the Copyright Office with this undertaking, but if they can find a way to make more vintage content available without violating the rights of those who wish to retain their rights, kudos to them.

posted by Patrick Ross @ 2:59 PM | Access: Commons, Fair Use, Orphan Works, Public Domain

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iPod Shuffle

Chris Anderson of The Long Tail is skeptical of the iPod Shuffle:

[C]ommercial services provide recommendations, editors' picks, bestseller lists and collaborative filtering to suppress most of the junk. This is important: a key element in extracting value from any Long Tail is the ability to find the diamonds in the rough, which gets harder the further into the rough you go. In other words, a Long Tail without good filters is just noise.

posted by James DeLong @ 11:07 AM | Markets: Business, Investment & Innovation

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Digital Europe

New passports have arrived, tickets bought, and in a couple of weeks much of PFF's staff will be off to Milan and Brussels to talk about open standards, product and service interoperability, and open source software.

We will be reporting regularly, so keep track of the Digital Europe home page.

The topic may sound dry, though we have been working hard to punch up the descriptions with gratuitous sex and violence, but the issues are crucial to the development of the digital world. Further, the debate over standards -- whether they can and should sometimes be proprietary -- is a very important part of the debate over intellectual property specifically, property rights in general, and market society.

Specific events:

Continue reading Digital Europe . . .

posted by James DeLong @ 10:00 AM | Digital Europe

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01.27.2005

Online Music

Real Networks talks about its online music subscription business, on the Internet Stock Blog:

In 2004, our music revenue grew by more than 350 percent over 2003 and we became the clear leader in music subscriptions with over 700,000 paying subscribers… we operate what we believe is the largest network of subscription music listeners. Our RHAPSODY subscribers played over 239 million on-demand songs during the fourth quarter

iPod and iTunes get most of the ink, but prospects look bright for the subscription model as well.

posted by James DeLong @ 12:01 PM | Internet: P2P, Search Engines...

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01.27.2005

Speaking for Consumers

posted by Patrick Ross @ 10:48 AM | Free Culture Movement

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