With his typical class, cutting through the nonsense, Jan Herman is leaving MSNBC today: Some media observers have pointed out the absurdity of that claim. What’s not absurd, though, is the occupational hazard. It grows on bloggers like a fungus. Show me a blogger and I’ll show you someone who …
Read More »Culture and Society
“Hmm, what can we do to INCREASE file sharing?”
“I know – we’ll threaten to sue them all, alienate everyone and watch the files fly!” Good thinking RIAA: The Recording Industry Association of America’s announcement on June 25 that it will start tracking down and suing users of file-sharing programs has yet to spook people, say developers of these …
Read More »Spread the Word – But Who’s Going to Pay For It?
The thunderstorm currently pummeling the environs feels like the wrath of God – perhaps He is angry with file sharers: Does “thou shalt not steal” mean “Thou shalt not download”? Just like other computer-savvy listeners, evangelical Christians swipe songs off the Net – and Christian labels have watched their fortunes …
Read More »Googling For Peace
Jan Herman Googles against WMD.
Read More »Great Tunes
Professor Barnhardt’s Journal poll’s several writers for best songs of the last 25 years, in response to VH1’s take on the same. Here are the top 5 of each listed – see the site for each writer’s top 20 and the VH1 100: VH1 1. Nirvana, “Smells Like Teen Spirit” …
Read More »Amazon Confirms Online Music Interest
Amazon.com senior vice president Diego Piacentini said: The online retailer said it sees future opportunities in digital music download offerings, similar to Apple Computer Inc’s AAPL.O online music service, iTunes, which lets users download some songs from major record labels for less than $1. “You should definitely expect Amazon to …
Read More »Bizarre Economics: Price Goes Down, Sales Go Up
I have said all along that online music sales has to be a low-price, high-volume operation in order to cut into free P2P, which clearly has disadvantages of spyware, ads, unreliable files and labeling, and less than 100% good karma. I think the price range for unrestricted MP3s should be …
Read More »“Trusted Computing” Shouldn’t Be
Properly, trust is a two-way street – this isn’t that: Your next personal computer may well come with its own digital chaperon. ….Silicon Valley – led by Microsoft and Intel – calls the concept “trusted computing.” The companies, joined by I.B.M., Hewlett-Packard, Advanced Micro Devices and others, argue that the …
Read More »“Yuki, check out groovy doo!!”
I find this hilarious, combining about five different stereotypes – I love the image of hordes of Japanese girls snapping away on “backwards” magazines, sending the pics out to their digital buddies. And as always, the assumption by content owners is that information shared is a sale lost. It’s a …
Read More »Bloggy Court Ruling
An appeals court says you are not libel for information you republish on the Internet: The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last Tuesday that Web loggers, website operators and e-mail list editors can’t be held responsible for libel for information they republish, extending crucial First Amendment protections to do-it-yourself …
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