Mayhem & Chaos Blog

Blogging

Mayhem & Chaos downtime

The machine that hosts this site will be moving over the weekend, so this blog will be unavailable from sometime saturday afternoon until sometime sunday afternoon.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Music industry watch

EFF: Voluntary Collective Licensing

The EFF has written an article on Voluntary Collective Licensing, which is another alternative compensation system. While the approach from the EFF is a lot more level-headed than Prof Fisher's naive approach fundamentally it is not any different from the other proposed systems.

The EFF approach also suggests a Nielson type approach for determining whose music is popular and therefore who should get paid. My objections are still the same:

• Crooks will wreak havoc with this system.
• This system maintains or increases the barriers to entry for new artists.
• Top down systems like Nielson ratings are unsuited for the net.

The EFF draws the comparison between radio and file sharing and how the radio/performing-rights societies model could be used to compensate artists for people trading their files on P2P systems. If the dot com era taught me anything, its that brick and mortar business models cannot be readily be grafted onto the Internet. Yet, the EFF proposes to do the very same thing.

I don't hold radio or the ASCAP/BMI in very high regard. There are so many things wrong with radio (e.g. FCC, Payola, ClearChannel) that I would hesitate to use this as a model for anything in the future.

The proper system for rewarding artists when their music gets traded on file sharing systems must be a forward looking system that embraces the nonrivalrous nature of digital music. It should not be rooted in outdated systems that still attempt to shoehorn digital music into a rivalrous container.

Cool Tech

foaf:tipjar

Dan Brickley, the creator of FOAF has written up a quick blog entry proposing to add foaf:tipjar to the FAOF specification.

I'm a big fan of this proposal -- when I revamped my site and created this blog I setup my contribution box. But, I think the tipjar is a much better term for this, so I've started using this name on my page.

Of course I'd like to see a fancy solution that is completely machine readable, but the usual host of problems that prevents this from working well haven't been solved yet. (Authentication of the tipjar owner is the big one). Still no decent solutions on the horizon, but having the data on where to find the tipjar is an important starting point. The human planning to drop money into a tipjar will still need to make the final call and decide if this tipjar actually belongs to the person who claims to own it. Not optimal, but good enough to start with.

Now all we need to do is spread the tipjar meme.

Music industry watch

Economy recovers, CD sales recover

The big picture blog has some remedial math for the movie industry:

The economy slows, CD sales slow.

The economy recovers, CD sales recover.

If I am going too fast for you with this complex and sophisticated economic argument, please let me know. I can't make this explanation any simpler, but perhaps I can find some crayons or blocks for you to play with

I don't think you could state the reason for declining CD sales any more succinctly. I'm sure it won't do any good -- the entertainment industry will continue to blame flagging CD sales on file traders.

Music industry watch

Mayhem & Chaos goes grey

The Mayhem & Chaos site is grey in protest of the music industry cracking down on DJ Dangermouse. DJ Dangermouse remixed Jay Z's Black Album (at Jay Z's public request) and overlaid a bunch of Beatles tracks from their White Album to create the Grey Album. Now EMI wants to crack down on the album because it infringes on Beatles' copyrights. They should've signed DJ Dangermouse, licensed the Breatles tracks and made a mint of it. But no, they are just being the usual butt-heads about it.

Matt Haughey is offering up the grey album for download -- and my download just finished. Thanks Matt!

Go download the album!

Music industry watch

RIAA sued for racketeering

C-Net writes that the RIAA is being sued for racketeering:

Through her attorneys, Michele Scimeca contends that by suing file-swappers for copyright infringement, and then offering to settle instead of pursuing a case where liability could reach into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, the RIAA is violating the same laws that are more typically applied to gangsters and organized crime.

"This scare tactic has caused a vast amount of settlements from individuals who feared fighting such a large institution and feel victim to these actions and felt forced to provide funds to settle these actions instead of fighting," Scimeca's attorney, Bart Lombardo, wrote in documents filed with a New Jersey federal court. "These types of scare tactics are not permissible and amount to extortion."

While this seems funny at first, lets take this a couple steps further -- lets assume that this woman succeeds in suing the RIAA. Could the RIAA be forced for sue people for the maximum penalty under the law and not allow case settlements? If that is the case, then I would expect the maximum penalty per offense to come under heat next. Copyright infringements can be punishable by up to five years in prison and $250,000 in fines, and civil suits can ask for statutory damages up to $100,000 per infringed copyright.

What if a teenager gets busted for sharing 1,000 songs? This teenager would be liable for a million bucks and if there was no way to reach a settlement this kid's life would be ruined. Not a fair punishment, now is it?

So, either this counter-suit is bogus (smells like it to me), or downloading takes on a much higher risk. If it is the latter, I'm sure some judges will realize that these damages are braindamaged and challenge the law. If the damages are lowered to a reasonable level then the benefit of pursuing these cases may erode even further.

Who knows what will happen next. Sometimes I wish I also had a law degree to understand these things better.

Random stuff

Issue roundup IV

Or, why I should get myself a link-blog. :-)

• Two Blanks Against the Trend
• Canadian Recording Industry Goes After P2P Users
• Detecting Patterns in Complex Social Networks
• Hack Your Car

All these Slashdot articles look worthwhile -- maybe someday I'll have time to read them, rather than just skimming them.

Toot your own horn

ETech wrapup

I'm back from ETech and digging out from under a huge pile of things I should be focusing on. Instead I'm blogging and sharing various links about my presence at ETech:

• Robert Kaye: Social file-sharing
• Quinn Norton: next generation file sharing with social software
• Robert Kaye: Technorati Grokked
• Hairy marketing (in german)
• Robert Kaye on Social Networking-Based File Sharing Networks
• Etech Day 2: Data Visualization and Vegetables

And I've written the following blog entries for the O'Reilly Network:

• ETech: Technorati Presentation
• ETech: FOAF
• ETech: Wrapup

ETech was awesome -- I've met a number of really cool people and learned lots of useful things... I'm looking forward to the next one already!

Conferences

What people have to say about me at ETech

Here are a few links about my hair and my presentation:

• Hairy marketing (in german)
• Robert Kaye on Social Networking-Based File Sharing Networks
• Etech Day 2: Data Visualization and Vegetables

More links as I find them!

Hollywood

Comcast makes bid for Disney

In keeping with watching what is going on a Disney, here is Comcast making a $66 Billion bid for Disney. Eisner said NO.

When Real made a $75 million bid for Xing Tech, Hassan Miah said NO. When the board of directors found out about the offer, they put the gun to Hassan's head: "Take the deal, or we'll fire you!".

I'm not sure that Comcast is the perfect match for Disney -- I think Jobs with Pixar would be a much better fit -- but I hope the Disney board comes to its senses and puts the gun to Eisner' head.

Hair

ETech 2004 Hair

ETech just started 1 hour ago and my hair is already on the net. Thanks Joi!

File sharing

MIPI raids Sharman Networks

ZD-Net.au writes about how the MIPI (Music Industry Piracy Investigations) just raided the Sharman Networks and Brilliant Digital Entertainment offices:

MIPI obtained an Anton Pilar order – which allows a copyright holder to enter a premises to search for and seize material that breaches copyright without alerting the target through court proceedings – yesterday from Justice Murray Wilcox, and began raiding premises in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria this morning searching for documents and electronic evidence to support its case against the peer-to-peer companies.

The whole gig of working in Australia and having the company in Vanuatu worked well for a while, but it sure seems that the gig is up. I doubt that anything will happen to the Kazaa network, but I wouldn't expect any new releases anytime soon.

Things are not looking too well down under. Fortunately, here in the US things seem to be looking up a bit. Listening to the Grokster case mp3 was interesting -- the judges had the plaintiffs on the defense post-haste. I want to cut some clips from the case and post them. Stay tuned...

Music industry watch

Legal downloads for $6 a month

Professor William W. Fisher has dreamt up a half-assed approach to compulsory licencing and The Register's Andrew Orlowski just ambled along and published an article to extoll his cluelessness: Free legal downloads for $6 a month. DRM free. The artists get paid. We explain how...

The article (and Prof. Fisher's paper I suspect) spends most of its time on the financials that could support such a model. Sounds plausible, but then again I have an intuitive feeling that the financials behind compulsory licensing would work ok. However, Aaron's Alternative Compensation System points out a lot of problems with this approach -- something that Prof Fisher naively glossed over.

The article talks about how watermarks would be used to track the listening habits of music consumers. Watermarks suck -- Prof Felten and his students have shown how easy it is to remove a watermark from a file. And I would venture a guess that it wouldn't be difficult to remove one watermark and replace it with another. So, if I were a crook trying to cheat Prof Fisher's system I would take songs from popular artists, remove their watermarks and replace them with my watermarks and put them back into circulation via P2P networks. Volia, I'm scamming Buttney out of money.

Then for Divvying up the pot Prof Fisher suggests that the Nielsen ratings model could be used. Unfortunately the Nielsen rating system is quite inaccurate, but it works just enough to be believable for mass media. Applying this model to the music is not likely going to give us desirable results since the Nielsen model is a based on statistics. If the sample that is fed into the model is not large enough, then the output is going to be wildly inaccurate. How can small artists ever get compensated for their music? If an artist is popular in one small city, they should get some compensation, right? But if that city is not being covered by the ratings scheme then they will not make it onto the money distribution plan and get nothing. This scheme would make it harder than ever for a small artist to make a living -- doesn't sound like the system that I want to participate in.

Finally, the kicker that illustrates the severity of cluelessness in this article:

The most significant disincentive to ballot stuffing is the model itself: most people would simply want the model to work. Unlike the current situation, where there's a monetary advantage to be gained by breaking the system.

They want the model to work, and thus everyone will abide by it? How naive can you get?? Everyone wants the government and our laws to work, but amazingly enough there are still criminals in this world. And everyone wants PayPal to work too, but that doesn't stop thousands of crooks from trying to scam PayPal users. PayPal needs to process millions of transactions before it can offset all the fraud prevention/mitigation measures in order to turn a profit. Just wanting a system to work is naive and stupid.

Prof Fisher's thinking that breaking his system has no monetary incentive is simply out to lunch. Crooks would have a great time sucking money out of this system -- see my first point above. And to think that the record companies would even take part in such a system is also half baked. Unless they have total control, they won't even consider it.

Perhaps the numbers add up -- whopee! Unless you can ground your proposals in something resembling reality you should keep your mouth shut Prof Fisher. And you too Orlowski!

Legal/Government

One lousy breast -- not even with nips!

This whole bare breast superbowl fiasco is plain ludicrious.

First, the US is so puritanical that one lousy breast, sans nips (!) causes a big stink. In europe people would've chuckled at the screw-up and and paid it no further attention.

Second, the FCC has launched an investigation. What for? There was a boob -- I saw the picture myself!! What is there to investigate?

Third, the FCC is talking about fines:

CBS faces a Federal Communications Commission investigation into whether the Super Bowl show violated decency laws, with potential fines of up to $27,500. If applied to each CBS station, the fine could reach into the millions.

Millions of dollars of fines? What would've happened if the pasty ripped off too? Ooops, sorry we'll have to execute you for that horrible crime. Gimme a break!

Last, but not least I'm really happy that CBS is getting the shaft -- afterall they refused to air the Bush in 30 seconds clip, since it they do no accept advocacy advertising. Never mind the anti-smoking ads and various white house commericals they play all the time. But controversial half time shows are apparently OK. So, maybe those big fines don't sound so ludicrous anymore. :-)