The Internet, Phonebooks, and Privacy

A really interesting statement from Xfinity/Comcast:

We will no longer make available any directory listing information about our Xfinity Voice customers through ecolisting.com, directory assistance, or print publications. This includes names, phone numbers, and addresses. We also will not share any of this information with third-party publishers.
We're making this change as part of our ongoing commitment to enhance customer privacy. 

Why is this so interesting? It speaks directly to the issue of unforeseen social consequences and new technology.

Early in the days of pushing the information revolution, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, a lot of idea about information and change were bandied about. Two of them, relevant here, were easier access to information generally with phone numbers and addresses as an example, and the other was the end of the paper phone book (saving lots of trees, it was said, more marketing and less fact).

Starting with the paper phone book, well there are giant paper phone books from who knows what advertising-driven company delivered to my door every year. When I lived in NYC, trucks would roll around the city and low-paid workers would deposit phone books on everyone's stoops. I've received them here in Massachusetts as well in the last year. So, no, the phone book did not go away, although the companies, its specific name, and its economic model are very different from AT&T's yellow pages of the 1970s and 1980s that were completely necessary back then.

But free access to information online didn't work out either: when you try to look someone up online, unless they have put their contact information up themselves, it's often paywalled and the Google results usually look pretty dodgy. If you get an unknown phone call (my recent ones are "from" Chicago and Michigan [they almost always fake the source phone number] and feature a recorded message in Chinese with music in the background, which says something about the economics of the phone-spam industry reaching out to non-English speakers in the US) and you Google the number to do a reverse lookup (a simple database operation), it is often very hard to get any information at all, although this could be because the number that shows up on your caller ID isn't actually in service. The point is, you can't actually look people up easily unless they are fairly digitally oriented.

So, we still have paper phone books, but they are not exactly the paper phone books from 40 years ago, and we still can't look people or phone numbers up online (I am tempted to mention the "where's my flying car?" trope, but we have flying cars, it's just that we call them helicopters and they are incredibly more complex than today's regular cars), and, to come back to Xfinity, maybe we don't even want this information available--when it was merely in a paper phonebook, restricted to who had access to those phonebooks, that was one thing, but in today's digital world where Macedonian teenagers can make websites devoted to fake news stories (which are shared to Facebook or via Twitter and then can make their way up the news hierarchy to actual televised news shows), maybe having easy access to everything is not the best idea. (I'll avoid a tangent to how newspapers, despite being driven by advertising revenue, still mostly cared about the advertisements they ran in their pages, but Facebook and Twitter don't see it that way.)

Facebook and Cambridge Analytical Screwed Up, But Not How You Think

Facebook: Open for Advertising, Open for Business

There’s a huge kerfuffle over the recent revelation that Cambridge Analytica, a political research and advertising firm, used data from millions of Facebook accounts in order to build behavioral profiles and then, using those profiling models, advertise to people and manipulate their voting behavior.

People are upset over this, but, it’s not for the reasons that most people are talking about, that is, it isn’t that either Facebook or Cambridge Analytica behaved unethically. They didn’t. They behaved exactly as they were supposed to. The mistake they made was that Facebook users were reminded of how it all works.

What do I mean?

Let’s back up a minute, and look at both Facebook’s business model and also how advertising works.

Facebook is a social networking site, where you can connect with lots of people. That’s not a business model—there is no mention of how the rent is paid (salaries, their giant electrical bill, money to buy new servers and replace old ones). The business model is actually a very old one, one that’s been around for decades: advertising. As any old-school American television scholar will tell you, “If the product is free, you are the product.” This has been true for broadcast television and radio for decades. But as television offerings and the idea of “radio” have complexified, the idea “over-the-air” broadcasting has been somewhat forgotten: many people get their local, i.e., broadcast, television via cable, satellite, or the internet. The local airwave component is not part of that picture even though it’s still there.

The advertising industry, for decades, has wanted perfect consumer profiles for each and every individual. This way they can advertise to you perfectly. “Advertise” is just a polite word for manipulate. Yes, manipulate. Not influence, not coerce, but manipulate. It’s behavioral propaganda. Credit card data and frequent shopper cards were a good start, but the internet, once it reached the right scale, was a bonanza of behavioral data. With big data capabilities, perfect advertising may finally be within reach.

Most advertising that we think about is consumer-based, trying to get you to buy a product. Yes, you, buy this. That’s the idea. It is that basic. And political advertising is exactly the same: behavioral acceptance of a product. But in this case, your behavior is voting, not buying, and the product is a politician, not a good or service (that could be argued but doesn’t matter). It’s the same: advertisements try to manipulate your behavior to the advertiser’s desired outcome.

There is one other important aspect to advertising: that you not think about the advertising. And that’s where the failure is for Facebook and Cambridge Analytica. When you think about the advertising and how it really works, you realize you are the product. If you realize your vote, which is supposed to be sacrosanct, can be manipulated, then it throws into question what you might want to think about democracy and free will. (If you do not live in a democracy, this explanation probably seems short-sighted.) Capitalism is triumphing over democracy, and it’s not supposed to be that way.

Except, it is. Facebook thrives on a user-based advertising model where you are the product. All of your data and access to you is sold to advertisers, or, if Facebook can keep your data, Facebook itself can make all the behavioral models and then sell access to you (the advertisers will still need to make the “right” advertisements, but Facebook will provide the “right” people). Advertising works by showing you what will manipulate you into the desired behavior, be it buying or voting—they’re the same, it’s just a selection on your part.

Facebook will continue to make its service available for free to users, and can do so because the users are the product. Again, this is not new. Facebook sells access to its users to advertisers with precision targeting because Facebook has so much data about your behaviors and preferences, and although there are other financial models this is the one Facebook is currently using. Advertisers try to manipulate your preferences and behaviors based on your past preferences and behaviors.

None of this is new. (Suddenly, my media studies degree is looking pretty hot!)

Where they screwed up was that users remembered that they, the users, were the product, and that they, the users, were the subject of manipulation in the political domain where an individual’s voting preference is supposed to be pristine, determined solely by the voter, beyond manipulation and not for sale. Except, that isn’t true. Just most of the time we don’t want to think about it.

Addendum 1: Google's business model is also advertising.
Addendum 2: Zuckerberg's first website.

Marshmallows

A great take on the children, restraint, and marshmallows experiment over at Math Babe's blog. She does great work and everyone should learn from her.

Copyright Follies

A lot can be said, and a lot has been, about the horrible issues with how the legal regimes of countries (mostly the US) with major cultural production sectors are trying to maximize copyright and kill fair use, among other things. Here are two stories, one recent and one I was recently pointed to, that shed some light on the larger picture.

One is How copyright enforcement robots killed the Hugo Awards, which is laughably horrible and all true.

The other is over at Granta, titled Life Among the Pirates, and is by Daniel Alarcón. It looks at book piracy in Peru, which is at a scale beyond what we have here in NYC for a variety of goods (like "Rolexes").

DVD Region Codes

Granted, the DVD industry has made itself somewhat irrelevant moving into the future given these ridiculous restriction schemes, what with improved digital streaming (and DVDs and BluRays with fifteen minutes of unskippable cruft at the front end - #designfail). But, I would have impulse-bought a copy of The Secret of Kells at Trinity College except it's region code 2, so I can't easily play it here. That's a lost sale, and that's no good for business.

Iron Crows - Shipbreaking

Modern shipping vessels, ships like oil tankers and container ships, help us live our first-world lives with affordable items. But, like how our modern computers often end up in the third world to be broken apart even with the accompanying health hazards, so too do these massive ships. The breaking apart of these ships is the focus of the documentary Iron Crows (NYT review), a powerful and sad film that could have used a bit more of a guiding hand in terms of narration but is still worth seeing. It takes place in Chittagong, Bangladesh, where the shipbreaking takes place.

What is fascinating, although perhaps not unexpected, is that you can easily see the ships of Chittagong, Bangladesh, in Google Maps. Granted the view will change as Google gets newer images, but for now there they are.

Here is a snippet, from the dozens of ships currently viewable. At the bottom, one that is mostly stern. Top left, perhaps that is for natural gas or something that we like to ship in spheres. Top was a cargo ship, it's huge. Along the shore the ships are more in pieces, further out they've just arrived or were too big to get closer to shore. (I have rotated the image 180 degrees, so although the ships are facing the "wrong" direction the image is less disorienting to view.)

Edit: From my friend Anna, see this photo essay at The Economist.

If You Follow, You Will Never Lead: Microsoft's Business Non-Strategy

The title of this post comes from my years growing up as a sailor in Nantucket, Massachusetts, on the wall of the old sail room in the Nantucket Yacht Club. The idea was that you'll get the same wind as the boat ahead of you, and, unless you are a greatly better sailor or have a vastly better boat, you will never overtake the leading boat. If you were that great, you probably wouldn't be behind in the first place.

This is not completely true in business, despite the myth of "first mover advantage", which is only true for successful products (so, not true in the long-term for Palm, nor for Apple's Newton, nor Atari in video games, to name a few). If you can copy products but improve on them without getting sued for patent violation, that may be viable, albeit difficult, and, honestly, foolish.

But it is Microsoft's strategy. I'll have to point out ahead of time that although they are ahead in market share in terms of operating systems if you group all the different versions of Windows, they are not ahead in some equally valid areas of measurement, such as smart phones (iPhone versus Windows Phone -- and they're not phones, of course, they're minis, as in, mini computers), digital music devices (iPod versus Zune), and, another measure, market capitalization -- Apple closed at an all-time high on Monday ($342.45), for a market cap of $314 billion, second only to Exxon Mobile in American companies. (The most recent number I can get for Microsoft's market cap is $240.5 billion. Not bad, but less than $314 billion, clearly.)

I would include digital music sales, but I don't actually think Microsoft really does that in any workable manner (iTunes Music Store versus what?). I'll have to check. I guess I could mention PlaysForSure. Oh I guess it's Zune Marketplace, which seems like a copy of... the iTunes Music Store. Well that continues to back my point. (I'll place it in the table below.)

The point is, Microsoft loves to copy, or on occasion purchase outright, what others are doing. And they usually do it badly, in terms of design and usability, despite market success over the long term, so far. Let's look at some examples.

Microsoft	Bought/Copied
Bing	Copied Google (see note)
DOS	Licensed another form of DOS (86-DOS)
Halo	Bought Bungie, for the Xbox
Hotmail	Bought, not as good as Gmail
Windows	Copied Apple's Mac OS
Windows Phone	Copied Apple's iOS and iPhone for the most part
Xbox	Copied Sony to challenge the PS platform
Zune	Copied Apple's iPod
Zune Marketplace	Copied Apple's iTunes Music Store

(I corrected/clarified the copying/licensing for DOS, I didn't like my initial explanation and it turned out not to be very accurate.)

The point is, Microsoft does not lead, it follows. I admit one interpretation is that I am saying that first-mover, which I just derided in a previous paragraph, is a strong effect, but that is not what I am saying. What I am saying is that Microsoft does not innovate, nor does it really micro-innovate, copying a product and then improving it as much as they can (incrementally). They buy products when they can't make a good competitor, and they copy products and they still can't make a good competitor (Apple's OSes have always been better, don't compare market share unproblematically since you have to deal with the hardware side of the equation, where Microsoft was not making the computers).

Apple tends to make products (and services) that make new markets (or, do so successfully). They are, to some extent, based on pre-existing forms, but not ones that are market successes.

Category	Apple's Move
Digital Music Downloads	iTunes Music Store (paid, not early free Napster)
Digital Music Player	iPod (a digital Sony Walkman)
GUI OS/Mouse	Original Mac OS (from work at Xerox PARC)
Smart Phone	iPhone (a mini computer, really)
Unix	OSX (based on NeXTSTEP, from Unix)

I'm avoiding the iPad as I think we need to wait another year to see how the "tablet" market pans out in the initial phase of the iPad era. Like NFL football before Thanksgiving, it's just too soon to tell. Apple's iPad has generated the most media coverage of recent tablets, which could be an honest indicator of quality, but I think there is some effect from journalists (not incorrectly) thinking they need to cover the iPad. There are probably some other items I could place in the list, but those are the most defensible and explainable that I can think of. (So, I'm avoiding USB and floppy disks.)

As I pointed out, it could be argued that none of these were new products either, but the thing is that, unlike with the Microsoft examples, none of these Apple products went up against anything similar that was successful in the market. (RIM's Blackberry series of phones, although cool, were still in the interface and paradigm of cool handheld phone devices, like Palm to some extent, the iPhone is a different device, it is not really a phone in the full sense, it is a computer that also has phone capability -- did you ever call your desktop computer a phone when it had a modem?) OSX didn't face a mass market Unix, Unix is mainly in labs, corporate back offices, and the homes of Linux geeks. (I've had... two? At least two, Linux boxes, so far.) There was an MP3 player before the iPod (I can't recall the name offhand), but it was not widely successful. Apple made a better interface (the wheel, which has now been replaced with touch screens for the most part).

This is also not to say that everything Apple does is gold (the Newton didn't succeed in the market, Apple's computer offerings were overpriced, underpowered, and muddled in the early 1990s, and there have been occasional but odd AppleTV offerings--usually a Mac with a TV tuner card--which seem to have worked themselves out finally), nor that Microsoft isn't a market success (despite, or perhaps because of, monopolistic practices, and who can resist taking a shot at Microsoft's Bob?).

Leading, and innovating, versus following. As others have pointed out, innovation is risky, but not innovating is moreso.

Update: One area I avoided, unintentionally, was web browsers. Sure, both Apple and Microsoft have web browsers, neither are original, and both are bundled with their OSes. I am pretty sure MSIE came before OSX's Safari, so it doesn't fit my pattern, but Safari wasn't establishing a new market. Not every product for both companies work as examples, but more than enough do that we can look at the overall pattern.

Note: When I said Bing was "copying" Google, I didn't mean literally copying the search results, I just meant the idea. Apparently, according to this report, Bing is indeed directly copying Google search results. Amazing.

Apple, Handhelds, and Disruption in Markets

Every time I see an advertisement for a touch phone, smart phone, or whatever you call them, I can only think of how Apple created this working technological system and the market. Really they are touch-screen handheld computers, but they come marketed like phones, so we call them phones and think of them like phones--computers had modems built in, at one point, and we could actually make phone calls on them, but no one ever referred to a computer as a phone.

I don't want to say "the market for these devices wouldn't have existed without Apple," since that's not true, the market did exist before Apple made the iPhone, and that's why the iPhone immediately sold so well. However it is true that these smart phone, or touch-screen handhelds (TSH is not a good acronym, though), would not exist today without some company having made the move first and having a positive market response, and in this case, such an overwhelmingly positive response that every other phone player wants in on the game.

And that's why we have to think about disruptive technologies.

I am not, by far, the first to point this out. The radio powers in some decade in the past sat on the newer, better, FM technology since their entire empire was built on AM radio, and their manufacturing process didn't make radios that could tune to FM signals, and none of the radios out there could tune to FM. Eventually they rolled it out. I have read how companies fear new technologies, since it is risky, changing what you are doing is risky, and people fear losing their jobs if the company shifts to something new.

Thus, Apple. Not a player in the phone market. No one at Apple stood to lose much if the iPhone wasn't a hit. But they also had experience with the iPod, the iPod as part of the larger iTunes system, and they could learn from their earlier Newton, from Palm, and from RIM's Blackberry. And given than the iPhone is really a computer, Apple had experience in that market.

None of the established phone makers would have made an iPhone knock-off, like they all do now, it was simply too risky. They didn't have the experience, they were locked into thinking about cell phones and not touch-screen hand helds, and they didn't have an existing infrastructure into which they could connect the device (iTunes). It is possible that individuals or teams at the more innovative cell phone companies tried to push an iPhone-like idea, but it wasn't until Apple blew the cell market open did anyone else make one. And of course it isn't actually the cell market, it's something new that people took a while to figure out, just like the iPad.

''They'll read everything.''

So says Bruce Schneier, an author and chief security technology officer at British telecommunications operator BT in an article about the ongoing BlackBerry negotiations (I copied his job description from the article, to be clear, but if I put it in quotes it makes it look like the description is misleading). Specifically, he's referring to the Saudi government and the recent BlackBerry data dust-up. "They'll read everything."

And, as I noted, they probably already do read everything else. This still implies that the countries that aren't making a fuss are already reading all the RIM/BlackBerry data they want (and everything else), especially Western nations. The nations mentioned in the NYT article are:

• Saudi Arabia
• India
• The UAE
• Indonesia

So, one must assume that the US...

1. Gets all the data they want from RIM's BlackBerry service.
2. Doesn't share it with any of those above countries in a way they like.

Apparently there are already local servers, or deals for them, in Russia and China. The article says, "Schneier said the Saudi arrangement is similar to deals RIM has struck in Russia and China," which is not exactly clear if those have happened or will happen.

However, RIM "issued a statement last week denying it has given some governments access to BlackBerry data." So, it's not really clear. And, one can safely assume that some governments, like the US, don't actually ask in a way that RIM would have to refer to as "giving", perhaps it's more like "taking."

One also assumes that the US government would share anything important it discovers with the Saudi government if it were relevant (and vice-versa), so I don't see that terrorism is really an issue, and maybe various agencies aren't actually getting along as well as they should. Or, as mentioned in the article:

Critics maintain that Saudi Arabia and other countries are motivated at least partly by a desire to curb freedom of expression and strengthen already tight controls over the media.

Sadly the article does not actually name or interview any of these critics.

Addition: A better article, finally, from the NYT.

BlackBerryBlocking

In today's NYTimes, via the AP, Saudi Arabia to Block BlackBerry Messaging. The UAE, however, decided first and Saudi Arabia decided to do so as well, which makes for a rather odd headline. The UAE isn't instituting the ban until October 11, and why they are taking so long isn't addressed in the article at all. (Saudi Arabia will, maybe, block messages "later this month.") I assume they could do it tomorrow if they wanted. Is it more a case of posturing, to get some local control over BlackBerry messaging?

From the article:

Regulators say the devices operate outside of laws put in place after their introduction in the country, and that the lack of compliance with local laws raises ''judicial, social and national security concerns for the UAE.''

However,

Regulators said they have sought compromises with BlackBerry maker Research in Motion on their concerns, but failed to reach an agreement on the issue.

Sounds like strong-arming. Why is this needed, and why only with BlackBerry?

Unlike many other smart phones, BlackBerry devices use a system that updates a user's inbox by sending encrypted messages through company servers abroad, including RIM's home nation of Canada.

Users like the system because it is seen as more secure, but it also makes BlackBerry messages far harder to monitor than ones sent through domestic servers that authorities could tap into, analysts say.

Ah, the surveillance society! I would assume the US already intercepts and decrypts all the BlackBerry info. Apparently we aren't sharing enough with the UAE or Saudi Arabia.

Addition: What this strongly implies, if not outright makes clear (ok it's clear, they just don't say it) is that the UAE and Saudi Arabia are already scanning/reading/monitoring/intercepting all the traffic they want on other phone devices.

The NYT decided their own writeup would be better than the thin AP wire feed, so they have an article up.

"So Much For The Dell Model."

I recall the hype about "the Dell process" or "the Dell way" or whatever it was (model, their manufacturing process), and the jealousy Michael Dell had over Apple's success. We Apple fans (and maybe some others) liked to refer to Dell as "Dull" since they made dull beige boxes.

Turns out their great production process wasn't. It was all accounting tricks. Reminds me of Enron, really. You would think people would wise up, although I guess the people who are dumb enough to think they are smart enough to break the rules are also the ones who aren't smart enough to make it work or get away with it. You could blame some of the losses on the economy, but Apple is doing fine.

So, the SEC has released some internal Dell emails where the Dell people discuss how they are only making their quarterly targets with a little side money from Intel. Or, a lot. Dell's quarterly target should have been "make great computers."

My headline is from the writeup by Ashlee Vance.

The Benefits of Free Information

Short version: using Shazam (a free app) on my iPhone, I identified a song (for free) I was enjoying (for free) at a lunch spot, listened to free samples on iTunes, and bought two albums by the band (Camera Obscura).

Ok the short version tells you everything you need to know. But look at how the free access to information led to my making a purchase:

• Shazam (free)
• Listening to song (free)
• Identified song (free)
• Samples of other song by same band (free)

It's more simple than the humorous 3-step plan of the gnomes in South Park, it's two steps:

1. Give away something for free
2. Profit

There really are some types of information that want to be free. (Ok there is perhaps a second step in there, where there are some things you charge for. But, it's a nicer story if it compresses into two steps.)

Hopeful Toshiba and HD DVD

I found this flyer next to the HD DVD player at my mom's. Sadly she did not have me advise on her home theater setup, so some idiot bought her an HD DVD player (if they had bought her Blu-Ray, I would say the same thing, since consumers should have stayed out of it until it resolved, which it did, not in favor in Blu-Ray, but of digital downloads). Given HD DVD's demise, I find the unfounded hope in the flyer amusing. "...as HD DVD continues to develop." Ha.

Market Research, Design, and Choices

I was writing a contact in the marketing world and I realized why I do not want to do market research for some types of companies, and why I prefer to work in the social media world.

I do not want to work at a research firm where I would have to do research for a fast food company, a tobacco company, or a soda company. I think one important aspect of good marketing, and good understanding of the market, is to make a good product that fits consumer need. This does not mean you make products that manipulate people's brains on a chemical level (fats, sugars, nicotine, empty calories) . Good design is important to me, products that harm people's health are defective by design and I do not tolerate treating people like that.

One reason I like social media is because it can make people's lives better, and it needs to be designed well to do that.

Good design makes life better. Some products are designed to enrich some at the cost of others, but are marketed in quite a different way. For more on fast food, read Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation.

The Death of Newspapers

I love a tired out headline! But I have discovered why newspapers are dying, although I don't have robust timeline data and this may not be why readership is declining (but really if you can access it online easier...).

I was reading Lessig's Remix, and he says how newspapers generally get 1/3 of their income from classifieds, and how the market for classifieds has been decimated by Craig's List (ok ok, craigslist). I don't know of many businesses that can withstand losing 1/3 of their income.

Then I also saw this piece in Salon, about the firing of Dan Froomkin from the Washington Post, which was a pretty good explainer about the death of newspapers.

Note that newspapers are not the same thing as journalism. The people who work for newspapers may or may not practice journalism, but the two are not the same thing. Newspapers can suffer financially but that doesn't mean that journalism is dying.

Rights and Wrongs

Okay that's an overused perhaps too-easy pun, but relevant in this case. And what is this case? Danger Mouse's Grey Album. Yes, an old story, I know, but check out the EFF summary page. Here's the part that blows my mind:

First, it's important to understand that there are at least 4, and maybe 5, "rights-holders" potentially involved:

1. Owners of the rights to the sound recording ("master") for the Beatles' White Album. That's EMI.
   
2. Owners of the rights to the musical works (songs or "compositions") that appear on the Beatles' White Album. For the Lennon and McCartney songs, that appears to be Sony Music/ATV Publishing, a joint venture between Michael Jackson and Sony. It's unclear who owns the rights to the George Harrison songs.
   
3. Owners of the rights to the sound recording for Jay-Z's Black Album.
   
4. Owners of the rights to the musical works that appear on Jay-Z's Black Album.
   
5. And, possibly, the owner of the rights to the Grey Album (presumably DJ Danger Mouse).
   

Rights to the sound recordings and to the musical works are different? Are you kidding me? I'm not even sure what the difference between the "master" and the "compositions" are! Copyright law is totally out of control. And it's unclear who owns the rights to the George Harrison songs? Ok honestly I understand how that can be, but that doesn't mean it's a good thing.

Horrible.

Hitler DMCA Meme

I will not pretend to be a master of "the Hitler meme" from the movie Downfall, although I have seen a few. This one, from the EFF, is absolutely amazing. You must watch it. All of it. 

There are many amazing lines, here are two:

Screw them. If they don't run Windows, who cares?

and

Those YouTube people are pussies.

The video is, of course, posted on YouTube...

To Save a TV Show, Don't Watch TV

I like this article over at Slate, Want To Save Your Favorite TV Show? Stop watching it on television, by Chadwick Matlin. Discusses how, unless you are a Nielsen household, no one has any idea that you are watching a TV show on TV... Unless you are watching a TV show online. Hulu? iTunes? They know. Suddenly your viewing preferences count. I am sure there is some decent discussion of samples and sampling in the survey out there somewhere. (It is a very technical issue, I've seen a Forrester senior analyst misinterpret the representativeness of a sample. Tisk.)

Old Media + New Tech = Disruption!

Newspapers are all after Google for including snippets of their news, or something. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me. The Author's Guild is all over Amazon for text-to-speech in the Kindle. 

Reminds me of, well, everything. The radio powers (initially AM) suppressing FM technology (which was better) so as to protect their AM investments. The TV establishment fighting cable TV and the VCR until they could profit from them (I cannot resist the "Boston Strangler!" comment, who can, it is perfect). Newspapers hating the internet. Oh wait that's where we still are!

Established powers like the status quo, it's what sustains them, even if they draw on a formerly disruptive technology. They always seek to stop challenges in any way possible, and when consumers make it very clear they would use something new, the established powers seek to destroy it, often legally. Eventually if they can they co-opt the new technology, but that doesn't always happen. 

Challenge is opportunity. Embrace it (but not like an anaconda would).

Economists Rejoice!

Apple's iTunes Music Store now has different prices for different songs. Someone please do a paper. Do lower prices increase purchasing and still raise revenues (where is the optimal price?), and do higher prices on new songs not reduce purchases too much while still increasing revenues? That's the bet. Let's see what happens.