I’ve been awarded a Thinking Blogger award, courtesy of Larry Moran at Sandwalk: Strolling with a Skeptical Biochemist. Thanks, Larry! As per the rules of this award-meme, I must tag five other blogs that make me think: 1. Glen Whitman and Tom W. Bell at Agoraphilia 2. The Technology Liberation Front 3. Martin Geddes at Telepocalypse 4. Ed Felten at Freedom-to-Tinker 5. Kevin Carson at the Mutualist blog
The Simple Dollar blog is offline, and its author is looking for a way to get back online. I’ve been reading Trent’s The Simple Dollar blog since mid-December. It’s a very well-written, professional-looking blog that gets a lot of traffic, but I was surprised to learn that he only started it about a month before I started reading it. Today, I noticed a lot of Google searches for “The Simple Dollar” were hitting my blog, all coming to my post about Robert Kiyosaki that linked to Trent’s blog. I clicked on the link to re-read his post, only to get a “Forbidden” message from his webserver. I contacted Trent to see if the problem was a legal issue, perhaps a threat from Kiyosaki, but it turns out his entire blog has been taken offline by Dreamhost, his webhosting provider. It seems that today The Simple Dollar–already in the top 2800 at Technorati–got prominent links from both digg.com and reddit.com. This generated so much traffic to the shared server hosting the blog that Dreamhost disabled the account and denied access to the blog. Not only have they denied web access, they’ve denied Trent FTP access. He does have a backup from a few days ago, but is currently looking for a way to get back online with a dedicated server. You can read his own account of his predicament at Metafilter. I’ve offered a few suggestions for possible webhosting providers, but he doesn’t think he can afford a dedicated server right now. That’s in part because, despite his huge traffic, his blog has grown in popularity so fast that he hadn’t yet acquired any major advertisers. He’s been the victim of his own too-rapid success. Are there any advertisers out there who would be willing to help finance the blog’s return on a dedicated server with sufficient bandwidth to handle the traffic? UPDATE (February 10, 2007): The Simple Dollar (or at least most of its content) is back!
After Steve Jobs said that he’d prefer to have the iTunes store sell DRM-free music, but is forced into DRM by the music labels, Edgar Bronfman of Warner Music said that his company will have nothing to do with DRM-free music: “We advocate the continued use of DRM,” Bronfman said, adding that music deserves the same anti-piracy protections as software, TV broadcasts, video games and other forms of intellectual property. “We will not abandon DRM nor services that are successfully implementing DRM for both content and consumers."This quote appeared in an article reporting Warner’s dismal results: its fiscal first-quarter profit fell 74% because of fewer album releases and soft domestic and European sales. Its shares fell nearly 6%. The New York-based recording company said net income for the period that ended Dec. 31 declined to $18 million, or 12 cents a share, from $69 million, or 46 cents, a year earlier. Revenue fell 11% to $928 million.The competition at EMI, however, feels differently: Music label EMI Group is in talks to release a large portion of its music catalog for Web sales without technological protections against piracy that are included in most music bought over the Internet now, sources said on Thursday. … One source familiar with the matter said that EMI was in talks to release a large amount of its music in an unprotected MP3 format to various online retailers.EMI’s plans apparently include talks with Shawn Fanning’s SnoCap about releasing MP3-format music through MySpace. Which company is more likely to still be in business under the same management ten years from now?
The Recording Industry Association of America has a web page arguing that we’re all getting a fantastic deal on compact discs because, if they had gone up in price along with the Consumer Price Index, they’d be over $33 each. As Ben Woods points out, by that same argument Texas Instruments calculators that cost $20 in the mid-1980s should have cost over $300. In fact, the recording labels engaged in price fixing, by setting “minimum advertised pricing” on CD retailers, which caused prices to stop their downward trend in 1996–and causing a decline in sales as prices increased. If you want to sell more CDs, lower the price. (Via Techdirt.) UPDATE (February 9, 2007): This post at kuro5hin from January 2003 on “RIAA vs. MP3 vs. Adam Smith” addresses compact disc pricing and demand. UPDATE (February 10, 2007): And this post at Techdirt reports on a study that shows no measurable effect on CD sales from online downloads (as opposed to, say, CD prices).
Long or Short Capital reports that: [Conceptual] artist Jonathon Keats has digitally generated a span of silence, four minutes and thirty-three seconds in length, portable enough to be carried on a cellphone. His silent ringtone… is expected to bring quiet to the lives of millions of cellphone users, as well as those close to them.Given the duration of the ringtone, Keats should expect to get sued by the estate of John Cage for copyright infringement.
Declan McCullagh at News.com reports that Sen. John McCain is preparing to hold a press conference with John Walsh of America’s Most Wanted and Miss America 2007 to announce a bill that will create a new mandate for Internet Service Providers to eavesdrop on all of their customers email and web traffic in search of child porn images. The act apparently requires ISPs to implement new technology to compare all images transmitted or received by their customers to a federal database of images (presumably via some one-way hash function, so that the database is not itself distributing child pornography), and to report any that are detected to John Walsh’s National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, a nonprofit, non-governmental organization that operates as a clearinghouse/proxy for federal and state law enforcement with Congressional mandate and federal funding. The new bill is known as the Securing Adolescents From Exploitation Online or SAFE Act, and is not to be confused with the 2003 SAFE Act (Security and Freedom Ensured), the 1997 SAFE Act (Security and Freedom through Encryption), or the 1998 SAFE Act (Safety Advancement For Employees).
Todd Underwood offers a fascinating look at how various natural disasters have caused outages in parts of the Internet. He begins with the recent earthquakes that damaged seven subsea cables in east Asia (the cables built by Global Crossing which now belong to Hutchison Global Communications and Asia Netcom were among the very few that were unaffected). He also looks at the effects on the network from the 2003 northeast U.S. power outages and Hurricane Katrina. Here’s one vote for him to post an offered followup that shows which providers gained and lost transit customers and network capacity in the outages.
Today I received the following email from John Martin of Phoenix (whose email address begins with “satguys01”), who was apparently set off by my web page reporting my record of lawsuits against telemarketers, which he came across about 30 minutes earlier while doing a Google search for “arizona telemarketing attorney” (could he be in need of one?): Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2007 08:12:22 -0800 (PST) From: John Martin Subject: Get a life You are just as bad as the telemarketers that call you. Just like a scummy attorney that profits from filing frivolous lawsuits. You raise the cost of doing business for companies, raise taxes by overburdening the courts, and therefore raise the cost of goods for consumers in the marketplace. What do you care? You made a dollar. Telemarketing is critical for the economy to function. The wheels would stop turning if there were no phones or business conducted on them. The Federal and State do no call list is just another angle for the Fed and State to make a buck. Just ask yourself, why is it legal for politicians to contact and harass millions of citizens with automated messages and call people on the so called do not call list? So its OK for them to fund raise and get re elected (profit) using unscrupulous methods. But a legitimate business offering legit goods or services is restricted. Are there Marketers that take advantage of people yes. Like any other business there are bad apples. But most offer legit goods and services. Does your mailbox get full of junk mail? Do you watch commercials on TV? or even now at the movies? Why not sue them? Junk Mail does more damage to the environment than anything else. But the US post service make money on it so that will never stop. Screen you calls, that’s what caller id is for, hangup on automated messages and telemarketers. And stop with the lame lawsuits. Do you really suffer any damages by listening to a message or having a dialer hang up on you? Or are you just an other greedy opportunist like you EVIL telemarketing counterparts just out for a quick buck? I sent the following reply: From: “James J. Lippard” [my email addr] To: John Martin Subject: Re: Get a life In-Reply-To: [email protected] The difference, John, is that they are knowingly violating the law, and I’m not. None of my lawsuits have been frivolous, which is why I have a 100% record of success. I’m only raising the cost of business for companies that are blatantly breaking the law; my impact on the courts is negligible–I always offer to settle out of court for the minimum statutory amounts before filing a lawsuit, and I always file in small claims which minimizes the paperwork. The money I collect is specified as damages in the statutes, and serves not only to compensate me for the violations but to act as a deterrent to further violations. It has worked pretty well–I don’t get many such calls any more. If you think the law is wrong, petition to have it changed. But if you violate it, be prepared to get sued and to lose. What’s your interest that motivates you to send a nasty email to someone you don’t know? From your email address, I would guess that you’re in the satellite dish resale business, which is well known for its sleazy violations of telemarketing law. Are you a regular violator of the TCPA, John? BTW, I have a nice life. What kind of life do you have that you seek enjoyment out of sending such an email as this?For the record, I don’t watch television commercials (thanks, TiVo!) and I’m also very opposed to spam (and much of my professional life in the Internet industry has been devoted to combatting it). We also don’t go to see movies in the theater anymore except on rare occasion; we rent DVDs. I’m an advocate of permission-based marketing to individuals, not indiscriminate broadcast advertising.
These recordings are from 2005, but comic Eugene Mirman received calls from a nonprofit that was recommending United American Technologies as a long distance provider because AT&T, MCI, and Sprint promote gay marriage. United American Technologies, by contrast, was billed as a “Christian-based telephone company,” with a “Faith, Family, and Freedom” campaign. Apparently the nonprofit was using prerecorded calls, which asked you to press one if you oppose gay marriage. Mirman really gets them going–they accuse MCI of running a child pornography website, and say that they aim to destroy the ACLU, for example. These calls were all illegal under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, even though they were initiated by a nonprofit, since these calls were clearly intended to advertise UAT. Prerecorded calls to a residence are illegal. United American Technologies is based in Oklahoma. The calls came from “Faith, Family, and Freedom,” a 527 organization created by Oklahoma Rep. Lance Cargill, who is now Oklahoma’s Speaker of the House. There are more details about these calls in Wikipedia’s entry on United American Technologies. (Hat tip: The Two Percent Company.) ...
Anson Kennedy got this wonderful set of directions on how to get to a location in New Jersey: Stan Schwartz also received some creative directions: