Disqus - Latest Comments for Seth Finkelstein

Re: Google Finance (GOOG) revista, Yahoo! (YHOO) and corporate accountability

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 09:25:19 -0000

Note the original post was in error - you have to use the name, not the symbol.

I explain this in a post of my own:

Google Finance, Blogs, and Politics

Re: Joanne McNeil on Boing Boing's "erasure" of Violet Blue

Seth Finkelstein — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 05:52:59 -0000

People have asked. The Boingers aren't talking.

See latimesblogs.latimes.com/webscout/2008/06/violet-blue-scr.html

Re: Real or Fake PageRank Update In Progress (round 3)

Seth Finkelstein — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 04:14:05 -0000

Has anyone seen measurable effects from this Pagerank flux? That is, searches on different datacenters where a ranking difference seems attributable to these sorts of changes (as opposed to general Google Dance effects)?

Re: Real or Fake PageRank Update In Progress (round 3)

Seth Finkelstein — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 04:14:05 -0000

Re: Wrong Reaction From Techcrunch On Paid Links?

Seth Finkelstein — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 16:47:26 -0000

"There seems to be a core group of "news breakers" and if they don't link to a story, it isn't relevant to Techmeme."

Techmeme's creator is up-front that that's how it works. I call it "serving the A-list".

Re: Wrong Reaction From Techcrunch On Paid Links?

Seth Finkelstein — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 16:47:26 -0000

Re: No gatekeepers — just a bunch of turnstiles

Seth Finkelstein — Sat, 21 Jan 2006 15:34:32 -0000

"I'm a technology writer at The Globe and Mail, ..."

Let them eat cake.

Matt, you *are* a gatekeeper! You have a professional media gig. To write that there are no gatekeepers, low barriers, simply from your own experience, is a classic blindness.

Yes, there is a very small group of people who determine what gets heard overall. This is established anytime someone does some counting.

Re: No gatekeepers — just a bunch of turnstiles

Seth Finkelstein — Sat, 21 Jan 2006 17:52:41 -0000

Matt, are you seriously asserting that being a writer for a national newspaper has no effect at all on how easily you can get blog readers? That the exposure, the social connections, are not to be considered? Now, people have said such things, like saying coming from a rich family has no effect on future success in life. But it's hard to know what to reply to a person in that case (note this doesn't mean it's a sure thing, but it's certainly amajor advantage).

Your chance of staring a blog and getting recognized is exactly parallel your chance of sending your column to editors and getting published to a wide audience. In both cases, it can happen, if you're in the right place and the right time. But there's a lot of unsuccessful attempts for every winner. In the blog case, if lightning doesn't strike, you'll "publish" it to a few friends of family members, which is frankly often NOT the goal (no offense to the people who are happy talking to crickets, but many aren't).

I mean, what would convince you? What argument could be made that you would consider? Would you always say something like, anyone can plunk down a dollar in the lottery and win, so there's no barrier to riches in the lotterysphere.. And people can waste away fortunes, so that (fallaciously) proves there's no inheritance advantage.

We know that the structure of audience is a power-law, an exponential distribution. This has been well-studied, and repeatedly established. That is, for a given topic, there's a few people with a lot of readers, and everyone else.

See, e.g. this essay by someone else:
http://civilities.net/TheNewGatekeepers

Re: No gatekeepers — just a bunch of turnstiles

Seth Finkelstein — Sat, 21 Jan 2006 18:27:33 -0000

I would put it that the size of the barriers swamps any relative difference for most purposes.

That is, if "old meda" chances are "one in a million"
And "new media" chances are "two in a million".

One could say "chances of success in new media are DOUBLE that of old media" - it would be true. But it would also be true that both chances are basically zero for many practical purposes.

What commentators often miss, is that the lowered barrier to having material produced intrinsically raises the barrier to having it effectively distributed (getting heard over noise). So the net effect is pretty much exactly the same for almost everyone, in terms of facing barriers to entry. There's a very tiny subset of people who have overcome the distribution barrier, so they are utterly in love with the lowering of the production barrier - it's great for them.

No offense intended. I discuss some of these issues myself e.g. this old blog post:

http://sethf.com/infothought/blog/archives/0006...

Re: Blogs — it’s all about the conversation

Seth Finkelstein — Sat, 04 Feb 2006 10:58:18 -0000

Are you sure it's not reversing cause and effect?

This all part of the tendency to consider a "blog" as something somehow out in a mysterious space like an asteroid, entirely distinct from the person who writes it and their social network.

Consider:

"If a person is well -connected and has a large social network, their blog is likely to flourish. If they aren't known and popular, their blog is likely to be ignored".

Would that be much of surprise?

But invert it - and it's hailed as a revelation.

Re: The disruptiveness of doing what you love

Seth Finkelstein — Sat, 04 Feb 2006 19:06:30 -0000

I haven't seen a media mogul with a scared wig. In fact, the ones I've observed (granted, from something of a distance), are dancing a jig. It tends to go like this: "FREE WORK! FREE WORK! We don't have to *pay* writers anymore. We can cut our staffing costs, and replace even the pitiful amount of money we pay them now with cut-rate blogger labor, 'cause those folks are willing to WORK FOR FREE, they love it so much!!!"

This is often called "citizen journalism".

The scared wigs I've seen are those who do have jobs as paid writers - and are losing them from outsourcing.

Re: The disruptiveness of doing what you love

Seth Finkelstein — Sat, 04 Feb 2006 20:07:59 -0000

Let's distinguish between being scared about a business model in general, from trembling before The Power Of Love.

That is, for example, music industry executives are terrified that the Internet might destroy their business through massive copyright infringement - disruptive, indeed. I haven't yet seen one who thinks podcasters for free are going to make the music business obsolete. Rather, there's quite a gold-rush on as to how to set up a middleman business mining the free podcasters and to make money off them. Not exactly the disruptive I think was intended above.

Re: Is a blog without comments still a blog?

Seth Finkelstein — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 15:04:19 -0000

As a practical matter, many (not all, but many) of the top blogs do not have comments. If you're going to say these are not "blogs", then the definition is of limited utility, since it excludes many prominent websites which are used as proof of the utility and success of blogs.

Frankly, the whole blog-comments argument is part of the marketing of blogs as "conversation", of selling it as something it's not.

Re: The blogosphere is growing up

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 12:10:56 -0000

Mathew, thanks for the link.

Note it's not about being "a fairly decent guy" or not.

Rather, money has influence. Every time this comes up, those influenced say "I'M A GOOD PERSON!" (== I'm not for sale). But the outright sale is kind of a trivial case. There's a whole range of complicated effects that shouldn't be reduced to that triviality.

Re: No scoops, no NDAs, no exclusives — no walls

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 02:06:57 -0000

Regarding "the incredible power even a single blog can have ..."

Somehow, this is much less impressive as "The incredible power a former magazine edtor and columnist who is a media insider can have to make a fuss about standard column-fodder"

Just sayin'.

Re: Nick Carr is a smart guy - but he’s wrong

Seth Finkelstein — Sat, 18 Feb 2006 10:45:42 -0000

Richard: "I mean, nobody I know ever claimed the Web (letâ€™s forget the 2.0 bit for a second) was a utopia ..."

Sure they do, just not in a trivial way. That is, it's rare to find a strawman claim of the sort that there will be absolute perfection. But it's pretty easy to find highly overblown claims of meritocracy and democracy, and it's immensely tedious to repeated debunk them (i.e. Where-Are-The-Woman, and the vast attention inequality).

The no-utopia is a deflection tactic from the unjustified evangelism.

Keen's just going overboard in the other direction. I suppose he could similarly argue "I didn't call it a dystopia, just a loss of the best of what we have now".

Re: Hey, my dad has a barn — let’s put on a show

Seth Finkelstein — Wed, 22 Feb 2006 01:24:22 -0000

"Essentially, we want to get some of the smartest and most interesting people in the Web 2.0 movement (if I can call it that) into a room together and talk about how some of these issues are changing the way we live our lives,"

That sounds a lot better than "We want to get the hottest show-biz acts of this business to perform at our party" :-).

Re: The RSS soap opera (updated)

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 02:37:39 -0000

About: (are they regretting ever getting involved)

I hardly speak for them, but I suspect it's considered just the price of doing business - $100 MILLION OF VC BUSINESS!

http://sethf.com/infothought/blog/archives/000873.html

Re: Softbank buys into “citizen journalism”

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 03:05:21 -0000

I prefer to call it "unpaid freelancing"

Re: Softbank buys into “citizen journalism”

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 15:00:03 -0000

Hey, â€œunpaid freelancingâ€? works from either direction.

Some people are overjoyed at the prospect of replacing professional journalism with unpaid freelancing.

Some people are appalled at the prospect of replacing professional journalism with unpaid freelancing.

But in either case, I think both are in agreement that the "citizens" do not get paid, and this is the key aspect (I'm not sure I should use the word "feature").

Why is ohmynews the New New Thing? You can almost hear the salivations ("It looks like news, AND WE DON'T HAVE TO PAY THE WRITERS!")

Quote the Wired article: "The pay ranges from nothing to about $16, depending on how a story is ranked by the editors -- "basic," "bonus" or "special." ... If an idea has legs, a citizen reporter will pick it up and report it on their own time and expense."

[Translation: "They do the deveopment for nothing, we give them a few peanuts if it's extra-good"]

Why should anybody be cheering the outsourcing of journalism? Doesn't it seem at least a little bit bothersome as to who is directly in line to benefit? (hint: not "the public" - rather, the media companies).

Re: Get off the A-list treadmill and just write

Seth Finkelstein — Sat, 25 Feb 2006 02:28:51 -0000

Seconded. There's a kind a bait-and-switch selling. What is "a voice in a conversation" viewed in terms of implication - it *sounds* as if one *will* be heard. It's not "because some people like to talk to themselves" (look, some people *do* like to talk to themselves, that's fine - but if one doesn't, it's not helpful).

Moreover, regarding "If you run a business, blog because one day, I promise, you will be glad you have a place to respond when the conversation is about you."

If an A-lister flames you (hardly a "conversation"), it doesn't do you any good to "respond" on a page nobody reads. Ever more so if attacked by a newspaper columnist or TV reporter. And why do you need a *blog*, rather than a *web site*, for that unhappy day? It certainly seems like some sort of comparable power is being insinuated, though it's not the best example of that shibboleth.

Re: Get off the A-list treadmill and just write

Seth Finkelstein — Sat, 25 Feb 2006 15:40:07 -0000

Scott, as I replied in another context, recently I've benefitted from, well, I can't call it a "wave", more like a little splash, of backlash against blog hype. But I regard this as some of the most trivial things I say, though I recognize it channels some widespread frustration with the cliquishness.

The way the paradox is resolved is to realize that "not being heard" is still talking about the blog evangelist sales-pitch, even if denying it.

The basic formulation I use in terms of audience size is that as a minimum I want to be able to reply to a *comparable* audience if attacked. Obviously, a billion Chinese couldn't care less. The problem is that the exponential nature ("power law") of readership means this will never happen for any but a few A-listers, just as a matter of mathematics. I could go into further estimates for activism, but let me stick to that simple point.

This is why I find the shell-game of seeming to promise audience and influence, but in fact offering nothing, then scolding the disappointment, to be such an irritating practice.

Re: There’s good Dave, and there’s bad Dave…

Seth Finkelstein — Sun, 26 Feb 2006 13:30:21 -0000

You've mixed up two _Star Trek_ episodes - there's one where just Kirk is split into versions of good/evil, and there's another, about a mirror universe, where everyone has an altered, usually more savage, version of themselves.

Further, the Z-lister sayeth not, except to note Mirror-Universe-Blogosphere politics would make for a fun post.

Re: Revenge of the M-listers? Sign me up

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 14:09:46 -0000

This is extremely well-known, in terms of selection and network effect.

The problem is that it's very, very, hard for even a determined group of M-listers to promote themselves, and even so, it just doesn't match the power of an A-lister.

This is what EXPONENTIAL means :-(

Re: Does Google need adult supervision?

Seth Finkelstein — Wed, 08 Mar 2006 20:06:12 -0000

Ehh, mistakes happen. It's more an example that cheap irony sells than any deep meaning.

Re: Marketing and blogs, still lots of work to do

Seth Finkelstein — Wed, 08 Mar 2006 22:13:34 -0000

The PR people don't "get" that big-time bloggers consider the problem of taking bribes to be completely solved by saying "I've taken a bribe" 1/2 :-).

Re: Marketing and blogs, still lots of work to do

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 03:20:24 -0000

Back in the FON advistory board overall discussion, there was a good point about how a conflict of interest doesn't go away because you disclose the conflict. Disclosure is important. But it's hardly the end of the story. It's a bit like money in politics (disclosure matters, but there's a lot more which matters too).

Re: Dave’s dark side returns to the forefront

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 05:46:51 -0000

",,, the RSS debacle, which gets weirder by the day ..."

Weirdness tends to follow the money :-)

Paul: I think you're improperly implying a moral equivalence. Here's a simple point: Dave had the option of saying "My lawyer was too aggressive, I apologize and withdraw any threat of litigation." He didn't. Or anything close to it. That's just one profound asymmetry (that the target had been derided as a "lackey" and "sycophant" is to me another telling point as to why we are dealing with abuse and not equals).

Re: Doesn’t Amazon want to get naked?

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 04:58:44 -0000

Y'know, I'm a far cry from Miss Manners, and I intensely dislike any bullying by the strong of the weak - but I marvel at the thin-skinned nature of some A-listers and blog evangelists. They praise "Naked Conversation", which seems to mean in general that *they* get to rant, flame, and abuse anyone else. But let someone give them a little rudeness - and wow, they whine to high heaven. Oh-me-oh-my, where are the smelling-salts, someone was *rude* to pushers of personal exhibitionism - I do declare, can you image that?

I think that would be quite convincing proof of the skepticism - they can't "eat their own dog food". If someone gets a bit naked, metaphorically, in terms of emotion - ie. saying it's bullshit (which, frankly, ought to be a response advocates of openness should be able to take in stride) - they can't handle it, other than by reacting with personal hurt. First test, and they fail! One might even speculate that they're used to gushing praise (from attention-seekers), and unused to being challenged.

Again, let me be direct. Let's assume Vogel *was* rude. It wouldn't be the first time someone failed to express harsh skepticism of suspected huckerism in a diplomatic way, that's a very difficult task. If The Experts then do the equivalent of "Mommmy (or Blogggggies), he's so *mean* to me! (He's not begging me for a link! He's not trying to get invited to my party! He doesn't want in on my start-up!)" - then I think that's pretty much proved the skeptic's point. Not because rudeness is nice - it *isn't*. But being "naked" has to deal with people's warts and blemishes, not air-brushed fantasy.

Re: Doesn’t Amazon want to get naked?

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 08:32:43 -0000

I think my main point is being missed, since I'm not claiming he wasn't rude. In fact, I'm willing to *stipulate* that many people *thought* he was rude. And it's also clear that he thought he was being tough but fair.

My point is this: BLOG EVANGELISM SHOULD BE ABLE TO HANDLE SUCH A CONFLICT! It's "openness". It's "being naked". It's "authentic". (all of which is consistent with "not nice").

This is a *slight*, *minor* culture-clash. Well-understood, completely predictable. If such a small thing can't be handled, being an emotional flasher cannot be taken seriously.

And it's not valid to take the question to a meta-level, to say, look, we're having a "conversation" about it. That answer works for anything.

Look, Z-listers are expected to put up with potentially far, far worse as just the price of being in "the conversation". An irritated A-lister always has the option of writing a personal attack on the Z-lister, where a huge number of people will see the attack and almost nobody will see the reply (this vast inequality is my fundamental view as to why blogging is arguable worse for power relationships, but I've discussed that elsewhere). So again, if a tiny and inevitable difference over acceptable discourse causes such a tizzy, how can imbalances which are orders of magnitude worse ever be addressed?

I don't mean the following in a rude way (see, worked example, I know this can be taken badly), but I'm having a hard time conveying how much this all seems to validate the charges that all that's being pushed is narcissism and echo-chambering.

Re: Matt Mullenweg sells a stake in Automattic

Seth Finkelstein — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 21:39:48 -0000

OK, the VC's are for the business contacts and the connections. I can understand that. It's not just about cash.

Re: Is Digg.com rigging its diggs?

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 20 Apr 2006 21:58:07 -0000

Sadly, I've never seen that it matters. You're confusing an extensively funded right-wing smear-campaign against media in general, with issues of trust. Slashdot was *infamous* for having someone who was abusive and used his position there for his politics and for personal vendettas. Realistically, the mass audience didn't give a damn.

Re: The Economist on “social media”

Seth Finkelstein — Sun, 23 Apr 2006 09:27:42 -0000

Let's put it this way:

Not every rock is a gem - but you find a lot more gems in diamond-mines than coal-bins.

Re: Can blogs affect politics and society?

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 08:43:12 -0000

Bah, humbug. Is there anyone there who isn't going to say "Blogs are just the bestest most disruptorious democratic people's pamphleteering revolution. Down with the MSM! Advantage bogosphere!"?

Re: Can blogs affect politics and society?

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 09:59:45 -0000

Thanks for the offer, but what would be the point? Not to mention I live in the US. Anyway, here's an interesting link I've remembered on the topic, with particular application to Canada:

Respectful of Otters
(see Friday, April 08, 2005 entry)

Re: Web 2.0 — powered by numbskulls

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 01 May 2006 21:04:18 -0000

I think the problem is that when you try to mine the collective intelligence of a group of people, you also have to deal with their collective stupidity. Otherwise, committees would be sure-fire recipes for genius.

Wikipedia is sometimes like listening to a huge committee where the chair of the committee insists that readers only praise the good parts of its efforts and not count any bad results.. All the while talking about how great committees are, in terms of being a management innovation.

Re: Web 2.0 — powered by numbskulls

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 01 May 2006 23:10:38 -0000

Wikipedia is not "democracy". It is a pet project of rich guy, who holds ultimate power over it, delegates lesser power, and can't ever be removed.

Morever, "democracy" as a system of political organization is one thing, as a method of determining encyclopedia accuracy, quite another.

Re: The Wikipedia model — unicorn or camel?

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 01 May 2006 23:17:52 -0000

And I think that is *deeply* flawed, on multiple levels. It's just a way to browbeat critics, to put them on the defensive as against "democracy", for being against voting on what's true. You neglect the topic if minority rights, as in the quotation "Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth".

Re: Can you apply wikis to democracy?

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 08 May 2006 04:27:32 -0000

Bah, humbug.

Bah, humbug.

Bah, humbug.

I could write more extensively, but I think that's the gist of it, and nothing more would do any good.

Re: Can you apply wikis to democracy?

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 08 May 2006 18:10:30 -0000

Well, not to be rude, but how often do you have the same type of content in the post (more or less)? [i.e. Web2.0/blogs/wikis ...]

Re: Mark Cuban makes a great point

Seth Finkelstein — Sat, 13 May 2006 18:16:22 -0000

Bleh. "Blogs *good*, MSM *bad* - "Blogs *people*, MSM *corporate*".
How is this not at heart as repetitive as my simply saying "Bah, humbug"? It's the hoariest blog triumphalism.
ALL media is "made of people", in the sense that it's people communicating with one another. But the A-lister is no more a real person than the newspaper columnist. And sure, you can write stuff, but if you actually want to get HEARD, it's a very different story.
How many people hear him ranting, as opposed to hear me? Do you think that he has an enormous pile of money, and I don't, might have something to do with it? Just a little?
(someone will immediately straw-man this, to say that money is not the only factor - but it sure *iS* a factor!)

Re: Mark Cuban makes a great point

Seth Finkelstein — Sat, 13 May 2006 21:09:51 -0000

Ah, but what is his point, when examined critically? It's rather uninspiring for a multimillionaire to be proclaiming how great it is that he can run a PR apparatus so much more cheaply these days. What is elided in the phrasing about "person who writes and their readers", is that there's still a conduit between readers and writers, in his case that conduit is the huge attention he has, by virtue of his wealth and ownership of attention-generating asserts. Those are major factors in *getting* him readers.

So he likes ranting instead of being a grey flannet suit. So what? Thus his wealth and connections get him an audience - that's not a triumph of blogs, it's triumph of wealth and connections.

The fallacy arises because of a false comparison between what it would entail if he had to use someone else's attention-network (a lot), versus what it costs him for incremental use *once he has gotten his own comparable attention-resources* (which represent an astonishing amount of bubble money).

Re: Mark Cuban makes a great point

Seth Finkelstein — Sat, 13 May 2006 22:33:55 -0000

Yes, I understood both "already awarded" and asserted "hold for others" point - my underlying point is contesting the latter, his argument does not generalize. Rather, generalizing his success is another way of stating cliched blog triumphalism. He's got's power because he's got power, and blogging gives very little unless one already has a lot (with some extremely rare exceptions).

Re: Mark Cuban makes a great point

Seth Finkelstein — Sun, 14 May 2006 00:13:16 -0000

It's linked. He can AFFORD to be personal, in many senses. You're missing the aspect "Personal blogs don't get read by almost anyone else unless the person writing them has something comparable to the attention aspects of traditional media", hence the misleading comparison.

Re: Is Sphere winning at blog search?

Seth Finkelstein — Wed, 24 May 2006 00:07:59 -0000

I suspect Google judges blog search as simply not worth the resources, given how little projected profit there is in it.

Blog search is actually amazingly niche, if you think about it - what much is there to search over blogs in specific, beyond ego and punditry-junkies?

Re: Letters section meets blog — blog wins

Seth Finkelstein — Sat, 10 Jun 2006 19:05:30 -0000

[Bah, humbug]

Oh me, oh my, what would poor little voiceless General Motors ever have done before this fantasic conversation - golly gee, BL0GS RUL3Z!!!

Because we know that before the greatest invention of web-infinity, the *blog*, a giant business just couldn't get heard. But now, with blogs, blogs, blogs, the gatekeepers have lost their power. It's a New Era.

Don't those unhip dead-tree old-worlders "Get it"? Wow. GM PUBLISHED IT THEMSELVES! Amazing. Fantastic. Unheard-of. No megabillion-dollar megacorp could ever have that sort of power before.

Shout it from the rooftops! Down with elitist priests of the old-media newspapers, and up with BIG CORPORATIONS AS THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE!!!!!!!

[Bah, humbug. Bah, humbug. Bah, humbug ...]

Re: Letters section meets blog — blog wins

Seth Finkelstein — Sat, 10 Jun 2006 23:36:02 -0000

Mathew, seriously, I'm flabbergasted. Again, General Motors is multibillion dollar corporation. That's BILLION. ten-to-the-nine. Can you seriously assert they were powerless before the advent of the weblog?

I'm at a loss. This isn't something I want to argue as a big flame-war. But seriously, rationally, what evidence could I put forth to you that would change your mind? Story-placement is bought all the time! They have friendly industry pundits who would echo their point of view, and press agents and PR people. I'm sure someone at the Wall Street Journal would have been happy to run GM's material as an Op-Ed, or work it into a story. All of this was in place in the era BB (Before Blogs).

Their "blog" is not any sort of personal voice - it's part of pre-existing corporate function. You or I have nothing in common with such a blog (GM, as an entity, is not even a carbon-based lifeform! - it's a legal fiction).

This particular entry irritated me, because of the cookie-cutter blog evangelism taken to such absurd heights, that scary aspect of cheerleading the interests of business flacks and portraying the very wealthy as somehow being persecuted underdogs.

The change in the equation is that the flackery business is shifting around, with different gatekeepers. But the rich have always been heard, and it's ridiculous to be trumpeting the latest example as some overall ability that's never been seen before.

Re: Letters section meets blog — blog wins

Seth Finkelstein — Sun, 11 Jun 2006 00:44:03 -0000

Mathew, I actually think you're missing my point. This exact same post could have appeared as a column in a GM-friendly business magazine, one which likes to bash the Times. In fact, that's basically what's happened, it appeared in a GM "house organ".

When you wrote "The Letters section is no longer the only sandbox that readers (and advertisers) can play in.", that ignored that GM has had its own sandbox for decades, as well as plenty of business press sandboxes. All of which love the plotline of the biased journalist who just won't give an honest businessman a fair shake (compare: "As Tom mentions here, the Times is used to having voice, not in giving voice.")

The difference now is that they have blog evangelists giving tnat old sob-story a New Era glossing.

Re: Has blogging jumped the shark?

Seth Finkelstein — Sat, 01 Jul 2006 22:54:32 -0000

Actually, "Family Circus" is sometimes now written by the original cartoonist's son, and you can often tell the difference - this was almost certainly one of those.

But blogging has definitely transitioned, from "in-crowd" to "serious sucker bait". Whether you want to call that "jumping the shark", or "business opportunity", is a matter of perspective.

Re: Financing for a Web 2.0 joke

Seth Finkelstein — Sat, 16 Sep 2006 06:27:45 -0000

Some jokes are funny because they're true, which is another way "find a need and fill it".

Re: News flash: Dave and Nick are both right

Seth Finkelstein — Sun, 15 Oct 2006 07:48:52 -0000

The fallacy is the vision of the quasi-commune. I keep asking, what's so great about being an unpaid stringer? What's so superultrafantastic that you can be a freelancer for no money (or Google Ads pennies)?

What happens is that a gatekeeping structure develops where there's a few voices heard, and everyone else. Yes, it's possible for someone to be in the right place at the right time and get a big break in terms of attention that way - I heard it, I don't need that repeated. But so what?

Again, a big problem is an almost pathlogical denial of a gatekeeping system, in the fact of manifest evidence from the Power Law in the abstract, to the practice that the same Big Heads in the bogosphere get attention for saying the same things over and over.

[anti-snark - I've said all this before too, that's my cross to bear]

Re: Does being transparent ruin a PR blog?

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 21:24:44 -0000

I think the issue is more that PR and blogs is about successfully faking sincerity - which contains within it the implication that there are times when they will unsuccessfully fake sincerity.

I haven't seen any evidence that this will discourage future attempts, huffing and puffing from blog evangelists to the contrary.

Re: Reddit gets to Digg-ify Conde Nast

Seth Finkelstein — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 16:37:50 -0000

http://reddit.com/info/olu8/comments/combx

One of the foundes (I think) said the 65 million claim was [pulled out of] "Thin Air".

Re: … and advertise with me, Mark Cuban

Seth Finkelstein — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 15:58:28 -0000

“those who host the Long Tailers will get paid, those who create for the Long Tail rarely will.”

Seems like that's exactly what many of the Z-listers say, from down on the bottom (and often get personally attacked for having bad attitudes).

Re: How soon until The Donald joins Second Life?

Seth Finkelstein — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 10:22:06 -0000

"The fact that liquidating all those assets in Second Life would demolish their alleged value is no less true when it comes to the net worth of Larry Page or Sergey Brin, for that matter. They couldn’t sell more than a fraction of the stock that makes up their net worth without cratering the share price."

But the fraction that they can sell results in REAL MONEY. Not true of virtual money.

Re: Hey Mike — chill out, dude

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 23:57:52 -0000

It's a "cultural" thing.

Arrington is a lawyer/VC guy. The other three are various types of media/marketing people. What Arrington keeps doing is "trash-talking" in situations where a lawyer/VC would find it appropriate, and the others basically keep saying to him, hey, cool it, not here, that stuff is for the posturing, not the dealmaking.

Re: Google provides options on its options

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 03:13:06 -0000

"An auction would solve at least that problem, ..."

Umm, there isn't a "problem" at that level - options on Google already have a price in a very liquid market (whether that's the true value is another issue ...). So there's nothing for the auction to solve.

There is the issue that employees couldn't sell those options before, so couldn't get that price. But that's entirely different.

Re: Google provides options on its options

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 16:23:40 -0000

The options can't be sold until the vest. When they vest, in this program, they are sold as a two-year (or less) option. Two-year options have a public market price. Google's own material refers to the general market, e.g.

" Although Google's TSO program is
intended to mirror the public market, it will not be as efficient
because there will be fewer market participants and slightly higher
transaction costs."

So it's essentially the open market price plus inefficiency and friction.

Re: Google provides options on its options

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 17:00:22 -0000

I don't understand. What is difficult to price about the employee stock options *relative* to an ordinary public market two-year option, except for the minor matter of "handling charges" having to do with small lots, paperwork, etc. ?

Isn't it useful to think about this as two-year option plus service fee, with the auction for the lowest service fee? But the service fee auction doesn't tell us anything about how to accurately value the two-year option.

Re: Google provides options on its options

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 17:24:25 -0000

Ah, your first sentence is right, but the second part, the auction system, doesn't follow.

The purpose of this system is to let employees get the full VALUE of some time premium of OPTIONS. Normally, an ordinary person can't easily get that full value for an employee stock option, because they can't sell it AS A STOCK OPTION. The employee can only, at some point, exercise the option, turn it into stock, and resell the stock. But the option itself has value because of the time-right in it.

More importantly - and Google keeps stressing this point - options can still have value even if they are for more than the current stock price (because of the chance that the stock will be higher in the future).

So Google has a semi-reasonable idea - just let employees sell the *options*. This has a lot of complications - did you read my long blog post about it?

However, the auction itself doesn't do much to value the options outside of the big public market. Nobody is going to pay *more* for an employee option than one for a similar time period they can just buy on the public market with no hassle. So the public value is a strict upper bound. If they want to pay a lot less, there's an arbitrage opportunity for someone else. So all the auction is about is finding the low bidder to handle the business of the employee options, and whatever weird accounting Google is doing here.

Why doesn't Google simply let the employees sell the options on the open market? Good question - I wish I knew the answer. I think it has to do with the way Google is using the program to keep up the stock price. It's got to be some complicated stock/options accounting issue. But that doesn't have anything to do with valuing the options.

Re: Google provides options on its options

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 17:56:47 -0000

Absolutely, the time-value a huge part of an option. But the auction itself is just to find a low-bidder. Again, if there wasn't some complicated unclear accoutning reason, why *not* just let employees sell the employee options on the public market? When employees exercise the options internally, they don't have a special "stock auction", to have employees sell the stock in a special private market.

Oh, it's not *just* to prop up the share price. It also lets employees take advantage of the likely current mispricing of Google stock options relative to how Google's stock will probably perform over the next few years, at the expense of the suckers who eventually get stuck with the worthless options.

Re: Steve Rubel throws a softball to Gates

Seth Finkelstein — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 01:28:37 -0000

It really doesn't matter if he's there "as a blogger", or "as a representative of a big PR company". It doesn't make a difference. In no case is he going to risk rocking the boat, because what would be the gain in it for him?

Re: Yes — but a smaller, less frothy bubble

Seth Finkelstein — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 21:00:26 -0000

All wars are not WWII
All bubbles are not Internet Bubble 1.0

But people still get hurt nonetheless.

Re: Good luck with the Google-killing, Jimbo

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 25 Dec 2006 21:14:50 -0000

It looks like that screenshot is of a project which might have led to the current one, but isn't the current one.

That is, Wikia seemed to have had an *internal* search engine in development (which is what is in the screenshot).

Then I conjecture someone threw money at Wales, and he decided to take it and run with an *external* (whole-web) search project.

Re: To vote for Mr. Obama, click here

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 12:33:51 -0000

"And then there’s Senator John Edwards making his pitch using Rocketboom, and having Poptech video-blogger Robert Scoble tag along on his airplane."

RE-INTERMEDIATION!

Instead of having a Fourth Estate intermediary, have a flack as a intermediary-marketer.

It's very revealing who thinks this is the greatest thing ever.

Re: PayPerPost: a Web 2.0 witch-hunt

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 01:13:09 -0000

It's all about disintermediation - of the current A-listers! They don't like that.

You know what the blog evangelists would say if they were in favor of this, hailing it as a marvelous disintermediation of the old monolithic priesthood of the high barrier to entry media payoffs, compared to the hip new democratized PEOPLE-POWERED PAYOLA.

Re: Robert: Disclose that bag of pretzels too

Seth Finkelstein — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 11:54:06 -0000

The big deal is as follows: There's been a huge amount of ranting from the A-list that PayPerPost is EVIL EVIL EVIL, and people taking money from them are bad, bad, bad bloggers who pollute our precious bloggily fluids.

Then one of the BigHeads announces he's getting paid - with special treatment! - to speak for them.

IOKIYAA! = "It's OK If You're An A-lister".

Yeah, yeah, you can argue "that's different", because, you see, he's getting big money for *speaking*, and that's just what A-listers do, but if you, little Z-lister, get small money for posting, well, then it's not about the "conversation" anymore (strangely, all those speakers fees aren't taken to corrupt the "conversation" at all, it's only capitalism).

So what you're neglecting in the above post in the demonization of PayPerPost, and the class-warfare aspects thereof.

[note: I'm not defending PPP _per se_ - but I don't see them as so much worse than the strategies used by the A-list for their own monetization]

Re: Is Wikipedia really in danger?

Seth Finkelstein — Sat, 10 Feb 2007 17:58:34 -0000

The numbers can't be right. See my post:

Wikipedia is NOT going to "shut within 3-4 months"

Re: Is Wikipedia really in danger?

Seth Finkelstein — Sat, 10 Feb 2007 20:41:50 -0000

I've updated my post with a link to the financial statement (I can't put it here because otherwise my comment will get trapped in the spam-filter). Operating expenses for 2006 were "$47,777", indeed triple (loosely) the 2005 figure of "$18,067". But that's not going to break the bank. They spent half again as much in travel as operating expenses.

Hosting expenses in 2006 $189,631.

There's no way you get "$5 million" from numbers like that.

They had half a million IN CASH there!

Does Not Compute.

Re: Why should we celebrate tech IPOs?

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 02:54:32 -0000

The sheep must be fluffed before they are fleeced.

Re: BitTorrent service is built to fail

Seth Finkelstein — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 17:21:56 -0000

It's a complicated game.

Now he's a *partner* and not a *pirate*. That matters.

Except he's a partner in a sabotaged division.

But that's MUCH better than being a defendant in court.

He can try to get a sane pricing structure from here. Instead of trying to avoid a lawsuit.

All in all, it's a good thing. A small step forward beats a large step backward.

Re: YouTube’s two success “secrets”

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 00:46:38 -0000

The third factor of success was being the son-in-law of an ultra-connected venture capitalist. But they don't talk about that in the public relations. It ruins the myth of a few guys striking it rich by their bootstraps.

"Their reluctance is understandable: Jim Clark is one of the valley's most revered figures, and because he runs a media-sharing website—Shutterfly, founded in 1999—it would be tempting to think he was the real force behind the video-sharing site his son-in-law was starting. But Chad says Clark has had only a tiny role in YouTube, merely offering the boys advice in 2005, when the start-up was seeking its initial round of funding. "

Yeah, right. A super-rich father being "only a tiny role". Not even worth mentioning ...

Re: YouTube’s two success “secrets”

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 01:10:43 -0000

Did I say *guaranteed* anywhere? That would be silly. Nothing in venture capital is guaranteed.

But if you're going to argue that having a super-rich, ultra-connected, venture-capitalist father-in-law who in fact tried the same business earlier isn't a factor, well, I think that's an utter denial of social reality.

It just doesn't make for nearly as inspiring a story :-(.

Re: Hey Google — stop linking to us

Seth Finkelstein — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 05:25:13 -0000

Mathew, this is a really common reaction I see all the time on the Net:

"This person is an IDIOT. We're SO SMART! Let's all show how smart we are, how hip and cool and "in" and "get it", by screaming IDIOT IDIOT IDIOT at him. Aren't we so smart?"

How many millions have all the ranters made?

I'd assume he either phrased something poorly, or that *I* was the one who didn't get it, rather than that he's a blithering moron.

Re: Hey Google — stop linking to us

Seth Finkelstein — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 12:22:18 -0000

Mathew, "because Sam Zell is rich" would mistate what I meant - it's more like "because the evidence shows that Sam Zell is a successful businessman".
That is, as a matter of probability, I would assume there was an idea that was either being garbled or wasn't apparent to me, rather than this guy who seems to have expertise in the topic just spent a zillion dollars on a transaction where he lacked the most basic understanding.
While not an absolute guarantee, such an assumption is a good bet.

Re: You are your own code of conduct

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 12:24:05 -0000

The bogosphere is not a "Wild West". It is a collection of petty little medieval fiefdoms.

Re: You are your own code of conduct

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 17:26:58 -0000

"bogosphere" is deliberate.

Re: Users — take back the media!

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 12:28:08 -0000

" Do not partake in systems meant to enforce hierarchy"

Abandon the bogosphere?

Re: Finding a balance in social media

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 14 May 2007 09:06:52 -0000

" All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

Arthur Schopenhauer "

Re: Community is the hard part

Seth Finkelstein — Wed, 16 May 2007 05:13:20 -0000

Right, right ... an under-told aspect of the Digg story is that Kevin Rose was a minor tech celebrity, and so brought his *audience* - not "community", *audience* - to the site.

It can't be easy by definition - if the audience is one place, it can't be in another place (to a good approximation). Add in network effect (people being where others are), and the outcome is a very few big winner-take-all results. But hey, maybe the venture capitalists get pleasure from the act of spending money itself, maybe they're doing it for the joy and happiness of being in business (to be clear, this is riffing off what Z-listers get told when they point out how the blog game is rigged).

Re: Legless chihuahuas and social media

Seth Finkelstein — Wed, 23 May 2007 10:06:55 -0000

Ironically, the way the searches follow the Big Mainstream Media shows just how much we're the people who are STILL the audience (snake-oil marketing blog-evangelism notwithstanding).

Re: Legless chihuahuas and social media

Seth Finkelstein — Wed, 23 May 2007 10:43:06 -0000

Nonsense. There's no fence like there's no A-list (sigh, per topic). It's a bit of denial put forth against what's patently obvious from any glance at the *audience* numbers.

A service like this is another demonstration of it all.

Re: Andrew Keen Q & A: still hates the Internet

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 18:59:54 -0000

Bah, humbug.

This is like some sort of epic battle of strawmen.

I'd actually give Keen the edge here, but he's too interested in being "controversial". Here's the real answers:

1) "Who gets to be the arbiter ..."

Look, if you think there's NO DIFFERENCE between "quality" and "popular" - that BY DEFINITION, "best" == "most appealing" - then there's nothing to say. If you don't, well, you've answered your own question in a way.

2) "do you enjoy a little more variety ..."
Strawman. The question is "Do you want the gatekeepers to be professional culturalists or professional demagogues? Because there *will* be a small set of gatekeepers, and it's just a matter of which ones.

Oh, why bother :-(.

Re: Yochai Benkler: An antidote to Andrew Keen

Seth Finkelstein — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 01:25:06 -0000

Bah, humbug :-(

Re: News flash: Wikipedia is run by people!

Seth Finkelstein — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 14:25:43 -0000

Mathew, my own column on it comes out tomorrow, so I'm in a better position to discuss my own take on it then (sigh, it'll be bogosphere "old news" at that point).

I actually don't even mention the secret mailing list angle, I cut that for space.

But anyway, Wikipedia rank-and-file may not be in revolt, but there are a lot of Wikipedia people unhappy at what looks like political backroom factional dealing having to do with Wikipedia's judicial system.

Re: News flash: Wikipedia is run by people!

Seth Finkelstein — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 22:31:24 -0000

My column is available now:

<a target="guardian"
href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/dec/06/wikipedia">http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/dec/06/wikipedia

<a target="guardian"
href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/dec/06/wikipedia">Inside,
Wikipedia is more like a sweatshop than Santa's workshop

Re: News flash: Wikipedia is run by people!

Seth Finkelstein — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 22:33:15 -0000

My column is available now:

"Inside, Wikipedia is more like a sweatshop than Santa's workshop."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/dec/0...

Re: Deadpool claims another victim: Edgeio

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 21:21:29 -0000

But isn't that (infrastructure over product that proves itself) almost all of "Web 2.0"? And his main source of attention?

[Do you see why I tend to just say "Bah , humbug"? :-) ]

Re: Video interlude: Techmeme time-lapse

Seth Finkelstein — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 10:32:01 -0000

"ants in the desert erecting a giant anthill" - you said it, not me!

Little ants on the bottom and a few kings of the (ant)hill :-(

Re: Wikia search: Let’s give it a break

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 11:34:00 -0000

If you want to see what I mean by sycophants, read:

http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2007/03/the_b...

Regarding the rest, I'm keeping quiet for the moment.

Re: Russell Smith: Web-bashing 101

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 00:51:11 -0000

Bah, humbug - facile, blog-evangelizing argument because, well… it’s easy.

You do several rhetorical fallacies, which I see over and over in blog-boosting posts.

Claim: Writer points out news coverage is not getting better
Fallacy: Say MSM is not great.
Of course, the writer didn't say that. The blog-evagenlist just finds it a good strawman to knock down.

Then there's the two-step, "blog" means "journalism", except when it doesn't.

Oh, why bother, I've been around this too many times :-(

Re: Russell Smith: Web-bashing 101

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 09:20:48 -0000

The fallacy here is formally called "Tu Quoque" ("You Too Fallacy"). Your assertion ("You shouldn't ...") would mean that nobody could ever point out that the hype of the blog evangelists is false (unless they were perfect themselves).

Re: Russell Smith: Web-bashing 101

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 12:55:25 -0000

That turns every refutation of blog-evangelist snake-oil into a media forum, which I think is unreasonable. I do not see the need to follow every short statement which points out that the web hype is unfounded and untrue with wearing a hairshirt.

"This snake-oil doesn't work. In fact, it makes you sicker than conventional treatment".
"Hey! In fairness you must point out mainstream medicine doesn't always work either. Side-effects were invented by mainstream medicine!"

Re: Russell Smith: Web-bashing 101

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 14:14:39 -0000

Talk about fallacies!!! You definitely believe in being unfair.

Re: Russell Smith: Web-bashing 101

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 19:31:41 -0000

Smith's point is not that MSM is perfect, but that blogs are essentially the echoing part with nothing else. Note:

Perhaps the most depressing of them is the fact that despite the massive proliferation of news-headline websites and "citizen" news sites (that is to say, blogs), there is no more actual news being found and reported.

In brief: The evidence shows snake-oil (blogs) doesn't help.

Blog-evangelists cannot deal with this as a fact. They have to launch into attacks on the writer, distractions, fallacies, etc, because THEY NEED TO GET ATTENTION. And the way to get attention, is by playing to the crowd. Which is sort of Smith's point.

[Pre-emptive: "The MSM plays to the crowd too!" . Sometimes. The problem is blogs have much less else.]

Re: Russell Smith: Web-bashing 101

Seth Finkelstein — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 00:32:36 -0000

"actual news" means not bloviating, opinionating, punditing, etc. but finding out things that are, well, new.
There is extremely little of it, and the web-hype was that all the "citizen-journalists" would be generating a huge amount of such news.

Really, one of the most frustrating things I find in these discussions is the necessity of repeating, over and over, the elementary points at issue.

Re: Russell Smith: Web-bashing 101

Seth Finkelstein — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 00:52:16 -0000

I should make a FAQ. This one is "The MSM shouldn't generalize about blogs"

Re: The blogosphere as high school, part XVII

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 02:03:45 -0000

Bah, humbug.

IF YOU'RE NOT ON THE A-LIST, YOU DON'T GET HEARD!

And then you get a bunch of A-listers and A-list-wannabees whiners attacking you.

The proof is the simple problem of claiming that worthiness just happens to manifest almost exclusively in well-off white men (aka Where Are The Women)

Re: Trolling for links: The top tech bloggers

Seth Finkelstein — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 18:39:36 -0000

Ah, the wonders of the bogosphere, where anyone, I mean the BigHeads, gets heard, and it's so democratic, I mean oligarchical ...

Re: Trolling for links: The top tech bloggers

Seth Finkelstein — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 19:03:00 -0000

And another strawman falls to the that venerable blogger weapon, the Big Sneer ...

Re: Web 2.0 in limbo? Let’s get a grip

Seth Finkelstein — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 01:26:24 -0000

Bah, humbug.

This post regurgitates the most dangerous idea: "IT'S DIFFERENT THIS TIME"

As in: "The bottom line is that the Web makes it so much easier to start and run a business " - it's different! Not like the old bubble! DON'T LEARN THAT LESSON!!!

In fact, I'd argue starting and running a real business is pretty much as hard as it's always been. People are confusing a shift in expenses with a revolution in economics.

Re: Web 2.0 in limbo? Let’s get a grip

Seth Finkelstein — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 22:45:17 -0000

"I had a feeling you would be dropping by, Seth."

And, see, it wasn't different this time! :-)

Again, you're confusing one component with an overall process. That's a very standard evangelist ploy, Since the laws of mathematics haven't changed, to a good approximation, the net results will never be different.

150 years ago, were their railroads like [BigName]? 100 years ago, was there TV and radio like [BigName]? 50 years ago, was there cheap air travel like [BigName]? All of these created a few new big businesses - and also lots of failed businesses. It's never different, in that there's always people running around saying that this time it's different.

Re: Techmeme and the “A-list” canard

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 05 May 2008 19:26:34 -0000

BAH HUMBUG!

Let me know how many links I can post without triggering a spam-trap, this utter nonsense is a FAQ by now.

Here, have one: Jon Garfunkel: "The New Gatekeepers"
http://civilities.net/TheNewGatekeepers

Re: Techmeme and the “A-list” canard

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 05 May 2008 19:57:26 -0000

Don't have a cow, man.

I would in fact claim your statement ("content from unknowns") is false, except in a trivial way. That is, blog-evangelists don't say: "With all the newspapers and trade-journals being published, with all the 24/7 news programs, there is still plenty of room for content from unknowns or little-knowns to emerge and be recognized in the mainstream media - and look, x% of people quoted or sound-bited come from The Long Tale!"

Have another link:

Nick Carr: "The Great Unread"

http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2006/08/the_g...

Re: Techmeme and the “A-list” canard

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 05 May 2008 20:21:30 -0000

Aye Carumba!

By "except in a trivial way", I meant you could give it a meaning where it was true, but that meaning would be trivial, depending on what you meant by "plenty of room". There are almost by definition few high attention slots, but it would likely be said to mean something like "lots of chances to win the (attention) lottery" (even though very few people do win), and that's what I'd mean by trivial.

The idea of the comparison is how one could construct similar spurious reasoning to "prove" the MSM is open, democratic, anyone can break-in (pointing to the few people who do), etc.

Oh, have another link:

Shelley Powers: "Guys Don't Link"

http://burningbird.net/connecting/guys-dont-link/

Re: Why Saul Hansell is wrong on AP

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 20:59:40 -0000

What people don't understand is that sending lawyer letters IS a corporation's idea of how to start a "conversation" :-).

[And if you don't believe that, remember, A-list blogger's idea of "conversation" is ranting from on-high to their audience below, and possibly bullying critics - it bears very little resemblance to any sort of reasoned exchange of concepts with equals.]

Re: Memo to Jakob Lodwick: Grow up

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 14:07:25 -0000

Cue another iteration of the hypester's song :-(

Marketer: Look! This is amazing! Fantastic! Revolutionary! World-changing! Never been anything like it before!

Chump: I tried it. It didn't work. It's nasty and damaging.

Marketer: WHAT DID YOU EXPECT YOU WHINER?!?

Re: Memo to Jakob Lodwick: Grow up

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 17:04:29 -0000

My impression is that he was/is running a video site, not earning money from being a blog/"conversation"/"self-expression" conference-club evangelist.

That is, he took the Kool-Aid, the evangelists were happy to "use" him while he said it tasted good, and when he got sugar-shock, then it was: SHUT UP, FOOL! Nobody FORCED you to drink that Kool-Aid. IT'S YOUR OWN DAMN FAULT!!!

The underlying problem is that the blog-world is extremely exploitative and personally destructive, and marketers need to construct excuses that it's a particular person's failing whenever this is demonstrated.

Re: Memo to Jakob Lodwick: Grow up

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 21:35:04 -0000

By the way, the Kathy Sierra incident was far more complex that the way the story is usually told (which tends to omit any hint that the facts were different from the most sensationalist narrative). See my column at:

Accusations of sex and violence were bound to grab the headlines

Re: Memo to Jakob Lodwick: Grow up

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 23:48:21 -0000

Well, regarding research, I was partially relying on your description - "... the brash young millionaire co-founder of Vimeo and CollegeHumour.com, and one-time blogging boyfriend of party girl-blogger Julia Allison ..." :-(.

Re: Denton: Evil genius or just plain evil?

Seth Finkelstein — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 16:11:30 -0000

"barriers to his bloggers going off and starting their own equivalent networks ..."

I think you've been taken in by the mythology here. The cuckoo-clock repeating of "Low barrier to entry! Low barrier to entry!" seems to have as much factual basis behind it as that cuckoo. Because if it were really true, why haven't a bunch of bloggers simply cut out Nick Denton ?

Re: Let’s all grow up a little, shall we?

Seth Finkelstein — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 02:01:45 -0000

> "Why not just put on a conference and let people decide for themselves whose is better? Would that be too much to ask?"

Yes. Remember rule #1 of A-listership: GET ATTENTION!

Re: Word of mouth can’t be manufactured

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 08:35:24 -0000

" everyone knows that’s going to happen eventually"

Oh? How do you know that? At the very least, admit the logical paradox.

Re: Blog search engine Technorati tops off with $11.52 million

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 14 May 2007 22:25:09 -0000

Interesting.

Question from a programmer - is it possible to use the public data to figure out the current valuation, and who owns how much?If so, how would one do that?

Re: Wikia lets companies add their widgets as search results

Seth Finkelstein — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 04:10:21 -0000

I like the way you described it here: "Wikia was started by Wikipedia [CO-]founder Jimmy Wales in 2006 to try to take monetary advantage of the user contributions ..."

You may enjoy a recent _Guardian_ column I wrote on Wikipedia's history, and advertising:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/sep/25/wikipedia.internet

Relevant quote: "It's informative to observe how long [Jimmy] Wales has been pursuing a strategy of selling advertising around other people's work."

Re: Wikia lets companies add their widgets as search results

Seth Finkelstein — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 15:00:56 -0000

To be clear, I was complimenting your description of Wikia. As I've written, I regard the business press as important, because they are (socially) allowed to make observations which are considered rude and improper in other punditry contexts. So I've been trying to bring some of the financial analysis which is permitted in the business press to other areas. When I make the observation that venture capitalists want money back, preferably large returns on their investment, you may consider that the most elementary baby-simple statement, but elsewhere it's regarded as a radical and almost insulting statement.

Many people believe Wales has treated them extremely poorly, either in his role as entrepreneur or as a person. I suggest to you that while of course these situations are not uncommon, there is an extra dose of salt-in-the-wound from, let's say, his presentation of himself.

Re: With his own account, Al Gore can finally claim to have invented Twitter too

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 00:54:24 -0000

Even though you note it's a "joke", please don't spread a vicious hatchet-job done by a yellow "journalist" and then publicized by Republican attackers.

See http://sethf.com/gore/

Re: BlogHer: where the feminist victimhood agenda is at

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 22 May 2006 05:33:14 -0000

Duncan, there's a bunch of stock arguments that get made every time inequality is pointed out.

1) The powerful are a tiny percentage of the populace, so that makes inequality OK.

2) What me worry? Not me! So that makes inequality OK.

3) The people pointing out the inquality are relatively privileged too! So that makes inequality OK!

I could go on, but what's the point? The basic idea is trying to slide away from the unpleasant truth by either redefining it or pointing to unpleasant aspects of the outsider group (which is not going to consist of selfless saints).

The Blogosphere IS NOT a level playing field, it's an amazingly cliquish and oligarchical system, which is often WORSE - that's WORSE - than the mainstream media, precisely because it's less willing to even deal with the complicated issues.

Re: BlogHer: where the feminist victimhood agenda is at

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 22 May 2006 06:59:35 -0000

Duncan, that's what I mean by "redefinition". It's like saying "Income is level, because for every Bill Gates who is a billionaire, there are millions of people just getting by, and happy not to be homeless". It's almost an illogical substitution of terms of debate.

Some people don't want to be rich. But others do. The segues into the standard argument made earlier, which I'll summarize as "Look, they want to be rich too! So that makes them bad people!"

The fact is, audience distribution in the bogosphere is highly exponential. This is again such a disturbing fact that it sets off all sort of evasion and rationalization. Yes, there are people who don't care about audience, who are happy little diary-writers and chatters. But there are also people who do want the kind of influence that comes with being higher up the curve, and that's where the clique and exclusionary effects are very evident.

That is so difficult to discuss this very basic and elemental aspect is a profound indicator of the quality of the reasoning.

Re: The Technology Liberation Front » Archive » Lessig vs. Rosen on Net Porn Regulation

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 20 Sep 2004 10:52:49 -0000

People interested in issues of Internet censorship and community standards might want to read my now-released work for the Nitke v. Ashcroft case:

Nitke v. Ashcroft : Seth Finkelstein expert witness report

http://sethf.com/nitke/ashcroft.php

"I. Opinion of Witness with Basis and Reasons Therefore

A provider of content via the Internet cannot reasonably be expected to know the location of readers, if the context is one in which location would lead to a denial of the ability to read the content."

Re: Is DRM a Legal Barrier or a Physical One?

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 22:59:36 -0000

Sadly, The terminology is basically obscuring the points of contention.

DRM itself is a private mechanism, I'd say that's true. HOWEVER, it is widely believed that the private mechanism will be ineffective in practice without government laws enforcing it, e.g. the DMCA. That's the deep issue.

Libertarian-types are often put in a quandary by this, as it looks really bad to be calling on government force, on men with guns, to stop people from using their legally purchased physical property in legal ways, in order to support a clearly government-granted monopoly right. It's just a tough position to support for a Libertarian. So *some* of them resolve this conflict by pretending that the issue is somehow about having a law forbidding corporations from using the private mechanism of DRM. They can then write the standard screed that makes them very happy, that business is good, and anyone who wants government to interfere is bad. The compulsion to write this article is driven by their cult need to chant their mantras, not by any connection to reality. So it often puzzles people who do not suffer from their religious dogma. The thing to understand is that it's not analysis, it's like a hymn, "God is great" ("Business Good, Government Bad").

Now, some of them are smarter, for Libertarians. They are able to resolve the tension above in a slightly less silly way, by focusing on the property rhetoric. If the issue is framed as enforcing property rights, they're also very happy, since that's one of their few permitted uses of government. They don't want to think deeper, since that would put them back in the tough quandary above. Alternately, they can write again generically that business is good, praise business, that's also easy.

This Libertarian mentality problem being played out is what you see in the discussion on this topic. There are basically very few things a Libertarian will write (though endless variation). And the mental block they have regarding thinking about complex business-government interaction, onerous for debate in general, is particularly ill-suited here.

Re: The Technology Liberation Front » Archive » What About File Sharing?

Seth Finkelstein — Sun, 14 May 2006 01:24:29 -0000

Basically, nobody knows how to solve it all. The immediate problem of DMCA critics is demonstrating the DMCA is a harsh and stifling law, not a workable solution. Solveig's paper is characteristic of the counter-offense, the reply that:
1) Nobody important gets hurt (Felten's "Happy Endings")
2) If somebody did get hurt, they were dirty pirates anyway (DeCSS aspersions)

But this doesn't get us to a solution.
I think licensing does have some promise, but it's hard to pursue. I've heard that the idea is discussed at times. But there's a lot of inertia in trying to preserve the old system. I doubt any theoretical proposal would be accepted, and I suspect any experiment would have to keep under the radar. Sometimes the future is utterly unpredictable.

Re: Finkelstein on Singleton and DeCSS

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 15 May 2006 19:34:13 -0000

Solveig, the point is that there was a large team effort at building a free-software Linux DVD player. That's not disputable. For those purposes, it's extremely misleading to obsess on a couple of trivial arguments with one kid, who (no disrespect meant), for *decryption* work, was only tangentially related to the actual reverse-engineering.

I understand the rhetorical reason for the mudslinging. But it *is* mudslinging.

Re: Our Deadly Organ Donation System

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 26 May 2006 15:05:15 -0000

You say: "The best solution would be to allow financial incentives to organ donors"

Just to confirm, you support organ-selling, correct? A billionaire can offer someone some cash for their ... liver? kidney?? HEART???

How does this interact with parental rights, by the way? Can said billionaire offer the money to a parent to make the parental decision for their *child* to donate the organ? How about the money if the parent will attempt to "convince" the child to donate the organ?

Is the financial "incentive" to donate organs part of the rights which can be sold for a debt? (adds new meaning to the phrase "the credit company owns me")

Inquiring minds want to know!

Re: Our Deadly Organ Donation System

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 26 May 2006 16:07:56 -0000

Err, even today, in certain parts of the world, children get sold into slavery. Or look up "baby farming". Or the issues with organ-harvesting in China, that's a horror story which is quite real and not a Libertarian thought-experiment.

Though I'm glad to see you admit there's other values besides "a full-blown free market in organs".

But, really, do you believe nobody has every thought of the wonders of organ-selling? That is, "It's an obvious point, but it's one that seems lost on the "bioethicists" who are currently ...". If that's just political rhetoric, then all it deserves in reply is counter-rhetoric. More seriously, the fact that people do respond to "incentives" is exactly why bioethics want to guard against the perverse incentives in organ-selling.

Riding ideological hobbyhorses is not a viable "alternative approach".

Re: Our Deadly Organ Donation System

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 26 May 2006 17:35:20 -0000

When "reward" means "pay money", it should be obvious how that can very quickly become problematic. "Rewarding" people in ways which don't translate into immediate profit are one thing - cash-for-kidneys quite another.

Look, it wasn't all the far back in history when *people* were bought and sold in this country, and again, there's still a market in slaves in some parts of the world. I think organizations which are aware of existing slave trades, and the killing of prisoners for organ transplant material, have every reason in the world not to want to see a financial market in organs created in rich countries.

Re: Our Deadly Organ Donation System

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 26 May 2006 18:45:58 -0000

Amanda: In both cases, money is paid for a human body (part). Now, if this is a replaceable body part, it's not a problem - there's a market in human hair, for example. If it becomes an irreplaceable body part, that produces an incentive to irrepairably exploit others (if you sell your hair, well, it grows back - eggs, sperm are generally useless, blood regenerates - but internal organs don't).

I'm trying to make this simple:

1) Do you know about China and organ-harvesting of prisoners?

2) Do you know about historical "baby-farming"?

3) From 1) and 2), can you see that cash-for-kidneys could be a problem?

[Tim, do you see this also?]

If we don't even get past the basics, there's no point is anything else.

Re: Our Deadly Organ Donation System

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 26 May 2006 21:36:43 -0000

Re: Wikipedia, Whipping Boy

Seth Finkelstein — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 17:21:10 -0000

Tim: Imagine a mine field. It's 95% safe. See the problem?

Wikiepdia is far, far, too vulnerable to malice.

Whenever this point is brought up, there's an immediate cultish denial - There's errors elsewhere too, screams the Wikifanatic. Don't believe everything you read, they excuse. But the dead trees and the old media don't have systems where any random flamer can mess with an article. That's a problem.

Re: CleanFlicks and the DMCA

Seth Finkelstein — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 17:23:34 -0000

I believe the reason was instead that they didn't want to present a *court* with a sympathetic circumvention defendant:

CleanFlicks, copyright infringement, and DMCA

Re: A Psychological Explanation for Censorship and Claims of “Media Bias”

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 24 Jul 2006 18:58:41 -0000

Some quick points:

1) It's possible for both sides to be correct, in a sense. The news report can be shoddy all around. This doesn't mean it's good.

2) It's also possible that one side is correct and the other is wrong, but complains anyway (the "working the refs" theory).

3) It's possible for both be correct in the sense that they mean different things - I've seen this a lot in the case that a news report presents a leftist but in a clearly negative manner. The left will say the negative presentation is bias, the right will say that presenting the leftist is bias because the left was on the show at all, so given that legitimacy.

The PTC theory is common, and while I strongly disagree with it, you're using a straw-man. The logically consistent version is "Adults can handle this, but *some* children will be damaged". The usual phrasing is "You think children are little adults!" (which is usually an absurd accusation in a literal sense, but the idiomatic meaning is clear).

Re: A Voluntary Online Code of Conduct to Avoid Internet Censorship

Seth Finkelstein — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 06:09:45 -0000

Adam, there are so many things wrong here I don't even know where to begin ... it's like being in a time-warp.

1) The Internet is international. Not "All companies doing business online" care about US religious fanaticism.

2) We've *been* here. *Many* times. The effect was to split the civil-libertarian opposition, as those in favor of touting censorware set out to smear and discredit the critics of censorware.

3) Any proposal which draws its power from the threat of goverment action is government censorship by another name.

Oh, to hell with it. Why even bother?

Re: The Technology Liberation Front » Archive » For Shame!

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 13:08:58 -0000

As Matt Stoller said:

"This is just disgraceful. A guy named Timothy B. Lee published an Op-Ed on net neutrality reiterating the telecom positioning, and claiming that the market for broadband services is competitive. It is not. Timothy B. Lee sounds an awful lot like Tim Berners Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web and strong net neutrality proponent."

Dirty politics, Tim. Libertarians are supposed to be against fraud.

Re: The Technology Liberation Front » Archive » For Shame!

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 14:09:38 -0000

C'MON GUYS! That's one of the oldest dirty tricks in the political playbook. If you don't know what's going on, then my name is Jesse L. Jackson.

Re: The Technology Liberation Front » Archive » For Shame!

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 15:19:56 -0000

Tim, *maybe* I'm being too hard on you personally. To spell it out: It is an old and longstanding sleazy campaign tactic to find someone with a similar name to a real candidate, and put them on the ballot to cause confusion. These people then say things like "Oh, my name is Georgie Bush? What a coincidence! Well, it is my real name. Surely you don't expect me to avoid politics ...".

Someone along the line did that with you, and that's the reason there's an Op-Ed in the New York Times on Net Neutrality today "By TIMOTHY B. LEE".

At best, taking you at your word, you were used.

Note I'm not involved in Net Neutrality, I've stayed far away from it, for my own reasons. It just annoyed me to see Berners-Lee being sandbagged like that.

Re: The Technology Liberation Front » Archive » For Shame!

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 15:51:54 -0000

I'm suggesting that somewhere along the path to the piece's appearance on the New York Times Op-Ed page, whatever politics is involved got a dose of sleaze. You're very naive if you don't see there's at least the appearance of bad dealings, especially given the contentiousness of the Net Neutrality debate.

Re: The Technology Liberation Front » Archive » For Shame!

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 16:24:25 -0000

I repeat: If someone can't at least see why this has an appearance of impropriety, that is deeply problematic. Which is one reason I'm less charitable. The silliness is very grating. It's one thing to maintain there was no fraudulent intent involved. It's quite another to be shocked, shocked, that someone would ever suggest such a thing could happen in this fine establishment.

Re: The Technology Liberation Front » Archive » For Shame!

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 17:34:40 -0000

"no reasonable person ... would mistake ..."

"(not evidenced by a Technorati search, incidentally) ..."

Well, many people don't consider Nick Douglas, who writes Valleywag, to be a reasonable person, but he is reasonably read:

"That's so old media
Photo of NickDouglas 4 hours ago in Valleywag, Silicon Valley's Tech Gossip Rag by NickDouglas Ã?ÃÂ· 2,156 blogs link here

That's so old media [ Railroad illo - Valleywag] Who commissions an op/ed about Net Neutrality from the inventor of the web from a man who ... metaphor? The New York Times, which today published a piece by Tim Berners-Lee doing just that. "
(I alerted him to the ringerness in a comment, and he's corrected it now)

"Rank: 211 (8,483 links from 2,161 blogs)"

Honor would indicate a retraction, Kevin.

Re: Carr Misreads Benkler

Seth Finkelstein — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 15:34:49 -0000

"... but its the difficulty of distinquishing them from RMS ..."

It's really very simple. The Open Source people are concerned with a business model. The Free Software people are concerned with a moral stance. This is meant to be descriptive, not judgmental.

Grasp this distinction, and they should be easy to tell apart.

Re: Carr Misreads Benkler

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 10 Aug 2006 09:48:51 -0000

Noel, please do NOT call me a Libertarian! Them's fightin' words :-).

Anyway, as someone deeply embedded in the debate, again, I use Open Source to denote the people who have no particular moral opposition to proprietary software, but believe source code access is simply a better business policy (which includes the above-mentioned software engineering issues), while Free Software denotes those who believe proprietary software is akin to censorship.

What I think you're describing is the Open Source rebuttal of the closed-source argument. The closed-source viewpoint is that restricted access is the *only* workable business model. The Open Source rebuttal is as you say, that *other* workable business models can be built by using different sources of economic returns to the participants.

But, critically, Open Source is NOT DENYING CLASSIC ECONOMICS! It's simply saying that closed-source is blinkered and limited in its framework. It's a "10% of a lot rather than 100% of a little" type economic argument.

Too many evangelists then make the mistake of saying that since the Open Source argument is about using different, more indirect, economic incentives, that's somehow not economic at all, and WOW, IT'S A REVOLUTION WHERE PEOPLE WORK FOR FREE!!! This is very stupid, and confusing, but it sells, for a lot reasons.

Re: Framing the Copyright Debate

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 05:13:45 -0000

Tim, it's much easier said that done. My own experiences in that direction have been very unpleasant. Lessig is regularly distorted, to the point that his actual very moderate position sometimes seems irrelevant to the ideological rant that (some) Republicans, conservatives, and libertarians want to write.

It's just hard to form alliances across ideological lines. Political crossover is a pundit's dream in proposing, and an activist's nightmare in execution, when crossover in theory becomes crossfire in practice.

Re: The Egalitarian Blogosphere

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 00:47:59 -0000

Sigh ... so many fallacies, so little time ...

I track my website with the zeal of a marketing firm. Statistics are often inflated, and I want *real* answers. The number of people *reading* *what* *I* *write* is quite low. I don't want to confuse that with the number of people who have a headline in their aggregator, or get directed to my site because they're looking for "free sex" and I have a page that ranks high on that search (it's a fun outcome, but it's not what I'm talking about here). Such hype is a clear example of the sales-pitch I'm arguing against.

"My blogging led directly to a quote ..."

No. That's misleading. I don't want to be too harsh on you Tim, but the stark truth is that your being part of a loud PR flacking system is what led to that, not "blogging" per se. Please don't stamp your feet here and proclaim "No, no, it isn't so, it's because I'm just so smart and clever and blogging is so great". Sorry, I'll have none of that, as I've seen the sausage being made. It's because there's a enormous noise machine pushing those views. And I made a deliberate choice not to be a part of it because I couldn't stand the reactionary ugliness of it. Where's *my* New York Times Op-Ed, huh?

"Seth apparently is, chasing the mirage of fame and fortune."

More like "intellectual influence and making a nice living from it", but that seems to be equally a mirage.

"totally misunderstand the mathematics of power laws."

Oh, utter blithering nonsense. I have a degree in Mathematics AND a degree in Physics from MIT (true!). DO NOT lecture me on mathematics, unless you have more to back it up than a very silly idea that we can't use English to informally refer to a section of a exponential curve because such a curve has a continuous value. If I write a paper on it, I'll define it in terms of median value and such, OK? It's the same thing as when someone says "Well, what's "rich", 'cause all Americans are rich compared to starving Africans". (yes, I know some people do make that argument, it's an attempt to blur the meaning - I'm *not* a Libertarian, remember).

"What's different about the blogosphere is ..."

Saying doesn't make it so.

Re: Heads or Tails

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 11 Sep 2006 22:06:10 -0000

"Why should people pay to read the Times's anointed pundits when there are as good (or at least nearly as good) pundits whose work is available for free?"

For the same reason they pay $$$ for WATER when there is as good (or at least nearly as good) stuff coming out of the kitchen faucet.

I'm not going to bother finding the links, but there's a lot of debunking of Anderson, to the extent that yeah, there's a shift, but it's more like 80/20 to 70/30 - matters if you're in the retail industry, but nowhere near as big a deal as it's being hyped.

Beware anyone who tells you "This new technology makes things all warm and fuzzy". It has a habit of not working out that way (things change, but not necessarily the way the hypester predicts).

Exhibit A: The DMCA.

Re: Summary of Latest ICRA Summit on Internet Free Expression & Child Protection

Seth Finkelstein — Sat, 16 Sep 2006 00:40:05 -0000

Sigh ... thanks (in a way) for the write-up.

I don't have the strength to go through it all, yet again. But your strategy is a really, really, bad idea. The problem is that once everyone has built up the industry censorware structure, the goverment imposes censorware.

I will say this very loudly, since I know you are a Libertarian-type:

THE GOVERNMENT IMPOSES CENSORWARE

Proof: China. Iran. Saudi Arabia.

And many initiatives in the US - libraries, copyright. Child pornography.

I understand the theory. Please don't repeat it. I've heard it (wow, have I ever). However, you are operating under a deep misconception, with a model of the world which does not match the censor's model, and is also overall contradictory (i.e., government overreaches power, but an effective censorware system will not be used by government).

If you care, I can dig up some links. But again, this is ground which has not only been well-trod, but pounded into a bloody spot where the dead horse was ten years ago.

Re: Washington Stock Exchange Takes Off

Seth Finkelstein — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 05:18:07 -0000

As I'm sure you know, this sort of betting has been done in e.g. England, for years. And has also been going on for years with the "Iowa Electronic Markets". The problem is, market-worship to the contrary, it's not really all that useful. For some extremely deep reasons - e.g. accurate information doesn't sell well in the media.

Don't get me wrong, it's not a bad thing. But it's already been around, and done nothing much except produce some self-referential punditry.

Re: Washington Stock Exchange Takes Off

Seth Finkelstein — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 18:00:31 -0000

How is it better than, e.g., Intrade.com ? That's had extensive scope and focus on political events.

WSX isn't even using real money!

Re: The Long Tail of Politics

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 12:04:41 -0000

The problem is that in our modern world, there's lots of problems that simply can't be localized.

One of the deep problem with Libertarianism is that it has yet to internalize the Civil War, on many levels. One of those lessons: It doesn't work to have half a country where some people are regarded as *property*, and half where they have human rights. And the Founders tried very very hard to make that work, because it was such a deep division. But it tore the country apart.

To spell it out: You can't declare yourself a Confederate, so that you can own slaves. You can't have some market choices, like whether or not to have a market in slaves.

Re: Who Writes Wikipedia?

Seth Finkelstein — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 01:09:25 -0000

[insert tongue in cheek]

But ... but ... that's Communism! You're talking "from each according to his abilities, to each according to needs". And who own the articles? Where's the private property in each microcontribution?

Don't you have faith in the free market, to work out a solution? It's an opportunity, for micropayments!

And I thought this was a Libertarian blog :-)

Re: Piet

Seth Finkelstein — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 00:10:19 -0000

Noel, this is the "paracopyright" argument. We start with copyright, which says certain word-patterns are *property*. They're *owned*. Nobody else can use those word-patterns(with some minor exceptions). The usual way of resolving the conflict is to say it's an "expression", not an "idea", and there's multiple ways of expressing the idea.

Now we get to the DMCA, which is copyright to a whole new level. Not only are the word-patterns *owned*, but the technical means are pre-emptively declared a kind of corporate version of a state secret. If you tell anyone how it works (too precisely), even if you find out just by looking at it, that's arguably a tort or even a crime. That's really quite an extreme legal enforcement of business models.

Re: The Reluctant Libertarian

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 00:38:23 -0000

It really helps to understand the context Lessig wrote that. My own essay, Libertarianism Makes You Stupid came out of the same background.

The problem was there was a certain ideology that held that The Internet was some sort of otherworldy place, where the State was an anachronism. So for every issue, what you were supposed to do was to rant, very loudly "Government BAD! Business GOOD!". And that was the height of social analysis (I know people are going to think I'm exaggerating, but you had to have been there). The last chapter of Code is basically devoted to saying this is utter BS, and harmful BS.

Benkler's book has some of the old otherworldly argument in it, so that's why it's appealing to Libertarians, among others. And it's being taken by the marketers as intellectual backing. But, in my view, it's a deeply flawed argument, just the New Era hype in more academic clothes. So it ends up as merely another item in the dispute between blog-evangelists (both Libertarian and Liberal) and the skeptics.

Re: Plagiarism vs. Copyright Infringement

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 05:13:34 -0000

Full study: Plagiarism by Wikipedia editors

The critic knows the difference between plagiarism and copyright infringement, and I believe the journalist does too. Both are problems for Wikipedia, just not the same problem.

Re: Tech Policy as a Case Study in “Liberaltarianism”

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 13:56:53 -0000

Sorry, Tim, your heart is in the right place (err, accurate place?), but:

WE TRIED YOUR IDEA AND IT DIDN'T WORK

The idea of a Libertarian-Liberal alliance is a pundit bloviating. That person has obviously never, ever, done anything on ground level.

I want to second Adam Thierer's comment from those of us who have tried to make alliance with Libertarians but aren't Libertarians. Which is, frankly, that Libertarianism Makes You Stupid. Any alliance tends to degenerate into Libertarian proselytizing where the cult of business-worship tries to take over the group, with endless dogma recitations. They drive everyone else away, and then they're happy, because they've "won". I've been there, and it's extremely destructive.

Re: Tech Policy as a Case Study in “Liberaltarianism”

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 19:07:26 -0000

As a practical matter, while Libertarians are neither conservatives nor liberals, they are also not equally far from either - they are much closer to conservatives in power than liberals in power. Sort of like Jews are not Christians or Muslims - but they are closer to Christians than to Muslims (so a Jewish/Christian alliance against Muslims is a lot more likely than a Jewish/Muslim alliance against Christians).

From another direction, the saying is "Republicans who like to smoke pot" - not "Pot-smokers who like to vote Republican".

Anyway, Libertarians are very loud in the tech-policy corner of the world. But in terms of general politics - we're talking rounding error significance (except for Ralph Nader-like spoiler situations)

Re: Tech Policy as a Case Study in “Liberaltarianism”

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 20:43:51 -0000

Tim, I think you're mixing up cause and effect. Nobody can change it, because it's a fundamental issue with the structure of Libertarianism.

Re: Graham on the Gap Between Rich and Poor

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 28 Dec 2006 14:29:08 -0000

"Where does wealth come from? People make it"

Yeah, but it's a long way from that platitude to thinking that superrich and starving poor is The Moral Order of things.

After all, it's equally true that:

"Where does GOVERNMENT come from? People make it"

It's a lot easier to see "government" as some sort of evil if you don't understand that it's just people. To kids, their parents just *do* things, etc. ...

[The *whopper*, the thing that's slipped-in, is that there's no reason that the system of dividing-up what is made has to follow any particular form. Especially not laissez-faire capitalism.]

Re: Vaidhyanathan Hates “You”

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 19:06:54 -0000

Y'know ... it's not worth it. I suppose in some formalistic system, I'm obligated to spend hours trying to teach pigs to sing. But I'm just too worn-out for that these days.

Society is more than business. That's the divide. If you don't believe that, there's not a whole lot more communication which can occur.

Re: Vaidhyanathan Hates “You”

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 19:10:53 -0000

PS - Tim, take note - This is why a Liberal/Libertarian alliance just doesn't work in the long run. Again, Libertarians are neither Liberals nor Conservatives - but they are *not* equally distant from each side.

Re: Vaidhyanathan Hates “You”

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 21:55:27 -0000

You wrote:

"He seems to think that social interactions on this new-fangled Internet doesn't count as "real" social interaction. And he hates the idea of companies making big pots of money by facilitating these interactions. I find both of those concerns baffling."

Agree or disagree, I don't find those concerns baffling.

He's saying: Marketing isn't civilization. Data-mining businesses are NOT social empowerment.

There's also some deeper issues about net-community vs real community. It's possible to go too far with this critique, which generates a backlash, but the core critism is meaningful in my view.

Re: Vaidhyanathan Hates “You”

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 22:36:22 -0000

"Vaidhyanathan (and I guess you) seem to believe that the fact that a company is making a profit is proof, all by itself, that no empowerment is going on."

This is what I mean by : "Society is more than business. That's the divide. If you don't believe that, there's not a whole lot more communication which can occur"

Sigh ... Tim, I don't want to be unduly personally harsh on you, reflecting my decade of frustration with Libertarians. But there is a fundamental mental block that Libertarianism induces that makes it very hard to discuss the topic. I've had this sort of conversation many, many times. Libertarians are so fanatically fixated on business and profit that they simply can't grasp certain criticisms on the issue. It's very much like fundamentalist Christians who simply can't get that pagan religions don't have a God and Satan.

It goes like this:

Liberal: This isn't all that great. It's a rather minor and not so wonderful effect
Libertarian: knee-jerk leftist and old fogeyism. ... hates the idea of companies making big pots of money [i.e.: COMMIE!]

And it just gets worse from there.

Re: Vaidhyanathan Hates “You”

Seth Finkelstein — Sat, 30 Dec 2006 00:50:09 -0000

Quote: "And he hates the idea of companies making big pots of money by facilitating these interactions."

The whole point of SV's article is that those companies are the ones empowered, not "You" (as in civic society) - but this just isn't getting across.
Because the *concept* isn't there.

Re: Vaidhyanathan Hates “You”

Seth Finkelstein — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 16:35:30 -0000

This statement is the core of the dispute: "enabling the individual to express him or herself more effectively is inherently empowering."

Express *what* and *how*? Empowering marketers to sell better, and data-miners to find the buzz, is not very helpful in *building* *civic* *society*. Confusing these senses of the word, making the former seem to stand for the latter, is a very profitable profession.

Richard: What you claimed about DDT is completely wrong. It's not even debatable. It's a right-wing Urban Legend. Here's a comprehensive DDT ban refutation.

Now, in terms of empowerment, did that do any good? You're empowered to spread nonsense, and I'm empowered to post the correction - but what's the result? Does the myth or the truth spread faster?

Re: Vaidhyanathan Hates “You”

Seth Finkelstein — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 00:56:54 -0000

Richard, you hit several "bingo" points on the page I linked above. You don't care. That's what I call "autorant".

One of us has to be wrong. Which one? DOES IT DEPEND ON EVIDENCE??? Or what's more popular or appealing?

This is why there's no great gain in certain areas from the Internet. Because "fools" are "empowered" as much as experts, and there's more of the former than the latter.

Re: Save Us from Fox News, FCC!

Seth Finkelstein — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 23:24:48 -0000

I'm not even going to bother.

Re: Save Us from Fox News, FCC!

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 08:46:49 -0000

It was something of a nod to the problems in your ideas of a left/Libertarian alliance. The purpose was not to comment on this issue _per se_, but rather to note yet another example where left vs. Libertarian thinking is at odds at a very deep level. So there was method in the madness.

Re: Save Us from Fox News, FCC!

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 23:43:40 -0000

Experience, Tim. It's experience. I've been there.

It's less of a matter of going out of my way, than being in situations where I really shouldn't (a weakness of mine).

Re: DRM on 9/11 Commission Report

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 04:47:03 -0000

I have a long blog post on this particular issue:

Making Fair Use of cut-and-paste restricted PDF files

Re: Boucher Puts DMCA Reform on the Back Burner

Seth Finkelstein — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 18:02:08 -0000

Because the DMCA stuff there is not problematic to the, err, "free-market competitive winners of commerce", while the Grokster stuff *is* bothersome.

Re: Boucher Puts DMCA Reform on the Back Burner

Seth Finkelstein — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 19:53:46 -0000

To be less flippant - the DMCA provisions of the new bill are, overall, extremely minor. Yes, the MPAA/RIAA/etc will scream about anything, no matter how trivial. But the actual changes being proposed do not address the core problem with the DMCA, of the prohibition on *tools*, as pointed out. So it's really not very threatening to the MPAA/RIAA/etc. even if they do their standard screaming.

In contrast, the Grokster portion is likely to be a much more *real* fight, one where there just may be some _economic_ interest affected. Thus, there's an incentive to keep that low-key for the time being. Have the flaming be on the sideshow, not the lion's den. Or at least, that's my take on how Boucher wants to play it.

Re: Wikipedia Doesn’t Make You Coffee Either

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 10:55:51 -0000

And here I thought Libertarians condemned fraud, as core moral principle, rather than using it as an opportunity to attack the defrauded.

It really shows how morally bankrupt are the Wikipedia apologists.

The point is that Wikipedia management both hired, and defends, a blatant liar WHO USED THE LIES TO PROMOTE WIKIPEDIA! If that doesn't merit ONE WORD of approbation, in comparison to the intense derision of the deceived - well, that says a lot about the twisted morality here.

Re: The Cathedral and the Blogosphere

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 11:53:17 -0000

"The premise seems to be that in-depth, civic-minded journalism is something that everybody needs but but no one wants to pay for, and so therefore we need large, bureaucratic organizations like the New York Times to subsidize these activities out of a sense of corporate noblesse oblige."

Yes. You got it (modulo the sneering). That's exactly right.

By which I mean "you both understand the premise" and "it's factually correct".

Everything after that is unfalsifiable fantasy.

[Sorry Tim, apologies for being a skeleton at the feast, I shouldn't do this stuff, I've been following the Wikipedia editor fraud story and raging against entropy again, bad habit]

Re: Why Wikipedia is Different

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 13:07:53 -0000

FYI:

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/...

EDITORS' NOTE:

The July 31, 2006, piece on Wikipedia, "Know It All," by Stacy
Schiff, contained an interview with a Wikipedia site administrator
and contributor called Essjay, whose responsibilities included
handling disagreements about the accuracy of the site's articles and
taking action against users who violate site policy. He was described
in the piece as "a tenured professor of religion at a private
university" with "a Ph.D. in theology and a degree in canon law."

Essjay was recommended to Ms. Schiff as a source by a member of
Wikipedia's management team because of his respected position within
the Wikipedia community. He was willing to describe his work as a
Wikipedia administrator but would not identify himself other than by
confirming the biographical details that appeared on his user
page. At the time of publication, neither we nor Wikipedia knew
Essjay's real name. Essjay's entire Wikipedia life was conducted with
only a user name; anonymity is common for Wikipedia administrators
and contributors, and he says that he feared personal retribution
from those he had ruled against online. Essjay now says that his real
name is Ryan Jordan, that he is twenty-four and holds no advanced
degrees, and that he has never taught. He was recently hired by
Wikia -- a for-profit company affiliated with Wikipedia -- as a
"community manager"; he continues to hold his Wikipedia positions. He
did not answer a message we sent to him; Jimmy Wales, the co-founder
of Wikia and of Wikipedia, said of Essjay's invented persona, "I
regard it as a pseudonym and I don't really have a problem with it."

Re: Why Wikipedia is Different

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 13:14:30 -0000

Perhaps I commented too brusquely earlier, without considering you might not have all the facts:

"But given that Wikipedia has never claimed to vouch for the credibility of its contributors ..."

Per above, that is in error - the Wikipedia management team specifically vouched for the credibility of *this* contributor. And Jimmy Wales specifically rewarded this contributor with an appointment to a Wikipedia high internal governing post.

"So even if some of the people who run Wikipedia are liars, that isn't relevant in judging its reliability as a reference work"

This is false if they seek to bolster its credibility via deception
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Essjay/Letter

"I am an administrator of the online encyclopedia project Wikipedia. I
am also a tenured professor of theology; feel free to have a look at
my Wikipedia userpage (linked below) to gain an idea of my background and credentials."

Those credentials were a lie. But there is a reason for the lie, which is sadly what gives the lie to your sentence above - it was a fabricated endorsement.

Re: Why Wikipedia is Different

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 13:16:00 -0000

[Posted again without the live hyperlink, to get through moderation]

Perhaps I commented too brusquely earlier, without considering you might not have all the facts:

"But given that Wikipedia has never claimed to vouch for the credibility of its contributors ..."

Per above, that is in error - the Wikipedia management team specifically vouched for the credibility of *this* contributor. And Jimmy Wales specifically rewarded this contributor with an appointment to a Wikipedia high internal governing post.

"So even if some of the people who run Wikipedia are liars, that isn't relevant in judging its reliability as a reference work"

This is false if they seek to bolster its credibility via deception
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Essjay/Letter

"I am an administrator of the online encyclopedia project Wikipedia. I
am also a tenured professor of theology; feel free to have a look at
my Wikipedia userpage (linked below) to gain an idea of my background and credentials."

Those credentials were a lie. But there is a reason for the lie, which is sadly what gives the lie to your sentence above - it was a fabricated endorsement.

Re: Why Wikipedia is Different

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 13:36:46 -0000

It is an indictment of Wikipedia's management that they appointed him to a position of high trust with full knowledge of the fraud. And have hired him (though the initial decision seems to have been when they didn't know). And have minimized his actions and defended him.

Now, one can say, abstractly, that management rewarding a liar who promoted the credibility of Wikipieda with false credentials should absolutely not be taken to reflect poorly on Wikipedia as an ideal Platonic endeavor.

But c'mon, a whole industry of liberal-media-bias ranting has been built on far, far, less.

I think the factual part you may be missing is that he's one of the people who rules on who is a bad Wikipedian and will be blocked from edits to the extent possible ("ArbCom") - and he was *appointed* to that position by Jimmy Wales even after Wales knew of the fraud!

Re: Why Wikipedia is Different

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 13:39:11 -0000

At a minimum, I think they should

1) Condemn his fraudulent actions

2) Remove him from his positions of trust in Wikipedia administration.

That doesn't seem to me to be out of line.

Neither of which they'll do, for evident reasons.

Re: Why Wikipedia is Different

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 13:43:03 -0000

Here's the refernce for the appointment:

http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2...

"I hereby appoint Mackensen and EssJay to the Arbitration committee.
After consulting with the existing arbitration committee and others, I
decided to appoint Mackensen to Dominic's seat (Dominic is retiring),
and EssJay to an expansion seat in the shortest tranche.

--Jimbo"

This is WITH FULL KNOWLEDGE of the fraud.

Re: Why Wikipedia is Different

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 14:21:43 -0000

"... because Wikipedia’s editing process does not rely on any individual’s judgment or expertise.""

This isn't really true. In fact, it's particularly false in exactly the way his position is most harmful. "Peer review" here is both self-selected and subject to administrative fiat - and Essjay is still one of the people empowered to throw editors out of Wikipedia for bad conduct (which is highly, highly, ironic ...)

What you're doing is a kind of fallacy of atomization - you're abstracting the process away from any implementation problems, then assuming the conclusion by saying liars don't matter since the process has been abstracted away.

The *scandal* here is Wikipedia's management tolerance, and rewarding with office, of DECEPTION IN PROMOTING WIKIPEDIA. That was my point in my first comment. The scandal's implications cast a cloud over Wikipedia's process, since it casts into question other endorsements - what else was fabricated? This is particularly pertinant since a very strong message has been sent that if you fake positive things about Wikipedia to the media, you'll get *rewarded*.

Re: Why Wikipedia is Different

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 15:47:20 -0000

Luis, sadly, that doesn't matter. Jimbo is a majority of one.

Re: Why Wikipedia is Different

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 17:48:27 -0000

Luis, perhaps you're misreading my phrase "Wikipedia's management". I don't mean that as a synonym for "the Wikipedia process", but rather the
very small group of people who actually wield power over it (not *in* it). That is, it's not quite that Jimbo Wales is an absolute monarch, shorthand to the contrary. But for all the talk about openness, there's a handful of people who count, and everyone else is just a volunteer (to use a polite term).

This is demonstrated by how the decision to keep Essjay was done. Jimbo just issued it. Whether he made it himself, or asked a few other people, is not really the point. It's top-down fiat, and while I deeply sympathize with the ground-level people who are upset, that doesn't change what happened.

Re: Why Wikipedia is Different

Seth Finkelstein — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 16:26:29 -0000

Doug: I freely admit I have grown bitter and cynical.

About this latest development, see my most recent post on Wikipedia's Value System

Re: The Bizarre Chip on Nick Carr’s Shoulder

Seth Finkelstein — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 09:57:07 -0000

I suspect the scare quotes are for the issue that Wikipedia has a very weird relationship to actual knowledge - it's got an absolute fetish about what experts write, yet disdains the experts themselves, in a kind of very strange cargo-cult version of academia. I went through a long debate with someone else about this on Nick's blog, see:

http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2007/01/the_m...>

Re: The Bizarre Chip on Nick Carr’s Shoulder

Seth Finkelstein — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 09:58:13 -0000

[Trying again, to get through !@#$% moderation]

I suspect the scare quotes are for the issue that Wikipedia has a very weird relationship to actual knowledge - it's got an absolute fetish about what experts write, yet disdains the experts themselves, in a kind of very strange cargo-cult version of academia. I went through a long debate with someone else about this on Nick's blog, see:

http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2007/01/the_m...

Re: The Bizarre Chip on Nick Carr’s Shoulder

Seth Finkelstein — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 18:37:50 -0000

Tim, if I can try to elaborate the problem, there's two different kind of knowledge here:

1) Trivia - You give Wikipedia too much credit, for something that's arguably a bug, not a feature. The trivial is created by fans, and it will be found by search algorithms. What Wikipedia does is centralize the storehouse, in one site. That's not necessarily a good thing, and it's certainly not a *big* improvement (you might want to argue the centralization is a small improvement, and though it looks strange to see Libertarians doing this, it's a longstanding ideological problem).

2) Expertise - VERY controversial. Given Wikipedia's hostility on the topic, it's not at all clear it's much good here. The infamous Nature study is *extremely* misleading on this point. Again, the issue is more the centralization than any new production.

Re: The Bizarre Chip on Nick Carr’s Shoulder

Seth Finkelstein — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 01:31:06 -0000

I don't find the usefulness worth the human cost - it runs on exploiting certain dreams of the core group in order to extract a huge amount of unpaid labor from them.

I particularly don't think it's all that innovative for *knowledge* - it's mostly innovative in a certain way of getting people to work for free.

I also intensely dislike the hype and marketing around it. It's not Hayek Made Net or a model for the New Era. It's a rich guy who stumbled into figuring out how to get an uncompensated staff. The positive lessons there are pretty small.

Re: France Gets Tough on (Documenting) Violence

Seth Finkelstein — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 19:45:21 -0000

Sean is correct.

[Sigh ... This is another wolf! Wolf! WOLF! story, that the
journosphere tells itself all the time, with the demagogues exploiting
the paranoid in mutual self-importance.]

http://www.techdirt.com/article.php?sid=2007030...

Wait a minute! by pvdg on Mar 6th, 2007 @ 4:45pm

I am a french journalist and everything I know on this topic
contradict the story up there.

Here is the agenda of our Conseil constitutionnel (aka Supreme Court):
http://www.conseil-constitutionnel.fr/divers/ac...

I find nothing related to this topic. Looks like they didn't examine
this law yet.

To my knowledge, the law in question is an attempt to stop an ugly
phenomenon: "happy slapping":

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_slapping

Not a good idea?

But of course, they had to differenciate the filming of a violent act
"for the fun" and "in order to get a proof". Not easy…

So they included a sentence saying this law will not apply…
« lorsque l'enregistrement ou la diffusion résulte de l'exercice
normal'd’une profession ayant pour objet d'informer le public ou est
réalisé afin de servir de preuve en justice »

that is: "when the recording or the diffusion results from the normal
exercise of a profession devoted to inform the public or is carried out
in order to be used as proof in justice"

Sounds bad? This is all I know for now.

Disclosure: I am not at all a partisan of this government.

50. The law is published by pvdg on Mar 7th, 2007 @ 4:33am

This morning, the law discussed here has been published in our
"Journal officiel":

http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/WAspad/UnTexteDeJ...

In fact it's a big package, in which you find a little thing modifying
an existing law about different kinds of violence (including rape,
torture…). Here it is:

« Art. 222-33-3. - Est constitutif d'un acte de complicité des
atteintes volontaires à l'intégrité de la personne prévues par les
articles 222-1 à 222-14-1 et 222-23 à 222-31 et est puni des peines
prévues par ces articles le fait d'enregistrer sciemment, par quelque
moyen que ce soit, sur tout support que ce soit, des images relatives
à la commission de ces infractions.

« Le fait de diffuser l'enregistrement de telles images est puni de
cinq ans d'emprisonnement et de 75 000 EUR d'amende.

« Le présent article n'est pas applicable lorsque l'enregistrement ou
la diffusion résulte de l'exercice normal d'une profession ayant pour
objet d'informer le public ou est réalisé afin de servir de preuve en
justice. »

It says:

1/ that whoever knowingly records images of a violence is an
accomplice and will be punished as such.

2/ that whoever broadcast this record will be punished (5 years,
75,000 �,�)

3/ as I said earlier, this law does not apply when the recording or
the diffusion results from the normal exercise of a profession devoted
to inform the public or is carried out in order to be used as proof in
justice.

So, may be this law could have been better conceived. It is evident
hat the basic idea is to tell the bad guys: "if you are going to rape
a poor girl in order to take picturees or a video and show them to
other bad guys, the rapists and their accomplices, INCLUDING the
photographer could go to jail. He will say: "I didn't touch her" and
the judge will anwer: "but you took pictures".

Whoever, passing by, takes pictures "in order to be used as proof in
justice" will be considered as a responsible citizen.

Whoever, passing by, takes pictures in "the normal exercise of a
profession devoted to inform the public", will be considered as a
journalist.

Oh, and what about the netizen who takes pictures of a rape and put
them on YouTube? I don't see that there is a "right" to broadcast that
kind of humiliating images of people.

Oh, and what about Rodney King? I thought, BTW, that this happened in LA.
And alerting the public about violence perpetrated by cops is definitely
another story. And our law says exactly that recording and publishing is
OK when it is "in order to be used as proof in justice". Which is what
happened in this case. AND: how could George Holliday, who filmed the
scene, be considered an "acomplice" of the perpetrators of the violence?

About the "Conseil constitutionnel": what I understand now is that our
"supreme court" in fact examined the whole package on March 3, but whas
never asked to look at this particular part of it. And this juridiction
is not supposed to decide by itself to examine every bit of the law.

One last word: we have a lot of political parties and organisations of
all sizes. I didn't heard a word about this law from any of them. The
exception is Odebi, a small group defending "Internet et Libertés /
Presse Libre d’Origine Non Kontrolée" ("Free press from uncontroled
origin"), which answered a couple of US journalists. In my opinion,
they fooled these journalists by not telling them about the other
provision of the law about filming "in order to be used as proof in
justice" and abusively using the exemple of Rodney King. To my
knowledge, George Holliday was not an amateur journalist who filmes
the scene to make a good post on his blog or upload it to YouTube. He
was acting as a full fledged citizen who is in position to record a
proof of a crime and does it. They don't say what other idea they have
to curb the "happy slapping" epidemy.

Re: France Gets Tough on (Documenting) Violence

Seth Finkelstein — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 22:19:07 -0000

My only comments are in brackets above. The rest is the work of the person I'm quoting.

The point is that the law does not do what sensationalists like Declan (though it's not all him by far) are hyping it as doing. It's in fact almost the exact opposite on that point - it specifically seeks to exempt nonprofessionals who record acts of violence in what's phrased in the US as the public interest. A Rodney King like recording incident would be black-letter law legal.

When this is pointed out, I've seen a moving of goalposts. If you want to say, it's wrong to criminalize third-party recording of *criminal* violence for kicks, well, that's another argument. But it's NOT any sort of attempt to certify journalists or make "eyewitness" recording illegal.

Too many people regard this as story too good to check, then too good to let go.

Re: The Technology Liberation Front » Archive » GPL 3.0: v. (for Vendetta)

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 00:09:32 -0000

You are shocked, shocked, to discover Stallman and the FSF are for free software, NOT BUSINESS MODELS!

Umm, he/they have said that from Day One. Stallman frequently very bluntly makes clear where he stands. But somehow, this has come as a revelation to you.

Re: Free Software and the Big Picture

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 03:45:55 -0000

Ah, Tim, you wrestle with a fundamental paradox underlying Libertarianism - Should someone have the freedom to sell themselves into slavery?

You're also butting up against another philosophical paradox of Libertarianism - when is it permissible to complain about the terms of a contract? Usually take-it-or-leave it is used by the powerful against the weak, and it's a demonstration about how much Libertarianism is in fact business-worship, that so many are flaming out when some tables are turned here (fun scripture rant: "Hey, you don't like the GPL, don't use the software - how dare you whiners try to restrict a CONTRACT, you fascist collectivists! Shows how much you really care about freedom, you interferers with free people making free choices!" :-))

Re: Free Software and the Big Picture

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 06:42:14 -0000

Richard, that general issue has been recognized since the GPL was first drafted. It has been 100% clear that the Free Software Foundation wants to use any powers of the restriction system in the service of openness. The point I'm making above is that this is their right as contract-drafters, and in fact is arguably a Libertarian form of activism (as opposed to the anarchist form of activism of trying to set a personal good example and usually failing).

There's some influence on the Creative Commons stuff Lessig is doing, but I think you have cause and effect reversed.

Re: Just a Number

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 04 May 2007 10:27:56 -0000

Folks, it's not about *infringement*. It's about *circumvention*. Your intuitions, the sense of what's "fair use" for *infringement*, DO NOT APPLY to the all-new completely-different offense which is *circumvention*.

I see this confusion coming up over and over in the blog reactions.

Re: DeLong leaves PFF

Seth Finkelstein — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 17:37:03 -0000

I'll just pipe up that I was fascinated to find out that DeLong made ~ $140K in 2003 for being a PFF "Senior Fellow" (from PFF's public tax data). A jolly good fellow indeed. Think-tankery is quite the business.

Re: Corruption and the Political Process

Seth Finkelstein — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 22:34:24 -0000

"But I think he gets it completely backwards when he suggests that money has corrupted the political process ..."

Yes, well, that's because you're a Libertarian, which, not to be harsh on you personally, worships business. And holds that the best society is one which maximizes the powers of money versus any other value.

Others, err, disagree.

One flaw in the post above is right here: "Drive money out of politics and you won’t end corruption; you’ll just shift ..."

This implicitly assumes all corruption is equivalent, and excludes a line of reasoning that runs "Drive money out of politics ,and while you won't end corruption, you'll keep it at a lower level than otherwise".

I'm not going to go into the rest of the flaws, life's too short. Suffice it to say that line of proselytizing has been heard many times.

Re: Corruption and the Political Process

Seth Finkelstein — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 23:13:51 -0000

As I said, no personal offense intended. I used to read what you wrote a bit more regularly, but I've dropped down my TLF reading in general recently, since it's probably not helpful all around. I came by today because Lessig's post struck a chord in me.

I think you're misreading what I mean by "worship business", in that I mean it as an ideal, not any particular existing players (I sometimes say, busines as a verb, not a noun). That is, you're not a Republican (1/2 :-)).

With that understanding, I hope the criticism is clearer. The point is that Libertarianism is an extraordinarily money-centric way of thinking (this is not debateable - anything that seriously talks about the virtues of selling your internal organs or your kids should not protest that characterization), so people who subscribe to it are going to have a hard time dealing with crticisms of money's influence.

Re: Corruption and the Political Process

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 02:57:31 -0000

" ... because it is the one that truly recognizes how people will behave ..."

I could write a longer rebuttal, but I think that says it all.

Well, one hint: The fact that people will sell their internal organs rather than die outright is not a deep philosophical revelation. But thinking that's so, is a profound philosophical shallowness.

Re: Felten on Comcast and BitTorrent

Seth Finkelstein — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 18:53:22 -0000

...target P2P applications specifically is that these aren’t “well-behaved” applications

Whether they are well-behaved in terms of compliance with technical standards is rather besides the point. They are not well-behaved in terms of eating bandwidth, and that's pretty simple.

Regarding "watchdog", been there, done that. See what happened with Global Warming report. Or TrustE. It's just an invitation for propagandists to:

1) Undertake a smear campaign against the accurate reports

2) Create their own phony reports.

The Libertarian bleat of "Government BAD, Business GOOD" is really tedious sometimes.

Note this issue is essentially two business against each other - it's not business vs. government

Re: Felten on Comcast and BitTorrent

Seth Finkelstein — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 20:54:52 -0000

The "Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change" - http://www.ipcc.ch/ (co-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize).

Basically, big businesses which didn't like IPCC's research results simply generated a huge amount of noise to drown it out.

Sort of like what's happening here, actually.

Underwriters Laboratories is IN EFFECT a public/private partnership between government and insurance companies, not exactly a Libertarian success story (almost the opposite, in terms of being a mixed-economy success story). Good Housekeeping is in effect an insurance company, it's pretty interesting.

Anyway, my point was that the idea doesn't work because it has the same problem here in the first place - big businesses which don't like the results simply trash any independent agency.

Because what's going with Comcast is not a tough call, at the core. Nothing to do with government - no business can afford to sell server-level bandwidth at home-use-level cost. No market competition will change that simple equation. It doesn't take any Neutrality Commission to say that, yet making the point doesn't do any good.

Re: Felten on Comcast and BitTorrent

Seth Finkelstein — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 22:29:14 -0000

There is no tight, thoughtful argumentation that will ever convince a Libertarian that his supposed free-market solution will be killed by malicious big business. It won't happen. I do display a certain weariness on the topic.

But, main point, again: No business can afford to sell server-level bandwidth at home-use-level cost. It doesn't take any Neutrality Commission to say that, yet making the point doesn't do any good.

Re: Felten on Comcast and BitTorrent

Seth Finkelstein — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 23:11:12 -0000

There are indeed hard cases. BitTorrent isn't one of them. In fact, the exact opposite. BitTorrent is *designed* to use every bandwidth bit it can find, for file serving - that's its goal in life.

No definition which encompasses all possible situations need be developed here, because this is a very simple case indeed.

Re: Market Processes and Regulatory Processes

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 17:59:48 -0000

Actually, it's sort of funny, the simple market incentives are the other way: Server-running bandwidth hogs are money-losing customers for home service. Naively, every cable company in existence would have an incentive to get rid of them.

The world's a bit more complex, as it's possible to upgrade them to higher service level - but that runs right into tiering service issue.

Re: The Technology Liberation Front » Archive » Yochai Benkler’s Apocalyptic Rhetoric

Seth Finkelstein — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 20:12:10 -0000

Robert, Lessig was never in the rah-rah-net crowd during the early days - that's one reason _Code_ was so refreshing when it first came out. But I worry about him falling victim to the latest iteration.

I actually don't think Benkler has in his own mind yet reached the point where he needs to explain why his theories don't work. The state will wither away eventually is good for at least a few more years.
(disclaimer - I'm not calling him a Communist, just using an infamous example of where tomorrow never came).

Re: Ron Paul Good, Ron Paul Spam Bad

Seth Finkelstein — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 13:45:02 -0000

Hey Tim, refering to the little party in the next post - do you NOW understand a little bit better how I've come by my attitude about Libertarianism?

I'm not asking if you agree with me (obviously) - I'm asking if you can better fathom what has formed my views.

Imagine dealing with such flamers for EVERY POST, ranters who would like nothing less than to drive you out in the name of their mind-flayed cult - and eventually succeeding.

Re: Wikipedia’s Notability Requirement

Seth Finkelstein — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 18:43:48 -0000

This statement is not true:

Disk space is now so cheap that including him is effectively free.

While frequently asserted, the accumulated cost is NOT free. It's not just the cost of a few bytes of disk space. It's in context of hosting, and the backups, and bandwidth from robots, etc. etc. etc.

Each article has a very tiny cost - but they do add up. To the point that Wikipedia has million-dollar hosting costs nowadays. That's NOT free.

That may not be the real reason - but it's a reason.

Re: Wikipedia’s Notability Requirement

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 21:49:22 -0000

Tim, again, it's not just "disk space". It's hosting, backups, bandwidth, etc. While it gets cheaper every year, there's also more demands every year. Wikipedia's database is around 4GB, but it costs FAR more than a few bucks to run Wikipedia.

Re: Comcast Acceptable Use Policy Revisited

Seth Finkelstein — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 22:18:50 -0000

I now have a greater appreciation for the politics of defining "torture" :-(.

[As in "What's "torture", huh, huh, huh? Waterboarding? If I stick your head under a faucet for 30 seconds, is that torture? How about 15 seconds, HUH, what about that? There's no permanment damage, so that doesn't count, right, right, right? And didn't you ever go swimming, IS THAT TORTURE?!!! ..."]

Near-drowning people is torture.

Transmitting files for hours is a server.

Re: Comcast Acceptable Use Policy Revisited

Seth Finkelstein — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 05:50:45 -0000

"In any case, Seth, please address this question: Is Comcast's FAQ, still listed on their website as of November 16, 2007 truthful or not?"

Yes. What Richard Bennett said. Comcast does not prevent use of BitTorrent. They try to traffic-manage it so as to keep down bandwidth and apparently to keep the transfers within their network. This is a good thing.

Comcast does not enforce the no-servers provision in their contract with an extreme, draconian interpretation of what is a server. In fact, the opposite, they seem to only take action with applications which cause serious network problems. This is also a good thing.

Bandwidth decisions have to be made, or else the most resource-intensive will crowd out everything else. And that would be a bad thing (for everyone except the users of the resource-intensive applications, and maybe not even them if they get into a tragedy-of-the-commons).

Re: Comcast Acceptable Use Policy Revisited

Seth Finkelstein — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 15:16:31 -0000

Comcast is not lying. Step back for a moment - do you truly think someone sat down and though something like "We're going to secretly BLOCK BitTorrent, and lie about it, the geeks can't do anything ..."

Some of this comes from the fact that PR people aren't network engineers. So if you ask them a technical question, they're going to read from a script and not be able to answer it. To be sure, they have a bunker mentality - but really, given the politics, can you blame them?

If we're quibbling over the details of the method being used by Comcast, that doesn't strike me as much of an objection.

Re: Comcast Acceptable Use Policy Revisited

Seth Finkelstein — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 19:02:27 -0000

Where does the idea come from, that if Comcast enforces a contract against the worst violators, they must then further enforce it in a tendentious reading given by people who aren't even parties to the contract? That seems so very unLibertarian! (and when did Libertarians start caring about selective enforcement anyway - it's so Liberal of you :-)).

Stripped from all the playing of politics here, it seems like a very simple and reasonable action - BitTorrent users are a big problem, despite a few legit exchanges the vast majority are infringement, it's against the TOS, throttling them down keeps them from ruining the network performance for everyone else.

The supergeek-type complaint, that they must construct a perfect solution that is protocol-independent, is making the perfect the enemy of the good. Sometime theoretically imperfect solutions are deployed, if they get the job done in practice.

Re: Comcast Acceptable Use Policy Revisited

Seth Finkelstein — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 09:18:06 -0000

enigma_foundry, many of the people huffing and puffing about what they consider to be proper network management would not know an RFC from KFC.
Are we agreed that Comcast's motives are almost certainly related to legitimate traffic shaping? All else is then armchair-quarterbacking.
They HAVE NOT attempted to stomp out BitTorrent traffic. They have attempted to keep BitTorrent users from overwhelming everyone else. There is no way government action can solve that, because it's a technical problem of bandwidth.

Re: Comcast Acceptable Use Policy Revisited

Seth Finkelstein — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 00:16:46 -0000

enigma_foundry, you still appear to be under the mistaken impression that Comcast deliberately stopped all BitTorrent traffic. They did not. The net effect of limits on seeding was not to prevent exchanges wholesale, but to throttle them. Let's get it straight - IT'S A KLUDGE! It's not a perfect way of doing bandwidth-limiting. But it would be utterly unrealistic to have a no-kludge government regulation.

Their FAQ was not dishonest because they are clear they do network management, and to expect otherwise is absurd.

If there was government regulation which required Comcast to publish something like "We are using Sandvine appliances set at threshold ABC this week", what would change in practice? There would still be X file-sharers trying to use Y bandwidth. "Transparency" isn't a magic word. In fact, I suspect all the heavy used would then tune to just under ABC, and if Comcast then moved the threshold lower, a mighty scream would go up "LIARS! Lack of TRANSPARENCY! You *said* it was ABC you're lying, lying, lying ...". I can very well see Comcast making a decision that they're damned no matter what, so say as little as possible (yes, I know the pundits have been saying otherwise, but the actions do not match the rhetoric there - it looks far more like find something to flame them).

Re: Comcast Acceptable Use Policy Revisited

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 05:51:48 -0000

You say: "Bit torrent is an important tool in the dismantling of highly centralized and oppressive corporate power structures."

Sorry. This is utterly ludicrous. The BitTorrent developers are very eager to sell themselves in service of those corporate power structures, and have been making deals with them as much as possible.

BitTorrent is a network problem because in the real world, it's the cause of an overwhelming amount of bandwidith use. That's just an empirical fact. And I keep repeating that ground-level problem solving is not the same as geek-rant perfection. This shouldn't be so tedious, and it's a lesson that it is.

Re: Comcast Acceptable Use Policy Revisited

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 11:31:29 -0000

It is ludicrous not because I say so, but because those corporate power structures have been cutting deals with BitTorrent developers. The industry also tried to stamp out the VCR. That did not make the VCR a dismantling tool (how's that working out - and this-time-it's-different is not a convincing argument).

The "cost gets shifted" is exactly right - but the problem is the network wasn't built for such cost-shifting. THIS CANNOT BE GEEK-RANTED AWAY! It must be addressed in the real world, with practical economic limits.

Re: Comcast Acceptable Use Policy Revisited

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 22:18:01 -0000

Sigh. I just did explain it: The industry also tried to stamp out the VCR. That did not make the VCR a dismantling tool (how's that working out - and this-time-it's-different is not a convincing argument).

The same argument you make about decentralized network has also been make about the Internet itself, and we see how THAT worked out (and saying someday in the future the revolutionary potential will be reached is not a convincing argument).

Re: The Technology Liberation Front » Archive » Who is the Masked Woman?

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 22:50:55 -0000

Hmm ... ".. and history shows that those rights are likely to change somewhat over time - but if my package differs somewhat from someone else's, well, sorry, the argument that this makes me a "regulator" is no more to the point than the argument that the someone else is an "anarchist.""

Solveig! You're going to become a liberal. Embrace the right to health care, the right to an education, the right to a living wage! :-)

More seriously, your argument is in fact fundamentally anti-Libertarian. Don't worry, I think that's a good thing. Maybe it'll help your intellectual evolution.

When you say things like "But there is not a lot of thinking about the system as a whole, or how it relates to these individuals.", you are abandoning the fundamental precept driving the Libertarian view, for one oft-derided as "social engineering". That is, in Libertarianism, it's basically postulated that the system of as whole is best formed by the consideration of individual rights. And that right-set is pretty primitive. One you start to think in terms of social systems, and what's best for society overall that does not magicaly emerge from the primitive rights-set, welcome to liberalism or conservatism.

Re: Obsessive Fan Mindset

Seth Finkelstein — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 22:47:05 -0000

"Another MSM smear of Ron Paul…"

That's funnier than the cartoon (and, I think, proves its point :-)).

Re: Anti-spam Theater

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 19:14:50 -0000

Yes, it's called "logical fallacy". It's very popular with Libertarians, though of course by no means exclusive to them (though they are one of the populations particularly vulnerable to that form, since the ideology severely damages their ability to think 1/2 :-))

A key factor underlying the problem is that a Libertarian has an extremely hard time believing something works in practice if it cannot be analytically demonstrated to his or her satisfaction from abstract principles. It's an order of magnitude worse if the empirical fact is contrary to what he or she wants to be the case.

The way I explain it simply is that if you try to tell a Libertarian that refrigerators exist, they answer back that it's a scientific principle that entropy must increase, so refrigerators won't work.

Re: “Even the Cato Institute”

Seth Finkelstein — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 18:29:10 -0000

Hee hee hee. Tim, you've got to understand that the vast majority of self-described "libertarians", including bogosphere A-listers, are, as the phrase goes, Republicans who like to smoke pot. The key word there is "Republicans". Plus there's the fact that while true Libertarians do support civil-liberties, for MANY 1) nothing seems to get their blood boiling like social services for the poor, and 2) There's not a lot of corporate funding for supporting, e.g. FISA-related op-eds.

So, while you're technically in the right, it's not really so surprising. It's not that "people have trouble wrapping their brains around the idea", but more that it's really a matter of extremely obscure ideology that most of the world, even the pundit world, doesn't care about.

Re: The Foolishness of Andrew Keen

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 11:27:31 -0000

Richard, it's discussions like this that remind me that you're a conservative :-).

You're wrong. What you've done is to switch the definition.

What is meant by
"lauds the appropriation of intellectual property"?

The obvious meaning is "approves of copyright infringement" - that is, specifically tells people to violate existing restrictions.

When called on this, people who want to attack Lessig define it as something like "advocates copyright be less than maximal" - that is, gives examples where there is a social benefit from less extensive ownership restrictions.

What this does is to conflate "advocates illegal activity" with "proposes changes in the law" - which is a rhetorical sleight of hand.

Re: The Foolishness of Andrew Keen

Seth Finkelstein — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 00:22:41 -0000

Let's back up to the exchange between Lessig and Keen. Obviously, there's a trivial way where proposing a law be changed to make it less strict is by definition advocating illegal acts. However, that's what I called rhetorical sleight of hand, since the connotations are extremely different. BUT, critically, the trivial meaning cannot be what Keen meant, formally. Because if that's what he intended, it would not have been difficult for him to say that when Lessig called him out. That is, he could have said, e.g. "I meant anyone who in any way says it's a good idea to make copyright even the smallest bit less restrictive is a COMMIE PIRATE, err, "lauds the appropriation of intellectual property"." (ok, I'm being hyperbolic, but it gets the point across). He didn't go that route, because then it would be transparently obvious that he's doing nothing but inflammatory red-baiting. He went for an appeal to prejudice instead. That's what this is about. Nobody at all is disputing that Lessig thinks current copyright law is overly broad. Rather, the attacks are to try to cast that viewpoint as somehow illegitimate and driven by immoral anti-capitalism, which is transparently wrong based on Lessig's actual writing. Which is why there's such an attempt to make it a "by definition" argument (i.e., per above, an argument that anyone who says copyright has gone too far is by definition taking an immoral stance).

Note the thing to understand about Andrew Keen is that he is not making any serious intellectual arguments. He's being a mirror-image of the web-evangelist and working that marketing niche. His blather may connect to serious ideas, but it's only in the same incidental way of net utopians, just in the opposite direction.

Re: Open Platforms vs. Central Planning

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 16:49:17 -0000

Oh, c'mon. Ten years ago Libertarians were full of overheated predictions about how strong cryptography and The Internet was going to make governments obsolete, and information-based anarchocapitalism would rule the world. I realize political hackery is a game played by silly standards. But it is to laugh if you're complaining about things not coming true and people getting consequences wrong.

In fact, the Libberbabbling complaints about Zittrain's book follow very much the same pattern of complaints made at the time about _Code_ (that it's - spit, grind, gnash - about laws and government - rather than a gushing pean to markets and technology)

Re: Open Platforms vs. Central Planning

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 17:20:28 -0000

Tim, not to be too hard on you - but that's OLD.

You might want think about the reasoning behind that last chapter of _Code_, in terms of not repeating the reason it was written :-( .

Re: Sunstein’s “libertarian paternalism” is really just paternalism

Seth Finkelstein — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 05:16:24 -0000

Oh, that's hilarious ("Civility Check"). Hey, why not have someone implement it, and let The Free Market decide, huh, huh, huh? If I want to buy Civility Check software, who are you, Mr. Libertarian, to tell me I shouldn't be able to do that? You've violating my rights! :-)

Hmm ... "And thankfully I don’t have a civility check system running on my machine right now so I can immediately post that thought!" ... self-proving? self-refuting? :-) :-)

Re: another problem for the Zittrain thesis — old people!

Seth Finkelstein — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 10:44:08 -0000

Adam, while JZ certainly does not need me to defend him, and I probably shouldn't get-into-it, so I'm commenting here against my better judgment ... that all being said, I believe you are not quite grasping the overall argument being made. Granted, there may be a relevant problem of what-he-said vs. what-he-meant. And I've certainly struggled over his points myself. Still, I suggest the above reading you make is far too simplistic.

Re: another problem for the Zittrain thesis — old people!

Seth Finkelstein — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 15:16:17 -0000

I think things went off the rails right around this point in your reply to him:

"Again, I guess I just don't see how all of us would "lose a sense of equilibrium between the generative and sterile spheres," or that "platforms that are open to third party innovation at first" will "close off selectively" and "squeeze out fully generative technologies.""

Well, that's sort of what his book is all about, his arguments as to why that could happen (n.b. I'm not endorsing that here, just explaining what I view him as saying, roughly). If you want to claim he's wrong, OK. But thereafter, you seem to start pummeling straw-men, endlessly, tediously. You seem to believe that he's arguing that "sterile and tethered" devices are not useful to anyone for anything and never any good in any way, and set yourself to refuting this with great vigor. In the essays, you say things at length, but the length doesn't help if the premise is off-base.

Re: another problem for the Zittrain thesis — old people!

Seth Finkelstein — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 17:27:18 -0000

Sigh. "Preference" doesn't necessarily mean "The other stuff must die! die! die! It must be removed from the face of the Earth, wiped from the pages of history ...". That's the strawman I'm talking about. I don't see him making a Richard M. Stallman kind of argument that everyone must only use that which is ideologically pure.

I *think* Zittrain could be partially summarized as arguing for strong anti-trust, like the European Union just did with Microsoft.

Re: another problem for the Zittrain thesis — old people!

Seth Finkelstein — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 08:47:39 -0000

Many technically-oriented people have critiqued his arguments. However, my point is only that this post is very far afield.

Re: another problem for the Zittrain thesis — old people!

Seth Finkelstein — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 17:25:18 -0000

Richard, it may be that I'm now talking about the book I wish JZ wrote instead of the one he did write, but "most of whom have access to APIs and SDKs for closed devices" is a blithe assumption that has been the subject of some very extensive court cases, i.e. Microsoft anti-trust. Moreover, the EU has very strong laws in favor of reverse-engineering. These are significant issues which are not merely the abstract theorizing of a ivory-tower professor.

Re: another problem for the Zittrain thesis — old people!

Seth Finkelstein — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 19:39:15 -0000

Richard, the anti-trust lawsuits weren't brought for fun. The point is that there's an issue there which can't be easily dismissed.

I assume you know that many developers have said that what Microsoft publishes is not the full story, and that outside developers are thus placed at a competitive disadvantage.

[tedious anti-straw-man: This is not refuted by saying it's possible to develop to it anyway]

Re: Selective Quotation in the Sydnor Paper

Seth Finkelstein — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 16:53:35 -0000

"he portrayed capitalism as a law of the jungle"

Oh my god, nobody has ever done that before! Stars and garters, what insolence! Heavens, is there no limits to that man's depravity?

Re: Larry Lessig, Demagogue?

Seth Finkelstein — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 22:48:36 -0000

> "Would there even be a discussion about net neutrality without Lessig’s role as Pied Piper?"

Oh, c'mon. This is getting into pure demonization territory. Yes, there would, because it's driven by a big fight between megamoney corporations - you know, that capitalism (in the real world) that Lessig supposedly committed a cardinal sin which is sufficient to cast him out in your eyes when he made the tiger comparison.

Look at how absurd this is getting - he made a comparison which seems to be more or less correct, to the extent that one can see it at work in manipulation over Net Neutrality (granted, not quite the way he intended, but still more right than wrong). You denounce him him for the observation, which leaves you with the issue itself - and so then you denounce HIM as the cause of it too! This is finding a Great Satan to explain all the evils of the world (It's not the fault of God, I mean, capitalism, it's his evil twin the Devil, I mean, Lawrence Lessig).

Re: Larry Lessig, Demagogue?

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 01 May 2008 00:49:44 -0000

Richard: "I have a problem with people communicating that thought *in pictures* to concretize a metaphor ..."

Would have have been similarly harsh on someone who illustrated "bandwidth hog" with a picture of an enormous literal pig pushing aside many smaller animals from food?

I think you're also engaging "presentism", by not taking account how much silliness there was in net discussions at the time Lessig was writing his early material. Many other people were trying to draw policy implications from the Internet, usually utterly absurd (still waiting for cypherpunk cryptoanarchy ...).

Re: Larry Lessig, Demagogue?

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 01 May 2008 11:24:31 -0000

Richard, I listened now to the part where Lessig shows the tiger slide. He says:

"You don't talk about trusting a company, just like you don't talk about trusting a tiger, even though the brand management for tigers has very cute images that they try to sell you on, how beautiful and wonderful the tiger is."

And should I go digging for an all-p2p-users-are-pirates statement from someone?

I see this over and over again in discussions - Lessig makes a moderate statement, one not extreme, but does imply business and property have downsides. Libertarian or conservative critics go absolutely NUTS. "HE SAID ...!!!". They really want to fight straw-Lessig, the radical communist who wants to destroy capitalism and abolish private property.

And there's no obligation to agree with everything real-Lessig says in order to think straw-Lessig is nonsense.

Re: Larry Lessig, Demagogue?

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 01 May 2008 16:32:57 -0000

Umm, Richard, how many people on the anti-NN side have been saying roughly:

"ISP's need to enact strict traffic shaping, otherwise the P2P start-ups will screw the Internet. They’ll overrun ISP's with illegal downloads and put us on the dirt roads and eat us like tigers eat their prey. They can’t help it, it’s their nature."

And arguably this whole thing started because Google and similar think that the teleco's will eat them alive like tigers - and they (Google/etc.) have the money to make a fuss over it.

So I find it hard to see why Lessig gets such attack for saying basically what everyone else is saying (with certain parameters shifted, of course!).

In fact, I don't think Lessig is wrong on the "nature" point - I think he's mis-focused about the prey. The People simply aren't worth it on that scale, like tigers don't go trying to eat ants.

Re: Larry Lessig, Demagogue?

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 01 May 2008 19:04:16 -0000

Oh, come on. There's plenty of emotion on the anti-NN side. It is to laugh to argue otherwise. Maybe I should take this to email, as I don't want to say unpleasant things about people I view as justified in their emotions - but those emotions sure are there.

The generic slogan of "regulating the Internet" is the purest play to mob mentality on the anti-NN side.

Re: Culture Clash on the Future of News

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 15 May 2008 18:39:42 -0000

Speaking as a technologist, I agree with the newspaper people 1/2 :-).

One problem is that there's very little support for technologists to voice a non-evangelistic view. If you say "YAY! GO GO GO Net/Blogs/RSS/etc!!!"", there's attention and money for that. The opposite view isn't supported, except by reactionaries (see Andrew K33n).

It's market failure :-(. Sort of recursive proof.

Re: The Technology Liberation Front » Archive » The ACLU and Media Hysteria

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 22 May 2008 11:09:22 -0000

Richard, that's funny, in an over-the-top way. If I didn't know you were serious, I would have thought you were being sarcastic.

Tim, I believe you've read my essay Libertarianism Makes You Stupid. Seriously, note the points I make about simplistic axioms and how they can lead one astray. That's what's going on with the Libertarian view of media consolidation debate.

Re: The Technology Liberation Front » Archive » The ACLU and Media Hysteria

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 22 May 2008 21:05:01 -0000

That's sadly what I mean by a simplistic theory. It's like saying "It strikes me as odd to be complaining about dominance of (US) politics by the Democrats and Republicans, when the Internet is revolutizing community and we have access to the greatest political thought in the world at the click of a mouse". I suspect you'd be able to see what's problematic there.

By the way, the supposed past "Global Cooling" scare is very much a made-up issue by professional liars who are trying to discredit current science. And that sort of proves my point. The accurate information being available DOES NOT MATTER. It depends more on who has the money to get a lie into the propagation system.

Re: Media Reform Now About Internet, Not Broadcast Ownership, says Free Press

Seth Finkelstein — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 19:14:48 -0000

"we have to embrace the reality that every Web site can be a TV network, ..."

That is web-evangelist Kool-Aid. I'm fond of saying:

IF YOU'RE NOT ON THE A-LIST, YOU DON'T GET HEARD!

If anything, there's a good argument that the web-world is WORSE. As in "Where are the women?". The fact that web-evangelists have to come up with some way of dismissing that question should be revealing.

Re: Neanderthal Philosophy

Seth Finkelstein — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 00:33:24 -0000

"Neanderthal philosophy" isn't the best phrasing, since it's not really ancient, and brutish isn't the main aspect. I suggest "right-wing fantasy ideology" as more apropos.

Re: Cerf: Nationalize the Internet?

Seth Finkelstein — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 02:39:19 -0000

Richard, "Net Neutrality" did not originate in free-speech concerns. The one public post I risked on the topic points out that such a statement is complete fiction. This is not a case of one of the right-wing's favorite storylines, the Good Past Movement that turned into the Bad Current Movement.

Anyway, I assume that what Cerf meant was that maybe the US telecomms should be nationalized, not "The Internet".

Re: Cerf: Nationalize the Internet?

Seth Finkelstein — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 02:40:39 -0000

[Posting without live link to get it through spam-trap]

Richard, "Net Neutrality" did not originate in free-speech concerns. The one public post ( sethf.com/infothought/blog/archives/001273.html ) I risked on the topic points out that such a statement is complete fiction. This is not a case of one of the right-wing's favorite storylines, the Good Past Movement that turned into the Bad Current Movement.

Anyway, I assume that what Cerf meant was that maybe the US telecomms should be nationalized, not "The Internet".

Re: Cerf: Nationalize the Internet?

Seth Finkelstein — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 18:03:29 -0000

Richard, I went into the "free speech" issue in my post. Look, "Net Neutrality" originated as a movement in the _Brand X_ court decision. Everything else has been about justifications for the two sides of that dispute, both of which are in essence big (huge) businesses. Which means a favorite right-wing narrative of Bad Liberal isn't to blame, no matter how crowd-pleasing it is to launch into denunciations of ivory-tower eggheads who supposedly have brought woe unto the world with their crazy academic theories.

I read Vint Cerf as merely re-iterating the position of one side of that dispute - that network upgrades should be funded as government-built infrastructure, and hence any given tier of access should be available on a no-buyer-discrimination basis (that is, _Brand X_ was wrongly decided and should be undone). This is neither a difficult nor an irrational position. But it has the word "government" in it - that causes certain knee-jerk ideological reactions, of which the post here is a fine example.

Re: Cerf: Nationalize the Internet?

Seth Finkelstein — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 21:49:27 -0000

Richard, it's a simple fact that up until the _Brand X_ decision, to a good approximation nobody cared about free speech concerns (meaning, there was no funding). In fact, anyone who even tried to discuss such concerns in many areas would be flamed by whiny Libertarians-types ranting the slogan "MY SERVER MY RULES!!!". Therefore, it didn't originate in free speech. Why do you take the PR of one of the big businesses involved as meaning anything other than PR? Well, that's a rhetorical question, because it wouldn't have any impact to say: "It's absolutely breath-taking that a movement where the big business lobbyists are falsely claiming free speech concerns as a tactic ..."

I don't know where you get the $11 million figure. Lessig really makes very little money relative to his standing (I've checked various filings). Certainly not as much some telecom lobbyists or right-wing hack-tank flacks.

Re: Cerf: Nationalize the Internet?

Seth Finkelstein — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 22:52:49 -0000

Is this the reasoning:

1) Lessig advocates A
2) Nobody listened (promoted) Lessig about A until the unrelated B
3) Therefore, A originated B

By the way, do we all agree now that Vint Cerf said something pretty standard and unremarkable, instead of the inflammatory stuff that's being strawmanned? (if this weren't Vint Cerf, you just know the Internuts would be filled with HE-DOESN'T-GET-IT frothing, about how that dumb old guy doesn't have a clue, unlike the hip wired with-it bloggers, natch). Note I didn't ask if Libertarians agreed it was a good idea - rather, that it wasn't anything that basically isn't commonly said in the debate.

Nobody in politics is 100% pure. It's almost impossible to survive that way. But I'd argue people like Lessig (tenured profs without a lot of financial deals) are pretty much as good as it gets. Anyone who strategizes a Supreme Court case based mainly on thinking he's come up with a killer principled argument that'll appeal to conservatives against "all the money in the world", isn't operating on the basis of what's going to enrich himself. And very important, there's a qualitative difference between them and the kind of political hacks who are just fancy paid liars.

Re: Cerf: Nationalize the Internet?

Seth Finkelstein — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 01:03:08 -0000

"... government control the chief means of government criticism ..."

This is as overheated and absurd as anything on the other side.

"... wishes to repudiate the accurately-reported statement."

You couldn't be wrong. The attention-driven ranters and flamers "reporting" what he said are paragons of accuracy, over his own words. Got it.

Why do I bother :-(.

Re: iPhone 2.0 cracked in hours… what was that Zittrain thesis again?

Seth Finkelstein — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 16:26:42 -0000

I'll just repeat what I said before, since nothing has progressed:

Adam, while JZ certainly does not need me to defend him, and I probably shouldn’t get-into-it, so I’m commenting here against my better judgment … that all being said, I believe you are not quite grasping the overall argument being made. Granted, there may be a relevant problem of what-he-said vs. what-he-meant. And I’ve certainly struggled over his points myself. Still, I suggest the above reading you make is far too simplistic.

I think things went off the rails right around this point in your reply to him:

"Again, I guess I just don't see how all of us would "lose a sense of equilibrium between the generative and sterile spheres," or that "platforms that are open to third party innovation at first" will "close off selectively" and "squeeze out fully generative technologies.""

Well, that's sort of what his book is all about, why that will happen (n.b. I'm not endorsing it in this comment, just explaining what I view him as saying, roughly). If you want to claim he's wrong, OK. But thereafter, you seem to start pummeling straw-men, endlessly, tediously. You seem to believe that he's said that "sterile and tethered" are not useful to anyone for anything and never any good in any way, and set yourself to refuting this with great vigor. In the essays, you say things at length, but the length doesn't help if the premise is off-base.

[See case study above of "pummeling straw-men, endlessly, tediously"]

Re: iPhone 2.0 cracked in hours… what was that Zittrain thesis again?

Seth Finkelstein — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 17:11:15 -0000

I wouldn't disagree with your first few sentences. The last sentence, however, is where the strawman-pummelling is found. I can just repeat: You seem to believe that he's said that "sterile and tethered" are not useful to anyone for anything and never any good in any way, and set yourself to refuting this with great vigor. In the essays, you say things at length, but the length doesn't help if the premise is off-base.

Re: The Technology Liberation Front » Archive » “Cry [Censorship] and Let Slip the Dogs of [Regulation]!” - A Lesson in the Dangers of Googlephobia

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 13:16:47 -0000

"Even the most tech-savvy among us should be sure to investigate the technical aspects of what we see online before leaping to conclusions ..."

Yes, absolutely. The problem is that there's no incentive, no reward, for doing that investigation, rather than crying wolf :-(.

It's a market failure.

Re: e-gold Settles Criminal Charges, Goes Back to Work

Seth Finkelstein — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 03:18:03 -0000

"eventually create value transfer systems that operate outside the control of any government"

1995 is calling. It wants its cypherpunk cryptoanarchy back.

Re: Google Search Won’t Return Links to cato-at-liberty.org

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 23:12:01 -0000

The site configuration is screwed-up. How do you folks expect to rule the world via sheer force of reason if you can't even run a website properly? :-)

Re: The Technology Liberation Front » Archive » Internet Habits and the Presidency

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 23:24:32 -0000

You have no shame.

Al Gore "invented the Internet" - resources

Re: The Technology Liberation Front » Archive » Network Neutrality Is Not About Price

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 16:34:12 -0000

Tim, you're misreading the issue about the price argument.

This is partially because Libertarians have a hard time thinking of corporations as bad actors (note I didn't say it was IMPOSSIBLE, I said "have a hard time").

The content companies (Google, etc). don't want the teleco's to play the content companies off against each other in auction-style pricing and exclusive "partnership" agreements.

Google, etc. ARE NOT LIBERTARIANS! Thus, they have no trouble lobbying for laws to make the telco's desires above, be illegal.

Everything is a sideshow for this argument, because this argument is where the money is, BILLIONS of dollars.

It's not about charging different prices for different levels of service. Instead, it's about once a price is set, any customer must be able to buy at that price - i.e. no auction pricing, no exclusive "partnerships".

The irony of this all is that I think the Liberbabblers are ultimately right that the free market would solve it eventually. But a lot of money can be wasted until then, and Google, etc. are not going to stand for the teleco's extracting it from them.

Re: Market Forces At Work: The PR Backlash Against Google Chrome’s EULA

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 01:14:35 -0000

Umm, folks, this wasn't a "market" matter in the first place. Various Google people have made it clear that the TOS was just a boilerplate thrown-together for a relatively low-level project.

The point which makes the argument in this article laughable and ludicrous - and I mean that, I'm not just being colorful, it's pretty much blithering nonsense - are examples such as "arbitration" and "no class action" clauses, which have been bitterly fought in court, and where corporations don't care about the bad publicity.

Re: Market Forces At Work: The PR Backlash Against Google Chrome’s EULA

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 12:09:36 -0000

@Jim - Do you even know what I'm talking about? I'm serious. That sounds rhetorical, but I mean it. Do you know the issues I'm describing? Your reply is pure knee-jerk sneer.

Bleh. I really shouldn't do this. Libertarians are like cuckoo-clocks, their "Cuckoo" is "Markets".

[Tedious explanation - denial of class-action affects HUGE NUMBERS OF PEOPLE! It is one of the major legal tools against corporate abuse.
"Arbitration" is almost a Libertarian fantasy, where you contract away all your legal recourse]

Re: Market Forces At Work: The PR Backlash Against Google Chrome’s EULA

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 15:23:55 -0000

I'm "fixated" on arbitration and class action suits because they are obvious counter-examples and extremely important. Yes indeed, you didn't mention them. No personal offense meant, but that is why your argument is babbling nonsense, because those are a few elephants in the room which make a mockery of your post.

To wit: "my point is that such criticism and the threat thereof together provide a powerful check". But they don't. There's no powerful check.

Let me try to outline how nonsensical, how absurd, is what you've written - note, I mean this literally, I'm not being gratuitously rude.

GOOGLE DID NOT WANT TO HAVE THOSE TERMS. IT WAS A *MISTAKE*. AN *OVERSIGHT*. NOT SOMETHING THEY WANTED TO DO!!!

WHEN COMPANIES *DO *WANT OPPRESSIVE TERMS, THEY *IGNORE* THE FLAMERS (see arbitration, class-action, for proof).

THE ONLY THING WHICH HAS WORKED IN *MANY* CASES IS *G-O-V-E-R-N-M-E-N-T R-E-G-U-L-A-T-I-O-N* (see European Union reverse-engineering rights for proof).

Your whole so-called "argument" is based on finding power where there is none.

It's meaningless to project anything from trivial case that when a company has a drafting error, they'll change it, to when they deliberately and intentionally do want to take away customer's legal rights. In fact, your "happy medium" is joke, literally - if a company makes a copying error, they'll fix it if people complain, and if a company wants to take away legal rights, they'll ignore people who complain, so each side sometimes wins and sometimes loses ....

Re: Dead Air Walking: Prisoners Face Loss of TV After Digital Transition

Seth Finkelstein — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 09:53:33 -0000

@Berin - the article above shows the reason why. Mean-spirited right-wingers will play politics with it, demagoging and sneering about e.g. how they "sit in stunned silence for a moment". Unless you believe that the optimum way to manage a prison matches exactly with reactionary rantings containing barely disguised sadism, well, there's a problem.

Re: another review of Zittrain’s “Future of the Internet”

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 22:30:11 -0000

Again, JZ does not need me to defend him, but ... Yes, your critique is unfair. It's knocking down a strawman.

"Zittrain, however, implies that these devices are force-feeding the masses only those services or information that a handful of corporate overlords deem worthy of mass consumption."

"But what Zittrain does in The Future of the Internet is generalize his personal preferences to the whole of cyber-society. What’s good for the ivory-tower digerati may not be what the rest of us want or need."

Bah. That's just by-the-numbers Libertarian ranting, where one hits a certain number of sneers and knee-jerks.

This is not an endorsement of Zittrain's book, which I have my own thoughts about.

Re: Negroponte’s “Daily Me” = RSS Feeds + Google Alerts

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 22:25:12 -0000

"Hell, Al Gore hadn’t even built the Internet yet!"

Shame on you.

Al Gore "Invented The Internet" resources

Re: Valleywag Hates on Net Neutrality & Vint Cerf

Seth Finkelstein — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 04:11:48 -0000

"and of course, former vice president and Nobel Laureate Al Gore."

Once again: Al Gore / Internet

Re: Zittrain debate at New America Foundation (11/6, 3:30)

Seth Finkelstein — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 11:29:36 -0000

Y'know, there''s really a lot of good critique of _Future of the Internet_ that isn't of the strawman sort of pry-my-iPod-from-my-cold-dead-fingers.

Maybe this is politics, and I just don't understand it. You get what you want, he gets an easy opponent.

Re: The Pragmatic (Internet) Optimist’s Creed

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 07:58:12 -0000

1) I call my view "technology-positive social criticism", but there's not a lot of support for it.

2) Richard - there does exist some empirical work. Again, not a lot of support for it, or forpublicizing it.

Re: Google Flu Trends and Privacy

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 09:50:09 -0000

[trying again]

You may enjoy (or not ...) my just-published column:

"Why you should be concerned about Google Flu Trends"

www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/nov/27/priva...

"The search engine has unwittingly hung a big sign on itself advertising services for government surveillance"

Re: Googlephobia: Part 6 - The Left Begins to Turn on Google

Seth Finkelstein — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 06:36:21 -0000

This is sort of funny, being that Wu and Lessig are regularly (and in my view, unfairly) slammed as being in the pockets of Google.

"they set the intellectual agenda for the Left on information technology policy"

Not to deny their evident public intellectual influence, I suggest you're confusing correlation with causation. These issues have been around for a while. Just to cite myself, see my book chapter:

"Google, Links, and Popularity versus Authority"

quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=nmw;idno=5680986.0001.001;rgn=div2;view=text;cc=nmw;node=5680986.0001.001%3A3.7

Re: Googlephobia: Part 6 - The Left Begins to Turn on Google

Seth Finkelstein — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 12:06:23 -0000

Trying to fix link, if anyone is still reading and cares:

"Google, Links, and Popularity versus Authority"

Re: Net Neutrality forever! Wait, never mind…

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 05:03:09 -0000

Nonsense article. Lessig has been mischaracterized:

"The made-up dramas of the Wall Street Journal"

lessig.org/blog/2008/12/the_madeup_dramas_of_the_wall

Re: Net Neutrality forever! Wait, never mind…

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 05:05:04 -0000

[Trying again, feel free to delete non-link version]

Nonsense article. Lessig has been mischaracterized:

"The made-up dramas of the Wall Street Journal"

http://lessig.org/blog/2008/12/the_madeup_drama...

Re: Lessig on Building a Better Bureaucrat

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 15:07:27 -0000

Adam, as I commented on Lessig's post, I thought his argument was particularly interesting for being aimed in a Libertarian direction, as an intellectual construct.

What I didn't say, was that I thought it wouldn't work. Same problem as his _Eldred_ argument. The law professor arguing from abstraction, neglecting that in reality the theory is just in the service of the practice of business-worship. He'd likely just get mad at me then, for being too cynical.

Thanks for providing me with proof. 1/2 :-)

Re: The News Innovator’s Dilemma

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 17:23:48 -0000

Very insightful article. Note it engages in actual thought about the complexities of the free market, where everyone pursuing rational self-interest in the short-term can lead to problematic results in the long-term.

Re: Liberty, Anarchism, and Eben Moglen

Seth Finkelstein — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 23:01:57 -0000

Hee hee hee ... "understand that being a libertarian means being pro-liberty, not necessarily pro-business." Nope. That's a key point of mine, hammered for more than a decade now. Libertarians define "liberty" as "business". You're having this demonstrated to you extensively.

Re: The Regulatory Cathedral and the Bazaar

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 00:43:35 -0000

"decentralized certification schemes and a skeptical public better..."

(sarcasm)
Which is exactly why the government should not be in the business of determining "fraud", because that makes people lazy and weak. It puts The State into determining truth. Lies will be taken care of by the Free Market, by "decentralized certification schemes and a skeptical public" so there is no need for The Men With Guns to be involved ...
(/sarcasm)

No?

Re: Cato Unbound Debate: Lessig’s Code at Ten (Part 4: Lessig’s response)

Seth Finkelstein — Tue, 12 May 2009 02:11:24 -0000

Adam, a serious meta-question - what did you expect? Am I misreading your trash-talk, or are you honestly disgruntled with your role as "Professional Opponent"? i.e.

Tomato Can : A journeyman fighter, or "professional opponent," who is not good enough to be a champion but provides a good fighter with a good practice session without any real danger to himself. Also called a "ham-and-egger" (for the diner food once consumed on the road by these men), or "palooka."

Re: Cato Unbound Debate: Lessig’s Code at Ten (Part 4: Lessig’s response)

Seth Finkelstein — Tue, 12 May 2009 20:17:42 -0000

Yes, Lessig was calling himself a non-ideologue, in the sense that this sums up the opposite:

"For the libertarian, there is only one fool-proof solution to the problem of government corruption: You shrink the Leviathan. "

He wasn't using ideology in the manner of system of thinking generally. Rather, I believe he meant that if you're the intellectual equivalent of a cuckoo-clock, that's a pretty trivial way of thinking.

Re: What is Cyber-Libertarianism? (The Debate over Lessig’s Code at 10 Continues)

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 14 May 2009 16:22:00 -0000

Now, now, Adam - be fair. My view about Libertarianism are very well-known. However, in these comments, I don't think I've said anything nasty about you as a person. There are Libertarians I think are nice people, and Libertarians I think are utter sleazes, apart from being Libertarians. I think there's a big difference between my criticizing Libertarianism, and the personal criticism of an individual (one could quibble the former entails the latter to some extent, but I'd reply that's not the spirit of the charge you make above).

I did ask if I was misreading you about being unhappy in the "professional opponent" role, but that was meant more as cynical political observation of the dynamics here.

Re: Linux in trouble

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 18:33:40 -0000

Overblown. This argument has been going on for a while, particularly with graphics drivers. Yes, it can get nasty at times. But Stallman didn't create it, he's merely personifying it - that's a very big difference.

And it would be a big mistake to view it as about some crazy hippy guru - a lot of it comes from the lawsuits filed against programmers, which focus the mind far more than ideological pronouncements.

Re: When Nunberg attacks

Seth Finkelstein — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 10:59:02 -0000

I think combining the old start of this post with the one you have now would be better (in terms of being amusingly self-referential). That is:

[Left-wing political activist and linguist Geoff Nunberg][who wrote Talking Right: How Conservatives Turned Liberalism into a Tax-Raising, Latte-Drinking, Sushi-Eating, Volvo-Driving, New York Times-Reading, Body-Piercing, Hollywood-Loving, Left-Wing Freak Show, ] ...

As to whatever similarities between Chomsky and Lakoff, I'd put it in the category that the US and China seem close when you're off on another planet entirely.

Re: Cuban’s Take on Media Fragmentation [PR 2.0]

Seth Finkelstein — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 23:19:35 -0000

"even the smallest of publishers has a very loud and effective voice."

It's really much more complicated than that. :-(

After all, and this is a key rebuttal, if that were true - where is my voice in refuting the charges?

At heart, saying a person can be subjected to successful smear campaign and may never be able to get their reputation back afterwards, tells us the exact opposite - some voices through various means can drown out others, with no protection against false accusations. I hope that wasn't what was being praised. :-(

Re: Wales: Wikipedia Does Not Have an Official Policy on Quashing News About Kidnapped Journos - mediabistro.com: BayNewser

Seth Finkelstein — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 22:09:55 -0000

The statement "there weren't any official sources to cite." is not correct. There were Italian and Afghan official sources. The history of this incident is more complex than portrayed above. See my own column:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/jul/0...

Re: The John Dvorakification of the blogosphere (I’m signing off of Memeorandum)

Seth Finkelstein — Sun, 05 Mar 2006 19:41:23 -0000

Ironically, this post is currently very prominent on Memeorandum.

In Soviet Russia, Memeorandum won't unsubscribe from YOU! :-)

Re: Scoble: poster child for not blogging

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 27 Mar 2006 14:12:25 -0000

With great trepidation, I'm going to defend Nick Carr's post here, as it parallels some of my own thoughts.

I don't think his main point is being engaged, which is, paraphrased: IT'S NOT WORTH IT.

That is, the negatives of "nakedness" far outweight the positives. The line of argument that nakedness is authenticity, and authenticity is connection, is merely an assertion. It's not automatically true. How do you know that people put-off and offended don't outweight those attracted by the display? Maybe making enemies of journalists is far worse than friends on the A-list.

Again, this argument IS NOT ADDRESSED by repeating that one is human, that humanness is good, etc. It's a cost-benefit analysis, and must be considered at that level.

Re: Scoble: poster child for not blogging

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 27 Mar 2006 14:51:53 -0000

I strongly agree that better journalism is a laudable goal. However, the personal or corporate costs of demanding it can be infeasible (blogging was supposed to be cure, but it's just given the world a layer of practitioners of all the sins of journalism without even the lip-service to public service and professionalism).

It's quite possible that Microsoft doesn't care. It's such a huge company that the blog world counts as noise. Or they could be making a mistake, it would hardly be the first time that a marketing fad led to bad results. There's many projects which have gone on past the point where stopping them would in retrospect have been the better decision (no offense intended). For them, perhaps having their own lightning-rod is overall a good idea, but for most companies which aren't so large, it would be a bad idea.

And it's a false dichotomy to write as if the choice were silence vs. full drama. The issue is more whether the benefits of being uninhibited are worth their costs (and there have to be costs).

Re: Scoble: poster child for not blogging

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 27 Mar 2006 16:11:31 -0000

One of the big fallacies of blog evangelism is what I call the "lottery argument". If, say, 10% of the attempts worked well, and 90% of the attempts failed miserably, there would still be a large absolute number of gains to point to, to say "Look, look, that person played the games, and won a nice prize" - even if, overall, the odds were horrible.

There is very little which is unalloyed positive - that's a quack-medicine pitch.

Ethan: Fairly cold - I was vaguely aware of the "60%" issued, but came here today after reading Nick Carr's post.

Re: Scoble: poster child for not blogging

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 27 Mar 2006 18:36:36 -0000

Sure, "shrillness and antagonism" can work well if you're an entertainer, or a political hack, or looking to carve out a niche as a rhetorical bomb-thrower. There are some narrow roles where that is part of the job. But, overall, especially in a corporate context, those tactics seem to be something that will hurt rather than help.

That's a perfectly reasonable argument.

Re: Wanna get attention of a public company?

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 09:19:19 -0000

Umm, the original post was in error - you have to use the name, not the symbol.

I explain this in a post of my own:

Google Finance, Blogs, and Politics

Re: This is not a numbers business

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 18:07:27 -0000

This is exactly what I mean by an unfalsifiable system.

It's set up so that BY DEFINITION, there is no way to measure whether it works or not! All measurement is rejected in terms of "people".

Re: Will Maine lawsuit hurt Pop!Tech?

Seth Finkelstein — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 11:29:24 -0000

I've got a post on the libel aspect of this, which goes into one of parts Scott mentions:

Warren Kremer Paino v. Lance Dutson, and Google keyword matching

Re: Contra Costa Times looks at women bloggers

Seth Finkelstein — Sun, 21 May 2006 20:09:58 -0000

Let's see if I have this straight ... if you weren't part of a teeny-tiny social clique, which heavily skews well-off white men, in a small part of California, more than a decade ago, that's "a major reason" you won't be on the A-list ("those early dinners back in 1992/93").

You said it, not me! :-(.

[PS - I suspect you're about to get flamed for the aesthetics/fashion-model parts of the post. Just a heads-up. Too bad Shelley Powers shut-down her blog.]

Re: Contra Costa Times looks at women bloggers

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 22 May 2006 13:41:34 -0000

Goebbels: What if we're cool or interesting *because* we're geeky? :-)

Anyway, several comments seem to be pointing out that all the backscratching and fur-grooming needed for the high-level networking is hard to do for people who have other demands on their time. Thus, blogging is pretty much like every other (mainstream?) media hierarchy - those with the most access to power have the most chance at obtaining power themselves.

Re: Contra Costa Times looks at women bloggers

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 22 May 2006 14:21:48 -0000

To quote something Melinda Casino wrote on her blog Sour Duck, which in fact does have some applicability to all Z-listers:

"There also seemed to be a taboo against admitting that women might have ambitions for anything other than the connecting with people online. For women to express the latter is, of course, socially acceptable - just like the new interest in knitting. This was a bit strange as it appeared that some of the women on the panel leveraged their careers with blogging. None of them could say, "Yeah, I like money. I like having it, and blogging has helped me get it, and I think women are ripped off because men have higher visibility through lists and hierarchies, and therefore gain more economically." Or anything remotely like it. Yet this is a fairly obvious point to raise."

Re: A list bloggers: keeping the little guy down?

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 09:03:09 -0000

Comparatively few people read comments. And one problem with making comments is that it's an invitation for bad press as being a spammer (one can get that sort of bad press from email too - but with comments, there's many more people who might decide to try to score a little attention for themselves by calling out a supposed spammer).

Re: Wordpress.com doesn’t allow PayPerPost and other SEO gaming

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 17:09:34 -0000

Robert, you're confused, though understandably so.

You're mixing-up two different factors - recency and PageRank.

A new link has a recency effect, which is not the same as PageRank.

Moreover, a new link in a post from a popular blogger can initially carry the PageRank of the front page PLUS recency, which makes it very powerful at first. When it moves off the front page, it loses that PageRank power and carries only the PageRank of the permalink page.

Of course PageRank plus relevant keywords is better than PageRank without relevant keywords.

PageRank matters. It's just not the only factor - Google even says that outright.

Re: UK Press Complaints Commissioner: “no means of redress”

Seth Finkelstein — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 12:59:53 -0000

Regarding: "If someone throws you under the bus on the Internet YOU CAN RESPOND ON YOUR OWN BLOG!"

And if you're not an A-lister, NOBODY WILL HEAR YOU! :-(

"Libel and slander laws still apply here," - actually, "section 230" has opened up an absolutely massive loophole in libel law for prominent bloggers to smear with impunity. But that's another topic.

Re: UK Press Complaints Commissioner: “no means of redress”

Seth Finkelstein — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 15:25:19 -0000

That's the libel-doesn't-matter argument. It should be very clear that is false under extremely reasonable assumptions. Note there are plenty of ways one can come to notice of the powers that be - minor political involvement, being in the wrong place at the wrong time during a news event, or even just writing something about an A-lister which annoys them and they lash out.

It boggles my mind that this can be a serious issue these days, when is clear that the top bloggers are by rational measures like syndicated columnists, versus the near-total obscurity of most everyone else.

Look, if you're going to believe that libel doesn't matter, you might just as well say it doesn't matter if the biggest news anchor of the MSM lies about you on national TV, 'cause anyone who cares can just ask you if it was true or not, and if they don't ask, well, they aren't good people anyway. So either you believe it matters or you don't, but pretending works equally well anywhere else.

Re: Pissing off the blogosphere…

Seth Finkelstein — Sun, 28 Jan 2007 09:52:31 -0000

Welcome to how Z-listers feel EVERY SINGLE BLOGGING DAY!

It must be very nice to be an A-lister. Then even your complaints about not getting enough attention get lots of attention.

Re: Code of conduct or not?

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 04:00:08 -0000

Sigh. My question on these is always: Who Enforces The Code Of Conduct?

Any hand-wave like "self-regulating" or "the community" means in practice, the A-list does whatever they want, due to the power imbalance.

Re: Code of conduct or not?

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 04:24:36 -0000

Robert, I understand that it's not all quotes and conferences. That celebrity has a downside. However, that doesn't address my point, that there's no way for the powerless to hold the powerful to account in the proposed code of conduct. Saying it's a tough job to be a dictator (and it is - number 2 means being dead!) doesn't adress the problem with having no judicial system except friends in the junta.

Re: Code of conduct or not?

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 04:45:20 -0000

Any lottery ticket COULD win. Virtually none of them will. This is basic mathematics.

Again, you are confusing a statement that the life of a junta member may be filled with rivalry and intrigue - quite likely true, and not disputed - with the issue that such an insider can in general attack anyone below with no consequences.

Even literal dictators can be overthrown by their enemies or by a popular rebellion. But a dictatorship is still rife with abuse of power and lack of accountability.

Re: Code of conduct or not?

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 05:10:55 -0000

I can't give examples because of the implications. But they are not difficult to find.

But that's a bit like saying "I dare you to become dictator and start killing people - you'll get called names and the best people will flee the country". None of which prevents dictatorships from existing.

Re: Australia: keeping the Internet clean for kids

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 03:37:09 -0000

See my _Guardian_ column on the government of Australia national censorware plan, from a few months ago:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/sep/13/guardianweeklytechnologysection.comment

"What is really under discussion is control of people. Calling it
'censorware' has the advantage of clarity"

Note I don't like the title they gave it ("The internet can't be censored and it's wrong for governments to try"). I don't assert categorically that the Internet can't be censored, in fact "Can you censor the Internet?" is the question I've explored for many years.

Re: Australia: keeping the Internet clean for kids

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 03:47:00 -0000

Similar schemes do float around in the US. So far, they've lost in court.

And by the way, I've blogged and blogged and blogged about this topic, for many years, and NOT GOTTEN HEARD, given the way the bogosphere amplifies a few elites and minimizes almost everyone else. So I gave up. It's not worth it.

Re: Google Defuses Googlebombs; Does this Change Link Building Practices?

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 10:15:07 -0000

I have some theorizing in my post:

Defusing The Google-Bomb - And Maybe Reigniting It

And I'm promoting a test using associated words, i.e. link using "George Bush: Miserable Failure":

George Bush: "Miserable Failure"

Re: The Guardian Trying to Undermine Blogging?

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 14:02:38 -0000

Andy. blogging is arguably a tool for the "chattering classes" professions, people I call "talkers" - punidts, marketers, professionals who write as part of their job, and so on. That's really a very tiny percentage of the population. Though it's the percentage that's heard, so there's a distortion there.

But for everyone else - if you're not absolutely fascinated by keeping a public diary, and most people aren't, there's no benefit, and a lot of wasted time. Or even a significant risk of hurting your employment prospects.

Re: Are Social Network Users Libertarian Voters?

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 11:51:25 -0000

The writer of the CNET article is well-known as a Libertarian-ideology proselytizer who has boosted Ron Paul in the past.

You ask the wrong question anyway. The correct one is more like:

"Do Libertarian ranters generate a lot of noise?"

Obviously, the answer is "yes".

Re: Are Social Network Users Libertarian Voters?

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 12:19:14 -0000

Umm, what do you think you "disproved"? The results prove my point.

I'm mostly concerned myself with stuff like the omission of Ron Paul's absolutely troglodytic position against the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Even the old Dixiecrat racists wouldn't go that far in the 21st century.

www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul188.html

McCullagh almost certainly knows this, and *approves*. But he wouldn't dare mention it in a respectable article, because he's pushing Ron Paul.

To give you an idea of his reputation, McCullagh is the guy who fabricated the "Al Gore Invented The Internet" story - see http://sethf.com/gore/

Re: Blogging to a Higher Standard

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 03:29:29 -0000

Scott, the problem with this article is that in the bogosphere, one generally gets points for being popular and/or inflammatory, not for consideration and accuracy. So, while you can certainly write that we should be thoughtful, the structure of the system amplifies the demagogic.

The whole point about gatekeepers shows this. There's an extensive critique of blog evangelism, major aspects usually fairly well-known among the marginalized. But it's not echoed and marketed, so it has little impact. On the other hand, the near-scam of "No gatekeepers!!!" is repeated so often it's become a kind of mind-shutting chant to those who incant it.

Look at it this way - Suppose someone wrote, "In blogs, like elsewhere in the media, attention on a topic is dominated by a very few, exclusionary, crony-istic, individuals. If you want to be heard, you have to please them, or at least endure being kicked by them. You probably need to suck up to them to get even a small audience. Otherwise, you're going to be doing the equivalent of singing in the shower, and go on only if you get deep emotional satisfaction from the equivalent of singing in the shower.". That wouldn't be a good sales-pitch. It wouldn't get a venture capitalist interested in funding it, or an academic think-tank position about The New New Thing. But if one says "In blogs, it's a new era. It's unlike anything that has ever happened before. The Internets are paved with gold. You can get rich. You can get famous. All you have to do is believe this." - well, that's more popular, more profitable, more crowd-pleasing all around.

I suppose I should take my own advice, and stop here.

Re: Blogging to a Higher Standard

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 18:44:52 -0000

Scott, I think you'd be oversimplifying to reduce to "Sloppy analysis? Yeah, it's all those damn A-listers." - rather, the idea is the more nuanced "Popularity trumps accuracy". And I used the A-list *discussion* in part (besides my frustration :-)) because YOU used it, in the form of the reactions to your "Gatekeepers" point. So it indeed seems unfair then for you to imply that frustration is clouding our thinking on an issue (no offense taken).

The "discussion has turned to the issue of getting attention in the blogosphere", for the connection that attention is generally given to the popular and/or inflammatory, not for consideration and accuracy. There's always exceptions, but *overall*, that's the amplification structures. Appealing to people's intellectual pride doesn't change this. The result may just be that the people who take your advice then get out-competed by those who don't.

And, going back to the discussion of attention in order to address your point, I strongly agree with what Tish said "Status that an individual has outside of the blogosphere is far more helpful to a blogger than good writing. Why do you think you were linked by Stowe Boyd? I'd venture a guess that it has more to do with your status at Atlantic Media than it does with what you said.".

When you write about memeorandum "but somehow I doubt they have anything in their algorithm about professional affiliations", this misses that they do have aspects of their algorithm which reflect attention-patterns, which *in turn* reflect professional affiliations. And Memeorandum does not send a tremendous amount of traffic (I've tracked hits to my site when on the front page, it's around 30, I'll take them, but no big deal). I think you're mostly confusing cause and effect there. The links/traffic you get is *mostly* not because of memeorandum, but rather you're on memeorandum because of professional affiliations leading to the links/traffic you get (there is a meaningful difference).

Re: Blogging to a Higher Standard

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 22:36:53 -0000

Scott, are you saying that you got 330 unique visitors specifically with referer fields listing tech.memeorandum as the source? I'm kind of dubious it has that sort of effect. Are you sure you're not misreading something? I'd believe 330 visitors *total*, from *all* sources, but not memeorandum itself. Checking over the sequence of comments, there's a lot of mentions of Kedrosky. I'd have guessed that to be the prime source of traffic to you.

Regarding "writing interesting posts that hit on key issues has little to do with it." - well, it's actually that interesting posts are a factor that is far from dominant. This is proved by how much attention an A-lister can get by writing the sort of standard name-dropping conference-attending post. I mean, those are interesting posts in an Entertainment Tonight way, but I don't think it's what you had in mind. On the other hand, a Z-lister can write his or her heart out, and if it's not pitched to the right gatekeepers, in essence, NOBODY WILL READ IT. The important point here is that this is mathematically true. Given the exponential nature of the power-law distribution, there are very few high attention slots available for all the material competing for them. In sum, "interesting" is just one factor among many. It's very clear from your site that you're a media person. Why deny that you bring your social network with you?

Now, to try to connect this all back to the main topic, does "interesting" mean "appealing", or "accurate"? Of course in an ideal world everything would be both. But in a contest between "appealing but inaccurate" versus "accurate but unappealing", which is likely to garner the lion's share of attention? Again, this is a *structural* issue.

Re: Blogging to a Higher Standard

Seth Finkelstein — Tue, 24 Jan 2006 10:43:24 -0000

Scott, I understood what you meant about the main listing. I had such a listing myself recently (frankly surprising, given that I'd simply tossed up the post to get some use out of some other writing):

http://tech.memeorandum.com/060121/p15#a060121p15

34 unique visitors from tech.memeorandum. I'll take them, but hardly impressive.
In my experience, it's not a huge traffic driver, so yes, I've wondered if there's an error somewhere. People make mistakes in reading reports, or statistics programs get fooled by blog-spammers or buggy aggregators, etc.

Regarding being a media person, for one simple example, you have "Romenesko" on your blogroll, that's almost a secret handshake in itself :-). From the description line "The Business of Publishing in the Digital Age", the topics, the tags, the sites on the blogroll, it's immediately apparent you're a professional media person on the business end of that industry - before reading anything much in the posts themselves, or even your name.
This isn't a magic trick. It should be regarded as obvious.

How can the bogosphere be seriously said to self-correct when the top blogs are often the most incorrect? (or at least the most partisan - it doesn't matter which side of a partisan divide you're on, as a rule, they can't both be correct!)

I've thought a lot about how one might make a system work, and sadly, the result has pretty much been that I don't know. That is, it's very clear why the system doesn't work - at the core, it's popularity over accuracy. To me, it's like asking "How do you get rich?" I don't know. However, I do know that e.g. playing the lottery essentially won't work. But when I say that, the promoters often reply "But the barriers to entry for buying a lottery ticket are very low. And every ticket can win. And look at that guy, he won, it's *possible*. All you need is a dollar and a dream, err, a blog and an RSS feed". Any analysis that can't handle simple mathematics - that the lottery has around a negative 50% expected return, or the exponential distribution and echoing structure of the bogosphere - is meaningless.

Re: A Challenge to Citizen Journalism

Seth Finkelstein — Sat, 04 Feb 2006 09:09:03 -0000

I'm late to the party, but readers might enjoy:

"Citizen Media" Skeptical Questions
"What's so superultrafantastic about being an unpaid freelancer?"

Re: Google Orwellian

Seth Finkelstein — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 00:57:33 -0000

Scott, do you stay awake at night worrying that the US government is going to send you to Guantanamo bay for your website? That's roughly what you're doing here. What Google did was:

1) A *good* use of power!

2) More an action to which they were pushed by embarrassment than any kind of Stalinist purge.

The overheated rhetoric makes talking about Google's power *harder*, because defense against spammers is so important.

Re: How Powerful Does Google Want to Be?

Seth Finkelstein — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 15:15:06 -0000

Scott, if you want to discuss Google's power in general, more power to you.

If you go off ranting about Orwell-1984-Animal-Farm-Gitmo-judge-jury-executioner-THEY'RE COMING TO GET US!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ... because Google slapped a search-spammer, well ... I guess this is why you don't have a hard time getting attention and links 1/2 :-).

Re: How Powerful Does Google Want to Be?

Seth Finkelstein — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 15:20:38 -0000

[I should clarify that the buzzword-soup was my parody of the sensibility, not all of them appear in your article.]

Re: Is the Long Tail a Lit Fuse?

Seth Finkelstein — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 16:22:12 -0000

"It would be interesting to see stats on blogs that post daily vs. blogs that post at least weekly vs. blogs that appear to be abandonned."

Exactly. If there's no culling of the numbers, if every demo from the past five years is included as A BLOGGG!!!, then the curve is highly misleading. It might just as well be measuring the hype and marketing, and hence feeding on itself.

Not the mention the confusion between people who are doing online personal diary (lots), and those who are trying for a substantial audience (much fewer).

Re: Blogging and the Elusive Mass Audience

Seth Finkelstein — Sun, 12 Feb 2006 17:07:49 -0000

I tend to believe Sifry's stats are highly misleading. As far as I know, though they eliminate splog, they count every demo, every one-day wonder, every long-abandoned toe-dip, as part of the "cumulative" number. That number will then almost never decrease, and increase very rapidly with hype and marketing.

Re: Rebooting My Brain

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 17:28:20 -0000

Step 1? That's

"We admitted we were powerless over [the A-list?] - that our lives had become unmanageable."

"The fact is that most [bloggers], for reasons yet obscure, have lost the power of choice in [l]ink. Our so-called willpower becomes practically non-existent. We are unable, at certain times, to bring into our consciousness with sufficient force the memory of the suffering and humiliation of even a week or a month ago. We are without defense against the first [l]ink."

I'm not sure that's what you intended, but it does seem apropos.
(no offense meant to anyone who really participates in these programs)

Re: Battle of the Media Brands

Seth Finkelstein — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 15:14:23 -0000

Newspaper credibility is built by following the political consensus of power. Blog credibility is built by telling readers what they want to hear. However, demagoguery is not an improvement over interest-group triagulation.

Re: Battle of the Media Brands

Seth Finkelstein — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 19:46:20 -0000

I prefer to think of it as a first-order approximation. A few sentences will hardly capture the entire complexity of an issue. But they may sum up the basic condition.

I'm restating the issues in a blunt manner - in fact, people often make the same analysis I do except to give it a positive tone. E.g. instead of "demagogery", the polite word is "democracy" (the tip-off is that the sense is "appealing to a mass audience").

Look at this:

"Okrent said, he was astonished how many times he heard people declare as accepted fact things they had read on a political blog."
[== that blog told them what they want to hear, that's why they believed it]

"Now, wait a second. Why did the majority of Americans believe Bush administration propaganda in the run-up to Iraq? Not because they read it in a blog."
[No, because the Bush adminstration told them a scary story, but this doesn't refute the earlier point]

"Which raises the larger question of what makes a media brand credible. Why is it Ã¢â‚¬Å“easierÃ¢â‚¬Â to determine the credibility of a story in the New York Times Ã¢â‚¬â€ just because theyÃ¢â‚¬â„¢re Ã¢â‚¬Å“The TimesÃ¢â‚¬Â?
[YES - 'The Times' means "this is conventional wisdom" (NOT the same as "This is accurate" - notably divergent in the case of Iraq war run-up]

"That may have been true in the past, but that assumed advantage is quickly disappearing."
[Okrent is saying they have to keep that advantage]

Of course, there's nuances e.g. that "conventional wisdom" isn't a monolith - but it is a useful concept when contrasted to, say, partisan hackery.

Re: In Media, Only Ideas Matter

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 22:42:19 -0000

Scott, I've got to hand it to you, this is absolutely *brilliant*, in a twisted way.

That is, restated: The value of blogging is that it's provided for a new pundit A-list, which is obviously the avante-guard of talent and ideas which matter [stroke, stroke, stroke]. The B-list value is in echoing the A-list [stroke]. The Z-list also serves, by validating the importance of everyone above them, but nobody who matters should feel guilty about not listening to them [stroke *and* kick at once!].

Impressive. This *will* get links. But not for the reasons you think, maybe (or want to admit ...).

Re: Bloggers Drink the PR Koolaid

Seth Finkelstein — Sun, 19 Feb 2006 21:07:21 -0000

Tell me again how "So what does matter? Ã¢â‚¬â€ talent, insight, and, most of all, ideas." :-(.

I know, I know, there's always a reply that if you wish really, really hard, it'll come true (and if it didn't come true, it must be all your fault for not wishing hard enough). However, from the perspective of seeing these Kool Kids parties, it sure seems like connections, insiderness, who-you-know, matters a lot more than is comfortable for the evangelism.

Re: Bloggers Drink the PR Koolaid

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 11:48:31 -0000

Recently I've benefitted from, well, I can't call it a "wave", more like a little splash, of backlash against blog hype. But I regard this as some of the most trivial things I say, though I recognize it channels some widespread frustration with the cliquishness.

However, the deep point is that just like the exponential nature of attention rebuts meritocracy (unless merit just happens to follow that distribution), the huge coverage of a party which has as its only distinguishing characteristic that a bunch of A-lister's groomed the lice out of each other's fur, shows that social factors can be enormously relevant in terms of what gets heard.

I mean, in most situations, there's a mixture of social and merit factors. So someone can always say that what succeeds is due to merit and not social factors, while what has failed on the social factors can be dismissed as not having merit. But that just doesn't fly with group hugs. That's why it's notable.

And the issue is not whether we'd be having this conversation. It is whether this conversation is better or worse than some other conversation we might be having in a non-blogging world (benefit vs. opportunity cost). Strictly as an objective matter, the answer is by no means obvious.

Re: Technorati Favorites Is a Glorified OPML File

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 00:49:05 -0000

did we really need one more popularity contest? - no, but *Technorati* did! :-)

Re: Audiences Are NOT Created Equal

Seth Finkelstein — Sun, 26 Feb 2006 11:19:44 -0000

I think this phrase captures the conflict: "... to find what you WANT or what you NEED"?

Finding what's *popular* is easier and more profitable than what's "important". In order to find the popular, you just poll either the crowd, or the demagogues (people who are experts - at what's popular). That's very simple (relatively speaking).

But how do you find what's important, what you *need*? What do you code for? The first cut is to poll a niche rather than a general audience. But problems there are that there might not be enough of a sample, and the economics are even less supportable.

These questions don't often get discussed extensively because the hype-machine runs on populism and demogoguery, so that's what gets amplified and echoed. But also, there's more to discuss, and moreover, a service which acts to find the popular is, recursively, a popular topic for coverage.

Nobody really knows how to do more.

Re: Who Has Time for Web 2.0?

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 17:36:39 -0000

Regarding: "for all but a small group of dedicated users (e.g. bloggers) there is not a clear return on investment for the time and effort it takes to actively Ã¢â‚¬â€ and consistently Ã¢â‚¬â€ participate in media."

And mostly, not even them! (e.g. bloggers). The non-diary/chat blog is too often fueled by hope and dreams, or less politely, being taken by hype and marketing.

However, almost all the "Web 2.0" folks are not really about empowering the edge, that's just posturing to be, err, "edgy". They're more concerned with selling themselves to the top, which is what they do.

Re: What You NEED vs. What You WANT

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 17:47:18 -0000

Thanks for the kind words. The problem though, is that helping the niche audience, while a viable niche business, often doesn't have the market to justify speculative development. I've seen a few of these types of businesses. And while they do work, they're very small and specialized. It's often someone at a firm already in the business, branching-out. And not at all portable to any other business.

Re: Do We Need Professionalism In Media?

Seth Finkelstein — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 10:21:08 -0000

Been done!

http://wiki-law.org/mwiki/index.php?title=Main_...

Wikilaw's goal is to build the largest open-content legal resource in the world. To accomplish this goal, Wikilaw needs your help! We encourage all law professors, practitioners, and students to share their knowledge.

Currently, there are roughly 1,000,000 lawyers in the United States. If every lawyer in America contributed a fraction of their legal knowledge to this site, Wikilaw would become one of the largest libraries of legal information in the world.

However, unlike other libraries, there are no geographic or financial barriers to accessing this information. Everything on this site is free!

Also:

DEMOCRACY 2.0
Democracy 2.0 is a Wikilaw experiment that hypothesizes that a wide range of individuals, not just politicians and special interest groups, can contribute to the creation of the United State's laws.

All laws listed in this section are the collaborative effort of the Democracy 2.0 community. The site aggregates the viewpoints of all users, after a large number of edits, to reach a consensus on what laws society should impose on us.

Democracy 2.0 hopes to answer the following question: if the country started from scratch today, meaning there are no laws, what laws would you make for society?

We hypothesize that collaboration through a wiki will filter social norms, transform these social norms into legislation, which in turn will produce superior laws to govern society.

[Disclaimer - these are NOT my personal positions, these are quotes from the above page!]

Re: You Know You’re a Geek If You…

Seth Finkelstein — Wed, 01 Mar 2006 19:01:21 -0000

Nerd Pride!

"(body) Nerd pride - The Nerd Pride movement, modeled on the Gay Pride movement, was started at MIT by Professors Gerald Sussman and Hal Abelson. Nerd pride paraphernalia includes baseball hats, buttons and - of course - pocket protectors.

"My idea is to present an image to children that it is good to be intellectual, and not to care about the peer pressures to be anti-intellectual. I want every child to turn into a nerd - where that means someone who prefers studying and learning to competing for social dominance".

-- Gerald Sussman, quoted by Katie Hafner, "New York Times", 1994-08-29."

Re: Conversation is NOT Enough

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 06 Mar 2006 13:32:40 -0000

I keep saying, "conversation" is an *extremely* misleading metaphor. It implies an intimacy and equality that just isn't present, in mutual pontification. It's used to market punditry. When critically examined, it just doesn't work. You can't "converse" with a huge number of people, except in the most strained and meaningless sense of the word.

Re: Conversation is NOT Enough

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 06 Mar 2006 14:22:53 -0000

What's wrong with the English words which have served us up until now? There's no big push to say "Writing a letter to the editor of a newspaper is a conversation" (occasionally that might be heard, but it would be recognized as particularly high-flown and flowery). It's hardly a "conversation" when a favored few have big megaphones, and everyone else is squeaking down at the bottom. Bluntly, what people often mean, if they mean anything, is something more akin to "data-mining".

But to point out a simple example, the sentence:

"The best bloggers will actually write a new post to sum up or reflect on the conversation from a previous post."

Really means, in less marketing-affected standard English:

"The best bloggers will actually write a new post to sum up or reflect on the reactions to a previous post."

See? Why use the misleading marketing word? (well, obviously, that's a rhetorical question :-().

Re: It’s All About the FILTER

Seth Finkelstein — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 01:52:11 -0000

It's *possible* that both you and Umar are misunderstanding Seth Godin. Though it's hard to say, since I think Godin may be not have expressed his point well. That is, it's not clear if Godin meant one thing but didn't express it well, or if I'm misreading him.

He *may* have meant, bluntly: There's a lot of writers out there competing for a finite pool of attention. Overall, the winner for that attention, in general, won't be *you*. Don't even bother trying, it's futile. The very best you can hope to do, in general, is to be prominent in a niche. That's a better idea than wasting your time chasing after the same punditry that others (likely far better positioned that you) are chasing.

The problem is, as a marking person, he is constrained from saying this so directly :-).

Re: It’s All About the FILTER

Seth Finkelstein — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 09:14:36 -0000

Now, now, Scott. Just like it's said there are only a handful of basic plots in literature, blogging-about-blogging has only a very few things which are said about it (e.g. 1) It's great for the winners 2) It's not so great for everyone else 3) WE NEED BETTER TOOLS! (see this post!), etc. - note this list is illustrative, not exhaustive).

I think some repetition comes from the people saying plot-1 not taking into account the people saying plot-2, and the chorus of plot-3 responses.

Umar saying "The whole point is that attention is no longer a commons;", (whatever in the world that means) is missing that attention is, to a good approximation, a finite resource, which is what I think Godin is using as part of his argument. Umar is going astray with one connotation of the word "commons", in part because I believe Godin isn't expressing his presumed point well. And I see this easily because I'm particularly concerned with the difficulties of the distribution of that limited resource, hence I think that's valid here.

Re: MySpace Is a Ticking Time Bomb

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 17:54:44 -0000

Ehhh ... about a decade ago, I recall The Horrors Of AOL. There were perverts in the chat rooms ... just look at this list of depraved topics ... OH MY GOD SOMETHING MUST BE DONE!!!

But, in the end, AOL did fine.

I think we're seeing deja-vue all over again.

Re: MySpace Is a Ticking Time Bomb

Seth Finkelstein — Sat, 18 Mar 2006 08:47:18 -0000

Scott, MySpace is words and pictures on a screen. It is not a neighborhood, it is not a district, it is not a physical place. Those are just metaphors. This puts a very strict limit on how dangerous it can in truth be. Yes, sex predator stories sell magazines, but that's fear-mongering.

Again, we've *been* through this, every time, it's the same story.

Re: Web 2.0 vs. Privacy

Seth Finkelstein — Sun, 19 Mar 2006 23:12:20 -0000

Ah, but Web 2.0 is not about sharing - it's about data-mining of consumers, and finding the popular. Sharing is just one way of inducing consumers to provide material for that data-mining.

Re: Web 2.0 vs. Privacy

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 09:32:11 -0000

Karl, it's all in how we're allowed to think of this issue. Is it Big Brother, tracking and spying on us, compiling permanent dossiers in some electronic government file? Is it The Corporate Man, wanting to have a demographic profile to better to advertise and sell to you? Is it the Patent-Medicine Marketer, exploiting your hopes and dreams and pain to push a worthless product that's supposedly good for whatever ails you? Some of these are far more socially acceptable ways of thinking, which is not the same as being accurate.

My view is it's mostly hucksters wanting to sell to you for themselves and corporations, because that's where the money is. And that is exactly the sort of discussion which won't get far, since that's basically the media A-list (not all, but a large part of it), so they aren't interested in that discussion, except sometimes to kick it. It'll be marginalized, not echo and amplified.

Re: Web 2.0 vs. Privacy

Seth Finkelstein — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 13:34:31 -0000

Karl, people who are in the business of professional writing, broadly, can potentially benefit from writing a blog, in terms of it being an advertisement and publicity brochure. This is often overstated, but to be sure, there's a kernel of truth in it. Elsewhere, diary-writers are socializing with their friends, and really don't have much in common with pundits.

The hucksterism comes in way, way, overselling the value of punditry to the vast majority of people who basically won't benefit from it, and extolling the wonders of socializing when it's really about the sellers making a buck off the consumers.

Moreover, if everyone's writing a free publicity brochure, the marginal benefit to each person diminishes, and the main winners are then the providers of publicity brochure services (venture capital is not investing in blog companies because of some hot air about blatherocracy - they see a new business in selling more shoe-leather to people who now have to run faster just to keep up).

Re: Corporate Blogging Reality Check

Seth Finkelstein — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 19:15:00 -0000

I think it's a risk/reward mismatch. The blog evangelist has no incentive to discuss any of the negatives. It's all happy, upbeat talk, of authenticity and being with-it and cool and hip. If a disaster happens - the evangelist is gone, they've already hyped that company X is ON THE CLUETRAIN, got their attention, and they've moved to peddling the snake-oil to the next sucker, err, "voice in the conversation".

Moreover, like financial firms which don't like to discuss security failures, there's a disincentive to discuss blog failures. A company president is very unlikely to say openly, something along the lines of "Yeah, we tried having a blog, but all that happened is some guys got into flamewars, and a lot of dumb customers took the comment section as technical support and were unhappy that nobody answered their question immediately - it was a complete waste of time". And if they said that, they'd be told they didn't "get it", and they needed MORE services of blog evangelism to "build community". So there's a process of burying mistakes.

There's too much venture capital money around, and secondarily people chasing to sell to the goldrushers, for honest analysis.

Re: Blogging For Blogging’s Sake or The Tyranny of the Term

Seth Finkelstein — Sun, 09 Apr 2006 20:31:20 -0000

For "User-generated content", I'm partial to the term "Unpaid freelancers". The latter seems to capture what many people really mean when they say the former.

Re: Technorati Top 100 Is Changing Radically

Seth Finkelstein — Sat, 22 Apr 2006 09:47:56 -0000

Britney Spears, or her Japanese equivalent, will always beat out Dave Winer among the general population. So from one point of view, there is a real indication as to when one is measuring the general population. On the other hand, when that point is reached, it should also be recognized that the meaning of the comparison has changed, and more localization needs to be considered.

You probably don't even know who the most popular movie star is in India. But they might outrank the most popular movie star in the US in terms of fan devotion. But remember, you're still not going to ever be a movie star yourself.

Re: Appearances and the Law in the Lance Dutson Lawsuit

Seth Finkelstein — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 11:34:01 -0000

I have a post which discusses the libel charge of the lawsuit regarding the Google aspect:
Warren Kremer Paino v. Lance Dutson, and Google keyword matching

Re: MySpace Still Ticking

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 04 May 2006 20:16:21 -0000

Set the WayBack machine for ten years ago, and you'd see similar articles about AOL. Here's a good one:

1995:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1995/09/21/DD22231.DTL

"AOL wants to have its cake and eat it, too. It wants a family system that appeals to kids. It also wants to keep making money off the hot- chat crowd. And it's terrified that the Microsoft Network is going to eat its lunch, so it's selling harder than ever.

Unfortunately, in the process it's built a system that makes it easy for predators to operate, and has then turned around and aggressively marketed it to prey. AOL had better figure something out. As it stands, this is not going to end well for it. "

Re: What If No One Will Pay For Content?

Seth Finkelstein — Sun, 07 May 2006 17:33:42 -0000

The solution is obvious. Not oh-me-oh-my-wring-hands-my-god-what-is-to-become-of-it-all. But rather, business models will adapt, and are already adapting.

Rather than 30-second ads, there will be more product placements.

Licensing may be more prominent.

Direct-DVD markets may become more important.

None of this has anything to do with unpaid freelancers, I mean vanity press, umm, user-exploitable content ...

Re: What If No One Will Pay For Content?

Seth Finkelstein — Sun, 07 May 2006 23:03:28 -0000

It's always easy to predict the end of the world. It shakes up the rubes.

But, very simple answer: Who said that if ads aren't in 30 second separate spots, they can no longer exist? What's a product-placement but an integrated ad? Think of NASCAR, where the cars and the drivers are billboards. Maybe there will be sponsorship deals - buy a mega-placement for episode X, and episode X revolves around the product. Comparative placement - not only does the hero use X, but the villian uses Y! And that's just me musing.

Frankly, this sentence "If the digital generation is content to entertain themselves with amateur (i.e. user-generated) video on YouTube ..." strikes me as silly link-baiting. Home movies didn't kill Hollywood, even if families found making their own videos of their kids and their vacations to be fun.

Re: The Solipsism of Web 2.0

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 12 May 2006 22:29:09 -0000

The bubble business model seems, crucially, to be based on selling hopes and dreams to the frustrated, rather than providing real value to real people. So from that perspective, hyping to a small cult is far more profitable than trying to actually build a company which delivers a service useful to the average person.

Re: Blogging and Journalism at Mesh

Seth Finkelstein — Sat, 13 May 2006 17:58:41 -0000

The problem is that the hoary "Bloggers v. Journalists" is often a code-word for different issues about the process of journalism, for example:

1) Those who want to destroy the professionalized nonpartisan system which has evolved, and replace it with a party-propaganda system.

2) Those who find talk-radio style ranting a lot more profitable than hard news, and want to make it more respectable.

3) Those who want to stop paying employees, and replace them with temps (One of my standard questions is what's so superultrafantastic about being an unpaid freelancer? Why is that supposed to be such a wonderful thing, and isn't it revealing who thinks so?)

These are, however, very inflammatory points to deal with directly, so the discussion often takes places in a kind of indirect way.

Re: Blogging and Journalism at Mesh

Seth Finkelstein — Sat, 13 May 2006 23:21:32 -0000

Scott, you're misreading what I'm saying there. I know "nobody has ever gotten rich being a journalist" - but there are people who do have jobs (low-paying ones, to be sure) as a journalist. One aspect of the bloggers vs. journalists debate is an assertion that even those low-paying jobs are going to be eliminated, outsourced to freelancers who will be paid in the privilege of having their material accepted (or maybe Google ad revenue peanuts). Some people are extremely enthusiastic about the prospects for doing this, which really should receive more of a jaundiced eye.

I know journalism wasn't always professionalized - my point is that some of the issue is forces which want to destroy the professionalized system, which hold that system is bad, and a party-propaganda system is good. And I wish this, too, was more openly examined (though I'm not claiming it's unknown, just saying I think it needs to be much more directly discussed).

I've read plenty of Jay Rosen. I used to participate in his blog's comment section. I stopped after I felt it wasn't worth it for me, when in my view he was lying down with the dogs too much, and I didn't want to be prey. I found it amusing when I checked back, and saw him writing a comment I'll paraphrase as "The *fleas*, the *fleas*. Get 'em off me, they itch like crazy, oh my God, the FLEAS". But what's a few flea infestations compared to the spoils of the hunt?

Re: Blogging and Journalism at Mesh

Seth Finkelstein — Sun, 14 May 2006 09:45:19 -0000

Jay, there's no point in my detailing what I think are your views. You're not going to do anything differently, while I can't gain, but can lose. It's armchair psychologizing anyway.

I think debunking is a sober perspective.

But actually, the comments I've made above are not solely about debunking, and more at trying to think about the issue in terms of certain laying out of constraints and the various models being advocated within those constraints. It's in fact an answer to "what role should bloggers/standalone journalists play alongside journalistic institutions". But rather than vamp with buzzwords, at length, I note some major roles being advocated (unpaid freelancer, political hack, talk-radio host), which is simply describing the reality of the situation. Albeit untriumphally (for example, "unpaid freelancer" is politely termed "citizen journalist").

My core suggestion to make the panels more productive is to stop shadow-boxing and euphemizing these conflicts, and address them head-on.

Re: Blogging and Journalism at Mesh

Seth Finkelstein — Sun, 14 May 2006 23:10:42 -0000

Sigh ... just for the record:

"You have no idea what my views are, Seth."

I specifically said, "It's armchair psychologizing anyway". I could be right, I could be wrong. It's an old philosophical problem.

"You know what you want to debunk. You need triumphalists to do that. I never was that, but you needed another one, so for a while I became one to you. That's your game."

You're pummeling a straw-man. That's your game. You don't engage the debunker critique on a substantive level, but make a caricature, go on and on about how the caricature you've made up is necessary for the crazy beliefs of the debunkers, and emerge in, err, triumph.

I will demonstrate:

"Then you talk about how "risky" it is to challenge the triumphalists and A-listers, and how much you will "lose" if you do, blah, blah, blah. On and on and on."

Key: Personal attacks do not refute mathematics

This is a simple fact: You reach a huge number of readers, much greater than me. It's got to be at least ten times, likely more. This is basic, simple, mathematics. It is an undeniable, elemental, baby-simple, objective statement.

Thus, if I write something critical about you, and you retaliate by writing something critical about me, far more people hear what you say about me than what I say about you. Moreover, many of the people reading you are vastly more influential than the people reading me. So the differential of the echoing is likely even more lopsided. Note this is all true without any reference as to whether you or I am correct.
Given this huge power imbalance, IT'S NOT WORTH IT!
(but note it's not all about your blog as much as the bad company)
The only reason would be something like if I wanted to be infamous from being a critic of you. But I have no particular desire to do that. I've made a few critical statements about some things you've done, because they bothered me a lot, but that's trivial, and it's down in the noise.

You do not engage the mathematics with anything but personal attack. That's the difference between what I write, and what you write, on this topic.

"Scott was simply observing that there's a sober perspective in my essay from January 05, Bloggers vs. Journalists is Over. It's not triumphalist. But this doesn't fit your narrative. You're the sober one, you're the debunker, taking risks and getting in trouble with the people who have bigger mikes."

And here's the caricature at work. I was replying to the part of Scott's statement about "Read Jay Rosen". The basic point is that I'd read a lot of Jay Rosen, and even commented on PressThink for a time. And then I told a story about why I no longer do so (you have no idea how long I've wanted to use that "fleas" line somewhere! - note, because I think it's a *funny* way of describing something sad).
That part wasn't related to blog triumphalism. It was just an anecdote that was meant to stress that I was indeed familiar with what you'd written.

I understand how you got the idea about blog triumphalism. You thought I was replying to the "sober perspective" part. But that story's not about blog triumphalism. I suppose it's in part about perspective too, but that's a somewhat different topic.

But I am taking risks and getting in trouble with the people who have bigger mikes. That's again, objectively true.

Re: “Mediocrity Is Finished”

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 18 May 2006 15:06:04 -0000

I think there's a way to read what he's saying consistently:

1) There is a market selling vanity press to frustrated would-be writers who inflict their rantings on their friends and family.

2) But nobody outside their friends and family wants to read that junk, so marketed entertainment is going to be high-quality professional productions.

It's like someone saying "Home videos are a great market for camera and film companies, but theaters will still be showing Hollywood productions". And you say "Well, which is it? Home movies, or Hollywood productions? They're both content! Is the future of content Ã¢â‚¬Å“professionalÃ¢â‚¬Â (Hollywood) or Ã¢â‚¬Å“user-generatedÃ¢â‚¬Â (home videos)?

It's different business models serving different needs. People watch both home videos and Hollywood movies, for different reasons.

Re: Is Google Hiding Fraud?

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 22 May 2006 15:40:01 -0000

That article mixes-up several different types of secrecy. There's "trade secret" algorithm proprietary information, versus financial matters.

Re: The Long Tail of Revenue 2.0

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 29 May 2006 12:40:42 -0000

"that strategy will work for a lucky few, and the rest of the tail will toil on in service to the headÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s profits "

Yup. And that's one big reason for blog evangelism - the favored few need a large crowd chasing dreams.

Re: MySpace is YOUR Space, Not THEIR Space

Seth Finkelstein — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 03:35:32 -0000

Yeah, but I'd guess the New York Times traffic is worth more in the abstract. It's probably one of the few times where the "numbers aren't everything" chestnut isn't patronizing.

Re: Hey Seth, Comment THIS!

Seth Finkelstein — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 03:37:39 -0000

No, no:

#57 - Know when not to drink the Kool-Aid.

Re: Book Publishing 2.0: Books As Continuously Updated Idea Platforms

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 16:10:35 -0000

Because that's the Web-infinity-plus-one bloggy emergent hypermetasemantic way!

Seriously - once you admit there's some value in authority, it pokes a hole in the evangelism. It means there's something, somewhere, which might not be better, where the marketers and promoters will make things *worse*. That's a big problem for the demagoguery (also the reverse, if the authorities ever admit a use for data-mining).

Re: Book Publishing 2.0: Books As Continuously Updated Idea Platforms

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 17:31:18 -0000

But Scott, here we're talking about people who are like the Party primary voters - they don't want moderation, they want partisanship and ideological purity :-).

Re: Book Publishing 2.0: Books As Continuously Updated Idea Platforms

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 20:47:39 -0000

Ron, have the courage of your convictions! To quote Stephen Colbert:

Well, anybody who knows me knows that I'm no fan of dictionaries or reference books. They're elitist. Constantly telling us what is or isn't true, or what did or didn't happen. Who's Britannica to tell me the Panama Canal was finished in 1914? If I wanna say it happened in 1941, that's my right. I don't trust books. They're all fact, no heart.

Web infinity-plus-one is made of people! Not lectures via dead trees!

[Note though this is tongue-in-cheek, there's a serious undercurrent in it]

Re: The Ideological Polarization of 2.0

Seth Finkelstein — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 21:36:13 -0000

"Debate is constructive. Ideological extremism is not."

Debate isn't profitable. Ideological extremism is.

Re: Digg vs. The New York Times

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 12:12:52 -0000

"fund the reporting from Congo" is so 1.0.
You've got to get it in this 2.0 world - It's about what's POPULAR!!!
What's your opinion? You, yes, you! Click on the ads, consume. That's what pays.

[This is sarcasm, in case it wasn't obvious]

Re: Digg vs. The New York Times

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 13:32:16 -0000

Karl, small correction - I'd say the net re-intermediates bundlers. Digg is a bundler, an intermediary, a middleman. Except it's not interested in reporting, it's interested in repackaging (this is another way of expressing Scott's point about being a "leech").

It's as if someone could make a "remixed" newspaper, but with just the comics, horoscopes, opinions, letter-columns, and of course the ads.

Re: Jellyfish’s Liquid E-Commerce Market

Seth Finkelstein — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 02:11:41 -0000

"... on the path to creating a truly liquid market where all of the following elements can dynamically interact to increase efficiency and consumer value ..."

My eyes glaze over.

Does it leverage the synergies?

Re: PayPerPost Will Taint Us All

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 17:49:18 -0000

It won't matter to the chatters, because most such people's blogs aren't worth anything :-)

The BigHeads always had this issue.

Call it "the democratization of payola" :-)

But I think it's not a huge deal - what you're missing is that payola follows power, and if you don't have much power in the first place, you don't have to worry about being mistakenly accused of payola - while if you do, it's just a "cost of doing business".

That is, sure, the "slope" of the curve has changed a tiny bit, but the basic shape of the curve remains the same.

Google's AdSense was a far, far, bigger *social* effect.

Re: What Does Google Want to Be?

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 12:56:28 -0000

Now, now. Being GOD is a long way off. We need to get to Asimov-style robot positronic brains first, for example.

Re: Dell’s Corporate Blogging and the Problem of Risk Management

Seth Finkelstein — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 17:51:14 -0000

"Conversation" is in too many cases a euphemism for "Pontification".

Re: Making Sense of the 2.0 Ideological Polemic

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 17:35:21 -0000

Unfortunately, that actually sidesteps the core of the issue: How much can a company cut corners before that process shifts from a profitable strategy to an unprofitable strategy?

Repeating, loudly, and then repeating, LOUDLY, that there's a point of diminishing returns, and we're now at the point, does not in fact make it true.

Re: Lawyers, Priests, and AOL’s Data Release

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 18:57:14 -0000

"homicidal and suicidal intentions" is overkill. But there's definitely sensitive information such as credit card numbers and social security numbers and usernames/passwords in that data.

I do hope this is another wake-up call as to what is happening.

Re: Lawyers, Priests, and AOL’s Data Release

Seth Finkelstein — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 05:03:40 -0000

My first thought would be that someone was looking for information about the crime case where part of the evidence against the defendant was Google searches he did. It was a fairly well-publicized case, so I'd think it more likely someone was trying to find it, than that he was planning a murder of his own. It strikes me as extremely alarmist to be infering someone wants to commit murder from a search about murder. There's plenty of mystery and true-crime fans, while murderers are rather rare. The rest of the search trail indicates the user was probably doing some sort of mystery/crime search (e.g. "pictures of dead people", NOT poisons/weapons).

Re: Blogging Is the New Novel/Screenplay Writing

Seth Finkelstein — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 15:03:48 -0000

Rex: You're making a classic straw-man attack. One of the ways discussion is deflected from the immense inequality of power, is to accuse the person pointing out the inequality of somehow being against those on the bottom ("belittle and ridicule those who do things for motivations other than his"). I've seen this tactic over and over in the A-list discussion - if someone points out that the supposed "conversation" is actually a top-down pontification gatekeepered by a very few BigHeads, a response will be "How dare you devalue those people who are writing for their friends and family, who do't care about ever being heard by anyone else". It's a demagogic diversionary tactic.

Re: Blogging Is the New Novel/Screenplay Writing

Seth Finkelstein — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 16:53:27 -0000

Brian, there is no absolute way to disprove your statement, just as there is no absolute way to disprove that most of the wealthy and powerful are white males because gosh darn it, it just so happens that "the natural distribution of talent" favors white males. It's the same argument, and I'm not going to win it. All I can do here is point out that it is the argument.

Re: Blogging Is the New Novel/Screenplay Writing

Seth Finkelstein — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 21:52:25 -0000

Brian, very, very simple:

Fact: Most of the wealthy are white and male.

True? False? I believe this is not worth disputing.

If merit is the sole factor for wealth, then it follows that non-white-males must not be as meritorious. Some people do indeed believe this, to very elaborate lengths. I even understand the reasoning. But this comment-box is too small to hold all the refutations.

Repeating that it's a perfect world, no matter how many times you do it, is no escape from the logical problem here.

Re: Blogging Is the New Novel/Screenplay Writing

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 15:34:52 -0000

Brian, this is the strawman: "hard working and talented people are justly rewarded when you imply they have gained their wealth/influence solely based on their ethnicity or gender"

The argument is this: Ethnicity and gender is A FACTOR, because of networking effects. *A FACTOR*. So, statistically, one can see this factor at work in the way the wealthy and powerful are overwhelming white males.

What didn't this say? It didn't say "hard work" was meaningless. It did say that you can work very hard, and not succeed based on another barrier, race, sex, etc.

This is a very objectional idea to some people, because it implies many disturbing consequences, most notably that some sort of social awareness is important. So they repeat, endlessly, that isn't so. But endlessly repeating something doesn't make it true.

Re: Are “Users” Who “Generate Content” Receiving Equal Pay for Equal Work?

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 08:48:42 -0000

As I've said, when you see a phrase like "citizen journalist", replace it with "unpaid freelancer". For "user-generated content", try "suckers working for free".

Of course many of the Big Heads love the concept, and present it as the greatest thing since the lotteries were invented. They're the ones getting paid (or at least hoping to get paid).

Re: Are “Users” Who “Generate Content” Receiving Equal Pay for Equal Work?

Seth Finkelstein — Sun, 17 Sep 2006 07:22:40 -0000

Michal, would dispute your objection strongly. The very essence of being a sucker is falling prey to emotional manipulation against economic interest. That's why I used that word. It is actually a fairly objective assessment. To deny it because the emotional appeal results in them making the choice, is to beg the question (i.e. "You're being manipulated" "If manipulation works, how can you criticize it" - because that's the aspect being criticized by definition).

The argument substitutes a conjecture benefit for cold cash. The fact that is usually overall considered a bad trade is shown by how much work has to be done to try to divert people from looking at the core of the argument, by insisting one not consider whether the contest is being used in a way which drives down the returns for the submitters versus the benefits of those wanting to use a contest rather than simply hiring someone.

Indeed, the basic principles are not new. They're very old. So I've been harsh in description to try to draw attention to that historical pattern.

Re: Edelman, Wal-Mart and the Loss of Control in Media

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 01:11:47 -0000

Regarding: "The problem is itâ€™s not. And because blogging is not a control-based medium, Edelman couldnâ€™t make Wal-Mart appear to be something itâ€™s not. It rang false, and they got caught."

Umm, they sent out a PRESS RELEASE. How much more this-is-fake can you get? It's got nothing to do with "control-based medium", which is a backhanded way of setting up an unfalsifiable argument (anyone who gets caught, proves that bloggers are just so gosh darn smart and clever they'll catch fakers - but the uncaught fakers don't get noticed!).

In fact, the real story is they followed the Kool-Aid recommendation for blog success, and failed miserably, because blogging is in fact a highly gatekeepered medium, and they had no gatekeepers involved.

Re: Edelman, Wal-Mart and the Loss of Control in Media

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 09:14:03 -0000

You think: "because no one is going to be interested in reading an honest and transparent blog"

Right. So they fake it. To make something that *looks* honest and transparent, but is in fact a marketing ploy. Lonelygirl15, anyone? The fact that someone is going to mess up on this sometimes, hardly means it can't be done.

Re: Edelman Shows That Control Is Still More Important Than “Conversation”

Seth Finkelstein — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 08:29:17 -0000

Scott - "by any reasonable measure a meaningful node in the â€œconversation.â€ Yet there was no attempt by anyone at Edelman to engage in conversation here." - You have delusions of significance :-).

I keep saying this, "conversation" is a sales-pitch used by the marketers to deceive targets of emotional manipulation into a false sense of power. In fact, they don't like you, they even have contempt for you (generic "you", not you personally).

Recursively, nobody cares what I say, and I'm shouting to the wind here :-(

Re: How Has Google Changed the Software Industry?

Seth Finkelstein — Sun, 22 Oct 2006 23:07:22 -0000

I feel like the guy just wants to say:

"99.9% is the world is NOT GEEKS. Get it? N-O-T G-E-E-K-S. They want something simple and robust, we give it to them, we make a mint."

I agree it's pity from the power-user point of view. But it's hard to argue with success.

Re: If The Users Are In Control Then Let Them Define Web 2.0

Seth Finkelstein — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 21:38:23 -0000

But users are not "in control". They are merely being marketed-to. Not necessarily a bad thing per se, but not the same thing at all.

Re: YouTube, Google, and Rumors vs. Truth in the Blogosphere

Seth Finkelstein — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 13:06:26 -0000

"If it isn't true, it should be" :-)

Re: The Delicate Balance of Participatory Media

Seth Finkelstein — Sun, 05 Nov 2006 06:01:42 -0000

Bleh. Anyone who gets abused by one of the people running these sites finds out damn well there's class divisions. Pretending otherwise for marketing purposes is one of the most irritating aspects of the popularity-mining goldrush.

Re: Deconstructing 2.0

Seth Finkelstein — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 21:01:39 -0000

Ah, but it's perfectly recursive - what could be a better example of noting the power of playing to crowd, then (blatantly but unironically) playing to the crowd?

Re: Blog Herald Column On The Great Comment Debate

Seth Finkelstein — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 19:39:37 -0000

There's a reason this debate is eternal, and part of it is the gap between theory and practice.

The sales-pitch about blogs is big on "conversation". But that's just the marketing hype. There's many bloggers for whom "conversation" is a code-word for "worship me". And they don't need comments for that, if they're at a sufficient level of celebrity. But that's an unpleasant aspect of the system.

So we have this go-around every time someone high-up enough on the attention ladder wants to rattle the cage.

None of the A-listers who don't have comments are going to change their minds about it based on someone else saying they don't have a "real blog". And not everyone wants to deal with the downsides either. Hence, nothing will change.

Re: Success on Digg Is Just Like Success In Old Media

Seth Finkelstein — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 23:40:05 -0000

One point I sometimes try to make about meet-the-new-boss-same-as-the-old-boss, is that from the standpoint of the writer, submitting to an A-lister is no different from begging a reporter, and when sending one's material for consideration at a site, it doesn't matter much if the accept/reject decision is made by single paid editor or an unpaid committee. The biggest difference is merely the hype.

Re: Is News A Fundamentally Shared, Social Experience?

Seth Finkelstein — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 11:35:48 -0000

Contrary to myth, there doesnâ€™t seem to be a lot of real interest in personalization. If you look closely, the hype is more gurus saying people should want it, than that people do want it.

TechMeme does something I call â€œserve the A-listâ€, in that it gives high attention earners even more attention, and focuses on mining whatâ€™s getting a lot of attention. Itâ€™s really a very top-down system at heart.

I wouldn't say "news *is* ...". But rather, "The money and the attention is in the Big Heads".

Findory was an interesting idea and I'm sorry to see it go.

Re: Not All Traffic Is Created Equal

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 03:39:53 -0000

Diggbait!

It's nice to have a rigorous analysis, but I think this is cast against something of a strawman. Of course advertisers know all about raw audience numbers vs. target demographics, and one is not the same as the other.

The issue is that most of us get neither :-(.

Re: The Real Problem For YouTube

Seth Finkelstein — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 00:31:10 -0000

The "cats flushing toilets and flatulence flambe" wasn't the business model - rather, that was the "substantial non-infringing use" that kept them out of court long enough to be bought-out for the megabucks, benefitting from the, err, other use. They learned the lesson of Napster VERY well.

Re: Deconstructing We Media

Seth Finkelstein — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 00:35:06 -0000

My personal definition of â€œwe mediaâ€ is the movement toward audience of unpaid workers, who can freelance their media experience and submit their own media for no money, leaving behind the old model of the mainstream media paid employee.

Re: What Gives SEO A Bad Name

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 01:59:50 -0000

That's "Black Hat" tactics.

Re: Why Journalism Matters

Seth Finkelstein — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 02:29:22 -0000

"What happens when you have thousands of people wielding ..."

You've misphrased it. The problem is:

"What happens when you have a very tiny number of people wielding the power of press without ANY of the constraints that have evolved to attempt fairness, accuracy, accountability ..."

This incident was created since the A-listers have the power to get HEARD. But none of the responsibility of the traditional press.

[Disclaimer: I didn't say press good, bloggers bad. I said the A-listers have the power without any of the limits. This doesn't mean the limits function well in the press - they don't. But the A-list doesn't even have that little check on its power.]

Re: Why Journalism Matters

Seth Finkelstein — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 00:03:24 -0000

Also 3) My opinion, right or wrong.

Re: User-Generated Content Is Not A Panacea

Seth Finkelstein — Sun, 27 May 2007 17:47:38 -0000

[reposting a comment I've made elsewhere on this campaign]

I'm sure the response of the work-for-nothing gurus will be: "Company, you needed to HIRE AN A-LISTER, to show you the right way to do it!".

The idea isn't that the company puts up a fence and people just come by and paint it. Instead, the company gives painting-evangelist Tom Sawyer a big consulting contract, since "Painting Is Conversation". And he goes around saying "Professional painters need to be knocked off their elitist perch! LET'S SHOW THEM *CITIZEN-PAINTERS* CAN DO IT! Working for free will ring in the new era of community fence-painting". And then he appoints a few of the bossier power-trippers to be "administrators", to watch over the rest, and sends out the most deluded to talk to the media that "we're here to do abstract art".

*That's* the recipe for unpaid labor, I mean, "user-generated content".

Re: Google’s Control Over Identity Is Nearly Absolute

Seth Finkelstein — Tue, 29 May 2007 00:32:13 -0000

In fairness, "Publishing 2.0" sounds close enough to talent management that the assumption was halfway reasonable. You're both in the media business. It's not like when people sometimes confuse me with a medical doctor who has the same name (so far, for nothing serious).

Re: Google’s Control Over Identity Is Nearly Absolute

Seth Finkelstein — Tue, 29 May 2007 18:45:42 -0000

Scott, I sadly have too much experience that people don't do one click. Heck, one of a my enduring blog unhappinesses was getting flamed by an A-lister where he wouldn't do a SINGLE CLICK - just one single click - to read before flaming me to his huge audience. So I can't attribute that to anything having to do with Google. It's a human condition. There's a big difference between "It's right because Google says it's so" (which is silly) and "This looks right, so I won't bother to check further, even a tiny bit" (deplorable, but all too common).

Re: Online Publishers Need To Set Their Own Editorial Standards And Stick To Them

Seth Finkelstein — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 01:18:54 -0000

@SpragueD - I'm thinking of the historical role of the court jester.

Re: ElectionVine Is A Distributed Political Affiliation Meter

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 02:53:04 -0000

Indeed, if blogs decided elections, we'd have had President Howard Dean. After all the hype, he was overall an also-ran in the primaries when the votes were counted.

I'd go deeper - this is a perfect demonstration of the chasm between who has "buzz" versus who has actual grassroots support. Marketing conflation to the contrary, the two are not the same.

Re: The Mahalo-Wikipedia-Google love triangle

Seth Finkelstein — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 19:31:06 -0000

It's clear that Jason is going after the high-value ads, with hand-crafted pages.

The mystery to me is how he plans to get the Google-ranking to drive the audience to it.

Wikipedia has a very weird and complex way of doing that, I don't think the phenomena can be reproduced readily.

Re: The Mahalo-Wikipedia-Google love triangle

Seth Finkelstein — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 19:47:46 -0000

Hmm ... what do you mean by "All those URIs actually work!"

I'm getting "Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name." for quite a few

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anythinghere will return a valid page.

Re: Why Fan History won’t be moving to Wikia any time soon

Seth Finkelstein — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 13:22:50 -0000

Regarding "Any other approach is insult", are you willing to say how much Wikia insulted you? As in, what did they offer, in terms of cash and/or stock options?

Re: Why Fan History won’t be moving to Wikia any time soon

Seth Finkelstein — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 14:09:12 -0000

GuildWiki was sold for $62,000 in cash plus some stock options. See the links at:

http://complaintwiki.org/wiki/Main_Page

Maybe you'd like to add your story :-)

[Disclaimer - I've written criticism of Wikia, but I'm not associated with the complaintwiki.org site - though I am sympathetic.]

Re: Why Fan History won’t be moving to Wikia any time soon

Seth Finkelstein — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 16:39:41 -0000

Thanks for the nice comments and replies. Regarding ComplaintWiki, I think they're basically addressing issues from the perspective of non-profits, not businesses (my paraphrasing). Wikia is a business, and you're running a business, which puts you in a different position vis-a-vis Wikia than most community websites. I suspect Wikia doesn't want *wiki* business partners (just more digital-sharecroppers building pages for Wikia to sell ads).