Disqus - Latest Comments for Seth Finkelstein

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

Seth Finkelstein — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 06:01:45 -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: The Technology Liberation Front » Archive » Network Neutrality Is Not About Price

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 20:34:12 -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: The Technology Liberation Front » Archive » Internet Habits and the Presidency

Seth Finkelstein — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 03:24:32 -0000

You have no shame.

Al Gore "invented the Internet" - resources

Re: Google Search Won’t Return Links to cato-at-liberty.org

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 03:12:01 -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: e-gold Settles Criminal Charges, Goes Back to Work

Seth Finkelstein — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 07:18:03 -0000

"eventually create value transfer systems that operate outside the control of any government"

1995 is calling. It wants its cypherpunk cryptoanarchy back.

Re: 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 17:16:47 -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: iPhone 2.0 cracked in hours… what was that Zittrain thesis again?

Seth Finkelstein — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 21:11:15 -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: iPhone 2.0 cracked in hours… what was that Zittrain thesis again?

Seth Finkelstein — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 20:26:42 -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: Denton: Evil genius or just plain evil?

Daniel Gibbons — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 01:41:10 -0000

I didn't say "low barrier to entry", but "lower barriers to entry", which is much more than just semantics. I was saying "lower" relative to what it would have taken to start a competitor to a major publishing property in the 1980s. It's gone from "virtually impossible unless you're already vastly wealthy" to merely "very difficult"...

And as to the reason why a bunch of bloggers haven't cut out Nick Denton, well that will almost certainly happen, as it does in virtually every creative industry. And they'll go on to form their own network, which in turn will be criticized for exploiting the poor old bloggers who work for it rather than own it.

Denton has momentum and a critical mass of readers, but these aren't things that are necessarily related to how much capital you have at your disposal.

Re: Denton: Evil genius or just plain evil?

Seth Finkelstein — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 20:11:30 -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: Joanne McNeil on Boing Boing's "erasure" of Violet Blue

ianbetteridge — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 10:34:46 -0000

Interesting - but, I note, Joanne had posted her post prior to this one. So clearly, while a proper newspaper was willing to make a couple of calls, she wasn't.

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

Seth Finkelstein — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 09:52:59 -0000

People have asked. The Boingers aren't talking.

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

Re: Cerf: Nationalize the Internet?

Seth Finkelstein — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 05:03:08 -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: Cerf: Nationalize the Internet?

Seth Finkelstein — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 02:52:49 -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 01:49:27 -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 22:03:29 -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 06:40:39 -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 06:39:19 -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: Memo to Jakob Lodwick: Grow up

Seth Finkelstein — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 03:48:21 -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: Memo to Jakob Lodwick: Grow up

mathewi — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 03:29:05 -0000

That's not the case at all, Seth. Take a look at Neekolas's comment
-- if anything, Jakob was the poster boy for Tumblr-blogging, and was
more than happy to confess his innermost thoughts and feelings to the
world. And when the attention was positive, he was happy to soak it
up. You need to do a bit more research before making pronouncements.

Re: Memo to Jakob Lodwick: Grow up

Seth Finkelstein — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 01:35:04 -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 21:04:29 -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

mathewi — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 19:06:06 -0000

Seth, I should have known that you would try to force this into that
tired mold. No one marketed social media to Jakob Lodwick -- if
anything, he's the one who has been marketing it to others, and
displaying its alleged benefits in the form of continuous updates
about his every mood, though or personal predilection. As I said in
my comment to Joe, for him to suddenly complain that some of the
attention he's been getting is negative is either the height of
hypocrisy or the height of naievete. One is stupid and the other is
ridiculous.

Re: Memo to Jakob Lodwick: Grow up

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 18:07:25 -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: Neanderthal Philosophy

Seth Finkelstein — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 04:33:24 -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.