Disqus - Latest Comments for Tom

Re: The RIAA: Possibly right, still weasels

Tom — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 18:38:18 -0000

Well, I hate to be the guy who pops in and posts a link to his own blog but I wrote a much better version of what I’m going to bang out below here: http://www.tomstechblog.com/post/2007/12/Making...

That said, the Readers digest version is this: What the RIAA is doing is legal strategy and while it might not be pretty to the laymen that is what lawyers are for (and that is why everyone hates them). They want copying on the table as a claim so that they can make their case against pirates as clear cut as possible. So yes they aren’t coming out and saying that copying is legal under the fair use principle because they want it as a legal club to beat people who are sharing illegally.

For those that are paranoid that they’re going to start going after legit people who bought the music legally I can’t help but roll my eyes a little. Anyone who looks at the negative press the labels are already facing has to know they’d be crushed by the outcry if they tried to sue someone who purchased music legally and just copied it to their own computer.

What people forget is that the RIAA is walking a fine line too. They create too much public outcry and congress is going to end up passing a law that hurts the labels (lobbyists or no). So if you really think they’d even chance suing someone who legally bought the music and isn’t sharing it I think you are jumping at shadows.

Re: The RIAA: Possibly right, still weasels

Tom — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 19:16:29 -0000

Any good lawyer knows that law isn’t about being right it’s about finding a loophole and getting the decision maker (judge or jury) on your side. People look for ways to do what they want to do so even having the law overwhelmingly on your side isn’t going to help if the Judge doesn’t want you to win and your opponent has found a loop hole (however slim it is) to allow him to do what he wants to do.

As a legal strategist your job would be to cut your opponent off from as many loopholes as possible. That is exactly what the RIAA is doing.
Now look at the RIAA’s position from a legal strategy point of view. The file sharing angle is full of loopholes by definition. Can Kazaa be used legally, if so does that mean illegal traders can’t be prosecuted, etc… So what they need to do is to find a way to pull back and make the acts leading to that trading illegal which cuts off their opponent’s access to all those loopholes.

Hence arguing that copying the music in the first place is illegal which cuts the other side off from making any arguments that would excuse the file sharing. By saying that they make the case against the file sharer iron clad which is what from a legal perspective they want. So they ARE saying that legally-bought copying is illegal but not to prosecute people who aren’t illegally trading them.

It isn’t about “giving in” it’s about legal strategy and while I might not like that the world has come to this there’s no doubt that the music industry has been forced into this position by society. If people would just accept that sharing music is stealing the record companies wouldn’t have to take these measures to make sure they can prove it in a court of law. I certainly don't think it makes them weasels because they listened to their lawyers who said this was the only way to protect their legal interests.

Re: Will no-DRM mean more lawsuits?

Tom — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 20:26:44 -0000

So are you saying you object to them suing people who are illegally sharing music?

Re: Will no-DRM mean more lawsuits?

Tom — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 20:59:06 -0000

So, and I'm honestly not trying to attack here, but what should their recourse be against people who are file sharing?

and I guess a follow up, do you believe they shouldn't legally be able to sue or that they are just morally wrong to sue?

Re: Will no-DRM mean more lawsuits?

Tom — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 21:34:46 -0000

OK, and again pardon the question after question, but a few follow ups…

On the moral part, how can you justify hating someone (or condoning others hating someone) if you think they are morally right in doing what they are doing?

On the ineffective part, there have been several studies that showed file sharing dropping by 50+% in the year after the RIAA filed their first subpoenas. Given that, were you always against the suits or do you just think they’ve stopped being effective now?

Finally, and if you don’t have time you can ignore this one since it’s a little time consuming, but if they should encourage file sharing than how do you think they should make money? Assuming that just deciding to make less money isn’t an option.

Again sorry to be a pest here but I honestly don’t see where you are coming from and it all seems a little contradictory to me. I’ve always thought the labels were being generous in they could have been pushing for criminal charges against file sharers (Microsoft does with pirated software) and to the best of my knowledge the RIAA has never done that.

Re: Will no-DRM mean more lawsuits?

Tom — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 23:46:56 -0000

I don’t know, I could be missing something but it just seems like you haven’t thought this through entirely.

On morality, I don’t understand where you are coming from here. A business created a product and you have to pay them for that product. If you get that product without paying them for it that’s stealing, it’s the definition of stealing (which is literally to take without the owner’s consent)

Now there is righteous crime and you could say there is some higher cause that negates the theft such as during the Boston Tea Party. In the Boston tea party the tea was stolen but the cause of a free nation superseded that principle in most people’s minds. But it was still theft (and I don’t know where the higher cause would be here)

On an illegal file sharing rise here are some articles from when the lawsuits began that say illegal file sharing (at least of music) at least was decreasing.

http://media.www.californiaaggie.com/media/stor...

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/broadcasting/a26272...

To the best of my knowledge the only organization that has claimed otherwise is BigChampagne which no one in the industry seems to take seriously. I mean, ask yourself this, the RIAA has been suing for almost half a decade now…more than enough time to get a sample of how effective the method is. Now, if it was making no difference whatsoever, why would the music industry keep doing it? It’s bad PR as it is so it would make no sense from their perspective. Further BigChampagne’s claim that there has been a steady uninterrupted rise in p2p sharing doesn’t make sense in light of all the illegal trading networks that have been shut down (which should have caused some kind of dip, at least temporarily). Grokster alone had 9 million users which should have made at least a dent.

Finally, I don’t see how you can say radio is fundamentally the same as file sharing. You can’t play songs on the radio at your own times, you can’t duplicate the packaged product with radio, you have to listen to commercials on the radio. I honestly can’t think of one fundamental way in which they are the same to be honest with you. Anyway, even if they were, I don’t think saying “they should be able to figure out a way” is a business model and if you can’t suggest a way for them to continue making money I don’t see how you can say they are wrong to protect themselves against file sharing.

Again, I don’t know (boy this turned out long…). Maybe I’m missing something here but it just seems like you’re using vague proclamations (“they should be able to figure something out”) and odd twists of logic (the labels are still suing even though its had no impact) to make what you want to believe seem as if it makes sense. I could be missing something here but for the life of me I just don’t see it.

Re: Will no-DRM mean more lawsuits?

Tom — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 00:28:51 -0000

On the rest I think we really will just have to agree to disagree.

But on the theft part, you are just wrong. Nowhere, in any dictionary that I can find, is theft defined as “only physical goods” . Business 101 teaches of opportunity costs and that is exactly what is being stolen in file sharing.

If you share a song that someone would have bought if they hadn’t gotten it for free from you, you are then stealing that money from the rightful copyright holder. This is black letter law. Software Piracy is a crime in every civilized nation in the world but if your definition it were correct it wouldn’t be.

Finally the conclusion of the Supreme Court case you cite is incorrect. Dowling vs the United States did not say that copyright infringement wasn’t theft it said that the result of copyright infringement didn’t create stolen property as defined by the interstate transportation statute. If you go to Wikipedia you can find the relevant passage where Judge Blackmun says

“The section's language clearly contemplates a physical identity between the items unlawfully obtained and those eventually transported, and hence some prior physical taking of the subject goods. Since the statutorily defined property rights of a copyright holder have a character distinct from the possessory interest of the owner of simple "goods, wares, [or] merchandise," interference with copyright does not easily equate with theft, conversion, or fraud”

So he is clearly referring to one individual statute and the language within that statute not the ideal of legal theft as a whole. He even says “The Section’s language” pointing out that he is specifically talking about that statute.

Re: Wordpress lands a whopper

Tom — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 22:29:20 -0000

I think the whole “building out our network” line is just something you say (not that it isn’t true I just don’t think they’ll be spending the majority of the money on that). Wordpress is in a situation now where everyone is starting to take notice of them and I suspect that is making them more than a little nervous. If I were Matt Mullenweg statements like “it has become one of the default publishing platforms for all kinds of online content” would scare the bejeezes out of me because it means people are starting to realize what position his company is in the lead. A position that comes with a big ol’ target for your back.

I think the storage announcement from earlier this week shows a little of that. They didn’t just want to beat the competition they wanted to beat them by a wide margin so their customers don’t even think to question their platform choice.

That is what I think the explaination is for the sudden money influx too. Wordpress has always been a company that values working lean so I don’t think they’ve gone money crazy overnight. I think this is just the realization that they are in front and that they need to have a war chest on hand to fend off attempts by competitors to take their market share.

Re: How not to think about music, Part XVII

Tom — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 19:38:49 -0000

I was once told that there are facts and there are opinions. People can be stupid if they don't know the facts but anyone who thinks another person is stupid for their opinion is probably saying more about their own intelligence. Something to think about…

There's nothing inherently incorrect about what Mr. Ulanoff says and while I don't agree with him there's something to be said for the fact that he's essentially endorsing capitalism (which has a history of working) while you're essentially endorsing (at least the knowledge based aspects of) marxism which has a history of not working. Further, I've scoured the multiple links on Techdirt and have yet to come up with actual respected economists who endorse the theories he put forth there. That doesn't mean they're wrong but it does mean that people who disagree with them probably aren't stupid for doing so.

Again, I don't agree Mr. Ulanoff but his post certainly wasn't "staggeringly dense" and for you to say so really makes you come across as someone adverse to anything he doesn't personally agree with. Nothing he said was as far out there as the idea that a low marginal cost (it isn't zero because of things like bandwidth) will in turn drive the price of an item to zero.

I guess it is nice to see you peeking your head out of the echo chamber you've built around yourself it would just be even better if you did so with an open mind.

Re: How not to think about music, Part XVII

Tom — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 23:08:43 -0000

It was actually my roundabout way of getting you to realize that it wasn't right to call other people stupid. If I were in turn trying to call you stupid that would make me a hypocrite.

As for Marxism, it isn't the marginal cost argument that has to do with Marxism (that's just bad economics) it's the idea that people don't have the right to distribute things they create in the way they see fit and that society somehow has the right to claim that information for themselves. That's straight out of Marx.

On the topic of marginal cost, it is accepted theory that end costs fall with marginal costs but not that a marginal cost that falls to zero will in turn create an end cost of zero. I'm not an economist but again I took these arguments to heart and went out a looked for an established economist who was endorsing these ideas and came up completely empty.

All that said, the point of my post wasn't to necessarily talk about the issues (though I don't mind doing so) but to get you to see you are being close minded when you think anyone that disagrees with you is a fool. There was nothing inherently foolish in the post you quoted and in fact he was just parroting what is the common perception.

With no offense to Vincent his post below shows exactly the mindset I was trying to get you to avoid which is "don't waste your breath on anyone who disagrees with you because they're all fools anyway"

I'm not sure you are wrong in your theories of how music should be distributed but what is worrisome is that you don't know they are on the fringe which means most of your news is coming from an echo chamber.

Re: How not to think about music, Part XVII

Tom — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 23:15:15 -0000

Well, the last sentance makes it a little hard to take you seriously (the idea that you don't understand why a person would think its out there to give away a product for free is dishonest) but I would be interested in the book you mentioned if you can give me a title. I looked on Amazon and only found one book by him and it was from '95

Re: How not to think about music, Part XVII

Tom — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 23:26:07 -0000

P.S. (and let me specify that I'm honestly not attacking you as evidenced by the fact that I just did 20 minutes of google searching)

Can you point me to anywhere in which Paul Romer specifically addressed Music Sharing? I understand how his ideas could be interpreted to be in favor of music sharing (if you consider music sharing an "idea" as opposed to a "thing") but that isn't a given from what I've read so far.

Re: How not to think about music, Part XVII

Tom — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 23:51:06 -0000

Well, on the marxist theory this goes back to something that Matthew had said to me in an ealrier thread so I apologize if I implied that you were the source of it. I don't have any problem wih artists submitting to this kind of business model (and as I said above I don't necessarily know that it is wrong) my problem stems from the idea that they should be forced to simply because there is no way to control piracy.

On the 0 point all I can say is in every school of thought be in physics, natural science or economics there are special states at which the laws that otherwise apply no longer make sense. In Physics its the speed of light and in mathematics its when you get to 0. Why is it that you can divide by any other number?

Beyond that I would say that just logically your argument doesn't follow as being necessarily true. The cost of goods are always above their marginal cost even though they tend to fall in line. So if the marginal cost falls to zero that doesn't mean that the price does.

Again, my argument coming into this thread wasn't to say "you're wrong and he's right" but to say "he's not a fool for disagreeing with you" No matter how much you argue this no one side is going to come out as completely right which is why its so important for each side to show respect for the other.

Re: How not to think about music, Part XVII

Tom — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 02:09:45 -0000

Thanks for the link!

Re: Books: Does piracy now = marketing?

Tom — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 03:27:28 -0000

So let me see if I get this straight...p2p is responsible for album sales declining last year but responsible for skyrocketing book sales. But somehow this is evidence that p2p is an effective marketing tool for both. That makes perfect sense. Oh no, I'm picking on you again, better call a bunch of twitter people to protect you :)

No, no...I kid...I'm just messin' with you

But seriously, in the case of a book the physical copy is vastly superior to the digital version (sorry Kindle). So digital distribution is an effective marketing tool for books. That isn't true of music which sounds the same on an iPod no matter what.

I'm not saying it isn't true of music too, I don't think it is but my point is just to point out that they are different concepts and what is true for one isn't necessarily true for the other.

Re: Facebook doing a great job making it hard to meet complete strangers off the internet

Tom — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 20:26:26 -0000

I think I agree with your overall point that Facebook and other recent social entries are doing a better job of pulling your real life online rather than just creating another one with total strangers in place of your friends. But as my post above indicated (which you quoted, thanks for the link!) I think there’s a danger to that for some.

I think the thing you notice about all those myspace pages by the, to use your term, “show-off inner city teens” is that they are all people with little to know responsibility. So yea, the 40 year old Musician/Waiter will have a MySpace page and he doesn’t have 2 nickels to rub together but I think that’s the exception. That group will embrace anything that’s free.

The issue I was more pointing to were the people from their late 20s on who actually hold down professional jobs and, at this point, haven’t embraced social networking much at all. That’s where I think fear of repercussions play a part.

Take Politics for instance. I have a friend who moved here (Southern California) from Wyoming to be a fashion designer. When he’d go for job interviews he’d put his Myspace profile on his resume (because he had pictures of designs there). After his second interview one of the people involved in the process pulled him aside and told him he’d be wise to remove the fact that he was Republican from his profile if he ever wanted to get a job in fashion. He did and sure enough he got hired on the very next interview.

Now that’s anecdotal for sure but it shows you how an online presence can have an impact on your professional presence and how that in turn can put your career in danger. If I were in my 30s with a family I know I wouldn’t risk it just to have a Facebook profile. For Social Networking to really take off there are going to have to develop much better controls on it. Not just for professional contacts but for different social spheres such as your Mother and your Best Friend (almost no one wants their mother and their best friend to get the same updates)

I think it’s a much trickier problem than anyone fully grasps at this point.

Re: Facebook doing a great job making it hard to meet complete strangers off the internet

Tom — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 00:17:33 -0000

Well first let me just say that I happen to work in not only an agency, but an entire industry that completely disagrees with me politically and I do so without problem. There are certain types of people who like to talk about politics but for everyone else it’s a complete non-issue. People in the fashion industry may hold very strong political positions but I’ve never once been at a party and had that topic come up in that circle (with the possible exception of Gay marriage but the discussion in that case was on a micro level not a macro one)

Beyond that I think you make the same mistake I was accusing Fred Wilson of making which is you assume your experience with people equates to all people and it couldn’t be less true. No matter how many people in their 20s you talk to they are all people related to your portion of society. There are social levels in the world and they determine who you interact with. I grew up around guys who worked construction but in my life now I haven’t talked to a construction worker in ages. Because construction workers don’t do the things I do, they don’t hang out in the places I hang out and they don’t talk about the things I talk about.

Your example makes that point better than I ever could. You’ve taken your very rare experience (working in an industry that is “blog friendly”) and applied it to the rest of the world. A lot of industries aren’t like that and in fact a lot of industries commonly consult lawyers and marketing firms who frown on open public expression. If a 35 year old School Teacher came to you and said “I live paycheck to paycheck, I have two kids and I’m thinking about starting a blog about teaching” would you advise he do so? I wouldn’t. Because all it takes is a few angry parents to read that blog and make a big enough fuss. Then you have a Principal who is weighing that fuss (and his job) against the job of one teacher and decides to fire the guy/girl. You might have 25 job offers lined up but the 35 year old teacher with 2 kids probably doesn’t.
That kind of thing happens all the time. Not everyone respects “well thought out essays” and a lot of people are reactionaries.

Larry Summers was the President of Harvard and he lost his job for putting forth a hypothesis based on scientific research. He suggested that innate differences between men and women MIGHT be ONE reason why fewer women are in math and science careers. Not as his opinion but based on conclusions that were backed up by research that was being discussed in a meeting where the goal was to find a way to get more women into math and sciences. If the President of Harvard can be pushed out of his job for giving his opinion as a world renowned economist than anyone can pay the price for putting their opinion out in public.

...wow, that turned out to be pretty long...

Re: louisgray.com: As I Get Older, Some Online "Friending" Gets Creepier

Tom — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 05:01:48 -0000

Just to reiterate what has been said many times over at this point I think you’re a tad too rigid.
My Dad was an actor and so I grew up around theatre folk and being that most productions have people of all ages and it was common to go out after each show there were friendships that developed between people of every age. Nothing weird about it.

It’s all about life experience really. I’m a 28 year old guy who is single and while I’d like to think we’d get along fine if I ever met you I suspect you’d have a lot more in common with a 20 year old if that 20 year old was married and just had twins.

The truth is, imho, you can learn something from anyone and life is too short to pass up the chance to gain that knowledge because you’re afraid of what other people might think.

Re: Jason Calacanis: The Email List

Tom — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 06:56:16 -0000

So let me see if I've got this straight... He basically stopped doing his blog (Which people visit anonymously) and switched to a communication system that requires registration. But he framed it as "I'm quitting blogging because the blogosphere is messed up" so now everyone's up in arms about the death of blogging and no one is paying attention to the fact that he's building a massive mailing list that he can use to promote whatever he wants.

That Calacanis, still the king!

Re: All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing

Tom — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 01:02:47 -0000

I think Mr Hawk's omissions in his first post show he was willing to portray the situation dishonestly to make his point. Lets look at what he originally posted...

Blint told me that "he did not care" and that he needed to "protect" his employees -- employees that might appear in my photographs. I was not shooting with a tripod. I was not shooting with a flash. I was being quiet and respectful of the area and the other patrons.

Now lets look at his correction (after being called on his initial omission)

One allegation that has been raised is that Blint threw me out because he felt that I was shooting down a low cut blouse of one of his employees sitting in the atrium below where I was shooting. The photo above is a photo that I snapped of Blint as he was publicly admonishing me from the floor, that's him with his arms crossed there -- he's about the size of an ant in the photo. As you will see, the female employee in question also appears in the photograph (the ticket taker next to Blint). She is not wearing a low cut blouse. In fact she's wearing some sort of a yellowish/orangish sweater or jacket sort of thing -- she's sort of hard to see as a 14mm lens makes people look super far away. Her arms, shoulders, in fact every visible area of her except her hands are completely covered in clothing.

Now, don't get me wrong, I think Mr. Blint over reacted. Had he kept his calm this might not have turned into a thing. Mr. Hawk claims not to have been taking pictures of the employee in question and says he offered to let Mr. Blint review the photos which is probably what Mr Blint should have done

But that said, Mr. Blint thought he caught someone trying to take elicit pictures of one of his female staff and it seems to me that he was blinded by anger which is a perfectly understandable position to take. I think this was a big misunderstanding where I suspect tempers flared on both sides (Mr. Hawk claims to have been perfectly calm but his post on the subject suggests he wasn't)

Had Mr. Hawk been completely honest in his original post I think most would have seen it as the misunderstanding it was.

Re: 8 ways Facebook may change under Mormon ownership

Tom — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 01:21:09 -0000

Yeah, I have to vote with the seeming majority here. I understand it's an attempt at humor and I get that humor can sometimes miss the mark. That said, this comes across as pretty low class. There's a difference between jokingly poking fun at someone and flat out saying you think they're bad people.

The line is clearly pretty thin but this seemed like an attack to me and I'm pretty liberal in this area

Re: 8 ways Facebook may change under Mormon ownership

Tom — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 03:39:23 -0000

Oh yes, how could someone be so sensitive over a bad attempt at humor: http://profy.com/2008/07/26/misuse-of-social-me...

Re: 8 ways Facebook may change under Mormon ownership

Tom — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 04:11:13 -0000

Well first, since you can obviously read I’m just going to assume you are intentionally slandering the author of that piece you quoted because he said nothing about murdering a baby. He specifically said "While it is hard not to feel bad for his brutally murdered wife and child, not to mention his wounded daughter, Eddie's suicide itself is the stuff of happy thoughts". So in fact he felt murdering a baby was a tragedy but was happy that the guy who had done so was dead.

On that note, claiming someone was making a joke about murdering a baby when they weren't is really kind of offensive in it's own right.

But back to the piece itself I also didn’t think his comments were all that tactful but that’s why I’m not a hypocrite and you are. The bottom line is that you can’t get offended by a poor attempt at humor and then criticize others for being offended by another poor attempt at humor. Either it’s ok to be offended by people’s bad jokes or it’s not. Period. Because any other stance means you’re demanding everyone be like you (e.g. it’s ok to say something offensive if you aren’t offended but not ok if you are offended)