DISQUS

"Should these guys have gone to goal? Yeah. They did break the law and steal a companies product."

Actually - the founders of the Pirate Bay stole Nothing! Zip! Zilch! - they created a means for the actual thieves (The public at large) to find copyrighted material - maybe not morally right, but not actually stealing on their behalf.

Also funny how the judge in the case just happened to be a member of two copyright associations - no trial bias there whatsoever.

And who really won? The MPAA or RIAA? Not one bit - not until they get the gawd knows how many other torrent trackers closed down (Thats all the Pirate Bay were - not theives -information sharers, them and thousands of other torrent trackers.)And even then - what about the myriad of file download sites (Rapidshare, etc etc.)

Its a crusade, just like the whole sue Napster users thing was! "The Man" winning nothing, wasting a lot of taxpayer dollars in trial money and making more people hate them. That's winning?

Other than disagreeing on this view - nice blog and great work - keep it up! :

I remember my mum telling me back in Scotland how new mums in the Greenock maternity ward used to get 2 bottles of sweetheart stout. So i guess the health benefits of stout might just have some merit to it after all.

Congratulations on this fun experiment. Yeah sure someone else might have done something similar - but almost certainly not to the scale you took it.

As i wrote about on my blog - this is a superb idea, taking modern conversation tools and applying them to a classic piece of American neighborhood tradition. I had a similar idea to create a blog/site to promote local sales, but the way you integrated other elements (Flickr, youtube ustream, etc) really gave me some ideas to add to my concept.

Thankfully, yard sale season is almost over, which gives me a few months to really plan this sucker! :)

Awesome work sir - A+ for you!

i'd have to start buying CD's again?

Oh - and conversations would end abruptly mid sentence as the person you were talking to raised a drawing of a whale being raised out of water

And if said cute girl just happens to be being grabbed my multiple hands - double your sales, pass go and collect loadsamoney :)

Dude - totally not helping me get over the fact that i wont make it to Sturgis this yr :) Even tried convincing the missus it was a nice place for a kid free anniversary getaway. oddly, she didnt buy it :(

- now there's a road trip for you - visit South Dakota on the "Debauchery t Shirt review fest"

Good stuff!

We're at a point where Social Networking is 9relatively) fresh territory for advertising - don't really see why we shouldn't be subjected to ads based on gathering demographics in this sphere - it's what advertising and marketing people have always tried to do anyway.

As for judging peoples personal brand ranking based on how many "Friends", etc, they have online - that's flawed for a start. Whoever started using the term "friend' on most SN sites got the wrong term - most people have a small % of their "friends' that actually are friends in the true sense of the word, and then they have people that think they might say something they might like to hear - how many followers to the "Big guys" have on say twitter? - and they pay attention and respond to each and every one of them - right?

i reckon Google ranking us based on how "Kewl" we are on Social networking is mainly just going to be a good thing for peoples ego's more than anything else. (For business purposes obviously i'd like to be #1 in google - but hey, when it comes to the social scene - being #5000 doesnt really bother me much -my ego ain't that fragile :)

I'd rather have some quality ads served at me than half the spammy junk on facebook already :)

Don't forget the only real Celts: @tartan - all those plaid phonies will realise that pretending to be Scottish (or irish) only gets you so far in life! :0

Defect and join the tartan!

I'm sure part of the reason google stock is so hot is also down to all the extras - gmail, gcal and more recently "apps for your domain"

I know Y! has most of these - but the whole google package is just still that notch slicker and presented nicer too.

I mean - for most folks, search is search - whether its the big G or the big Y! - but google just seems to do a better job of getting the word out there.

As more companies jump on the Apps bandwagon i'm sure google will only continue to boom. i read they're playing with project management tools for apps users now - thats an interesting development.

Hey - am i too late for the party?:
http://twitter.com/asimpson

I always wonder with the spam protection - what if one can't add? ;)

http://mashable.com/2007/10/19/radiohead-album-...

Just to bring some follow up to this interesting conversation.

Average of $8 per CD sounds more like a sum most buyers would like to see on shelves :)

I think this year will see more artists trying this route and hopefully the recording industry trying some new pricing models to finally have a competitive product on store shelves.

I remember when CDs first came out - "The prices will drop when more people have the technology" - guess what -they didnt drop - some fatcats at Sony etc realised they were on a get rich quick scheme - and finally its looking like consumers are telling the industry that the ride is slowing down.

(PS - what happens if we can't add but still want to comment ;) (sorry -i couldnt resist it)

First of all - do some research first - the physical release of "in Rainbows" was always scheduled for late this year/ early next!

The plan with "In Rainbows" was always to launch it online first, then launch it as a "real" product. In fact i was just reading how the band loved a fan mash up of one of their songs so much, they sourced the guy and added it to the in-store version of the CD.

The fact that they decided to go with Indie label support for the release still speaks volumes for their "trust level" of the Big guys in the industry.

I reckon it'll still sell as well as most CD's do - fans of the band will pay for the higher quality sound - and the moochers that got it for free off the web, well heck they would have gotten it for free off bit torrent/napster/mp3 blogs etc etc anyway.

Failure? far from it! - financially maybe not the best results - but in terms of challenging the standard recording industry nonsense and taking a stand for their fans - huge success - not to mention the amount of (mostly favorable) publicity and new traffic it got them.

I'm guessing they probably saw a decent movement in back catalog CD's from all of this too - people that maybe got the new CD for low cost or no cost and hadnt really heard much of them before.

And as for anyone that hasn't heard or bought a Radiohead CD - shame on you all :)

Merry christmas humbugs :)

Hmm -tricky one, as i have many marketing specific blogs on my feed list that i read on a daily basis - but i'm going to go for Matt Dickman "the Techno Marketer" http://technomarketer.typepad.com/ Love his writing style and as an educational tool or a quick refresher, his video podcasts are the best out there in my mind.

Keep up the good work Matt!

(If one could nominate a community it would have to be the newly found Gooroze ! :) )

Hmm -tricky one, as i have many marketing specific blogs on my feed list that i read on a daily basis - but i'm going to go for Matt Dickman "the Techno Marketer" http://technomarketer.typepad.com/ Love his writing style and as an educational tool or a quick refresher, his video podcasts are the best out there in my mind.

Keep up the good work Matt!