Yglesias is right about this:
Near the end of The New York Times’s article on new NBC TV downloads, Jeff Gaspin, NBC TV’s president, says “Our research shows that 83 per cent of the viewers would still rather watch on a TV than a PC.”
This doesn’t necessarily seem relevant to me. I would want to watch shows on as high-quality a display as possible but whether that display is a “monitor” connected to a computer or a “television” connected to a cable box doesn’t matter at all. I don’t, in practice, connect my TV to my computer but if you made it possible to download files that were worth watching on a large high-definition screen, then I’d do it in a minute.
Another aspect of consumers’ preference for TV-watching is a matter of convenience. That is, they want a compact, simple, and user friendly box that will fit on their TV stand and be operated with a remote. Right now, TVs fit that profile and computers don’t.
But that’s surely going to change in the next decade. Already, set-top boxes like the Apple TV provide a mostly TV-like experience. Sometime in the not-too-distant future, you’ll be able to buy a user-friendly $200 set-top box with an ethernet port on the back that allows you to download and play video files. What’s lacking is a robust, user-friendly distribution network for large quantities of free video content. This is a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem because nobody is going to buy a set-top box unless there’s content available for it, but few people are going to produce content for a given network unless there’s a large enough installed base to make it worthwhile.
But sooner or later, someone’s going to figure out a way to solve the dillemma. It might take the form of a peer-to-peer network like Joost or it might be a next-generation version of Netflix, where you pay $20/month for access to an unlimited amount of Internet-based streaming video. Technologically speaking, the set-top box will be a “computer,” but consumers will simply perceive it as a cable box with a virtually unlimited number of “channels.”
Incidentally, it’s rather bizarre that TV networks are so determined to charge consumers for copies of their TV shows. TV networks have been giving TV shows away for free for half a century. They’re the world’s experts at monetizing eyeballs. And if anything, selling ads on the Internet should be easier because they can precisely measure the size and demographics of their audience. So why do they continue giving their TV shows for free over the air (and even spending millions of dollars advertising those free shows) while fretting about the possibility that someone might get the exact same TV shows for free via the Internet? They should be creating MPEG files featuring their TV shows with embedded ads and giving them away for free on peer-to-peer networks.
USA Today reports that Municipal Wi-Fi plans across the nation continue to collapse under the pressure of economic reality. Schemes such as those proposed in Chicago and San Francisco simply don’t make good business sense, which is why they have been abandoned.
I don’t think citizens of these would-be wireless utopias should be upset over the loss of their Wi-Fi blanket, however. Most of these arrangements involved giving exclusive access to city rights of way to one company, creating a new generation of Ma’ Bells–a very dystopian vision. Getting in bed with the government is a bad idea for business, especially network industries, because as time goes by they lose their autonomy and become an atrophied public utility. So though Wi-Fi might give consumers more choice, it’s just another bad choice.
Read more in my piece recently published at American.com.
Ars reports on a new ITIF report critiquing the push for voter-verified paper trails in electronic voting. It’s a good summary over all, but I found a couple of things wanting about this part of it:
Castro makes his arguments against paper trails largely by ignoring the different role that paper has played (and may again play) during balloting. Currently, paper-only balloting is being suggested as a stop-gap solution for situations where the alternative is the use of electronic systems with recognized flaws; very few propose paper as a long-term solution. But a substantial fraction of the report is dedicated to enumerating the flaws of all-paper systems. Meanwhile, it attempts to use those same flaws to paint any attempts at using paper in any context—including cases where paper would create a supplemental record in electronic voting—as being equally flawed.
The report’s approach to people who oppose electronic voting systems is equally clumsy. A lot of the opposition to electronic voting is not focused on the concept itself, but rather some of the clearly flawed implementations of these systems. Instead of recognizing this distinction, Castro simply paints opponents as paranoid luddites: “Many opponents of electronic voting machines are motivated by a distrust of technology, anger at election results, and conspiracy theories about voting companies.” That sort of language pervades the report; concerns regarding the independence and robustness of voting machine validation apparently doesn’t exist. In Castro’s mind, the only opposition results from ill-informed paranoia: “Because some people do not understand that voting machines must undergo independent testing, they fear that a voting machine may steal their vote.”
I don’t know of any rigorous polling on the subject, but I think it’s an overstatement to say that “very few propose paper as a long-term solution.” Personally, I think that it’s at the very least an open question whether e-voting will ever be secure enough to be trusted, even with a paper trail. Certainly a paper trail is a big step in the right direction, and I certainly think there are strong arguments for making computerize ballot-marking machines available to the disabled. But given the large dangers and small benefits of e-voting, I think it’s a mistake to assume that paper is just a stopgap solution.
Relatedly, I think it’s a little bit misleading to say that e-voting critics are against “clearly flawed implementations” rather than e-voting itself. E-voting critics—including those like Ed Felten and Avi Rubin who support e-voting with a paper trail—emphasize that paperless e-voting fails for fundamental, systematic reasons. They advocate paper trails because they believe we can’t depend on the correctness of software systems that will always be vulnerable to hacking. I guess in some sense the lack of a paper trail is a “flawed implementation,” but I think it makes more sense to say that paperless e-voting is inherently insecure.
With that said, Ars is certainly right that it’s silly to paint e-voting critics as paranoid cranks. Ed Felten has a good post that ends thus:
The real worst-case scenario isn’t divergent paper and electronic records — with their attendant litigation and political discord. The real worst case is an attack or error that never even comes to the attention of election officials or the public, because there isn’t an independent way of catching problems.
That’s exactly right.
Arnold Kling links to this article at the American about the large drop in computer science majors and the concurrent surge in economics majors over the last seven years. It’s an interesting trend, but I don’t think it’s something to be worried about. I think aptitude for computer programming is pretty close to a congenital condition. The most talented programmers are the ones who really enjoy it, and often they’re the ones who have been tinkering with computers since they were 8 years old. Most of them will choose computer science as a major regardless of whether it’s considered trendy or lucrative.
On the other hand, when I was in school in the late 1990s, there were a ton of people in the computer science program who really didn’t belong there. The tech bubble had inflated the demand for programmers and so lots of people who didn’t really know what to do with their lives chose computer science more or less by default. Some of them switched majors or dropped out before they graduated. Others stuck it out but had trouble finding jobs when they graduated.
I think a lot of them ended up in mid-range tech support jobs that really don’t require a computer science degree. Although those workers are obviously an important part of the economy, they’re not likely to be a major driver of economic growth, and I doubt there are many people out there who find them particularly more enjoyable than being accountants, A/V technicians, or other jobs that require a similar skillset. They could just as easily have majored in something else and gotten a student job in an IT department–or for that matter gotten a 2-year degree in IT.
So if I had to guess, most of the 50 percent of students who have apparently switched from CS to other majors like economics are probably people who probably didn’t belong in a computer science program in the first place and probably will be just as happy with an econ degree. On the other hand, the 50 percent who are continuing to major in computer science probably includes the vast majority of the people who would have gone on to produce groundbreaking technologies in any event.
As the US and EU regulators bear down on Google we’re already seeing changes in the marketplace where the Googlers currently have the lead. Yahoo! is catching up to Google with several innovations in its email client. Unlimited Storage, a built in RSS reader (not separate and clunky with a just-added search function), push email for the iPhone, better contacts that syncs with the iPhone, built in SMS, and drag and drop functionality are all unique to Yahoo! mail, at least for the moment. There’s no doubt that GMail will catch-up, but that’s exactly what competition is meant to do, force competitors to improve or perish. Read more about it at LifeHacker.
Hat tip to my colleague Wayne Crews for sending me the link.
It will be fascinating to see how well this works. Mozilla has created a for-profit subsidiary that will work on improving Mozilla’s Thunderbird mail client.
The danger, it seems to me, is that once you’ve got $3 million burning a hole in your pocket, there’s a serious danger that the characteristics that make the free software model viable in the first place—lack of bureaucracy, community enthusiasm, relentless focus on users—will be undermined. The paid employees can begin to see themselves as “running” the project, as opposed to facilitating the collaborative efforts of community members. In a traditional open source project, the only things that get done are the things that somebody is passionate enough to do themselves. On the other hand, in a traditional for-profit company, the product gets the features the CEO thinks the product should have, whether or not anyone else wants those features. Trying to mix the two approaches could be poisonous in an effort in which the bulk of the manpower is still provided by volunteers.
Still, it’s a worthy experiment. And the guy they picked to run it seems like a smart guy who may have the combination of good judgment and humility to pull it off. With the Mozilla Foundation sitting on tens of millions of dollars, they can certainly afford to experiment. Free software is a new enough phenomenon that there’s still a lot to be learned about when and how it can be combined with more traditional top-down management styles.
Over at Techdirt, I’ve been discussing a great paper on how the magic industry thrives without patent or trade secret protection. The paper is similar to Raustiala and Sprigman’s widely discussed “piracy paradox” paper, which sought to explain how the fashion industry thrives without copyright.
Jacob Grier, a friend and sometime professional magician, had a great post last week on the paper that I thought was worth highlighting:
My impression is that the most creative magicians invent because they love the art, want to improve their acts, and seek acclaim from other magicians. Copying is a problem, but not, as far as I know, one that’s significantly driving out innovators.
An ongoing and bitter dispute between two high profile gaff makers provides a telling example of how creative magicians deal with theft. The props in question are difficult and expensive to create, but once developed they can be reverse engineered. The more established of the two craftsmen has alleged that the other has copied many of his original designs. But he’s not giving up. This is what he had to say about the conflict on a magicians’ forum:
“Now some good things have come out of all this. I think that the feud/competition has actually increased my business by a rather large margin. And the competition has certainly been a catalyst for me to improve my products. That is good for the consumer, and also I have developed more pride in my work over the course. However, I really have to shake my head when I see these blatant copies of nearly everything I do. Not only that, [his] prices are substantially higher than mine, and I feel that I can safely say that I am putting a lot more time into making stuff than he is. Now I am getting advice to increase my prices to match his. Some think that higher prices mean better product, at least to those that aren’t in the know.”
This strikes me as the typical response of a truly creative individual for whom making money off of his ideas is just one of many motivations.
Read the whole thing.
The New York Times paywall is officially coming down:
The Times said the project had met expectations, drawing 227,000 paying subscribers — out of 787,000 over all — and generating about $10 million a year in revenue.
“But our projections for growth on that paid subscriber base were low, compared to the growth of online advertising,” said Vivian L. Schiller, senior vice president and general manager of the site, NYTimes.com.
What changed, The Times said, was that many more readers started coming to the site from search engines and links on other sites instead of coming directly to NYTimes.com. These indirect readers, unable to get access to articles behind the pay wall and less likely to pay subscription fees than the more loyal direct users, were seen as opportunities for more page views and increased advertising revenue.
Or as I put it last year:
The columnists of the New York Times got a lot more attention from the blogosphere before they went behind the Times Select paywall. In the long run, the Times will have to either tear down their paywall, or their columnists will fade into obscurity. 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?
I think it’s only a matter of time before the Journal crunches the numbers and reaches the same conclusion.
Julian has a great write-up of the push to extend copyright protection to the fashion industry:
Even when the ubiquity of a style harms the sales of particular garments by widely-copied designers, however, it need not lower sales for high-end fashion as a whole. Instead, it may cause lateral displacement, as the fashion elite seek out less common looks. That could yield what legal scholars Kal Raustiala and Christopher Sprigman have dubbed “The Piracy Paradox”: Copying that harms individual designers may be a boon to the industry as a whole, as it popularizes trends and then burns them out, speeding up the fashion cycle and spurring demand for new styles. “When a successful restaurant opens up on a street that’s never had a restaurant before, there’s a way in which the second business is parasitic on the first,” says Raustiala. “But in the United States, we call that capitalism and competition.”
As the copyright office’s own analysis noted, there’s no data showing that knockoffs have done any net harm to high fashion, and the explosive growth of fast fashion has coexisted with a massive luxury boom. Betsy Fisher, who owns an eponymous clothing boutique in Washington D.C., suggests this may be because knockoffs create “fashion groupies,” serving as a kind of gateway drug to couture for the teens who are flocking to fast fashion.
And be sure to tune in for this week’s podcast, which will feature an in-depth discussion with Julian and Prof. Sprigman about this issue, as well as Sprigman’s recent victory in the Golan decision.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.