Miscellaneous

Cuban on Fragmentation & Attention in the Blogosphere (or Why Power Laws Really Do Govern All Media)

by on June 1, 2009 · 14 comments

Mark Cuban penned a sharp piece over the weekend entitled “Who Cares What People Write?” in which he explains why people shouldn’t get too worked up about what they might read about themselves (or their organizations) online since, chances are, very few people are ever going to see it anyway.  To explain why, Cuban identifies two kinds of “Outties” (which is shorthand for someone who publishes on the web): (1) “professional outties” (or “Those that attempt to publish in a limited number of locations to a maximum number of readers or listeners, with a reasonable expectation of building a following.”) and (2) “amateur outties” (“Those that attempt to publish in as many places as possible hoping they are “discovered.”)  But those “amateur outties… really [have] no impact on 99.99pct of the population,” Cuban argues, “[and the] vast majority of what is written on the web goes unread and even that which is read, is quickly forgotten.”  Moreover, “even when something is heavily commented on, it  is usually just an onslaught by the ‘amateur outties.’”

Thus, Cuban concludes:

Fragmentation applies to 100pct of media. We have gotten to the point where it is so easy to publish to the web, that most of it is ignored. When it is not ignored and it garners attention, the attention is usually from those people, the amateur outties, whose only goal is to create volume on the web in hopes of being noticed.

That’s not to say there are no sites that people consume and pay attention to. There obviously are.  That’s where the “professional outties” come in. They are branded. They have an identity that usually extends beyond the net.  They are able to make a living publishing, even if its not much of one.  They are the sites that people consume and may possibly remember.

The moral of the story is that on the internet, volume is not engagement.  Traffic is not reach.  When you see things written about a person, place or thing you care about,  whether its positive or negative, take a very deep breath before thinking that the story means anything to anyone but you.

Continue reading →

SHARE: 14 comments

On Measuring Technology Diffusion Rates

by on May 28, 2009 · 27 comments

Via Kevin Kelly I see that at some point Forbes magazine produced this chart measuring technology diffusion rates for various media and communications technologies since their year of inception.
Forbes tech diffusion chart
I found this of great interest because, since the mid-90s, I have been putting together various charts and tables illustrating technological diffusion [most recently I did this in my “Media Metrics” report] and this particular chart is quite challenging since you are forced to pick a “Year 1” date to begin each of the “S curves.” For example, what is “Year 1” for electricity or telephony on one hand, or the PC or the Internet on the other? That’s not always easy to determine since it is unclear when certain technologies were “born.”

Regardless, no matter how you cut it, the more modern and the less regulated the technologies, the quicker they get to market. Here’s a couple of my recent charts illustrating that fact. The first shows how long it took before various technologies reached 50% household penetration. The second illustrates the extent of household diffusion over time.


However, as Kevin Kelly notes, we usually never see any technology hit 100% household penetration (although the boob tube got close!):
Continue reading →

SHARE: 27 comments

Cato Unbound Debate: Lessig’s Code at Ten (Part 4: Lessig’s response)

by on May 11, 2009 · 10 comments

The week-long Cato Unbound online debate about the 10th anniversary of Lawrence Lessig’s Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace continues today with Prof. Lessig’s response to Declan McCullagh’s opening essay, “What Larry Didn’t Get,” Jonathan Zittrain’s follow-up essay, and my essay on, “Code, Pessimism, and the Illusion of ‘Perfect Control.’”  Needless to say, Prof. Lessig isn’t too happy with my response. You should jump over to the Cato site to read the entire thing, but here are a couple of excerpts and my response.

To my suggestion that there is a qualitative difference between law and code, Prof. Lessig says:

I’ve argued that things aren’t quite a simple as some libertarians would suggest. That there’s not just bad law. There’s bad code. That we don’t need to worry just about Mussolini. We also need to worry about DRM or the code AT&T deploys to help the government spy upon users. That public threats to liberty can be complemented by private threats to liberty. And that the libertarian must be focused on both.  […]

Of course, law is law. Who could be oblivious to that? And who would need a book to explain it?  But the fact that “law is law” does not imply that it has a “much greater impact in shaping markets and human behavior.” Sometimes it does — especially when that “law” is delivered by a B1 bomber. But ask the RIAA whether it is law or code that is having a “greater impact in shaping markets” for music. Or ask the makers of Second Life whether the citizens of that space find themselves more constrained by the commercial code of their geo-jurisdiction or by the fact that the software code of Second Life doesn’t permit you simply to walk away (so to speak) with another person’s scepter. Whether and when law is more effective than code is an empirical matter — something to be studied, and considered, not dismissed by banalities spruced up with italics.

Well, I beg the professor’s pardon for excessive use of italics.  [I won’t ask for an apology for misspelling my last name in his piece!] Regardless, it’s obvious that we’ll just never see eye-to-eye on the crucial distinction between law and code. Again, as I stated in my essay: “With code, escape is possible. Law, by contrast, tends to lock in and limit; spontaneous evolution is supplanted by the stagnation of top-down, one-size-fits-all regulatory schemes.”

Lessig largely dismisses much of this with that last line above, suggesting that we just need to keep studying the matter to determine the right mix of what works best.  To be clear, while I’m all for studying the impact of law vs. code as “an empirical matter,” that in turn begs the question of how we define effectiveness or success. I suspect that the professor and I would have a “values clash” over some rather important first principles in that regard.  This is, of course, a conflict of visions that we see throughout the history of philosophy; a conflict between those who put the individual and the individual’s rights at the core of any ethical political system versus those who would place the rights of “the community,” “the public” or some other amorphous grouping(s) at the center of everything.  It’s a classic libertarian vs. communitarian / collectivist debate.

Continue reading →

SHARE: 10 comments

More on “Open vs. Closed” Technologies & Business Models

by on May 10, 2009 · 20 comments

Over at the Verizon Policy Blog, Link Hoewing has a sharp piece up entitled, “Of Business Models and Innovation.” He makes a point that I have often stressed in my debates with Zittrain and Lessig, namely, that the whole “open vs. closed” debate is typically greatly overstated or misunderstood.   Hoewing correctly argues that:

The point is not that open or managed models are always better or worse.  The point is that there is no one “right” model for promoting innovation.  There are examples of managed and open business models that have been both good for innovation and bad for it. There are also examples of managed and open models that have both succeeded and failed.  The point is in a competitive market to let companies develop business models they believe will serve consumers best and see how things play out.

Exactly right.  Moreover, the really important point here is that there exists a diverse spectrum of innovative digital alternatives from which to choose. Along the “open vs. closed” spectrum, the range of digital technologies and business models continues to grow and grow in both directions.  Do you want wide-open, tinker-friendly devices, sites, or software? You got it. Do you want a more closed, simple, and safe online experience?  You can have that, too.  And there are plenty of choices in between.

This is called progress!

SHARE: 20 comments

Terrific Section 230 Resource

by on May 10, 2009 · 13 comments

If you’re a cyberlaw geek or tech policy wonk who needs to keep close tabs on Sec. 230 developments, here’s a terrific resource from the Citizen Media Law Project up at the Harvard Berkman Center.  The site offers a wealth of background info, including legislative history, all the relevant case law surrounding 230, and breaking news on this front.  Just a phenomenal resource; a big THANK YOU! to the folks at CMLP who put this together.

If you’re interested in these issues, you might also want to check out this friendly debate that Harvard’s John Palfrey and I engaged in over at Ars recently as well as my essay on how Sec. 230 has spawned a “utopia of utopias” online.

CMLP screen

SHARE: 13 comments

Cato Unbound Debate: Lessig’s Code at Ten (Part 3: Thierer response)

by on May 8, 2009 · 7 comments

The Cato Unbound online debate about the 10th anniversary of Lawrence Lessig’s Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace continues today with my response to Declan McCullagh’s opening essay, “What Larry Didn’t Get,” as well as Jonathan Zittrain’s follow-up.

In my response, “Code, Pessimism, and the Illusion of ‘Perfect Control,'” I begin by arguing that:

The problem with peddling tales of a pending techno-apocalypse is that, at some point, you may have to account for your prophecies — or false prophecies as the case may be. Hence, the problem for Lawrence Lessig ten years after the publication of his seminal book, Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace.

I go on to argue that:

Lessig’s lugubrious predictions proved largely unwarranted. Code has not become the great regulator of markets or enslaver of man; it has been a liberator of both. Indeed, the story of the past digital decade has been the exact opposite of the one Lessig envisioned in Code.

After providing several examples of just how wrong Lessig’s predictions were, I then ask:

[W]hy have Lessig’s predictions proven so off the mark? Lessig failed to appreciate that markets are evolutionary and dynamic, and when those markets are built upon code, the pace and nature of change becomes unrelenting and utterly unpredictable. With the exception of some of the problems identified above, a largely unfettered cyberspace has left digital denizens better off in terms of the information they can access as well as the goods and services from which they can choose. Oh, and did I mention it’s all pretty much free-of-charge? Say what you want about our cyber-existence, but you can’t argue with the price!

Continue reading →

SHARE: 7 comments

Cato Unbound Debate: Lessig’s Code at Ten (Part 2: Zittrain response)

by on May 6, 2009 · 9 comments

As I mentioned on Monday,  the folks over at Cato Unbound have put together an online debate about the impact of Lawrence Lessig’s Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace as it turns 10 this year.

The opening essay from Declan McCullagh, “What Larry Didn’t Get,” took Lessig to task for favoring rule by “technocratic philosopher kings” over the spontaneous invisible hand of code.   In Round 2 of the debate, Harvard’s Jonathan Zittrain comes to Lessig’s defense and suggests that the gap between Lessig and libertarians is not as wide as Declan suggests:

The debate between Larry and the libertarians is more subtle. Larry says: I’m with you on the aim — I want to maintain a free Internet, defined roughly as one in which bits can move between people without much scrutiny by the authorities or gatekeeping by private entities. Code’s argument was and is that this state of freedom isn’t self-perpetuating. Sooner or later government will wake up to the possibilities of regulation through code, and where it makes sense to regulate that way, we might give way — especially if it forestalls broader interventions.

Run over to Cato Unbound to read the rest.  My response will be going up next (on Friday) and then Prof. Lessig’s will be up next Monday.

SHARE: 9 comments

Bank of America’s “Borrower’s Protection Plan” is a Scam

by on May 4, 2009 · 172 comments

Once in a while, I indulge in a non-tech rant here, just to be interesting – or in hopes of reaching the world at large with some information they can use.

Well, everyone should know that Bank of America’s “Borrower’s Protection Plan” is a complete scam. It charges a HUGE monthly amount to insure your mortgage payments (for only a year!) in case of adverse events like job loss, disability, etc.

When I refinanced a year ago, I signed up for it casually and inadvertently, in light of a “first-year free” offer. When it occurred to me that they would probably refuse to let go of me at the end of the opening year, I canceled my participation in the plan by telephone. Or so I thought.

It’s a year later and I’m scheduled to begin making payments for this rip-off in my mortgage payment starting on July 1st. Bank of America evidently lied to me about letting me cancel a year ago.

Here’s a Washington Post article on the topic with the usual pro-regulatory angle. This is not a matter for regulators. It’s my job and yours to be better consumers.

I just called my mortgage broker and chewed her out good for getting me involved in this scam. I won’t refinance with Bank of America, and will be moving accounts (in addition to my current mortgage, I have two business accounts at BofA) away from Bank of America to more reputable institutions. I’ll be distributing this post far and wide and I hope you will pass it along too.

Bank of America’s “Borrower’s Protection Plan” is a scam.

SHARE: 172 comments

Cato Unbound Debate: Lessig’s Code at Ten (Part 1: Declan’s Lead Essay)

by on May 4, 2009 · 8 comments

CodeLawrence Lessig’s Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace turns 10 this year and the folks over at Cato Unbound have put together an online debate about the book and its impact on cyberlaw, which I am honored to be taking part in.  The discussion begins today with a lead essay from Declan McCullagh of CNet News and then continues throughout the week with responses from Harvard’s Jonathan Zittrain, myself, and then Prof. Lessig himself.

Declan’s lead essay, “What Larry Didn’t Get,” starts things off with a bang:

[Lessig] prefers what probably could be called technocratic philosopher kings, of the breed that Plato’s The Republic said would be “best able to guard the laws and institutions of our State — let them be our guardians.” These technocrats would be entrusted with making wise decisions on our behalf, because, according to Lessig, “politics is that process by which we collectively decide how we should live.”

Declan goes on to cite a litany of high-profile legislative and regulatory failures that have unfolded over the past decade, calling into question the wisdom of Prof. Lessig’s approach.  Declan continues:

One response might be that the right philosopher-kings have not yet been elevated to the right thrones.  But assuming perfection on the part of political systems (especially when sketching plans to expand their influence) is less than compelling.  The field of public choice theory has described many forms of government failure, and there’s no obvious reason to exempt Internet regulation from its insights about rent-seeking and regulatory capture.

Sounds like it could be a heated discussion!  Jonathan Zittrain is up next with an essay due to be posted on Wednesday and then my response will follow on Friday.  Prof. Lessig’s response will go up a week from today.  I look forward to this exchange and the responses it generates.  I encourage readers to head over to the Cato Unbound site and check out the essays as they appear.  I’ll post reminders here as the installments go live on the Cato site.

SHARE: 8 comments

Princeton Students (including me!) Blog about Tech Policy

by on April 9, 2009 · 4 comments

I’m taking a course here at Princeton on IT Policy, taught by my advisor, Ed Felten. It’s been an interesting experience. I think it’s safe to say that I’ve spent more time thinking about the topics than the median member of the class, and the class has been an opportunity to re-acquaint myself with how these issues look for smart people who aren’t immersed in these issues every day.

The course has a blog, where each class participant is asked to contribute one post per week. I’ve been impressed by the quality of a number of posts. Here is a good post by “Jen C.” about the Author’s Guild’s implausible claim that text-to-speech software on the Kindle 2 infringes copyright by creating a derivative work. And here is a fascinating post by Sajid Mehmood about Jonathan Zittrain’s The Future of the Internet, which our own Adam Thierer reviewed here. Sajid points out that Zittrain’s prophesy is more likely to come true if it’s helped along by bad government regulations, an argument that I find persuasive (and not just because he quotes my DMCA paper).

One of the most interesting debates has been over the Google Book Search settlement. A couple of weeks ago, Sajid posted a tentative defense of the settlement, arguing that whatever its flaws, the Google Book Search settlement is a private agreement and the courts would be overstepping their authority to reject it. I responded with a pair of posts making the case that, thanks to the creative use of the class action mechanism, the settlement would have effects far beyond those that could be achieved by an ordinary private contract, and that the results of the settlement would be anticompetitive. Sajid responded with the reasonable point that the settlement will not be the only—or even necessarily the most important—barrier to entry in the book search engine market, and that its better to have one firm able to build a book search engine than zero.

We’ll all be blogging throughout the month of April, so I encourage you to check it out.

SHARE: 4 comments

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →