I have often pointed out that Digital Rights Management is futile. It is ineffective, and destroys the value of the content that it supposedly protects. Suncomm have sunk to a new low here:
News.com:
SunnComm Technologies, a developer of CD antipiracy technology, said Thursday that it will likely sue a Princeton student who early this week showed how to evade the company's copy protection by pushing a computer's Shift key.
Princeton Ph.D. student John 'Alex' Halderman published a paper on his Web site on Monday that gave detailed instructions on how to disarm the SunnComm technology, which aims to block unauthorized CD copying and MP3 ripping. The technology is included on an album by Anthony Hamilton that was recently distributed by BMG Music.
On Thursday, SunnComm CEO Peter Jacobs said the company plans legal action and is considering both criminal and civil suits. He said it may charge the student with maligning the company's reputation and, possibly, with violating copyright law that bans the distribution of tools for breaking through digital piracy safeguards.
Suncomm sold a product to damage CDs. Haldemann showed how to get the value back.
'We feel we were the victim of an unannounced agenda and that the company has been wronged,' Jacobs said. 'I think the agenda is: 'Digital property should belong to everyone on the Internet.' I'm not sure that works in the marketplace.' "
The agenda is 'I want to have control of software running on my computer'. Suing for the right to install software on my computer without my permission would (I hope) be thrown out.
Mr Jacobs, it is DRM that doesn't work in the marketplace. Customers don't want to buy damaged CDs that have missing features.
My suggestion to computer manufacturers is as follows.
When the user inserts a 'protected' CD, the computer says:
"This CD appears to be damaged - it has a corrupt Table of Contents."
"Would you like to burn a corrected copy? [Eject] [Play] [Burn]"
Thursday, 9 October 2003
San Jose City Wide Activity Guide's unintended consequences
Rosie has written an open letter on the San José City Wide Activity Guide and how by centralising listings of recreational activities, it has ended up cancelling lots of them due to lack of interest.
Syntactic web?
Jeremy Allaire:
'I wrote up a proposal, which I posted on my Weblog, for a new format called RSS-Data, which would provide an ability to provide richer data in RSS feeds,' Allaire said. 'So that people who want to use RSS as a way to do syndication of information, can syndicate not just news content but they'd be able to syndicate application data as well, data from a database or object data from programs.'
How to pass around data structures without meaning. If RDF is the Semantic Web, this is the Syntactic web.
'I wrote up a proposal, which I posted on my Weblog, for a new format called RSS-Data, which would provide an ability to provide richer data in RSS feeds,' Allaire said. 'So that people who want to use RSS as a way to do syndication of information, can syndicate not just news content but they'd be able to syndicate application data as well, data from a database or object data from programs.'
How to pass around data structures without meaning. If RDF is the Semantic Web, this is the Syntactic web.
BBC new media Director almost gets it
Ashley Highfield:
...future TV will may be unrecognisable from today, defined not just by linear TV channels, packaged and scheduled by television executives, but instead will resemble more of a kaleidoscope, thousands of streams of content, some indistinguishable as actual channels. These streams will mix together broadcasters' content and programmes, and our viewers' contributions. At the simplest level -- audiences will want to organize and re-order content the way they want it. They'll add comments to our programmes,programmes, vote on them and generally mess about with them. But at another level, audiences will want to create these streams of video themselves from scratch, with or without our help. At this end of the spectrum, the traditional 'monologue broadcaster' to 'grateful viewer' relationship will break down, and traditional advertising and subscription models will no longer be viable.
This is so close, but he is still talking about streams. If he can start thinking 'files' not 'streams' he will have the right model maped out.
TiVo's and iPods are hardware devices that customers willingly buy to turn streams into files. If they could get the files directly the whole enterprise is far simpler and more attractive.
...future TV will may be unrecognisable from today, defined not just by linear TV channels, packaged and scheduled by television executives, but instead will resemble more of a kaleidoscope, thousands of streams of content, some indistinguishable as actual channels. These streams will mix together broadcasters' content and programmes, and our viewers' contributions. At the simplest level -- audiences will want to organize and re-order content the way they want it. They'll add comments to our programmes,programmes, vote on them and generally mess about with them. But at another level, audiences will want to create these streams of video themselves from scratch, with or without our help. At this end of the spectrum, the traditional 'monologue broadcaster' to 'grateful viewer' relationship will break down, and traditional advertising and subscription models will no longer be viable.
This is so close, but he is still talking about streams. If he can start thinking 'files' not 'streams' he will have the right model maped out.
TiVo's and iPods are hardware devices that customers willingly buy to turn streams into files. If they could get the files directly the whole enterprise is far simpler and more attractive.
Monday, 6 October 2003
USA Yesterday
While I was getting ready for BloggerCon, I got a call form a USA Today Journalist, who had his story angle all ready:
'So, you got fired for blogging?'
'No, it wasn't like that. I wrote an explanatory piece, why don't you read it?'
He wasn't interested in that, so I explained a bit more that Apple discourages employees from talking to the press, and that I had found new work through my blogging.
He managed to imply his original line in the story instead.
'So, you got fired for blogging?'
'No, it wasn't like that. I wrote an explanatory piece, why don't you read it?'
He wasn't interested in that, so I explained a bit more that Apple discourages employees from talking to the press, and that I had found new work through my blogging.
He managed to imply his original line in the story instead.
Bloggercon roundup
I was too busy to blog at Bloggercon, but others weren't.
je_apostrophe has a nice editorialised roundup.
Dan Bricklin has great pictures
Betsy Devine is just making me blush
I had a great time - many thanks to Dave Winer and Wendy Koslow for making it happen.
je_apostrophe has a nice editorialised roundup.
Dan Bricklin has great pictures
Betsy Devine is just making me blush
I had a great time - many thanks to Dave Winer and Wendy Koslow for making it happen.
Saturday, 4 October 2003
Bloggercon live video
The conference is over, so I've taken my 'bootleg feed' down. This is the problem with 'live' video - easy to do but no persistence. (Well, OK it wasn't that easy to do - I spent 2 years coding it at Apple so it could be this easy).
Being able to do a live broadcast to the world on a whim with the contents of my backpack, an ethernet cable and a friendly server in Japan is something I would not have predicted when I started working for the BBC in 1988 - especially as I was also using the same computer to share wireless connectivity with half the room, to chat with people on 3 continents, and to write and debug code in the session.
Something I said a few times at Bloggercon is that video and audio are missing the essence of blogging. You can do live video, or you can use your computer to edit together a professional-looking video presentation, but the equivalent of the 'just-in-time' publishing that blogging provide is not there.
I spoke to Jennifer Neal of VidiBlog about this - their's is a live event service, which isn't VidiBlog, it's VidiChatRoom - it may still be interesting though.
Adam Curry and I had a chat about trying something more like blogging using the RSS 'enclosures'. I have the beginnings of a tool to automatically move audio posts into iTunes (and hence iPods) as I just can't listen to speech radio at the computer - I need to do it while driving.
There are two aspects we need to solve to make this work. One is on the capture side - making this straightforward. Audblog and similar services do this, but their output is effectively voicemail in the browser, and voicemail suffers from the problem of being easier t make than to listen to.
Coming up with a new grammar for presenting video and audio in a 'skimmable' way (as Dan Bricklin put it) is going to be interesting to work out.
Being able to do a live broadcast to the world on a whim with the contents of my backpack, an ethernet cable and a friendly server in Japan is something I would not have predicted when I started working for the BBC in 1988 - especially as I was also using the same computer to share wireless connectivity with half the room, to chat with people on 3 continents, and to write and debug code in the session.
Something I said a few times at Bloggercon is that video and audio are missing the essence of blogging. You can do live video, or you can use your computer to edit together a professional-looking video presentation, but the equivalent of the 'just-in-time' publishing that blogging provide is not there.
I spoke to Jennifer Neal of VidiBlog about this - their's is a live event service, which isn't VidiBlog, it's VidiChatRoom - it may still be interesting though.
Adam Curry and I had a chat about trying something more like blogging using the RSS 'enclosures'. I have the beginnings of a tool to automatically move audio posts into iTunes (and hence iPods) as I just can't listen to speech radio at the computer - I need to do it while driving.
There are two aspects we need to solve to make this work. One is on the capture side - making this straightforward. Audblog and similar services do this, but their output is effectively voicemail in the browser, and voicemail suffers from the problem of being easier t make than to listen to.
Coming up with a new grammar for presenting video and audio in a 'skimmable' way (as Dan Bricklin put it) is going to be interesting to work out.
Friday, 26 September 2003
Doctor Who to return
Tom Leonard :
After aeons drifting hopelessly lost in the space/time continuum, Doctor Who is finally coming back to Earth.
In a move that heralds the most eagerly anticipated comeback in television history, BBC1 said yesterday that it is developing a new series of the sci-fi classic.
I'd like to repeat my vote for Stephen Fry as Dr Who.
Update: Tom Baker tips Eddie Izzard for the role
After aeons drifting hopelessly lost in the space/time continuum, Doctor Who is finally coming back to Earth.
In a move that heralds the most eagerly anticipated comeback in television history, BBC1 said yesterday that it is developing a new series of the sci-fi classic.
I'd like to repeat my vote for Stephen Fry as Dr Who.
Update: Tom Baker tips Eddie Izzard for the role
Thursday, 25 September 2003
Taxing the unemployed
I've just had a conversation with Linda Meridon of the City of San Jose Finance Department.
According to her, looking for contract work counts as running a business, and I need to apply for a San Jose business license.
Also, as I didn't apply when I started looking in August, I will be charged interest on the fees. And she wants a copy of my 2002 tax return.
Apparently, looking for full-time (W2) employment is fine, but if you say you'll accept contact work too, you need to register as a business.
This seems a classic example of the failure to apply leeway that Weinberger explains so well.
According to her, looking for contract work counts as running a business, and I need to apply for a San Jose business license.
Also, as I didn't apply when I started looking in August, I will be charged interest on the fees. And she wants a copy of my 2002 tax return.
Apparently, looking for full-time (W2) employment is fine, but if you say you'll accept contact work too, you need to register as a business.
This seems a classic example of the failure to apply leeway that Weinberger explains so well.
Monday, 22 September 2003
More Greedy Capitalists needed
Liz leads me toTim Burke:
Why is so much children's software so bad? Is it the need to appeal to parents with the proposition that it's "educational", which usually results in insincere, uninvolving, hack-design work in children's culture as a whole? Anybody got any ideas?
The problem is twofold. Childrens 'culture' in games or TV is triply disintermediated - by parents, publishers and producers. Most staff actually working in this business are too young to have children, and are ready prey for poorly justified ideology about learning from the second-rate academics they hire as consultants.
I've been there. I helped make forgettable software for small children that did not engage or teach them.
Software in these fields goes through storyboards, linearizing it to the point of dullness; the children often end up with the equivalent of watching a PowerPoint marketing presentation.
The key is, as Liz and Tim imply, is build model worlds for the children to explore and create in, not linearized presentations. The best children's software - Zoombinis, Zap!, SockWorks and Cocoa do this.
Why is so much children's software so bad? Is it the need to appeal to parents with the proposition that it's "educational", which usually results in insincere, uninvolving, hack-design work in children's culture as a whole? Anybody got any ideas?
The problem is twofold. Childrens 'culture' in games or TV is triply disintermediated - by parents, publishers and producers. Most staff actually working in this business are too young to have children, and are ready prey for poorly justified ideology about learning from the second-rate academics they hire as consultants.
I've been there. I helped make forgettable software for small children that did not engage or teach them.
Software in these fields goes through storyboards, linearizing it to the point of dullness; the children often end up with the equivalent of watching a PowerPoint marketing presentation.
The key is, as Liz and Tim imply, is build model worlds for the children to explore and create in, not linearized presentations. The best children's software - Zoombinis, Zap!, SockWorks and Cocoa do this.
Tim Oren goes after the RIAA again
Tim Oren: Most hostile analysis of the music industry has focused on its inability to cope with the transition from material scarcity to digital abundance in the distribution portion of its business. However, the labels have been equally hapless when it comes to exploiting the Internet as a medium for promotion. Specifically, their promotional model still hinges on the scarcity of play slots on radio stations, and the label's ability to control them through payola promotional spending.
Joe misses the point
Joe Wilcox:
Microsoft claims consumers and businesses can do lots of cool and productive things with Windows. But for all Windows' features, I find what I miss the most is the Internet. Or so I learned a few hours into my three days without Internet access.
[...]
Until this afternoon, when Comcast kicked local service back on, my computer was uncharacteristically idle, in spite of all the things I should be able to do with a Windows PC. It's the Internet, a creation apart from anything invented by Microsoft, that I missed. E-mail, instant messaging, (legal) downloadable music, online newspapers and wire feeds: These are the things for which I most use my PC and for which I sorely suffered without.
[...]
The Web has always been about content. Some of the most interesting stuff that could be delivered over the Web, such as movies and music, is not necessarily dependant on Windows for delivery.
He almost saw it, but then dropped the ball in the last paragraph. The Net is about people. The computer is the conduit to the other people through email, music, IM and the web.
'Content' is a word for the byproducts of these connections.
Microsoft claims consumers and businesses can do lots of cool and productive things with Windows. But for all Windows' features, I find what I miss the most is the Internet. Or so I learned a few hours into my three days without Internet access.
[...]
Until this afternoon, when Comcast kicked local service back on, my computer was uncharacteristically idle, in spite of all the things I should be able to do with a Windows PC. It's the Internet, a creation apart from anything invented by Microsoft, that I missed. E-mail, instant messaging, (legal) downloadable music, online newspapers and wire feeds: These are the things for which I most use my PC and for which I sorely suffered without.
[...]
The Web has always been about content. Some of the most interesting stuff that could be delivered over the Web, such as movies and music, is not necessarily dependant on Windows for delivery.
He almost saw it, but then dropped the ball in the last paragraph. The Net is about people. The computer is the conduit to the other people through email, music, IM and the web.
'Content' is a word for the byproducts of these connections.
Sunday, 21 September 2003
How to Atomize (or de-atomize) Syndication
Joi, Dave, Shelley and others have been talking about how Microsoft might approach the Syndication feud.
They're all missing how 'embrace and extend' works. Imagine I'm a developer who wants to write a tool that can read and write to weblogs. I look into it and discover that there are multiple conflicting versions of syndication formats, and multiple inconsistent blog posting APIs.
I have to pick which ones to start with, and implement multiple parsers and an outer API to talk to the various blog types available.
If Atom or Microsoft or RSS 2.0 or whomever wants to win converts in the future they need to solve this problem for would-be adopters. Here's how to do it (for clarity, I'm using Atom as the putative protagonist, largely because I can then use the pun 'Atomizer').
Take Postel's law seriously.
Implement a web service at atomizer.org that, presented with a feed URI in arbitrary format, returns a usable feed in Atom format. (For extra credit, provide an API in mainstream languages that does this transparently when parsing fails).
Implement another web service there that presents the atom API fro arbitrary blog URI's. It bridges the Blogger, Userland, MT, LiveJournal, etc. APis transparently.
Given such services, the choice should become obvious for all future developers.
Will any of these players pull this off? I don't know.
They're all missing how 'embrace and extend' works. Imagine I'm a developer who wants to write a tool that can read and write to weblogs. I look into it and discover that there are multiple conflicting versions of syndication formats, and multiple inconsistent blog posting APIs.
I have to pick which ones to start with, and implement multiple parsers and an outer API to talk to the various blog types available.
If Atom or Microsoft or RSS 2.0 or whomever wants to win converts in the future they need to solve this problem for would-be adopters. Here's how to do it (for clarity, I'm using Atom as the putative protagonist, largely because I can then use the pun 'Atomizer').
Take Postel's law seriously.
Implement a web service at atomizer.org that, presented with a feed URI in arbitrary format, returns a usable feed in Atom format. (For extra credit, provide an API in mainstream languages that does this transparently when parsing fails).
Implement another web service there that presents the atom API fro arbitrary blog URI's. It bridges the Blogger, Userland, MT, LiveJournal, etc. APis transparently.
Given such services, the choice should become obvious for all future developers.
Will any of these players pull this off? I don't know.
Saturday, 20 September 2003
Video Blogging
Joi comments on activist web video: At the joint Social Entrepreneurs and Global Leaders for Tomorrow meeting in Geneva, I met Gillian Caldwell. She is a film maker and an attorney and the Executive Director of WITNESS.
This is incredibly important work. They are causing a great deal of impact already, but I think blogs could help increase their ability to reach a broader audience. This is such a great reason to figure out video blogging.
He mentions later that he wants to 'deep-link' video.
By this I think he means he wants to excerpt a shorter clip from a longer video and use this as a link. Most web video models don't do this very well; because of inter-frame dependencies in both video and audio, you usually get either a visual glitch or a big bandwidth spike at the beginning of each excerpted clip. A standalone clip may work, a sequence of them will often fail to play right.
In addition, clip selection is fiddly to do well, and all-but impossible for streaming.
I have some ideas on how to get round this issue; it also needs some work on the presentation side for improved effect.
This is incredibly important work. They are causing a great deal of impact already, but I think blogs could help increase their ability to reach a broader audience. This is such a great reason to figure out video blogging.
He mentions later that he wants to 'deep-link' video.
By this I think he means he wants to excerpt a shorter clip from a longer video and use this as a link. Most web video models don't do this very well; because of inter-frame dependencies in both video and audio, you usually get either a visual glitch or a big bandwidth spike at the beginning of each excerpted clip. A standalone clip may work, a sequence of them will often fail to play right.
In addition, clip selection is fiddly to do well, and all-but impossible for streaming.
I have some ideas on how to get round this issue; it also needs some work on the presentation side for improved effect.
Isenberg takes up Power Laws
David Isenberg says:
Yahoo and Google are permanently popular; they have low Zipf volatility. But my hypothesis is that there's a middle tier of blogs with high Zipf volatility, where a well expressed idea or a funny story or a new factoid can rapidly catapult a blog from #100,000 to #1000, or in rare cases even to #10, in a matter of hours.
I am not sure how you'd test this idea experimentally (comments appreciated), and I am afraid that if you take 100 blogs, say between #100 and #200, and look at their delta-rank over a one week period, they might not look any different than the blogs between #20,000 and #20,100. Despite this caution, I strongly suspect that blog rank (and web site rank, to a lesser extent) has a burstiness that is not characteristic of other media, that permits new ideas (and new sites and blogs) to bubble up and subside, to move more readily than other media along the x-axis of Zipf's Law.
His intuition is right, but it doesn't just apply to blogs. Consider other power-law distributed things, such as music and movies - their rankings suffer sudden volatility too.
In one sense, the argument is obviously true - with a true power law distribution, once you get down to the smaller numbers there are many with the same value, so a change of one in your value can move you a long way up (or down) the rankings.
However, the underlying catastrophe theory that predicts power laws also predicts cascades of arbritrary size too, so Isenberg's theory is likely to be right.
Yahoo and Google are permanently popular; they have low Zipf volatility. But my hypothesis is that there's a middle tier of blogs with high Zipf volatility, where a well expressed idea or a funny story or a new factoid can rapidly catapult a blog from #100,000 to #1000, or in rare cases even to #10, in a matter of hours.
I am not sure how you'd test this idea experimentally (comments appreciated), and I am afraid that if you take 100 blogs, say between #100 and #200, and look at their delta-rank over a one week period, they might not look any different than the blogs between #20,000 and #20,100. Despite this caution, I strongly suspect that blog rank (and web site rank, to a lesser extent) has a burstiness that is not characteristic of other media, that permits new ideas (and new sites and blogs) to bubble up and subside, to move more readily than other media along the x-axis of Zipf's Law.
His intuition is right, but it doesn't just apply to blogs. Consider other power-law distributed things, such as music and movies - their rankings suffer sudden volatility too.
In one sense, the argument is obviously true - with a true power law distribution, once you get down to the smaller numbers there are many with the same value, so a change of one in your value can move you a long way up (or down) the rankings.
However, the underlying catastrophe theory that predicts power laws also predicts cascades of arbritrary size too, so Isenberg's theory is likely to be right.
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