Fair Use News & Views

I’ve always insisted that people be prepared for meetings. — after all they are group time wasters and the loss of productivity due to unprepared participants is huge. But this rule applies to people on both sides of the table. If I show up for a meeting with another company, investors or in any other business setting and my counterparts don’t have business cards, I might as well just leave. — it means that they have come to be entertained. Consider the following lame excuses:

I forgot my cards — did you bring your brain?

They are being printed —- OK, call me when they come in.

I didn’t want to use my old address. —- what, the basement in your Mom’s house has no suite #?

I don’t have cards — you are too cheap, unimportant or clueless?

I recently met with some “investors” . Some of them had no cards. That wasn’t all they were missing. One told me he really wasn’t a tech investor and couldn’t understand my pitch. He suggested I treat him like a smart child to make it understandable. — OK, would you like a sucker? (I’m not it)

Steve Jobs announced a new version of AppleTV at MacWorld to considerable and deserved fanfare. He said that the old version was wrong because did not understand that people wanted to rent movies. from the TV — you’re kidding? I really wanted to download movies on my PC and then see if I could coax the AppleTV into finding and streaming them from my PC to the TV. Now there are lots of studios on board and they have a good (albeit siloed) three-screen solution. This is a major improvement, but not the one that will win unless it becomes truly open.

Questions:

Ok, I need a third box on the TV (in addition to my DVD and Tivo) Can I play any of my own content on it or only what Apple approves?

Can I rip DVDs I already own and store them on the AppleTV?

What happens to all the content I buy from Apple if I want to switch vendors?

I’m pretty sure I won’t like the answers.

In today’s NYTimes, Paul Krugman distills the sub-prime lending mess down to a bite sized, easy to understand piece.  His outlook is not really that gloomy but you can see that there is not a simple solution.  However, today President Bush will announce the preliminary plan for a stimulus package.  Don’t expect much meat.  It will be the usual solution to all problems  — tax cuts.  At least this is more entertaining than Rudy Giuliani’s solution to all the country’s ills.  — more 9/11.

Gregory Reyes, the ex-chairman of Brocade has been sentenced to 21 months in prison for stock backdating. It is surprising how many people here in the Valley see this as a “victimless crime.” He argued that he never personally benefited from the practice and 400 hundred letters sent to the court agreed with his personal acessment as a fine citizen. If you take look at this stock chart, I suspect there are some who beg to differ. This is just like the Martha Sewart case. — it’s about lying and obstruction of jusctice, which are in fact crimes.

Consider another high profile case that is still open. — Apple computer. You’d have a hard time finding anyone who could find a crime in what Steve Jobs is accused of (and that the company has essentially admitted to). Apple stock has been a rocket in the last couple of years, so in this case even stockholders have a hard time finding the crime. In this SEC report, you see that they have settled with various former officers at Apple. Since the Jobs options were repriced/reversed he seems to be out of the firing line. — again the argument of no personal benefit. But consider another little known fact. At the time Jobs rejoined Apple he brought two key employees with him from his former company (Next). Both of them received in the money options that someone dated and priced in a very advantageous manner. The two subsequently became head of Apple’s hardware and software operations. — and contributed in no small part to the reborn Apple. Of course they reaped millions on the options. The both “retired” in the spring of 2006 while the SEC investigation was starting. One of them sold some $30M of options in the days running up to his “retirement”. With a little digging you find that one was hired immediately at a $250k/year “consultant” to Apple with an employment contract that can be easily found on the Net, outlining the fact that no particular tasks would be expected of him. Fishy or not?

Fake Steve echos my feelings on Facebook and Faceborg. For a little more insight on the whole privacy/Beacon controversy take a look at this Wired story. I know you can turn off Beacon, but it’s still on by default and was kind enough to share with the world that I bought tickets to “There Will be Blood” on Fandango. The 60 Minutes interview really captures the depth of the problem.  —- take a look if you want to see Kara Swisher bitting her tongue.  Faceborg has no idea how to make money other than with advertising. Just as mayonaise makes any foods into a salad, advertising makes any website into a business. — NOT. Oh yeah, how DO I shut it off.

Hard data is arriving from the Radiohead experiment.  I see two lessons here:

Free content does not necessarily kill sales

Fans under a certain age don’t spend money

The unifying them in both of these issues is CONVENIENCE.  Piracy is a tradeoff against convenience not money.  In my day technology piracy involved long distance phone calls.  I know people who didn’t pay for a call for years, but eventually the convenience tradeoff made paying a more attractive choice.  The  price of a long distance call declined also, which made the decision easier.  I talked to someone at CES who told me he was doing focus groups on whether a new music distribution method would be embraced by users under 30.  — save your money dude, the answer is no.   But these freetards will grow up and become lawyers and doctors and getting busted by the RIAA would be embarassing — and extremely unlikely.  If the scheme of distribution is more convenient than piracy, people WILL pay for it.

Yesterday Xerox unveiled their new corporate identity. I have it on good authority that they spent several $M on it’s creation. What message are they sending us?

Possibility 1:

Xerox is about to enter the gaming market (thanks for the X-box logo Microsoft)

Manga printing will be huge (and the only people who don’t hate the comic sans font)

Possibility 2

No one in Xerox management knows there is a gaming market

Hey look at this cool font no one ever uses

You decide.

A panel discussion here at CES proclaimed DRM (on music) as dead   Is it likely that the music trend will soon migrate to video?  This would imply that studios accept the fact that DVDs are rippable.  So far only Fox has an announcement related to this and I don’t expect the trend to continue due to the differences in the way music is consumed.  — video tends to be a one time play environment.