MySpace opens up, but still in control

Mathew Ingram, 08/05/08 at 4:42 PM EDT

Everyone seems pretty excited about MySpace hooking up with Yahoo, eBay and Twitter as part of the Data Portability project. Data portability and open standards are a great thing, and it's nice to see some movement on that front after all of the announcements and back-slapping that went on about it last year -- followed by very little movement on anyone's part. But after all the party favours are handed out and everyone's finished their MySpace punch, it might be worth noting that this "data portability" initiative still keeps the power very much in MySpace's hands.

It's true that the site has agreed to open up its API and allow other providers such as Yahoo and Twitter to extract user data with the OAuth standard. But we're still talking about data that resides on MySpace's servers and therefore effectively -- according to the terms of use agreement that members sign when they register -- belongs to the social network. It's nice that they are letting you use it elsewhere, but as Stacy Higginbotham at GigaOm points out, they still get to choose which services can play, since they have to agree to MySpace's terms of service in order to get access to the API. And what if something happens and your account gets deleted for some reason?

Don't get me wrong -- it's good that MySpace is opening up. And I think it's great that being the first one to adopt any kind of open standard or interoperability seems to be turning into a competitive advantage. But this is very much about MySpace wanting to become the central storage point for peoples' data, and then doling out whatever information it wants to the services that it wants to play ball with. Even the praise from the Data Portability Project seems rather faint: it says that it hopes MySpace will someday "evolve toward becoming a compliant implementation" of the project's best practices. I hope so too.

Update:

Ben Metcalfe, who acted as an advisor to MySpace and is also a co-founder of the Data Portability group, contacted me to correct some misunderstandings about the nature of what MySpace is doing. In particular, he says that the launch partners are not getting any kind of special deal, but were only chosen in order to "have someone to test and debug the implementation with and also have the ability to demonstrate the complete value proposition end-to-end." Thanks for clarifying things, Ben.

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Neil Young jumps on Blu-Ray wagon

Mathew Ingram, 07/05/08 at 1:55 PM EDT

Jonathan Schwartz, the CEO of Sun Microsystems, is a pretty hip-looking guy for a chief executive officer: he has a long ponytail, and often wears jeans and turtlenecks. Standing next to Neil Young at the recent JavaOne software conference, however, Schwartz looked more like a typical stuffed-shirt than he ever has, since the legendary rocker was wearing his favourite wardrobe: jeans, running shoes, and a denim shirt over a T-shirt. And a baseball cap.

If you're wondering why these two men were on stage together at a conference devoted to Sun's Java software, you're probably not the only one. Neil Young isn't known as a computer geek (although he has a well-known interest in model trains). And he has made it clear in the past that he wasn't enamoured of digital technology.

That said, however, Neil has apparently jumped on board the Blu-Ray bandwagon, and is issuing his entire back catalogue using the format, starting with a disc holding all of his music from 1963 to 1972, as well as news clippings, videos and other material. And the Java connection? Sun's interactive software is part of the Blu-Ray standard, and allows the discs that Young is selling to be dynamically updated in the future, with additional tracks or features downloaded automatically to users when they play the Blu-Ray disc.

The singer said that while he has had concerns about sound quality in the past, he has no such problems with the quality available through Blu-Ray. And he also made some comments about the effect of downloading and file-sharing on music. “It's up to the masses to distribute it however they want,” Young said. “People sharing music in their bedrooms is the new radio.”

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Author says Potter lawsuit is "a crock"

Mathew Ingram, 06/05/08 at 12:58 PM EDT

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Trent Reznor gives away new album

Mathew Ingram, 05/05/08 at 12:45 PM EDT

Not long after Radiohead offered their new album In Rainbows through their website for whatever fans wanted to pay, Nine Inch Nails' frontman Trent Reznor took a similar approach with a new album he produced by hip-hop artist Saul Williams. The response was relatively lacklustre, however, with less than 20 per cent of those who downloaded the tracks paying even $5 for them, and from some of the interviews he gave about the experiment, it sounded as though Reznor wasn't all that happy with the way things turned out.

The singer/songwriter hasn't pulled back from experimenting with Web releases, however -- in fact, just the opposite. In March, he released a new instrumental album called Ghosts I-IV as a combination Web download and physical product; fans could opt for one of a series of offerings, all the way from low-quality mp3 tracks at $5 to a deluxe package for $300, which included a CD, a DVD and signed cover art. Even though nine of the tracks were released for free through the BitTorrent network, more than 2,500 bought the deluxe version and Reznor said he made $1.6-million.

In gratitude, the NIN frontman has released his latest album, The Slip, as a download that is completely free of charge. A message on the download site says "As a thank you to our fans for your continued support, we are giving away the new Nine Inch Nails album one hundred percent free." The entire album can also be streamed through iLike (something R.E.M. also did with their latest album). Radiohead, meanwhile, said recently that the "pay what you want" release of In Rainbows -- which Reznor criticized as "insincere" and a "bait-and-switch tactic" -- was "a one-off" and won't be repeated.

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Facebook: Good in emergencies too

Mathew Ingram, 02/05/08 at 5:08 PM EDT

There's a chart going around that looks at the 23,000 or so applications that have been developed for the Facebook social network, and the vast majority of them are dedicated to fun and games -- Super Pokes, Fun Walls, Zombies, and so on. But the networking site has a serious side as well: as a communications tool in emergencies, according to a recent study published in New Scientist magazine.

The study -- done by researchers at the University of Colorado who specialize in what's called "crisis informatics" -- found that Facebook and other "social media" tools such as Wikipedia and Twitter (a kind of group-chat instant messaging tool) did a better job of getting information out during emergencies such as the shootings at Virginia Tech and the forest fires that decimated California than either the traditional news media or government emergency services.

During the Virginia shootings, for example, the study found that the emergency service agencies were slow to update their reports on the latest situation at the technical college (where a gunman had opened fire on students in classrooms) and were also slow to update the names of those who had been killed. Within just 90 minutes of the first deaths, however, the New Scientist study says that a web page accurately describing the events had already appeared on Wikipedia and been updated several times.

The study also found that during the fires in California in October, contributors to various websites and those using Twitter were keeping their friends and neighbours informed of their whereabouts and of the location of various fires on a minute by minute basis. They also posted links to Google Maps with which others could track the progress of the fire and mark areas where schools and businesses were shut down as a result of the threat.

According to the study, the "mass media were unreliable... as they struggled to access remote areas from which website users with an internet connection could easily report. Media sites also focused on the 'sensational', such as fires close to celebrities' homes, which distorted the overall picture."

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RIAA loses key music decision

Mathew Ingram, 01/05/08 at 12:28 PM EDT

One of the long-running lawsuits that the Recording Industry Association of America has against illegal file-sharing of digital music tracks is the Atlantic v. Howell case, which involves a husband and wife and the music that they kept on their computer. The RIAA's argument last year -- an argument that was initially accepted by the court -- was that even though the agency couldn't prove that anyone actually downloaded copies of the music from the Howell's PC (other than a company working for the RIAA), the simple fact that their files were kept in a "shared" folder available to the Kazaa P2P software was enough to breach the law.

That decision was struck down this week, however: Judge Wake of the District Court of Arizona ruled that while section 106 (3) of the U.S. Copyright Act gives the owner of copyrighted works the exclusive right to "distribute copies" of those works, the law doesn't define the term “distribute,” and so the courts have had to do so. The general rule, Judge Wake said in his decision, was that “infringement of [the distribution right] requires an actual dissemination of either copies or phonorecords.” The decision (PDF link) goes on to quote copyright experts William Patry ("without actual distribution of copies of the [work], there is no violation of the distribution right”) and William Goldstein (“an actual transfer must take place; a mere offer for sale will not infringe the right”).

The court also rejected the RIAA's motion on another point: the agency argued that the Howells were guilty of primary copyright infringement for sharing the music through Kazaa -- but the court decision said that even if someone had downloaded a copy of the music from them, because of the way that a peer-to-peer network functions, that would still only be a case of secondary copyright infringement, since the downloader would not be taking the Howells' file, but merely making a copy of their copy.

The decision ends with this statement: "The court is not unsympathetic to the difficulty that Internet file-sharing systems pose to owners of registered copyrights. Even so, it is not the position of this court to respond to new technological innovations by expanding the protections received by copyright holders beyond those found in the Copyright Act." The decision doesn't mean the Howell case is over, however -- it now proceeds to a regular trial. The RIAA had been pushing for what's called "summary judgment," which is a much faster process.

Update:

As Brian Bishop points out in a comment, the U.S. decision is very similar to one that Konrad von Finckenstein (now the head of the CRTC) delivered in 2004 when he was a judge with the Federal Court, in a case involving the CRIA's attempt to get the names of file-sharers in Canada. In addition to accepting an earlier Copyright Board opinion that downloading was effectively permitted by the private copying levy, the judge ruled that simply putting files in a shared folder did not constitute evidence of infringement.

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Radiohead: No more free downloads

Mathew Ingram, 30/04/08 at 1:04 PM EDT

Just as Radiohead's "pay what you want" download model is being adopted by more musicians and artists -- including Nine Inch Nails, Coldplay, The Charlatans UK and others -- the band that launched the model says it doesn't plan to do it again, calling the release of In Rainbows "a one off." In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter, frontman Thom Yorke said that the offering last year arose out of a particular set of circumstances.

"I think it was a one-off response to a particular situation," Yorke told the magazine. "It was one of those things where we were in the position of everyone asking us what we were going to do," he said. Although the band hasn't confirmed it, there was speculation at the time that Radiohead chose to release its new album online first because it knew that leaked tracks were going to make their way onto the Internet soon anyway. A number of other artists, including Gnarls Barkley, have been either moving up their release dates or offering free samples for the same reason.

Yorke also said that he wasn't sure such an offer "would have the same significance now anyway, if we chose to give something away again. It was a moment in time." The band may also have been underwhelmed by the number of people who chose to actually pay for the album: according to a survey by the Telegraph of 5,000 users, almost 50 per cent either paid nothing or only a nominal amount (one pence). Thousands of fans also downloaded the album for free using the BitTorrent peer-to-peer network, although some said they only did so because the official Radiohead download site was crippled by a flood of requests.

Coldplay experienced a similar phenomenon after the band released a track from its new album Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends as a free download. According to several reports, the site crashed under the strain on Tuesday. More than 600,000 people downloaded the song in less than 24 hours, according to one report. Other artists have also announced plans to experiment with online delivery in some form or another; even Metallica -- the band best known for its vocal criticisms of Napster in the early days of downloading -- has said that it may look at offering new music directly to fans instead of using a traditional label.

Despite Radiohead's statement about not offering "pay what you want" downloads any more, Yorke said the band was going to build on its online connection with fans. "We are about that direct relationship (now) because we are big enough to establish that," he said. Among other efforts, the band has set up a music 'mashup' site where people can upload their own versions of one track from In Rainbows, and also has a social network based on Ning.com called W.a.s.t.e. Central, which has about 12,000 registered users. Members of the community can upload as many as 100 Radiohead songs that can be streamed from their profile pages on the network.

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Look at me, I'm Internet famous!

Mathew Ingram, 29/04/08 at 2:07 PM EDT

If you know who The Tron Guy is, or what LOLcatz are, or the name Leeeeroy Jenkins means anything to you -- then you need to get out of the house more. But seriously, if you know who all of those "Internet celebrities" are, then you probably wish you had been at the MIT campus in Cambridge, Mass. on the weekend, for the very first ROFL-Con. An event that took its name from the Internet chat-speak acronym for "rolling on the floor laughing," ROFL-Con featured all of those Internet celebrities and more (the guy behind Bert Is Evil, the creator of the Chuck Norris facts list, etc.)

Most of these people, of course, are unknown to anyone who doesn't spend a lot of time on the Internet. Tron Guy is just Jay Maynard, a computer programmer from Minnesota, and the creators of the LOLcatz website called I Can Has Cheezburger are just a couple of university friends -- only now, they are hiring their 10th employee and making a living from a site that specializes in pictures of cats with funny, misspelled sayings written on them. Not only are people uploading photos of their own and visiting the site by the hundreds of thousands, but they are buying T-shirts as well.

Tron Guy's fame (such as it is) stems from photos that he uploaded to a website in 2004, showing the step-by-step creation of a skin-tight bodysuit similar to the outfits worn by characters in Disney's TRON, a science-fiction movie from 1982. Although he was ridiculed mercilessly for his middle-aged physique -- much like the young Quebec boy who became known as the "Star Wars kid" after a home video of him jousting with a fake light sabre was uploaded to the Internet -- Jay Maynard turned the attention to his advantage and now gets paid to appear at sci-fi conventions in his bodysuit.

For David Weinberger of Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, these kinds of characters are evidence of the democratization of fame. Instead of being something that is created by Hollywood studios and producers and publicists, using unsuspecting singers or actresses from the U.S. Midwest, fame has become something that can also be created by average individuals (or at least, average individuals who spend a lot of time on the Internet). And the people who become Internet famous can turn that to their advantage, just as Tron Guy has. They may not get their own TV show, but who needs TV when you have millions of friends on the Internet?

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U.S. paper closes, moves online

Mathew Ingram, 28/04/08 at 12:52 PM EDT

Over the past couple of years, as the U.S. newspaper industry has watched advertising rates and subscription rates dwindle, there have been a number of predictions that a "major" newspaper would eventually cease print publication and move exclusively to the Web. Depending on your definition of the term "major newspaper," there have been several over the past six months, including the Cincinnati Post. And now we have another: the Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin said Saturday that it was closing its doors as a print publication and will be publishing only on the Internet. The paper, which had a peak circulation of more than 40,000 in the 1960s, now has fewer than 20,000 readers.

The Times, which has been publishing daily for 90 years, has apparently been losing ground steadily over the past decade or so to its local competitor, The Wisconsin State Journal -- in part because the State Journal is a morning newspaper and the Capital Times is published in the afternoon. Before the Internet came along (or television news, for that matter), the afternoon newspaper was the most current news available, and afternoon publishing was seen as a better alternative to morning newspapers. As the Web and television have siphoned off a lot of the urgent news of the day, however, afternoon papers have ceased to be as compelling.

About a third of the 60-person staff at the Capital Times have lost their jobs, with some new hires in the Web publishing area. In addition to creating content for a Madison website called Madison.com (which the State Journal also contributes to, although the two papers are editorially independent), the staff of the Capital Times will produce a local news insert that will be printed as part of the State Journal. Other daily papers that have closed over the past year include the Albuquerque Tribune, another afternoon newspaper. New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen has posted some thoughts about the closure on his blog at PressThink and there are more details here.

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