By dcl

There has been a lot of virtual ink spilled on the topic of the NYT pay wall. Just visit Daring Fireball for a run down of some of the better comments on this.

The short of it is this, the pricing model is confusing and complicated, and subscribing to a print edition (either weekdays or Sunday only) will net you the full digital which costs more than your subscription per annum… (Some sort of tax on people that can’t do math?)

But we must assume that the Times business people can do math quite well. And this whole thing doesn’t make any sense until your remember one very important thing, ads in the print edition of the times are worth a hell of a lot more than the ones in the online edition, so anything that suppresses print subscriptions even a little cost them millions, and anything that pushes that up even a little grosses millions of dollars. Even if you throw the paper away, the NYT gets to count you in their circulation numbers they provide to advertisers. You are worth a lot of money as a print subscriber; that’s why they chase you like a jealous and clingy ex whenever you try to cancel your subscription. And you continue to be worth a lot of money until the print advertisers realize everyone is just throwing the paper in the recycling bin, un-read, along with the phonebook.

Continue reading »

By dcl

So I came across this over at Improbable Research. It would appear that there is a scientist who believes her name cannot be used without written consent.

Continue reading »

By dcl

[Bumped to top. -ed.]

In preface, I think I’ve officially become a cranky old man… I don’t have any problem with the short form Census that was sent out earlier in the year. It is a Constitutionally mandated function of the government, and an accurate count of the population is necessary for a number of things. But all they really need to know is how many people live at the address. Which is, with slightly more detail, all the short form really asks, and I’m cool with that and it’s not particularly invasive.

But I have to say, I have to agree with the staunchest of bat s*#$ crazy libertarian conservatives when it comes to the “American Community Survey.” Continue reading »

By dcl

So, reading the BBC, and the record industry position on illegal file sharing.

The long and short of it is, the record industry association is shocked that illegal file sharing isn’t decreasing. Though, given the economy and the expansion of broadband, I think they should probably just be happy it isn’t increasing exponentially. And then to further demonstrate that they have no idea what they are talking about, they say:

[...]However, the BPI estimate there are still more than a billion illegal downloads every year in the UK.

Mr Taylor said that figure demonstrated how the market could “explode” if the government tackled illegal filesharing.

I’m not sure what it’s going to take to get these morons to understand that legal downloads and illegal file sharing are actually different use cases. It’s like saying if we got rid of radio, LP sales would soar. It’s hogwash. Illegal file sharing is, well, a lot like radio. Nobody is going to buy every song they listen to on the radio—it is a different use case.

I’m not saying that anyone should illegally share songs, or any intellectual property. It is illegal and unethical. What I am saying is that it is amazing the degree to which the record industry completely misunderstands the nature of illegal file sharing. And until they manage to actually understand it, no stupid and poorly constructed laws are going to fix it. The problem they have is not a legal one, file sharing is already illegal, it’s a business model. iTunes and online legal music sites helped part of the problem, but it only took care of one use case that leads to illegal file sharing. They need to find a way to deal with the other, and again, that is an business issue not a legal issue.