Is it really that difficult for folks in the industry to at least admit that many, many people discover new music through file sharing? They don’t have to say that it’s okay or that it’s legal. But if they’re going to come up with something that really competes, they should at least be willing to admit what’s really happening in the marketplace. It’s great that they’re trying — but pretending that file sharing doesn’t exist isn’t how you respond to the market threat.
Techdirt on Music Sharing
14 September 2008
20 August 2008
At this point, plenty of companies are recognizing that it’s just too expensive to actually innovate. If you do something well, you’re only going to get sued by someone else who hasn’t been able to innovate as well as you. The patent system is functioning in exactly the opposite manner from its constitutional purpose. It’s not promoting the progress, it’s hindering it by making sure that “progress” has a toll booth attached to it.
Techdirt on Patents
9 June 2008
I tend to think of big media companies hiring a “Chief Digital Officer” as being severely misguided. That’s because thinking “digitally” isn’t a separate job function or a separate department these days. It should permeate across the business — and assigning it to one exec pretty much guarantees that the rest of the company now thinks that it isn’t their problem to think about how new technologies impact their business strategy.
Techdirt on “Chief Digital Officers”
21 May 2008
It really does take a team of folks to successfully implement an idea and bring it to market. While that doesn’t necessarily mean founders are “expendable,” it does highlight the importance of a strong overall team, rather than reliance on a single “visionary” expected to guide all aspects of the company. It doesn’t mean founders shouldn’t watch out for speeding buses, however.
Techdirt on Startup Founders
9 May 2008
But, of course, to politicians with a legislative hammer, every little problem looks like a nail. Thus, we’ve got politicians proposing cybersecurity legislation that would require Homeland Security to decrease the number of successful cybersecurity attacks against its network.
Techdirt on Politicians
7 May 2008
Just a few months after worrying about terrorists hiding in Second Life, now at least one Congressional representative is worried about how Second Life is corrupting your children. He’s trying to drum up support to ban Second Life from schools and libraries, hyping up the fact that “bad stuff” happens in Second Life and, gosh, we wouldn’t want kids to learn how to deal with bad stuff in an environment where they’re protected from any physical harm. It’ll be much better when they learn to deal with it out on the streets.
Techdirt on Second Life
10 April 2008
Sometimes it’s fascinating to see the type of research reports that analyst firms put out. For example, one firm has put out a report supposedly warning all these wireless firms hyping up “unlimited” plans that unlimited plans tend to increase usage. You think? Really? One would have hoped, given the long history of unlimited usage plans in other fields, that the mobile operators would have understood the basic economics equation in moving to such plans.
Techdirt on Unlimited Plans
7 March 2008
People working together to collaborate is an important skill in the real world, and what some people consider “cheating” these days seems a lot like the type of collaboration that kids are quite used to doing online, and which should serve them well later in life.
Techdirt on “Cheating”
10 February 2008
Extrapolation of what’s happening “now” is one of the most dangerous things in trying to predict the future. If something is growing quickly today, it doesn’t mean that will last.
Techdirt on Social Networks
31 January 2008
The [film festival] organizer has a few quotes that suggests he understands that piracy isn’t the problem the MPAA makes it out to be: “No artists have ever starved because too many people knew about them.”
Techdirt on Cinequest via Organizer