Monthly Archives: September 2007

Beware of flying balls

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A sign at Brancaster on the Norfolk coast on Sunday last. Note warning about “flying golf balls”. The beautiful links course behind the sign is that of the Royal West Norfolk club. It was laid out in 1892 and hasn’t changed much since — which is another way of saying that it was pretty good from the beginning. “Few things are more terrifying than the first hole at Brancaster on a cold, raw, windy morning,” wrote Bernard Darwin in The Golf Courses of the British Isles (1910), “when our wrists are stiff and our beautiful steely-shafted driver feels like a poker. There is a bunker – really a very big, deep bunker – right in front of our noses.”

Regulatory teeth

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This may seem a strange image with which to illustrate a post on the Microsoft judgment, but bear with me. As my mother used to say when confiscating pocket-money for some misdemeanour, “it isn’t the money, it’s the principle”. I can’t imagine that even a $613 million fine will make much of a dent in a company that has a market cap of $300 billion and is sitting on nearly $50 billion in cash and marketable securities.

I can’t even get worked up about seeing Microsoft finally coming unstuck (though it couldn’t have happened to a nicer company), because in a way the caravan has moved on. The company’s monopoly hold on the PC desktop is still a reality, of course, but it’s a wasting asset in a networked world. The most interesting implication of the European court’s decision is what it might mean for other companies — Apple and Google, to name but two. Just as sharks are encouraged by the sight of blood, the sweeping legal success regulators have enjoyed in the Microsoft case may have whetted their appetite for more. Apple’s grip on the music-download market provides one obvious target (especially in view of the widespread European concern for ‘interoperability’). And Google’s stranglehold on “all the world’s information” will eventually put it squarely in the crosshairs of the European regulatory system. Stay tuned.

The text of the Court of First Instance judgment is here, btw.

More: I forgot to mention Intel as another possible target for Euro-regulators. And this week the European Commission is opening hearings on a complaint that the iTunes store violates competition rules by charging Britons more than other Europeans for downloads.

Jobs descends from clouds, launches UK iPhone, departs

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No surprises here, then.

Apple has announced that its long-awaited iPhone will go on sale to British customers on November 9.

The handset, which will be available exclusively to O2 customers, will cost £269 – more than the $399 (£200) that it costs in the US.

The iPhone will sell for £269.

Users will have to sign an 18-month contract priced at either £35, £45, or £55 depending on the call package.

Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO, appeared in person at the company’s flagship Regent Street store in London for the announcement.

Still no 3G, I see. I’ve used one, courtesy of my friend Hap. It’s neat and hooked up easily to my home WiFi. But in the open it’s still a 2.5G phone.

You can have any gadget you like so long as it’s an iPod

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This morning’s Observer column, which has items about Apple, YouTube and Facebook. Sample:

The release of the new iPod range provided an insight into the company’s technical strategy. At the top of the line is the iPod Touch, which looks, feels and operates like the new phone – except that it doesn’t make or receive calls. It is, as one wag put it, ‘a de-phoned iPhone’. A better way to put it is that the iPhone is an iPod that makes calls. The music player is at the heart of Apple’s technological strategy, which leads to the thought that the company’s next laptop will be an iPod masquerading as a tablet…

The real value of Fair Use

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From InformationWeek…

Fair use exceptions to U.S. copyright laws account for more than $4.5 trillion in annual revenue for the United States, according to a report issued on Wednesday by the Computer and Communications Industry Association.

“Much of the unprecedented economic growth of the past 10 years can actually be credited to the doctrine of fair use, as the Internet itself depends on the ability to use content in a limited and nonlicensed manner,” CCIA president and CEO Ed Black said in a statement. “To stay on the edge of innovation and productivity, we must keep fair use as one of the cornerstones for creativity, innovation, and, as today’s study indicates, an engine for growth for our country.”

By one measure — “value added,” which the report defines as “an industry’s gross output minus its purchased intermediate inputs” — the fair use economy is greater than the copyright economy.

Recent studies indicate that the value added to the U.S. economy by copyright industries amounts to $1.3 trillion, said Black. The value added to the U.S. economy by the fair use amounts to $2.2 trillion.

The fair use economy’s “value added” is thus almost 70% larger than that of the copyright industries…

The report is here.

Later: Alas, it’s not as good as it seems. Nick Carr has a good critical swipe at it:

There’s a little problem, though. Even by the woeful standards of the bespoke research industry, this study is a crock. It’s not just bad; it’s absurd. What the authors have done is to define the “fair-use economy” so broadly that it encompasses any business with even the most tangential relationship to the free use of copyrighted materials. Here’s an example of the tortured logic by which they force-fit vast, multifaceted industries into the “fair use” category: Because “recent advances in processing speed and software functionality are being used to take advantage of the richer multi-media experience now available from the web,” then the entire “computer and peripheral equipment manufacturing industry” qualifies as a “fair-use industry.” As does the entire “audio & video equipment manufacturing” business. And the entire software publishing industry. And the entire telecommunications industry. And – hey, why not? – the entire insurance industry. Stock markets and commodity exchanges? Sure, throw them in, too…

I’ve always thought that a more insightful comparison is between the economic value of the information technology industry and that of the media industry. In terms of size and economic importance the former dwarfs the latter — which is why it’s absurd for legislators to agree to measures that would allow the latter to determine the pace and nature of innovation in computing and networking. Fair Use is no doubt significant in economic terms, but its real importance is cultural. Unless our societies have free exchange of ideas, they’re dead.

Tories plan supertax on SUVs

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Now here’s an unexpected political development …

Motorists who buy environmentally unfriendly “gas guzzling” cars would be hit by a new batch of green “supertaxes” that would add thousands of pounds to the final bill under plans announced by David Cameron’s advisers.

In a triple assault on high-emission vehicles, they have proposed a new “showroom tax” that would add 10 per cent to the cost of the biggest polluters, a new variable rate of VAT with the lowest charge for the greenest cars, and a new top band of vehicle excise duty that would add up to £200 to the annual cost of licensing “super polluters”.

The proposed taxes would act as an incentive for motorists to drive smaller, more environmentally friendly cars

As a result, a car costing £30,000 that was ranked in the most environmentally damaging category would have £3,000 added in tax to the ordinary cost as well as paying full VAT of 17.5 per cent and additional road tax…

Hmm…. Will this idea make it into the next Tory election manifesto?

All the news that’s fit to Digg

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This is really interesting — a summary by the Pew Research Center of a survey conducted by the Project for Excellence in Journalism.

If someday we have a world without journalists, or at least without editors, what would the news agenda look like? How would citizens make up a front page differently than professional news people?

If a new crop of user-news sites — and measures of user activity on mainstream news sites — are any indication, the news agenda will be more diverse, more transitory, and often draw on a very different and perhaps controversial list of sources, according to a new study. The report, released by the Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ), compares the news agenda of the mainstream media for one week with the news agenda found on a host of user-news sites for the same period.

In a week when the mainstream press was focused on Iraq and the debate over immigration, the three leading user-news sites — Reddit, Digg and Del.icio.us — were more focused on stories like the release of Apple’s new iphone and that Nintendo had surpassed Sony in net worth. The report also found subtle differences in three other forms of user-driven content within one site: Yahoo News’ Most Recommended, Most Viewed, and Most Emailed…

The full report is available here.

This is useful in redressing the balance in the debate about the relationship of user-driven media to mainstream journalism. There’s an assumption that almost anything would be better than the skewed news agendas of mainstream media — that the Jeffersonian ‘marketplace in ideas’ will lead, inevitably, to closer approximations to the truth. This survey, sketchy and inadequate though it is, and Cass Sunstein’s new book, Infotopia: how many minds produce knowledge, (which I’ve been reading) cast some doubts on that comfortable assumption.

Which is a bit distressing, to say the least. It’s always uncomfortable having one’s cherished illusions undermined.

Nick Carr is not in the least distressed by all this, btw. Itr probably confirms what he’s suspected all along.

Rory Cellan-Jones’s report on the survey is here.