Daily Archives: December 6, 2007

Wilful cluelessness

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Wonderful Wired interview with Doug Morris, Universal’s CEO.

Morris was as myopic as anyone. Today, when he complains about how digital music created a completely new way of doing business, he actually sounds angry. “This business had been the same for 25 years,” he says. “The hardest thing was to get something that somebody wanted to buy — to make a product that anybody liked.”

And that’s what Morris, and everyone else, continued to focus on. “The record labels had an opportunity to create a digital ecosystem and infrastructure to sell music online, but they kept looking at the small picture instead of the big one,” Cohen says. “They wouldn’t let go of CDs.” It was a serious blunder, considering that MP3s clearly had the potential to break the major labels’ lock on distribution channels. Instead of figuring out a way to exploit the new medium, they alternated between ignoring it and launching lawsuits against the free file-sharing networks that cropped up to fill the void.

Morris insists there wasn’t a thing he or anyone else could have done differently. “There’s no one in the record company that’s a technologist,” Morris explains. “That’s a misconception writers make all the time, that the record industry missed this. They didn’t. They just didn’t know what to do. It’s like if you were suddenly asked to operate on your dog to remove his kidney. What would you do?”

Personally, I would hire a vet. But to Morris, even that wasn’t an option. “We didn’t know who to hire,” he says, becoming more agitated. “I wouldn’t be able to recognize a good technology person — anyone with a good bullshit story would have gotten past me.” Morris’ almost willful cluelessness is telling. “He wasn’t prepared for a business that was going to be so totally disrupted by technology,” says a longtime industry insider who has worked with Morris. “He just doesn’t have that kind of mind.”

The piece provides a fascinating insight into the mindset that has nearly destroyed the industry. Ed Felten has some acerbic comments on it.

Morris’s explanation isn’t just pathetic, it’s also wrong. The problem wasn’t that the company had no digital strategy. They had a strategy, and they had technologists on the payroll who were supposed to implement it. But their strategy was a bad one, combining impractical copy-protection schemes with locked-down subscription services that would appeal to few if any customers.

The most interesting side of the story is that Universal’s strategy is improving now — they’re selling unencumbered MP3s, for example — even though the same proud technophobe is still in charge.

Why the change?

The best explanation, I think, is a fear that Apple would use its iPod/iTunes technologies to grab control of digital music distribution. If Universal couldn’t quite understand the digital transition, it could at least recognize a threat to its distribution channel. So it responded by competing — that is, trying to give customers what they wanted.

Still, if I were a Universal shareholder I wouldn’t let Morris off the hook. What kind of manager, in an industry facing historic disruption, is uninterested in learning about the source of that disruption? A CEO can’t be an expert on everything. But can’t the guy learn just a little bit about technology?

YouTube Breeding Harmful Scientific Misinformation

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From Slashdot…

“University of Toronto researchers have uncovered widespread misinformation in videos on YouTube related to vaccination and immunization. In the first-ever study of its kind, they found that over half of the 153 videos analyzed portrayed childhood, HPV, flu and other vaccinations negatively or ambiguously. They also found that videos highly skeptical of vaccinations received more views and better ratings by users than those videos that portray immunizations in a positive light.

According to the lead researcher, ‘YouTube is increasingly a resource people consult for health information, including vaccination. Our study shows that a significant amount of immunization content on YouTube contradicts the best scientific evidence at large. From a public health perspective, this is very concerning.’ An extract from the Journal of the American Medical Association is available online.”

Nixon on Reagan

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Lovely stuff. A new transcript of a conversation between Henry Kissinger (the patron saint of gravel mixers) and Tricky Dick Nixon.

For years, the Presidential Recordings Program of the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia has been transcribing and analyzing the tape recordings Nixon secretly made in the White House. Even though it’s been 33 years since a disgraced Nixon left office, his tapes are still being processed by the National Archives, and the Miller Center has only recently gotten to the tape of this particular conversation. According to the newly created transcript of the meeting, both Nixon and Kissinger believed Reagan was not the brightest bulb in the GOP. Here are some key excerpts:

President Nixon: What’s your evaluation of Reagan after meeting him several times now.

Kissinger: Well, I think he’s a–actually I think he’s a pretty decent guy.

President Nixon: Oh, decent, no question, but his brains

Kissinger: Well, his brains, are negligible. I–

President Nixon: He’s really pretty shallow, Henry.

Kissinger: He’s shallow. He’s got no…he’s an actor. He–When he gets a line he does it very well. He said, “Hell, people are remembered not for what they do, but for what they say. Can’t you find a few good lines?” [Chuckles.] That’s really an actor’s approach to foreign policy–to substantive….

President Nixon: I’ve said a lot of good things, too, you know damn well.

Kissinger: Well, that too.

Later in the 24-minute-long discussion, the two discussed the possibility of Reagan running for president:

President Nixon: Can you think though, Henry, can you think, though, that Reagan with certain forces running in the direction could be sitting right here?

Kissinger: Inconceivable.

So much for Kissinger’s powers of prognostication. As they were finishing up–after discussing other matters–Nixon slammed Reagan again:

President Nixon: Back to Reagan though. It shows you how a man of limited mental capacity simply doesn’t know what the Christ is going on in the foreign area.

Knacker of the Yard (and Fleet Street’s Finest) beaten by woman using Google Images

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Truly, you could not make this up…

A single mother put police and journalists to shame in their attempts to unravel the mysterious reappearance of the canoeist John Darwin by using a simple Google search, it emerged today.

The woman found the picture that apparently shows Darwin with his wife, Anne, in Panama City in July last year.

When confronted with the picture, which was printed in the Daily Mirror yesterday, Anne Darwin is reported to have admitted: “Yes that’s him. My sons will never forgive me.”

It was found by the anonymous woman after she tapped in the words “John, Anne and Panama” into Google. She then forwarded the picture to both Cleveland police and the Mirror.

She said when she forwarded the picture to detectives, she was told: “You’re joking.”

She turned to the internet after becoming suspicious about the story, which has gripped the world’s attention, and she admitted her scepticism had paid dividends.

Thanks to Adrian Monck for spotting it.

Lennon in his own rite

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Paul Kindersley pointed me at Ubucom, an avant-garde site, where I found this amazing film of John Lennon and Yoko Ono and their friends, including Ringo, Allen Ginsberg and many others who had gathered to celebrate John’s birthday on October 9, 1972. This film — made by Jonas Mekas and shot on 16mm — is the only record of the event. We hear a series of improvised songs, sung by John, Ringo, Yoko Ono, and their friends — not in a clean studio recording, but as birthday singing: relaxed, chaotic and happy.

Other sequences included in the film mean that it develops like a contemporary music video: a party for John & Yoko at Klein’s (their agent) on June 12, 1971; August 1972 at Madison Square Garden; the Central Park Vigil on the day John was shot; and some other rare footage of John and Yoko shot on different occasions. The soundtrack also includes John’s comments on his own film-making — the “home movies” he made with 8mm technology. The most catchy song, sung in an improvised manner in the film, is the Attica Blues. The drummer for the last part of the film is Dalius Naujolaitis. Amazing stuff: like a trip in a time machine.

I saw John and Yoko once in the flesh. They came to a wierd hippie event held in the Lady Mitchell Hall in Cambridge in, I think, the Autumn of 1969. The hall was packed, and a good many of those present (though not, I hasten to add, this blogger) were, er, stoned. The old adage — that if you can remember the Sixties then you probably weren’t there — is only true up to a point.

Ah, those were the days! Remind me to tell you sometime about the Boer War.