Google’s video codec has significant support, but building it into the standard language for Web pages would advance its fortunes significantly.

Originally posted at Deep Tech

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Today we’re announcing an event that we’re holding on June 16th, in the evening, at Google’s offices in Mountain View. It’s not your ordinary panel/speaker event. It’s based on the Techdirt Greenhouse series of events that we’ve done over the years, where the focus is on getting lots of smart people together in a room and brainstorming to come up with solutions to certain issues. In the past, those have often been issues faced by a particular organization, but back in January, at Midem, we tried it on a specific industry: the music industry. The results were fantastic, so we’ve decided to start doing similar brainstorming workshops in other areas, and this one is our first, entitled “Techdirt Saves* Journalism.”

Obviously, the focus is on brainstorming ideas to help the journalism market. It will kick off with three short presentations: one by me, one by Google economist Hal Varian, who’s been doing a ton of fantastic work on newspaper economics, and one by Ian Rogers, the CEO of Topspin, one of a growing group of companies that is helping to reinvent the music business. That last one might seem a bit confusing — since this event is all about the journalism industry — but that’s very much part of the point. These brainstorming sessions work best by bringing in people with very different perspectives. We don’t want this to just be journalists/newspaper people, but have already begun inviting a wide range of folks with diverse backgrounds, well beyond journalism. There will be plenty of journalism/media folks there, as well. But we thought that Ian could provide some perspective about how some parts of the music industry have responded (successfully) to the challenge of the internet, and that could be great in getting people thinking differently and creatively.

These events are highly interactive — so if you’re coming, expect to participate. Following the brief presentations, attendees will be broken out into small brainstorming groups, and we’ll have about an hour to workshop and brainstorm (with some guidance) to try to come up with creative ideas and ways to help save journalism. After that we’ll regroup, share some of the best ideas, and then partake of some food and drink.

The event is being both sponsored and hosted graciously by Google — which shouldn’t come as a surprise, given how much effort the company is putting into trying to help the journalism business succeed (that Atlantic article is a fantastic read).

To commemorate this occasion, we’re also releasing our latest t-shirt design. Given the massive success of our limited edition DMCA t-shirt (seriously, we sold way more of those than we expected), we thought we’d follow it up with a special paywall t-shirt. Sporting a typical online newspaper paywall design, you can use this paywall t-shirt to make sure folks pay up before finishing their conversation with you. After all, without people paying to talk to you, how would you ever be incented to produce the sort of quality conversations they want? If you’d like to attend the Techdirt Saves* Journalism workshop, you can reserve a spot here — and we’ll throw in the t-shirt! If you can’t attend the event, but still want your very own paywall t-shirt, that option is right here.

We look forward to seeing you on June 16th!

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* On the title of the event, Techdirt Saves Journalism, we’re adding this particular disclaimer to ward off those who might have missed the joke and are about to accuse us of massive hubris. The reference is a mocking response to the regular headlines you see every few days about “newspapers are dying” or “so-and-so is ‘killing’ journalism.” We figured that if there was so much hyperbole around an industry dying based on misread data points, we might as well hit back with a mocking claim that this single event will clearly save journalism. Oh yeah, also, one of our regular critics in the comments recently started claiming that we had said we could save journalism, even though we made no such claim. However, if we’re going to get slammed for making the claim anyway, we might as well embrace it and see what we can do. So, for the really literally minded of you out there, we don’t think this event alone will “save journalism.” That’s just a joke. But it should be insightful, enlightening and educational for all involved. And, who knows, perhaps some idea will be hatched that does, in fact, help journalism avoid the fate in all those headlines we keep seeing…

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Data protection laws–of all things–could be used by Google to avoid having to turn over data collected as part of its Wi-Fi Street View incident to German authorities.

Originally posted at Relevant Results

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Rose M. Welch points us to an interview with Cory Doctorow, where he discusses his decision to give away all of his books as free downloads (which, as you hopefully know, has been quite successful for him). As Rose notes, one of his quotes aptly sums up the basic position we’ve taken here at Techdirt for years:

As a practical matter, we live in the 21st century and anything anybody wants to copy they will be able to copy. If you are building a business model that says that people can only copy things with your permission, your business is going to fail because whether or not you like it, people will be able to copy your product without your permission. The question is: what are you going to do about that? Are you going call them thieves or are you going to find a way to make money from them?

This is what’s been so frustrating about this debate for so long. The focus, by many in certain industries (especially the music and movie industry), has relied so much on the “calling them thieves” part, rather than figuring out better ways to make money. Sure, if there were a way to stop unauthorized copying, that would make lives easier for those companies. But that’s a pipe dream. It’s not possible. And while it may take more work, once they stop complaining about it, and start realizing that there are ways to leverage that copying as free or cheap creation, promotion and distribution, suddenly it becomes an opportunity, rather than a threat.

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YouTube’s Moderator tool gives YouTube channel owners a way to prioritize and harvest user ideas. It’s a carryover from Google’s own Moderator service, which offers many of the same features.

Originally posted at Web Crawler

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We’ve been discussing the manufactured buzz around the concept of a “cyberwar,” despite the lack of any real evidence of anything beyond some typical espionage efforts with a bit of vandalism thrown in for color. However, for the companies building up the buzz, it’s proving to be quite profitable, and it appears others are rushing to get in on the gravy train — and they’re using the unquestioning press to push the claim along. Take, for example, this Reuters article, that is all about how British aerospace/defense contractor giant BAE is now trying to cash in on the US government’s new obsession with “cyberwar.” The article opens in a cinematic fashion:

Threats to sensitive computer networks lurk everywhere and with a few mouse clicks, organized criminals and hackers could shut down vital networks that run the U.S. government, industry and military.

Source for that? None. Details? None. Evidence? None. Explanation for why vital networks that run the U.S. government and military are connected to the open internet? None. Explanation for why if all it takes is a few mouse clicks, no one has actually taken down these networks yet? None. In fact, that opening is never revisited or explained. Instead, it’s taken for granted along with what’s effectively a press release for BAE’s new “cyber center” in (of course) Washington DC. If this keeps up, perhaps Techdirt will need to open a “cyberwar” division just to cash in on this hype.

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We recently had a discussion about the legalities of fan fiction, and how some authors were adamantly against the concept (even if their views were on shaky legal grounds). While it is true that certain derivative works can be stopped, that also doesn’t mean it’s a smart thing, from the perspective of cultivating fans. Reader Eilieen now points us to the news of a fan-made film that builds on Joss Whedon’s Firefly TV show and Serenity movie:

“Browncoats: Redemption was made by the fans for the fans,” director Michael Dougherty explained to Wired.com by e-mail. “But we view this as an independent film; we had Firefly fans travel from all over the U.S. to volunteer their time as extras and other supportive roles in its production. Without them, this film would not exist, and it will only be successful with their continued help and support.”

Unfortunately, the article at Wired totally leaves out the question of whether or not the copyright holders know about this particular fan film, and if they’re okay with it. Plenty of movie makers — such as George Lucas — are perfectly happy with fan flicks, even to the point of encouraging them. But, in this case, it’s not clear if this is, in any way, sanctioned. While the filmmakers say they’re doing this for charity, that still suggests they’re hoping to make some money from the film to give to charity — which often is the trigger that sets off Hollywood lawyers.

Whedon, for his part, has always been good about cultivating super-loyal fans, and at the same time, of experimenting with smart business models. But, not everyone associated with Firefly/Serentiy have always been so sharp. Back when Universal Studios tried to market Serenity via its biggest fans, the lawyers at Universal (apparently kept separate from the marketers) tried to demand licensing fees from the fans that the marketing department was urging to promote the film.

Looking over the site of the movie itself, it does suggest that they were able to secure permission from everyone necessary — including both Universal and Fox (who ran the TV show) along with Whedon himself:

So here’s how it is, we’ve reached out to FOX, Universal Studios, Joss’ agent at CAA, and even Mary Parent who is now at MGM. Everyone we’ve dealt with has been extremely helpful and completely blown away the stereotype of what the Hollywood experience is like. And much to our surprise, we even have the blessing of Joss Whedon himself. We’ve reached out to both Fox and Universal to get a greater understanding of the legal permissions we needed to make this a reality and we set out to complete it. And thanks to mighty fine Browncoats like yourself…we have.

That’s slightly cryptic, but it sounds like all the legal permissions were granted, and perhaps this fan film will go ahead with all the official blessings. While it’s silly that such a permission-based culture is necessary, just to make a film celebrating something that people love, at the very least, it’s nice to see some Hollywood folks recognizing that fan fiction and fan films aren’t inherently bad things.

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Stephen Conroy, the Australian politician who has been pushing hard to massively filter and censor Australia’s internet has been fighting Google for a while now. After the company made comments about why such censorship was a bad idea, rather than respond to the issues, Conroy came out swinging by attacking the company for its Buzz privacy mishap, and quoting Eric Schmidt out of context. So, of course, with Google’s WiFi data capture admission, Conroy has some new ammo. He’s claiming that it couldn’t possibly have been an accident and that this represents “the largest privacy breach in history across Western democracies.”

While it’s no surprise that Conroy doesn’t like Google and its opposition to his plan to censor the internet, perhaps he should stay away from laughably ridiculous hyperbole. The only data Google collected was what was passed over open WiFi connections in the split seconds that it drove by those access points with its Street View vehicles. These are networks where anyone on those networks could have just as easily have done the same thing — except if someone was really on one of those networks, they could keep recording that data, rather than moving on when the traffic light changed. Furthermore, there’s no evidence that Google ever did anything whatsoever with whatever data it did collect. Making claims about this being some huge privacy breach when there’s no evidence that anyone ever even saw the data seems pretty questionable.

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