The Solution Is Tech Heavy, Data Heavy

Hollywood Might Not Get Killed, Any More Than Silicon Valley Might
What Price A Movie?
MegaUpload, SOPA, PIPA
SOPA Went Down
SOPA Has Egg In The Face
SOPA Is So Going Down



TV ads are not as effective as Google ads. On TV you could be showing me beer ads and I don't even drink beer. But you are hoping many of the million people who got bombarded do.

When I search for beer on Google and you show me beer ads, that is way more effective. You already know I am interested in beer. TV ads not as effective. Search ads more effective. Social ads even more effective. You are more likely to buy something a friend bought and recommends. The engagement on Twitter for ads is more than on the Google platform.

Big Data ads should be 10 or more times more effective than even social ads. And at that point the freemium model really takes off. All you want as content people is people's attention. You don't want their money, at least not directly. I think that is the real solution to the piracy problem.

Fred Wilson: A Post PIPA Post
Clay Shirky: Pick up the pitchforks: David Pogue underestimates Hollywood
O'Reilly Radar: The week the web changed Washington

SOPA Went Down

Image via WikipediaWhat just happened? SOPA went down.

The enormous passion some of the early opponents of SOPA exhibited told me right there and then that SOPA was so going down. And now it is official. SOPA will not make it to the floor of the House. This is victory.

Copyright asks for a new definition. Intellectual property has to be redefined. The nation state itself has to be redefined. There is a guttural feeling among tech innovators that that is the case. And the jinn is out of the bottle. There is no going back.

SOPA Has Egg In The Face
SOPA Is So Going Down

More people consume more news than ever before. But many newspapers have crashed and burned. What is going on? Enormous amounts of music is being created, more than ever before. More books are being written than ever before. If piracy is devaluing intellectual property then there should be this strong signal to authors and music people and creative people in general that they should cease work. But the signal is the exact opposite. What's going on?

Artificial scarcity is being made fun of. Access is being democratized globally. If you have internet access, you are in. Compare that to the pains of getting a visa to the US.

There is so much good news going on. How could such enormous good news be bad news to some people? One person's freedom fighter is another person's terrorist.

As far as I was concerned this was a fight between good and evil. Good won.

SOPA Has Egg In The Face

Image by Getty Images via @daylifeSOPA Is So Going Down

Google: Don't Censor The Web
Mark Zuckerberg: The Internet Is The Most Powerful Tool
Search Engine Land: Google Slows Web Crawlers To Help Blackouts Sites
TechCrunch: In Face Of Protests, Congressmen Begin To Abandon SOPA Ship
TechCrunch: Reddit’s Alexis Ohanian On SOPA: “The Fight Isn’t Over”
GigaOm: Taking SOPA/PIPA to the streets: Protests on for SF, NYC

My favorite has to be this one:

TechCrunch: In Face Of Protests, Congressmen Begin To Abandon SOPA Ship

The tide began to turn this weekend when a hearing scheduled for today was canceled and the White House pushed back on some of the more controversial portions ..... Already, a couple of co-sponsors of the bill are pulling their support. Representative Ben Quayle (R-Ariz.) is no longer a co-sponsor, and Representative Lee Terry (R-Neb.) is also planning to remove his name from the co-sponsor list, according to Politico. One Congressman, Representative Justin Amash (R-Mich.) is even joining the protest movement.

Related articles

• All Adwords are now anti-SOPA (news.ycombinator.com)
• Stop SOPA And PIPA (neilperkin.typepad.com)
• Reddit's Alexis Ohanian On SOPA: "The Fight Isn't Over" (techcrunch.com)
• Microsoft opposes SOPA 'as currently drafted' (zdnet.com)
• Yes, Google Will Protest SOPA on its Homepage (techcrunch.com)
• Say NO to SOPA & PIPA! (jeenus.wordpress.com)
• Wikipedia Is Doing a Blackout to Protest Against SOPA/PIPA (dailyblogtips.com)
• This Is the Internet After SOPA [PICS] (mashable.com)
• The Wikipedia Blackout Begins in SOPA Protest (mobilemarketingwatch.com)
• The SOPA blackout (nevillehobson.com)

Google? Pirate?

So Barack Obama thinks SOPA is not worth the paper it is printed on, and Rupert Murdoch, @therealshitmydadsays, thinks Google is a pirate.

That's interesting thinking. Obviously Murdoch wants his newspapers to be online but behind paywalls and not accessible through search engines. If you are paying, you obviously know the name and the domain name. Show up and read. You found me when you paid for the subscription.

I don't know where to begin. I mean, a search engine is a good thing, right? Or am I missing something here? Do we want to go back to the good old days of the Yahoo directory?

Murdoch seems to think the internet was designed to save him the costs on paper. ("Why can't you just read the paper on your computer?") Everything else should remain the same.