The Decline of “Old Media”

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James Cramer writes about Old Media Giant Viacom’s difficulties:

Viacom SOS. No, to find out why Viacom?s stock sank to the 52-week-low list, all you need to do is look to the 52-week-high list, where the winners are: video games, satellite radio, video-on-demand, and Internet search engines. Those are the companies with the better models, the better technology that has, in an incredibly short period of time, stolen massive amounts of the fuel that powered Battleship Viacom: the viewers themselves.

Congress goes after your fair use rights

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Dan Gillmor writes about the latest version of the “best law money can buy“:

I hadn’t been taking some proposed new copyright legislation very seriously, mainly because it’s logically absurd on its face. But the “Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act of 2004” (PDF) seems to be moving so quickly that we have to pay attention now.
This bill, the stated purpose of which is to criminalize actions that might “induce” copyright infringement, doesn’t just overrule the Sony Betamax case, which gave us the right to tape TV shows to watch later. It would turn people offering totally legitimate technology into criminals, if what they offered could also be used for infringing purposes.
Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch is cloaking the bill as “child protection.” It is nothing of the sort. It is a Hollywood-sponsored attack on fundamental freedom, and on innovation. (Ernie Miller deconstructs Hatch’s floor speech introducing the bill. See also Lessig’s comments.)

Monday’s Private Manned Spaceship Launch

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Mojave Airport, with its stands of refreshments (orange soda and doughnuts) is the site of Monday Morning’s Spaceship One Launch. This will be the first privately funded initiative into orbit – paving the way for space tourism. Mike Hodgkinson updates us from Mojave. Mike Melvill is the pilot of this Burt Rutan designed craft. Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen has backed the project with $20M.

Certain Equations are Illegal

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Cory Doctorow gave a talk this week at Microsoft. He is asking the company to go back to its roots on the issue of Digital “Rights” Management (aka Digital Restrictions Management), or DRM. He posted the talk on his website. Doctorow tried to persuade Microsoft that:

  • DRM systems don’t work
  • DRM systems are bad for society
  • DRM systems are bad for business
  • DRM systems are bad for artists
  • DRM is a bad business move for msft

via Dan Gillmor

The Guardian Profile: Wisconsin born Steve Jobs

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Duncan Campbell profiles Steve Jobs. Some classics:

Jobs on money: “I was worth over $1m when I was 23, and over $10m when I was 24, and over $100m when I was 25, and, erm, it wasn’t that important, erm, because I never did it for the money” From Triumph of the Nerds, 1996 TV documentary

Jobs on Bill Gates: “I wish him the best, I really do. I just think he and Microsoft are a bit narrow. He’d be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger”

The Cost of Executive Perks

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Perk Hoggs on the cost of executive perks.

The problem is not the cost of the perks themselves; at a ten-billion-dollar corporation, they?re hardly even a rounding error. It?s what they are symptomatic of. Perks and rigid management hierarchies tend to go together; perks are designed in part to reinforce status divisions, and rigid hierarchies do not lend themselves to intelligent decision-making, since they isolate executives from the rest of the company. Also, C.E.O.s who indulge in perks are likely to be profligate in general with shareholder money.

There are problems in both the private and public sector. Our senators have incredible health care AND average much better investment returns than us poor taxpayers. There are plenty of examples of corporate excess. Hoggs makes some useful points. Via John Robb.

Journalism vs Advertising at the LA Times

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Tribune owned LA Times recently announced layoffs, just after winning a couple of Pulitzer prizes according to this story by Jacques Steinberg.

“Look at USA Today; how many Pulitzers have they won?” Mr. Janedis added, singling out the flagship of the Gannett chain, which has yet to win one. “But they sell a lot of advertising and get good rate increases.”

The article also compares major publisher cashflow margins (from Banc of America Investment Securities):

Lee publishes the local Wisconsin State Journal and co-owns the federally sanctioned monopoly (newspaper joint operating agreement: whereby overhead and advertising are shared among two or more “competitors”): Capitol Newspapers.