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The Canadian passport will undergo a "facelift" of a sort. No time mentioned, but according to this story. Facial biometrics, "the method of identification chosen by the International Civil Aviation Organization to harmonize passport information globally," will be included in new passports.
At least there won't be any need to smile or not smile for the photo . . .
Not really a believer, but I heard the line once. And, blogging will be light for a few days because I'm working on some projects: painting the interior; building a walk-in closet organizer system; etc.; etc.
Frank Dunn, former CEO at Nortel, was smoked this morning "for cause," according to this story. Seems it was part of a general blood-letting that included about seven other executives. So . . . financial reporting irregularities are a problem then?
Here's a piece from The Telegraph (registration required), entitled Blunkett publishes ID cards Bill, covering the introduction of legislation to the British parliament this fall for a biometric ID program to be introduced over the next 9 years. A snip:
The draft Bill is expected to be introduced to Parliament in the autumn, with the first biometric passports issued in 2005 and the first cards carrying fingerprint details in 2007.By 2013, when ministers are set to make a final decision on whether to make registration compulsory, Mr Blunkett expects 80 per cent of the population to hold biometric identification either in the form of a passport, a driving licence or a voluntary identity card.
Here's a story in the Mercury News, entitled Music downloads on the rise again, that quotes a new Pew survey regarding (illegal) file sharing. In short: it's growing and still well ahead of the legal alternatives such as iTunes. But, people have a different attitude about it -- "I understand that it's wrong and people shouldn't steal from the owners . . . but it's here and I want it . . ." But, it another study it quotes, indicates that file sharing is at its lowest ebb.
So, the question is: so what?
FWIW, I think the so what is that money will eventually win. The "business" model will succeed by making it more difficult and risky than it's worth to file share music and other copyright materials. It will take a while though because business has just woken up to the idea.
On that note, here's a neat article from the NYTimes about Steve Jobs and Apple's reinvention as a music/entertainment company.
This is why Canada's super-intelligence organization (CSIS) takes such a bad beating. In an item entitled2003 blackout harbinger of future havoc, CSIS says, the Globe and Mail leads with the following:
OTTAWA -- Last summer's major power failure is worrisome evidence of the havoc a terrorist attack could wreak on key utilities and computer systems, warns a confidential report by Canada's spy agency.No joking! Of course the newspaper's glossed over the details and nuance that must be in the report so that focus can be put on the sellable notion. Still, it's good to know that our intelligence organization has this one covered.
As I've said before, I'm going to keep my points cache low because you never know when they'll be less valuable. Apparently Aeroplan has made a change to the program, opening up more seats and reducing/eliminating blackout periods. However, some members who care and study these things point out that it may not be as good a change as it sounds at first honk (as usual). The Globe and Mail carries a story here.
My reader knows I've got a jones for Bob Milton and Air Canada. So, when I read in the Globe and Mail that he's shaking the executive tree, but hasn't fallen out himself, I am saddened. Here's a snip:
TORONTO and OTTAWA -- Air Canada chief Robert Milton shook up his executive roster yesterday, replacing a key vice-president, as the federal government prepared its plan to help the troubled national carrier.The story speculates that Air Canada may be now trying to catch up with rival, Westjet, in customer service. That's going to be a Herculean effort (or Sissyphan -- for those with experience on the receiving end of Air Canada's may efforts to enhance its customer service).Shifting out of the top ranks is Rob Giguere, who was effectively the airline's chief operating officer. . . . Mr. Milton, chief executive officer, said he has split the airline's operations staff into two groups to place a stronger focus on each of customer service and hard operations.
On that note, Westjet is apparently competing on a new tack with Air Canada: loyalty points. As noted in this item in the Toronto Star.
According to a Washington Post item entitled, World Economy Is Starting to Bloom, IMF Says, Projecting Strong Growth, we could be in for the best couple years in a decade -- globally. Sounds great before you start looking at the averaging out, which means your part of the world could be quite different. And, the IMF doesn't exactly get down to the level of "what's happening in my sector." Most important though, as usual, is the fine print where the disclaimers hide. Like here:
The fund tempered its optimism with warnings about risks that could destabilize financial markets and undermine the expansion.Sort of like it's going to be hot and sunny, unless of course there's a destabilizing event which could cause severe thundershowers."Global interest rates are very low, and will eventually have to rise substantially," the IMF said, asserting that low interest rates may have caused prices of real estate and other assets to rise excessively. "Future interest rate rises -- especially if abrupt or unexpected -- could lead to financial market volatility and possibly adversely affect the recovery."
Put on your shorts and sunscreen -- but grab an umbrella.
Motorola, more than occasionally written off against competitors like Sony/Ericcson, Nokia, and Samsung in the mobile handset business is about to come back in a big way. Apparently they've agreed to license RIM's push-email technology -- you know the thing that makes the Blackberry a "crack"-berry. The lead from the Toronto Star piece (from the link):
Research In Motion Ltd. says it has struck a deal with Motorola Inc. to license the popular BlackBerry wireless e-mail service on some of Motorola's mobile phones.
Regular reader
Let's take a look at his great strides:
Karl Moore, a business professor at McGill University, said the numbers suggest Air Canada's business model isn't working."You would think that if you're going to lose market share, your profitability should go up. They're losing on both counts."
The NYTimes has an interesting item entitled, In a Fast-Moving Web World, Some Prefer the Dial-Up Lane. It looks at the much-analyzed market move to hi-speed Internet from a different perspective: that of people who could be don't/won't switch from dial-up.
The issue here is that there very well may be a large part of the market that is not price or speed-driven. They are satisfied with "good enough." The impact to those of us planning penetration of bandwidth-hog services beyond that of the SAM for broadband may be modestly overestimating our market size. Bear in mind, of course, that this is just the NYTimes's way of providing interesting reading for its customers: could be that Ms Jenkins et al featured in the article are part of very small company. Don't know for sure. But, here's a snip
. . . she is part of another big group, the tens of millions of Americans seemingly immune to the lure of more speed and satisfied with dial-up services. A majority of Americans who surf the Internet still do so by dialing in on regular telephone lines, despite the rapidly narrowing price gap between high-speed and dial-up connections.
All the Canadian papers are carrying a story or two about a report from the Information Technology Association of Canada that makes some recommendations for what's needed to do better in the technology sector. Here's one from The Globe and Mail. The report was authored by Doyletech Corp, of Ottawa, whose namesake, Denzil Doyle, looms large in Canada's nascent tech sector -- particularly in the Ottawa/Kanata region. Dave Ebner's lead paragraphs:
Canada has to figure out ways to nurture high-tech startups so that they flourish at home rather than getting scooped up by foreigners, says a new study published by the Information Technology Association of Canada.The point here is not that there is a report nor that it makes some recommendations that, if followed, may increase the number and global value of home-grown technology companies. My point is that the recommendations are motherhood -- at least as outlined by the media. It's changing the investment culture that's the hard work.
From 1993 through 2003, as many as 125 emerging high-tech companies in the Ottawa area were bought by foreigners, mostly from the United States, the study indicates. The problem is that promising startups end up becoming mere branch offices of foreign companies rather than growing into well-established, publicly traded, Canadian-based companies.
IMO, Canada's best and brightest juniors will continue to be bought up by foreign investors at early and even later stages because Canadian investors, by and large, want a sure thing with big winning odds. And, when they do come to invest, they're more likely to put out little drips and drabs of dough. Enough to feel it if you lose it but far from enough to make a splash of the business being invested in. More than that, we seem to be a very collegial bunch of investors: we like a crowd (like when everyone was getting into Nortel, or JDS, etc.). So, the Yanks, with stronger stomaches and the willingness to invest the money that will get the attention of executives who feel mandated to get the best value for their shareholders, will continue to take the best and leave branch offices in Canada.
Amen.
A lot of hand-wringing (and elbow-bending, no doubt) has been going on this week down in Miami at the 2004 management conference of the American Association of Advertising Agencies. They're concerned because a survey they commissioned through Yankelovich Partners says (shock!) that effectiveness of advertising conducted by agencies for their clients is, as the New York Times says, "deteriorating." I found out about this in an NYTimes article.
Still, advertising is an essential element in our consumer world. And, let's be honest about it, we -- in North America -- are CONSUMERS first. So, the challenge that these agencies have is to make less advertising more meaningful to more people. They've tried one-to-one, interactive, and all the rest with serial limited success. Probably because each of these efforts assumes that the consumer is a moron requiring spoon-fed persuasion to both know about and then know what's good for him/her.
"You ARE the weakest link: Good-bye."
A little background is in order. I work for a VERY industrial organization. Its firm class has been around since the beginning of the industrial age. Today it is not especially different than the industrial-military organizational model that created and perpetuated it through the 19th and 20th centuries. It is prototypical of the industrial form. This despite the fact that it has been forced to create pockets of knowledge employees to align it with the demands of this so-called "new" economy.
The effect of linearity on management is that people are "chained" in a relatively rigid line-of-command hierarchy. Each person in the vertical chain represents a "link" between the mind of the organization (the senior decision-maker) and the rank-and-file. This is not new. Nor is it a novel observation that people are not necessarily intelligent and capable in descending order of ability from top to bottom of the chain. We hope that the best and the brightest are moved upward so that intelligence and competence prevails. But we regularly see people promoted, as Peter has it, to their level of incompetence. Even merit promotions are made for subjective reasons including relationship to the organization and supervisors, (perception of) specific achievement, compliance with organizational norms, political artistry, eloquent incompetence, and sometimes just plain luck. So, chances are that there are some fairly dumb – which is not the same as unskilled – people in the middle strata of an organization.
I've observed in enterprise organizations that the hierarchy readily substitutes power position for intelligence. Again, not new. Particularly regarding the movement of ideas, each link is given a chance to influence communication going up the chain through him/her. That right appears to be jealously guarded more or less in directly inverse correlation to the overall intellectual capability of the individual. These links recast ideas being moved through them in accordance with their own perception of what those above are able to understand. For instance, a junior vice president of lesser abstract intelligence will repackage (if (s)he forewent killing it altogether) an idea from a subordinate into something that "the big guy will understand" based on his/her own ability to understand the idea. In other words, a middle link will – typically, and very humanly – project him/herself onto those above and below. Consistent with the mathematical principle of reduction to the lowest common denominator, in linear chain-based hierarchies the organization (or at least that particular chain) is thereby as dumb as its dumbest link.
Even where links on either side operate at a higher-level, the dumb link will eliminate abstraction – losing much in the process. The dumb link is uncomfortable representing that which (s)he doesn’t understand – and won’t allow it to happen. Thus only ideas comfortable for the dumbest link are transmitted. That's bad despite accepted wisdom that good ideas are simple and understandable by the masses. It's bad because, unfortunately, before an idea can become simple it has to be complex. Gravity and motion are today relatively simple concepts. But the original idea and its proof were, at the time of initial exploration, very complicated. By making ideas dumb before they're ready to be over-simplified does an injustice to the organization and everyone in it – and to those who might have been served by the idea. On the other hand, dumb links ensure that the organization is always well within its comfort zone and skill set for higher probability of achievement.
Now consider the organization as a network. The network has much different characteristics than does the chain: It is non-linear. The "links" are "nodes" which can be limitlessly connected to other nodes. The obvious example is the Internet. The beauty of the network structure is that although some nodes are more important than others – based on their value to the network as determined by the network – no single node inhibits the workings of the overall system. The failure of a "middle" node (though there is no real "middle" in a distributed network) is imperceptible because of the multitude of alternate routes between nodes.
The ideal for a knowledge environment then, might be to have a network organization that connects the most valuable nodes dynamically. Just like with the Internet, the nodes that provide the greatest value (i.e., knowledge, ideas, decision-making, etc.) will be linked directly, irrespective of structural hierarchy. It is a meritocracy on the dimensions of intellect and actionability. This ideal is relatively democratic and the number of links to, would determine the value of the node. Those nodes not linked so much – i.e., those not intellectually up to par or unable to make a value decision – would be systematically neutralized without prejudice. So, at least in respect of communicating ideas, a network-based organization is at least as smart as its smartest node.
This Utopian notion is, of course, unrealistic because an organization is more than its IQ – even a post-modern knowledge organization. Getting things done, for one thing, is an area where intellect and ability do not always correlate (except in the inverse, usually). Also, I've presumed that the weakness is with a middle link of the chain. The highest level positions are, for the sake of this exposition, intellectually advanced abstract thinkers. Many are not. Now what? Well, I'll take the optimistic and charitable view that those at the very highest ranks of an organization do not last there unless they have a few things going for them, one of which is the ability know when they don’t know something important, and demand either to be made to understand or trust confidantes who do.
Still, a "network" organization could and should exist side-by-side with the formal authority "chain" hierarchy, each exerting influence and power as need warrants. That’s a place I’d work at.
Here's a bit of Richard Clarke's words about George Bush and the Administration as relayed in an editorial by Jeffrey Simpson in the Globe and Mail. The snip:
Mr. Clarke saw Mr. Bush infrequently, but formed this penetrating assessment: "It was clear that the critique of him as a dumb, lazy, rich kid was somewhat off the mark. When he focused, he asked the kind of questions that revealed a results-oriented mind, but he looked for the simple solution, the bumper-sticker description of the problem. Once he had that, he could put energy behind a drive to achieve his goal."My question is, imagine this is not the executive of any large organization: can you do it?But, Mr. Clarke continues, "The problem was that many of the important issues, like terrorism, like Iraq, were laced with important subtlety and nuance. These issues needed analysis, and Bush and his inner circle had no real interest in complicated analyses; on the issues they cared about, they already knew the answers; it was received wisdom."
In the Toronto Star, a story about General Electric's new approach to the world. In short: INNOVATE, stop moving managers about like carpetbaggers from post to post, and take the long view. A snip:
The key lesson of history, which GE chief executive officer Jeff Immelt exemplifies, is that survival and growth depend on innovation and service, by creating new value out of existing products, with the light bulb one example; or developing a pipeline of brand-new products and services, which GE is doing with fuel cells, nanotechnology, medical diagnostics and smart materials, for example. This is how the advanced economies will compete with China, India, Brazil and others: by being leaders in innovation.Read the whole thing here.We must also make people changes. As GE spells out in its latest annual report, Growing in an Uncertain World, the company is shifting away from "professional managers" to "growth managers" focused on innovation, markets and service, not on the next stop in the corporate chain.
Admittedly, I hit from the left a little more than from the right. But, some (the Washington Post, in this case) media are piling up the paper to prove that Bush, Cheney, and others had plenty of "unspecific" warning about potential terror strikes to the U.S. from al-Qaeda prior to 9-11. Check the Post's Panel Says Bush Saw Repeated Warnings (washingtonpost.com). A snip:
By the time a CIA briefer gave President Bush the Aug. 6, 2001, President's Daily Brief headlined "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US," the president had seen a stream of alarming reports on al Qaeda's intentions. So had Vice President Cheney and Bush's top national security team, according to newly declassified information released yesterday by the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.It seems to me that former Republican governor (New Jersey) Kean is shilling for the GOP by putting the boots to the F.B.I. Although they obviously didn't do their job as well as one might have hoped, doesn't it seem like just a little bit of misdirection? A bit of sleight-of-hand to keep the eye off the presidency? Look here at the NYTimes.
In April and May 2001, for example, the intelligence community headlined some of those reports "Bin Laden planning multiple operations," "Bin Laden network's plans advancing" and "Bin Laden threats are real."
By the time a CIA briefer gave President Bush the Aug. 6, 2001, President's Daily Brief headlined
Like everyone else in Canada . . . North America . . . the West in general, I've spent the better part of the last two and a half years listening to the (usually) Christian complaints about how the Arab terrorists are just so fanatically religious that there is no way to deal with them. No argument from me. I have an issue with the excesses of ideology, dogma, and other mindlessness in general and will make no exception for the nut-bar activities of those who choose to follow Muhammed's books. But, those who live in glass houses . . .
I heard about this on the radio on the Saturday of the Easter weekend and had to look it up. Apparently there are many devout Christians in the Philippines who re-enact the Passion, including a real cruxification, every year. They choose -- volunteer, I understand -- someone/some people to be the flagellant(s) who carries the cross, is beaten (whipped), and then is tied to the cross and has real nails pounded through hands and feet.
How can one group of people (say, us Christians in Canada and the USA) stereotype on a religious basis a group for being replete with fools who will die for the glory of Allah and the virgins of the hereafter without feeling just a little hypocritical? Call it like it is. Osama and which ever other villians you can point to are maniacal, genocidal psychopaths whose delusions are, if not driven by then are supported by fierce religious doctrine. Let's deal with it. But, let's be careful of how we characterize others unless we know what's in our own closets.
Most identity theft is not very clever. Just some dumpster diving and a bit of fake identity credentials. Occasionally an imaginative fraudster will work out a cheque forgery scheme to supplement the crime. This one, in Alberta, is particularly complex, devious, and right for the Monday night movie.
Hard to protect the little old ladies from some of this kind of thing.
Second "master" lefty in a row. Take THAT!
The problem with scandals that are media-fuelled and sully the powerful is that nobody will ever really know the truth. Case in point: the so-called Ad-scam as pointed out in this new coverage that says the total is now only $13-million, substantially less than the Auditor General's estimate of more than $100-million.
Who knows? And, ultimately -- say after an election -- who cares?
According to both this NY Times and this Globe & Mail story about the same thing, Junior was advised of the Al-Qaeda threat before 9/11. For what it's worth -- given the media's ability to get things wrong or "mistaken" is a snip:
Crawford, Tex. — U.S. President George W. Bush was told more than a month before the Sept. 11 attacks that al-Qaeda had reached America's shores, had a support system in place for its operatives and that the FBI had detected suspicious activity that might involve a hijacking plot.That would imply negligence in command to augment the decisiveness in action after the fact
More about this Christianity-defining holiday later. (It may not be policitally correct -- at least at the Vatican or in the White House.)
Check out this little story about VoIP telephony making it big from the NYTimes. I don't know about you, but it seems to me that VoIP has begun its climb up the mainstream hype cycle.
If you're not in already . . . you're too late.
A whole lot of expleting going on due to a little bit of profit overload over at Yahoo!.
"If that Mocking bird won't sing, daddy's gonna buy you . . ."
So the whole leader of the Conservatives didn't work out. No big one, Bel. Daddy's got you covered.
Nice.
Apparently I'm not the only one who thinks that it's about time for the present regime at Air Canada to pack up and try their luck at another game. And I'm not even a shareholder. Here's Eric Reguly's take on it in the Globe and Mail. Here's the story about the resignation in The Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail.
Let's get busy.
Erase this message and you'll never see it again. ( - Phentermine) http://www.fda-phentermine.com 93.0818205074505
The single greatest impediment to Air Canada's rejuvenation: its CEO. Keeping a stiff upper lip in Toronto yesterday, he said (via TheStar.com - Investors waiting in the wings):
"Air Canada president Robert Milton says while he's disappointed Hong Kong billionaire Victor Li has walked away from a deal that would save the troubled airline, he's optimistic the insolvent national carrier will find a new buyer."I don't get it: the part about others being interested, that is.
This, Future of Aeroplan could be up in air, shouldn't be a surprise, what with Air Canada living on life support for the past four fifteen years. Call me suspicious, but having been burned once by the whole loyalty-points thing, I'll take my rewards as I earn them. Remember: stored value is only as good as the storage facility.
I've been participating in a strategy review with a facilitator of some skill and experience. We've been assessing the "fields of reality," which, in pedestrian language is an analysis of the business context and environment: getting a lay of the land projected forward by 5-10 years. We do that typically by looking at trends and forces at work in the industry and at large. Anyway, we were having a discussion about an impending disruption to the industry that would, in my view, come on in a cascade rather than a slow ramp. He posed an interesting question.
"How," he asked, "would you know the change was coming? In other words, what are the signs?"
Excellent line of thought. Well, in keeping with that, faithful readers may recall that this blog has more than once said that the communications world -- including the mail and courier businesses -- is changing and will change significantly once telecommunications and Internet are more than pipe-sharers. Moreover, we've blogged ENUM, and the VoIP activity going on both at Bell at AT&T in the USA. Now, the real stuff begins. Testing by Cogeco here and coverage of Vonage in the US here.
It's not Revelation, but the signs are there -- if you look.
Would somebody PLEEEAAASSSSE just put a bullet in Robert Milton Air Canada and get it over with. What's the point of months -- or years of more stories like this and this.
Economic incentives are an awful lot like laxatives. You want relief and you want it fast, but you don't want to take more than you need. So -- wisely -- you start small. Sometimes you get what you want when you expect it. Sometimes, though, it takes a while for the solution to work its way through all the sh**. You get impatient waiting for relief and may opt for another dose -- too soon. Well, it appears that the stimuli laid on the U.S. economy over the past several years is begining to show up in employment numbers. Maybe. Now we'll just wait and see if it was enough to clear it all or if the US economy's going to be running to the toilet a little too much. SeeTheStar.com - Higher U.S. job numbers rally markets
You knew there had to be a reason for the wait, besides circumspection. Now, according to this it might be a couple ex's and some children. First snip:
Raymond Sobeski kept his $30 million secret for almost a year until he appeared at a Lotto Super 7 news conference last Thursday to claim Canada's largest single lottery jackpot. He also said he was single.And more . . .
Since then, reporters have been banging on the door of the family farm in the rural community of Harley and taking pictures of the house. Locals are stopped on the street and asked what they think, and false stories have appeared saying he's behind on child support for his two children, 12 and 13, Sobeski said.
Ionson met Sobeski Dec. 10, 1994, and they eloped exactly four years later, she said. She said she is finding it hard to reconcile her feelings with Sobeski's decision to sit on a lottery ticket while she was struggling.Of course, a story's just a story. But, with a $30-million budget this daytime drama's sure to make a spash."I believe he loves me, but I'm confused why he'd let me suffer for an entire year," she said. "I can't believe he did it. It's been the worst year of my life."
She said Sobeski gave her separation papers more than a year ago and she received, but didn't sign, divorce papers in January.
She also said their relationship has continued.
And this, from Michael Geist, is why a really good investment would be to send an experienced and capable e-business product innovator to law school for even more knowledge. Otherwise the poor industrial-era business is left at the mercy of an equally "yesterday" legal counsel but further delayed because of the consulting period.
David Akin pushes the consequences of the ruling further, noting that some people (and you know who you are ;-) ) have been downloading television programming and movies with P2P file-sharing just like KaZaa opens the world to music file sharing. His column here.
Also in the Globe and Mail, George Emerson provides an essay on how von Finckenstein's rule is a little bit of push back not as dramatic but equally as valid as the Magna Carta and the Declaration of Independence in their effect of rebelling against the overlording of the power elite. (My apologies for the inconsistency in the parallel -- of course, the judge represents the established rules and not those seeking to overturn establishment. Whatever, it sounds more dramatic this way and I think you get my point.)
A Brampton man waited nearly one year to claim his $30-million Super-7 cheque (plastered in every media outlet, but noted here). Apparently it cost him about $700,000 in lost investment return to get his ducks in a row: and he doesn't care. He's going to keep farming near Brampton, but intends to quit the computer repair business. You go, man!
His story reminds me of a joke going around when I was a kid about the farmer who won the million-dollar lottery (yeah, that was big then). When asked what he was going to do with his new found wealth, he replied, "I think I'll keep farming until it's all gone."
I'm in LOVE with Google. At least I think so, although it could be a short-lived intense infatuation that ultimately leads down the road to boredom and heartbreak . . .
Here's why, as covered by the NYTimes in a story called Google to Roll Out E-Mail Service. Frankly, it seems as though everyone is offering e-mail services these days. So what. More to be loved is how they're doing all this. Yahoo!: yeah, whatever, that is soooo 1990s; Microsoft: what?? those bastards are just using their monopoly power to control even more of the Internet. Sun . . . Oracle . . . and so on. But with Google, It's "oh goodie. It's so cute. Those two boys are sooo smart . . ." And it's cheeky in a post-modern kind of way. A snip:
The new service, to be named Gmail ["I'm picking up my mail from the G-spot (a.k.a. Google). . ."], is scheduled to be released on Thursday, according to people involved with the plan. It will be 'soft launched,' they said, in a manner that Google has followed with other features that it has added to its Web site, with little fanfare and presented initially as a long-running test.The last part is the best: "presented as a long-running test." Wow! Does that ever make life simple. Products in and dominating their markets without ever being officially launched -- with attendant expectations. Gonna have to try that with my next initiative.
Here in the NYTimes is a small story about a "BioPod" from American Power Corporation. Just another in the mounting pile of stories about digital identity tools and capabilities that are getting ready for prime time in the most capitalist of ways: hitting the price point for the mass market. The Times's lead:
Fingerprint scanners are nothing new, but high prices have made them a tough sell for many technology buffs. A new scanner that costs $50 may persuade consumers to give biometric technology another look.
From the Globe and Mail:
The Federal Court of Canada ruled Wednesday that Internet Service Providers can't be forced to turn over identities of suspected music swappers, throwing a roadblock in the path of the recording industry's efforts to crack down on the practice.Some are heralding it as a victory for file-sharers; others bemoaning it as a defeat of the copyright laws. I'm not sure it's either of those: the decision was on whether ISPs could be forced to turn over the names of people identified by a third party (not the police) in a civil action. It is the ISPs "victory" over a battle for the protection of their turf (read: they have control over the identity of their customers/subscribers). In that respect it is really a (perverted) victory for privacy.
"The mere fact of placing a copy on a shared directory in a computer where that copy can be accessed via a P2P service does not amount to distribution," Judge von Finckenstein said.Tie this to the information from the post below and you have an industry that is fighting a losing battle and really, in the spirit and wisdom of the greater Oriental martial arts, ought to align itself with and use the forces blowing around it to its advantage rather than fighting against them."Before it constitutes distribution, there must be a positive act by the owner of the shared directory, such as sending out the copies or advertising that they are available for copying."
This just (well, recently -- I've seen it a few times) in from CNET news via the Globe and Mail: File-sharing doesn't kill CD sales, study finds. The story kind of puts a dent in the recording industry's whine about the evils of file sharing on their business. In short:
A study of file-sharing's effects on music sales says on-line music trading appears to have had little part in the recent slide in CD sales.Still, the tobacco industry didn't worry much about the studies that countered their story either.For the study, released Monday, researchers at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina tracked music downloads over 17 weeks in 2002, matching data on file transfers with actual market performance of the songs and albums being downloaded. Even high levels of file-swapping seemed to translate into an effect on album sales that was 'statistically indistinguishable from zero,' they wrote.