The 463: Inside Tech

The Economics of Social Media Apparently Doesn't Include Public Policy

I was down in LA late last week for the Economics of Social Media Conference that was put on by the folks at Paid Content. It was well put together event that was worth the trip. Here are reviews of each panel. A few take-aways:

--A good portion of the panel speakers were LA based and worked for content companies or start-up offspring. Since they're not in the Silicon Valley blog, media and event swirl, it's remarkable how little they are known 500 miles to the north (not including Carson Daly). The LA/SF divide continues.

--Nearly everywhere I turned, I recognized folks from similar conferences in the circa 1998-2001 tech-entertainment conferences. Except now they had a little bit more paunch and a sense of well-placed cynicism mixed with cautious enthusiasm.

--But, my biggest take-away was the fact that in a full-day of chatter about social media, the only policy related conversation was a bit of back and forth with Google's lead content industry liaison. No mention of the many laws seeking to impinge social networking sites. No talk about new copyright rules. No chatter about social regulation of video. This is not a criticism. Just an observation. It shows that the lure of deals still overwhelms consideration of rules that might impact business models in the future.

Worst Internet Laws Ever

Santa Clara Law University Professor and Internet law expert, Eric Goldman, picks through the muck of good intentions, bad execution and cluelessness to select, in his opinion, the ten worst US Internet laws on the books. Here's the top ten. Go here for the full explanation and even a link to a couple of decent laws...

10. E-Sign
9. DMCA Online Safe Harbors
8. Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006
7. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) Anti-Circumvention
6. Electronic Communications Privacy Act
5. Utah Digital Signatures Act
4. Anti-Kid Spam Laws in Utah and Michigan
3. Dot Kids Implementation and Efficiency Act of 2002
2. Utah/Alaska Anti-Adware Laws
1. Communications Decency Act (CDA)

57% of Teens Have Been Surveyed About Their Social Networking Practices

The social networking boom among teens created inevitable shrugged shoulders, looks of concern and then over-reaction from the adult set.  This created a vacuum to Figure It All Out with stories about generational divides, conferences, papers and polls -- oh so many polls.

This is a good thing.  The more we move away from perceptions based on anecdotes and move closer to understanding based on hard-ish data, the more likely knee-jerk, counter-productive legislation like DOPA and its offspring will fail.

The latest polling on how those wacky kids use The MySpace and The Facebook comes from the Pew Internet & American Life Project.  In particular, Pew looks at the identity and privacy issues that have largely driven the public policy debate on the social phenomenon.  They polled 935 12-17-year-olds.  You can download the PDF of the report and results here.

Excerpts and top-line stats galore after the jump...

David Byrne on Web Radio Royalties That Have Stopped Making Sense

The Copyright Royalty Board had a chance to ask itself, "My God, what I have I done?", when it considered a request to their March ruling that would massively hike fees Web radio stations pay to copyright holders.  But, on Monday, the board denied the request.

Rock legend and Powerpoint artist, David Byrne, provides one of the simpler explanations for what this really means in a blog post....

Somehow, Patent Reform is Becoming Sexy...

The subject made it to the front of the Business section coverage on the patent reform debate in the Washington Post today...

Shortly after Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) emerged as the new chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee following Democratic congressional wins in November, he named patent reform as one of his top legislative priorities.

"This leadership of America is only as good as the system that fosters and protects innovation. We have to update it," Leahy said during a December speech outlining his program.

On the House side, Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Calif.), who has long advocated changes in the patent system, has become chairman of the Judiciary subcommittee overseeing patents. The first hearing he scheduled, "The Case for Patent Reform," drew an overflow crowd, prompting some participants who long toiled in relative obscurity to voice their amazement at people lining up for more than an hour to hear about patents.

Recent previous coverage on the previously ignored topic is here.

Living in the Pop-Tech Bubble

It's time to get some air, when you can read this ridiculous string of words alone and nod knowingly:

“I think that YouTube is great, because if you do something like ‘Dick in a Box,’ someone in Pakistan can see it,” said Mr. Michaels in a phone interview.

From a New York Observer piece on Saturday Night Live that includes Lorne Michaels perspectives on NBC's digital strategy.  And, I'm off for a walk around the block...

How MySpace Filters for Porn

The Progress & Freedom Foundation posted a transcript to their March roundtable that, tellingly, was named "What Goes Up Must Come Down: Copyright and Process in the Age of User-posted Content."   It's an interesting convo that includes a Viacom lawyer (but no one from the Google/YouTube camp).  PDF of transcript is here.   

Inevitably, the perennial Mark Cuban question of what YouTube can filter for now came up.  I thought this response from News Corp's DC lobbyist Rick Lane (who was in the audience) on how MySpace filters for porn was interesting...

Mr. Lane: Rick Lane from News Corporation. I'm obviously familiar with MySpace. How we do it, for pornography and hate speech, just so everyone knows, is that we actually review every picture with human eyes that come up and then we fingerprint them.

For pornography, there is no technology that can check for it, because a pie looks like a naked person to the technologies that we have tried to use and so you have a lot of pies coming up and being blocked as pornography.

The difference is what is copyrighted versus what is pornography. You know a naked picture when you see it, but is that a copyrighted work? How do you know? We have a lot of people looking at pictures. They are not copyright lawyers. They don't know if a deal has been struck with a certain company to allow for a video or a picture to be uploaded.

So we are looking for pornography and clicking and deleting those and hashing them and putting them in good and bad piles, so it's a little bit different than knowing if it is copyrighted and if there is a deal or not.

Utah Saves Citizens from Keyword Ads

What happens when combine a guy who pushes a bill that might help him score a lucrative contract with a legislature and governor who refuses to listen to their own lawyers on the constitutionality of the bill? Then you bundle that with complacent Web retailers?

You get a law signed that saves the good people of Utah from the scourge of keyword ads that let consumers get advertisements of the competitors that they typed into, say, Google search. I need to get me to Utah so I can be saved from viewing a Barnes & Noble ad when I search for Borders.

A Flat World is Hard Work

The US has plenty of its own very real and looming competitiveness issues.    But, as the Word Economic Forum noted at the end of March, those who will soon supposedly be running the world, India and China, still lag well behind in competitiveness metrics.

To underline the point, AP's Tim Sullivan filed an interesting piece on the dearth of skilled employee's in India over the weekend:

Nearly two decades into India's phenomenal growth as an international center for high technology, the industry has a problem: It's running out of workers.

There may be a lot of potential — Indian schools churn out 400,000 new engineers, the core of the high-tech industry, every year — but as few as 100,000 are actually ready to join the job world, experts say.

Instead, graduates are leaving universities that are mired in theory classes, and sometimes so poorly funded they don't have computer labs. Even students from the best colleges can be dulled by cram schools and left without the most basic communication skills, according to industry leaders.

Not sitting on its hands to wait for the educational system to turn around, Indian tech leader Infosys has built its own massive training center:

These Shocking YouTube Videos Banned in Thailand!

Thailand has banned YouTube because it contains a video that insulted their monarch King Bhumibol Adulyadej.  The video has apparently already been removed.  As IHT notes:

In Thailand, insulting King Bhumibol Adulyadej is a serious offense. Last week, a Swiss man convicted of vandalizing images of the king and Queen Sirikit was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

The explanation...

(The Thai Communications Minister) told The Associated Press that the government would continue its crackdown. "It's not about freedom of expression," he said. People who create Web sites insulting the monarchy "are abusing their rights and clearly don't mean well for the country."

Naturally, the first thing I did was try to find the video in question.  I found one insult clip awash in a sea of pro-King video love letters bolstered by heart-felt "Long Live the King" comments that are currently banned from view in Thailand.  For example, the instructive "[In the Heart]:  Why We Love our King"...

Or, King of Thailand:  60 Years of Success...