The ArtLab

I haven't been able to get my hands on a review copy of Chris Anderson's new book Free: The Future of a Radical Price, so I'll pass on making any commentary about its contents, but I do want to point something out that I found interesting in Mike Masnick's review of the book at Techdirt.

Mike discusses the various ways in which "free" can be sustainable, including bundling, cross-subsidizing, and other typical solutions to goods with a declining marginal cost.  But he also mentions non-monetary payment, which Anderson apparently talks about a bit in the book:

You can pay people to write -- just as Encyclopaedia Britannica does. Or you can get other people to write for non-monetary rewards -- as Wikipedia does. The latter is a lot more efficient a solution, and the difference in productivity and output is quite evident. It's not saying that there is no business in paying people to write, but it's a very different business than the indirect business model, and it's the economic efficiencies that come into play.

Money, at times, is a transactional lubricant. It helps us make transactions faster than bartering three pigs for two trees, a goat and a bushel of corn. At other times, though, money can be friction. It can limit transactional effectiveness by acting as a kind of crutch. That's where non-monetary benefits can suffice (or do a much better job) in rewarding people for their actions. In those scenarios money gets in the way and actually makes a transaction less efficient.

Fair enough.

But what I found interesting is that at the end of the post, Mike addresses the accusations of plagiarism that have swirled around the book and concludes, "If Chris can take the works of others and make it into something more valuable, aren't we all better off because of it?"  We very well may be.

But even if building on someone else's work is a net good and carries a price tag of $0.00, there is a customary form of non-monetary payment in formal writing --the kind of payment that is critical to Mike's and Anderson's arguments.  That payment is proper attribution.  Academics have standardized formats for attribution; bloggers offer "hat tips" to attribute sources and ideas; and twitterers "retweet" clever or insightful comments to credit the author: attribution is the "transactional lubricant" that rewards good ideas in written work.

Mike says he "would have preferred it if that such mistakes in attribution did not happen, mainly because it's a distraction, but the issue is a minor one." He also says, "I don't think it takes away from the quality of the overall work at all."

But the very opposite should be true if we accept the idea that non-monetary payment is the best way to compensate authors for the use of their words and ideas.  The book is certainly still valuable if for no other reason than that it sheds light on many of the difficult business decisions that face content creators, but it should definitely weigh in our assessment that the author doesn't recognize a real-world application of the very concept he espouses. 

Waldo Jaquith at the Virginia Quarterly Review found something very interesting during his review of Chris Anderson's new book, Free: The Future of a Radical Price: several chunks of the text were verbatim excerpts from Wikipedia entries that were uncredited in Anderson's book.  On the VQR blog, Jaquith points out a half-dozen or so instances of such segments in the book, set to be released in July, after what he said was just a "cursory examination" of the text.

Another blogger, Edward Champion, also found some language--also unattributed--that was nearly identical to language used in some non-Wikipedia sources, including other books, essays, and blogs.  More on that here.

Anderson has acknowledged that he screwed up with the Wikipedia and (sort of) apologizes, explaining that the lack of proper citation was due to a last minute decision to pull the footnotes. It's an explanation that some are* seem to be accepting--including Jaquith, who says "you'd have to be mentally ill to do this on purpose"--and some are more skeptical about, such as Plagiarism Today's Jonathan Bailey, who writes that Anderson's effort "is, at best, extremely sloppy research" to the point that it "severely undermines the message of his book."

But whether it was sloppy research, laziness, poor decision-making by the publisher, or flat out intentional plagiarism, the book is certain to make waves in discussions about the future of the Internet and the delivery of online content.

Of course the irony of an author writing about pricing mechanisms and the "free" availability of copyrighted content being accused of plagiarizing--from the Wikipedia entry on "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch," no less--hasn't been lost on bloggers and commenters.  And it brings to mind another adage that can be applied to the Internet, one that's probably weighing heavily on Anderson's and his publisher's minds right now: not all press is good.  Important lesson learned.

*UPDATE: Jaquith writes below in the comments to clarify the meaning behind his statement above that "you'd have to be mentally ill to do this on purpose." 

He writes:

Actually, I'm neither accepting nor rejecting that explanation, because it's not my position to do so. What I was trying to establish with that comment is that I cannot imagine that Anderson would do such a thing intentionally, as I find it difficult to believe that any author of a major-market book (especially one that explicitly cites, in places, several of the plagiarized works) would do such a thing intentionally--the odds of getting caught are simply too high.

There hasn't been a great deal of coverage on this, but Charles Nesson filed a response Tuesday to last week's order by the judge in the Joel Tenenbaum case admonishing Nesson for his erratic behavior and tactics, which have skirted the line of the law.  In the order, Judge Nancy Gertner suggested that Nesson's bizarre personal and legal behavior has "overshadowed" the legal issues at hand.

(For a full recap of Nesson's bizarre defense strategy, read Copyrights and Campaigns by Ben Sheffner, who has been following the case closely.)

Nesson's response, which is charitably described by Sheffner as reading "like an impassioned blog rant," denies that he has overshadowed the issues at hand and that he will "continue to try to make as much of this case open to the internet as is possible under the law" since "the capacity to inform and educate the digital public is at the heart of this case."  Essentially, Nesson does not want the case to be about whether or not Joel Tenenbaum broke the law, but whether copyright law is fair.

Actually, Nesson takes this a step further:

The issue presented here is not only whether Joel Tenenbaum unfairly infringed copyright by sharing in music free on the open net. It is whether an entire digital generation did so and whether Joel will be individually punished for it. That generation needs to hear and see a case made on its behalf. The world needs to see and hear it.

This argument seems pretty disingenuous.  There are a lot of people around Joel Tenenbaum's age who never "unfairly infringed copyright by sharing music free on the open net" and probably even more who were swept up in the Napster craze but stopped sharing music when they understood that it was illegal.  These people probably would not appreciate being accused by Nesson of having "unfairly" shared files, nor would they likely appreciate Nesson appointing himself as their spokesperson.  Joel Tenenbaum isn't being held individually responsible for a collective action, he's being held responsible for his individual action of downloading copyrighted material.  To act as though this case is about an entire generation is kind of like saying that individual speeders on the highway who get caught are being punished not only for all other speeders, but for all other drivers.  It doesn't make sense.

It's the classic "but everybody else does it" defense.  We don't accept that from our children.  Especially when it's not remotely true.

Whether or not you buy Nesson's argument that he's protecting Joel Tenenbaum from martyrdom on behalf of everyone under thirty, one thing is clear: the Tenenbaum trial is now officially The Charles Nesson Show, and it promises to get more interesting as the drama--and legal hijinks--unfold.

How interesting will the trial get?  During written discovery (PDF) in the Tenenbaum fair use defense, Sony presented the image of Nesson below, by asking Tenenbaum to "admit that the image attached hereto as Exhibit 1, with the caption, 'Destroy Capitalism, Support Piracy,' is a true and correct copy of an image that was posted to the Internet by your counsel."

Charming...

Arts+Labs is excited to announce our newest members, Auditude, Blue Pixel and JibJab!  We released this statement this morning.

Arts+Labs, a unique alliance of the technology, content and creative communities, today announced that three new organizations have joined its coalition. These innovative new companies are at the forefront of exploring distinct new ways of creating a safe, open and accessible digital marketplace that delivers a wide variety of legal content and services to consumers. Joining Arts+Labs are:

• Auditude - a company that solves the business of monetizing online video, combining a sophisticated ad platform with a patented fingerprinting index to simplify video distribution and advertising
• Blue Pixel - a leader in helping companies and consumers understand, harness and leverage the power of digital still and video images
• JibJab - a leading digital entertainment studio, is best known for its online political parodies and a subscription-based eCard service

"Arts+Labs is unique in the sense that we bring together a very diverse group of organizations that are tied together by their reliance on a healthy digital economy," said Mike McCurry, co-chair of Arts+Labs.  "With every new member that joins Arts+Labs, we build momentum and raise awareness of the challenges and opportunities of the digital age."

Arts+Labs launched in September 2008 with six founding members and recently announced that two new members, ASCAP and BMI, had joined the coalition.  Since launch, Arts+Labs has been out in front of key Internet issues, such as cybersecurity and national broadband adoption.  On June 8, the group filed a response to the Federal Communications Commission's Notice of Inquiry of national broadband that urged the FCC to think outside the scope of traditional telecom policy and consider a larger vision of building a successful "digital society" as it begins work on its national broadband strategy.

"Auditude, Blue Pixel and JibJab each bring distinct new perspectives and ideas that will broaden our coalition even further as we work towards a dynamic digital society," said Mark McKinnon, co-chair of Arts+Labs. "We look forward to working with their organizations to shape the way we tackle today's most critical Internet-related issues." 

Adam Thierer at Tech Liberation Front has had two great posts in the last two days about Free Press's new crusade against metered billing, which has attracted support from Rep. Eric Massa (D - NY).  Thierer argued first that the effort "is based on a combination of outright lies and blatant economic ignorance." Harsh, but he makes a compelling case:

Metering broadband access is not an effort "to restrict Internet use," as Free Press claims. Rather, like every other metered system under the sun, it's an effort to price a scarce resource in such a way so as to maximize use.  Broadband operators don't sit around all day scheming to find ways to decrease network usage.  They wouldn't make any money that way!!  They need to find business models that encourage increased uptake while also investing in and growing their networks to meet new demand and competitive challenges.

Very true. As with the net neutrality debate, people seem to start from the assumption that network operators want to actively devalue their own product, which makes no sense. Quite the contrary, network operators want to offer their services to a wider range of people, including those who might want to pay less for using less broadband.  Right now, there is a disincentive for such users:

Unless it is your goal to allow some particularly aggressive users to be subsidized by all other users, it is sometimes sensible to price usage based on demand.  If you don't, you potentially create a perverse incentive for a small handful of over-grazers to to be feeding at the trough at everyone else's expense.

It was a very good post in defense of some of the myriad reasons ISPs might want to move to metered bandwidth, and you should read the whole thing.

Unconvinced?

Check out Adam's second post on the subject, in which he cites some of Free Press's own work documenting the potential benefits of metered bandwidth.

The Internet Innovation Alliance's National Broadband strategy symposium is happening at the Newseum today.  The event is streaming live on the IIA website, and you can follow various attendees on Twitter with the hashtag #iia.

This morning, the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project released data on broadband adoption, and it's quite interesting.  Despite the recession, broadband adoption is increasing.

Home broadband adoption stood at 63% of adult Americans as of April 2009, up from 55% in May 2008.

The latest findings of the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project mark a departure from the stagnation in home high-speed adoption rates that had prevailed from December 2007 through December 2008. During that period, Pew Internet Project surveys found that home broadband penetration remained in a narrow range between 54% and 57%.

What's more, 55% of home broadband users said "broadband was very important to at least one dimension of their lives and community, such as communicating with health care providers, government officials, sharing information about the community, or contributing to economic growth."

In response to this good news, Arts+Labs Co-chairs Mike McCurry and Mark McKinnon have released the following statement.

The continued growth in broadband adoption shows that even in tough economic times Americans are excited by the emerging digital society.   This trend is driven in part by content providers' growing enthusiasm for distributing their work on the web, which stimulates broadband adoption by making the Internet more valuable to consumers.

By embracing legal content, consumers, in turn, support a prosperous digital society by encouraging the creative and technology communities to expand their investment in the Internet and its infrastructure.

Earlier this week, Zogby polling and 463 Communications announced a new partnership, Zogby463, that will "track public opinions on a variety of topics pertaining to technology and the economy." This is certainly a welcome addition to the technology landscape, and I'm looking forward to seeing what kinds of data they come up with.

Their first outing, released this week, looked at technology and the economy and also included questions about technology policy. One of the more interesting findings from the survey was an acknowledgement among those surveyed that the future of the American economy is technology and service jobs, not industry and manufacturing.

Also of note: we often see surveys that show that Americans distrust the government but want the government to do more, and the Internet is no exception.  While about 60% think that the government should have some authority to regulate Internet content or provide a ratings system, a whopping 83% of respondents think that the average 10 year old knows more about the Internet than their Congressman.  Why not put the 10 year olds in charge?

NBC has showed an impressive commitment to providing content online, and not just by their partnership to create Hulu. NBC's own website not only delivers handily on the basics, but also shows some real effort on features to engage the audience.

Almost all of NBC's prime-time and late-night shows have full episodes available on NBC.com. And virtually all of those are available in sharp HD using NBC Direct, which is a desktop application that uses P2P in the background to power quick, high-quality downloads. Now that NBC has built up that broad selection of HD content, the only obstacle is going to the trouble of actually installing the program.

If you prefer to watch your shows in your browser, NBC.com's native player has a lot to recommend it. It runs smoothly, it's well-stocked with extra features, and it's fairly easy to use. (Right now, you can even watch full episodes of 22 shows commercial-free. How cool is that?)

As a standard feature, the background automatically darkens during playback to aid viewing, a feature shared by the ABC.com player and which is optional on Hulu.

Additionally, NBC has a variety of features for sharing the viewing experience. Not only can you embed videos and share them through email or social bookmarking sites, you can also join or host "viewing parties" so that up to 10 viewers can watch episodes together, comment on them and answer customized polls and trivia. Click on the image on the right for an example of setting up one of these parties.

That complete package earned NBC's full episode player the 2009 Webby Award in the Broadband category, which is for:

Sites fully integrating bandwidth-intensive interactive content. This content may include video, animation, and like dynamic elements that bring the computer, television, radio and film one step closer to convergence.

NBC also integrates its website into the full experience of its shows by creating exclusive online content like webisodes (including whole web series) and themed websites around their shows, not only to keep viewers thinking about the show but even to provide extra back story in some cases. Web content can especially come in handy when a show has a long break between seasons, to stoke continued interest in the series.


And for that extra content, NBC (perhaps unsurprisingly) has its own social network, myNBC.
As you can imagine, users build and style their profiles around the shows they enjoy, and are encouraged to join groups, participate in forums and the like. But the social network is also integrated with the extra content that NBC produces, and users can upload photos and video, write their own blog posts and use special widgets and modules to stay in the loop. If the myNBC members list is roughly complete, they can boast almost 900,000 users.

But NBC's online content doesn't end there. The network provides episodes of classic shows like Quantum Leap, the original Battlestar Galactica and many more, and during the Beijing Olympics NBC invested heavily in putting content online despite the high difficulty of translating that into revenue.

Clearly, NBC isn't timid about embracing the internet, but is instead experimenting boldly by creating unique value online and embracing the web as part of their wider business model.

The venerable Peacock Network has put a lot of eggs into its web basket, and anyone who likes any of their shows has reason to be pleased at what's available online. If fans didn't have enough reasons to enjoy their content the safe and legal way already, NBC seems determined to give them as many more reasons as they need.

Arts+Labs, a unique alliance of the technology, content, and creative communities, today urged the Federal Communication Commission to think outside the scope of traditional telecom policy and consider a larger vision of building a successful "digital society" as it begins work on its national broadband strategy.

"Rather than a narrow look at the rules governing the traditional 'telecom' service providers, we urge the Commission to map out a plan that considers the entire Internet ecosystem, including such pillars as safety and property rights that may be outside the FCC's traditional jurisdiction, but are fundamental to a prosperous digital society," Arts+Labs said in comments submitted in response to the FCC's Notice of Inquiry on broadband policy.   

Arts+Labs said that providing easy online access to professional quality entertainment and other content can help the United States reach its goal of universal broadband by encouraging more consumers to adopt broadband.  It noted that 30-40 percent of Americans do not subscribe to broadband even when it is available in their community and suggested that "compelling content can be the first 'on-ramp' to the digital highway."  

Digital Theft Poses Threat to Broadband Goals

But it also warned that a massive wave of digital theft threatens the continued creation of high quality content and services that will draw more Americans to embrace broadband.

"Further, the continued availability of quality content online depends on creators' confidence that their property rights will be protected from digital theft.  Today, that confidence is at risk.  Creating and distributing content costs large sums of money.  Before staking their economic future on creating new content, creators and the industries they work with must believe they will have a fair chance to earn a return.  But the faith needed for investment is eroded every time creative works are illegally copied or downloaded with impunity," A+L said in its filing.

A Safe Internet and Smart Management Will Boost Digital Society

It also said that a safe Internet must be a core part of a national broadband strategy and that the failure to protect online data and crack down on net pollution such as malware, spam, phishing and other Internet crime will erode the value of the Internet and discourage broadband adoption.

"To drive adoption and build a successful digital society that reaches every American, all of us must accept responsibility for minimizing online risks, protecting users' privacy, and ensuring data security against malicious online activity and cybercrime," A+L said.

It also urged the Commission to embrace "smart management tools and techniques."

"Used effectively, smart management of our networks will stimulate broadband adoption by expanding the scope of activities available to consumers, by addressing network congestion, and by defending against hacking, phishing, identity theft and other forms of cybercrime," the filing added.

But it said network operators must not abuse management tools to interfere with competitors or consumers rights and noted:  "In a digital society, network managers owe their customers transparency about their network management practices, including proactive disclosure of new policies or innovations that may affect users' experiences."

A+L Urges Collaborative Effort, Says Pragmatism Should Trump Ideology

It also urged the Commission to avoid unnecessary regulatory constraints that would interfere with the ability of content providers, network operators and other Internet-related businesses to experiment with new business models and to offer innovative new services and options to consumers.  

Finally, A+L urged every Internet industry and every individual who uses the Internet to work together to achieve the nation's broadband goals.

"Building an inclusive digital society and achieving our broadband goals will require all of us to think outside of silos, to choose pragmatic and effective policies over ideology, and to drive broadband adoption by encouraging the creation of exciting content, protecting intellectual property, and ensuring that the Internet is a safe place to be.  And, the guiding principle on every issue should be to find the solution that moves broadband forward," A+L concluded.

NewTeeVee has a great write up of a new comScore report about online video streaming in April.The post gets a little bit technical about how the measurement are taken, but the takeaway is this: Americans streamed a jaw-dropping 16.8 billion videos in April, which NewTeeVee thinks is a new record.  16,800,000,000 streams. That's a lot of zeros. (Any word on American productivity in April by any chance?)

In all seriousness though, that amount of online video consumption confirms what a lot of us already know: that Americans are increasingly comfortable turning to the Internet for entertainment, whether it's for user generated video (this is my personal favorite), traditional television programming, or web-only shows and exclusives.

As more and more Americans get online--sixty-two percent of U.S. households are already connected at home according USA Today--those streaming numbers are only going to get higher, which is why content creators are working harder than ever to bring even more content online.  But with 16.8 billion streams, it looks like we've already come a long way.