At the Microsoft policy blog (Microsoft On The Issues) Horacio Gutierrez makes a good point about the economic value of intellectual property.  Collaboration on interoperability holds a great deal of promise, especially for companies running both "open source and proprietary software".  For this collaboration to be most effective, it must involve both sharing of, and competition between, the intellectual assets of many companies.

All information technology solutions - regardless of software development or business models - benefit from a balance between collaboration and competition. [...] At the heart of these business arrangements is an honest recognition of the value of the intellectual assets that drive innovation.  Such arrangements strike a balance between intellectual property incentives that encourage, recognize, and reward innovation, and practical mechanisms for sharing intellectual property that are responsible, accessible, and affordable.

At Microsoft, we have created many such business arrangements - more than 500 in just five years - through the licensing of our intellectual property to a wide range of companies from a variety of industries and geographies.  In fact, two new deals were announced last week.  One is a patent licensing agreement with Brother, a leading printer company, which includes IP coverage for devices running on Linux-based technologies.  The other is the licensing of Microsoft's Exchange ActiveSync intellectual property to Google that will help G-mail customers better manage their data.

Expropriating intellectual assets may benefit somebody, but collaboration that respects intellectual property benefits everybody involved.  Our economic future depends on it.  
 

Most of the mainstream video content that's available online is, unsurprisingly, targeted at the people who use the internet most independently - teens and adults. And when we're looking for something to watch online, it's nice to be shielded from the malware and other pitfalls of illicit content.

But when it comes to the shows our kids watch online, safety takes on whole new dimensions. For them, you'll be happy to know there's a place they can safely and easily watch some of their favorite cartoon shows online: KidsWB.com.
KidsWB.com is a fairly sheltered environment, relatively easy to navigate and featuring a number of ways to keep your child busy. WB has its own classic characters as well as children's versions of DC Comics characters like Batman and Superman.

The site does genuinely seem to steer kids directly toward the content. As you can see above, the basic options are Video, Games and Downloads, although if you're looking for something specific, there's a very simple search option or they can click directly on their favorite show.

The site has over 200 episodes spread out over all its shows, old and new, with the typical episode clocking in at a bit over 20 minutes.

The video player is purposely light on functions: besides being able to play, pause and change the volume, it has a full-screen option (which can only be undone by use of the Escape key, if you want to set it up ahead of time).

Besides video, Kids' WB has, last we checked, 132 Flash-type games of various styles, which should keep any kid busy for a while. And it has a wide variety of downloadable content - wallpaper, a few types of widgets, printable activities and more.

It does feature a few advertisements, of the kind you would see on the TV network: toys and cereal, mainly. In videos, you'll only have to endure two short commercials for each episode. If your child should click on one of the banner advertisements, a banner will appear for 10 seconds warning that they're leaving Kids' WB, and should check with a parent before using any personal information.

The same warning appears if the child should click on the DVD Showcase and then click the little "Buy It Now!" button, which redirects them to the WB Online DVD Store, which in turn requires knowledge of how to add to a cart and order. There's not much room for mischief, but depending on your situation you may want to lightly monitor your kid's activity... or just hide the credit cards.

Some extra features at the site require registration, with the assurance that Kids' WB keeps a strict privacy policy, and rarely uses more than a first name and an email address even for things that are not viewed publicly.

For even younger kids (i.e. preschool age), the partner site KidsWBJr.com is even more insulated. Featuring "baby" versions of the Kids' WB characters, Kids' WB Jr. is highly simplified, using simple shapes, big text, bright colors and even voice cues to aid navigation.

There are only a few things to do at the "Jr." site: video, activities and games. No other links to speak of. And as the site explains in the "Grown Ups" page,

Game controls and game play are specifically designed to promote early learning skills such as number, letter, shape, pattern recognition, and hand-eye coordination while keeping your child entertained and safe.

There isn't even a registration option, or anything else that might ask your child for personal information. Nor does it have any advertisements. It's just a straightforward little sandbox in which your kids can access some of the simplest content. The only way out of the site, in fact, are some small, plain text links at the very top and bottom of the screen.

On both sites, there's a moderate amount of content, presented according to the audience. It's enough to give kids something to do on rainy days or in the evenings, but not enough to keep them from seeing daylight again. Together, these WB sites provide a pretty kid-friendly site from a very young age up to... whenever they grow out of Batman Beyond.

comScore has released new numbers showing online video is booming in the US, with a record 13% growth between November and December of 2008.  That's double-digit growth in a single month.  Specifically, "U.S. Internet users viewed a record 14.3 billion online videos during the month..."

More notable findings from comScore's December 2008 data:

•     78.5 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.
•     The average online video viewer watched 309 minutes of video, or more than 5 hours.
•     98.9 million viewers watched 5.9 billion videos on YouTube.com (59.2 videos per viewer).
•     48.7 million viewers watched 367 million videos on MySpace.com (7.6 videos per viewer).
•     The duration of the average online video was 3.2 minutes.
•     The duration of the average online video viewed at Hulu was 10.1 minutes, higher than any other video property in the top ten.

President Obama has just announced that Melissa Hathaway will spend the next 60 days directing a review of U.S. cybersecurity policy. Hathaway has been the cybersecurity adviser to the director of national intelligence, and an important voice on the economic and national security aspects of cybersecurity.

It's great to see that the new administration recognizes the crucial economic and national security importance of network security. While we embrace the Internet as a free and open community, it is important to protect it against the kind of net pollution that threatens this global community.

Here's what Arts+Labs co-chairs Mike McCurry and Mark McKinnon had to say about the news:

President Obama's fast-track review of cybersecurity signals the central role that computer networks now play in providing both national defense and economic security.

In addition to securing government networks against foreign agents and terrorists, the government must work with the private sector to protect the public Internet against cybercrime, terror attacks, and disruptive online activities that threaten digital commerce and communication. According to one recent study, malicious online activity drained $1 trillion from the world economy last year - an extraordinary loss that only adds to our general economic difficulties.

We also note that the assignment of Melissa Hathaway, who worked on this issue in the Bush administration, signals that cybersecurity is a truly critical issue that transcends politics. Addressing cyber threats is essential for continued development of the digital economy and the Internet-based activities that have become an integral part of American life.

Appointments in the Obama Administration make it clearer every day that the President fully understands the fundamental economic principle taught in every freshman econ class around the world--there is no such thing as a "free" culture.

This realization is of particular importance at a time when our international relations are in dire need of improvement. Our foreign policy professionals require all the tools they can get their hands on to build a vibrant cross-cultural human network. These concepts are familiar to readers of Joseph Nye's Soft Power and the recent report of the Center for Strategic and International Studies Smart Power Commission.

"Smart power" is a foreign policy doctrine originated at CSIS that balances the use of "hard power" (such as weapons) with "soft power" (a country's cultural attractiveness) to win the battle for hearts and minds as well as military victories.

The inventory of soft power opportunities range from hospital ships to the Voice of America, vaccination programs to academic exchanges. But soft power also includes popular culture, preferably a robust popular culture. More people in the world know of Louis Armstrong than know of Allen Dulles. And probably adore Satchmo a lot more. He didn't play music because he wanted to be "Ambassador Satch," but he became one of America's greatest cultural ambassadors because he could earn a living playing music.

There are few countries that have benefited more than the United States from the attractiveness of its ubiquitous popular culture. While Professor Nye does not expressly offer a correlation between the ability of the creative community to sustain itself as a measurement of the success of soft power as a foreign policy objective, Nye probably didn't think it necessary to make that connection when he first articulated these concepts in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The economic liberties and labor value that fuels the engine of popular culture were not then under attack.

But they are now. Because in order for popular culture to remain part of the tools available to those charged with operating a successful foreign policy for the United States, it is of critical importance that American culture survive and be regenerated, not fail and be regurgitated.

The importance of these tools are not to be underestimated. Professor Nye notes in Soft Power "[l]ong before the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, it had been pierced by [music,] television and movies.... Lennon trumped Lenin.... One [Chinese] dissident told a foreign reporter [during the Tiananmen Square massacre] that when she was forced to listen to local Communist Party leaders rage about America, she would hum Bob Dylan tunes in her head as her own silent revolution."

These are all examples of the importance of maintaining cultural contact with both our friends and enemies. Unfortunately, the engine that drives the production of popular culture around the world is under attack online at levels that surpass anything experienced in the physical world. Whether that attack succeeds or fails determines the availability of these smart power options.

Ivory tower "free culture" apologists and their followers position an artist's struggle for economic freedom as a "war" that pits "Silicon Valley" (aka "innovation") against "Hollywood" (aka "Hollywood"). This view misses the point--absent a respect for fundamental economic freedom and for labor value, arguing over control of the distribution channel is a rather meaningless exercise in wedge politics.

Many of these same "free culture" academics incongruously champion the Internet as democratizing the distribution channel so the "little guy" can circumvent "Hollywood" while they simultaneously beat the drum for a government-mandated compulsory license and government-mandated pricing for all content. The rationale often heard for these extremist wage controls is that the current crisis online has produced a "market failure." Yet a fundamental element of a market is respect for basic economic rights would afford creators the ability to sustain themselves from their work product. Absent these rights there is no market, and therefore there can be no market failure.

If these basic rights are not protected, the distribution channel eventually will fill with net pollution and will be of less value to everyone. That's already happening.

Once talent is lost, it is lost forever. If it is extraordinarily difficult for creators to earn a living, there will not be another extraordinary "Ambassador Satch."

So when considering popular culture as a component of soft power in formulating foreign policy, our government ought to start at home by protecting the fundamental economic liberties that sustain the creative community both offline and online and reward the labor value of creators.

Drat!  Hulu has revealed our secret plot to destroy the world by combining excellent content with superior technology!

 

The BBC has a story about how the world is adapting to the internet, including the barriers to adoption...

Getting the web right starts with the basics: spam, privacy and fraud.

"The internet is seen by many [consumers] as an extremely dangerous place," says Thomas Stewart of consulting firm Booz & Company.  Companies have to tackle the "killers of digital confidence", he says, from issues such as network security to fraud prevention.

Internet security is a key factor in increasing broadband adoption.  The safer it is for people to walk the virtual streets of the global community, the more likely they will be to move there.