Thursday, March 06, 2003

Nintendo Case Study: Rules Are Made to Be Broken. An ''E-Mail Marketing Case Study'' by Heidi Anderson, at ClickZ. How often should you send mailings to your opt-in database? Conventional wisdom says not too often. Otherwise, you risk overloading recipients with e-mail. There aren't hard-and-fast rules, but a rule of thumb many in the industry follow is regular newsletters are typically sent once every two weeks or monthly. If you sell a product or service via e-mail, you'll generally send an offer once, maybe twice, with little follow-up. . . . . Nintendo . . . found more frequent mailings can be a successful tactic. . . . How does Nintendo manage this without overwhelming its members? 12:06:53 PM    comment []

Yale Oxymoron: Labor Relations. A history of distrust feeds tensions in Yale University's eighth labor strike since 1968. By Steven Greenhouse. [New York Times: Education] 6:57:29 AM    comment []

Keep Out Sign Irresistible Online. Despite one website creator's plea to stay away from his site, people just can't stand not clicking on the Don't Go There button. The site, programmed to go dark after 100 visitors, stayed live just shy of one hour. By Michelle Delio. [Wired News] 6:56:59 AM    comment []

Lexmark: New Fuel for DMCA Foes. Critics of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act say businesses like auto-parts manufacturers and makers of a universal garage-door opener could be affected if Lexmark wins its copyright infringement case against a maker of inexpensive toner cartridges. By Katie Dean. [Wired News] 6:56:26 AM    comment []

Reclassifying the 'Consumer'. UPDATED with many, many responses; see below. My friend Jerry Michalski, a notable thinker about how digital technology is changing... [Dan Gillmor's eJournal] 6:55:50 AM    comment []

California's '3-Strikes' Law Upheld [Washington Post: Front Page] 6:55:07 AM    comment []

Three from the New York Times: Education: Students Skip Class for Peace (and Frisbee): More than a thousand high school and college students walked out of their classrooms and gathered in Union Square Park in Manhattan to protest the possible war in Iraq. By Leslie Eaton. The War on Schools: It's an insane society that can contemplate devastating and then rebuilding Iraq, but can't provide schooling for all its own young people. By Bob Herbert. Is Answer J Right or Wrong? None of the Above, State Says: None of the four possible answers to a question on New York State's standardized English test, administered in January, was clearly correct. By David M. Herszenhorn. 6:36:01 AM    comment []

How to avoid the dotcom shakeout: buy a better domain name. Xeni Jardin channelling 18-year-old BoingBoing reader Numair, helping out Red Herring founder Tony Perkins with a new (and improved) domain name for his new venture, over at bOing bOing. )With links to the AlwaysOn Network site, The Orifice of Naked Ape, and Numair's AONW.com site.) 6:31:42 AM    comment []

Doc Searls: Blog early, blog often. Mike Sanders has been exploring habits of highly effective blogging. The series starts here. [The Doc Searls Weblog] 6:26:13 AM    comment []

Should Universities Crack Down on File Swapping?: Why They Should Resist Congress's Call And Fight for Students' Free Speech Rights, by Julie Hilden, FindLaw's Writ (legal commentary). In theory, the basic legal doctrines are currently these: Files as to which the copyright owner has given permission, are always legal to swap. (For instance, open source software can always be legally swapped; it's called "open source" precisely because the owner has given up any legal claim to it.) In addition, some files can also be swapped without the copyright owner's permission, pursuant to the "fair use" doctrine. But when exactly, does the "fair use" doctrine apply? That's the difficult question. The "fair use" doctrine evolved in a simpler world - in which, say, a book review could quote part of a book, or a classroom lecturer could photocopy a small section of a copyrighted work to distribute to his or her students. Each of these acts is plainly "fair use." But what counts as "fair use" when it comes to file swapping? Great piece that teases out some of the conceptual problems in defining fair use for digital environments and makes a good case for universities' taking a stand to protect it instead of wimping out as many seem to be doing. 4:04:53 AM    comment []