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Tuesday, May 27, 2003 |
the freedom to click.
There were an extraordinary number of people who took up the Starbucks's challenge. Check out the links here and lots elsewhere on the web.
There were many in the comments to the challenge who suggested there was nothing wrong with Starbucks exercising control over its own property. Of course that is right. And of course it is right that Starbucks should have the right to control people who are bothering people with their cameras, just as Starbucks has the right to control people who are bothering others with a radio. And of course it is right that Starbucks has the right even to be extremist about it -- banning anyone who clicks even a picture of a friend, invoking mysterious claims about security or trade-secrets.
But if they exercise these rights to an extreme, then of course we have the right to criticize their extremism. We have the right to link their extremism to a growing phascism about photographs. (See the wonderful summary of your rights by Bert Krages.) For it is bizarre that we increasingly live in this world where every movement is captured by a camera, yet increasingly, ordinary people are not permitted to take pictures with cameras. This is yet another part of a growing obsession with control that seems to mark so much of this society. At a minimum, we have a right to take note of this control, and criticize it where we can.
That's just what I wondered about when I read these stories about Starbucks'. I'm a terribly untrendy sort -- I like Starbucks. But I couldn't quite tell whether the extremism of these stories was an exception or a policy. And I guess I was relieved to read, and to find, at least some stores where the manager of a place that loves to imagine itself a public place was actually giving members of the public a freedom to feel like they are in public. I understand of course -- as everyone should -- that this "feeling" is just virtual. It can be withdrawn at anytime. [Lessig Blog]
9:20:39 PM 
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$150
plasma TV site faces lawsuit, by Bob Sullivan,
MSNBC.
Close to 200 Web sites now offer customers a chance at a $50
laptop computer or a $200 plasma television. But now the largest and oldest
such site, EZExpo.com, has been slapped with a lawsuit alleging it is an
illegal lottery.
The matrix concept is simple: Pay $150 (or $200 or some other figure — the
sum varies) and receive a spot in line for a 42-inch plasma television.
Each time 30 people do so, the one on top of the list gets a television.
It’s a great deal for the first couple of entrants, but the numbers rise
exponentially. Entrant 10 doesn’t get a TV until nearly 300 people have
joined. And entrant 300 needs 9,000 optimists to pay $150.
. . .
If the entrants pay their money just for the right to get in line for the
deeply-discounted high-tech toy, that would be an illegal Ponzi scheme,
according to James Kohm, assistant director of marketing practices for the
Federal Trade Commission. A Ponzi scheme is a form of fraud where early
investors are paid off with money from later investors. Ponzi schemes are
illegal because such systems eventually collapse under their own weight —
eventually, there aren’t enough newcomers to continue the payouts.
If people are really buying the opportunity to obtain the laptop,
obviously most people can’t do that, Kohm said. Only 2 percent of
the people could get a laptop, if you’ve got to have 50 people under you.
That means 98 percent of the people have to fail.
But Flynn and his imitators think they’ve found a way around the Ponzi
label. Entry into the matrix is a free gift, they say, attached to the
purchase of a real product.
1:02:09 PM
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Dave: Who will pay, part 2. There's been a bit of discussion about my last DaveNet piece, mostly users talking about what they're willing to pay, as if they have all the power. They don't.
The power of the software developer not to develop is largely silent, so people don't consider it. . . . .
[Scripting News]
7:13:45 AM
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Howard asks, Do you know of any corrections in the book Smart Mobs?. Have you spotted any typos, incorrect URLs, or other flaws in the book Smart Mobs (the kind that can be corrected easily)? If I get them to my publisher soon, the paperback edition can be corrected. Here are the ones I know about:
[Smart Mobs]
7:10:36 AM
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