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Tuesday, August 09, 2005 |
Where Does Hollywood Make Its Money? (Alan Wexelblat).
Edward Jay Epstein has a nice piece on Slate (audio broadcast on NPR) explaining some of where Hollywood makes its money. Turns out most of it comes from what Epstein calls the "El Dorado" that is television licensing. Ninety percent of the licensing revenue from TV is profit, versus about 2/3 of revenue as profit from DVD sales. Actual theatrical showings are money losers, as even the vastly increased ticket prices and ads stuffed before showings don't cover the studios' publicity and marketing budgets for major films. It costs studios about USD 1.4 for each $1 in ticket revenue generated.
The article also includes other financial tidbits, such as the assertion that the wholesale price of a DVD is around $5, meaning that retail mark-up is 100-400%. Finally, Epstein delves into the way that this revenue arrangement has led television to drive the studios and how that hurts independent movie producers, who don't have the huge television revenue stream on which to rely. [Copyfight]
6:31:59 PM 
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Why I Don't Trust
Readers:
I'm sad to report that their credibility has fallen to an all-time
low.
Jack Shafer, in Slate.
4:48:34 PM
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QTAmateur. QTAmateur is a small, simple QuickTime video player. It can play any format that QuickTime can understand, handle fullscreen video playback, and export files to any format that QuickTime can write. [unmediated]
8:02:29 AM
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David Isenberg on the FCC's "Four Internet Freedoms".
David Isenberg, an astute and informed observer, is scared about the direction the FCC is taking regarding netizen rights (Via JOHO):
Powell: Freedom to access content.
Martin: Consumers are entitled to access the lawful Internet content of their choice.
Powell: Freedom to run applications.
Martin: Consumers are entitled to run applications and services of their choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement;
Powell: Freedom to attach devices.
Martin: Consumers are entitled to connect their choice of legal devices that do not harm the network.
Powell: Freedom to obtain service plan information.
Martin: Consumers are entitled to competition among network providers, application and service providers, and content providers.
And the Martin FCC adds an important footnote:
All of these principles are subject to reasonable network management. [Smart Mobs]
8:01:31 AM
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Blogs, links and influence.
When Mary Hodder of Napsterization digs into a subject, stand back and look out, world!
In her latest, "Link Love Lost or How Social Gestures within Topic Groups are More Interesting Than Link Counts" (caution, techie talk here), Mary follows up on a discussion begun first at Les Blogs in Paris and then at BlogHer last weekend -- namely, that raw link counts and Top 100 standings don't tell you much. What's more meaningful are the social interactions that take place within niche topic groups. She goes on to suggest the ingredients of an open source algorithm around blog influence. Excerpt:
I think scoring, even a more sophisticated version of it, akin to page-rank, is problematic and takes what is delightful about the blogosphere away, namely the fun of discovering a new writer or media creator on their terms, not others. What I love is that people who read blogs are assessing them over time to see how to take a blogger and their work. But more recently, as I said, I'm seeing these poorly done reports floating around by PR people, communications companies, journalists, advertising entities and others trying to score or weight blogs. And after hearing the degree to which people are upset by the obtuseness of the top counts, and because they do want to monetize their blogs or be included into influencer ranks, I'm at the point where I'd like to consider making something that we agree to, not some secretly held metric that is foisted upon us. ... [unmediated]
8:00:56 AM
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The Freesound Project.  The Freesound Project - a collaborative database of Creative Commons licensed sounds. It is developed for the international computer music conference 2005 to be held in Barcalona Spain in September. The site has a very advanced search engine. The best was recently introduced: geotags were added for the field recordings in the database. This means that you can look at your google earth and see all these cool sounds from all across the globe. Thanks Anton! Link. [unmediated]
8:00:45 AM
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Guitar Heroes. Two guitarists -- one classical, one from the 80s rock band The Police -- have joined forces with a symphony orchestra. Today: the unique sounds of a concerto for two electric guitars. Also on the show: Laura Veirs. [WNYC New York Public Radio]
7:57:22 AM
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The Mother of Acrimonious Acronyms (Donna Wentworth).
As Cardozo law professor Susan Crawford recently noted, there are a lot of "acrimonious acronyms" in the battle over the future of the Internet. One of the most dangerous: the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act, better known as CALEA.
Back in the Clinton era, the FBI asked for a law to force all telecommunications companies to build backdoors into their networks for easy government spying. As part of the desperate Capitol Hill horse-trading before CALEA was passed, privacy advocates won a concession: the new law would not apply to providers of information services such as email and Internet access. But as of Friday, that's no longer the case. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has issued an advisory stating that it has granted the FBI's request to expand the scope of CALEA to include Internet broadband providers and certain Voice-over-IP (VoIP) providers.
. . .
As the press release points out, the proposal to expand CALEA to airline broadband illustrates the fallacy of law enforcement's rationale for its CALEA request. To avoid the statute's carefully crafted compromise -- the total exclusion of information services from the CALEA's reach -- the DOJ argues that CALEA covers broadband services because they have "substantially replaced" the local telephone exchange. But airplane communications have hardly "substantially replaced" local telephone services. This request is about opening the door for CALEA to cover just about anything.
EFF's CALEA FAQ gives it to you short and not-so-sweet:
Q: "Is the FBI trying to dictate how the Internet should be engineered to permit whatever level of surveillance the FBI deems necessary?"
A: "Yes. What the FBI is really asking for is a massive overhaul of how the Internet works to make it easier for federal agents to listen in on people's digital conversations. EFF believes that law enforcement should not be allowed to have veto power over proposed innovations to the Internet in order to make spying easier. In addition, federal agencies should not force the broadband industry -- and by extension, its consumers -- to bear the considerable costs of purchasing and implementing surveillance-ready network technologies simply because it suits the government's needs." In other words, the government not only wants service providers to make your private communications easily open to government surveillance, it also wants the providers -- and therefore you, the customer -- to pay for it.
For more on the FCC and CALEA, check out FCC Schizo on DSL, Wiretapping and Justice Department Effort to Eavesdrop on Airline Passengers Challenged.
(Cross-posted @ Deep Links.) [Copyfight]
7:55:52 AM
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Blog jam or blog flood?.
FC Now, the group blog of Fast Company Magazine, is running its second annual "BlogJam," a two-day blogfest during which they post a continuous stream of blog entries on leadership, innovation and related topics from participants they've recruited. (FC Company posts tagged "blogjam 2005")
My favorite post so far is "Testing the Power of the Blog," a smack-down challenge (start your stop watches) to see how long it will take Fast Company to change its site so that when one types "fastcompany.com"* in a browser, it will actually make it to the website -- now one must type in the entire www.fastcompany.com address. Says "blog jam" guest blogger James Durbin, "It may seem like a small issue, but as an experienced netizen, I can't stand typing "www" into an address bar to get the proper url."
*If that link works, they've fixed it.
Update: In trying different browsers, I've noticed different results when attempting to replicate Durbin's pet-peeve. It appears to be a browser specific glitch.
[rexblog: Rex Hammock's Weblog]
7:52:05 AM
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Following up on yesterday's post, Jennifer Granick has:
More Tales From 'Ciscogate'. The tempest surrounding a whistle-blowing security researcher boils over when FBI agents and forbidden hacking slides show up in Sin City. Mike Lynn's lawyer describes the view from the inside. By Jennifer Granick. [Wired News]
7:51:59 AM
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Worldwide wonder.
The 10th birthday of the internet as a mass phenomenon is rightly being celebrated this week to mark a decade since the explosive stock market debut of Netscape, which triggered the dot.com boom and unleashed a friendly browser to navigate the web. The Guardian reports.
To understand the extraordinary revolution that swept the world so quickly, existing users need simply to imagine what life would now be like without email (on which corporate life depends), search engines such as Google, web companies such as Amazon, eBay and Yahoo, the ongoing explosion of online commerce, not to mention the burgeoning world of personal journals (blogs), downloaded music and films, free newspapers, web cameras, internet telephony (now the hottest thing on the web) and the growing convergence of the net and mobile phones.
... Although, contrary to the instincts of its early protagonists, the web has long since been colonised by commerce, it still nurtures its founding community spirit.
More [Smart Mobs]
7:41:37 AM
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Microsoft settles with 'Spam King' for $7 million.
Microsoft has settled a lawsuit that it filed two years ago against the self-proclaimed "King of Spam," Scott Richter, who at one time helped distribute more than 38 billion unsolicited e-mails per year, Microsoft said Tuesday.
Richter and his online marketing company, OptInBig.com LLC, have agreed to pay Microsoft $7 million to settle the suit, which was filed in December 2003, Microsoft and Richter said in a joint statement.
He and his affiliates have also agreed to comply with U.S. federal anti-spam laws and stop sending spam to anyone who does not opt in to receive marketing e-mails, according to the statement.
The settlement depends on the dismissal of bankruptcy cases filed by Richter and his company earlier this year. Richter and OptInBig plan to file for dismissal of those cases later Tuesday.
. . .
Helped by Microsoft, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer also sued Richter over spam offenses in December 2003. Spitzer settled that case with Richter last July for $50,000.
[InfoWorld: Top News]
7:40:08 AM
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Sorting the Uproar Over Downloads. It seems like Hollywood won in the Grokster ruling, but the file-sharing universe will be largely unaffected, at least for a while. What the federal ruling against Grokster really means. By Jeff Howe from Wired magazine. [Wired News]
7:38:37 AM
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Stuck in Second. President Bush's report card from the public for the first half-year of his second term is not a good one compared with previous administrations. By ANDREW KOHUT and PETER HOEY. [NYT > Opinion]
7:38:03 AM
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