All of the items in the Top Stories section link off to their respective source sites. This might come as a shock to Mr Murdoch, but the Times isn’t my homepage; nor is the Sun. If it wasn’t for their headlines appearing on Google News on iGoogle, which is my homepage, I wouldn’t ever need to visit those sites. What else do you notice? No ads. Google aren’t monetising this page, which is another reason to question how this hurts News Corp.

Rather than look at them as some kind of competition, News Corp need to see Google and Yahoo as a (and I apologise for the 1990′s AOL reference) portal into their own content. Let Google send me to your site, and when I’m there, give me content compelling enough to make me stick around. To make matters worse, News Corp’s chief, Rupert Murdoch, has gone on record to say that “we intend to charge for all our news websites“. In the face of falling readership and advertising revenue for their physical media business, the last thing News Corp wants to be doing is putting a pay wall around their web-based content. There will always be other, free places to get the news; if not News Corp’s direct competitors, then smaller, feisty startups like BNO. Today, some of those news sources lack authority, compared to the News Corp sites; as pay walls go up, that will change.

If you were in charge of this multibillion dollar, international news and media organisation, what would you do? Does putting a pay wall around the web-based news content seem like a smart play, or are there better ways to monetise?

Users “suspected” of having illegally downloaded something will get an e-mail from their ISP notifying them of their anti-social behavior. A second offense will result in a temporary suspension of Internet connectivity and a third will see the contract with your ISP ripped apart.

This is, of course, is being lobbied hard by the music and film industry who are quoted as saying that ISPs had “done little or nothing to address illegal downloading via their networks”. The most laughable quote of all, though, is:

This is the number one issue for the creative industries in the digital age, and the government’s willingness to tackle it should be applauded.

So, it’s the number one issue for the creative industry, and how do they tackle it? By suing the pants of people or bleating to Ministers. What they’re not doing is addressing the real issue: Why do people download copyrighted material? Here are a few thoughts, just off the of my head.

Maybe it’s because they’re frustrated with the “creative” industry’s DRM, which prevents them from playing their legally downloaded purchased content on which ever device they choose.

Maybe it’s because they’re tired of being stiffed by their local cinema, who charge more for a Diet Coke and a bucket of popcorn than the local drug dealer charges for a week’s worth top-notch snort (so I’m told).

Maybe it’s because they’ve shelled out for the latest in DVD player technology, only to watch the “creative” industry render that technology obsolete thanks to a $400m back-hander.

Or maybe, just maybe, it’s because the majority of the content produced by the “creative” industry (especially mainstream music) is such generic, mass-produced, pop pap that people don’t think it’s worth spending their money on.

I’m tired of being told that the content I want isn’t available for download in my region – even though I can buy it on DVD from my local store; I’m tired of buying stuff from iTunes only to find that it will only play on my iPod; it pisses me off that you think of me of as a pirate before you think of me as a consumer.

So, here’s little tip to the “creative” industry – it’s time to get a little creative. Instead of whining about illegal downloads and hoping that someone else will sort it out for you, how about you look at better ways to make it easy for people to legally download your content.

And here’s a tip for HM Govt, too. You’ve got more important things to worry about than this. Tape cassettes didn’t kill their industry, neither did video tapes or writeable CDs. Nor will the Internet. Their current distribution model is broken and it’s up to them to fix it, not you.

Any group capable of producing a product that generates $300 million worth of sales in it’s first week is, surely, the thing you want to hold to the most?

Perhaps that’s the problem; maybe Microsoft was holding on a little too tightly:

… Bungie is like a shark.  We have to keep moving to survive.  We have to continually test ourselves, or we might as well be dolphins.  Or manatees,” said Jason Jones, Bungie founder and partner.

It’s easy to see what’s in it for Bungie – “unleashed” from Microsoft, they will be free to develop titles for Sony and Nintendo – but it’s harder to see what Microsoft might get out of this.

The thing I don’t get is, why would Viacom bother? One of the podcasts I listen to is Adam Curry’s Daily Source Code. On each episode, he plays (at least) a couple of podsafe music tracks – independently produced music, which often puts “mainstream” artists to shame – and pretty consistently, the artists who have had their tracks played send some feedback to Adam along the lines that after being played they’ve seen an increase in sales of their music.

Robert Scoble recently reported:

To watch my videos you used to have to go to PodTech. Then in January we let go a little bit of our controlling attitude and made a player that you can embed on your own site. What happened?

Traffic tripled.

Read that last bit again – “Traffic tripled“.

A paradoxical, golfing maxim goes something like, “to gain control, you have to give up control”. Which brings me back to my opening question: why would Viacom bother suing YouTube?

If I hear a great tune on the Daily Source Code, I’m driven to go and buy it; if I hear enough good stuff from that artist, I might buy/purchase/spend my hard-earned cash on more material. If I’m browsing YouTube and see one clip that makes me laugh, I might look for another clip featuring that same comedian; and then another. If I see enough funny material from one show, guess what? I might actually tune in to the entire show on TV week after week.

YouTube gets a lot of eyeballs. Somewhere along the line, that must translate into increased viewing figures of the full-length versions of the very clips that Viacom is looking to have removed. I don’t work in the media business so this might be stupid question; increased viewing figures is a good thing, right?

So, why strangle a potential revenue stream?

[tags]Google, YouTube, Viacom, copyright, lawsuit[/tags]

My first reaction to this story was, wow!, that’s harsh, but then I read on and saw that, against company policy, the data wasn’t encrypted. And I started to wonder how I’d feel if I was the CTO, or IT Manager, or whoever is responsible for Boeing’s personal computing infrastructure. From the article:

Jim McNerney, Boeing’s chairman, president and chief executive, said the breach of company policy was so serious that some Boeing managers also will be disciplined.

I think Boeing have got it dead right; this doesn’t just stop with the person taking that laptop off-site. There must be a reason for that user not encrypting their data, and I suspect responsibility for that lies at the feet of the people running Boeing’s IT as much as it lies at the feet of the user.

Think about it – why do you not do some things? Usually because they take too long, or they’re too complicated, or both. Would you forget to set your burglar alarm? No. Would you forget to lock your front-door before leaving the house? No. The reason that you don’t is because setting the alarm and locking your door are simple, 5-second jobs.

Using IT security should be that simple, too – a 5-second job that quickly becomes second nature. If you’re responsible for IT Security in your organisation, put yourself in the shoes of your users and tell me; is your security so easy to use that your users would never take unencrypted data off-site….?

[tags]EFS, Boeing, IT Management, CTO, encryption[/tags]