Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but the Internet keeps bringing this pair of issues to our attention, and they seem to go together more and more often.
Sinclair Broadcasting wants to use the spectrum (our spectrum) to broadcast political messages through its company-owned stations. Once again, regardless of our politics, I think we need to ask the following question:
“Whose spectrum is it?”
Computers have completely reinvented what we can do with a slice of spectrum. In the bandwidth your local CBS-affiliate uses, we could easily broadcast dozens of channels of digital information. We could create free internet access around the country. But it sits there, stuck, because the FCC licensed that spectrum years ago. Just because someone has built a business around it, should it stay that way?
What if we decided to use the spectrum in ways that benefitted everyone, not just media companies? For example, why not require that anyone broadcasting on the public airwaves devote one hour every night in prime time to public interest programming and commercials? With that much inventory, the cost of running for President could be driven close to zero (all your media buys would be free).
Which brings us around again to copyright, which always manages to get me in trouble. Whose copyright is it? What’s it for?
Why not have patents last 100 years? They don’t because we know that allowing a patent to go into the public domain makes it far easier for society to benefit… other inventions can be based on that first idea.
So why not make copyrights last for 5 years, not 100? A five year copyright would not dramatically decrease the incentive to make a movie or write a book, would it? Looking at my book sales, I can tell you that the vast majority of sales come in the first five years. Sure, JD Salinger would get hurt in the long run, but would that have kept him from writing Catcher in the Rye?
The purpose of copyright is simple: to encourage people to make stuff worth looking at and using. Not to protect the people who already wrote something. And CERTAINLY not to protect the companies that market movies or publish books.
Both cases are the same: our spectrum and our access to ideas are being held hostage by big companies who are dependent on the status quo. The ability of our culture to quickly evolve ideas and then to broadcast them to ever larger audiences is a fundamental building block of our success. Why do 98% of us sit around while big companies with no interest in us legislate against our interests?
October 12, 2004
Two quotes from page E1 of today’s New York Times:
“Sports Illustrated has designated the book “Friday Night Lights,” an account of a year the author spent in 1988 following a high school football team in Odessa, Tex., one of the top five sports titles ever, and called it the best book ever written about football–a verdict that’s hard to quarrel with unless you’re partial to Roy Blount Jr.’s “About Three Bricks Shy of a Load.”
“…the 1990 work is titled in part “Three Little Boys” in parentheses, preceded by a description of a sexual act.”
Is it just me, or is the (unedited/unprofessional) writing of blogs significantly clearer and more straightforward?
It’s a movement.
Viral & Buzz Marketing Association
Nice manifesto as well.
October 11, 2004
Many companies have decided to use the web and automated phone systems to decrease their costs. What an incredibly stupid idea.
How many clicks is it from your company’s website to your phone number? At Sprint: Welcome to the Sprint Customer Center, the phone number is four clicks down.
Then, once you call them, you have to go through dozens of hoops and presses and pound signs before you reach a human.
Isn’t having your customers and prospects talk to you a profit center, not a cost?
Isn’t the best outcome of a visit to your website a phone call?
If it’s not, how can you change things so it is?
October 7, 2004
HELLO, my name is Scott 
Scott has been wearing a nametag for almost five years. It’s fascinating to see how this simple act of engaging with the world has fundamentally changed his life.
October 5, 2004
Courtesy of my friend Elizabeth: About Foodie NYC.
One more thing that changes when you can communicate with people who want to hear from you (and when the word is easy to spread).
It’s a restaurant that’s only open 6 nights a year. Fifty people, sold out far in advance.
Bush, Kerry Underfund Online Ads · MarketingVOX
No one builds a jingle or a slogan or even a brand identity using web advertising. It’s never been done to my knowledge and it’s hard to see how it could be done.
The purpose of web advertising is to get interested people to raise their hand and give you permission to have an anticipated, personal and relevant conversation.
The web site and the blogs and the interactive email conversations and the petitions and the online buzz are where minds get made up and where ideas spread. Not in the Adwords.
Did either campaign do a good job in building an online asset of people who actually want to hear from them? Nope. Moveon did, definitely. Everyone could have done far far better, but political operatives are impatient and greedy and forget to build an asset for when it really matters.
October 4, 2004
In just about all of my writing, I assume that the stuff you’re making is world class. In a world where everything is good enough, meeting that standard isn’t enough.
But it’s worth a reminder every once in a while that getting the quality right still matters. I went to buy the much hyped (1 million bucks worth ) Gourmet Magazine cookbook: Amazon.com: Books: The Gourmet Cookbook : More than 1000 recipes, only to discover that every single reviewer hated the fact that they couldn’t read it.
How did that happen? In a conservative industry known for not screwing up the hard stuff (no typos, page numbers in order, stuff like that), how did a book this important to the bottom line end up with yellow headlines?
[added two days later: my apologies to Ruth Reichl. I just bought the book at Borders. Hey, it’s not so bad. A reasonable person might even like it. I got fooled by the Amazon reviews. I guess retail stores still have a purpose.]
I love this.
The web site (LIttleMissMatched) is totally lame, but the idea goes straight to the edge.
Mismatched socks for 11 year old girls. Hundreds of varieties. Four categories so you don’t clash. Only sold in odd lots.
Think about how easy this was to do, and how remarkable it is. Think about how many sock marketers thought of this and then got scared and didn’t. Realize how turning socks into a remarkable collectible is both obvious and satisfying and likely to succeed.
I wish they came in my size.
October 3, 2004
“What are you in for?”
“I robbed a bank. You?”
“Kidnapping. How about you, little man?”
“Well… I videotaped five minutes of Lord of the Rings.”
And they all moved away from me…
House Bill Makes Camcording Films a Felony
If I bore a cocktail party with my ability to perform, from memory, the Woody Allen moose joke (verbatim, from his live album) is that just a misdemeanor? What if I quote Arnold on my blog? Take a picture of my wife in front of a movie poster?
It’s easy to laugh at this, but it’s also insanely scary.
September 29, 2004
