raving lunacy - oxymorons for the 21st century

AOL sent an email out to the troops explaining what widgits were getting the axe.
In the middle of it was this nugget:

“We have found that building media management applications within the context of a social experience is a more rapid and effective way to grow the business.”
Kevin Conroy - VP AOL

Simply put, wrapping ads around ‘user generated content’ is the only way to make any money.

I don’t have the heart to tell them that the advertising supported display model had its noon about 6 months ago, sundown is coming sooner than they think, followed by a bitter cold winter.

The latest episode of Social Network Slavery is the Viacom Copyright Grab of Joanna Davidovich’s [1] short film she created, Copyrighted, and posted to YouTube.

Copyright and 2 bucks will get you a cheap cup of latte.
This is interesting on a number of counts.
First, the terms of discovery in the YouTube Viacom Copyright Infringement lawsuit, turned over allegedly non personal information logfiles, so Viacom could attempt to circumvent the Safe Harbor Provision of Section 512 of the DMCA, [2] and place YouTube, as the largest copy thief on the planet. So now it looks like the first thing Viacom is doing is making a land grab for everything that is not nailed down.

Second, according to Joanna, there is a distribution agreement between her and Viacom. she says,

“only entered into distribution agreements that were nonexclusive.”

I have no details on this currently, but as a guess, it probably assigns the copyrights to Viacom.

The defect in this agreement and with every other social network site, are the Terms and Conditions that these sites make you agree to, before posting anything.
Let me take a moment and explain what you are giving away to the Social Network Content Plantations.

a worldwide, fully sub-licensable, fully paid-up and royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable license to use, reproduce, modify, distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, and create derivative works

You gave it all away and for free. See if the word Chump fits

I have written on this before.

[3] Facebook - Emerald City’s Newest Sharecropper Network
[4] A Bill of Rights for Users of the Social Web - The Sharecropper’s Revolt
[5] Social Network Bill of Rights

The most pathetic part of this is you have done it to yourselves.

Third, and most important is the lack of value of Copyright and the lengths that the Entertainment and Publishing Industries have gone to turn Copyright into an Entitlement Program for themselves, while perverting the the spirit of Copyright for Creators, Musicians, Authors, Filmakers, and everyone who has a novel artistic idea.

Everyone who participates in Social Network Sharecropping sites is at best a share cropper and at worst a slave. Your participation fills their pockets, and is not going to change anytime soon. They are not chumps.
You may get a couple minutes of fame, they get to sell your ass down the river forever for free.

Sources:
[1] Viacom Fraudulently Claims Ownership Of Indie Filmmakers’ YouTube Clips
[2] Frequently Asked Questions (and Answers) about DMCA Safe Harbor Provisions
[3] Facebook - Emerald City’s Newest Sharecropper Network
[4] A Bill of Rights for Users of the Social Web - The Sharecropper’s Revolt
[5] Social Network Bill of Rights

Data Data Data….
Folks want it, folks want to hide it, Folks get shocked other folks have it.

One of the inconvenient truths about internet life is to get data from point A to point B, both of them have to be defined. Your computer needs an address to receive it, their computer needs an address to send it. How it gets from A to B is another story, involving other computers, routers, and wires. Folks count this stuff.

In the beginning these things were counted strictly to be sure that you got what you were looking for, and the computers that were pitching and catching were working. Then folks discovered that you could add things to web pages(cookies, clear gifs, webbugs) to get more data that you could sell to other folks, who are waiting with checkbooks and engorged flesh.

Data Data Data….
Some folks were not content with merely using other folks data, but began to build whole sites under various guises(friends networks, social networks, ‘blah’ spaces and ‘brrt’ books, Sharecroppers and Social Gillnetters) to deliberately mine this information, under the meme of User Generated Content, to sell things. !!Connect with your Friends while we shove ads up your nose!!

Google is the latest data baron to have the villagers with their pitchforks and torches storming the gates, screaming about their data. It is not yours, get over it. Because if you are crying about it, your vision is too blurry to do anything about it.

A large part of the perception problem is that the majority of us are self funded, by spending our own money and time to put out our thoughts, and are happy when folks stop by, whereas there are lot of sites that are built strictly with other peoples money, who understand what whoredom is about, or are refugees from ad supported media companies and have been institutionalized by it, and willingly flash their wares.

There are whole categories of sites dedicated to becoming pixel bitches, usually revolving around buying the “Secrets” guidebooks from the pimps of these sites. (note:I am a whore too, not a very good one however, the sidebars contain ads and other things, neither of them producing enough revenue to buy that gold lame’ frock that you are desperately waiting for me to model:) Plus I try not to talk about stuff I know nothing about. It irritates my 5 readers)

Data Data Data….
The past few weeks has had folks crying for data from various government organizations. Some are beating the transparency drum, some have been bleating about the legislative process needing a sunlight bath, and some just want to wallow in the underbelly of the data sewers.
As if government information is anymore reliable despite the fact we are footing the bill.

But in the interest of promoting the availability of data for all those folks, I present;
The Federal Reserve Board News Feeds Page
You can watch the US Banking System crash and burn from the convenience of your computer.
hat tip to Paul Kedrosky for finding this jewel.

Enhanced Mahalo results in Yahoo thanks to Search Monkey

WOW!! Where can I get some Search Monkey! According to the latest spams, you can never have too much enhancements. Is is nasal, oral or anal? Inquiring minds want to know!!

The Guardian has a very interesting look at the investors behind Facebook. Not the warm fuzzy folks helping you to connect, or even typical venture capitalists, but some really strange folks.

Facebook’s Beacon Advertising scheme is even more creepy than I envisioned.

Advertising By Stalking! In the new world of Social Gillnetting, you are not only exposed to a bunch of folks whose primary goal in life is to get 5000 friends faster than Scoble, but your online shopping is now a matter of public record.

Hey Look! Bill just bought a Father Sebastian 14” butt plug!!

The fact that Facebook is stalking your every move, slicing and dicing every click and letter you post, and selling you to every advertiser and marketeer with a checkbook, is your just desserts for not reading the fucking manual. The cost of participation on the web is so close to zero, that joining these sharecropper networks is a sign that you are just plain boring. Hell they give away blogs. You can be your own beacon.

Electronic Serial Rape
No does not mean No in the brave new world of electronic advertising.
You really want it, you were just fooling when you tried to say no. You were asking for it, or you wouldn’t be strutting around here. Sound familiar? Since you did it for one, you are going to do it for everybody else.

Privacy and Social Networking is an oxymoron. What part of the web being accessible to everybody with a connection did you miss?

Does your ass hurt yet? It will.

Ladies and Gentleman! Step right up and get your Social Objects!
Don’t be the last kid without one!
Just look for the target on your forehead!!
Social Objects? More bullshit from the same cheerleaders that sucked you into Web 2.0, Social Networks and Advertising Sharecropping for Fun and Profit. Tim Oreilly who gets all the credit for Web 2.0 wants to tell you why Social Objects are good for you Now with a new definition of OPEN with the Google API, you can become a marketing target on almost every bodies network.

Social Networks are really very weird constructs. The Idea is to become a member of a community with shared interests, and to become a social person. This is an old idea, dressed in drag with AJAX and widgets, for you to think that this is the next big thing. Like all internet activity, you end up using a keyboard, by yourself to create your online persona. You still have to use the keyboard, ’cause you can’t fart emoticons.

Every one of these ’social networks’ has been created to sharecrop your labor, to enrich the plantation owners, by selling your ass to any marketeer with a checkbook. I wrote more here. Read the Terms and Conditions on any of these sites. You agree to be a marketing target, you give the plantation owners Virtually Unlimited Copyrights to anything you post.
The owners of the social network plantations are telling you that advertisers are standing by to foot the bill for you to post your information, while they are selling every click and link.
The marketeers are telling you that this will help them to target you with only messages and advertisements of interest. What is really happening, is they are struggling to get their message out and keep their fucking jobs. Oh yeah, if they can save money, they can do more of it. At the end of the day you are just another one of the monkeys waiting your turn to get punched out.

Probably the most annoying thing about this is the VRM crowd is getting sucked into it.
Ladies and Gentleman! Step right up and get your Social Objects!
Don’t be the last kid without one!
Just look for the target on your forehead!!

“The key thing is that Facebook has an audience,” says Forrester analyst Charlene Li. “Wherever audiences go and people spend time, that becomes an advertising medium.”
Source: Wired Facebook Got Its $15 Billion Valuation — Now What?

And that boys and girls, is the true meaning of WEB 2.0(what’s your monetization(click-thru advertiser) strategy).

Sharecropping and Social Gillnetting.

Facebook gets BorgedLast week’s darling sharecropper social network, Facebook has taken 30 pieces of silver from none other than Microsoft. The technoweenies are all aflutter, atwitter and posting their little fingers off by using the calculator that comes with their various operating systems and figuring that MS’s 240 million ostensibly for ’staffing’, and being called a marketing coop for Ballmer the Borg, means that Facebook is worth 15 billion bucks.

Wish in one hand, shit in the other. Bring toilet paper.

The value of every one of these walled garden spots plummets in a direct proportion to the increase in membership. For those of you that have drunk the Kool Aid and want to argue, save your breath, I have been on the web longer than you have had pubic hair.

Now in the WEB(what’s your monetization(click-thru advertiser) strategy)2.0 world, Microsoft is going to be the exclusive ad server for Facebook. Good business move in the short term (help pay all those fines in the EU, and pump more marketing dollars into the Flatline OS Vista) as they really are the gang who couldn’t shoot straight on their own properties, but the darkside is that they will be tracking every move and click across their new partners network. And yes they will sell your ass down the river.

Enough about fools with no sense of history since last week.

do not screw with hippies with money
Sun Microsystems’ Jonathan Schwartz (the Big Cheese), has decided to turn loose the lawyers and bitchslap Network Appliance, who is suing them to stop them promoting Sun’s file system ”ZFS - which enables expensive, proprietary storage to be replaced with commodity disks and general purpose servers.” Dumb move on the part of Network Appliance since Sun released it as Open Source, but litigation seems to be the new business contact sport.
This is the money shot:

So later this week, we’re going to use our defensive portfolio to respond to Network Appliance, filing a comprehensive reciprocal suit. As a part of this suit, we are requesting a permanent injunction to remove all of their filer products from the marketplace, and are examining the original NFS license - on which Network Appliance was started. By opting to litigate vs. innovate, they are disrupting their customers and employees across the world.

The rest of the posting is priceless.

The Sharecroppers are Revolting!!

The ‘Social Web’ appear to be the sharecroppers who belong to Social Networks, like FaceBook.

In the latest thrilling episode of the internet’s version of We the People, comes the Bill of Rights for Users of the Social Web.

We publicly assert that all users of the social web are entitled to certain fundamental rights, specifically:

• Ownership of their own personal information, including:
  • their own profile data
  • the list of people they are connected to
  • the activity stream of content they create;
• Control of whether and how such personal information is shared with others; and
• Freedom to grant persistent access to their personal information to trusted external sites.

Sites supporting these rights shall:

• Allow their users to syndicate their own profile data, their friends list, and the data that’s shared with them via the service, using a persistent URL or API token and open data formats;
• Allow their users to syndicate their own stream of activity outside the site;
• Allow their users to link from their profile pages to external identifiers in a public way; and
• Allow their users to discover who else they know is also on their site, using the same external identifiers made available for lookup within the service.

Noble Words,

Stirring Ideals,

Doomed to Failure.

Time for a Reality Check….

“Ownership of their own personal information”

You gave up Ownership as soon as you signed up. Or did you miss this part? From the FaceBook Terms and Conditions which is Publically Accessible

Registration Data; Account Security

In consideration of your use of the Site, you agree to (a) provide accurate, current and complete information about you as may be prompted by any registration forms on the Site (”Registration Data”); (b) maintain the security of your password and identification; (c) maintain and promptly update the Registration Data, and any other information you provide to Company, to keep it accurate, current and complete; and (d) be fully responsible for all use of your account and for any actions that take place using your account.

Proprietary Rights in Site Content; Limited License

All content on the Site and available through the Service, including but not limited to designs, text, graphics, pictures, video, information, applications, software, music, sound and other files, and their selection and arrangement (the “Site Content”), are the proprietary property of the Company, its users or its licensors with all rights reserved. No Site Content may be modified, copied, distributed, framed, reproduced, republished, downloaded, displayed, posted, transmitted, or sold in any form or by any means, in whole or in part, without the Company’s prior written permission, except that the foregoing does not apply to your own User Content (as defined below) that you legally post on the Site. Provided that you are eligible for use of the Site, you are granted a limited license to access and use the Site and the Site Content and to download or print a copy of any portion of the Site Content to which you have properly gained access solely for your personal, non-commercial use, provided that you keep all copyright or other proprietary notices intact. Except for your own User Content, you may not upload or republish Site Content on any Internet, Intranet or Extranet site or incorporate the information in any other database or compilation, and any other use of the Site Content is strictly prohibited. Such license is subject to these Terms of Use and does not include use of any data mining, robots or similar data gathering or extraction methods. Any use of the Site or the Site Content other than as specifically authorized herein, without the prior written permission of Company, is strictly prohibited and will terminate the license granted herein. Such unauthorized use may also violate applicable laws including without limitation copyright and trademark laws and applicable communications regulations and statutes. Unless explicitly stated herein, nothing in these Terms of Use shall be construed as conferring any license to intellectual property rights, whether by estoppel, implication or otherwise. This license is revocable at any time without notice and with or without cause.

Social Networks are virtual rooms filled with user generated content masquerading as a peoples place. They place ads around your stuff, and deliver eyeballs to advertisers in the electronic version of valpack coupons and junk mail. When you step back you may realize that your ‘network’ consists of folks who are clones of yourself, delivered to advertisers, whose sole purpose is to sell your stuff. It is an electronic roach motel. So boys and girls, you get to work for Facebook for nothing, getting all your equipment from Facebook, doing only those things the plantation owner allows, and at the end of the day, not even sharing in the wealth.

“Control of whether and how such personal information is shared with others; and Freedom to grant persistent access to their personal information to trusted external sites.”

I’ll Bet you Missed this Part too.

When you post User Content to the Site, you authorize and direct us to make such copies thereof as we deem necessary in order to facilitate the posting and storage of the User Content on the Site. By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing. You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content.

“Freedom to grant persistent access to their personal information to trusted external sites.”

Third Party Websites and Content

The Site contains (or you may be sent through the Site or the Service) links to other web sites (”Third Party Sites”) as well as articles, photographs, text, graphics, pictures, designs, music, sound, video, information, applications, software and other content or items belonging to or originating from third parties (the “Third Party Applications, Software or Content”). Such Third Party Sites and Third Party Applications, Software or Content are not investigated, monitored or checked for accuracy, appropriateness, or completeness by us, and we are not responsible for any Third Party Sites accessed through the Site or any Third Party Applications, Software or Content posted on, available through or installed from the Site, including without limitation the content, accuracy, offensiveness, opinions, reliability, privacy practices or other policies of or contained in the Third Party Sites or the Third Party Applications, Software or Content. Inclusion of, linking to or permitting the use or installation of any Third Party Site or any Third Party Applications, Software or Content does not imply approval or endorsement thereof by us. If you decide to leave the Site and access the Third Party Sites or to use or install any Third Party Applications, Software or Content, you do so at your own risk and you should be aware that our terms and policies no longer govern. You should review the applicable terms and policies, including privacy and data gathering practices, of any site to which you navigate from the Site or relating to any applications you use or install from the site.

Seriously, you do not have a snowballs chance in hell in getting any current social network to enable any of these rights. You are certainly welcome to build your own social network from these principles, and I applaud the effort except for

‘Freedom to grant persistent access to their personal information to trusted external sites’.(because this smells like the same bullshit that the current plantation owners are using to enable them to collect money by selling the members to advertisers with checkbooks, plus there are no trusted sites, that do not daisy chain the third party get out of liability card)

You figure out some other way to pay for it, you will have a winner.

Bonus Links:

Donna Bogatin - Plaxo, Marc Canter Ignore Rights of Stubborn Social Web Silent Majority