James Wynn

There is a sad sort of phenomenon that the world populace has been subjected to for most of this era, and it is becoming increasingly prominent and obvious. The root of this problem is businesses inability to evolve at the same pace as technology. A new product or technology arises and becomes popular and instead of embracing this new way idea to increase business the corporations’ first strategy is litigation. It is always litigation.

The record industry was terrible about this during the Napster era, and has only in the last few years started to really embrace this new technology. The movie studio’s are now attacking Google Video and YouTube. Warner aside, these people don’t see the benefit of these sites. For almost any sort of market, exposure only increases your sales. This has been proven quite adequately with mp3s, and I can’t imagine it not applying just the same with video.

Lately people have been ridiculing and litigating Google for everything they are doing, because they are making money. They are well within fair-use laws. Their news site only shows a short clip from the author’s site which the reader must go to in order to read the full article. The book search that they have created works similarly, a small excerpt is shown with a reference to the full work, this is the same rights that someone writing a paper would get, why is it not applicable to Google? Because they are displaying ads? They are not SELLING the book, nor the excerpt. Why should they have to share their ad revenue?

People complain that their copyrights to their content are being infringed, when in reality they should be thanking Google for the added exposure. They should try to harness this new exposure and maximize their profits from it. Litigating new technology only stifles innovation. Google is giving consumers exactly what they want, an easier way to find and absorb content. If the content providers/producers were making this as easy as Google is, then THEY would be making the money and even still they are only GAINING from Google’s distribution of their content because it always points back to the source.

This really comes down to people being angry about not getting money. Even if the money being made is not directly coming from their content, but only indirectly associated with it. As I understand it, Google has an opt out mechanism for excluding content from their search products. If these people don’t want their content — which is FREELY viewable — to be redistributed then they can simply exclude themselves, but that is not what they want. They WANT to be included, but the want a share of the revenue to which they have no right. Shameful, simply shameful.

After being very irritated for some time at the lack of support for videos inside wordpress, I finally stumbled upon a plugin that makes it seamless. It supports YouTube, Google Video, IFilm, .mov, .mpg, and .wmv and it integrates it all right into the graphical editor. It allows you to post a movie to wordpress with just a single click. Viper007bond is a genius. Track down Video QuickTags over at geeklimit.

Since returning from Japan I’ve had terrible jet lag; stay up till 1am only to wake at 4am followed by an energy crash at 3pm. Luckily the crash is short lived. This insomniatic state has given a chance to work on things though.

For instance, this morning I added OpenID to my blog so that people from livejournal, deadjournal, or any other OpenID enabled blog can comment more easily. This also allowed me to comment on any of those blogs without having to be added to their communities. Few things irritate me as much as having to sign up to new networks every time I want to comment on a blog. So instead of spending 5 minutes creating a new account this morning, I spent 30 minutes implementing OpenID on my server. Hooray for wasting time.

My morning have also given me a chance to get to know my new BlackBerry a bit better. Its nice being able to read the morning mail and news from bed, or anywhere else for that matter. I was totally psyched when I finally got a phone with AIM, email, and a decent keyboard, but my head exploded when I realized that I could use Gmail, Google Talk, and Google Maps on it. Handiest damned phone I’ve ever used. Now I just need to get one of those nice bluetooth earbuds so I can talk without holding it. And yes, I promise not to wear it in public, that’s just creepy looking.

Aside from the mid-afternoon energy crash, the only other downside to this new allotment of morning is having much more time to think about D.C. Just being on the same continent as Jessie makes it so unbearably tempting to jump in the car and drive to her. But I will be visiting soon enough… well not soon ENOUGH, but soon…

I need more distractions… Please people, send me your blogs so that I may be entertained by your drivel.

I hate it when you work on a post for a good hour, and then because of a fluke wordpress follows a link and destroys everything. Fuck you wordpress. Fuck you very much.