Texas based Music Business Attorney, Chris Castle is busy again misrepresenting the communications revolution. I post another retort to his seemingly uninformed anti Open Source rantings...
..And now this week's exceptionally annoying snippet from Castle's "MUSIC • TECHNOLOGY • POLICY" blog:
MUSIC • TECHNOLOGY • POLICY
Light the Cat Signal: Did Google Ask the Feds to Arrest Android Hackers?
April 2, 2014 - by Chris Castle
Are These More Alike Than Not?
According to the Department of Justice, the operators of the Android version of Megavideo have–with one exception–pleaded guilty. Recall that the DOJ seized two domain names earlier this year under its pre-trial seizure process (kind of like they did with Rojadirecta, the tiny Spanish single member LLC pirate site–more about them later–during the SOPA days).
Remember this is not just any pirate app site–this is an Android pirate site. And this exists because Google and Google alone allows unknown third parties to maintain storefronts for Android apps. Unlike Apple that actually thinks its more important to maintain brand integrity than to allow their footprint to be used for illegal activity. You can get iOS apps from one place only–the App Store. Windows Phone Apps from the Windows Phone Store. If Google had the same values as Apple or Microsoft, this problem would not exist, and app developers would face much lower risk of being pirated. All the more reason not to develop apps for Android.
...
To which I respond:
Chris Castle, your unenlightened knee jerks against Google's business model are extraordinarily annoying. But because you represent popular reaction when complex reasoning is required instead ... I must respond.
First off - 'Did Google Ask the Feds to Arrest Android Hackers?'
No.
Google allows crowd sourced development because developers in offices at Apple and Microsoft (especially MS) don't know what the world needs apps for. Free enterprise in software development speeds the adoption of new innovation - enables innovation that would not have occurred otherwise.
Also there are only two major web phones Apple and Google - one uses the propitiatory model, and the other doesn't - not as you say, 'Google is the only one that allows independent development'. As well, because Google does allows independent development based on their open source software architecture (as does Firefox), there are lots of Android style brands out there - and they're all hackable too. So to put it correctly - there are thousands of web phone brands - only one (major one) uses the propitiatory model.
A mobile browser is a very simple thing - it's like a radio - anyone can build a radio from parts found at an electronics store. Fooling the consumer public with branding and a beautiful containers is a symptom of the early years of this particular communications revolution. You don't need an App to access the weather for example - what you need is a way to manage links on a mobile browser - like bookmarks.
As a natural function of development problems with software will be found and exploited; and developers will create fixes; criminals will innovate new exploits; the web development community will plug the holes --- and so on.
This is a revolution, and it's not going to end any time soon. Get used to it - learn how to secure your web platform - just like you secure your wallet.
CBC.ca/Radio is becoming a shopping mall, an itunes portal - a static encyclopedia of brand name URL place-holders. The path ensconced: Privatization, Digital Locks, and prison terms for 'Illegal Listening'
Of coarse we all know the conservatives have finally found some people at the top of the CBC that they can work with towards their dream of privatizing the CBC.
But to sell CBC it has to turn a profit, or at least break even. To push the institution towards this end, the majority Harper government (and before that, the Mulroney government) has been cutting CBC funding in every budget that they could. This directed an impetus by management to find other sources of revenue.
Now the push to monetize CBC.ca is in full swing.
Last year the CBC show "Wiretap" went from posting all their content online, to now, a brief window. Recent shows are up for 3 weeks - after which they disappear behind an itunes paywall.
I haven't been following the internet exsistance of "The Debaters" (another of my favourite shows) - so I don't know the history of their progress behind the paywall. All I can tell you is, as of now they offer 1 minute long snippets from each show. All content at "www.cbc.ca/thedebaters" is behind an itunes paywall. This is another way to copyright one's content on the web - these are audio URL place holders.
www.cbc.ca/thedebaters - "Menopause & Home Ownership"
Why does this suck?
Today's installment of The Debaters had a segment on Home Ownership, "Is it better to rent or to own?" (each show has 2 topics up for debate, each runs about 15 minutes).
I thought that posting this show online at "Occupy Toronto Market Exchange" would be a good fit. But with out a link to content I'm whistling in the wind.
Instead of aggregating interested people to CBC radio content, the note in facebook becomes a plaintiff to get rid of the paywall. A negative experience tallied for CBC; and a negative experience for viewers of my stream, and my brand: 'the tech guy who LINKS EVERYTHING' - takes a hit. CBC, my reputation, and my listeners, lose.
So we go from what the internet is all about - links - to what broadcast was/is all about, sequestering content and doling it out at a specific time and date. The broadcast model doesn't work on the intent - the real internet isn't just another place to put a television screen - it's a way for producers and consumers to exist in the same place - out of which may come brand new content we cannot imagine.
The broadcast model is nothing like what the new model promises - cooperation, communication, creativity - while broadcast offers deception, hidden content and a frustration of creative urges caused by this black boxing or "black magic" approach.
Why even have a website for "The Debaters"? (I know, so someone else doesn't steal the the brand, a place holder in the web.)
As is, the website is 'Web point Zero'. It's not as good as it's Wikipedia entry (which someone else at the collaborative has written). The Wikipedia article is a much better way to get info on the show than the show's own CBC/Radio page: it has no synopsis; it's a list of itune shopping opportunities; and an annoying audio player that brands Steve Patterson's voice in 59 second audio teases. Bounce!
But what I want from www.CBC.ca/radio is not a Wikipedia entry, I am expecting an interactive user Experience! For the most part, that means spreading the "magic" to my friends effectively, through the social tools - the social networking devices (FB, Google+, Twitter, Blogging.). From my experience that means a taste --- an entire episode embedded on my social network of choice best represents 'a taste' of a production --- and a link back to more of the same. (Then perhaps, a yearly archive that is behind an itunes paywall.)
The future of the internet is still unfolding - what it is going to be is still unclear - but we do know what it isn't. From recent experience we know the future of the web is NOT what CBC radio's entire web presence is now --- a static encyclopedia of brand name URL place-holders.
"The future of radio in part, is the experience of listening via a Multimedia Player that has on screen, pop up links that a mp3 producer adds to the stream - like a lower bit rate Youtube."
I like radio as a medium a lot.
In the breaking new world of New Media I have always thought that Radio is full of potential. It offers a flexibility that allows it to mesh it with other media - and as the world wide web is all about connecting things - it's only a matter of imagining the right combination until we realize a magical new mix of media that will mesmerize like movies, radio and television have done in the past.
This vision of the potential of radio is always in the back of my mind.
The history of radio has been not only the content coming out of it, but also Where we listened to it.
The vacuum-tube radio for the Home
Console vacuum-tube radio - 1930
Stromberg-Carlson 561 (1947, Toronto)
Then we tried to put radios Everywhere:
Huffy Bicycle radio - 1955
Nash-Healey Roadster with dashboard radio - 1952
Then came the pocket sized portable radio
Battery powered transistor radio
Now radios looks like this:
GOM Media Player
Apple iPod nano
Android Phone
Apple iPod Touch
Windows Media Player on a 'left-handed' desktop computer
I grew up with radio because my parents made the great sacrifice of permanently un-plugging our family television set after it became apparent I was hopelessly addicted to it. I would sit and stare - oblivious to all else. If someone spoke to me while I was watching I actually couldn't hear them - only shouting and jumping up and down could break the spell I was under. I spent every waking hour paying homage to that amazing piece of furniture.
One day, home from school sick, I found that I could connect with my cathode-ray god with-out the constant interruption of people. That was pretty well my last day of school for that school year - I quickly became an expert at faking cold symptoms and my parents, both of whom worked, didn't have the time to do battle with me each morning. They would almost always relent and let me stay home. After a week of this I don't believe they thought I was sick, but they knew I certainly didn't want to go to school. They took the long-view; they determined to address the problem 'going forward'. (It turned out my attachment to the 'boobtube' as my dad called it, was as much an inability to find an identity as I struggled to fit in to this, my third school, and third different community in my first ten years - and this new place, a rural farming community was extremely xenophobic compared to big city cultures like Vancouver's and Edmonton's. This change was a tough cultural acclimation for me.)
I failed grade four and but saw every episode of "Truth or Consequences", "The Saint" and "Gilligan's Island" - whatever was on during school hours, I watched it. I became an expert at positioning the TV-top antenna to pick up broadcasts from as far away as Erie Pennsylvania, Cleveland Ohio, and even Buffalo New York!
Après TV I became a big fan of radio. I turned my 'ability to focus' to multitasking (which the experts say doesn't exist). I've heard many people say the same thing, that they can do other things while listening to the radio - listening to radio leaves part of the mind free to do other things. For some reason radio allows this 'duel-tasking' - while TV engages every neuron of my brain - and if I don't manage my viewing turns me into a drooling moron.
On radio I no longer presented the symptoms of someone with the asocial personality disorder - instead I listened and wrote or drew - I was normal - and I attended school. (Also, I had discovered that playing sports during school lunch-hour helped me form an identity, make some friends and fit in a little.)
The role that lunch-hour pick-up soccer played in my life is, now in these next generations, filled in a huge way I think by mobile technology. Young people it occurs to me, must be marked by what technology they're using; what cell phone they have, what mp3 player they use - even to the extent that what is playing on the devices doesn't matter. Now the fact that you have those white ear pieces from Apple plugged into your ears is much more important than what you listen to with them. In my youth the 'what', the Dead Kennedys, Fleetwood Mac verses Donna Summer or Village People defined one much more than the brand of cassette player you used - in fact the device was completely irrelevant. I listened on a big bulky, book-sized cassette play/recorder with headphones.
But 'Where' was important. 'Where' one listens was as important then as it is now. It affects the 'experience' of the media you've chosen to play. A particular song can have a completely different meaning played on the beach for example, as opposed to hearing it on a home stereo in the basement rec-room.
Right now for example sitting at my desk writing this, I'm experiencing a weekly radio show called "Counter Spin" which is playing on my desktop GOM media player via an mp3 download. I've embedded an audio player below as another example of how "Where" shapes content.
I think is interesting that the flexibility of 'New Radio', allows someone to experience this writing in a simular audio-scape to that which I was immersed in when I wrote it.
Counter Spin Radio show for, Friday, March 25, 2011
(in a "The Podcast Place" mp3 player)
Where you are - whether your reading on your phone while walking down the street or sitting at your desktop at home - is another element in a "cluster" of experiences that combine to create a unique time and place relevant experience. This all speaks to the Tim O'Reilly idea of the Internet Operating System - the idea that all the communications tools we use, where we use them, and how we are connecting them - are in the process of producing a global Internet Operating System - a globe-wide soft-wired consciousness, or usual way of doing if you will.
"Where" is not a new idea; it has been much talked about around the explosion of the smart phone usage in the last few years. Tim O'Reilly has a conference for that. The seventh "Where 2.0" Conference is titled, "The Business of Location" - and is happening Tuesdasy April 19th to Thursday April 21st 2011 in Santa Clara California. This year's major theme is marketing in the "Geospatial Web" - exploring the emerging characteristics and opportunities offered by a bazillion gigabytes per nano-second of new data.
But where doesn't just mean the physical position on the globe, what latitude and longitude. It can also mean, with-in what context. Like, listening while your riding the subway to a work; while bicycling on a nature trail or while writing an essay at your desk. Radio is a very common thread in the tapestry of our "Where" experience which is a cumulative mix of experiences that very often includes audio or the cultural audio construct, 'radio' which is extraordinarily flexible compared to any other media form.
Much of the Where Web data is created by technology people use, that they carry around with them. The Where 2.0 Conference meme is now more than ever, a focus on how to read this complex real-time data that is an extrodinarily intimate view of the daily routines, choices and connections of individuals. This data that can create telemetry of our behaviors in so many different ways. As such, an understanding of this data is thought to be the much sought-after 'Holy Grail' of Advertisers.
But not all Where Web ideas focus on the server side (the vendor) perspective and O'Reilly Media has not alays focus thusly on the marketing side of this. O'Reilly Media's recent preoccupation with monetization of all things web, I think, is a reflection of the amount of hurt caused by the on-going Great Recession and the fact that the technology has reached a point where it is maturing into marketable products that are in demand.
But the client side experience (the end user, the shopper, the sucker as W C Fields would say) is a much more interesting place I find; it's the current anthropology of technological progress.
Today I realized that a new experience of radio is not only about where one listens to it, but what the state of technological progress offers in the "shape" of the "box" that the person is able to experience, where.
Mapping is an important part of the 'Where' explosion of understanding; it places the 'clients' (shoppers) on a map, and helps 'servers' (retailers) target customers based on their location. It changes everything when viewed from the server side of the client/server relationship. But Where also includes a view from the 'client' side of the experience the envisioning of the shape of the future web Operating System we are building with Web 2.0 tools.
The experience of listening to the radio anywhere is not new, the transistor created that experience in the 1954 - but now the web is creating a new kind of Where radio experience. Now, out of what construct one listens to radio is important. The idea that a radio can throw up a visual link window is an example of a brand new radio experience.
It is this new way to listen to radio that is at the heart of this article - while listing to the content plush radio program I found that I wanted to link to a news piece that was referenced by a host. It made me think of Youtube's on screen link capability. A Youtube user can add a link to a video that they post there, the link pops up on screen at a moment chosen by the user, in an on screen box that the user can define by size, position, shape and colour.
The future of radio, in one part, is the experience of listening in a Player on one's desktop. A Multimedia Player, like the GOM Player I use, should be enabled to allow on screen pop up links - like those in Youtube - that the mp3 producer can add to a stream.
References:
Counter Spin RSS feed (with mp3 addresses for past episodes):
http://www.deadprogrammer.com/category/technology/vacuum-tube
http://www.audiodramatalk.com/showthread.php?t=301
http://www.etsy.com/listing/38649934/vintage-ge-transistor-radio
http://opusurbanista.blogspot.com/2009_08_01_archive.html
http://www.pushclicktouch.com/blog/?p=124
http://www.art.com/products/p13834686-sa-i2759556/1952-nash-healey-roadster.htm?sorig=cat&sorigid=20908&dimvals=20908&ui=1eab85842c6c49b7a51f81e7b20393f5http://www.cnet.com.au/apple-ipod-nano-4th-generation_images-339291900.htm
http://www.letsgomobile.org/en/review/0040/apple-ipod-touch/
(edited by author)
http://www.mobiletor.com/2009/05/25/driver-generated-live-map-platform-launched-by-waze/
(edited by author)
http://roguediamond.com/?p=34 | http://gom-player.en.softonic.com/
(edited together by author)
http://www.interweb.in/pc-news/6546-intex-desktop-pc.html | http://rocketdock.com/addon/icons/15110
(edited together by author)
