Month: May 2012

Samlade länkar 2012-05-11

Lättare få ut abonnemangsuppgifter – datalagringsdirektivet

Från den 1 juli räcker det med att begå brott som bara ger böter för att polisen ska få ut abonnemangsuppgifter som namn, telefonnummer och IP-adress. Det kommer att göra det lättare att jaga såväl illegala fildelare som andra som begår upphovsrättsbrott på nätet. Riksdagen fattar beslutet i dag.

Lättare få ut abonnemangsuppgifter – DN.SE

Holland först i europa med lagstadgad nätneutralitet

Netherlands – first country in Europe with net neutrality | EDRI

The Netherlands adopted crucial legislation to safeguard an open and secure internet. It is the first country in Europe to implement net neutrality into its national law. In addition, it adopted provisions protecting users against disconnection and wiretapping by providers. Digital rights movement Bits of Freedom calls on other countries to follow the Dutch example.

Nätneutralitet från wikipedia: “Nätneutralitet (engelska: net neutrality) är ett uttryck som myntades i USA i början av 2000-talet av politiska motståndare till möjligheten för telekombolag och internetleverantörer att kontrollera informationsflödet över Internet, och att viss trafik får högre prioritet.
Begreppet har en motsvarighet i 1800-talets amerikanska telegraflagar, som sade att all trafik skulle överföras opartiskt oavsett avsändare och mottagare (undantaget meddelanden från staten).”

läs mer:

Kan ett internet-meme varumärkesskyddas?

Zenimax Files For Trademark On A Skyrim Internet Meme | Techdirt

We are all aware of the aggressive nature of Bethesda parent company Zenimax when it comes to trademarks. We now learn that it is not only aggressive in defense of its trademarks but is also an aggressive filer of trademarks for things surrounding its properties. Fusible is reporting that Zenimax has recently filed 6 different trademark applications covering a variety of uses of the phrase “Fus Ro Dah”.

For those of you not in the know, “Fus Ro Dah” is a phrase spoken by characters in the Bethesda game Skyrim when casting a spell that sends a blast of energy knocking back anything in its path.

Artikeln fortsätter:

Unfortunately, this move to trademark a meme can actually result in its premature death. Memes are born in the wild and are best able to grow and spread if left to the whims and wiles of those on the internet. Memes cannot be controlled or tamed. If Zenimax’s trademark filing is approved, the moment it makes its first move toward control, such as sending a cease and desist or taking down a video, it will feel a backlash by fans of Skyrim.

Problemet är väl att man har svårt att kontrollera hur ens användare pratar om produkterna när de väl släpps ut i världen. Internet-memes är dessutom snabbrörliga mål och de föds, används och dör långt innan en juridisk process har hunnit behandla ärendet…

Ingen bryr sig om hur mycket det kostade att få fram din bok!

De bryr sig om värdet av kopian de har köpt.

En riktigt bra text om prissättning av varor:
Nobody Cares About The Fixed Costs Of Your Book, Movie, Whatever | Techdirt

The consumer doesn’t care how much it cost you to make the original.

Nor should they. They only care about the value to them of the single copy they get. And this makes sense for a variety of reasons, both economically and psychologically. This is the point that economists have been making for ages, trying to get people to understand the difference between fixed costs and marginal costs. Fixed costs don’t impact pricing. Maginal costs (the cost to produce the copy) do. That’s not to say that the fixed costs aren’t important — they are — but they don’t factor into the pricing decision, they factor into the investment decision. That is, you don’t take on a project if you don’t think you can create a business model that will give a total return on investment over the fixed and marginal costs. But the pricing on the individual item is entirely about the marginal costs. And this is actually a good thing. If you did pricing based on the average cost, including fixed costs, you actually lose the incentive to be more efficient and lower your fixed costs, since you get to just bake them into the price. But the public doesn’t care about how much you spent. As far as they’re concerned, you may have spent stupidly and inefficiently. They only care about the marginal benefit they get from the copy.

mer att läsa:

Veckans video II: TED – Rob Reid: The $8 billion iPod

Rob Reid: The $8 billion iPod

TED

En tredje industriell revolution?

Den tredje industriella revolutionen | Framtidskommissionen

Är världen på väg in i en tredje industriell revolution? Enligt ett av de senaste numren av The Economist är svaret ja. Den första industriella revolutionen inträffade under 1800-talet och innebar att hantverket som dominerande produktionsmetod ersattes av mekaniserade fabriker. Den andra industriella revolutionen inträffade under 1900-talets början och innebar övergången till massproduktion. Nu står vi i början av den tredje industriella revolutionen, där digitaliseringen av produktionen får fullt genomslag och där det blir möjligt att på kommersiell basis producera produkter individuellt anpassade till kundernas och deras behov.

Frågan är om det är relevant? Jag tror att det är viktigare att mer och mer av sammhällsekonomin flyttat över till kunskapsbaserade branscher. Man kan kan säkert hävda att vi är inne i en sjätte, sjunde eller åttånde jordbruksrevolution men det påverkar inte samhället så mycket. Produktionen av individanassade varor är snarare en produkt av övergången till informationsåldern/nätverkssamhället än ett industrisamhället utvecklar sig…

Läs mer:

Piratkopieringens kostnad?

Det är inte så lätt som vissa vill få dig att förstå:

Hulu, Pricing Strategies, and the Costs of Piracy | Cato @ Liberty

To illustrate, let’s imagine television show that initially streams online for free with advertising, garnering a million viewers per episode and earning $1 per viewer in ad revenues, for a total of $1 million. A small number who really dislike ads, or have connections too slow for streaming, let’s say 5,000, download pirate copies anyway—but the vast majority watch legally. After building an audience and generating some good word of mouth, the accountants suggest that it might be more profitable to stop the free streaming and instead sell ad-free episodes for $4, in hopes that enough dedicated fans will pony up to compensate for the predictable drop in viewership once the program is no longer free to watch. The paying audience does indeed drop to 255,000, which still leaves the company slightly better off for the switch, but 100,000 viewers decide to keep up with the show (at least initially) by downloading pirated copies. A subsequent price hike to $10, however, turns out to be a money loser. Now the show has only 80,000 paying viewers, while 150,000 are engaged in piracy.

Undoubtedly that piracy is costing the show’s producers something: If piracy were impossible, some unknown fraction of those who download illegally would be willing to pay the asking price. But just crudely using the actual market price at each stage—even if modified by some constant “displacement rate” to acknowledge that not every illicit download represents a lost sale at that price—yields some perverse results. As the pricing strategy for the show changes, the “cost” of piracy rises from $5,000 to $400,000 (even as revenue rises) to $1.5 million (while revenues drop by $20,000). Obviously, something is wrong here.

It’s no great mystery what: The problem is that the rate of piracy, the price of a digital good, and the “displacement rate” (the percentage of the pirates who’d buy at that price in a world of perfect copyright enforcement) are not independent variables. And, of course, the interdependency runs both ways: Pricing decisions are influenced by the knowledge that we don’t live in a world of perfect enforcement, and you can tell plausible stories according to which this might keep prices higher or lower than they’d be under perfect enforcement, depending on your assumptions about the conditions under which a particular audience will substitute the pirate for the legal good.

Mattias Sundin röstar nej till integritetskränkande lag

”Därför röstar jag i morgon nej till det nya lagförslaget” – DN.SE

Integritetskränkande. Från den 1 maj lagras all information om vem du har ringt, vilka du har mejlat och när du loggat in på internet. I morgon ska riksdagen fatta beslut om hur de brottsbekämpande myndigheterna ska få tillgång till denna information. Jag har så stora invändningar mot detta lagförslag att jag röstar nej, emot min egen regering. Folkpartiet borde som liberaler vara de som strävar mot och begränsar nya integritetskränkande lagar, inte de som hejar på dem allra mest, skriver Mathias Sundin.

Googles fiberplaner gör MPAA nervösa

Google har planer på att lägga ner fiber i marken till hemanvändare och det gör Hollywood nervösa.

It seems like every Hollywood statement about new technology follows the same format. “This new thing is great, but… piracy!” The problem is that they refuse to act on the first part until someone gives them a bulletproof solution to the second part—and since such a solution does not and never will exist, they ruin every attempt at a new service with ineffective restrictions and DRM schemes.

Google’s Fiber Makes MPAA Skittish. Why Does Hollywood See All Technology In Terms Of Piracy? | Techdirt

The fact that the MPAA can’t get through a single statement about something as clearly positive as faster internet without bringing up reservations about piracy doesn’t bode well for Hollywood’s future. The studios should be getting ahead of the new technology, and making sure that everyone who gets hooked up to a new fiber network is immediately greeted with a well-made, well-priced movie service that gives them a chance to test out their speedy new connection. Instead they’re probably going to watch the technology develop with caution, wait for pirates to beat them to the punch, then arrive in the market with an inferior product and complaints about how they “can’t compete”.