inconsequence

From the Wall Street Journal:

Under most recording contracts, artists are entitled to 50% of revenue from licensed uses of their music. That usually means soundtracks for movies, TV shows and ads. Sales, on the other hand generate royalties for the artist at a much lower rate—generally in the low teens, and rarely more than 20%.

And also:

…the Ninth Circuit held that iTunes downloads (even the DRM-free variety) are encumbered by enough restrictions that they can’t be considered sales at all.

Fair enough. Now may I observe that since a “license” doesn’t physically exist, and in particular need not travel from the vendor to where-ever I happen to be that my purchases shouldn’t be subject to sales tax.

Also, if my computer explodes my licenses remain in effect and I should be able to obtain new copies of the actual tracks for free or at most a nominal price.

When will the law catch up to, say, 1975?

Interesting post by the reddit people on the apparent miscounting of traffic by third-party traffic counting sites.

The basic issue is the enormous discrepancy between the traffic estimates produced by outfits like Alexa and “more reliable” numbers from Google Analytics. Here’s the thing, each works the problem from the opposite end. Alexa follows the TV ratings model (find volunteers, watch what they do, extrapolate to the population) while Google takes the publisher model (count how many copies you sell and where they go). Both are trying to estimate your market reach, generally expressed in terms of uniques and pageviews.

Each approach is bound to make certain kinds of mistakes. When you only sample a population, you’re prone to sampling errors. Alexa, and sites like it, are have a huge sample bias in favor of … let’s call them idiots, because only “idiots” allow the necessary spyware on their computer (e.g. if you visit one of their websites with IE running on XP SP1 you’ll probably end up with their crap on your computer without even agreeing to it; try the same thing with Chrome or Safari and … nothing).

The original TV ratings system, pioneered by Neilsen, used volunteers and logbooks (my wife and I actually filled in logs for radio listening about six years back, so this method is still in use). It has all kinds of obvious flaws, not least of which is that you’re not going to measure the viewing habits of people who suck at keeping log books up-to-date (even if they volunteer to fill them in). Even more modern automated systems have major sample bias issues. Alexa (et al) piggyback their spyware on apparently useful add-ons, but let’s just say that the typical reddit user is not the kind of person who is going to be well-represented in their statistics.

Google Analytics, on the other hand, is going to overcount a lot of things, especially uniques (e.g. if I have cookies fully or partially disabled and my IP address changes) and pageviews (when is a refresh a new page view?). Readership doesn’t equal the number of copies printed.

Anyway, I think I have a simple answer for the reddit post. The kinds of people who show up in spyware-based ratings systems are exactly the kinds of people who don’t visit reddit.

I’ve just set up an account with Google checkout and also with Square. For years, I’ve been using Kagi to handle orders for various software products I’ve developed, notably QuickMP3 and RiddleMeThis. I also give away a bunch of stuff on my website, including tools that people are using for commercial projects, such as Particle Accelerator and Alphaville — which I give away because the hassle of setting up registration systems and the like outweighs any revenue I’d get from them, and — if I’m not going to make any money anyway — I’d rather people use stuff I’ve written than not.

My experiences with Kagi have generally been good. Great even. But their prices seem to keep going up while alternatives (such as Paypal) are cheaper, and also more convenient. RiddleMeThis tends to sell in fits and gasps; it’s pretty irksome to be charged money by Kagi even when I’m not selling anything (but the alternative is to give Kagi an even bigger slice of each sale).

Bottom line: Kagi’s rock bottom cost is 5% (there’s also a minimum charge, but it’s hard to find on their website right now), Google’s price is 1.9% + $0.30. Square and Paypal are a little more expensive. Back when I was selling a $5 product (QuickMP3) Kagi was charging me over $1 per sale.

The really interesting thing about both Google, Square, and (of course) Paypal is that they all operate both ways. Each account lets you buy and sell goods, or simply move money around. Take a common situation we’re all familiar with — splitting a check at a restaurant. The old model: restaurant won’t split your check and not everyone has cash, so someone pays with plastic and everyone gives that person cash or “will pay them back”. The new model: anyone can split the check by accepting credit card payments from the other people at the table. (It may not be socially acceptable to suggest this right now, but it’s perfectly feasible technically.) Square even provides you with a (free) widget for swiping other people’s credit cards.

Interesting times.

Apple is playing right out of Microsoft’s playbook—and it’s one they complained about a lot

Someone named David Balto, quoted in the Wall Street Journal.

Microsoft feared all of these technologies because they facilitated the development of user-oriented software that would be indifferent to the identity of the underlying operating system.

This is quoted from the findings of fact in the Microsoft anti-trust lawsuit.

Here’s a brief rundown of the Microsoft playbook:

License DOS from a small company (because you have no in-house capability to do something similar yourself) and then license that code to IBM. When the resulting property becomes incredibly valuable, screw over the original developer.

It’s widely rumored that Microsoft deliberately broke Lotus 1-2-3 with upgrades to DOS on two occasions (DOS 2 and DOS 3.31), but it looks like someone did some detective work to show this is probably not the case. (DOS 2 did break Lotus 1-2-3′s floppy-based copy protection, but this may have been inadvertent; DOS3.31 broke both Excel and Lotus, but that seems to just be incompetence.)

When Microsoft was publicly beta-testing Windows 95 it inserted code in the loader to detect programs compiled with Borland compilers and insert an error message, making it look as though any program produced using Borland products was not to be trusted. Microsoft initially denied this was deliberate, then claimed it had a legitimate reason for doing so (but couldn’t supply one).

Microsoft did its very best to undermine all efforts at making file formats open and interchangeable in an effort to protect its monopoly on desktop office software.

It’s probably instructive to look at the findings of fact from the Microsoft anti-trust lawsuit as well. If I may summarize:

• Microsoft created its own, incompatible implementation of Java in an effort to undermine it, and then induced third parties to use it over Sun;’s version
• Microsoft gave away a free alternative to NetScape, “rewarded” third parties to target or distribute it over NetScape, and did its best to undermine NetScape in other ways.
• Microsoft did its best to damage rival multimedia platforms (QuickTime and RealNetworks).

It’s not like these are isolated incidents in an otherwise unblemished record. Microsoft has consistently acted in a predatory and underhanded manner — e.g. it’s hard to think of a major release of Windows that didn’t put several third party developers out of business with clones of their products given away. Remember Stac? Lots of pundits conveniently forget that Microsoft’s $150M cash injection into Apple in 1997 in part settled a very embarrassing lawsuit (which involved, among other things, Microsoft stealing source code from Apple and then threatening to pull Office for the Mac when Apple called them on it).

Based on the above, I’d have to say that Apple’s moves resemble Microsoft’s in one important way (it doesn’t want cross-platform middleware to make its platform irrelevant) but that’s about it. The differences between the two are much greater than the similarities.

First of all, Microsoft’s platform lock-in was based on the difficulty of porting software from a technical standpoint. There was pretty much no end-user benefit involved, since Microsoft didn’t tend to differentiate its platforms with any real innovations (more like, hey our new OS copies some more stuff from our rivals and fixes these glaring deficiencies). Microsoft wasn’t afraid its superior user experience would be marred by a generic, ugly, non-standard UI running on a cross-platform runtime (although in the case of Java this would have been a legitimate fear). On the contrary, it was simply afraid that people would be able to develop equally good, or even better software that ran on anything.

The one case where Microsoft really tried to innovate its way to success was probably Internet Explorer. The main way to entice websites to support IE over NetScape was to provide superior development platforms and APIs. Most notably, Microsoft added AJAX and .NET. But even with IE, Microsoft couldn’t resist doing Evil stuff on the way, such as trying to “embrace and extend” both Java and JavaScript to death, and halting the progress of web standards once IE became dominant (IE6-8). Only now, as IE’s position is threatened on the mobile web, is Microsoft once again trying to produce a good browser, rather than a container for its proprietary technologies.

Does Safari represent part of Apple’s platform lock-in? Does it support proprietary web extensions (such as .NET or ActiveX) that would result in websites that only work properly in Safari running on a Mac? On the contrary, Safari is open source and standards-based. Anything written to run well on Safari will run well pretty much anywhere, including on IE9. And, in any event, webkit has been adopted by both Google and Adobe, so it’s hardly affording Apple much of a platform-specific advantage.

Microsoft didn’t ban third-party development tools, instead it tried to undermine them and sabotage them based on strategic business imperatives. Apple, instead, has stated that it wants to offer users a first-rate native experience and has explicitly barred all tools which (in its opinion) violate this. It’s not like Apple has tricked developers into building tools for the iPhone and then pulled the rug out from under them; instead it has made it very clear it doesn’t want third-party platforms running on the iPhone and makes its wording more explicit every time someone finds a loophole.

And, finally, Apple isn’t in a monopoly position (except maybe in the music player market, which isn’t the question at hand). When Microsoft did all this it had over 90% of the desktop computer market (and it still does). Right now, Apple isn’t even dominant in the “smart phone” market (except, perhaps, in Japan). In the cell phone Apple has large rivals with significant market share who are free to compete with Apple either by eschewing its tactics or embracing them.

It seems to me that if we want to complain about the cell phone market, we really ought to be complaining about Android. After all, why can’t we buy Android handsets that automatically keep up-to-date (or, at least, allow us to keep up-to-date) with the latest OS? In Google’s lust for market share, it has allowed handset makers and carriers to do anything they like with Android, and what they like is locked in customers with crippled phones. In a choice between crippleware and a walled garden, users are opting for the walled garden — wouldn’t it be nice if we actually had a choice between a real open platform and the iPhone?

So for some reason John Gruber has been spending a lot of time thinking about the whole Gizmodo-buying-a-probably-stolen-prototype-iPhone thing. While I agree with pretty much everything he’s said (or think I do, given I haven’t been interested enough to read any of his longer posts or numerous linked articles), the basic question remains: who the frack cares?

First of all, Gizmodo’s cell phone was remote bricked — so they can’t tell us anything about its most interesting features beyond stuff Gruber had already leaked: it has a ridiculously sharp screen. Thanks.

Second, Gizmodo is kind of a dumb website. I cite as evidence the amount of excitement over Windows Phone 7 Series. The first words in this “article” are:

I’m sorry, Cupertino, but Microsoft has nailed it. Windows Phone 7 feels like an iPhone from the future. The UI has the simplicity and elegance of Apple’s industrial design, while the iPhone’s UI still feels like a colorized Palm Pilot.

Gizmodo is worse than a fanboy site, it’s a site run by people who aspire to be fanboys. To the extent that I am an Apple “fanboy” I both cringe at the label and try to second-guess myself. Gizmodo is a website for people with no life, no sense of priorities, and no ability to think beyond, “ooooh, shiny”. The thinking person’s ten second reaction to Windows Phone 7 is “wow, cool”. But after thirty seconds it becomes “how the frack is it supposed to work?” As Edward Tufte puts it:

The WP7S screens look as if they were designed for a slide presentation or for a video demo (to be read from a distance) and not for a handheld interface (read from 20 inches). …

… The titling typography does not serve user needs or activities. Instead it is about its designer self, and looks like signage on the walls of a fashionable building. Good screen design for information/communication devices is all about the user and should be endlessly self-effacing.

Indeed, he speculates that the design was optimized to look good in internal PowerPoint presentations rather than based on actual use of a life-sized device. Ouch.

I won’t dwell on this, the Gizmodo article is almost pathetically adoring of the Windows Phone 7 interface. My favorite bit is how rather than merely being user-centric, the interface is data-centric. As if this is a Good Thing. The Thing beyond user-centric, I guess. But how can it be? If the user needs data-centredness, then being data-centric is being user-centric. If not, not.

Argh, the whole damn website is so stupid it’s not worth criticizing. And that’s my point. But hey, they may be idiots, but at least they have some ethics… Oh, wait.