Month: January 2003

Gator must be relieved, now that they no longer define the bottom of the barrel in marketing practices. Slashdot summarizes the Wired story:

“Following the same devious footsteps of the infamous Bonzi Buddy, Gator, and Comet Cursor “enhancements”, Xupiter now has their own self-installing toolbar for IE. There are many claims that if you leave your security preferences at their default level, it will install itself without your express permission. And once on your system, it’s gracious enough to reset your homepage to xupiter.com, forward all your searches to their search engine, download and automatically launch applications (like gambling applets), and blocks all attempts to set these back to normal. Removing it isn’t trivial either – it automatically checks for updates upon reboot, where it constantly changes the registry settings it uses, making the jobs of spyware removal programs like AdAware or Spybot Search & Destroy much harder. No word yet if it collects and forwards personal data.”

While marketers continue to sue Gator and its advertisers for usurping their advertising rights, no one wants to take on these companies for taking over our computers without fully disclosing what they’re doing.
Until then, Gator, Xupiter and others will be in a race to answer the question “How low can you go?”

Now that the RBOC’s have used their control of your telephone lines to eliminate nearly all their competition for the DSL market, they’re using us their control of DSL to keep competitors out of the local market. SBC, Verizon, and BellSouth customers who sign up for competitive local service are losing their DSL service.

“I would like to have the business,” but there’s no way to do it, says Zeke Robertson, senior vice president of SBC’s DSL division. “Few people understand the complexity of doing two services over a single line.”

Yeah, right. The WSJ story points out that you can still buy competitive DSL service (where it still exists) if you keep the RBOC as your local phone carrier. It probably doesn’t hurt that DSL services are sold with annual contracts, which phone service (so far) is not.
This is a business practice that only a monopoly can get away with.AT&T Broadband charges more for high-speed Internet service if you don’t buy cable TV service from them.

Spam is a tragedy of the commons, says Len Ellis of Wunderman, a direct marketing agency. I agree. After admitting that spam is wrecking direct marketing and that technical solutions are imperfect and temporary, his conclusion hints at (but fails to demand) a real solution:

While we curb despoilers and secure our own commercial freedoms, we must make it our business to exercise those freedoms to create an online commons worth protecting. We all share at least one common purpose: to secure a terrain where innovations and ambitions in information exchange between companies and consumers can be productively pursued. If we don’t properly cultivate our commons, spammers will deservedly prevail.

Huh?
Why won’t anyone in the industry admit that “free market solutions” fail unless consumers have have (a) information and (b) power. Yesterday, I proposed a partial solution. but I think the gentleman from Wunderman will hate it.

A couple of weeks ago, the recording industry (i.e. Recording Industry Association of America) agreed not to pursue a law that would require new electronics to be equipped with DRM (the “Fritz chip”) and the computer industry (“Business Software Alliance, which has Microsoft, Apple Computer and Adobe among its members”) agreed not to pursue a law that would ensure consumers’ fair use rights (such as Rick Boucher’s bill).
This was an agreement between consortia of big corporations agreeing not to use their pet congressmen against one another.
In the NY Times story, other consortia (“Computer Systems Policy Project, whose group represents Dell Computer, Intel, Hewlett-Packard and others” and the Motion Picture Association of America) are quoted in the story about what this means to their members. The Consumer Electronics Association is mentioned by inference: “Consumer electronics industry officials did not join the agreement.”
No citizens were heard from.

Microsoft is changing the name of Palladium, to the more euphonious Next-Generation Secure Computing Base (NGSCB?). Microsoft has a long tradition of giving their products dumb, ugly, dishonest, useless, generic, or simply bad names; but this takes the cake. A lot of folks have tumbled to the real goal here: if something hasn’t got a real name, it’s a lot harder to talk about it.

We’re going to pay a price for our using corporations to enforce rules that the government can’t without violating the constitution. A legal precedent has already been established for using corporations as extraconstitutional cops.
The government can’t test you randomly for drugs or search you without cause, but they’ve gotten your employer to do it for them.
The goverment can’t suppress Internet porn and gambling, but they can make your credit card company to do it for them.
Corporations are also scratching one another’s backs. That’s the thinking behind the RIAA trying to force Verizon to rat you out. Don’t think that Verizon’s lack of enthusiasm for this role has anything to do with scruples.

As much as I loathe local TV news, multi-station braodcasters replacing local newscasts with corporation-produced broadcasts is even more loathesome.
This is logical outcome of Congress’s and the FCC’s mad dash to concentration in the media business, as surely as are robot radio stations . What’s staggering is that Michael Powell could present this as anything other than bad for America. The only reasons for concentration are increasing ad rates by lowering competition and lowering costs by ceasing whatever minimal production is going on locally.
The real tragedy is that we have to fight for the protection of such unwholesome fare as the local newscast or ABC’s overrated Nightline.
[Thanks, Mediageek, for this depressing link!]