All Things Digital

Back in 2000-2001, when the Recording Industry Association of America was still trying to recover from its CD price-fixing scheme with poorly reasoned justifications for CD price inflation (”Listen, if CD prices were governed by the Consumer Price Index, you’d be paying $33.86 for them instead of $12.75!”), a little company called Napster came calling. Napster had pioneered a new Internet distribution model for digital media that was revolutionizing the music industry, and it hoped to partner with RIAA member labels to create a subscription-based service.

At the time, Napster had some 20 million users worldwide and was essentially the de-facto file-sharing standard. Had the RIAA labels agreed to the alliance, they might have turned peer-to-peer distribution into a new and powerful business model, one with low distribution and marketing costs and a fast developing user base. But they didn’t. They chose another route.

Big mistake. Along came Gnutella. And increased broadband penetration and cheaper storage. Along came Kazaa. And then came BitTorrent. And, well, look at the industry now.

Given such history, it’s difficult to look at the recording industry’s plan to have a monthly fee added to consumers’ internet-service bills and not shake your head in wonderment.

Portfolio.com reports that Edgar Bronfman Jr.’s Warner Music Group (TWX) has indeed hired veteran industry consultant Jim Griffin (no relation to Peter, right?) to quarterback a plan under which consumers pay an Internet-access surcharge of $5 a month for the collective right to freely share music. Those fees would be pooled and divvied up among artists and their labels.

“Ideally, music will feel free,” says Griffin. “Even if you pay a flat fee for it, at the moment you use it there are no financial considerations. It’s already been paid for.”

Ah- charge everyone for all music. So it is Monetization Without Representation. OK. But what gives the music industry the right to tax all broadband users because it suspects some of them might illegally share its content? And if the music industry deserves that right, then doesn’t the film industry deserve it as well? And the publishing industry? And any other industry that might benefit from such a tax?

As David Barrett, engineering manager for peer-to-peer networks at Web content-delivery giant Akamai (AKAM), notes Griffin’s plan is problematic. And desperate.

Said Barrett:, “It’s too late to charge people for what they’re already getting for free. This is just taxation of a basic, universal service that already exists, for the benefit a distant power that actively harasses the people being taxed without offering them any meaningful representation.”

Yahoo took some time off from fretting over its uncertain future today to ditch its also-ran subscription music service.

This morning the company said it’s exiting the subscription-music market and throwing its support behind Rhapsody America, a joint venture company owned by RealNetworks and Viacom. In the coming months, Yahoo Music Unlimited subscribers will be transitioned over to Rhapsody and Yahoo will begin promoting the new service on its properties.

The deal leaves us with a subscription services market of three: Rhapsody, Napster and Microsoft’s Zune Marketplace. And among those, Rhapsody–with just under 1 million subscribers–will be the leader. “This takes away a competitor, and gives Rhapsody potentially some marketing muscle,” Jupiter analyst David Card told USA Today. “This is good for Rhapsody.”

Indeed. But only if the deal lasts. And there’s good reason to believe it won’t, given Microsoft’s hostile bid for Yahoo. The software giant and Real aren’t exactly old friends.

According to last year’s safely-looking-ahead-to-the-year-to-come lists, 2007 was to be “a year of hyperdisruption for the technology industry”; it was to be “a year of significant developments” and “a year of evolution”; it was to be “a year of invention and innovation,” “a year of experimentation” and “a year of slow, but significant, change”; it was to be “a year of carnage,” but it was also to be “a year of great happiness and multiple blessings.” Above all, 2007 was to be “a busy year for technology.”

Which, as you’ll see below (and in our companion video), is pretty much how it turned out. What follows is Digital Daily’s abridged guide to the year in tech news–a fond reminiscence of what was, and our First Annual Year-End List For Year-End List Haters.

1. Yahoo Shareholders Reject Plan to Tie Executive Compensation to Company’s Crappy Performance
   Well, what do you know: Yahoo’s annual shareholder meeting didn’t conclude with CEO Terry Semel’s head piked on the exclamation point of the Yahoo sign outside company headquarters.

2. I Know It Was You, Fredo. You Broke My Heart. You Broke My Heart!
   Apparently, Fred Anderson is the “Fredo” of the Apple options backdating family.

3. We’ve Asked John Williams to Do a Special Performance of the Theme From “The Poseidon Adventure” for Our Q4 Results
   Who’s programming Microsoft’s on-hold music, Apple’s Phil Schiller? Waiting for the company’s third-quarter earnings call to begin yesterday, those listening in were treated to an instrumental piano version of Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On.” From “Titanic,” the disaster movie.

4. I’m Proud to Say Our New “Soylent Green” iPod Is Made of 100% Biodegradable Greenpeace Activists!
   If you’re going to try to smear Apple for reckless environmental practices, you best have some hard epidemiological and toxicological data on hand, because goofy Photoshop treatments of the company’s marketing materials just can’t stand up to a blow from the Apple PR machine.

5. And Online Display Impressions Soared as More Americans Checked Their AOL Accounts for Old Times’ Sake
   To hear tell from Time Warner executives, the company’s better-than-expected earnings for the first quarter owed quite a bit to gains in online-advertising market share by its AOL Internet division.

6. Web 2.0 Audience in Mirror May Be Smaller Than It Appears
   How ironic is it that Web 2.0–the “participatory Web”–has far fewer participants than its architects would have us believe?

7. And for My Next Trick, I’ll Turn Myself Into a Complete Jackass
   If you’re going to demand that YouTube remove a video to which you object under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, it’s probably wise to make sure that you actually understand the DMCA.

8. War Is Peace. Freedom Is Slavery. Ignorance Is Strength. DRM Is DCE.
   You can’t put frosting on manure, but HBO’s Chief Technology Officer Bob Zitter isn’t above trying.

9. We’re Naming It the Motorola STNKR, After Our Q1 Earnings …
   Carl Icahn was right. Motorola really is desperate for a new product. How else to explain a patent the company was awarded last month for a “communication device having a scent-release feature and method thereof.”

10. The Frienemy of My Frienemy Is My Enemiend
    If Microsoft is planning an acquisition in the online marketing and advertising space, it better act fast, because if it waits much longer there won’t be anything left to acquire.

11. How Would Monsieur Ellison Like His BEA Served? Mixed in a Bucket With Oracle’s Other Acquisitions?
    Looks like we may be in for another PeopleSoft-esque takeover drama …

12. I’m Just Biding My Time Here Until I Can Quit and Study Whale Feces Full Time
    Given the chance, how would you alter the course of your career? Well, if you worked at Microsoft’s Security Response Center, you might consider taking a job as an Olympic drug tester, a gravity research subject, or a “whale-feces researcher.”

13. Much Like Energy, BS Cannot Be Created or Destroyed, It Can Only Be Changed From One Form to Another
    If Steorn’s perpetual motion effort is anything like its e-commerce venture (and by all accounts things do seem to be going that way), the only thing in its future is insolvency.

14. From Now On, We’ll Be Known as Nlsn/NtRtings
    Looks like vowels won’t be the only accoutrements to be tossed aside in the rise of Web 2.0. The venerable page view is to be abandoned as well.

15. The Defendant Stands Accused of Copyright Infringement, Breach of Contract and Misappropriation of Dumb Luck
    According to popular legend Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg once kept two versions of his business card in his wallet–one with the title CEO, the other with “I’M CEO . . . BITCH.”

16. Well, Here Come YouTube’s Video ID Tools. Guess That Means Godot Will Be Here Any Minute Now
    Google’s apparently finished “educating users about copyright law” and has moved on to the far more important business of making sure not to run afoul of it.

17. Look at It This Way: Now That Yahoo’s an ‘Ecosystem,’ the EPA Can Finally Declare It a Superfund Site
    “Our financial performance is not what we would like to see long-term.” This, from Blake Jorgensen, Yahoo’s chief financial officer who, just six weeks into the job, is already well versed in the company’s fiscal truisms.

18. Gates to Google: My Lyrical Technique Will Leave Your Body Weak
    Much as Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates fancies himself untroubled by Google’s incursions into his software empire, they clearly do chafe him a bit.

19. Newest Yahoo Mail Feature: BCC Beijing
    Sure, Yahoo signed China’s “Public Pledge on Self-Discipline for the Chinese Internet Industry,” a voluntary agreement to monitor and restrict information deemed “harmful” by Beijing, but did it have to take it quite so seriously?

20. Apple: Wham, Bam, Thank You Fanboi
    “I feel like a $200 whore.” That was one iPhone early adopter’s crass assessment of his feelings of self-worth, after Apple unexpectedly cut the price of the device by a third–just two months after it arrived at market.

21. In the Unlikely Event of a Water Landing, Sergey’s California King May Be Used as a Flotation Device
    With its onboard hammocks, full-size sofas and California King beds, it’s a wonder Google’s “party plane” has room for scientific instrumentation befitting the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, but apparently it does.

22. Act Now and Get a Downgrade to the OS You Really Want, ABSOLUTELY FREE!
    It’s looking more and more like the pent-up demand for Windows Vista we’ve heard so much about this past year is really just pent-up demand for Windows XP.

23. Dude, I Work for Friggin Forbes Magazine. Have You Heard of It?
    The year-long guessing game is over. New York Times reporter Brad Stone has outed Daniel Lyons, a senior editor at Forbes magazine, as the author of the Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, the satirical blog lampooning Apple’s iconic CEO (See? Told you it wasn’t me).

24. If Facebook’s Worth $15 Billion, Then My Stupid Idea’s Got to Be Good for $10 Mil
    Apparently the vainglory from which Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg appears to suffer is communicable and spreading rapidly throughout the social network’s developer community.

25. A Billion Here, a Billion There, and Pretty Soon You’re Talking Real Bollocks
    MySpace is worth $65 billion in the same way that Facebook is worth $15 billion–hypothetically.

26. “Apple Has Destroyed the Music Business”–Not That We Didn’t Try Our Best
    Many, many years ago, when the digital-music business consisted of little else besides Napster and the Recording Industry Association of America’s lawsuits against it, Apple proved that there was indeed a decent business to be had in selling music online for $1 per song.

27. It’s Not an Unpaid Endorsement, It’s a “Social Ad”
    Facebook’s Social Ads aren’t endorsements, they’re a “representation” of user activity.

28. Obama Announces “No Tech Policy Left Behind” Plan
    If Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful, then Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s is to do the same to its tech-policy issues.

29. Sounds More Like the “Zune of Reading” to Me
    If Jeff Bezos truly hopes to create “the iPod of reading,” observers say he’s going to have to do a hell of a lot better than Amazon’s new Kindle e-book reader.

30. Fiascobook
    What Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg lacks in foresight, he certainly makes up for in disingenuous hair-shirt remorse.

Many, many years ago, when the digital-music business consisted of little else besides Napster and the Recording Industry Association of America’s lawsuits against it, Apple proved that there was indeed a decent business to be had in selling music online for $1 per song. With iTunes, it quickly established a market for paid downloads as the music industry wrung its hands in utter incomprehension at this new age of digital distribution that was dawning.

So it is ironic, enormously ironic, to hear NBC Universal Chief Executive Jeff Zucker accuse Apple of ruining the music business (like that second Lindsay Lohan album didn’t do any damage at all). Speaking at a breakfast organized by Syracuse University’s Newhouse School, Zucker said Apple “destroyed the music business in terms of pricing” and will invariably do the same to the online video business.

Noting that NBCU booked just $15 million in revenue during the last year of its iTunes deal, Zucker described the company’s deal with Apple’s digital media store as one that was corrosive to its media business. “We don’t want to replace the dollars we were making in the analog world with pennies on the digital side,” he said. What Zucker does want is a piece of Apple’s iPod business. “Apple sold millions of dollars worth of hardware off the back of our content and made a lot of money,” Zucker said. “They did not want to share in what they were making off the hardware or allow us to adjust pricing.”

Can’t imagine that’s going to change anytime soon, either–no matter how loudly Zucker whines. Apple CEO Steve Jobs would probably rather swallow a Zune whole than be pressured into handing over a percentage of iPod sales to record labels, as Microsoft has done with Zune.

Does AT&T know how to craft a competitive value proposition or does AT&T know how to craft a competitive value proposition?

This morning, the company said it will soon offer wireless customers the ability to download music over the air from Napster–at a 50% to 100% markup over iTunes and Amazon MP3. AT&T is charging $1.99 a track, or $7.49 for five songs from Napster’s 4 million song library–prices that, while on par with those offered by Verizon Wireless, are double the 99 cents currently charged by not only Amazon and iTunes, but also Sprint, which reduced the price of its music downloads to 99 cents from $2.49 in March to spur demand.

Rob Hyatt, AT&T’s director of premium content, acknowledged the steep price point might be off-putting to some, but insisted it wouldn’t pose a problem for the impulse-control challenged. “They’re very price insensitive,” he told Reuters.

Something like X times Y, to the power of Z–where X is the lack of a sustainable business model, Y is an aggravated response to a nonexistent threat, and Z is the inability to differentiate between customers and thieves.”

–Toronto Globe and Mail writer Mathew Ingram explains the formula used to calculate damages in Virgin Records America et al. v. Thomas.

We’re never going to hear the end of it now …

The recording industry won its first ever file-sharing suit to go to trial yesterday, when a federal jury found 30-year-old Jammie Thomas liable for copyright infringement. The jury awarded the six record labels involved in the case a total of $220,000, or $9,250 for each of the 24 songs they claimed Thomas uploaded.

Seems it was far easier for the labels to sell the jury on their investigative methods than you might think–especially after the presiding judge ruled that no proof was needed that anyone actually downloaded the songs at issue in the case–simply making them available constituted distribution.

Emboldened by the ruling, the Recording Industry Association of America took a break from sending prelitigation settlement letters to college students to issue this gloating statement: “The law here is clear, as are the consequences for breaking it. When the evidence is clear, we will continue to bring legal actions against those individuals who have broken the law. This program is important to securing a level playing field for legal online music services.”

Reading that you’d never think it’s been eight years since Napster, would you? Eight years. Anyway …

Attorney Ray Beckerman, writing in the Recording Industry Vs. the People blog, called the verdict “one of the most irrational things” he’s ever seen in law. “A verdict of $222,000, for infringement of 24 song files worth a total of $23.76?” he asked. “In a case where there was zero evidence of the defendant having transferred any of those files? It is an outrage, and I hope it is a wakeup call to the world that we all need to start supporting the defendants in these cases, and the attorneys who are sacrificing so much to represent them. And the support cannot be with words, it must be with checkbooks. And it cannot be next year, it must be now.

“All the businesspeople who make a living from the vibrancy, democracy and freedom of expression which is the Internet need to get behind the RIAA’s victims; if they do not, the world in which they hope to thrive and prosper will disappear rapidly.

“The RIAA ghouls smelled blood in Duluth, and I guess they were right.”