Someone who prefers to remain anonymous writes in to let us know that: "An Israeli court has ordered Google to reveal the identity of a blogger that uses Google's own blogging platform, Blogger. The blogger accused a Shaarei Tikva comity member of illegal acts all through his blog posts. Google objected to the request claiming freedom of speech, however the court sided with the plaintiff and said that since the plaintiff is a public figure running for reelection, he is allowed to confront his accuser and clear his name." Google did, apparently, try to reach the blogger in question who did not respond, and the company only needs to hand over an IP address -- which isn't necessarily the blogger's "identity," though it could lead to it. There's nothing wrong with a court requiring a service provider to cough up identifying information on someone who has broken the law -- but it gets into very tricky territory when it comes to things like libel. We recently covered a number of similar cases in the UK where the results were the same -- but a case in the US had the judge determine that the anonymous speech was protected and the person shouldn't be revealed. It seems likely that we're only going to see more of these cases over time -- and questions about jurisdiction are only going to make them more confusing. What if the blogger in this case actually resides in the US, for example?

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Of all the major record labels out there, it's been Universal Music, the largest record label out there, that has been the most vocal about its contempt for changes in the market place. In the past, we've mentioned that Universal Music CEO Doug Morris appears to be focused on squeezing every immediate dime out of anyone he can, even if it means destroying the company's long-term prospects. From an outsider's perspective, it really appeared as though he believed that giving up a dollar today was bad business, even if it meant the ability to get $100 in the future. However, it turns out that's not just the outsider's perspective. That's Doug Morris' own perspective as well.

In a stunning interview that should have any stockholders of Universal Music demanding a CEO change, Doug Morris happily reveals his ignorance of all things having to do with business, business models, strategy, economics and technology. It's hard to know where to start. When asked about giving up money now to be able to make more later, Morris tells the interviewer that if you do that, then "someone, somewhere, is taking advantage of you." This is the guy in charge of charting Universal Music's future? To further underscore his inability to think long term, Morris gets angry when discussing the fact that his job isn't easy any more, discussing how great it was when he could just sit back, not do anything strategic and just let he money pour in from high-margin CDs. Sure, that must have been nice, but your job as a CEO is to be able to see those changes ahead of time and set a course for the company to navigate them.

Not so, according to Morris. When asked why the recording industry was unable to see the change, Morris says that there was nothing he or anyone could have done (!!!):

"There's no one in the record company that's a technologist," Morris explains. "That's a misconception writers make all the time, that the record industry missed this. They didn't. They just didn't know what to do. It's like if you were suddenly asked to operate on your dog to remove his kidney. What would you do?"

Personally, I would hire a vet. But to Morris, even that wasn't an option. "We didn't know who to hire," he says, becoming more agitated. "I wouldn't be able to recognize a good technology person -- anyone with a good bullshit story would have gotten past me." Morris' almost willful cluelessness is telling. "He wasn't prepared for a business that was going to be so totally disrupted by technology," says a longtime industry insider who has worked with Morris. "He just doesn't have that kind of mind."

So why is it that Universal's shareholders would allow a CEO who gleefully admits he doesn't like to think strategically about the long-term, doesn't understand the forces that are changing the fundamental business he's in and doesn't even know enough to hire people who can help tell him what's going on?

To make matters even worse, Morris is so clueless that he chooses the worst possible analogy to explain his position. Lots of entertainment industry execs have thrown up their hands and ignorantly stated that "you can't make money from free." That's wrong, of course, but Morris takes it one step further up the ridiculous scale, with the following example: "If you had Coca-Cola coming through the faucet in your kitchen, how much would you be willing to pay for Coca-Cola? There you go. That's what happened to the record business." Hmm... and what is coming out of your faucet in your kitchen? That's right... water. And how much are people willing to pay for water? That's right, billions. In fact, it's a larger market than (oops) recorded music. Can someone please explain how Morris keeps his job?

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We've heard time and time again that schools refuse to allow Wikipedia citations in papers. That's somewhat understandable. However, what's ridiculous is to go beyond that to the point that some teachers and even entire schools are now blocking Wikipedia entirely from school computers. It's hard to see how this furthers the cause of education. If anything, it does the exact opposite. If the concern is that Wikipedia may not be trustworthy, why not teach students how Wikipedia works, how to improve it and how to think critically before believing any particular source? What's amazing is that people complain about inaccurate info in Wikipedia as a reason it shouldn't be trusted -- but those same people don't seem to try to ban the use of the Encyclopedia Britannica when significant errors are found in it. And, when errors are found in Britannica (which some studies have shown occur just as frequently as in Wikipedia), they remain there. When errors are found in Wikipedia, they quickly get corrected. Again, though, it comes down to learning not to trust any single source as being authoritative -- and teaching kids to be skeptical of any source. Completely banning a source does students a complete disservice. Once they leave the school and encounter Wikipedia on their own, wouldn't it be better if they'd spent some time with a teacher assisting them to understand the pros and cons of Wikipedia so they know how to use it properly on their own?

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The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) has been pulling out all the stops in fighting the proposed merger between XM and Sirius. What's most amusing is that the NAB's active involvement in the campaign against the merger weakens its own argument. After all, if XM and Sirius really would represent a monopoly, then doesn't that mean that the terrestrial broadcasters the NAB represents don't compete with XM and Sirius and therefore shouldn't care about the merger? Yet, the NAB keeps on fighting despite this rather obvious problem with its position. It seems as though the NAB can't resist pulling out just about every dirty trick in the playbook. It set up astroturf groups to create a pretend grassroots campaign against the merger. It also paid for a "independent" report from a research firm who had previously claimed that terrestrial radio and satellite radio competed -- but quickly changed its tune when the NAB was funding a study.

The latest is that, in the tradition of many other astroturfing campaigns, it bombarded the FCC with letters from "real people" against the merger. There's just one big problem. It would appear that many of those people have no idea they wrote the FCC, and some even claim they're in favor of the merger. That's what a Washington Post investigation found when it tried to track down the people who supposedly used the NAB's spam-o-matic website to protest the merger. Most of the people couldn't even be reached at all, suggesting that they might not even exist. Of those who were actually reached, nine out of ten claimed they had nothing to do with contacting the FCC and the 10th says she remembered reading something about the merger but doesn't remember protesting it to the FCC.

The NAB insists that its program is perfectly legitimate, and that the emailers all meant to protest the merger. An NAB spokesperson claimed: "It was a fairly rigorous process." How rigorous? Take a look at some of the quotes from folks who the NAB claims are absolutely against the merger and then let us know just how "rigorous" the process was:

• "How did they get my name? I don't want someone using my name for something I don't even know about."
• "No sir, I never sent any notes to Washington. This call is the first time I've heard of this."
• "I never sent an e-mail. I don't even know about the issue."
• "I don't know what the merger is about and I don't care. I have no idea what you're talking about."
• "Where did they get my name? If anything, I'd be for [the merger]."

Quite rigorous over there at the NAB, huh?

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When the One Laptop Per Child project announced its "Give One Get One" program in September, I praised it as an opportunity to get some laptops in the hands of real users. And apparently the program has proven a big hit, raking in as much as $2 million a day in revenues. With numbers like that a normal firm would be looking for ways to expand the program. But not OLPC. While they have extended the program through the end of the year, Nicholas Negroponte is apparently anxious to phase it out after New Years, so that they can focus on a "give only" strategy. It almost seems like Negroponte believes there's something dirty about having people actually pay for his product. That doesn't make any sense. There's nothing wrong with making a profit, especially when those profits would presumably be plowed into giving away more free laptops to poor kids. Somebody has started a website devoted to talking some sense into Negroponte and the rest of the OLPC project. They advocate not only continuing to sell laptops to interested parties in the developed world, but also making the laptops available for purchase, possibly at a discount, in poor countries. This makes a lot of sense. It will allow the OLPC program to gain a foothold in countries whose governments aren't necessarily interested in buying the laptops in batches of 100,000. And it will ensure that the first laptops go to places where they'll actually be used. It's hard to see what the downside is. Negroponte will still be free to solicit government contracts, or to approach Western donors to finance larger gifts. A tech startup would be crazy to turn down an opportunity like this, and doing so doesn't make any more sense for OLPC.

It also appears that Negroponte is still bitter at Intel for introducing a competing low-price laptop. His angst seems rather misplaced. The goal is to get laptops into the hands of poor kids. If that goal is being accomplished, it doesn' really matter whose laptop ends up being the most popular. Poor countries have as much right to seek the best products they can get as anyone else. Intel has apparently used its considerable engineering resources to produce an attractive alternative to the XO. If third-world governments choose Intel's laptop over his own, Negroponte should be congratulating them for helping achieve the goal of universal laptop ownership, not griping about the fact that his product didn't make the cut. Besides, it's a big world. There are thousands of different computer models being sold in the developed world. Why would anyone think that a single laptop could possibly meet the needs of hundreds of millions of poor kids?

Tim Lee is an expert at the Techdirt Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Tim Lee and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Three and a half years ago, famed jeweler Tiffany sued eBay because people were selling counterfeit Tiffany goods on the auction site. As we noted at the time, it doesn't make any sense at all to sue eBay, since it's not eBay who's doing anything wrong. Tiffany's CEO has now basically admitted that, but doesn't seem to mind. At a hearing in the lawsuit, CEO Michael Kowalski admitted that the firm was suing eBay because it was hard to find the actual sellers. That may make sense in the mind of a Tiffany exec, but the way laws work is that you don't get to sue the person or company who's easy to find just because those actually responsible are hard to find. When a robber holds up a Tiffany store, does Kowalski sue the maker of the getaway car, because the robber can't be found? The company does admit that it sues the individuals when they can be found, but the CEO refers to them as "phantasms" and claimed it made more sense to just focus on eBay, saying that the real fault is "the distribution network, not the seller." Next thing you know, Kowalski will be suing the internet itself. After all, it's "the network, not the seller."

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We've written a few times about Bridgeport Music, which has been called a "sample troll". The small company claims ownership of numerous copyrights on songs written by George Clinton -- about which George Clinton claims the main guy at Bridgeport forged Clinton's signature to obtain. Bridgeport is largely responsible for many of the lawsuits you hear about these days concerning "samples" being used in music, as it effectively convinced the Sixth Circuit Court that there was no fair use when it came to samples, and any sample requires royalty payments. However, in its latest lawsuit, it may have even overstepped those boundaries. William Patry points us to the details that show the lengths to which Bridgeport will go to try to squeeze money out of songs it may not even really own the rights to. The case involves a Snoop Dogg song that apparently used a sample of an old Clinton tune (something that Clinton encourages (video clip)). But, that's not the problem. The problem appears to be that two other musicians later sampled the Snoop Dogg tune (not the Clinton tune), and therefore Bridgeport is now claiming that Universal Music (who owns a small fraction of the rights associated with the Snoop Dogg tune) owes it money for licensing a song that had a sample that may or may not have been owned by Bridgeport. Luckily, the courts have tossed out the suit, noting that Bridgeport's evidence is incredibly weak.

Either way, just the fact that Bridgeport thinks it has a claim shows to what ridiculous lengths people are taking copyright laws these days. To recap: Bridgeport may or may not own the copyrights to some George Clinton songs (Clinton himself claims that Bridgeport does not own those rights and forged signatures to pretend it does). However, Bridgeport is suing Universal Music who owns a tiny fraction of the rights for a Snoop Dogg song which may or may not have sampled a tiny portion of a George Clinton song, and, in turn had a small section of the Snoop Dogg song sampled by two other musicians. The connection here between the two parties involved in the lawsuit is so distant that the idea that copyrights even play a remote part here is laughable. Unfortunately, though, that is the length to which companies will go these days thanks to our overly broad copyright laws.

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Last year we noted the possible resurgence of AllAdvantage (under a new name), the dot-com-era company that tried to make money by paying users to have advertising on their screens. It didn't work, and like a lot of companies AllAdvantage went belly-up in early 2001. But apparently, the new AllAdvantage isn't the only one not paying attention to history. A short-lived startup called Brightspot.tv announced last week that it, too, was closing up shop. Brightspot was apparently like AllAdvantage, only focused on video ads instead of banner ads. The fundamental problem in both cases is the misunderstanding about what's being purchased when companies buy ads. Companies want to buy consumers' attention, not just screen real estate. The raw screen space isn't worth anything if people aren't focusing on it. And obviously, if people are only playing the ads because you're paying them to, they're likely to find ways to hide the ads or play them at times when they're doing something else. If you have to pay people to watch your ads, that's a sure-fire sign that you're doing something wrong. As we've said before, ads are content. The trick to making them more effective is to either make them more relevant to your target audience or make them more entertaining. If your ads are fun to watch, or if they have information your target customers are actually interested in, then you won't need to bribe people to watch them. Conversely, if your ads are boring and irrelevant to your target audience, they're not going to be effective no matter how much money you spend on them.

Tim Lee is an expert at the Techdirt Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Tim Lee and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Remember how some independent movie directors and producers were thrilled that people found their movies worthwhile to download? Well, here's a disturbing twist on those types of stories. TorrentFreak tells us about how the director of a popular Norwegian film is thrilled that people are downloading copies of his movie, and even admits that he uses BitTorrent to download stuff himself: "It's flattering that people are making copies of the movie and releasing it on the internet. Besides, all movies today are released onto the web. It would have been worse if no one wanted to share the movie." So what's the twist? The production company behind the movie is going after those people who were file sharing the movie, asking the police to file charges against 14 people accused of sharing the movie. Once again, it seems like the left-hand isn't paying attention to what the right-hand is doing.

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The recording industry loves to trot out musicians in its fight for ever-more-draconian copyright laws. We're repeatedly told that fans who create mash-ups with their favorite songs and post them back to YouTube are not only infringing copyright, but are hurting the very artists who created that music in the first place. The funny thing is, a lot of musicians don't seem to have gotten the memo. A couple of years ago, OK Go front man Damian Kulash took to the pages of the New York Times to tell of his battle to keep DRM off of his band's latest CD, which he knew would turn off a lot of fans. Now Nine Inch Nails founder Trent Reznor, who just a few weeks ago parted ways with Universal, has a statement on the group's website about his own struggles with his former label. Reznor has actually encouraged fans to share and re-mix his music, and has even released a new CD featuring user-created mash-ups of Nine Inch Nails music.

He was planning to create a YouTube-style website to host and promote the best mash-ups, but he found out at the last moment that Universal wasn't willing to participate in the site, for fear it would undermine their legal arguments against YouTube and its competitors. It's a little bit unclear about what the exact controversy is about. To its credit, Universal apparently hasn't tried to stop Reznor from setting up his own mash-up site. Since Reznor has been released from his Universal contract, it's not surprising that Universal would be reluctant to help him promote his music -- even though it still owns the rights to his earlier songs. So in some sense, it seems a little unfair to blame Universal for not wanting to be involved in setting up a website to promote the music of one of its former acts. But this kind of friction also makes it pretty clear that the labels' claims to represent the interests of artists are rather hollow. Reznor wants to experiment with new ways of promoting his music, while Universal seems to be myopically focused on the next quarter's CD revenues. Instead of looking for ways to turn YouTube into a new promotional vehicle or revenue stream, they've been busy threatening to sue YouTube and its competitors. That's probably not a good strategy for Universal; it certainly isn't a good strategy for Reznor or musicians who are still on Universal's labels. Reznor, it seems, was smart to get out when he did, and I'm sure he's encouraging his musician friends to follow his lead.

Tim Lee is an expert at the Techdirt Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Tim Lee and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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