A few weeks ago, there was a lot of buzz around Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, a short series of internet video, created by director Joss Whedon, and using a few well-known actors. We had a ton of people submit it, and the press went nuts over it. While I actually enjoyed the videos, I had a difficult time understanding why this was big news. Plenty of people create online videos -- some more professional than others. About the only thing that could be said for the story was "A few TV people discover the internet... years after everyone else."

And yet, now we're seeing more stories along those lines. The NY Times notes how a bunch of Saturday Night Live writers and cast members spent the summer creating their own comedy short video as well, and the story is basically the same: TV people discover the internet. In both cases, the push wasn't that "hey, the internet is actually a good platform for video" but the silly writers' strike had them bored, so they focused on creating stuff for the internet.

Again, I'm not entirely sure why this is seen as a big deal. TV people recognize what plenty of others have recognized for years, and it's suddenly newsworthy? If anything, the news peg here is that it sure has taken these TV folks a long time to realize that producing content for the internet makes sense.

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For quite some time, we've been pointing out that all the fear mongering from lobbyists and politicians about a coming "exaflood" of bandwidth that will wipe out the internet unless ISPs are allowed to double charge for the same bandwidth, is something of a myth. Instead, it turns out that traffic appears to be slowing its growth trajectory somewhat. The latest to agree with this is Cogent, who supplies plenty of bandwidth, but actually found overall traffic decline last quarter. Apparently, the unstoppable march of bandwidth consumption isn't as threatening as some would have you believe.

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For years, people have talked about the concept of planned obsolescence, where gadgets you buy are designed to basically wear out or need to be replaced, in an effort to get you to upgrade to the latest version. More recently, we noted that the continual advancement of new features meant that in some areas, people were upgrading even before the old devices hit that "obsolete" stage. Yet, it appears that planned obsolescence may be facing something of an unexpected challenge: easily updating old gadgets to have new features.

Thanks to the fact that many devices these days are connected to the internet in some manner and that many features are software, rather than hardware-dependent, it's possible for companies to continually upgrade "old" hardware, even at the risk of making you perfectly happy with that old hardware, instead of upgrading to the new hardware. Of course, smart companies recognize that this actually makes that old hardware more valuable, meaning that people are more willing to pay for it, knowing that it will be functional (and useful) for a longer period of time. It's unlikely that planned obsolescence is going anywhere soon, but it's nice to see some companies recognizing that people like things that not only last, but that get better with time.

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For years and years we've wondered why various companies were spending billions on building mobile TV systems that simply mimic traditional broadcast TV to mobile phones. In an age of time shifting and place shifting there's little reason for a mobile broadcast TV system that's separate from your other ways of accessing television. People don't want to have to buy into a whole different (expensive) mobile subscription service when they already have a cable subscription at home which they can save via their TiVo. And, if they really want to access it on the go, they can just pick up a Slingbox and not have to pay for an entirely separate subscription. But that hasn't stopped billions from being poured into various mobile TV systems, even though pretty much every test shows very little interest in paying for mobile TV.

Of course, sometimes when we talk about this, people tell us that the experiences in Asia -- specifically Korea and Japan -- show that there really is a market for fee-based mobile broadcast TV. Turns out that's not true. A new study in Korea points out that the highly touted mobile broadcast system there gets very, very little usage. In the meantime, Toshiba is backing off plans to offer a fee-based mobile TV subscription service in Japan. So much for those "success" stories.

What's really stunning about this is that it wasn't hard to predict that this would happen years ago, before billions were wasted on such systems. None of this means that video alone isn't an interesting space in the mobile market, but it has to be allowing users to access what video they want -- not taking us back in time to an old live broadcast system, and adding yet another subscription fee for the privilege.

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Reuters is running an article about how the Allman Brothers Band is suing Universal Music for apparently not paying the band royalties owed for iTunes downloads. This seemed like yet another example of a record label squeezing its artists, while insisting that it's always looking out for the artists' best interests. Of course, then I remembered that this isn't the first time this has come up with the Allman Brothers. More than two years ago, we wrote about the Allmans suing Sony over the same issue. At that time, there was a dispute over how the label was counting iTunes downloads, and which clause iTunes downloads fit under in the band's contract. This recent lawsuit seems like a similar dispute with Universal, but it does make you wonder why the band sued Sony back in 2006, but waited until now to sue Universal?

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There was a lot of fuss last week as some folks discovered a secret "kill switch" in iPhone software that allows Apple to retroactively "kill" an app that it allowed you to "buy" (but apparently, not really buy). Steve Jobs admitted over the weekend that the kill switch exists, with this gem:

"Hopefully we never have to pull that lever, but we would be irresponsible not to have a lever like that to pull."

Irresponsible? Really? That's why no other platform has a similar switch? Apparently, everyone else is irresponsible. The truth is more along the lines of this being a standard Steve Jobs offering, where he wants full control over how things are done -- even if it means removing apps you thought you had bought.

But the question is whether this is really a surprise or even a bad thing? While some are screaming "bloody murder" (or at least asking why people aren't screaming that), as others point out, if this is such a big deal, don't buy the iPhone. I agree that this isn't very smart on the part of Apple or Jobs. It certainly opens up an opportunity for competitors to point out that they don't maintain such a closed system, but it's hardly the end of the world. The more Apple makes decisions like this, the more likely people will be more open to alternatives that are coming to market -- and that's exactly what should happen. There's no "bloody murder" to scream. There's just a chance for the competition to come up with something better that doesn't give Steve Jobs the ability to pull a lever and make apps you thought you had bought disappear.

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We never quite understood why various universities were cooperating with RIAA demands that it send "pre-litigation" letters to students accused of file sharing. These non-binding letters are often used to pressure students into paying fines, even if they're based on weak (at best) evidence of file sharing. It certainly wasn't in any university's best interests to basically help out a private organization in a business model dispute with its students. Yet, some university officials, falsely convinced by the RIAA that this was more than a business model dispute, decided to help out. And the response? The RIAA has increased the flood of notices, and then convinced Congress to move forward on legislation that would legally obligate universities to act as the RIAA's copyright cops.

It appears that more and more universities are realizing that they got shafted. The EFF points out that there's widespread anger among university officials who felt they were trying to find a middle ground by cooperating, but instead find themselves swamped with more and more notifications and this new legislation that increases their legal liability over a business model dispute. And, the worst part? Now that they're pushing back in court, the RIAA points out that dealing with these notices before wasn't a burden, so universities aren't being truthful that they're now a burden. How's that for a thank you for helping out originally?

If it hasn't become clear by now, the RIAA doesn't view universities as partners in all of this -- and any university that thinks of the RIAA as a partner is about to get steamrolled by the RIAA legal machine. It's time that more universities stood up not just for their own rights, but the rights of their students as well not to be targeted by questionable "pre-litigation" threat letters without more significant evidence. And, it wouldn't help for the RIAA to finally recognize that this entire battle has done nothing to deal with the real issue: its own inability to recognize that its business model needs to change.

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You want to know how to basically clog up the administration of various high schools across the state of California? Pass a law that would kick kids out of school for sending a "cyberbullying" text message. Yet, that's exactly the type of bill that's been introduced in the state, as it rushes into following others in trying to make it illegal to be a jerk online. Yes, cyberbullying is an issue for the targets of such bullying. But the answer is not to create laws that try to legislate manners, nor to suggest that it's okay to kick kids out of school for sending a bullying message. All that's going to do is have overly sensitive kids complaining any time anyone sends them a mean message.

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In the sales world, you're often judged on the size and quality of your "rolodex" of contacts. No one expects a salesperson jumping from one job to another to somehow "forget" everyone they know -- or to cough up their entire list of contacts to the previous company. Yet that seems to be what happened in the UK. Slashdot points us to the news of a court ruling where a guy was forced to give up his LinkedIn contact list to his former employer after he left the company to start his own business. In this case, the original company had actively encouraged its employees to make use of LinkedIn, even though it was under the individual's control, rather than the employer's.

Expect to see plenty more lawsuits like this going forward. For many users of social networks from LinkedIn to MySpace to Facebook, the connections you make blur the lines between professional and personal -- and the questions of who actually "owns" those contacts will become a legal issue that the courts will decide over and over again. Of course, the truth is that this is a silly debate. No one "owns" a contact in the first place. If the company has a rule requiring employees to hand over contacts to the company, then it should employ a CRM system which the company controls. Otherwise, reaching into a personal social networking account seems to go beyond what's reasonable.

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We've noticed a recent trend of kids caught performing criminal acts to blame Grand Theft Auto as their inspiration, knowing full well that officials will focus on that instead of the actual crime. It's even reached the point that kids are blaming GTA for things that aren't even in the game. Witness some kids who were caught making Molotov Cocktails and firebombing cars, claiming that they learned how to make the weapons while playing GTA IV. Of course, as the article notes, the Molotov Cocktails in GTA IV come pre-assembled -- so perhaps it's not exactly to blame. Won't stop adult outrage over the game, though. And that's probably just what the kids want, as it takes some of the responsibility off of them.

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