BuzzMachine... by Jeff Jarvis

May 05, 2005

Pick your headline: Google steals content... Google declares war on publishers... Google violates copyright.... Google is evil.... None of the above... All of the above....

: Correct me if I'm wrong, but Google is repeating one of the great sins of AOL, promising to "accelerate" the web by caching -- that is, copying and storing -- web pages to serve to you.

It's one matter when the search engine caches a page you can't get anymore; that's a copyright violation but an all-in-all benign one in the sense that it's only giving you content you could not otherwise see (no different from, say, the web archive).

But it's quite another matter for Google to get in the way of serving current content. This means that the page is served from Google rather than from a publisher's server, which means that the publisher cannot count the traffic and serve targeted and dynamic advertising.

It also means that Google is copying content on its servers and serving it from there and thus is violating copyright.

And it means that Google is in a position to snoop on data on consumers' usage of sites that Google does not own: That is, Google will know what the consumers on my site are doing better than I will for these "accelerated" pages.

I'm also reading that Google shortstops cookies, which affects not only publishers but also users. Cory Doctorow points out: "...but of course you're not anonymous to Google, which knows about your search history (if you've got cookies on), your email address (if you register for Groups, etc), your friends (if you use Orkut), your email (if you use gmail), and even has your credit card (if you use AdWords or Answers)."

And all this is done in the name of accelerating the web in an era when most of us have broadband and it doesn't need much acceleration.

Again, if I'm getting that wrong, please tell me. But I'll just bet we'll see publishers telling their lawyers go to fetch.

Here's PaidContent's writeup; here's Steve Yelvington's writeup; here's John Battelle's.

Search Engine Journal reports that the accelerator is screwing up, serving the wrong pages to the wrong people and even signing people into forums under the wrong names.

Fantomas gives instructions on how to block the Google accelerator.

: See earlier cautionary notes on Google here and here.

Bottom line: I see no reason why I should be expected to trust these guys anymore.

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Crystal ball

: Alex Beam, who sometimes chooses not to get the future, tries to write a cute column about the future, when Nick Denton buys The New York Times. Tries way, way too hard. Too cute by half. And essentially wrong-headed, arguing that only in newspapers are serious issues like Social Security discussed -- when, in fact, if you look up Social Security online you'll find, often, more discussion and better depth.

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Imported

: I'm sorry, but I don't understand why the Guardian imported Kos to blog the British election -- and write lines like this: "Exit polls numbers have dominated the coverage of the election up until now, and it's no wonder. It satiates our desire to get some metric of progress, and it helps fill the dead airtime between the polls closing and actual results." [let's all use "satiate" in a sentence] -- when there are plenty of great Brit bloggers. No offense to Kos, but I'd rather hear another British voice.

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Jumping the shark for Jesus, continued

: George Will has a good start to a column today about George Bush apparently trying to pull back from the follies of the religious fringe. But Will doesn't pull back quite far enough, in my view, for he contrasts only the religious fringe with the godless and leaves out the vast religious majority inbetween.

The state of America's political discourse is such that the president has felt it necessary to declare that unbelievers can be good Americans. In last week's prime-time news conference, he said: "If you choose not to worship, you're equally as patriotic as somebody who does worship."

So Mark Twain, Oliver Wendell Holmes and a long, luminous list of other skeptics can be spared the posthumous ignominy of being stricken from the rolls of exemplary Americans. And almost 30 million living Americans welcomed that presidential benediction.

According to the American Religious Identification Survey, Americans who answer "none" when asked to identify their religion numbered 29.4 million in 2001, more than double the 14.3 million in 1990. If unbelievers had their own state -- the state of None -- its population would be more than twice that of New England's six states, and None would be the nation's second-largest state:

California, 34.5 million.

None, 29.4 million.

Texas, 21.3 million.

The president, whose political instincts, at least, are no longer so misunderestimated by his despisers, may have hoped his remarks about unbelievers would undo some of the damage done by the Terri Schiavo case. During that Florida controversy, he made a late-night flight from his Texas ranch to Washington to dramatize his signing of imprudent legislation that his party was primarily responsible for passing. He and his party seemed to have subcontracted governance to certain especially fervid religious supporters.

He then goes on to praise Pat Robertson -- "who is fervid but also shrewd" -- for tolerating the idea of a Guiliani run for President and says: "Some Christians should practice the magnanimity of the strong rather than cultivate the grievances of the weak."

As if Robertson is a model. He neglects to mention Robertson's other recent media appearance contending that loose judges are the most serious threat to America in 400 years of history -- more serious than the Nazis and slavery and explicitly more serious than al Qaeda. A fine model of political reasonableness.

Will then goes on to argue that the religious right should stop trying to play victim and he uses Passion of the Christ and best-selling religious books and more as his evidence. "But their persecution complex is unbecoming because it is unrealistic." I agree with that.

But I have a problem with making Robertson, Passion, and the Left Behind books the milestones of religion in America. Will puts people in that camp or in the unbelieving camp. But there is a vast religious middle that would not qualify as religious by the definition of some, that may not be the most loyal churchgoers or churchgoers at all, that may hold opinions that are antithetical to the beliefs of this group... but they are religious Americans nonetheless. I am in that middle, that mainstream. But that's the subject of another post another day.

: At the same time, in The Times, David Brooks writes about religion and Abraham Lincoln:

On Sept. 22, 1862, Abraham Lincoln gathered his cabinet to tell them he was going to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. He said he had made a solemn vow to the Almighty that if God gave him victory at Antietam, Lincoln would issue the decree.

Lincoln's colleagues were stunned. They were not used to his basing policy on promises made to the Lord. They asked him to repeat what he'd just said. Lincoln conceded that "this might seem strange," but "God had decided the question in favor of the slaves."

I like to think about this episode when I hear militant secularists argue that faith should be kept out of politics.

Well, I'd be stunned, too. So what if the battle had gone the other way: Would Lincoln have left the slaves imprisoned? Does this mean he believes that God joins in a battle? Yes, stunning. I don't think that's a mark of sane religion in government any more than Pat Robertson is.

Deciding that slavery is wrong and must be stopped should not require a signal from God; it should be evident from studying God's word and from examining one's own conscience. Brooks would call that relativism -- "the bland relativism of the militant secularists." But that is not relativism. That is morality. That is what religion is about.

But Brooks would call me a "militant secularist." I think those are fighting words.

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Nannyism gone wild

: Jay Allen sends news that a middle-school marching band in Benton Harbor, Michigan, was forbidden from playing Louie Louie -- the instrumental version -- because one lone whining parent thinks it's obscene. There was, by the way, an FBI investigation into the song years ago that concluded it is not obscene and, in any case, the lyrics can't be understood. The Smoking Gun has pages from the file and the real lyrics.

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Exploding media: local

: See Fred Wilson's post about Backfence and 101 and other efforts to bring media to its proper local level.

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Exploding media: creativity

: For me, the lesson I learn from the announcements last week that podcasts are coming to Infinity Radio and Sirius is that big media is adopting citizens' media faster than I ever would have predicted.

I've said that what would make big media pay attention to citizens' media, in the end, would be economics: We, the people, are creating compelling, valuable, addictive, fresh content at a lower cost than the big boys with all their big ways and big costs. And as the big boys' audience and revenue shrink, they will turn to new ways to make content and save money.

I thought this would take time to happen -- as it has taken time for mainstream media to decide that they wouldn't get cooties reading blogs. But I was operating in the wrong world, on the wrong timetable. Mainstream media journalists have been slow to accept or at least acknowledge citizens' media because they operate in a priesthood, a club closed in by its standards and rules, and they don't want to change any of that and allow new members in.

But radio is entertainment. It is a business. There's no hooha about professionalism and higher standards. Hell, just look at prime time. Listen to radio.

So along comes content that is new and getting an audience and -- best of all -- cheap or even free, and you'll see guys in suits slap on iPods and webcams faster than you can spell EBITDA.

But this raises two issues, two cautions:

The first is podcasts and vlogs are new, really new. Their potential is limitless. But at a year old, even Mozart couldn't play chopsticks. They have not begun to reach their potential. So I worry that Infinity and Sirius will slap on lots of podcasts and we'll immediately read the reviews from big media snobs that it's all tedious crap. Or a lot of it may actually be tedious crap. And then it will all be dismissed as a fad, a bubble, a nothing. And I don't want to see that happen. And the fate of this media merger is in the hands of Adam Curry and whoever is programming YOURadio and Current.TV and I have hope that they will do more than just slap up any old multimedia blather. I know they will pick the best they can find. I also know that the people will make great stuff to try to impress them and get the attention. But the programming directors here -- inserting themselves into a new medium where programming directors are an oxymoron -- need to do more: They need to encourage and support the best. And that leads to the other issue...

The big guys can't just exploit the citizen-producers and take the stuff for free. They need to find value in what they create and pay that value not just because it's fair but also as the way to support the creation of great new stuff. The creators need to realize, in turn, that they're not going to get rich overnight doing this, not until someone proves that audience and advertisers will make it profitable. And there are new ventures being started by not-so-big-boys that aren't making any money yet. But this has to be seen as a partnership or it won't work.

If it is seen as a partnership and if it does work, I'll now bet you'll be hearing your neighbor on some form of radio and seeing your coworker on some form of TV just as you are reading your friends in this, some form of publishing, sooner than you can imagine.

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Exploding media: distribution

: I have seen the prototype for the future of TV and it is my son's PSP (bought with his own hard-earned money, I might add).

Doc Searls said that the iPod is a prototype for the future of radio. As the transistor led to the transistor radio and that led to rock 'n' roll, so the iPod is a prototype for a future when we get any programming we want anywhere anytime (now it's downloaded but soon enough it will be on-demand via ubiquitious broadband).

That made sense for me with radio. I was willing to preach the same sermon about TV but didn't fully believe that gospel because I hadn't seen a hybrid device that would make TV worth watching (that is, there's little value to watching TV on a phone; you might as well just listen).

Well, the PSP screen is magnificent and now, already, content is being distributred to it. Here's a NY Times story about this and here are two PaidContent links about it.

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Exploding media: advertising

: Forrester says that 64 percent of advertisers are looking at advertising on blogs.

Now we have to make it easy for them. (Insert plug for open-source ad calls here.)

The clear conclusion of the Forrester survey is that much, much, much more money is going to go online and leave other media:

"Despite significant changes in consumer behavior, there is a large disparity between the amount of time consumers are spending online and the money marketers are spending trying to reach them online," says Forrester Research Principal Analyst Charlene Li. "When at-work Internet use is taken into consideration, online consumers spend more than one-third of their time online -- roughly the same amount of time they spend watching TV. Yet marketers spend only 4 percent of ad budgets online versus 25 percent on TV." ...

* Search engine marketing will grow by 33 percent in 2005, reaching $11.6 billion by 2010. Display advertising, which includes traditional banners and sponsorships, will grow at the average rate of 11 percent over the next five years to $8 billion by 2010.

* New advertising channels will draw interest and spending from marketers. Sixty-four percent of respondents are interested in advertising on blogs, 57 percent through RSS and 52 percent on mobile devices, including phones and PDAs.

* Marketers are quickly losing confidence in the effectiveness of traditional advertising channels and feel that online channels will become more effective over the next three years. Seventy-eight percent of survey respondents said they think search engine marketing will be more effective, compared with 53 percent of respondents who said TV advertising would become less effective.