Week of August 11, 2008

RIAA Pays File Sharer Six Figures

Friday, August 15, 2008

There has been much discussion that the RIAA has been overzealous in its pursuit of individual filesharers. Now we are seeing the results of that. The RIAA has been ordered to pay Lory Lybeck $107,951 in legal fees after losing in court. Lybeck had been accused of illegally sharing copyrighted music and not only won her case, but the judge awarded her legal fees. Now that the RIAA has paid those, their next nightmare is on the docket: Anderson v. Atlantic. A case where Atlantic Records is being sued for damages tied to malicious prosecution.

Google Phone Coming This Fall

Thursday, August 14, 2008

The New York Times has confirmed that T-Mobile will release an HTC mobile phone using the Google Android operating system. This will be the first and only "Google Phone" released this year. It will be interesting to see how this phone stacks up. After an absolutely spectacular presentation at their I/O conference, Google has since frustrated developers with SDK (software developer kit) issues. They have also pushed back all releases except for T-Mobile.

The T-Mobile connection may be the secret weapon here: T-Mobile has announced an open application storefront to mimic the iPhone, and it is possible that T-Mobile and Google are working closely for an iPhone-type "oh wow" launch. At this point, however, all we can do is wait and see what develops. The potential for an iPhone competitor is real, but thus far no one has really delivered. We'll see if Google, HTC, and T-Mobile can.

Controlling the flow of information

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

One of the real issues moving forward as customization and personally-targeted content becomes more and more ubiquitous is how much control to hand over to the consumer. Of course, the obvious answer is to give the user total control, but there are monetization, complexity, and other issues involved. Still, that is most likely the destination for all content sites eventually.

Facebook has been ahead of the curve on targeting advertising content by interest and behavior, but has been slow to give its users much control over what they can see. But it is making progress, and the latest update will add more control: Users will soon be able to filter the status messages they receive via a number of criteria.

Again, there is no reason that consumers can't control what they send out or what they receive in a community they call home on the Internet, and the major social networks are recognizing this.

What Online Advertising Growth Slowdown?

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Many of you have read the headlines that online advertising is finally starting to slow down. There are many reasons for this, but one thing that shouldn't be lost is that just because the growth has slowed down does not mean it is still impressive. Lehman Brothers just released their Internet Data Book and display advertising--you remember, the one that is slowing down--is predicted to grow 27% in 2008 and 22% in 2009. We know quite a few media segments that would like those numbers.

iPhone Unlock About To Be Released

Monday, August 11, 2008

You knew it was only a matter of time. With a new release and software update, all previous hacks and unlocks to the iPhone had been made inoperable. The iPhone Dev Team recently announced a jailbreak tool (which allows applications unsupported by Apple to be added to the iPhone), but a true software unlock tool (which allows the iPhone to be used by other carriers, such as T-Mobile) has been absent. That changed today with the announcement out of Germany that a hacker has successfully unlocked his iPhone and would be releasing the application in the near future. The lesson remains: If consumers want something and companies don't deliver it, the consumers will make it happen themselves.