67 posts from March 2007
In three and a half years of blogging I don't think I've ever failed to post at least once a day. I did that yesterday and didn't even realize it until this morning when my friend David emailed me to see if I was allright :) The Gotham Gal and I have been up to our eyeballs in our move and I've been distracted the past week and will likely be distracted the coming week too. But I hope to resume my posting habit anyway.
I remember the first time I heard this term, it was 1997 and someone was explaining a complicated digital rights management scheme to me. I invested in that complex digital rights management scheme and lost everything and have been dubious of DRM ever since.
But superdistribution is something I've become obsessed with. Superdistribution means turning every consumer into a distribution partner. Every person who buys a record, a movie, reads a newspaper, a book, every person who buys a Sonos or a Vespa becomes a retailer of that item. It's word of mouth marketing, referral marketing, but with one important difference. The consumer is the retailer.
I've wanted to be a superdistributor ever since. When I talk about music, books, politics, Sonos, Blackberry, MacBook, or anything else, I want all of you to be able to click and buy. When I buy something, I want to be able to pass it along to everyone else and get paid for doing that. And I want the people who created the thing I pass along to get paid too.
A lot of people who read and comment on this blog think I am anti content creator, that I want to eliminate property rights. Wrong. The thing I want to eliminate is FRICTION. I want to supercharge commerce. I want to turn everyone on to Arcade FIre. I want to them to sell 100 million Arcade Fire mp3s. And I want to get paid for doing my part.
My friend Steve calls me anti establishment. He's right. I am done with the old way of selling goods. I don't want to buy from an institution. I want to buy from my friends. And I want to sell to them.
The technology largely exists for this to happen. Society is moving this way. Superdistribution is the future. All we need is the technology to make it happen. It's way more than an affiliate program. That's the first step, but not the last step. Whenever you buy something, you should get a web account that makes you a reseller of that item. At a discount to the retail price. And you should get a decent margin for demand creation. It shouldn't require any effort on your part.
We are close to an environment where superdistribtion can flourish, but we aren't there yet. A few more years of technolgy and business model innovation and we'll be there. I can't wait.
I heard that there was a shooting in the village last night. So I went to outside.in and found out the details. What a mess.
While at outside.in, I also found out that The Coffee Shop, my favorite breakfast place was closed for health violations. When I showed up there last week to meet a friend, we saw a sign saying "closed for renovations". Now I know the truth. Ugh.
While both these stories are interesting in their own right, the point I am making is that keeping track of your local news is getting easier on the Internet. You can even subscribe to a feed of local news in outside.in if you like to get your news that way.
One of the most nefarious forces in the venture market during the last bubble was dumb money. It drove up valuations and financing sizes, drove down decision making timeframes, pushed smart money out of syndicates, harassed management, fed venture fratricide, and worst of all, was gone in a flash when the bubble burst.
I know because I cleaned up a bunch of companies from the messes left by the "Drive By" investments that dumb money favors.
And I am seeing every single one of these things happening now. It's deja vu all over again. It's scary.
Longtime readers might recall that I am a huge Jonathan RIchman fan.
So it put a huge smile on my face last night when The Shins delivered a cover of 
Someone I Care About [rhapsody link] during their encore set at The Theater At Madison Square Garden.
Here's the video, sorry about the lousy picture and audio quality.
After reviewing all the comments to my SueTube post, I have to conclude that copyright is a political issue. Or maybe a religious issue. There are copyright hawks and copyright doves.
Steve, who is a copyright hawk, said this:
Yes, I too love YouTube. But since when does that mean its the right thing to do under law? Since when does mob emotion outweigh the rights of minorities (e.g. property owners)? Lots of people like looting. Lots of people would like to arbitrarily redistribute your personal net worth. Should we make that legal?
Sam, who is a copyright dove, said this:
If these media companies spent as much time innovating and discovering ways to monetize new media (like Google) as they do in creating these lawsuits against them, then maybe their bottom line would actually increase. Provide value to the consumer maybe?
I am a copyright dove. I think the legal structures that were created in the analog world must be revisited in the digital world. We have concepts that make no sense. As Sam points out, it's possible to monetize content in a supercharged digital world like Google has shown us that makes a mockery of the old fashioned command and control models that the traditional content companies want to hold on to with their dear life.
My friend Albert told me today that he's sure Google will lose this case if it goes to court. I don't really care if they win or lose because I am not a Google shareholder or a Viacom shareholder. But I want it to go to court to bring focus to this issue that is not going to go away. What is fair use? What is copying in the digital world? Why is the onus on YouTube to determine if the person uploading a video is the owner or not?
Steve thinks that it's time to rip up DMCA and that our government can be trusted to figure this out with new legislation. Not me. I have never met a politician who really understands digital technology. I'd rather this get settled in the marketplace.
So this very morning, I am thinking that all the Cortez videos I've watched in the past three days won't show up in last.fm. And how I wish they would.
And then I came across this piece from The Register that suggests that last.fm is working on scrobbling video as well as audio. Awesome.
I've been into this song for the past couple days since seeing Jennifer's mention of the DMB/Warren Haynes cover in Central Park on that amazing comment thread at newcritics.
Here's Dave and Warren doing their thing. I watched this on the DVD and as great as YouTube is, watch it on the DVD if you can.
And after seeing that, I had to go check out the real thing on YouTube. My favorite is this rendition from the Rust Never Sleeps tour. I saw that tour at the Boston Garden and it's in my top ten shows ever. Neil does this little reggae thing with the "he comes dancing across the water, Cortez Cortez" line. It's great.
So I've concluded its time to jetison our fax machine and go to a service that sends and receives faxes via email.
I want to redirect our home fax number to a eFax service. And use our scanner to scan documents and then email them to fax machines.
I know there are a bunch of such services to choose from.
Any recommendations?
I realize that the $1bn lawsuit that Viacom filed against Google and YouTube today is all about negotiating leverage.
But I for one hope that this suit doesn't settle.
I want to see Viacom prove the 'massive and intentional copyright violations' accusations in front of a jury of reasonable people.
Given the number broken links we all experience on YouTube due to take down requests, I have a feeling that Viacom's case isn't so open and shut.
Google has billions of dollars to defend itself. I'd like to see them use some of it. This is not Napster all over again by a long shot as much as Viacom would like it to be.