AR&D Reinventing Local Media

We're going to go off-topic here for a moment, and on to one of my personal favorites: the First Amendment. We invoke the 1stAm a lot, especially online. If someone comments on your blog and you decide to erase the comment, there will be people who cry "You're infringing on my First Amendment rights!" Employees of companies, when told they can't blog, cry 1stAm foul.

Most recently, Redlasso, the excellent-and-therefore-most-likely-to-be-shutdown video service cried 1stAm. It allows users to go to any point in a network's content, "clip it," and post it in its own embedded player. Redlasso did not get permission from the nets to do this. While it would be smart for the nets to go along, or at least partner, they have decided not to. That is their right.

According to the usual way these things go, the networks have issued a cease-and-desist to Redlasso. And, according to the way these things go, Redlasso has told the networks to stick it. Nothing new. But Redlasso is on shaky (and incorrect) legal turf with this statement:

"Clip usage by bloggers is an exercise of first amendment rights to provide social commentary on newsworthy events."

Ah, no. A private company deciding how it wants its content used has nothing to do with the 1stAm. Here is the relevant portion of said Amendment:

Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of
speech, or of the press…

Get that? Congress shall make no law. Not "NBC shall not make it a rule…" or "ABC can't sue you if…" or "If a guy doesn't publish what you say, that's illegal…"

The 1stAm does not, not, not give you an absolute right to say, post, and write whatever you want wherever you want with whomever's content you desire.

A better argument? Fair use. And here, I think we have a stronger case for Redlasso.

From the U.S. Copyright Office:

Section 107 contains a list of the various purposes for which the reproduction of a particular
work may be considered “fair,” such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching,
scholarship, and research. Section 107 also sets out four factors to be considered in determining
whether or not a particular use is fair:

1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of
   commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;

2. the nature of the copyrighted work;

3. amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted
   work as a whole; and

4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted
   work.

Indeed, Redlasso, in other instances, has employed the Fair Use defense. But it looks like the networks may still be a step ahead, according to Paul Sweeting at ContentAgenda:

The networks call it unlicensed syndication of their content (although
they also shrewdly include charges of trademark infringement and unfair
competition, which, of course, have no fair use exemptions).

So, in fact, without really, really deep pockets, RedLasso may find itself sued out of existence before it begins. That would be too bad – this is a really good product, and partnering with the nets would be a win-win.

Either way, Congress will certainly make no law infringing on the right of RedLasso to say whatever it likes.

Or so says the analysis of your correspondent, based upon his masters in a field wholly unrelated to law…

Amid the usual V|@gr?/\ and Nigerian scam emails, across my transom comes this exciting news:

 {{03)),

It is my pleasure to inform you that you are being considered for inclusion into the 2008-2009 Princeton Premier Business Leaders and Professionals Honors Edition section of the registry.

The 2008-2009 edition of the registry will include biographies of the world's most accomplished individuals. Recognition of this kind is an honor shared by thousands of executives and professionals throughout the world each year. Inclusion is considered by many as the single highest mark of achievement. 

Imagine! Me! {{03))! A Princeton Premier Business Leader Honor winner!

They could have at least done the mail merge correctly and had my name inserted at the top…

Now, it looks like more of an ego play than an actual scam. My guess is that they print the book and then hit you up for money to buy it. More embarrassing – they put out a press release actually naming the suckers each time one falls for it.

But, lest anyone use this to point out the Web is making an art of the scam, I'd like to point out this is just a variation on the Who's Who book.

Sony has reached a deal with the nation's six largest cable companies that would mean an end to the cursed set-top box. The arrangement would mean that Sony would incorporate all the tech you'd normally find in a cable box directly into its TVs. So you wouldn't need to rent the darn boxes anymore – you'd just plug the cable directly into your TV.

The six companies represent 82% of the cable universe in the U.S., so Sony is starting out very strong. One less box – and one less remote to worry about?  Those expensive Sony HDTVs are going to get a leg up in the crowded marketplace.

Stick a Blu-ray player in there, DVR capabilities and web access for online video (which Sony already has, you just need – that's right – a box) and you'll have a serious convergence product.

That's changing the rules. That's reinvention.

Some things simply make sense. Advertisers want details about the people they're advertising to. They want lots of details, in fact. And we have the technology to provide those details.

 Except that it's not exactly in television's best interest to get into the micro-detail game. The more TV provides details, the more advertisers are going to want TV to hit specific audiences. The more advertisers want to hit those specific audiences, the less they are going to want to buy the "large numbers" that TV is used to selling. So while cable TV has long had the ability to enable technology that could produce specific demographics, it has been slow to pull the trigger.

At NCTA '08 in New Orleans this week, the advertisers are telling Cable to move their butts – or they're going to take their business elsewhere.

Deborah Wahl Meyer is the vice president and chief marketing officer for Chrysler. She presented a keynote that put the industry on notice. Via AdAge:

"We want to be able to deliver one message to a married 55-year-old man
watching 'Battlestar Galactica' and a very different one to a
25-year-old single woman watching the same show the next block over,"
Ms. Wahl Meyer said. "You have all the wires that go straight into
those homes. So how can we then work together to develop addressable
advertising?" 

 She was talking about cable's long-overdue plan to standardize metrics and allow advertisers to buy VOD advertising that will have solid metrics. Apparently the plan, known as Project Canoe, is still a way from being implemented. No surprise.

Ms. Wahl Meyer may as well have been talking about local media outlet Websites. We need to provide much better details about our audiences. We need to assure our advertisers that they are getting their messages to the right audience, not just the big audience.

Otherwise, businesses are just going to do more of the "advertising-as-entertainment" we're seeing online. Ms. Wahl Meyer talked about this, too. And while she wouldn't say she was threatening TV, I'd say this comes pretty close:

"Our issue is if you can keep proving your cause and effect, you don't
have to cut the budget. What we're doing on the web right now, which is
why the dollars are going there, is because there's more justification
to protect those budgets," she said. "I can show how a web ad hits all
the way down to a sale." 

Matching advertisers with the right audience? The concept has always been there, it just hasn't been very detailed. Getting micro? That's a reinvention.

You can now register domains that end with .me, thanks to a decision by its owner (Montenegro!) to share me… uh, it… with the world.

GoDaddy is the distributor in the US, while Ireland-based Affilias is also taking orders.

I say go for it, especially if you can come up with a catchy URL. Let's start with those of you in Maine. I noticed that Portland.ME and Bangor.ME were available. Certainly those are great places to start for local sites.

Then there are all the verbs that could work with .ME. I haven't checked out all of these, but ideas like "travelwith.me" or visit(yourcity)with.me would be cool niche sites. You get the idea.

This is something of a complicated process – they want to make sure that trademark holders get a fair shot at getting their names. "Coke.me?" But you can get in a

From Affilias, the explanation of how this works:

May 6 to May 20: General Sunrise Period. During this time, anyone with a trademark is eligible to apply for a .ME domain.

May 20 to June 6: Quiet Period. The registry will be closed to registrars. Sunrise auctions will begin for names that received multiple applications. .ME domain names that receive only one application will be awarded.

June 6 to June 26: Landrush. This is the first opportunity for the public at large to apply. Anyone who doesn't have a trademark, but is interested in a specific .ME domain, can apply during this period. This is also when Sunrise challenges begin.

June 26 to July 15: Quiet Period. During this time, the registry is closed to registrars. Names for which there was only one application during the Landrush Period are allocated. Landrush auctions will begin for names that received multiple applications.

July 17: Open Registration. Domain names are registered on a first-come, first-served basis.

Expect this to be something of a model for future top level domain releases.

This is a great opportunity for some experimenting. We're always encouraging risk-taking and innovation as part of the media reinvention.

Take a chance on .me.

- Steve Safran, Sr. Vice President, Media 2.0, AR&D

Today, I got a medical form sent to me as a PDF. My only option was to print it, fill in the sections (which were far, far too small for my needs-to-be-big-to-be-legible printing. I went in serch of inexpensive software that would help me crack the PDF so that I could "type" my answers in the fields. There's a way to do it, but trust me – it takes longer than just printing the form and writing your information.

My office requested I return the paperwork promptly. That meant I could either FAX back the form or scan it and send the newly-scanned version.

Either way, there's nothing digital about what we're doing. As far as the transaction is concerned, these are just dots on a paper. Wonder why we're not paperless? There's too much paperwork to get there, that's why!

I decided to keep paper out of this nonsense as much as I could. So I scanned the document back into PDF format. Somewhere, in the health care system, someone will get that PDF and… I guess.. retype all the information into their system. And I think we've all just figured out why hospitals and health care companies make mistakes. My one transaction alone was:

1. Paper (a form) which became

2. Digital (a PDF) which was printed on

3. Paper, so I could fill in my address and information, before scanning it back

4. Digital (as a PDF again – but really just a glorified picture by this point.) So it could be sent and printed out into

5. Paper so an administrator could have hard copy to place in a file and a sheet off which to take information to type into…

6. Digital once more, as part of the system's database.

That's six different states of beging for our one lonely document. Imagine if I had decided to include Faxing into this system at some point.

My last name is "Safran." My street name is "Skowhegan." Everyone in my family has a name that has at least two spellings. My cousins can't keep us straight. You should see the birthday cards. So I'm used to a life of saying "It's S as in Sam, A, F as in Frank, R, A, N as in Nancy."

But when you're given the digital option to take control of your name and your information, only to see your paperwork go through half a dozen iterations of life, you may as well be ready to see some of the variations on my name I've received over the years. All are true:

Stephen Saffrin

Steven Saffron

Steve Safrin

Stephen Stafford

Saferin, Saferan, Stoffyn.

Dr. Steven Safran (I had no problem with this, and promptly forwarded it to my mother.)

 My wife, whose madien last name was "Farrice" (Pronounced Fuh-REESE) once was pre-approved for a credit card under the last name "Farnce." I like to think someone squinted and saw that last r squish together with the i next to it, making a "ri," which under the right conditions could look like an "n."(For the record, I still call her "Farnce" and "Farncey."

We have the power to end this crap and the endless work it takes to straighten out government agencies and hospitals when they make mistakes. By pushing old models of data gathering ("We have to get this by Fax") onto new models of data sharing (database-driven fields), we're just asking for more layers of Saffords, Staffryns and more.

Trust me, you don't want to meet those guys. They hate paperwork.

Give me a break. The conspiracy nuts have "found" an image of John McCain in the opening of a Fox local newscast and are out for blood.

In the animated open, just before the anchors appear, there's a frame or two of John and Cindy McCain. Clearly either a switching error, graphics glitch, or edited in by the poster who admits he was working in Final Cut Pro, the tinfoil hat crowd has decided it's a Fox mind control trick. Never mind that subliminal advertising has never been proven to work. When you want to find evidence of corporate brainwashing, you'll find it in the oddest places.

Sadly, Occam's Razor is never enough for some people. The story is getting more than 3,000 Diggs.

So what on Earth am I doing posting this in a blog dedicated to reinvention? Because I think newsies will get as steamed as I am about it. I think many will use this as evidence of the wackjobs on the Internet and say "See! The Web is full of ignorant clowns who aren't interested in the truth!"

And I'm here to say it doesn't matter a bit.

Because in the wilderness of the Web, there is even room for the crazies. I was talking to a friend who was lamenting a chain email she got. Surely the Web is to blame. But I reminded her that chain letters go back to the snail mail days. And, as a kid, I was responsible for forwarding way more of those.

In fact, nearly every Web nuisance has a real world antecedent. Conspiracy theories? JFK. UFOs. Fake offers for pills that don't work? You can still find them in alternative papers (and the classifieds of mainstream papers).

We look at examples of some blogs that go to the extreme and say "that's why we need professional journalists." But that's not why we need professional journalists. We need professional journalists because there is so much work to be done in covering our communities, aggregating the great local content and being a trusted resource of information. Being better than a few whack jobs doesn't give me a reason for being. Helping reinvent how we do what we do and being in on the ground floor of this wonderful and important shift is our mission now.

Sometime the reinvention gets messy. That's terrific, isn't it?

(Video via Lost Remote.)

 - Steve Safran, Sr. Vice President, Media 2.0, AR&D

The last thing holding back the Internet from ubiquity is connectivity. You still need either a wired connection, a WiFi hotspot or a wireless card to be on the Web. This still gives the upper hand to cable, phone companies, satellite, radio and the established forms of transmission.

But what happens if plans for WiFi/WiMax clouds actually happen?

Big, big change.

One of two things will happen – you'll either get free or cheap access on a city wireless connection or you'll pay a company a flat fee.

Once you're truly wireless, the remaining distinctions go away. Internet radio now goes in your car. You make free Skype calls from anywhere. Cable and satellite become less necessary. With WiFi, you simply "tune
in" the programs you want on a web-enabled TV. (Really, you can do this
now. You just won't need the many boxes and the extra fees.) No wonder cell phone and cable companies are investing in WiMax. They have to be panicked.

Live shots for the web and TV become as easy as opening your laptop and plugging in a camera. Sending video becomes cheap. 

Will we recognize the changes ahead of time, or hang on to the old broadcasting model?

The Big Tower model thus ends, ironically, not by a cable, but by a competitor also using radio waves.

That's reinvention.

- Steve Safran, Sr. Vice President, Media 2.0 AR&D

We frequently conduct web video seminars (webinars) for our clients to teach about the latest happenings on the Web. The advances in video technology make this easy – even fun – to pull off. I thought I'd share what it takes for me to pull off a multimedia "live shot." Have a look.

Linking to other websites is another one of those Not Done practices in most newsrooms. This is a silly superstition, and one that doesn't grok with how the web behaves. You're hurting yourself by not linking to other sites. Ironically, the best thing you can do is link to your competition. Also – mention them a whole lot on your blogs.

Why?

Let's look back at the old practice first. You couldn't mention the other stations in town. This led to the very, very silly practice of phrases like "another station in town reported" or "at a competing station." Nobody talks like this. We are in the facts business. But somewhere along the lines, someone thought "hey – if we mention that WXXX found out something before we did, we'll never get our viewers again." The logic should have been "The audience will appreciate our honesty with them and will trust that we will always be straight with them."

Still, as everyone engaged in this nonsense, there was no real harm done. Now, with the Web, you can shoot your site in the foot(er) by this same tactic.

Why? Search.

Search engines rate sites by, among other things, the number of inbound and outbound links. Search wants to see how many people trust you – and how active you are among other sites. You're going to turn up higher in a search if you have lots of links to your site. The best way to get those links is to link out.

Also, you can't tell every part of a story. That's where the links are also handy. When writing a tech story – link to the company's site. It's maddening to read a story about a website and see the writer hasn't bothered to link to that site. Internal linking helps too – after all, you're taking advantage of your own archives to help flesh out a story.

Remember: Google's entire business model is based upon sending you away.

You want to be the place people trust and keep returning to. The tech sites I visit are the ones I know will be excellent starting places for information. So what if I go off and wander after starting there? They've earned my trust. I'll be back.

My partner, Terry Heaton, is quoted in Mark Glaser's latest essay at MediaShift. The essay is about search engine optimization (SEO). 

“The main reason Wikipedia links always appear near the top in Google
is because their Google Juice is rich with links from and to
themselves,” Heaton said. “The ‘weight’ of a link is measured, in part,
by the source. Wikipedia gets a ton of traffic, so a link from them is
‘worth’ far more than a link from, say, any TV station in the country.
Hence, Google ‘sees’ the links and values them accordingly, which
raises Wikipedia’s search results…Internal linking, therefore, always
reaps SEO rewards. Moreover, the reason we link out, is to encourage linking in. Again, we want and need links. It’s job one.”

When you link out, you get links back. A perfect example came right here this week. I've only begun this blog. A typical story gets about 50 views or so. (Unless it features Tim Robbins.) Because Lost Remote linked to my story on "Forbidden or Compulsory," I've had about 350 views. You may notice that LR (where I used to write) is one of the RSS feeds on the right of my page. One link. A seven-fold increase in readership.

The Web is hypertext. Hypertext is links. Don't fight the nature of the Web. When you're reinventing, embrace it.

 - Steve Safran, Senior V.P., Media 2.0, AR&D