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The title of this piece is undeniably alarmist. It’s also in need of clarification.

The Internet, as most people know it, consists of surfing the web using aptly named web browsers. People typically enter “www”, which followed by a period, and then finally name of the domain they wish to visit (ie. google.com, ameritrade.com, etc.) But this system is under attack.

There are only so many domain names out there. Once someone buys “seal.com” for a year for instance, no one else can take it. That is to say until that year is up and domain expires, at which point its a free-for-all as to who wants to buy it next. To avoid having their domain bought out by unwanted others, owners of these addresses typically re-buy them before the expiry date.

That said, there’s a new breed of companies out there. The type that automatically buy these domains as soon as they expire, and replace the homepage with pure advertisements. Sometimes the address can be bought out again, but at a price substantially higher than its original value (up to a hundred times so, if not more).

The problem with what these companies are doing is that once they buy these domains, they don’t let go. And so, as irresponsible webadmins let their domains expire, these addresses are gobbled up by these chain advertising firms. Now, there’s one less address available for legitimate people to use on the Internet.

Multiply that by a million, and we have a serious problem here. There are, and always will be, people that let their domains expire. But once that happens, these firms come up, and the addresss become unavailable forever. With time, there are less and less legitimate addresses for people to use, and more and more of these pages of 100% advertisements.

This is a serious problem, and so far there’s been very little to curb it. If it continues, the Internet, as we know it, will go down the drain. Sure IP addresses will always work – but that’s not the Internet. Not to the average non-technical folk.

Nothing raises more bad PR in an industry than launching lawsuits against people that are clearly in the right.

In a lapse of judgement, Starforce threatened BoingBoing’s Cory Doctorow because of comments he made on his blog. The comments, very benign in their nature, outlined the serious programming issues that were being placed on user’s machines when StarForce was used.

StarForce, for those who are not aware, is one of the popular anti-copying technologies used in PC video game products. What’s important to note here is that Cory’s comments are supported with undeniable evidence on his site. Just as the Sony BMG “rootkit” was an idea-gone-bad, so was the implementation behind StarForce.

But to threaten a lawsuit for someone to raise these issues is clearly not a good idea. So there’s a few bugs – you iron them out and move on. You come out with a better version. What you don’t do is sue the person that spoke of these issues to begin with. It’s not just a case of bad PR: it’s simply plain stupidity.

From: “Dennis Zhidkov”
Date: January 31, 2006 9:55:40 AM BST
To: “doctorow@craphound.com”
Subject: StarForce Response to Cory Doctorow

StarForce Inc. response to Mr. Cory Doctorow

Dear Sir, calling StarForce “Anti-copying malware” is a good enough cause to press charges and that is what our corporate lawyer is busy doing right now. I urge you to remove your post from http://www.boingboing.net/2006/01/30/anticopying_malware_.html because it is full of insults, lies, false accusations and rumors. Your article violates approximately 11 international laws. Our USlawyer will contact you shortly. I have also contacted the FBI , because what you are doing is harassment.

Sincerely,
Dennis Zhidkov
PR-manager
StarForce Inc.

My honest opinion is that this is more of a scare tactic than anything. I can’t fathom of a single law that was violated here. It is not libel, because the information is both true and this is a declared personal opinion. It is not a violation of the DMCA. StarForce is based in Moscow, which complicates matters. Finally, this was not written by a lawyer, but by a PR Exec.

A PR Exec that should have known better than this.

Google recently unveiled its new pay-for Google video offerings. It is my belief that it will fail.

Now let’s define failure for a little bit. When I say “fail”, I don’t mean that Google will face financial troubles and shut down its troubled Google Video. No, quite the contrary, I think it will be a financial success. Bandwidth, after all, is nearly free.

I believe it will be a failure because Google will have ignored 95% of avid internet surfers out there. Instead, it will focus on that 5% that throws money on shirts with silly monikers and expensive gadgets that are never used.

How is Google ignoring its market? Well it goes down to what Google Video is, fundamentally: TV on the Internet. On Google Video, you pay to watch TV shows. And that, in itself, is part of the core of the problem.

People are used to TV being free. Most people, including myself, don’t want to pay to watch something that’s been free and advertisement supported since they were tots. Google, and iTunes before them, have defied this sense however by ditching ads alltogether and charging people $2 to watch shows.

But despite the price, there are issues. When you pay that $2 premium, you’re still quite constraint. The CSI episode that Google Video is featuring, for example, can only be watched for one day. That’s kind of crap, esp. since I could buy the season DVD for the same price per episode. It’s also kind of crap because there’s no reason for that limitation to be there, other than greed. Absolutely no reason.

Furthermore, they’re charging a ripoff rate for crap shows. No parent will ever accept to pay $2 to watch a Rocky and Bullwinkle episode, or some dated black and white Western TV show from the 50s. Then there’s the selection, which right now is quite limited. There’s only one random episode of CSI available, and four episodes of Season 2 of Voyager. What nonsense is this?

Google Video also sports some restrictive DRM, which prevents people from watching the shows on their video iPods or PSP. It’s sort of hypocricy – spouting this to be cutting edge technology when in fact you ignore all other advances made in home entertainment and the way people watch their media over the last few years.

I will never buy from Google Video. Ever. Nor will anyone else from my generation. Essentially, we do not have money to waste on semi-functional video clips. PT Barnum once said that a sucker is born ever minute. Unfortunately, Google is counting on it.

When Google became Google corp., it adopted a motto: “do no evil.” Well, I was hoping it would last as long as possible. And it did, for quite a few years. However, Google became a publicly tradable company, and when that happened I knew that it was only a matter of time before it became “evil.”

Oh sure, they made billions because of their IPO. But their focus on ethics was lost, it was now on satisfying its investors. And investors don’t care about ethics, they care about money. In fact, I sometime joke that if the US of A were a publicly tradable company, its investors would (ironically) vote it facist to make a few extra bucks.

Because of this, however, Google has made a decision that uncategorically makes it evil: it will now censor its results in China. And who can blame the investors: it was that or potentially loose access to the millions of chinese web surfers. That could have hurt their investment.

So we, we who are so upset about a government that spies on us, help put forth massive censorship in a distant land. I once heard a quote “Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely.” It remains true, but money is power, and so it can be said that “Absolute Money Corrupts Absolutely.” Who seeks “absolute money”? Investors. And they’re corrupt because of it.

It isn’t really anti-capitalist to frown upon this system we have whereby companies are afraid of decisions because of the fears of the ignorant market that supports it. Then again, Google might of made this decision, as a company, reguardless.

It’s a mess. I’m just ashamed that its because of investors that politically charged youth are given 10 year jail sentences (in China; thanks to Yahoo), and that the people of a distant country are given a false truth of the world, fed to them by American companies.

For shame. Who are we to say we support freedom when the companies beneath us promote censorship and help jail political dissidents.

Update: I tested out the new Google.cn. “tiananmen square” in the standard Google-US search reveals 1,600,000 results; including Wikipedia references, BBC’s and CNN’s revisited perspective on the massacre, and history websites. Google-China has 13,000 results, with all references to the massacre erased.

People are getting upset over here because the government is demanding search results from Google. Google is refusing to hand them over, citing “…their demand for information overreaches.” Yet this is the same company that’s sharing all its information with Chinese officials to better censor their results. Now why are they hypocrites? Because of investors, who as much as they don’t give a damn about foreign users, cry outloud whenever their lives are mildly inconvenienced.

Oooh this blog hasn’t been updated in a while.

Well in terms of life – not much new. I’ve been very ill over the last week; and currently sleep approx. 16 hours a day. I’m up now only to take care of business on the Celsius Studios side of things.

And speaking of Celsius Studios: the piracy documentary. The filming period is being delayed. Essentially, I have everyone lined up for interviews safe for two representatives: those from the film and music industry. Their opinions are the foundation for the film, and without them its very hard to create a cohesive structure for the film. That sentence doesn’t make much sense, but I have a blaring headacke right now, so: meh.

At this point I’d like to thank the following for going out of their way to make our lives easier in the last few weeks:
– Universal Music
– Warner Bros.
– Canadian Recording Industry Association

There are many others to thank as well, but these are our heroes of week.