mcX’s posterous

A new toy from Google Labs!

Michael Fricklas, Viacom's General Counsel, gave a lecture to a Yale Law class in which he confessed that suing people for copyright infringement felt "like terrorism." He says that this was bad strategy on the entertainment industry's part, as was "bad" DRM.

That's the good part -- an admission that suing customers is bad news. But lest you think that Fricklas has learned anything from this experience, consider the rest of his talk.

First, like a lot of people who got bitten on the ass by the magic DRM beans he bought a decade ago, he's unable to resolve his cognitive dissonance around DRM. The problem isn't DRM, he reasons, the problem is that he used the wrong DRM. He argues that there are "business models" that are enabled by DRM, and you just need to get it right.

I hear this all the time. It's truly the mark of a magic-bean-buyer: someone who has failed to absorb the first principle of DRM, namely, "DRM is technically impossible." There is no way that you can send someone a scrambled message, and the key to descramble the message, and then build a business on the foundational principle that no one will descramble the message except on the terms that you set.

And what's more, the effort to preserve DRM involves laws that prohibit telling people about flaws in DRM (which doesn't mean that the flaws won't be discovered and shared and used to undermine DRM, of course -- just because you cover your eyes, it doesn't follow that the danger goes away). It involves laws that prohibit making products compatible with DRM without permission from the DRM maker, even if you're doing something otherwise legal (so your customers can't buy someone else's music player, which means that you're locked into that vendor who can dictate terms to you forever).

This often gets lost in the DRM discussion: we get bogged down in what the DRM "allows" and "prohibits" and forget that DRM doesn't actually stop pirates from doing anydamnthing they want to do. And since most infringing users will "crack" the DRM by finding a copy that someone else took the DRM off of and uploaded, it doesn't deter "casual" pirates either.

Multi-touch and motion-sensing devices have recently emerged from research labs, offering new ways to operate computers. Microsoft's experimental tactile interface takes things further still, letting users interact by squashing, stretching, rolling, or rubbing.

At the base of the new device a "sensor tile" produces magnetic multiple fields above its surface. By detecting disturbances to these fields, the system can track the movement of a metal object across its surface, or the manipulation of a bladder filled with iron filings or a magnetic fluid. A user can drag a ball bearing across the surface to move a cursor across a computer's screen, or manipulate a ferrous fluid-filled bladder to sculpt 3D virtual objects.

He is grotesquely overweight. He is childless. He lives in the chilly and undesirable North Pole. He insists on dressing in a bright-red jumpsuit with fur trimmings. He can only ever find employment on one day a year, and, even then, it is night work.

On every accepted level, Santa Claus is a total loser.

Yet this is a man who heads up a brand that commands 98 percent global recognition. Furthermore, he is universally adored.

How does he do it?

In a controlled research investigation involving uninterrupted surveillance videotaping, a sustained loop of twinkly music, and state-of-the-art ­merriness-determination equip­ment, a Dutch santologist named Hans Bunquum discovered the secret to Claus’s phenomenal success.

“The conclusion is both remarkable and inescapable but also—most importantly—counter-intuitive,” Dr. Bunquum told me over a glass of organic lemonade in his stunn­ing waterstulp, or waterside studio, near Rotterdam. “To become the object of universal love, one must first live with a red-nosed rein­deer, and then gain a premier position as the sole registered employer of elves in the Northern Hemisphere. It’s as simple as that.”

Gorgeous.

Amazing 3D fractal images!!!

Great concept!