This Land

I'm sure you've probably already seen it, but if not, you need to visit JibJab and watch the This Land parody. It's quite funny.

What isn't funny is the reaction of Ludlow Music, the copyright owner of Woody Guthrie's song. They want the parody taken down. How ironic, since Boing Boing points out that one of Guthrie's frequently used copyright statements was:

"This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright # 154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don't give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that's all we wanted to do."

It just goes to show how perverted copyright has become in our country. What started as a means to protect the artist who created, it's now the means to protect the company that takes control of the creation when the artist dies (Disney, anyone?). And just in case you thought the original This Land was just a cheesy feel-good song, it might be a good idea to re-read the last two stanzas, which are often left out when people sing the tune:

As I was walkin' - I saw a sign there
And that sign said - no tress passin'
But on the other side .... it didn't say nothin!
Now that side was made for you and me!

In the squares of the city - In the shadwow of the steeple
Near the relief office - I see my people
And some are grumblin' and some are wonderin'
If this land's still made for you and me.

Chris Isaak

My wife and I went to see Chris Isaak last night at the H.O.B. here. I have to say, that man is quite an entertainer. I'm not the biggest "rockabilly" fan in the world, actually, quite far from it. But he (and his band) really enjoy themselves on stage... they have a good time, and consequently the crowd has a good time. It was a really good show, and I would recommend catching him if he comes through your town.

An Upgrade

Well, I made the jump... I've upgraded the site to MovableType 3.0. I did it for a couple of reasons:

1. I think the folks at Six Apart deserve some hard earned $$$ for building a very nice, robust blogging system, which I have enjoyed for a long time without paying them anything.

2. I needed better comment spam protection.

3. I just like futzing around with the site.

So there you have it. MT3.0. So far it's been a painless upgrade and smooth going on new features. I'll let you know if I run into any problems.

Google, Attorneys and Ethics

There’s a really interesting discussion about an attorney in Kentucky, Ben Cowgill, who purchased a Google AdWord to promote his new law practice. No big deal, you might say, except that the term he purchased was “Peter Ostermiller” his local competition.

Now, there has been a huge outcry about the ethics of this move. Mr. Cowgill, ironically, represents attorneys who are facing ethics charges. Kevin O’Keefe at Lexblog,com compared his actions to "standing in front of another lawyer's office with a sandwich board saying, `Would you consider coming down to my office instead?'"

This really isn't the same as standing in front of a competitor's practice with a sandwich board directing clients to your firm at all. A much more accurate analogy would be taking out an ad in the same section of the yellow pages as your competitor. That's hardly illegal, or unethical. I think the problem here is the confusion about what Google is and what it is not. Certainly both men have websites which are indexed and searchable via Google. Similarly, AdWords purchased from Google are not exclusive. So, how is this different from competitors buying billboards on the same stretch of highway, or paying retail chains for adjacent shelf space? I personally don’t think it is any different.

The link displayed for Mr. Cowgill when users searched for Mr. Ostermiller wasn't misleading, it was clearly marked as advertising, and obviously it might be of value to someone searching for that type of legal service. The only real argument I've heard that I buy in this case is from Carolyn Elefant, who notes that Mr. Ostermiller should have the first right to use his own name (in essence a trademark) as his own search term. But his failure to do so does not make Mr. Cowgill's behavior unethical, and in fact, there was nothing to prevent him from doing so.

I do agree that Mr. Cowgill stepped into a hornet's nest on this one, and it would have been wise to avoid the issue altogether. However, there seems to be a lot of confusion out there about what Mr. Cowgill really did, which is to simply purchase an ad that would be displayed in the same place as a competitor’s ad. I’ve read several blawgs about how it’s this kind of action that gives lawyers a bad name, but in reality, I think what gives lawyers a bad name is over-reaction and hyperbole.

8,000 New Bloggers a Day, and Still Not Much Worth Reading

Here are some interesting blog stats from Technorati, courtesy The Register...

Weblog search engine Technorati says it is now tracking over three million webblogs, with 8,000-17,000 new blogs created every single day. That means that a new weblog is created somewhere in the world every 5.8 seconds. Of these, a reported 36 per cent irritate friends or family with their twitterings, while a staggering 12 per cent attract the attention of lawyers with their biting commentary.

Heh. I still think the blog hype is overrated. It's a tool, people, not a revolution. Blogs are (generally speaking) just a new varient of vanity web sites; just as some vanity sites were useful and interesting, some blogs are useful and interesting. Blogging software makes it easy for nearly anyone to host a site and update it regularly, but honestly, it's no more of a revolution than say, Geocities was in the 1990s. If there's anything from the "Blog-o-lution" that is interesting it's RSS... syndication, finally done right, well, mostly right. But syndication isn't a new idea either (*cough*Pointcast*cough*Marimba*cough*Push*cough*).

The Kerry Campaign Online

Dennis Kennedy has an interesting post today about Dave Winer and thoughts on the Kerry campaign, the DNC, and their use of Internet technology in this election.

As usual, Dave has his panties in a bunch over the DNC reliance on television ads. He's under the impression they are "clueless":

"Joe Trippi, get a clue. Geez Louise. He thinks the role of the Internet in politics is to raise money so they can run ads on TV. Look at how much good all those TV ads did for Howard Dean. You think he would have figured it out by now. The election will happen here, not there. Probably not the Presidential election of 2004. Perhaps one of our goals for the DNC is to smoke out innovative uses of the Internet by Democrats, where they're doing more than raise money for TV ads. Put that one on the list for sure."

As they say on one of my favorite radio programs, let's do the numbers:

• There are 248 *million* television sets in U.S. Households
  
• 98.2% of all households with at least one television
  
• The average number of TVs per home in 2001: 2.4
  
  
  
• 54 million households have computers
  
• 51% of households have one or more computers
  
• 41.5% of households with computers have Internet access
  

Hmmm... yes, what on earth is Joe Trippi smoking?! The DNC definitely needs to pander more to the self-important blog community. The revolution will not be televised, it will be blogged.

Now, let me preface this by saying I'm not a political analyst. But common sense sure tells me that advertising where the greatest number of people will see my message sure makes sense. The Internet is proving to be a very valuable fund raising tool, in spite of the fact that Winer thinks that's a poor use of the net. However, in June the Kerry campaign raised $34M with about $3M of that being on-line. Impressive use of the net, if you ask me, but it also demonstrates again that the majority of the money and most likely the votes are not coming from on-line.

Is the Kerry campaign making the best use of the net that they can? Probably not. Will the net be more influential in future elections? To put it in terms even Winer can understand, "Duh". Of course as the net grows in popularity, and as the general populous becomes more comfortable there will be a rise in the influence of the Internet on campaigns. But honestly, stop putting the cart before the horse. The democrats aren't doing a horrible job on-line; they are raising good money via the web, and they are keeping people informed of campaign info on-line. That's pretty good for the present state of politics and the present state of the web. They're even trying some interesting things, such as the custom "Kerry Campaign" newsreader Dennis mentions. (Although, I think that is mis-guided. Why in the hell would I want a Kerry only RSS reader? Answer: I wouldn't.) But they are trying.

What it really boils down to is that Winer disagrees with anyone who he doesn't feel is using the net and blogs the way he sees fit. Disagree with him, and you need to "get a clue". What's that? You're raising millions of dollars on the net not doing it his way? Apparently, that still makes you a chump in his book. Whatever. Hey Dave, put your money where your mouth is, run a successful, all Internet political campaign. I dare you.

The IE Switch

Wow. If ever there was confirmation that I'd done the right thing, switching from Internet Explorer to Mozilla Firefox, this would be it: a CERT Vulnerability Note about IE, which actually lists as a security fix, using a different browser!

For those who may not know, CERT is the Computer Emergency Readiness Team, which issues security alerts about the most pressing computer security issues. For them to have released this about IE is a major indication that Microsoft needs to address these browser security issues post-haste.