- Blog
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The Economist keeps the faith
The last time The Economist ran a big survey of the Internet (1996?) I bought dozens of copies and sent them to all my clients and suppliers with a stern letter insisting that they read it cover to cover. The latest is not quite as exciting but strikingly keeps the faith. Many of the scenarios…
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Pizza with a pioneer
Roger Green is a media backroom boy, a veteran of many years as a top manager at Britain’s number 2 magazine publisher EMAP (until he left the company last year) and one of the first to understand the Internet’s sweeping potential to change publishing. In the early days of the web (I mean 93/94), Roger…
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Practically a proper journalist…
The nice people at The Guardian (in particular Online editor Vic Keegan) continue to indulge me and have now allowed me a weekly ‘at large’ column which you’ll be able to find here www.guardian.co.uk/online on Tuesday mornings from now on. My first is up now and concerns the hot topic of ‘the public domain’. I’ll…
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Double clever?
Emily Bell in The Guardian greets Ofcom’s new boss and wonders if the BBC might have been excluded from Ofcom’s scope in order to provide a PR win for the new regulator when the Ministry does a tactical U-turn. Sounds a bit baroque to me.
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Net aversion
Owen Gibson wonders why the ad agencies are still steering clear of the net.
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Kazaa busted
Kazaa Media Desktop is a slick, commercial-grade file sharing app, shielded – so far – from prosecution by the application’s distributed architecture and the company’s multi-layered off-shore status. A US court has just stripped away both by compelling an ISP to grant access to a user’s personal data. By going for the users, the RIAA…
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I’m bored saying this
Charles Mann in Wired Magazine, restates the euphoricists’ case for the imminent dissolution of the recording industry. The recording industry is nearly 100 years old and has weathered dozens of existential threats – from the great depression to radio to cassette tapes. It is still with us. It will still be with us in 100…
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Rosen resigns – slowly
Hilary Rosen, the downloaders’ Great Satan, will step down from her job running the US Recording Industry’s trade body, the RIAA, ‘by year end’. Considering it’s only January, she’s certainly providing plenty of warning – she’s been at the RIAA for nearly fifteen years so I guess she’s accustomed to thinking long term. I blogged…
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The management consultants, the toothpaste marketers and the other Carterets…
The Observer’s profile of Stephen Carter as he prepares to assume the role of Chief Executive of Ofcom. Most interesting is the ballooning payroll. The first estimate I can remember is 500 staff. At the Oxford Media Convention a couple of weeks ago some were prepared to venture 600. Here, in the same article, 900…
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The right to be annoying
For some reason, people have been asking me lately about the increasingly visible Trots at Spiked! and the Institute of Ideas. Why are they so cynical and snotty? What is it with the obsessive debunking? Why are they so annoying? Why are they everywhere? So I thought it might be useful to link to three…