Now even the ads are watching us...

Wired: "The eyebox2 from xuuk is a palm-size video camera surrounded by infrared light-emitting diodes. It can record eye contact with 15-degree accuracy at a distance of up to 33 feet. A simple glance from a passerby scores an impression, providing a tally that enables new Google-like measurement metrics that real-world advertisers could only dream about until recently."


Peachy.

Step 1. Aquire ad companies. Step 2. Wholesale surveillance. Step 3. Profit.

Interesting duo-fecta of announcements this week from two competing retardo-level market cap companies in the computing world. Both Micro$oft and Google have acquired ad-serving companies that extend reach beyond their own properties - and curiously, both have plans to do the deep cross-property profiling of individuals and their online activities.


From the Financial Times, on Google's 'do no evil' plan: "Google’s ambition to maximise the personal information it holds on users is so great that the search engine envisages a day when it can tell people what jobs to take and how they might spend their days off. Eric Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, said gathering more personal data was a key way for Google to expand... Fears have been stoked by the potential for Google to build up a detailed picture of someone’s behaviour by combining its records of web searches with the information from DoubleClick’s “cookies”, the software it places on users’ machines to track which sites they visit."


From New Scientist on Micro$oft's continued push to assimilation: "If you thought you could protect your privacy on the web by lying about your personal details, think again. In online communities at least, entering fake details such as a bogus name or age may no longer prevent others from working out exactly who you are. That is the spectre raised by new research conducted by Microsoft. The computing giant is developing software that could accurately guess your name, age, gender and potentially even your location, by analysing telltale patterns in your web browsing history. But experts say the idea is a clear threat to privacy - and may be illegal in some places."


Spiffy. Inescapable pervasive wholesale surveillance, by Micro$oft, Google, the federal government, and ISPs.. Let the countdown to investigative subpoenas begin? Pleh. Time to start a new internet. This one's been infected.

Jobs / RIAA SlapFight - none of it matters..

Lots of layers to the Steve Jobs / RIAA / DRM conversation..

Jobs, of course, recently called for an end to DRM. It's been speculated that this is less a genuine dislike of DRM (which has given Apple a lock on music distribution and allowed them to dictate low wholesale prices for downloads as a loss leader for iPod sales) and more of a response to the EU desire to open "FairPlay" (quotes intentional) DRM to other providers.

Blame shift to record labels - they make us use DRM.

The RIAA, in turn, has responded with a call (mirroring the EU) to open "FairPlay" DRM. This is likely less about a genuine desire to improve competition for consumers and more about bitterness at Apple's dominance and price-setting - coupled with a genuine desire to ensure that downloads are a horrible consumer experience.

Blame shift to Apple - they have a monopoly.
Blame shift to consumers - they're all thieves. (enter swat team raids and lawsuits against 13 year olds, despite an independent study showing that sharing has zero impact on record sales).

With 90% of the music industry's revenue coming from DRM-free CDs (the profitable atom-bit model of yesteryear), the consumer experience with a CD is mostly better than downloads. You can rip, mix, burn, move songs freely between devices in uncrippled form, etc.

And with 90% of tracks on iPods being DRM free and 'pirated' according to Microsoft's Ballmer, (Real's Glaser puts it at 50%, and the music industry would like to think it's all pirated), the recording industry would like nothing more than to have the Internet go away, downloads to disappear, and CDs to remain the dominant form of delivery. And entire CDs, to boot. None of this 'single track' stuff -- since there are maybe a few commercial hits at best on any given CD. It's more profitable and doesn't require any change of business model.

Ensuring that downloads are crippled with DRM keeps the old model a better experience (if more expensive).

Meanwhile, it all sucks for consumers. Who would like to be able to get the tracks they want at a reasonable price and use them in a fair manner on any device they want - without threat of expiration.

The bottom line is that the corporate slap fight in the media really doesn't matter - no one has the consumer's interest on the agenda. (and where are the aritsts in all this?)

If the two choices are either overpriced CDs with a few songs you want, or crippled downloads laden with restrictive DRM schemes, piracy remains the best overall consumer experience and will continue to flourish.

Now that AACS is utterly busted in multiple directions, the MPAA should bear this all in mind as they crawl in bed with Micro$oft.

And consumers should bear this in mind as choose vendors, services and as they vote.

MySpace sued for things they don't have control over...

AP: "NEW YORK - Four families have sued News Corp. and its MySpace social-networking site after their underage daughters were sexually abused by adults they met on the site, lawyers for the families said Thursday.

The law firms, Barry & Loewy LLP of Austin, Texas, and Arnold & Itkin LLP of Houston, said families from New York, Texas, Pennsylvania and South Carolina filed separate suits Wednesday in Los Angeles Superior Court, alleging negligence, recklessness, fraud and negligent misrepresentation by the companies.

'In our view, MySpace waited entirely too long to attempt to institute meaningful security measures that effectively increase the safety of their underage users,' said Jason A. Itkin, an Arnold & Itkin lawyer."


While the assaults themselves are a horrific violation of human rights, dignity and law, and we feel for the parents and the teens involved, the blame rests with the individuals who committed the acts, not MySpace.

We'll bypass the usual comment on parental responsibility, etc. They didn't want this for their children (nor did MySpace), and yes, perhaps if the parents had been more aware of what the small humans in their care were doing (in their houses, using their computers and broadband connections, and under their direct legal supervision), this might never have happened... If they'd raised their children to be cautious online, yatta... But the reality is that kids are their own persons, and what they lack in judgment, they make up for in enthusiasm and ingenuity. Just as parents are often blissfully aware of their kids drug habits, drunken binges and sexual proclivities, they have no idea what they're doing on the internet, or in the real world. But they are closer to the source than myspace -- a collection of interlinked web pages that are simply in one place and easy to use.

The parents, in attempting to hold MySpace responsible for what their kids were ultimately subjected to offline by third parties engaged in criminal conduct, would apply a standard of assumed responsibility to an online destination that's not found anywhere in real-space -- including theaters, shopping malls, Walmart, strip malls, backyards, or anywhere that kids can potentially interact with 'others'.

The Internet is not some hidden darkly magical place divorced from the real world -- the same laws (or lack of laws) should apply. The kids were not abused on MySpace. That would be impossible. They were assaulted in the real world at a physical location -- MySpace was only the medium by which they were able to initially communicate. That could have easily been Yahoo IM, a Cingular moble phone or through a mutual friend.

In the real world, you don't sue a mutual friend for an introduction that lead to something bad later on that they had nothing to do with.

While we do sincerely feel for the victims here, the perps are the ones who did the abusing. Lashing out at MySpace is a cynical move. Telling is the tens of millions in compensation being sought. MySpace may not have anything to do with this, but they're the ones with cash...



2/15/07: Update: The judge in the case has tossed out the lawsuit. With this much cash at stake and no real downside, the family will likely appeal...