Tech Scoop - Hot Technology Gossip

You may recall that eBay execs were trying to require the use of subsidiary PayPal for payments in Australia -- which resulted in a bunch of protests. That, in turn, resulted in the Australia Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) saying that this probably broke the law. Not surprisingly, eBay has now agreed to indefinitely delay the plans to require PayPal, saying that it would wait for a final ruling from the ACCC. Of course, it still seems like a situation where this would present another opportunity for eBay competitors to try to steal customers away from eBay.

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You may recall that eBay execs were trying to require the use of subsidiary PayPal for payments in Australia -- which resulted in a bunch of protests. That, in turn, resulted in the Australia Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) saying that this probably broke the law. Not surprisingly, eBay has now agreed to indefinitely delay the plans to require PayPal, saying that it would wait for a final ruling from the ACCC. Of course, it still seems like a situation where this would present another opportunity for eBay competitors to try to steal customers away from eBay.

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Google, Verizon, HP, Cisco and some others are apparently teaming up to put money towards buying patents to keep them out of the hands of patent hoarders who would turn around and sue them. This isn't a new concept, and has been tried before -- and it didn't help much. The problem is that many of the worst patent suits aren't from "known" patents, but someone claiming a patent on some minor feature that everyone thought was obvious. Also, this type of action only encourages more bad patent activities by adding another buyer to the market. Now, questionable patent holders will recognize that they can also just sell to this patent pool, rather than selling to some patent hoarding firm. This is one of those ideas that sounds good on paper, but will have little to no effect on slowing down or stopping bad patent lawsuits, and may actually encourage more of that activity.

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Late last year we mentioned that Google was tiptoeing into the content distribution game, using its AdSense network. The program seemed very limited (and somewhat confusing). Basically, with all the various sites out there (including us) that used AdSense for some advertisements, Google would let them choose from a (incredibly small) selection of videos to include on their sites. The videos would run with ad overlays, potentially providing a little bit of revenue to the partner sites. The whole thing seemed extremely forced and not all that compelling. Most sites have plenty of options for adding content, and this didn't seem to add much of value.

Google is now trying to expand that by getting content creators to create content specifically for this program, kicking it off by signing a deal with "Family Guy" creator Seth MacFarlane, who is creating new content just for this endeavor. It definitely helps to get a big name involved -- and we still think that it's worth watching what other services Google tries to provide to its AdSense partners, but it's still not entirely clear how compelling an offering this is. Yes, having good content in the pool will certainly help -- but Google is going to need to do a better job explaining why this is different than just embedding videos from YouTube.

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NBC is hyping up how it's really embracing the web this year in its Olympic coverage. However, the details suggest that (as per usual with NBC Universal) it's taking a very old school approach -- meaning the web is treated as a second class citizen and that it won't be either useful or interesting to people online. That is, there are some restrictions that make its online efforts close to pointless. First, the videos won't be embeddable elsewhere. In other words, one of the key factors for online videos these days -- the shareability of those videos -- won't be allowed. NBC is trying to control and hoard the content -- which goes against everything the web should have taught the big shots at NBC Universal.

Secondly, while NBC is talking up 2,200 live hours of competition being shown online, it's sounding like those 2,200 hours will be of the content that people aren't as interested in watching. That is, the stuff that's being shown on TV will not be simulcast online. In fact, it won't be available to watch online until after it's been shown on TV (so, hardly live). So, any of the big important stuff will have to wait until NBC has shown it on TV (most likely on tape delay). So the only really "live" content you'll see is the stuff that isn't particularly interesting.

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A few weeks ago, we pointed out that a French court had made a very bad ruling, blaming eBay for actions of its users. The case involved the sale of counterfeit goods from LVMH. Rather than recognizing that eBay is just a platform and has no way of knowing whether products put up for sale by its users are legit or counterfeit, the court somehow ruled that eBay should know. Now the court has ruled on the fine, making eBay pay up $63 million for this exceptionally bad ruling. If you provide any sort of platform, a ruling like this should make you very, very afraid of doing any business in France. You can now be blamed and fined for the actions of your users.

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Slashdot is running an interesting post, suggesting that GoDaddy's VP in charge of managing the domain auctions it runs on expired domains, has been caught participating in the auctions himself, often driving up the prices of those auctions for customers. That's one way to pump up those revenue numbers. If this is shown to be true, it seems incredibly questionable.

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There's been a fair amount of complaining about the pricing of the new iPhone 3G over the last few weeks. While plenty of people were initially enamored by the cheaper price for the actual phone in the US (and in some other countries), this subsidized low price often hid higher service fees (with a locked contract) that came with it. However, it appears that the folks at Rogers Communication up in Canada really went overboard in its service pricing: offering very expensive service fees that have excessively limited data amounts (and no unlimited data offering). Users also get less talk time. Basically, these service plans make the iPhone a hell of a lot less appealing -- but since Rogers is the only carrier offering the iPhone in Canada, it feels it can get away with such high prices. But, the impressive thing is that people are trying to fight back, putting together a petition against Rogers' decision. While online petitions are notorious for their ineffectiveness, this one seems to be getting an awful lot of attention -- creating a ton of negative publicity for Rogers. If the company has any sense of the harm negative publicity can do, perhaps it will rethink its pricing strategy.

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There's been a fair amount of complaining about the pricing of the new iPhone 3G over the last few weeks. While plenty of people were initially enamored by the cheaper price for the actual phone in the US (and in some other countries), this subsidized low price often hid higher service fees (with a locked contract) that came with it. However, it appears that the folks at Rogers Communication up in Canada really went overboard in its service pricing: offering very expensive service fees that have excessively limited data amounts (and no unlimited data offering). Users also get less talk time. Basically, these service plans make the iPhone a hell of a lot less appealing -- but since Rogers is the only carrier offering the iPhone in Canada, it feels it can get away with such high prices. But, the impressive thing is that people are trying to fight back, putting together a petition against Rogers' decision. While online petitions are notorious for their ineffectiveness, this one seems to be getting an awful lot of attention -- creating a ton of negative publicity for Rogers. If the company has any sense of the harm negative publicity can do, perhaps it will rethink its pricing strategy.

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A few weeks back when we mentioned that the musical act Girl Talk was releasing a new album using the pay what you want model, one element we didn't dwell on was the fact that Girl Talk's genre might be best described as "mash up music." That is, Greg Gillis, the guy who is Girl Talk, takes samples from tons of songs and mixes them together to create something totally new. While there may be some who disagree, listening to Girl Talk, I find it difficult to believe that Gillis is any less of a musician than the musicians he samples -- he's just playing a different kind of instrument.

But there's a big question -- whether or not Girl Talk's albums are legal or are they basically massive copyright infringement cases. If Gillis were to actually go around licensing all the snippets he samples, such an album would be impossible to make -- showing (yet again) how copyright would act as disincentive for creation rather than incentive. So far Gillis hasn't actually been sued, though that seems unlikely to last. On the positive side, some big name musicians interviewed in a recent Wall Street Journal article about Girl Talk sound much more honored than litigious to be included on a Girl Talk album. However, with over 300 samples used on the album, there's almost certainly going to be a few who get upset. The article, for example, suggests that the woman in charge of the copyright for the band the Guess Who is planning to go after Girl Talk, noting that: "We'll chase it down. What more can you do?" Well, actually, there's plenty more that you can do -- such as recognizing that no one who hears the music on Girl Talk is going to see that as a replacement to the Guess Who's album -- and, if anything, it might entice new fans to the original.

But, eventually a legal battle is going to pop up -- and while Gillis and his label are banking on "fair use" claims to protect them, the history of court cases on this particular question have shown the courts (wrongly) seem to count nearly any sample, no matter how minor to require a license. This has created a small industry of "sample trolls" getting the rights to various songs (often via very questionable means) and then suing anyone who samples just a few notes from it. It seems quite likely that sooner or later someone is going to go after Gillis for this. And, while it's nice that some artists are honored by Gillis's use of their music, that probably won't stop others from suing. Luckily, Gillis has at least one big supporter in Congress -- and perhaps a lawsuit against him will help bring this issue to the attention of lawmakers.

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