Is Yahoo! Done?

Posted on March 14, 2012 by djscram

Way back before Google was fun, Yahoo! was actually fun. It was a directory, and there were directories with Yahoo! of all kind of things. Like Supermodels. Yahoo! made some dumb decisions. Instead of trying to be a core part of the Internet, Yahoo! elected to create a “portal.” People would somehow come “into” Yahoo!, they would become Yahoo! users, and could be sold to Yahoo! advertisers. Even though Yahoo! was, in some ways, more innovative than Google, the bad decisions ran deeper. Yahoo! fell to number two, then number three.

Then Yahoo! become fun to watch. A board of directors that was more like a clown car–bringing in the dynamic Carol Bartz, then firing her–it was a show. But we mostly hoped it would survive.

Not now, though

Yahoo! is, by all accounts, going down the patent-troll path. People have made money doing that, but no company has followed that road (that I’m aware of) and wound up being a successful, legitimate business.

The Tech press isn’t even bothering with fake-neutral reporting

Wired is highlighting a much-quoted story by Andy Baio, a former Yahoo! engineer, who regrets ever helping Yahoo! building a patent portfolio, which the engineers thought was for defensive purposes.

TechCrunch runs down the specific “patents,” pointing out how vague and ridiculous they are.

AVC (A Venture Capitalist) calls the patents “a crock of shit.”

Gizmodo runs several stories, one of which says Yahoo! is out to burn down the Web.

Even the more neutral mainstream press notes that Yahoo! is filing now because Facebook, in getting ready for the IPO, is most vulnerable. Nobody suggests that the patents are valid.

Mark Cuban says he hopes Yahoo will crush Facebook. Which seems slightly pro-Yahoo, until you realize that he’s hoping that the sheer insanity of that outcome would cause consumers to rise up and tear down the patent system. So less positive.

What Yahoo! Has Traded Away is Their Brand

The people who are still aware of, and somewhat sympathetic to Yahoo! are in this tech community. Either as participants, or at least frequent readers. There was a reservoir of good will towards Yahoo!, whatever its flaws. But my read is that this well just ran dry. If Yahoo! is seriously trying to re-position itself, or any of its properties, it will face derision and doubt. Whether it wins this suit or not. SCO suffered for it’s patent trolling behavior, but that was before social media really raised the level of transparency. Yahoo! will be more permanently marked. The only thing it will have left, after this, is more patent trolling.

Don’t Delete Your Google History

Posted on February 29, 2012 by danjeffers

Unless you really, really want to.

Coffee Shops That Know Me

There are two kinds of business transactions in a coffee shop. One is the arm’s length: “what would you like sir?” The other is “hey ____, good to see you. Do you want the usual? How’s your dad doing?”

I like both. Some people only like one or the other. Everyone who has come to terms with gmail’s trade-off has, to some extent, accepted the second model.

So Why Get All Upset?

If the hype is any indication, Google has jumped to the dark side with a complete conversion to total evil:

Worst Headline: “‘Google privacy policy: 7 in 8 users are ignorant’”

Says the Times of India. If you haven’t read it, you must be ignorant. So listen to our alarmist headlines instead! Actually, I read it and you’re not missing much. In fact, most people who’ve read are probably about as ignorant as most people who haven’t.

Almost nothing changed. There is some scrubbing, and unifying policies makes things simpler.

But There Is That Cross-Sharing Thing

The sticking point for some people, and a potentially legitimate complaint, is the non-optional cross-sharing of information. Even though you’ve signed a bunch of individual TOSs that let various platforms track what you do, maybe you didn’t want them sharing. Kind of reasonable, given that not everyone realizes that, say, YouTube is part of the Google empire.

If you are the kind of privacy person who is okay with gmail, but finds this to be too much, you probably should protest the change. Personally, I’m just surprised they took this long to get around to it. I would rather have better-tailored results, so I won’t be pausing, deleting, or whatever, my search history.

Also, You Can Totally Opt Out

I have about five gmail accounts. Not all are linked to anything, but I could set up a profile under each one, and use just those services that I want related under a particular profile. In fact, if I had a real need to keep my Flickr away from my Google+, I would probably do that anyway. It’s too easy to cross things up when you don’t have to log out and log in again. But then, I sometimes leave the ice cream in the refrigerator.

Free Stuff Is Good: But Somebody Has to Pay

Google isn’t the only thing you get for free. Many startups count on ads, often using Google’s AdSense or Amazon affiliate programs to provide revenue. From bloggers to tech innovators, these people need some way to pay the rent while the build better mousetraps. Online pay-per-click has made it easy for them to incorporate advertising into their online products and websites.

You know who else is making money from this system? Almost every online alarmist website in the collage above. Here are some ads, which are on the same pages as those alarming articles:

Privacy is a Serious Issue

The last thing we need to do is send huge companies apparently random signals about what we really want. If we scream about a better-unified privacy policy, they’ll stop doing that. If we go nuts over this kind of algorithmic sharing, they won’t take us seriously when we need to stop the next, actual threat. You only have so much complaint capital.

Wait, We Won? Should We Celebrate, or Actually Listen to the Other Side?

Posted on January 20, 2012 by danjeffers

Washington Insiders Are Literally in Shock

They knew SOPA/PIPA was unpopular in the tech community, and most probably knew it was a bad law. But unpopular, bad laws are kind of normal around here. So is loud, hyperbole from interest groups. But the model that DC follows was pretty accurately covered by De-Tocqueville:

The laws of the American democracy are frequently defective or incomplete; they sometimes attack vested rights, or give a sanction to others which are dangerous to the community; but even if they were good, the frequent changes which they undergo would be an evil.

Let us now imagine a community so organized by nature or by its constitution that it can support the transitory action of bad laws, and that it can await, without destruction, the general tendency of its legislation.

What He’s Saying is That Our Laws Suck, But They Mostly Go Away

The Internet Community is Pretty Stunned As Well

The most current numbers I could find are at Ars Technica, Techcrunch, and the NYT technology blog. These may change, but it seems:

7 million people signed Google’s online petition
8 million Wikipedia visitors followed links to get contact info for congress
Firefox users sent 360,000 emails to congress
Craigslist generated 30,000 calls
115,000 websites participated in the protest

But these numbers don’t get at the depth of the movement. Google was not a leader, they added their power at the last moment. Wikipedia was the first of the major platforms to join, but it was smaller services such as Tumblr and Reddit, along with thousands of bloggers, and technology sites that kept the movement percolating and built the buzz.

But What’s Next?

Most of the big leaders are pointing out the battle is not over. The interests that fueled SOPA/PIPA still exist, and they aren’t going to quit. I think there is truth in that, but I also think it’s the wrong way to frame the inevitable sequel.

The interests of these big industry groups aren’t inherently evil. It’s true that the RIAA is mis-guided, self-destructive, and mean. And the MPA is, well, stupid. But stealing intellectual property is still wrong–though not in the way they claim. It’s easy to prove that letting people get free content usually leads to more purchases, but that isn’t the same as saying illegally providing someone else’s work, for profit, is acceptable.

But just because they are ossified, hide-bound dinosaurs doesn’t mean we shouldn’t at least try to find a way to solve a common problem without breaking the internet.

If Only We Knew Why They Thought This Would Help

One part of this discussion that has befuddled anyone who deals with Internet marketing is the complete ineffectiveness of this approach. Taking away a domain name, or blocking the listing for that name on a search engine is disastrous to a legitimate business. It destroys credibility, brand value, wipes out the chain of referrals, destroys the paths that connect the website to existing clients and customers.

But if you’re selling penis enlargers, fake prescription drugs, porn, or pirated movies, you don’t care about all that. Your primary marketing mechanisms are email spam, viral adware, links on comment boards, comment spam, etc. If someone does use a search engine to find you, they’ll keep looking. If your domain isn’t listed, some comment on some bulletin board will be. The link will be shortened, which the search engines won’t block.

If “stolenmovies.com” gets confiscated, you move your stuff to stolenmoveez.com. If you’re using link-shorteners and re-directs, you probably can re-route all the traffic with very little effort. Total cost: $7.99 for a new domain name.

This seemed so obvious that even the supporters who failed to grasp the ethical or technical flaws in the bill should have noticed.

So Why The Passion? Maybe There’s Something Else…

Not secret motives, just poorly expressed.

Yesterday, I attended a “hill briefing” hosted by TechFreedom and the Cato Institute. Not my normal end of the political spectrum. I asked the panel, and most agreed with me that this couldn’t possibly have an effect.

But one panelist disagreed with me. James Gattuso, from the Heritage Foundation (really not my political norm), said his understanding was that domain name seizures would place an economic burden on rogue sites, as the tried to portray themselves as legitimate businesses.

In my mind, I argued back that the “legitimate business” percentage was small, at best an anomaly.

But…

If you restrict the discussion to these public-facing sites that carry an air of legitimacy, then it is true. Seizing their domain names, or forcing a de-listing, does make them look more like criminals. I spoke with him afterwards, and I think we agreed that this could be the real driving force. Not the amount, economic impact, or practical accessibility–but the public acceptance of these sites is driving the MPA/RIAA crazy.

Some of These Place Should Be Shut Down

I don’t know if Megaupload is one of them. But the DOJ went after it, and the existing laws are working. It seems to be some combination of legitimate business model and illegal file-sharing, but the courts will have to decide how much. The internet vigilante group, Anonymous, has decided to “punish” those who dared to attack the site.

Many of us have uncomfortable feelings about Anonymous and other groups, such as LULZsec. What they’re doing is probably wrong, but often their targets are people and institutions we don’t mind seeing humbled a bit. Vigilantism is something people turn to when they are refused redress through normal processes. By it’s very nature, it is not accountable. While the original motives may be pure, there are no standards to tell the vigilantes when to stop. Also, it’s addictive. Righting wrongs is fun until you run out of wrongs, then you start to make some up.

We’ve learned something really important–we do have a legitimate voice. We need to make clear, perhaps clearer than we have in the past, that groups like Anonymous and Lulzsec don’t speak for us. They may be a symptom of a bigger problem, but that’s not the same as medicine.

Bonus Paragraph:

A couple side-notes to the Megaupload story:

Google had long ago cut the site off, refusing their add money in 2007.

Megaupload is back up, on different servers and using a different domain name. Probably they did lose most of their legitimate business connections, but if they do have a revenue stream from piracy, it will likely continue.

Deplorable Is As Deplorable Does

Posted on January 12, 2012 by danjeffers

Outrage Pops Up All Over

Leon Panetta is totally, absolutely, 100% correct when he says that the actions of the U.S. Marines who urinated on the bodies of fallen opponents where deplorable.

John McCain is, understandably, sad.

Hamid Karzai, accurately, describes the act as “inhumane.”

Veterans, generally, are outraged and the Marine Corps is obviously mad. The Marine Corps Commandant is investigating, and sees this as an act that profoundly taints the history of a proud organization.

Only The Weirdest Fringe of the Farthest Right Isn’t Bothered

The muslim-hating fringe writers, such as Pam Geller, are making stupid comments supporting the actions of these Marines, without recognizing how much they are damaging their own institution and endangering fellow service-members.

But…

What they did was wrong, stupid, and to some extent inhumane. But if you can stop thinking about “our fine upstanding service-members” as some kind of separate species, maybe there’s a way to understand it. Killing people is inhumane. People trying to kill you isn’t exactly normal, either.

We train teens to be ready to kill. We put send them out in groups of similarly aged, similarly trained guys. These teens share values, respond to peer pressure, and constantly try to demonstrate they are tough enough, crazy enough, hard-core enough to fit in. Harassment, challenging each other, breaking boundaries, and trashing your own values from family, community, etc., are part of the game.

These guys just went through something that is, in our world, inhumane. People were trying to kill them, they killed people. Afterwards, these young, young men are each trying to impress each other with how little they feel the impact of this event. Maybe one said something, the next one was afraid to say no. Perhaps one actually thought it was a good idea, but more likely each one of them, even the guy with original thought, would have known better on his own–or would have said “let’s not do this” if he hadn’t just been through combat. Or maybe they were all really angry at these people who’d been trying to kill them.

No, That Doesn’t Make It Right

But I spent six years in the Navy. Many times, I did things I thought wrong because I was either driven by peer pressure, or carried by the collective adrenaline/testosterone that comes from being with a group of young guys in a dangerous world. The things people did to each other, in the name of “initiation,” crossing the equator, making someone fit in, etc. can make the act of urinating on a dead enemy seem a lot closer to normal. Not right, but not quite as deplorable as it does from the distance of a safe couch and a few years of experience.

These Guys Will, and Should Be Punished

The military needs people to adhere to a tight code under often trying circumstances. It’s not a place to say “oh, you did that and it put your fellow Marines in more danger, but we understand.” But people fail to meet these standards all the time. Many probably don’t belong, others need to learn a lesson–but once they do, they become even more valuable than the ones who never failed.

Punish them for being stupid, violating rules, and for unthinkingly endangering their fellow Marines. But don’t punish them as if they did something so wrong that we couldn’t understand it if we were in the same position.

Google + Google+

Posted on January 11, 2012 by danjeffers

Every Search Result Now Includes Felicia Day!

If there’s one thing we’ve been thinking we need more of, it’s Google+ posts integrated into our Google search results. Well, Google thinks that’s what we’ve been waiting to see. Search, plus Your World is the newest, latest service.

So, if I want to see what “My World” has to say about Tacos, I can select “personal results.” But “My World” is currently just Google+, and Google+ doesn’t have a lot to say right now.

For people like me, who added a few celebs to our G+ follow list months ago, then forgot about it, we’re going to see those same people over and over. Now I really like and admire Felicia Day, but is she really part of the answer to EVERY question I pose to Google?

Exploding Blogosphere!

Though, at first glance, it seems that Google is just pushing a modestly-failing service onto us in a way that is annoying but not too troubling, the blogosphere exploded. As a side note, I’m pretty sure the word “blogosphere” is only used with the word “exploded.”

But there is an issue. Search is becoming a “start here, find everything” tool. Status updates, posts, and pictures are becoming a much bigger part of everything. Search that doesn’t address all that content falls short.

Google isn’t the whole problem, though. Twitter has been fickle, and Facebook is downright cold towards the search giant.

But whoever is at fault, all the parties would probably be better off working together. Two of the major thought-leaders have written excellent articles on the how and the why:

Danny Sullivan at SearchEngineLand

John Battelle at BattelleMedia

Bad Journalism? Bad Metaphors? Or Bad Science?

Posted on January 5, 2012 by danjeffers

Somebody Thinks They’ve Bent Time Using Spaghetti

I have piles of cables in my apartment, and I’m aware that dealing with them can suck time into a black-hole and propel me into the future, often causing me to miss events as if they never happened. Also, electricity flows through my cables at some speed which is not quite the speed at which light travels in a vacuum.

If I had any fiber-optic cables in that pile, light would also be travelling at some speed that is slower than the speed light travels through a vacuum.

Heather Deal, Cornell University / AP Photo Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/01/04/4162512/now-you-see-it-now-you-dont-time.html#storylink=cpy

When I First Read This Story, I Thought It Was One Bad Writer

The AP ran a story about how scientists have “bent time” and cloaked an event from an observer “as if it had never happened.” The author then talked about Harry Potter and art thieves before getting back to trying to describe something that he/she clearly failed to grasp:

You don’t see the thief strolling into the museum, taking the painting down or walking away, but he did. It’s not just that the thief is invisible — his whole activity is.

Sometimes local outlets hack up AP stories, so you just have to search around for whoever put out the best version. The first version I found, on Yahoo! News, was a bit hacked up, but this version looks like the whole thing. And it still doesn’t explain anything. Worse, it includes the full photo caption which is labored, painful, and just wrong.

Some outlets re-write AP stories with their own input. I looked at The Blaze, which did a little context, but still failed to notice the complete lack of explanation in the original story. It did have a good collection of user comments, though. Some of whom do see the lack of story. Others add some excellent crazy, which really isn’t any worse than the art heist/Harry Potter allusions:

the state I live in has been laying miles and miles of fiber optic cable….could this be useful in what the article stated about needing 18,000+ miles of f.o. cable? If it were installed coast-to-coast? I’ve witnessed much out-of-the-ordinary phenomena–

Me too! Time is bending right in front of me right now!

Then Phys.org, because the user comments are a great blend of actual physicists and wing-nuts trying to disprove physics itself.

But The Biggest Disappointment Was Ars Technica

They have the best-written article I could find on the topic. They focus on the experiment itself, and seem to understand what actually happened. They also do a good job of reporting this as an experiment that will likely never produce practical applications–and notably they don’t use the art-heist photo.

But, they don’t challenge the connection being made between time, events “happening,” and the speed of light.

Here’s The Thing (And I’m Open To Challenge):

The connection between “time” and the speed of light in a vacuum is a theoretical one–based on traditional Relativity. It has practical application when light is affected by things like gravitational fields–apparently slowing it down to an observer in a way that can only be accounted for in the theory if you adjust the speed of time itself. The experience of an observer getting near a gravity well, such as a black hole, would be, not that “light slowed down,” but that time moved on a different scale.

One practical use of this effect has been detecting things like black holes via this “gravitational lens,” they create. Light is slowed as it bends around the black hole, producing differences that can honestly be called time-shifting.

But the speed at which light travels can be affected by things that don’t change time. Light is refracted by all kinds of things, but nobody calls a rainbow a time-bender. Fiber-optic cables are a medium–and it has been known since 1850 that the speed of light in a medium is slower. That slower speed has nothing to do with special relativity, which is based on “c.”

Here’s a Wikipedia quote on “c.”

The speed of light in vacuum, usually denoted by c, is a physical constant important in many areas of physics.

As far as I can tell, from the Ars Technica article, what the scientists did was slow light down as it passed through a cable, using signal interference from another cable. Cleverly, they took the same signal, split it and provided results to an observer in a way that somehow obscured an event. I’d like to know more about that–but not from people reporting it as if time itself were being bent.

That Was The End Of My Post, This is a Bonus

I wanted to talk more about all the user comments and forums–but had to stop somewhere. But here are some of the better comments, pulled from Anandtech, Fark, Phys.org, and The Blaze:

If a photon collides in a time hole, and no one can observe it, does it still produce a research grant?

Meh. That’s nothing. NBC had The Event on for weeks and nobody saw that.

Since wild over the top analogies seem fair game in this article I say, its like farting but pinching your nose so you wont smell it, but still i can hear it!

If I throw a bag over your head and then remove it a minute later guess what I just did the same thing.

But My Favorite:

This dialog from Futurama is the best ever explanation of something. It’s kind of an internet meme, and showed up in more than one of the forums:

Professor Hubert Farnsworth: These are the dark matter engines I invented. They allow my starship to travel between galaxies in mere hours.
Cubert J. Farnsworth: That’s impossible. You can’t go faster than the speed of light.
Professor Hubert Farnsworth: Of course not. That’s why scientists increased the speed of light in 2208.
Cubert J. Farnsworth: Also impossible
Professor Hubert Farnsworth: And what makes my engines truly remarkable is the afterburner, which delivers 200% fuel efficiency.
Cubert J. Farnsworth: That’s especially impossible.
Professor Hubert Farnsworth: Not at all. It’s very simple.
Cubert J. Farnsworth: Then explain it.
Professor Hubert Farnsworth: Now that’s impossible! It came to me in a dream, and I forgot it in another dream.

Google Gets the Smack Down From Google

Posted on January 4, 2012 by danjeffers

Updating the earlier news about Google’s violation of Google guidelines, Danny Sullivan is now reporting that Google has applied the page-rank penalty to it’s own browser: Google Chrome, as a response to the violation of Google’s terms of service.

If you search for “browser,” Chrome now moves from the #2 spot to page 5.

What’s interesting to me is that the engineer’s who protect the Google algorithm seem to have the lead on this. They reviewed exactly what actions violated the TOS, and applied a penalty as if Chrome were a separate entity. That’s good news because it means the core property of search is still being driven by the people who value it. Famously, when Eric Schmidt took over as CEO, he called down to complain that a negative story about him was ranking highly. The search team told him he was an idiot and that they didn’t make changes for those reasons. (more or less paraphrasing)

You can read Matt Cutt’s posting here. Matt Cutt’s is a Google engineer who is pretty much the public face of search integrity and the spam fighting team. He makes the distinction between his group and any marketing team pretty clear in his post:

In response, the webspam team has taken manual action to demote www.google.com/chrome for at least 60 days. After that, someone on the Chrome side can submit a reconsideration request documenting their clean-up just like any other company would. During the 60 days, the PageRank of www.google.com/chrome will also be lowered to reflect the fact that we also won’t trust outgoing links from that page.

I doubt this will make everyone happy, and there are still some significant problems. But I like that search still has internal integrity–and the license to use it. Maybe someday that will change. Once upon a time, network television had news divisions that were granted editorial independence, based on their idea of journalistic integrity. That changed. Not by direct attack, really. More through creating more “soft” news, and “softer” journalism with smooth, palatable images that proved profitable and justified slowly cutting the budgets of real news rooms.

Google’s Left Hand Doesn’t Know What the Outsourced Growth On Right Hand Is Doing

Posted on January 3, 2012 by danjeffers

Buying Links.

Or, well, not exactly, but close enough that if someone else where doing it that’s what Google would probably say. Anyway, this story have been growing all day, and Danny Sullivan finally got responses from all the key players, and explains the debacle better than anybody. Aaron Wall got the story started when he uncovered the pattern of posts by running a search on Google. He searched for ““This post is sponsored by Google””

I’m sure a lot of people who aren’t SEO nerds are wondering why this is a big deal. And, in the long run, it isn’t. Much. Really. There’s a lot of talk about “Orwellian” influence, which seems a little over the top, but I think this is why people really get upset.

Google Makes The Rules

In search marketing, there really is one source: Google. It’s true there are other search engines, and it’s also true that social media, news, and other sources have a big impact in how people find information. But Google still sends more people to more websites than any other entity.

There’s a whole profession devoted to trying to figure out how that happens. And within this profession, there is a wide divide between “white hat” and “black hat” approaches. (SEO, the name of said profession, was spawned while watching cheesy Westerns, apparently). White hat means optimizing by giving users the best possible content, in a way that search engines can understand. Black hat means tricking search engines into believing crappy content is what people want. (But what if what we want is crappy? Google’s Zeitgeist says that what we most wanted in 2011 was Rebecca Black.)

But in the middle there’s a lot of gray. The gray stuff is where a lot of SEO professionals can add value and make money. Since getting someone to link to your website is a great way to get better search results, it makes sense to create incentives for them to do so. But if you actually pay them, Google has DECIDED that you’re now wearing a black hat.

That Decision Made People Mad

It’s an arguable point, and when you get into the details, the good/bad analysis often falls apart. But Google decided, so people had to either give up paid link building, or go the “black hat” route. They had to give up a value-add service for clients that many viewed as acceptable.

Then Google comes along and does the same thing! They say they never intended to, and probably that’s the case. In fact, it looks as though they outsourced to one company, and that company outsourced to another. But Google is huge, and often refuses to take responsibility for it’s size and impact. It applies “don’t be evil” to itself, but often as if it were a small, free-wheeling entrepreneur. It’s not.

SOPA Winners and Losers

Posted on December 16, 2011 by danjeffers

Congress keeps moving SOPA forward, even though nobody with any understanding of the technology, social structure, or importance of the Internet or of human collaboration and progress in general, supports it. Somebody must in favor of it, and you’d think that would be the people who have the most to gain. But the truth is there really isn’t anyone in the win column on this one. Just people who THINK they are. And maybe China.

I thought I would have to prove the ignorance point with a long list and description, but this really sums it up.

Here’s the obvious list of who wins and who loses:

BIG LOSER: Internet and information navigation tools, such as Google, but also directories, curation sites, resource lists, etc. SOPA seems to think that telling people how to find something is the same as endorsing it. So if some guy at a gas station in the desert gives you directions to Las Vegas, he is somehow responsible for what happens next. Most of these tools are either algorithm-driven, in order to reach the scale of the internet, or rely heavily on user-input. In either case, creating a Government mandated level of hand-filtering, based on the preferences of the movie industry is a huge administrative cost. Sort of like requiring that gas station owner to always check requests for directions against an ever-changing list of prohibited destinations before giving out directions.

BIG LOSER: Users of these services. When I search for information, I’d like to believe the results are delivered are the best available. Sometimes I want to find information on topics, even though I really don’t like what I’ll find. Hate groups, for instance. Or the fact that the one story most people were interested in for 2011 was, well, you can find that here. Give me the info, trust that I can make my own decisions on how to use it.

BIG WINNER: China and Iran. Seriously. When Sergey Brin made the connection, lawmakers got all defensive. One bill sponsor said (in response to a different version of the analogy):

“That’s nonsense,” Berman said. “There’s a big difference between regulating commercial activity designed to deceive consumers and violate ownership rights and those seeking to suppress political conduct and dissent.”

Maybe there’s a difference in the intent of the lawmakers, but NOT in the changes they are making to the technology, and more importantly, to the relationship between us, the information tools we use, and the purity of results we expect. If I buy a hammer, I can use it however I want. Once you add a feature that doesn’t let me hit people with it, the technology for not letting me use it on non-Union jobs isn’t that different.

China has pressed the search giants to make fundamental changes to their algorithms. In one case, Google actually stood up for the purity of search. But if that principle has already been compromised by the American Congress, it’s far more difficult to stand up to China.

Here’s The Less Obvious List:

Big Loser: America. Face it. In the long run, America tends to lose out on steady-state competition. Maybe it’s wage differences, perhaps differing attitudes towards rights or the environment. Or we’re spoiled. Or distracted. Our expectations (the American Dream) may actually be the problem. It doesn’t matter, because we keep winning on innovation. From Levi’s to summer blockbuster’s, we keep coming up with economy-driving ideas that the rest of the world wants to adopt. Amazon, Google, Facebook. Apple. We started the Internet, Wikipedia, and Rebecca Black. Modern Warfare 3 brought in $1 billion dollars in worldwide sales in just 16 days.

We can lead on innovation and technology partly because we created this internet thing, a place where barriers are low, collaboration is easy, and information is free. Yet Congress is ignoring every technology and innovation thought leader to listen to one small walled-in legacy business. A business that is being run by it’s senior leadership to keep their own interests secure even though they may be sacrificing their own future.

WINNER (OR AT LEAST NEUTRAL): Internet pirates/rogue sites, copyright infringers (deliberate, anyway). SOPA is not crafted to effectively block internet piracy. In fact, legislation probably can’t ever accomplish this. A domain name is about $5, if you buy in bulk. Identifying, complaining, and taking down a “rogue site” will cost (made up number) around $6,000 per site. And that’s after the big infrastructure hit. Math alone tells us the highly profitable piracy will out-breed and out-innovate the forces of shut-down. Creating a new site takes less than 15 minutes. Shutting one down will take weeks. The only strategy that has effectively destroyed internet piracy has been to provide people a way to BUY what they want. iTunes is the prime example.

BIG LOSER: The Movie Industry. They are being closely identified with this bill, and the Internet is not a forgiving place. They are creating a tool that can easily abused. Already, users are discussing how to use take-down provisions against the industry that spawned it.

It’s hard to picture why the big studios are ignoring this danger. Many are fully aware of the dangers they constantly face over copyright issues. A big block-buster movie is full of potential liability–many studios return all submitted manuscripts unopened because it’s so easy to believe something you see on the screen was taken from something you wrote somewhere. And yet they’re opening the door to exposing all their online marketing assets to this threat. While pissing off a huge constituency of people who have the know-how.