Wednesday, October 16, 2002

What's Coming Out of Canada? Jack Kapica up at the Globe and Mail has posted "10 rules of e-business failure, a list inspired by the recording industry's imaginative approach," with suggestions like: Lie: Go on Kazaa, count the MP3 versions of songs you produced, old and new, and multiply that number by the current retail price of a CD; howl that you are losing a fortune. Forget that a Buddy Holly album sold for $2.95 in 1958; you sell records for much more now, and that's the price you use when calculating your losses--it's more impressive. Insult your market: After calling your customers "pirates," antagonize them further by threatening to release a flood of "empty" MP3 files to frustrate swapping. Do not understand the technical reasons why this won't work. Threaten to hack into the P2P networks, like real criminals. Forget that some of these networks are based in foreign countries, which (for reasons you also cannot understand) do not subscribe to your system of justice. Then say you will launch denial-of-service attacks on pimply-faced file-swappers, even if they live in those other countries. And everyone's favorite Canadian, Colin Mochrie, is in a commercial that we'd all like to see. Thanks to GMSV for the links. 6:57:26 PM     What do you think? ()

What Do You Do in This Situation? While they were in state prison, three of the five Harlem teenagers convicted in the 1989 rape of a jogger in Central Park insisted that jury verdicts, history books and their own videotaped statements had it entirely wrong: they actually had nothing to do with the attack. Their persistence in claiming innocence, instead of conveying remorse for the assault, cost them their best chance to reduce their prison terms, according to parole records made public yesterday. Each of the three maintained his innocence at separate parole hearings in the 1990's, long before a murderer and serial rapist stepped forward in January to say that he alone was responsible for the attack. This is like something out of Kafka. 8:26:46 AM     What do you think? ()

© Copyright 2003 Morgan N. Sandquist. Last update: 11/2/03; 10:29:45 AM.

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