Jun 07 2009
News Round-up — Week Ending June 5
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- The Electronic Frontier Foundation released a “terms of service” tracker earlier this week. The tracker chronicles older and new terms of service agreements, side by side, and highlights changed provisions. The TOSBack.org site was created in part from an outgrowth of Facebook’s change in its service agreement in February that, under a broad interpretation, provided that Facebook with a license to its members’ uploaded content even after termination of membership. Following criticism in the media and by its members, Facebook backed down and provided for a termination of the license. But the episode revealed the difficulty end users have in evaluating how revised terms of service provisions can have real impact. The “terms of service” tracker currently tracks 44 sites, including Facebook, Google, Wordpress, Data.gov, YouTube, GoDaddy, and eBay.
- For years, content providers have provided information to viewers for free by depending on advertising sales to support its websites. With the decline of the advertising market, advertisers have cut back on spending, forcing content providers to rethink their business model. Many websites are returning to previously used revenue models, including charging for premium services and selling real or virtual goods on its sites. GigaOM, a network of tech-oriented blogs, is one of the latest examples of this trend. GigaOM is charging for a premium subscription research service, which includes more content and analysis, while continuing to provide its basic content for free. We expect to see more business changes of this type in the future
- The increase in digital media possibilities has led traditional storefront retailers to make efforts to capitalize on digital space. Last September, Best Buy bought Napster for $121 million. Now, Best Buy is supplying capital for a new digital media investment fund managed by Fuse Capital. By doing so, Best Buy will be able to hedge its profit opportunities in this fast-changing economy with both its core retail business and its investments in digital media.
- Internet advertisers have been using trackers to follow around users. But now federal regulators are tracking the online advertisers around to ensure that they are being fair to consumers. According to Jessica Rich, the Assistant Director of the Federal Trade Commission’s Privacy & Identity Protection (USPIRG) arm, “[t]he FTC is concerned that data collection is disproportionate to the benefits that are achieved.” In December, the FTC released a draft of behavioral guidelines, calling for more transparency and user control, and allowing opt-ins for sensitive data. Few people actually opt out, however, even when given the opportunity. Yahoo told Congress last year that only 75,000 users a month even visited its privacy page to opt out of targeted ads. Microsoft’s Mike Hintze says that it is unrealistic and that if users are not going to bother to opt out, they are unlikely to opt in. He suggests that more consumer education is necessary, but most consumers just do not care.
- A recent study confirms DRM technology sometimes it makes pirates of even those who are attempting to make legal uses of content. DRM does not discriminate between preventing illegal versus legal uses. As a result, even users who want to use the content for legal purposes must violate anticircumvention laws and in essence become pirates to accomplish their goals. Advocates of the DRM technology assert that despite the inability to accommodate legal uses, there is not an anti-piracy solution that would be able to accommodate all possible legal exceptions. Unfortunately, this has left even legal content users forced to find other means, including piracy, to get around the DRM protection.
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