After Supernova, headed down to the street to Bloggercon 4, which its organizers decided to put on opposite Supernova as a protest against the latter’s high fees and too-traditional content agenda. So far, not a great deal new here, though a nifty discussion about user gripes about software shortcomings. A few photos tomorrow. I posted a few photos on Flickr.
Doc Searls is doing a Docnography of participants’ comments. Doc didn’t, however, capture the complaint I voiced about DRM and the increasing monopolistic behavior by Apple.
I pointed out that those of us who want to support artists and listen to them on our iPods are more often than not given a single choice — the iTunes Music Store — and Apple has decided not to allow any third party music player, like the Sonos, to play any songs purchased at the iTunes store because of monopolistic behavior: they want you to buy their stereo music box. So we have this perverse situation where pirated music from the Darknet will play from device to device while legally purchased music will not. This penalizes both users and artists.
“Bullshit!” exclaimed ZDNet’s Steve Gillmor, who said he simply goes down to the local music store, buys CDs, rips them, transfers them to his iPod without DRM.
Which misses the point. The digital generation doesn’t want to buy physical CDs and do that workaround to get their digital music in a format they want that works across devices. We need to push back against Apple’s monopolistic behavior here. If they keep it up, a boycott may be in order.
Regarding liability: Robert Cox, president of the Media Bloggers Association, said he gets emails from bloggers every day from bloggers who are being sued or being threatened with a lawsuit. He recommends that anyone who achieves a level of popularity in the blogosphere should consider incorporating your blog “so that if you get sued, you get to keep your house.”
The best part of Bloggercon, as always, is the socializing with old friends and networking with familiar names. Among those on hand here: Terry Heaton, Buzz Bruggeman, Dave Winer, Doc Searls, Kevin Marks, Sylvia Paull, Matt Mullenweg, Dan Farber, Steve Gillmor, Mark Glaser, Marc Canter, Scott Beale, Niall Kennedy, Jay Rosen, Lisa Stone, Jory des Jardins, Elisa Camahort, Susan Mernit, Philip Torrone, Ponzi, Chris Pirillo, Guarav and Ashish from Tekriti Software (the original developers of Ourmedia), Lisa Williams, Robert Cox, Toni Schneider, Paolo Valdemarin, Frank Paynter, Greg Narain and Bram Cohen.
Here’s how to tune in today and tomorrow. Here are what the bloggers here are posting.
JD Lasica, founder of Inside Social Media, is also a fiction author and the co-founder of the cruise discovery engine Cruiseable. See his About page, contact JD or follow him on Twitter.
Leave a Reply