What is it about Netflix that causes critics to misread it so badly? Call it the innovator’s paradox: Netflix forged an identity by building a simple business—DVD delivery by mail—that had never been done before. The very fact that this DVD-by-mail idea connected so deeply with consumers led many observers to think that was all that Netflix could or would ever do. Instead, the DVD delivery service—while still vital to Netflix’s revenue—looks more like the Trojan horse of a much wider strategy designed to change how Americans watch filmed entertainment.

The company’s critics have also tended to focus on technological platforms, rather than what consumers actually want. Netflix, like Amazon, has built its relationship with customers extremely carefully and successfully—some 15 million people now send Netflix money every month. (How many nonutility companies can boast that?) As long as it continues to keep its customers happy, it should be able to transfer them to whatever platform—DVDs by mail, streaming over the Xbox or Wii or set-top boxes, the iPad, the iPhone—those customers want.

» via Slate

I’m more interested in the motives and character of people who offer “information” to reporters off the record on strict conditions of anonymity, when they’d risk nothing by speaking on the record other than loss of status or popularity, and perhaps their comfortable seats on corporate or not for profit boards.  They’re not whistleblowers, exposing illegal or unethical activity and requiring anonymity to protect their livelihoods, or freedom.  They’re not “leakers,” providing objective evidence of wrongdoing or offering allegations that can be investigated and independently corroborated.  They’re gossips, and sometimes backstabbers, whose information may be no more reliable then the alliances they extend to the people they betray.  Or they’re simply cowards, with access to reporters who pander to their adolescent fears of not conforming …

» via The Atlantic

The first thing to understand about bookfuturism is that “book” modifies “futurism” as much as the other way around. So bookfuturists aren’t just people promoting the future of the book; they’re also a different kind of futurist, the way a cubo-futurist painting like Duchamp’s “Nude Descending A Staircase” is different, or Afro-futurism was/is different from typically white science-fiction culture.

A futurist (in Marinetti’s original sense) wants to burn down libraries. A bookfuturist wants to put video games in them. A bookfuturist, in other words, isn’t someone who purely embraces the new and consigns the old to the rubbish heap. She’s always looking for things that blend her appreciation of the two.

» via The Atlantic

American researchers also found that people now trusted the technology heavyweights more than social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

According to the new study, the majority of people rated online privacy as one of their major concerns when using the internet after both Google and Facebook were hit by rows over people’s private details being disclosed on the web.

The study, of more than 2100 people, found nearly half they trusted the big three technology firms Apple, Google and Microsoft” completely” or “a lot”.

» via The Telegraph

Just a day after Google and Twitter called the legal concept of “hot news” obsolete, the major news heavyweights have collectively thrown their hat into the ring in support of the nebulous restriction. 

The Associated Press, New York Times, Time, Washington Post, Agence France-Presse, Advance Publications, and others submitted their own amicus brief in the ongoing legal case between theflyonthewall.com and Barclays Capita. They aren’t taking a side in the dispute, but they do want the ability to tell others not to re-report “their” facts.

According to the brief, the news orgs believe the hot news doctrine provides “limited but vital protection” for those who put elbow grease into publishing the news. They argue that they’re the ones spending time and money doing the research on a piece of news, and that they should get full control over who can republish the facts while the news is still considered timely. (Facts generally are not protected by copyright.)

» via ars technica

Within two weeks, the French newspaper Le Monde will run out of cash. By this Monday at noon, candidates to the takeover of the most prestigious French daily will have disclosed their offers. By June 28, the staff will vote and make the final decision for the fate of the 66 years-old paper.

More importantly, the newspaper’s independence will be under severe pressure.

» via Monday Note

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is considering several ways to help the struggling newspaper industry, but Americans strongly reject several proposed taxes to keep privately-owned newspapers going.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 84% oppose a three percent (3%) tax on monthly cell phone bills to help newspapers and traditional journalism.

Similarly, 76% oppose a proposed five percent tax on the purchase of consumer electronic items such as computers, iPads and Kindles to help support newspapers and traditional journalism. Seventy-four percent (74%) oppose the proposal to tax web sites like the Drudge Report to help the newspapers they draw their headlines from.

Each of these ideas was suggested for consideration in a recent FTC report.

» via Rasumussen Reports

There is growing concern within the press corps that the result of all these cutbacks is less reporting about the president, coming from fewer and fewer sources. In its place, probably not coincidentally, come more shouting heads, meaning that citizens still hear and see their president constantly — but with fewer facts attached.

“This would have been unthinkable a while ago,” said Frank Sesno, a former White House correspondent and Washington bureau chief for CNN. Mr. Sesno, now the director of the school of media and public affairs at George Washington University, said the cutbacks paralleled “the ebbing of the major networks and newspapers themselves.”

» via The New York Times