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Intellectual Property / Technology / Web — No Comments
14
May 10

Hollywood’s Injunction to Disconnect The Pirate Bay (This Time in Germany)

Today I was discussing the recent LimeWire copyright infringement decision with a colleague of mine, when he remarked “I want the Pirate Bay shut down too.” Then I realized that some of you may have missed the latest news. According to an article on TorrentFreak, a group of major Hollywood studios have obtained a preliminary injunction from the Hamburg District Court in Germany against The Pirate Bay’s web host, CB3ROB, prohibiting them from connecting the Pirate Bay’s web servers to the Internet.

You can read more about this at Torrentfreak. However, for more information I recommend checking out this article over at The Register in the UK, where representatives from the web host say they know nothing of this injunction, and even go so far as to refer to The Pirate Bay as “fully legit.”

The sad part is, that if the Pirate Bay gets disconnected, it’s almost certain we’ll see it pop right back up in some other country on another web service. I hate to say it, but perhaps it’s time we consider actually putting together laws that require ISPs to block access to sites that are known to be operating illegally. Otherwise, it’s just going to continue to be a game of whack-a-mole.

Intellectual Property / Music / Technology / Web — 2 Comments
13
May 10

LimeWire Has Officially Been Deemed Illegal (It’s About Time)

LimeLimeWire has finally been found illegal, liable for copyright infringement, a bunch of thieves, etc.

The news of this has been all over the web (WSJ has one of the best pieces of coverage), but I think Patrick Ross of the Copyright Alliance has one of the best responses to it on their blog.

I left my thoughts on the Copyright Alliance’s site, but thought it was worth sharing here as well. So, consider this my official response to the news.

“This is one of the best pieces of news I’ve seen reported in a long time. It’s about time this happened. I remember a few years ago, I was talking to some people I knew and found out that they don’t ever buy music – instead they only download from Limewire (or did at the time). The thing is, when I told them that what they were doing was illegal, they had no idea. Their response was “but I bought some pro version and a plan.” It was only after explaining to them that it still was unlicensed and nothing went to any of the artists or creators that they saw just how misled they had been.

Limewire’s entire business plan was built around the theft of copyrighted materials, and as you said, they were just fine with that. It’s good to see that the Judicial System has stepped up and given them the smack they so deserve.”

It’s about time.

Web — No Comments
11
May 10

Find a Barrier and Destroy It

This article is written mostly with a web site in mind, but you can apply the same basic philosophy to pretty much anything in the world and your life. The philosophy is this: things will never get better until someone (hopefully you) finds where the problems are, identifies them as problems, and removes them.

On a web site we have the distinct advantage of being able to see pretty much everything that happens within its borders. By using analytics software like Google Analytics, Coremetrics or (my favorite) Omniture SiteCatalyst it’s extraordinarily easy for web designers, programmers and marketers to watch what users are doing with your site. The problem, however, is that most of these packages have a tremendous amount of data that you can look through. So, what your focus needs to be is to determine what information you’re looking for and focus on that.

For the purposes of this discussion, we’re going to focus on giving the visitor a remarkable experience. What is a remarkable experience? It’s one in which the user doesn’t want to leave you site until the goal is achieved. In my opinion, it’s not about flashiness or spectacle, nor about guiding the user through the loopholes you might want them to go through for add-on sales, extra page views, etc. Instead it’s about determining why is this person on my site and how do I get them to leave fulfilled?

That is your goal. If they are fulfilled they will return, and they will tell others to come as well.  If your business model is sound, good will come of this approach.

As for the analytics, however, the question remains how do I fulfill my visitors goals? What is my purpose?

Continue reading →

Intellectual Property / Music / Publishing / Technology / Web / Writing — No Comments
5
May 10

My New Book: “Starving the Artist” Is Now Available

If you’ve been following my updates here or on Twitter, you are likely aware that over the last nine months or so I’ve been working on a new, nonfiction book, discussing the value of creative works.  The book, Starving the Artist, focuses on how in today’s Internet age where information can be transferred for a negligible amount of money (basically for free), the underlying creation that makes up the music, movies, books, art and other types of media that we enjoy, is being viewed as something that should be free as well.  A lot of this comes from the thought process that the actual cost of a product should be determined in great part to the physical cost of the packaged good, as well as the general philosophy of those that argue “Information should be free.”

The full title of the book is Starving the Artist: How the Internet Culture of “Free” Threatens to Exterminate the Creative Class and What Can Be Done to Save It.  It’s not a book about copyright law or an argument that “free is evil” – instead it’s a discussion of our current state of how we value other people’s work and creations, and how it should not be up to us as consumers to decide whether or not we want to pay what the creator is asking (if they are asking for anything at all). In some ways it’s a response to Chris Anderson’s Free: The Future of a Radical Price and tangential to Andrew Keen’s The Cult of the Amateur.

Continue reading →

Marketing / Web — No Comments
4
May 10

Where Will I Be Speaking This Summer?

This summer I’m scheduled to present at two different e-commerce conferences, Internet Retailer in Chicago and e-Tail in Baltimore.  Here are the details.

Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition (IRCE) 2010

Topic: The Anatomy of a Successful Twitter Campaign
When: June 10, 2010 2:45 PM-3:15 PM
Where: McCormick Place West – Chicago, IL

Description:

Tweeting is not just sending messages to consumers who have signed up for them. To be a successful Twitterer, a retailer must possess a plan that includes clear objectives, useful information, attractive offers, and the ability to talk and listen. Our speaker, whose company MusicNotes.com has been tweeting daily for two years, will discuss how MusicNotes determined goals, how it created a plan of execution, what Twittering requires from management and staff, what MusicNotes has learned as its Twitter program has evolved, its plans for more tweeting and what it’s gotten out of tweeting.

E-Tail East

Topic: Panel Discussion: Redesigning Your Site to Increase Conversion Rates & Better Engage Customers
When: August 11, 2010 1:50 PM
Where: Hilton Baltimore

Description:

When is the right time for a redesign? And how do you go about identifying your strategic goals? Our panelists have all recently undergone site enhancements or full site redesigns. They will take you through the process of setting their vision, planning ahead, and overcoming many of the unforeseen obstacles. They’ll also discuss how they employed customer feedback into their strategy to ensure they were delivering the most relevant functionalities.

  • Creating a redesign roadmap – outlining your core redesign objectives, method and design considerations
  • Ensuring your redesign is aligned with your overall customer experience strategy
  • Allocating the budget and internal resources that you will need to reach your project goals on time
  • Best practices for site redesign from the home page, product page to checkout
  • Small changes that can make a big impact
  • What works and what doesn’t
  • Developing the features and content that will be the backbone of your new site
  • Will your new site include web 2.0 functionalities?
  • Examining the ease of your checkout process and where are customers abandoning
  • Ridding your checkout of distractions

Note this is a panel discussion that also includes Josh Himwich, Director of eCommerce Solutions for Diapers.com and Ralph Mondeaux, VP of Website Marketing for Overstock.com.

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4
May 10

My Recent Omniture / Adobe Webcast

I recently helped out with a webcast / webinar with Omniture (an Adobe Company) to talk about how you can increase e-commerce revenue by simply providing relevant content and search results.  Most of what I cover goes through how we use SiteCatalyst in conjunction with SiteSearch to offer Musicnotes.com customers the products they want, and to be sure that they find it when they are looking for it.

You can watch the presentation here. Note, my part starts at about 20 minutes in.

Web — No Comments
8
Apr 10

Bill Aicher Talks iPad

I ordered an iPad for release-date-delivery.  It’s the first time I’ve ever actually purchased an Apple device (although I did get an iPod for free once). Watch the video below for my rambling reactions.

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