Techgeist

Apparently the incredibly strong reaction against an EU-wide three strikes law left no dent on some British organizations. Groups such as the British Phonographic Industry and the Federation Against Copyright Theft are lobbying Parliament to include provisions in the Digital Britain manifesto which would “force ISPs into banning users caught sharing illegally.” Any law which forces service providers to do this and all the data that watchdog groups claim they have are now and have always been completely bogus.

Let’s start with how wrong the data is. The first stat, that 50% of online traffic in the UK is illegal content, could be correct, but to say that file sharing is going to destroy DVD sales is plain wrong. If Joe Smith wants to own a DVD, he’s going to go and buy it. If Joe Smith instead, however, just has some small interest in seeing some movie once, why would anyone think he’d go out and buy it? If he’s so inclined, he might download it through illegal means, but there is nothing to suggest that every illegal download translates to a direct hit to sales. There’s another story …

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This is big, big news for a culture where more and more entertainment comes from on demand services. Hulu announced today that it will be partnering with Disney to provide their content on the popular Hulu.com streaming service. The most notable aspect of this deal is that it will allow users to watch ABC content via Hulu, which is a pretty major about face for Disney. Previously, ABC has refused to allow its content to be streamed from anywhere other than its own site, where users can watch ABC shows such as Lost and Castle (the latter of which is a current TG office favorite).

Google’s plan to provide funding to “support innovation and encourage promising new technology companies” might be a way for the juggernaut to extend its controlling tendrils even further into the technology world.

What if instead of innovating to make more money, people who were about to launch lucrative projects came to you and essentially gave you a percentage of the cut? That’s one of the ways in which Google Ventures could operate. If a company is developing a technology that Google wants, Google could set the start-up company up to become financially reliant on Google. Additionally, Google would be in a prime position to buy out the fledgling company (who doesn’t like the notion of becoming a millionaire over night?). Google would be whispering honeyed words to the start-up: “Oh, it will still be your development team, and everything will be run the same way. Everyone will just make lots and lots more money.” But at the end of the day, it’s just one more awesome innovation controlled by those evil geniuses at Google.

Upon first glance, news that Google is pulling tethering applications from the Android Marketplace may come as quite a shock as it suggests Google is taking an Apple-like position on applications. This could not be further from the truth. While regulations on what can be sold through Marketplace make Google appear to be restrictive, we as geeks know much better.

Being able to install applications from third-party sources is one of Android’s most attractive features as a platform as it allows for an extreme level of openness. We know as computer users that we do not need a centralized portal for acquiring software; we are perfectly comfortable with using search engines to track down anything we want. It is only those who are indoctrinated to the iPhone model who will see Marketplace as the extent of what one can do on an Android mobile phone, and the telecoms are some of the most indoctrinated groups around.

This crackdown will serve to appease the telecoms with whom Google needs to maintain good relations if it wants to continue to push Android as a viable mobile platform. We as users, on the other hand, are …

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