Piracy

Great satire is rare.

• Today's Wall Street Journal Editorial satire on Google entitled "Search and Destroy by Holman Jenkins" is truly GREAT satire.

Please read it and laugh out loud and shout ouch!

The pen is surely mightier than the algorithm.

The Precursorblog was shut down for most of today because we were hit by yet another targeted and malicious denial-of-service attack.

• March 2nd of this year we were shut down for a half day by a different kind of denial-of-service attack.

It appears that some net neutrality zealots may "say" they oppose any "blocking, degrading or impairing" of access to any Internet content -- but I guess that only applies to people who agree with them.

Last time this happened, I appealed to Moveon.org's, SaveTheInternet and FreePress to denounce this attack on free speech, but alas, they said nothing.

My detailed analysis over the last several weeks leads me to believe that the FTC is likely to block the Google-DoubleClick merger because it will enable Google to dominate online advertising and dramatically increase the opportunity for market collusion and price manipulation in the market for consumer click data, ad-performance tools, ad-brokering and ad-exchanges.

Antitrust is fact-specific and evidence-driven. To understand the true antitrust outlook for a merger one needs to become familiar with the core facts of the case. To date, media and investment coverage of this merger has been remarkably superficial.

• The executive summary and my new 35-page white paper: "Googleopoly: the Google-DoubleClick Anti-Competitive Case" can be found at Googleopoly.net. An audio file of my conference call on this merger outlook will also be on Googleopoly.net. The analysis and conclusions are driven by pages and pages of facts and evidence.
• The purpose of the paper is to present the detailed case theory, argumentation and evidence of why the merger is anti-competitive and harms consumers, content providers and advertisers.
• The paper:
• Defines the market;
• Explains why Google-DoubleClick are competitors;
• Explains why startups, Yahoo and Microsoft can't compete with Google in search;
• Spotlights the four anti-competitive network effects of the merger; and
• Shows how the merger harms consumers, content providers and advertisers.

I see three big takeaways from my white paper.

First, the more people learn about this merger the more concern they will develop.

I have been watching with some amusement all of the SaveTheInternet-launched blogilantes ranting about the prospect of Internet backbone networks like AT&T or others, becoming a filtering technology solution to Hollywood's problem of rampant content piracy on the Internet.

Why am I amused?

• Because net neutrality proponents are so predictably knee jerk in their reaction to anything that they see as a threat to their datatopian ideal of a net free of any broadband competition, differentiation or diversity of choice.
• Net neutrality proponents have such a bad case of "myneutralopia" that they can't see the proverbial forest for the trees.
• Over the last year, net neutrality proponents have had to make an increasing number of big concessions about what "bit discrimination" is acceptable in order to remain credible on Capitol Hill.
• They have had to concede and support network management "discrimination" of bits:
• To filter out viruses, filtering which is essential to protect the Internet and users from Net blackouts or shutdowns;
• To filter out illegal spam, so the Internet and email remains unclogged and useful; and
• To allow for law enforcement under CALEA, the ability to surveil criminal and terrorist activity on the Internet.
• If all that network managment "discrimination of bits" is OK,
• Then why isn't it OK for these same network managers to filter traffic for pirated content, i.e. trafficking in stolen goods?
• In other words, if it is OK to filter the Internet for the misdemeanors and felonies of spreading viruses and spam, and it is longstanding law for the Goverment to be able to surveil the Internet to detect criminal behavior, how is new network filtering for illegal pirated content any different or any less necessary?

Once again, the net neutrality crowd's kneejerk reaction is to side with lawbreakers rather than with every day citizens and users of the Internet who are all ultimately harmed by allowing Internet-enabled crimes to go undetected and unnpunished.

Can you believe it?

Google launches its new public policy blog today and the NetCompetition/Precursorblog is not one of the blog links under "What We Are Reading!" Horrors!

First of all, it is not very "authentic" of the Google bloggers to not admit that they regularly read Precursorblog -- we know they do!

• Of course they do.
• It's just one of those guilty pleasures that they do behind closed doors because it is not politically correct at Google to expose one's mind to conservative or free market thoughts.  

Second, don't you believe for a minute that Google does not want to know what their latest public policy or PR vulnerability is.

The following is the comment I posted to Google's first "authentic" blog post on net neutrality in Google's new public policy blog:

Welcome to the blogosphere! We congratulate Google for joining the NN debate more openly using your own "authentic" voice and not those of your surrogates. It is also about time for Google to be more specific on the issue of net neutrality.

Scotland's Sunday Herald reports that : "INTERNET SEARCH engine Google is understood to have reached deals with several large UK news groups over carrying their content on Google News."

This news is on the heels of Google settling with Agence Presse and the Associated Press in separate settlements over IP theft.

• Three data points!
• Seems like an emerging pattern of tacit admission of guilt to rampant IP Kleptomania.   

The real question is:

• Has Google made the first step to recovery from it's IP kleptomania by admiting it has an addiction problem?
• Probably not.
• Most everyone has heard that to truly recover from an addiction, like Google's pathological theft of everyone's intellectual property, one has to be able to publicly admit a problem exists and is hurting others.
• Unfortunately, Google seems to still be in denial.
• Where's the public mea culpa?
• Sneaking back room settlements/bribes to make a problem go away does not inspire any trust that the stealing will stop.
• Where's the settlement with:
• Viacom for its YouTube thefts?
• With the studios for aiding and abetting illegal downloading of pirated movies?
• Publishers and authors for copying their works without compensation?
• For trademark owners who have to pay only Google for keyword extortion so competitor's can't buy competitor's trademarks to send traffic to their site?

Come clean Google.  

Reuters reports that "a federal judge ordered Google to face a jury trial in a trademark infringement suit that aims at the main source of the company's revenue."

• The Federal judge previously had denied Google's motion to dismiss this case.

Why does this matter?

• Google does not want to go to trial on any of the legion of IP theft lawsuits they face... because they fear discovery by clever trial attorneys who will try to get access to executive emails that will show that use of other companies intellectual property for free is standard business practice at Google.
• Google also fears that they can't buy off everyone, because if one company, like American Blind and Wallpaper Factory, does not succumb to Google's settlement bribes to make the case go away...
• it will embolden other companies, whose IP has been violated by serial IP thief Google... to come out of the woodwork to testify or file class action suits against Google.

I also discovered a new and relevant fact in my ongoing research -- that I believe will be used succesfully against Google in this case.

eGoogle-YouTube was sued yet again for rampant copyright infringement in U.S. District Court in New York.

• See www.youtubeclassaction.com

Plaintiffs, including the English Football Association Premier League and others said in their court filing that Google-YouTube is "pursuing a deliberate strategy of engaging in, permitting, encouraging, and facilitating massive copyright infringement" in order to increase the value of Google by generating more traffic which it could monetize without having to pay for.

Why is this British suit particularly interesting? Remember the fact that Google already has 75% share of the search market in the UK?

I always take time to read interviews with CEOs because I always learn something.

• The USA Today cover story interview with Steve Ballmer of April 30th was no exception.

What did he say that was relevant to the Google-DoubleClick?

First, he made the case why the Google-DoubleClick merger is a big deal:

• "I do think that it would be worth the regulators taking time to understand this market, much the way they took the time to understand other parts of the technology business, because the whole future of the media and advertising will move to the Internet. "
• "What we think of television today, what we think of newspapers, magazines, you name it -- all of these things are going to move to the Internet and be funded by advertising. And so we are talking about a pretty important part of ... people's basic lives." 
• What this means is that Google-Doubleclick is about the evolution and the future of advertising. 

In response to a question about being third in search -- Ballmer said: