Daily Digest
Who is who
John McCarthy was born in Boston on September
4, 1927 to two immigrants, John Patrick and Ida Glatt
McCarthy. The family was forced to move frequently
during the depression, until McCarthy’s father found
work as an organizer for the Amalgamated Clothing
Workers in Los Angeles, California. McCarthy showed
an early aptitude for mathematics; in his teens he taught
himself mathematics by studying the textbooks used at
the nearby California Institute of Technology (Caltech).
As a result, when he was accepted into Caltech the fol-
lowing year, he was able to skip the first two years
of mathematics.[2] Receiving a B.S. in Mathematics in
1948, McCarthy initially continued his studies at Cal-
tech. He received a Ph.D. in Mathematics from Prince-
ton University in 1951 under Solomon Lefschetz. After
short-term appointments at Princeton, Stanford, Dart-
mouth, and MIT, he became a full professor at Stanford
in 1962, where he remained until his retirement at the
end of 2000. He is now a Professor Emeritus.
The Ruby way
Ruby is a dynamic, reflective, general purpose object-
oriented programming language that combines syntax
inspired by Perl with Smalltalk-like features. Ruby
originated in Japan during the mid-1990s and was ini-
tially developed and designed by Yukihiro ”Matz” Mat-
sumoto. Ruby supports multiple programming paradigms,
including functional, object oriented, imperative and
reflection. It also has a dynamic type system and au-
tomatic memory management; it is therefore similar
in varying respects to Python, Perl, Lisp, Dylan, and
CLU. In its current, official implementation, written in
C, Ruby is a single-pass interpreted language. There
is currently no specification of the Ruby language, so
the original implementation is considered to be the de
facto reference. As of 2008, there are a number of
complete or upcoming alternative implementations of
the Ruby language, including YARV, JRuby, Rubinius,
IronRuby, and MacRuby, each of which takes a dif-
ferent approach, with JRuby and IronRuby providing
just-in-time compilation functionality.
1
CNBC’s New Online Strategy: Partner
With LinkedIn
We’ve seen TV news networks make quite a few for-
ays into social networking. Conspicuously left out have
been CNBC and LinkedIn, but today they’re announc-
ing a partnership that actually makes some sense.
LinkedIn is the social network for careerists: every-
one’s resume on the Web. Presumably a larger per-
centage of LinkedIn’s 27 million users are interested in
business news than, say, Facebook, MySpace or Bebo
users, and the two share higher-income demographics.
Under the terms of the deal, CNBC will provide news
to the network, and tap the LinkedIn community to
develop content for TV such as polls, surveys, etc.
In addition, CNBC will integrate LinkedIn function-
ality into its Web site. That’s probably a bigger deal
for CNBC than LinkedIn, given the site reaches just 3.2
million people a month, according to Quantcast, but
the availablility of business information, stock quotes
and headlines on LinkedIn can’t hurt, either. CNBC
will add another source of news for LinkedIn users; the
network added headlines from the NY Times in July.
National Enquirer Web Traffic Spikes
On Edwards, Palin Scandals: Tabloid
Not Doomed?
The struggling National Enquirer may want to re-
think its strategy of spurning the web to protect its
dwindling print business. Ever since the John Edwards-
Reille Hunter affair, traffic has spiked to NationalEn-
quirer.com, and new allegations of a Sarah Palin affair
will no doubt keep American Media’s servers busy.
In keeping with the tabloid’s practice, it’s keeping
its reporting about an alleged Palin affair off the Web
to drive print sales, one reason it still not in same league
as other celebrity/gossip sites.
Here’s how NationalEnquirer.com compared in July
unique visitors, according to Quantcast. Note that
massive Edwards’ spike.
NationalEnquirer.com: 906,000
TMZ.com: 3.9 million
PerezHilton.com: 3.5 million
People.com: 11 million
JP Morgan Cuts 2008 Outlook For
Online Display Ads
JP Morgan’s Imran Khan cut his 2008 and 2009
forecasts for online display ads in a research note today,
predicting increasingly conservative marketers will shift
dollars to search and performance-based advertising.
His new view: U.S. display ads will grow 14 in 2008
to 8.2 billion, down from his original forecast of 20
growth to 8.6 billion. Khan also dialed back predicted
2009 growth to 16 to 9.4 billion, down from 17 to 10
billion.
”As advertisers become more conservative with their
ad spend, we think that the long-tail advertisers will
shift toward performance-based advertising forms,” he
said. But even as dollars shift, search won’t grow as
fast as he once thought it might. Khan is calling for
27 growth in search advertising in 2008, down from an
earlier prediction of 32.
Khan joins a growing club of analysts that have
revisited their online advertising predictions, in some
cases multiple times, over the past year:
* August 27: Carat drops overall ad forecast, but
raises online advertising outlook to 23.7 growth in 2008
* August 13: eMarketer plans to drop ”a few per-
centage points” off its March estimate of 22.7 growth
* July 7: BMO Capital Markets cuts its 2008 U.S.
forecast to 1.8 from 3.6
* June 30: Zenith Optimedia cuts its U.S. ad fore-
cast for the second time in three months
* May 30: Lehman drops 2008 U.S. online ad fore-
cast from 24 growth to 23
* March 19: eMarketer cuts its 2008 online ad fore-
cast 6
* September 14: Oppenheimer cuts 2008 U.S. online
ad estimate 26 growth to 25
PAX Technica: Ars goes inside the
gamer’s ”Burning Man”
Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) is one of the biggest
yearly events in gaming, and the draw is easy to explain.
The lineup of developers and publishers who hawk their
games at the show is much larger than even E3’s list this
year, and the games to be seen and played comprise a
list of the biggest-name titles coming out this year and
next. The best in geeky music, including video game
cover-bands like the OneUps, nerdcore rappers like MC
Frontalot, and troubadours like Jonathan Coulton, are
performed during the two nights of concerts. In short,
PAX has become the destination for gamers all around
the world who wish to connect with the community of
games, music, and all other kinds of Internet culture,
and this year was no different. Well, except for one
thing: it was much bigger.
2
The problem for how people perceive PAX is that
there is no precedent for this sort of thing. While things
like ComicCon may come close, even that wide-open,
varied show doesn’t have the type of intense focus and
community that PAX enjoys. Others argue that PAX
is the new E3, which any game writer will tell you is ab-
surd. While it’s wonderful that the public gets to play
all those great games at the very public PAX, there is
precious little news that comes out of the event. In-
terviews and hands-on posts are great, but many of
the booths are stocked with PR people, not develop-
ers. More than one prominent writer in the press room
complained about not knowing exactly how to cover the
show. Other writers complained that doing any kind of
job at PAX is nearly impossible; the show makes you
want to quit your job and join the mob of gamers as
everyone chases their own idea of what PAX should be.
Anyone who goes has an easy word for what PAX
is: magic. The best things, the things that people re-
member after they go home, are rarely planned events.
Rather, the impromptu and collaborative nature of the
events, mixed with a community that has a strong sense
of giving and friendliness that extends to every line,
game, and happening, means that the best way to ex-
perience PAX is to fall into it, and to let the event
create itself minute by minute around you.
Not everything is wine and roses, however, as a few
cracks have begun to show at PAX08. Let’s take a look
at the highs, and lows, of the show this year.
As we arrive at the gates in Seattle’s airport, every-
one at SEA-TAC knows something is up, but no one
can quite put their finger on what. The airport is fill-
ing up with a very specific crowd: almost completely
male, almost exclusively white, and mostly unshaven
and looking either malnourished or over-fed. The pre-
ferred uniform for the crowd milling about the termi-
nals is beat up jeans and T-shirts bearing arcane look-
ing symbols and images. For anyone with eyes to see,
the geeks have arrived.
As the hordes of bodies make their way from the air-
port to the convention center, the line begins to form at
the center’s entrance, and no one is surprised or rest-
less. Tens of thousands of Nintendo DS systems, the
preferred way of passing time at the show, come out,
and groups form up around specific games. Those at-
tending dressed up as game or anime characters, espe-
cially the attractive women, are asked for pictures and
are very nearly mobbed.
A few hours later Ken Levine delivers the keynote
for the show, and, remarkably, he doesn’t mention his
signature achievement, Bioshock, once. In fact, Levine’s
story ends with his first job at Looking Glass. Instead
of talking about his latest game, he talks about growing
up young and nerdy, of being ashamed of his enthu-
siasm for comic books and games like Dungeons and
Dragons. He talks about how the issues dealt with in
favorite comics like Spiderman may have made him feel
more grown-up than his peers, while noting that he was
mocked for his choice of reading material.
He describes his first Dungeons and Dragons source
book, read under the sheets in the dead of night, as
if it was pornography that he was afraid to be caught
with. He describes how the gift of an Atari system
one Hanukkah changed his life. ”This was my Nerd
Siberia,” he tells the packed auditorium, as they nod
in understanding. No friends. Picked on at school.
Ashamed of a growing comic book collection.
He shows a picture of Farrah Fawcett. ”Believe
me, this was the shit back in the ’70s,” he says, be-
fore changing the slide to a scantily clad illustration.
”Me? I wanted to fuck the Scarlet Witch.” The room
erupts.
He describes meeting his first friends and joining
an ongoing Dungeons and Dragons campaign, who he
refers to as his ”tribe,” and how girls somewhat broke
that group up. He then goes on to speak about his
failed script for a vampire movie, as well as a rejected
script for a romantic comedy. Years of nothing followed,
until he found himself working at Looking Glass, a
place where employees watched Blade Runner on VHS,
played games in between making games, and generally
were at peace with being geeky.
”After many years running from things I love, it’s
amazing to come here and see what Gabe and Tycho
and so many others have built together,” he said. ”We
are united by a common element, but it’s not the color
of our skin or our ideology or politics,” he went on, his
voice rising. ”What brings us together at PAX is that
we are a giant bunch of fucking nerds.” The kids sitting
to the right of me, wearing Magic: The Gathering shirts
and suffering through what looked like hard bouts of
acne, almost bowl me over as they rush to stand up,
applaud, and cheer. I believe one of them is crying.
The part of PAX that most resembles a classical
gaming show, the part that makes people claim PAX is
the new E3, is the show floor itself. Filled with themed
booths, flashing screens, things to buy, and, of course,
long lines, this is the section of the floor where the
hardcore go to find out what they’ll be playing in the
future.
The problem is that the number of people this year
has skyrocketed; it has now been confirmed that over
58,000 people showed up for PAX this year, and while
the Convention Center can easily handle that amount
of people, the individual things people have come to see
can’t. For the entirety of the show, it took most of the
afternoon spent waiting in line to play Fallout 3, and
StarCraft 2 also required dedication if you wanted to
put your hands on a mouse and keyboard. This is a
big show for Bethesda, as the company promised some
new, never-before-seen content for Fallout 3 in the main
theater. Unfortunately, the theater could only handle
around 5,000 people, and masses of gamers were turned
away without being able to see anything. After the
3
interminable wait for the game, this is more than many
can bear, and it was there that we saw the first signs
of bitterness at the vastness of the show.
”I got in line for the Fallout 3 preview in the main
theater, as it was supposed to start. The main theater
filled up after 20 minutes and the preview began while
there were still hundreds of people waiting in line. Ev-
ery panel seemed to be packed; if you didn’t line up a
half-hour or an hour early, you weren’t getting in,” one
reader angrily commented.
The best lines were the ones that turned into a
party, and of course those lines belonged to Guitar
Hero: World Tour and Rock Band 2. ”It’s pretty mind-
blowing. I was at PAX last year when we were debuting
Rock Band and it was... amazing to see everyone who
couldn’t play drums and no one could sing and they
were performing on stage. This year it’s so surreal to
see players come up, play on expert, and nail everything
on expert,” Dan Teasdale, the Lead Designer on Rock
Band 2, told us. ”It’s very rewarding.” It seems like it.
The Rock Band 2 booth was hopping throughout the
entire show, and the line was even treated to an early
look at Jonathan Coulton’s ”Skullcrusher Mountain,”
which will have been released as downloadable content
by the time you read this.
Teasdale told us he thinks there is room for a wide
variety of music games when I grill him on Guitar Hero:
World Tour, and claims he hasn’t had a chance to play
the new guitar yet. I did brave the line for the new
guitar and drums, and the new features on the World
Tour guitar-including the button for star power located
near the heel of your hand and the touch panel on the
neck-seem to work well, and the drums are solid and
attractive. My main complaints would be how floppy
the cymbals felt; they bend down when you slam them,
in a way that feels less satisfying than either a harder
surface or an actual cymbal. It’s also hard to get over
being used to Rock Band’s four-pad layout.
The people having the most fun on the show floor
seemed to be those happy to just walk around and take
the scene in, playing games as they became available.
It’s an odd mixture of old-school E3 and fan events,
while being somehow better than both. There was even
the odd surprise to be had, such as finding The Conduit
somewhat hidden at Nintendo’s booth, or finding that
many gamers just wanted to sit down and play Castle
Crashers, a game that had been available for a few days
at that point. For many, the lines and the crush of
greasy gamers was more than worth it; I witnessed one
teenager who finally got a chance to play StarCraft 2,
his face breaking into a wide grin, his arms shaking
with anticipation.
”Back then, a year ago, before ’Still Alive’ had come
out, it was a huge bump up in that feeling of being fa-
mous,” Jonathan Coulton told me. We were sitting
in an interview room, and he seemed happy to have
a chance to sit down and relax a few hours before his
show. He contentedly ate candy and answered my ques-
tions.
We discussed his now-legendary show at PAX last
year. ”Everyone was singing along, and cheering, and
the zombie thing... I had done it before, but never
with such a huge crowd... It’s the greatest feeling in
the world.”
”I’ve always felt like I don’t want to be a super-
famous person who gets recognized all the time. That
doesn’t sound so nice to me,” he explained. ”I’m sort
of glad it’s a niche thing. I get to come to a place like
this and be a rock star, and then I go home and the
rest of my life is still normal.”
That night he played to a packed house, and ev-
eryone greets every song like it’s the biggest hit in the
world. As a surprise he brings Felicia Day onstage to
handle vocals on ”Still Alive,” the song that capped
off the end of Portal. The crowd here, filled with fans
of The Guild, which Felicia Day writes and stars in,
and of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along blog, Joss Whedon’s
web-series, absolutely adores Day, and the duet brings
cheers.
Felicia Day with The Guild co-star Sandeep Parikh
at PAX08.
The idea of the ”stars” of PAX is an odd one, and we
adored an odd mixture of people at the show. Jonathan
Coulton is something of a rock star here after his show
last year, and of course the success of ”Still Alive.”
Later in the show I saw him being whisked to some se-
cret location, flanked by a PAX enforcer, batting away
adoring geeks.
Felicia Day also had to contend with the same level
of hyper-fame at PAX. ”You know, I don’t really get
creepy fans,” she tells me. ”What I see more often is
people who start to sweat and shake when they meet
me.” She pantomimes a nervous person, her arms out.
”Only people who come back like eight or nine times
a day to take my picture, from like, afar, that gets a
little creepy.”
I interviewed Felicia with Sandeep Parikh, who plays
Zaboo in The Guild and has his own web show in ”The
Legend of Neil.” It’s a surreal experience, even though
the pair are incredibly nice and outgoing. They smiled
and greeted fans warmly during the signings, and a
screening of The Guild and Legend of Neil at PAX
proved to be draws. At other times you could catch
a glimpse of Felicia being whisked somewhere, looking
slightly hunted.
I was also able to greet Wil Wheaton at the start of
the show before the general public is let in, and he re-
mained one of the friendliest folks at the show. At PAX
his book signings draw large lines and his panels draw
standing room-only crowds. People absolutely adore
the once-Star-Trek-actor-now-writer at PAX, and it’s
no wonder: he drops inside jokes, playfully bats at his
own image as a professional geek, and is an honestly
talented public speaker.
4
These are the people who become pop stars at PAX,
although the ability to create your own fame certainly
exists. Cosplayers were numerous, dressing like as many
characters as you can imagine. Get a good idea, create
a good costume, and you can pose for pictures all week-
end. There was also a group of gentlemen who decided
to try to create a real-life ”rickroll” by dressing as the
bad horse singers, handing people a letter, and then
performing the song when it was opened, an homage to
Dr. Horrible. Felicia Day herself fell into this trap.
PAX can feel almost like its own world, with its own
rules and tropes. Wheaton’s law, which consists solely
of ”Don’t be a dick,” was vigorously enforced. The
great thing about creating a world from scratch is that
you get to choose who to make famous, and luckily, the
crowds got the celebrities they deserved.
Jerry ”Tycho” Holkins often held court at differ-
ent places around the show, swarmed by Penny Arcade
fans. One of them approached Holkins hesitantly. ”Can
I shake your hand?” he asked.
”Sure,” Tycho told him. ”This hand belongs to you
guys this weekend. Do whatever you want with it.”
Luckily for him, the gentleman gave it two brisk pumps,
and simply walked away smiling.
We pass the Serpent Theater, which houses the table-
top role-playing crew. We walk in and take a deep
breath, check out the giant Beholder... this is the very
essence of geek. The tables are filled with games, cards,
and all manners of dice. There is much concentration,
a lot of frowns, and some slammed hands on tables as
games of Magic don’t go as planned. They may look
miserable, but don’t believe the faces. These guys don’t
want to be doing anything else in the world. Here, the
only stops are for water out of the fountain and bath-
room breaks.
Few sights are as sobering as a room full of passion-
ate CCG players.
We pause for a while to watch a Jenga tournament
on the third floor of the Serpent Theater, and it is one of
the most nerve-wracking things we have ever witnessed.
The Omegathon is the on-going tournament of games,
both real and virtual, that runs throughout PAX. The
first prize is a trip to the Tokyo Game Show, 5,000, and
a set of Penny Arcade-themed consoles. Second prize
gets the consoles, and a ”lifetime supply of shame.”
One of the contestants prowls along the table, studying
each piece, looking for his way in. Each successful grab
results in polite applause, as if we’re watching golf. For
a little under an hour, no one breathes. Flash photog-
raphy is forbidden. When the tower of blocks finally
goes down, I imagine the gamers beneath us frowning
at the distraction.
Jenga felt more like a tight-rope walk than a party
game
This mirrors the first round, which was Peggle. ”Peg-
gle is a weird crossover game, it’s from PopCap, but it
has this odd crossover with hardcore gamers. [For the
Omegathon] we want it to be a fun game, but also...
Peggle is great contextualized, if you’re not just play-
ing it by yourself at home in the dark,” Jerry ”Tycho”
Holkins tells me while we watch the game together. ”If
it really matters where that ball goes, and you’re try-
ing to think about and really break down Peggle, my
guess is that it’s completely harrowing.” I agree. If
you’re lining up a shot in Peggle with that trip and
those thousands of dollars at stake, it must turn your
bowels to liquid. The Omegathon is brilliant in that
it adds insane stakes to common games, and reduces
gamers to piles of jelly.
I grab one of the Omeganauts, and ask him how
Peggle was. ”It was fine,” he tells me. Then he breathes
out. ”That’s just about the most scared I’ve ever been.”
After Jenga I try to grab one of the Omeganauts for
an interview, but he’s pacing the floor, wide-eyed, and
hyperventilating.
The final event of the Omegathon closes down the
show, and it occurs in the main theater. This, of course,
means another long line, which is something PAX08
gamers are getting used to. Luckily, in true geek style,
everyone finds something to do. Someone passes around
huge handfuls of pipe cleaners, and the geeks get to
work. One woman creates a large weighted companion
cube. Another creates a hand-held bat-signal. We see
logos for PAX, spiderwebs with real spiders; it’s amaz-
ing. And it’s happening up and down the line. We’re
finally let in, and then we begin to wait, thousands of
gamers strong, and then Gabe and Tycho get the bright
idea to pipe in easy listening.
Suddenly, a few rows up, a large group of promo-
tional Pip-Boy puppets from Fallout 3 begin to dance
over the heads of the crowd. They move in unison,
and switch their moves every few minutes, but almost
always perfectly instep. ”That’s a lot of puppets!” Ty-
cho exclaims when he takes the stage. ”Look some-
where else!” he tells them, sounding slightly creeped
out. Dutifully, they turn the other way.
The final game is played, Excitebike VS., a Famicom
disc game that never made it to the US. One Omega-
naut beats the other handily, and then Gabe and Tycho
take their expected turn. Gabe wins in the end, and
the expected thanks are given out to the crowd. It’s
all slightly anticlimactic, and no one seems to have a
graceful way to leave. The cosplayers, the gamers, the
table-top kids, the weekend Rock Band rock stars-no
one wants to go. The city is being broken down, and
the world we have created here is almost over. The Pip-
Boys begin their walk towards the exit, bobbing up and
down in unison, and soon they are lost in the crowd of
people heading into the night.
Selfish driving causes everyone to pay
the Price of Anarchy
5
Traffic jams are something nearly everyone can re-
late to. While driving is ideally a communal activity,
where people pay attention to each other and follow
the rules of the road, most people seem to follow their
whims, only occasionally within the confines of common
sense. This urge to do what is best for the individual
leads to headaches for the group, increasing the total
amount of time everyone has to spend on the road.
In a paper set to be published in an upcoming issue
of Physical Review Letters, physicists Hyejin Youn and
Hawoong Jeong, along with computer scientist Micheal
Gastner, look at the result of self-interested drivers
traveling on both hypothetical and real-world networks.
The abstract describes what happens very clearly:
Uncoordinated individuals in human society pursu-
ing their personally optimal strategies do not always
achieve the social optimum, the most beneficial state
to the society as a whole. Instead, strategies form Nash
equilibria which are often socially suboptimal. Society,
therefore, has to pay a price of anarchy for the lack of
coordination among its members.
To illustrate this principle, the authors discuss a
trivial example: two points A and B are connected by
both a short bridge and a long freeway. Here, the total
number of travelers going from A to B is constant, but
the bridge is narrow and prone to congestion, while the
freeway is wide and is less susceptible to traffic jams.
In this setup, the ideal situation for everyone is for half
the traffic to take each path. Even in this trivial ex-
ample, however, what is best for everyone is not best
to each person. Using their example numbers, a driver
taking the freeway under ideal conditions would reduce
his or her individual delay by 40 percent over taking
the bridge.
But as more and more people move away from the
global optimum and take the bridge, the total time in-
volved in traveling from A to B increases and a Nash
equilibrium is reached. This is the point where ”no sin-
gle user can make any individual gain by changing his
own strategy unilaterally.” In other words, no matter
what route you take, you’re going to be stuck in traffic.
By looking at the ratio of the cost at Nash equilibrium
to the equilibrium representing the global optimum, one
can calculate the price of anarchy (POA)-a measure of
inefficiency caused by the lack of coordination.
Imaginary bridges and freeways can only take us so
far, so the authors decided to apply the analysis to the
real world. They calculated the Price of Anarchy for
three real-world commutes: from Harvard Square to
Boston Common in Boston, from Washington Market
Park to the Queens Midtown Tunnel in New York, and
the trip from Borough underground station to Farring-
don station in London. Using a well-established func-
tion to model traffic delays, they find that at an average
traffic flow of 10,000 vehicles per hour in Boston-a typ-
ical number-the POA peaks at 1.3. This means that
drivers waste 30 percent more time because they are
driving with their own interests in mind rather than
a group concern (not a news flash for anyone who has
driven in Boston). New York and London had similar
peak POA values of about 1.27 and 1.22, respectively.
To gain a better theoretical understanding of the
nature of POA in networks, the team applied their
methodology to various types of idealized networks.
They came to the conclusion that, to improve the Price
of Anarchy, you must close off various roads-something
known as Braess’s paradox. In the network representing
Boston, the researchers find six possible road closures
that would reduce the delay in the suboptimal Nash
(selfish) equilibrium. A similar analysis of the London
and New York networks found that there were seven
and twelve roads, respectively, that could be closed to
improve the overall travel time.
While still theoretical, the work has the potential to
aid future urban planning. Since the obvious solution
of adding more roads may actually make the problem
worse, an analysis of this sort could prove invaluable in
determining real-world driving conditions.
eMusic: UK P2P warning letter pact
”smells very funny to us”
The UK detente between ISPs and the music indus-
try hasn’t attracted the same vociferous criticism that
has followed other recent music industry actions; who
could be opposed to ISPs merely sending out friendly
letters to alleged file-swappers? But indie music store
eMusic has some olfactory concerns about the deal. It
”smells very funny to us,” CEO David Pakman tells
Ars.
eMusic has made a name for itself in the US as one
of the largest music download stores, a hub for inexpen-
sive indie music. The company expanded into Europe
in 2006, and European sales now count for 15 percent
of its total revenues. Pakman sees the UK, in partic-
ular, as one of the largest underserved music markets
outside the US; that’s why he’s concerned about the
new arrangement between ISPs and the British music
business.
The fear is that Britain’s BPI, which represents ma-
jor labels, may have offered a ”quid pro quo” to en-
courage ISP cooperation in its scheme. US ISPs have
been exceptionally reluctant to get involved in fingering
subscribers for the content industries without a court
order, but several major British ISPs have agreed to do
so, and two (Sky and BT) have gone on to announce
licensing agreements with the music business. Those
agreements could give ISPs the right to launch their
own music stores.
And that’s the issue. Should ISPs choose to launch
their own music services, would independent companies
like eMusic still receive a fair shake? It’s not a new
worry, and we’ve seen it in Canada when Bell Canada
started throttling P2P traffic (too much bandwidth!)
and then opened a bandwidth-intensive movie down-
load store of its own. Similar concerns were voiced in
the US when Comcast began interrupting some P2P
uploads even as it had a huge financial interest in hav-
ing people watch video through its cable system, not
an Internet connection.
BPI boss Geoff Taylor made the ISP music strat-
egy explicit in a column for the BBC this summer.
”We believe that ISPs, far from being a simple pipe,
can become significant distributors of digital media,” he
wrote, ”and share in the tremendous value that would
be unleashed if more music were accessed legally on-
line.” He then made a brief reference to ”ISP partner-
ships,” which are the ”next logical step in our maturing
digital music business.”
Pakman’s concern isn’t so much about crude prac-
tices like throttling traffic to eMuisc or cutting off ac-
cess to the site. That’s not going to happen. But what
worries him is the possibility for other arrangements-an
ISP’s own music offering being exempt from bandwidth
caps, for instance.
While Pakman’s not a fan of bandwidth caps in gen-
eral, it’s the link between caps and music licenses that
makes him uneasy. ISPs suddenly have an ”economic
interest to favor their own services,” a fear that ISPs
will have to address in ever case in which they attempt
to enter a content-delivery market.
Instead of sending letter to file-swappers, which Pak-
man doesn’t think ”is going to do anything,” he wants
to see ”hundreds of legitimate, well-priced alternatives.
Instead, he says, there are two or three, in part be-
cause music labels are stingy in handing out licenses to
startups.
He admits that the concerns about UK ISPs are hy-
pothetical at the moment and that he’s thinking ”three
steps ahead of where we are today.” Still, he’s adamant
that the scenarios he sketches aren’t ”some fairy-tale
situation that could never happen.”
Pakman’s worries, floated in media interviews over
the last few days (see his similar comments to the Fi-
nancial Times), are themselves a form of action, even
though Pakman says that the company has nothing to
announce in the way of legal complaints at the moment.
But even as he rightfully looks ahead to competitive
threats to his business, there’s also the possibility that
this will all work out well for music download services.
Previous UK surveys have shown that sending out sim-
ple ”I see you’ve been file-sharing” notices strip away
the feeling of anonymity that pervades such activity,
and has the potential to lead to significant reductions
in illicit P2P downloading. As that happens, music-
loving consumers may turn increasingly to legitimate
sources, and that’s an opportunity that eMusic and the
six people working out of its London UK headquarters
would do well to capitalize on.