I recently wrote an article for a series called “Twelve Things That Will Be Obsolete in 10 Years” on the The Mark News.

In the near future, the notion of a single company holding your online identity, photos, and videos will seem quite strange and unnecessary. This, of course, is the monumental goal of Facebook. And they’ve had some success. Not long ago, it was unthinkable to use our real names on the internet, but Facebook has made this commonplace. However, by 2020, neither Facebook nor any other sole entity will be the exclusive host of our digital identities, our photos and videos, or information about our personal relationships.

Please visit The Mark News to read the entire article.

Stop using the Internet. It is just simply not for you.  Don’t use email anymore, because any message you send is stored on your ISP’s server, the destination server, probably on a backup or two in some data center somewhere.  The message itself is readable by sinister criminals looking to steal your identity.  If you created a profile on Facebook with all your personal details, and pictures of your dog, and whatever, then your expectation of privacy is non-existent.

For those of you that are concerned that Evil Facebook is claiming to own your pictures of your dog, and your deep, dark secret status updates:

Get over yourself. Your pictures and videos are worthless, and even if Facebook had claimed sole ownership of it (which they never did), what do you think they will do with it?  Sell t-shirts with your picture on it, or sell DVDs of your birthday party, and not cut you in for at least a few points on the back end?  Understand what is Facebook’s potential business model: your participatory information.  That is, they want to know what you are doing, where you are doing it and when you are doing it.  This is the raison d’etre for Facebook Connect.  They just announced that they will sell crowd-sourced market research data to corporations.  They need you to participate.  For this to work, certain information needs to stick around, and they want to keep it.  This explicitly does not include anything you marked “private”.  If you have marked stuff private, see my first point.

If you don’t like it, close your account. Facebook is a FREE service that allows you communicate with your friends, share pictures and videos, and all kinds of other fun and useful stuff.  Close your account and go to MySpace or Linked In (who’s terms read like a non-exclusive content licensing deal, potentially in perpetuity).  Don’t enter ANY user-generated content site, who will universally claim the sole ownership of your goofy video, and WILL re-purpose it in every conceivable way.

I like Facebook.  I don’t think they are evil.  I think they have a cool product, and they can’t seem to make any money.  If I can passively provide data to help them make a buck, then all the power to them.

Just don’t represent me to my friends that I endorse schlock.

Users must explicitly opt out of being included in “Social Ads”. For those who are not familiar with this concept, picture your profile mug in a sidebar ad suggesting you heartily endorse this event or product.

In the Social Ads tab, change Appearance in Social Ads to No one.

I’m really very surprised about the lack of “Hey! WTF?” that this feature has gotten, especially after the Beacon debacle and other Facebook criticisms.

“The Future of Music Business, Law and Technology: A Critical Analysis of
Related Articles on the Topic of Digital Music.”

Quite a mouthful.

The related articles mentioned in the title were all written within a short time frame (2000, 2004 and 2005), yet also within three significantly different climates. The first was written before the explosion of Napster, the second at the height of Napster Mania, and the third just as the iTunes Music Store was gaining momentum.

I have decided to revisit the topics discussed in these papers and to reflect on the last several years. I wrote the first version of this paper before many had heard of Facebook, MySpace or YouTube, and well before they sold for billions (Facebook pending…). New bits are in bold.

So here we go:

It is a popular notion that the future of the music business structure is unclear. Traditional copyright law does not allow for a frictionless model of information diffusion and companies that have, in the past, been based upon geographic boundaries are being forced to adopt new business models.

In order to create a practical vision of the future, several issues need to be examined. The history and evolution of current copyright law, its intended purpose and the effect of globalization on that institution is discussed in “How Will the Music Industry Weather the Globalization Storm?” by Wilfred Dolfsma (2000). Digital technology’s role in changing the way consumers experience music and the resulting shift in relative value within the music market structure is analysed in “The end of the CD as we know it… Shifting consumer behaviour and changing business models in the music industry” by Dr. Piet Bakker (2004). The article “The Move to Artist-Led Online Music Distribution: Explaining Structural Changes in the Digital Music Market”(2005), by The Carlson School of Management proposes a model of the future music value chain where litigation and the proliferation of a digital rights management system will maintain the status quo with respect to copyright and its benefactors.

(I’ve linked to the versions that were originally cited…)

All three of these articles introduce a vision of the music business where intermediaries, that is any system or stage between the producers of content and the consumer, will have new and different roles.

Dolfsma and the Carlson School of Management are polarized in their vision of copyrights role in the future, but their proposed model for intermediaries are both similar to Bakker’s.

Both “The end of the CD as we know it” and “The Move to Artist-Led Online Music Distribution” do not examine the effect of the potential for new value-added features contained in physical media.

Advances in audio technology, storage capacity and new media formats as potential sales drivers should be considered when predicting the future of the music industry market.

Today, we can see a wonderful combination of both digital distribution of music, and the traditional distribution of value-added physical media. The best example, in my opinion is Radiohead’s Rainbows record. Anyone reading this is probably aware of Radiohead’s “pay-what-you-want” digital strategy and their kick-ass physical project promotion.

There are a few bands that could pull off such a campaign without a label, but the vast majority of acts can still benefit greatly from the knowledge, experience and resources of a major record label.

Even though the points of view of the above authors are different, we can find similarities within their conclusions that display a reasonably realistic image of the future media industries.