Erudition and Inanity

I am not a constitutional scholar, but it’s my understanding that the Bill of Rights is silent on the issue of an inalienable right to one’s own talk show. Don Imus isn’t in jail. This is all about community speech and the government isn’t involved. This is precisely how it’s supposed to work.

Of course they will, and The Economist’s skepticism baffles me:

For years, I have been hearing avid downloaders claim that people are basically willing to pay for music but aren’t because the music industry is screwing it up—overcharging for their product, and crippling it with DRM. This is true at some level; I would snap up a Porsche at £1.20, but that is not an indictment of the firm for refusing to sell one to me at that price.

Ever since I have had enough disposable income to purchase music, rather than download it, I have made a point of doing so. This means that I had converted from a downloader to a buyer before I entered college in 2002. The iTunes Music Store is all about impulse and immediacy to me, and I’ve (occasionally) unwisely taken advantage of it, knowing full well the dangers of lock-in. For me, the promise of higher-quality, DRM-free songs at a mere 30% markup is a no-brainer.

I suppose this means that I’m not what they would describe as an “avid downloader.” But I would go one step further and claim that, for those who are, digital music has always been chiefly about convenience. I predict that the existence of a legal DRM-free method for obtaining the same, weighed against the threat of arbitrary and capricious lawsuits, will be enough to tip the scales.

As for the analogy: a Porsche is not a song; they do not cost the same to manufacture, they are not manufactured in the same way, they are not sold in the same way, and they are not governed by the same laws. The price given (£1.20) does not bear any resemblance to the cost to produce a Porsche.

Let’s turn the premise on its head. If it cost $50,000 to produce a Porsche, and the company charged $200,000 for the same car, and that car came with an arbitrary restriction (can’t go any faster than 100 MPH, say), and then no one bought the car, you would rightly point out that the company is overcharging and underdelivering. The onus falls upon the company to readjust their business model, and their choice to (for example) sue the living daylights out of their customers rather than re-examine their assumptions about the market is certainly worth an indictment or two.

But if the grand experiment fails, and people continue to download music for free despite being offered the chance to compensate artists for it, I don’t expect I’ll shed many tears for those involved. The music market is oversaturated with would-be stars. The “recording artists” most heavily promoted by the industry are the most God-awful. There is little to admire in the industry’s predatory business practices. For truly dedicated musicians, micropatronage is now widespread, and live music venues certainly aren’t going anywhere. The real victim here is copyright law, which Congress and the content holders have abused recklessly in their desperate attempts to maintain the status quo in an industry in grave need of change. Luckily, free-market alternatives exist.

A List Apart, these days a shadow of its former self, writes this week about how to ruin the user experience. Apparently the best way to ruin the user experience is to, and here I get confused, require that users enable Javascript in their browser. According to ALA founder Aaron Gustafson,

The problem here is not that Lala is using JavaScript, but that they are requiring it. The reason? Well, they apparently like the idea of loading all of the content into their pages using Ajax. In their rush to cram all that Web 2.0 stuff under the hood, they’ve alienated a good portion of Web 1.0 users and a sizable chunk of the mobile market. And they’re not alone.

This bothers me on a number of levels. First and foremost, I’m skeptical of his claim that requiring that users have Javascript enabled is “like pouring cold water in a customer’s lap.” Even if there weren’t a hundred easier ways to pour water both colder and, um, wetter, startups geared towards the youth market don’t generally worry too much about the “good portion of Web 1.0 users” (what portion exactly?) that don’t have Javascript enabled. And who in their right mind browses the internet via cell phone?

I don’t disagree that relying on the availability of AJAX, or even overusing it, is very frequently a bad idea. But I don’t think it’s anything like as bad an idea as he claims it is, and it’s a poor illustration of his points. For crying out loud, it’s 2007. They chose to optimize their website for a slick, rich user experience, and it strikes me as almost bizarre that they should be singled out for that choice.

People make choices about their market all the time. I design to separate content from style whenever possible, and I generally keep my designs simple. But I’m willing to bet that brianguthrie.com (not the blog) doesn’t render properly in IE6. I own a Mac now, and I have no easy way to test for IE6 compatibility. But it doesn’t bother me a bit. Why? Because the sooner that legacy users get the idea that IE6 is broken the better.

This is a luxury and a risk that would be unacceptable on a commercial site. But my personal site exists primarily, at the moment, to connect me to my friends and to help my career. All of my friends use modern browsers (right guys?), and I’m frankly skeptical about taking a job with anyone who browses with IE6 on a daily basis. Call me crazy, but also call me fairly sure you can’t win my $5000.

I bet you didn’t see that coming.

xkcd, the best webcomic in the world, reveals its insightful theory about cat proximity. We must be vigilant.