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Having Learned Nothing From ESPN Mobile Debacle, Disney Closes Disney Mobile
Disney explored the MVNO concept for years, convinced that given the opportunity, people would rush out to buy Disney-branded mobile phone service. What's amazing is that in all that time, the company never bothered to figure out how to actually make a branded mobile phone service compelling. It started an MVNO based on ESPN, which failed spectacularly, despite dumping millions of dollars into it. You would think that, having failed once, the company would be careful not to make the same mistakes -- but apparently not. When Disney launched its Disney-branded mobile phone service, it seemed perfectly designed as something no kid would want to use. So, it came as little surprise that Disney seemed to follow the identical path of other failed MVNOs: launch hype, quick price cuts, desperate flailing, closure. We noted Disney Mobile was following that exact pattern nearly a year ago (up to the price cut point), but the service continued to hang on... though, it seemed pretty...

Details Needed On Novell's Allegedly Soaring Linux Sales
Slashdot is linking to a story supposedly showing that Novell's Linux business has seen amazing growth in the nine months since they signed a controversial patent deal with Microsoft. "The affect on sales year over year, for Novell's first three quarters of our fiscal year, which ends Oct. 31 -- our Linux business was up 243 percent year over year," said Novell exec Justin Steinman. But so far, at least, this growth doesn't appear to be reflected in Novell's financial results. If my math is right, Novell's revenue for "Linux platform products" totaled $32 million in the first three quarters of 2006, while the total for the first three quarters of 2007 is $53 million. That's a healthy 65 percent growth rate, but it's a long ways from 243 percent. (Novell's Open Enterprise Server is also based on a Linux kernel, but revenues from that product line have been flat at about $45 million a quarter, which would make Novell's overall...

Intentional Software Lives... But Did It Miss Its Window?
It's been many, many years since the news broke that Charles Simonyi, whose claim to fame was his work on Microsoft's office suite, announced plans for his company, Intentional Software, to make creating applications as easy as creating a PowerPoint presentation. This has resulted in some level of ridicule, as there are still plenty of people who think that the ease of creating PowerPoint presentations is actually a problem that has resulted in poor decision making. However, when put in the context of "situated software", Simonyi's idea starts to make a little bit more sense. The idea is that many individuals don't need a big app that scales, but just need a simple app to do what they specifically need it to do.Unfortunately, though, over the last few years, Simonyi has seemed a lot more focused on going into space than on what's happening in the market. A ton of companies have entered the space in the intervening years, offering up simple tools for non-programmers to create...

Music Without Borders -- How Amazon Can Go One-Up On iTunes
Recently, we mentioned that Amazon's MP3 Download Store got the DRM-free part right but screwed up on the pricing model -- the real Achilles heel of iTunes. As it turns out there's another angle from which Amazon could go one-up on iTunes: extend the offering across more countries. The moment I heard about the launch, I enthusiastically hit Amazon's MP3 Download Store and eagerly clicked on a "Buy MP3" link only to be greeted with a "We are sorry... We could not process your order because of geographical restrictions on the product which you were attempting to purchase. Please refer to the terms of use for this product to determine the geographical restrictions. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you."Wow! What's that again? Geographical restrictions on music? Because I am a citizen of India and not a citizen of a country where the music labels think that DRM-free music should be made downloadable? That's just dumb. Similarly, a long time ago, iTunes informed...

DEMO Recap: Can We Make All This Stuff Work Now?
I spent the last few days at DEMO seeing the demos of the nearly 70 presenting companies, talking to venture capitalists, press, attendees (I kept sitting next to Microsoft people) and startup execs, trying to pick out what the larger trends were. There were plenty of other folks listing out the companies and liveblogging the event -- so, as per usual, I felt it was best to take it all in, think about it a bit and then see what sticks and what is better left ignored. If you are interested in seeing some of the live blogs of the event, Eprhaim Schwartz over at InfoWorld did a great job, as did the CNET WebWare team. Ed Baig, at USA Today also has a nice summary.As for the bigger trends, the thing that kept getting my attention was that there were a ton of companies at the show that had almost nothing to do with what folks like to call "Web 2.0." That was incredibly refreshing. It's true that there still were plenty of internet/search/social networking plays scattered throughout...

Do Walled Gardens Promote Innovation?
A former chief economist for the FCC, Thomas Hazlett, has written an article claiming that walled gardens promote innovation -- which seems like an extraordinary claim. Unfortunately, he completely fails to back it up in the article itself. Instead, he mostly focuses on why regulating open access in the wireless space doesn't make sense -- a statement we tend to agree with. Regulating mandatory openness is excessive, and hopefully unnecessary as the industry realizes that openness actually provides more value and opportunity. It's on that point that we appear to disagree with Hazlett. He claims that walled gardens are better for innovation, arguing that innovations like the Blackberry and the iPhone came first to US networks because of their closed, rather than open, nature. That's not necessarily accurate. It's much more likely that both came to North America first because both Apple and RIM are based in North America. And, it's worth noting that both have expanded...

Would A $100 Billion Fine Get The US To Pay Attention To Antigua's WTO Win?
We've covered the long and detailed saga of Antigua fighting the US via the WTO, but the short summary is this: Antigua claims that the US is violating a free trade agreement in banning online gambling (many online gambling firms are in Antigua). The WTO agreed with Antigua and the US proceeded to ignore the ruling. The WTO again sided with Antigua... and the US pretended the WTO had sided with the US... and again ignored the ruling. This has happened a few more times, with the US eventually unilaterally changing the terms of the free trade agreement -- which didn't satisfy either the WTO or Antigua. Of course, with Antigua being such a small country there has been little in the way of ramifications for the US for ignoring the ruling. That's why Antigua is now pushing for the right to ignore US copyrights and patents as a remedy. However, there may be an even more persuasive remedy. Back over the summer, the EU indicated that it might start siding with Antigua in the...

NLPC Continues Bogus Campaign Against Google Video
Back in July, the National Legal and Policy Council put out a headline grabbing report about how (gasp!) there was copyrighted content on Google Video. We blasted the study for a variety of points that the folks at NLPC either didn't understand or chose to ignore in order to generate headlines. One would hope that a group that wants to be taken seriously would address those concerns. Instead, they simply waited a couple months and came out with a nearly identical report that makes the exact same mistakes the first one did. For a group that claims its whole purpose is to promote ethics, that's quite disappointing. It's also rather amusing that the group, which claims to be promoting transparency and corporate integrity, doesn't appear to make it easy to find out who is funding its activities. The latest report highlights how the folks at the NLPC found copyrighted content on Google Video. What they fail to mention is that all new content is covered by copyright at the...

Myanmar Protests Reported by Citizen Journalists, And Possibly Government Journalists As Well
As Myanmar struggles towards democracy after 40 years under military junta, the Internet is playing a crucial role in the fight. News of Monday's protest was reported within a few hours of it starting, due largely in part to thousands of citizen journalists who sent their stories, photos and videos to global news sites. This is in stark contrast to the days that it took for news to break about the 1988 8888 uprising, where 3,000 civilians were killed. Now, armed with cameraphones and email, coverage of the events in Myanmar are posted immediately to blogs and news sites, forcing the junta to play out this weeks events under the scrutiny of global eyes. Well, perhaps the government has started to take notice -- false reports are being sent out as well, presumably by Burmese authorities looking to undermine those reporting the news or to spread government propaganda. However, regardless of how the medium is used, the most important thing is that the Internet has made it...

Court Realizes That Criticizing A Trademark Is Not Trademark Infringement
For quite some time now, there's been a push to extend the meaning and purpose of trademark law to make it more like copyright or patent law -- granting the holder of the mark much more control over its usage. Of course, trademark law really isn't even about "intellectual property." The purpose of trademark law is much more a consumer protection law -- avoiding a situation where someone is selling something while claiming it's actually something else (or endorsed by someone else). In other words, it's to protect consumers from being mislead. In lumping it in with copyright and patents, though, many have started to assume that it really is like those things, granting owners much more control over their trademark than was ever intended. Unfortunately, there have even been times when the courts have agreed.In a recent example of just how bizarre this has become, there was apparently a dispute over the trademark of the word "Freecycle" that's been used by groups who promote...