The Flicker Blog and Podcast

As a consequence of a discussion about peer-to-peer file sharing on the Tech-House Mailing List, I became aware of a study completed by Felix Oberholzer of the Harvard Business School. The document investigates the impact that peer-to-peer networks such as Napster etc have had on album sales in the US.

Apparently, illegal downloads have had virtually zero impact on album sales in the US. In fact, it is suggested that downloads actually help encourage sales. Those who download tracks and don’t buy the respective album, would not have bought it anyway – apparently.

Oddly, I don’t think of this as positive news for recording artists. With the current setup of the music industry, it’s only the labels that make any money.

Theoretically, the internet provides a great distribution method for any artist – and besides the marketing muscle; it’s only the distribution that a record company really offers the artist these days. With the development of PC based recording and production software, the traditional, expensive recording studio is increasingly obsolete.

Still – you make your tracks; and you could theoretically get them to millions of users. But – how do you get noticed or paid? Without the marketing clout of the industry heavyweights, I wonder how much demand there is on Kazaa for tracks from artists such as Flicker? Even if there was a huge demand – would downloads have any effect on the sales of vinyl (CDs rarely being produced by smaller labels in this genre)?

Went to a rather fascinating presentation at the Oxford Internet Institute today.
Dr Barbara Simons presented the findings (or at least tried to) of a paper she had co-authored for the American Department of Defense’s FVAP (Federal Voting Assistance Programme).

Essentially, the US was planning on using the next presidential election to ‘test’ the concept of letting overseas citizens and military personnel vote online. That’s from any internet connected PC running Windows! The test group was to be around 100,000 voters – and if successful, a scaling up would occur for the 2008 election. Remembering Florida in the last presidential election, that’s quite a large number of potentially ‘unsafe’ votes!

I was entertained and staggered at the arrogance of some of the ‘intellectuals’ present who challenged her for being against the spirit of scientific endevour in her recommendations that the programme be cancelled. Their argument being, that to rule out a possible course of action was being in some way, a ‘luddite.’

I felt quite the opposite was true – the paper does not suggest that the aims of the project are wrong-headed – but it does quite explicitly list the unavoidable flaws in the technology on which it is based. These real and demonstrable weaknesses mean that no democratic election based on Internet Voting could be truly considered ‘safe.’ Unlike the last US Presidential Election of course!

Apparently, the US has called off the programme as a result of the report – although their website currently states otherwise.