Big Tech Tyranny?

Cory Doctorow's March LOCUS column discusses tech tycoons from the perspective of monopoly and world domination. Well, that phrase may be a bit exaggerated but not totally inapplicable, considering his term "commercial tyrant":

Vertically Challenged

Is meritocracy a "delusion"? Are people such as Mark Zuckerberg (founder of Facebook) unique geniuses, or did they just get lucky? One might maintain that some sort of genius is required to recognize opportunities and take advantage of the "luck," but that's beside Doctorow's point. He argues against "vertical integration" and in favor of "structural separation." Fundamental antitrust principles should forbid mega-corporations from competing with the companies to which they sell services. "Amazon could offer virtual shelf space to merchants, or it could compete with those merchants by making its own goods, but not both. Apple could have an app store, or it could make apps, but not both."

It's easy to see his point. It would be better if Google could somehow be prevented from giving preference in search results to entities in which it has a financial interest. On the other hand, more ambiguous "liminal" cases exist, a point Doctorow himself does acknowledge. For example, "Amazon might say it gives preferential search results to businesses that use its warehouses because it can be sure that those items will be delivered more efficiently and reliably, but it also benefits every time it makes that call." Granting the second half of that sentence, I'm still not sure this practice is a bad thing. Given a choice between two identical products of equal price, I DO tend to choose the one labeled "Fulfilled by Amazon" for that very reliability, as well as speed of delivery. As for splitting off Amazon's publishing services, as he advocates, I'd be dubious. I like the way Kindle self-publishing currently works.

Doctorow also brings up problems that may require "structural integration" rather than separation, to prevent Big Tech from evading its legitimate responsibilities. He tentatively calls for "a requirement that the business functions that harm the rest of us when they go wrong be kept in-house, so that the liabilities from mismanaging those operations end up where they belong." Is there a simple answer to the dilemma of maintaining the conveniences we enjoy while preventing the abuses?

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Digital Feudalism

In Cory Doctorow's early January LOCUS column, he discusses in considerable technical depth the surveillance and privacy (or anti-privacy) policies of big tech companies, mainly Apple but also others such as Facebook and Google:

Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor

He draws an extended analogy with the medieval feudal system. Private citizens besieged by cyberworld bandits have no practical recourse but to ally themselves with "warlords" who offer protection through powerful security measures unavailable to ordinary users. Behind the nearly impregnable walls constructed by the warlords—Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Google, etc.—we can consider ourselves fairly safe from encroachment by predators. Safe from everyone, that is, except the warlords themselves.

Doctorow's example of Apple's "feudalistic" practices: "For more than a year, Apple has engaged in a covert, global surveillance of its users through its operating system, which automatically sent information about which apps you were running to Apple, and which gave Apple a remote veto over whether that program would launch when you double-clicked it." The corporation might claim this feature protects users from malicious software, but it doesn't prevent Apple from blocking any software it chooses, whether harmful or beneficial. Furthermore, Apple also locks out programs consumers might use to turn off the surveillance and blocking feature.

The article cites various examples from other major corporations. It also explores entanglement between big tech and government, with the state claiming the right to mine data collected by technology giants. How chilling to contemplate that "the US government viewed the tech companies as host organisms to be parasitized at will, a force that would mobilize market investments to erect a vast, expensive surveillance apparatus that the state could then wield at bargain-basement prices."

If the only thing that stops Apple or any big tech lord of the manor "from blocking you from running legitimate apps – or from gathering information about your movements and social activities – is its goodwill and good judgment," what can we peasants do? Doctorow, of course, has some suggestions, but they're solutions no individual or small group of consumers can implement on our own.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Targeting a Readership Part 17 - Original Production Wars

Targeting a Readership

Part 17

Original Production Wars

Previous parts in the Targeting a Readership series:

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/10/index-to-targeting-readership-series-by.html

Readerships are a moving target, and the motion is getting faster with technology.

But then, so is the motion of the writers getting faster.

As noted previously, we live in a world where the social fabric is disintegrating and reforming rapidly.  One way to understand the change in social integration (and strength of the culture) is to note the changes in the decades between having only 3 coast-to-coast networks in the USA, (ABC, NBC, CBS) through the advent of Cable where new networks (Weather Channel, National Geographic, History Channel, etc) proliferated, bleeding viewers off of the three networks.

Meanwhile, the total population of the USA grew and grew, while access to television sets and broadcast channels peaked and waned. Yes, with Cable, and now Satellite, broadcast signal is getting harder to find, and what contents there just is not what is being discussed over business lunches.

This trend toward fragmenting the total viewership is accelerating with online streaming.  Gaming competes with Series Fiction productions, live sports from around the world, and so on.  There is too much for one person to watch everything.  Where you could watch 1/3 of everything (before VCRs when you couldn't record the other 2 channels), you could hold an intelligent conversation with anyone.

Today, we do not have that common thread.

It might re-develop, at least to bind segments of our total population into groups, but meanwhile the opportunities for new writers are proliferating at a dizzying pace.

New markets with new requirements are popping up all over.  Soon a number will fail, or be bought, and the number of scripts sold, the number of novels optioned for streaming-movies, will suddenly shrink.

The elephant in the room is Netflix.  You can get Netflix on all the "devices" (and many TVs have it built in) - Netflix pioneered and still dominates the marketing in the streaming industries.

Apple TV Example

This year, Netflix is building on its award winning history (which astonished everyone a few years ago), and now has not only picked up cancelled TV Series and continued them (such as Longmire), but is spending big on creating original content.








Netflix claimed:

======quote======

Netflix US
✔
@netflix
 .@Stranger_Things 3 is breaking Netflix records!

40.7 million household accounts have been watching the show since its July 4 global launch — more than any other film or series in its first four days. And 18.2 million have already finished the entire season.

217K
3:33 PM - Jul 8, 2019
Twitter Ads info and privacy
38.4K people are talking about this

=========end quote=======

And immediately, doubt was cast upon that claim -- which to other streaming original producers is very scary, though to those worried about our fraying social structure and culture, 40 million is good news.

Here is an item discussing Netflix's reporting habits:

https://observer.com/2019/07/netflix-stranger-things-3-ratings-nielsen-data/

Remember Netflix is a publicly traded company.

Such public companies have been buying each other up at a mind-boggling pace the last 10 years or so.  The new combined companies own warehouses full of backlist material, potentially a gold mine as content-hungry streaming proliferates.

But the real money is in originals - which is where you and Science Fiction Romance come into the picture.  We have an opportunity here.

Here is an article about 2019's "in-development" list at Warner Media.

https://observer.com/2019/07/warnermedia-streaming-service-content-price-cost-hbo-shows/

Recently, the old radio turned broadcast TV turned Cable channel, CBS (after much not-so-polite buying of companies) ended up with the rights to make new Star Trek.  They used Star Trek to lure their target audience into subscribing to CBS-All Access and are withdrawing many of their backlist properties from Netflix (and elsewhere), making it so that you can only view their content via a subscription to their service.

Other elderly media giants are following suit.

But the new ones have made their subscriber base from streaming rented content from those elderly giants.  Now Wall Street is expecting the profitability of these new media giants (Amazon, Sling, Crackle, Hulu which just got bought, and many you've never heard of) to plummet.

However, the new original content created by the new streaming media companies is winning legitimate awards, and huge viewerships.

This fall, Apple is jumping into the fray, having spent a couple of years trying to duplicate Amazon Prime, Roku, Google, and other streaming delivery services while spending big time on new, original content for their Apple service.

To get the Apple service, you generally have to buy a little box to plug into your TV set -- and all of these services will be trying to leap to more pixels per screen and 5G internet speeds.  Then you have to enter your subscription credentials (username and password) into the App on the TV Screen.  You pay for the little box, and then pay monthly subscriptions to all the services you want.  Both Apple and Roku offer "free" services, but likely not the ones you want.

Tivo is in the same "little box" business, so once you have their DVR/box, you connect to the internet and use Tivo's collection of Apps to enter your subscription data.  Due to a lawsuit, Tivo has a Hulu App but you can't get "live TV" service via that Hulu App.  You can get Hulu Live TV via Roku's Hulu App.

What you can get, and what it costs you, depends on contracts and court orders, not the socially healing effect of the content.

They will all be producing hits, some of which will carry the Romance Themes which may be the most "healing" themes in fiction.  Amazon Prime has some hits, Netflix is rising in huge audiences for its hits, Hulu has had some original hits -- they all have.

The streaming services "original" production money is leaning heavily on novels, and series of novels, for material -- just as some of the very biggest, longest running TV Series from the Black&White days did.  Perry Mason was one series made from books.  Sherlock Holmes has been done in a lot of versions.  Many writers, popular and not, have had books made into TV movies, and
series.

Popular books are most likely to be chosen, so Romance is being courted.  Look at what Starz did with OUTLANDER,
https://smile.amazon.com/The-Battle-Joined/dp/B073XWVKSL/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=Outlander&qid=1562864168&s=gateway&sr=8-3
then right in the middle of marketing OUTLANDER onto Netflix, Seasons 3 and 4 were withdrawn in favor of the new individual-channel-subscription offer.

Maybe in 2020 you will see the beginnings of the Cable business model (one subscription to a bundle of networks) take hold in the streaming space.

Meanwhile, independent authors with material that appeals to a narrow, but easily defined audience, will be able to market text-fiction to video-production.

The "exclusive content" wars will further shred our social fabric, but it might be possible that Facebook will provide the model for bringing us back together.

Google pointed the way by using crowd-sourcing to conquer spam.  We need a new way to sort the torrential stream of entertainment and information media.  Crowd-sourcing filtering might work to bring audiences together.

I doubt we'll ever get down to just 3 "everybody I know watches this" topics, but it seems to me Romance and its sub-genres has what it takes to bind up our wounds so we might heal.

Meanwhile, the war for Original Production Streaming Products continues - and the giants we thought were dead have come alive, eaten each other, and produced some new, voracious, media giants.  They are stealing content from each other, actors, production staff -- there is a tremendous and growing market for video-skills.

Think about the dynamic forces behind this article, and where you might fit into this war.

https://observer.com/2019/07/netflix-dwayne-johnson-the-rock-salary-red-notice-gal-gadot-ryan-reynolds/

---------quote---------
Early last year, Universal Pictures won a heated Hollywood bidding war when it agreed to slap down up to $160 million to fund Dwayne Johnson’s upcoming action adventure blockbuster, Red Notice, based on a pitch meeting and Johnson’s star power alone. No script.

That included a $20 million payday for Johnson, an eight-figure check for director Rawson Marshall Thurber (Skyscraper) and what we assume to be significant salaries for Gal Gadot and Ryan Reynolds, who would later join the cast. Yet on Monday, in the midst of a progress-to-production timeline lapse built into the contract, Universal pulled Red Notice from its 2020 release schedule and shopped the script to Netflix, which had previously been an aggressive bidder.

-----------end quote-----

Who's going to win this war?  Probably not the consumer.  But you are a writer, talent-on-the-hoof, (very cheap talent; writers aren't the expensive part of movie making).  You produce the content these big guys are fighting over.  As little as writing costs in a production budget, you could fund the rest of your life by landing just one of these contracts.

What do you have that targets a specific, defined, precise viewership - that is of keen interest to just a few million people out of Earth's billions of people?

Remember, with Netflix in the game, "the market" is not the USA consumer but the entire world.

As we've discussed previously, video fiction is "a story in pictures" -- fewer words and more images.

Like a graphic novel, panel after panel of pictures unfolds into a story.

Many movies and now TV Series are being made from video games which are based on old comics.

Be the "old comic" of the 2020's so that in 2050 your source material will be the blockbuster, award winning, title of the year.

Be the original source of the defining Romance to build on the OUTLANDER series.

Say something new, that hasn't been said in Romance before.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Dear DOJ For The Last Time

Several of my correspondents asked me where they could find the Complaint and Request For Relief upon which the public has until June 25th to mail or email comments.

I am transcribing from pages 34 and 35 of the .pdf "e-books_complaint.pdf (49 pages)"

VIII. REQUEST FOR RELIEF

104. To remedy these illegal acts, the United States requests that the Court:

a.     Adjudge and decree that Defendants entered into an unlawful contract, combination, or conspiracy in unreasonable restraint of interstate trade and commerce in violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C.  (squiggle that I don't have on my keyboard) 1;

b.     Enjoin the Defendants, their officers, agents, servants, employees and attorneys and their successors and all other persons acting or claiming to act in active concert or participation with one of more of them, from continuing, maintaining, or renewing in any manner, directly or indirectly, the conduct alleged herein or from engaging in any other conduct, combination, conspiracy, agreement, understanding, plan, program, or other arrangement having the same effect as the alleged violation or that otherwise violates Section 1 of the Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C. (squiggle that I don't have on my keyboard) 1, through fixing the method and manner in with they sell e-books, or otherwise agreeing to set the price or release date for e-books, or collective negotiation of e-book agreements, or otherwise collectively restraining retail price competition for e-books;

c.      Prohibit the collusive setting of price tiers that can de facto fix prices;

d.      Declare null and void the Apple Agency Agreements and any agreement between a Publisher Defendant and an e-book retailer that restricts, limits, or impedes the e-book retailer's ability to set, alter, or reduce the retail price of any e-book or to offer price or other promotions to encourage consumers to purchase any e-book, or contains a retail price MFB;

e.       Reform the agreements between Apple and Publisher Defendants to strike the retail price MFN clauses as void and unenforceable; and

f.        Award to Plaintiff its costs of this action and such other and further relief as may be appropriate and as the Court may deem just and proper.

In my opinion, every author in America ought to peruse this "Request" and ask himself/herself whether this "relief" punishes the CEOs, or whether it punishes authors.... including authors who were not in a position to benefit from the Agency Pricing during the period covered by the Complaint.

Moreover, authors should ask themselves whether the DOJ is setting a precedent that undermines any copyright owner's right to set the price for their work, and also to exercise or refrain from exercising any aspect of their copyright.

If any aspect of this "REQUEST FOR RELIEF" troubles you, you have until June 25th to write to:

John.Read@usdoj.gov

John Read

Chief Litigation III Section

Antitrust Division

US Department of Justice

450 5^th Street, NW

Suite 4000

Washington DC 20530

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright#Exclusive_rights
The rights of the copyright holder also permit him/her to not use or exploit their copyright, for some or all of the term."

Extremely interesting old piece about the precedent for copyright that would be set with the Google Book Settlement.

http://james.grimmelmann.net/essays/UnprecedentedPrecedent