5 minutes and 20 slides rotating automatically in front of NYC’s brightest geeks, what would you say? For nearly two years Ignite NYC has cultivated a vibrant community of artists, technologists, thinkers, tinkerers, and personalities to connect, develop new relationships and projects, and answer this challenge. Enlighten us, but make it quick!

Drucker discussed an issue which many deem important, but most of the solutions have been repeated and regurgitated across tech blogs around the internet – How can women become more involved in prominent roles in the world of tech?

Drucker’s perspective is simple; females in tech should start referring to themselves as women instead of girls. Her insights are pretty funny, and thought-provoking. If you’re wondering how she defines a “woman”, it’s someone who’s menstruated and paid taxes. The reason for the distinction is because the term woman is associated with maturity and power, while girl implies immaturity and less power. Simple enough.

If I can interject with my own thought, I think the problem comes from women getting gipped when it comes to age/maturity neutral descriptors. Let’s take a look…

Man – Woman
Boy – Girl
Male – Female
Guy – ummm…Girl

A guy can be anyone. There are 5 year old guys, and 90 year old guys. Yet, we equate a guy to a girl, even though we use the same term when we’re designating a female child. I think it’s time we devised a maturity neutral descriptor for women/girls. Or women could simply refer to themselves as such in the workplace; that is, after their first menstruation and tax filing.

The music publishers filed the lawsuit against LimeWire and its top executives in US District Court for the Southern District of New York. They  are asking $150,000 for each song illegally distributed  by the company which could bring total damages to hundreds of millions of dollars.

"Pervasive online infringement…
has consequences for everyone in the music chain."

The eight plaintiffs come from the ranks of North America’s top music publishers including companies affiliated with all four major label groups: EMI Music Publishing, Sony/ATV Music Publishing, Universal Music Publishing Group, Warner/Chappell Music, Inc., Bug Music, MPL Music Publishing, Peermusic, and The Richmond Organization. Named as defendants are LimeWire LLC, Lime Group LLC, LimeWire CEO Mark Gorton, former COO and CTO Greg Bildson, and M.J.G. LimeWire Family Limited Partnership. 

 “The pervasive online infringement facilitated by LimeWire and others like them has consequences for everyone in the music chain,” NMPA President and CEO David Israelite declared at the NMPA’s Annual Meeting in New York City yesterday. "Operations like LimeWire must understand the songs that make their illegal venture lucrative don’t appear out of thin air. Behind every song is a vast network of people – a songwriter, a publisher, a performer, a record label. They have robbed every individual in that chain by selling their site as an access point for music and then refusing to properly license the music. It is a scheme the U.S. Supreme Court spoke on five years ago in its landmark Grokster decision, and a scheme that the U.S. District Court ruled was a violation of copyright law in the record labels’ hard-fought case.”

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That was my reaction to a Reuters article that I came across. I am still a little taken aback, as they say, about the even the threat of the US government looking into ways to bailout the struggling newspaper / old school media industry. Right now it’s more talk than anything else but if someone said it in a public forum then you know there are greater rumblings going through Washington with a similar stink on them. I guess you can guess where I stand on this one, huh?

The Reuters article starts off

A top Democratic lawmaker predicted on Wednesday that the government will be involved in shaping the future for struggling U.S. media organizations.

House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, saying quality journalism was essential to U.S. democracy, said eventually government would have to help resolve the problems caused by a failing business model.

Waxman, other U.S. lawmakers and regulators are looking into various options to help a newspaper industry hurt by the shift in advertising revenues to online platforms.

Can you see me shaking my head now? Did the government bailout the horse and buggy industry when the automobile was invented? Did the government bailout the radio industry when TV came along? Did anyone bailout the transcribers of the world when the Gutenberg press started producing the printed word?

If journalism is essential to the US democracy then let the free market system that has built this democracy into one of the greatest powers of the modern age (at least until recently that is) take care of how this plays out! The last thing we need is the government handing tax benefits and even worse, more deficit funded handouts to the likes of the Washington Post, New York Times and anything that Rupert Murdoch is whining about these days.

So who will profit from this concept more: our democracy or the likes of Rupert Murdoch? Hey let’s just go out and figure out which failing business model victim looks the most like AIG, Bank of America or Government General Motors and throw money at their executives business and see just how much better it gets. WTF!

This is not a government issue for goodness sake. This is a paradigm shift issue. The world is changing and not everything survives change. Why are we so obsessed with keeping something alive that may not have a place in the new world media order? And if it does have a place let the free market principles that allowed it to thrive for so long determine what piece or pieces will move forward as we boldly go further in the digital age.

Of course there is some press constituency that thinks this a great idea. Wonder who pays their bills?

Free Press, a public interest group, said the search for solutions to the crisis in journalism should be premised on the idea that news-gathering is a public service, not a commodity.

Waxman’s “indication that government has a role to play is both bold and soberly sensible,” said Free Press Policy Director Ben Scott on the sidelines of the FTC conference.

I call BS on this one. Honestly, if the newspapers were truly a public service shouldn’t they have acted more responsibly to the change that very public is undergoing in how it consumes news? Business change is not always about failure; it’s usually more about progress and smarts or lack thereof. If the newspapers have ignored the myriad tell tale signs that have been written on the wall for years now why should MY TAX dollars save them from their own arrogance and stupidity? What have they done for me and my business?

Geesh, just the rumor of this happening really ticks me off! Hey, Senator Waxman and anyone else who thinks this is a good idea! Shut up and go read your Washington Post while it’s still here!

Phew! That felt great because I am part of the new free press and I plan on being around in the digital age as long as I can identify what people really want. Will it last forever? Probably not but if I am not smart enough to get on board the next train that is heading for the future don’t bail me out. That’ll be my problem not yours.

UPDATE: Google CEO Eric Schmidt gives the WSJ his ideas for fixing the “crisis” in the newspaper industry.

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The Center for Media Research is reporting

According to a survey conducted for the American Press Institute, reported in Media Buyer/Planner, more than half of newspaper publishers believe readers will pay to access online newspaper content. 51% of publishers say they believe they can successfully charge for content, while 49% either aren’t sure or believe paying for content will not work.

So half of the these folks say they believe it can happen which is not quite the same as saying that it is definitely the way to go and that the industry will be saved. The following bit if data from the survey shows just how out of touch this group may be over all though.

68% of publishers said they thought that, even if readers object to paying for content, they would have a difficult time finding that information in other places, while 52% said they thought it would be either very easy or somewhat easy for readers to find replacement content.

Hard to find information elsewhere? We’re talking about the Internet, right? There are always options.

There’s more in the details and, of course, it’s more fun to talk tough than to be tough.

• 58% of publishers said they are considering charging for content
• 49% said they have no timetable in mind for how that will play out

Right now we are in the all talk phase of this next generation of newspapers and everyone can sound ready to go but who will be the first to really make the move and step out as the guinea pig? That is the online equivalent of ‘breaking through to the other side’ or ‘walking the plank’. There will be no halfway reactions on this subject, so who will have the stones to be the poster child for paid content? Any thoughts?

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I totally agree!

Hinton must have been bitten by a vampire. How else do you explain such nonsense coming from the man responsible for one of the largest publishing companies–and owners of The Wall Street Journal.

He continues his deluded rhetoric:

[Google] didn’t actually begin life in a cave as a digital vampire per se. The charitable view of Google is that the news business itself fed Google’s taste for this kind of blood.”

By offering its content free on the Web, the newspaper industry “gave Google’s fangs a great place to bite,” he continued. “We will never know what might have happened had newspapers taken a different approach.”

I tell you what would have happened. Without Google sending millions of daily visitors to newspaper web sites–for FREE–the newspaper industry would have being snuggling up to the Dodo a long time ago. It drives me batty (pun intended) when I read about newspaper execs blaming their demise on Google. They seem to believe that the newspaper industry would still be thriving, if it weren’t for the search engine making it easy to serve up their content.

Let’s think about that, shall we? As a publisher, you’re placing your content on your web site, right? If you didn’t want your online content to cannibalize your printed daily offering, why post it to the web? Oh, I see. You have to, because that’s where people prefer to get their news these days. OK, you want people to find your news story and not your rivals’ right? How are you going to do that? Hmm, seems like there’s one channel that hundreds of millions of people use to find new content each day? Do you remember the name of that place? Ah, yes, Google!

OK, you get my point, so I’ll stop the sarcasm and get back to the facts.

People want to read news online. They don’t want to pay for it. They use Google. Google sends you the bulk of your daily web site visitors. Either figure out how to monitize those visitors–like the rest of the world–or block Google via your robots.txt file and shut up!

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Henry Blodget penned a column over at Ad Age that can be summed up neatly in its headline “Sorry, There’s No Way to Save the TV Business; It Should Take Its Cues From What Happened to Newspapers”.

The traditional TV industry — cable companies, networks and broadcasters — is where the newspaper industry was about five years ago: in denial.

If this is even half true the folks on the TV side of the ledger better wake up and smell the erosion. The erosion of their leverage, profits and influence is taking place but it is believed that the arrogance that led to the dismantling of the newspaper industry is just as active in the TV world.

Specifically, the TV industry’s attitude is the same as the newspaper industry’s attitude was circa 2002 to 2003: Stop calling us dinosaurs. We get digital; we’re growing our digital businesses; we’re investing in digital platforms; people still recall ads even when they fast-forward through them on DVRs; there’s no substitute for TV ads. And traditional TV isn’t going away: Just look at our revenue and profits!

Blodget posits that the Internet still represents such a small percentage of profits and revenue of TV today but as it continues to grow the tide will quickly turn. As a result, the traditional broadcast industry will buckle and eventually crumble under the weight of its own in cost structure. Sounds painful.

So why is TV still successful? The old model may still have some legs but it is certainly aging out fast. Less and less people are dependent on TV of their information and entertainment. A quick comparison shows the following:

Television Depends On

1. Few options at home other than TV
2. No way to get video content other than TV
3. Only broadcast, cable and satellite options to get TV content
4. Choke points for delivery give inordinate control to those who own the access points

Reality Is

1. More and more simple fun options including games, Internet, social media etc.
2. New ways to get traditional TV content like Hulu, YouTube, iTunes etc.
3. More options for video content including telcos and cable companies providing broadband
4. The Internet is everywhere. You can connect more easily, more often than ever and that will only get better

So how has the TV industry responded?

Thus far, the TV industry has reacted to these changes the way most people would: by trying to port its existing model to the new world and maintain its hold on power and money. This is why we’re getting so many ridiculous, consumer-unfriendly TV solutions

These solutions include, but are not exclusive to, market-based control over what can or can’t be watched, single episode downloads that expire after 24 hours and time shifting of popular shows.

So Blodget’s conclusion is as you may have guessed; TV is headed for the gallows and a slow death from their own ignorance and arrogance.

You won’t have five channels, or 50 channels, or 500 channels. You’ll have millions of channels. You’ll be able to watch anything you want, live or taped. You’ll be able to watch it wherever you want — TV, computer, mobile device. You won’t have to sorry about “slinging” video content around or programming your DVR. You’ll just plug a pipe (internet) into a box (device) and watch.

So all of folks in TV land better take heed. The same day that you reach for your morning paper that no longer exists at your desk in the corporate office could be the same day that your control is handed over your viewers and they leave you for greener pastures. Then what?

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