Posts by Russell Brown
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Legal Beagle: The hopeful disallowance…, in reply to Jonathan Milne,
Thanks for swinging by, Jonathan.
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Hard News: MegaBox: From f**k-all to zero, in reply to Don Christie,
The ad revenue diversion is certainly problematic. But consider this, the MegaKey technology is basically spyware and nasty substitution technology. It’s spyware because it will report on the site you are visiting (how else would it know if it was a top 100) and it could presumably substitute *anything* on your web page. Not just ads. Links, keywords, pictures, anything.
Yes, this is quite scary to think about.
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Hard News: MegaBox: From f**k-all to zero, in reply to Idiot Savant,
You’re not about to bring down anything by using an ad-blocker as an individual – but if everyone took the same stance as you, there wouldn’t be any Scoop to rely on. You may wish to consider parallels with, say, taxes and resource use. Or at least come down from that high horse.
(shrug) The invention of the car put buggy-whip sellers out of business. I love and use Scoop, but technology has shitcanned its business model, just as it has for newspapers. And if they want to stay in business, its up to them, not me, to come up with an alternative to secure their future.
I find your attitude quite astonishing. You're all fluffed up with moral justification for frustrating the principal means of revenue for an important site you have used freely for years.
I do understand that people would want to use use ad-blockers -- although it sometimes seems a bit precious to me -- but the level of arrogance you display about it is remarkable.
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Hard News: MegaBox: From f**k-all to zero, in reply to Sacha,
Your rights as a creator do not extend to .. dictating how I experience and interact with your product
Actually, copyright has always done that as one of its functions.
It tends to be a function of art as well. Artists are terrible control freaks ;-)
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Hard News: MegaBox: From f**k-all to zero, in reply to Sacha,
I recall Russell looked into this a while ago.
Brenda Leeuwenberg looked into it more throughly than me, and concluded that it was just too difficult to use. Is it still denominated in Euros only?
I do have at least one person Flattring me, but I haven't redeemed anything yet. Signing up (via Twitter) was really confusing and I haven't spent time with it since.
The basic ideas seem pretty good, but at the least, it needs a marketing strategy.
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Hard News: MegaBox: From f**k-all to zero, in reply to sallyr,
Russell, by way of consolation I have been pleased to shop at Felt a number of times.
I’m delighted for Lucy at Felt that that’s the case, although I’m not actually sure we even get any more for that one :-)
And just like Geoff I’m happy to send cash.
Thanks. I think this has to happen soon.
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Hard News: MegaBox: From f**k-all to zero, in reply to Richard Aston,
Whoa – I am part of this community and purchased a banner ad on PA .
Good onya!
Admittedly only a grand’s worth.
That's heaps!
Mind you, bugger all people clicked through on it .
Clickthrough is a problematic measure of performance, especially on this site.
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Hard News: MegaBox: From f**k-all to zero, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
True. The advertising partnerships PA had for People’s Coffee and Slingshot were something different and got their brands across, I think.
Tragically, that would actually be Karajoz and Eden Coffee, and Orcon ...
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Fire on the mountain. Two pics of the fire damage in the Mt Eden crater caused by a couple of dickheads with fireworks – and a shot facing south of the Aussie bushfire haze that lingered even yesterday.
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Meanwhile, Chris Keall's Mega launch report for Ars Technica has this at the end:
Onstage, Dotcom talked up two new services that will follow Mega in around six months time. First is Megabox, which will offer music, cutting in artists on profits. The second is Megakey, which will allow people to access that content for free if they earn credits by installing a plugin that substitutes ads served up by websites with those fed from the Mega network. (A service called "Megamovie" is also in the works, and will offer a similar setup for films.)
Offstage, Kim offered further details. All Megabox users will be given a dollop of free Megakey credit to hook people into the service. And for those who don’t want to use the ad-serving Megakey plugin, “You can choose to just straight-out buy the music that is on the [Megabox] site, just like you would on iTunes.”
But wait, won’t media sites be hostile to their own ads being blocked and replaced by those served by the Megakey browser plugin as a visitor seeks to build ad-viewing credits to ‘buy’ music from Dotcom?
“No.”
No?
“No. Here’s how we’ll do it at first,” Dotcom explains. “Only 10 percent of the ads you see will be ‘adjusted.’ This is not a general removal of ads. We’re not going to replace ads off small publishers, for example, or sites that have an Alexa rating below 100,” he pledges. “That is not our goal. We’ll be taking it [ad revenue] from the big guys, and giving it to the smaller artists.”
How on earth this is actually going to work is beyond me. He won't get the consent of the most popular artists -- will he just offer their music anyway?
Who is going to sell this advertising? Who is going to buy it? How large will these profits actually be, spread across the whole cohort of popular music?
