Just one of the many stories to get overshadowed by #frankenstorm today is the opening arguments of Kirtsaeng vs. Wiley in the Supreme Court. This case will test whether we (as in, citizens of the US) have the right to re-sell items which may contain copyrighted components that were originally sold overseas. So, for instance, an iPad that contains copyrighted software, or even a house that contains parts with copyrighted text or designs on them. Joe Mullin at Ars Technica is calling this the Intellectual Property case of the decade. Marvin Ammori has a detailed writeup in the Atlantic from earlier this summer. Demand Progress is launching a campaign today. I've been getting slightly mixed reviews from legal folks I know regarding the importance of this. Is it, as Joe suggests, the IP case of the decade, or will this just make some limited set of commercial transactions more difficult. For those with the inclination, the 30 Amicus briefs filed on the case should make good reading. The one thing I know is that it rubs me wrong that the content industry keeps trying to have their cake and eat it too re: ownership rights. It's all about owners rights when we're talking about fighting piracy, but "it's really just a lease" when consumers buy stuff.
I'm still frustrated with how book buying works. Totally randomly, we ended up watching the Tom Wolfe documentary on TV Friday night. It was really great -- incredible to get a behind-the-scenes look at how he operates. He is clearly a master of the interview and a master researcher. He has an incredible way of making people feel comfortable and getting people to like him and talk to him. Nearly every one of the folks from Miami he worked with in preparing his new book spoke glowingly of him. And it was great to get a peek into how he learns a place -- from the small details of a house or neighborhood, to the larger political & social currents. Anyway, it was cool. You can catch the trailer here: I've actually never read any of his books, if you can believe that (though I obv know many of the stories). And after seeing this, I realized I wanted to read all of them. A great project to embark on. So, now what? What do I buy? Kindle/ebook or hardcover? I feel so stuck, because I love a physical library -- even just seeing the spines of books I've read or want to read is meaningful. But I also like being able to read digitally (especially because I travel a lot). Then, this morning, I realized that there is one place in my life where the analog/digital divide is handled perfectly: with the NY Times. We have a Sunday paper subscription, which also includes digital access. So I read the times almost every day on my phone, and then get to spread out with the actual paper on Sunday, which is so nice. I pay about $30/mo for this, which seems like a great deal to me. It strikes just the right balance -- I get my daily digital fix, but I also get to engage analog-ly, which is really nice given how much of my life is spent looking at a screen. It's so different reading a physical paper vs. reading on the phone, especially when it's Sunday morning and you're hanging around the house with other people. I really want something like this for books. I feel like I should get an e-book for free (or for a small additional fee) when I buy a paper book. If this were the case, I'd almost certainly buy more books, and would enjoy them more.
I am writing this from 30,000 feet on my way to San Francisco. I have a great car service which I use every week when I travel. This morning, I ended up having a long conversation with Reda, one of my regular drivers, about Uber and how it's shaking up the taxi and car service business. For some reason, I've always loved talking to taxi drivers about how the business operates. It's a fascinating and often surprising lanscape, consisting of regulators (the city), fleet operators, vendors (for example VeriFone, CMT, and now new entrants like Square and to some extent, Uber), drivers -- who are sometimes employees of fleets and sometimes independent entrepreneurs, customers of various stripes, etc. I think the reason I'm fascinated by taxis is two-fold: 1) it's a hugely important part of the fabric of cities. Ubiquitous, reliable cars for hire are a big part of what make dense, urban living possible. While some urbanists and environmentalists may dislike taxis in favor of other forms of public transit, I have always been a huge fan of taxis as a part of the public transit (i.e., non-private car) ecosystem, for how usable they make the city. Taxis use can also
Just one of the many stories to get overshadowed by #frankenstorm today is the opening arguments of Kirtsaeng vs. Wiley in the Supreme Court. This case will test whether we (as in, citizens of the US) have the right to re-sell items which may contain copyrighted components that were originally sold overseas. So, for instance, an iPad that contains copyrighted software, or even a house that contains parts with copyrighted text or designs on them. Joe Mullin at Ars Technica is calling this the Intellectual Property case of the decade. Marvin Ammori has a detailed writeup in the Atlantic from earlier this summer. Demand Progress is launching a campaign today. I've been getting slightly mixed reviews from legal folks I know regarding the importance of this. Is it, as Joe suggests, the IP case of the decade, or will this just make some limited set of commercial transactions more difficult. For those with the inclination, the 30 Amicus briefs filed on the case should make good reading. The one thing I know is that it rubs me wrong that the content industry keeps trying to have their cake and eat it too re: ownership rights. It's all about owners rights when we're talking about fighting piracy, but "it's really just a lease" when consumers buy stuff.
I'm still frustrated with how book buying works. Totally randomly, we ended up watching the Tom Wolfe documentary on TV Friday night. It was really great -- incredible to get a behind-the-scenes look at how he operates. He is clearly a master of the interview and a master researcher. He has an incredible way of making people feel comfortable and getting people to like him and talk to him. Nearly every one of the folks from Miami he worked with in preparing his new book spoke glowingly of him. And it was great to get a peek into how he learns a place -- from the small details of a house or neighborhood, to the larger political & social currents. Anyway, it was cool. You can catch the trailer here: I've actually never read any of his books, if you can believe that (though I obv know many of the stories). And after seeing this, I realized I wanted to read all of them. A great project to embark on. So, now what? What do I buy? Kindle/ebook or hardcover? I feel so stuck, because I love a physical library -- even just seeing the spines of books I've read or want to read is meaningful. But I also like being able to read digitally (especially because I travel a lot). Then, this morning, I realized that there is one place in my life where the analog/digital divide is handled perfectly: with the NY Times. We have a Sunday paper subscription, which also includes digital access. So I read the times almost every day on my phone, and then get to spread out with the actual paper on Sunday, which is so nice. I pay about $30/mo for this, which seems like a great deal to me. It strikes just the right balance -- I get my daily digital fix, but I also get to engage analog-ly, which is really nice given how much of my life is spent looking at a screen. It's so different reading a physical paper vs. reading on the phone, especially when it's Sunday morning and you're hanging around the house with other people. I really want something like this for books. I feel like I should get an e-book for free (or for a small additional fee) when I buy a paper book. If this were the case, I'd almost certainly buy more books, and would enjoy them more.
I am writing this from 30,000 feet on my way to San Francisco. I have a great car service which I use every week when I travel. This morning, I ended up having a long conversation with Reda, one of my regular drivers, about Uber and how it's shaking up the taxi and car service business. For some reason, I've always loved talking to taxi drivers about how the business operates. It's a fascinating and often surprising lanscape, consisting of regulators (the city), fleet operators, vendors (for example VeriFone, CMT, and now new entrants like Square and to some extent, Uber), drivers -- who are sometimes employees of fleets and sometimes independent entrepreneurs, customers of various stripes, etc. I think the reason I'm fascinated by taxis is two-fold: 1) it's a hugely important part of the fabric of cities. Ubiquitous, reliable cars for hire are a big part of what make dense, urban living possible. While some urbanists and environmentalists may dislike taxis in favor of other forms of public transit, I have always been a huge fan of taxis as a part of the public transit (i.e., non-private car) ecosystem, for how usable they make the city. Taxis use can also
show us a lot about how our cities work
. And 2) taxis have always been a big part of the american dream. For some reason (and I'm not exactly sure what that is), driving a taxi provides a certain path to employment, and often times to entrepreneurship -- maybe in reality this is on par with other careers, and perhaps it's just a more visible one, I'm not sure. My dad drove a NYC taxi in the 1970s, and I've always been proud of that. My wife's grandfather represented cab companies in Boston through his whole career as a lawyer and has endless tales of drama from that experience. So anyway, I think taxis are fascinating, and the industry has seen a lot of change in recent years. When NYC introduced (mandatory) pay-by-credit-card a few years ago, along w/ GPS tracking I had lots of conversations about how drivers felt about that (initial displeasure w/ both the cards and GPS - but ultimately appreciation for pay-by-card as tips skyrocketed). When NYC introduced new medallions for hybrid cars, I asked a lot of questions about that. All of these changes have raised questions about power, control, and opportunity in the industry. For example, in Boston, the payment processors in taxis take 6% of every transaction -- there is some speculation that this fee is artificially high due to coordination among the operators, city and the vendors. By contrast, Square takes 2.7% (plus some flat fees, I think), and many of the livery services use that. Uber takes a 20% cut, which includes a tip for the driver. Uber has shaken things up the most, as it blurs the line between "street hails" & metered rides (typically the purview of medallioned taxis) and dispatched pickups / fixed-price rides (typically the purview of car services / limos). Uber also shakes up the role of car service dispatchers, which has traditionally been very local. If you haven't been following, the entrance of Uber into American cities has caused a major stir, triggering legislative battles and lawsuits in
. In nearly every case so far, Uber has prevailed -- often times enlisting their passionate userbase to come to their defense. But it's still the case that Uber operates in a legal gray area, that tests our assumptions and beliefs about the value and necessity of regulation. Not surprisingly, the tech community is solidly behind Uber in this effort. When the DC City Council introduces an amendment specifically targeting Uber, TechCrunch (in what seems to be an unusual act of advocacy)
. Epic internet investor Paul Graham recently tweeted (with 850 retweets and 250 favorites): [tweet https://twitter.com/paulg/status/222462460978937856] David Alpert, proprietor of Greater Greater Washington, former Googler, and urban & transportation policy wonk,
outlining the clash of philosophies at work here, calling it a tension between the "permission model" (regulation and permission to operate in a certain way up front) and the "innovation model" (freedom to operate up front until you cause harm). His post, in my opinion, totally nails it: if companies like Uber can offer a service that customers
and drivers
want, and that uses competition to improve the industry overall, then we should encourage that. Though he points out an important wrinkle:
taxis are a regulated industry today. An innovation model might be better, but most taxis don't operate on one. It is indeed unfair to put a lot of regulations on one group of businesses in a space (the traditional taxis) and none on others (Uber).
That is a fascinating and somewhat hard problem, at least in the short term. So anyway, all that is to say: it's clear that Uber (and similar innovations) are better for customers (more reliable, more convenient service), and that they are threatening to regulators (loss of control / medallion revenue) and to incumbent dispatchers (routing around them). My big question is still how drivers feel about it. So this morning, I asked Reda how he felt about Uber -- and in particular, how he thinks drivers like it. His response was that he doesn't personally use it (he has plenty of business as it is), but his brother (also a driver with his company) uses it and likes it a lot. And that, in general, he feels like the regulators, fleet owners, and monopoly payment providers are generally involved in a coordinated scam to pad their pockets. If this is the case (and it's been supported by other drivers) My feeling, on the whole, is that we should support solutions that benefit two primary groups: producers and consumers, and get out of the business of protecting the intermediaries of the past. In the case of Uber, if it works for drivers and it works for riders, great. Of course, I -- like other folks working in tech -- are on the side of the intermediaries of the future (internet companies). But I would of course support a future that was even more disintermediated, open and efficient (for more on this, see Eben Moglen's great talk on Innovation Under Austerity). But to make this approach, it's critical that networks -- the intermediaries of the future -- take steps to distribute the value they create throughout the community (not just at the center), in order to create long-term, sustainable ecosystems (for instance, the way Etsy has established itself as a B Corporation). That's why I'm particularly interested in how the producers -- in this case taxi drivers themselves -- see the emergence of these new platforms, and why I'll keep on asking them.
show us a lot about how our cities work
. And 2) taxis have always been a big part of the american dream. For some reason (and I'm not exactly sure what that is), driving a taxi provides a certain path to employment, and often times to entrepreneurship -- maybe in reality this is on par with other careers, and perhaps it's just a more visible one, I'm not sure. My dad drove a NYC taxi in the 1970s, and I've always been proud of that. My wife's grandfather represented cab companies in Boston through his whole career as a lawyer and has endless tales of drama from that experience. So anyway, I think taxis are fascinating, and the industry has seen a lot of change in recent years. When NYC introduced (mandatory) pay-by-credit-card a few years ago, along w/ GPS tracking I had lots of conversations about how drivers felt about that (initial displeasure w/ both the cards and GPS - but ultimately appreciation for pay-by-card as tips skyrocketed). When NYC introduced new medallions for hybrid cars, I asked a lot of questions about that. All of these changes have raised questions about power, control, and opportunity in the industry. For example, in Boston, the payment processors in taxis take 6% of every transaction -- there is some speculation that this fee is artificially high due to coordination among the operators, city and the vendors. By contrast, Square takes 2.7% (plus some flat fees, I think), and many of the livery services use that. Uber takes a 20% cut, which includes a tip for the driver. Uber has shaken things up the most, as it blurs the line between "street hails" & metered rides (typically the purview of medallioned taxis) and dispatched pickups / fixed-price rides (typically the purview of car services / limos). Uber also shakes up the role of car service dispatchers, which has traditionally been very local. If you haven't been following, the entrance of Uber into American cities has caused a major stir, triggering legislative battles and lawsuits in
. In nearly every case so far, Uber has prevailed -- often times enlisting their passionate userbase to come to their defense. But it's still the case that Uber operates in a legal gray area, that tests our assumptions and beliefs about the value and necessity of regulation. Not surprisingly, the tech community is solidly behind Uber in this effort. When the DC City Council introduces an amendment specifically targeting Uber, TechCrunch (in what seems to be an unusual act of advocacy)
. Epic internet investor Paul Graham recently tweeted (with 850 retweets and 250 favorites): [tweet https://twitter.com/paulg/status/222462460978937856] David Alpert, proprietor of Greater Greater Washington, former Googler, and urban & transportation policy wonk,
outlining the clash of philosophies at work here, calling it a tension between the "permission model" (regulation and permission to operate in a certain way up front) and the "innovation model" (freedom to operate up front until you cause harm). His post, in my opinion, totally nails it: if companies like Uber can offer a service that customers
and drivers
want, and that uses competition to improve the industry overall, then we should encourage that. Though he points out an important wrinkle:
taxis are a regulated industry today. An innovation model might be better, but most taxis don't operate on one. It is indeed unfair to put a lot of regulations on one group of businesses in a space (the traditional taxis) and none on others (Uber).
That is a fascinating and somewhat hard problem, at least in the short term. So anyway, all that is to say: it's clear that Uber (and similar innovations) are better for customers (more reliable, more convenient service), and that they are threatening to regulators (loss of control / medallion revenue) and to incumbent dispatchers (routing around them). My big question is still how drivers feel about it. So this morning, I asked Reda how he felt about Uber -- and in particular, how he thinks drivers like it. His response was that he doesn't personally use it (he has plenty of business as it is), but his brother (also a driver with his company) uses it and likes it a lot. And that, in general, he feels like the regulators, fleet owners, and monopoly payment providers are generally involved in a coordinated scam to pad their pockets. If this is the case (and it's been supported by other drivers) My feeling, on the whole, is that we should support solutions that benefit two primary groups: producers and consumers, and get out of the business of protecting the intermediaries of the past. In the case of Uber, if it works for drivers and it works for riders, great. Of course, I -- like other folks working in tech -- are on the side of the intermediaries of the future (internet companies). But I would of course support a future that was even more disintermediated, open and efficient (for more on this, see Eben Moglen's great talk on Innovation Under Austerity). But to make this approach, it's critical that networks -- the intermediaries of the future -- take steps to distribute the value they create throughout the community (not just at the center), in order to create long-term, sustainable ecosystems (for instance, the way Etsy has established itself as a B Corporation). That's why I'm particularly interested in how the producers -- in this case taxi drivers themselves -- see the emergence of these new platforms, and why I'll keep on asking them.
