The Kingdom of Google

Primogeniture.  Noun, the system of inheritance or succession by the firstborn, specifically the eldest son.  Origin: 1595, Medieval Latin primogenitura.

Students of the Google capitalization table will know that the real control of the company results from what might be called the Google Voting Test.  If you are a Google insider, each of your votes is counted 10 times.  If you are not, your vote is sometimes–sometimes–counted once.

What this means is that it is mathematically impossible for the insiders–Page, Schmidt, Brin–to be removed from control by the shareholders–even if they were to leave the company for an extended visit to say…Leavenworth, Kansas.

Some of the shareholders didn’t like this, and sued the company.  You won’t be surprised to know (according to Steven Musil):

Google has reached a settlement in a shareholder lawsuit that will effectively guarantee that founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin retain lifetime control of the company.

But Google shareholders should be happy about one consequence of the way things are done in the Kingdom of Google:

Page and Brin will be solely responsible for everything the company does.  With the NSA, the CIA, drugs, human trafficking, the works.

Leavenworth is lovely in the Spring.

Artist income poll

We’re partnering with @DamntheScience for something new for MTP–polling. We’d like to get some idea of what you think about a variety of music-related subjects.

@damnthescience

But Mommy, I’m Special! The Internet Society Wants to Punch Your Nose and Commoditize You Without Your Permission

“It’s really important that we protect the rights of really good looking people in this society,”

Attorney Andrew Bridges of Fenwick & West (frequently representing Google) quoted at Beautiful Person Derek Khanna’s SXSW Panel

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This rather stunning bit of Googley sarcasm from the frequently-Googley litigator Mr. Bridges sums up the geek view of the world.  The Rich and Smart should win over The Beautiful and Famous.  (That he said it on a panel with one deemed to be of the 50 Most Beautiful Men on Capitol Hill and who is seemingly doing everything in his power to be famous–Mr. Khanna–does have a certain irony.)

But whatever the sarcasm and whatever the irony, Mr. Bridges apparently places himself in the conga line of those who believe that the Internet is “special”.  And nowhere is this “we’re special, screw off” more apparent than in the wandering Internet Society Issues Paper on Intellectual Property on the Internet.  Perhaps what the Internet Society really needs to sell their ideas is for Chris Crocker to reprise his viral “Leave Brittney Alone” video with “Leave Google Alone.”  Because what their principles really boil down to is “Trust Us, We’re Special”.

Not the best timing–there’s this problem with the National Security Agency, maybe they heard about it?

“The right to swing my fist ends where the other man’s nose begins.”

This quotation (attributed to the revered American jurist and legal theorist, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes) seems to be a bedrock principle in the law, not just in America, but even on Mount Horeb.  The idea that what is mine is mine what is thine is thine not only is a fundamental principle of many ancient and modern legal systems, but even is a fundamental principles of a market economy.

The Internet Society has adopted a principle of “permissionless innovation”–meaning that “innovation” (whatever that means) should not have to seek “permission”.  Let’s put it in more grammatically correct terms.  I know this may come as an affront to technologists, but I think their use of “innovation” really means “innovators”, unless you want to give human properties to machines and ideas–or the hive mind of the Internet itself.  I’m not quite prepared to go that far.

So what the Google lobbyist Vint Cerf, the Internet Society and others who push this line of “permissionless innovation” more accurately mean is that “innovators” (such as Google) should not have to seek permission.  Why?  No reason is ever really given other than there is some inherently superior value to innovation that insulates “innovators” from the mundane need to seek permission of mere non-innovators.  Or as Mr. Bridges might say, what is important is that we protect the rights of the really innovative in this country.

But I think that when you humanize the hive mind into its daughters and sons walking the Earth who chafe under the burden of asking permission, you begin to get the idea of just how infantile this all really is.

And of course, the permission that the Internet Society really doesn’t want to ask for is anything relating to digital transmissions of works of authorship.

The most relevant passage in what might be called the Internet Society’s Rules for Radical Innovators is this:

Innovation without permission:

All intellectual property laws and policies should bear in mind the Modern Paradigm for Standards Development, shaped by adherence to the following principles: cooperation; adherence to principles including due process, consensus, transparency, balance and openness; collective empowerment; availability; and, voluntary adoption.

“Permissionless innovation,” then, is clearly anathema to property rights.  It seeks to define a group that is to be given special treatment to the detriment of others–and this particular group at this particular moment in time has the money and influence to try to make that “special group,” those extra rights for the beautiful people, a legal reality.

If the end result of the new economic policy of “permissionless innovation” is a privileged class of “innovators” not being required to seek permission from the less innovative, everything in the Internet Society’s list of glittering generalities is just window dressing (if not downright tautological).  Not surprisingly, the collectivist “Modern Paradigm for Standards Development” sounds like it originated as part of a Five Year Plan in a command economy for the decree of the Internet, rather than as a standard setting white paper written by the “Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the Internet Architecture Board (IAB), the Internet Society and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).”

In other words–the “Modern Paradigm for Standards Development” and its concept of “permissionless innovation” is written by Very Serious Men (and a handful of Women) of Science Who Are Smarter (and frequently richer) Than You.  Or more seriously–bureaucrats who never humped a trap case.  But they are going to tell you what they can do with your property and you’re going to like it.  Because the clear result of all the latter day hippie platitudes of strung together buzz words is that they can take your work for themselves in the name of innovation in a kind of digital ZiL lane.

And the reason they can make it stick is because for all their hand wringing about “cooperation”, they didn’t include one artist in their group and for all their whining about “voluntary adoption” the very words “innovation without permission” tells you that there’s nothing “voluntary” about it at all.

The Internet Society Doesn’t Want Competition

It is important to recognize what lies beneath these “principles” is an unstated principle–that “innovators” are special and they shouldn’t have to compete or even negotiate when it comes to the use of intellectual property online.

These Very Serious Men of Science would not try to say that permissionless innovation would include say, co-location facilities, content delivery networks or fiber.  Not servers or routers.  Not smartphones or tablets.  They don’t want to collectivize the hardware.  Now why might that be?

And don’t let that word “collectivize” slip by you–that’s exactly what they want to do.  Because like good bureaucrats, the Very Serious Men of Science want these rules to become the law.  And how would they do that?

Take Google for example–a big backer of the Internet Society’s principles because it profits them to do so.  According to Edward Wyatt, Google “is now the eighth-biggest spender on lobbying in the capital, ahead of not only Microsoft but also mainstays like Lockheed Martin.”  Depending on who you believe, Google has one lobbyist for every two members of Congress–and if you ask me they have five academics and two consultants for every lobbyist.  Given recent shenanigans in Washington regarding privacy, it also appears that Google owns the Federal Trade Commission, the National Security Agency and who knows what else.  And it looks like they weren’t schmucks and hired Susan Molinari to get it for them wholesale.

There’s some permissionless innovation for you.

Permissionless Innovation Diminishes the Value of Private Property Rights

Professor Armen Alchien defines private property rights as a bundle of rights, a view widely held among economists:

A property right is the exclusive authority to determine how a resource is used…One [attribute of private property] is the exclusive right to the services of the resource. Thus, for example, the owner of an apartment with complete property rights to the apartment has the right to determine whether to rent it out and, if so, which tenant to rent to; to live in it himself; or to use it in any other peaceful way. That is the right to determine the use. If the owner rents out the apartment, he also has the right to all the rental income from the property. That is the right to the services of the resources (the rent).

Finally, a private property right includes the right to delegate, rent, or sell any portion of the rights by exchange or gift at whatever price the owner determines (provided someone is willing to pay that price). If I am not allowed [or not required] to buy some rights from you and you therefore are not allowed to sell rights to me, private property rights are reduced. Thus, the three basic elements of private property are (1) exclusivity of rights to choose the use of a resource, (2) exclusivity of rights to the services of a resource, and (3) rights to exchange the resource at mutually agreeable terms….

Private property rights do not conflict with human rights. They are human rights. Private property rights are the rights of humans to use specified goods and to exchange them. Any restraint on private property rights shifts the balance of power from impersonal attributes toward personal attributes and toward behavior that political authorities approve. That is a fundamental reason for preference of a system of strong private property rights: private property rights protect individual liberty.

The Googlebertarian view of intellectual property as anything but protectable private property rights (digital only, of course) is a bizarre indulgence that seems to benefit only one actor–Big Tech, and at that Big Tech when the companies involved want to commoditize “content” online.

This “permissionless innovation” says that if the “innovator” wants to use your property to profit himself, then he need not ask your permission to do so.  If he need not ask your permission, why would he have to pay you for the use of your property?  And even if he did have to pay you, would not the price he paid be reduced because he had taken away important private property rights before he tried to sell your property back to you?

This is going to be particularly interesting when 3D printers begin to bring the Ford Motor Company into collision with permissionless innovation.  Can’t wait.

Whose Nose is It?

Nowhere is there a better example of “permissionless innovation” than in the current NSA scandals–and the intellectual property involved is your privacy rights.  The highly innovative National Security Agency and Google, et al, demonstrated once and for all just how valuable your intellectual property is.  In this case, it was the right to your name and likeness, attributes about yourself, photographs, GPS data and who knows what else.

What this all boils down to is that “innovators” want to be treated as special children by Big Mommy and have their toys protected by the government.  To paraphrase Mr. Bridges, it’s really important that we protect the rights of really rich “innovators” in this country–not to mention protecting one of the greatest income transfers of all time.  They should be free to drive around and sniff your WiFi while they take pictures of your house for their no-bid government spy agency contracts.  Yes, the special kids need Big Mommy to protect their toys yet again.

And Big Mommy has done a great job of protecting their toys so far.

If you can tell me where Google stops and the government begins, you will get the prize.

PRO Rate Courts are Swords, Not Shields: It’s Time to Bring the PRO Consent Decrees into the 21st Century

If Pandora’s recent shameless antics prove anything, it proves the decades-old antitrust consent decrees that dictate how ASCAP and BMI operate need to be updated to reflect the modern online music business or be abandoned altogether in favor of market place licensing.

The way the consent decrees work is that if a user of music and the songwriter collectives cannot reach a deal, they can avail themselves of what is essentially a government-mandated price setting hearing in front of a federal judge in New York. And with all respect, federal judges in New York have much more productive things to be doing with their time.

A rate court is a very expensive procedure that used to be rarely used, but now is the avenue of choice for well-heeled Internet companies wishing to use their financial muscle to harass songwriters into taking less money to make the pain stop–pain usually associated with the hemorrhaging of money to pay legal fees.  Unlike Pandora, ASCAP’s CEO is not making a million a month from stock sales.  Songwriters have to fund this massive rate court litigation with ever dwindling revenues that decline in large part as a result of the piracy that profits so many and for which the government has historically done little or nothing to stop (although that changed with Mr. Morton for which we are grateful).

And let’s be clear–ASCAP and BMI are songwriter collective bargaining groups, not that dissimilar to unions–unions that enjoy the labor antitrust exemption.  While the Pandoras of the world would like you to believe that they are suing “ASCAP”, when they sue ASCAP they are really suing songwriters.  There’s no ASCAP, BMI or any other PRO without the songwriter members of those organizations.  And it’s the songwriters who are hurt by these rate court tactics that are an end run around collective bargaining.

Rate courts are a process that is available to pretty much all users of music if they don’t make the deal they want with songwriters because companies like Pandora which clearly dominates the web radio space, the online video monopolist YouTube, Clear Channel, and the National Association of Broadcasters all need to be protected by the American people and its powerful government from…songwriters.

This would be the American government that has been unable and until recently unwilling to do much, if anything, to protect songwriters from brand sponsored piracy that is facilitated by companies like Google.  Google that is permitted to acquire pretty much anything they want and are never found to be American monopolists, can advertise drugs to unsuspecting consumers, get caught selling counterfeit Olympics tickets and keep the money, can have cars drive around taking pictures of your house to use with Google Maps (commissioned on a no-bid contract by a government spy agency)–but those songwriters, boy we have to watch out for them.

Aside from the sheer absurdity of the concept of rate courts as moral hazard, rate courts are also economically inefficient.  If you compare the last best positions of the PROs and the retailers before they went to the rate court, the rate they ended up with as set by the rate court, and the extraordinary cost of the rate court, it is hard to imagine that the rate court actually benefits anybody to any significant degree–if at all.

What is truly odd about the current rate proceeding with Pandora is that they seem to be complaining about songwriters “opting out” of the blanket licenses offered by PROs–which is a requirement of the consent decrees designed to foster competition.  PROs are required to allow their members to opt out, so when a songwriter opts out of the blanket license, she is exercising her right to do so.  Of course, when a songwriter opts out of the PRO blanket license for Pandora, the songwriter is also opting out of the rate court bully-boy mind game.

And that is enough to make Pandora stamp their little feet and go shopping.  And here’s the moral of their story:

Songwriters are dangerous people.  Pandora and Google must be protected against songwriters.

This is patently absurd.

Pandora’s “Grass Roots” Bait and Switch Part 2: What does Pandora have in common with the Saudi Arabia, AIG and Google?

Continued from More on Pandora’s Bait and Switch Campaign, Part 1

In other news from the latest proud owner of a local radio station who doesn’t care about the locality of their local radio station–

Pandora’s Bait and Switch Campaign:  Pandora Wants to Cut Royalty Payments But Nancy Tarr Doesn’t Tell You That

Pandora got the IRFA message–they are now trying to drive a wedge between the stars who are having what passes for hits these days, and the independent artists who aspire to have hits or to at least make a living.  How are they doing this?  By dangling the bait of “promotion” in front of artists who yearn to break in.

Here’s how it starts.  An independent artist will receive this email from someone at Pandora, in this case from Nancy Tarr:

Dear <firstname><lastname> I hope you don’t mind this unsolicited email. I’m reaching out to introduce myself and to start a conversation with you about your music on Pandora and about some broader policy issues.

What comes next?  Investment opportunities in the Horn of Africa?  The true importance of owning gold?  Or some other spammy pitch?

No, Nancy Tarr’s email is ostensibly about Pandora’s “artist dashboard” system, which is basically 12 year old “heat map” technology that is pretty meaningless because it doesn’t do the one thing that independent artists need: Direct contact with their fans.  Also known as an email address.  (MTP readers will remember our discussion from February about how “subscribe here” buttons could be added to “buy here” buttons on music services like Pandora so that fans could elect to join an artist’s email list–with no other involvement from Pandora.)

If Nancy Tarr’s email gets the artist to respond with a pulse, the artist then gets another email from Nancy Tarr:

From: Nancy Tarr <XXXX@pandora.com>

Date: [April 2013]

To: <ARTIST >

Subject: RE: ARTIST – Introduction to Pandora Listener Analytics for Artists

Dear <firstname>,

Thank you for taking the time to write back to me.  I am going to attach a couple of documents for you, a sample of an Artist Dashboard Pandora is researching as well as Pandora’s Artist Best Practices (you may already have this).  Please let me know what you think of the dashboard – and if this information may be helpful when you are setting up your tours.

I am also glad you are willing to talk about helping working musicians raise their voices in Washington, DC.

[Never mentioned by the artist.]

As I mentioned in my first email to you, Pandora is interested in raising the voices of working class musicians like yourself [and here comes the wedge] to policy makers in Washington, DC.   In that spirit, we’re working to pull together a “letter of support” for internet radio from working musicians.

Our aim would be to share the letter with members of congress.  Would you be willing to add your name and your bandmates to the following letter?  If so, please reply to this email with your permission [how about the bandmates' permission?].  We already have over 250 signatures.  In the next several weeks, we will hand deliver this to members of congress, particularly those overseeing legislation in this area.  Eventually we’d like to collect over a 1000 signatures.

The primary intent is not to advocate a particular position, but make members aware of the missing voice on this issue, and for that matter other issues surrounding copyright, royalties, licensing, etc.  [Like what?] If we get enough signatures, perhaps members will reach out and actively include working musicians in the process, which we view as critical to the long term health of the music industry.  [You mean like...whatchamacallit...unions?]

Please let me know your thoughts on the Artist information I attached as well as the Letter of Support.  I look forward to talking soon.

The letter of support is below.  Thank you.

Best wishes,

Nancy Tarr

["LETTER OF SUPPORT" STARTS HERE]

We are working musicians.

We do not have the promotional budgets of major acts. We have built our careers outside of the traditional music business, relying on our own ability to build an audience through years of touring, creative grassroots marketing and the enduring support of friends, family and our fans. It is not an easy life but our passion for making music keeps us going.

And now we have internet radio.

For the first time in our professional lives we are experiencing what it’s like to have a the power of radio in our corner, introducing thousands of new fans to our music all across the country.

Internet radio is young but it is already beginning to really make a difference for us and for thousands of others just like us. We are finding new fans, selling more music, and playing to larger audiences.

We are all fervent advocates [or dupes?] for the fair treatment of artists. We are also fervent supporters of internet radio and want more than anything for it to grow; and to grow as fast as possible. We want more Pandoras.

As policy makers shape the future of radio, we urge you to listen to ALL musicians. Don’t ignore us.  We are not on top of the pop charts, but we are large in number and we represent the next generation of music in America and around the world.

Who is “Nancy Tarr” and Why is She Sending Me Emails?

So–who is Nancy Tarr?  First of all, she’s that most elusive of commodities at Internet companies–a live person.

She has been on what I’d call the wrong side of artist royalties for a long time now, including as a consultant for Qorvis Communications–the Washington DC PR consultants protecting Google, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, AIG, and other wealthy individuals such as Mubarak buddy Ahmed Ezz.  Her title is the very “working class musician” mouthful “Social/Cause Marketing, Celebrity/Community Engagement Online/Grassroots Coalitions.”  According to SourceWatch, the Qorvis offices were raided by the FBI investigating violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

In working class English–sounds like a very advanced manufacturer of Astroturf to us.

Don’t Tell Them Pandora Wants to Cut Their Royalties

At the end of the day, Pandora wants to cut artist royalties to enrich Pandora and its executives.  That’s the fact.   We saw just how far they will go to accomplish that goal with the announcement–after their shareholder’s meeting was over–that Pandora intended to pull the stunt of buying an FM radio station to try somehow to bootstrap owning one small station in an area they have no connection to as a desperate attempt to pay songwriters even less than they already do.

And this is the really offensive part–nowhere in Nancy Tarr’s emails does she reveal what seems pretty clearly to be her true role.  Or that the point of her unsolicited email is to trick the artist into signing up to Pandora’s “artist letter” without ever revealing its purpose: Duping artists into supporting Pandora in cutting the royalties for all artists in order to increase Pandora’s profits.

If this wasn’t clear before the latest action of Pandora’s board in using the stockholders’ money in this bizarre purchase of a radio station, it should be crystal clear now.

Imagine if you’d signed up to this campaign first and then found out about Pandora’s little radio station buying stunt?  Which you would have given that this letter went out in April.

Now that is a cold blooded example of the 1% using bait and switch tactics to accomplish Pandora’s one true end.

Screwing the vulnerable.

More on Pandora’s Bait and Switch Campaign

MTP readers will remember the short lived legislation to lower artist royalties that Pandora backed last year.  That was called the “Internet Radio Fairness Act” and it never came to a vote.  The House IP Subcommittee  held a hearing at which, I think it is fair to say, Pandora lost and lost big.

We Will Not Be Moved

This was in no small part to two things:  Artists came together: 125 artists came together to sign an open letter to Congress that supported digital music but rejected Pandora’s lust for profits.

Songwriters also came together and a group of them performed at the House offices to demonstrate how the songwriter royalties that Pandora pays are grotesquely out of whack.  (Right after Pandora, Clear Channel and Google joined together to use their lobbying clout on that legislation, Pandora also sued songwriters to get a lower royalty for them.)

The other event was that independent artist David Lowery of Cracker and Camper van Beethoven challenged Senator Ron Wyden at the Future of Music Policy Summit about the Pandora legislation–and Wyden really didn’t have much of a response.

In short–the artists locked arms and said we will not be moved.

Pandora’s Bait and Switch Campaign:  Pandora Wants to Cut Royalty Payments But Nancy Tarr Doesn’t Tell You That

Pandora got the message–they are now trying to drive a wedge between the stars who are having what passes for hits these days, and the independent artists who aspire to have hits or to at least make a living.  How are they doing this?  By dangling the bait of “promotion” in front of artists who yearn to break in.

Here’s how it starts.  An independent artist will receive this email from Nancy Tarr at Pandora (who lists herself as a “grassroots” consultant to one of the biggest spin factories in DC):

Dear <firstname><lastname> I hope you don’t mind this unsolicited email. I’m reaching out to introduce myself and to start a conversation with you about your music on Pandora and about some broader policy issues.

Tomorrow–Baiting and Switching

Tim Westergren’s Mask Is Slipping: Pandora’s Scorched Earth Attack on Songwriters

In yet another disastrous act of misguided desperation, Pandora announced that they purchased a radio station in Rapid City, South Dakota.  That’s not South San Francisco, it’s South Dakota–1500 miles away.

Why did they buy that station?  To somehow try to bootstrap themselves into the most important thing in their miserable lives–paying songwriters less.  (And artists will be next.)

Pandora has no connection to South Dakota, much less Rapid City–and that’s not why the FCC grants licenses to radio station owners.  But in the world of media concentration perfected by Pandora’s running buddies Clear Channel, buying a radio station in a city you have no connection to for purposes not related to proper use of the public airwaves to benefit the citizens of Rapid City is just business as usual.  Send in the Silicon Valley lawyers with the IPO checkbook to screw the songwriters whatever the cost.

Just in case you didn’t quite get it before, Pandora has now demonstrated unequivocally that they loathe songwriters so much that they’d literally do anything to screw them.  Including antics like buying an FM radio station.

In fact, they would rather spend their IPO millions–gained by their one product, music–on something as idiotic as buying a radio station and take on the burden of FCC licensing (including the inevitable opposition to their license at the FCC) than pay songwriters fairly.

This is a shockingly brazen stunt on the short con, even for committed grifters like Pandora.  It compares to Google’s attempt to destroy authors by attacking their ability to bargain collectively in the Google Books case.

And Tim Westergren keeps making $1 million a month in stock sales.

Tomorrow–what do the House of Saud, Google, AIG and Pandora have in common?  Aside from crony capitalism, that is.

The New New Native Advertising: The Internship Crosses the Creepy Line

For those of you following the summer movie releases, poor Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson are starring in the career-ending “The Internship,” something of a sequel to “The Wedding Crashers” which happened to be released the same weekend as Google’s very creepy connections to the National Security Agency became global news.

Oops.

In one of those hysterically funny juxtapositions that only happen in the trade press, the Hollywood Reporter tells us that the picture bombed, but also has a related and unintentionally ridiculous sidebar news story:

Box Office Shocker: Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson’s Google comedy “The Internship” opens to a disappointing $18.1 million, the lowest debut for a Shawn Levy film in a decade.

STORY: Google Unveils Model to Predict Box Office Success [is it a joint venture with the NSA?]

Yes, do you know how many people have floated a way to “predict box office success” since the flickering dawn of Hollywood?  One word:

Ishtar.

I’m still looking for a positive review of “The Internship” but this one from Manohla Dargis is pretty representative:

It may also be that Mr. Vaughn’s interest in libertarianism (he spoke in support of Ron Paul during the last presidential campaign) dovetailed with the cyber-libertarianism that’s popular in Silicon Valley. Whatever Mr. Vaughn’s motivations, with “The Internship” he has charted possibly new, definitely uneasy terrain by helping create a big-studio release that, from start to gaga finish, is a hosanna to a single company, its products, philosophy and implicit politics. Plenty of movies sell stuff from fashion to wars and religion; this one sells the Tao of Google….

The name Google, surprise, appears in almost every scene in every conceivable cutesy, slangy permutation (noun, verb, adjective) in what sounds like every other line of dialogue. That the studio releasing this feature-length ad, 20th Century Fox, would lend its brand to another branded behemoth like this is vulgar if not shocking, especially given how numbers-driven studios have become. The systems that they increasingly employ to try and build hits may be not as famous or secret as Google’s algorithm, but there are, um, links. Or in the words of one industry adviser: “As audiences are more interactive than ever in their entertainment consumption, it’s become increasingly easier for marketers and the information technology community to gather data on their preferences.” Someone really said this. You can Google it.

And how much script approval did Google have?  Claire Cain Miller tells us:

Lorraine Twohill, Google’s vice president of global marketing, said at the premiere that Mr. Vaughn approached Google with the idea two years ago, and the company agreed.  [Two years ago?  He got his movie from idea to wide release in TWO YEARS?  Do you know how long that usually takes, stars or no stars?]

The marketing department worked with the film’s producers throughout the process and read the script. Mr. Levy said that Google did not have editorial control and that much of the final film was improvised by Mr. Vaughn and Mr. Wilson anyway.

Still, according to news reports, Google had some veto power: it jettisoned a scene in which one of its driverless cars crashed. (Instead, as the two stars stare at the empty driver’s seat, Mr. Wilson’s character says, “It’s scary because it’s new.”) Yet Google didn’t step in with other elements, like the Google employee who moonlights at a strip club.

Google clearly thinks the film can do wonders for recruiting.

This is a tribute to Google’s remarkable tone deafness–remember, this was the company that put out what was supposedly a “user generated” YouTube video of a perfect wedding processional choreographed to…a Chris Brown track.  The week after Chris Brown beat Rihanna into the hospital.  A video that was clearly produced before the incident and that Google used anyway after the incident. (The “JK Wedding Video” which supposedly were real people.  See “YouTube’s monetization claims: Where’s the beef?“)

Welcome to the new new native advertising.  Now the real question is–how much did Google pay for the product placement.

My bet–Fox wasn’t born yesterday and they protected their downside.  How they did that will eventually come out.

Google’s NSA Toilet

Understanding Google’s Wrist Slaps: When is the FTC Like the NSA?

The Washington Post tells us that a whistleblower has come forward to disclose how the National Security Agency has been getting data “Collection directly from the servers of these U.S. Service Providers: Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple.”

So which of these is not like the others?

Google.

It is only Google that has been getting off with wrist slaps from the FTC in investigation after investigation.  Send cars around to take pictures of your house and snarf down your wifi?  No problem.  Abuse their monopoly position in search and on YouTube?  Monopoly?  What monopoly?

Merge with companies that give Google unprecedented access to behavioral data and private phone calls?  Approved!!

Adopt antebellum privacy policies?

‘If You Have Something You Don’t Want Anyone To Know, Maybe You Shouldn’t Be Doing It’.