Posts and thoughts on business and best practices.
So, the latest-and-greatest panic rumor is that Amazon is going to create a “Netflix for books,” where any Amazon Prime member can download (presumably) any ebook they want for nothing more than the cost of their Prime membership. People on the net–particularly paranoid authors and lugubrious tech writers–have been speculating …
So, you want to make your work–book, movie, sculpture, whatever–perfect, don’t you? You want it to shine. And you’re going to polish it, rewrite it, re-imagine it, and retcon it every chance you get? Or maybe you just can’t resist adding those few last-minute flourishes? Well, you’re in good company. …
I’m going way out on a limb here. I’m only a lay enthusiast in the field of economics, not an expert in the field, but I’ve got a middling amount of business experience in a variety of different fields, and a strange notion has been growing on my mind lately: …
The following is the text of an email I sent this evening to the Parsec Awards Committee. If you agree, please chime in in the comments. Dear Committee– A couple years ago, the categories surround podcast novels were modified so that single reader podcast novels were given their own category, …
Because this one deals a lot with the law again, the usual disclaimers apply: I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice. This is one man’s opinion on how business is done. Always consult a qualified legal professional when seeking legal advice. — — — — Previous chapter: …
Well, everyone, it looks like Dropbox has listened. They’ve rewritten their TOS in a way that is very sensible, does not use loaded legal terminology that would allow an unscrupulous employee or future company administration to do a little snatch-and-grab with your intellectual property, and is layperson readable. I call …
Apologies to those who are already tired of this–it’s threatening to become a hobby horse. Looks like with Google+, Google is going where every stupid lawyer has gone before: claiming “a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute …
Dropbox keeps trying. They’ve changed their TOS again–if you’re watching and waiting for them to get their act in order, check the link and see where they’re at now. Meanwhile, Gigacom has posted an interesting analysis about what the public reaction to Dropbox might mean for the future of online …
ECtimes posts an excellent analysis of why Dropbox’s TOS situation continues to be a problem for its users–and compares the current (revised several times since Friday) wording to the wording of some other, similar services. Worth a gander. —addendum— There are more updates on the Dropbox situation at my new …
My gripe session about Dropbox’s new TOS and my presentation (wherein I all but came out and shouted that it’s stupid to use a free cloud-based backup service) understandably rankled a healthy percentage of the commenters. My fellows in the hacking community, who eat, sleep, and breathe security issues, described …