The FCC and violence on television

Reason is so good that I might just have to give up blogging. There's nothing I can add to that, it's so perfect. Read the link if you want a primer on why violence in our culture is almost certainly not hurting our children, despite all of the loud shouting to the contrary. As happens oh so often, the loud shouting is to make up for the lack of any real evidence to back up their point.

A Good Hard Look at Downloading

About a week ago someone told me that they don’t download because they believe that content makers should be paid for their work. This sounds like a reasonable argument, but it really isn’t. I’ll explain why for each type of media.

Let’s start with music, because that’s the most popular thing to download. Personally, I don’t buy CDs, ever. And don’t get me started on iTunes downloads, but that won’t happen either. It doesn’t really matter why, but let’s just assume I’m either poor or cheap (or both). Because of this, no record company, artist, or distributor will ever make a cent from me. So if I were to (hypothetically) download a CD, then they haven’t lost any money. They didn’t lose any money from distribution or production. They only money that they lost was the money spent making the music, which doesn’t change at all based on my actions. So they didn’t make any money, but they didn’t lose any either. Since we’ve already accepted that I wasn’t going to buy the CD, there should be no problem with me (hypothetically) downloading anything, because I was never going to net them any money.

So far the download is neutral, no money lost or gained. But let’s take it a step further. Now let’s assume that after I have (hypothetically) downloaded the CD I share it with my friend/family member/coworker, who does buy CDs. Despite how the record companies make it sound, people who buy CDs still exist, in massive numbers. He likes the music, and he goes out and purchases the CD. Had I not (hypothetically) downloaded it, he would not have heard it, and would not have netted them the money.

If we look at it like a pyramid-scheme, I share a CD with a few friends, who share it with a few friends, who share it with a few friends, and so on. Through the power of exponents, you get to a few hundred people very quickly, some of whom will buy the CD (or future CDs) and would not have without the (illegal (and hypothetical)) act of downloading. The more obscure the band, the more pronounced this effect will be, since they won’t have national exposure. This is exactly why sites like Jamendo do so well, people love free music, bands love free exposure, and the Creative Commons just works.

The situation is different for the “big four”. They already pay for exposure, and their music is the stuff on the radio. However, they produce fewer CDs of lower quality than they ever have, which is probably the main reason they’re making less money now. I wouldn’t be surprised if they lose more money from lawyer’s fees than from downloading. (As a note, I’m not sure if the distribution scheme I mention below would work for music as well as TV. It very well may, in a similar way that radio works. Because I discussed it there I won’t again here.)

To sum up: the case that downloading music hurts profits is unlikely, especially when the downloader is a person who wouldn’t normally purchase CDs. Downloading increases exposure, which can only result in more profits (whether through CDs or concert tickets). As such, it’s likely that non-traditional distribution is beneficial for artists, and quite possibly for distributors.

The case for TV is different. TV (at least for broadcast) is free, but supported by advertising. Gee wiz, that sounds like something familiar on the internet. There’s no way that you could use that model to support internet distribution! It would be really difficult for gigantic companies like FOX or CBS to dedicate a few servers to shows, make them free for download without commercials, and use a model like Salon’s to support it. That’s only the exact same thing as television at over the air, it would never work! They could probably even get away with keeping the commercials in there, most people are ridiculously lazy and wouldn’t bother with cutting them out. Even if people don’t watch the commercial(s), it’s no different than going to the bathroom during a break, and just as easy. As such that’s not a real problem.

Because TV is advertising dependent, distributing it over the internet would probably increase profits, whether through P2P channels or through something like I described above. There are many people who don’t have time to watch their favorite shows anymore, and services like TiVo are expensive. Right now I don’t even own a TV. No one is making any money off of me. The very worst case scenario for the stations is that I (hypothetically) download their shows off of P2P networks and retain my interest in them, so that when I do have access to a TV I watch their channel instead of another one. Who wants to watch a plotline-dependent show that they haven’t seen in nine months?

More likely (and beneficial) scenarios include me watching the show with friends, getting them hooked on it, thus increasing the potential number of advertising targets audience. If networks adopted the scheme above, they would still be able to show me ads, while I would be able to watch my favorite shows, all of them, at my leisure, with my friends. It’s the best of both worlds, and I really wish a major network would start doing it (and I don’t mean some crappy YouTube-esque Flash Plugin that you need to be online to watch and is 200 pixels wide. I want an .avi that I can store on a hard drive and watch whenever I want to, at least at TV quality).

To sum up: Illegal downloading probably negligibly affects television. Even if it does, the effect is likely to be positive. Not to mention that the ability to mitigate the effects and give the customer what they want while still making money is well within the content provider’s capabilities, if they wanted to do it.

Movies are a different beast still. However, they’re pretty much like music, except where exposure matters less. They’re also much more expensive to produce, and an ad-supported distribution network probably wouldn’t work as well. I’d have sympathy with Hollywood if it weren’t for the fact that they make about one good movie a year, they haven’t had an original idea in twenty, and their slow demise will almost certainly be a benefit to all of society. I won’t discuss the issue further.


I am well beyond skeptical that downloading hurts anyone. Given people’s actual behavior (as opposed to the fantasy-land where everyone who downloads a CD would have bought it) the effects will be much smaller than the $20 bajillion estimates that the RIAA throws around, and this doesn’t take into account any of the positive effects, which are hard to quantify, but extant nonetheless. (For a fortuitously timed article on this subject that just came to my attention, see here.)

Anyone interested in learning more about copyright issues should read Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig, Stanford Professor of Law. He distributes it for free online, and (unlike me) isn’t writing based solely on his own logic. I highly recommend it.

(Final note to those feeling litigious: when I write in the first person it does not actually indicate that I have performed the act that the narrator was said to have performed. This page in no way constitutes proof that I have ever violated any law.)

"Dirty Jobs" Monkey Thoughts

There’s a show on the Discovery Channel called “Dirty Jobs”, where the host, Mike Rowe, goes around doing job that are, well, dirty. A recent episode had him at a sanctuary for rehabilitating monkeys in South Africa. The manager gave him a list of things that he shouldn’t do, including showing his teeth, hitting his head with both hands, mimicking, and flapping his arms. The reason is that the monkeys use these as a signals of aggression, and they will interpret them as such and respond aggressively.

That got me thinking about how every animal I can think of has their own special signals with their own special meanings, and they act like every other animal understands it. I started wondering whether some of these things are cultural like they are in humans. We have both universal and local signals, for instance laughing and smiling are both universally understood, but certain gestures are not. For instance, shaking your head means no in some cultures and yes in others. So are there groups of monkeys for whom flapping your arms means something besides aggression, perhaps a warning of danger? I don’t know, and I don’t even know where to start looking to find out. I would speculate that there are, because I know that some primates have some form of culture, such as tool use. But I don’t know.

I also thought about how effective these signals are for interspecies communication. Some of them, like barring the teeth, are probably pretty effective, and seem to be used by most animals as a way of saying, “Don’t mess with me.” But hitting your head with your hands? That seems far less likely to trigger any kind of understanding. Maybe this is almost like sexual selection, where all that matters is what the majority of the species uses, and it’s fairly arbitrary.

I think that there are some things that are fairly universal, base instincts inherited from the ancient mammals, or even further back, while the rest are arbitrary, and only have meaning inside the species. But because of the universal instincts, the animals don’t recognize that these signals will be meaningless past the species boundary. That’s just my guess though, I’m sure some biologist out there actually knows.

Problems With Documentaries

I watch the History Channel frequently. There are a lot of good documentaries on it, and you can really learn a lot from just a few. However, I’m consistently disappointed by the documentaries that investigate more radical claims.

A recent one on the Bible Code comes to mind. There codes have been thoroughly debunked (this is a collection of such debunkings). The people who still think that Equidistant Letter Sequences in the Bible produce prophecies are deluding themselves and ignoring all of the evidence. But somehow, a program about the Bible Code gives them most of the time. Skeptics get a soundbyte, and proponents get the rest of the show. This makes it sound like these claims have a foot to stand on, when they really don’t.

Continue reading...The same is true of every sensational topic, including a recent show on “The Exodus”. The Biblical exodus didn’t happen, “from the period within which the Exodus should have happened -- the 16th-13th centuries BCE, in the broadest definition -- there is no evidence whatsoever of an exodus of the people of Israel from Egypt.” But the program brought up crazy ideas, like Israelites going to Minoan Greece and being buried there, along with stories of the parting of the Red Sea on graves and golden images of the Ark of the Covenant. It was essentially a crazy interpretation that relied on nothing but one guy’s opinion. How can you make such outrageous claims with essentially no evidence backing it up? It’s irresponsible.

Whether the topic is UFOs, the Lock Ness Monster, other “monsters”, the Holy Grail, the Exodus, the Bible Code, or any other controversial topic, skeptics get less time, and people could walk away from the show believing a position that is countered by all the evidence. We live in a country where the majority of people believe that evolution, a scientific fact, is wrong, where horoscopes based on nothing are published in newspapers and widely read, and where people believe the ludicrous over the evidence. I would hope that popularizers of Science and History should get their facts right rather than be sensationalist and contribute even more to this problem. They have a responsibility to the public, and they air documentaries such as these, they fail in that responsibility.

Why Jon Stewart should run for President

I think that Jon Stewart should run for President of the United States. I know I’m not the first to suggest it, and I doubt I’m the first to seriously consider it as a possibility, but I’ve given the idea some thought, and I’ve come up with 8 reasons he should run.

I want to point out that I’m not a political theorist, and I’m not entirely well-versed in political methods. This is just my view as part of the electorate about a candidate I would love to see on the ballot come November 10, 2008, and the reasons he should run.

8. He has The Daily Show.

This might seem like a minor point, but considering that political ad campaigns cost millions, and Jon Stewart probably doesn’t have that kind of money, having a nationally-viewable TV show with a fairly large audience is a decent starting point. It could allow him to raise enough money from loyal viewers to start an advertising campaign elsewhere.

Besides that, Comedy Central and Viacom could use his candidacy as an excellent plug for the show to draw additional attention to it. I’m no marketing executive, but even I can see that this would be a superb gimmick, especially if spun correctly.

7. There would be a media frenzy.

This ties in with the last point, in that they both have to do with media exposure. Besides the exposure Jon already has from his own show, his candidacy would be all over the news stations, especially if he announced it during a news-lull. Those 24-hour networks need something to talk about, and the “fake news anchor” turned Presidential candidate would probably get more attention than Hillary Clinton, John Kerry (attempt #2), John Edwards, or Barak Obama.

6. He commands attention from and is adored by youth.

Remember the 2004 election? Remember how John Kerry was supposed to get all the 18-24 year olds off their lazy asses and into the voting booths? Remember how he may have won had that happened? Personally, I can’t think of anything that would get them out more than Jon Stewart’s name on the ballot.

Besides getting the young voters to ballot boxes, Stewart would get the votes his thousands of fans. If he managed to get the Democratic nomination, he’d probably get pretty much all the registered Democratic and Independent vote, too. Combining that with an unprecedented young-voter turnout, he might actually win.

5. He has a fantastic bullshit detector.

In perhaps the most important consequence of him running, Jon Stewart would force candidates to have real platforms, not just empty rhetoric. One of the biggest problems with Kerry’s campaign was how he completely and utterly failed to have a real platform, while Bush just hammered home security. Stewart would cut through the bullshit, and make the other candidates actually have opinions and platforms. Who knows, America might finally have an election that’s actually about political and social issues…

4. He’s not afraid to say what needs to be said.

As he said about Al Sharpton in 2004, “The person who knows he’s not going to win is allowed to speak most freely.” This ties in with the above point. Jon would bring out the truth about candidates: their political histories; inconsistencies in their opinions and platforms; and how they fall short in areas that matter. This would force the other candidates to actually come up with consistent, logical, and reasonable platforms, which is the first step to getting someone competent into the White House.

3. He is a great debater.

Every time I see Jon Stewart interview someone he disagrees with or who holds inconsistent positions, he tears them to pieces. He even does this when he’s on their shows. (Crossfire, anyone?) He has the speaking and debate skills necessary to make use of the two other skills I mentioned above, and this trifecta makes him dangerous for the other candidates. When asked why politicians don’t answer straight, simple questions, he said, “Nobody holds their feet to the fire to do it.” If he were in the race, he would be able to hold their feet to the fire in spectacular fashion.

2. His middle-left positions.

At least as far as I can gather from the Daily Show, Jon is pretty center-left. While I doubt he could get the votes of more hardcore Republicans, especially the religious-right, the moderates and independents would likely be drawn to him. Especially if he applies his hatred of the absurd to his political philosophy. I can only imagine a candidate who chose their platform based on logical and sensible conclusions instead of partisan rhetoric, and I doubt I’m the only one.

1. If he wins, he would be a fantastic President

All right, that’s pure speculation. But I’m a big Jon Stewart fan, and I want to believe, nay, must believe that he could do it. He might have no political experience whatsoever, judging from the politicians I see that might not be a bad thing. It would be very refreshing to have a President who sees the problems we have, and could deal with the crap other politicians spew. Here’s hoping for Stewart ’08.