How Not to Fight Piracy on the Intarwebz

I learned this morning from Marketing Pilgrim that Henry Porter thinks Google is a monopoly and a deleterious force upon the internets, our individual rights, and even our livelihoods.

BA BUM BUUUUMMMMMM!!!

I also learned from the very same utterances that Henry Porter is an idiot with an addiction to haterade.

Guardian.co.uk: Google is just an amoral menace

Despite the aura of heroic young enterprise that still miraculously attaches to the web, what we are seeing is a much older and toxic capitalist model - the classic monopoly that destroys industries and individual enterprise in its bid for ever greater profits. Despite its diversification, Google is in the final analysis a parasite that creates nothing, merely offering little aggregation, lists and the ordering of information generated by people who have invested their capital, skill and time.

I feel dirty just having read the article, so you'll need to hop on over there to get the full effect.

I am not sure if Mr. Porter realizes the irony of both decrying Google's success and at the same time arguing that it provides no value to its users.  Given the how foolish the rest of the article is, I really don't think he saw it.

For instance, he argues that artists who want to share their work with the masses on the internet have no where else to go but YouTube, a Google subsidiary.

Really?  There aren't any other video sites on the internets where people can post their own videos?  Someone better not tell these people.

Want another example of Mr. Porter's pigheaded idiocy is his argument that Google is apparently killing newspapers (Yes, I know he denies it, but it doesn't stop him from making an argument that can only be construed as supporting that point.) and arguing that in this day of the internet, complete with Twitter, blogs, and new media, newspapers are the only thing that can save our freedom.  Again, I really don't think he sees the irony.

And his ignorance is really just gobsmacking, such as his claim that Google has never known failure.  Does anyone remember Google Answers?  Probably not, because it was a failure.  Remember when it flagged the whole internet as malware?  Fail.  Remember their failed attempt at radio advertising? No?  Well, it was another fail.  I would call their capitulation to China a failure as well.

Google has failures, but it has loads of wins.  They have loads of wins because they do loads of things well.

Mr. Porter does rightly point out one sort of crime that is rampant on the internet: Intellectual Property Piracy.  I would argue that many (30%?), if not most internet users think that P2P file sharing is morally acceptable and see nothing wrong with it.  But this isn't Google's fault so much as it is a sign of the intellectual corruption of our time.

Posted by: Flibbertigibbet at 02:49 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Category: In the News
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