Giving a reader free access to something new is often exponentially more effective than expensive media advertising.

If you’ve been to a Sam’s club around meal time, you can;t miss the free samples of food products in almost every aisle. It’s a pretty simple concept. If you get a taste of something you like, you’re very likely to buy more to take home. Books with good library representation always sell more copies than those notilable on loan.

We’ve noted in the past the various stories of individual authors like Paulo Coelho and David Pogue, who showed that free (non-DRM’d) versions of their ebooks helped increase physical book sales. Then, in February, we wrote about some actual research that showed that when unauthorized ebooks get out into the wild, there is a “significant jump in sales” of the physical book. And, now there’s even more evidence to support this. A recent paper by a PhD. candidate noticed that free ebooks tend to increase sales of physical books. In this case, rather than looking at “unauthorized” ebooks, it looks like they focused on authorized free ebook versions. (Techdirt)

Publisher suits have  a hard time dealing with the fact that there are freeloaders in the world.  What these execs don’t seem to understand is that this minority of readers has always existed, and that they will do without rather than pay.  By depriving the avid reader who might pay for something he likes to stop the freeloader, publishers are literally killing their most powerful new marketing tool.

New FCC chair Julius Genachowski seized the opportunity to talk up the need for more of  his so called “open net” initiatives at CES last week:

Chairman Julius Genachowski seized the opportunity to reiterate the FCC’s net-neutrality goals and reasoning to his interlocuter, Consumer Electronics Association president and CEO Gary Shapiro.

When Shapiro asked him his opinion of Comcast’s argument that the FCC didn’t have authority to dictate to them how to run their business - “There was simply no federal law to interpret, enforce, or apply against Comcast,” were Comcast’s words - Genachowski danced away from the question. “The litigation underscores for me the importance of developing sensible rules of the road around a free and open internet that people understand,” he said, adding that “we’ll obviously watch what happens with the court and act accordingly.” (The Register)

Here’s the rub: Simply replacing Comcast (or any other duopoly player) as the arbiter of how traffic flows on the net with government micro management is replacing a bad problem with one that is worse. If chairman Genachowski was really interested in a free and open net, he’d open the last mile to competition.  That includes making the public airwaves really public, and requiring line sharing on the last mile of copper and coax.  Adding another layer of government to an uncompetitive market can’t possibly improve anything. You can’t have a free and open net without free and open competition. Unfortunately the hope and change FCC seems to prefer the status quo duopoly with more FCC rules.

Imagine the reaction of a Sony pictures suit receiving news that one of the company’s new releases had rocketed to the top of the most shared bit torrent list. We’d hear plenty of complaining, demands for tougher laws and blaming the internet for losses.

The reaction of some indie producers is exactly the opposite. If one of their products rockets to the top of the shared files list, it’s cause for celebration. Why? Viral distribution creates buzz and puts them on the map. That much buzz pushes the indie past the big Hollywood distribution wall and actually helps make sales.

Alan Gerow was the first of a few folks to send in the news that some independent filmmakers not only discovered that their film, Ink, had ended up being widely available via Bittorrent, but that they were quite happy about the exposure. Alan sends over the email that the filmmakers sent out:

Dear Fans and Friends,

Over the weekend something pretty extraordinary happened. Ink got ripped off. Someone bit torrented the movie (we knew this would happen) and they posted it on every pirate site out there. What we didn’t expect was that within 24 hours Ink would blow up. Ink became the number 1 most downloaded movie on several sites having been downloaded somewhere between 150,000 to 200,000 times as far as we can tell. Knowing there’s absolutely nothing we can do about it, we’ve embraced the piracy and are just happy Ink is getting unprecedented exposure.

As a result, Ink is now ranked #16 on IMDb’s movie meter and is currently one of the top 20 most popular movies in the world. (Tech Dirt)

If you think regional monopoly communication behemoths like AT&T and Verizon are a good thing, you’ll love the new Comcast. With the newly minted FCC blessing unrestrained growth of the MSO giant, there’s little to stop Cablezilla from gobbling up smaller operators and growing its coax monopoly footprint.  Will this be good for consumers? Don’t bet on it. While Comcast has been upgrading its network to deliver faster speeds to some end users, it’s also been leading the industry in pushing usage caps and surcharges. With an ongoing enlargement of a Cabliezilla monoculture, we’ll see this being pushed into more markets where competition is sparse. The need for cash to fund system buy outs combined with no competition from the telcos will pretty much guarantee all Comcast customers will be paying more.

Comcast issued their third quarter earnings this morning, which indicate that while growth has slowed slightly at the cable giant, the money continues to roll in thanks to a combination of rate hikes and customers adding additional services. The company recorded a quarterly profit of $944 million, up from $771 million one year earlier. The company added 361,000 net broadband subscribers and 375,000 VoIP net customers, lower than predicted growth on both fronts but still respectable in the eyes of Wall Street investors.

Respectable might be an understatement, given Comcast’s quarterly broadband subscriber additions were more than double the combined total of Qwest, AT&T and Verizon on the quarter. (DSL Reports)

Former Third Pipe affiliate and popular online retailer Newegg has just announced and IPO during one of the worst recessions in history. Much of the money expected to be raised will fund an expansion in Asia, but it will also convert founder Fred Chang’s majority stake in the company to cash. Is the company seizing the opportunity to take market share while competition is pulling back? Is the founder cashing out in uncertain times? I think it’s a little of both.

According to the prospectus, Newegg plans to use $25.0 million from the IPO to expand its international operations, including building an Asian headquarters and a regional warehouse. It will also pay back $8.6 million in loans, and pocket the rest for working capital and general corporate purposes.

Insight Venture Partners owns a 12.7 percent stake in the firm, thanks to a $20 million investment it made in the company in 2005. (Internet news)

No one is really sure what the limits of fiber optic capacity are.   One thing is certain: With a little investment there’s no scarcity of available bandwidth on existing infrastructure.

Alcatel-Lucent today said that scientists at Bell Labs have set an optical transmission record that could deliver data about 10 times faster than current undersea cables,  resulting in speeds of more than 100 Petabits per second.kilometer.  A petawhat? This translates to the equivalent of about 100 million Gigabits per second.kilometer or sending about 400 DVDs per second over 7,000 kilometers, roughly the distance between Paris and Chicago. (Gigaom)

Out of the remaining 2-1/2 US telcos, sometimes half pint Qwest acts like the actually get where the world is going. Preparing its backbone to operate at 100GPS is part of that future. With photonics boffins talking about TB over fiber, it could be just another incremental step in milking more and more bandwidth out of fiber that was buried in the 90’s.

Qwest today said it has purchased gear from Alcatel-Lucent that will one day allow its long-haul network to achieve speeds of 100Gbps. Since the company decided last June to keep its long-haul network, the upgrades were part of a continued and necessary investment in greater speeds and capacity, Qwest CTO Pieter Poll said. However, before folks get too excited, the new equipment makes the Qwest backbone network 100Gbps-ready, rather than delivering those speeds anytime soon. Current long haul networks are delivering about 40Gbps. (Gigaom)

Quest has also bee slowly ramping up end user speeds in locales where the cable guys have upset the the telco’s favorite “old is new enough” strategy. Lets hope the trend continues.

Do you hate robocalls? Want to split some money with a lawyer? After Tuesday it will be illegal, per the FTC, to robocall for profit. There are some exceptions, after the jump –

Those unwanted prerecorded commercial calls, soliciting services such as carpet cleaning or car warranties, will be a thing of the past unless telemarketers have written permission from consumers that they want to receive these calls, the commission said today. Beginning Tuesday, Sept. 1, violators will face penalties up to $16,000 per call.

“American consumers have made it crystal clear that few things annoy them more than the billions of commercial telemarketing robocalls they receive every year,” Chairman Jon Leibowitz said in a news release. Previously, telemarketers had to tell consumers how to opt out of receiving robocalls.

But there are a few exceptions. The commission will exempt calls that aren’t trying to sell goods and services to consumers; that category would include calls that provide information such as flight cancellations, delivery notices and debt collections.

So lets note the exceptions. Its legal –

• If a human is making the pitch.
• If it is associated with a nonprofit.
• If the call is not based on a soliciation for profit or prior association with the called party.

Debt collection robocalls are still legal. The fine is $16k per call. Getting the money would take some effort but for the adventurous it might be an interesting hunt.

Linky.

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In 2001 the combination of an over invested stock market combined with a terror attack on American soil caused the greatest IT spending crash in the industry’s short history.  The need to cut costs made the industry more global and the US centric spending never fully recovered.

New data ranks the current world IT spending shrink as worse than what we suffered in 2001.

Based on current economic conditions and the word that Forrester is getting from the IT departments, Forrester is now saying that global IT spending for hardware, software, and services by companies and governments will drop by 10.6 percent to $1.53 trillion. In 2008, Forrester reckons that IT spending rose by 8 per cent to just over $1.7 trillion globally, and this year was slated to be bad, but not as bad as the IT budget downdraft in the wake of the dot-com, Y2K, and ERP booms in 2001 and 2002, when IT spending fell 6 per cent in both years. (The Register)