***MAJOR SPOILERS***

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I haven’t talked much about the Writer’s Guild of America (WGA) strike because there isn’t much going on. There have been talks with the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers (AMPTP), and apparently there has been some movement, but nothing definite as of yet.

The WGA did release the following letter to their members (and reprinted via Deadline Hollywood)

Dear Fellow Members:
I would like to update you on where we stand with bargaining with the AMPTP. While we have made important progress since the companies re-engaged us in serious talks, negotiations continue. Regardless of what you hear or read, there are many significant points that have yet to be worked out.

In order to keep members abreast of the latest developments, informational meetings are being planned by both Guilds for this weekend-details to be announced. Neither the Negotiating Committee, nor the West Board or the East Council, will take action on the contract until after the membership meetings.

As the talks proceed, never forget that during this period it is critical for us to remain on the picket lines united and strong. We are all in this together.

At this point, there is a chance of saving the “back nine” episodes of the season (most shows get an order for 13 episodes, and then for another 9 to finish the season), but as it will take shows 4 – 6 weeks to spin back up, things are looking sketchy.

The interesting thing is that no matter when this ends, it looks like NEXT season is in jeopardy of having any new shows.  This is the time of the year that the networks begin to go in to “pilot season” and start picking their shows for the next season, but nothing is currently in development, so, maybe no new shows next season.  What an idea: Develop what you have!

I skipped the Super Bowl because, well, football bores the living heck out of me.  As I was working a way, someone on Twitter said that after the Giants won, the Patriots coach, Bill Belichick, acted like a really sore loser.  As displays like that always interest me, I decided to check out ESPN later in the evening, and in all the time I watched, it was more like hearing the eulogy of the Patriots than anything else.

Now, excuse me, I really could care less about either tam, but shouldn’t it be the Giants night to shine?  Instead, all I got to hear was whining and moaning about how the Patriots had missed out on some piece of history for an undefeated record.  They lost, MOVE ON!  No matter how you slice it though, the night should have all been about the Giants and they’re win, but no, no, let’s sit around and cry over something they just simply didn’t happen.

This all goes back to my basic problem with American Football in that the championship system makes no sense to me.  If you have a bad day on game day, that’s it, too bad.  While real Football (sigh… soccer for those who don’t get it) uses a system that every point you score during the season matters.  Perhaps if football didn’t all come down to one ludicrous game that people treat like some insane resolution of a war,  maybe the Giants would have gotten the accolades they deserved last night as opposed to muscle-bound men looking like they were on verge of tears because the Patriots didn’t get their precious undefeated season.  (and before any Patriot’s fans try to skin me, let me make it perfectly clear I am not berating you or the team, but the silliness of “news” casters looking visibly upset over it)

Let the Giants have their moment in the sun and you can all armchair quarterback the Patriots in a day or two, but show some respect to the team that won… or switch to a more sensible system of determining your champion…

As a follow-up to my piece about The Music Industry Vs Net Neutrality, it seems that the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) is following in the footsteps of U2′s manager, Paul McGuinness.

In their Digital Music 2008 Report (PDF link), John Kennedy, the chairman and CEO of the organization, issues a letter of how it is time for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to step-up to the plate and aid in protecting the copyrighted materials of the music and movie industries. He points to the efforts in France of President Nicolas Sarkozy to ban file sharing from ISPs by using filtering software. Mr. Kennedy also goes on to say that helping stem the activity of peer-to-peer (P2P) traffic will benefit the ISPs as there are estimates that 80% of all Internet traffic is copyright infringement-based (no source cited).

As I listed in my article from the other day, this violates net neutrality as it will require deep packet inspections to discern what is legal P2P traffic from illegal. There are companies using P2P to transfer legal files, there is legal music and video circulating on the torrents daily, how will you discern what is legal and what is illegal? How will you address privacy concerns? How will you address the fact that ISPs are supposed to be neutral to the traffic that crosses their systems?

The music industry is trying to make ISPs take on the financial burden of cleaning up their own troubled industry. Yes, as the linked report says, overall sales are down, and, as always, the music industry points to piracy. What about the fact that perhaps you are promoting music of questionable quality? What about the fact there are more ways for consumers to spend their entertainment dollar than ever before? And then there are people like me who have moved from buying multiple new CDs a month to buying 0. I am making an exception for the upcoming Flogging Molly album, but otherwise I buy used CDs or use a legal trading service such as Lala.com.

The likes of the IFPI has driven me to this because I will not support groups such as this that are actively moving to strip consumers of their rights. Let’s not forget that the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) wants to say it is illegal for you to copy music from a CD you legally purchase to your own computer for your own use.

As I wrote back in October of 2006, the music industry has always tried to find a scapegoat for their financial woes. Twenty years ago it was home taping (oh how this image still cracks me up), and now it is the evils of illegal downloading. Yes, I will not deny there is copyright infringement going on and that it is wrong, but I will say that my right to privacy should not be trampled to stop some illegal downloaders.

My favorite comment in all of this was that 80% of all Internet traffic is copyright violations. Back in July of 2007, I wrote a piece for Mahsable.com entitled 50+ Tools For Torrenting, and while researching sources for legal content on torrent networks (it does exist), I could see how many people were using torrents at the time, which were always around 1 million+.  Mind you that this is a worldwide number, not a USA only number, and they are going to try to claim that small a  number is going to account for 80% of copyright violations?  I’m sorry, but I find this hard to believe.

Hopefully ISPs and government officials will stand up to such strong arm tactics of an industry body, but a sinking feeling in my gut says they won’t.

With a day now to digest the Microsoft-Yahoo news, I still can’t exactly figure out what Microsoft thinks they’re going to gain from this. Yesterday, when I had the fun of assembling Microsoft-Yahoo: The Complete Coverage, I read somewhere around a hundred or more opinions on the subject, and no two of them seemed to agree what Microsoft is after.

Is it the search engine business? Even combining their two systems will only give them around a 34% Yahoo is about 23.7% and MSN is 10.3%) share of the search engine market, still well behind Google’s 57%. Is it worth $44.6 billion dollars to get a firm grip on second place? Doubtful.

Yahoo’s advertising sales are nowhere near Google’s, so another case of settling for second.

I honestly can not figure out what Microsoft thinks this will gain them. Neither company has the best track record for progressive management, and both have been languishing as of late in the web. Do they think two idiots will make a brighter Internet star? Just take a look at Gmail, for all of its flaws, it is still light years ahead of Yahoo Mail or Hotmail.

Even when I did find someone who favored the deal, they didn’t totally grasp why it was being done.  If I was too hazard a guess, I would have to say that Microsoft just decided they have too much money laying around.

What’s everyone else think?  Does this deal make any sense to you?

Did anything other than Microsoft-Yahoo happen in the world today?

For those of you who slept through the day, Microsoft is looking to buy Yahoo for $44.6 billion dollars. It sent the tech world in to a tizzy, and I got to spend my day doing round ups of the coverage. It was tiring as hell, but we got it done.

So, yeah, that’s kinda it, I’m not done working, but I just couldn’t let the day pass without saying I’m truly sick of talking “Microhoo!” already. You can follow my mini coverage at Microsoft-Yahoo: The Timeline Of A Deal and Microsoft-Yahoo: The Complete Coverage. (image credit to… someone at Mashable… not sure if it was Stan or Adam who did it, but one of ‘em) I will probably post my thoughts on it sometime this weekend.