What do you do when you want to save your business from failure? Seek taxes, sue your customers or find some government protection, apparently.

Although the auto and financial industries’ troubles are the obvious, in-the-news examples, many other traditional businesses have been struggling for years too. Think movie, music and newspaper companies.

The Internet being the great disruptive force it is has thrown many firms into a tailspin trying to protect their old business models from its influence. Here are some recent examples.

• Record companies in Canada receive 29 cents — recently up from 21 cents — for every blank CD sold in the country. The Canadian copyright board levies this charge in an attempt to “compensate” artists record companies that are suffering loses due to music piracy. IPods, flash drives and even DVDs are not taxed.
• This guy — who is a professor, god help us — suggests newspapers should seek an antitrust exemption so they can collude and start charging for online subscriptions.
  

  Now, here’s my idea: The newspaper industry should ask the Justice Department for an antitrust exemption that would allow publishers to collaborate on a decision to begin charging for their Web sites. No paper would have to charge, and each paper could determine its own price. But if most papers in a region - San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose, for example - began charging for Web access at more or less the same time, many readers would likely subscribe.

• Speaking of papers, this writer and others think the government should revive the Depression-era Federal Writers’ Project to put unemployed journalists to work.
• Ever wonder why sharing music is such a pain in the butt? Blame DRM, which many record, movie and software providers use to block you from sharing their works. What happens when companies put particularly intrusive DRMs in their products? Revolution.

  The Dark Knight, which grossed nearly a billion dollars worldwide, was 2008’s most-pirated movie. (Could have all the piracy actually encouraged people to pay and see the blockbuster movie?) Spore, a popular computer title, and despite its DRM, was ’08’s most-pirated computer game. Have they not learned?

  Sony widely received criticism for putting DRM malware in its CDs in 2005. The protection software actually opened users’ computers to viral attacks. Not exactly a ringing endorsement for the technology.

  Say what you will about piracy/sharing’s legality, but the Web makes “owning” intellectual property in the 21st century very difficult.

• The Recording Industry of America rushed to shutdown two last.fm-like music-sharing Web sites because the group couldn’t collect royalties. Never mind that these sites encourage more music consumption and exploration.
• The much-hated RIAA has shifted its failing strategy of suing its customers to suing Internet Service Providers. One record company exec has even suggested taxing universities for all the music their students steal.

Even Web companies struggle making money off the Internet. The first dot-com crash showed that your .com needs a business plan beyond piles of venture capital money and unrealistic initial public offerings. (Goodness, Netscape had revenues of just $16 million when it went public and was valued at more than $2 billion(!!).) I believe the later days of Web 2.0 are showing that you can’t count on just advertising to sustain your online business.

Still, some companies successfully mix free and charge services. Basecamp creator 37signals is an oft-cited example.

Bottom line: Businesses are struggling to survive in a world of “free” online. Competition is fierce and creating a scarcity online is difficult. With the cheap cost of entry, anyone can undercut you by being a disruptor. Taxes, suing your customers and government interference are hardly business plans, though.

Web standards advocates show their love for the World Wide Web Consortium’s recommendations every day through little buttons or links at the bottom of their pages. These links tout the sites’ sound use of W3C’s standards via popular free online validation services.

The movement’s most visible face is a growing and financially challenging component of the W3C’s budget, and the group needs your help to keep it alive. For a small donation, corporate gift (Hewlett-Packard gave a server) or volunteer time, users can help this valuable service stay in operation.

Open-sourcers find advertising antithetical to their movement. Passing on ads — a sure bet for the millions of hits the validators get a month — is a principled and costly decision.

However, the economic downturn is showing a lot of Internet companies that they can’t count on a giant pile of ad money to fuel their ventures. In a blog post, free Web dating site Plentyoffish’s founder laments about the advertisement downturn and a surging, but server-intensive, user base. He writes, “The bigger you get as a free site the less money you make per visit and the more it costs to service a visit.”

Some bloggers suggest the W3C mirror the validator and spread the bandwidth drain. Others think a desktop tool would do the job. (Enterprising developers can grab the open-source code.) As a central part of the standards movement, it seems most logical to host the validators with the W3C, but it may become necessary to spread the pain. Servers and bandwidth aren’t cheap. Even free costs something.

(Via RefreshCleveland)

Apple added third-party software abilities to the newest iPhone operating system edition. Now users can download various applications without having to jail break their phones. The new App Store is raking in $1 million a day and CEO Steve Jobs would like to see it grow to a billion dollar a year business.

So, is Apple making money off of it? (more…)

With a new Web site called Mygazines, you can scan in your favorite periodical and share it with the world. That’s a lot of work for something that is terrible to read on a computer screen.

Are publishers grateful for these extra eyes on their content and advertising? I guess not.

No, I don’t get the “convenience” of being able to read a print publication on my computer screen, especially when many Web technologies exist that allow you to do this more easily. MP3s, music, movies and software certainly lend themselves to piracy; I don’t think magazines do. I can’t think of a publication that I would like to spend time scanning. Plus, many of these magazines are already online for free! (more…)