DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

Here is a sad comment about media saturation and advertising and, well, the sloth of the average American: regarding its new series of anti-iMac television advertisements, computer maker Gateway estimates that “83 percent of U.S. adults would see the TV ads an average 14 times through September.” (local mirror)

If the ad is 30 seconds long, then 83 of 100 adult Americans will spend seven minutes next month watching the same commercial, over and over. How productive is that?

According to the 1990 U.S. Census, there are 248M people in the country, of which 74.4% are 18+ years of age. So that’s roughly 185M adults. If 83% of them see seven minutes of Gateway commercials next month, that amounts to 2051 years of wasted time.

Fortunately, the media companies have not yet succeeded in making it illegal to skip past commercials (in spite of Jamie Kellner’s efforts), so some of those 153,583,320 adults won’t actually see all 14 broadcasts of the Gateway commercial. I feel good about this: perhaps those people will be out winning the Iditarod or inventing revolutionary transportation devices or ghostwriting autobiographies for people who didn’t spend their lives watching computer commercials on television. But I fear that some large percentage of the people who leave the couch during the commercial will just be going to the kitchen to retrieve some Jiffy-Pop or a Snickers bar, which, while in one sense good for the economy, in most other senses doesn’t address the productivity problem.

An associate of mine views advertisements as entertainment. I can’t be so positive, or even impartial: I think advertising is a virus. It feeds on attention and turns brains to jelly. Check out your neighborhood toddlers in designer footwear if you disagree.

Most people I’ve talked to claim they’re not affected by advertising. That argument can’t be true — if advertising wasn’t effective, why would merchants spend so much money on it? In fact, the people who think they’re somehow untouched by the manipulative messaging are probably the advertisers’ favorite audience, as they are puppets who insist that there are no strings.

So I had this milk-crate of “LPs” that I’ve been carrying around for 20 years… the remains of the collection of records I bought in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when vinyl was the only respectable media on which to acquire music. I haven’t purchased an LP since, probably, 1988, and I’d only listened to these once or twice in as many decades. I have not replaced many of these records on CD — my tastes evolved (although not very far, some might claim!) — and that was the only reason I hadn’t dumped these years ago.

We’re moving to our new house soon, though, and it was time to jettison some of the detritus of past obsessions.

I flipped through the stack one last time, reminiscing about the music I used to really enjoy. I think I had the entire REO Speedwagon collection, up through 1980’s Hi Infidelity, a commercial peak but already (IMO) a good distance down the back side of the slope in terms of creative output. Then there was a Lynyrd Skynyrd promo disk, a Zeppelin disk, three from Mannheim Steamroller, a few early Genesis records, one from Alan Parsons, and the record that inspired my earliest remembered case of buyer’s remorse, In 3-D from Weird Al Yankovic. Ewww.

I schlepped the milk crate to a run-down-looking “vinyl-only record store” and hefted it up on the counter. The sign on the door announced “we buy record collections,” so the owner had no escape: it was only a question of price. And I was willing to accept just about anything — one mean stare and I’d just leave the crate behind and run for my car.

The owner looked at the first dozen titles, and uttered a question I never would have predicted: “Is it all heavy metal?” I goggled briefly… there was not one metal record in the whole stack. But maybe this guy was a big Tuck & Patti or Carpenters fan. Still, I’d expect someone who sells music for a living would be better able to distinguish between heavy metal and REO Speedwagon.

Anyway I walked out with $35 cash (about $0.87 per LP) and figured I got the better end of the deal, even considering that I threw in the milk crate.

Steve Kirsch, ex-Infoseek, hates junk faxes. He created junkfax.org, an awesome resource of legal information that should enable any victim to claim up to $1500 in fines per junk fax received without too much difficulty.

Yesterday, Kirsch filed a lawsuit against junk-fax “king” Fax.com, claiming $2,200,000,000,000 in damages. That’s 2.2 trillion dollars. (For additional coverage of this lawsuit, see the junkfax.org news page.)

Coming just two weeks after the FCC fined fax.com $5,379,000, this lawsuit sounds a lot like another nail in the fax.com coffin.

I find it tremendously refreshing that someone with Kirsch’s determination and resources is focused on an issue like this. Like the privacy law that’s currently getting batted around the California senate, junk faxing is an issue that most consumers have strong feelings about, but the legal changes that would satisfy consumers somehow manage not to ever pass, perhaps because the perpetrators are better-organized and better-financed, or maybe just because the average citizen doesn’t know s/he has the opportunity to make a change.

CA residents who are interested in making a change should check out the junkfax.org page on how to vote against junk faxing.

The Chronicle reports on the complicated birthing story of what would be the nation’s toughest consumer privacy law: High drama as privacy measure advances

The story, in a nutshell, is that California Senator Jackie Speier introduced strong pro-privacy legislation last year, but the bill was defeated in the wake of the Trade Center attacks by Democrats protecting business interests from “expected economic fallout.” Read it here: Landmark privacy bill killed in Assembly; Assembly kills consumer privacy bill

With some revision, Speier has re-introduced the bill, which would prohibit insurance companies and banks from selling or trading their customers’ private data without first getting permission from the customer. Read the full text of SB773. See also the less-jargony summary within this editorial: Restore the privacy bill

For a change, today’s news is good — as the Chron reports, Assemblyman Lou Papan’s attempts to eviscerate the bill earned him a public rebuke from Senate President Pro Tem John Burton and a private one from Assembly Speaker Herb Wesson. None of today’s articles give Papan an opportunity to explain his actions, so I’ll refrain from speculation as to his intentions. Still, I find it curious that Papan plans to leave office at the end of this month. Would I feel cheated if he went to work for one of the financial institutions that benefits from his gutting of this privacy bill? You bet I would. Let’s hope that does not happen.

Assuming the bill passes the Assembly Judiciary Committee hearing today, it will still have to win in a meeting of the full Assemibly — as near is I can make out. So I guess the best way to help ensure this bill passes is to contact your Assembly person and request support for SB773. You can find your California Assembly representatives via the ZIP-code search at leginfo.ca.gov.

One year ago today I published a list of the “do not call” registries across America. It became one of the most popular articles on this site, thanks to inbound links from all over the place.

Today I received an email from reader Stewart Vardaman that contained some very happy news: CO resident David Hakala sued a telemarketer for violating the state’s “no call” law, and settled out of court for an undisclosed amount of cash.

Share the joy! County’s 1st no-call list suit settled; Telemarketing suit pays off

At least 19 US states have set up “do not call” lists, and more are in the legislative pipeline. For more information see my summary, Stop Telemarketing.

(Thanks for the tip, Stewart!)