The big strip search hoax

I can't believe this needs to be said but apparently it does:

If you're managing a restaurant and you get a phone call from someone claiming to be police officer, ordering you to strip search an employee or customer looking for stolen property -- don't do it!

One, real police don't do that. Two, it's probably illegal and could get you arrested or sued (both have happened).

Nonetheless, this hoax has been perpetrated on restaurants in seven states since 1999, the Wall Street Journal reports. Investigators believe all the cases are the work of a single person.

Piracy might be painless

Two college professors made a shocking discovery: online downloads have no effect on CD sales, the Boston Globe reports.

What makes this study interesting is the methodology employed by researchers Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Koleman Strumpf:

Most studies of music downloading have surveyed people who use file-swapping services, asking them whether they buy copies of the recordings they download. But Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf feared that some people wouldn't provide honest answers and claim that they bought recordings when they didn't.

So in the fall of 2002, Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf got permission to plug into two ''supernode" servers on the file-swapping network called OpenNap to track the files being downloaded. Over a 17-week period, they watched users download about 1.75 million files, of which 261,000 were downloaded by Americans.

Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf also drew up a list of 680 popular CDs, in a variety of musical styles. They tracked the Nielsen SoundScan charts to measure US sales of these albums over the 17-week period, comparing this to the number of times people downloaded songs from the albums.

Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf figured that if music downloads were cutting into record sales, there would be a decline in sales of a CD whenever there was an increase in downloads from that disk. To their surprise, it didn't work that way. ''Downloads have an effect on sales which is statistically indistinguishable from zero," the study concluded.

So, why are CD sales falling, if piracy's not to blame? According to New Scientist, Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf suggest that a weak U.S. economy and increasing CD prices may be factors.

Highest-paid officials

Seattle's city librarian, police chief, transportation director, and power and utilities directors are all paid more than the mayor. One of many interesting tidbits to be found in a P-I survey of public employee salaries in King, Pierce and Snohomish counties.

Fishing for fools

A public-service announcement from Wired News:

This week, as news sites, blogs and Net merchants gear up for April Fools' Day tricks, hoax watchers warn susceptible readers to be on the lookout for more online trickery.

So, who wants a Desktop Zero-Point Infinite Power Generator for their birthday?

Tyranny and the Net

Dictatorship.com is a piece by The New Republic foreign editor Joshua Kurlantzick attacking the premise that the Internet will inevitably foster democratic, open societies by exposing people to new ideas and undermining authoritarian regimes.

But world leaders, journalists, and political scientists who tout the Internet as a powerful force for political change are just as wrong as the dot-com enthusiasts who not so long ago believed the Web would completely transform business. While it's true that the Internet has proved itself able to disseminate pop culture in authoritarian nations ... to date, its political impact has been decidedly limited. It has yet to topple -- or even seriously undermine -- its first tyrannical regime. In fact, in some repressive countries the spread of the Internet actually may be helping dictatorships remain in power. 

Kurlantzick argues that the Web is "in many ways ill-suited for expressing and organizing dissent." Specifically, it can't make up for a lack of organized opposition offline, the cybercafe setting doesn't encourage people to gather and talk politics, the Net can't reach the less educated as well as TV or radio, and the anarchy bred by giving everyone a voice undermines organized resistance.

But an even bigger problem, he writes, is "the ease with which authoritarian regimes have controlled and, in some cases, subverted" the Internet. They shut down opposition Web sites and aggressively censor where their citizens can go online -- often aided by Web-filtering and Web-monitoring technology sold by companies in the democratic West -- thereby creating an environment of willing self-censorship. In fact, such control of Internet access actually makes it easier for authoritarian governments to monitor opposition voices who foolishly communicate online.

Kurlantzick's piece has prompted some interesting, thoughtful responses across the blogosphere. Among them:

BuzzMachine's Jeff Jarvis savages Kurlantzick's argument with a withering rebuttal:

Well, how long did it take radio to topple a regime? Did radio ever topple a regime? Did TV? ... And besides, who set that as the pass-or-fail test of a medium as a catalyst of change: start a revolution or give up? ...

There's some strange, jealous agenda coming out of TNR: an old, fuddy-duddy activist viewpoint that says this new-fangled Internet thang can't be as good as old-fashioned pamphleteering and armed insurrection.

Matthew Cowie at Baodinger offers this elegant summation:

People have often said the Internet is a great tool for democracy. That's true in a democracy. In authoritarian countries the Internet just becomes a tool of oppression.

(Via Smart Mobs.)

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Buzzworthy, incidentally, apparently requires a fairly high reading level.

(From Eubie's Notes.)