The Weekly Round-Up: 06.02.04

Last Sunday the Round-Up tried to watch the Super Bowl - which for the uninitiated is a five-hour celebration of America's most popular sport... advertising.

The festival of commercials is broken up every few minutes by 30 second clips of American Football but don't worry - the sporting action isn't too distracting - and there'll be some more adverts along soon.

One of the adverts on show at this year's event was a Pepsi commercial which starred a group of teens who have all been charged with illegal file-sharing and prosecuted at the behest of the Recording Industry Association of America.

Pepsi took pity on these kids who, after all, only wanted to listen to some music and employed them as figureheads for a new campaign which, in association with Apple's iTunes, will give Pepsi drinkers the chance to win free music by finding a lucky ring pull or bottle top. Every one-in-three is a winner and there are 100 million free tunes being given away.

Accompanied by a Green Day rendition of 'I fought the law and the law won', one fresh-faced fizzy-pop drinking music lover toothily grins into the camera while stating: "Hi, I'm one of the kids who was prosecuted for downloading music off of the internet and I'm here to announce in front of 100 million people that we're still going to get our music free off the internet.

"And there's not a thing anyone can do about it."

Actually it's more than likely the advert was watched by far fewer than the stated 100 million, as spectators were getting more chips, dips and beers from the fridge, making trips to the toilet or just not watching the mind numbing tediousness that is the Super Bowl at all. But we get the message.

So is Pepsi just doing its bit for the kids who can't afford rip-off prices for CDs and other legal download services? Of course. Did it have anything to do with the fact that Coca-Cola (and rumour has it the two companies don't get along too well) had just launched one such legal download service? We couldn't (because our lawyers said we couldn't) possibly comment.

Whatever the reason, it's quite a coup for Apple who will have been aware of the increasingly crowded marketplace which iTunes is operating in.

An extra 100 million downloads (assuming every winner has an internet connection and can be bothered to download a track) will be quite welcome - especially if users keep coming back once the promotion is over - ensuring iTunes remains dominant in the market place.

But of course there's only been one event during the half-time show (pronounced 'haff-time') at the Super Bowl which people have been talking about this week. In fact it's become the most searched for event on the internet - even outstripping the events of 11 September in terms of total web searches.

Janet Jackson's right breast popped out of her costume while she was performing a duet with Justin Timberlake. JT ripped at her top in a provocative dance routine - evocative of Bucks Fizz, the Round-Up ventures - but rather than ripping away just one layer of clothing he unwrapped a little too much of the star and out it popped, gatecrashing the performance with an almost audible 'boo' and making history in the process.

Anybody wanting to see the event live had to be quick though - it was very much blink and you've missed it, as the lights went down and stations predictably went to a commercial very quickly.

But of course if Ms Jackson thought she'd gotten away with it (assuming it wasn't all just one big stunt) then she's forgotten about the power of the internet.

The next day search engines such as Google and AltaVista were bombarded with requests for images of the controversial 'flash' dance.

The Round-Up tried a search on 'Janet Jackson' and 'right tit' - and just got a picture of Janet with her brother Michael... so not really sure what happened there.

And while we're still on the subject of breasts - or boobies to give them their proper name - search giant Google is mightily peeved about an 'adult' search site called www.booble.com which borrows heavily from Google's branding while changing the double 'o' into a rather large pair of norks (fun-bags, jubblies, wabs... whatever you call them... at this point the Round-Up will say goodbye to anybody who uses key-word filtering in their spam configuration).

The Booble site (and the Round-Up realises you're probably all already there and this is being read by nobody) even imitates Google's 'I'm feeling lucky' function by using a series of variations, such as 'I'm feeling playful', 'I'm feeling retro' or 'I'm feeling cheap' - returning pages which cover certain niche areas.

Of course the people at Booble were probably ready for a little criticism - after all, they were always going to have their knockers - but they believe Google are being a little petty and showing very little sense of humour towards the obvious parody.

As if to prove the point a Google lawyer said: "We dispute [the] assertion that [the] website is a parody. For a work to constitute a parody, it must use some elements of a prior author's composition to create a new one that, at least in part, comments on the original author's works."

It's the way they tell them! Surely though Booble does use elements of Google's composition (its branding) to create a new one that comments on the original author's works (the fact that many people who are using Google are doing so to search for adult material anyway). The Round-Up will let Booble have that free of charge for their defence.

One of the founders of Booble, known on the pages of silicon.com as 'Mysterious Bob', responded to Google's heavy-handed approach by getting all Constitutional on them:

"We responded with our own letter, asserting our right to parody under the first amendment... We have just begun to fight for our right to parody."

Ah, the wonder of the Constitution. Seems a reasonable approach... after all they've already defended their right to bare arms... bare breasts... you get the idea.

Now, combining the topics of Pepsi, advertising and (we think they probably played a part) breasts. There was a question on the BBC website this week which asked 'Would you watch an advert for Pepsi on the internet?'

The article was about broadcast quality commercials being played as web users surf from one page to another. However, the Round-Up was surprised to read no mention of Pepsi in the article, despite the large accompanying picture of Britney Spears dressed in a heavily-Pepsi-branded outfit. The mention of the soft drinks giant would appear to have been completely arbitrary.

So returning to the original question: would we watch an advert for Pepsi on the internet? The Round-Up thinks it just has.

Which seems a little at odds with the Beeb's oft-quoted stance on product placement and advertising. It's certainly a far cry from the days when the BBC wouldn't even allow us to see the logo on a Fairy Liquid bottle as it was turned into Thunderbird 1 on Blue Peter (who sounds like one of Mysterious Bob's colleagues).

The Round-Up yearns for the days when the BBC would have asked 'would you watch an advert for a generic fizzy vegetable extract drink on the internet' and when kids enjoyed the healthy outdoor sport of trying to permanently injure each other in pursuit of a victory in British Bulldog, not tinkering around on their PCs, writing viruses and hacking.

While one security-busting teen, Joseph McElroy, this week escaped jail, the biggest loser from the MyDoom virus is actually finding sympathy a little thin on the ground this week.

SCO Group suffered the largest ever denial of service attack after computers infected with the virus launched a co-ordinated attack on SCO's website, bringing it crashing down and leaving it crippled for most of the week.

The creator of the virus would appear none-too-pleased about SCO's controversial Linux licensing legal action.

The Round-Up assumes the police officers investigating the attack didn't open their questioning along the lines of: "Have you made any enemies lately?" Darl McBride, the controversial CEO of SCO, would have had to replied: "How long have you got?"

And if McBride thought he'd seen the back of denial of service attacks after the MyDoom hiatus, he - like Ms Jackson - wasn't counting on the power of the internet.

Type 'Darl McBride' and 'Utah' into Google - you'll see what the Round-Up means.

You could try ringing the mobile phone number but the Round-Up is pretty sure his line is going to be busy... for about the next 50 years.

Until next week here are some recent headlines you shouldn't miss, a request to enter our annual skills survey and a free tickets offer. Phew. The Round-Up is off to buy shares in Darl McBride's landline telco.

Enter silicon.com's Skills Survey 2004 here.

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