When I was visiting my brother two weeks ago, I received a parking ticket for parking “Within 20 Feet of Intersection.” While I disagreed with the officer’s interpretation of 20 feet and didn’t have a tape measure nor the desire to fight over a $25 ticket, I decided to pay the fine.

I logged on to the city website to pay, and they couldn’t locate the ticket. I called the city, and the automated system couldn’t find it either. When I was connected to an operator, she asked for the number and said they probably hadn’t entered it into the system yet.

She said she would manually check for me, and she asked me for my ticket number and violation. I gave it to her, and she replied, “thank you, I manually entered your ticket into the system for you.”  Since it was 17 days after the ticket was issued, I probably would have gotten off.  I should have kept my mouth shut!

Bummer!

When the Writers Guild of America held their first labor strike in 1988, television viewers turned to cable as an alternative to the regular shows they were missing, and they clearly embraced the programming.    That first strike lasted 22 weeks, and the impact of  it can still be seen today in America’s television viewing habits, which continue to rely on cable television as its main source of entertainment.

How will the Writers Guild strike of 2007 impact us in this day and age of the Internet?    If the first strike was indicative of what will happen,  people  will probably  spend more time entertaining themselves online rather than watching reruns on television.    User generated content, which is always  well stocked,  should be in high demand.   Sites such as YouTube will certainly benefit from the strike.

Unique content will be key to turning eyeballs into dollars.  People will be looking to satiate their viewing needs, and if they can get their fix on the Internet, they will certainly be back for more.  This could be a great opportunity for some websites to become more mainstream and capture a new audience of Internet savvy viewers.

I think  Doug Aamoth said it best on Crunch Gear,

“To those of you in the Writers Guild; whether or not I agree with the reason you’re striking, I wish you the best of luck and I hope you consider creating content for the web. And if you do, I hope you’ll realize that you don’t need the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers to get that content onto the Internet.” — Source: Crunch Gear

My brother, Scott Silver, is going to be an incredible attorney. He is currently in his first year at Suffolk Law School in Boston after spending a few years working at two top law firms in Maryland. Over the past year and a half, Scott has been a big help to me. There are always risks in business, and his advice has helped to mitigate many of those risks for me.

I doubt that he will be interested in going into the field of Internet Law once he graduates, but if he does, he will have his first client.