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While Sony could be prosecuted under U.S. cybercrime law, no one thinks it will be.
 
What I want to know is why the fuck shouldn't a corporation be held to the same rules the rest of us are? As the line above illustrates, people now assume that companies can abuse the law as they see fit and not get reprimanded.
 
While the rest of us (AKA as not rich) get sued into oblivion or prosecuted to the fullest for downloading a shitty CD that should only be $5.

http://hollywoodreporter.com/thr/article_display.j sp?vnu_content_id=1001477589 has this quote from Albert:

"I think legislation is absolutely necessary as we are at a critical point as the technology is changing so quickly. Because of the changes in technology, it's so much easier (to pirate) now. What that's doing is encouraging large-scale criminal enterprises to get involved in intellectual property theft, and that involvement is used, quite frankly, to fund terrorist activities. It is a great concern to the Department of Justice and the administration."

Tomorrow: file-traders are non-legal enemy combatants, and can be jailed offshore and tortured?

Funny that a top dubya adminstration official chided Sony for its DRM debacle, when not but one day later, Bush is asking Congress to pass a tough new anti-piracy law. Read about it Here. If anything, the proposed law takes "going too far" to the next level.

Great! Yet my brow is
still upturned. Why is this? It's
going to get worse.

You will be missed

'Star Trek' writer Michael Piller, 57

Michael Piller, "Star Trek" veteran and co-creator/executive producer of USA Network's hit series "The Dead Zone," died early Tuesday at his Los Angeles home after a long battle with cancer. He was 57. Before co-creating "The Dead Zone" with his son Shawn, Piller was head writer on "Star Trek: The Next Generation," leading the show to a best drama Emmy nomination in 1994, the first for a syndicated series. He went on to co-create the following two "Trek" installments, "Deep Space Nine" and "Voyager." Both series ran for seven seasons. In 1998, Piller wrote and co-produced "Star Trek: Insurrection," the ninth installment in Paramount Pictures' successful Star Trek feature franchise.

I like the idea of clothing being able to do as you suggest, but as the e-paper is composed of plastic films, laundering it would be a PITA.

You forget that piracy groups have recently been associated with terrorist groups.

Read these documents.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr/article_displ ay.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000528473

http://news.com.com/Terrorist+link+to+copyright+pi racy+alleged/2100-1028_3-5722835.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/crime/article/0,2763,126 0047,00.html

The latter even implies piracy gives terrorists more money than drug sales!

Terrorist groups like Al Qaeda will do more than bust your knee caps. They'll fly a plane into your skyscraper.

Also, piracy is or will soon be a big staple in Mafia fundraising. See this:

http://www.grayzone.com/ifpi4899.htm

The danger in this is that Governments will soon be interested in alleging Al Qaeda or Mafia ties every time they bust an organized piracy group of any sort. Thus, they can justify punishing piracy with much harsher methods in the future.

Who'd have thought in the past that a single charge of mp3 piracy could land you in prison for as long as a charge of forcible rape?

Much of California drives right next to cliffs every day. Some of them die from it.

As the Hollywood Reporter puts it, "The end of the "Star Wars" movies leaves a gaping hole in the galaxy of geekdom. And it begs the larger question: Is the era of the superfan over? No longer is there any variation of "Star Trek" on TV. The Grateful Dead essentially passed with Jerry Garcia, and even Phish is done now. The seminal pop-cult experience may be a thing of the past."

Finally.

Doh! The Shuffle... the Shu-FF-le. Stupid brain. hehehehe.

Peter Jackson had huge chunks of LoTR footage sent from NZ to London when he was working on the film score... they sent and received 1TB or more in two months IIRC.

link here: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr/columns/tech_ reporter_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=2077623

Apparently the pilot was done on 35mm and then the series was shot directly on HD video, so HDTV broadcast should look fantastic:

format wars heat up as reality opts for new strains of standard-def video
but more dramas shoot on Super 16 film

High-definition certainly makes sense for effects-intensive shows. Sci Fi Channel's recent remake of the seminal 1978-79 series "Battlestar Galactica" shot its pilot on 35mm film then switched to HD when it went to series, set for a January debut.

"HD is about a whole new creative medium that's out there for us to explore," "Galactica" cinematographer Stephen McNutt says. "We just have to understand how to control it creatively, and there are lots of things about it that you can control on-set, in-camera and in post."

"Galactica" is one of 10 fall series being finished in HD on the Avid DS Nitris system at Modern Video Film, where president Moshe Barkat notes that he is still seeing a lot of filmed series come in.

Remember how Jason Hall, once founder of Monolith (devs of Matrix Online - MO) and now head of the WB games division, went on some tirade about quality games a year ago?

Reviews haven't hit the web yet, but I wonder if Hall will hold his former company to the same standards he threatened. From advance press, my guess is that the Matrix Online will be sufficiently underwhelming to get any kind of decent score. So what happens then? Will Jason withhold royalty to his own friends and former co-workers?

Postscript: Ironically, didn't WB also just announce a second Matrix game by Shiny? Hall is still in charge right?

Laugh all you want, but in Mexico, they already control most of the cable TV market and the picture does freeze quite regularly. Plus, Bill Gates owns 7% of Grupo Televisa, Mexico's biggest media group.

Not just nitpicking here, the dispute is over trademark, not copyright. EVEN WORSE... Marvel and the SONY-suck-a-lot corporations want to release an online universe populated with Marvel characters. This is just a legal attack to knock the competition into a dive while their NeverFun (Evercrap) engine drives out another lousy product. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr/article_displ ay.jsp?vnu_content_id=1574246 Aug. 02, 2002 Gamers creating own universes By John Gaudiosi Sony is getting serious about massively multiplayer online gaming. MMO, as it's known in the industry, is where thousands of people pay a monthly fee to play one another in a cyber universe. Flush with the success of its MMO game "EverQuest," Sony Online Entertainment has been in negotiations with Marvel Entertainment, intent on creating an MMO universe filled with some of Marvel's 4,700 superheroes, including Spider-Man, the X-Men, Daredevil, the Hulk and Blade. Although Korean video game publisher NCSoft is developing "City of Heroes," an unlicensed MMO that will let players create their own superheroes, Sony Online Entertainment VP marketing Scott McDaniel said an MMO coming from a Sony/Marvel partnership would have a broader appeal than the NCSoft game. [rest of article at website] /I am SO CLOSE TO A 5-YEAR BOYCOTT OF THE ENTIRE MARVEL COMIC PRODUCT LINEUP

All praise to the forces of libertarian freedom unleashed in the xUSSR by Amerika in the early 1990z.

All hail the spirit of capitalism, free to flourish in the manner intended. The top 1% of mafiosi get to eat lobster with cheese, for another 40% nothing changes, and the remaining 49% suffer huge declines in their standard of living to below the poverty line. To the point they can barely afford food and clothes,let alone a full price DVD.

This, dear reader is the best case scenario awaiting Iraq. But I digress.

Cheap CDs, software and DVDs for local and international consumption are wild west capitalism in its purest form.

Thus, there is just no way piracy is going to be stopped. An occassional bulldozer across a pile of CDs for your TV cameras is all you can expect, gringo.

I especially love some of the articles linking terrorism to patent law. See this article foran example.

I can only agree.

Linking patents to control over essential drugs, agricultural seeds ....or software for that matter is real terrorism.

And needs to be actively resisted.

Copy a CD today. Join the fight.

In a recent print article for Film & Video (magazine web site), the authors wrote that producers and directors are using iPods to carry digital dailies between sites and VIPs. They did not mention how they viewed the video, however (I'd assume they were using the iPod as a high bandwidth sneakernet).

I did a little searching on the net and found another article that states the iPod was used for digital dailies during production of LOTR.

This upgrade in iPod capabilities seems like a logic step, perhaps even originating from a few Hollywood users....

You will be just as surpised as I when you read this:

Alien vs Predator Domestic Total as of Oct. 5, 2004: $79,690,462, Worldwide total $101,614,954

They've already gone into profit territory on this and in fact it's being called a success: The studio also saw success this year with Regency's "Man on Fire" and "Alien vs. Predator."

So stop all the hate and learn the facts.

Home video sales now account for nearly 60 percent of Hollywood's revenue. DVD sales are not only the fastest growing part of the movie business, they're changing the way Hollywood does business.
He says DVD sales can save a film like "Dark Blue," which pulled in a modest $9 million in theaters. "It actually did more revenues in DVD than it did at the box office," says McGurk, because the DVD market is a man's world.
Blockbuster films now often sell more than 10 million DVDs in the U.S. alone. And that's at $20 a pop. And with DVD players still in only half of American homes, Hollywood believes those soaring sales will just get hotter still.

Finding Nemo grossed $320 million from DVD sales in 2003. "Consumers spend more money on the DVD version of almost every movie than they do on that same movie in theaters, including blockbusters such as The Lord of the Rings, Finding Nemo and Pirates of the Caribbean" (USA Today). CNN/Money reports that the movie studios "pocket roughly 80 cents of every dollar on each DVD sold, a take well above the 50 cents for each dollar at the box office" and The Hollywood Reporter says that "studios are earning about 60% more upon initial release from video sales of theatrical feature films than they did during the VHS-only era". So, not only are video sales up overall, DVDs are more profitable for the media companies than VHS or the box office.

And the future looks rosy as well. PriceWaterhouseCoopers has a sample chapter of their Global Entertainment and Media Outlook 2004-2008 report online which says:

We project filmed entertainment spending in the United States, EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa), Asia/Pacific, Latin America, and Canada will rise at a 7.5 percent compound annual rate, reaching $108 billion in 2008 from $75.3 billion in 2003. EMEA will be the fastest-growing region, rising by 10.3 percent compounded annually to $36.9 billion in 2008 compared with $22.6 billion in 2003. The U.S. market will expand at a 6.3 percent rate, from $34.3 billion in 2003 to $46.6 billion in 2008. Spending in Asia/Pacific will increase from $13.3 billion to $17.3 billion in the five-year period, growing at a 5.4 percent compound annual rate. Filmed entertainment in Latin America will total $1.6 billion in 2008, up from $1.3 billion in 2003, representing a 4.6 percent gain compounded annually. Spending in Canada will rise from $3.9 billion in 2003 to $5.6 billion in 2008, 7.7 percent compounded annually.

This is anything BUT piracy eating into sales. Mr. Lucas, would you like to change your answer?

I thought I would spew out a few links to reviews of the movie if you want to see what movie critics have to say...

Hollywood Reporter
NY Times (requires registration)
ReelTalk Reviews
ComingSoon.net
E! Online (with trailer)

Did Slashdot really receive only one submission for this story? It's really a horrible selection to put on the front page, given its horrible grammar.

Engadget has an interview with Jack Valenti, the outgoing president of the MPAA and the object of hatred for many hacker after he took he on DVD Jon, who is retiring tomorrow after more than three decades on the job.

He took he? On DVD Jon, who is retiring tomorrow?

when he says stuff like

Yeah, shame on Engadget, and stuff.

but it is at least slightly encouraging to hear that he owns a TiVo.

This is similar to the MS Security Manager running Firefox news bit. Because Jack Valenti owns and enjoys a TiVo, means he condones all aspects of the technology? No, it's more likely Jack Valenti likes to use a TiVo as a new-fangled VCR.

Let's see what Google turned up:

"The MPAA, NFL and other sports leagues attempted to convince the agency that the devices pose a threat to copyrighted works and could be used to broadcast games where they are blacked out. FCC commissioners disagreed, finding that the fears were unfounded. MPAA chief Jack Valenti, who will step down next month, personally lobbied all five commissioners, FCC sources said."

Be careful what you wish for.

Just catch a plane down to New Zealand, kidnap Peter Jackson's iPod, and tell him he ain't gettin' it back until he signs over Weta's setup to you as sole proprietor. Sheesh - all this talk of hardware, software, fiber/GbE, and the like is waaay too complicated.

Damn, I wish I could have gotten to this sooner. Warner Brother announced this week that they would be implementing increased royalties for games that do not achieve a certain average-rating by multiple gaming websites and magazines. This has huge implications to developers and gamers. If this works I'm sure it will catch on to all the movie studios with any marketing sense.

I actually wrote an article about this on my gaming website Counterfrag. Here is a direct link.

Sadly it happens all too often nowadays. "Oh, your project is done, and you still want to get paid? Bye bye" The good people get fed up and leave the industry, and we end up with crap programs. Maybe more companies should do what the WB is thinking of (see here ).

Clear Channel currently owns over 722 radio stations and a few dozen tv stations.

Clearchannel owns 1200 radio stations. Did you forget the AM band? They also own many of the ticket sales outlets which provide ticket sales for the larger venues, and have considerable holding in movie theater chains such as Carmike, AMC, Cinemark, and Century.

They're one of the biggest boosters of the Bush administration because of the monopoly-limiting regulatory rollbacks the republicans have perpetrated.

What "monopoly-limiting regulatory rollbacks" have been perpetrated? Are you talking about deregulation of the media? Well yes, you could talk about how Clearchannel owns over 1200 stations in the major markets, and provides content to 60% of radio listeners in the US (which happens when you buy radio stations in big cities...duh). But what you and your ilk never bother to mention is that there are 12,500 radio stations (AM FM total all formats public and private). Clearchannel owns just under 10% - some "monopoly". Additionally, the number of radio stations has increased since deregulation occurred, up 15% in markets considered "saturated" (rural markets) and 12% in major markets (urban areas).

In my area, CC owns six radio stations. You won't hear any local music on any of them, and as a result, the whole local music industry is floundering because the main outlets for promoting music are dominated by a few big corporations.

In my area, they own none. You still won't hear any local music because most local music sucks. Really. Other than the novelty of hearing it live, 99% of local bands always suck balls. The music industry cannot make a profit with their current discovery, production, and distribution methods so consequently they manufacture acts that aren't even up to the suck-ass level of most local acts, many of whom aren't doing anything but covering the songs put out by said manufactured acts.

But if you're so bothered by it, why don't you start a station? For around a grand you can set up a LPFM station that, in urban areas, is capable of reaching a thousand homes. Play nothing but local music, and sell advertising. Report back in one year.

One thing you can bet on. If Kerry gets in office, he's not going to let the media consolidation continue.

How can I bet on that? Lets look at John Kerry's words.

The Hollywood Reporter: What are your thoughts on media consolidation, and do you believe it has become a problem in the country?

John Kerry: I think it is a serious problem in the country, and I was against the FCC decision and efforts to narrow the ownership of media outlets in America.

Now let us examine Kerry's voting record, and it's impact.

Kerry was a strong supporter of the Telecommunications Competition and Deregulation Act of 1995 and the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which by some accounts was the most lobbied piece of legislation in history. The result of these laws was a massive consolidation of media companies, particularly in the radio industry, where over 4,000 radio stations have been sold since 1996. Clear Channel alone went from 40 stations to approximately 1,200 stations. The legislation also gave away the digital spectrum to the broadcasting companies free of charge (rather than having it auctioned off). The spectrum is valued at about $70 billion. Keep in mind, this is the same John Kerry who likes to brag about how he boldly shafted the poor by supporting welfare reform. Apparently, giving a $70 billion Christmas gift for the telecom industry is a more laudable goal than provi

These raids are the result of "Operation Fastlink" and are a direct attack on the Release Groups that supply everyone with movies/warez/appz/gamez/etc. Here's a real story & A much better google news link will help fill out the picture. here are some snippets:

No arrests were immediately announced, but Ashcroft said they were coming. Among the countries in which FBI searches have been conducted are Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Israel, the Netherlands, Singapore, Sweden and Great Britain.

Three Singaporeans were arrested on Wednesday night in an anti-Internet piracy operation involving 12 countries.

At the request from the US authorities, the Dutch tax investigation service FIOD-ECD has raided 14 locations in the Netherlands in an operation against large scale software piracy.

In Their 18th Year Of Glory, FairLight Is No More
A small archive of their text files

I work for a mid sized architecture firm. our back up typically is 60 GB every day on DLT tapes. A DLT tape costs in the range of $40 where as an 40/80 DLT drive is around $600. So I dont really see this being a viable alternative to the existing technology.

Well, how long does it take you to retrieve the very last file on the tape if it's rewound? I don't see this being a replacement for your existing backup methods, but this is great for things like transporting video footage, for example.

QuickTime is the API which started affordable desktop video (nor all-software video editing like Premiere, FCP, etc., incidentally).

QuickTime came out a couple of years before Mplayer, I think...

The author says he did the 'research' but on what is what I want to know.
Take a look at my research. It says that the video game industry is growing at 11.7% compounding growth. Thats exponential.

So, he's just plain wrong.

I quote from The Hollywood Reporter, 9/17/2002:

Gary Barber and Roger Birnbaum's Spyglass Entertainment has tapped "Chicken Run" scribe Karey Kirkpatrick to co-adapt Douglas Adams' "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." [...] Adams had begun adapting the project for the big screen before his death in May 2001, and Kirkpatrick will work from his draft. [...] Adams will receive an executive producer credit along with Robbie Stamp and Jonathan Glickman, president of production at Spyglass. Derek Evans, senior vp production at Spyglass, will co-produce and oversee.

Full item is here but you have to be a paid subscriber to read it.

here

> Anyone know when the first "season" is coming out on DVD?

Since I RTFA, I saw that:

> Three shows never aired on Fox but will likely be featured on the series' DVD release, due out in December.

Ceri

Advertising agencies have still got it all wrong. Why doesn't one of the characters on Friends, for instance, have a thing for coke? I know enough people in the real world who are adamantly "addicted" to certain brands and foods that it wouln't even stretch the imagination to see a TV character with that trait.

Ironically, enough, one of the characters in "Sex in the City" is going to have a thing for TiVo. No, I'm kidding! In the 2nd episode of season 6 (this season), Miranda is going to give up on men in deferrance to her TiVo! I am NOT making this up.

Sigh, leave it to fanboyism to make statements like that. I wonder wy people can't separate the story/direction from the VFX when doing statements like that. It's very easy to take cheap shots but the same could be said the other way around.

ILM is still a leader. They got around one of the biggest R&D dept. besides being the biggest VFX studio around. They have won countless of Sci-Tech awards, pioneered work on cloth dynamics, water dynamics, muscle systems, etc. They are regularly featured in industry magazines such as Cinefex, CGW, American Cinematographer and Millimeter. They participate in countless event including SIGGRAPH, this year they present a paper on fluid simulations, plus a special session and participate in the RenderMan course plus a Maya Masterclass and we'll see what else, plus their R&D reel was selected for the Electronic Theatre. They have 2 sessions on VES plus many other festivals around the world.

BTW, Weta doesn't own Massive, though it was developed for them in the first place. They do deserve much kudos but also many studios like ILM, DD, Imageworks, ESC, and the list goes on. You might want to read this for a bit more perspective:

Summer tentpoles rush to wrap effects work

Man I wish this mentality of destroy all competition calms down after both LOTR and the Matrix films are done with.

If you check out this page and look down four entries, you'll see that it is true. It is set to have a 2005 summer release with Universal producing it. He is going to shoot it on location in New Zealand with WETA doing all the f/x.

On the other hand, this is quite site questionable in authenticity (but true nonetheless) :)

Marvel has learnt from its past mistakes and no longer simply takes a step back from their film properties. They have a subdivision "Marvel Films", or something to that effect, which involves this guy being on the set to every single Marvel film property. From what has been released, Marvel gets a profit slice, not just a flat licensing fee.

Oh and by the way, Sony Pictures made the movie and it cost about 100 million to make. It took in 800 million at the box office worldwide thusfar and is the 7th highest grossing film of all time. It earnt an estimated 245 million in it's first week on video release. So out of this billion dollars, yeah, I'm sure Marvel only got "$12 million or so".

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*FINDS ANY STORY LINKED ON DRUDGE WEATHER ACTION
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If one looks at the past history of Miramax one will realize that they exhibit some semblance of concern about the "art" that they produce. I think that it's less about money and what the customers want and more about artistic value. I believe that in this case someone convinced them, and it shouldn't have been hard, that the film would have more artistic value if it came with the Japanese language track.

Harvey Weinstein and his brother have done a fine job with Miramax. They've released a lot of good material and have fought against corporatism. Unfortunately Disney bought Miramax and I imagine that they probably regret it after all the problems that Harvey has caused them. In the case of Kevin Smith's "Dogma" they lost to Disney, so the Weinstein's put the film out with money out of their own pockets. In my opinion, the change by Miramax is nothing more than a testament to the attitude and culture that the Weinstein's have fostered within the organization. For more of a taste of Harvey Weinstein's attitude read this 1999 Interview by Roger Ebert.

Gentlemen, start your pocket protectors... Regarding the pros and cons of going CGI to do R@-D2. I write about special effects for The Hollywood Reporter, so here's my $0.02 from an "insider's" perspective.

First of all, I'm not sure how much on-set actor interaction you'll lose with a CGI R2, which some people fear will lessen the performance value. He/it is, after all, a very non-anthropomorphic, trash-can shaped character who moves and emotes entirely differently than everything around it. (Keep in mind the sound effects come later.) And given the complexity of dealing with the props and Anthony Daniel's C3PO costume, the droid scenes are probably heavily scripted, with no improvisation, and thus necessarily limited. Aside from timing the slap of Daniels' hand on R2's head, there's no real reason to have Baker on set, although you could still have him be his own stand-in (like Ahmed Best did for Jar-Jar) and just erase him from the shots. I don't mean to keep dumping on Kenny, but if the radio-controlled R2 version were good enough, he would have been out of that suit years ago.

If there's one thing CGI does well, it's smooth metal surfaces, so it'll look fine. And while I hope we won't see R2 flying or jumping rope, going CG would allow him to move a little bit more. As it is he usually just stands and beeps. In fact, aside from the classic whimpering pass-out after he gets shot by the Jawas, he/it hasn't exactly been giving Robert De Niro a run for his money (and even that performance was more about the sound effect than Kenny Baker taking a fall).

Finally, if I'm not mistaken, we've already seen a CGI R2 several times. The new X-Wing Death Star attack flyby in the Star Wars special edition, with R2 in the back seat, was all CGI (done on a Mac, by the way). And I'm pretty sure the shots from "Phantom Menace" where R2 is working on the outside of that chrome Jedi ship were also CG.

You have to understand how these things evolve in a film production. It's far from diabolical. Here's my theory: Someone probably produced a very good CGI model of an R2-style droid for use in a background scene, or to populate a flock of droids. That file could have been picked up and used for the Episode 2 "animatics," the detailed low-rez version of the film used to plan shots and effects. Somewhere along the line, someone decided why not go CGI.

All in all, I'd say if you were going to safely go CGI with any "Star Wars" character, it'd have to be R2, though you could make a strong case for doing Yoda CG, since the muppet version looks odd these days. And in that case you could easily give Frank Oz the digital inputs that would allow him to perform a CG Yoda completely. It would look BETTER than any physical puppet.