Slashdot Mirror
UK Government Advised to Promote and Adopt DRM
aking137 writes "From ZDNet, the UK Broadband Stakeholders Group (BSG) are recommending '...actively promoting the development and spread of global DRM-related standards' on the grounds that 'The UK's broadband boom is likely to falter unless more progress is made towards combating digital piracy'. Also in the article: 'The massive popularity of peer-to-peer networks also needs to be urgently addressed, the BSG said.'" The report (pdf) is online.
in the US, now companies can take over the world! What will we do in 100 years?
I'm not the devil.. just his advocate.
oh yeah, that's the most pressing issue with broadband.. that people aren't interested in the ways they wish to exploit it. egads!
I'm not here. This isn't happening.
Where broadband has failed because there's no DRM, or is it more like Japan, or maybe Canada?
Wait, maybe its like the US, where with DRM and the DMCA, broadband is failing.
Didn't anyone tell them porn and piracy are the main reasons for broadband?
At least they left the good stuff ;)
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
The fact that DRM doesn't actually solve anything doesn't seem to phase these people?
Sure you can make *your* software DRM but free open source multimedia applications already exist. The cat is out of the bag [so to speak].
If there are any psych majors in the crowd could you please explain to me the appeal of seeking out the "latest 3 letter fad" regardless of any the predictable outcomes [e.g. DRM techniques always fail because the problem has no solution].
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Fast downloads of MP3s are why people sign up for the first place. Stopping that would discourage my John Thomas from signing up for broadband. How can they say that "digital piracy" slows adoption of broadband? That just makes out with me.
Because the general populace HATES getting entertainment in a medium of their choice for free. What they REALLY want is a lot of constraints on using their entertainment purchases, and really aggressive copyright holders to sue them when they think they might have stepped out of line.
Oh yeah, need DRM in there quick or this "internet" thing will never catch on.
So making it harder for people to help themselves to media files over the Internet is supposed to encourage people to switch to broadband?
"The upcoming boom in automobiles is likely to fail unless we install governors on all cars to enforce speed limits."
Reading this, does anyone else go, hunh?
why is DRM an "issue" only MPAA and RIAA sees it as an issue everyone else sees it as them trying to make more money.
These include urgently looking into ways of developing "effective measures for enforcing intellectual property rights", and actively promoting "the development and spread of global DRM-related standards".
And, as everything every user create is copyrighted to this user, how are the DR of this user Managed, and how are the ip rights of this user enforced ?
remember that system like sdmi consider that unmanaged content should be managed, and once in the system, cannot be extracted. this is a clear violation of the rights of the user.
It's a fair point to assume the more access to high-capacity connections then the easier it is to download large-volume copyrighted material.
... but I agree broadband in the UK has more pressing issues at the moment, like when are we all going to get access to it?
From this viewpoint I would argue the report is at least far-sighted.
The UK's broadband boom has been caused by digital piracy. Kazaa and the like are nearly the only reason anyone I know has got a broadband connection. The only other reason is online gaming, but everybody I know who plays games also downloads music and films.
'The UK's broadband boom is likely to falter unless more progress is made towards combating digital piracy'
Riiiight...
We have to save broadband! But how? I know! Let's limit what people can do with it and throw them in prison if they don't comply!
Who is the BSG? Exactly who makes up their membership? It's just a hunch, but I'm betting that 'Joe Average' UK citizen isn't represented.
who the major investors in the companies that form this group are?
Who are these bozos who are obviously clueless? - customers who want broadband either don't give a hits about DRM or are against it. I have yet to meet a single person that says that they won't get broadband until DRM is implemented. Please show me one.
even if DRM was implemented, many broadband users would probably cancel their service. In the end, the broadband companies would just blame it on piracy, taking us back to the original problem.
You can't have your cake and eat it too.
"Some fight for law. Some fight for justice. What will you fight for? One day, you will see."
Ok, someone sues IBM and there's a massive FUD campaign against Linux.
.. not only are they not worried about Windows .. they're also not worried about using the specific technology that M$FT is alleged to have stolen.
Somebody sues M$FT and nobody's worried about Windows
.... urr... how ae these things meant to be inforced? can it be made that installing DRM enforcement software on my box be a legal requirement of owning a computer? i know with microsofts market penetration they could include it in a future version of windows and a hell of a lot of people would just have it becasue they don't know any better.
but could other OS's like linux, freebsd, etc be forced to include such steps?
"if i'd known it was harmless, i'd have killed it myself"
one of the main reasons for getting broadband is so you can download large files faster. large files like songs, movies, pr0n, warez...
Next time I upgrade my Slackware I'll buy it by snail mail like I did last time. That way I won't have to sit and watch all day for when the broadband cable connection drops (seriously - it took NTL 10 months to fix this one).
"Digital Rights Management and micro-payments are becoming 'make or break' issues for the whole of the broadband value chain," said Antony Walker, chief executive of the Broadband Stakeholder Group, in a statement.
The value of broadband isn't determined by which businesses deign to offer pay services requiring a high speed pipe. The value of broadband is based entirely on what the end user is willing to pay for a high-speed pipe to their house. I'm sick of these rat-bastard marketroids who keep trying to redefine the utility of internet connectivity based on their [TV/radio/other mass-media] mindset: "we talk, you listen (and buy)". Broadband is doomed unless they can sell stuff to us? Broadband is doomed unless they can force us to pay-per-[view/listen/read] for the media we "buy"? Broadband is doomed unless they get to keep our credit card number on file to make paying them [easy/automatic/mandatory]? Please...
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
should read
'The UK's broadband boom is likely to falter if more progress is made towards combating digital piracy'.
Call (206) 338-5780 COLLECT for information about a genuine BA, BS, MA, MS, MBA, or Ph.D.
without set top boxes so that people can watch their movies on their TVs most people won't want broadband for watching movies and TV?
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
Here are their contact details
I don't understand their position. Oh wait. Unless they are getting pressure from the entertainment industry to take this stance. Now it makes sense. I know this is a UK issue, so maybe things are different over there. But I just don't understand how online piracy is preventing the spread of broadband services.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
it may just be a bunch of smoke and mirrors, but its a bunch that there going to make damn sure we have to live with!
...vividly encapsulates that post-Watergate/pre-punk/coked-up moment when you could trust no one, least of all yourself.
This is probably true. I work in an organisation that requires content from the people that Slashdot love and then hate on an almost daily basis.
They have made it abundantly clear that if we don't support DRM, they will not give us any content. There is no room for negotiation.
As much as I hate DRM and some of the ideas behind it, I realise that when companies make that kind of demand there is nothing we can do about it. Sure, we could say "push off, we don't want you" but then that would be a monumentally dumb move and in the end, if we kept that stance up, we'd have nothing to sell. Plus, before you start - we are a big company. This is not a case of us verses the big guys.
When every single company you work with is starting to make those demands, you have no chance but to comply.
So in that sense, I think they're probably right. If content providers see that the UK is making no effort towards adopting DRM, then they simply won't sell there. Again, there is no room for negotiation - like it, or lump it.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
Let us not forget that one of the UK industries that export the most is the music industry. Now you might understand the logic behind this report.
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
Water, electricity... bandwidth?
Water and electricity are commonly billed on a usage basis -- you pay $X per gallon of water, you pay $Y per megawatt of electricity. This causes certain actions, such as conservation of water and electricity, which are beneficial as these are limited resources.
Bandwidth is also a limited resource, and as it is being more and more dependent upon by business and government...
If people were paying for bandwidth like they do for many other utilies, conservation of bandwidth would be achieved and much of this piracy would be limited. When Danny's father gets the internet bill for $200, Danny's P2P software is getting uninstalled. If Danny leaves all the lights on in the house, or leaves all the faucets running water all day every day, we can easily see that his water and electricity bills would skyrocket and he would pay for his usage, as well as shortening the supply of these two shared resources for others especially in times of limited resources.
The days of flat-rate internet usage (should be) numbered. If I download a 650 MB ISO image of RedHat, or a 650 MB ISO of a pirated version of MS Office XP, it doesn't matter, similarly it doesn't matter if Danny is taking 30-minute showers or is just running the shower into the drain for 30 minutes.
Maybe that's what the UK should be looking at instead of all this DRM nonsense. The primary reason people download music is because they can get it "for free" since they are already paying their flat rate for internet access. If it actually costs them (in terms of $Z per MB) perhaps they will think twice about both downloading and potentially more expensive uploading of these files.
And maybe that will help some of these god-awful websites clean up their massively over-imaged websites.
MORTAR COMBAT!
AOL Time Warner
British Music Rights
Universal Studios
Panasonic
And my favorite: "The Work Foundation" (a fully owned subsidiary of The Human Fund) Source: Broadband Stakeholder Group's Website
And remember, never attribute to studpidity that which can more accurately be attributed to a global conspiracy.
Consider the situation where data storage is virtually free. Whenever I meet a friend I could copy ALL his movies and sound files. And it will be fast. And everybody will have 1000s or millions of media files. So its only an issue to get the really new stuff. And if anybody buys anything they can "give" it to all their friends. In such a system there is no longer any need for "the net".
Googlefight "Slashdot Troll" against "BSD is dying" 303:229. BSD thus cant die.
Without DRM, broadband won't become popular. These guys really have thier finget on the pulse of the net generation. Yep, got it all wrapped up.
Reminds me of AT+T's CEO talking about the big telecoms recovery in the next few years where everybody is going to going crazy paying for music and movies and the best part --videoconfrencing.
Well, as long as he can hustle all the 80 year old shareholders it works. Shine on baby.
You just got to have confidence, see.
companies can take over the world
You know, I've come to wonder what issues people really honestly have with DRM.
My primary reason for disliking it is really an engineering one -- it's really, really hard to do DRM, at least on plain ol' audio and video. I'd put it on the same level as antispam legislation -- I'm pretty sure that it isn't going to work, and there's a lot of irritating legislation that indirectly impacts me (like ability to grab information from ISPs by copyright holders...privacy issue that I'm sure will be abused in the long run) and money wasted on lawyers in the meantime.
Most folks on Slashdot are the technorati. They were, in a much higher percentage than other groups, using MP3s and other forms of audio trading well before anyone else. They caught the "sweet spot", where they could pirate music without everyone doing it, so that those that pay subsidized the development of popular music. Piracy hadn't yet hit the point of moving music towards the public good dillemma (where nobody wants to pay for it because it's easier to pirate). Now, though, it's easy for anyone to download music, and the subsidization of the folks that used to download music from FTP servers isn't there.
DRM as a concept isn't all that "neat feeling", but neither is copyright or other forms of IP. What is the actual, practical impact on you of DRM? In this case, Apple was unable to obtain non-US rights. To my way of thinking, that's a fairly minor issue for people. The biggest drawback is that a US citizen might become comfortable buying music in the US from Apple, then move, and not be able to use the route he has come to prefer.
How about cost? To most teens, cost of music is a pretty legitimate issue. I don't really care much any more, now that I'm out in the work force -- the effort of getting an album in the format I want with the quality I want really isn't worth it. I go to work all day, and when I come home I'd rather just spend a little money and get the thing in full quality. So if DRM prevents piracy, it doesn't really impact me much.
What about inability to trade music around? I guess this could be an issue for some (I know some people that lend CDs out left and right), but I don't. At least for me, this really doesn't affect me.
What about limited-time ownership of music? This I *do* find unacceptable -- I won't buy music that expires. The point's kind of moot, though, since attempts to commercialize expiring music and video haven't really gone anywhere.
What about inability to move from place to place with a music collection? Well, I'm biased -- I live in a first world nation so forms of region coding tend to screw me over by letting media companies charge me more. While I've never moved out of the US, I'd like the ability to do so, so I consider region coding sufficiently irritating that I would be happy to break 'em. Incidently, I don't believe I've yet seen a DRM lawsuit over violating region coding -- the media companies aren't willing to test it, and I suspect it might fall over in court.
May we never see th
Cheers,
Ian
'The UK's broadband boom is likely to falter unless more progress is made towards combating digital piracy'.
How? I call Bullshit! Unless the RIAA or similar company will muscle in some sort of tarriffs (on the British? Can they do that?) that make broadband prohibitively expensive for many. Just like how i have to pay piracy tax on all the blank cds i buy to record my own music.
This trend of allowing corporations to dictate law to politicians also needs to be urgently addressed, but I don't see them recommending anything in that regard...oh wait...you usually don't make recommendations that will lessen your power.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
Broadband what?
Large parts of the UK can't get broadband and these clowns are coming up with DRM recommendations?
Piracy is a problem, but with all the factors put together is it any wonder people are saving money copying music? house prices are very high (£125,000 average UK house price), council taxes have soared, NI contributions have gone up, fuel prices are slightly higher. The average UK citizen has between £2000 and £3000 worth of credit debt.
Yup, it seems fair enough for me.... Finally, you can't expect them to remember they're promotion main points....
1. No sig. 2. ???? 3. Profit!!!
I'll do anything to keep UK pop music as far away from me as possible.
The widespread use of cars didn't occur until after the national highway system was built. From early on, it seems people insisted wasting the resource by driving around just for fun or whenever and however they felt.
On a related note, the highway system was paid for (and is still being financed) by the government through taxes.
--> insert right-wing-knee-jerk-reaction here
Their contacts page lists a couple of people who have email addresses at intellectuk.org.
Hmm...I recognise that name from somewhere.
Oh yes, from their unbiased report that appeared on
Q. Will the British Government be ignorant enough to be taken in my a self-appointed "key advisory group on Broadband"?
A. Yes, probably.
..In Soviet UK, all your 99% of the actual speed of the bb connections are belong to us, cause with our new hyper-plan, you definitely can't find a way to use more than a 1% of the traffic limit....
1. No sig. 2. ???? 3. Profit!!!
'The massive popularity of peer-to-peer networks also needs to be urgently addressed, the BSG said.'
I'm sure what they mean is to try their darndest to shut down p2p networks, but in the words of Hugh Grant, "that's just silly." Why do they have to be addressed this way? Why don't we address the broken IP and copyright legal system instead? Why don't we address the VERY broken entertainment and recording industry?
Don't become a regular here, you will become retarded. -- Yoda the Retard
Ya, this was my thought. They are basically saying, let's kill off the one reason most people are adopting broadband. As it currently sits, there are only two real reasons that a person would have to get broadband.
1. High speed songs/movies/porn. Sure, a legal way to get these wouldn't hurt, but right now P2P is the best way to get this stuff. This is most of your broadband users, in my experience.
2. Getting a damn good ping on Enemy Territory or other online games. Much smaller group of people.
Other than those reasons, I don't know of anyone (outside a business) that would have a reason to justify the cost of broadband. At a cost of $40-$50, I just don't see a lot of people needing to get their email that much faster. But then, I'm not some industry hired shill^H^H^H^H^H analyst.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
Good points. But I mainly use broadband for better response times and bandwidth for online gaming. The second reson is for the 24/7 connection. I just leave my PC on all the time with MSN and ICQ running in the background.
Life is not for the lazy.
I think the point is that broadband could do with more killer apps. Currently companies are unwilling to let their content loose on the net due to piracy concerns, whereas if there was a pervasive, fairly reliable DRM system, a lot more companies would make use of broadband, which in turn would make people more likely to buy it.
Sure, you may say, why would people pay for what they can get *now* for free?
a) It's still not that easy to get. Sure, you can use kazaa, but it's not really reliable or quick
b) Legal systems would get marketed. I'm sure this makes a lot of difference. If people were getting ads on TV all the time advertising on-demand movies, streaming music etc, they'd be a lot more tempted to get broadband.
And an echoed cry was heard around the countryside, "Will the last one leaving the island, please turn the lights out?"
Speaking as a born and raised Englishman, I'm considering leaving this country as it increasingly goes down the pan. I was a fierce patriot once - but times have changed. I simply can't find a way to be proud of being British any more. I know I'm not alone in thinking that it may well be time to head back into old Europe - I have loads of friends in the process of emigrating.
Maybe I'll look into moving to France...
[The] UK's broadband boom is likely to falter unless more progress is made towards combating digital piracy
Actually, the more piracy there is, the more broadband is needed / utilized. There's absolutely no reason to combat piracy, where growing the broadband market is concerned.
I don't have an on/off button on my DSL modem. Neither, probably, do you or most other people. When I lived in Tampa, I had one until the cable company arrived one morning to tell me that I had to get a new modem installed.
If companies really want everyone to conserve bandwidth then why can't we block the pipe without unplugging the thing? Makes no sense unless they get a bigger benefit from knowing exactly what your computer is doing at any given moment.
Laws are for people with no friends.
This sounds exactly like the argument used by the US media companies to get Sen. Fritz Hollings to propose the SSSCA, or whatever it got renamed to.
Some of us might actually use broadband to transmit large amounts of non-media data, or do VOIP. It isn't all about music and movies!
Fight back!
If the broadband company is willing to sell me a 600kbit/s link at £25/month then why shouldn't I be allowed to use it as much as I like?
What are the hidden costs?
Why shouldn't you just pay for the size of the pipe?
Stick Men
Have you people in the UK ever thought about maybe adopting some of the other characteristics that make America great, such as ...
-- private health care
-- widespread homelessness
-- high crime
-- corporate government
-- war on the middle class
-- offshored jobs
-- little gun control
-- moronic culture
???? If not why not?
Upgrading ALL the 3000 exchanges without broadband. FUCK the demand system. Subsidise the smaller exchanges with the bigger ones. My relatives in somerset CAN'T get it because BT is a fucking incubent monolith that needs to fucking DIE!
That's not a troll, that's bloody funny.
The BSG is the Broadband Stakeholder Group. Fortunately, they do provide a list of members.
But more than likely, it's NTL who are pushing for this, ever since the bad publicity they received over the broadband cap they tried to impose.
It's not about how much data you use. It's about how saturated the broadband pipe is saturated. So, once it comes to that point, then it might be meetered. Untill then, why would you be in favor of artificially creating a lack of supply when there is simply more then enough infrastructure to prevent that.
Life is not for the lazy.
That poor Tard michael craps his pants everytime the GNAA gets a FP.
Many unsigned and independent musicians provide free downloads of their music on their websites as a way to attract more fans. Here's some from my friend Oliver Brown for example. Many such musicians, while relatively unknown, are as good as any major label band and certainly an improvement over the pablum they serve up on ClearChannel.
You can find many more examples in my new article:
- Links to Tens of Thousands of Legal Music Downloads
The article also explores some of the historical and legal issues behind copyright, and suggests steps the file traders can take to make file sharing legal.If you're a musician who offers downloads of your music, I can link to your band's website from the article if you give my article a reciprocal link. Please follow the instructions given here
Request your free CD of my piano music.
apt-get update
apt-get -u dist-upgrade
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
If they won't provide content without DRM, someone else will. The old media content providers have their fossilized heads up their sterilized asses and want DRM so as to keep new content providers from thinking up a better business model.
Infuriate left and right
In my personal experience I have found that massive increase in available bandwidth can actually reduce downloading of software/music.
In the days when I had only a 56k modem, I used to set my PC to almost continuous download, not really carring what I took. Now that I have a 100Mb connection to my college room I don't bother because I know that if I ever actually needed something I could get it instantly.
If it depends on Tony Blair, aka US joyful puppy, then the UK will have DRM.
This is sad. So sad.
-
Roses are #FF0000, Violets are #0000FF, find / -name '*base*' |xargs chown -R us && mv zig greatjustice
Governments all over the world enforce DRM technology and when everyone is sick of all the draconian policies they'll switch to OSS.
So the British government will be the first government to shoot themselves in the foot. People move to OSS, companies lose money and lay people off and the economy suffers.
What a great idea!
that is better written as
sub circumcise($) { return chop }
Curiously, as your way wasn't funny in the slightest, none of the hunour is lost.
1. Restrict Content
2. ?????
3. Profit
A good suggestion, mayhaps they could have higher rates per "flow", the equivalent of having Purified water delivered to your house at premium prices, as opposed to simply Tap water? It sounds like a great idea, until you realize that your Premium Purified water is being drank by those damn neighborhood kids. These kids are the equivalent of Modem(56k) users. They will use the same backbones that your premium (T1+) connection will use to acquire its sites, thus drinking away your premium "water", which you are paying $.14/KB for. The problem with this mentality on the internet is simple: the internet is a shared user space, with free interdomain communication. It was a good idea, but who would pay for a water bill that only allowed one to take a shower between 9 and 12, and only hot water between 10:15 and 10:20.
Microsoft in a nutshell:
"If I could start again, a million miles away, I would keep myself. I would find a way"
-NiN
"this is the gloaming"
radiohead
The only reason I have braodband is to download large files. I'm talking 50megs, 100 megs, even various files that make up one entire dl that add up to over a gig. Dling music that hovers from around 2-10 megs is also a huge reason for broadband.
Just like upgrading pc's to get things moving faster we get faster connections for the same purpose. If you're on broadband depending on the type (cable/DSL/etc.) you can grab an mp3 in a minute or so but on dialup it can take you way over 10 minutes to get the same file. It's all about how fast you get what you want. Remember we are a society of instant gratification so broadband is to music what the micorwave is to food. We want it and we want it now!
There is also one other big use out there and it's gaming. Who wants to be a HPW when you can be an LPB? I used to pay $115 USD for the fastest service offered in my area just to have the lowest ping I could get. No matter what gamers will keep their broadband connections.
Take away the reasons for having broadband and see subscribers stop buying. Who needs broadband for viewing web pages? Yea there's streaming news, etc. but I can watch that on any of the 24 hour new channels.
Message to all companies pushing the DRM...
Don't cut of your nose to spite your face. You can't sell music from one part of your business and in another division sell cd-burners and not expect consumers to use them burning your music and/or sharing. Wake the fuck up
You aren't free to do anything, until you've lost everything.
Exactly. That's why I haven't switched to Debian yet, still stuck on dialup (but DSL will be in my area "Real Soon Now"). Debian & other free software is one of my primary reasons for wanting hi-speed (Gawd I'm a geek;).
When you lose something irreplaceable, you don't mourn for the thing you lost, you mourn for yourself. - Harpo Marx
... and bite them off.
One of the recurring themes with Media providers is that they need a way to make more money of the sam variety of product with each new inovation.
Examples from the RIAA include the fact that a lp record would cost $8, and a casette tape of the same recording would be sold for $9. When CD's came out they upped the price immediately to $10, then over the next 15 years ramped it up to $15 per album. As they realized they could add features onto the CD, such as data tracks with atrax compressed editions of the music, and possibly video clips in mpeg format, they bumped the prices up to $18-$20 for an Album. (More if they could find a way to make it multi-disk.)
Similarly going from vhs, (which I realize the movie industry did not want to use at all initially) where a movie would cost between $5.99 and $20, (at a time when the same movie was shown 6 or more months previously in theaters for $4.00, $2.50 Matinee) to DVD, the Movie industry generally bumped the price up to between $9 and $29 depending upon the features they decided to include, and their take on the potential market for that movie.
Broadband is their next target. They want to sell you the option of watching any of most of their library of videos. However they do not trust the existing platform because it is altogether too easy to pirate the videos that they would like to provide for you to watch.
Yes the current boom is largely due to piracy of one sort or another. Whether it is MP3 audio, or Divix video, is only peripherally important. They believe that there is a much larger market for them if they can get to the vast majority of customers who will not pirate their material.
If they can charge $4.99 to ppv a movie they released last year, and $2.99 for a movie from 5 years or more ago, or $.50 to p4p an audio track from the last year, and $.25 for more than 5 years ago, they think that they could be making significantly more money. They may even be willing to sell you a copy of the same movie for 3 times the ppv, or an audio track for 4 times the p4p cost.
The disadvantage for them is that they need an even larger potential customer base than they can get from the current broadband customers. They realize that they are not going to be able to charge those prices to people who can get copies of their material free for the download from some pirate site or network.
Since they believe that their ability to provide content is what will continue the boom in sales of broadband, they think that they have a serious voice when it comes to what the users of that network should be restricted to attaching to the network.
I am not saying I agree with them. Just giving the logic behind it. I happen to think that there is a sufficient market for broadband without video or audio on demand from the members of the MPAA and RIAA, and their equivalents in other countries.
Then again, I have been known to be wrong.
-Rusty
You never know...
The massive popularity of peer-to-peer networks also needs to be urgently addressed
Yeah, because if people massively use peer-to-peer, then they probably want their representatives to put an end to that. Or perhaps they don't?
The UK's broadband boom is likely to falter unless more progress is made towards combating digital piracy
What is the Mafia running this "organization"? That sounds like a pretty strong threat. "You know accidents happen, people get killed"
What a fscking brilliant plan: Stop people from doing the things that make them want to buy your service.
'nuff said.
Try converting this into ascii: you fail it. yes, you, sir, have failed it, so hardcore, for putting up something so incredibly stupid and unrecognizable. Bravo.
The letter has preferred customer undertones (corporate santions). Riddled with mistaken assumptions of DRM and feasible online sales. Seeks to involuntariely charge me for legal online content I already receive. Potentially give a very big chunk of sales to BT.
It's corporate propaganda, when I'm president you'll be able to sue *fact* finding corporations who mistaken psychology with advertising, and for providing intentionally false or misleading information.
80% of the article is a bold faced lie. Some what cleverly written to hide the gun pointed at the british goverments' head. The solution is to go public and say no, revoke the business licence of the company(ies) involved from doing business within WTO or it's membership.
I can't honestly see why our judges aren't seeking to decorate the street lights downtown with lobby groups and some (PR)-research firms employees.
Ok, IMNSHO, this is a cultural market... much like selling French champagne, Italian pasta etc.
You don't force people. Instead, you have to make sure your quality is undisputed.
What good is having DRM, if your receipts are among the worst? Your music can be ok but, really, don't you think India can speak English, too? Or, for that matter, any other country?
And about cinema, one word: anime.
Isn't that DRM thing a little like painting oneself into a corner? Imagine all these companies some time into the future paying large ads to announce they don't use DRM!
The massive popularity of peer-to-peer networks also needs to be urgently addressed
Why do they make this sound like such a negative? The comment makes it seem like anything popular MUST be illegal (or immoral,or fattening...). Surely the correct capitalist pigdog way to approach this would be to gratuitously exploit the popularity for profit - if it's that good, someone's gotta be able to make a fortune out of it.
Back in my day (haha, like i'm that old), if you had something marketable that someone wanted, you found a way to deliver it and made cash from it. If you didn't, you added to the unemployment statistics. Maybe this is just the content providers not realising that net users don't find DRM'd content a decent delivery.
Ah well, more stats are always good...
Warning: May contain nuts
File sharing technologies which facilitate the direct infringement of copyright have the potential to destroy important areas of creative, cultural activity: shrinking rosters of creative talent in the music industry bear compelling witness to this fact.
Notice that last line there: shrinking rosters of creative talent in the music industry bear compelling witness to this fact. - This is the only 'fact' it seems in the document which isn't backed up by various statistics. Its worrying how government documents can make hard statements like this with no presented evidence (I'll be contacting them on Monday to ask for some).
Notable the evidence involving statistics is geared up to attack the file-sharing networks ie: Kazaa currently running at 2.5m downloads/week.
I believe that the BSG is a Government advisory group started by Patricia Hewitt, I'm worndering, being as they 'advise', what gives this group so much expertise in the matter?
The report is Authored by Nick Garnett of the Simkins Partnership (Media&Entertainment Lawyers) - He reveales few if any sources of information in the document so we have to assume that he is the oracle of all things P2P and Internet.
I dislike the way our govenment tries to 'Blind with statistics' especially when only the statistics of convenience are shown. Clearly the government is attempting to scare the UK broadband stakeholders into co-operation.
They have scheduled September 2003 for initial talks; I'm yet to discover if any discussions will be public. I would suggest that if there are public talks, members of the general UK IT community should be in attendance before we get our legs cut out from under us by DRM side-effects.
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
P2P is pretty heavily demonised. "Filesharers don't [...] pay for the infrastructure they use", is the old argument that just because you were sold a 1Mbit connection doesn't mean that you should expect to use it. This is absurd, because the only way that you could pay for the infrastructure would be to buy content from your ISP. That relegates "broadband" to being just another way to pay-per-view. Excuse me, but I can already do that. Don't expect me to pay you extra for some of bits that turn left at my cable splitter rather than right.
They also make the (seperate) point that large scale copyright violation will lead to less money going to content producers, which means that less content will be available. Yes, yes, the economy will collapse, we'll waste our money on things like mortgages and food instead, cats and dogs living together... There's no acknowledgement that if the incumbents die off because they won't change, then maybe, just maybe, something might spring up to take their place and supply the demand under the new conditions. Yes, you can't "compete with free", but why the presumption that content is only created in order to make money? Instead they propose DRM [sic] as a mechanism to prop up the incumbents, again repeating the fallacy that copy rights are designed to protect profits rather than to put work in the public domain. Look, chumps, it doesn't matter how it gets there, or how much money changes hands in the process, as long as someone is prepared to make and distribute it.
I'd go on, but it's just repeating itself from this point. Bear in mind that they assert that "The DVD Video format [is] still relatively secure." Judge from that whether this report is worth your time.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
If you want to know what the problem with DRM is then you should read this story by one of the leading minds of the GPL/GNU, Richard Stallman:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
It's an article in which reading is outlawed, made possible by Microsoft's DRM, and corporations' ideas of what copyright should be.
He also has many other essays too.
Even if they are correct, they are effectively saying "Take-up will be faster (which we want), at the expense of comsumer choice (in which we are not interested)".
I'd fax my MP but the lazy shit (Dr Alan Whitehead) never answers his mail.
J.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
This bedroom's conclusion is that these people are talking bollocks, as surely digital piracy is one of the single most attractive reasons for getting broadband in the first place!
Readying is not really outlawed persay, but only the rich can read since they can afford the 'reading fees'. What is outlawed is trying to read books without paying these fees :).
If I actually feel the need to manage MY digital rights, I will do it myself.
* Carthago Delenda Est *
"The UK's broadband boom is likely to falter unless more progress is made towards combating digital piracy"
Thats a joke right?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
According to this article, copy protection is a "crime against humanity". Why? Because bending the rules is an integral part of society, and DRM is either insecure and ineffective, or leaves most users no wiggle room (especially with a law like DMCA preventing users from spreading information on how to bypass it).
*tic* *tic* *tic*... you hear that? That's the meter running. Worrying about the phone bill, broken downloads = wasted money, idling waiting for your friends to come online = waste of money, remember to disconnect when you're done (e.g. you go play a game, even if you turn the machine off when not using it) and so on.
The single most important reason for me was to get a flatrate connection. No worries, no insecurity, no nastygram phonebill. That is the real power of broadband, and why I'd never want a metered connection ever again (per minute or per gigabyte)
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Many 'utilities' have a flat 'subscriber' rate for up to a base amount of usage, and if you exceed that you get charged per kW/hr, kB, gallon.. etc.
As long as the base rate/cap are *reasonable* its not a terrible idea. But still give us the option of buying unlimited as well, for us people that use their broadband for work.
But.. once i get charged for use, i agree the websites and spam-artists MUST be dealt with. im not going to pay extra just to see their crap, which many times i cant control ( ie, spam ).
---- Booth was a patriot ----
This whole situation is getting way out of hand. DRM, file sharing, RIAA, MPAA, DMCA, and all the rest of the Intellectual Property corperate subject matter are begining to annoy the hell out of the average Joe Consumer. Even Sally's Grand-pappy is getting sued for having IP on his computer that Sally downloaded. Now everyone is going to be forced to use stupid DRM technology because these corperations feel as though they should pick which technology is best suited for you (i.e. to keep you from making them any less money). Now even ISP's are catering to these corperate pencil dicks' bank accounts. Let's DRM everything on the damn internet and make you buy broadband so the only thing you can use it to download for free is a Linux ISO. Oh wait, SCO wants to sell you a Unixware License. WTF is this world coming to. I say pirate every possible product on the planet, and make these money-hungry-whores go out of business.
My message to the corperate whores: If I like your product, I'll buy it, in the meantime, PISS OFF!
There's a billion PCs out there right now without h/w DRM. In the next few years there will be another billion sold without h/w DRM. These machines are not going to disappear overnight.
So who can afford to limit their market place to the
very small number of PCs that have DRM?
Okay, probably not the internet, but MSNet (or something similar). This will be like the internet but more business friendly and it will be cheap for users, probably free with new computer and console purchases. Companies will pay to be on MSNet because all machines must be DRM-enabled AND consumers will want it because the speed will be measured in gigabits and be able to access the latest music, movies, etc. Of course, for a consumer to be on MSNet, you need an MSBank account that allows for simple and quick purchases.
Once MSNet is up, the internet will go back to the geeks and the universities and MSNet will be the choice for consumers and media companies!
Come join MSNet, Secure, fast surfing without the geeks :)
It's coming, as soon as the DRM hardware is available - look for an announcement by 2005.
...sort of.
/. terminology ;) adding restrictions to the cd they're ripping? Or building it into kazaa?
I reckon the explosion in the number of p2p users out there just goes to show that the majority of people aren't going to pay for media they can get for free. Adding drm to software and media isn't going to help - can you really imagine someone about to infringe copyright (ooh - +1 correct
So whilst I agree that there's no reason whatsoever that a content provider has to release their stuff without drm - it DOES belong to them, after all - people are going to either find it cracked on the net, or not take it with drm (any iTunes users wanna tell me different? I'm in the UK).
I guess what I'm saying is that the end user will always be able to get what they want in the format they want, and eventually, the content providers may have to compromise or go bust.
Warning: May contain nuts
Ok, I know it's counter intuitive, but bear with me. I think DRM could possibly make music, movies, books etc, MORE readily available for free.
I've layed out my idea in my blog. I could be wrong but I think it works. The only barrier I can see here in the states is possible DMCA issues resulting from decrypting DVD's or some future encrypted audio format.
DRM can be used to subvert fair use, or protect it depending on whose hands it's in.
You're absolutely right. And because you're right, and it's an unpopular position here, prepare for a massive assault by the trolls that occupy this place.
Metered bandwidth usage would solve a ton of problems IF users were charged seperately for uploading and downloading. The same rate for both, but tracked independantly. This would kill the vast majority of the spam business right away. If pushing that "send" icon meant getting charged for all of the bandwith it takes to send mail to 100,000 addresses, spamming would no longer be a profitable enterprise. If little Junior had to face Dad's wrath for a bandwidth bill in the tens (or even hundreds) of gigabytes, piracy would be way curtailed.
This solution makes tremendous sense, and for many users, would actually cut their internet bills while still affording them access to a high speed connection.
But as I said, look for much wailing and gnashing of teeth here at your suggestion.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
There's plenty of anti-capitalist nanny-statism to go around in America, Australia, Europe, Asia, and every-fuckin-where else.
Will they impose a certain O$ upon the public?
v vans.html
"It's for the common good." they will say.
I know that they drive around in secret vans
with funny antennas, sniffing around for illegal TV sets.
http://www.tv-l.co.uk/tvlic/penalties/detection_t
For a real squeal, read through the whole site at:http://www.tv-l.co.uk/
I can see in the near future they will unleash a fury of PC detector vans
that will sniff out rouge, forbidden operating systems, namely *NIX systems..
You'll have to apply for and pay for a license to operate your PC.
You can be sure that this will be comming to the USSA soon too....
2+2=5.
Enjoy your victory gin under the spreading chestnut tree, brother.
Oh, get real. How in the name of heaven do you explain the fact that broadband adoption in the US and number of people using Napster, when graphed, followed the same-shaped curve for Napster's life? Napster and now KaZaA are the killer apps for broadband. Always have been, always will be.
As for movies, I'd say the recent popularity of movie piracy came about because of a combination of cheap DVD-ROM drives and download-friendly codecs like DivX. It sure as hell didn't cause broadband adoption.
Your repeated attempts to bury your head in the sand on this issue are ridiculous.
TS
If using Linux is about choice, how come people complain when I choose to use Windows?
This isn't about the general populace at all. This is about greedy corporations that are threatening all sorts of legal action and 'witholding content' until they feel the online medium is safe for them. They are the ones who have control over the progress of the broadband boom, not the general populace unfortunately.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
i remember back in the 40s, the brtons were actually AGAINST opinion control and stuff.
You're right! It's as much as a turn on as
when your boy/girlfriend snaps a collar around
your neck, and leads you around in all sorts
of ways, or dresses you up as a school girl,
and tells you what do!
Bandwidth saturation at 100% means that your network begins to crawl. The only way to make your network "work" again is to (a) increase bandwidth at great expense or (b) decrease usage. With budget crunches abounding, I can almost guarantee you that bandwidth usage is about to be decreased, forcibly, using a variety of mechanisms.
MORTAR COMBAT!
This is ridiculous. Record sales haven't been flagging -- people have just given up on the Top 40 mainstream dross the record labels are spitting out, and are buying music from indie labels instead.
We're not buying less music, we're not buying more music. We're buying music from people who aren't them, and they're pissed.
I've bought at least ten CDs this month from The End and I doubt a penny of it went to the RIAA.
The report was chaired by Dominic McGonigal, who said in 199 "It is a great honour for me to represent the music industry...". So who who is surprised that the conclusion is to support DRM.
3 2f 7a93b280256738005c9167?OpenDocument
Link and text below...
http://213.38.88.195/coi/coipress.nsf/0/f9ef682
DCMS 50/99 2 March 1999
DOMINIC McGONIGAL BECOMES MUSIC INDUSTRY ADVISER
Culture Secretary Chris Smith today welcomed Dominic McGonigal as Music Industry Adviser to the Department for culture Media and Sport.
Mr McGonigal is joining on secondment from the Mechanical-Copyright Protection Society (MCPS), where he is Head of Member Services. He will work as a link between the music industry and the Government.
Mr Smith said:
"I am delighted Dominic has joined us to help us work more closely with the music industry and understand its needs. The industry is important to Britain, both economically and culturally.
"Our Creative Industries Task Force revealed that the music industry contributes about #2.6 billion to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Music is an area where we are a world leader, with overseas earnings of #1.2 billion - twice as much as our expenditure on music imports.
"With new technology opening up new possibilities for music, we want to ensure that we do all we can to keep our music industry in good shape."
Mr McGonigal said:
"It is a great honour for me to represent the music industry in this way. There is much that Government and the industry can do together, and I am looking forward to playing my part in that co-operation."
Biographical note
Dominic McGonigal is Head of Member Services at MCPS where he looks after the 13,000 composer and publisher members. He previously worked at the Incorporated Society of Musicians, advising performers and composers. Since graduating in music from King's College, Cambridge, he has worked in a number of capacities within the commercial and subsidised music sectors. He has served on the boards of the Educational Recording Agency and the National Federation of Music Societies. He has acted as an adviser to Jazz Services and has represented the views of the music industry to Government.
Notes to Editors
1. The post of Music Industry Adviser was created by Chris Smith 18 months ago. It is funded equally by British Music Rights, the British Phonographic Society and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Dominic McGonigal takes over from Sara John, who is taking maternity leave before returning later in the year.
2. MCPS is the collecting society licensing the "mechanical" right in CDs, television programmes, videos, multimedia products etc. In alliance with the Performing Right Society (PRS), they have a combined royalty turnover of #400 million. British Music Rights represents the British Academy of Composers and Songwriters, the Music Publishers Association, the MCPS and the PRS. The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) is the trade body for record companies.
Spammers usually don't sent 100,000 individual emails from their computer to their upstream provider.
They:
1. Send one email with a very large "BCC" or "TO" or "CC" list, a one-time cost, which their upstream provider would then incur.
2. Use other people's mail servers to send their e-mail, and thus those people would be charged for the usage. This actually makes spammers even more evil.
3. Hack into other people's computers (usually via trojans) and send email directly from them (See #2).
SMTP is fundamentally broken when it comes to SPAM.
MORTAR COMBAT!
I would HATE to have capped bandwidth. If they are going to cap me, they'd better start charging me less. Or have an unmetered cap, where I get X amount per month, and metered charges over that.
If they would go to metered usage, then they'd better charge me a lot less than what I pay now ($54/mo, thanks to the new "state" taxes on the line) The problem is that the phone companies hold the infrastructure, and they love their current system: ever-increasing base fees, metered usage, sprinkled with miscellaneous taxes here and there. They make a killing. If they try to apply their logic to broadband, they will kill it. They have done a good job so far of holding it back with their line-leasing schemes.
I have proven that I will pay for a damn broadband connection, stop trying to screw me even more! And I don't download movies or MP3s. But I'll bet I use a nice chunk of my bandwidth. At least I use it in the middle of the night, thanks to brag and cron. :-)
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
The broadband providers in the US and elsewhere are suck between a rock and a hard place -- and they know it. Its the well-known internal position of most broadband providers to ignore pirates -- not because of some highly vaunted interest in freedom of access -- but because pirates are a large chunk of their customer base.
Pirates have also put the broadband providers into another lurch -- bandwidth utilization. P2P use is clogging the Internet backbone to a point where it is not too inconceivable that in the near future it will become saturated.
To be honest, the broadband providers did this to themselves. They sold Internet connections based on max bandwidth and unlimited throughput, thinking [rightly at the time] that most users wouldn't saturate their links. They turned out to be wrong, but are now in the position that if they throttle back the bandwidth or utilize content-based filtering to nix P2P services, there will be some provider that won't do it and they will lose business.
So, here, the ISPs are in a bind. Either upgrade the Internet backbone to be able to handle the traffic that P2P is bringing -- costs that would eventually be passed down to the consumer to a point where broadband would again be unacceptable to the average Joe -- or do everything they can to kill P2P networks everywhere so they won't have the competitors that can provide access to them -- and won't themselves be turned into the bad guys.
Believe me, the future is coming, and its not what we want. The free ride on broadband is coming to an end, that is to be sure. How DRM or P2P networks will be handled in the future has yet to be decided.
Actually I do, and I have done for the last 10 years - I would have had a gaol sentence if I didn't. That's over £1000 total if you want to put a price on it.
The last price hike was introduced because the BBC wanted a bigger Internet presence. I had no choice but to pay. Even if I choose not to use BBC TV or radio I still have to pay. Gaol is no option for me.
So, I already pay for my media, I have done for a long time. I don't intend paying for it again. We, the British public, are taking the media we have already paid for. As far as I'm concerned; the Broadband Stakeholder Group can sing for their micro-payments.
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
3. (although it does include 2 as well) People who work from home and need remote access, run servers (of one type or another), and CS students...
As far as I'm concerned, they can go right on ahead and withhold their 'content' forever. I don't need my PC to be a $1200 TV, when my $300 TV fits that niche perfectly. I watch too damn much TV anyway.
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
Broad band stakeholders group is a sub-lobby group from a group called Intelect. Broadband stakeholders pushes the telecoms interests.
a to z.asp
Here's their member list, it doesn't identify which ones are interested in this topic, but you can take a guess:
http://www.intellectuk.org/databases/member_db/
Lots of names, including plenty of the usual suspects:
Microsoft, Microsoft Great Plains, a lot of MS integration consultancy companies , Digimarc ID Systems, a major firm of Solicitors: Nabarro Nathanson (whose hiding behind these people?) , and quite a few Cable and DSL equipment manufacturers.
Looks like that is really the consensus opinion of that faction.
Didn't anyone tell them DRM doesn't work? How can something that doesn't work help broadband takeup?
"Why don't you like DRM?"
Its pretty obvious. It replaces an agreed balance COPYRIGHT LAWS with a piece of code completely under the control of the copyright holder.
If the copyright holder decides that today, you have RIGHTS = RIGHTS/2, then you have lost half your rights. No law enforces your fair use rights.
Flip that question on its head:
Why should companies be able to force DRM on people BY LAW, when those customers wouldn't buy it VOLUNTARILY?
Why should it be made compulsary for me to take DRM?
Its not P2P piracy that killed DIVX (the DRM'd DVD) because it didn't exist then. People didn't want DIVX, so they didn't buy it.
Nothing is stopping copyright holders offering DRM'd product now. If it works, go on, do it.
I won't buy it, and I won't back any law that requires me to buy it.
Why should I?
right. Withholding content will certainly make more money. Oh, wait...
Yeah, I think the UK should adopt DRM right away.
David Stein, Esq.
Computer over. Virus = very yes.
Come on, what content? If a content provider *doesn't* want to supply content, they aren't a content provider.
So, no DRM, then they aren't a provider. Sucks to be them. Kind of reminds me of the Steam Locamotive vendors...Baldwin Locamotive works (1831-1915).
Content on the 'net is NOT the same as content on Radio or TV. The whole POINT of on-line content is that it is manipulable (sp?). What is "value proposition" of DRM? It makes it harder to supply and use content.
The Content Provider is dead! Long live the the Content Provider!
Ratboy.
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
In the article they claim they "can't compete with free" when will they realise that lowering prices and adding value will result in a drop in piracy...not everyone can afford to spend £10 (for a product that costs under a pound to make) on every single song they want!!!!
One should perform this transformation when considering any law.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Not only is that funny, but it is also very to the point. Let me choose my own sampling by limiting the freedoms I have the choice of, or let some prick technologist poser tell me how I should spend my money on what I used to get for free with more content.
Hate to break it to you guys, but the UK has no "broadband boom". The vast, vast majority of Internet users in the UK are still on dial-up. A couple of the really big ISPs now claim over a million broadband subscribers, but when you check the figures, they're including things like 128K cable modems in that -- the figures look at "always on" connections, not bandwidth per se. Real, genuine broadband (of the killer P2P calibre, for example) makes up single figures of percent of the UK Internet presence, and much of that is via universities linked to JANet.
Incidentally, I'd love to have broadband for its always-on nature, to play on-line games, and because in the last six months I've downloaded plenty of legitimate but large packages: Mozilla (three versions), OpenOffice, MySQL, Perl+Apache, MinGW, etc. These take forever on a modem, and require download management software just to protect you if the line drops after 75% of the download is complete. I have little interest in downloading music or movies.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
The music/media distribution industry is _dead_. They serve _no_ purpose any more. The time in which we are living will be remembered as the birth of the artistic (for want of a better word) revolution where the mass audience has _direct_ access to the artist. Where is the role for the distributor? That's right, there isn't one. They (the industry) are behaving in _exactly_ the same way that the church acted towards the printing press in the 15th century, look where that got them, and the industry will have the same fate. Whilst it is unlikely that anyone will burn at the stake for this (well at least I hope not) we will suffer a lot of pain whilst the industry is in the death throws and some more bad laws will be made but I am actually pretty confident that in the end (and it may be several decades) all will be well, I just wish that we could forshorten all that pain and cut to the chase where the industry is dead and we are all the better for it.
"The first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is stop digging."
The vast majority of members on the full list appear not to be in the content provision business. They're mostly infrastructure, broadband ISPs, government reps and the like.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Actually, they make it quite clear in the paper that while they feel DRM is an important part of the broadband equation, it is not the only part. They also consider things like micropayments, one of the better ideas for fixing the current on-line distribution problem, which is more than most of lobby groups seem to be doing. They explicitly say that new business models are required.
I suspect that if they actually promoted an effective micropayment infrastructure and a business model to go with it, this would do a lot more to advance the state of the Internet than just fixing P2P abuse. How many people would download from a legitimate source if they felt the price was fair, and it only took a couple of clicks to get the material they wanted? Probably most, I'm guessing, and so by implementing that they'd probably render the DRM mostly irrelevant anyway. How many people would find the time to self-publish quality content knowing that that effort was going to be rewarded?
This report is obviously biased in favour of the big companies, but it's not nearly as one-sided as many here are making out (presumably without reading it?).
And by the way, in the UK, the system isn't nearly as broken as in the US. CDs are overpriced, but DVDs and computer games are generally pretty fair. For example, I picked up two whole series of programmes a couple of weeks ago in genuine box sets for under £100, which comes out at well under £2/episode. I consider that a fair price, and paid accordingly. Deals where buying two or three DVDs at once brings the price of movies way down are also found in many shops.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
If people were paying for bandwidth like they do for many other utilies, conservation of bandwidth would be achieved and much of this piracy would be limited. When Danny's father gets the internet bill for $200, Danny's P2P software is getting uninstalled.
The days of flat-rate internet usage (should be) numbered. If I download a 650 MB ISO image of RedHat, or a 650 MB ISO of a pirated version of MS Office XP, it doesn't matter, similarly it doesn't matter if Danny is taking 30-minute showers or is just running the shower into the drain for 30 minutes.
Granted, while it might be flatrate, the cost of bandwidth is still distributed across the users. The only public statistic I've heard here was that as ADSL company found that their users were downloading on average 6,5gb/month. Now divide that by the monthly rate, and you'll see that the bandwidth costs are a pittance compared to the full retail price of for example MS Office XP. No matter how you look at it, there is still a financial gain compared purchasing in a shop.
And if Danny's dad get the choice between a) Pay $200 internet bill and b) Increase allowance by $1000 to cover buying the stuff, I wager most parents will go for a) in no time flat. Not to mention the old floppy swap (now CD-R/DVD±R swap) as a fallback, but as it is now I send CD images back and forth to friends that are a 10 minute drive away, simply because it's easier.
If you want to make any argument about the cost of P2P, at least try the "cost of searching / incomplete / broken / fake / unfindable stuff" instead of bandwidth costs, because that point is really moot and getting mootier by the day. And even then, I'd say that real world experience speaks against that argument, though whether the common behavior is rational or not is a different story.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
> The only other reason is online gaming
Online gaming is not very compatible with broadband, at least with DSL. The
connection is interleaved to improve the robustness against burst errors.
That is, on a typical DSL line the ping (latency or lag) is about 100ms.
For online gamers, it means that the shoot goes off only 1/10 sec AFTER
hitting the fire button.
For those who consider changing their connection type for better online
gaming experience, a better alternative is ISDN (RSDI). ISDN lines have
ping times of 10-12ms, that's a magnitude faster than DSL broadband.
However, the online gamers will then have to wait quite a while when they
plan to pirate their online games off the internet.. Probably this tade-off
is why most of them stick with DSL instead of choosing the faster ISDN.
Marc
Heh... There was a programme on TV the other night that mentioned people from the UK moving to France. There's one area where the population is now 1/4 British, and guess what? House prices are going through the roof, farms are merging, "The English Shop" selling Heinz beans is in the town centre, and the French are more than a little upset about it. You can take the Brits out of Britain, but you can't take Britain out of the Brits, I guess.
But good luck on your quest for finding a better place. The country is better off without people who see only the bad things going on anyway.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I bought and paid for a new game about a week ago. I have the actual stamped silver CD-ROM. I even have the manual. I have the cardboard mini-box too! But because of the idiosyncratic ways of my drives, the game would never recognize the legit CD in any of them. I applied the No-CD 'patch,' and, wow, I could actually play the game I bought on my hardware. DRM is about turning your PC hardware into an oversized Nintendo/TV console, and I think that sucks.
The paper does heavily advocate DRM, and points out the drawbacks of P2P.
However, it also advocates
and several more relevant and important issues besides.
Read the article, people. It's biased, but it has a lot of good stuff in it too, and it's one of the more balanced proposal documents to come out of any government-related department so far. The number of knee-jerk "DRM ROOT OF ALL EVIL!" responses here is sad, and doesn't do justice to the original paper.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
The only reason early adopters ran for broadband was unlicensed, unrestricted content.
this is nothing more than jewish controlled media lies.
and if that is anti-semitic - so be it. i don't give a fuck any more. who owns big media? and what are they stereotypically known for?
thank you.
'The UK's broadband boom is likely to falter unless more progress is made towards combating digital piracy'.
The UK's broadband "boom" is hamstrung by BT. Most people in the UK think "broadband" is ADSL supplied by BT. In most areas they're right because there's no alternative.
BT will not configure one of their exchanges until they have an arbitrarily large number of preregistrations. For those lucky enough to be within range of one of the configured exchanges, actually getting connected is a bureaucratic nightmare.
You can't order ADSL unless you have a BT analogue line to put it on. Without a phone number to put in their internal systems, they can't tell you whether they'd be able to connect you if you have a line installed. You order the line, they connect it to the exchange and allocate it a number. Only then can they tell you whether it will support ADSL. If not, they cancel the order and take the line out again.
The customer care for the BT "Business" ADSL range of packages is inpired. They'll happily sell you a routed ADSL connection with NAT or No-NAT options and a four-port hub in the router but when you call the support lines to report a fault they say "we don't support ADSL in networked configurations"
"I am a die-hard capitalist....but unethical, lying, bastard capitalism is really no better than socialism" - unknown
As I said, I only think it's OK to cap if they tell you about it up front. You can then make the informed decision as to whether you would like to go with a provider that caps bandwidth or not. I certainly would. you might not.
That said, they're not "making a killing." Bandwidth simply is not as cheap as you seem to think it is -- any business trying to get the same speed line to you take for granted with cable or DSL will pay several times as much as you do, because they don't have Grandma who only checks her email to subsidize them. Broadband internet is a commodity, low-margin business. If you and everyone else want a 24/7, fast, uncapped line, prices will have to go up.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
Actually, piracy is one of the largest reasons people buy broadband.. If you could not download movies games and music for free, most people wouldnt have any use for broadband atall. And the money spent on broadband would instead be spent on buying pirated videos down the local market...
If you had to pay extra to download movies, then people would opt to just rent them from the local video store instead..
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
These fucking morons still don't have a friggin clue, and it absolutely amazes me just how far their heads are up their ass.
DRM will destroy the internet faster than the can shake a stick at, as well as the general proliferation of culture, free enterprise and free communications that made the internet what it is.
The STUPIDITY is beyond belief. I still haven't figured out whether to laugh at their gross idiocy or cry at the fact that these fat-cat, greedy bastards will destroy the whole thing and bring all the hope the internet portended to its knees. And ironically the very free enterprise capitalism that thrived on it.
www.enthea.org
They could (a) rely less on fancy high bandwidth stuff and more on good old-fashioned gameplay, (b) be in partnership with the ISPs since they are providing a HUGE benefit to the ISPs by driving up bandwidth usage, instead of now being against them because they are driving up bandwidth usage, or any other number of things.
MORTAR COMBAT!
people look for the shit beneath the shine.
---- oh no - it's the RIAA and their $100000000 fine. I'm gonna take that so seriously...
Agreed. Well said. It's been this way since broadband opened up in the US. If you look at the pricing structures for broadband access versus dial-up, it's clear that prices don't scale with bandwidth. Customers who aggressively use their bandwidth are averaged out with customers who don't use much more bandwidth than they would on dial-up (seeking responsiveness). The greater the peak capacity, the greater the spread in bandwidth usage.
There's probably been an increase in aggressive bandwidth use since the popularization of P2P activity. :) This could threaten the viability of price structures and require increases, as you say. I think it might get difficult for providers who have tried to be cool about not placing caps in TOS but find their bandwidth costs gradually rising beyond their pricing structure. An inexpensive moderately capped account could relieve prices for some, but would require jacking up uncapped rates for aggressive users to near-business rates.
I would have thought that broadband would be more popular amongst those that share files?
I am not stubborn. I am right!
PS. The Daily Show rules!
The ones I referred to as "making a killing" were the phone monopolies, who own the lines. They make a killing because they make money on the line no matter who uses it. SBC was recently sued because of this. That also makes the margins thinner, because the providers have to pay their kickbacks to the phone companies.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.