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Intel Cutting Linux Out of Content Market
An Anonymous Reader wrote in to mention an Inquirer story suggesting that Intel is planning on cutting Linux out of the content market. From the article: "The vehicle to do this is called East Fork, the upcoming and regrettable Intel digital media 'platform'. The funny part is that the scheme is already a failure, but it will hurt you as it thrashes before it dies. Be afraid, be very afraid."
Time to buy stock in AMD. I imagine they'll be happy to support the market share that Intel doesn't want to.
-TLAY
Sunday is a slow news day, but geez. This is news? So Intel (or Microsoft/Toshiba/Sony/Phillips/Haliburton) is making a media PC? Um, who cares?
My CDs play well on my $29 stereo, and in my car. FM radio, where it isn't ClearChannel, sounds just fine. Perhaps the drones who are EMPOWERING Intel to make this move are going to suffer. Why must your PC converge with your TV?
Why must you have 55" plasma, Dolby 11.1 surround, with Foomatic DSP and Orgasmatron effects? Christ, step outside and go for a walk, see a local band, read a book, play with your dog, have sex with your wife. This is your life, man, and its ending 1 minute at a time.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I'd love to use something like iTunes. Unfortunately, because of the DRM, the fact that the files aren't compatible with Linux, my Palm, and whatever else I want it to be with, I'd rather just pirate the damned thing. Then I get it in a format I know works.
Computer software. If the first damned thing that I'm going to do is scour the net for a "nocd" patch to get rid of the ridiculous SecureROM crap, then I'm more likely to grab the entire package. Add to that a point-of-sale variation on DRM, the no-return policies, and the fact that so much of the software out there sucks, doesn't perform as advertised, crashes, or is incompatible with hardware it should work with, and people are more likely to pirate the software.
The content companies can keep shooting themselves in the foot. Hopefully, the U.S. government will eventually come in and slap all these companies down with anti-trust violations and the like, but I'm not holding my breath. Microsoft, the RIAA, et al. donate a lot of money, you know.
Then how will you get your TV?
/.ers do now.
Over the internet, from people in countries with sane copyright law, same as a lot of
0 1 - just my two bits
True ... but you're assuming that much of the cultural production of our day has any value. Most of it does not, and can well be lived without. That, ultimately, is the crux of the matter. At what point does the impact of DRM and other anti-competitive, consumer-unfriendly technologies become so great that we will turn back to each other for entertainment and companionship?
... so what? To me, cultural production should be a product of the culture itself, not a tiny, unenlightened, arrogant subset of it that claims to represent everyone else in it. There's a lot more to life, to culture, than the products of the RIAA and the MPAA, although they'd rather you didn't think too much about that.
... I say switch that little bastard off, go kiss your significant other right on the lips, and go out for a nice long walk. In the long run, you'll both be better off without Hollywood running the show.
The media people will try to find that "sweet spot", the point where they remotely control all content distribution and use, but where we aren't quite irritated enough to keep our wallets firmly jammed in our pockets where they belong. Current experiments with copy-protection and DRM are proving that the threshold of pain is currently very low for consumers: if I can't watch what I want when I want then you can just stick this disc up your a** (and this is as it should be!) However, after some time and incrementalism, whereby we keep losing bits and pieces of what we've come to enjoy since the advent of the VCR, we will one day wake up in a world where there is an automatically-deducted charge for viewing each individual frame of a movie. If I am still able to buy books at that point, that's what I'll be entertaining myself with. The rest of the population probably won't have that option, since at the rate we're going, it is unlikely they'll even be able to read.
We've been hypnotized into believing that we absolutely must have a television (the larger the better, and preferably HDTV-ready), a DVD player and disc collection (the larger the better) and that the movie theatre is so important that we will regularly part with nine or ten bucks to see the latest round of wooden acting and plotless filmmaking (can you say, "Episode III?" I knew you could.) To that I say
To all you people that spend your spare time in front of your computer or watching that 60" Hi-Def
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
This is actually the very doomsday scenario that caused the British Government in the 1940s to ban the use of cable for broadcasting. Dissent will be impossible, you WILL see the content that is proscribed and no other, for no other content will exist.
In the same way pirate radio simply doesn't exist in the US, pirate TV will not do so either. If more people had access to multicast streams, it would be very easy to set up dissenting sources of media, but that isn't going to happen.
Sure, there are technologies like DeCSS around. They are banned in the US, under the DMCA, but they are around. Eventually, though, they are bound to fail. The penalties will become too severe, there won't be any safe havens left for developers to operate in. (DeCSS only exists because other countries haven't gone DRM-crazy yet.)
There is also the fact that Intel is a near-monopoly. In the same way Microsoft killed off Netscape, Intel CAN kill off all non-DRMed media by simply refusing to play it - or, worse, creating a log of un-DRMed content and sending the list to "interested parties". The technology for this exists and would certainly be in the spirit of the DMCA.
Does this mean Intel are evil? Not necessarily. "Can" is a long way from "will". There is no proof of intent to cause harm. Harm is inevitable, when you go down this kind of road, but there is no proof that that is why Intel is going there.
Personally, I believe Intel see this as a way to make money off the RIAA and MPAA - sponge off of their paranoia - and therefore solidify control over their corner of the market. I don't see this as Intel trying to censor or trying to "cut Linux out".
Nonetheless, once the technology is out and branded with the Intel logo, it will be used to censor (by the RIAA and MPAA) and will be used to cut Linux out (by Microsoft and possibly SCO). The long-term consequences are inevitable, even though I don't believe Intel are doing this for those reasons.
Intel is out to make money, and the most money comes from having the most power. The same is true of all the other companies. Power is not an end in itself, it is a means of becoming filthy rich and staying that way. It is necessary in order to attain and maintain that state. Without power, alternatives can thrive and that will reduce profit.
Intel are no more evil than Star Trek's Ferrengi and are driven by much the same belief system. Their "crime", if it can be called that, is to ignore the consequences of that belief system. It doesn't affect their profit margin, so is of no consequence to them, regardless of how it impacts others.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
"This guy sounds like a doomsday fanatic to me."
Why? Because he paints an unpleasant picture?
What part of the picture seems unreasonable? That Microsoft, Intel, RIAA and MPAA could be in bed together? That these corporations are run by greedy bastards that really don't have your best interests at heart? That these powerful corporations could buy congress? That people are fucking sheep too busy with their little lives to pay attention to important issue until it's too late?
The man hit the nail on the head folks. The corporations have done that statistical math as it applies to a population of self centered, apathetic consumer drones. Their formula is based on the fact that although a small percentage of the population is unpredictable, the vast majority are predictable.
John Lennon said it really well in "Working Class Hero"
A working class hero is something to be.
Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV,
And you think you're so clever and classless and free,
But you're still fucking peasants as far as I can see,
So go ahead and ignore all the warnings and mock them as doomsday predictions. After all, you must. The corporate consumer drone formula says so.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
DRM is only a problem if the content is being distributed with it attached. When the artists are in charge of their own distribution, they are free to not do this. As technology drives the cost of distribution towards zero, distribution will become commoditized. Artistic effort, by its very nature, can't be commoditized. The end result will be that the artists will be in control, as customers and clients. Some will choose to use DRM, some will not. The market will take this into account when deciding who is most convenient to pay attention to, and any DRM that inconveniences consumers substantially will not be economically viable.
The only problem is that this will take a while.
There's no failure quite as dissatisfying as a complete and total solution to the wrong problem.