Apple to Offer Monthly iTunes TV Subscriptions

sg3000 writes "Fans of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, rejoice! Reuters is reporting that Apple will provide monthly subscriptions to two of Comedy Central's most popular shows. One question, as TV shows become available for sale on the Internet, will this make it harder to share clips online, such as through Google Video? In your answer, ignore facts. Just go with what feels true."

Comments

While good - why not unlimited I-Tunes pass

[jimmy page]

Oh that's right Jobs is against that...

Am I the only one thinking this is the first step to subscription music on the IPod

Re:While good - why not unlimited I-Tunes pass

[Yahweh Doesn't Exist]

>Am I the only one thinking this is the first step to subscription music on the IPod

no, but you seem to be one of the people who are falsely under the impression that "subscription" means rental, which it does not in either the general case or the case of iTunes video passes.

here "subscription" has its tru meaning, as applied for example to magazines, in that you pay for something in advance (at discount) and receive the product periodically when it is actually published.

this is not to be confused with BS "subscription" services which take away what you already have when you stop paying.

Re:While good - why not unlimited I-Tunes pass

[SEWilco]

You might be able to get all the Apple product announcements that you could want.

Re:While good - why not unlimited I-Tunes pass

[DigitalReality]

"this is not to be confused with BS "subscription" services which take away what you already have when you stop paying."

Now if I could figure out how to stop myself from paying for WoW. There shsould be a clinic for this.

Re:While good - why not unlimited I-Tunes pass

[StikyPad]

I dunno, those chicks kinda freak me out. But hey, whatever floats your boat.

Re:While good - why not unlimited I-Tunes pass

[R3d M3rcury]

I think you're the only one.

I think subscription services for music will be a tough sell. First, you have over a hundred years of history going against you. For over a hundred years, people have been able to buy music (Player Piano Rolls). That's going to be a tough sell.

Conversely, video has traditionally been a "pay to watch" kind of thing. You went to the movies and paid your money to see the movie. TV, while free to watch, came with commercials. So I think video will be easier to convince people to buy a pay-to-watch subscription service.

That said, I kind of like the way this works and it would be interesting to see Apple do more of this. For example, while I might not pay $40-some-odd dollars to watch a season of 'Lost', I might pay Apple $20 up front for a subscription to 'Lost'. The files can sit on my hard drive until I manage to get around to watching them in much the same way that they are currently sitting on my DVR.

Re:While good - why not unlimited I-Tunes pass

[jschottm]

here "subscription" has its tru meaning

Dictionary.com definition

I assume, of course, that the true meaning that you refer to is that part of the perscription that gives directions to the pharmacist? Or perhaps the agreement to purchase stocks? Yes, the word does, in fact, have more than one meaning. For example, many fine arts organizations offer subscriptions to their performances. While technically the word rent would also apply there, you'll find far more people who would say "I got my wife a subscription to this season's Operas at the Foo Peformance Hall" than "I got my wife a rental of this season's Operas at the Foo Performance Hall."

Per part b of definition one, you'll see that online services are increasingly using the term subscription to describe granting of access for a period of time to electronic services. In some cases such as LiveJournal or our very own Slashdot, the subscription grants special rights and priviledges, in others, such as Salon, a subscrtion or temporary pass is needed to read the content. It is also used in terms of cellular subscriptions.

in that you pay for something in advance (at discount) and receive the product periodically when it is actually published.

Not exactly. Subscriptions, the type used to aquire magazines, do not require payment in advance nor are they necessarily at a discount. If you're going to complain that you feel other people are misusing a word, it helps to be more precise yourself.

this is not to be confused with BS "subscription" services which take away what you already have when you stop paying.

So, I sense that you have a dislike for "subscription" music services. Rather than laying out logical reasons for that or presenting a good argument why the dictionary is wrong, you simply churn out a bunch of vitriol, which of course, because you're supporting Apple and against any form of DRM, is a great way to get modded up.

You are quite correct that Apple/Daily show is not a (new) Napster/Rhapsody style plan. What you gloss over is what the grandparent poster aludes to and other people have more clearly stated, is that there is most likely a limit to how many shows Apple can reasonably offer on a ala cart basis before users determine that they're better off with a cable/minidish subscription (ah, that word again) and a TiVo (etc) and transfering saved files to their computer/phone/whatever manually. This leads to the supposition that Apple might at some point begin offering a cable-like experience where users can view on-demand but not indefinitely licensed media. It may or may not be correct, but it is something to consider, and something your post failed to address.

It makes a certain amount of sense for video files, in that they are larger than audio files, and also "consumed" less often. Most people aren't going to watch a Daily Show episode dozens of times like they would a music track, but the ability to pull out a random episode from a month ago to show a friend would be desirable. The recent study that showed that iTunes users tend to purchase fewer and fewer songs after an initial flurry of purchases shows that the concept may be worth Apple considering for music as well - a steady monthly fee of $10 may work out to be better for Apple in the long run than $1/track in a pattern that may drop off rapidly.

I'm glad you're happy with your choice not to use a subscription model music service. However, millions of us are quite happy with them, and choose to use them because they offer a comparative advantage that meets our needs better than an ala carte system. If you or anyone else are curious, I can lay those out yet again. That's the great thing about having a choice - we can both be happy. In the mean time, please brush up on your argument skills before railing about the terrible companies that "take away what [I] aready have when [I] stop paying," when that misrepresents the nature of the service and how they treat me.

Re:While good - why not unlimited I-Tunes pass

[TheRaven64]

I listen to the same audio track tens, if not hundreds of times. I watch the same video a maximum of two, maybe three times (except in exceptional cases). For the first, a purchase model makes sense. I buy a track, and then I can listen to it as many times as I like. For the second, a rental model makes more sense - I pay a monthly fee and I get to watch whatever I want.

Re:While good - why not unlimited I-Tunes pass

[Sparks23]

I'm glad you're happy with your choice not to use a subscription model music service.

Honestly, I tend to think subscription and 'single purchase' models serve different markets. I use both iTunes Music Store (on my Mac) and Rhapsody (on my PC) for different reasons. I've been a Rhapsody user since it first came out, and I love that I can play anything in the Rhapsody library. One monthly fee, and I have access to the whole library.

However, even with the more recent ability to operate while offline, Rhapsody's 'I'm not online' experience is not as good for me as just normal MP3s or stuff I buy from iTMS. So I tend either to buy the music from Rhapsody and burn CDs which I rip back into my iTunes on the Mac, or just buy the tracks from iTMS in the first place.

I find Rhapsody's DRM more of a hassle than Apple's, and I don't like wasting a CD to burn unprotected copies from in Rhapsody if I only want to buy one or two tracks. But I find Rhapsody infinitely better for just browsing and sampling stuff I might be interested in. I think my music experience would be the poorer without both.

That's just my $0.02, anyway.

Re:While good - why not unlimited I-Tunes pass

[Curunir_wolf]

In the mean time, please brush up on your argument skills before railing about the terrible companies that "take away what [I] aready have when [I] stop paying," when that misrepresents the nature of the service and how they treat me.

I haven't tried any of the subscription music services, I rarely buy music at all and when I do, it's something not normally available on the mass market channels. However, I'm curious about your statement. How exactly did the grandparent "misrepresent" the nature of music subscription service? If you decide to cut expenses and get rid of that monthly subscription service bill, what do you have for the money you've paid?

Re:While good - why not unlimited I-Tunes pass

[wanorris]

If you decide to cut expenses and get rid of that monthly subscription service bill, what do you have for the money you've paid?

If you decide to cut expenses and get rid of that monthly cable TV or XM radio bill, what do have for the money you paid?

Rhapsody is a primarily service where you are paying for the right to listen to any of the millions of songs in the library for a period of time. If you stop paying, they aren't taking away something you own, because you never bought it. That's how the original poster misrepresents the nature of the service.

I can't see that this is any different from an online-only subscription to the Wall Street Journal or the Economist -- if you stop subscribing, they don't still give you online access to the issues you already "paid for." Likewise, cable TV and XM Radio don't give you access to the TV programs or radio streams you consumed in the past either.

Do you think that there is something inherently wrong with these other services as well?

Re:While good - why not unlimited I-Tunes pass

[Golias]

I think what he was trying to say is that, prior to the existence of on-line services, the word "subscription" was usually taken to mean that you are buying multiple issues of a periodical in advance. You always used to get ownership of whatever it is you were subscribing for.

He's not wrong... but the reality is that the definition of the word has broadened to include limited-use services, such as XM radio, Rhapsody, and NetFlix.

Re:While good - why not unlimited I-Tunes pass

[soloes]

well put. I use Itunes a little, but mainly use walmart for my purchase site and I use Napster for my subscription. I like being able to set up my play lists for my portable device and listen to those same playlists on my home computer, work computer and one other one. for the price of 1 cd a month i have thousands of songs in my phillips player, and an almost unlimited supply of music I can choose to download.
The only drawback to Napster is same as rahpsody.. windows needs to work on WMA. That DRM really lacks a lot.

Re:While good - why not unlimited I-Tunes pass

[IAmTheDave]

I find Rhapsody's DRM more of a hassle than Apple's, and I don't like wasting a CD to burn unprotected copies from in Rhapsody if I only want to buy one or two tracks. But I find Rhapsody infinitely better for just browsing and sampling stuff I might be interested in. I think my music experience would be the poorer without both.

Wow. Ok, so, you, the consumer, are forced to consume two different, separate, DRM laden services, just to get a worse experience than if you just hopped on P2P and pirated music, or even bought from a service like AllOfMp3.

And the music business is confused as to why piracy is still an issue. Go figure.

Re:While good - why not unlimited I-Tunes pass

[Sparks23]

...just to get a worse experience than if you just hopped on P2P and pirated music...

I'd disagree. If I wanted to go download Kazaa (and end up with Gator and god-knows-what other spyware on my machine), then go looking for a specific album -- say, 'Stunt' from the Barenaked Ladies -- I suspect it would take me a good while to find all the tracks. Some of the tracks I would find would probably actually be viruses in disguise. Some would be corrupted. The people I'm downloading from might go offline, and my download slows to a crawl. Etc.

In contrast, I go and open Rhapsody, I enter 'Barenaked Ladies' into the Artist search (or 'Stunt' into the Album search), find the album, and click 'play.' No additional charge; it downloads the album into my local Rhapsody library and voila, plays it. For just browsing music, Rhapsody's already beaten out Kazaa/Gnutella/etc.

On iTMS, I go enter 'Barenaked Ladies' into the search bar, I click on 'Stunt' and click 'buy album.' Again, an easier time.

(Or, of course, I could pick up the album from the used CD shop two blocks from my house and just rip it into iTunes, which is what I actually did. But it made a good example nonetheless.)

The reason I choose to use both Rhapsody and iTMS is that I find iTMS works better with my overall personal style of music management (I don't like Rhapsody's library system, plus it isn't available on Mac as a standalone product). But Rhapsody blows away pretty much everything for just browsing of music, and trying out new stuff to see if I like it. iTMS is great, but a 20-second clip is not really enough for me to judge a song by, most times.

Yeah, the DRM can be annoying at times (more with Rhapsody than with iTMS), but not enough so to counter other factors for me. :)

Still, to each their own.

Re:While good - why not unlimited I-Tunes pass

[angel'o'sphere]

He's not wrong... but the reality is that the definition of the word has broadened to include limited-use services, such as XM radio, Rhapsody, and NetFlix.


Well on Rhapsody you can buy music like on iTunes, I don't understand what you guys (you and your parents) mean.

angel'o'sphere

Re:While good - why not unlimited I-Tunes pass

[Curunir_wolf]

If you decide to cut expenses and get rid of that monthly cable TV or XM radio bill, what do have for the money you paid?

Well, I don't know about XM, but (at least for now) I can record anything coming in on cable or broadcast tv out to VHS or DVD-R, and keep it essentially forever - the "subscription" doesn't lock down everything I watch, restrict how and where I can make copies or format-shift it, so that I can't watch it when I stop paying the bill.

I guess that type of thing is fine, if that's what you want - just a radio-type service where you listen to music on it until you stop paying - but that's not the way I listen to music. I like to have a collection of music that I can go back to and listen to whenever I want. I don't want to have to pay for it forever.

Although, considering the vast majority of music that the major distributors are putting out these days, using a model where you would listen to it a bit and then decide it's not worth keeping is probably the right way to go.

What happens when they decide to "stop carrying" certain songs? What if they decide a song has too much controversial content, and they will only support the revised version, and your old one is revoked? They can do that with the DRM they are requiring you to use.

Don't get me wrong - they should be able to offer such a service, and if you are happy with it, if it works for you, that's fine. They don't really make it clear what the restrictions are, though, do they? They are not really up front about it. Those Napster ads where they compare the costs of filling an MP3 player on Napster with the ones for filling an iPod on iTunes don't really spell out the details. I mean, what if they compared it to having an iPod for 10 years compared to 10 years of Napster?

-1 Redundant

[perlionex]

In your answer, ignore facts. Just go with what feels true.

We /.ers already do that all the time, no need to remind us. /me ducks

Re:-1 Redundant

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, it works for the President.

Re:-1 Redundant

[ModernGeek]

I think these editors are starting to feel more and more like high school teachers. They are telling us what to do, and they are grossly misinformed on current events. I say we rebel *stands up and throws a paper wad at the mods*

Re:-1 Redundant

[JasonTechnophile]

I think it is pretty humorous and apropos that Google's quote of the day is: "I am not one of those who in expressing opinions confine themselves to facts." - Mark Twain

Never have so few words been so profound.

[His name cannot be s]

"In your answer, ignore facts. Just go with what feels true".

That's Slashdot. Summed up in a single sentance. That's so beautiful.

I think I'm changing my sig.

*sigh*

And, in an attempt to be on topic:

No, why would it make it harder to share. Uh, google video? WTF?

Oh right. That's how people share videos... *snickers*

Oh Rihgt.

Re:Never have so few words been so profound.

[Jeff Benjamin]

"In your answer, ignore facts. Just go with what feels true".

...
That's Slashdot. Summed up in a single sentance. That's so beautiful.

Um, I hate to break it to you but that was two sentences.

Re:Never have so few words been so profound.

[Justin205]

Oh, come on. He's just ignoring facts. And going with what feels true. ;)

Re:Never have so few words been so profound.

[eventhorizon82G]

Yeah, but it FEELS like one.

Re:Never have so few words been so profound.

[rtaylor]

"In your answer, ignore facts. Just go with what feels true". ...
That's Slashdot. Summed up in a single sentance. That's so beautiful.

Um, I hate to break it to you but that was two sentences.

Didn't you read what he wrote? "In your answer, ignore facts."

Re:Never have so few words been so profound.

[noidentity]

"Um, I hate to break it to you but that was two sentences. "

Ummm, I hate to Break it to you, but Slashdot isn't bound by archaic Grammer Rules,,,

.

Re:Never have so few words been so profound.

[wass]

"In your answer, ignore facts. Just go with what feels true".

Normally I wouldn't do this, but after seeing about 20 /.ers comment on these words, nobody yet (at least in the comments I've seen so far) have realized this is a tongue-in-cheek homage to the king of sarcasm himself, Stephen Colbert , of the Colbert Report.

Colbert totally rocks, I look forward to his show more than the Daily Show. For those that don't know, Colbert basically pretends to be a right-wing egotistical fact-ignoring pompous talk show host, but everything he says is either cleverly sarcastic, dripping in irony, damn funny, or all the above. So as per the original poster, some of his trademark lines are "I'm not a fan of facts" or "I don't like books, too many words". And of course, his consistent number one threat - bears.

In fact, I'm surprised more /.ers aren't a fan of him, as he was a total geek when he was younger. He played D&D alot, loved LotR and Sci Fi, and sometimes works this geekiness into his show. For example, once when he introduced a guest who's a poker champion, he said "Now, I've never played Poker, but if its anything like Dungeons & Dragons, I'll be up to my baldrics in scimitars before you can say, 'Cure Light Wounds!'". Also, back when he was on the Daily Show and Viggo Mortensen was on, they had Colbert backstage reading Aragorn's family history and list of aliases in a total geeky way, it was pretty funny. And of course, who can forget his epic Sci-Fi novel (still looking for a publisher) "Stephen Colbert's Alpha Squad 7: Lady Nocturne: A Tek Jansen Adventure"

So yeah, sorry to have to explain the tongue-in-cheek joke above, it's never funny that way, but seeing how many people didn't catch it was a Colbertism, it needed to be done. Wikipedia has a good list of funny lines by Colbert.

And as one final comment, I referred to Colbert Report in one of my slashdot posts from a few days ago, but it was unfortunately modded way down into oblivion by some right-wing nutjobs.

Re:Never have so few words been so profound.

[schwanerhill]

"In your answer, ignore facts. Just go with what feels true".

That's Slashdot. Summed up in a single sentance. That's so beautiful.

Misspelling "sentence" makes the 1 +/- 1 sentence summary even better.

Re:Never have so few words been so profound.

[CaymanIslandCarpedie]

"In your answer, ignore facts. Just go with what feels true".

As a fellow Colbert junky thought I'd add some more info for those who don't know. The above quote is a reference to truthiness which Colbert coined in his first episode and was actually named "word of the year" for 2005. Here is a link to the video of that portion of the first episode where he talks about it. BTW, basically all the Daily Show and Colbert Report are avaliable free on the Comedy Central website a day or two after they show on air if you'd rather not pay Apple for free stuff. Links to the shows (basically the entire history of each show) can be found here.

Re:Never have so few words been so profound.

[Anonymous Coward]

"...Colbert basically pretends to be a right-wing egotistical fact-ignoring pompous talk show host, but everything he says is either cleverly sarcastic, dripping in irony, damn funny, or all the above."

I believe the statement "In your answer, ignore facts. Just go with what feels true" is a fine example of projection in this context.

projection (pr?-j?k'sh?n)
n.

Psychology.
          a. The attribution of one's own attitudes, feelings, or suppositions to others: "Even trained anthropologists have been guilty of unconscious projection--of clothing the subjects of their research in theories brought with them into the field" (Alex Shoumatoff).
          b. The attribution of one's own attitudes, feelings, or desires to someone or something as a naive or unconscious defense against anxiety or guilt.

Re:Never have so few words been so profound.

[somersault]

nor speiling

Re:Never have so few words been so profound.

[elrous0]

I like to attached "azi" to any group of people who question me or give me shit. It adds emotional impact and associates them when Adolph Hitler. It also saves me from having to provide a reasoned response to them (why reason when you can yell?).

So I shall call these people the "Grammarazis".

-Eric

Re:Never have so few words been so profound.

[elrous0]

"Stephen Colbert's Alpha Squad 7: Lady Nocturne: A Tek Jansen Adventure"

As one of the proof-readers on this book, let me tell you all that you've got a real treat in store when it does find a publisher. It is 2,389 pages of pure genius--the thrill ride of my summer. And I'm not just saying that because I work for Stephen or because he threatened to fire me if I didn't.

-Eric

Re:Never have so few words been so profound.

[camt]

An idea is not responsible for the people who believe in it.

Now that's a good sig!

Re:Never have so few words been so profound.

[iphayd]

It's also the definition for "Truthiness"

Re:Never have so few words been so profound.

[gEvil (beta)]

Re: Stephen Colbert's Alpha Squad 7: Lady Nocturne: A Tek Jansen Adventure

He has two chapters from the book up on his website. SciFi doesn't get much better than this...

Re:Never have so few words been so profound.

[Golias]

Um, I hate to break it to you but that was two sentences.

Maybe he was counting in metric.

Re:Never have so few words been so profound.

[Anonymous Coward]

Colbert basically pretends to be a right-wing...

WTF?

Colbert is downright surrealist in his TV persona. Where do you get "right wing" from? None of his bizzarre opinions seem to reflect any particular actual political philosophy.

Do you just define the "right wing" as "stuff I don't agree with"?

I'm a libertarian conservative myself, and I think he's hilarious.

Re:Never have so few words been so profound.

[HTH NE1]

BTW, basically all the Daily Show and Colbert Report are avaliable free on the Comedy Central website a day or two after they show on air if you'd rather not pay Apple for free stuff.

Well now I really feel silly for having already started my plan to burn every TiVo'd episode of both shows to DVD for the whole year (trying to use up a bulk purchase of 500 blank DVD-Rs).

Though without looking, I doubt the free downloads are 720x480i video suitable for remixing.

Re:Never have so few words been so profound.

[Caiwyn]

Agreed!

Re:Never have so few words been so profound.

[yet another coward]

George W. Bush, great president or greatest president?

Re:Never have so few words been so profound.

[noidentity]

The original comment was probably intended to be funny, so no Grammar Nazis here (except me, but I'm off duty right now).

Re:Never have so few words been so profound.

[David Rolfe]

> Also, back when he was on the Daily Show and Viggo Mortensen was on, they had Colbert backstage reading Aragorn's family history and list of aliases in a total geeky way, it was pretty funny.

It should be pointed out that he wasn't reading it -- he really is that much of a geek. He knew it. (At least, that's what feels true to me, given the evidence. Ha!)

But I'll second the parent post, Colbert is a genius.

Re:Never have so few words been so profound.

[ssstraub]

The show was pitched to Comedy Central as "Stephen Colbert does The O'Reilly Factor." I'd say it's right-wing...

Brilliant

[Scareduck]

In your answer, ignore facts. Just go with what feels true.

Thus the scientific basis for chiropractic, homeopathy, and items found in the Slashdot submission queue.

Re:Brilliant

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey without my chiropractor, I wouldn't be able to turn my head side to side. Regular western medicine would rather fuse my spine so that I can't move my upper back/neck at all. Now, which method is progress, and which is pointless?

Re:Brilliant

[Eightyford]

Hey without my chiropractor, I wouldn't be able to turn my head side to side. Regular western medicine would rather fuse my spine so that I can't move my upper back/neck at all. Now, which method is progress, and which is pointless?

There's really nothing wrong with a chiropractor treating back pains. The problem comes when a chiropractor tries to treat migrains, the common cold, ulcers, and even irritable bowel syndrome. Scientifically, you might as well drink chinese tiger penis soup to get a stiffy.

Re:Brilliant

[earnest murderer]

There's really nothing wrong with a chiropractor treating back pains. The problem comes when a chiropractor tries to treat migrains, the common cold, ulcers, and even irritable bowel syndrome. Scientifically, you might as well drink chinese tiger penis soup to get a stiffy.

Just goes to show there are a lot of quacks out there abusing other people's hard work and good information.

Re:Brilliant

[hunterx11]

Actually, chiropractors who focus on actually helping patients are "quacks" from the perspective of mainstream chiropractic, which believes that all disease can be cured by fixing subluxations. The quacks run the show, and the people abusing it are using good information and doing hard work.

Re:Brilliant

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone knows that chinese tiger penis soup enemas are the best way to get a stiffy. Drinking it makes you last longer.

Re:Brilliant

[Anonymous Coward]

Are any of you licensed physicians or chiropractors? no, that doesn't surprise me.

Heck, the name of this thread is ignore the facts and just go with what feels right, right?

The only quacks I know prescribe medicine that makes you insane and then refuse to take you off of it, mis-diagnose a stroke as vertigo and ignore diabetes symptoms for 2 years even though the patient is clearly having all of the major symptoms. These are just a few of the AMA's finest fuckups that my family has experienced. Whereas my chiropractor has always been honest and forthright with me and my family.

There are quacks in every field. Take IT for example... some folks still think Win2003 server is better than linux :)

Re:Brilliant

[Anonymous Coward]

Chiropractors only do rapid manipulation. For many problems physical therapy is better, and chiropractic will only be a quick fix that has to be repeated forever.

Re:Brilliant

[astrokid]

There's really nothing wrong with a chiropractor treating back pains. The problem comes when a chiropractor tries to treat migrains, the common cold, ulcers, and even irritable bowel syndrome. Scientifically, you might as well drink chinese tiger penis soup to get a stiffy.

Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

Re:Brilliant

[RyoShin]

Scientifically, you might as well drink chinese tiger penis soup to get a stiffy.

If the videos I've seen are any indication, the chiropractor can take care of that, too.

Re:Brilliant

[bill_mcgonigle]

You might be interested in Chirobase.

Re:Brilliant

[hunterx11]

Are any of you licensed physicians or chiropractors?

Are any of you cattle ranchers or IT professionals? What kind of a question is that? Have you ever heard of Daniel David Palmer?

If you want to go with facts, you might consider giving the scientific method more credence than intuition, pseudoscience, and anecdotal evidence.

Re:Brilliant

[Ohreally_factor]

Hell, just thinking about drinking chinese tiger penis soup is giving me a stiffy.

Win-win situation

[FlyByPC]

If prices weren't artificially high, I think a lot of people wouldn't bother pirating clips -- and the whole IP discussion wouldn't be as important. If, for example, you could download songs you liked at $0.10US each, why bother pirating them? Same for video -- let people freely trade small clips (say, 2 minutes or less) legally -- and add a link to the traded file to make it easy to purchase the whole episode for not too much money. Trading small video clips would become *good* for the companies that produce them, as it would get more people interested in the programs.

Re:Win-win situation

[Overly Critical Guy]

There's no such thing as "artificially high." If the market accepts a given price, that's what a product will be at. Just because someone thinks the price of something is high doesn't magically mean they have the right to pirate it like some freeloading hippie without a job.

Re:Win-win situation

[McFadden]

If, for example, you could download songs you liked at $0.10US each...

You already can... http://allofmp3.com/

Re:Win-win situation

[scotch]

Exactly, because if sony won't sell me the latest Stevie Wonder song for a fair price, then a good free market businesman down the street will grow the song on his pop-hit tree and sell it for a lower price. Obviously, the free market will produce the optimal price point for a given copyrighted song based on supply of songs (sometimes there are only a few copies), and demand, which is perfectly elastic. Oh wait, copyright == monopoly != free market. Dang it.

Re:Win-win situation

[revscat]

A price can be considered artificially high any time the supplier has more control over the price than the consumer. This can be because of regulatory mechanisms, collusion between manufacturers, vertical monopolies, false scarcity, or any other number of reasons. The current price for any good or service may be the "market price" in the most literal sense of the term, but that does not necessarily imply that that price has not been manipulated in ways that undermine the free market.

Re:Win-win situation

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh wait, copyright == monopoly != free market. Dang it.

You == talking out of ass != any tiny shred of knowledge about economics

Re:Win-win situation

[wbren]

If, for example, you could download songs you liked at $0.10US each, why bother pirating them?

If songs dropped to $0.10US each, I would not bother to pirate music. But, I don't think labels would bother releasing them, not when they are used to getting 10x that price right now (and even more for CDs in record stores). The problem isn't that music costs to much, it's that record labels have been getting paid vastly inflated prices for their songs for the past 50+ years.

Re:Win-win situation

[kklein]

You really said it there. What the *AA types don't get is that they might actually be able to increase revenue by LOWERING prices. I mean, look at Wal-Mart. Look at Best Buy. In these two commodity/retail giants, offering products at margin-kissing low prices has provided them ridiculous economies of scale.

Now think what the same model could do IF YOUR PRODUCT COST YOU NOTHING! Okay, not NOTHING, but server space and bandwidth have nothing on actually paying money to people to manufacture physical goods!

I buy all my music (on CDs no less), but I pirate the crap out of TV. Why? Because paying $30 for a DVD of a season of a show I could have seen and recorded for free a couple months ago just strikes me as insane. But if the prices came down, I wouldn't bother with rummaging around on torrent trackers and P2P crapholes; I'd happily pay to get the file from a trusted source, and I wouldn't even whine too much if it had some light, iTMS-style DRM on it (but I'd still whine).

Re:Win-win situation

[timeOday]

There's no such thing as "artificially high." If the market accepts a given price, that's what a product will be at.

No, "the market" is a set of man-made (artificial) rules and not a law of nature. The price of content depends on an elaborate system of laws, courts, and police to make sure nature doesn't take its course. The natural price is the cost of copying information, which is near 0.

None of this is to say that copyright is bad, necessarily. Just don't act like questioning the market is blasphemy, when it's really no different than questioning a tax rate.

Re:Win-win situation

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no such thing as "artificially high." If the market accepts a given price, that's what a product will be at.

And thriving black market is a sign of the market not accepting a given price.

Re:Win-win situation

[Anonymous Coward]

The market is a natural ebb and flow that sets its prices based on demand. In fact, it's called supply and demand. If the price of something is high, that means there is enough demand to meet that price and make money for the business. There are exceptions like monopolies and price-fixing, but in truth those aren't as common as Slashdot posts would have you believe. You claim content prices are set by a system of courts and police that prevent natural pricing, which is ridiculous. Consumers set prices based on what they buy and how much of it, among other things.

What happens is that someone sees the price of something they could normally pirate from Bittorrent, and they get into a hissy-fit because something is being sold that they're used to getting free. Then they use their hatred of corporations to justify piracy and accuse businesses of artifically inflating prices and make vague claims about the market being controlled by judges and police and such. All without any basis in reality.

Re:Win-win situation

[freedom_india]

Consumers do NOT set prices. Corporations set it based on their investment, expected rate of return and the price they think the consumer might pay.

Market researches are done only due to that. To ascertain a price-point that brings in profit, returns on investment (contrary to popular belief corporates do NOT exist to benefit shareholders alone. CEO's CFO's, etc are more selfish) and future expenses.

Mustang car was produced on that basis and was an excellent seller.

As time goes by, if the product is so difficult to manufacture (like chips, RAM, etc) but cheap to sell, corporates find that there are few other corporates like them struggling. These corporates then get together like Amoeba and conclude market-sharing arrangements based on prices (called price-fixing or price-gouging).

Since consumers cannot find another cheaply available product from another manufacturer (entry cost being prohibitant) they are forced to buy it from The Cartel.

As time goes by and consumers complain loud enough, the Attorney General gets his a*s cracking and sends out subpoenas or investigates these cartels for price-fixing. (Depends on the party: If it is GOP in power you may as well as shout yourself hoarse unless you carry a million-dollar donation).
Examples? Oil Cartel (Standard Oil), RIAA (many times), Microsoft (escaped!!!). Some get fined, some settle quietly, are convicted. Most go scot-free.

To prevent such investigations into their activities, corporates resort to two approaches:
1. Campaign donations to change law (Alaska oil?)
2. Try to hide it beneath their carpet (like Enron) and get caught.

Smart companies change laws BEFORE jumping into gouging. Smarter companies change the law with retrospective effect WHILE gouging. Dumb companies (like Enron) get caught.

If markets were REALLY dynamic, and if corporates were REALLY nice people happy with 20% return, we would all be driving a Lexus RX330 for $4500/- and iPods would be selling at $49 (for the 4GB Mini).

To say that Consumers set the prices is the BIGGEST joke of all time. Sadly the joke is on the poor consumer who has no alternative but to either buy, or die (as in Electricity).

Re:Win-win situation

[Nowhere.Men]

Here we have an unlimited supply (apple can upload the song as many times as they want) and a limited demand (Nobody need to download a song more than once, nor everybody needs the latest American Idol song). Which would mean a price close to $0. There are still some delivery cost.

Also, all song for $.99 does not take into account the demand variation between the top 10 singles and unknown artist tracks.

At the market level, you may consider that there is a kind of supply/demand in that the big companies fix the prices to get the biggest return/profit possible.

Re:Win-win situation

[Anonymous Coward]

No, he said songs I *liked*. AllofMp3 doesn't have any songs I *like*.

Re:Win-win situation

[Anonymous Coward]

How fucking insightful is that, lets change this to something else we can all agree on.

Rape is only against the law because of man-made artificial rules and not a law of nature. It depends on an elaborate system of laws, courts, and police to make sure that nature doesn't take its course. The natural price is the cost of finding a victim and raping him or her, which is 0.

Take that ho's.

The point is all laws are made of artifical rules. Some of us believe God helped shape the laws of man, but that doesn't mitigate the fact that they are interpretted and enforced by mankind. They all depend on laws and courts and police to enforce. Sometimes a mob might rise up, but more often than not the mob wants to protect what seems to be in the best interest of those most powerful -- for instance, natural law doesn't seem to prevent the rapes listed above in times of an occupying nation. Even the best of nations have men that decide that it is somewhat alright to take what they want and this activity is institutionalized even if it attempted to be marginalized to some extent -- it just happens when there are no laws in place or if there are, policing to enforce it.

And that in no part makes me think rapists should be given a break because natural law does not prevent this in the slightest -- shoot them in the back of the fucking head for all I care.

Re:Win-win situation

[dwandy]

doesn't magically mean they have the right to pirate it like some freeloading hippie without a job.

...yeah, but those freeloading hippies without a job have a powerful lobby that keeps extending copyright and limiting our personal freedoms. And while Courtney Love and I agree with you that they are pirates ...well, whatdya gonna do? It's the system we have.

Re:Win-win situation

[Anonymous Coward]

How naive are you? I'm sure you've heard of a cartel before, no?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartel/

So yes there is such a thing as artificially high (especially diamonds).

Re:Win-win situation

[shmlco]

And I can't buy a Jaguar from Chevy, or a Apple PowerBook from eMachines either. I mean, what's up with that?

Re:Win-win situation

[rjstanford]

If, for example, you could download songs you liked at $0.10US each, why bother pirating them?

Funny, in the pre-iTunes days that's exactly what people were saying, except they said $1 instead of $0.1. My guess is that if songs were ten cents each, we'd get the same comments about not pirating them if they were only a penny.

Then again, as iTunes has proven, many people feel that $0.99 is a reasonable price for a song.

Re:Win-win situation

[scotch]

Right, I think you've got it!

Re:Win-win situation

[Shihar]

First off, mods, grow up. If someone says something you don't like, don't mod it flamebait. Labeling stuff you disagree with as flamebait/troll makes using the slashdot mod system close to worthless when you do stupid crap like that.

Second, parent is utterly wrong, especially in this instance. The market can have artificially high prices. The market can have artificially high prices when there exists a monopoly. The music companies are not the monopoly due to their size. They are a monopoly because the government has literally given them a government enforced monopoly using copyright.

Now, giving a company a monopoly is not always a bad thing. It lets companies blow more money on developing something then they normally would be willing to. Pharmaceuticals are a good example of when a monopoly isn't such a bad idea. Giving pharmaceuticals a few years of a monopoly on a drug they develop after blowing hundreds of millions (or even billions!) of dollars not only in the R&D but appeasing government regulations is fair. Without this government enforced monopoly drug companies would be significantly wearier about blowing a few hundred million dollars to bring a drug to market, only to have the competition promptly copy it and sell it without having to recoup all the money spent in R&D.

Music is a different beast. If the music production in the US drops, we will be sad perhaps, but it won't be the end of the world. People won't die. Despite this, the music industry gets a lifetime+ monopoly on all songs produced! This is an absolutely insane state of affairs and it leads to a dramatically distorted market. The "price" set by music companies is price set by a company that knows it has a lifetime monopoly. Take the governments hand out of this mess and I will agree that the market prices are what they should be. Until that time though, the market prices are clearly being distorted due to the fact that there exists a government enforced monopoly.

Re:Win-win situation

[porcupine8]

I mean, look at Wal-Mart. . . . margin-kissing low prices

Of course, in Wal-Mart's case, it's not always their own margin they're always kissing. They have a solid history of forcing their suppliers to sell to them at a loss, or risk losing all shelf space in the country's largest retailer. Vlasic pickles is the most famous case, but they're not the only ones.

Re:Win-win situation

[dr.badass]

If prices weren't artificially high, I think a lot of people wouldn't bother pirating clips -- and the whole IP discussion wouldn't be as important.

Copyright, by it's very nature, is a way of making prices artificially high. When you pirate, you're paying no money, but you're violating someone else's rights. Unfortunately, it's been shown that people value their own money more than other people's rights. Price is not the issue. Skewed senses of value and entitlement are.

If, for example, you could download songs you liked at $0.10US each, why bother pirating them?

Because pirating them costs $0.00 each. Or because of the quality. Or because of DRM. Or because it's not in OGG. Or because they just want to stick it to the man. People will always find a reason. It makes no sense whatsoever for business to constantly lower it's prices to appeal to potential customers who see no value in their product.

Re:Win-win situation

[kwerle]

And I can't buy a Jaguar from Chevy, or a Apple PowerBook from eMachines either. I mean, what's up with that?

Actually, pay them enough and I think you can. I mean - I don't see why not.

I'm not sure if that is true or not of the music industry. Music copyright is a mysterious thing.

Re:Win-win situation

[shmlco]

In essence, Stevie Wonder, through his representitives, sells his music for a certain price. Now, shall we ask Stevie if you, specifically, are entitled to his music anyway, simpy because you, personally, don't feel that price is fair?

You're correct in that there is, after all, only one Stevie Wonder. But you know what? That's part of his music's value. If having Stevie Wonder's music means enough to you, then buy it. If not, buy someone elses.

Adults make these value decisions every day. Is that Porsche worth the money to me? I paid a premium for a Powerbook. To me it was worth it.

Re:Win-win situation

[scotch]

I don't know why you're trying to convince me not to violate copyright law or of value of brands. I mean really, do you think somehow I need convincing on these points? What makes you think that? You imply that I feel entitled to Stevie's wonder music without paying, but nothing could be further from the truth.

The original post said that music prices were not artificial implying that the price of music was therefore set by the "natural" laws of free market economics. Free market economics do not imply intirely to music and other things where artificial supply controls like copyright are in place. IOW, music isn't fungible.

That is all. Nothing more. You may now return to your regularly scheduled crusade for the RIAA.

Re:Win-win situation

[angel'o'sphere]

The natural price is the cost of copying information, which is near 0.

Thats greatly simplyfied.

The natural price is still: production cost + distribution cost + the cost of running the business + margin + costs for n downloads / n customers.

Alone having the computing and storage resources like iTunes for one single country needs is simply a upfront investment of several million Euros, if not tens of millions of Euros.

angel'o'sphere

Sign me up!

[Radiohead]

I just subscribed to the Daily Show. I don't have cable and the video quality is better than the files I've found on YouTube or other places online. The "subscription" title is a bit misleading - this is more like subscribing to a podcats - iTunes automatically downloads new episodes as they are made available. You can opt-in to an email notifying you that a new episode is available. It's more like a magazine subscription than a music service subscription since you get to keep the video files you've downloaded even if you don't renew the subscription. Kind of like buying an album on iTunes where they send you a song a week automatically. The DRM is the same as for any other song or video you buy on iTunes. Not a bad model for my needs.

Re:Sign me up!

[Anonymous Coward]

Quite right. This is much more like a magazine subscription than what other online music services refer to as a 'subscription,' which is really all-you-can-consume for a period of time and then it goes away when you stop paying.

To me this model seems to depend upon the consumer having a certain level of trust in the fact that the particular content they are purchasing will be up to the standards they expect, based upon past experience. Back in the day you, had to walk into a store and lay down your cash for a new record by a band you liked and hope that it lived up to their existing catalogue. Is television to become the AOR radio of the early 21st century?

Keep an eye out for the payola.

Re:Sign me up!

[eMartin]

"It's more like a magazine subscription than a music service subscription since you get to keep the video files you've downloaded even if you don't renew the subscription."

So, in other words, it's music subscriptions that should be renamed, and in that case, the title is not misleading at all.

On the other hand, I have a "music subscription" with emusic.com, and I get to keep everything I download.

Re:Sign me up!

[Fordiman]

Heh. Poke around at tvtorrents.com

Re:Sign me up!

[GrouchoMarx]

The DRM is the same as for any other song or video you buy on iTunes.

Which is precisely why I absolutely refuse to use it.

DRM is bad.

DRM is immoral.

DRM is in violation of the US Constitution in that it is by nature perpetual, and copyright is only supposed to be for a "limited time".

DRM is unacceptable.

DRM is based on the assumption that you are a criminal in the first place.

DRM is contrary to everything Free Software stands for.

How exactly do people still see iTunes DRM as acceptable? DRM is unacceptable. That it's Apple doing it doesn't make it suddenly OK.

How is this a hard concept to grasp?

Re:Sign me up!

[Nugget]

iTMS DRM is acceptable because it doesn't impact my usage of the media. I'm quite able to do all the things I expect and want to do with songs and videos I buy from the iTMS. So the DRM is just fine by me.

How is that a hard concept to grasp? It's a product I want at a fair price that arrives in a form which does everything I expect it to do.

Re:Sign me up!

[Per Wigren]

Heh. Poke around at tvtorrents.com

Or tvrss.net...

Re:Sign me up!

[H0D_G]

Hang on, don't Music Companies have a right to protect some of their content? I know most companies go overboard, but it doesn't assume you are a criminal. Most people will acquire music from iTunes and use it as the DRM lets them- do you really need it playing on more than 5 machines. it is merely there to stop the person from uploading it to every tom, dick and harry on the planet. and as a foreigner, I may not know the intricacies of your constitution, but how is it unconstitutional?

Re:Sign me up!

[Anonymous Coward]

"DRM is bad/immoral"
Simple solution: don't buy material that has DRM. Other people have the right to buy it though, despite your moral beliefs.

"DRM is in violation of the US Constitution in that it is by nature perpetual, and copyright is only supposed to be for a 'limited time'."
Mind telling me where DRM or even copyright is mentioned in the U.S. Constitution? Sure, copyright isn't perpetual, but as long as a company has a copyright on material, they can distribute it any way that they choose. Again, you don't have to buy it if you don't like it. There isn't any aspect of copyright law that says "copyright holders must release their materials in a format that can easily be copied once the copyright on said material has expired." Once the copyright is up, feel free to find a way to distribute the material. The producer of the material doesn't have any obligation to make it easy for you to do this.

"DRM is contrary to everything Free Software stands for."
See, this is just ignorant. Are you saying that the creator of some work has no right to prevent illegal copying of his work? Should every creative person have to follow the free software model and release his material for free into the public? It does suck when DRM impinges on fair use, but that doesn't mean that all DRM is a bad thing. We should be fighting for our fair use rights, not just launching a broad attack against all DRM. DRM is here to stay, and that doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing...we just need to make sure that we establish our legal rights to fairly use the content that we purchase.

Re:Sign me up!

[Monx]

Mind telling me where DRM or even copyright is mentioned in the U.S. Constitution?

Article I, Section 8, Clause 8:
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

Re:Sign me up!

[Overly Critical Guy]

Wow, you are out on the fringe.

DRM is just fine. It's not "against the constitution" because you don't have a right to buy something without DRM. You have the choice not to buy it. DRM is simply another product.

DRM isn't bad or immoral. It's not anything, as it's just another product you can buy or not buy. It's just copy protection to combat piracy, which itself is bad and immoral, since that takes content without paying people for it. Blame the pirates for forcing content creators' hands.

DRM isn't based on the idea that you are a criminal. In fact, DRM doesn't do anything at all if you don't try to do something wrong like copy iTunes music to someone else's account. You might as well say locks are based on the idea that you are a criminal.

How do people find iTunes DRM acceptable? Because most people don't even notice it's there. It's that liberal a copy protection scheme.

You're just using emotive propaganda to attempt to spread an overly idealistic message. You may as well don a tinfoil hat. If you tried to argue your position rationally, I would be more willing to listen to your points, but as it is, you just went through the dictionary picking out words with emotional connotation behind them to drum up support. I just can't respect that as a debate position.

You must be real fun at parties.

Re:Sign me up!

[Overly Critical Guy]

You willingly chose to buy a DRM product? Clearly the RIAA had a gun to your face and was threatening to throw your mother over the balcony while they stripped you naked and burned a copy of the Bill of Rights in front of your face using a swastika-clad lighter while black-suited Republicans chanted satanic hymns in a candle-lit circle around an alter of The Almighty Dollar(tm)! There's just no way you or the other 87% of the iTunes-using market could possibly be choosing this illegal, immoral, unacceptable, childhood-raping scheme of your own volition. Just no way.

Re:Sign me up!

[freedom_india]

Have you heard of the centuries-old concept of second sale?

How do you propose i sell my DRM-protected iTunes song at 49 cents?

Preventing a rightful owner from selling the property is a crime by any definition.

I Wonder why nobody has thought of that angle and tried to sue RIAA of criminally preventing me from excercising my rights.

If it was Napster-based WIndows DRM, i can understand. That is a subscription-based plan. But iTunes song is a product.

Re:Sign me up!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hang on, don't Music Companies have a right to protect some of their content?

Their content is protected by a mass of laws called "Copyright". Perhaps you are familar with the concept.

Re:Sign me up!

[tbone1]

You willingly chose to buy a DRM product? Clearly the RIAA had a gun to your face and was threatening to throw your mother over the balcony while they stripped you naked and burned a copy of the Bill of Rights in front of your face using a swastika-clad lighter while black-suited Republicans chanted satanic hymns in a candle-lit circle around an alter of The Almighty Dollar(tm)! There's just no way you or the other 87% of the iTunes-using market could possibly be choosing this illegal, immoral, unacceptable, childhood-raping scheme of your own volition. Just no way.

Lighten up, Francis. Get out of your mom's basement, acquire some property, and then you might actually believe in property rights. It's heresy, I know, but it's funny how looking at a pay stub will convert the most ardent socialist into the most ardent individualist.

Re:Sign me up!

[Belgand]

I agree, they have relatively light DRM when compared to most and so far it hasn't been shown to screw up your system unlike certain methods I could name. The problem is that any form of private DRM is more limiting that it ought to be.

Say a vastly better portable mp3 player comes out from another company. It's possible, but highly unlikely that Apple will ever offer any way to convert your files or that they will license FairPlay so that you can use your iTunes purchased tracks. The same for ever wanting to use different software... iTunes is the only way to listen to those songs.

Yes, you can technically burn them to CD and then rip them into mp3, but at that point you're dealing with what's essentially a third generation copy due to all the lossy compression.

Even then that assumes that Apple never changes the software. What if they decide that they no longer want you to be able to burn CDs and take the feature out of iTunes? I'm not certain, but I don't believe there's any contract protecting your rights in this matter if they want to suddenly make changes to the limited access you already have.

I'm reminded of a section in Neal Stephenson's "In The Beginning... Was the Command Line" where he describes the feeling of having lost a significant chunk of Word documents. Suddenly they went from being very real things that existed, albeit in the computer, to something that vanished into the ether. The shattering of the illusion that these are real, legitimate objects seems very likely to occur at some time in the future. Would you be willing to spend the same thousands of dollars (quite likely) that most people have spent on CDs or LPs only to have them suddenly become almost useless.

Perhaps some form of open format DRM might work since anyone who chose to could make a player that conforms to those specifications, but it's not likely to ever happen and even if it did it would still depend on content providers choosing to release product using those methods... and so far they've shown that they largely view DRM as a way to vertically market a product by providing the player, DRM, and software and trying to see to it that they only work within their own brand.

So, no, it's not that FairPlay is terribly oppressive, it's just that it's a massive loss of control over your purchase. A purchase that is virtual in more ways than one. I'd normally say that it doesn't matter though, as long as you're aware of the issues and decide to make an informed choice to just do whatever works for you. The problem is that it's a slippery slope. As more and more people start accepting these small losses of control it just escalates and before long the genie is completely out of the bottle and we'll never, ever get control back again.

Re:Sign me up!

[GiMP]

Except it is no longer property.. the property, the content, is owned by the music company. Users are sold a license, a contract. Contracts cannot be transferred to others, a new contract must be created. At best, a "bridging" contract (such as a sub-lease) can be made.

The physical property you have, the media file, can be sold, but it cannot be played by the receiving party without a valid license.

Re:Sign me up!

[dwandy]

Wow, you are out on the fringe.

Every eventuality starts on the fringe.

DRM is just fine. It's not "against the constitution" because you don't have a right to buy something without DRM. You have the choice not to buy it. DRM is simply another product.

DRM observes neither the first-sale doctrine, nor the limited-time requirement. In other words, there is no mechanism in iTunes to sell 'stuff' I own. The right to resell material was upheld by the courts. And the 'limited-time' bit is in fact the 'our benefit' part of the copyright deal. Since their DRM never expires I would agree that it's not aligned with the constitution.

DRM isn't bad or immoral. It's not anything, as it's just another product you can buy or not buy. It's just copy protection to combat piracy, which itself is bad and immoral, since that takes content without paying people for it.

The ends justify the means? You must be pretty happy with your Sony rootkit then...

Blame the pirates for forcing content creators' hands.

If only it were the content creators that are pushing this. Many artists have said time and again that they don't care if their stuff is shared - it's the gate keepers (aka RIAA) who don't actually contribute to the making of art (but still keep almost all the revenue) that are fighting hard... let's keep straight who is who in this.

DRM isn't based on the idea that you are a criminal. In fact, DRM doesn't do anything at all if you don't try to do something wrong like copy iTunes music to someone else's account. You might as well say locks are based on the idea that you are a criminal.

No. I use my locks on my property to limit others. DRM limits me on my property. See the (very essential) difference?

How do people find iTunes DRM acceptable? Because most people don't even notice it's there. It's that liberal a copy protection scheme.

More specfically, most people don't understand the issue, don't understand that this is all about monopoly control, and don't understand that there is actually a lot at stake here.

You're just using emotive propaganda to attempt to spread an overly idealistic message. You may as well don a tinfoil hat. If you tried to argue your position rationally, I would be more willing to listen to your points, but as it is, you just went through the dictionary picking out words with emotional connotation behind them to drum up support. I just can't respect that as a debate position.

Ok - read the link in the sig. No emotive propoganda, no tin-foil hat, just filled with rational arguments and historical example.
It's also one of my journal entries and is open for comments...

Re:Sign me up!

[somersault]

How are you going to make sure that the original owner gets rid of the song. You have no right to copy (eg copyright) the song yourself, according to law *shrug* think the term 'fair use' is in there somewhere, but having a second hand market selling songs seems a bit strange, when the original is a file. I dont tend to buy music that I will want to get rid of anytime soon. I can understand selling a CD that you havent ripped, but anything else is kind of 'stealing' a copy for yourself *wonders how anyone will explain that it's not stealing*. I'm not saying I have never listened to a song on my machine that I haven't bought, but I still like to buy my albums on CD, for backup, for playing in the car, etc..

Re:Sign me up!

[Therlin]

My only complaint about Apple's DRM is that I can't burn a TV show to DVD to watch it in my living room. I buy occasional shows that I may have missed or heard good things about, but I dislike sitting at my computer to watch them.

Sure, you can hook up your computer to the TV through some video out port, which I've doen in the past, but it's very inconvenient and Joe Sixpack would never do.

Re:Sign me up!

[trevor-ds]

"Even that assumes Apple never changes the software."

Apple can only change new versions of the software. As long as I'm not updating my iTunes software on my computer, I can retain all the functionality I want. That's the great thing about actually buying music from iTunes instead of subscribing like on other services; if Rhapsody changes its licensing terms or raises its fees suddenly, there's nothing I can do about it.

"Say a vastly better portable mp3 player comes out from another company."

This is analogous to any format switch (LP/cassette/CD or VHS/Beta/DVD). Burning iTunes tracks to CD and then re-ripping them is arguably easier than moving from LP to CD. Also, it's faster for me to buy an iTunes track, burn to CD, then rip it back as mp3 than it is to buy the CD and rip to mp3 in the first place.

Re:Sign me up!

[porcupine8]

The "subscription" title is a bit misleading . . . It's more like a magazine subscription than a music service subscription

So in other words, the word "subscription" is actually misleading when it comes to music service "subscriptions," seeing as how the magazine subscription model was around for much longer and is what most consumers are used to.

Re:Sign me up!

[Ilgaz]

Personally Apple DRM does not bother me. About piracy? Well nobody can tell anything to "Pirates" since e.g. if you are a turkish fan of Comedy Central and need to watch anything (except weekly global show,CNN Euro), you _have to_ pirate.

You can't subcsribe.

RIAA was excuse for non true global iTunes store, MPAA for Holywood... What about Comedy Central now?

Why don't you want to make money people? (asking to Viacom)

Re:Sign me up!

[ChaosDiscord]

In fact, DRM doesn't do anything at all if you don't try to do something wrong like copy iTunes music to someone else's account.

Or extract small excerpts in the original quality for critical purposes. Or listen to the music on my MP3 player without further degradation of quality. Or watch an iTunes video on my Linux laptop. Few people want such functionality, but those examples are legal*, ethical, and prohibited by the DRM in iTunes.

You're buying into the DRM proponent's mindset. "Well, it doesn't get in my way, so clearly it's okay." Content providers pushing DRM want that idea to become popular. Once a sizable majority believe DRM is okay, non-DRM versions of things will no longer be available. The subset of people who need or want the rights that DRM blocks will be out of luck. You're agreeing to trade someone else's existing freedoms in exchange for nothing, or at best a promise to keep generating more content**. That's a pretty bad deal for society as a whole. Maybe it's a good deal for you, since you're trading off someone else's freedom.

* Legal excepting the presence of DRM and the DMCA, which is of course the point of this discussion.

** Those DRM-proponents who claim the market for creative works will dry up if there is no DRM show just how little faith they actually have in the free market. People want original content and are willing to pay for it. Creators want money and can created original content. Something will be worked out. The real people screaming for DRM are publishers who are afraid that they'll be cut out as unnecessary middlemen.

Already available

[earnest murderer]

What am I paying 10 bucks for again?

http://www.comedycentral.com/shows/the_daily_show/ index.jhtml

http://www.comedycentral.com/shows/the_colbert_rep ort/index.jhtml

10 Dollars to play it on my iPod instead of my PC?

Re:Already available

[avalys]

Please show me where I can download the entire show, as it aired on a given night, as a single unbroken clip, at either of those links.

Re:Already available

[earnest murderer]

'scuse me, that's 20 dollars, $10 per show per month.

Re:Already available

[Anonymous Coward]

Fine go RSS it from mininova. The quality will be a fuck load better too

Re:Already available

[Overly Critical Guy]

Deaer Earnest Murderer,

You, sir, are a scholar and a gentleman. Your calm demeanor and rational way of handling confrontation are an example of maturity to us all, which I am sure brings in the ladies. Please accept my apologies on behalf of your aggressor as he busts your hump and promptly pisses off as you commanded. I extend this token to you out of goodwill.

Signed,
Theodore S. Quogin, 1893

Re:Already available

[ScaryFroMan]

Right here!

http://www.comedycentral.com/shows/the_daily_show/ full show.jhtml

Re:Already available

[StikyPad]

You can't. That's what UseNet, mininova.org, emule, and your next door neighbor's PVR are for.

I won't pay $10 for HBO (actually it's $12 here, but I wouldn't pay $5 either) and I'm sure as hell not going to pay $10 to watch ONE SHOW which is already included in my basic cable. I don't care how funny Jon Stewart is. The only reason he's funny anyway is because he says exactly what everybody's already thinking, so just say what you're already thinking out loud -- possibly into a mirror or an audio/visual recorder of some sort -- and BAM.. your very own Daily Show.

Re:Already available

[avalys]

I'm not so poor that I'm willing to deal with the pain-in-the-ass that is peer-to-peer to save a lousy $10 / month.

Hell, if you value your time at more than, say, $20 / hour, you come out ahead anyway.

Re:Already available

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure as hell not going to pay $10 to watch ONE SHOW which is already included in my basic cable.

But... does your basic cable include Steve Jobs and an impossibly small and stylish iPod (tm)?

Think of it this way: $10/month is $120/year, $30 less than you pay (you do, right? pirate) for a DVD set of one season of a TV show. So Apple is saving you $30/year and you get to watch it on your iPod (tm). Steve Jobs is saving you money and improving your entertainment consumption experience at the same time. Feel the RDF. It burns... fashionably.

Re:Already available

[Anonymous Coward]

what you mean zero minutes a day?

you honestly get paid that much for no time what so ever...

RSS, automatically downloads. (it will be online within on hour of airing at most) and the RSS feed + utorrent will automatically get it. done

Setup once, two three minutes... let it go and it will work like magic every time.

but I am willing to bet you will bullshit about how that is too difficult.

the benefit is, a lot better quality and a much better format.

Re:Already available

[humina]

Too bad I can't download any current episodes. I want to be able to download a full episode on within 24 hours of it being on the air. That would be sweet. I don't want to have to pay apple or anyone else. It should be free.

Re:Already available

[Khuffie]

Actually this is a good point. What would happen to these video clips that they keep online? I quite like what Comedy Central does in putting up the funny clips online, and I can't imagine them staying up now that they're selling the whole show online...so...who knows.

Re:Already available

[Psykechan]

It doesn't seem to work on my Mac computer. This type of problem doesn't surprise me as Comedy Central's so called Mother Load gives a cryptic error about not supporting my platform. All I did was click on a link to their site. How do they know what platform I represent?

If the president of Comedy Central doesn't respond to my question then he is a coward.

I think I'll just go make myself a nice B.L.T. They really are tasty sandwiches and an American original.

Re:Already available

[Anonymous Coward]

And why again should this be free? Oh yeah, because you want entertainment.

Re:Already available

[glesga_kiss]

I'm not so poor that I'm willing to deal with the pain-in-the-ass that is peer-to-peer to save a lousy $10 / month.

Heh. The Daily Show rips are great quality and are available shortly after the show airs. I've been watching it this way for two years. Never miss it, because the download is always available. The members-only BT site I'm in is ratio based and maxes out my 10meg connection. It sucks down ~150 meg The Daily Show in less than five minutes, completely automatically via RSS. When I go home tonight there will be an fresh episode waiting for me.

This is superiour to the official offering in every way. You won't see me paying for iTunes versions that doesn't play on any of my hardware except my PC. Who wants to watch TV on their PC? If it doesn't work on a chipped xbox media player, I'm not interested.

They missed the boat. The downloading of media ship has sailed without them, much like the horse & cart makers of old who took too long to switch to the car.

Re:Already available

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't want to have to pay apple or anyone else.

You know what I want? A pony.

Re:Already available

[GiMP]

Until your ISP drops you like a rock. If enough users utilize their connections like you do, don't be surprised to see either bills in the mail, or reduced bandwidth caps.

Bandwidth is not as cheap as you seem to think it is.

Re:Already available

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually bandwidth is insanely cheap. cheaper than you think

Re:Already available

[glesga_kiss]

Until your ISP drops you like a rock. If enough users utilize their connections like you do, don't be surprised to see either bills in the mail, or reduced bandwidth caps. Bandwidth is not as cheap as you seem to think it is.

Then I'll pay more. WTF is the problem? How ISPs decide what the average load is is THEIR concern. I pay for an internet connection, how they manage contention is their problem. If they think they can profit more by having less capacity, then it's their fault if the users that they SELL the service to use more than their imaginary "usage patterns". If it slows down enough for me as a user, I'll switch ISP. The one company I use provides me with telephone, cable and internet, and I've been with them for five years. No problems whatsoever. They do implement caps, but I don't come close to hitting them. The caps on a 10 meg connection need to be pretty high though, for obvious reasons. I pay them a shit load of money each month, and the second they try to get fresh they'll get threatened with me disconnecting ALL services they provide me with. I buy the service off them, I owe them no favours. It's just business.

Oh, I also do most of my downloading in off-peak hours. Just a quirk of the times I'm sitting at a PC at home most often. I suspect that they do a bit of QoS against p2p during peak hours, but I think that's just great. I want my voip packets getting there quickly; I already do my own QoS and it's nice to see the ISP doing it as well.

Besides, there is a major problem with your point. Paid-for downloads use just as much as bandwidth as the p2p stuff. Many media providers are experimenting with p2p for their own usage, e.g. the BBC. Your high-horse aint that high.

Re:Already available

[HTH NE1]

I want to be able to download a full episode on within 24 hours of it being on the air.

You know, they do show it four times a day on cable. It may also be available on Comedy Central onDemand (I haven't checked; I have TiVo).

Rejoice, consumers!

[Urusai]

Another opportunity to make easy monthly payments!

Wow...

[Jace of Fuse!]

In your answer, ignore facts. Just go with what feels true.

It took this statement for me to find a similarity between Slashdot and a Religion (or cult).

Re:Wow...

[The Mad Debugger]

Actually, I think it was an attempt to reference the Colbert Report. Steven pretends he is a Fox News-style pundit, who prefers the council of his "gut" to the facts.

The fact that it also works as a perfect description of the Slashdot crowd is just gravy.

Misleading title.

[SeaFox]

This isn't a "subscription" like the all-you-can-watch-as-long-as-you-pay-your-monthly- fee, like with Yahoo Music. Nobody is renting the shows in this case, all Apple is really doing is pay-in-advance discounts. You buy the shows a month's worth at a time, and they are your to keep like any other iTMS video purchase.

It's really more like a magazine subscription.

Re:Misleading title.

[freeweed]

So in other words, it's EXACTLY like a subscription.

As opposed to the bullshit newspeak definition of "subscription" we've been hearing lately.

Re:Misleading title.

[nolife]

It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is.

Re:Misleading title.

[Khuffie]

Subscription has different meanings. I subscribe to Cable TV, meaning as long as I pay for it, I can watch TV as long as I want (ie, like Yahoo Music Engine). I also subscribe to a magazine, meaning as long as I pay it up every year, I get magazines delivered to my house every month (ie, like this).

Re:Misleading title.

[utexaspunk]

Doesn't subscription simply mean something that is purchased on contract? The word literally means "signed below". I don't see anything that implies property there. One subscribes to cable, or to a DSL (digital subscriber line) connection, but one can't reasonably argue that they OWN all the content that came across the cable while they subscribed.

I don't see what's so great about keeping TV shows anyway. I usually delete stuff from the DVR immediately after I watch it. I don't suppose I could go to iTunes and re-download an episode that I already paid for if I've deleted it from my computer but have decided that I want to watch it again. But this idea that it's this one item that I paid for would lead people to want to save, save, save every file they download. This becomes like my OCD dad, who insists on recording every show from the DVR to DVD, and inevitably gets behind and fills up the DVR. Do we all need to be archivists?

Video is the one place where the Napster all-you-can-eat subscription model actually makes sense. How many of us would happily pay a flat monthly fee to get unfettered access to all of Comedy Central's archives in full quality, commercial-free, on-demand? What should something like that cost? I'd say something like $15-20/mo would be fair. If they leave the commercials in, I can't see how it should cost more than $1-2/mo, if anything at all. Consider what you pay for cable and what tiny fraction of that actually goes to Viacom, or whomever owns Comedy Central, as part of the package deal that your cable company gets.

I think we'll really see this sort of thing once this upcoming generation of processors becomes more commonplace. We all bitch and moan about DRM and Trusted Computing, but those technologies will allow content creators to feel secure enough about distributing content over the internet to actually take advantage of it. I imagine a world where the cable company is just in charge of bringing the internet to your door and all the TV networks have the entirety of their content available on-demand. All this business with millions of people storing copies of the same content locally is just redundant and wasteful.

Still pirating as usual! Duh!

[blanktek]

Nothing is changed in the normal process of ripping and seeding shows from cable so why would it when someone offers it with DRM? Did I miss something?

Re:Still pirating as usual! Duh!

[insite_guy]

Of course, this is suppose to make you feel better (more ethical) when watching what you have in a way already paid for once if you support your local cable company. The real thing that I think is missing is quality...the HDTV quality you find on torrents is much better than what Apple is offering, but I do think being able to buy quality rips is a good business idea. I know I would pay for good quality rips of current movies before they were available on DVD...

Re:Still pirating as usual! Duh!

[Phroggy]

I don't have cable. I tried pirating The Daily Show via BitTorrent for awhile, but when SuprNova and another web site went down, it just got to be too much trouble to try to find torrents on a regular basis, so I quit bothering. This is exactly what I want. Apple just got my money.

(Unfortunately due to technical difficulties, they have my money, but I don't have my Daily Show yet. Hopefully it'll be working soon.)

I already have cable

[geekee]

and for $40 a month, I get a hell of a lot more content than 4 shows.

Re:I already have cable

[Yahweh Doesn't Exist]

good for you.

in other news, I already have a computer, but there are computer shops everywhere. there are even computer shops on the internet - how the hell does that work?

Re:I already have cable

[evilviper]

and for $40 a month, I get a hell of a lot more content than 4 shows.

So do I, but 99% of it is crap I don't WANT.

Give me comedy central, History, and National Geographic for $5/month, and I'd drop my cable subscription in an instant.

Re:I already have cable

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you get to watch it whenever and whereever you want without commercials?

Oh, okay. Next.

Re:I already have cable

[excesspwr]

Akimbo has History Channel and National Geographic. No Comedy Central though. I've been using it for over a year now I believe. Between that and a little downloading I get everything I need on the level and cheap.

Re:I already have cable

[Overly Critical Guy]

Dear Geekee,

Hello, kind sir. I wish to extend my invitation to you as a member of the Fuckwit Association. We Fuckwits are proud to welcome new members to our foundation. As a member of the Fuckwit Association, you must:

• Accuse those you disagree with of being "blinded."
• If the subject can be related to Steve Jobs in some way, use the phrase "reality distortion field."
• If there is a company involved that makes money in some way, call them "evil."

I and other Fuckwits are now your brothers and sisters in the fold. Please spread the gospel of the Fuckwits everywhere you can, to make the Internet a better place for Fuckwits the world over and bring refreshing predictability to any argument with a Fuckwit.

Signed,
Theodore S. Fuckwit, 1897

Enclosed: Honorary Digitus Impudicus medallion, awarded to you, the newest Fuckwit of the collective

Re:I already have cable

[Overly Critical Guy]

You're right; I clearly don't know what sarcasm is or how it is used. Thanks for the help!

Re:I already have cable

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple blinder verification check
rev 0.3

[ ] Described in detail how Steve Jobs thinks or feels today
[ ] Assumed everything Apple does is part of a secret 100 year master plan
[ ] Agreed that Fairplay/DRM is good and fair
[ ] Gave Apple credit for something that others already have
[ ] Used look and feel in place of a real technical description
[ ] Stated, "it just works"
[ ] Used intentionally vague term like "fast enough" or "very responsive" but provided no real analysis
[ ] Quoted a carefully chosen spec that an Apple product was better then X but failed to mention other important details
[ ] Described how every device known to man is harder to use then the Apple version
[X] Attempt to muster the Apple fanboi moderators by putting down or ignoring points of parent posts that may be anti Apple.
[ ] Stated that feature X in product Y is stupid and Apple does not need that and therefore, you do not need or want it
[ ] Agreed that Apple does not allow the use of product or feature X because of the burden to support it
[ ] Excitedly claimed new release of Apple product X will turn the world into Apple users
[ ] Truely believed that vendor "lock in" or keeping secrets about releases is actually good for everyone
[X] Forgot Apple is a business with shareholders and thought they are your buddy looking out for you!
[ ] Claimed Apple version X is 100% perfect, then after Apple released X+1, you stated how awesome and powerful it is compared to version X.
[ ] Used a rumor or speculation as evidence that a different rumor or speculation may or may not be true
[ ] Justified a cause by claiming iTunes or the iPod make or lose money for Apple
[ ] When comparing prices, used the highest possible price you could find for the non Apple product and included the student discount on the Apple product
[ ] Expressed willingness to buy the next Apple product that may not be developed yet or available for more then a year.

BONUS
[ ] Posted any one of the above and ignore or "drop out" of the thread when others try to bring up thier counter points.

Re:I already have cable

[Overly Critical Guy]

BEGIN PROGRAM

READY.
HI I AM AC BOT

YOU HAVE QUERIED "APPLE"
SEARCHING DB...

POST#3457 FOUND IN CATEGORY "List of cliches to dismiss a post you can't argue with"

ATTEMPTING TO APPEAR WITTY...
POST SUBMITTED

THANK YOU FOR CHOOSING AC BOT

DISCONNECTING...
END PROGRAM

Re:I already have cable

[RalphBNumbers]

And you are so blinded by the crap on TV that you don't realize that less than 1% of it is worth my time to watch.

And much of that $70 a month to get the channels that offer those shows back via digital cable.

And that's not even mentioning the fact that I can see them whenever I want instead of having to remember to watch or record them on the TV's schedule.

If Apple were to extend this deal (~16 shows for $10, paid in advance) to some of their other shows, like Battlestar Galactica, I could actually see myself making my first iTMS purchase.

But of course, they probably won't offer that low a rate on longer and more collectible shows like BSG. And I really can't see paying much more than that for a movie that just isn't all that comparable to a DVD (320x240 vs 720x480, watchable on ubiquitous $40 players vs needs a computer or an iPod, comes on a nicely packaged DVD vs can't even be burned as a DVD, etc).

Really, it seems to me the iTMS got a lot of things right with music, and then turned around and got those same things irritatingly wrong on video.

They made the music decent quality, as good or better than most of the stuff being traded on the net at the time (using similar bitrates and a superior codec). But they made the video disappointingly low res, equivalent to stuff that was traded online in the late '90s, not the mid '00s (the h264 codec is great, and the ~768k bit rate they use is, if anything, overkill for their resolution, but the 320x240 resolution is just not competitive with what you can find on bittorrent these days [and as Jobs has said before in relation to music, the pirates are their real competition]).

And they made the music burnable to a standard redbook CD so it could be easily backed up and used with your old equipment, but they made the video unable to be burned to a DVD... (I wonder if the studios demanded the burned DVDs be DRMed and were bitten in the ass by their earlier mandating that consumer DVD burners cannot burn CSS encrypted DVDs?)

I wonder what balance of the causes of this was? Were the studios setting apple up to fail, or at least not succeed to fast for the competition to copy, after being frightened by apple's rapid success in selling music online? Or, was it largely a technical issue? Would letting the iPod decode 640x480 h264 have required more time/money/power than Apple felt they could spend to release the iPod /w video?

Re:I already have cable

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean like your fuckwit post?

Re:I already have cable

[evilviper]

Very interesting... I've been wondering how long it would take for something just like that to come around.

Got any tips? Anything important that's not listed on the site?

Re:I already have cable

[RalphBNumbers]

Oops, I lost a chunk of that post somehow, the 2nd paragraph was supposed to go something like this:

And much of that 1% isn't even on decently priced analog cable anymore. Comcast has cut even basics like the SciFi channel form analog cable in my area, and hasn't offered any premium channels outside of digital for a while now. So paying $10 a month for each of the few shows I want is a much better deal for me than paying $70 a month to ransom the channels that offer those shows back via digital cable.

Re:I already have cable

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple hater verification check
rev 2.3
 
[ ] Called Apple users "fags"
[ ] Used "OS/X," "OSX," or "OS-X" instead of OS X
[ ] Used the word "overpriced" while ignoring previously published price comparisons
[ ] Described a Mac as "cheap PC parts"
[ ] Vaguely accused iPod users of falling for marketing
[ ] Confused install base with market share
[ ] Referenced Xerox Sparc
[ ] Referenced "Pirates of Silicon Valley"
[X] Posted list of fictional cliches in a Slashdot discussion to avoid discussing a point
[ ] Used the words "evil" and "DRM" in one sentence
[ ] Gave someone else credit for an Apple innovation
[ ] Made fun of a Switch commercial
[X] Ignored a valid point in favor of bashing Apple users
[ ] Made a one-button mouse joke
[ ] Made reference to "white plastic"
[ ] Called 99 cents "too expensive"
[ ] Victoriously made reference to Microsoft's monopoly market share to avoid addressing a point
[ ] Referenced a "lack of games" for Mac despite all big-name titles having Mac ports
[ ] Pretended that normal computer users actually want to have to build an entire computer by themselves piece by piece, have knowledge about every transistor in the machine, and hand-tune C code for any piece of software the user might have an issue with
[ ] Ignored when someone mentions that you're not a mechanic and didn't build your own car either
[ ] Used the word "cult"
[ ] Ignored that Apple was the first consumer GUI with built-in audio and graphics while PC users were staring at C:\> for the next 15 years.
 
BONUS
[ ] Claimed to hate Apple yet drooled over running OS X on generic PCs

Re:I already have cable

[Anonymous Coward]

BEGIN PROGRAM

READY.
HI I AM AC BOT

YOU HAVE QUERIED "APPLE DEFEND"
SEARCHING DB...

POST#3458 FOUND IN CATEGORY "List of cliches to dismiss a post that may be anti Apple and you can't argue with"

ATTEMPTING TO APPEAR WITTY...
POST SUBMITTED

THANK YOU FOR CHOOSING AC BOT

DISCONNECTING...
END PROGRAM

Re:I already have cable

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, geekee, he really must have struck a nerve with you after pointing out your dumbassitude.

Re:I already have cable

[Anonymous Coward]

BEGIN PROGRAM

READY.
LOGIN: geekee

HELLO, geekee

YOU HAVE QUERIED "nothing to say"
POST #18 FOUND IN CATEGORY "Repeat what they say back to them and pretend you said something"

ATTEMPTING TO APPEAR WITTY...
POST SUBMITTED

LOGOUT: geekee

THANK YOU FOR CHOOSING AC BOT

DISCONNECTING...
END PROGRAM

Re:I already have cable

[Anonymous Coward]

those comments made my night...

Re:I already have cable

[Anonymous Coward]

Man... Irony and sarcasm conflated so brilliantly... You, Sir, are a national treasure.

Re:I already have cable

[mblase]

With all due respect, I think you answered one of your own questions:

But they made the video disappointingly low res, equivalent to stuff that was traded online in the late '90s, not the mid '00s (the 320x240 resolution is just not competitive with what you can find on bittorrent these days)....

And they made the music burnable to a standard redbook CD so it could be easily backed up and used with your old equipment, but they made the video unable to be burned to a DVD...

At that resolution, you wouldn't get nearly the quality of a DVD video anyway. However, you have always been able to back up iTMS video downloads as files to DVD-R; you just can't play them in a standard DVD player.

Re:I already have cable

[Rude Turnip]

My Akimbo box will arrive tomorrow. It was on sale for $70 with a 30-day free trial, so what's there to lose, right? How do you like the service? I'm guessing you let your shows download while you're at work? I'm pretty excited about getting Fawlty Towers for 49 cents an episode!

Re:I already have cable

[elrous0]

If I call Apple users "brainwashed, cult-like, self-aggrandizing, hippy fags" does that qualify as two checkboxes or three?

-Eric

Re:I already have cable

[Kevin DeGraaf]

Referenced Xerox Sparc

That's Xerox PARC, retard.

Re:I already have cable

[Anonymous Coward]

A bunch of your posts were +5 last night, including this one. Look like a bunch of sheep afraid of your opinions are trying to modbomb your account today by marking you as Overrated, which won't appear in the meta-mod queue. Be careful, Taco and co. won't do squat to fix this problem or help your account even if it goes into -1 territory. Believe it or not there really are people with absolutely no social life and spend all day on Slashdot modding enemies down

Re:I already have cable

[zakezuke]

and for $40 a month, I get a hell of a lot more content than 4 shows.

You pay $480/year. How many shows do you actually watch?

I'm not saying cable isn't a good deal, nor am I saying it is. I will say that $480 can represent 32 to 48 shows/year assuming $10 = 16 episodes, and a given season is between 16 and 24 episodes. While this might not be a good value for you, for someone who watches less than 16 shows/year that's a decent value.

Re:I already have cable

[mweier]

i don't have cable. And if i only watched one show a month, this $10/mo may make sense. Once you want to watch more than one show? well cable is obviously way more bang for yer buck, and comes with 4x the resolution.

Re:I already have cable

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a sarcasm detector for sale that you may be interested in.

Re:I already have cable

[evilviper]

Okay, I've really looked through it now, and I'm sure I'm not interested.

With every even mildly interesting (~45min) show costing $1.99 each, I'm sure I'd end up paying more than I do for cable...

Oh well. It's too bad, it sounded like a great deal, if only most of the channels were free, and perhaps if they removed the DRM...

I can already get all this stuff DRM-free (for $19/mo with DishNet) why would I even consider paying more, and not being able to (easily) record it?

Re:I already have cable

[geekee]

"You're right; I clearly don't know what sarcasm is or how it is used. Thanks for the help!"

Are all your responses just canned responses based on key words from the previous post? I swear you'd have problems passing the Turing test.

Sweet...

[evilviper]

That would be great, if I didn't need Windows to get and play those DRM-encumbered videos. I'd also like a few History Channel and National Geographic programs on occasion. If I got that, I'd cancel my cable TV, and put up a (BIG!) HDTV antenna...

I've looked at my viewing habits very closely, and the Daily Show/Colbert Report are the only important things I watch that aren't available OTA, for free.

I really believe HDTV stands a good chance of killing off (or at least seriously wounding) cable/satellite companies.

Re:Sweet...

[Anonymous Coward]

"That would be great, if I didn't need Windows to get and play those DRM-encumbered videos."

You don't; they work fine on a Mac. :)

Re:Sweet...

[Khuffie]

We're lucky, in Canada CTV (which you can pickup OTA) airs the Daily Show/Colbert Report an hour after its on the Comedy Network,

Re:Sweet...

[SeaFox]

If you need for cable TV is really limited to two or three shows you should ave gotten rid of it by now. I would just download them from online. It's the same arguement as pirating one song off a CD comparison wise. You only need one program, paying for hundreds of hours of other programming doesn't make sense.

If you can't find them, keep in mind a DVD of National Geographic Programs can be bought for what $24.95 at the most? Less than you'd pay for a month of cable.

Re:Sweet...

[gooberguy]

That would be great, if I didn't need Windows to get and play those DRM-encumbered videos.

They play just fine on my iBook. Also, the restrictions are extremely tame. Most importantly, this isn't a subscription like Napster offers. You keep the videos even after you stop paying for the service.

I'd also like a few History Channel and National Geographic programs on occasion.

I'm sorry Apple didn't immediately cater to your whim as soon as they launched their new service. Like you said, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are extremely popular shows available only on cable/satellite. Both shows are most popular among Apple's younger demographic, so it makes sense for them to start off with the biggest money makers. I don't think Apple will cater to the DRM-hating linux users for a while. In fact I don't think anyone will cater to the DRM-hating linux users.

Re:Sweet...

[evilviper]

They play just fine on my iBook.

Gee, so instead of a spare hard drive, and a $99 copy of Windows, I only need to spend $1,000 on a new Mac. That's a big improvement there.

I'm sorry Apple didn't immediately cater to your whim as soon as they launched their new service.

Nice trolling there. I didn't say they should be doing that right now, or even that they should do that at all, did I?

I don't think Apple will cater to the DRM-hating linux users for a while. In fact I don't think anyone will cater to the DRM-hating linux users.

Gee, I can only think of one, single, gigantic problem with that... These are shows that are currently widely available without any kind of DRM at all. I have a cheap capture card, and I record these shows daily, as well as many others. Just tell me why there should be addition restrictions placed on me, because I'm PAYING EXTRA to download them from Apple? If I wanted to do anything nefarious with them, the copies I'm currently making are FAR higher quality than what you can get from iTunes anyhow.

It's beyond ridiculous to put any DRM on TV shows.

Re:Sweet...

[evilviper]

If you need for cable TV is really limited to two or three shows you should ave gotten rid of it by now.

Not quite. I'm in a bad area, where the analog signal from OTA broadcasters out of L.A. are so weak it's practically unwatchable. It's only with the switch to digital/HDTV, and possibly a damn good antenna, that cable TV won't be necessary for me.

If you can't find them, keep in mind a DVD of National Geographic Programs can be bought for what $24.95 at the most? Less than you'd pay for a month of cable.

It's not that I only watch a show or two, it's that I only watch 2 or 3 cable channels... However, I do watch those 2 or 3 quite a lot, which is why the alternatives haven't worked, just yet. The "Akimbo" service looks like it might work really well, but they are really vague with details on their website, so I'm not too confident about them.

Besides, those $25 National Geo DVDs don't contain several programs, they each contain one ~45 minute program, which makes them a very serious rip-off.

Re:Sweet...

[CarpetShark]

You should check out Democracy Player. In particular, search for Democracy Player and the Daily Show ;)

Completely wrong

[Overly Critical Guy]

Sigh, I was waiting for this to hit the Slashdot front page.

This is not "monthly iTunes TV subscriptions." It's a standard pre-order. You pay the full price for the season, and as each show is made available, it downloads it in iTunes. The same thing happens when pre-ordering an album, which will automatically download when it's available (often with bonus tracks). The only difference here is that an entire TV season of The Colbert Report obviously won't suddenly exist at once but will be filmed episode by episode, and so each show downloads as it becomes available.

Nothing to see here, please move along.

Re:Completely wrong

[geekee]

"Sigh, I was waiting for this to hit the Slashdot front page."

Welcome to the "I sigh because I'm an arrogant know-it-all prick" club.

Re:Completely wrong

[damiam]

Um, actually it is "monthly iTunes TV subscriptions." The word "subscription" has several meanings. Think of this as like a magazine subscription - you pay in advance, the content is sent to you as it's produced, and you get to keep it.

Re:Completely wrong

[periol]

Actually, you pay $9.99 for sixteen episodes, or $1.99 per episode. Hardly full-price for a season, it's more like buying a new album every seems to be priced exactly the way they price albums, which is interesting (and shows just how artificially high the price of music is).

Re:Completely wrong

[OzRoy]

You mean like pre-purchasing 12 magazines that are released once a month and calling it a "12 month subscription"?

Truthiness!!

[mrfett]

Well it only took 12 hours to get this news on /.... but the shows looked great, and I really do think this could end up bad for cable companies. I'm keeping it since baseball season is around the corner, but if i wasn't a Red Sox nut i'd be canceling my subscription. these two shows are fantastic, and being able to watch them without commercials is a real win. i'd like to see the price lower, though. 16 episodes/$10 is ok, but still seems a bit much over the long haul. i bought both "multi-passes", but we'll have to see if i continue once the novelty has worn off. gotta love Colbert. Check out the "Long War" segment :P

Re:Truthiness!!

[isometrick]

First Leeloo Dallas mul-ti-pass joke.

Harder to share?

[zakezuke]

One question, as TV shows become available for sale on the Internet, will this make it harder to share clips online, such as through Google Video? In your answer, ignore facts. Just go with what feels true -TFA

Totally easier to share, but that's hardly the point. The point is I pay for cable, and there is no way I'd pay for both cable service and downloads... so if what I watch is available for download at $10/season... I'd ditch the cable. I'm not offended by the idea of paying for media. I pay for cable, I chuck money tward PBS from time to time. I'm not that hip paying for DVDs as in contrast to downloads they take up a hell of alot less space.

Parents would also be interested as I'm starting to notice more switching to video rentals rather cable subscriptions.

Re:Harder to share?

[SlartibartfastJunior]

I just cancelled my cable. I'm slowly working my way through CSI, the Simpsons, and some of my other favorite shows via Netflix - why do I need overpriced cable again?

That said, the Daily Show was the one thing I realized I'd miss about cable. And now I can get my TV fix for ($10 for Daily Show) + ($18 for Netflix) = about $20 less than I was paying for very basic, TiVoless, 90-percent-commercials cable. Sounds good to me!

Re:Harder to share?

[Ohreally_factor]

The math works for me, too. I cancelled my cable about a year ago, and didn't really miss it. The three shows that I would have wanted to watch are The Daily Show, Lost*, and Battlestar Galactica. iTunes has me covered for much less than my monthly cable bill (which I'd still have to pay when Lost and BSG are in reruns).

I'm also not spending as much time watching stupid crap because I'm bored. I'm reading more and finding more productive uses of my time.

*Yes, it's a "regular TV" network show, but I have really lousy TV reception.

Legal starting to get more convenient than illegal

[brxndxn]

The whole point of piracy, imo, is to make all media (entertainment not limited by the economics of scarcity) more convienient than actually purchasing the media..

But, even with piracy, there's annoying costs involved.. It takes a user's time to find the shit. The user has to be skilled enough to extract it, run it, store it, convert it, etc.. Also, users have to rely on each other to package pirated media in convenient forms.

However, if one can pay a small fee to get ready access to their shows from anywhere, then piracy will die down. Once the actual media is more convenient than pirated media, piracy will be less of a problem. IMO, even most tenacious of pirates would rather have Google or Itunes store all their media so they could access it from their set-top boxes, Ipods, PSPs, cell-phones - all without having to take the time to convert it or store it on their own hard drives.

But then, since the media companies are so determined to prove piracy as a bigger problem than it is - as a display of greed not necessarily good for the media industry - they DRM the hell out of everything. So, most people that are used to controlling their own media just ignore everything with DRM.

Piracy, for consumers, IS A GOOD THING. The more consumers pirate, the more media companies will be FORCED to innovate and adapt. If the media companies were entirely in control, we'd probby be forced to listen to only the 10 most-popular songs on Clearchannel, watch reality tv with 1/2 the time being commercials, and call an 800 number to ask permission for every time we use the media.

IMO, what Apple is doing is a GOOD thing. It's just hilariously funny how Apple is doing it while becomming an unecessary middleman since the media companies have their heads so far up their own asses they can't realize that they are NOT in control of what the consumer wants - or even their own media once the consumer consumes it.

I support the principles of piracy.. I think it's morally acceptable to pirate when the pirated media is more convenient (with more features) than the regular media. The marketplace is about the consumer - not the producer. If I decide to put my Chiquita banana on a stripper's tit covered in chocolate and take pictures of it, Chiquita can't cry when I'm not consuming it like a normal monkey. I feel the same way about media companies..

If media companies had their way, they'd have control of our memories and erase everything they could re-sell us. So, we'd even forget we watched a movie or bought the DVD and blindly pay for it again. /end rant.. gonna eat a banana now.

What about those recording t.v. and fair use?

[Antony-Kyre]

Isn't it currently considered fair use to record television shows off of one's t.v. set? How will this affect fair use laws?

Re:What about those recording t.v. and fair use?

[H0D_G]

I know that in Australia, technically it is illegal, but no one will arrest you or fine you for it. same with ripping CDs. legislation is coming so that these two will be legal.

Re:What about those recording t.v. and fair use?

[Antony-Kyre]

Copyright laws are out of control it seems like. In my OPINION, the below would be just fine.

First of all, make media (such as music, movies, television, etc., not books or e-books) have commercial copyrights expire at 50 years, personal use copyrights expire at 10 years, and educational use copyright non-existant.
-
Commercial use as in making money off of it, like using it in a movie, selling it to someone, etc.
Personal use should be self-explanatory. Maybe I should say home use. (Selling tickets to a home viewing would be illegal since it's commercial use, not personal/home use.)
Educational use such as in doing research, I guess.

Fair use would be making personal copies for one's own use. Someone has already legally bought a copy, and regardless of what the license says, it should be legal, and isn't immoral, to make a copy for oneself. Maybe someone bought a new DVD. I think it's perfectly reasonable to make a back-up copy.

Someone giving a copy away to others should be a civil matter on both parties. Civil as in sueing for the price of the DVD plus legal costs among other things. Either way, it'd be way below that $250k fine or whatever.

Someone selling a copy should be a criminal matter.

Re:What about those recording t.v. and fair use?

[nagora]

I would make commercial use copyright 50 years or life of creator, whichever is longer. I'm happy with the idea of artists leaving their children the proceeds of their work, but if said artist gets run over the day after selling their blockbuster novel to some firm I'd like the children to have that too. What I don't want to see any more is companies holding and raping the creative work of long dead people (ie, Winnie-the-Pooh).

I see no point in having copyright on personal use, in the sense that you should be able to do anything to a legally obtained copy of a work so long as it is for your own use. There is no reason, other than creating a legal framework to support a business model, to have any copyright restrictions on personal use of personal property.

As to fines for breach of copyright: (2 times cost of disc) times number of copies squared.

TWW

Re:What about those recording t.v. and fair use?

[Antony-Kyre]

I should have better explained it, and I should have added a few things too.

Yes, commercial copyright 50 years or to the death of the creator, whichever is longer. Also, options to renew it for commercial copyright.

When I said personal copyright at 10 years, here is what I meant. At the 10 year mark, someone could legally download/copy a piece of work without threat of lawsuit. They cannot sell it. They cannot use it for commercial uses (music in grocery stores for example) or profit (theatre). When I said this, I simply meant if someone downloads it off the net for free, or copies it from someone else's legally obtained disc, they can make personal copies all they want, period. The copyright owner would have had 10 years to make money off of it that way, now they don't. However, this is still different from commercial use, such as companies selling "Best of the 80s" type music, etc.

When I spoke of this, I was only referring to like media, such as t.v. shows, movies, music, etc. I wasn't referring to creative ideas such as Mickey Mouse, etc. That would be a seperate area altogether.

Actually,

[AWhiteFlame]

This is pretty cool. The iTunes model .. could be worse. With my Mac that runs iTunes and my iPod, I hardly even notice the DRM. iTunes prices are very reasonable, legit :P, and go straight into my library. AAC provides decent enough music for my 2.1 speaker system (or my headphones). iTMS MPEG-4 provides decent enough quality video for 2 bucks an episode. There is definitely tons of room for improvement, but seeing as they're the dominant force in the online legit music business, they could make the predicament much, much worse.

Re:Actually,

[R3d M3rcury]

I got hit by iTunes DRM recently and I wasn't amused.

I heard a fun song on TV and wandered over to iTunes to look it up. I found the song and I noticed Apple was also selling the video. Well, I watched the video and, again, thought it was a cute video and I decided to buy that instead of the song. Same thing, right?

Wrong.

I don't own an iPod, so I burn stuff to CD so I can listen to music in my car. Well, I went to burn that video to a CD and got the "Sorry, you're not allowed to do that." message. Now, I can understand that I can't burn a video to an audio CD. But seeing that Apple considers this to be a Music video, I would think iTunes would at least smart enough to say "Hey, you're not going to get the video on an audio CD, but I'll put the audio on the CD..."

The obvious solution was Audio Hijack and Sound Studio, I'll admit. But it irked me enough that I probably won't bother buying anymore videos.

Re:Actually,

[Anonymous Coward]

True dat! Slightly off-topic, but I do have a point I'd like to stress.

I've DL'd all of my music, although I don't really listen to much of todays music, to be honest (Pink Floyd and Jefferson Airplane mostly. Oddly enough, I'm only 26). Now, the last really good album I have found (read: opinion) was, don't laugh... Christina Aguilera's "Stripped". Not a trend whore in the least, mind you, so when I came to the conclusion that it was worth my money, I went and bought it (February 2005, I believe I picked it up). Doesn't make me a hero, in the least. But, I'd probably have bought it sooner had I gone Apple sooner. If I had even pirated it at all. My point is; iTunes/iPod are some of the most realistic options in the modern age, and it's quite fair.

Let's say , hypothetically, that I liked that song "My Humps" by the Black Eyed Peas, it's crazy I know. But, "What If". ;) Now, I might not want to purchase the whole album, the other songs might not be all that great. Or, maybe, I don't think it worth my time going out of my way to pick up the single (this geek hates to shop). I'd pirate it, outright, 100% of the time, if I dug it. Now, enter Apple and iTunes. They have given me a better option, which is quite reasonable. It might be that the cash flow in my world has gotten stronger (read: disposable income). Or, maybe it's because I am geting older, I don't know. But, piracy, as easy as it is (IRC, BT, IM, PG2, etc.) is not as sexy an option for me as it once was (lawsuits, fear of the financial downfall the RIAA will bring upon me).

Now, I do occasionally like the random "it" song I hear on the radio (see: above). But, I don't think that one song is worth $13, I don't care how big her tits are. Apple/iTunes/iPod are damned near a perfect blend, and it's the only one I'd personally go with. Tax time is coming up, I might get back some quid and I have been seriously considering such an investment.

However, the final hurdle for me at this point is lossless audio (I use FLAC, but I'd accept a DRM'd Apple Lossless file) and gapless playback. But, that won't happen anytime soon. It's far too fringe, I guess. On the plus side; I only use FLAC for full albums and OGG Vorbis for the Decade by Decade randomness. So, iTunes CAN work for me, to an extent, without the lossless audio option. But, gapless is a must, if I am to buy all my music diretly from Apple. It's an Audiophile thing.

My $0.02 USD*

PS: I am NOT trying to defend my pirating music, in any way. I also took up Linux recently, and am learning Japanese to boot... no, I am not trying to skip town, and I chose Linux for the beer, man... I'm just going through a small, personal, cultural revolution type deal. And, I know a few Dazed and Confused types who went the high road, recently, as well. Something in the water, me thinks! Now would be the time to snag someone like me. Apple, I meant, not you.

* "opinion" for non USians

Re:Actually,

[TheSkyIsPurple]

> I hardly even notice the DRM

As a consumer, I agree.

As a developer... I disagree.

I wrote a nice replacement for Front Row that would do full screen on any of my attached screens, on screen menuing, browseable, etc...

It worked great! I ripped all my Firefly episodes and had them randomly playing on a "Channel" from my computer that is distibuted throughout the house. Wonderful for background stuff. I recorded a bunch of music videos from VH1/MTv/etc, and have a pretty good music video station that I run around the house when guests are around.

Problem! I can't play DRMd files. The Quicktime API won't recognize the files, nor deal with them. I submitted a bug report, since there were no limitations mentioned anywhere. After over a month of sitting around, I finally got a response: "It works as designed".

Re:Actually,

[glesga_kiss]

With my Mac that runs iTunes and my iPod, I hardly even notice the DRM.

Oh, you'll notice it at upgrade time. Unless of course your upgrades automatically assume a trip to the Apple store. You are Apple's bitch and will be as long as you wish to listen to the media you have paid for. Every media player you will own will need to be an iPod.

Re:Actually,

[bubba451]

What's interesting about Front Row is that it doesn't actually play the music itself, but instead builds a playlist in iTunes and tells iTunes to play that. Assuming you're on a Mac, this can all be done with Applescript. Can your app just do that? (I'm don't mean to be argumentative here, just offering a suggestion.)

Re:Actually,

[Anonymous Coward]

ptx4fife@ccom.net

Re:Actually,

[TheSkyIsPurple]

>Assuming you're on a Mac, this can all be done with Applescript. Can your app just do that?

Not really. iTunes doesn't do full screen video, so you can't use that trick. =-(
It doesn't give a programmatic method of choosing which screen to play the video on either.

Re:Actually,

[Enrico Pulatzo]

You should be able to script the Quicktime Player in the meantime.

That's not the best solution though, and I agree with the point you made about DRM from the developer's POV.

Re:Actually,

[TheSkyIsPurple]

>You should be able to script the Quicktime Player in the meantime.

Yeah, tried that too... but I just couldn't make it play on a specific screen. Either it doesn't work, or I just didn't have the magic needed to do it right

Re:Actually,

[Scudsucker]

iTunes doesn't do full screen video, so you can't use that trick. =-(

Sure it does. Get a quicktime file playing in iTunes, right click on the video, and select "full screen".

Problem! I can't play DRMd files. The Quicktime API won't recognize the files, nor deal with them.

Sure it does. I'm listening to one of my iTunes-purcahsed Morcheeba songs in Quicktime Player right now. iTunes and Quicktime Player are just front ends, and one way people get around the "Pro" restrictions in Player is to use a script to tell it to play fullscreen.

Sounds like you just need to hack at it some more. :) Good luck.

You're not alone

[Anonymous Coward]

I put up an antenna, installed an HDTV tuner in my MythTV system, and am ready to cancel cable. I liked it so much that I've added a second tuner.

I'll miss Speed Channel, but not enough to swallow the whole cost of the cable level required to get it.

roll your own subscription...

[Anonymous Coward]

1. EZTV RSS Feed
2. Azureus
3. RSS Feed Scanner plugin
4. VLC

You'll get every Jon and Steve episode, plus a lot of others. It's your TV. Own it.

The Daily Show

[Eightyford]

The Daily Show was among the first TV shows to be freely available for download. This may just be the beginnings of an end of an era for free internet content.

Re:The Daily Show

[Bungopolis]

Where exactly was The Daily Show freely available for download?

Re:The Daily Show

[Eightyford]

Where exactly was The Daily Show freely available for download?

http://www.comedycentral.com/shows/the_daily_show/ videos/most_recent/index.jhtml
It used to be available for free on realplayer many years ago.

Re:The Daily Show

[gEvil (beta)]

Did they ever have full episodes available? I remember checking out the Comedy Central site 4 or 5 years ago and only got a few 2 or 3 minute clips from each night (the same as what they offer now). All in all, it added up to maybe a third of the show.

Re:The Daily Show

[Eightyford]

Yeah, actually I think you're probably right. Sometimes I talk out of my ass a little on slashdot ;)

Re:The Daily Show

[gEvil (beta)]

No problem. At least you got a little karma boost out of it. : p

Daily Show Fine with Bittorrent

[BongoBen]

There was an interview with Jon Stewart and a producer of the Daily Show on Wired a while back, where Jon says that he's fine with people downloading the show. We can only hope that the bigshots at Comedy Central feel the same. Me, I would never buy cable, but I do love watching the Daily Show...

Here's a quote:
Stewart: We're not going to shut it down - we don't even know what it is. I'm having enough trouble just getting porn.

Argh! The Pressure!

[sg3000]

Why do I feel like some marketing guy at Apple is eyeing my ITMS account, just waiting for me to sign up:

"Hey pal, you said you'd do it ..."

There is a word for this...

[SetupWeasel]

"In your answer, ignore facts. Just go with what feels true."

I believe the proper expression is:

Answer with truthiness.

Hard Choices...Questionable Price Model

[Anonymous Coward]

Definitely progress...but that price needs to come down a little. A month of the Daily Show for 9.99 sounds fairly reasonable at first...then I started thinking about the Colbert report. They put one more show I want up there, and I'm paying a full basic cable bill for just three shows.

I suppose the convenience is worth something, but it still forced me to make a choice:

Stewart or Colbert? Whats would you do?

Re:Hard Choices...Questionable Price Model

[PenGun]

Oh come on. I'm watching the Colbert Report now, well on the next window to the right ;).

  You need a DVB-S card, Twinhan 102 recommended, a dish and LNB as low as $150 for both. You need VDR and Linux and a little ingenuity.

  TV ... oh ghod ... TV.

    PenGun
  Do What Now ??? ... Standards and Practices !

Re:Hard Choices...Questionable Price Model

[Anonymous Coward]

Your basic cable is either a lot cheaper than it is here, or you haven't checked the prices in the last decade. Well, there was for a time an effort to get cable companies to offer a la carte channel selections, but I think the movement fell apart.

Make it harder?

[smokes2345]

Why would it make it any harder? Eventually, those subscrition fees will end up costing more than a Tivo or capture card, at which point it would be impractical. Not to mention that there are many more reasons to use a hardware capture device with current TV service than to bother with iTunes (unless you actually bought into the iPod craze). Even with a capture card, i'm sure there's a way to get it into an iPod. This is as pointless as DRM itself, a scheme for suckers.

Actually, this is something new

[BearRanger]

You're partly right in that it's not entirely new. But it is new.

Unlike traditional TV, preordering a show on iTunes allows the producer to gauge interest and demand. It's not the standard television "push" model that spends lots of money up front only to find that no one really cares after the fact. By attracting funding in advance by selling subscriptions, the production cost of the program can be partially offset. And you KNOW that you'll have an audience.

Admittedly that's not what's happening now. These shows weren't created FOR iTunes, and they became established the old fashioned way. But theoretically this model could be used to create targeted programming. To use an old Slashdot (and personal) favorite, how many people would subscribe in advance for a new season of "Firefly"? How much would they (and you) be willing to pay to make it happen? Just as musicians are viewing iTunes as a potential model to cut out the middle man record labels, independant video producers might find a similar benefit in directly reaching their audience.

And they post this now?

[Short Circuit]

The Colbert Report is still on...

Agendas

[alchemist68]

Corporations have agendas, that are motivated/governed by one or a select few individuals. In the case of Apple Computer, everyone knows who the steward of the Apple ship is, what his path is remains to be somewhat "foggy." Why is this? Well, that my friend is a trade secret, owned by the one soul in the universe with his own REALITY DISTORTION FIELD. At the age of 38 and as a long time Apple user, I could never predict very far Steve Jobs's visions, and that's the key to the success of Steve and Apple. Steve Jobs has a gift that is unique to the success of a business that he co-founded, that he is absolutely passionate about. Whether you or I like it or not, Apple Computer is on the verge of crossing a threshold, a boundary that will propel it farther than its competition ever imagined. The foundation of this success will be the quality of its products: the iPod, iTunes and the momentum of the iTunes Music Store, and lastly the quality of Apple's operating systems and hardware. Consumers want something simple to use that works flawlessly out of the box. Apple has already achieved that with its computers (with less than or equal to 5% market share - it didn't work economically, hardware was too expensive for the average consumer), so it ventured into digital music players - now very successful! Now Apple is transitioning to Intel processors, i.e. more or less generic hardware that it doesn't have to design and engineer itself - effectively "outsourcing" the Macintosh design to Intel. Through its digital music players, Apple has shown the massive consumer market that it can design and successfully implement quality software and hardware integration that works flawlessly for the consumer. I predict that over time, Apple will make steep inroads to consumer markets, and eventually corporate America and global corporate markets. This will be in combination and recognition to producing goods and services that meet both consumer and commercial needs. There will be some serious convincing in the corporate world, but as more and more people play with and experiment with Mac OS X and iPods, people will be purchasing more Apple products. Microsoft and Sony have already lost the media war to Apple, I'm glad in one way that I own Apple stock, fearful in another way that Apple may "think itself so large and influential that it can go into any direction that it wants." There is always uncertainty with any investment... but Apple is here to stay no matter what Microsoft and Sony would like otherwise, or anyone else.

The one factor in Apple's favor is that Steve Jobs is hell bent on being NUMBER 1, not just good enough, unlike Bill Gates who likes to be just good enough. The Borg is too large and the corporate culture is too much "set in place" for adequate change for a serious challenge to Apple's agenda and momentum. Looking at Apple's market share, both in terms of computer sales, iPod sales, online services, overall market share, Apple Computer is GROWTH COMPANY AND CASH COW waiting to happen! It's just a matter of time before maturity develops...

So long fair use. We hardly knew ye.

[natrius]

I hope everyone's watching closely as fair use is lying on its deathbed.

Lots of Slashdotters are hailing this development as a move away from traditional TV-based distribution to online video sales. It sounds nifty on paper, but let's look to the future. If these online video stores end up becoming popular enough to supplant TV distribution, fair use is screwed. These videos are DRM encumbered, and breaking that protection is against the law. TV shows like the Daily Show and Colbert Report depend on their being a large pool of accessible content to discuss and parody. Once it's all online and DRM encumbered, they won't be able to use that content without breaking the law. Want to add background music to your home videos? I hope you didn't buy your music online. Even though this type of use isn't specifically protected under copyright law, it is still felt to be perfectly acceptable by the masses, and courts would probably back it based on the same logic that stopped Hollywood from taking time-shifting away from us.

The future looks bleak for creative works online. These developments call for an overhaul of our copyright laws, but it really doesn't look like that's going to happen. Should a work that is only available in a DRM encumbered form still be protected by copyright? If so, why? Copyright was granted to copyright creators for a limited term, but with DRM, not only do they take away fair use, but they also gain the ability to close up their work forever. Hopefully someone gets elected soon that sees and is willing to fix the many problems with our copyright laws.

Re:So long fair use. We hardly knew ye.

[mblase]

Want to add background music to your home videos? I hope you didn't buy your music online.

Using Apple's iMovie and iDVD, I'm entirely able to do this with purchased iTMS music without jumping through any hoops. So granted, I'm not using Windows, but I fail to see what you're griping about.

As for DRM ending fair use: why do you say that? There are ways to get "fair use" clips from purchased video without breaking the DRM; video screencaps comes immediately to mind (an approach that is awkward for converting an entire 30-minute show or 90-minute movie but quite reasonable for a 40-second clip).

Fair use is a right, not a privilege. There's nothing written anywhere which says that media companies have to make it easy for you to make fair use of their media. That does not in any way outlaw software makers from providing ways to do so, or give the media companies the right to end fair use in the courts. You're making a big fuss over losing something you never actually had in the first place.

Re:So long fair use. We hardly knew ye.

[TomatoMan]

Using Apple's iMovie and iDVD, I'm entirely able to do this with purchased iTMS music without jumping through any hoops. So granted, I'm not using Windows, but I fail to see what you're griping about.

Try playing your video on a different machine not authorized to your itunes account and you'll see what he's griping about.

Re:So long fair use. We hardly knew ye.

[c0bw3b]

I ran into this a while back, and have since used JHymn to strip that crap off of all my files, and haven't bought an iTune since

Re:So long fair use. We hardly knew ye.

[BeProf]

Try playing your video on a different machine not authorized to your itunes account and you'll see what he's griping about.\

Let's see... I have a home movie DVD that I edited with iMove, put DRMed iTMS music in as background music, and then burned with iDVD. Works fine on my computer, my wife's computer (which isn't authorized into my iTMS account), and pretty much every DVD player I've run it through.

Re:So long fair use. We hardly knew ye.

[TomatoMan]

Try just the iMovie. The DVD format doesn't have a facility to detect iTMS protection, but iMovie does. My brother made an iMovie of his kid on the beach and put an iTMS song in it and mailed it to my brothers and me, and it refused to play for all of us.

Re:So long fair use. We hardly knew ye.

[dr.badass]

I hope everyone's watching closely as fair use is lying on its deathbed.

TV shows like the Daily Show and Colbert Report depend on their being a large pool of accessible content to discuss and parody.

Says who?

Want to add background music to your home videos? I hope you didn't buy your music online.

Really bad example. iTunes can be added to iMovie videos as easily as any other. In fact, I believe that feature is mentioned specifically on Apple's site. If you're not using iMovie, then yeah, too bad. More reason for Apple to license FairPlay someday. If you're using some other DRM music store, then you've got a lot more problems.

Granted, there is a case to be made for interoperability, but that has never been a part of Fair Use.

Even though this type of use isn't specifically protected under copyright law, it is still felt to be perfectly acceptable by the masses, and courts would probably back it based on the same logic that stopped Hollywood from taking time-shifting away from us.

Time-shifting is not the same thing, not by a long shot. A better precedent would be sampling, which has a much more mixed history.

The future looks bleak for creative works online.

You mean, creative works for whom the creators have explicitly chosen to protect the copyrights through DRM. That isn't all creative works.

Should a work that is only available in a DRM encumbered form still be protected by copyright? If so, why?
Why? Because DRM doesn't change anything about what rights the creator has over his work.

Copyright was granted to copyright creators for a limited term, but with DRM, not only do they take away fair use, but they also gain the ability to close up their work forever.

Neither of these claims are true. DRM does not inherently take away Fair Use. It does restrict the channels through which one can exercise Fair Use, but you will find nothing in the law that speaks to this. Also, DRM does not give a copyright holder any rights over his work after the copyright has lapsed. I cannot fathom why you think this is the case.

Re:So long fair use. We hardly knew ye.

[dr.badass]

Try playing your video on a different machine not authorized to your itunes account and you'll see what he's griping about.

I just did this and nothing unusual happened. The video and audio played as expected. Could you describe what "should have happened"?

Re:So long fair use. We hardly knew ye.

[TomatoMan]

When I tried to play the iMovie my brother made with an iTMS tune of his, QuickTime Player refused to play it on my machine, saying it was "not authorized."

Didn't work on his gf's video iPod, either. Same thing.

Re:So long fair use. We hardly knew ye.

[dr.badass]

When I tried to play the iMovie my brother made with an iTMS tune of his, QuickTime Player refused to play it on my machine, saying it was "not authorized."

That's really odd. With iMovie alone I can't replicate that at all, in any export format. However, I was able to reproduce it by pasting the track into the already-rendered movie using QuickTime Pro. Perhaps this is what your brother did to add the music. If that's the case, simply doing it in iMovie instead will remove the DRM.

Re:So long fair use. We hardly knew ye.

[ChaosDiscord]

As for DRM ending fair use: why do you say that? There are ways to get "fair use" clips from purchased video without breaking the DRM; video screencaps comes immediately to mind (an approach that is awkward for converting an entire 30-minute show or 90-minute movie but quite reasonable for a 40-second clip).

Having to jump through hoops to enjoy my fair use rights is hardly a fair replacement. And good luck pulling off screencaps in the future when your operating system, video player, video card, and monitor are all conspiring through HDCP and similar technologies to keep you as far from that stream as possible. You'll be reduced to pointing a video camera at your screen.

The goal is to convince most people that DRM isn't really a big problem. "See you can add music from iTunes to your family movies in iMovie! Isn't that swell?" It's easy, as the number of people who need more access are pretty small. Once most people have bought into it, mainstream media will cease to be available in non-DRMed form. Most people won't notice as the common case will work. But the guy trying to assemble small clips from a variety of sources to show, say, trends in violence in movies, is out of luck. Fair Use will cease to exist for all practical purposes, replaced with What the Publishers Allows.

Re:So long fair use. We hardly knew ye.

[mblase]

Try playing your video on a different machine not authorized to your itunes account and you'll see what he's griping about.

All I have to do is log into iTunes from that machine; Apple lets me authorize my media on up to five different computers at a time.

Re:So long fair use. We hardly knew ye.

[mblase]

Having to jump through hoops to enjoy my fair use rights is hardly a fair replacement.

You always had to jump through hoops to enjoy fair use rights. Excerpt from a book? Retype the paragraph. Excerpt from a magazine? Pay $0.10 for the photocopy. Excerpt from a TV show? Find a blank tape and make sure your VCR is ready.

Just because it's a little tricker when that media is on a computer, you think the media companies owe you an easy way to fairly use parts of their media. They don't, and they never once gave you an easy way. You're just griping because the hoops are digital now instead of analog.

Re:So long fair use. We hardly knew ye.

[ChaosDiscord]

Bogus comparisons. Magazine and book publishers don't specifically add things to their products to make them harder to copy. They don't charge me for the "privlege" of blocking me from the information I've purchased. I'm not owed an easy way to get the data. I'm saying that media companies want to make it extremely difficult, effectively impossible for the average person to engage in some types of fair use. That will spell the effective end of fair use. Instead of the digital age becoming an era when people have increasing freedom to engage in commentary on other works, we'll be restricting people further. That's a step backward for humanity. For the potential (but not certain) benefit of additional income to companies, we're trading social progress as a whole. That bullshit.

MOD PARENT DOWN - FAKE LINK

[Anonymous Coward]

That's misleading.

Re:Legal starting to get more convenient than ille

[Fordiman]

Good monkey.

I agree with you, but I know what a detractor would latch onto: "I think it's morally acceptable to pirate when the pirated media is more convenient (with more features) than the regular media."

Response: "Oh, so it's ok to copy someone else's credit card because it's 'more convenient' than using your own?!"

Yeah. People are assholes.

Going to reiterate your point about media being exempt from the economics of scarcity. It's nonexcludable, people. You can sit around and dry hump a 95 year copyright term and the corporations that have put them into place, but frankly, I have no respect for a copyright law that doesn't let TGI Fridays sing me happy birthday, much less get free digital copies of 25 year old Jethro Tull albums.

From my mouth, to Steve's ear

[jake_eck]

/ doesn't have a TV // only watched the Daily show when I had free cable and Eye-TV /// doesn't want to pay Comcast for 40 channels when all I watch is one show

ridicoulous

[Anonymous Coward]

people pay monthly cables fees to watch these kind of shows, and all the network shows you can get fo free with an antenna, what is the purpose of repaying for something?

if people had more common sense, they would save the money they are wasting on buying these shows, and purchase cheap tv card for there pc that has dvr functions. (im sure you could even make it automaticly convert the files to the ipod format)

Re:ridicoulous

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

"if people had more common sense, they would save the money they are wasting on buying these shows, and purchase cheap tv card for there pc that has dvr functions. (im sure you could even make it automaticly convert the files to the ipod format)"

Well, they could spend $100 or so on a TV card and turn their computer into a DVR. The resources this takes up could be questionable, though. You can get a card that'll encode to MPEG2 and use up 2 gigs an hour or you can encode to a more efficient file size and eat up more CPU. Once that's done, then you've got to go through the conversion process to make this video playable on your iPod. Then you've got to sync it. The result? Well, you can get one show at a time assuming what you wanted to see has aired, and it comes complete with commercials. Alternatively, you could buy a season of your favorite show and have it sent directly to your iPod sans commercials. Frankly, I can see a quite a few people enjoying the benefits of both a DVR and an iPod subscription.

It's not for everybody, bfd.

watch out for that aspect ratio

[adpowers]

I was about to buy the 16 episode plan, but I previewed the episode and noticed that both TDS and TCR both have problems in the encoding. The videos are are 320x208 resolution, which is horribly non-standard and causes the stretching of both videos (well, more accurately, squishing, but they have the same end effect), making everyone look fat. I have a blog post with picture comparing Jon Stewart's head in the video with how it should look.

Re:watch out for that aspect ratio

[skingers6894]

I'm not fat! You're just viewing me with the wrong aspect ratio...

Re:watch out for that aspect ratio

[wanorris]

The videos are are 320x208 resolution, which is horribly non-standard and causes the stretching of both videos (well, more accurately, squishing, but they have the same end effect), making everyone look fat.

I've never used iTunes, nor any player that can play files from iTunes, so I apologize for my gross ignorance in this area. But a number of video players I've used in the past can play video at any resolution in the correct aspect ratio, even if it's 23x147 or something. Can you not do this with some player for an iTunes video?

If not, I hope you'll pardon me for saying that iTunes sounds like a pretty limited format on which to buy video.

Re:watch out for that aspect ratio

[adpowers]

iTunes restricts the aspect ratio, as does QuickTime. I'm not sure if any media player that can play iTunes files lets you change the aspect ratio. Maybe a 3rd party player that calls the QT API might work.

It wouldn't be a big deal if the video was encoded properly. Also, I would prefer to watch purchases through iTunes because it keeps track of playcounts, which I am fanatical about.

Re:watch out for that aspect ratio

[adpowers]

Just an update for those without iTunes or too lazy to check, yesterday's Daily Show is also in the wrong aspect ratio.

Re:watch out for that aspect ratio

[Anonymous Coward]

In case it's not clear: the problem is not really with iTunes the application, or the QuickTime APIs that it uses to play the file. The issue is that the video was encoded from a 4:3 master to a widescreen format. Whatever they use to encode the videos stretched things out to fit the new aspect ratio.

Neither iTunes nor QuickTime Player will let you change the aspect ratio of videos that you're watching (which makes sense), but I think it may have been possible in previous versions of QTP, so presumably there is a way to do it within the QT API.

Re:watch out for that aspect ratio

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, I've discovered that QuickTime Player (at least on the Mac) will let you resize to whatever aspect ratio you want if you hold down Shift. You'd have to be pretty damn careful in order to get these videos back to exactly 4:3, though...

you'll still be able to get it for free...

[Malor]

You'll still be able to get it for free... in fact, the more it's distributed for free, the more Apple will make.

They're not really selling the bits, although they're pretending to. What they're selling is convenient, automated delivery, and super-convenient playback. It blends many of the best elements of the computer and a VCR. So the more available it is online, the more people will be interested, and the more will sign up for the automated delivery service.

This is the first really definite step toward the Holy Grail of convergence.

I might even subscribe. It'd take more than 10 bucks' worth of time to find and download these episodes anyway.

Re:you'll still be able to get it for free...

[N1AK]

Personally I use azureus with RSS feed scanner. After the basic setup (name, eps wanted) it downloads episodes as it sees them. I get 24, BSG, The Simpsons and now Colbert downloaded overnight (I live in UK). Plus I have the option to get them normal, 720p or 1080i res.

Now don't get me wrong, I realise this is illegal, but what you have their is a completely free system, comprised of different teams of volunteers which has managed something people are now lauding apple for!?

In the end, I'm not going to pay money for something I can't easily do what I like with, $2 for limited access to a limited quality episode of a TV program!? I got 4 series of 24 on DVD for what $90s or so, and thats 96 episodes.

great

[muzik4machines]

it's_nice

Good for Apple, but US only?

[mh101]

Too bad the TV shows are US only.

I've gotten tired of hearing the constant stream of "So-and-so is now selling something-or-other on iTunes" announcements lately, when absolutely zero TV shows are on the Canadian store.

I don't get why Apple only has permission to sell stuff only in certain regions - like lots of albums in the US store that aren't in the Canadian store. With physical media, it's not like if I zip across the border into Washington, the people at the store can't sell me a particular CD because they don't have permission to sell it to Canadians, so why is it the case with iTunes?

Re:Good for Apple, but US only?

[byolinux]

If people were allowed to buy anything from anywhere over the Internet, how would companies price fix in certain countries, and charge people more because they live in certain countries.

You're not thinking markets ;)

Re:Good for Apple, but US only?

[mtec]

Canadians have TVs?

Re:Good for Apple, but US only?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't blame apple for this, the copyright owners are very protective of individual markets. Although, the Daily Show and Colbert Report are quite time sensitive (making fun of what just happened) so they would seem to be good candidates for opening up to other markets immediately.

The other thing is that Apple doesn't care where you are, just where your credit card bill goes, sometimes that is a useful loophole.

Re:Good for Apple, but US only?

[citizenc]

Wait, is THIS the reason why I can't find any TV on iTunes? I was rather excited to, at a minimum, read the details of a Daily Show subscription, but I can't find it anywhere.

God damn, do I hate this bullshit. So close, Apple. SOOOO close. Not available to Canadians, eh? I guess I'll have to go spend a couple of hours configuring a torrent scraper to automatically download the daily show for me every day. Then I'll do it with all the other programming which I'd otherwise be willing to pay for, and you'll never see a single dollar from me.

Hooray marketing!

Re:Good for Apple, but US only?

[Anonymous Coward]

The other thing is that Apple doesn't care where you are, just where your credit card bill goes, sometimes that is a useful loophole.

Would anyone in US like to pay my credit card bills?

Re:Good for Apple, but US only?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

I don't get why Apple only has permission to sell stuff only in certain regions - like lots of albums in the US store that aren't in the Canadian store.

There are two reasons for this. The first is that media publishers are greedy, rich, and have no ethics. The second is that politicians are greedy, bribable, and have no ethics. The reason Apple can't distribute the same music.shows in Canada as in the US is simply because since artists no longer hold copyrights (basically the big publishing houses force them to give them up if they want to reach an audience) they don't have the authority to grant the right to republish the show everywhere for a set price. Instead bodies like the MPAA, RIAA, etc. collect royalties in any given country and they set the price differently in each country to maximize profit. This means anyone wanting to resell a song or show needs to negotiate and sign one contract for every country in the world, which is prohibitively expensive and time consuming.

With physical media, it's not like if I zip across the border into Washington, the people at the store can't sell me a particular CD because they don't have permission to sell it to Canadians, so why is it the case with iTunes?

Selling copies of a song or show are not restricted by law, making copies are restricted by law. Thus, if a company has the right to copy a CD for a set price in the US, they can do so and most countries have a reciprocal agreement that says any of them imported are legal. However, when you are dealing with a digital transfer you aren't moving a copy, you're making a copy, thus the laws restrict it.

If you don't like it, talk to your politicians and get your laws changed.

don't care about sharing clips...

[l3v1]

...what I'd care about would be online availability of clips, shows, series, movies, events, concerts, etc. for some fee [moderate and realistic, realistic as "from this world" not as "hey I have this service and nobody else has let's get their money hard"], meaning that if I sit down after a long day and would like to watch an excerpt from O Brother Where Art Thou, or an episode from the seventies' galactica, or if I want to watch Blade Runner 30 yers from now, it should be only a matter of a card and a remote.

I wouldn't care about downloading episodes from series that will probably get here 4-5 yeras from their airing in the States, hell I could spend my time and bandwidth better and I wouldn't need to worry about legality issues.

So if _anyone_ is beginning to offer shows for a fee online, it's fine with me. My problem is though that iTunes is still nowhere to be found in my country, nor in neighboring countries, and yes, we're in the EU, in 2006.

Can i watch the clips in XBMC

[HeavyMS]

Can I watch the episodes on my Xbox Media Center? No.. figures..

"The Real /." (OT)

[kaptron]

on topic only for those of you who follow ./ as if it were "The Real World"... (perhaps as a drinking game?)

that was pretty amazing that geekee managed to find the opportunity to turn Overly Critical Guy's fuckwit club joke back on him only a few posts later. This reminds me of George Costanza's "Well the jerk store called... and they're all out of you!"

And not that it excuses him from anything, but his name is Overly Critical Guy.

I can't wait for next week's episode!

Now THAT was insightful

[SuperKendall]

So in other words, it's EXACTLY like a subscription.

As opposed to the bullshit newspeak definition of "subscription" we've been hearing lately.

That was the most insightful thing I've read on Slashdot all month. In the real world, when you subscribe to something you get something you can keep - like magazines or a CableTV feed you can record (by law, since it has to include firewire output).

Newspeak has "subscription" taking on the meaning of the peep show, where you can see whatever you like - as long as you keep putting in quarters. The moment you stop you have nothing, and indeed can legally not even try to keep anything.

What a great summary of the ripoff that modern "subscription" services are. $10 a month for eternity is not cheap in my book.

Re:Now THAT was insightful

[Anonymous Coward]

Your ideas intrigue me and I'd like to subscribe to your newsletter.

Re:Now THAT was insightful

[FeTrut]

That was the most insightful thing I've read on Slashdot all month. In the real world, when you subscribe to something you get something you can keep - like magazines or a CableTV feed you can record (by law, since it has to include firewire output).

I don't understand what all the fuss is about with regard to the word subscription. There are *TWO* ideas of subscription in play here, and both are valid. The real world includes both of these, and neither are *bullshit*.

1. Subscription to recieve something that one owns on a regular basis, i.e. Magazines, Daily Show Episodes.

2. Subscription *to a service*, i.e. Napster.

I would group Cable TV under the latter category, not the former, as it really is a service. That you can choose to record the stream is sort of a side effect of technology, not necessarily a selling point for most people.

Free Internet TV

[CarpetShark]

There is an alternative. Democracy Player lets you subscribe to podcasts/vodcasts, downloads the latest episodes, and shows them to you in TV channel format. It's very cool, and it comes with lots of free channels of surprisingly high-quality content. If you really want your cable shows on the computer too, you can add them from an RSS-enclosed bittorrent feed :)

It wont.

[SeaFox]

Really, I don't see what the availability of shows in digital format has to do with people recording the show with their own equipment off the cable. That's like asking what the availability of shows on DVD will do to your right to tape them instead (nothing happend).

Just like you pay for the prerecorded DVD w/ extra footage, ect. You are paying for the convienence of the show already being encoded for iTunes and delivered over your internet connection rather than having to record it yourself.

Re:It wont.

[Antony-Kyre]

The logic is as follows. Why would someone bother paying $2 to download an episode which they can record for free off of their television? It's only a matter of time before it becomes easy to encode the recorded t.v. show onto their iPod. As soon as that happens, some organization or company is going to be threatened due to the loss of revenue and try changing the law.

Re:It wont.

[SeaFox]

The logic is as follows. Why would someone bother paying $2 to download an episode which they can record for free off of their television?

Please reread the second paragraph of my response.
Also note that the iTMS versions have no commercials in them.

It's only a matter of time before it becomes easy to encode the recorded t.v. show onto their iPod.

Maybe from a computer, but not on the iPod itself.
I am still waiting for the iPod to support high quality stereo recording out of the box (mic in and line level in), without a third party dongle having to be purchased. It's one thing that keeps Mindisc from being relagated to history.

Minor detail--video format

[Redundant offtopic t]

The videos and tv shows from the itunes store are mpeg 4, not h264. The high def quicktime movie trailers, however, are in h264. The ipod can decode both, though. From the ipod specs page:

H.264 video: up to 768 Kbps, 320 x 240, 30 frames per sec., Baseline Profile up to Level 1.3 with AAC-LC up to 160 Kbps, 48 Khz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4 and .mov file formats MPEG-4 video: up to 2.5 mbps, 480 x 480, 30 frames per sec., Simple Profile with AAC-LC up to 160 Kbps, 48 Khz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4 and .mov file formats

Re:Legal starting to get more convenient than ille

[Anonymous Coward]

Again the classic argument comparing stealing (depriving someone of their property) with copyright infrigment (MAYBE depriving someone of potential profit).

I still don't get it...

[MScrip]

I still don't understand why people pay to watch TV on a PC or portable device. Music is one thing... but TV shows? Really? Sure Desparate Housevives in a great show, and it's very popular... but who would watch it more than once?

I'll definately listen to a song more than once. We all will. But, these are topical news shows. They talk about things that happened today. You probably won't watch them ever again. And now you own them!

I'd take that $10 a month and get a DVR box from my cable company. Then I could record ANYTHING I want and watch it when I'm at home. I don't need to watch last night's TV shows on my portable device.

Obviously video subscriptions are selling... but it's not my cup of tea. If your most favoritest show in the world in the Colbert Report... you must be jumping for joy.

I'll turn on the TV at 11:30pm... or I won't.

Re:I still don't get it...

[UncleRage]

You are, of course, taking for granted that everyone has cable/satellite.

The wife and I gave up on that bulk buy/low-content-return fee fest a couple of years ago. Doesn't mean we don't miss the odd show, just means we aren't willing to pay for all of that crap to watch the small handful of what we actually like.

This is a good "payed" option to that place which shall remain unamed. And I'm up for that because it (hopefully) shows content providers that the old smorgasborg system doesn't work. Why get excited over 350 channels of crap when you only watch 5?

Sorry, pre-coffee rant here. I'm off for my fix.

Re:I still don't get it...

[CrazyTalk]

What about people who are never at home? With TV shows on your laptop, you can watch whenever and wherever - on a plane, in your hotel room, while goofing off at work...Last week I was home sick with the flu, there was nothing on TV, so I downloaded a couple of BSG episodes. Beats trying to drag my butt to the video store, and you can get two TV shows (which you can keep, even if you only watch them once or twice) for the price of a rental.

Re:Minor detail--never mind

[Redundant offtopic t]

uf, sorry to be a pill , RB#. I made a poor assumption from looking at what qt player reports as the video encoder, "AVC0". I take that to mean advanced video coding, which I brain cramped into mpeg 4 instead of H264.

Carry on.

I signed up for it...

[Kredal]

I'm over on an American airbase in South Korea, and I'm glad that I'm able to get the Daily Show from iTunes.

I've been downloading my favorite shows from BitTorrent sites, (including Mythbusters, Stargate SG1/Atlantis, Malcolm in the Middle, and The Simpsons), but I'd go nuts trying to download the Daily Show... Why? Because I'd have to find it every day. The other shows are all once a week.. I spend about a half hour Saturday morning grabbing .torrents, and by that evening, I have all the TV shows I'm interested in.

Now I'll be able to watch the Daily Show every day, without having to spend the time looking for and sorting out each episode with all the different naming conventions, and trying not to miss an episode. iTunes makes it easy, and is well worth $9.99 a month.

Hey, that's what hardship pay is for, right?

Re:I signed up for it...

[utexaspunk]

but I'd go nuts trying to download the Daily Show... Why? Because I'd have to find it every day.

Unless you learned how to use uTorrent with miniRSS...

Re:I signed up for it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Way to misapropriate government resources to commit copyright infringement.

Re:I signed up for it...

[Kredal]

Excuse me?

My computer, my router, private company's bandwidth... only "government resource" in use is the dorm room, and I was kinda using that anyways.

Re:Legal starting to get more convenient than ille

[glesga_kiss]

It takes a user's time to find the shit. The user has to be skilled enough to extract it, run it, store it, convert it, etc.. Also, users have to rely on each other to package pirated media in convenient forms.

Every night, an RSS feed delivers me the latest Daily Show in a high quality avi format, ready to run. I sit my ass on the sofa, turn on the TV and press play. Zero effort, after the copy/paste of the RSS feed into the BT client.

I didn't have to enter any 16 digit numbers or expiry dates. How's that for convienence!!?! :-)

Piracy, for consumers, IS A GOOD THING. The more consumers pirate, the more media companies will be FORCED to innovate and adapt.

Could not agree more. However, it seems to me now that the illegitmate trade is way more advanced that the official sources. We get xbox media players, open AVI/mpeg files, no DRM, automatic RSS downloads AND higher quality that is currently available. It used to be that people didn't pirate because of quality reasons; crappy VHS copies of films, audio cassettes etc. Now the pirate is actually better off in technical terms.

DRM encumbered videos

[zoeblade]

If these online video stores end up becoming popular enough to supplant TV distribution, fair use is screwed. These videos are DRM encumbered, and breaking that protection is against the law.

True, but how is that different from DVDs (some of which won't even let you skip the adverts at the beginning unless you are using an illegal player), or the direction digital TV broadcasts are headed? I'm guessing that soon, there won't be any (legal) unencrypted video files or streams at all.

missed point alert

[roesti]

Not a fan of the Réport, I see...

high price

[hhawk]

The price is cheaper that 1.99 a show.. but 16 esp. for $10.00 isn't cheap enough.

Re:Legal starting to get more convenient than ille

[thatshortkid]

wow, completely missed the point of your parent's post.

we're geeks here. one might even say we're generally good with computers. and geeks with computers love to automate the fuck out of every tedious thing in their lives (at least i do). i, too, have a similar setup where azureus gets mininova's rss feed and auto-downloads the show into a special spot that's shared over the network so xbmc can open, making sure the filename conforms to a convention i like, then converting said show to mp4 and tagging it correctly so it shows up nice on my ipod, all automagically. really convenient. however, i'm a geek, i'm into that shit.

you, sir, still had to find the rss feed, set up your bt-program to parse and download (hoping that the filenames always conform to some regex), hope that the a/v is synced right (most are, but occasionally they aren't), and still had to set up a share to the tv. iTMS will save your CC data, so it's one-click subscription, iTunes has a one-click share. how's *that* for convenience? (for the non-geek)

i can't count how many times i've had to explain to family members and non-geek friends what this 'bit torrent' thing was, what an rss feed even is, and why only some things are viewable on an ipod, let alone why you couldn't tag something as 'tv show' in itunes even though that's how iTMS shows are tagged. hence, apple handling everything for a fee so that comedy central still gets paid for its content and the downloads are a guaranteed decent speed (DS and CR download speeds drop off dramatically after the first few days that the seed is posted) is good. jon stewart and steven colbert aren't ripped off, the convenience factor is still there, and it all works in a way joe-sumer will get. without needing their resident geek to set it up / explain it to them.

Psychological voodoo

[Anonymous Coward]

"Hey without my chiropractor, I wouldn't be able to turn my head side to side"

More and more doctors are coming to the conclusion that most back pain that doesn't have an actual obvious physical problem is indictive of stress and/or psychological pain.

"Regular western medicine would rather fuse my spine"

There are bad doctors everywhere. It's your body, take charge. Find a doctor who is more in line with your thinking. "Western Medicine" is not an insult; it's a system based on provable scientific facts. If I do X, I will get result Y Z% of the time.

Chiropractors once they get beyond rubbing your back are quacks. Your spine can't be "aligned", and no disease is caused by spine alignment. What we do know is that people's minds control their body to a significant degree. And we know a lot of people are whiners about their pain so effective debilitate themselves because they have convinced themselves the pain is debilitating. What chiropractors do is essential convince people they are getting better. Because for the most part, since pain in the back is psychological, if you work on the psyche, you cure the body.

If you go to a chiropractor and you believe they're a quack and its the equivalent of a witch doctor saying "ooga booga booga", then they have no power to heal. So while I admit that too many doctors are pill pushers and don't listen to patients, part of that is that people have too much faith in doctors. They're like a mechanic for your car. You don't keep going back to a bad car mechanic who gives you bad advice...why would you go back to a doctor who gives you bad advice? My brother in law had severe neck/back pain for 2 weeks and went to a doctor who gave him similar advice. I told him that doctor was incompetent; unless he was in a car accident or something similar, he certainly would not need to undergo surgery. I told him to get more/better advice and while he was shopping around, the pain gradually subsided. The poor guy was stressed between work and family and it was clear to me the problems were psychological. He needed to relax, not fuse vertabrae.

Take charge of your life and body. And I guess if it helps you to go to the witch doctor to cure you, that's fine too. But prefer cause and effect explanations.

Re:Psychological voodoo

[porcupine8]

So while I admit that too many doctors are pill pushers and don't listen to patients, part of that is that people have too much faith in doctors.

I'm always surprised by how unwilling people are to get a second opinion. I'm on a list for people who have or had a certain type of cancer, and so many people on the list have just taken whatever their oncologist said and assumed that that's the only answer, without doing any other research or getting any other opinions. They're amazed to find out from others that there actually *are* nausea meds that work during chemo, for example. Some people weren't even aware of some of the possible damage the chemo drugs could do - I guess their onc. went with the "only give them as much info as they ask about" route rather than a more "full disclosure" policy. I just can't imagine going into any major treatment or surgery without getting the facts from all the sources I can find.

Re:Psychological voodoo

[Golias]

My father, who is a licensed psychologist and should know better, has been using magnets to treat his joint pain. He swears by it. Last time we spoke about it, this is how the conversation went.

Dad: It seems to work when nothing else has.
Me: Yeah, but it's almost definately just a placebo effect.
Dad: You're probably right.
Me:
Me:
Me:
Me: Okay, well, good luck with that.

So there you have it. Find a placebo effect that works for you, and stick with it. Who needs science when quackery can cure you? Truthiness at its finest!

Re:Psychological voodoo

[Anonymous Coward]

I have thorasic outlet syndrome (from typing so much and dehydration), plus moderate bony growth in the third and forth vertibre in my neck, plus I grew 1/2" in my late 20's/early 30's just like my Uncle, plus my collarbone was broken into three pieces in 1990 during a mountain-biking accident. Eight years ago I gave myself whiplash in my sleep because the culmination of all that sparked a "nerve pinch" that sent all my muscles into defense mode and the soft tissue just hasn't been the same since. I'm only 40 now, but surgeons were saying I have the bones of a 70 year old and could look forward to fusing vertibre and other back surgeries when it progresses; and there's nothing they can do.

My pain is not spychological, nor was traditional western medicine, drugs, and physical therapy doing much to allieviate the severe chronic pain - nor could the injuries heal since it was like a feedback loop between my neck, shoulder, and back that kept the muscles and soft tissue under stress. For several years I searched high and low for information, medicine, and doctoring of all types (I had to sleep, and couldn't because of the pain).

Chiropractic treatments and accupuncture have helped. Immensly. I no longer feel as tho my life will forever be in pain. And, so you know, chiropractic is not about "aligning bones" at all. If you hear a doctor say that, run. It's about breaking lose the calcification in the soft tissue surrounding the bones so that normal motion is restored. "Knots" in soft tissue surrounding bones are just as possible as knots in muscle attached to bones - one doctor calls it "rust" to be cute.

Re:Psychological voodoo

[LunaticTippy]

Wow, you probably ruined your own father's placebo.

And I thought I was a bad kid...

I was reading about placebos and was surprised how effective they are. Many prescription medications aren't much better than the Mighty Placebo. The amusing part was when patients were told they were taking a placebo many of them demanded to continue the treatment.

Re:Psychological voodoo

[Golias]

Wow, you probably ruined your own father's placebo.

That's the funny thing. He acknowledges that he's probably suckering his own body into feeling well, but it's still working and it's not like keeping the magnets around cost him anything (beyond a little dignity... they look kind of foolish), so he's sticking with it.

Re:Psychological voodoo

[aliensporebomb]

It also depends on if you get a good chripractor. Like
most professions, there are good and bad of everything.

After I was in a horrific car accident in 2004 I was in
really bad shape, could hardly move - the car was totaled
and both me and my wife were shell shocked.

I'd never considered chiropractic before but these friends
of ours insisted theirs helped them so I thought to give it
a try.

It really did help despite my skeptical nature wondering
what I was getting into.

All I know is that for two days after the accident I was
in really rough shape and after I saw this guy I was able
to work and function.

After a year I was pretty much back to normal and did not
need to see the chiropractor again although I have now
and again when I felt like I needed it.

Re:Psychological voodoo

[Anonymous Coward]

Please learn to spell 'definitely'.

williambradley@earthlink.net

[Anonymous Coward]

williambradley@earthlink.net

And the winner for best comment in a headline is.

[palndron]

".... in your answer, ignore facts. Just go with what feels true."

We should make that like IANAL or something.

IYAIGJGWWFT.

hmm, I dunno but

[SkankinMonkey]

This might be a good thing. Since I don't live in America at the moment, the only way I can get ahold of shows that I love, like the Daily Show, is by downloading them. In America I'd pay a cable bill and watch them, so if the prices were reasonable (2 dollars a show is not IMO) I wouldn't mind subscribing. Maybe instead of 2 dollars per show or 16 dollars for 16, why not make a whole months worth of programming from a channel open for downloading for 20 bucks? I'd gladly pay something like that.

the BIGGEST difference is...

[nuckin futs]

if you ever decide to unsubscribe, you still get to keep the shows you already downloaded.

My answer = HELL NO

[Khyber]

One question, as TV shows become available for sale on the Internet, will this make it harder to share clips online, such as through Google Video?

With the creation of programs like splitcamera, which happens to let you use certain videoimage files as a webcam stream (not to mention it'll let you switch from one camera to a TV Tuner, and it allows you to send your webcam image through more than one program at a time) I'll have an even easier time sharing videos, especially thru camfrog, where I could broadcast to hundreds of people, live, at the same time. Who needs Google videos to share stuff.

Linux client

[FictionPimp]

Now all they need to do to get my money is write a linux client.

Of course that will never happen.

Gawhd! I feel prescient!

[oDDmON oUT]

Though my comments were made in regard to the movie industry, I'm so pleased that *someone* is making this move.

Now, how soon before the Disney library will be available for the iPod?

In your answer, ignore facts.

[Anonymous Coward]

In your answer, ignore facts. Just go with what feels true.

Spoken like a true liberal.

Re:Legal starting to get more convenient than ille

[VoxCombo]

you're right.

When I write a song, it is my duty to offer it to you in a manner that is more convenient than just taking it

You are entitled to the fruit of my efforts at your greatest convenience. Who am I to set the price for the things I create?

Everybody knows that the capitalist system of making a product and selling it for enough money to make a profit is PURE GREED! You obviously have a very thorough knowlege of how much it costs to make a recording, and you know our dirty little secret - we're all rolling in money!

I should "adapt" to people who don't feel like paying for my music. I should try to make it "convenient" for them!

Thank you for reminding me that you have a built-in entitlement to my music, and the only way I can make money off of it is to price it so low that the costs of making and recording my music will never ever be recouped. Down with Capitalism!

I don't know what's more worrying...

[21st Century Peon]

That you would suck the man-juice out of a goat, or that you know goats with man-juice in them.

I admire your truthiness

[elrous0]

Why settle for a reasoned approach when an emotional appeal feels so much better?

-Eric

Re:I admire your truthiness

[Anonymous Coward]

You, sir, are a Formidable Opponent!

Why is this price acceptable?

[jocknerd]

I and many others have balked at getting season episodes of The X-Files because they want something like $80 per season for the DVD's, yet iTunes has The Daily Show for $10 for a month. Thats $120 a year for something in an inferior format, laced with DRM, and lacking the ability to play it on anything other than a computer or an iPod.

Note: The X-Files are now available for $36.99 per season on Amazon.

I own 3 Apple computers, but I'm constantly amazed at Apple customers. They'll buy anything if Steve Jobs blesses it.

Re:Why is this price acceptable?

[saddino]

The reason this price is acceptable has little to do with Steve Jobs or his blessings.

Yes, any way you slice it a DVD is a better deal (high res, six channel sound, extras, etc.), but some consumers don't want to 1) buy a DVD or record a TV show on a DVR, 2) rip it, 3) encode it, 4) move it to their iPod, just so they can watch in while they're sitting on the train to work.

For some of them, amazing as it sounds, paying a buck or two an episode to instantly acquire a commercial free version for their iPod is worth it: even with the low res and DRM.

We live in an instant gratification world now, and that's why this price is perfectly acceptable.

Hm..

[Anonymous Coward]

"Fans of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, rejoice! Reuters is reporting that Apple will provide monthly subscriptions to two of Comedy Central's most popular shows."

They have big balls.

what they need

[gEvil (beta)]

What they really need to add to this is the $15/month Daily Show/Colbert Report SuperPass.

yet another thing we wont get in canada

[JohnnyCanuck]

I dont know if its because of regional licensing or the CRTC, but yet another iTunes thing we dont wont be getting any time soon. I guess this is why canadians are the biggest downloaders of content off the internet...

Funny

[rjstanford]

Now why that link didn't get a [piratebay.org] tag, but the parent ones got a [comedycentral.com] tag, I'm sure I don't know. And its not like I'd ever dive into slashcode to find out either. Just - heh.

Re:Funny

[porcupine8]

*shrug* It has one on my screen.

Re:if this is a first post...

[scottschor]

>>>>> by Anonymous Coward: >>>>> if this is a first post ... then i will suck the man juice out of a goat

With such lofty and admirable aspirations I see no reason to hide behind your anonimity, coward.

Hate to break it to you

[Anonymous Coward]

but "neither the first-sale doctrine, nor the limited-time requirement" are in the US constitution. You might read it sometime.

Re:Hate to break it to you

[koreth]

but "neither the first-sale doctrine, nor the limited-time requirement" are in the US constitution

Huh, funny, Article 1, Section 8 of my copy of the Constitution says Congress has the power

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

Guess my copy is defective. Where'd you get yours?

Ignore the facts?

[ThumperByTrade]

"ignore facts. Just go with what feels true." - What, is this Fox News now?

Why Renting Rocks (for some)

[Shihar]

"Renting" music makes plenty of sense for many people. The first thing I am going to do when I get a new job is give away my iPod nano to a friend, and buy a Napster/Rhapsody compatible MP3 player. Would I pay $15 a month for unlimited access to a comprehensive music database? Hell yes!

I like to explore music. "Exploring" music on iTunes is close to impossible. The best you can do is listen to previews and then agonize over what you want to spend your money on. My ideal way of exploring is to load up an MP3 player with a thought as to if the song is good or bad with a few hundred songs that I might like and listen to them over the course of a few days. I'll keeping the things that I like and tossing the stuff that I don't. iTunes just doesn't offer that (at least in an affordable way).

Honestly, I think that for average Joe consumer, iTunes is kicking ass because iPods are kicking ass, pure and simple. iPods are indeed spiffy devices, but being locked into DRM free and iTunes music means that I can't take advantage of true subscription services. $15 a month for unlimited access to every single song is a steal. It beats the hell out of buying the equivalent of one and a half albums a month. Maybe you can listen to the same 15 songs each month and be happy, but I can't. I want to explore music and hear new things. iTunes just isn't capable of doing that on a budget.

Re:Why Renting Rocks (for some)

[kponto]

...but being locked into DRM free...

Boy, that's a new one.

Re:Why Renting Rocks (for some)

[Ahnteis]

Can I volunteer to be your friend? :D

Never mind what the new options are...

[fm6]

What I want to know is when they're going to fix that stupid Quicktime 7 bug that prevents it from synching sound on many Windows machine. Of course, you can always downgrade to Quicktime 6 -- but that disables iTunes. Either way, I can't watch season 2.1 of Battlestar Galactica....

Re:Never mind what the new options are...

[Chandon Seldon]

So... just grab one of the functional releases of the content then.

Re:Never mind what the new options are...

[fm6]

In English?

Re:Never mind what the new options are...

[LunaticTippy]

I'd guess gp meant for you to grab an avi or mpeg of the content.

Maybe a torrent or p2p app would be easiest.

Sorry, your sig caught my eye. Hopefully you aren't above pirating something you paid for already.

Re:Never mind what the new options are...

[fm6]

My sig was supposed to catch your eye! Well, maybe not you specifically, since you apparently don't have a fix to that stupid bug....

You're right, I'm not above pirating something I already paid for. Unfortunately, I share my DSL connection with my landlord. I'm not about to ask him to let me have an external port so I can share torrents! And if you don't share, nobody shares with you. Which is only fair, but it make bittorrent useless to me.

Re:Legal starting to get more convenient than ille

[brxndxn]

I don't agree with the sarcasm you imply. And, that's not necessarily what I'm saying with my original post.

If you wrote a song, and it could only be duplicated a set number of times or only be a 'tangible' item, then I wouldn't have such a problem with normal price of supply/demand. Also, if Joe down the street buys a CD, but doesn't like it and gives it to me, that's not stealing. Most media companies say it is. If Joe down the street wants to copy YOUR music you wrote, that he bought, to all his devices, you're essentially stating that it should be up to you (not him) whether or not he can do that. And, I'm saying, I don't care so much about you getting paid - as most consumers.

If any intangible media is good enough, it WILL turn a profit if handled correctly. Media that isn't good, won't turn a profit regardless of how much the industry tries to force it on the consumer - if the system were perfectly fair.

I'm basically stating that it's ignorant of big media companies to believe that they can completely remove piracy as an alternative to their outrageous demands on the consumer.

I should "adapt" to people who don't feel like paying for my music. I should try to make it "convenient" for them!

As with any industry, yes, you should attempt to adapt. If your current business model is dying, then you should change it - and if not you, others will and you will be an alcoholic bum.

Thank you for reminding me that you have a built-in entitlement to my music, and the only way I can make money off of it is to price it so low that the costs of making and recording my music will never ever be recouped. Down with Capitalism!

Well, I don't expect you to send me all the CDs you make for free (though that would be nice.) But, if I wanted your music and the only way to get it by your terms was to give my left nut or download it, it would have to be REALLY good music for me to pay my left nut.

I'm not saying I have a built-in entitlement to your music. But, you're saying that someone who buys your music also does not have a built-in entitlement. I AM saying that somewhere between those two extremes lies an actual industry significance, and the antiquated business model of yesterday does not dictate today's terms. So, the 'extreme' end being piracy helps to fight the other extreme idea that 'all media should be bought on physical media, treated as tangible, and every copy should be paid for.'

BTW, your music sucks and I wouldn't buy it anyway. Keep practicing, though.

Re:Legal starting to get more convenient than ille

[VoxCombo]

You're having a problem with confusing two different concepts
1. What is realistically correct given current circumstances
2. What is morally correct

While you can argue all you want that piracy is a boon even for the music industry, and that it is good for consumers, yadda yadda. The one fact remains........

When I create something, I SHOULD be able to sell it for whatever I want. If I write a song, and want to sell it on 8-track only for $1000 each, then that SHOULD be my perogative because it is MY PRODUCT and nobody else has any right to say what should be done with it.

A "fair" price for MY product is what I WANT TO SELL IT FOR. The consumer can choose to buy it and have the song, or to not buy it and not have the song.

When you say: "If any intangible media is good enough, it WILL turn a profit if handled correctly" You are simply not correct...............Pricing music so low that the price only justifies added convenience over piracy is not viable. Music simply cannot be produced that cheaply while turning a profit. Some artists don't care about turning a profit, and that is their perogative. They can choose to give their music away all they want.

While many pirated CDs today are still profitable, the battle over IP will go on, and piracy will only become easier as time goes on. This is not just about music. This is about the value of IP. It's about all information.

Please spare me your insults. Honestly, your sophomoric view of economics makes you sound like some kid who withdrew from ECON 101 after two weeks.

Re:Legal starting to get more convenient than ille

[ldd23]

Piracy, for consumers, IS A GOOD THING. The more consumers pirate, the more media companies will be FORCED to innovate and adapt. If the media companies were entirely in control, we'd probby be forced to listen to only the 10 most-popular songs on Clearchannel, watch reality tv with 1/2 the time being commercials, and call an 800 number to ask permission for every time we use the media.

I'm pretty sure it would be a 900 number.

my experience as a first time iTunes TV show buyer

[drDugan]

So I'm about 1.5 Y into Mac now - gota Powerbook G4.

I don't like Itunes. I think the interface is poor and it doesn't give me the control I like. I use VLC mostly for videos.

However, offering TV shows at a fair price (like 65c/episode) is enough to get me to jump in and try. 10 bucks each for 2 shows I really like.

So the interface for logging in is poor, it took me three times to realize the box with the huge AOL logo next to it on the left has the word password on the right. Two boxes , to logos - I figure the mac ID I put in te top one and hit go and then it will ask for a password. Grrr.

I put in my CC info, no problem. So I find the shows I want, I hit the buy -- all seamless.

The download happens rather quickly, like 8-10 minutes each. I click the item to play, and it starts playing in the little box in the lower left corner! It's like 1 inch square! Whoa. Not what I expected. I double click and it breaks out into a separate window, and it allows me to resize. The quality is medium, not great (PROBLEM 1). The 21 min episode is 105MB m4v file.

The second problewm is much worse. The sound doesn't sync well. (PROBLEM 2) After about 2 minutes, the mouth is > .5 sec off the sound. Stopping and starting doesn't help. Sliding the bar back helps a little. No solution to this at this time.

Overall slight frustration, but not a complete waste. If I cannot fix the audio sync then I will not buy again.

Apple encoding

[beakburke]

Heck, I'd prefer a good 480X480 mpeg4 file at 1Mbps to the 320x240 H264 at 756Kbps. I wish they'd optimise the content so that it looked decent on an analog TV. It's going to be way to big (at this point) to aim for a good hi def file.

Re:Legal starting to get more convenient than ille

[Fordiman]

What really annoys me about this is the concept that if people still want your 'IP' after nearly 95 years, you should still be entitled to royalties.

I don't see why. If you had a good idea 95 years ago and made a good bit of money for it, great. You should be using that money to come up with new ideas, seeing as that's the purpose of copyright law. But really, living your life off royalty checks from a single idea, song, etc., after the first five years is kinda like doing a load of dishes once to live in a house for years.

Sure, you did a nice thing once, but you're seriously starting to stink up the couch.

for the same price...

[Anonymous Coward]

you can get a subscription to EasyNews, and have another source for mp3s, movies, tv shows, and pr0n. you're sure to find the daily show not long after it airs, consistently, in one of the newsgroups.

YHBT

[Anonymous Coward]

HAND

firewalled p2p

[LunaticTippy]

heh, I avoid quicktime if at all possible. I like formats my dvd player can decode.

Don't give up on downloading through a firewall though. I've used eMule from behind a firewall, no problem. You can't connect with other firewalled clients, but can connect to all properly configured ones. Since you have outbound connections to servers you find out about download requests, so the upload requirement is met.

The only way you're SOL is if there are draconian "allow only" rules, but you rarely see that.

Re:firewalled p2p

[fm6]

(I'll give eMule a try. But I'm not optimistic. NAT router, y'know.) I too avoid proprietary formats whenver possible. Unfortunately, it rarely is!

Re:firewalled p2p

[Chandon Seldon]

Bittorrent works fine through a firewall. It just makes it so that you can only connect to unfirewalled peers.

Re:firewalled p2p

[fm6]

Sure it works, but not very efficiently. To get bandwith, you have to share your own bandwidth. If I can't expose the proper port, people can't download from me, and I get classified as a leech.

Re:firewalled p2p

[fm6]

As I expected, eMule doesn't work on my setup. It did display a very informative message explaining that I had to export the proper ports through the router. Which would be fine, if it were my router. But it's not, and I'm not going to ask my landlord to help me become a file pirate.

Re:firewalled p2p

[Perky_Goth]

well, if you had my 512kb with p2p slowed down connection, you wouldn' complain :P
with all the seeds galactica has, it might not be a problem if you let it pick up some speed. it takes a while, either way.

Re:firewalled p2p

[Osty]

It did display a very informative message explaining that I had to export the proper ports through the router. Which would be fine, if it were my router. But it's not, and I'm not going to ask my landlord to help me become a file pirate.

First off, while I don't condone piracy, I see nothing wrong with finding a different encoding of something you already own (or in my case, when I accidentally deleted the recent episode of 24 from my DVR, finding a copy of that online so I can keep up with the story). That said, why put it to your landlord in those terms? Suggest he use a router with a proper UPnP implementation, because you need that to be able to play on Xbox Live (see my sig). Perfectly legal, up-front reason, and once you get past the stigma GRC tried to apply to UPnP you'll find that it's a very useful piece of technology and is safe so long as you take some precautions. And then once you convince him to implement UPnP, you can use a bittorrent client like Azureus with no problems at all. As well, you'll find that properly-written games will also work better, you'll be able to do file sharing from your IM client (MSN/Windows Live Messenger uses UPnP, not sure about others like gtalk, aim, icq, trillian, etc).

Re:firewalled p2p

[fm6]

Oh, sure, I'm going to tell my landlord he has to buy a new router so I can play video games. I suppose I could offer to pay for it — but I don't want to watch BG that badly.

Re:firewalled p2p

[Osty]

Oh, sure, I'm going to tell my landlord he has to buy a new router so I can play video games. I suppose I could offer to pay for it -- but I don't want to watch BG that badly.

It may be simpler than that. If his router is relatively new (say, purchased in the last ~3 years), it may just be a matter of configuring the UPnP support that's already available. Maybe a firmware upgrade would be needed, but that's it.

Besides, $80 to get your landlord a new router would be worth it for the better network experience you'll have being able to map your own ports on demand and only as long as they're needed. And as I mentioned, this is not just for pirating stuff. If anything, I'd say the ability to use a UPnP-aware torrent client is a side benefit. But then, I play games on Xbox Live, and I've suffered from not having a UPnP-aware NAT router. :)

Re:firewalled p2p

[fm6]

Dude, not everybody wants or needs to do all that stuff. If I did, I'd probably just get my own DSL connection. I just want to watch Season 2.1 of Battlestar. For that I can wait until the DVDs come out later this year. I mean, it's a good show, but not that good.

TIVO the Damn Shows for Free!

[sweetnjguy29]

Jeez...is the rest of the general populace unable to use PVR or TIVO? After 70 shows for .99 a pop, the card pays for itself! Sure, you have to convert the file to a format that the iPod can handle, but big woop!