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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."
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.
"Everything worth innovating today will go to court tomorrow."
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.
"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.