Slashdot Mirror
The End of Content Ownership
adeelarshad82 writes "In recent weeks companies like Amazon, Sony, Google, Verizon, 24symbols and others have started to roll out 'cloud-based' content streaming and on-demand services (or plans) for movies, music and even books. Video on demand is nothing new, nor is streaming. The difference now, though, is that companies like Amazon want you to stream your own content. This article sheds some light on how the cloud, along with subscription and on-demand services, will transform our perception of content access and ownership."
At a time when ISPs are moving to cap bandwidth usage, and these companies are moving to streaming-only ideas, am I the only one cringing?
Don't get me wrong, I love my streaming media, but ISPs seem to really hate it.
"No one is more miserable than the person who wills everything and can do nothing." -Emperor Claudius 10 BC - AD 54
I keep documents I want to access from multiple computers in the cloud. But I see no reason to store 30 gigabytes of music on a pay service when I have a perfectly serviceable 2TB drive and a 30 gig iPod.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
A fine idea, but then reality sinks in when people start losing data and lawsuits are filed and the whole thing gets shelved for the next round in one or two decades.
Having licensed content available in the cloud is nice, but there is one issue, a major one:
Owning stuff in this manner is an investment can be easily turned off from a remote source, and there is absolutely zero one can do about it. With books, someone would have to enter my residence unauthorized with a fairly large truck and haul stuff out. Similar with DVDs. All a cloud provider can do is just click a button or enter a SQL statement, and the many thousands of dollars in a game/book/movie/music library are now rendered inaccessible. Lawsuit? Good luck. There have many people who threatened Valve with litigation because VAC banned them, but there has yet to be a single case that goes to court. EULAs are proven and are completely supported by precedents, so a cloud provider essentially states that "we are not responsible if you lose access to a product or your library", and someone with a large library does not have a leg to stand on.
Even if a lawsuit was successful, a bankruptcy of the cloud provider can render all the licensed content gone.
This is why people should have local, un-DRM-ed copies of their media they have purchased. It would take a lot more than just a delete to remove access from a library of physical media.
Isn't that what /. journals are for???
This article sheds some light on how the cloud, along with subscription and on-demand services, will transform our perception of content access and ownership."
Or, it sheds light on how several large industry players hope and wish the cloud will transform our perception of content access and ownership. More likely, that transformation of believes will fail to materialize, and us humans will continue to mean the same thing we've always meant when we use the words 'buy' and 'own'.
When there are relatively cheap 32Gig microSD cards on the market, along with tiny mp3 players, I don't really get the appeal of streaming. Portable devices are good because you can carry them around. Being a slave to a data connection seems like taking a step backwards.. like when we only had broadcast TV and couldn't record anything.
The problem is that content stored on someone else's server, or authorized from it, seems to go away within five years. Often less. That's happened with Circuit City's DIVX (1998-1999), Microsoft's PlaysForSure (2004-2008), WalMart Music (2007-2008), and seems to be about to happen to Microsoft's Zune. Yes, there's usually some way to pry the content loose, but it's usually difficult, unsupported, and won't be done by most consumers.
Of course, you can't sell used "cloud" content, and you can't play it on an unapproved device. You're caught between the service going bust and your devices becoming obsolete.
Bad idea.
End of Content Ownership? Seems more like the start of a great discussion on ownership. This is what the public really need to get excited about a legitimate conversation on the subject, real implications about what the average person can or cant do with stuff we have always thought we owned.
Goatse...
You fucking assholes with your 503s. What kind of dickheads are running this place?
This article sheds some light on how the cloud, along with subscription and on-demand services, will transform our perception of content access and ownership.
If you put your stuff in the cloud you dont own it. Period. Full Stop. You're just licensing it. If you stop paying, your stuff will disappear. That's the opposite of ownership.
Furthermore, none of his supposed points are actually advantages of the cloud, just advantages of digitized content, the cloud is just one of a myriad of storage and distribution methods.
Ownership will become an anathema as consumers realize they don't want to risk losing content as they switch services
How's the cloud supposed to fix that? I can't switch from amazon to netflix and expect all my stuff to still work.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
So my email is indexed, my searches are indexed, what I like to watch and listen is now also indexed, nearly a complete profile. How long until profile algorithms accurately to predict purchases, crime, disease, etc? This is the “Age of the Profile” That is to say that a complete picture of every connected person will soon be available. An interesting time indeed...
Nice Goatse.
Best solution? A private "cloud".
Dropbox already is a private cloud. I believe there are mobile clients already, not tailored to a specific data type but they simply let the system handle playing of different types of media.
The only line between what Amazon and Dropbox is doing, is that (a) Amazon uploads a digital copy to the cloud storage for you, and (b) Amazon makes an interface tailored to a specific media type.
Amazon would be OK with (b) but I think they will get spanked because of (a), which seems terribly similar to what MP3.com was doing. Legally if you just hold what the user uploaded directly you cannot be liable.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
When IP can be reproduced and distributed at zero cost, ownership and property rights have little to no meaning. People who use the term "imaginary property" have been saying this for at least 10 years, especially on Slashdot.
Well, this is now content creators agreeing with them. "Imaginary property" advocates have been saying for years that IP rights holders are free to exercise their exclusive rights to that IP by not selling it to anyone, thus maintaining their exclusive copy of the IP. (Implied there is that no one will get to actually experience the IP, making it useless as a source of income). Well, this is them doing half of that. Because copyright (i.e. exclusive distribution rights) is impossible to enforce, they are simply going to stop distributing the IP in "here's a copy of it, please don't copy it again and give it away" form, which basically stopped working over 10 years ago. They are instead providing access to their IP behind these cloud-based services which, in addition to providing the content itself, provide added value in ways such as organizing the content and allowing access from many devices/places/times. For most people, the content plus the additional value offered by these services is enough to get them to subscribe (i.e. pay). This allows the IP creators to continue making money from their IP. By the way, this goes for software too: think Steam.
This is in opposition to the "imaginary property" advocates that maintain that all content should be free-as-in-beer because it doesn't cost any money to duplicate, damned be the (sometimes significant) creation costs. Most of them use free-as-in-freedom arguments like "I own this, I should be able to do what I want with it", or arguments such as "I hate the RIAA/MPAA so I'm screwing them." Personally, I hate the RIAA/MPAA as much as the next guy, but what I hate even more is justifying pirated content by saying "well I'm just screwing the RIAA/MPAA". Guess what? You're also screwing the content creator, whose work you apparently want enough to pirate.
NSFW Goatse link!
We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are. -- Anais Nin
separating content from the application is the best design as you can improve the application. Look at all the different programs and innovations that happened with the mp3 file format. Now when you get vendor lock-in formats or only streaming you don't get any of this innovation.
It would make more sense, if we are not going to be able to download music to any device, to just have a streaming service of everything in the Amazon collection.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
When The Cloud matches my HD-based content serving home cloud I might consider it, but until then it's just so quick, easy and customizable to rip and stream my own stuff than to navigate all the content hosting websites. I do use NetFlix and their so-called instant streaming, but as of yet it's no match for a physical DVD (or ISO of same) quality and feature wise, so much so that I generally grab a torrent for a better viewing experience the next time I watch it, even though I already pay via subscription (which is kind of like TIVOing HBO or something I suppose).
We may be the last ones to relate to shows as physical items, but it'll be a long while I think before no one else does.
They're offering that as an alternative.
You can still download it if you like. But if you download it, you have to upload it again to be a part of your amazon cloud collection.
They're using their grammar skills there.
I do not mind streaming content or even a steam based client that holds all my games available for me to download at a moment of my choosing. What I do mind is these big name ISP companies who are making money hand over fist for our internet access already or they wouldn't be doing it for the price it is now deciding that a monthly limit with overages sounds like a good idea. This is just a scheme to make more money off of us and control what we are allowed to do. And I say no good sir!
I live next to the Interstate (I95) Where one of the biggest Fiber pips in the country runs. I live under 3 miles from the brick and mortar Version building. And there are Pop sights underground much closer. But all I get is DSL The phone lines that where run in the 60's
Hulu set at the lowest setting, 240p, maxes out the line. If I want the next setting up, I wait for data to load close to half the time.
So media streaming will have to wait until we get access thats better then the greedy ISP's we are stuck in the dark ages. Perhaps Roof top routers. At least I will not have to pay Version.
there will be some bad parts about this like subscription fees but it will be nice to have the ability to watch my content on any device, anywhere I am. I just wish there was a save feature to watch it later and they don't go nuts with fees.
There is no reason to own this kind of content. When access is ubiquitous, and cost is negligible, ownership becomes kind of redundant.
Proverbs 21:19
Somewhere around 2015 to 2020, at our current rate of advances over the last 40 years, we can expect to have storage devices that hold Peta-Bytes of storage. (http://www.engadget.com/2006/02/20/petabyte-disks-coming-in-5-years/) That's a 1000 TB drives for the same cost as your TB drive today.
Yes, streaming from the cloud is critical to this transformation. You have to be able to share information.
But who says we will not be able to back up the cloud? That we will have to rely on the cloud to exchange truly *huge* amounts of data?
By 2020, $100 should buy you a drive that would hold as much as **14 years** of HD Video. That's very likely to be more content that I will ever own, even should I manage to collect all my home videos and all the home videos of all my relatives and their friends.
(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_jaDcJXMqSL0/SvtiByNVLFI/AAAAAAAAALQ/oEUZfyV3IY8/s1600-h/FutureStorage.JPG)
The attempts by the telecommunications companies to restrict the internet to low quality videos of kittens, and by the MPAA and RIAA to eliminate content from the internet are doomed. It cannot happen. Even if the internet is destroyed by these forces, kids will pass around hard drives (or whatever tech replaces hard drives) that contain all useful content (indexed and searchable at high quality) by physically handing them off between each other if they have to.
Seriously -- all this streaming is for nought if there's not enough bandwidth to carry it all. People thought we had a problem w/ Netflix. When all these companies try to switch everyone to a streaming model, it'll just be giant fail.
goat.se link
You guys don't read the small print, do you? Once you upload, it's no longer your content unless you have a few hundred thousand dollars sitting around to convince a judge otherwise.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
The problem with everything being in the cloud is that the government can make the cloud go away. Didn't slashdot just have a discussion on how the internet helped with the changes in Egypt? Once everything is in the cloud, what is to stop some government from cutting off its people from the cloud?
This proposal is a lot more than being able to stream Avatar to any device you want. It is really about who controls your access to information (your own or licensed).
Certainly for some or even most people, easy access was the only benefit of actual ownership in the first place, so cloud substitution is a no-brainer. But there are other advantages of ownership.
Quality: While streamed quality will inevitably improve, it will never exceed the quality of owned media. Even assuming image and audio quality reaches parity some day, the reliability of streaming will never reach that of local transports. Not to mention the superiority of local fast forward/rewind and other niceties.
Permanence: A nasty fight over distribution rights could prevent a title from being available for streaming in certain areas, even if it had been available once before. If you own it you never have to worry about whether or not you can watch it later.
Multiple editions: There are multiple cuts of movies, and plenty of cases where the most recent edition isn't necessarily the best. We're not just talking Star Wars here--Cinema Paradiso, Blood Simple, E.T., etc. How many different cuts of the same film will streaming services offer? I'm guessing one under most cases, maybe two under extraordinary circumstances. If you own it you can watch the version you want.
Extras: Some of the extras on physical media are actually worthwhile on occasion.
As I said before, most people probably don't care about any of this. But these are nevertheless benefits of ownership that some people do care about.
Valve is slightly different. In the VERY plain english agreement you agree to upon joining, certain behavior warrants banning.
I can guaranty that somewhere in their EULA it states something like this "We reserve the right to change this agreement at anytime without notice."
But with Amazon's cloud, you DO own the content.. it's all your content that you are streaming... and you can download any of the items there.
(BTW, I have only played with it for a few minutes, and had Amazon put a couple of free songs of the day there.)
Maybe we need to accept that sharing ideas is necessary otherwise innovation will become stagnant. If content duplication is so easily possible, we need to adapt and provide services and products that are necessary and cannot be easily duplicated or replaced. We need to look at the common good and make progress, not just make money, otherwise our problems will just pile up and desperation and greed will become the primary motivators and things won't get any better.
I rather have a copy that I can move to my laptop, phone, whatever... I want access locally. I don't want to pay extra for "streaming" from somewhere when I can open it locally.
iTunes and others don't want you to keep anything local, as this method gives them COMPLETE CONTROL over WHO READS, LISTENS, WATCHES WHAT - not only that, they can also get all the data from specific, identifiable persons. I would say, this gives them even bigger value than the actual revenue they collect from streaming.
Most of you guys never heard or forgot already, that a prominent German terrorist group in the seventies was able to avoid police for a long time... until someone had a simple idea: let's check the library records, who borrowed certain books...
You really don't have to be a terrorist to see why you never want this content through the cloud... Hitler and Stalin couldn't have been happier to have this...
If I store my content in the cloud, who pays for my bandwidth when my kid wants to watch "Bamba" every night before bed?
Only buys things you can actually OWN. Everything else can go to hell.
You say that like these companies won't get exempted from metering.
Verizon already owns the last mile, and the other companies listed have enough cash to buy their way onto the white-list.
Am I the only one detecting the obvious astroturfing in a story purporting to equate some ebook generator called "24symbols" with Amazon, Sony and Google?
When I was a kid, we only had one Darth.
...to the next generation. I've got 12" vinyl and photographs I'll be able to pass down to my children. If all their music and photos are in the cloud, some of which they may not even 'own' in the view of comtent owners, what will they pass down to their children? A big chunk of our lives is turning so digital that there won't be much to represent who we were after we pass on.
In a world where all content is housed at repositories controlled by the content providers, as soon as someone decides that such content needs "editing" for artistic, financial or political reasons.. then there's NO recourse, or even a source of proof that the previous version ever "existed" at all. Sounds like 1984 really just arrived. So who DID shoot first, Han or Greedo? I SWEAR I remembered it otherwise.. but nope, I guess not.
*** DRINK MORE COFFEE ***
I don't WANT to own every book, CD, or DVD in the world, but I'd sure like to be able to access them all (well maybe not ALL, but I'll pick and choose LATER). I would consider the cloud to be a library (perhaps a library for hire, at least for some of the titles). I do own my favorite books, CD's and DVD's and you can try to pry them from my cold dead hands (and NOT till then!), and I also borrow books, CD's and DVD's from the public library. I can see extending this to some provider in the cloud as well. But I'll still want physical copies of some things......
How many mediated-access DRM schemes have to come and go, leaving the unwary screaming about how they paid for something and now it's gone, before they wake up?
This is big media's wet dream. Up to now, it's just been, "Uh, I guess I have to buy the White album again," when it's released in a new format, a new mix, a new cover (sic). With these schemes, big media is setting up to collect every time you listen to part of the White album.
Ownership? What's that? You are a mere licensee, subject to a license that is not slanted in your favor. Rights under the license? Whatever highly structured and highly limiting circumstances big media deigns to allow, subject to revision and reversion on their whim.
Even if you have the file sitting on your local server, if you need an internet connection to be able to play it, you don't have anything except somebody looking over your shoulder and putting their big grubby hands into your pockets.
Subscription services have always performed poorly where there's an alternative. (And with piracy, there's always an alternative).
It's especially true with books. People expect free access to them, as libraries have always provided. They're not going to accept anyone slapping a price on that.
Joel Spolsky had a Joel on Software post pertinent to this subject back in 2002, except then it was applied to understanding just why numerous large companies were jumping on the open source bandwagon. (Hint: it's not due to a sudden shift to a Stallman-esque viewpoint.) Joel talks a bit of economics, lays out the details, and provides a number of examples, like the one below.
Headline: IBM Spends Millions to Develop Open Source Software.
Myth: They're doing this because Lou Gerstner read the GNU Manifesto and decided he doesn't actually like capitalism.
Reality: They're doing this because IBM is becoming an IT consulting company. IT consulting is a complement of enterprise software. Thus IBM needs to commoditize enterprise software, and the best way to do this is by supporting open source. Lo and behold, their consulting division is winning big with this strategy.
Seen in this context, these providers are rapidly commoditizing an entire marketplace as a complement to increase the demand for their products and services.
Closely related reading: This timely post on Facebook's Open Computing Project.
P.S.: I certainly don't think that Joel's ideas capture the whole of the open source movement, but it's one valuable perspective. At minimum, there's also big wins for many parties, whether individuals or companies, who can cooperate to share the burden of a cost center (such as an operating system, a web server, etc.)
Seems to me the cloud makes it harder for the IP enforcers. Now a bunch of us can share an amazon cloud account, pool our music and videos?
So long as we keep checking for duplicates, the costs will be a fraction of the individual cost and the benefit will be the sum of everybody's files.
Choose your friends carefully, you cut the costs of media a lot also.
I would never buy something that is only stored in the cloud. If I buy it, I want to have it at home, lend it to my friends, rip it, jailbreak it, change its format, print it, resell it, make backups, feed it to my dog, set it on fire, do whatever I want with it! If you don't want me doing any of the above, you obviously don't want to sell me something, you want to provide me with a service. It is like going to the cinema. You pay 10 euros and you walk in the theater with a coke, you watch the movie, drink the coke, go home, end of story. Now, if you want to provide me with the opportunity of going to the cinema using my couch, my machine, my bandwidth and my coke, then this should not cost more than 2-3 euros. Ah, you would say, but now you can store the movie in the cloud, and watch it again! Therefore we set the price at 8 euros. Well, I don't want that because, you see, you tried again to sell me something without making me the owner of anything! I want a really cheap streaming service with no monthly fee that will let me click on a button and watch a movie, all legal, just this once, no questions asked, thank you very much.
Disclaimer: the price numbers are hypothetical and used to express relative prices. Anything that costs 10 credits in real life should in my opinion cost no more than 2 or 3 credits online. BTW, if anyone knows of a streaming service like the one described above that will work from Germany I would be quite grateful. Thanks!
Apparently, the hope is we'll stop perceiving that we own the things we buy.
When they say "the end of content ownership" they mean "by consumers".
I'm waiting for the announcement that anything we write or make ourselves will no longer belong to us. I'm actually sort of surprised that there isn't some effort to limit programs like Garage Band or Logic or Final Cut Pro so that anything we make with those programs belong to them instead of us.
I think that's the holy grail for them, really: when they can simply say "We own Music" or "We own Video" no matter who creates it.
And this is just a warmup for the battle that will occur when 3D fabricators start becoming really useful.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I only own a few DVDs, most of what I watch comes from Netflix. If they die tomorrow, I really don't care. And my video library is effectively infinite.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
First he screws up Star Wars, now the cloud. Does that douch3 bag have to ruin everything?
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Netflix sure as hell can't send you a suitcase full of blu-ray discs!!!
I know this is /. and I'm supposed to be outraged; but surely I'm not the only one who thinks of ownership as a burden. With Netflix streaming, I can (cheaply) obtain access to far more movies than I ever care to watch. If one becomes unavailable (Moon, I'm looking at you!) I'll just pick one of the thousands of other movies to watch.
Same thing with my kindle. There are more books on Project Gutenberg than I'll ever get through, not to mention cheap/free modern electronically published works, never mind conventional publishers. If I can't read one, I'll move to the next.
A movie collection (even ripped) has storage and maintenance costs (time, money, space, storage for the physical disks, etc.). A book collection even more so - shelving, enough home space to house said shelving, ways to protect the books from my kids. If it becomes valuable enough, you need the added expense of security (plus living where the crime rate is low enough for security to work). Take away enough of the crap "ownership" (it still isn't yours, really) and your life will still be just as enriched as before, but less of your time/capital (and use of time to generate capital) is wrapped up in "stuff". In fact, that sounds like a major component of "wealth".
Welcome to the Rentership Society! The only thing I miss from home ownership is my own plot of land for a garden. Okay, I also wish we had better soundproofing in our walls/floors, but that's due to our budget choices, not rentership in general...
For a monthly subscription fee, you get one free download a month, and they have sales where you can buy books for very cheap. They store your books in your "library" in the cloud, you can download them in their proprietary format, or burn them to DRM-free CDs. It would be nice if they had an uber cheap listen-once or this-book-will-self-destruct-in-30-days format. There aren't many books I want to listen to twice, so owning them forever isn't a big deal for me.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
I bought Dark Side of the Moon on vinyl, I want a refund for the CD. And I want the scratched ones streamed too. I bought the music, right?
All your database are belong to U.S.
Actually been doing precisely that - when Amazon Cloud Drive launched, I uploaded a ~5GB selection of my music collection and use it as my main media player at the office. [I'm glad I have the same local hard drive media repository that I did before; internet connection at the house sucks compared to the one at the office. :)]
Some of the stuff I got in .mp3 or .m4a form to begin with; for some of the stuff I keep in .flac, I had already made a 256 or 320kbps .mp3 copy for my regular portable player anyways.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
The cloud is great for my Steam save games, but I'll continue using my own software on my own hardware. I trust my 2TB hard drive more than some company that only cares about my data as long as I'm paying them a subscription fee..
"Streaming on the go" is a sham. Buy it once then load it onto your Device. With modern capacities, you can hold 40 hours of TV is you scrunch it enough.(If not today, try next year - concept holds.)
It rarely makes logical sense to only receive a 1-shot usage vs a saved usage of media. This whole streaming thing is the ultimate sham.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Actually, as I get older, I find i rewatch and reread less and less. It has to be pretty spectacular to warrant watching or reading again.
Music i most just stopped listening too. I think I got fed up with the music industries attitude. If it's not free (add on to cable TV or via ads) I just pass.
I have so many DVD's and CD's which I haven't listened to in years. It would be boring to do so again.
Right now at my desk, I'm not listening to any music and haven't.
When I go skiing- my buds listen to music but i find it ruins my enjoyment of skiing.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
If I buy something, I want to posses a copy of it. If I download it, I want to be able to download it once and once only. I'm not paying to be able to access something only when Amazon feels like it.
I'll avoid giving money to this business model wherever I can, but if it comes down the point that I don't have an alternative, I'll rip every damn thing to my hard drive. Once that data is on my computer, that data is MINE.
My biggest problem with cloud streaming is I don't want a corporate entity knowing everything I own/listen to/watch, etc. Because by default the government will know. And the way things are heading in this country, I wouldn't be surprised if we have another Red Scare of sorts to be used against citizens deemed Un-American by some faction looking to score points. Or heaven forbid, I upload something that I can't later prove I purchased (like I lost the DVD, CD, etc.). Could you imagine how much easier a witchhunt from the MPAA or RIAA will be if all our content is online at a public server?
I'm actually interested in something where I pay a monthly fee, and I can stream ANY movie or television show ever made.
Not gonna happen. The Walt Disney Company is not interested in releasing Song of the South.
Actually, as I get older, I find i rewatch and reread less and less.
You'll start rewatching again once you have or babysit children. A single-digit-year-old kid is happy watching the same animated film once a week.
Bandwidth really is cheap
If bandwidth is so cheap, including the last mile, then why does 5 GB per month on Verizon Wireless, AT&T, or Sprint cost in the neighborohood of 50 USD per month?
I only own a few DVDs, most of what I watch comes from Netflix.
Netflix is perfect for people who watch mostly at home. But say you want to watch a movie on a bus trip to another city. With DVDs, you fire up your portable DVD player. With paid downloads, you fire up your tablet. But with Netflix, you'll have to spend big bucks on a compatibly sized data plan and eat up a sizable percentage of your monthly cap.
or just stream it from Amazon as some sort of subscription with a flat monthly rate and a marginal cost of zero.
Until your ISP starts billing you for transfer overages.
it has been shown that the content creator receives very little for their efforts.
Freakin' citation please.
Courtney Love. Steve Albini.
For most artists, albums have always been a form of marketing, and not always a cheap one.
Even if this is true of recorded music, how is it also true of films and video games? Films don't have live performances, unless you count the uncommon Broadway adaptations. Video games used to be released to arcades first until those died.
Even as we move away from publishers?
Who other than a publisher will bankroll a large-production-value film? Who other than a publisher will submit an indie video game to be digitally signed by a console maker?
actual laws (hopefully made without corrupting influences)
I laughed out loud. Because MPAA members control TV news, the MPAA gets to choose which issues and which candidates the general public is aware of. For example, they won't do a piece on people running up against the restrictions of DRM, nor will they do a piece on the various export-the-DMCA treaties that the United States has negotiated over the past few years. And any candidate proposing real change to copyright's scope in favor of librarians and the public will suffer the same fate as Ron Paul in his 2008 presidential run: unable to get a word in edgewise at the televised debate.
No matter how you deliver content, people will be able to rip it, convert it, copy it, (re)distribute it.
How will people rip and convert a video game played over OnLive, where the only things sent over the wire are keypresses and video frames? The best that end users can do is rip and convert a playthrough video.
Because DVDs use UDF, not ISO. ISO would mean you've recompressed the film to fit into the 0.7 GB of a CD.
Cost won't be negligible until some sort of breakthrough in U.S. mobile broadband pricing.
I'm waiting for the announcement that anything we write or make ourselves will no longer belong to us.
That announcement has already come: Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music. If the incumbent record labels want to shut an indie recording artist down, they can have their co-owned music publishers dig up some old song that might share ten notes in common and sue for plagiarism (that is, infringement without attribution).
I'm actually sort of surprised that there isn't some effort to limit programs like Garage Band or Logic or Final Cut Pro
"Academic versions" of 3D programs, rapid application development programs, and the like already have watermarks and/or noncommercial licensing restrictions on their output. Incumbent copyright owners have sued over ten-second snippets included in independent films and won, leaving no way to establish the setting of a piece through diegetic music except through the RIAA. The majority (that is, over half) of the budget of the film Clerks went to music clearance. Game console devkits aren't even sold to individual developers or to companies that rely on telecommuting.
Old legal term for accessing something you don't own. Ownership entails access. Access implies ownership, at least to a limited or shared degree.
What I'm saying is that companies who want to abolish ownership by offering access instead don't realize that access is basically ownership with a new name. "Unlimited Access" is ownership. It entails all the same rights.
The article is complete bullshit.
First of all, if I put my own content on the cloud, then it is still my own content, and not the host's. I would certainly keep the content locally in case the cloud goes away some day.
Secontly, let's please cut the crap about piracy not being theft, alright? piracy is theft of profit: when you enjoy something I created and you did not pay for, I am deprived of some legitimate profit. Also, copyright does not limit innovation in any way, we are free to produce the greatest works and deliver it for free, if we can.
Almost everyday there is a slashdot article about how copyright needs to be reformed and how content ownership is changing...that's complete bullshit. It is the bullshit of a generation addicted to enoying stuff for free, thinking that all movies and songs and games are theirs for the taking. Well, these things are not free, sorry. And no matter how you put it, what one creates is not free and it will never be unless he/she explicitly say so.
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Secontly, let's please cut the crap about piracy not being theft, alright?
No, it's not all right, and your specious argument was tired the last 23423523123 times we heard it. If I wouldn't have paid for it whether I listen to it or not then you're not being deprived of any profit. Your reward for imagining that you should profit will be imagining you had money. If someone buys an illicit copy of your work, then something like theft is occurring. You are being deprived of the opportunity to make a reduced-cost sale.
Also, copyright does not limit innovation in any way, we are free to produce the greatest works and deliver it for free, if we can.
The most important limitations of innovation which could occur due to copyright are prevented by fair use law, but that does not mean that there are none remaining. At minimum you are guilty of hyperbole.
And no matter how you put it, what one creates is not free and it will never be unless he/she explicitly say so.
It depends very much on your definition, doesn't it? If it can be copied, it will be copied. That is a kind of freedom.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
There have been people trying to re-centralize computing, in various forms, since the invention of the minicomputer. It ain't gonna happen. Really, this article just illustrates WHY it ain't gonna happen. Notice that TFA is announcing the creation of cloud services...not that people are actually USING them.
I'm sick of big companies making lousy clouds. I've had to start making my own cloud. http://www.matthewiscloud.com
it's full of stupid ideas!
This isn't the end of content ownership, but rather the (protracted) beginning of it. Never before has content been so thoroughly owned, in fact, and that's the problem.
A lot of colleges and universities believed that, too. At least until they found out otherwise.
No, they were threatened with legal action and caved. Did any trial actually go forward where the studios actually won, instead of a college either just paying out money without trial or settling before the trial ended? I don't recall any.
Not all the colleges folded either, some ignored the threats and nothing happened.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If I wouldn't have paid for it whether I listen to it or not then you're not being deprived of any profit.
But the problem is exactly that: you didn't pay for it, so you are not entitled to listen to it.
Your reward for imagining that you should profit will be imagining you had money.
No, it's not imaginary money at all. Works of art, songs, video games and other similar things are real products, and therefore there is real money to be made from selling those products.
but that does not mean that there are none remaining
Feel free to say which are remaining.
It depends very much on your definition, doesn't it? If it can be copied, it will be copied. That is a kind of freedom.
So, If I can kill you, then I will kill you? and that is acceptable?
Your comment shows exactly what's wrong with society nowadays: morals have gone down the drain. People will form any possible excuse to get what they desire, without any moral constraints.
But the problem is exactly that: you didn't pay for it, so you are not entitled to listen to it.
By law of man, perhaps. I do not consider that to be a natural law. I didn't pay for the sun, but I enjoy its warmth. It costs no more to operate the sun whether I am here or not.
So, If I can kill you, then I will kill you? and that is acceptable?
That is a stupid thing to say and you are a stupid person for saying it. That clearly deprives someone of something, whereas listening to music that I haven't paid for and never would have paid for deprives no one of anything.
Your comment shows exactly what's wrong with society nowadays: morals have gone down the drain.
You're equivocating copyright infringement and murder and my morals have gone down the drain? You're not even fit for Soylent Green.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
By law of man, perhaps. I do not consider that to be a natural law. I didn't pay for the sun, but I enjoy its warmth. It costs no more to operate the sun whether I am here or not.
Stupid analogy. The Sun was not constructed by people; no one expects to get fed and pay bills by operating the Sun.
That is a stupid thing to say and you are a stupid person for saying it. That clearly deprives someone of something, whereas listening to music that I haven't paid for and never would have paid for deprives no one of anything.
Your action deprives someone of legally entitled profit.
The 'never would have paid for' argument is circular: you don't pay for something, and then you say that you would have never paid for it anyway to justify that you did not pay for it. For that reason, it is not a valid argument.
You're equivocating copyright infringement and murder and my morals have gone down the drain? You're not even fit for Soylent Green.
No, I am not making copyright infringement and murder equal. I made the murder reference to show you that your quote "If it can be copied, it will be copied" is invalid: just because something can happen, it does not mean that it should happen. That's exactly what morals are about.