Well now you don't even need to go more than a year or two behind new releases. God of War 3, FFXIII and many other big titles that came out earlier this year are now available through Gamefly's used game sales for $20 or so and they haven't even been out an entire year. I only buy a game new if I know that I am going to get tons of hours of gameplay out of it.
Yes but an Ipad can't rip a CD to lossless in 4 minutes like my desktop's drive. An Ipad doesn't have a very large hard drive either. All those lossless files are big.
HAHA yeah, even though out of my 50,000 tracks a small number of them are from RIAA owned labels. I'd like to see the Japanese labels try to sue me for downloading their music.
But if I bought the music I would have bought a CD and gotten lossless files. Surely there is some inherent benefit there to buying. Of course certain sites make it just as easy to pirate lossless files, in which case $2.97 a song is reasonable. Too bad though for the person who has pirated 20,000 songs because they still would owe around $60,000. Also what about the pirate who downloads songs from albums with 50 tracks like a soundtrack album? Shouldn't that downloading be converted into buying the album three times for a total of anywhere between $45 and $60 rather than paying $150?
One thing I would like to see is some defendant where the RIAA sues someone who uses downloading to sample and buys a ton of albums each year. The RIAA can't as easily suggest that by downloading music a person is hurting the industry if that same downloader is actually buying way more music than the average consumer.
The article mentions both piracy and the sale of counterfeited goods. However, it is unclear if this simply stops web sites selling bootleg copies of movies, or also allows shutting down of sites where people post movies (through torrents or direct downloads). If it is about shutting down web sites where counterfeited movies are sold then I am all for it, provided they fix the inherent due process problem. At least if you are going to get a court order, do it in the form of an injunction so you have to show likelihood of success in some other suit still pending.
Just as the declarations of international human rights in the past, even if this is passed, it will be another silly international resolution with no binding effect on individual countries. While I agree with the purpose of this law more than the international declaration on human rights, it doesn't make this any less pointless. I would certainly like to see countries stop regulating the internet but there has to be a better way to go about protecting individual internet freedoms.
Bah so if I read this article correctly, all those times I spent shortcutting the annoying puzzles I face in RPGs set me up to forever struggle with the same puzzles when presented to me until I actually try to figure them out! Its no wonder I still reach for the guide book. The positive of this article though is what I think many knew instinctively is confirmed; by challenging yourself with a task to determine the answer yourself, you actually remember that answer better. [Of course one would hope you formulated the correct answer in the process otherwise you would be filling your head with wrong answers.] I for one have always avoided the use of those blasted GPS navs because I lack the visualization necessary to understand how far 500 feet or 1/2 miles is when the voice tells me my turn will be X feet away. This of course keeps me driving the way I should be if I want to build a mental image of the streets I travel so I use google maps to find out where my destination is and then make my own map for getting there.
I agree, this is sad and not likely to be very beneficial. If I heard this poor of a recording in anything as a soundtrack I would laugh at the creator for using such poor recordings. I would rather not listen to anything than this drivel.
This is interesting but I am surprised that there is even a demand online for people to download bollywood films. I think any web site who refuses to comply with a takedown notice deserves what they get.
Music is the most likely to be pirated also because taste in music is much more personal than movies or video games and it is far more difficult to rely on reviews to determine if something is going to be worth checking out. Usually I can tell from a movie trailer and a few reviews if a movie is worth watching. This is a one-time payment for a single experience that I can easily skip on and watch the same movie on Netflix down the road if I choose. Video games are usually pretty easy to predict if you will like it by checking out the numerous gameplay videos and video reviews out there that tell you exactly what you are getting into with the game.
Music, on the other hand, is much more difficult to review or predict if you will like a new release even if you are a fan of the group. Plus, unlike movies and video games where there is essentially one mainstream avenue of releases that is easy to follow, various labels are releasing music constantly and users don't always know what is coming out. I find it is much easier to find what new releases are out there by browsing a web site that provides downloads than any single online web site. Sure certain specialized sites are sufficient when it comes to niche genres of music and following their new releases page can sometimes be enough but I feel like I am more likely to ignore a great new group if I just use the traditional outlets. On the movie and video game side of things there are fairly reliable web sites that tell you what new releases are out on a given week and what is coming down the pipeline.
Well I listen to a variety of genres of music and I buy movie soundtracks, anime and video game soundtracks, heavy metal, hard rock, and japanese pop/rock etc. As I mentioned in the first post, some of the labels, especially those releasing older movie soundtracks usually limited edition stuff tend to give plenty of samples that I could easily determine if it was for me by sampling what is provided.
However, the labels that put out soundtracks from new movies and TV rarely have many samples posted. Varese Sarabande used to post four or five decent length samples on their web site from a new release but has stopped posting samples altogether. Anything I buy of Japanese origin I will download first just because of the cost of importing. Most Japanese bands frequently release singles in anticipation of a new album but they aren't always represented on the album.
Then finally there is heavy metal [I use loosely to include all types of metal I enjoy] in which most labels will provide one track to sample if you are lucky and a few bands who are more independent might post three tracks on their myspace page. I have been lucky that a few of the recent albums I bought based upon the one track available turned out to be good.
In my experience bands who are independent enough that they post a ton of music on myspace and youtube I probably wouldn't know were releasing music unless I stumbled upon them somewhere. Those types of artists would benefit from illegal downloading because the user who sees a familiar poster putting up a debut album has the benefit of their past with the uploader and might check it out when they might otherwise ignore it.
Music stores? I don't think those exist much around here anymore. Even if they did, I doubt they would carry much of the metal and rock I would want to sample. From my experience when I tried to go to the few stores that still sell CDs they don't stock the music in the store but tell me to order it off their web site.
I really wish the music industry would realize how important it is to users to have an idea what they are getting before they buy it. I buy tons of music from small film music labels who put out limited edition soundtracks and they are by far the best when it comes to providing samples of their new releases. Film Score Monthly posts 1 minute clips for each track on their new release, in low bitrate but at least it usually gives me a good idea what I am getting into. Labels should provide moderate bitrate (192kbps) streams of the music online (or at least half of a new album) and offer lossless downloads for a reasonable price and users wouldn't need to download as much. As it is, most of the time I find the only way to discover a new group is to download an unknown album and give it a listen. I've purchased a number of debut albums and albums from independent artists after downloading their music if I find that it is impressive. There is way too much music out there to do otherwise and still have the finances to support quality music. If labels provided better samples, I would be able to discover the same groups without resorting to downloads.
I wonder how many of these people are subscribers of netflix and could validly wait and rent it as part of their monthly fee they pay but just download it because the dvd release is delayed pointlessly compared with the release of the academy award screeners. Haven't they realized by now that by making users wait a long time to see the movie that everyone is talking about, those same users are going to download the movie online rather than wait for it to be available on DVD or Blu-Ray? I know with these stupid agreements with movie companies to delay DVD availability on netflix in the hopes of getting me to buy it, I prefer to stick it to the stupid companies and download it earlier rather than waiting.
Often times rather than using the worthless samples available online to determine what I should buy, I use them to determine what I should download. I have a certain threshold of quality that I have to hear from samples before its even worth my time to download and listen. Then the stuff that is really good and I listen to over and over I buy to support the artists. Even more so I buy their future albums after I develop an attachment to groups. If companies were to somehow prevent me from downloading, I would hope that they make available better forms of sampling online because the current model doesn't work. 30 second samples on amazon in super low bitrate that would be unacceptable on a file sharing site is not sufficient to give me a good idea what something sounds like.
A good example of the importance of sampling through downloading is a recent purchase. I listened to samples of the soundtrack to Leap Year (composed by Randy Edelman) on Varese Sarabande's web site and thought to myself "ok this is pretty boring" because they sampled the non-traditional celtic pieces rather than the orchestral ones. Then later my friend tells me as you say "you have to listen to this, its really good" and I download it and love it. I then purchased a copy because I thought it was a fantastic album. If I hadn't downloaded it I would have forever ignored it because they can't pick representative samples.
I actually have cable in my house that my parents pay for but I never watch anything on it because bittorrent is, as you said, very convenient. I know we wont be getting rid of the cable subscription anytime soon because my dad can barely figure out how to get a DVD working, let alone stream anything or watch TV on a computer. I think my show total is maybe 10 or less but I try to cut it down and avoid new series.
Or Merlin, my BBC show of choice. But I agree it seems nuts that we still have a delay between the original airing and the US airing. I watch the original BBC cuts because I fear they will cut something out of the show when they put it on NBC. I'm surprised that no TV show equivalent of Crunchyroll has popped up yet to provide viewers with an option to watch British (and other European) television content on the same day it airs in the original country. If Crunchyroll can give me same day streams in HD with subtitles of anime content from Japan, the same thing can be done with British TV.
I still wonder why anyone in my class would bother to login to the school email. My first day of any school, i've logged in, set up forwarding and never logged in again. Yet I still see the majority of my classmates checking their school email as a separate thing and you wonder why nobody gets the "important" faculty mail.
I have no problem with hard games per se but I think when you have something as widely known for being hard as Demon Souls, it would be beneficial to sales for the game to include an easier difficulty for those of us who don't appreciate frustration as a key to enjoyment. Otherwise I'll just ignore the game and stick to my flexible difficulty rpgs.
I don't see how piracy is much different than being friends with a book addict who has mountains and mountains of books ready to lend you more than you could possibly read in a lifetime. I've bought very few books because when I walk into the store there are tons of books to choose from and I am not about to randomly judge a book by its cover and pay money for something I don't know if I'll like. Sure I could read book reviews by various publications but its much easier and cheaper to have my friend lend me everything after he has read it and told me what is good. I sure hope he doesn't get a Kindle anytime soon though or my source for free books will dry up quick!
Its simple, unless you have a Kindle or other similar E-book reader, its not likely that you will want to read a pirated book on your computer unless you are used to reading stuff on your computer everyday for hours. Reading a physical book is much nicer.
Thankfully though, Music is not region encoded, so I can import music from Europe and Japan and not have any difficult playing the CD on my system or ripping it to listen to in lossless for archival purposes. Sadly, this is not always the case with video games. Yes I can import games if I want to play the Japanese version - IF it is for the Nintendo DS or Playstation 3. But most of the time if I want to import a game (that the US branch of various companies refuses to localize) for Xbox 360 or Wii, I have to modify my system, voiding the warranty and making everyone assume I modified it because I am a pirate. So what happens here? I have a few imported DS games and tons of imported CDs but am at the mercy of various US publishers to localize, translate and release games from Japanese that I am interested in. (Although with xbox 360 it is up to the company who releases the game whether or not they want to region code it).
The problem with the way companies are adapting to the systems of online piracy is that when we move to a system dominated by Itunes and other digital download services, the content is limited by region. Thus I need to have a Japanese credit card or Japanese Itunes card with associated address to sign up for an account and purchase Japanese Itunes exclusive games. In that instance, the companies are making it so difficult for me to support the content creators that its no wonder I download the same content.
On the other hand, the Anime industry has realized that American consumers want to watch Japanese aired Anime on the same day as it airs in Japan with English subtitles and various sites have sprung up, such as Crunchyroll, where you can pay a monthly fee to get access to HD streams of new release anime with subtitles and support the content creators at the same time. This is the sort of adaptation these companies should be looking into rather than limiting the reach of their products by region.
Slashdot Mirror
Well now you don't even need to go more than a year or two behind new releases. God of War 3, FFXIII and many other big titles that came out earlier this year are now available through Gamefly's used game sales for $20 or so and they haven't even been out an entire year. I only buy a game new if I know that I am going to get tons of hours of gameplay out of it.
Also who uses laptops on their lap for extended periods of time really? I always use my laptop at a desk like it should be.
Yes but an Ipad can't rip a CD to lossless in 4 minutes like my desktop's drive. An Ipad doesn't have a very large hard drive either. All those lossless files are big.
HAHA yeah, even though out of my 50,000 tracks a small number of them are from RIAA owned labels. I'd like to see the Japanese labels try to sue me for downloading their music.
But if I bought the music I would have bought a CD and gotten lossless files. Surely there is some inherent benefit there to buying. Of course certain sites make it just as easy to pirate lossless files, in which case $2.97 a song is reasonable. Too bad though for the person who has pirated 20,000 songs because they still would owe around $60,000. Also what about the pirate who downloads songs from albums with 50 tracks like a soundtrack album? Shouldn't that downloading be converted into buying the album three times for a total of anywhere between $45 and $60 rather than paying $150?
One thing I would like to see is some defendant where the RIAA sues someone who uses downloading to sample and buys a ton of albums each year. The RIAA can't as easily suggest that by downloading music a person is hurting the industry if that same downloader is actually buying way more music than the average consumer.
The article mentions both piracy and the sale of counterfeited goods. However, it is unclear if this simply stops web sites selling bootleg copies of movies, or also allows shutting down of sites where people post movies (through torrents or direct downloads). If it is about shutting down web sites where counterfeited movies are sold then I am all for it, provided they fix the inherent due process problem. At least if you are going to get a court order, do it in the form of an injunction so you have to show likelihood of success in some other suit still pending.
Just as the declarations of international human rights in the past, even if this is passed, it will be another silly international resolution with no binding effect on individual countries. While I agree with the purpose of this law more than the international declaration on human rights, it doesn't make this any less pointless. I would certainly like to see countries stop regulating the internet but there has to be a better way to go about protecting individual internet freedoms.
Only if you are a dude.
Bah so if I read this article correctly, all those times I spent shortcutting the annoying puzzles I face in RPGs set me up to forever struggle with the same puzzles when presented to me until I actually try to figure them out! Its no wonder I still reach for the guide book. The positive of this article though is what I think many knew instinctively is confirmed; by challenging yourself with a task to determine the answer yourself, you actually remember that answer better. [Of course one would hope you formulated the correct answer in the process otherwise you would be filling your head with wrong answers.] I for one have always avoided the use of those blasted GPS navs because I lack the visualization necessary to understand how far 500 feet or 1/2 miles is when the voice tells me my turn will be X feet away. This of course keeps me driving the way I should be if I want to build a mental image of the streets I travel so I use google maps to find out where my destination is and then make my own map for getting there.
I agree, this is sad and not likely to be very beneficial. If I heard this poor of a recording in anything as a soundtrack I would laugh at the creator for using such poor recordings. I would rather not listen to anything than this drivel.
This is interesting but I am surprised that there is even a demand online for people to download bollywood films. I think any web site who refuses to comply with a takedown notice deserves what they get.
Music is the most likely to be pirated also because taste in music is much more personal than movies or video games and it is far more difficult to rely on reviews to determine if something is going to be worth checking out. Usually I can tell from a movie trailer and a few reviews if a movie is worth watching. This is a one-time payment for a single experience that I can easily skip on and watch the same movie on Netflix down the road if I choose. Video games are usually pretty easy to predict if you will like it by checking out the numerous gameplay videos and video reviews out there that tell you exactly what you are getting into with the game. Music, on the other hand, is much more difficult to review or predict if you will like a new release even if you are a fan of the group. Plus, unlike movies and video games where there is essentially one mainstream avenue of releases that is easy to follow, various labels are releasing music constantly and users don't always know what is coming out. I find it is much easier to find what new releases are out there by browsing a web site that provides downloads than any single online web site. Sure certain specialized sites are sufficient when it comes to niche genres of music and following their new releases page can sometimes be enough but I feel like I am more likely to ignore a great new group if I just use the traditional outlets. On the movie and video game side of things there are fairly reliable web sites that tell you what new releases are out on a given week and what is coming down the pipeline.
Well I listen to a variety of genres of music and I buy movie soundtracks, anime and video game soundtracks, heavy metal, hard rock, and japanese pop/rock etc. As I mentioned in the first post, some of the labels, especially those releasing older movie soundtracks usually limited edition stuff tend to give plenty of samples that I could easily determine if it was for me by sampling what is provided. However, the labels that put out soundtracks from new movies and TV rarely have many samples posted. Varese Sarabande used to post four or five decent length samples on their web site from a new release but has stopped posting samples altogether. Anything I buy of Japanese origin I will download first just because of the cost of importing. Most Japanese bands frequently release singles in anticipation of a new album but they aren't always represented on the album. Then finally there is heavy metal [I use loosely to include all types of metal I enjoy] in which most labels will provide one track to sample if you are lucky and a few bands who are more independent might post three tracks on their myspace page. I have been lucky that a few of the recent albums I bought based upon the one track available turned out to be good. In my experience bands who are independent enough that they post a ton of music on myspace and youtube I probably wouldn't know were releasing music unless I stumbled upon them somewhere. Those types of artists would benefit from illegal downloading because the user who sees a familiar poster putting up a debut album has the benefit of their past with the uploader and might check it out when they might otherwise ignore it.
Music stores? I don't think those exist much around here anymore. Even if they did, I doubt they would carry much of the metal and rock I would want to sample. From my experience when I tried to go to the few stores that still sell CDs they don't stock the music in the store but tell me to order it off their web site.
I really wish the music industry would realize how important it is to users to have an idea what they are getting before they buy it. I buy tons of music from small film music labels who put out limited edition soundtracks and they are by far the best when it comes to providing samples of their new releases. Film Score Monthly posts 1 minute clips for each track on their new release, in low bitrate but at least it usually gives me a good idea what I am getting into. Labels should provide moderate bitrate (192kbps) streams of the music online (or at least half of a new album) and offer lossless downloads for a reasonable price and users wouldn't need to download as much. As it is, most of the time I find the only way to discover a new group is to download an unknown album and give it a listen. I've purchased a number of debut albums and albums from independent artists after downloading their music if I find that it is impressive. There is way too much music out there to do otherwise and still have the finances to support quality music. If labels provided better samples, I would be able to discover the same groups without resorting to downloads.
I wonder how many of these people are subscribers of netflix and could validly wait and rent it as part of their monthly fee they pay but just download it because the dvd release is delayed pointlessly compared with the release of the academy award screeners. Haven't they realized by now that by making users wait a long time to see the movie that everyone is talking about, those same users are going to download the movie online rather than wait for it to be available on DVD or Blu-Ray? I know with these stupid agreements with movie companies to delay DVD availability on netflix in the hopes of getting me to buy it, I prefer to stick it to the stupid companies and download it earlier rather than waiting.
Often times rather than using the worthless samples available online to determine what I should buy, I use them to determine what I should download. I have a certain threshold of quality that I have to hear from samples before its even worth my time to download and listen. Then the stuff that is really good and I listen to over and over I buy to support the artists. Even more so I buy their future albums after I develop an attachment to groups. If companies were to somehow prevent me from downloading, I would hope that they make available better forms of sampling online because the current model doesn't work. 30 second samples on amazon in super low bitrate that would be unacceptable on a file sharing site is not sufficient to give me a good idea what something sounds like. A good example of the importance of sampling through downloading is a recent purchase. I listened to samples of the soundtrack to Leap Year (composed by Randy Edelman) on Varese Sarabande's web site and thought to myself "ok this is pretty boring" because they sampled the non-traditional celtic pieces rather than the orchestral ones. Then later my friend tells me as you say "you have to listen to this, its really good" and I download it and love it. I then purchased a copy because I thought it was a fantastic album. If I hadn't downloaded it I would have forever ignored it because they can't pick representative samples.
I actually have cable in my house that my parents pay for but I never watch anything on it because bittorrent is, as you said, very convenient. I know we wont be getting rid of the cable subscription anytime soon because my dad can barely figure out how to get a DVD working, let alone stream anything or watch TV on a computer. I think my show total is maybe 10 or less but I try to cut it down and avoid new series.
Or Merlin, my BBC show of choice. But I agree it seems nuts that we still have a delay between the original airing and the US airing. I watch the original BBC cuts because I fear they will cut something out of the show when they put it on NBC. I'm surprised that no TV show equivalent of Crunchyroll has popped up yet to provide viewers with an option to watch British (and other European) television content on the same day it airs in the original country. If Crunchyroll can give me same day streams in HD with subtitles of anime content from Japan, the same thing can be done with British TV.
I still wonder why anyone in my class would bother to login to the school email. My first day of any school, i've logged in, set up forwarding and never logged in again. Yet I still see the majority of my classmates checking their school email as a separate thing and you wonder why nobody gets the "important" faculty mail.
I have no problem with hard games per se but I think when you have something as widely known for being hard as Demon Souls, it would be beneficial to sales for the game to include an easier difficulty for those of us who don't appreciate frustration as a key to enjoyment. Otherwise I'll just ignore the game and stick to my flexible difficulty rpgs.
I don't see how piracy is much different than being friends with a book addict who has mountains and mountains of books ready to lend you more than you could possibly read in a lifetime. I've bought very few books because when I walk into the store there are tons of books to choose from and I am not about to randomly judge a book by its cover and pay money for something I don't know if I'll like. Sure I could read book reviews by various publications but its much easier and cheaper to have my friend lend me everything after he has read it and told me what is good. I sure hope he doesn't get a Kindle anytime soon though or my source for free books will dry up quick!
Its simple, unless you have a Kindle or other similar E-book reader, its not likely that you will want to read a pirated book on your computer unless you are used to reading stuff on your computer everyday for hours. Reading a physical book is much nicer.
Thankfully though, Music is not region encoded, so I can import music from Europe and Japan and not have any difficult playing the CD on my system or ripping it to listen to in lossless for archival purposes. Sadly, this is not always the case with video games. Yes I can import games if I want to play the Japanese version - IF it is for the Nintendo DS or Playstation 3. But most of the time if I want to import a game (that the US branch of various companies refuses to localize) for Xbox 360 or Wii, I have to modify my system, voiding the warranty and making everyone assume I modified it because I am a pirate. So what happens here? I have a few imported DS games and tons of imported CDs but am at the mercy of various US publishers to localize, translate and release games from Japanese that I am interested in. (Although with xbox 360 it is up to the company who releases the game whether or not they want to region code it). The problem with the way companies are adapting to the systems of online piracy is that when we move to a system dominated by Itunes and other digital download services, the content is limited by region. Thus I need to have a Japanese credit card or Japanese Itunes card with associated address to sign up for an account and purchase Japanese Itunes exclusive games. In that instance, the companies are making it so difficult for me to support the content creators that its no wonder I download the same content. On the other hand, the Anime industry has realized that American consumers want to watch Japanese aired Anime on the same day as it airs in Japan with English subtitles and various sites have sprung up, such as Crunchyroll, where you can pay a monthly fee to get access to HD streams of new release anime with subtitles and support the content creators at the same time. This is the sort of adaptation these companies should be looking into rather than limiting the reach of their products by region.