I think you'd have a hard time convincing a judge that pursuing a lawsuit (which is assumed to be legitimate until proven otherwise in court) is anticompetitive.
Yes, but now that you've mentioned it, I expect to see "XIMIAN IS DYING!!" posts on/. from here on out. Knowing the influence that/. trolls have on reality, Ximian won't last long.
Also worth mentioning - of course movies don't *have* to be seen in a theater. I'm sure everybody here has heard "I'll wait till it's out on video."
Of course, which goes back to my point about Hollywood needing to concentrate on making good movies. People shy away from seeing things at the theater because they've been burned so many times by crappy movies. So they decide that it's only worth 4 bucks to rent instead of 8 bucks apiece to see at the theater. If they keep the quality up, then more people will shell out for the movie and later for the DVD. Maybe they'd score some extra good will too.
Yeah, I went to a preview of American Wedding and they showed it then too. I cracked up. Aren't those guys all union members anyway? I don't see them taking a pay cut anytime soon. The only possible way that movie piracy could affect them is if people simply stopped going to movies and just downloaded them instead. I would have to happen on a scale that caused the industry to just stop making movies (and thus not hiring all those union guys). That ain't gonna happen. The quality is generally (very) inferior and you don't get the big screen/big sound system effect either. Sure, some people have home theaters worth more than a nice car, but they're few and far between. Then there's rentals. I could possibly see this impacting those, but even then it's a long shot. You don't get all the extra features and stuff that a lot of people like (and one of the few things that the movie industry is doing right). So I think the poor guy will still be able to put a crust of bread on the table for his wife and kids for a long time to come. Hollywood needs to handle this a lot differently and quit pissing people off. If they would simply create good movies and keep improving the package deal you get when buying a DVD, then they should have no problems.
Actually, the interesting thing about the statement is that they say "which makes you just as responsible if you had downloaded the movie", when it's distributing the movie that is the real crime, not downloading it.
Yes, you can get around it easily, but you'd think the very idea of having to pay a sort of pre-emptive tax based on the assumption that they are going to commit copyright infringement would piss people off. Especially when it remains a crime to do so even if they've paid the tax.
-ISP's and their users would complain that it's a "tax", and would fight it to the end.
I didn't see everyone fighting tooth and nail against the "tax" on recordable media. I don't think the public has enough awareness of the situation to mount any sort of defense against such a tax. That said, I think you're correct about the opposition we'd see from the Recording Industry. Reducing the terms to something sensible is really the only way to go. 20 years I could live with, but not much beyond that or it defeats the purpose of giving the public unfettered access to the work. The problem with today's terms is that none of us will live to see anything created in our lifetime become public domain, even assuming that the terms aren't further extended (which is pretty farfetched). The term was originally 14 years, with a possible extension of 14 more. I really don't believe it should be any longer than that now.
What if I'm a customer of one of the telcos that got cheated and my rates went up because they weren't making the profits they should have been, due at least in part to MCI's fraudulent activities?
Ahh... but what if your name was Gordon Freeman and you were a scientist who helped to open a door to another dimension? Kinda changes things don't it?:)
My bad then... those were the only specs that they list on their site. I assumed they were for the $300 machine. Guess if it seems too good to be true...
DISCover® will play thousands of PC games at launch!
DISCover's patented technology makes it the only video game console able to play PC games
A "sizzling" Pentium®4 3.06 GHz
1Gb of RAM
120GB Hard Drive
3D audio capability with Dolby® Digital 6.1 Surround Sound
nVIDIA® GeForce®4 TI Graphics
TV out onto a standard resolution TV using AV (composite) or S-Video
True HDTV component out
DVD player
MP3 player
And it's running WinXP. Seems like a good machine for US$300. That said, I certainly won't be running right out to buy one. Besides the subscription cost, I'm still skeptical about their ability to handle any and all issues with the huge number of PC games out there. I'll wait a while and see how this works out. I also wouldn't want to play PC games on my TV. That would look horrible unless you have an HDTV.
Hmm... seems that you could find out what calls it was making to check the computer it was registered too, and then write an app to intercept those calls and return the same info. Basically you would end up having to distribute the movie file along with a second info file that the app would use as an info source to return to the media player. But I don't know how technically difficult it would be for sure, or if it's even possible.
Probably a massive patent exchange will be more likely. Microsoft will get rights to use InterTrust patents and Sony and the rest get the rights to use whatever Microsoft patents they choose.
Okay, Golden Eye was definitely a movie-based game. Had the same basic plot and everything. It was a good game though. The Pod Racer game was only semi-movie-based. It took a small portion of the movie and made a game out of it. I wouldn't consider it to be a movie-based game myself. X-Wing was a movie-based game, it just wasn't released anywhere near the same time as the movie. That is probably why it didn't suck. As long as they aren't trying to rush crap out the door to cash in on the popularity of a movie, they have a decent chance of making a good game.
Troll?! Methinks we have trolling moderators. If they would bother to pull their heads out of their asses they would know that my post was entirely serious and quite related to the topic at hand.
Actually, I do the same thing. But it still hasn't made the blades last much more than a week. Maybe it's just dependant upon coarseness of hair or something. I really don't know.
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I think you'd have a hard time convincing a judge that pursuing a lawsuit (which is assumed to be legitimate until proven otherwise in court) is anticompetitive.
Exactly. It's much more like a butter-eating relay of some sort, carried out while sitting around a table and shouting obscenities at each other.
Yes, but now that you've mentioned it, I expect to see "XIMIAN IS DYING!!" posts on /. from here on out. Knowing the influence that /. trolls have on reality, Ximian won't last long.
Also worth mentioning - of course movies don't *have* to be seen in a theater. I'm sure everybody here has heard "I'll wait till it's out on video."
Of course, which goes back to my point about Hollywood needing to concentrate on making good movies. People shy away from seeing things at the theater because they've been burned so many times by crappy movies. So they decide that it's only worth 4 bucks to rent instead of 8 bucks apiece to see at the theater. If they keep the quality up, then more people will shell out for the movie and later for the DVD. Maybe they'd score some extra good will too.
Yeah, I went to a preview of American Wedding and they showed it then too. I cracked up. Aren't those guys all union members anyway? I don't see them taking a pay cut anytime soon. The only possible way that movie piracy could affect them is if people simply stopped going to movies and just downloaded them instead. I would have to happen on a scale that caused the industry to just stop making movies (and thus not hiring all those union guys). That ain't gonna happen. The quality is generally (very) inferior and you don't get the big screen/big sound system effect either. Sure, some people have home theaters worth more than a nice car, but they're few and far between. Then there's rentals. I could possibly see this impacting those, but even then it's a long shot. You don't get all the extra features and stuff that a lot of people like (and one of the few things that the movie industry is doing right). So I think the poor guy will still be able to put a crust of bread on the table for his wife and kids for a long time to come. Hollywood needs to handle this a lot differently and quit pissing people off. If they would simply create good movies and keep improving the package deal you get when buying a DVD, then they should have no problems.
Actually, the interesting thing about the statement is that they say "which makes you just as responsible if you had downloaded the movie", when it's distributing the movie that is the real crime, not downloading it.
A game called "Star Monkey" just sounds like fun :) I'm downloading them both now. Stay tuned for my brief and possibly expletive-ridden review...
Yes, you can get around it easily, but you'd think the very idea of having to pay a sort of pre-emptive tax based on the assumption that they are going to commit copyright infringement would piss people off. Especially when it remains a crime to do so even if they've paid the tax.
-ISP's and their users would complain that it's a "tax", and would fight it to the end.
I didn't see everyone fighting tooth and nail against the "tax" on recordable media. I don't think the public has enough awareness of the situation to mount any sort of defense against such a tax. That said, I think you're correct about the opposition we'd see from the Recording Industry. Reducing the terms to something sensible is really the only way to go. 20 years I could live with, but not much beyond that or it defeats the purpose of giving the public unfettered access to the work. The problem with today's terms is that none of us will live to see anything created in our lifetime become public domain, even assuming that the terms aren't further extended (which is pretty farfetched). The term was originally 14 years, with a possible extension of 14 more. I really don't believe it should be any longer than that now.
What if I'm a customer of one of the telcos that got cheated and my rates went up because they weren't making the profits they should have been, due at least in part to MCI's fraudulent activities?
Ahh... but what if your name was Gordon Freeman and you were a scientist who helped to open a door to another dimension? Kinda changes things don't it? :)
Yeah, and I bet those game developers in Finland are just glued to the TV to watch cheesy American "wrestling". The suit is bogus.
My bad then... those were the only specs that they list on their site. I assumed they were for the $300 machine. Guess if it seems too good to be true...
The specs:
And it's running WinXP. Seems like a good machine for US$300. That said, I certainly won't be running right out to buy one. Besides the subscription cost, I'm still skeptical about their ability to handle any and all issues with the huge number of PC games out there. I'll wait a while and see how this works out. I also wouldn't want to play PC games on my TV. That would look horrible unless you have an HDTV.
Hmm... seems that you could find out what calls it was making to check the computer it was registered too, and then write an app to intercept those calls and return the same info. Basically you would end up having to distribute the movie file along with a second info file that the app would use as an info source to return to the media player. But I don't know how technically difficult it would be for sure, or if it's even possible.
Probably a massive patent exchange will be more likely. Microsoft will get rights to use InterTrust patents and Sony and the rest get the rights to use whatever Microsoft patents they choose.
Not to mention the fact that SCO's suit bears no resemblance to this one since it has nothing to do with patents.
then again, latency times in terms of hundreds of years may be a big turnoff for some web surfers.
Yeah, playing Quake MDXXV will be a bitch with that kinda lag.
Okay, Golden Eye was definitely a movie-based game. Had the same basic plot and everything. It was a good game though. The Pod Racer game was only semi-movie-based. It took a small portion of the movie and made a game out of it. I wouldn't consider it to be a movie-based game myself. X-Wing was a movie-based game, it just wasn't released anywhere near the same time as the movie. That is probably why it didn't suck. As long as they aren't trying to rush crap out the door to cash in on the popularity of a movie, they have a decent chance of making a good game.
Troll?! Methinks we have trolling moderators. If they would bother to pull their heads out of their asses they would know that my post was entirely serious and quite related to the topic at hand.
This sounds exactly like what Microsoft was accused of doing a year or two ago. Did anything ever come of that?
Actually, I do the same thing. But it still hasn't made the blades last much more than a week. Maybe it's just dependant upon coarseness of hair or something. I really don't know.
If we all stopped shaving, we'd all look like Alan Cox. That would really show how evolved we are when the aliens show up :)
But won't the aliens have serious doubts about our intellect when they see how much we pay for freaking razor blades?
A month?! If I use the same one for a week it will start to get pretty uncomfortable.
A mod point! A mod point! My kingdom for a mod point! Owell... I woulda gave ya +1 if I could :)