Right, but you'd be happy to take tracks for free at 128kbits without liner notes.
Seriously, having performed listening tests with the various codecs, it is unlikely that you will be able to tell the difference between 128kbits AAC (used in the Liquid format) and the original CD source. AAC is noticably higher quality than MP3 at the same bitrate.
Also, note that article says you can burn your own CD after you buy the tracks or album. This means that instead of going to the store and shelling out $14-$16 for a CD, you can download it for $10 and burn it yourself. I think this is a pretty good deal!
Keep in mind that a DLP allows you to show live events so there may also be more revenue opportunities if you get creative. I would imagine that content distributors would be interested in experimenting with sporting event or concert broadcasts and a college campus might be the ideal way to start.
And to those DLP naysayers, anyone who has seen a movie on the big screen in the Mann's Chinese would probably argue that digital cinema is ready to go. I recently had the pleasure of seeing a movie there and it looked awesome.
A friend of mine happened to have some of the UMG and Sony CDs, and he tried to reproduce the results reported in the news. He tried both the marker and the electrical tape techniques, and the only thing he succeeded in doing was making the CDs unreadable in his computer. In one instance the computer would not eject the modified CD and he had to use the paperclip eject trick.
I would be curious to know if anyone has witnessed success. To me this sounds like the "green marker on the inner ring" rumor that was supposed to make a CD sound better.
I don't understand the OSS statement. People don't (usually) die if linux crashes, but people can die if airport or plane software goes down. I personally feel much better knowing that air traffic control software and plane software was written by a company that got paid to do it, and that can be held accountable if something goes wrong. The thought of risking my life on software that was developed in someone's spare time makes me shudder. The problem in this article is the exception, not the rule, for aviation related software which is usually very well tested and debugged.
Please, let's use common sense. Hilary is not upset about paying artists, she's upset about the fact that the companies she represents (and the artists they represent) would lose their ability to price their own goods on the Internet.
You are side-stepping my point, which is that we have to use logic and make realistic suggestions if we don't want to be ignored. So what is the realistic, objective suggestion that you are making?
In my professional career, I've found that you can't find fault with a corporate approach unless you have a viable alternative. If all you do is point out the problem but don't offer up anything better, you'll be ignored.
Whenever this topic comes up, everyone says "our 'fair use' rights are being trampled, we should be able to make copies of our legitimate music." So assume that the music industry acknowledges this. How are they supposed to allow copies for legitimate uses but not for piracy? Today's DRM technology cannot make this distinction. Telling them to remove all protection is equivalent to saying "ignore me, please, because I don't have constructive input."
So if we want to be taken seriously, we need to make objective, constructive and viable suggestions that allow them to prevent piracy while protecting our rights. This is the kind of input the "geekPAC" needs in order to be taken seriously.
If only people would argue in the logical and objective demonstrated by this letter, rather than flaming on about the evils of MSFT. Amazing what it does to your level of credibility. Platform-zealots take note!
I worked in a lab that provided computer access technologies (braille printers, keyboard and mouse alternatives, voice control, puff switches, etc.) for people with disabilities and there are some pretty cool technologies out there.
When I started we had a head mouse but now there are a few eye tracking alternatives: Eyegaze from LC technologies, Eyecan, and Eyetech. I'm sure there are more out there.
Ok, point taken. What I meant was in the context of a society where people expect to get paid for what they produce unconstrained but perfect duplication is bad. If we have a societal shift where everyone assumes that everything is shared for the good of humankind, that would be great, but that is not the world in which we live today.
My point is that we're treating this one particular type of good as though we live in this imaginary world, where everything is free. Why should it be singled out?
None of these analogies is any good, because the student is not trying to sell the paper. Real world examples don't work outside of the digital realm because there is no physical device that makes perfect replications of an original physical object.
Imagine that there was a "duplication device" that could clone whatever you put into it - a watch, a TV, a car, whatever. Imagine it only cost $.20 per use. This device could literally destroy our society. Think about how many people would be driving Porche Boxters or (insert your favorite car here) versus how many would actually sell. Your friend bought a brand new HDTV? Now you've got one too! How would any manufaturer or store stay in business? Does this seem bad to anyone other than me?
Why doesn't the same logic apply to digital music? Sure CD's are way over priced, but that doesn't mean I'm going to go steal! Sorry to rant but I'm tired of people trying to justify what they know is not right!
You are not crazy. Vivendi, like other large corporations, has a policy about speaking to the press, especially when the topic of discussion relates to an on-going lawsuit. I doubt this "interview" is authentic.
I think most companies have modified their policies because they prefer not to have the government involved. It's like the threat of the Hollings Bill: solve the problem, or we'll solve it for you.
The point of #14 is that a content owner who releases content in a *protected* digital form has a way to technically enforce content usage rules (think DRM or conditional access). If this protected content is grabbed in the analog domain and redigitized, all of the protection and usage rules are stripped out. The content can then be distributed without constraint.
So it's not that analog is illegal, it's that protected digital -> analog -> unprotected digital is a security hole that they are trying to plug.
That's why the entertainment industries (both movie and music) have investigated the use of watermarks. Watermarks can be used to indicate that a piece of content was originally protected, and unprotected content found with this watermark has therefore had its protection stripped via security breach or D to A to D. If every recorder checked for this kind of watermark (and assuming they were not trivial to strip) illegally copied content would be a lot harder to use.
I was in a meeting with an industry exec (I think from UA?) and he pointed out that most of the chains have just gone through a round of updating their theaters. Remember when your local theater had 1-5 screens instead of 10-14? In the process of converting to megaplexes they bought new projectors and are therefore not eager to turn around and spend money on new equipment again especially when, as you correctly point out, it has not been finalized or standardized. They need a few years to amortize their current equipment before they will consider buying something new.
Also, saw Phantom Menace in Burbank on a digital screen and while my animation friends and I could see the pixels (most noticable on the titles & credits), an informal survey on the way out revealed that most of the "non-industry" audience had no idea that they had just seen a digital projection. I liked the lack of scratches/dirt and think this will be great stuff in a couple of years.
The thing the article does not mention is that a number of rights languages have already undergone a rather thorough peer review within MPEG 21, which is looking to adopt an open solution. I heard from a friend who attends that all of the submissions had problems (e.g. ambiguity) except for XrML which was subsequently adopted as the starting place for MPEG (neither he nor I work for the companies backing XrML).
Real's original rights language, XCML, was rolled into ODRL. ODRL was one of the standards that lost out so maybe that partly explains the strange logic.
Just to clear up a bit of mis-information, SACDs are not backwards compatible with the CD standard by default. The physical media used for SACDs is high density like a DVD and the audio bitstream is not LPCM, but the specification allows for a hybrid disc with two layers where one of the layers is compliant with the traditional CD spec and made such that it will play in most CD players. Note that this is an optional portion of the specification. There is a short FAQ here.
Another alternative is network based peered agent services that are operated by third parties on the behalf of consumers. This would be similar to having someone run your personal agent for you, or being able to choose between a bunch of different passport service operators. This eliminates the operations burden on end users who are then able to use the trusted third party of their choice to host their information. Access to the information would still be governed based on rules defined by the end user.
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Right, but you'd be happy to take tracks for free at 128kbits without liner notes.
Seriously, having performed listening tests with the various codecs, it is unlikely that you will be able to tell the difference between 128kbits AAC (used in the Liquid format) and the original CD source. AAC is noticably higher quality than MP3 at the same bitrate.
Also, note that article says you can burn your own CD after you buy the tracks or album. This means that instead of going to the store and shelling out $14-$16 for a CD, you can download it for $10 and burn it yourself. I think this is a pretty good deal!
As I posted above, there is a way to turn on 30 second skip on a Tivo. Read about it in the Tivo FAQ.
FYI, there is a way to activate a 30 second skip feature on your Tivo. The details are in the Tivo Faq.
Keep in mind that a DLP allows you to show live events so there may also be more revenue opportunities if you get creative. I would imagine that content distributors would be interested in experimenting with sporting event or concert broadcasts and a college campus might be the ideal way to start.
And to those DLP naysayers, anyone who has seen a movie on the big screen in the Mann's Chinese would probably argue that digital cinema is ready to go. I recently had the pleasure of seeing a movie there and it looked awesome.
A friend of mine happened to have some of the UMG and Sony CDs, and he tried to reproduce the results reported in the news. He tried both the marker and the electrical tape techniques, and the only thing he succeeded in doing was making the CDs unreadable in his computer. In one instance the computer would not eject the modified CD and he had to use the paperclip eject trick.
I would be curious to know if anyone has witnessed success. To me this sounds like the "green marker on the inner ring" rumor that was supposed to make a CD sound better.
I don't understand the OSS statement. People don't (usually) die if linux crashes, but people can die if airport or plane software goes down. I personally feel much better knowing that air traffic control software and plane software was written by a company that got paid to do it, and that can be held accountable if something goes wrong. The thought of risking my life on software that was developed in someone's spare time makes me shudder. The problem in this article is the exception, not the rule, for aviation related software which is usually very well tested and debugged.
Please, let's use common sense. Hilary is not upset about paying artists, she's upset about the fact that the companies she represents (and the artists they represent) would lose their ability to price their own goods on the Internet.
You are side-stepping my point, which is that we have to use logic and make realistic suggestions if we don't want to be ignored. So what is the realistic, objective suggestion that you are making?
In my professional career, I've found that you can't find fault with a corporate approach unless you have a viable alternative. If all you do is point out the problem but don't offer up anything better, you'll be ignored.
Whenever this topic comes up, everyone says "our 'fair use' rights are being trampled, we should be able to make copies of our legitimate music." So assume that the music industry acknowledges this. How are they supposed to allow copies for legitimate uses but not for piracy? Today's DRM technology cannot make this distinction. Telling them to remove all protection is equivalent to saying "ignore me, please, because I don't have constructive input."
So if we want to be taken seriously, we need to make objective, constructive and viable suggestions that allow them to prevent piracy while protecting our rights. This is the kind of input the "geekPAC" needs in order to be taken seriously.
If only people would argue in the logical and objective demonstrated by this letter, rather than flaming on about the evils of MSFT. Amazing what it does to your level of credibility. Platform-zealots take note!
I worked in a lab that provided computer access technologies (braille printers, keyboard and mouse alternatives, voice control, puff switches, etc.) for people with disabilities and there are some pretty cool technologies out there.
When I started we had a head mouse but now there are a few eye tracking alternatives:
Eyegaze from LC technologies, Eyecan, and Eyetech. I'm sure there are more out there.
Ok, point taken. What I meant was in the context of a society where people expect to get paid for what they produce unconstrained but perfect duplication is bad. If we have a societal shift where everyone assumes that everything is shared for the good of humankind, that would be great, but that is not the world in which we live today.
My point is that we're treating this one particular type of good as though we live in this imaginary world, where everything is free. Why should it be singled out?
None of these analogies is any good, because the student is not trying to sell the paper. Real world examples don't work outside of the digital realm because there is no physical device that makes perfect replications of an original physical object.
Imagine that there was a "duplication device" that could clone whatever you put into it - a watch, a TV, a car, whatever. Imagine it only cost $.20 per use. This device could literally destroy our society. Think about how many people would be driving Porche Boxters or (insert your favorite car here) versus how many would actually sell. Your friend bought a brand new HDTV? Now you've got one too! How would any manufaturer or store stay in business? Does this seem bad to anyone other than me?
Why doesn't the same logic apply to digital music? Sure CD's are way over priced, but that doesn't mean I'm going to go steal! Sorry to rant but I'm tired of people trying to justify what they know is not right!
You are not crazy. Vivendi, like other large corporations, has a policy about speaking to the press, especially when the topic of discussion relates to an on-going lawsuit. I doubt this "interview" is authentic.
How about having someone write an open source update notification library instead?
I think most companies have modified their policies because they prefer not to have the government involved. It's like the threat of the Hollings Bill: solve the problem, or we'll solve it for you.
The point of #14 is that a content owner who releases content in a *protected* digital form has a way to technically enforce content usage rules (think DRM or conditional access). If this protected content is grabbed in the analog domain and redigitized, all of the protection and usage rules are stripped out. The content can then be distributed without constraint.
So it's not that analog is illegal, it's that protected digital -> analog -> unprotected digital is a security hole that they are trying to plug.
That's why the entertainment industries (both movie and music) have investigated the use of watermarks. Watermarks can be used to indicate that a piece of content was originally protected, and unprotected content found with this watermark has therefore had its protection stripped via security breach or D to A to D. If every recorder checked for this kind of watermark (and assuming they were not trivial to strip) illegally copied content would be a lot harder to use.
I was in a meeting with an industry exec (I think from UA?) and he pointed out that most of the chains have just gone through a round of updating their theaters. Remember when your local theater had 1-5 screens instead of 10-14? In the process of converting to megaplexes they bought new projectors and are therefore not eager to turn around and spend money on new equipment again especially when, as you correctly point out, it has not been finalized or standardized. They need a few years to amortize their current equipment before they will consider buying something new.
Also, saw Phantom Menace in Burbank on a digital screen and while my animation friends and I could see the pixels (most noticable on the titles & credits), an informal survey on the way out revealed that most of the "non-industry" audience had no idea that they had just seen a digital projection. I liked the lack of scratches/dirt and think this will be great stuff in a couple of years.
The thing the article does not mention is that a number of rights languages have already undergone a rather thorough peer review within MPEG 21, which is looking to adopt an open solution. I heard from a friend who attends that all of the submissions had problems (e.g. ambiguity) except for XrML which was subsequently adopted as the starting place for MPEG (neither he nor I work for the companies backing XrML).
Real's original rights language, XCML, was rolled into ODRL. ODRL was one of the standards that lost out so maybe that partly explains the strange logic.
Just to clear up a bit of mis-information, SACDs are not backwards compatible with the CD standard by default. The physical media used for SACDs is high density like a DVD and the audio bitstream is not LPCM, but the specification allows for a hybrid disc with two layers where one of the layers is compliant with the traditional CD spec and made such that it will play in most CD players. Note that this is an optional portion of the specification. There is a short FAQ here.
Another alternative is network based peered agent services that are operated by third parties on the behalf of consumers. This would be similar to having someone run your personal agent for you, or being able to choose between a bunch of different passport service operators. This eliminates the operations burden on end users who are then able to use the trusted third party of their choice to host their information. Access to the information would still be governed based on rules defined by the end user.
-n