Great. Now you can spend hours sending the file to your friends, who can spend hours downloading it and spend more time transcoding it back to.vob format, and spend 3 bucks for a DVD-R to burn it onto to watch it.
Or they can just spend a few bucks at Target and pick up the fscking "EZ-D" themselves.
Disney et al. are betting that most people fall into the latter non script kiddy hax0r category.
Ford has decided to make its cars cease to function after 60,000 miles or 10 years, whichever comes first.
Funny! But seriously, if you could get a car which safely decommissioned after 60k miles, for one third the price of a similarly equipped "expiry free" car, wouldn't you jump at the chance?
It seems to me that you are missing the point. This technology is in no way comparable to DIVX. What made DIVX suck, from a "consumer rights" POV, is that it required you to give up your privacy (and a phone jack) to utilize it. But "EZ-D" doesn't have that problem. These discs will be just as anonymous as regular DVDs. Their only drawback is that they don't last "forever." Big deal. Alkaline batteries don't last forever either, or paper plates, or light bulbs, or cut roses. People accept this tradeoff for lower prices and convenience, but they can always dish out for rechargeable batteries, china dishes, gas lamps and potted plants if they wish. Choice is good.
Which brings us to the other problem with DIVX -- It was an attempt to diplace the nascent legitimate DVD format. It was meant to restrict choice, not add to it. However, this technology is at best an adjunct to DVD. At this point in time the market for DVD's with added features galore is large and entrenched. And there's no way to watch all those cut scenes and commentaries in 48 hours. So Hollywood isn't looking to alienate those customers willing to pay full price for the extras discs. They're just looking to capture the additional market of those people who might pay 5 or 10 bucks to pick up a flick or two at the grocery store or 7-11.
TDK recently came out with a new line of "Armor Plated" DVDs which are supposed to virtually eliminate the problem with scratch sensitivity. From the press release..."Compared to standard blank media, the new TDK Armor Plated discs provide a remarkable 100 times greater resistance to damage from everyday use such as scratches, dirt, fingerprints and other contaminants."
Actually the most interesting thing about the press release is that they cleverly avoid the whole Plural Acronyms Controversy by referring to the discs collectively as "DVD media" and "DVD discs".
Get a grip, people. If you wanna use windows, keep using windows2000 or xp, then you'll be safe in your drm-free world
One of the problems with that idea is that MS "sunsets" its support on legacy OSes. Leaving those users increasingly vulnerable to viruses, buffer overflows and other exploits. And in the longer term, unable to run "standard" software like the latest versions of Word, the latest video codecs, etc.
And if you can trace spam, you can trace all other emails. Bye-bye proxies and anonymous remailers
No, that's not the case. There would be nothing stopping me (as an anonymous remailer host) from receiving your email, stripping all the headers, and forwarding it on my account to its intended recipient as From: Reziac via xigxag. However, if I allowed you to vicariously spam people through that method, then I'd have a problem with my own ISP.
In the body of the spam there is usually contact information: a website or a toll-free phone number. Imagine that a large organized group of volunteers were to set up spam traps and identify the most egregious culprits. Then, if they would en masse simultaneously and repeatedly go to the spammer's web page or call the toll-free number, the spammer would be hit by a huge bill from his ISP or telco, and would also suffer a DoS preventing "legitimate" customers from signing up.
The problem to begin with is that spammers falsify their headers. Therefore under this plan, innocent people would get stuck with a tax bill. If there was a simple automatic process to trace the origin of spam to its source, then we could do that to begin with and simply block the true sender.
In other words, in order to properly implement a tax, we'd have to have already solved the spam problem, which would make the tax superfluous.
I think they mean that it could curently replace certain functionality of laptops and PDAs. For example those people who basically use a laptop or PDA primarily to transport data back and forth between their home and office desktops. Also, that further in the future, if terminals for this baby become ubiquitous, that many people would choose to just carry around their data on this device and then use the built-in terminals on the train/bus/plane/Starbucks etc. instead of lugging around their own screen and keyboard or playing hunt and peck with a stylus. I'm not sure if I agree (too insecure) but it's an interesting idea.
Everyone acts like they couldn't possible have a net effect on economics of price (they don't because there is probably price fixing involved). Assuming a free market, you'll still drive prices of CD's down. Freely available high quality music has to drive the price down in a free market.
I'm not at all saying that illegal music sharing won't have an effect on the price of music. (In fact, I'll agree that in the long term it will likely reduce the demand for music on the retail level.) What I'm saying is that the effect could be extremely complicated, and you seem to want to minimize the complexity of the situation in favor of some Econ101 analysis.
Couple of points:
* Just because the demand for something has gone down doesn't mean the price will go down. Buggy whips are probably much more expensive than they were at the beginning of the 20th century.
* A compact disc is not just "music." It's photos, liner notes, lyrics, a tangible asset with aesthetic and resale value. None of which applies to mp3s. Furthermore, mp3's aren't exactly "free" either. You have to spend time finding them, downloading them, checking to see if they are of good quality, storing them, bearing the risk of possibly being caught by your college or ISP. All of which are minimal but non-zero expenses. So it's not at all clear that illegally available mp3s will necessarily drive down the demand for CDs. (Although as I conceded above, this is likely the case.)
* Fair use copies are not "designed not to diminish the value of the copyright." I argued earlier that they can diminish it in some cases. Certainly there have been many occasions where I've borrowed a book from the library instead of buying it. My "fair use" trampled all over Frederick Pohl's bottom line. Too bad, Freddy, thems are the breaks. I understand, though, that in Europe, copyright holders get royalties from the library when their works are borrowed.
* Simply because you're a copyright holder doesn't mean you know how to make the best economic decision about your IP. The world is full of stories about people sold away their copyright for a mess of pottage, and wound up in a pauper's grave. So the fact that IP holders are largely opposed to P2P networks says nothing about their effectiveness at creating demand. Besides which, we really ought to be weighing the interests of copyright holders against the interest of society. Keep in mind that IP-holders "own" their property for a limited time to serve the public good. If the public good can be advanced by some other means, that method should be considered. Having said that though, the way things stand now, most music-sharing is illegal and traders should be prepared to face the consequences of their actions.
The economic value of the song is diminished...precisely because a copy was made. So supply is increased, holding demand constant, drops the value. Simple economics.
Not so simple. To prove your point, you have to establish that the demand for the song in fact remains constant. Perhaps spreading the song about makes demand for it go up. Perhaps it goes down. When you hear a song on the radio, does your demand for it go up, down, or remain constant? Also depends on the song, doesn't it?
Your simple illegal copy diminishing their value, makes you liable for a lawsuite.
The key word there is "illegal". The reason the person is liable is because they are committing a tort, not merely because they are making a copy. Not all copies of a song are illegal, even if they diminish the economic value of it. A performance of a song is a copy, but if you perform it on your home keyboard in front of a few friends, you aren't violating any laws. And again, whether that causes demand for the song to increase or decrease will depend on the circumstances at hand.
Okay, so let's say I'm pretentious...fair enough. Still, what I'm trying to convey to you (albeit perhaps in sneeringly condescending fashion;-)) is that you are certainly entitled to your opinions, but they would be worth more to others if you were familiar with the subject you are so glibly deprecating. If you are even paasingly familiar with the history of art, the methodology, the "industry," the culture, and after all that you dismiss it as being a smoke-and-mirrors enterprise, I still wouldn't agree with your opinion but I would respect it. As would many others. And after all, the entire reason people post here is because they'd like their opinions to be evaluated and respected. (That's even true of trolls.) Either that or they have some kind of neurological disorder which causes them to write compulsively. But you don't strike me as that sort of fellow.
An interesting point is that Art actually has a lot in common with Science. You'll find that historically it's really an enterprise in problem-solving. How does one reproduce three dimensions on a 2D surface? Can one convey emotion on a page? Can an image have meaning if it doesn't correspond to something in the real world? What is the simplest basic unit, the "atom," so to speak, of art? Can something which is intrinsically "lead" be artistically transformed into "gold"? Now that we have photographs, what is the point of painting, anymore?
Finally, there have been plenty of artists who created good art early on in their careers and spent their waning years making crap. I was simply responding to your presumption that Pollock didn't know how to draw. He knew, but like many other artists, he was more interested in problem-solving than in trying to reproduce the output of a $2 Kodak Brownie. And regarding Beethoven's farts-in-a-jar, I'd love to get my hands on one of those. If nothing else, I'd bet they'd fetch a pretty penny on Ebay. Besides, with my head stuck so far up my ass, I've got to believe that Ludwig's effluvia are an improvement over mine.;-)
Being that I was pretty much trying for an areal density of errors similar to my last Deskstar HD, if "loose" is the only typo you noticed, I gotta wonder about ya, Brain.:-)
Hmm, maybe I should tell you the same thing I told IBM: "Ease up on the pixie dust, ya heard!":-)
Thanks for sorting that out... Now nobody will be confused by my typo and think I was talking about commas.
I didn't think anyone was confused. Did I give you that impression? Rather, I simply find it interesting to note the general rule of thumb -- that posts designed to correct grammatical errors tend to have a higher than normal probability of having grammatical errors themselves.
I'm certainly not the first person to note this, see here, here, and here. Nor, unfortunately, will I be the last.
If somehow you got out of my comment that I was looking to make an example specifically of you, or to expose you to ridicule, well, that wasn't the case. Actually, your post was both informative and interesting, and by virtue of the typo, funny to boot.
Ever seen any of Jackson Pollock's stuff? Then you know what I mean. Abstract Expressionism is a politically correct way to say "I can't draw/paint so I slapped some crap on the canvas and voila."
Just a suggestion. Before talking out of your nether regions you might want to actually spend a few minutes looking into the subject. Pollack's sketchbooks, for example, prove that he was quite adept at representational art. He chose to forge into uncharted artistic regions, and struggled greatly before achieving success. There's a reason why he's still famous almost 50 years after his death.
I mean, I know it's really cool, and staggeringly original, for you to presume that you know what Art is more than the entire art community, but really. Everybody got a good laugh over Malevich...in the 7th grade. Then hopefully we picked up a book or two and learned something.
Actually, as far as I can tell (and IANAL) the GPL says nothing about renaming or rebranding.
These books are not covered under the GPL.
The GPL, broadly speaking, covers software. As the writeup states, these books were covered under the GFDL and the OPL. The GFDL is a little bit confusing as to its requirements, but there are a number of rules you must follow to either print a verbatim copy or to release a derivative work. It does state, in part that you must:
B. List on the Title Page, as authors, one or more persons or entities
responsible for authorship of the modifications in the Modified
Version, together with at least five of the principal authors of the
Document (all of its principal authors, if it has fewer than five),
unless they release you from this requirement.
In other words, if you release a modified version, you are still required to state the original author(s) on your own modified title page.
The OPL is more simple and explicit and says:
Any publication in standard (paper) book form shall require the citation of the original publisher and author. The publisher and author's names shall appear on all outer surfaces of the book. On all outer surfaces of the book the original publisher's name shall be as large as the title of the work and cited as possessive with respect to the title.
It also says that if you publish a derivative work you must cite the original work.
LOS ANGELES (Embreuters) -- The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) today lodged suit against a Mr. Eldrad E. Barge for $38 million in statutory, compensatory and punitive damages. Using the DMCA to subpoena his credit card records, the RIAA was able to establish that Mr. Barge charged $129 in CD purchases in 1998, $144 in 1999, $163 in 2000, but then his purchases precipitously and illegally dropped to $93 in 2001 and only a measly $68 in 2002. Meanwhile a suspicious $20 in blank CD-Rs were purchased in 2001 and $39 worth in 2002. Their court papers claim that this is incontrovertible proof that Mr. Barge has resorted to piracy to avoid buying record albums, even though the defendant alleges that he just got tired of the nigh-endless stream of uncreative Mariah Carey bombs and dead-rapper Tupac Shakur remixes being foisted upon him. He also claims the recordable CD purchases were "mostly for Phish and pr0n." The high monetary damages, says RIAA spokesperson Ibeah Bigg-Gonad, are to deter other pirates from stealing food out of artists' mouths. "However," she adds, "we'll consider dropping the suit if Mr. Barge agrees to a lifetime membership in Columbia House or the BMG Group's record club."
Slashdot Mirror
Since we can't seem to get rid of the damn law, I'm gonna go with Tenacious-DMCA.
Or for the full specs in English, go here.
Great. Now you can spend hours sending the file to your friends, who can spend hours downloading it and spend more time transcoding it back to .vob format, and spend 3 bucks for a DVD-R to burn it onto to watch it.
Or they can just spend a few bucks at Target and pick up the fscking "EZ-D" themselves.
Disney et al. are betting that most people fall into the latter non script kiddy hax0r category.
Ford has decided to make its cars cease to function after 60,000 miles or 10 years, whichever comes first.
Funny! But seriously, if you could get a car which safely decommissioned after 60k miles, for one third the price of a similarly equipped "expiry free" car, wouldn't you jump at the chance?
It seems to me that you are missing the point. This technology is in no way comparable to DIVX. What made DIVX suck, from a "consumer rights" POV, is that it required you to give up your privacy (and a phone jack) to utilize it. But "EZ-D" doesn't have that problem. These discs will be just as anonymous as regular DVDs. Their only drawback is that they don't last "forever." Big deal. Alkaline batteries don't last forever either, or paper plates, or light bulbs, or cut roses. People accept this tradeoff for lower prices and convenience, but they can always dish out for rechargeable batteries, china dishes, gas lamps and potted plants if they wish. Choice is good.
Which brings us to the other problem with DIVX -- It was an attempt to diplace the nascent legitimate DVD format. It was meant to restrict choice, not add to it. However, this technology is at best an adjunct to DVD. At this point in time the market for DVD's with added features galore is large and entrenched. And there's no way to watch all those cut scenes and commentaries in 48 hours. So Hollywood isn't looking to alienate those customers willing to pay full price for the extras discs. They're just looking to capture the additional market of those people who might pay 5 or 10 bucks to pick up a flick or two at the grocery store or 7-11.
I gave up mod points for this thread (I *always* mod up, btw) only to be modded into oblivion because I was a few *seconds* too slow.
You slow, you blow...*oh shit*
TDK recently came out with a new line of "Armor Plated" DVDs which are supposed to virtually eliminate the problem with scratch sensitivity. From the press release..."Compared to standard blank media, the new TDK Armor Plated discs provide a remarkable 100 times greater resistance to damage from everyday use such as scratches, dirt, fingerprints and other contaminants."
Actually the most interesting thing about the press release is that they cleverly avoid the whole Plural Acronyms Controversy by referring to the discs collectively as "DVD media" and "DVD discs".
...a l'Effect Slashdot, mes amis.
Get a grip, people. If you wanna use windows, keep using windows2000 or xp, then you'll be safe in your drm-free world
One of the problems with that idea is that MS "sunsets" its support on legacy OSes. Leaving those users increasingly vulnerable to viruses, buffer overflows and other exploits. And in the longer term, unable to run "standard" software like the latest versions of Word, the latest video codecs, etc.
And if you can trace spam, you can trace all other emails. Bye-bye proxies and anonymous remailers
No, that's not the case. There would be nothing stopping me (as an anonymous remailer host) from receiving your email, stripping all the headers, and forwarding it on my account to its intended recipient as From: Reziac via xigxag. However, if I allowed you to vicariously spam people through that method, then I'd have a problem with my own ISP.
In the body of the spam there is usually contact information: a website or a toll-free phone number. Imagine that a large organized group of volunteers were to set up spam traps and identify the most egregious culprits. Then, if they would en masse simultaneously and repeatedly go to the spammer's web page or call the toll-free number, the spammer would be hit by a huge bill from his ISP or telco, and would also suffer a DoS preventing "legitimate" customers from signing up.
The problem to begin with is that spammers falsify their headers. Therefore under this plan, innocent people would get stuck with a tax bill. If there was a simple automatic process to trace the origin of spam to its source, then we could do that to begin with and simply block the true sender.
In other words, in order to properly implement a tax, we'd have to have already solved the spam problem, which would make the tax superfluous.
I think they mean that it could curently replace certain functionality of laptops and PDAs. For example those people who basically use a laptop or PDA primarily to transport data back and forth between their home and office desktops. Also, that further in the future, if terminals for this baby become ubiquitous, that many people would choose to just carry around their data on this device and then use the built-in terminals on the train/bus/plane/Starbucks etc. instead of lugging around their own screen and keyboard or playing hunt and peck with a stylus. I'm not sure if I agree (too insecure) but it's an interesting idea.
Everyone acts like they couldn't possible have a net effect on economics of price (they don't because there is probably price fixing involved). Assuming a free market, you'll still drive prices of CD's down. Freely available high quality music has to drive the price down in a free market.
I'm not at all saying that illegal music sharing won't have an effect on the price of music. (In fact, I'll agree that in the long term it will likely reduce the demand for music on the retail level.) What I'm saying is that the effect could be extremely complicated, and you seem to want to minimize the complexity of the situation in favor of some Econ101 analysis.
Couple of points:
* Just because the demand for something has gone down doesn't mean the price will go down. Buggy whips are probably much more expensive than they were at the beginning of the 20th century.
* A compact disc is not just "music." It's photos, liner notes, lyrics, a tangible asset with aesthetic and resale value. None of which applies to mp3s. Furthermore, mp3's aren't exactly "free" either. You have to spend time finding them, downloading them, checking to see if they are of good quality, storing them, bearing the risk of possibly being caught by your college or ISP. All of which are minimal but non-zero expenses. So it's not at all clear that illegally available mp3s will necessarily drive down the demand for CDs. (Although as I conceded above, this is likely the case.)
* Fair use copies are not "designed not to diminish the value of the copyright." I argued earlier that they can diminish it in some cases. Certainly there have been many occasions where I've borrowed a book from the library instead of buying it. My "fair use" trampled all over Frederick Pohl's bottom line. Too bad, Freddy, thems are the breaks. I understand, though, that in Europe, copyright holders get royalties from the library when their works are borrowed.
* Simply because you're a copyright holder doesn't mean you know how to make the best economic decision about your IP. The world is full of stories about people sold away their copyright for a mess of pottage, and wound up in a pauper's grave. So the fact that IP holders are largely opposed to P2P networks says nothing about their effectiveness at creating demand. Besides which, we really ought to be weighing the interests of copyright holders against the interest of society. Keep in mind that IP-holders "own" their property for a limited time to serve the public good. If the public good can be advanced by some other means, that method should be considered. Having said that though, the way things stand now, most music-sharing is illegal and traders should be prepared to face the consequences of their actions.
The economic value of the song is diminished...precisely because a copy was made. So supply is increased, holding demand constant, drops the value. Simple economics.
Not so simple. To prove your point, you have to establish that the demand for the song in fact remains constant. Perhaps spreading the song about makes demand for it go up. Perhaps it goes down. When you hear a song on the radio, does your demand for it go up, down, or remain constant? Also depends on the song, doesn't it?
Your simple illegal copy diminishing their value, makes you liable for a lawsuite.
The key word there is "illegal". The reason the person is liable is because they are committing a tort, not merely because they are making a copy. Not all copies of a song are illegal, even if they diminish the economic value of it. A performance of a song is a copy, but if you perform it on your home keyboard in front of a few friends, you aren't violating any laws. And again, whether that causes demand for the song to increase or decrease will depend on the circumstances at hand.
My comment wasn't entirely serious but since you insist upon parsing it that way...
...Do you people have dictionaries?
unique is precisely that - one of a kind.
Yes. Right here. J.D. Salinger, frex, seems not to completely disagree with me.
"Very unique" is roughly equivalent to "highly unusual." ;-)
Okay, so let's say I'm pretentious...fair enough. Still, what I'm trying to convey to you (albeit perhaps in sneeringly condescending fashion ;-)) is that you are certainly entitled to your opinions, but they would be worth more to others if you were familiar with the subject you are so glibly deprecating. If you are even paasingly familiar with the history of art, the methodology, the "industry," the culture, and after all that you dismiss it as being a smoke-and-mirrors enterprise, I still wouldn't agree with your opinion but I would respect it. As would many others. And after all, the entire reason people post here is because they'd like their opinions to be evaluated and respected. (That's even true of trolls.) Either that or they have some kind of neurological disorder which causes them to write compulsively. But you don't strike me as that sort of fellow.
;-)
An interesting point is that Art actually has a lot in common with Science. You'll find that historically it's really an enterprise in problem-solving. How does one reproduce three dimensions on a 2D surface? Can one convey emotion on a page? Can an image have meaning if it doesn't correspond to something in the real world? What is the simplest basic unit, the "atom," so to speak, of art? Can something which is intrinsically "lead" be artistically transformed into "gold"? Now that we have photographs, what is the point of painting, anymore?
Finally, there have been plenty of artists who created good art early on in their careers and spent their waning years making crap. I was simply responding to your presumption that Pollock didn't know how to draw. He knew, but like many other artists, he was more interested in problem-solving than in trying to reproduce the output of a $2 Kodak Brownie. And regarding Beethoven's farts-in-a-jar, I'd love to get my hands on one of those. If nothing else, I'd bet they'd fetch a pretty penny on Ebay. Besides, with my head stuck so far up my ass, I've got to believe that Ludwig's effluvia are an improvement over mine.
Being that I was pretty much trying for an areal density of errors similar to my last Deskstar HD, if "loose" is the only typo you noticed, I gotta wonder about ya, Brain. :-)
:-)
Hmm, maybe I should tell you the same thing I told IBM: "Ease up on the pixie dust, ya heard!"
Thanks for sorting that out... Now nobody will be confused by my typo and think I was talking about commas.
I didn't think anyone was confused. Did I give you that impression? Rather, I simply find it interesting to note the general rule of thumb -- that posts designed to correct grammatical errors tend to have a higher than normal probability of having grammatical errors themselves.
I'm certainly not the first person to note this, see here, here, and here. Nor, unfortunately, will I be the last.
If somehow you got out of my comment that I was looking to make an example specifically of you, or to expose you to ridicule, well, that wasn't the case. Actually, your post was both informative and interesting, and by virtue of the typo, funny to boot.
And I do feel better now, thanks for asking!
Let's go over the rules for commas.
Sigh. ITYM "apostrophes".
Okay, here's my question. How many times did you go over your post to make sure it was perfect? No misspellings, no out of place periods, commas, etc.
Then you hit "reply".
Then: "D'oh!"
Another poor sucker burned by his own spelling/grammar flame!
This is of course a universal law, but if it has a name, I'm not aware of it. Maybe "Teh Backdraft Efect"?
Ever seen any of Jackson Pollock's stuff? Then you know what I mean. Abstract Expressionism is a politically correct way to say "I can't draw/paint so I slapped some crap on the canvas and voila."
Just a suggestion. Before talking out of your nether regions you might want to actually spend a few minutes looking into the subject. Pollack's sketchbooks, for example, prove that he was quite adept at representational art. He chose to forge into uncharted artistic regions, and struggled greatly before achieving success. There's a reason why he's still famous almost 50 years after his death.
I mean, I know it's really cool, and staggeringly original, for you to presume that you know what Art is more than the entire art community, but really. Everybody got a good laugh over Malevich...in the 7th grade. Then hopefully we picked up a book or two and learned something.
it's = it is
True, but as a Lisenced Speling and Grammer Expert, allow me to further note that:
It's also = "It has", as in
It's been three minutes since trying to figure out thes'e damn apostrophe's has caused me to loose my temper!
These books are not covered under the GPL.
The GPL, broadly speaking, covers software. As the writeup states, these books were covered under the GFDL and the OPL. The GFDL is a little bit confusing as to its requirements, but there are a number of rules you must follow to either print a verbatim copy or to release a derivative work. It does state, in part that you must: In other words, if you release a modified version, you are still required to state the original author(s) on your own modified title page.
The OPL is more simple and explicit and says:
It also says that if you publish a derivative work you must cite the original work.
LOS ANGELES (Embreuters) -- The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) today lodged suit against a Mr. Eldrad E. Barge for $38 million in statutory, compensatory and punitive damages. Using the DMCA to subpoena his credit card records, the RIAA was able to establish that Mr. Barge charged $129 in CD purchases in 1998, $144 in 1999, $163 in 2000, but then his purchases precipitously and illegally dropped to $93 in 2001 and only a measly $68 in 2002. Meanwhile a suspicious $20 in blank CD-Rs were purchased in 2001 and $39 worth in 2002. Their court papers claim that this is incontrovertible proof that Mr. Barge has resorted to piracy to avoid buying record albums, even though the defendant alleges that he just got tired of the nigh-endless stream of uncreative Mariah Carey bombs and dead-rapper Tupac Shakur remixes being foisted upon him. He also claims the recordable CD purchases were "mostly for Phish and pr0n." The high monetary damages, says RIAA spokesperson Ibeah Bigg-Gonad, are to deter other pirates from stealing food out of artists' mouths. "However," she adds, "we'll consider dropping the suit if Mr. Barge agrees to a lifetime membership in Columbia House or the BMG Group's record club."