Looks like the people who lose out here will be either the stores (used games no longer sell for as much) or the people who sell their used games back to the stores. And seeing as the prices paid by stores for used games are already shockingly low, I doubt they could take another $10 off the offer price.
As a buyer, I should get the advantage of an extra $10 discount on the used game if I don't want multiplayer. And my choice is nice and easy - if the used game isn't at least $10 cheaper, I'm not buying it. Right now in the UK it's quite common for the used game to only be $3-$5 cheaper than new.
I was all ready to get fired up with righteous indignation, but I just tried visiting B3ta from my Three UK mobile and there was no issue.
I'm on a standard contract, never had Xseries, not paying the extra fiver. Want to list a few more sites you're having trouble with? I'll test them out here, could help getting unblocked for free if other customers aren't having the issue.
Very much agree about the XArcade, it's a really nice bit of kit. The only downsides are the price and the amount of space it takes up. I bought one years ago with the intention of using it as a removable controller on a Mame cabinet that I never built.
Oh, I don't mind a logo screen that takes a few seconds, especially if I can press a button to skip it or if it's there while something else is loading, but waiting for a publisher's logo to load just so I can be advertised to isn't what I want.
I've had a quick look at the site and more than anything it makes me want to switch to a font with no TM character - 24 of them on one page is at least 23 too many. Okay Sony, I get it, you've trademarked all this stuff. What do you want? A trophy? A cake?
I guess it's a similar problem with the PSP itself - before playing a game I have to sit through splash screens telling me who developed the game, who published it, what technology it used (again, all with little TMs, (C)s and (R)s) - all I want to do is play the thing. And that's why I leave the PSP at the back of the drawer and play DS instead. UMDs are slow to load, don't slow them down further with tedious animations and logos.
Are you suggesting here that there should be a limit to the number of submissions that can become stories, or a cap on submissions themselves?
If it's the latter, then I'm advocating the same thing.
Limiting the number of submissions by a user would make the linkwhores work harder, making life easier for the editors in the process. A linkwhore who can only submit ten times a day (or five, whatever number is deemed appropriate) is going to put more effort into their submissions and be more selective of what they submit.
I'd also suggest that in cases where the article has to be largely re-written by an editor, the user should only have a link to their profile. And in the worst cases, where the story submission is just a verbatim copy of the intro to the linked article, then give attribution to the source of the article, not the submitter (unless they happen to be the same person, in which case declare that fact).
To me the problem with 'slashvertisements' is that the story submitter can hype their own product under the guise of it being third-party comment. I think this is what causes anger. The only solution in the absence of a link to an independant review is to either ignore the product, or strip the story down to factual elements. In the case of the stripped down stories they could be placed on a specific 'product releases' section, making them easy to ignore.
As for anger caused by submitters linking to their own sites (ie Hexus review of the Fatal1ty mouse), could you add a disclosure comment, in the same way you do when linking / discussing an item associated with Slashdot's parent company?
As long as the device is de-tuned (all channels, not just BBC) and is not connected to an aerial then that does appear to be legal. I'd expect you'd get repeated visits from TVLA though, just to make sure it stayed de-tuned.
Just finished reading your tv license page - no wonder you're not a fan of the BBC or TVLA. A friend of mine has been in a similar situation, although his case is complicated by the fact that he does have a plasma screen which he uses to watch DVDs (it has no tuner, so no license is required). Even after an enforcement officer visited and confirmed that the setup was legal the TVLA continued to send threatening letters.
I was rather surprised by your figure of 2% not having a television, I always assumed the UK population were more addicted to tv than that.
Regarding the gamble taken by the license payers - Yes, I agree we lost big when it came to Eldorado, but because the bets are spread widely it rarely becomes a total loss. Hopefully the BBC will never spend a whole year's budget on a single project - that would be bad (remember On Digital and the football broadcast rights?)
I am more concerned about the slipperly slope aspect of this, rather than this being BBC or whoever, and thus my reaction.
Fair enough, I'd taken your comment to be specifically about the BBC offering, not DRM in general. I think the BBC case is different to the majority, as the content is also available in a non-DRM format and at equal (or better) quality for those with DVB-T decoders.
I do accept your point about the slippery slope, although I hope consumers will see the difference between a product which is restricted even though it has been purchased, and a product which is free to download (licence fee aside) yet restricted.
His atttitude towards it all seemed very much to lean against "I'd rather have DRMed content than none at all, if corporations aren't willing to provide us with what we are entitled to". At least that is how I read it.
It may have seemed that way, but it certainly wasn't what I meant. As I said a couple of lines above, I think the DRM here is a different case, because the media is also available in a non-DRM format as long as I remember to watch it or record it at the time it is broadcast. If the BBC were to start attaching DRM to on-air broadcasts then it would be another matter entirely and I'd agree with your point that it was taking away more than copyright should allow.
Unless you don't have to pay the license fee for computers or projectors. But if you don't, couldn't you just use a TV Tuner card?
The fee is to receive tv broadcasts, so if your PC or projector has no tv tuner then you don't have to pay. Put in a tv tuner and you do have to pay.
I know people who have plasma screens with no tuner. They don't have or need a tv licence, but get a fair amount of hassle from the tv licensing authority who find it very hard to believe anyone would not watch broadcast tv.
This doesn't sound like a very strong system, regardless of whether or not it's distributed by P2P. I believe on the of the other posters who said his wife works for this company and said that they are only instituting a half-hearted DRM scheme because they're required to do due diligence by the content owners.
I agree - they're doing what they need to for legal and boardroom reasons, and if it stops the majority of unauthorised viewers that's good enough.
Almost all of the UK population can record this stuff off air with no DRM anyway, in fact those with DVB-T cards in their PCs can record nice high-quality unprotected digital streams - too big to fileshare for the moment, but easily re-encoded to a lower bitrate.
As soon as the BBC put in some sort of inconvenience for unauthorised viewers those viewers will either get the media another way, or not bother because they weren't that interested in it in the first place.
I'm certianly not defending DRM on a wide scale, but I would rather the BBC provided this facility with DRM than not at all.
And there went the chance for the rest of us to live in a world without DRMed content. DRM being just another way of saying "fuck the public domain".
I can't believe how people time and time again seem totally oblivious of that consequence. DRM = Perpetual copyright, which in effect reverses the effect copyright was intended to have. For the record: Copyright doesn't mean right to profit.
How nice of you guys defending the big coprporations, IP mongerers and cash-reapers while they are not only getting away with your cash once again, but also are taking away what was supposed to be something that belonged to society.
Well done.
Do you not feel this is a little extreme? Before this service you could record BBC content off the tv as much as you wanted, and you still can. But in addition, they're letting you download the same content for free with the trade-off that you can only keep it 7 days.
This is a service for people who missed something when it was broadcast and would like another chance to watch it. The BBC hasn't trampled on your rights or taken anything from you, and you're complaining because the gift isn't yours to keep, just to borrow.
If you don't like this service, you could always go to the creative archive (http://creativearchive.bbc.co.uk/) and download what the BBC provides there, without DRM, and well before the 70 years of copyright have expired.
I wouldn't be surprised if several of the posters on this thread are confusing iMP with the Creative Archive, given the level of negativity towards this scheme.
Still, it would be more convenient if the lines were blurred to an extent, so that the programmes which didn't warrant DRM were released unencumbered from the outset.
Lets seperate the medium that delivers the content from the content itself as the medium is secondary to the argument. By asking how it is different to a DVD I think you are really asking how is it different to a film made by an independent studio.
Yes, you've described it far better than I did.
When making a film someone stumps up a big pile of money with the hope of recovering that money through the sale of the film (eg cinema / DVD sales). Providing the money to make the film is a risk and the person / people who do so have a right to expect to own the content at the end of the process so that they can make money from it.
It could be argued (although it's quite tenuous) that the film financiers take a gamble, with the risk of losing their money vs the chance of making a profit. The license fee payers take no such gamble, so don't get such a great reward.
In reality they don't even have a choice of investing. The more I think about this the more I realise we get the short end of the stick.
The upswing though is that any profits the BBC does make go back into producing more content, so we get a better product than the license fee alone would provide. And it would be difficult to get an agreement of every single financiers (license fee payers) to give the content away to anyone who wanted it, unless it was made a condition of the license fee.
I'm rambling here and I've gone completely away from the original point. Sorry about that...
I'm certianly not defending DRM on a wide scale, but I would rather the BBC provided this facility with DRM than not at all.
While the release of unencumbered media files by the BBC shouldn't impact on any future profitablity, it may decrease the willingness of overseas broadcasters to buy BBC content to show on their own channels. Once the general paranoia felt by big buisiness over digital copies fades then hopefully the DRM would be removed.
(I can't see any reason why current affairs programmes should have any DRM - their resale value must be negligible)
In the case of the BBC I do care about the levels of profit - because with more profit they will have more money to spend on producing better shows, so I will have a choice of something other than continual makeover and property development shows to watch.
...we already have a VCR / PVR that can keep them longer than 7 days.
What I don't have is a VCR / PVR that can record a programme broadcast yesterday that I forgot was on or didn't even know about until I got an e-mail asking if I'd seen the really good show on tv the previous evening.
I could download the show of an existing.torrent or fileshare network but that's only possible if someone else has encoded and uploaded it. My priority at this point isn't so much having a file I can keep (I'll think about that once I've watched it once) - it's to be able to watch the programme while it's still being discussed by my peers, and before they've given too many spoilers away.
I can certianly sympathize with you. I often wondered why we paid for the creation of the content but didn't have more rights to it. If you paid for anything else to be created you would naturally assume that you would own it at the end.
Is this any different from buying a DVD? In both cases you are partly funding the creation of the content. I'm not saying that you shouln't have rights to the content, just that what applies to one type of media should also apply to the other.
Surely anyone who pays the licence fee should be able to give a copy of a show to anyone else who pays the fee (tax).
Without DRM how could the content creators determine whether you were giving a copy to a person who had paid their license fee, or one who hadn't?
From the BBC About iMP page http://www.bbc.co.uk/imp// - The files stop working 7 days after the broadcast date of the programme. So this isn't archive material, it's current programmes being offered for people who missed the live broadcast.
Because all the files expire at the same time there's no reason why everyone couldn't use the exact same DRM-encumbered data, so there's no reason why it shouldn't be downloaded from peers.
People who don't have the DRM key (ie those don't have the iMP application) won't be able to watch the media.
Well, I've certainly learned a lot from this thread. I always thoght Bork was a reference to the Swedish Chef in The Muppets, and was used to imply things were wrong or broken due to Swedish Chef's methods of food preparation....and I'd like to think a lot of other people were equally as deluded. Just so I'm not on my own here.
A scheme where the developing nations were allowed to ignore IP and Copyright law while producing goods to be used only in their own internal markets could be introduced with minimal cost to the IP owners.
The G8 countries wouldn't make significant loss, because the developing nations are generally unable to afford the licensed products anyway. Piracy would be no worse, because the pirates already ignore Copyright and IP law.
Maybe it would encourage the producers of the commercials to improve the quality of their output - I'll sometimes channel surf during the programmes to look for an advert that amuses me...
What I won't do is sit through adverts for loansharks or ambulance chasers that get shown in heavy rotation on the music channels - it seems most of them show the same 10 music vids interrupted by the same 10 adverts.
Slashdot Mirror
Looks like the people who lose out here will be either the stores (used games no longer sell for as much) or the people who sell their used games back to the stores. And seeing as the prices paid by stores for used games are already shockingly low, I doubt they could take another $10 off the offer price.
As a buyer, I should get the advantage of an extra $10 discount on the used game if I don't want multiplayer. And my choice is nice and easy - if the used game isn't at least $10 cheaper, I'm not buying it. Right now in the UK it's quite common for the used game to only be $3-$5 cheaper than new.
Inconstant Moon
Inconstant Moon was mentioned on here a few months ago so I picked up a copy from Amazon. It's one of the best things I've read this year.
I was all ready to get fired up with righteous indignation, but I just tried visiting B3ta from my Three UK mobile and there was no issue.
I'm on a standard contract, never had Xseries, not paying the extra fiver. Want to list a few more sites you're having trouble with? I'll test them out here, could help getting unblocked for free if other customers aren't having the issue.
Very much agree about the XArcade, it's a really nice bit of kit. The only downsides are the price and the amount of space it takes up. I bought one years ago with the intention of using it as a removable controller on a Mame cabinet that I never built.
Oh, I don't mind a logo screen that takes a few seconds, especially if I can press a button to skip it or if it's there while something else is loading, but waiting for a publisher's logo to load just so I can be advertised to isn't what I want.
I've had a quick look at the site and more than anything it makes me want to switch to a font with no TM character - 24 of them on one page is at least 23 too many. Okay Sony, I get it, you've trademarked all this stuff. What do you want? A trophy? A cake?
I guess it's a similar problem with the PSP itself - before playing a game I have to sit through splash screens telling me who developed the game, who published it, what technology it used (again, all with little TMs, (C)s and (R)s) - all I want to do is play the thing. And that's why I leave the PSP at the back of the drawer and play DS instead. UMDs are slow to load, don't slow them down further with tedious animations and logos.
Are you suggesting here that there should be a limit to the number of submissions that can become stories, or a cap on submissions themselves?
If it's the latter, then I'm advocating the same thing.
Limiting the number of submissions by a user would make the linkwhores work harder, making life easier for the editors in the process. A linkwhore who can only submit ten times a day (or five, whatever number is deemed appropriate) is going to put more effort into their submissions and be more selective of what they submit.
I'd also suggest that in cases where the article has to be largely re-written by an editor, the user should only have a link to their profile. And in the worst cases, where the story submission is just a verbatim copy of the intro to the linked article, then give attribution to the source of the article, not the submitter (unless they happen to be the same person, in which case declare that fact).
To me the problem with 'slashvertisements' is that the story submitter can hype their own product under the guise of it being third-party comment. I think this is what causes anger. The only solution in the absence of a link to an independant review is to either ignore the product, or strip the story down to factual elements. In the case of the stripped down stories they could be placed on a specific 'product releases' section, making them easy to ignore.
As for anger caused by submitters linking to their own sites (ie Hexus review of the Fatal1ty mouse), could you add a disclosure comment, in the same way you do when linking / discussing an item associated with Slashdot's parent company?
As long as the device is de-tuned (all channels, not just BBC) and is not connected to an aerial then that does appear to be legal. I'd expect you'd get repeated visits from TVLA though, just to make sure it stayed de-tuned.
Broadcast TV must be a lot better in Britain than it is in the US, for anyone to have trouble believing that someone would not want to watch it..
For the purpose of the tv license, 'broadcast' includes cable and satellite.
Excluding sport and movies the channels that are only on cable / sat tend to be the lowest quality though.
Just finished reading your tv license page - no wonder you're not a fan of the BBC or TVLA. A friend of mine has been in a similar situation, although his case is complicated by the fact that he does have a plasma screen which he uses to watch DVDs (it has no tuner, so no license is required). Even after an enforcement officer visited and confirmed that the setup was legal the TVLA continued to send threatening letters.
I was rather surprised by your figure of 2% not having a television, I always assumed the UK population were more addicted to tv than that.
Regarding the gamble taken by the license payers - Yes, I agree we lost big when it came to Eldorado, but because the bets are spread widely it rarely becomes a total loss. Hopefully the BBC will never spend a whole year's budget on a single project - that would be bad (remember On Digital and the football broadcast rights?)
Fair enough, I'd taken your comment to be specifically about the BBC offering, not DRM in general. I think the BBC case is different to the majority, as the content is also available in a non-DRM format and at equal (or better) quality for those with DVB-T decoders.
I do accept your point about the slippery slope, although I hope consumers will see the difference between a product which is restricted even though it has been purchased, and a product which is free to download (licence fee aside) yet restricted.
It may have seemed that way, but it certainly wasn't what I meant. As I said a couple of lines above, I think the DRM here is a different case, because the media is also available in a non-DRM format as long as I remember to watch it or record it at the time it is broadcast. If the BBC were to start attaching DRM to on-air broadcasts then it would be another matter entirely and I'd agree with your point that it was taking away more than copyright should allow.
The fee is to receive tv broadcasts, so if your PC or projector has no tv tuner then you don't have to pay. Put in a tv tuner and you do have to pay.
I know people who have plasma screens with no tuner. They don't have or need a tv licence, but get a fair amount of hassle from the tv licensing authority who find it very hard to believe anyone would not watch broadcast tv.
I agree - they're doing what they need to for legal and boardroom reasons, and if it stops the majority of unauthorised viewers that's good enough.
Almost all of the UK population can record this stuff off air with no DRM anyway, in fact those with DVB-T cards in their PCs can record nice high-quality unprotected digital streams - too big to fileshare for the moment, but easily re-encoded to a lower bitrate.
As soon as the BBC put in some sort of inconvenience for unauthorised viewers those viewers will either get the media another way, or not bother because they weren't that interested in it in the first place.
Do you not feel this is a little extreme? Before this service you could record BBC content off the tv as much as you wanted, and you still can. But in addition, they're letting you download the same content for free with the trade-off that you can only keep it 7 days.
This is a service for people who missed something when it was broadcast and would like another chance to watch it. The BBC hasn't trampled on your rights or taken anything from you, and you're complaining because the gift isn't yours to keep, just to borrow.
If you don't like this service, you could always go to the creative archive (http://creativearchive.bbc.co.uk/) and download what the BBC provides there, without DRM, and well before the 70 years of copyright have expired.
I wouldn't be surprised if several of the posters on this thread are confusing iMP with the Creative Archive, given the level of negativity towards this scheme.
Still, it would be more convenient if the lines were blurred to an extent, so that the programmes which didn't warrant DRM were released unencumbered from the outset.
Yes, you've described it far better than I did.
It could be argued (although it's quite tenuous) that the film financiers take a gamble, with the risk of losing their money vs the chance of making a profit. The license fee payers take no such gamble, so don't get such a great reward.
In reality they don't even have a choice of investing. The more I think about this the more I realise we get the short end of the stick.
The upswing though is that any profits the BBC does make go back into producing more content, so we get a better product than the license fee alone would provide. And it would be difficult to get an agreement of every single financiers (license fee payers) to give the content away to anyone who wanted it, unless it was made a condition of the license fee.
I'm rambling here and I've gone completely away from the original point. Sorry about that...
I'm certianly not defending DRM on a wide scale, but I would rather the BBC provided this facility with DRM than not at all.
While the release of unencumbered media files by the BBC shouldn't impact on any future profitablity, it may decrease the willingness of overseas broadcasters to buy BBC content to show on their own channels. Once the general paranoia felt by big buisiness over digital copies fades then hopefully the DRM would be removed.
(I can't see any reason why current affairs programmes should have any DRM - their resale value must be negligible)
In the case of the BBC I do care about the levels of profit - because with more profit they will have more money to spend on producing better shows, so I will have a choice of something other than continual makeover and property development shows to watch.
What I don't have is a VCR / PVR that can record a programme broadcast yesterday that I forgot was on or didn't even know about until I got an e-mail asking if I'd seen the really good show on tv the previous evening.
I could download the show of an existing
Is this any different from buying a DVD? In both cases you are partly funding the creation of the content. I'm not saying that you shouln't have rights to the content, just that what applies to one type of media should also apply to the other.
Without DRM how could the content creators determine whether you were giving a copy to a person who had paid their license fee, or one who hadn't?
From the BBC About iMP page http://www.bbc.co.uk/imp// - The files stop working 7 days after the broadcast date of the programme. So this isn't archive material, it's current programmes being offered for people who missed the live broadcast.
Because all the files expire at the same time there's no reason why everyone couldn't use the exact same DRM-encumbered data, so there's no reason why it shouldn't be downloaded from peers.
People who don't have the DRM key (ie those don't have the iMP application) won't be able to watch the media.
And who is to decide good vs. bad?
Surely it wouldn't matter if something is categorised as 'bad'. From the original quote:
protect ourselves from accidentally finding the bad stuff [my emphasis]
If you want to find something that has been classed as 'bad' then turn off whatever safety feature is there to stop you finding it by accident.
Well, I've certainly learned a lot from this thread. I always thoght Bork was a reference to the Swedish Chef in The Muppets, and was used to imply things were wrong or broken due to Swedish Chef's methods of food preparation. ...and I'd like to think a lot of other people were equally as deluded. Just so I'm not on my own here.
Still, I know now. That's the important thing.
A scheme where the developing nations were allowed to ignore IP and Copyright law while producing goods to be used only in their own internal markets could be introduced with minimal cost to the IP owners.
The G8 countries wouldn't make significant loss, because the developing nations are generally unable to afford the licensed products anyway. Piracy would be no worse, because the pirates already ignore Copyright and IP law.
Maybe it would encourage the producers of the commercials to improve the quality of their output - I'll sometimes channel surf during the programmes to look for an advert that amuses me...
What I won't do is sit through adverts for loansharks or ambulance chasers that get shown in heavy rotation on the music channels - it seems most of them show the same 10 music vids interrupted by the same 10 adverts.