I wonder if what Microsoft is objecting to is the fact that, if they took open source software and modified it, they'd have to provide the source code for others to use. Is it possible that they want to develop their own Linux distribution but not provide the source code? The question of MS Linux has been discussed here before, and people have said that if MS developed their own distribution, it wouldn't be a threat because competitors could examine the source and improve upon it. Maybe MS would like to sidestep that obligation. They'll want to argue that if they "innovate", they shouldn't be forced to let everyone else see what they've done. Never mind the fact that they'll be using the work of those who came before them, but that's a minor detail, easily ignored.
Didn't you hear? These folks were just issued a patent for "a device that allows a bipedal organism to remain in one position without relying on its legs for balance." Initially thought to apply only to chairs, it was later discovered that the patent also covers stools, beds, and floors. Further research indicates it may also cause the surface of the Earth to be in violation, but the patent holders are choosing not to enforce this violation at present because they are unable to determine the Universe's mailing address so that they can serve the appropriate paperwork.
Now maybe a bill outlawing spam will finally get passed. I mean, if spam is suddenly a threat to national security, its days are undoubtedly numbered.:)
I have to disagree about the current importance of MP3s. I will admit that their popularity is increasing, but they still don't garner nearly the attention and market share that recordings from the major labels do. Look at the upcoming Grammy awards. How many non-major-label artists are likely to win anything? Granted, the Grammys are a product of the recording industry, but do you see an MP3 awards show getting the press and television coverage the Grammys are? Of course not. Like it or not, the major labels still command a lion's share of the music scene.
If you believe for one minute that most people in this country aren't being influenced by the mass media in their music-buying decisions, then go to your local shopping mall and ask each person who passes you how many MP3s they downloaded this week and what non-major label albums that prompted them to buy. I guarantee you that a significant number of folks won't even know what an MP3 is. After you get right down to it, you're going to find that only a small minority are not relying on the mass media when making their buying decisions. Don't forget that the majority of Americans aren't even connected to the Internet.
And as for my statement about getting exposure through independent record stores, I didn't say this was a sure-fire way to succeed, but a vast majority of bands never get much farther than their garages anyway. And there most certainly are independent record stores in smaller cities. They usually crop up in college towns, places where alternative music thrives.
If I'm looking for a new band to listen to, I sure as hell ain't gonna turn on a radio.
Get rid of the tunnel vision. Most people find out about music via the radio and MTV, not the Internet. It'd be nice if it weren't so, but it is. Did Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys get noticed because of MP3.com? No, they got noticed because of a marketing effort by their labels to make sure that MTV and every Top-40 radio station on the planet got copies of their material.
And to address the idea that some have put forward stating that you can take a CD down to your local station and have a good chance of getting airplay, that may have been true 30 years ago, but it isn't true now. Many stations aren't even programmed locally anymore. They pay companies like Broadcast Programming to send them playlists every few weeks. These lists can be downloaded directly into a station's computer, which then plays the songs off a music library stored in CD changers or on hard disks. All the D.J. has to do is fill in the gaps between songs. Some stations are even automating that. A D.J. will come into the studio and look at the playlist, then record what he's supposed to say in between, then merge it all together in the computer. Presto! Instant radio show, and if it's done really well, the listeners won't even know it isn't live. So do you really think that you can have much hope of getting an unknown artist played on stations like that? Every song on these stations is researched using focus groups and other techniques to ensure that it meets some consultant's concept of what ought and ought not be played. And you know what? This works beautifully for the major labels and their cookie-cutter artists.
If you want to have a shot at airplay, the best place to turn is college radio. Many of these stations are very interested in playing quality material from local bands. You won't get the same audience as you would on commercial radio, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. And in fact there are some enlightened commercial stations out there. WZEW comes to mind as one.
I also think that any new artist looking for a way to sell CDs shouldn't pass up local record stores. Many of these stores carry a wide selection of independent labels and unknown artists, and there's a good chance that the owners are true music lovers who will give new artists a chance. They might even play the CD on their in-store music system, guaranteeing that people will hear it. Going this route isn't going to make a band an overnight success around the world, but you have to start somewhere. And this approach could help good radio stations and good local record stores get the music they need to thrive. And that's definitely a worthy endeavor. As much good music as there is on the Net, it doesn't substitute for spending a laid-back afternoon browsing a local independent record store, IMHO.
Re:Good business technique
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DSL Woes
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No. Slamming is switching a customer without their permission. They can recommend you switch all they want, but it's ultimately the customer's decision.
Look at it this way. Covad isn't disconnecting end users, it's disconnecting the ISPs. Big difference, and it's well within their rights to do so if the ISPs aren't paying. It'd be no different if an ISP's backbone provider or POP provider pulled the plug.
I agree. The Sony Mavica was a good idea because of the built-in floppy drive. Yes, I realize that putting lots of moving parts in a device like a camera increases the risk that something will break, but the advantage is that you can now have a virtually unlimited supply of digital media to save pictures on. If you're on vacation with a digital camera and run out of storage, just buy another box of floppies, and you're back in business. This assumes, of course, that these new drives can be made cheaply. If a CD burner can be integrated for less, then the advantage is lost.
When I read this story in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution this morning, I couldn't help but think that there's going to be some politician out there calling for the banning of encryption. Never mind that a U.S. ban would accomplish absolutely nothing in this case, since the terrorists are based in Afghanistan. And even if you ban it, and even if the terrorists are U.S.-based, how is such a ban supposed to help? The software is already out there, and new products are being developed around the world, not just in the U.S. Hell, you can even hide messages in graphic files. Are we going to ban everything but plain ASCII text? If someone posts an encrypted message on a Web site or bulletin board, what good did that ban do? The message is already posted, and you may presume that someone has read it by the time law enforcement discovers it. And never mind the fact that if someone wants to cause mayhem badly enough, they're going to do it with or without encryption or even computers. People have been blowing up things for centuries.
Still, logic has no role in politics, so we'd better brace ourselves.
And one last thing. I love it how politicians always say that we will never give in to terrorists when we do just that every time some asinine proposal like this surfaces. Terrorists are ultimately out to destroy our quality of life, and the really ironic thing is that law enforcement agencies, by advocating such extreme measures, are helping them further that goal.
The main obstacles to overcome are ignorance and apathy. The reason that MSN Messenger, ICQ, and AIM aren't being used in this way is simply that most Internet users don't even know about these issues. Ten years ago, getting information around the Net was much easier because there weren't so many users, and those users had much more in common. At present, you have many people who, although they are online, are completely clueless about how the Internet or computers work or what issues our society is facing. I've done Internet tech support, and, believe me, there are lots of Internet users who have absolutely no grasp of what the Net is or how it works. The only reason these people manage to get online every day is because nothing goes wrong. When it does, even the smallest thing, they're completely lost.
But back to the subject at hand. Spreading a message from person to person is fine, but if you want this to really have an impact, you need several things. First, you need a tight-knit coordinating organization. You need this for several reasons. The organization has to develop a coherent message to distribute. It will need to write position papers, press releases, slogans, etc. It also has to act as a point of contact for the press because you're going to get reporters who will want interviews, at least you hope you will. When that happens, someone is going to have to talk this up, and they'll have to do it professionally or the media conglomerates will eat your lunch. They're going to say all you are are a bunch of freeloaders who want to pirate music and steal from the artists. They're going to be slinging truckloads of mud, and someone will have to respond, someone who is viewed as informed and professional. You're going to be going toe to toe with the big boys here. If you start to attract attention, the gloves will come off, and things will get bloody. The outfits that produce all those negative political commercials you see are guns for hire, and the content producers will hire them if necessary.
Your organization also has to figure out how to organize groups of people who want to be volunteers. They'll need to be organized into regional groups to focus on various geographic areas. These people are just as important as your coordinating group because they're usually larger in number and ready to pound the pavement for you. However, they often lack direction. They're waiting to be told what they need to do, which gets back to your central group.
Finally, when you begin to plan your publicity campaign, you have to figure out how you're going to reach the majority of the population who've never used the Internet. It's really easy to get tunnel vision and forget that Internet users, especially tech-savvy Internet users, constitute a minority of the population. You still have to reach the other people out there, and don't expect much help from the big media outlets. You might get some news coverage, but no one is going to fall over themselves to give you much press unless and until your movement gets too big to ignore. Until then, you're on your own.
No, DivX failed mainly because DVD was available as a better alternative. As I said in a post a while back, if the movie companies had it to do all over again, DVD would have never been allowed into the market.
If you are starving and are given the choice of eating a cheeseburger or fried grasshoppers, which will you eat? Easy choice, right? What if someone took the cheeseburger away? Granted, this isn't a life-or-death issue we're discussing, but you get the idea.
If you get signed by a record label, but you still want people to be able to post your songs on Napster, then you'd better get that put into whatever contract you sign. That's the only way it'll happen.
As for artists wanting to be creative, that's true, but most of them also want to be able to eat on a regular basis and live indoors. If making music was only about creativity, no one would need record companies, especially not these days, with the easy distribution the Internet offers. These people want to make money as much as the next guy. They may not be greedy, but I guarantee that if you talk to many artists who are trying to make a go of selling albums, they'll tell you that, although publicity is great, it can't be allowed to significantly eat into CD sales. If you want an example of how bands publicize themselves, visit Oreo Blue's Web site. They have MP3s of songs from their albums posted, but they don't post the whole albums by any means. Why? Because, although they want you to listen to them and enjoy their music, they also want you to buy their CDs. Seems fair to me.
And as for record companies needing to care less about money and more about the artists, that's why anyone signing a contract needs a good agent and a damn good lawyer. Record companies are there to make money, not care about their artists. That's just the way it is. As with many companies these days, they are completely amoral. When their executives come into the office each morning, they don't contemplate how to stab someone in the back purely for the hell of it (well, maybe they do from time to time, but not on a regular basis). That would be immoral, not amoral. No, they think about how to maximize profits. If that helps someone else, that's OK. If that totally screws someone else, so be it. These companies are looking out for themselves at the expense of all else. In case you're thinking that being amoral is at least better than being immoral, think again. Being immoral--screwing someone out of spite, vengence, whatever--can lead someone to make mistakes because their judgement can be clouded by their desire to inflict damage on their opponent, which can cause them to make tactical errors. Being amoral, on the other hand, means they calculate every more for the maximum benefit, which means that they're paying very close attention to their surroundings and the competition. That's the toughest opponent to go up against.
A big ad campaign usually requires big money. Don't fool yourself; the anti-smoking campaign you see has lots of money behind it, and it has media companies behind it as well. That's why you see the PSAs on TV. Do you think that you're going to get an anti-SDMI ad carried on CNN, TNT, ABC, etc.? Not a chance, since the parent companies of these networks have an interest in seeing that campaign fail.
I'm not saying that what you propose can't be done, but if you don't have lots of money, then you need lots of people and one hell of an organization behind them. OK, let's see. You can have all your people wear t-shirts to spread the word, but where will the t-shirts come from? You can make them and distribute them, but now we're back to the money thing again, or you can put the designs out on a Web site and let people download them and print them, but then how do you let people know where to find the designs?
Finally, as several folks have already pointed out, how do you get past the sheep factor? How are you going to convince some 15-year old kid that they shouldn't buy that Britney Spears album because they're cutting their own throat in the process? If that kid knew enough to realize the problems we're facing with the big media companies trying to gain complete control of content, then they'd also realize that what Britney Spears churns out isn't real music anyway and instead look for something produced by a real musician, but you don't see that happening. So perhaps you should forget the mainstream demographic and instead focus on audiophiles. You'd have a better chance there, IMHO, but will that market segment be large enough to, if not turn the Titanic around, sufficiently alter its course to make a difference?
And where do alternative, independent artists and labels fit into this? I think they could be a powerful ally, since they're getting squeezed out by the big media companies as well. Still, many of them hate the idea of having their work pirated just as much as the major labels, since they can tolerate diminished sales less than the big companies can. Some of these guys are literally living hand to mouth. So you must convince them that this isn't about being able to copy music but an issue of the dominance of the big media companies over the entire musical domain. Still, if the big outfits won't budge, the independents may be people's only source of music. (For an example of this, read up on how BMI was created out of the dispute between radio stations and ASCAP.)
Such an educational campaign could work, but it has to be carefully planned and targeted. It ain't nearly as easy as it might look. Still, I do agree that something has got to be done, not just in regards to music, but to stop this insane rush toward total control of any information that someone somewhere thinks can be sold for a profit.
Not really. The reason that spam costs us (Internet users and ISPs) is the cost of storage and transmission. By the time it hits your computer, the cost has already been imposed.
Second, what you are implying by such a proposal is that spam is OK as long as it has ADV: stuck in the subject line. At the moment, spamming is against the AUPs of most ISPs and backbone providers, and many will boot spammers when they are discovered. If your proposal were to become law, spammers may argue in court that such a law would set up a framework by which they can legally spam without their provider being able to cut them off, no matter what the AUP says.
Finally, I doubt that such a tag would cut into a spammer's profits too much simply because so few folks respond to spam right now. The reason most spammers do what they do is because a) they've been conned by the spamware vendors into thinking that this is a way to make money on the Net, b) their costs are so low, since the most they usually lose is a $19.95 Internet account, if that, and c) they only have to get a couple of suckers to respond out of the millions of spams they send out in order to turn a profit, albeit a small one.
Believe it or not, most spammers aren't getting rich doing this, but the common wisdom is that they've convinced themselves that they're on the road to riches. And don't underestimate the stupidity of people when it comes to making money on the Internet. If you were going to open a business in a brick and mortar store, what general steps would you follow? The usual method is to first come up with a product or service that you see a market for, then build the business around that product or service. I can't count the number of calls I've taken from people who wanted a Web site because they wanted to make money on the Internet, then the next thing they asked me was what products they should be selling once they built the site. Now, these were fairly intelligent people, and they had their priorities totally backwards. Most spammers strike me as borderline to complete idiots with dreams of riches in their heads, so they're willing to eke out whatever profit they can, figuring the big payoff is just around the corner.
No, I don't think this proposal is what we need. What we need, IMHO, is a law similar to the junk fax law. Outlaw the garbage, then make high-profile examples of some spammers. If you do that, many of the rest will run scared and find some other scheme that poses less risk. Actually, we really don't need a law to begin doing this; I think that if ISPs made sure they had financial penalty clauses in their AUPs, then aggressively used them against spammers, it'd make a lot of difference. Perhaps ISPs could share the legal costs of court actions by contributing to a common fund that could be drawn upon by participating providers. This would allow smaller ISPs to band together and have the financial resources to go after spammers they might otherwise choose not to sue. They wouldn't have to sue them all; they could sue just enough to turn the anxiety factor way up for anyone considering spam as a way to make money.
That's because companies can see this for the legal time bomb that they are, and want no association with them. That is, until they become successful money makers and they can invest without the chance of legal recourse coming THEIR way.
I find it interesting that so much emphasis has been placed by the media on the idea that VC money has to go into any new technology. As just about everyone here knows, that simply isn't so. As has been stated many times before, all it takes is one sharp programmer to write a new application that is good enough and wanted enough that it takes off.
As for P2P, some may say that the "geek factor" in programs like Gnutella and Freenet will doom them to failure in the mainstream marketplace. I haven't tried them yet, so I can't say how usable they are, but the same was said about things like IP telephony, Netcasting, and even the Internet itself, anf they were all adopted by the masses to one extent or another. Usable or not, VC-backed or not, P2P must continue to develop, if for no other reason than to show the media industry that it doesn't have veto power over technology.
And FWIW, when the printing press was invented, it scared the hell out of the monarchies and the Church. These entities had a stranglehold over information, and they were going to either harness this new technology for their exclusive use or crush it if they had no other choice. For a long time, they mostly succeeded, but they ultimately failed, although the unlicensed printers of the day probably didn't see many encouraging developments. The thing is, people didn't give up, and freedom ultimately won, even if it took a few hundred years.
With PPV, they're trying to keep people from taping the movie as they watch it. That way, if you want to see it again, then you have to pay again...and again...and again. Or you can go out and buy the video. If you'd taped the PPV broadcast, you're less likely to buy the video later.
I agree that they're spending lots of money on this, but I suspect they're trying to lay long-term groundwork here. They're in the process of building an infrastructure that will give them control of how you use content. For the last 25 years or so, we've come to see video as something we can freely record off TV broadcasts and watch as often as we like. I suspect that the entertainment industry would like to reverse that attitude. They don't have to activate all their copy controls at once. In fact, I suspect they won't. They'll do it gradually, possibly beginning with things like live PPV events such as boxing, then move out from there.
BTW, does anyone remember the concept of self-destructing videotapes the movie industry experimented with in the 1980s? The idea was that you could buy a tape of a movie that you could then watch for a set number of times. A counter would keep track, and at the beginning of the last viewing, a magnet would be brought in contact with the tape. As the tape passed under the magnet, it would be erased. This idea never took off, but it demonstrates that content providers have always wanted to place controls on how you use their content. It's just that the technology is finally catching up with what they've wanted to do for years.
Agreed on all counts.
As a matter of fact, I remember that NBC (I think) explored the possibility of using Macrovision on the NFL games they broadcast during the mid 1980s. I don't know if it was the loss of advertising they feared or if it was due to pressure from the NFL to stop viewers from taping its games. In any event, it never came to pass. I also seem to remember that SkyPix, a failed DBS venture in the early 1990s, planned to use Macrovision on its PPV movies. If you paid a lower price, you could watch but not record. If you paid more, the Macrovision would be switched off so you could tape the movie.
In response to your last comment, that people will feel justified in cracking DVDs if the studios want to make them pay, then force them to sit through commercials, you must not forget the underlying theme that seems to be at work here: Content providers seem to have the attitude that they'll push this as far as they can. If enough people would pay for a DVD with the movie interrupted by commercials every 15 minutes, they'll make you sit there and watch those commercials. These companies are out for maximum profits, and they'll do whatever their customers will let them get away with. It's all about making as much money as possible, and what's morally right has nothing to do with it. As for things like tradition, which has held that when you buy something like a book, it's yours to keep, lend, or sell, that will go right out the window if we let it. The technology is allowing all the rules to be rewritten, and the corporations want to monopolize the pen.
Do you see how your argument falls down? Clearly someone is buying them or they wouldn't advertiser them. Walk into a video store in the UK and you can see tapes of Red Dwarf, Babylon 5, Star Trek etc etc. These videos are often on sale at the same time that the shows are being made on TV.
Logical conclusion: People are wiling to pay fair dues for a decent product. We are not all thieves and copyright infringers and don't deserve to be treated as such.
Of course some folks are buying them, but some are not. There's no legal restriction against taping them for private use, either, so folks can legally tape them. However, if the shows are copy-protected, then taping is suddenly out of the question, and all the folks who would have taped now must buy the tapes if they want a copy. Perhaps most will simply do without, but some will buy, and therein lies the extra profit.
To paraphrase someone a long time ago in a galaxy far far away, "The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.". See which way the wind is blowing, there are the seeds of rebelion in it's infancy here.
Depends on what kind of rebellion you refer to. You must remember that content owners see piracy as a criminal act, nothing more, and they're going to try as hard to stop it as you'd try to kill a cockroach scurrying across your kitchen floor. Likewise, not a single law will ever pass any legislature to curtail copy controls because of the rampant piracy of content. Someone might make the argument that piracy is simply the result of frustrated consumers who want freer access to content and therefore demonstrates a need for less restrictive controls, but the entertainment industry will counter that piracy is a criminal act, not a legitimate form of protest, and tougher restrictions--mandated by law--are necessary.
On the other hand, if you're saying that as controls get more restrictive, then consumers will simply turn away from the entertainment companies, then you have a legitimate argument, assuming it really happens. And I don't mean that the readers of this board turn away; I mean that many tens of millions of people in the United States alone stop buying. Only then will these companies see enough damage to their bottom lines--damage that laws can't repair--, that they'll reevaluate their position.
I agree that most folks wouldn't buy tapes of the programming, but a few might. More importantly, would anyone pay, say, a nickel to be able to time-shift their favorite soap opera or prime time drama? I bet they would, if they had no other choice. Another use might be to prevent viewers from taping PPV movies. This would allow the release date for PPV to be moved up, since it'd have less impact on video sales and rentals.
Some may argue that the entertainment industry would be incredibly stupid to piss off viewers by doing things like this. That may be true, but as I've said in other posts, they'll charge whatever the market will bear. If this scheme creates more negatives than positives, then they won't use it, but they will if they can make a profit. My guess is they want the ability to do things like this, even if they don't necessarily use that ability.
This post is a reply to things said in all three replies to my last post. Rather than be repetitive, I'll just post once.
Yes, the entertainment companies lose power as more indie content surfaces and as more folks simply tune out. But, and this is a really big "but", technologically-savvy Net users do not represent the vast majority of Americans. Yes, indie content is beginning to flourish online, but Joe Sixpack doesn't know this, nor does he know how to access it. He's satisfied to sit in front of his TV, which is hooked up to AOL-TWX-AT&T-Cox-Comcast Amalgomated Cable and watch whatever comes down that little wire. His average teenage kids aren't boldly experimenting with listening to unsigned bands they find online; they're down at the mall buying Britney Spears and Backstreet Boys CDs. Until alternative content is as accessible to the masses as traditional media, the big corps will have the advantage. In short, there may be a revolution taking place, but most of the public doesn't even know about it.
I realize that this is a bit of a generalization, but the fact remains that the big entertainment companies couldn't make this much money if they decided to print it themselves. They're literally raking it in. As a previous poster points out, sales of videos that you see on places like the History Channel are probably very low. Yep, they probably are, but if flipping a single bit can stop folks from taping those shows and force them to spend real money on buying them, then the content owners just made a profit. So what if most folks who would have taped the show can't. As long as sales were generated and other revenues didn't decline by an offsetting amount, the endeavor was a success.
Sure they lose money if a home viewer copies it. See, if that viewer copies it, then that viewer isn't likely to buy it. Have you seen the ads on places like the History Channel offering to sell you a tape of the show you just saw for $20? Have you then thought to yourself, "I don't need to spend $20 for their tape. I'll just tape the show the next time it airs." Now do you see their angle? With copy controls on digital broadcasts, they can put an end to your taping session before it even begins.
As for your speculation about why they're doing things like this, I'd say your second choice is closest to the truth. My guess is that the content owners see the situation this way:
1. We own the content.
2. Consumers want the content.
3. We have the technology to make consumers pay us in various ways for the content.
4. We will therefore charge whatever the market will bear and impose whatever restrictions are necessary to ensure that we are paid the price we have set.
5. Piracy shall not be viewed as a protest of these charges. It is a criminal act that we will stop in whatever ways necessary. If we can eliminate piracy, consumers who may have pirated content will have two choices: pay for the content or do without.
People here have often commented on the failure of the DiVX format as an example of how consumers will reject such intrusive content restrictions. This may be a valid point, but another lesson can be learned from it: If you're going to impose a system such as DiVX on the marketplace, then you'd better make damn sure that a less restrictive alternative, i.e. DVD, is not available. In other words, if the entertainment industry had it to do all over again, my guess is that they would still roll out DiVX, but they'd never allow standard DVDs to see the light of day. In such a scenario, DiVX might just succeed, since the consumer has no alternative. They'd probably even make the argument that if a consumer wants unlimited viewing rights, he can stick with VHS. If, however, he wants better quality, he's going to have to pay the higher price of DiVX. If enough consumers buy into this view and start using DiVX, then the content owners turn a profit. For those who don't see this as fair, well, they'll just have to find something else to do to pass the time.
My point here is this: If you feel that content restrictions such as the ones discussed daily on Slashdot are harsh/unfair/immoral/whatever, then you'd better either figure out a way to organize one hell of a boycott and make it stick, or you'd better lobby for legislation to prevent or regulate these practices because, if you don't, the content owners are going to push these things as far as they can. If they could find some economical and legal way to have a guy looking over your shoulder 24/7 to make sure you comply with whatever content restrictions they devise, they'll do it and feel completely justified in doing so. From their point of view, they're protecting their property, and if that's somehow inconvenient for you, that's just tough--unless, of course, that inconvenience has a negative effect on their corporate well-being.
They might be using the MAPS DUL. It doesn't list the IPs of mail servers, but it does list the IPs of POPs, the idea being that a POP has no business connecting to a non-local mail server. POPs can be listed by the ISPs that own them, or they might also get listed if someone manages to compile a list of an ISPs POPs, usually because lots of spam is coming out of that provider.
On the Internet, perhaps, but not via traditional means, such as broadcast and cable. Sure, you can get alternative programming online, but a vast majority of Americans have never done this and wouldn't know how if you asked them. They get their media fix from companies like AOL/Time Warner, Disney/ABC, Clear Channel Communications, Cumulous Broadcasting, Sony, Paramount, and others. Until you reach these people, you can't truly break the stranglehold of the big corporations.
BTW, as for the decline in newspapers, that trend began before the recent popularity of the Web for getting news emerged. It's been attributed more to the increased use of television by younger people to get their news. Older folks are still reading newspapers more, so it appears to be a generational issue. There have been plenty of communication studies on this phoenomenon. I remember discussing them in the early '90s, long before the Internet found mass appeal.
I partially agree with you. I think that companies such as AOL, WebTV/Microsoft, Netpliance (isn't that the name), etc. think that people want these set-top boxes so they can be entertained by using the Net on their TVs or doing something similar. From what I've seen, sales of these things haven't been exactly overwhelming. By and large, people are still getting Internet access via computers. Meanwhile, you've got people ripping these boxes apart to try to turn them into something more useful than their original form. Sure, you can build the coolest, fastest, most tricked-out PC in your neighborhood, yet not that many folks post that fact on places like Slashdot. They do, however, post articles about how to make these set-top boxes do things they weren't designed to do. I don't look down on these people one bit. I get your point that old minicomputers didn't have all the pretty bells and whistles that these boxes have now, but I don't see what folks are doing as less challenging. They're just working with what they're given.
I do agree with you that our culture is preoccupied with entertainment. I've also begun to think about how the mass production of movies, music, television programs, and possibly even literature has moved us toward a point where corporations are almost single-handedly creating our culture for us. This is definitely a Very Bad Thing. It's also occurred to me that all the recent discourse about copyrights and IP misses the point a bit. Even with freer access to copyrighted works, who we are is still being defined by huge multinational corporations. Independent media is quickly slipping away, and only it holds the key to truly breaking our society away from the dominance of the media conglomerates. To get back around to the subject at hand, having a set-top box that is relatively open, as the Nokia appears to be, may hold some promise. Now there's a chance to reach the public in the place that they look at most: their TV screens. With the right software, independent and alternative programmers have a shot at getting the viewing public to look at their work in a way that is much more like the traditional media the public is used to. So, in the case of the Nokia, I can see a set-top box that I can look at with something other than contempt. This thing might have some promise. Instead of existing simply to dumb down the Internet, it might actually have the potential, if exploited correctly, to bring prople content they might have otherwise never found.
It seems to me that half the articles on Slashdot these days are about things related to copyright, IP, patents, the DMCA, etc. The conclusion I reach regarding all this is that we're moving into an era where corporations are trying to get almost complete control of our society.
And the amazing thing is that people are letting them get away with it
Now, before you say that there isn't anything we can do, I'll tell you that you're wrong. Yes, corporations control the mass media, and most politicians are in their back pockets, but the ultimate power still lies at the ballot box. Governments can be changed if enough people want it to happen. And we're all sitting here with the most powerful media right at our fingertips: the Internet. One of the biggest reasons the Net gets kicked in the head so much by politicians is that they don't see its users as a potent political force. At the present time, politicians by and large view the Internet as either a big gimmick to hold up to the media when they want to appear "high-tech" or a scapegoat to kick around when they need a convenient cause for some complex social problem. The day that Internet users flex their collective political muscles, that will change.
The main problem here, as I see it, is that getting Net users to agree on anything is a lot like herding cats. (I've never tried herding cats, but I've always wanted to.) We're a diverse group, and we have a hard time agreeing on anything. A few years ago, it was a little easier to reach a consensus because there weren't as many people online, and they came from somewhat similar backgrounds. Now, the Net has gone "mainstream", and you see more and more people online whose sole purpose for being there is to visit big corporate Web sites. They wouldn't have been nearly as passionate in opposing things like the CDA, Clipper chip, and other similar things, partially because they'd be less likely to even find out about them.
Having said that, I still think we need to try. What exactly we would try, I don't know, but our society seems to be at an all-time low point in political activism, and we need to change that. Any democratic society moves in the direction that its most active participants want it to move in. Notice that I didn't say "the majority of the population." No, if you want something to happen, you have to participate, and the only ones participating right now are major corporations. Say what you will about corps having undue political influence, but the sole reason they do is because they're involved in the process to a degree that no one else is. Many people say that they don't care about the political process because they don't see any politicians offering them something they're interested in, but you can be sure that this would change if a large group of people who vote starts making noise. Why do you think Social Security is such a big deal? Because senior citizens vote, and any politicians with two brain cells to rub together knows that he ignores that issue at his peril. Any group can get politicians to do its bidding, provided it is organized and politically active.
Anyone care to make any contributions as to how to get Internet users organized and politically active? Anyone want to take a stab at doing it? It's going to have to get done sooner or later, and now is about as good a time as any.
I have an Acer 6206A, and I've never had a problem with Verbatim discs. Last year, a friend was trying to burn some stuff on his HP using some generic discs someone had given him, and they kept failing. He thought his burner had failed, so he gave me his last three discs to try. All of them failed, and those are the only three CDs that have ever failed im my burner in 2 1/2 years. So yes, there are some really crappy discs out there, as well as crappy burners. I've never heard of a Harmon Kardon (sp?) burner. I thought they only made car stereos and speakers. Could be made under contract with another company and private-labeled. In that case, there's no telling who actually made it.
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder if what Microsoft is objecting to is the fact that, if they took open source software and modified it, they'd have to provide the source code for others to use. Is it possible that they want to develop their own Linux distribution but not provide the source code? The question of MS Linux has been discussed here before, and people have said that if MS developed their own distribution, it wouldn't be a threat because competitors could examine the source and improve upon it. Maybe MS would like to sidestep that obligation. They'll want to argue that if they "innovate", they shouldn't be forced to let everyone else see what they've done. Never mind the fact that they'll be using the work of those who came before them, but that's a minor detail, easily ignored.
Didn't you hear? These folks were just issued a patent for "a device that allows a bipedal organism to remain in one position without relying on its legs for balance." Initially thought to apply only to chairs, it was later discovered that the patent also covers stools, beds, and floors. Further research indicates it may also cause the surface of the Earth to be in violation, but the patent holders are choosing not to enforce this violation at present because they are unable to determine the Universe's mailing address so that they can serve the appropriate paperwork.
Now maybe a bill outlawing spam will finally get passed. I mean, if spam is suddenly a threat to national security, its days are undoubtedly numbered. :)
I have to disagree about the current importance of MP3s. I will admit that their popularity is increasing, but they still don't garner nearly the attention and market share that recordings from the major labels do. Look at the upcoming Grammy awards. How many non-major-label artists are likely to win anything? Granted, the Grammys are a product of the recording industry, but do you see an MP3 awards show getting the press and television coverage the Grammys are? Of course not. Like it or not, the major labels still command a lion's share of the music scene. If you believe for one minute that most people in this country aren't being influenced by the mass media in their music-buying decisions, then go to your local shopping mall and ask each person who passes you how many MP3s they downloaded this week and what non-major label albums that prompted them to buy. I guarantee you that a significant number of folks won't even know what an MP3 is. After you get right down to it, you're going to find that only a small minority are not relying on the mass media when making their buying decisions. Don't forget that the majority of Americans aren't even connected to the Internet. And as for my statement about getting exposure through independent record stores, I didn't say this was a sure-fire way to succeed, but a vast majority of bands never get much farther than their garages anyway. And there most certainly are independent record stores in smaller cities. They usually crop up in college towns, places where alternative music thrives.
If I'm looking for a new band to listen to, I sure as hell ain't gonna turn on a radio. Get rid of the tunnel vision. Most people find out about music via the radio and MTV, not the Internet. It'd be nice if it weren't so, but it is. Did Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys get noticed because of MP3.com? No, they got noticed because of a marketing effort by their labels to make sure that MTV and every Top-40 radio station on the planet got copies of their material. And to address the idea that some have put forward stating that you can take a CD down to your local station and have a good chance of getting airplay, that may have been true 30 years ago, but it isn't true now. Many stations aren't even programmed locally anymore. They pay companies like Broadcast Programming to send them playlists every few weeks. These lists can be downloaded directly into a station's computer, which then plays the songs off a music library stored in CD changers or on hard disks. All the D.J. has to do is fill in the gaps between songs. Some stations are even automating that. A D.J. will come into the studio and look at the playlist, then record what he's supposed to say in between, then merge it all together in the computer. Presto! Instant radio show, and if it's done really well, the listeners won't even know it isn't live. So do you really think that you can have much hope of getting an unknown artist played on stations like that? Every song on these stations is researched using focus groups and other techniques to ensure that it meets some consultant's concept of what ought and ought not be played. And you know what? This works beautifully for the major labels and their cookie-cutter artists. If you want to have a shot at airplay, the best place to turn is college radio. Many of these stations are very interested in playing quality material from local bands. You won't get the same audience as you would on commercial radio, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. And in fact there are some enlightened commercial stations out there. WZEW comes to mind as one. I also think that any new artist looking for a way to sell CDs shouldn't pass up local record stores. Many of these stores carry a wide selection of independent labels and unknown artists, and there's a good chance that the owners are true music lovers who will give new artists a chance. They might even play the CD on their in-store music system, guaranteeing that people will hear it. Going this route isn't going to make a band an overnight success around the world, but you have to start somewhere. And this approach could help good radio stations and good local record stores get the music they need to thrive. And that's definitely a worthy endeavor. As much good music as there is on the Net, it doesn't substitute for spending a laid-back afternoon browsing a local independent record store, IMHO.
No. Slamming is switching a customer without their permission. They can recommend you switch all they want, but it's ultimately the customer's decision. Look at it this way. Covad isn't disconnecting end users, it's disconnecting the ISPs. Big difference, and it's well within their rights to do so if the ISPs aren't paying. It'd be no different if an ISP's backbone provider or POP provider pulled the plug.
I agree. The Sony Mavica was a good idea because of the built-in floppy drive. Yes, I realize that putting lots of moving parts in a device like a camera increases the risk that something will break, but the advantage is that you can now have a virtually unlimited supply of digital media to save pictures on. If you're on vacation with a digital camera and run out of storage, just buy another box of floppies, and you're back in business. This assumes, of course, that these new drives can be made cheaply. If a CD burner can be integrated for less, then the advantage is lost.
When I read this story in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution this morning, I couldn't help but think that there's going to be some politician out there calling for the banning of encryption. Never mind that a U.S. ban would accomplish absolutely nothing in this case, since the terrorists are based in Afghanistan. And even if you ban it, and even if the terrorists are U.S.-based, how is such a ban supposed to help? The software is already out there, and new products are being developed around the world, not just in the U.S. Hell, you can even hide messages in graphic files. Are we going to ban everything but plain ASCII text? If someone posts an encrypted message on a Web site or bulletin board, what good did that ban do? The message is already posted, and you may presume that someone has read it by the time law enforcement discovers it. And never mind the fact that if someone wants to cause mayhem badly enough, they're going to do it with or without encryption or even computers. People have been blowing up things for centuries. Still, logic has no role in politics, so we'd better brace ourselves. And one last thing. I love it how politicians always say that we will never give in to terrorists when we do just that every time some asinine proposal like this surfaces. Terrorists are ultimately out to destroy our quality of life, and the really ironic thing is that law enforcement agencies, by advocating such extreme measures, are helping them further that goal.
The main obstacles to overcome are ignorance and apathy. The reason that MSN Messenger, ICQ, and AIM aren't being used in this way is simply that most Internet users don't even know about these issues. Ten years ago, getting information around the Net was much easier because there weren't so many users, and those users had much more in common. At present, you have many people who, although they are online, are completely clueless about how the Internet or computers work or what issues our society is facing. I've done Internet tech support, and, believe me, there are lots of Internet users who have absolutely no grasp of what the Net is or how it works. The only reason these people manage to get online every day is because nothing goes wrong. When it does, even the smallest thing, they're completely lost. But back to the subject at hand. Spreading a message from person to person is fine, but if you want this to really have an impact, you need several things. First, you need a tight-knit coordinating organization. You need this for several reasons. The organization has to develop a coherent message to distribute. It will need to write position papers, press releases, slogans, etc. It also has to act as a point of contact for the press because you're going to get reporters who will want interviews, at least you hope you will. When that happens, someone is going to have to talk this up, and they'll have to do it professionally or the media conglomerates will eat your lunch. They're going to say all you are are a bunch of freeloaders who want to pirate music and steal from the artists. They're going to be slinging truckloads of mud, and someone will have to respond, someone who is viewed as informed and professional. You're going to be going toe to toe with the big boys here. If you start to attract attention, the gloves will come off, and things will get bloody. The outfits that produce all those negative political commercials you see are guns for hire, and the content producers will hire them if necessary. Your organization also has to figure out how to organize groups of people who want to be volunteers. They'll need to be organized into regional groups to focus on various geographic areas. These people are just as important as your coordinating group because they're usually larger in number and ready to pound the pavement for you. However, they often lack direction. They're waiting to be told what they need to do, which gets back to your central group. Finally, when you begin to plan your publicity campaign, you have to figure out how you're going to reach the majority of the population who've never used the Internet. It's really easy to get tunnel vision and forget that Internet users, especially tech-savvy Internet users, constitute a minority of the population. You still have to reach the other people out there, and don't expect much help from the big media outlets. You might get some news coverage, but no one is going to fall over themselves to give you much press unless and until your movement gets too big to ignore. Until then, you're on your own.
No, DivX failed mainly because DVD was available as a better alternative. As I said in a post a while back, if the movie companies had it to do all over again, DVD would have never been allowed into the market. If you are starving and are given the choice of eating a cheeseburger or fried grasshoppers, which will you eat? Easy choice, right? What if someone took the cheeseburger away? Granted, this isn't a life-or-death issue we're discussing, but you get the idea.
If you get signed by a record label, but you still want people to be able to post your songs on Napster, then you'd better get that put into whatever contract you sign. That's the only way it'll happen. As for artists wanting to be creative, that's true, but most of them also want to be able to eat on a regular basis and live indoors. If making music was only about creativity, no one would need record companies, especially not these days, with the easy distribution the Internet offers. These people want to make money as much as the next guy. They may not be greedy, but I guarantee that if you talk to many artists who are trying to make a go of selling albums, they'll tell you that, although publicity is great, it can't be allowed to significantly eat into CD sales. If you want an example of how bands publicize themselves, visit Oreo Blue's Web site. They have MP3s of songs from their albums posted, but they don't post the whole albums by any means. Why? Because, although they want you to listen to them and enjoy their music, they also want you to buy their CDs. Seems fair to me. And as for record companies needing to care less about money and more about the artists, that's why anyone signing a contract needs a good agent and a damn good lawyer. Record companies are there to make money, not care about their artists. That's just the way it is. As with many companies these days, they are completely amoral. When their executives come into the office each morning, they don't contemplate how to stab someone in the back purely for the hell of it (well, maybe they do from time to time, but not on a regular basis). That would be immoral, not amoral. No, they think about how to maximize profits. If that helps someone else, that's OK. If that totally screws someone else, so be it. These companies are looking out for themselves at the expense of all else. In case you're thinking that being amoral is at least better than being immoral, think again. Being immoral--screwing someone out of spite, vengence, whatever--can lead someone to make mistakes because their judgement can be clouded by their desire to inflict damage on their opponent, which can cause them to make tactical errors. Being amoral, on the other hand, means they calculate every more for the maximum benefit, which means that they're paying very close attention to their surroundings and the competition. That's the toughest opponent to go up against.
A big ad campaign usually requires big money. Don't fool yourself; the anti-smoking campaign you see has lots of money behind it, and it has media companies behind it as well. That's why you see the PSAs on TV. Do you think that you're going to get an anti-SDMI ad carried on CNN, TNT, ABC, etc.? Not a chance, since the parent companies of these networks have an interest in seeing that campaign fail. I'm not saying that what you propose can't be done, but if you don't have lots of money, then you need lots of people and one hell of an organization behind them. OK, let's see. You can have all your people wear t-shirts to spread the word, but where will the t-shirts come from? You can make them and distribute them, but now we're back to the money thing again, or you can put the designs out on a Web site and let people download them and print them, but then how do you let people know where to find the designs? Finally, as several folks have already pointed out, how do you get past the sheep factor? How are you going to convince some 15-year old kid that they shouldn't buy that Britney Spears album because they're cutting their own throat in the process? If that kid knew enough to realize the problems we're facing with the big media companies trying to gain complete control of content, then they'd also realize that what Britney Spears churns out isn't real music anyway and instead look for something produced by a real musician, but you don't see that happening. So perhaps you should forget the mainstream demographic and instead focus on audiophiles. You'd have a better chance there, IMHO, but will that market segment be large enough to, if not turn the Titanic around, sufficiently alter its course to make a difference? And where do alternative, independent artists and labels fit into this? I think they could be a powerful ally, since they're getting squeezed out by the big media companies as well. Still, many of them hate the idea of having their work pirated just as much as the major labels, since they can tolerate diminished sales less than the big companies can. Some of these guys are literally living hand to mouth. So you must convince them that this isn't about being able to copy music but an issue of the dominance of the big media companies over the entire musical domain. Still, if the big outfits won't budge, the independents may be people's only source of music. (For an example of this, read up on how BMI was created out of the dispute between radio stations and ASCAP.) Such an educational campaign could work, but it has to be carefully planned and targeted. It ain't nearly as easy as it might look. Still, I do agree that something has got to be done, not just in regards to music, but to stop this insane rush toward total control of any information that someone somewhere thinks can be sold for a profit.
Not really. The reason that spam costs us (Internet users and ISPs) is the cost of storage and transmission. By the time it hits your computer, the cost has already been imposed. Second, what you are implying by such a proposal is that spam is OK as long as it has ADV: stuck in the subject line. At the moment, spamming is against the AUPs of most ISPs and backbone providers, and many will boot spammers when they are discovered. If your proposal were to become law, spammers may argue in court that such a law would set up a framework by which they can legally spam without their provider being able to cut them off, no matter what the AUP says. Finally, I doubt that such a tag would cut into a spammer's profits too much simply because so few folks respond to spam right now. The reason most spammers do what they do is because a) they've been conned by the spamware vendors into thinking that this is a way to make money on the Net, b) their costs are so low, since the most they usually lose is a $19.95 Internet account, if that, and c) they only have to get a couple of suckers to respond out of the millions of spams they send out in order to turn a profit, albeit a small one. Believe it or not, most spammers aren't getting rich doing this, but the common wisdom is that they've convinced themselves that they're on the road to riches. And don't underestimate the stupidity of people when it comes to making money on the Internet. If you were going to open a business in a brick and mortar store, what general steps would you follow? The usual method is to first come up with a product or service that you see a market for, then build the business around that product or service. I can't count the number of calls I've taken from people who wanted a Web site because they wanted to make money on the Internet, then the next thing they asked me was what products they should be selling once they built the site. Now, these were fairly intelligent people, and they had their priorities totally backwards. Most spammers strike me as borderline to complete idiots with dreams of riches in their heads, so they're willing to eke out whatever profit they can, figuring the big payoff is just around the corner. No, I don't think this proposal is what we need. What we need, IMHO, is a law similar to the junk fax law. Outlaw the garbage, then make high-profile examples of some spammers. If you do that, many of the rest will run scared and find some other scheme that poses less risk. Actually, we really don't need a law to begin doing this; I think that if ISPs made sure they had financial penalty clauses in their AUPs, then aggressively used them against spammers, it'd make a lot of difference. Perhaps ISPs could share the legal costs of court actions by contributing to a common fund that could be drawn upon by participating providers. This would allow smaller ISPs to band together and have the financial resources to go after spammers they might otherwise choose not to sue. They wouldn't have to sue them all; they could sue just enough to turn the anxiety factor way up for anyone considering spam as a way to make money.
That's because companies can see this for the legal time bomb that they are, and want no association with them. That is, until they become successful money makers and they can invest without the chance of legal recourse coming THEIR way. I find it interesting that so much emphasis has been placed by the media on the idea that VC money has to go into any new technology. As just about everyone here knows, that simply isn't so. As has been stated many times before, all it takes is one sharp programmer to write a new application that is good enough and wanted enough that it takes off. As for P2P, some may say that the "geek factor" in programs like Gnutella and Freenet will doom them to failure in the mainstream marketplace. I haven't tried them yet, so I can't say how usable they are, but the same was said about things like IP telephony, Netcasting, and even the Internet itself, anf they were all adopted by the masses to one extent or another. Usable or not, VC-backed or not, P2P must continue to develop, if for no other reason than to show the media industry that it doesn't have veto power over technology. And FWIW, when the printing press was invented, it scared the hell out of the monarchies and the Church. These entities had a stranglehold over information, and they were going to either harness this new technology for their exclusive use or crush it if they had no other choice. For a long time, they mostly succeeded, but they ultimately failed, although the unlicensed printers of the day probably didn't see many encouraging developments. The thing is, people didn't give up, and freedom ultimately won, even if it took a few hundred years.
With PPV, they're trying to keep people from taping the movie as they watch it. That way, if you want to see it again, then you have to pay again...and again...and again. Or you can go out and buy the video. If you'd taped the PPV broadcast, you're less likely to buy the video later. I agree that they're spending lots of money on this, but I suspect they're trying to lay long-term groundwork here. They're in the process of building an infrastructure that will give them control of how you use content. For the last 25 years or so, we've come to see video as something we can freely record off TV broadcasts and watch as often as we like. I suspect that the entertainment industry would like to reverse that attitude. They don't have to activate all their copy controls at once. In fact, I suspect they won't. They'll do it gradually, possibly beginning with things like live PPV events such as boxing, then move out from there. BTW, does anyone remember the concept of self-destructing videotapes the movie industry experimented with in the 1980s? The idea was that you could buy a tape of a movie that you could then watch for a set number of times. A counter would keep track, and at the beginning of the last viewing, a magnet would be brought in contact with the tape. As the tape passed under the magnet, it would be erased. This idea never took off, but it demonstrates that content providers have always wanted to place controls on how you use their content. It's just that the technology is finally catching up with what they've wanted to do for years.
Agreed on all counts. As a matter of fact, I remember that NBC (I think) explored the possibility of using Macrovision on the NFL games they broadcast during the mid 1980s. I don't know if it was the loss of advertising they feared or if it was due to pressure from the NFL to stop viewers from taping its games. In any event, it never came to pass. I also seem to remember that SkyPix, a failed DBS venture in the early 1990s, planned to use Macrovision on its PPV movies. If you paid a lower price, you could watch but not record. If you paid more, the Macrovision would be switched off so you could tape the movie. In response to your last comment, that people will feel justified in cracking DVDs if the studios want to make them pay, then force them to sit through commercials, you must not forget the underlying theme that seems to be at work here: Content providers seem to have the attitude that they'll push this as far as they can. If enough people would pay for a DVD with the movie interrupted by commercials every 15 minutes, they'll make you sit there and watch those commercials. These companies are out for maximum profits, and they'll do whatever their customers will let them get away with. It's all about making as much money as possible, and what's morally right has nothing to do with it. As for things like tradition, which has held that when you buy something like a book, it's yours to keep, lend, or sell, that will go right out the window if we let it. The technology is allowing all the rules to be rewritten, and the corporations want to monopolize the pen.
Do you see how your argument falls down? Clearly someone is buying them or they wouldn't advertiser them. Walk into a video store in the UK and you can see tapes of Red Dwarf, Babylon 5, Star Trek etc etc. These videos are often on sale at the same time that the shows are being made on TV. Logical conclusion: People are wiling to pay fair dues for a decent product. We are not all thieves and copyright infringers and don't deserve to be treated as such. Of course some folks are buying them, but some are not. There's no legal restriction against taping them for private use, either, so folks can legally tape them. However, if the shows are copy-protected, then taping is suddenly out of the question, and all the folks who would have taped now must buy the tapes if they want a copy. Perhaps most will simply do without, but some will buy, and therein lies the extra profit. To paraphrase someone a long time ago in a galaxy far far away, "The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.". See which way the wind is blowing, there are the seeds of rebelion in it's infancy here. Depends on what kind of rebellion you refer to. You must remember that content owners see piracy as a criminal act, nothing more, and they're going to try as hard to stop it as you'd try to kill a cockroach scurrying across your kitchen floor. Likewise, not a single law will ever pass any legislature to curtail copy controls because of the rampant piracy of content. Someone might make the argument that piracy is simply the result of frustrated consumers who want freer access to content and therefore demonstrates a need for less restrictive controls, but the entertainment industry will counter that piracy is a criminal act, not a legitimate form of protest, and tougher restrictions--mandated by law--are necessary. On the other hand, if you're saying that as controls get more restrictive, then consumers will simply turn away from the entertainment companies, then you have a legitimate argument, assuming it really happens. And I don't mean that the readers of this board turn away; I mean that many tens of millions of people in the United States alone stop buying. Only then will these companies see enough damage to their bottom lines--damage that laws can't repair--, that they'll reevaluate their position.
I agree that most folks wouldn't buy tapes of the programming, but a few might. More importantly, would anyone pay, say, a nickel to be able to time-shift their favorite soap opera or prime time drama? I bet they would, if they had no other choice. Another use might be to prevent viewers from taping PPV movies. This would allow the release date for PPV to be moved up, since it'd have less impact on video sales and rentals. Some may argue that the entertainment industry would be incredibly stupid to piss off viewers by doing things like this. That may be true, but as I've said in other posts, they'll charge whatever the market will bear. If this scheme creates more negatives than positives, then they won't use it, but they will if they can make a profit. My guess is they want the ability to do things like this, even if they don't necessarily use that ability.
This post is a reply to things said in all three replies to my last post. Rather than be repetitive, I'll just post once. Yes, the entertainment companies lose power as more indie content surfaces and as more folks simply tune out. But, and this is a really big "but", technologically-savvy Net users do not represent the vast majority of Americans. Yes, indie content is beginning to flourish online, but Joe Sixpack doesn't know this, nor does he know how to access it. He's satisfied to sit in front of his TV, which is hooked up to AOL-TWX-AT&T-Cox-Comcast Amalgomated Cable and watch whatever comes down that little wire. His average teenage kids aren't boldly experimenting with listening to unsigned bands they find online; they're down at the mall buying Britney Spears and Backstreet Boys CDs. Until alternative content is as accessible to the masses as traditional media, the big corps will have the advantage. In short, there may be a revolution taking place, but most of the public doesn't even know about it. I realize that this is a bit of a generalization, but the fact remains that the big entertainment companies couldn't make this much money if they decided to print it themselves. They're literally raking it in. As a previous poster points out, sales of videos that you see on places like the History Channel are probably very low. Yep, they probably are, but if flipping a single bit can stop folks from taping those shows and force them to spend real money on buying them, then the content owners just made a profit. So what if most folks who would have taped the show can't. As long as sales were generated and other revenues didn't decline by an offsetting amount, the endeavor was a success.
Sure they lose money if a home viewer copies it. See, if that viewer copies it, then that viewer isn't likely to buy it. Have you seen the ads on places like the History Channel offering to sell you a tape of the show you just saw for $20? Have you then thought to yourself, "I don't need to spend $20 for their tape. I'll just tape the show the next time it airs." Now do you see their angle? With copy controls on digital broadcasts, they can put an end to your taping session before it even begins. As for your speculation about why they're doing things like this, I'd say your second choice is closest to the truth. My guess is that the content owners see the situation this way: 1. We own the content.
2. Consumers want the content.
3. We have the technology to make consumers pay us in various ways for the content.
4. We will therefore charge whatever the market will bear and impose whatever restrictions are necessary to ensure that we are paid the price we have set.
5. Piracy shall not be viewed as a protest of these charges. It is a criminal act that we will stop in whatever ways necessary. If we can eliminate piracy, consumers who may have pirated content will have two choices: pay for the content or do without. People here have often commented on the failure of the DiVX format as an example of how consumers will reject such intrusive content restrictions. This may be a valid point, but another lesson can be learned from it: If you're going to impose a system such as DiVX on the marketplace, then you'd better make damn sure that a less restrictive alternative, i.e. DVD, is not available. In other words, if the entertainment industry had it to do all over again, my guess is that they would still roll out DiVX, but they'd never allow standard DVDs to see the light of day. In such a scenario, DiVX might just succeed, since the consumer has no alternative. They'd probably even make the argument that if a consumer wants unlimited viewing rights, he can stick with VHS. If, however, he wants better quality, he's going to have to pay the higher price of DiVX. If enough consumers buy into this view and start using DiVX, then the content owners turn a profit. For those who don't see this as fair, well, they'll just have to find something else to do to pass the time. My point here is this: If you feel that content restrictions such as the ones discussed daily on Slashdot are harsh/unfair/immoral/whatever, then you'd better either figure out a way to organize one hell of a boycott and make it stick, or you'd better lobby for legislation to prevent or regulate these practices because, if you don't, the content owners are going to push these things as far as they can. If they could find some economical and legal way to have a guy looking over your shoulder 24/7 to make sure you comply with whatever content restrictions they devise, they'll do it and feel completely justified in doing so. From their point of view, they're protecting their property, and if that's somehow inconvenient for you, that's just tough--unless, of course, that inconvenience has a negative effect on their corporate well-being.
They might be using the MAPS DUL. It doesn't list the IPs of mail servers, but it does list the IPs of POPs, the idea being that a POP has no business connecting to a non-local mail server. POPs can be listed by the ISPs that own them, or they might also get listed if someone manages to compile a list of an ISPs POPs, usually because lots of spam is coming out of that provider.
On the Internet, perhaps, but not via traditional means, such as broadcast and cable. Sure, you can get alternative programming online, but a vast majority of Americans have never done this and wouldn't know how if you asked them. They get their media fix from companies like AOL/Time Warner, Disney/ABC, Clear Channel Communications, Cumulous Broadcasting, Sony, Paramount, and others. Until you reach these people, you can't truly break the stranglehold of the big corporations. BTW, as for the decline in newspapers, that trend began before the recent popularity of the Web for getting news emerged. It's been attributed more to the increased use of television by younger people to get their news. Older folks are still reading newspapers more, so it appears to be a generational issue. There have been plenty of communication studies on this phoenomenon. I remember discussing them in the early '90s, long before the Internet found mass appeal.
I partially agree with you. I think that companies such as AOL, WebTV/Microsoft, Netpliance (isn't that the name), etc. think that people want these set-top boxes so they can be entertained by using the Net on their TVs or doing something similar. From what I've seen, sales of these things haven't been exactly overwhelming. By and large, people are still getting Internet access via computers. Meanwhile, you've got people ripping these boxes apart to try to turn them into something more useful than their original form. Sure, you can build the coolest, fastest, most tricked-out PC in your neighborhood, yet not that many folks post that fact on places like Slashdot. They do, however, post articles about how to make these set-top boxes do things they weren't designed to do. I don't look down on these people one bit. I get your point that old minicomputers didn't have all the pretty bells and whistles that these boxes have now, but I don't see what folks are doing as less challenging. They're just working with what they're given. I do agree with you that our culture is preoccupied with entertainment. I've also begun to think about how the mass production of movies, music, television programs, and possibly even literature has moved us toward a point where corporations are almost single-handedly creating our culture for us. This is definitely a Very Bad Thing. It's also occurred to me that all the recent discourse about copyrights and IP misses the point a bit. Even with freer access to copyrighted works, who we are is still being defined by huge multinational corporations. Independent media is quickly slipping away, and only it holds the key to truly breaking our society away from the dominance of the media conglomerates. To get back around to the subject at hand, having a set-top box that is relatively open, as the Nokia appears to be, may hold some promise. Now there's a chance to reach the public in the place that they look at most: their TV screens. With the right software, independent and alternative programmers have a shot at getting the viewing public to look at their work in a way that is much more like the traditional media the public is used to. So, in the case of the Nokia, I can see a set-top box that I can look at with something other than contempt. This thing might have some promise. Instead of existing simply to dumb down the Internet, it might actually have the potential, if exploited correctly, to bring prople content they might have otherwise never found.
It seems to me that half the articles on Slashdot these days are about things related to copyright, IP, patents, the DMCA, etc. The conclusion I reach regarding all this is that we're moving into an era where corporations are trying to get almost complete control of our society. And the amazing thing is that people are letting them get away with it Now, before you say that there isn't anything we can do, I'll tell you that you're wrong. Yes, corporations control the mass media, and most politicians are in their back pockets, but the ultimate power still lies at the ballot box. Governments can be changed if enough people want it to happen. And we're all sitting here with the most powerful media right at our fingertips: the Internet. One of the biggest reasons the Net gets kicked in the head so much by politicians is that they don't see its users as a potent political force. At the present time, politicians by and large view the Internet as either a big gimmick to hold up to the media when they want to appear "high-tech" or a scapegoat to kick around when they need a convenient cause for some complex social problem. The day that Internet users flex their collective political muscles, that will change. The main problem here, as I see it, is that getting Net users to agree on anything is a lot like herding cats. (I've never tried herding cats, but I've always wanted to.) We're a diverse group, and we have a hard time agreeing on anything. A few years ago, it was a little easier to reach a consensus because there weren't as many people online, and they came from somewhat similar backgrounds. Now, the Net has gone "mainstream", and you see more and more people online whose sole purpose for being there is to visit big corporate Web sites. They wouldn't have been nearly as passionate in opposing things like the CDA, Clipper chip, and other similar things, partially because they'd be less likely to even find out about them. Having said that, I still think we need to try. What exactly we would try, I don't know, but our society seems to be at an all-time low point in political activism, and we need to change that. Any democratic society moves in the direction that its most active participants want it to move in. Notice that I didn't say "the majority of the population." No, if you want something to happen, you have to participate, and the only ones participating right now are major corporations. Say what you will about corps having undue political influence, but the sole reason they do is because they're involved in the process to a degree that no one else is. Many people say that they don't care about the political process because they don't see any politicians offering them something they're interested in, but you can be sure that this would change if a large group of people who vote starts making noise. Why do you think Social Security is such a big deal? Because senior citizens vote, and any politicians with two brain cells to rub together knows that he ignores that issue at his peril. Any group can get politicians to do its bidding, provided it is organized and politically active. Anyone care to make any contributions as to how to get Internet users organized and politically active? Anyone want to take a stab at doing it? It's going to have to get done sooner or later, and now is about as good a time as any.
I have an Acer 6206A, and I've never had a problem with Verbatim discs. Last year, a friend was trying to burn some stuff on his HP using some generic discs someone had given him, and they kept failing. He thought his burner had failed, so he gave me his last three discs to try. All of them failed, and those are the only three CDs that have ever failed im my burner in 2 1/2 years. So yes, there are some really crappy discs out there, as well as crappy burners. I've never heard of a Harmon Kardon (sp?) burner. I thought they only made car stereos and speakers. Could be made under contract with another company and private-labeled. In that case, there's no telling who actually made it.