I really don't understand how any of these media-specific networks/business models are going to hold up when true ubiquitous wireless comes of age. Clear Channel, cable companies, telephony(voice), direcTV, etc. all specialize in pushing one form of media to people who have little or no choice. Once everyone has wireless internet connections how are these incumbent monopolies going to prevent the low barrier of entry and stop new companies from distributing more variety and better service?
The document neglected to mention quality control. People accept the current quality and problems of download via p2p because the benefits of FREE outweighs the time to search and lack of quality. This will change when people start to pay and start wanting quality service that they have purchased. And when both consumers and the artists want quality control over the digitized entertainment, how are we going to offer it to them?
The document says that
"... the fans do a better job making music available than the labels. Apple's iTunes Music Store brags about its inventory of over 500,000 songs. Sounds pretty good, until you realize that the fans have made millions of songs available on KaZaA. If the legal clouds were lifted, the peer-to-peer networks would quickly improve."
but how do the fans get the music in the first place! Currently, p2p networks are populated by a small amount of people who rip massive amounts of CD's and make them availalbe to share. As people start to download, the files get distributed within the network towards the edges and the files become redundant and easily located by the majority of downloaders. When (if) a voluntary licensing scheme takes effect, who is going to buy CD's anymore? And if no one is buying CD's, who is going to distribute music on CD's? And if new music isn't distributed through CD's, how are they going to be ripped and put onto the p2p networks? Well the labels will just upload their music to the p2p networks directly right? Well then why can't someone else upload a file with the same name and metadata as the artists' containing false data (like the labels actually do now to make people download bogus tracks and get frustrated and stop illegal downloads).
How does one assure downloaders that the song is in fact the genuine copy released by the artist. If you go on to any file-sharing network and try to search for a song, you will get many variations of song length, title, artist, bitrate, etc. In fact, downloading a song that appears to have the correct artist/title name can be something entirely different. What happens when your son or daughter tries to download a Britney Spears song that appears to have the correct song title, but then happens to be a sexually explicit adult novel.
Metadata databases, checksums, etc. can fix these problems, but who can enforce them?
This is a great way to hinder people from randomly picking to hack your box by scanning for open ports. However, if someone is dedicated to hack YOU specifically, they could still use a man-in-the-middle attack, sniff the packets to see which port sequence you were using, etc, etc.
Of course, there really is no way to block a skilled hacker who is intent on breaking into a specific network/box by any means necessary.
From a technical stand point, switching to a PPC architecture may have added speed & engineering benefits, but as far as backwords compatibility and developer retension, its a weird move.
1.) No playing XBOX 1 games on XBOX 2 : Why you say? Let's see, those games were pushing a 700 mhz celeron based system. How fast is the new Xbox going to be to actually EMULATE that?
2.) Developers not as happy : Developers flocked to the XBOX because it was a familiar x86 platform which they could get started with easily, had tools for, and developing for PC as well as XBOX simaltaneously was easier than other consoles. Now they have to switch from that comfortable nest to PPC, hire new talent, change development tools, etc.
Not exactly, PR firms charge a lot of money up front. How many unknown musicians/artists have enough money to hire such firms?? Record companies market artists based on potential reimbursment if the album gets popular. That is what is needed, not simple PR firms.
And as for not needing the recording industry at all, I'll agree that the current incarnation of the recording industry is not required, but its uses might need some form of record companies to exist.
Record lables/companies don't only create & distribute, but they MARKET the artists and artists' products. Every time you see an artist on tv, or hear them on the radio (which is how most artists are introduced to the MASS audience), or see their posters in stores or songs in movies, the labels spent a lot of money and effort to get that exposure. How will you replace that? I know the internet can generate exposure to an already installed fan base, but how do you get more?
The internet is ideal for distribution, and with faster/lower priced desktops and music creation software, its easy to create the music. The last step is marketing, getting that music heard by a lot of people. I think that will be the only role future music companies might need to fill.
P2P file sharing was bound to reach the public eye with or without the first mover being Napster. The internet had reached a massive audience and mp3 files had brought the size/quality of digital audio to an acceptable level (for listening & downloading). It was only a matter of time that a file-sharing program was created, be it Napster or something else.
Napster being technically liable for prosecution by the RIAA (due to its centralized indexing servers) and hence its eventual downfall has nothing to do with the current popularity of distributed apps. That whole fiasco might have increased public awareness of copyright law and music industry practices, but as for paving the way for P2P, it was going to happen regardless.
I always thought the question at hand was whether to regulate COMMERCIAL VoIP and it's providers, not voice over internet in general. I mean, that's the only thing that makes sense. Regulating VoIP between two end users over the internet is just bullshi* because all it is is another data transfer, be it digitized voice or whatever, its all data.
The POTS telcos are regulated, but if I string copper from my house to the guys house down the street, will they start regulating me?! I don't think so.
And even if something as absurd as government regulation of end-to-end VoIP ever came into practice, couldn't we just encapsulate the SIP or H.323, or whatever voice protocol into another protocal (or even encrypt), then how could they even detect we were transmitting and receiving voice.
The new number portability provision will help a lot, but it only eliminates one form of lock-in, one based on the social norms where users become reliant on their current phone number.
Another form of lock-in, one based on economic norms, is the penalty to be payed when switching away from a wireless provider before your service term is up,which we all are bound to by contract.
Most people I know hate switching not because they have to switch numbers, but because they have to pay a stepp $200+ fine for ending a service contract prematurely.
I don't think number portability will have as huge an effect for competition as they say they will. It will help consumers switch when their contracts are done, but because we are bound by contracts with such steep penalties, most people will remain locked into their poor performing carriers.
This is a horrible idea and I can't believe any proponent of freedom without control on the internet would ever think this is good.
The nature of the internet that makes it so scalable to new innovations is its end-to-end nature meaning the infrastructure of routers does the most basic thing possible, route packets. The end hosts are required to do all the rest. If we start adding "security authentication" and other crap on the routers this breaks the end-to-end nature and basicly puts a system of control into the very heart of the internet.
If microsoft came up with this idea, everyone would be screaming bloody murder, but Cisco and the Security companies are ok to trust with the control of the entire internet??! These are companies just like microsoft, part of the same capital system with agendas to profit the same as microsoft and don't think for a second this doesn't have ulterior motive written all over it. We do need to do something about the escalating security risks on the internet, but this is the wrong direction.
your assumption isn't entirely correct. Yes, 100mbps connections might not be the superfast connections we think of today by that time, but they will take care of all the necessities of delivering broadband content. Voice, video, and text-based data do not need nearly that amount of bandwidth, they just need some sort of quality of service (QoS) scheme on top to ensure on-time delivery of said services. 100mbps would be more than adequate to deliver multiple streams to each individual connection.
It's not like processor speeds where new applications (mostly graphics-intensive games) eat up the new allocated processing power & continue to drive demand for faster cpus. Yes, more bandwidth would enable larger (read more bytes) to be consumed at faster rates, so you'd get your new linux ISO in a fraction of the time, but as far as digitized media goes, 100mbps would be adequate for quite some time (until the advent of more bandwidth intensive services such as HDTV over IP, haptics, or truly virtual realities.
There are several companies providing this new service which they refer to as 'online media measurement'. One is BigChampagne . According to DMusic,the labels pay upwards of $40,000 a month for these services!
The hypocracy of the RIAA to condemn P2P as an illegal activity and then actually use it towards its own gains just further confirms its selfish motives.
I'm not an expert in US law by any means, but can't this be useful in court against the RIAA somehow?
This is great in large institutions who have fast, but more importantly, RELIABLE connections suchas as > T1. However, try to incorporate this in homes who have DSL/Cable connections losing packets & losing connections here & there, not to mention sluggish dial-up connections, and you'll have real problems.
I can't speak for everyone, but I'd hate to miss an important phone call because my internet connection was out.
It might sound very weird, and actually is pretty freaky, but all my memories are in the 3rd person, ie, when i remember taking a trip with my family at the age of 7, I look back on it not through first person of me sitting in the car, but as a 3rd person looking at myself and the rest of the scene. Is this common?
I go to USC and my major is 'Computer Engineering and Computer Science'. They also offer a Computer Science degree. I take all the courses the computer science degree offers except a class on compiler theory. I also get a lot more EE classes.
So as I see it, CE is still concerned with programming & theory, but with the addition of a lot more hardware.
Slashdot Mirror
Brings new meaning to viral licensing
I really don't understand how any of these media-specific networks/business models are going to hold up when true ubiquitous wireless comes of age. Clear Channel, cable companies, telephony(voice), direcTV, etc. all specialize in pushing one form of media to people who have little or no choice. Once everyone has wireless internet connections how are these incumbent monopolies going to prevent the low barrier of entry and stop new companies from distributing more variety and better service?
The document neglected to mention quality control. People accept the current quality and problems of download via p2p because the benefits of FREE outweighs the time to search and lack of quality. This will change when people start to pay and start wanting quality service that they have purchased. And when both consumers and the artists want quality control over the digitized entertainment, how are we going to offer it to them?
The document says that
"... the fans do a better job making music available than the labels. Apple's iTunes Music Store brags about its inventory of over 500,000 songs. Sounds pretty good, until you realize that the fans have made millions of songs available on KaZaA. If the legal clouds were lifted, the peer-to-peer networks would quickly improve."
but how do the fans get the music in the first place! Currently, p2p networks are populated by a small amount of people who rip massive amounts of CD's and make them availalbe to share. As people start to download, the files get distributed within the network towards the edges and the files become redundant and easily located by the majority of downloaders. When (if) a voluntary licensing scheme takes effect, who is going to buy CD's anymore? And if no one is buying CD's, who is going to distribute music on CD's? And if new music isn't distributed through CD's, how are they going to be ripped and put onto the p2p networks? Well the labels will just upload their music to the p2p networks directly right? Well then why can't someone else upload a file with the same name and metadata as the artists' containing false data (like the labels actually do now to make people download bogus tracks and get frustrated and stop illegal downloads).
How does one assure downloaders that the song is in fact the genuine copy released by the artist. If you go on to any file-sharing network and try to search for a song, you will get many variations of song length, title, artist, bitrate, etc. In fact, downloading a song that appears to have the correct artist/title name can be something entirely different. What happens when your son or daughter tries to download a Britney Spears song that appears to have the correct song title, but then happens to be a sexually explicit adult novel.
Metadata databases, checksums, etc. can fix these problems, but who can enforce them?
This is a great way to hinder people from randomly picking to hack your box by scanning for open ports. However, if someone is dedicated to hack YOU specifically, they could still use a man-in-the-middle attack, sniff the packets to see which port sequence you were using, etc, etc.
Of course, there really is no way to block a skilled hacker who is intent on breaking into a specific network/box by any means necessary.
From a technical stand point, switching to a PPC architecture may have added speed & engineering benefits, but as far as backwords compatibility and developer retension, its a weird move.
1.) No playing XBOX 1 games on XBOX 2 : Why you say? Let's see, those games were pushing a 700 mhz celeron based system. How fast is the new Xbox going to be to actually EMULATE that?
2.) Developers not as happy : Developers flocked to the XBOX because it was a familiar x86 platform which they could get started with easily, had tools for, and developing for PC as well as XBOX simaltaneously was easier than other consoles. Now they have to switch from that comfortable nest to PPC, hire new talent, change development tools, etc.
Not exactly, PR firms charge a lot of money up front. How many unknown musicians/artists have enough money to hire such firms?? Record companies market artists based on potential reimbursment if the album gets popular. That is what is needed, not simple PR firms.
And as for not needing the recording industry at all, I'll agree that the current incarnation of the recording industry is not required, but its uses might need some form of record companies to exist.
Record lables/companies don't only create & distribute, but they MARKET the artists and artists' products. Every time you see an artist on tv, or hear them on the radio (which is how most artists are introduced to the MASS audience), or see their posters in stores or songs in movies, the labels spent a lot of money and effort to get that exposure. How will you replace that? I know the internet can generate exposure to an already installed fan base, but how do you get more?
The internet is ideal for distribution, and with faster/lower priced desktops and music creation software, its easy to create the music. The last step is marketing, getting that music heard by a lot of people. I think that will be the only role future music companies might need to fill.
P2P file sharing was bound to reach the public eye with or without the first mover being Napster. The internet had reached a massive audience and mp3 files had brought the size/quality of digital audio to an acceptable level (for listening & downloading). It was only a matter of time that a file-sharing program was created, be it Napster or something else.
Napster being technically liable for prosecution by the RIAA (due to its centralized indexing servers) and hence its eventual downfall has nothing to do with the current popularity of distributed apps. That whole fiasco might have increased public awareness of copyright law and music industry practices, but as for paving the way for P2P, it was going to happen regardless.
I always thought the question at hand was whether to regulate COMMERCIAL VoIP and it's providers, not voice over internet in general. I mean, that's the only thing that makes sense. Regulating VoIP between two end users over the internet is just bullshi* because all it is is another data transfer, be it digitized voice or whatever, its all data.
The POTS telcos are regulated, but if I string copper from my house to the guys house down the street, will they start regulating me?! I don't think so.
And even if something as absurd as government regulation of end-to-end VoIP ever came into practice, couldn't we just encapsulate the SIP or H.323, or whatever voice protocol into another protocal (or even encrypt), then how could they even detect we were transmitting and receiving voice.
The new number portability provision will help a lot, but it only eliminates one form of lock-in, one based on the social norms where users become reliant on their current phone number.
Another form of lock-in, one based on economic norms, is the penalty to be payed when switching away from a wireless provider before your service term is up,which we all are bound to by contract.
Most people I know hate switching not because they have to switch numbers, but because they have to pay a stepp $200+ fine for ending a service contract prematurely.
I don't think number portability will have as huge an effect for competition as they say they will. It will help consumers switch when their contracts are done, but because we are bound by contracts with such steep penalties, most people will remain locked into their poor performing carriers.
This is a horrible idea and I can't believe any proponent of freedom without control on the internet would ever think this is good.
The nature of the internet that makes it so scalable to new innovations is its end-to-end nature meaning the infrastructure of routers does the most basic thing possible, route packets. The end hosts are required to do all the rest. If we start adding "security authentication" and other crap on the routers this breaks the end-to-end nature and basicly puts a system of control into the very heart of the internet.
If microsoft came up with this idea, everyone would be screaming bloody murder, but Cisco and the Security companies are ok to trust with the control of the entire internet??! These are companies just like microsoft, part of the same capital system with agendas to profit the same as microsoft and don't think for a second this doesn't have ulterior motive written all over it.
We do need to do something about the escalating security risks on the internet, but this is the wrong direction.
your assumption isn't entirely correct. Yes, 100mbps connections might not be the superfast connections we think of today by that time, but they will take care of all the necessities of delivering broadband content. Voice, video, and text-based data do not need nearly that amount of bandwidth, they just need some sort of quality of service (QoS) scheme on top to ensure on-time delivery of said services. 100mbps would be more than adequate to deliver multiple streams to each individual connection.
It's not like processor speeds where new applications (mostly graphics-intensive games) eat up the new allocated processing power & continue to drive demand for faster cpus. Yes, more bandwidth would enable larger (read more bytes) to be consumed at faster rates, so you'd get your new linux ISO in a fraction of the time, but as far as digitized media goes, 100mbps would be adequate for quite some time (until the advent of more bandwidth intensive services such as HDTV over IP, haptics, or truly virtual realities.
There are several companies providing this new service which they refer to as 'online media measurement'. One is BigChampagne . According to DMusic ,the labels pay upwards of $40,000 a month for these services!
The hypocracy of the RIAA to condemn P2P as an illegal activity and then actually use it towards its own gains just further confirms its selfish motives.
I'm not an expert in US law by any means, but can't this be useful in court against the RIAA somehow?
This is great in large institutions who have fast, but more importantly, RELIABLE connections suchas as > T1. However, try to incorporate this in homes who have DSL/Cable connections losing packets & losing connections here & there, not to mention sluggish dial-up connections, and you'll have real problems.
I can't speak for everyone, but I'd hate to miss an important phone call because my internet connection was out.
It might sound very weird, and actually is pretty freaky, but all my memories are in the 3rd person, ie, when i remember taking a trip with my family at the age of 7, I look back on it not through first person of me sitting in the car, but as a 3rd person looking at myself and the rest of the scene. Is this common?
I go to USC and my major is 'Computer Engineering and Computer Science'. They also offer a Computer Science degree. I take all the courses the computer science degree offers except a class on compiler theory. I also get a lot more EE classes. So as I see it, CE is still concerned with programming & theory, but with the addition of a lot more hardware.