For example, some tv shows (like Buffy the Vampire Slayer) are released on dvd later in the US, because the studio has lucrative syndication agreements based on keeping it out of home video. In the UK, where there are no syndication agreements, they release the season dvds earlier.
"Syndication" appears to be something created by the US system of loosely coupled TV networks. Which makes it very much a unique American thing. Even worst from the position of US viewers is that syndication showings can be trimmed to allow even more commercials to be stuffed in.
Movies show later in countries outside of the US and the industry doesn't want to lose money on the theatre sales if the movie is already available on DVD.
On the other hand US customers get screwed on TV series DVD releases.
And if one DVD player comes out that is multiregion, once the price on it comes in line with other players, and it will, those other players will be unable to compete, especially in markets where the desire for a multi-region player is high.
In many parts of the world retailers would have a hard time selling single region players, even if they were cheaper.
The French actually use SECAM (System Essentially Contrary to American Method), which is nothing but PAL with a fancy FM colour sub-carrier.
Actually PAL is effectivly NTSC version 2. Both schemes use similar methods for colour sub carrier, quite a few chipsets support both. SECAM uses a different approach, hence the "Sytem Essentially Contrary to American Method" joke.
The only european countries that you could release american prints for would be GB and Ireland.
Plenty of English speakers throughout Europe. Anyway you probably can't simply use US prints. At minimum frames showing the classification would need changing.
The reasons are somewhat obscure, but part of the explanation (as I've understood it) is because of the need to subtitle or dub them.
US movies released in the UK are not subtitled or dubbed. Or have popups to explain lesser known bits of US culture. Region 1 is the US and Canada. Where Spanish and French are also common languages. Most of Europe will understand at least one out of English, Spanish and French. Indeed there are quite possibly more English speakers in Europe than in the US. If it was simply about language then the regions would be defined by language. It makes no sense to put Japan in the same region as Europe and to put English speaking Australia and New Zealand in a different region from either the US or the UK.
The idea here was to keep people in regions where a film had not been released from getting the film ahead of time.
Except region coding also appears on old movies and those which are released only on video tape/DVD. Differential pricing appears to be a big part of the motive. In addition to having the status quo of staggered movie relases and the US specific "syndication" model of TV repeats.
This is also obvious when you see how rare the MPAA rereleases great films. How many out there who own 2001 on DVD would pay to see it on the big screen. I'm sure we could come up with a list of hundreds of films they could put back out and have people flock to see them (think about how much better the summer would be if you knew there were going to be some good films that you could look forward to in addition to the list of ones you hope will be good like MIBII).
There appears to be some aspect of not wanting "old" content to appear to be competing with the new. Another possibly little tapped possible business model would be to show films and their pre/sequel(s) back to back.
Ever heard of product placement? Movies (and to a lesser extent, TV shows) do this all the time. I prefer it to the 2-3 minutes of ads (or channel surfing) for every 8 minutes of content.
The problem with product placement is that it highly restricts your potential advertisers, not uncommonly to transnationals only. Being able to have local adverts, possible with the US model of network TV or video on demand, cable systems, there are even ways of doing it on satellite, means you have a much bigger market to sell to. Also things can look silly if your product placement involves a Pan Am, Enron or similar.
I think a better solution would be to be able to pay for the few shows or channels I like individually, WITHOUT commercials.
This would be a good deal for the viewers (likely also the production companies, actors and everyone else who actually produces the content in the first place), there are a great many shows where there are probably more than 2 million people prepared to pay at least one US doller per episode. But it would completly kill the existing broadcast companies, they arn't going to go quietly...
BBC in the UK have two channels (BBC1 and BBC2). IMHO, they are the best channels in the world in terms of content *and* they don't sport any commercials whatever.
The BBC does carry advertising, both programme trailers and promotion of other parts of the corporation (some of which is most definitly commercial advertising.) What it does not have is commercial advertising for third parties. The advertising carried by the BBC also virtually never appears in the middle of a programme either.
Me, I don't mind watching television ads, there aren't so many in the UK (ads appear only every 15 minutes here for 3 minutes typically)
When showing North American produced programming there is often the same amount of advertising on UK commercial TV as in the US. But the proportion of third party commercial vs self promotion and trailers tends to vary. With the BBC you'd simply have a "hour long" programme shown in a 45 minute slot. Sometimes UK commercial TV will use a 50 minute slot, but only outside peak viewing times. The way in which ad breaks are scheduled are also different. In the US you typically have no ads between programmes. You'd have an ad break immediatly before the closing credits and immediatly after the opening credits of the next programme. Which is probably why US (and Canadian) drama often has a long pre opening credit scene. Programming produced in Europe and Australia tends to have the title sequence right at the begining. (In the case of a European/NA co-production it can go either way, e.g. it looks like the Germans were in charge with Lexx.)
Has there been any research on the negatives of showing commercials to the sorts of folks who are greatly annoyed by most of them?
There's also the issue of overplaying the same ad, overplaying ads for the same product (sometimes where someone has come up with a clever series or set of ads the broadcaster appears to have made a mess of actually showing them) or overplaying ads for the same type of product (maybe the audience for a programme isn't as typecast as the ad schedulers think).
then use technology to allow me to see commercials that are about stuff I might have an actual interest in buying. This should be done in a way that can't trace back to me as an individual.
It's quite possible for an ad which asks you to call a phone number, go to a URL, etc to provide feedback on how effective specific ads are. This sort of thing has been used for a long time in print media ads.
Hear, hear! But wait... the invention of TV ended the glory days of radio entertainers! We should ban that, too. Those poor radio stars... And look what the "talkies" did to all those silent movie stars -- they hardly ever land a good part now! Let's ban the movies, at least, the ones with sound...
Also could have banned ice making machines, they put the ice cutting and shipping industries out of business. Airliners put ships out of the business of mass transport of people over oceans. The invention of the motor car put many industries related to horse transport out of business. Sometimes industries adapt, taxis easily made the switch from horse to internal combustion engine, cruise liners providing recreational trips is big business, involving ships much larger than those which used to be major "people transporters".
Nobody weeps for the buggy-whip makers!
Or the buggy makers, not all of whom turned to making "horseless buggies". Equine vets who couldn't simply become car mechanics. Horse breeders. Farmers and distributers of horse feed. Those responsible for cleaning the streets of horse manure and dead horses.
How else are television broadcasters supposed to cover their costs?
What exactly is sacrosanct about the television broadcast industry? (Or for that matter the record industry or the movie distribution industry.)
If as a result of pvrs, nobody watches commercials anymore and the bottom falls out of the broadcasting industry,
Programming with intermixed commercials quite clearly isn't the only possible business model for broadcast television. Nor is broadcast television the only possible method of getting content from the production company to the viewer.
what do you propose to do with the countless people who were employed by said industry and now are jobless with mouths to feed?
Having companies even whole groups of companies fail is part of capitalism. Other areas such as airlines and telecom suppliers are not doing too well right now. But no-one is calling for special legislation to force people to fly or to force people to buy additional telephone lines.
The only point I can think of for the RIAA is that maybe there should be a process for shutting down a domain that is clearly violating international law.
Most issues of international law are nothing remotly to do with the RIAA also the origanisations involved tend to be governments
That raises all kinds of other issues, but pushing for amendments to international treaties might be an acceptable way for them to deal with their problem.
You'd end up with the same kind of issues as with the ICC, support from the US in principle, but opposition when it looks like their people might wind up amongst the accused.
If this suit passes in the favor of the RIAA, then you can kiss justice goodbye, as well as the common sense of that judge.
You can probably kiss the whole economy goodbye. Since who is their right mind is going to want a business where they are responsible if their goods or services are used to do something possibly illegal?
How long until the entire web except for CNN and Amazon isn't accessible because of people getting pissed off and submitting sites that aren't illegal just because they don't like their views?
What makes you think that CNN will be ok, e.g. because of their not being pro Zionist, ditto Amazon since they carry book reviews.
And to, pirates purchase CDR's and CDR recorders with credit cards. So they are to blame for all the pirated MP3's. This is becuase, pirates backup MP3's and full copies of the raw data on CDR's which they bought on credit cards. thanks,
Best sue banks, since they manage credit cards too... Alternativly maybe someone could sue the RIAA for not providing the music they want to listen to or not making artists they like rich...
Should we sue the Post Office for anthrax sent through the mail? Sue the Dept of Highway Safety because a gangster robbed the bank then made his getaway on the highway? Sue the telephone service because a stalker keeps calling your house?
Hence the concept of "common carrier".
No company - no company - should be able to sue a communications company just because they don't like what somebody says. If the government of China doesn't want to shut it down, then the RIAA should be applying the powers that be there - not on the communications medium.
Or they should be petitioning the State Department about it.
Providing complete copies of copyrighted recordings is by no means fair use. Fair use would be providing short sections for critical discussion and analysis.
The site is in China thus is is subject to Chinese law. If Chinese law does not acknowlage foreign copyrights then tough, it's not that long ago that the US ignored copyrights on everything published outside the US. This sounds rather similar to the Yahoo! case in principle.
Not long ago, in Moscow a 7 year old girl was physically abducted from his mother's house and a few weeks later was found in US territory with her father. Interesting to note that US judges seem concerned not about the abduction but who should be the tutor of the child...
Considering how the Cuban boy was treated can you really expect the US to do much about abducted children?
We also, along with Bittain and France, created all or most of the Middle east countries, prior to 1918, they were all under the control of the Ottoman Empire, who sided with Germany in WW1 - the result, like Austria-Hungry and the German Empire, was that the LOSERS lost their respective empires.
Since then there has been constant meddling in the politics of the region. The establishment of Israel in 1948 being just one of the most obvious.
not surprising when anti-Jewish propaganda declares that the US is, after all, a puppet state run by a Zionist conspiracy.
One thing overlooked is that Zionism does not equate to Jewdeism. Some of the most forceful anti-zionists are Jews who were living in Palestine when the state of Israel was created. Also Zionism appears a popular cause amongst the US "Christian Right". Equating Jew with Zionist means that a lot of relevent questions simply don't get asked. There is certainly an element of truth in the "Zionist conspiracy" theory. The Israeli government has more unanimous support in the US Congress than they do in the Kinesset.
If the US were fervently isolationist, at least with regards to the Middle East, it would probably get less grief. And if the US were isolationist and made fewer (if any?) enemies there, I doubt that the US would even/need/ a foothold beyond the Turks allowing the base at Incelrik.
As I have said before whilst the US people would tend to want the US to take a more isolationist position those actually in the government, and the corporations US politicans tend to listen to more than real people, want the US to play at being an imperial power.
So, while there may be a warm fuzzy feeling knowing that the US is supporting a nominally friendly democratic republic,
Rather nominally on the friendly, bombing a US ship isn't exactly a "friendly act" and very nominally on the democratic. The West Bank, Gaza strip and Golan Heights are occupied and effectivly controlled by Israel, yet the majority of the people living there have no vote in any Israeli elections.
Say i stand in one contry and shoot a bullet over the border to another country to kill someone.
This is a crime in both countrys but i can only be procequted (spelling?) in one.
Contry 2 has the ball if they want to go first.
however if i stand in c1 and over the phone to c2 sa that god wears leather underwear and frequents the blue oyster bar:) and this is a crime only in c2, a crime has only been comitted in c2
The situation we have here is like the first example. Since cracking computers is illegal in both the US and Russia.
When we played "Cops & Robbers" as kids we had rules. The Cops usually won - but they were still somewhat impared. Why? Because that is what seperates the cops from the robbers! Cops are supposed to obey the law, and when they step outside that they aren't cops anymore.
Even if an undercover cop has some legal protection in case they break the law in their own country they have no such protection if they do so in somebody elses country. So far as the Russian authorities are concerned some foreigner has claimed to have carried out what appears to be a crime in Russia. At best the accused's status as law enforcement will count for nothing, at worst it will encourage them to prosecute more strongly, so as to send the message that law enforcement is expected to obey the law.
Did you also notice the fact Russian law does not apply the federal agents hacking Russian computers, but clearly US law applies to Russians hacking American computers?
US courts simply have no business deciding the scope of Russian law. That's for Russian courts to decide, the only part of the US government which has any part to play is the State Department. Since the agent has been charged, presumably an extradition warrent has been issued.
Slashdot Mirror
For example, some tv shows (like Buffy the Vampire Slayer) are released on dvd later in the US, because the studio has lucrative syndication agreements based on keeping it out of home video. In the UK, where there are no syndication agreements, they release the season dvds earlier.
"Syndication" appears to be something created by the US system of loosely coupled TV networks. Which makes it very much a unique American thing. Even worst from the position of US viewers is that syndication showings can be trimmed to allow even more commercials to be stuffed in.
Movies show later in countries outside of the US and the industry doesn't want to lose money on the theatre sales if the movie is already available on DVD.
On the other hand US customers get screwed on TV series DVD releases.
And if one DVD player comes out that is multiregion, once the price on it comes in line with other players, and it will, those other players will be unable to compete, especially in markets where the desire for a multi-region player is high.
In many parts of the world retailers would have a hard time selling single region players, even if they were cheaper.
The French actually use SECAM (System Essentially Contrary to American Method), which is nothing but PAL with a fancy FM colour sub-carrier.
Actually PAL is effectivly NTSC version 2. Both schemes use similar methods for colour sub carrier, quite a few chipsets support both. SECAM uses a different approach, hence the "Sytem Essentially Contrary to American Method" joke.
The only european countries that you could release american prints for would be GB and Ireland.
Plenty of English speakers throughout Europe. Anyway you probably can't simply use US prints. At minimum frames showing the classification would need changing.
The reasons are somewhat obscure, but part of the explanation (as I've understood it) is because of the need to subtitle or dub them.
US movies released in the UK are not subtitled or dubbed. Or have popups to explain lesser known bits of US culture. Region 1 is the US and Canada. Where Spanish and French are also common languages. Most of Europe will understand at least one out of English, Spanish and French. Indeed there are quite possibly more English speakers in Europe than in the US.
If it was simply about language then the regions would be defined by language. It makes no sense to put Japan in the same region as Europe and to put English speaking Australia and New Zealand in a different region from either the US or the UK.
The idea here was to keep people in regions where a film had not been released from getting the film ahead of time.
Except region coding also appears on old movies and those which are released only on video tape/DVD.
Differential pricing appears to be a big part of the motive. In addition to having the status quo of staggered movie relases and the US specific "syndication" model of TV repeats.
This is also obvious when you see how rare the MPAA rereleases great films. How many out there who own 2001 on DVD would pay to see it on the big screen. I'm sure we could come up with a list of hundreds of films they could put back out and have people flock to see them (think about how much better the summer would be if you knew there were going to be some good films that you could look forward to in addition to the list of ones you hope will be good like MIBII).
There appears to be some aspect of not wanting "old" content to appear to be competing with the new. Another possibly little tapped possible business model would be to show films and their pre/sequel(s) back to back.
They're already distributed here
Next week Microsoft will be filing a patent entitled "The process of closing stable door after the horse has bolted".
Ever heard of product placement? Movies (and to a lesser extent, TV shows) do this all the time. I prefer it to the 2-3 minutes of ads (or channel surfing) for every 8 minutes of content.
The problem with product placement is that it highly restricts your potential advertisers, not uncommonly to transnationals only. Being able to have local adverts, possible with the US model of network TV or video on demand, cable systems, there are even ways of doing it on satellite, means you have a much bigger market to sell to. Also things can look silly if your product placement involves a Pan Am, Enron or similar.
I think a better solution would be to be able to pay for the few shows or channels I like individually, WITHOUT commercials.
This would be a good deal for the viewers (likely also the production companies, actors and everyone else who actually produces the content in the first place), there are a great many shows where there are probably more than 2 million people prepared to pay at least one US doller per episode. But it would completly kill the existing broadcast companies, they arn't going to go quietly...
BBC in the UK have two channels (BBC1 and BBC2). IMHO, they are the best channels in the world in terms of content *and* they don't sport any commercials whatever.
The BBC does carry advertising, both programme trailers and promotion of other parts of the corporation (some of which is most definitly commercial advertising.) What it does not have is commercial advertising for third parties. The advertising carried by the BBC also virtually never appears in the middle of a programme either.
Me, I don't mind watching television ads, there aren't so many in the UK (ads appear only every 15 minutes here for 3 minutes typically)
When showing North American produced programming there is often the same amount of advertising on UK commercial TV as in the US. But the proportion of third party commercial vs self promotion and trailers tends to vary. With the BBC you'd simply have a "hour long" programme shown in a 45 minute slot. Sometimes UK commercial TV will use a 50 minute slot, but only outside peak viewing times.
The way in which ad breaks are scheduled are also different. In the US you typically have no ads between programmes. You'd have an ad break immediatly before the closing credits and immediatly after the opening credits of the next programme. Which is probably why US (and Canadian) drama often has a long pre opening credit scene. Programming produced in Europe and Australia tends to have the title sequence right at the begining. (In the case of a European/NA co-production it can go either way, e.g. it looks like the Germans were in charge with Lexx.)
Has there been any research on the negatives of showing commercials to the sorts of folks who are greatly annoyed by most of them?
There's also the issue of overplaying the same ad, overplaying ads for the same product (sometimes where someone has come up with a clever series or set of ads the broadcaster appears to have made a mess of actually showing them) or overplaying ads for the same type of product (maybe the audience for a programme isn't as typecast as the ad schedulers think).
then use technology to allow me to see commercials that are about stuff I might have an actual interest in buying. This should be done in a way that can't trace back to me as an individual.
It's quite possible for an ad which asks you to call a phone number, go to a URL, etc to provide feedback on how effective specific ads are. This sort of thing has been used for a long time in print media ads.
Hear, hear! But wait... the invention of TV ended the glory days of radio entertainers! We should ban that, too. Those poor radio stars... And look what the "talkies" did to all those silent movie stars -- they hardly ever land a good part now! Let's ban the movies, at least, the ones with sound...
Also could have banned ice making machines, they put the ice cutting and shipping industries out of business. Airliners put ships out of the business of mass transport of people over oceans. The invention of the motor car put many industries related to horse transport out of business.
Sometimes industries adapt, taxis easily made the switch from horse to internal combustion engine, cruise liners providing recreational trips is big business, involving ships much larger than those which used to be major "people transporters".
Nobody weeps for the buggy-whip makers!
Or the buggy makers, not all of whom turned to making "horseless buggies". Equine vets who couldn't simply become car mechanics. Horse breeders. Farmers and distributers of horse feed. Those responsible for cleaning the streets of horse manure and dead horses.
How else are television broadcasters supposed to cover their costs?
What exactly is sacrosanct about the television broadcast industry? (Or for that matter the record industry or the movie distribution industry.)
If as a result of pvrs, nobody watches commercials anymore and the bottom falls out of the broadcasting industry,
Programming with intermixed commercials quite clearly isn't the only possible business model for broadcast television. Nor is broadcast television the only possible method of getting content from the production company to the viewer.
what do you propose to do with the countless people who were employed by said industry and now are jobless with mouths to feed?
Having companies even whole groups of companies fail is part of capitalism. Other areas such as airlines and telecom suppliers are not doing too well right now. But no-one is calling for special legislation to force people to fly or to force people to buy additional telephone lines.
The only point I can think of for the RIAA is that maybe there should be a process for shutting down a domain that is clearly violating international law.
Most issues of international law are nothing remotly to do with the RIAA also the origanisations involved tend to be governments
That raises all kinds of other issues, but pushing for amendments to international treaties might be an acceptable way for them to deal with their problem.
You'd end up with the same kind of issues as with the ICC, support from the US in principle, but opposition when it looks like their people might wind up amongst the accused.
If this suit passes in the favor of the RIAA, then you can kiss justice goodbye, as well as the common sense of that judge.
You can probably kiss the whole economy goodbye. Since who is their right mind is going to want a business where they are responsible if their goods or services are used to do something possibly illegal?
How long until the entire web except for CNN and Amazon isn't accessible because of people getting pissed off and submitting sites that aren't illegal just because they don't like their views?
What makes you think that CNN will be ok, e.g. because of their not being pro Zionist, ditto Amazon since they carry book reviews.
And to, pirates purchase CDR's and CDR recorders with credit cards. So they are to blame for all the pirated MP3's. This is becuase, pirates backup MP3's and full copies of the raw data on CDR's which they bought on credit cards. thanks,
Best sue banks, since they manage credit cards too...
Alternativly maybe someone could sue the RIAA for not providing the music they want to listen to or not making artists they like rich...
Should we sue the Post Office for anthrax sent through the mail? Sue the Dept of Highway Safety because a gangster robbed the bank then made his getaway on the highway? Sue the telephone service because a stalker keeps calling your house?
Hence the concept of "common carrier".
No company - no company - should be able to sue a communications company just because they don't like what somebody says. If the government of China doesn't want to shut it down, then the RIAA should be applying the powers that be there - not on the communications medium.
Or they should be petitioning the State Department about it.
Providing complete copies of copyrighted recordings is by no means fair use. Fair use would be providing short sections for critical discussion and analysis.
The site is in China thus is is subject to Chinese law. If Chinese law does not acknowlage foreign copyrights then tough, it's not that long ago that the US ignored copyrights on everything published outside the US.
This sounds rather similar to the Yahoo! case in principle.
In short, despite the fact that these folks are illegal combatants who could be summarily executed according to the Geneva Convention,
These people's only "crime" is that they lost an uneven war. Hopefully Iraq will remember to pull the same stunt with any US prisoners.
Not long ago, in Moscow a 7 year old girl was physically abducted from his mother's house and a few weeks later was found in US territory with her father. Interesting to note that US judges seem concerned not about the abduction but who should be the tutor of the child...
Considering how the Cuban boy was treated can you really expect the US to do much about abducted children?
We also, along with Bittain and France, created all or most of the Middle east countries, prior to 1918, they were all under the control of the Ottoman Empire, who sided with Germany in WW1 - the result, like Austria-Hungry and the German Empire, was that the LOSERS lost their respective empires.
Since then there has been constant meddling in the politics of the region. The establishment of Israel in 1948 being just one of the most obvious.
not surprising when anti-Jewish propaganda declares that the US is, after all, a puppet state run by a Zionist conspiracy.
/need/ a foothold beyond the Turks allowing the base at Incelrik.
One thing overlooked is that Zionism does not equate to Jewdeism. Some of the most forceful anti-zionists are Jews who were living in Palestine when the state of Israel was created. Also Zionism appears a popular cause amongst the US "Christian Right". Equating Jew with Zionist means that a lot of relevent questions simply don't get asked.
There is certainly an element of truth in the "Zionist conspiracy" theory. The Israeli government has more unanimous support in the US Congress than they do in the Kinesset.
If the US were fervently isolationist, at least with regards to the Middle East, it would probably get less grief. And if the US were isolationist and made fewer (if any?) enemies there, I doubt that the US would even
As I have said before whilst the US people would tend to want the US to take a more isolationist position those actually in the government, and the corporations US politicans tend to listen to more than real people, want the US to play at being an imperial power.
So, while there may be a warm fuzzy feeling knowing that the US is supporting a nominally friendly democratic republic,
Rather nominally on the friendly, bombing a US ship isn't exactly a "friendly act" and very nominally on the democratic. The West Bank, Gaza strip and Golan Heights are occupied and effectivly controlled by Israel, yet the majority of the people living there have no vote in any Israeli elections.
Say i stand in one contry and shoot a bullet over the border to another country to kill someone. This is a crime in both countrys but i can only be procequted (spelling?) in one. Contry 2 has the ball if they want to go first. :) and this is a crime only in c2, a crime has only been comitted in c2
however if i stand in c1 and over the phone to c2 sa that god wears leather underwear and frequents the blue oyster bar
The situation we have here is like the first example. Since cracking computers is illegal in both the US and Russia.
When we played "Cops & Robbers" as kids we had rules. The Cops usually won - but they were still somewhat impared. Why? Because that is what seperates the cops from the robbers! Cops are supposed to obey the law, and when they step outside that they aren't cops anymore.
Even if an undercover cop has some legal protection in case they break the law in their own country they have no such protection if they do so in somebody elses country.
So far as the Russian authorities are concerned some foreigner has claimed to have carried out what appears to be a crime in Russia. At best the accused's status as law enforcement will count for nothing, at worst it will encourage them to prosecute more strongly, so as to send the message that law enforcement is expected to obey the law.
Did you also notice the fact Russian law does not apply the federal agents hacking Russian computers, but clearly US law applies to Russians hacking American computers?
US courts simply have no business deciding the scope of Russian law. That's for Russian courts to decide, the only part of the US government which has any part to play is the State Department. Since the agent has been charged, presumably an extradition warrent has been issued.