If the MPAA is worried about me downloading a movie w/o paying for it, the best defense they have is to have a good rapport with me. If I respect you, I'm not going to let harm come to you. Unfortunately, they have treated us all like they need to throw us all in jail. At least that is what I envisioned when I heard about the SSSCA.
Let's face it, the tools are out there. They'll always be out there. Whether we use them in a damaging way or not is dependent on two things: 1.) Incentive not to, i.e. extras on the DVD and so on... 2.) Whether or not we care.
Frankly, when I first heard about the SSSCA and it's over-reaching implications, I was out for blood! I still am, really. If I do something the MPAA wouldn't like, I feel good about it. Film88.com? I probably would have been all over that had it not gone down, half because I knew the MPAA would have a shitfit. This sentiment is far more damaging than DeCSS or any other circumvention tool around.
What the MPAA needs to do, instead of trying to invent new technology to thwart copying they don't want, is to make us friendly towards them. Show that they're out to have fun instead of out to squeeze money out of our wallets. When that happens, I'm happy to give them my money for stuff like DVD's.
Make it socially unacceptable to download copies of movies w/o paying for them and you'll get far more done than using encryption that somebody's going to break.
"If your a fan of the movie, you want to own the original. "
Im not convinced that Macrovision's really to stop the casual copier, but those dudes using DVD's to make endless VHS copies to sell. The article points out that would-be copiers already have the tools.
I've yet to hear of anybody copying rental movies to tape. Just isn't worth it.
"Be afraid Macrovision...its not the fact that you don't do your job because you do for the most part; its the fact that you have become obsolete in a day of P2P and broadband."
This is basically true. However, I can see why they do it. It'd be dirt-simple to buy a DVD and make endless copies to tape, then sell the tapes. This is a seperate problem that has nothing to do with the consumer, but those dudes in China that are making decent money off it. I don't think Macrovision is whole-heartedly intended to stop the casual 'rental copy', I think it's there to stop the guys re-selling the tapes.
I didn't get the impression that the average customer was the one with anything at stake here. I think WB's attitude is 'the pirates got the tools, why should we buy an expensive lock that everybody has the key to?'.
If Hollywood wants to stop stuff making it to Kazaa, then what they need to do is make online-video a reality. *Willing to PAY for streamed movies*
... Don't forget that by the time you by a DVD, you've had a pretty good chance to find out if you want to own it. You can watch the movie in the theater, and then buy the DVD with bonus material. The RIAA only does this in a half-assed way. They don't play entire albums on the radio.
"But its still damn annoying when IE goes down and makes the box unstable..."
I'm a little surprised you're having that problem. Wish I knew how to troubleshoot what's causing that because I'm not having that problem here. My whole office runs 2k, and I'm the one they come to when they have problems like htat, and only 1 (out of 17) is having a problem like that. Her laptop, though, is just plain sucky.
As for the hibernate problem: Have you tried standby instead? I, personally, have never found hibernate to be of value as my laptop'll boot at about the time it takes to come out of hibernate. Not to mention, it takes a nasty stability hit. On my laptop, though, stand-by is surprisingly good. When I was in Brazil for two weeks, I rebooted/booted my laptop twice. The rest of the time, I'd have it go into standby at night. Standby will last for days. Seriously.
I love Win2k, but I whole-heartedly agree with you that their hibernate feature is half-ass-implemented, at best.
"Now keeping days of uptime with aim, icq, outlook express, internet explorer, word, winamp, and then playing a game randomly is tough. Its all relative to what conflicts. "
[Off-Topic]
I can attest to that comment. I have two Win2k boxes. One is a PVR in my bedroom that does nothing but capture, and occasionally view what I capture. It has an uptime of a month or two. It'd probably be longer if I never watched vids straight off it.
I have another Win2k box I use for playing Quake, responding way too much on Slashdot, and doing lotsa 3D work. It has an uptime of roughly a week or so. Although, that number was significantly hire during the period I wasn't playing Quake. Heh.
Re:This could be done today...
on
P2P Television?
·
· Score: 2
Heh. Nah, I don't have anything to share. Recently cleared it all. Eventually I want to build a new PVR system here, but I have a coupla hurdles. I'm trying to capture at 60 fps instead of 30 by expanding the interlaced vid. I figured that part out, but the problem is that it randomly decides to start capturing on either the even or odd field. The problem is that in order to automate expanding from 30 to 60 fps, it has to know which field to start on, or it'll look really screwy!
Any idea what I can do to enforce it capturing starting on the even fields?
Re:This could be done today...
on
P2P Television?
·
· Score: 2
I use Win2k.:)
I have up-times of about a month or two, usually. Works great!
If they were smart, they'd capture popular shows at really high quality, and include some ads in them to regain some of their revenue. Then, they'd put it out on a high bandwidth server so that I'd have incentive to pick up the version with ads instead of the P2P capped/edited one.
The reason to share the shows isn't so that the ads would be removed, but so that I can actually watch the show!! Duh, why would I buy a Tivo if I was home to watch the shows I want?
Re:Don't read here much, do you?
on
P2P Television?
·
· Score: 2
Actually, they just relaunched a few days ago. Here's the addie: http://www.icravetv.biz/
I'm not sure how they resolved their issues, but I'm watching a Live TV feed of CNN Live right now.:)
This could be done today...
on
P2P Television?
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
It's not quite the same as what the article suggests, but I do think a reasonable P2P 'TV' network (it'd really be a PC network...) is rather plausible.
I have a Pentium 2 400 machine in my bedroom. It has a Hauppage WinTV card ($49, $99 for stereo) and the PicVideo Motion JPEG Codec. It can capture at 640 by 480 @ 30 fps without breaking a sweat. I use it as a VCR. The data rate's pretty high, I usually compress it to DivX later if I want to keep the show. I wouldn't put this stuff out on Kazaa, though, with my 256kbps limit.
However, I live in a pretty big complex that is laid out rather nicely for 802.11. I could see a few people taking really old computers, turning them into virtual VCR's, and making the shows available on 802.11.
One guy could be capturing That 70's Show, while the next guy is capturing Enterprise, all at near-broadcast quality!
The reason I'm mentioning this is that I expect one day there'll be a huge 802.11 network built. (Or something like it...) It'll start with an apartment complex sharing an internet connection. Then they'll share their files. Then they'll connect neighboring complexes.... and so on. There won't be any charge for bandwidth other than electricity.
I have a feeling that the way the internet is going, individuals will build something like this so they can break away from the WWW. Maybe I'm just fantasizing, but who knows? Sharing TV shows, like the article describes, could be the killer app that gets this type of thing launched.
"It doesn't mean they don't stand against what Vivendi is doing, just they they don't really care enough to give up anything. "
I don't see how you can prove that. What is there that they can do? Boycott = unnoticably fewer sales for Blizzard, and they don't get to play a good game. (Thus giving companies incentive to go for crap, cookie cutter games like Mortal Kombat and anything that ends in 'Kart')
This is a problem if nothing they're gonna do is have an effect, other than they get to express themselves here.
Be cynical all you like, you really don't know everybody inside and out like you think you do.
"bnetd is a totally different issue. The use of the DMCA is quite different from a technological barrier or a restrictive ToS. "
I'm sorry, why is it a totally different issue? Maybe I'm misinformed, but I thought that Vivendi dropped the DMCA stuff and went for copyright stuff. I don't really care either way. I don't Blizzard defending itself from letting ppl circumvent their protection is worth telling the game market that I won't buy a high quality game. Seriously, I'd be in support of blocking DeCSS if Hollywood movies were as good as Blizzard games.
Don't bother flaming me on that comment unless you have something interesting to say. There is a need in this world to lock up valuable items.
I can't believe you got modded down just because your opinion doesn't go with the flow.
I agree with you. It looks to me like they were preventing people from playing unauthorized versions of the game. Somebody made a comment earlier up that BnetD was being used to play WC3 "before the game was even for sale!".
Doesn't that sound like BnetD was being abused a bit?
Nobody's convinced me yet that Blizzard was totally in the wrong. Certainly not wrong enough for me to say "I'm not going to support a high quality game because *gasp* I have to buy it to play it."
"Most people here on slashdot are blow-hards that sacrifice their ideology as soon as the new cool gadget from comes out. "
Why? Because people are going to buy a good game?
Face it, boycott is, by far, the worst approach you could take to fighting Blizzard on the BNETD deal. Just because people buy the game, it doesn't mean they don't stand against what Vivendi is doing.
Most slashdot readers would think it would be cool to perform some sort of sexual act Full Stop."
That probably would have gotten a +1 funny if it hadn't been the same thought on everybody's minds. Heh.
Re:I would love to destroy this thing...
on
Trek Prop Collecting
·
· Score: 4, Funny
"Everyone assumes that if you are into computers, you are into all things trek. It was a bad, dumb show."
I'm curious what you consider to be a good show, then. I seriously think you're judging ST for the wrong reasons.
The reason that Trek is popular among geeks is that the depicted world of the future is more pleasing to live in if you're a geek.
For example: You can tell the computer "go find me some porn I like!" and boom, you'll get porn you like. Today, we haveta scour the web manually for that. That sucks.
Another example: I want a burger and fries right now. But *gasp* I have to walk for 15 minutes to do that! That sucks! In Star Trek, you'd walk up to your replicator, say "Burger and fries, Burgerville style." And boom, you have a burger and fries, Burgerville style.
Here's yet another example: I have to walk 3/4ths of a mile to work every day. This sucks! Well, in Star Trek, I could just say "Beam me up!".
One more example: Isn't it a pain in the butt to get a phone number of some chick? Face it: Most chicks don't wanna talk about computers, and none of them are impressed if you're running Linux. (Actually, you lose points for that, as a woman I dated pointed out.) Well, fear no more! In the Star Trek universe, you could just say "Wiggam to Portman, c'mon girl, my tricorder says that your hair is not in need of washing!" You couldn't do that today!
As you can see, the world of Star Trek is quite appealing and serves as an acceptable template for the future. Geeks have a lot to be happy about when the world churns out one more Trek-like device.
Yep, and the dictionary backs you up. However, my post wouldn't have been funny if I didn't stretch definitions a bit, would it?
Besides, the Enterprise is no longer operational. If my memory is correct, it's become a museum piece in Kennedy Space Center in Florida. (I was 13 at the time, so don't get too uppity if my details are wrong)
Also, didja read my sig? Don't nitpick a detail of my post as if it totally negates the point of it! In this case it didn't.
Slashdot Mirror
If the MPAA is worried about me downloading a movie w/o paying for it, the best defense they have is to have a good rapport with me. If I respect you, I'm not going to let harm come to you. Unfortunately, they have treated us all like they need to throw us all in jail. At least that is what I envisioned when I heard about the SSSCA.
Let's face it, the tools are out there. They'll always be out there. Whether we use them in a damaging way or not is dependent on two things: 1.) Incentive not to, i.e. extras on the DVD and so on... 2.) Whether or not we care.
Frankly, when I first heard about the SSSCA and it's over-reaching implications, I was out for blood! I still am, really. If I do something the MPAA wouldn't like, I feel good about it. Film88.com? I probably would have been all over that had it not gone down, half because I knew the MPAA would have a shitfit. This sentiment is far more damaging than DeCSS or any other circumvention tool around.
What the MPAA needs to do, instead of trying to invent new technology to thwart copying they don't want, is to make us friendly towards them. Show that they're out to have fun instead of out to squeeze money out of our wallets. When that happens, I'm happy to give them my money for stuff like DVD's.
Make it socially unacceptable to download copies of movies w/o paying for them and you'll get far more done than using encryption that somebody's going to break.
"If your a fan of the movie, you want to own the original. "
Im not convinced that Macrovision's really to stop the casual copier, but those dudes using DVD's to make endless VHS copies to sell. The article points out that would-be copiers already have the tools.
I've yet to hear of anybody copying rental movies to tape. Just isn't worth it.
"Be afraid Macrovision...its not the fact that you don't do your job because you do for the most part; its the fact that you have become obsolete in a day of P2P and broadband."
This is basically true. However, I can see why they do it. It'd be dirt-simple to buy a DVD and make endless copies to tape, then sell the tapes. This is a seperate problem that has nothing to do with the consumer, but those dudes in China that are making decent money off it. I don't think Macrovision is whole-heartedly intended to stop the casual 'rental copy', I think it's there to stop the guys re-selling the tapes.
I didn't get the impression that the average customer was the one with anything at stake here. I think WB's attitude is 'the pirates got the tools, why should we buy an expensive lock that everybody has the key to?'.
If Hollywood wants to stop stuff making it to Kazaa, then what they need to do is make online-video a reality. *Willing to PAY for streamed movies*
... Don't forget that by the time you by a DVD, you've had a pretty good chance to find out if you want to own it. You can watch the movie in the theater, and then buy the DVD with bonus material. The RIAA only does this in a half-assed way. They don't play entire albums on the radio.
"But its still damn annoying when IE goes down and makes the box unstable..."
I'm a little surprised you're having that problem. Wish I knew how to troubleshoot what's causing that because I'm not having that problem here. My whole office runs 2k, and I'm the one they come to when they have problems like htat, and only 1 (out of 17) is having a problem like that. Her laptop, though, is just plain sucky.
As for the hibernate problem: Have you tried standby instead? I, personally, have never found hibernate to be of value as my laptop'll boot at about the time it takes to come out of hibernate. Not to mention, it takes a nasty stability hit. On my laptop, though, stand-by is surprisingly good. When I was in Brazil for two weeks, I rebooted/booted my laptop twice. The rest of the time, I'd have it go into standby at night. Standby will last for days. Seriously.
I love Win2k, but I whole-heartedly agree with you that their hibernate feature is half-ass-implemented, at best.
"Now keeping days of uptime with aim, icq, outlook express, internet explorer, word, winamp, and then playing a game randomly is tough. Its all relative to what conflicts. "
[Off-Topic]
I can attest to that comment. I have two Win2k boxes. One is a PVR in my bedroom that does nothing but capture, and occasionally view what I capture. It has an uptime of a month or two. It'd probably be longer if I never watched vids straight off it.
I have another Win2k box I use for playing Quake, responding way too much on Slashdot, and doing lotsa 3D work. It has an uptime of roughly a week or so. Although, that number was significantly hire during the period I wasn't playing Quake. Heh.
Heh. Nah, I don't have anything to share. Recently cleared it all. Eventually I want to build a new PVR system here, but I have a coupla hurdles. I'm trying to capture at 60 fps instead of 30 by expanding the interlaced vid.
I figured that part out, but the problem is that it randomly decides to start capturing on either the even or odd field. The problem is that in order to automate expanding from 30 to 60 fps, it has to know which field to start on, or it'll look really screwy!
Any idea what I can do to enforce it capturing starting on the even fields?
I use Win2k. :)
I have up-times of about a month or two, usually. Works great!
If they were smart, they'd capture popular shows at really high quality, and include some ads in them to regain some of their revenue. Then, they'd put it out on a high bandwidth server so that I'd have incentive to pick up the version with ads instead of the P2P capped/edited one.
The reason to share the shows isn't so that the ads would be removed, but so that I can actually watch the show!! Duh, why would I buy a Tivo if I was home to watch the shows I want?
Actually, they just relaunched a few days ago. Here's the addie: http://www.icravetv.biz/
:)
I'm not sure how they resolved their issues, but I'm watching a Live TV feed of CNN Live right now.
It's not quite the same as what the article suggests, but I do think a reasonable P2P 'TV' network (it'd really be a PC network...) is rather plausible.
I have a Pentium 2 400 machine in my bedroom. It has a Hauppage WinTV card ($49, $99 for stereo) and the PicVideo Motion JPEG Codec. It can capture at 640 by 480 @ 30 fps without breaking a sweat. I use it as a VCR. The data rate's pretty high, I usually compress it to DivX later if I want to keep the show. I wouldn't put this stuff out on Kazaa, though, with my 256kbps limit.
However, I live in a pretty big complex that is laid out rather nicely for 802.11. I could see a few people taking really old computers, turning them into virtual VCR's, and making the shows available on 802.11.
One guy could be capturing That 70's Show, while the next guy is capturing Enterprise, all at near-broadcast quality!
The reason I'm mentioning this is that I expect one day there'll be a huge 802.11 network built. (Or something like it...) It'll start with an apartment complex sharing an internet connection. Then they'll share their files. Then they'll connect neighboring complexes.... and so on. There won't be any charge for bandwidth other than electricity.
I have a feeling that the way the internet is going, individuals will build something like this so they can break away from the WWW. Maybe I'm just fantasizing, but who knows? Sharing TV shows, like the article describes, could be the killer app that gets this type of thing launched.
... a Beowulf Cluster of Tivos!
"I think the real question is, why would anyone over the age of 14, like myself, still read this site? "
Don't worry, once you get out of the 'girls have cooties' phase, you won't have time for this site anymore.
(Psst, his user-name is from Transformers.. a KIDS SHOW!! heh)
"I knew I should have moved to Iowa!"
Wow... I never thought I'd hear ANYBODY say that. Heh
... Just wait until Windows 2000 is released over there.
"It doesn't mean they don't stand against what Vivendi is doing, just they they don't really care enough to give up anything. "
I don't see how you can prove that. What is there that they can do? Boycott = unnoticably fewer sales for Blizzard, and they don't get to play a good game. (Thus giving companies incentive to go for crap, cookie cutter games like Mortal Kombat and anything that ends in 'Kart')
This is a problem if nothing they're gonna do is have an effect, other than they get to express themselves here.
Be cynical all you like, you really don't know everybody inside and out like you think you do.
"bnetd is a totally different issue. The use of the DMCA is quite different from a technological barrier or a restrictive ToS. "
I'm sorry, why is it a totally different issue? Maybe I'm misinformed, but I thought that Vivendi dropped the DMCA stuff and went for copyright stuff. I don't really care either way. I don't Blizzard defending itself from letting ppl circumvent their protection is worth telling the game market that I won't buy a high quality game. Seriously, I'd be in support of blocking DeCSS if Hollywood movies were as good as Blizzard games.
Don't bother flaming me on that comment unless you have something interesting to say. There is a need in this world to lock up valuable items.
I can't believe you got modded down just because your opinion doesn't go with the flow.
I agree with you. It looks to me like they were preventing people from playing unauthorized versions of the game. Somebody made a comment earlier up that BnetD was being used to play WC3 "before the game was even for sale!".
Doesn't that sound like BnetD was being abused a bit?
Nobody's convinced me yet that Blizzard was totally in the wrong. Certainly not wrong enough for me to say "I'm not going to support a high quality game because *gasp* I have to buy it to play it."
"Most people here on slashdot are blow-hards that sacrifice their ideology as soon as the new cool gadget from comes out. "
Why? Because people are going to buy a good game?
Face it, boycott is, by far, the worst approach you could take to fighting Blizzard on the BNETD deal. Just because people buy the game, it doesn't mean they don't stand against what Vivendi is doing.
"...it will never go flat a long as your arms work!"
Does this mean that porn could be considered a perpetual motion device?
Most slashdot readers would think it would be cool to perform some sort of sexual act Full Stop."
That probably would have gotten a +1 funny if it hadn't been the same thought on everybody's minds. Heh.
"Everyone assumes that if you are into computers, you are into all things trek. It was a bad, dumb show."
I'm curious what you consider to be a good show, then. I seriously think you're judging ST for the wrong reasons.
The reason that Trek is popular among geeks is that the depicted world of the future is more pleasing to live in if you're a geek.
For example: You can tell the computer "go find me some porn I like!" and boom, you'll get porn you like. Today, we haveta scour the web manually for that. That sucks.
Another example: I want a burger and fries right now. But *gasp* I have to walk for 15 minutes to do that! That sucks! In Star Trek, you'd walk up to your replicator, say "Burger and fries, Burgerville style." And boom, you have a burger and fries, Burgerville style.
Here's yet another example: I have to walk 3/4ths of a mile to work every day. This sucks! Well, in Star Trek, I could just say "Beam me up!".
One more example: Isn't it a pain in the butt to get a phone number of some chick? Face it: Most chicks don't wanna talk about computers, and none of them are impressed if you're running Linux. (Actually, you lose points for that, as a woman I dated pointed out.) Well, fear no more! In the Star Trek universe, you could just say "Wiggam to Portman, c'mon girl, my tricorder says that your hair is not in need of washing!" You couldn't do that today!
As you can see, the world of Star Trek is quite appealing and serves as an acceptable template for the future. Geeks have a lot to be happy about when the world churns out one more Trek-like device.
Yep, and the dictionary backs you up. However, my post wouldn't have been funny if I didn't stretch definitions a bit, would it?
Besides, the Enterprise is no longer operational. If my memory is correct, it's become a museum piece in Kennedy Space Center in Florida. (I was 13 at the time, so don't get too uppity if my details are wrong)
Also, didja read my sig? Don't nitpick a detail of my post as if it totally negates the point of it! In this case it didn't.
Ok, then you can be friends with the people that enjoy the fights on "Jerry Springer" and "WWF".
Lol it's kind of funny you said that because me and my GF watch Jerry alot, and she's really into WWF.
Okay, I guess the prolly humor's lost on ya. It's just funny cos Im at her house right now.
"Instead, Slashdot is newbies who do not even know fork()... This is why you were attacked on September 11th: because you deserve it."
;)
If you mean that we were attacked for incredibly petty reasons, you got your point across.