Most Americans don't travel (and thus wouldn't come into possession of a foreign-region disc), don't speak any other languages (and so most foreign content is useless to them), and have enough domestic content available that they're not dying to get their hands on stuff from abroad.
Huh, 20% of Americans speak a language besides English at home, and 50% speak a foreign language. 7% of Americans go abroad in any given year.
A more realistic explanation is, first that US movies dominate world cinema, and secondly that there is enough demand in the US for foreign DVDs, that the DVDs are readily available in region-free or region 0 NTSC versions. Certainly that's true for Indian and HK movies, they are the two largest non-US producers of content. As a movie buff who used to live in the US, I can say pretty much everything was easily available, without requiring a region-free DVD player.
And, of course, English subtitles are very common for DVDs. Basically anything recent from Europe, Hong Kong, Korea, or India will have English subtitles.
It appears you are a US resident who doesn't know anything about international cinema? You should give it a try, there's some great stuff out there!
It seems your main judge of a movie's success is how consistent it is with the original novel. If that's the case, why even bother to see the movie? "Dune" the movie wasn't nearly as good as "Dune" the novel, but it stands on its own as a unique interpretation with interesting imagery, rather than the utterly forgettable mini-series.
Most people would hate the novel Tarzan - the idea is too goofy to take seriously, plus the Hardy Boys-level prose is laughable. Most people would hate the novel "Starship Troopers," and consider the fascism off-putting. At least I did, but I thought the movie was goofy fun. There are inevitably going to be changes between cult/niche novels and the mainstream movies they inspire.
Hollywood is too large and varied to be considered "broken." It's not the 40s or 50's, where literally every movie released is product of a closed system. There's a huge amount of different models for making films. If none of these different systems are releasing pitch-perfect imitations of the shit books you mentioned, it's because there's no audience or artistic desire for "Tarzan: the Real Genuine Story Where He Speaks Perfect French."
But at the same time the old guard is deeply suspicious of foreign media.
If only! "Old guard" implies that it's a limited faction of the reactionary wing of the party - probably in fact, old people with a temporary hold on power. Really, the tightening of media & Internet controls has been stepped up under the rule of Hu Jintao, who can be viewed as a pretty mainstream Chinese political figure, otherwise in favor of a more international China.
And honestly I don't see the Beijing 2008 Olympics as a great force for open reporting. That lasts 3 weeks or so? And beyond puff pieces of what it's like to slurp noodles from the hotel restaurant, or the actual Olympic events, I don't imagine much reporting on China will be going on.
It seems like people are saying this every two hours and thirteen minutes. That's how long it took from the last story on games.slashdot, that said pretty much the exact same thing.
A 2 fucking gigabyte download limit? You gotta be joking. Anyway, the vast majority of US broadband users don't have a silly limit like that, I'm sure. Definitely 700MB is no big deal for most broadband users.
Yeah, initially all were in love with the iPod because for the return on effort, it seemed like magic. Consumers eventually get tired of jumping through even the tiniest of hoops to continue "enjoying" their gadgets. They want to turn it on, and not have to worry that the computer from which they're trying to transfer music is "iTunes anointed" or not. DRM-fatigue, finally, sets in (it's about time!).
The majority of iPod users use MP3s, which aren't affected by DRM. And DRM isn't anything at all new to iPod, either. There's no reason to assume the correlation that you take as a given. Any random anti-DRM screed is sure to get modded +5 on Slashdot, but you should put in the extra work and have it at least make some kind of sense.
And it isn't a scientific survey, but every person I know who's technologically savvy enough to be downloading MP3s is also downloadings.avi's. Here in China MP4 compliance is a big selling point for cell phones, PDAs, and other random gadgets. I gotta believe it's the same in the US. Amazon may not be impressing people, but that has more to do with the price than the fundamental concept.
But what is it...good for? Like a lot of people here (I imagine), I have a PC that outputs to a TV and a stereo. If I click on the movie a movie starts playing. If I click on the album the music starts playing. I've already learned the interfaces to these programs, I don't see a need for a suite of programs to accomplish something that any modern OS can already do anyway.
Everything else seems pointless. Installing modules to give weather reports? Like a lot of people, I can just click "home" in firefox. This is a solution in search of a problem.
Speaking of silly cliches that don't really work, why bring up the video game - cinema comparison?
And why bring up the specter of out-of-touch studio bosses, when really that has nothing to do with what the article, or this discussion, or your point, is all about?
Anyway, video games gave been going strong for 25 or 30 years now, and are still a whole lot more like pinball than cinema.
At the rates you mention, you'd have to upload 400 videos a year before it'd be worth it to subscribe to the $20/year plan. They'd have to charge more, and they'd probably want to charge additional fees for the highly downloaded videos that dominate the bandwidth.
There's no real reason to have brand loyalty to youtube - it works pretty well, but the controls are simple and it'd be easy for another company to copy. If youtube charges even a nominal fee, a huge amount of their audience will just jump ship to whatever's cheaper, or whatever their friends are using, etc. And it may well be that just charging the bandwidth costs would require a price point so high, users would abandon it in mass.
I guess you don't like America, or maybe you really like England, or something? Either way, if it's not Turing complete, it's not a computer. That's not a matter of national pride, that's just how computers are defined.
And why would the Colossus be the first computer, and not the Z3?
I had thought ENIAC was the first computer (generally considered by whom?), and from looking at the Wikipedia article, it seems the Colossus wasn't actually a computer:
Colossus was the first of the electronic digital machines to feature limited programmability. However, it was not a fully general purpose computer, not being Turing-complete, even though Alan Turing on whose research this definition was based, worked at Bletchley Park where Colossus was put into operation. It was not then realized that Turing-completeness was significant; most of the other pioneering modern computing machines were not either (e.g. the Atanasoff-Berry Computer, the Harvard Mark I electro-mechanical relay machine, the Bell Labs relay machines (by George Stibitz et al), Konrad Zuse's first two designs, and so on). The notion of a computer as a general purpose machine, and not simply a massive calculator devoted to solving difficult but single-minded problems, did not become prominent until a few years later.
I wouldn't suggest music would entirely disappear, but honestly would you give money to artists as a promise of future results? A lot of people bootleg music from their favorite bands, both major-label and indie, fully knowing that doing so doesn't benefit the artist.
And where would be the infrastructure to support new artists? Even creating music requires an initial investment, not to mention TV or advertising. I quite enjoy the American "The Office" (to be fair, I download the episodes off bittorrent). I *might* be convinced to pay 50 cents an episode, but I certainly wouldn't have done than before I saw a single episode, or even after I had seen all of season 1. Some smarty-pants at NBC saw it was a good idea for a show, and worth investment.
The whole idea reeks of creating charities to support artists, an unworkable idea. DRM is not inherently wrong. Nobody's denying it's annoying, but if the alternative is a n artistic world entirely consisting of what you might find on youtube.com, or as comissioned by Bill Gates, I am all in favor of it.
However, I don't agree with DRM at all, either, because if you do shell out the cash, you should be rewarded with a lot of freedoms with that content. You should be allowed to make backups, you should be allowed to listen/watch on different devices and so forth.
And you should be able to have your cake, and eat it too! The empirical, verifiable, 100% accurate take on movies, music, games that lack DRM is that they will get copied and traded over P2P networks. OK, DRM is of limited effectiveness, but for how long will that be true?
If something is worth buying, it's worth buying. If it's not worth buying, don't buy it
What you suggest basically amounts to "donate company to the money if you feel like it." It simply wouldn't be able to support large industries. I've heard anecdotal tales that freeware authors who ask for contributions will get essentially nothing, regardless of the popularity of their product. How does "buy it if you feel like paying the money" amount to anything more?
I'll make these analogies as well: when cassette tapes hit the markets as a cheap, convenient means to copy recordings
Copying via tape didn't destroy the industry once, therefore easily available P2P downloads are good for the industry! This "logic" is a rationalization, not an argument.
I live in China, where DRM effectively doesn't exist and bootlegs are widely available, without much chance of getting sued by the RIAA. It has killed the CHinese entertainment and everybody knows it. A recent movie of "Crazy Stone" stunned everybody by making a small profit. The key to its profitability was somehow, it took a whole week before quality bootlegs became widely available. That is a lot more important factor than the quality or basic appeal of a movie
Given the choice, people don't want to spend any money. Either you have to make new business models (typically involving all artists becoming advertisements), you have to abandon the entertainment industry, or you need DRM & copyright protection. Your system of people voluntarily giving money wouldn't work.
Of course, nothing would ever get made this way, but the idea plays well to the Slashdot crowd who are more concerned with bluster than finding a real, practical solution.
During the 50s, the world outside the US was divided into Communist nations, nations ravaged by a recent war, and nations that were either actively colonized or still dealing with the aftereffects of colonization. The US could afford to work inefficiently, because the US was the only game in town.
And good for it, too. The "war on drugs" is a sham, possession of crack is a victimless crime that the police should ignore whenever possible. People parking everywhere is a fucking nuisance.
Yeah, of course the record labels are the ones who gave the bands money in the first place, and if the bands thought it wasn't worth giving away their right, nobody forced them to sign such a contract at gunpoint. Microsoft programmers don't own the code to Windows, either.
So it could be a standard American Idol style:
1) trick contestants into signing away all rights they have to their work
There's no tricks involved. Any person competent enough to develop a video game will be more than competent enough to quickly Google the rights they'll be allowed to keep.
Similarly, all the karaoke champions on American Idol know that the network keeps the rights to what they sing on American Idol, give me a break. The Clay Aikens of the world know that they'd never have the slightest chance of being rich & famous pop musicians without entering into such a contract, and do so of their own will. Seems a fair bargain to me, and if they didn't think so, well nobody forces them to sign the contract.
Slashdot Mirror
Huh, 20% of Americans speak a language besides English at home, and 50% speak a foreign language. 7% of Americans go abroad in any given year.
A more realistic explanation is, first that US movies dominate world cinema, and secondly that there is enough demand in the US for foreign DVDs, that the DVDs are readily available in region-free or region 0 NTSC versions. Certainly that's true for Indian and HK movies, they are the two largest non-US producers of content. As a movie buff who used to live in the US, I can say pretty much everything was easily available, without requiring a region-free DVD player.
And, of course, English subtitles are very common for DVDs. Basically anything recent from Europe, Hong Kong, Korea, or India will have English subtitles.
It appears you are a US resident who doesn't know anything about international cinema? You should give it a try, there's some great stuff out there!
It seems your main judge of a movie's success is how consistent it is with the original novel. If that's the case, why even bother to see the movie? "Dune" the movie wasn't nearly as good as "Dune" the novel, but it stands on its own as a unique interpretation with interesting imagery, rather than the utterly forgettable mini-series. Most people would hate the novel Tarzan - the idea is too goofy to take seriously, plus the Hardy Boys-level prose is laughable. Most people would hate the novel "Starship Troopers," and consider the fascism off-putting. At least I did, but I thought the movie was goofy fun. There are inevitably going to be changes between cult/niche novels and the mainstream movies they inspire. Hollywood is too large and varied to be considered "broken." It's not the 40s or 50's, where literally every movie released is product of a closed system. There's a huge amount of different models for making films. If none of these different systems are releasing pitch-perfect imitations of the shit books you mentioned, it's because there's no audience or artistic desire for "Tarzan: the Real Genuine Story Where He Speaks Perfect French."
If only! "Old guard" implies that it's a limited faction of the reactionary wing of the party - probably in fact, old people with a temporary hold on power. Really, the tightening of media & Internet controls has been stepped up under the rule of Hu Jintao, who can be viewed as a pretty mainstream Chinese political figure, otherwise in favor of a more international China.
And honestly I don't see the Beijing 2008 Olympics as a great force for open reporting. That lasts 3 weeks or so? And beyond puff pieces of what it's like to slurp noodles from the hotel restaurant, or the actual Olympic events, I don't imagine much reporting on China will be going on.
It seems like people are saying this every two hours and thirteen minutes. That's how long it took from the last story on games.slashdot, that said pretty much the exact same thing.
A 2 fucking gigabyte download limit? You gotta be joking. Anyway, the vast majority of US broadband users don't have a silly limit like that, I'm sure. Definitely 700MB is no big deal for most broadband users.
The majority of iPod users use MP3s, which aren't affected by DRM. And DRM isn't anything at all new to iPod, either. There's no reason to assume the correlation that you take as a given. Any random anti-DRM screed is sure to get modded +5 on Slashdot, but you should put in the extra work and have it at least make some kind of sense.
And it isn't a scientific survey, but every person I know who's technologically savvy enough to be downloading MP3s is also downloadings .avi's. Here in China MP4 compliance is a big selling point for cell phones, PDAs, and other random gadgets. I gotta believe it's the same in the US. Amazon may not be impressing people, but that has more to do with the price than the fundamental concept.
I'm sorry, I thought it was a "magnum opus of modular design, freedom of expression and personal entertainment."
Everything else seems pointless. Installing modules to give weather reports? Like a lot of people, I can just click "home" in firefox. This is a solution in search of a problem.
How old are you - 14?
And why bring up the specter of out-of-touch studio bosses, when really that has nothing to do with what the article, or this discussion, or your point, is all about?
Anyway, video games gave been going strong for 25 or 30 years now, and are still a whole lot more like pinball than cinema.
There's no real reason to have brand loyalty to youtube - it works pretty well, but the controls are simple and it'd be easy for another company to copy. If youtube charges even a nominal fee, a huge amount of their audience will just jump ship to whatever's cheaper, or whatever their friends are using, etc. And it may well be that just charging the bandwidth costs would require a price point so high, users would abandon it in mass.
And why would the Colossus be the first computer, and not the Z3?
Colossus was the first of the electronic digital machines to feature limited programmability. However, it was not a fully general purpose computer, not being Turing-complete, even though Alan Turing on whose research this definition was based, worked at Bletchley Park where Colossus was put into operation. It was not then realized that Turing-completeness was significant; most of the other pioneering modern computing machines were not either (e.g. the Atanasoff-Berry Computer, the Harvard Mark I electro-mechanical relay machine, the Bell Labs relay machines (by George Stibitz et al), Konrad Zuse's first two designs, and so on). The notion of a computer as a general purpose machine, and not simply a massive calculator devoted to solving difficult but single-minded problems, did not become prominent until a few years later.
You can also just download the bittorrent. Free, no commercials, how can you go wrong?
"You can't copy it." Jesus how complicated is that? What a leading question.
That's not actually what dumping is...for one thing, it's being sold for approximately the same price in its home market as to foreign markets.
And where would be the infrastructure to support new artists? Even creating music requires an initial investment, not to mention TV or advertising. I quite enjoy the American "The Office" (to be fair, I download the episodes off bittorrent). I *might* be convinced to pay 50 cents an episode, but I certainly wouldn't have done than before I saw a single episode, or even after I had seen all of season 1. Some smarty-pants at NBC saw it was a good idea for a show, and worth investment.
The whole idea reeks of creating charities to support artists, an unworkable idea. DRM is not inherently wrong. Nobody's denying it's annoying, but if the alternative is a n artistic world entirely consisting of what you might find on youtube.com, or as comissioned by Bill Gates, I am all in favor of it.
And you should be able to have your cake, and eat it too! The empirical, verifiable, 100% accurate take on movies, music, games that lack DRM is that they will get copied and traded over P2P networks. OK, DRM is of limited effectiveness, but for how long will that be true?
If something is worth buying, it's worth buying. If it's not worth buying, don't buy it What you suggest basically amounts to "donate company to the money if you feel like it." It simply wouldn't be able to support large industries. I've heard anecdotal tales that freeware authors who ask for contributions will get essentially nothing, regardless of the popularity of their product. How does "buy it if you feel like paying the money" amount to anything more?
I'll make these analogies as well: when cassette tapes hit the markets as a cheap, convenient means to copy recordings Copying via tape didn't destroy the industry once, therefore easily available P2P downloads are good for the industry! This "logic" is a rationalization, not an argument.
I live in China, where DRM effectively doesn't exist and bootlegs are widely available, without much chance of getting sued by the RIAA. It has killed the CHinese entertainment and everybody knows it. A recent movie of "Crazy Stone" stunned everybody by making a small profit. The key to its profitability was somehow, it took a whole week before quality bootlegs became widely available. That is a lot more important factor than the quality or basic appeal of a movie
Given the choice, people don't want to spend any money. Either you have to make new business models (typically involving all artists becoming advertisements), you have to abandon the entertainment industry, or you need DRM & copyright protection. Your system of people voluntarily giving money wouldn't work.
Of course, nothing would ever get made this way, but the idea plays well to the Slashdot crowd who are more concerned with bluster than finding a real, practical solution.
During the 50s, the world outside the US was divided into Communist nations, nations ravaged by a recent war, and nations that were either actively colonized or still dealing with the aftereffects of colonization. The US could afford to work inefficiently, because the US was the only game in town.
In Korea, making movies for a profit is only for old people.
Wikiwiki is Hawaiian for quick.
And good for it, too. The "war on drugs" is a sham, possession of crack is a victimless crime that the police should ignore whenever possible. People parking everywhere is a fucking nuisance.
Yeah, of course the record labels are the ones who gave the bands money in the first place, and if the bands thought it wasn't worth giving away their right, nobody forced them to sign such a contract at gunpoint. Microsoft programmers don't own the code to Windows, either.
1) trick contestants into signing away all rights they have to their work
There's no tricks involved. Any person competent enough to develop a video game will be more than competent enough to quickly Google the rights they'll be allowed to keep.
Similarly, all the karaoke champions on American Idol know that the network keeps the rights to what they sing on American Idol, give me a break. The Clay Aikens of the world know that they'd never have the slightest chance of being rich & famous pop musicians without entering into such a contract, and do so of their own will. Seems a fair bargain to me, and if they didn't think so, well nobody forces them to sign the contract.