"some people don't like spending time micro-managing DVD queues."
And like I replied already, it takes seconds to drag an drop movies in the queue. And as I've also replied previously, if you don't have mere seconds to do that, you probably don't have time to watch movies in the first place.
"Moreover, the fact that you don't find recommendations useful surely can't make it impossible for you to see that others might find them useful"
I must be small minded because I simply cannot imagine an intelligent adult relying on machine generated suggestions for movies. Don't you have actual friends to recommend movies to you? Can't you read movie reviews written from actual people?
I've been a Netflix subscriber for over four years and I've never used the profiles. I never saw a reason for them. But, in reading through the threads here, apparently they are widely used. (Even though I still don't understand why.)
Anyway, here's my theory. Netflix will bring the profiles back but charge a "nominal" fee each month for each profile. Like maybe 50 cents per month. Overtime the fee will be raised to actually increase Netflix's profits.
I can't understand why we're not massively building wind farms in the great plane states of the US. Until we have a means to safely dispose of nuclear waste, building more nuclear power plants make no sense. Although, I have to admit I'll miss W's attempt at pronouncing "nuclear."
"The beauty of the profiles is that if I have a bunch of new releases at the top of my queue, I'm still guaranteed to get a movie that I want to see that week."
Once again, that makes no sense. If the movie in your individual queue, that you're "guaranteed" to get, is available for mailing, than it is necessarily available for mailing when it is in a single and shared queue. Having the separate queue in no way increases its chances of the movie of being available.
"Yes, but now if you want to be fair and evenly distribute between the two tastes you will have to micro-manage the queue and make sure you alternate between "husband" movies and "wife" movies all the way down the list."
As I've said previously, it takes about five seconds to drag and drop a movie in the queue. If you're too busy to do that, you're probably too busy to even watch movies.
"This leads to obvious problems when Netflix suggests movies to you."
Ah, that's the reason. We rent movies and shows we like. I've never relied on Netflix's system of pushing its movies on us. I've never found it to be even remotely accurate other than by random chance.
"we need to actively interleave the movies to make sure she gets some that she likes in a timely fashion. It's just going to be a really big hassle to manage a single account"
It takes about 5 freaking seconds to pick up a movie in the queue and to drop it somewhere else. Does your computer even have a mouse? Are you using some utterly complicated command-line version of Netflix?
If you want to watch Die Hard, for example. Put it on the top of your queue and you'll get it in the next batch. If you wife wants to watch a chick flick, she can add that to the number two position. She'll get it in the next batch. Even if Netflix has a "one movie at a time" plan, having separate queues would not give you two movies at a time.
"It is to guarantee that your family members get a movie that they like."
Once again, that makes no freaking sense. I have four family members. I can add movies to the single queue and adjust that single queue to ensure that each of us get movies. You do realize you can change the order of the queue, right?
"I guess your family has homogeneous movie tastes. My wife and I have pretty radically different tastes in movies."
That makes no freaking sense whatsoever. My wife and I could have completely different tastes in movies and we could add those different genres of movies to the same queue!
I personally never used it nor saw a reason to use it. If a family member wants a movie we add it to the queue. The only reason I could see an advantage in using different accounts is so the kids won't know you're renting porn. But since Netflix doesn't rent porn, that's not really a reason.
I've been a Netflix subscriber for over four years. This is the first time they've ever taken a step backwards. And their complete lack justification is very strange.
There's an old legal maxim that say if you can't win under the law, argue the facts. And if you can't win under either, well, there's always lying, cheating, and stealing.
"Maybe, maybe not. The number of computers you're downloading from bears no relevance. I could be downloading at a very slow rate but be uploading at a much higher rate."
Nope, that's impossible. If you're uploading at a faster rate than you're downloading, you would be uploading data you have not yet downloaded. I guess it would be possible to download and upload at nearly the same amount, but it would be unlikely. Especially considering most ISPs upload rates are significantly lower than their download rates and the fact that you're downloading from multiple sources and are only uploading from one.
"Maybe im the only seed now..."
Clearly if you have 100% of the data and you're the sole seeder, then it's pretty obvious you're be infringing. And I'm shocked that the RIAA are not going after the egregious seeders. However, the overwhelming number of users on bittorrent are not sole seeders. They're leechers.
"I think that constitutes 32 seconds of an mp3 encoded at 128kbps"
Even if you are right, and even if you did manage to share 32 seconds of sequential data (which I've never seen happen on bittorrent), would it be infringement? Show me one case that holds the sharing 32 seconds of a song constitutes infringement and I'll agree. I don't mean to be a prick, but I won't be holding my breath.
First, the United State Supreme Court held in DOWLING v. UNITED STATES, 473 U.S. 207 (1985) that copyright infringement is not stealing and is not even analogous to stealing. That does not mean infringement is legal, it only means it is not theft.
Second, I think sharing a part of a song without permission of the copyright holder could be infringement, ignoring any fair use arguments or the like. I've not seen any case law to support that, however.
My point is that the "making available" argument is infinitely easier to prove than the actual infringement argument. And furthermore, that under the current P2P systems available, that actual infringement will be nearly impossible to prove.
"You are not an attorney, and you do not concentrate on copyright law. I am calling absolute shenanigans, since you are flat out lying."
I am, I did, I never said I do, I don't care what you call it, and I'm not.
"you just happaned to distribute some tiny portion... this could be seen as copyright infringement."
I think the problem you have is that you don't understand how systems such as bittorrent work. When you share data on bittorrent, you're not sharing sequential data. Thus, unless a lot of data was shared, it would be impossible to prove that the nearly random data you've shared was a part of an actual song.
When you download from bittorrent, you're immediately sharing. However, since you're downloading from many computers you're downloading faster than you're uploading. Combined with the fact that you cannot share what you do not have, when the download is complete, you're necessarily going to have shared less than what you've downloaded. And because you're sharing with numerous people, that random non-sequential data is going to become even less recognizable as a song because it was spread out to different computers.
Let's take a real world example, Let's say you download one 4MB MP3 from bittorrent. You download it from 100s people and some of those people start sharing from you. Let's say during that download you uploaded one forth of it, thus you've uploaded one non-sequential megabyte. However, because you shared it across 100 or more people, that one non-sequential megabyte has to be divided into at least 100 non-sequential parts. That means that each person you shared with got about 10KBs of data each. Do you really think that someone could determine a song based on 10KBs of non-sequential data? Really? The answer is "no," you cannot. And that's why the RIAA is making this ludicrous "making available" argument.
First, I'm an attorney who concentrated in IP law.
Second, there will never be any law that holds that a bit of data could constitute copyright infringement anymore than copying one note could constitute copyright infringement. Neither bits nor notes are copyrightable because neither could be considered an original work.
The RIAA is obviously afraid of losing outright on the issue of its "making available" argument. I say that because without the "making available" argument the RIAA will no longer be able to sue it fans. Let's face it, if the RIAA had actual evidence of copyright infringement, it would not need to use the "making available" argument. Thus, it's clear that the "making available" argument is the only pseudo-legal straw available for it to grasp.
I personally think it has something to do with the nature of P2P. In the old days if you shared music, the person would download it directly from you. Now you're only sharing bits and pieces of songs,not entire songs, spread out among many different people.
Of course the RIAA could attempt to make the argument that that sharing one even one bit of a song constitutes infringement. However, when one and zeros themselves become illegal, we're all in trouble!
This is exactly the problem with the world today, corporations have way too much power. Even when they lose under the law, they simply create new laws to suit their needs. They never lose. Thus there is no balance between any power citizens may have and corporations have.
Let's face it, if piracy is as rampant as the content industry claims, then it necessarily follows that the vast majority of citizens do not want such draconian laws protecting copyrights. Why should corporations, who cannot even vote, have more rights to create laws than the citizens governments are supposed to protect?!
But what the court actually determined is that software licensing agreements (as currently written) do not apply to third parties. And that those third parties have the right to resell software under the first sale doctrine.
Microsoft has never been about the customer. Microsoft will gladly screw over their customers to get a few bucks or gain marketshare.
Here's an old but great example. Back when Win95 was released you could not natively use long file names with 16-bit apps. However, there was a product called "Name-It!" which did allow that function. In other words it was possible and quite easy to enable the function, but Microsoft chose NOT to implement it. Why? Because long file names was a well liked feature among customers and denying it to customers would give incentive to upgrade to new 32-bit programs.
Another great example is Messenger, the chat program not the service. Microsoft originally made it nearly impossible to get rid of. Even if you edited your sysoc.inf file and uninstalled Messenger, it'll suddenly come back. Even if you deleted the subfolder under Program Files, it would mysteriously come back. Obviously Microsoft considered its chat war against AOL more important than ease of use for its customers.
And of course there's product activation. We were told it was to stop piracy, but that was bull-shit. You can easy obtain pirated copies of XP and Vista. Let's face it, if piracy has been decreased, then why is Vista Microsoft's most expensive OS? Why aren't they passing the savings back to us? Clearly product activation is not stopping piracy at all. Once again, the real purpose of product activation is to screw over the paying customer who wants to install the OS he paid for on both of his systems.
And lets not forget how Microsoft's Office products are constantly screwing with file formats to make the later versions incompatible with earlier versions. Once again, this is NOT done to make it easier for paying customers. It's merely leverage to get those customer paying again and again.
It'd be really hard to be passionate for Microsoft's products. It's hard to be passionate for anything that nickel and dimes you at every turn. That treats you like a criminal. And sees you merely as a cash cow to be milked at every chance.
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"some people don't like spending time micro-managing DVD queues."
And like I replied already, it takes seconds to drag an drop movies in the queue. And as I've also replied previously, if you don't have mere seconds to do that, you probably don't have time to watch movies in the first place.
"Moreover, the fact that you don't find recommendations useful surely can't make it impossible for you to see that others might find them useful"
I must be small minded because I simply cannot imagine an intelligent adult relying on machine generated suggestions for movies. Don't you have actual friends to recommend movies to you? Can't you read movie reviews written from actual people?
I've been a Netflix subscriber for over four years and I've never used the profiles. I never saw a reason for them. But, in reading through the threads here, apparently they are widely used. (Even though I still don't understand why.)
Anyway, here's my theory. Netflix will bring the profiles back but charge a "nominal" fee each month for each profile. Like maybe 50 cents per month. Overtime the fee will be raised to actually increase Netflix's profits.
I can't understand why we're not massively building wind farms in the great plane states of the US. Until we have a means to safely dispose of nuclear waste, building more nuclear power plants make no sense. Although, I have to admit I'll miss W's attempt at pronouncing "nuclear."
"The beauty of the profiles is that if I have a bunch of new releases at the top of my queue, I'm still guaranteed to get a movie that I want to see that week."
Once again, that makes no sense. If the movie in your individual queue, that you're "guaranteed" to get, is available for mailing, than it is necessarily available for mailing when it is in a single and shared queue. Having the separate queue in no way increases its chances of the movie of being available.
"Yes, but now if you want to be fair and evenly distribute between the two tastes you will have to micro-manage the queue and make sure you alternate between "husband" movies and "wife" movies all the way down the list."
As I've said previously, it takes about five seconds to drag and drop a movie in the queue. If you're too busy to do that, you're probably too busy to even watch movies.
"This leads to obvious problems when Netflix suggests movies to you."
Ah, that's the reason. We rent movies and shows we like. I've never relied on Netflix's system of pushing its movies on us. I've never found it to be even remotely accurate other than by random chance.
"we need to actively interleave the movies to make sure she gets some that she likes in a timely fashion. It's just going to be a really big hassle to manage a single account"
It takes about 5 freaking seconds to pick up a movie in the queue and to drop it somewhere else. Does your computer even have a mouse? Are you using some utterly complicated command-line version of Netflix?
If you want to watch Die Hard, for example. Put it on the top of your queue and you'll get it in the next batch. If you wife wants to watch a chick flick, she can add that to the number two position. She'll get it in the next batch. Even if Netflix has a "one movie at a time" plan, having separate queues would not give you two movies at a time.
"It is to guarantee that your family members get a movie that they like."
Once again, that makes no freaking sense. I have four family members. I can add movies to the single queue and adjust that single queue to ensure that each of us get movies. You do realize you can change the order of the queue, right?
"I guess your family has homogeneous movie tastes. My wife and I have pretty radically different tastes in movies."
That makes no freaking sense whatsoever. My wife and I could have completely different tastes in movies and we could add those different genres of movies to the same queue!
I personally never used it nor saw a reason to use it. If a family member wants a movie we add it to the queue. The only reason I could see an advantage in using different accounts is so the kids won't know you're renting porn. But since Netflix doesn't rent porn, that's not really a reason.
I've been a Netflix subscriber for over four years. This is the first time they've ever taken a step backwards. And their complete lack justification is very strange.
No, but that is funny. Thanks!
I used to work at a music store in my youth and selling promo CDs is what got me through college.
There's an old legal maxim that say if you can't win under the law, argue the facts. And if you can't win under either, well, there's always lying, cheating, and stealing.
"Maybe, maybe not. The number of computers you're downloading from bears no relevance. I could be downloading at a very slow rate but be uploading at a much higher rate."
Nope, that's impossible. If you're uploading at a faster rate than you're downloading, you would be uploading data you have not yet downloaded. I guess it would be possible to download and upload at nearly the same amount, but it would be unlikely. Especially considering most ISPs upload rates are significantly lower than their download rates and the fact that you're downloading from multiple sources and are only uploading from one.
"Maybe im the only seed now..."
Clearly if you have 100% of the data and you're the sole seeder, then it's pretty obvious you're be infringing. And I'm shocked that the RIAA are not going after the egregious seeders. However, the overwhelming number of users on bittorrent are not sole seeders. They're leechers.
"I think that constitutes 32 seconds of an mp3 encoded at 128kbps"
Even if you are right, and even if you did manage to share 32 seconds of sequential data (which I've never seen happen on bittorrent), would it be infringement? Show me one case that holds the sharing 32 seconds of a song constitutes infringement and I'll agree. I don't mean to be a prick, but I won't be holding my breath.
First, the United State Supreme Court held in DOWLING v. UNITED STATES, 473 U.S. 207 (1985) that copyright infringement is not stealing and is not even analogous to stealing. That does not mean infringement is legal, it only means it is not theft.
Second, I think sharing a part of a song without permission of the copyright holder could be infringement, ignoring any fair use arguments or the like. I've not seen any case law to support that, however.
My point is that the "making available" argument is infinitely easier to prove than the actual infringement argument. And furthermore, that under the current P2P systems available, that actual infringement will be nearly impossible to prove.
"You are not an attorney, and you do not concentrate on copyright law. I am calling absolute shenanigans, since you are flat out lying."
I am, I did, I never said I do, I don't care what you call it, and I'm not.
"you just happaned to distribute some tiny portion... this could be seen as copyright infringement."
I think the problem you have is that you don't understand how systems such as bittorrent work. When you share data on bittorrent, you're not sharing sequential data. Thus, unless a lot of data was shared, it would be impossible to prove that the nearly random data you've shared was a part of an actual song.
When you download from bittorrent, you're immediately sharing. However, since you're downloading from many computers you're downloading faster than you're uploading. Combined with the fact that you cannot share what you do not have, when the download is complete, you're necessarily going to have shared less than what you've downloaded. And because you're sharing with numerous people, that random non-sequential data is going to become even less recognizable as a song because it was spread out to different computers.
Let's take a real world example, Let's say you download one 4MB MP3 from bittorrent. You download it from 100s people and some of those people start sharing from you. Let's say during that download you uploaded one forth of it, thus you've uploaded one non-sequential megabyte. However, because you shared it across 100 or more people, that one non-sequential megabyte has to be divided into at least 100 non-sequential parts. That means that each person you shared with got about 10KBs of data each. Do you really think that someone could determine a song based on 10KBs of non-sequential data? Really? The answer is "no," you cannot. And that's why the RIAA is making this ludicrous "making available" argument.
First, I'm an attorney who concentrated in IP law.
Second, there will never be any law that holds that a bit of data could constitute copyright infringement anymore than copying one note could constitute copyright infringement. Neither bits nor notes are copyrightable because neither could be considered an original work.
The RIAA is obviously afraid of losing outright on the issue of its "making available" argument. I say that because without the "making available" argument the RIAA will no longer be able to sue it fans. Let's face it, if the RIAA had actual evidence of copyright infringement, it would not need to use the "making available" argument. Thus, it's clear that the "making available" argument is the only pseudo-legal straw available for it to grasp.
I personally think it has something to do with the nature of P2P. In the old days if you shared music, the person would download it directly from you. Now you're only sharing bits and pieces of songs,not entire songs, spread out among many different people.
Of course the RIAA could attempt to make the argument that that sharing one even one bit of a song constitutes infringement. However, when one and zeros themselves become illegal, we're all in trouble!
That these Blu-ray compatible discs will be primarily used by consumers to store ripped Blu-ray movies.
Here's a link to 7,065,520.
This is exactly the problem with the world today, corporations have way too much power. Even when they lose under the law, they simply create new laws to suit their needs. They never lose. Thus there is no balance between any power citizens may have and corporations have.
Let's face it, if piracy is as rampant as the content industry claims, then it necessarily follows that the vast majority of citizens do not want such draconian laws protecting copyrights. Why should corporations, who cannot even vote, have more rights to create laws than the citizens governments are supposed to protect?!
But what the court actually determined is that software licensing agreements (as currently written) do not apply to third parties. And that those third parties have the right to resell software under the first sale doctrine.
Even so, it's still an amazing ruling.
Microsoft has never been about the customer. Microsoft will gladly screw over their customers to get a few bucks or gain marketshare.
Here's an old but great example. Back when Win95 was released you could not natively use long file names with 16-bit apps. However, there was a product called "Name-It!" which did allow that function. In other words it was possible and quite easy to enable the function, but Microsoft chose NOT to implement it. Why? Because long file names was a well liked feature among customers and denying it to customers would give incentive to upgrade to new 32-bit programs.
Another great example is Messenger, the chat program not the service. Microsoft originally made it nearly impossible to get rid of. Even if you edited your sysoc.inf file and uninstalled Messenger, it'll suddenly come back. Even if you deleted the subfolder under Program Files, it would mysteriously come back. Obviously Microsoft considered its chat war against AOL more important than ease of use for its customers.
And of course there's product activation. We were told it was to stop piracy, but that was bull-shit. You can easy obtain pirated copies of XP and Vista. Let's face it, if piracy has been decreased, then why is Vista Microsoft's most expensive OS? Why aren't they passing the savings back to us? Clearly product activation is not stopping piracy at all. Once again, the real purpose of product activation is to screw over the paying customer who wants to install the OS he paid for on both of his systems.
And lets not forget how Microsoft's Office products are constantly screwing with file formats to make the later versions incompatible with earlier versions. Once again, this is NOT done to make it easier for paying customers. It's merely leverage to get those customer paying again and again.
It'd be really hard to be passionate for Microsoft's products. It's hard to be passionate for anything that nickel and dimes you at every turn. That treats you like a criminal. And sees you merely as a cash cow to be milked at every chance.
If you're talking about drug advertising during episodes of Matlock and Murder, She Wrote, I totally agree.