"We have slightly different advertising standards to the US"
Standards which allow companies to advertise "unlimited internet access" with 500 MByte limits because _the company says_ that not many users exceed that limit.
Make sure that you don't repeat my mistake and buy the remarkably similar-looking iPod Touch instead, because it's the most useless phone I've ever had.
"I think the only reason why Apple might appear exceptional is because they were required to pull the ads."
That's not in the least exceptional with ASA, which considers one complaint about some aspect or other of a national advertising campaign that millions of other people have seen but not complained about to be sufficient reason for pulling it. In this case, they received (wait for it) 18 complaints, which is a veritable landslide compared with _the single person_ who claimed to have been offended by use of the word "bloody" in a lorry-side ad for The Sun, which was then forced to pull it on the grounds that ASA said it was a very bad word.
It's actually quite rare for deep sea animals such as giant squid to get washed up on shores, so many scientists really did believe that they only existed in tall tales from mariners until the 19th century, when a French gunboat brought back part of a specimen.
The word "Soma" dates back to at least the 10th century BCE, was probably in use before the 25th century BCE, and is thought to be a tea made from Asian ephedra (which contains alkaloids not present in American ephedra), a stimulant that constricts blood vessels and increases blood pressure and heart rate, so it has a very different effect indeed from Carisoprodol.
Archaeological evidence indicates that, unlike the version of Soma used by Zoroastrians, the ancient Aryan one that many historians think is the source for references to Soma in the Indian Rigveda probably contained cannabis and opium together with the ephedra, which may well go a long way towards explaining why some of the verses in that document are so confusing!
So I'll see your Wikipedia link, and raise you two more:
"How about just releasing everything world-wide, at the same time, instead of a handful of countries, or different dates for only a selected few countries?"
And how about not charging wildly different prices in each of those countries for the same album in the same cover?
You're going to have to do better than this, because Radiohead signed a six album deal with EMI in 1992, and were heavily promoted by that label. They'd be complete unknowns without that promotion, as would Nine Inch Nails, who have followed Radiohead's lead in selling music from their own web site.
A person who actually knew a bit about the industry (which isn't you) would of course have no trouble coming up with artists who actually achieved fame without having it bought for them by a major label. A well-known example is the Arctic Monkeys, whose fans used the likes of FaceBook and various file sharing networks to generate a significant amount of buzz about them. I won't bother going into any more detail here because feeding their name into Google will lead you to lots of info about them.
"They pay rent or mortgage; that's warehousing costs."
They'd pay that rent or mortgage irrespective of whether they store CDs in their homes or not, so it isn't anything remotely like industrial warehousing costs. I'm really finding it hard to see why you continue to write things that make you look like a total idiot.
"The locals here produce CDs that sound as good as, or in most cases better than, RIAA fare."
You must live in an utterly unique part of the world if your local studios can afford facilities and engineers to rival those of the ones used by major artists.
"Black Magic Johnson (a blues guy)"
Black Magic Johnson is a blues group, not a blues guy.
"the live shows have two white guys playing bass and guitar."
Who are both members of the group, not session musicians. I also fail to see how anything else you mention has any relevance whatsoever to my point about session musicians and singers on professional recordings, because entire orchestras and "big bands" use session people both in the studio and when playing live, and they have a lot more than seven members.
"It surpasses ANYTHING I've seen the majors produce this century."
I suggest you back up this claim by producing some evidence to prove that your opinions about music are objectively more correct than somebody randomly pulled off the street in any part of the world.
"You know that's bullshit. The RIAA lables have fired off hundreds of lawsuits against "pirates", who spend more money on music than anyone."
1) None of those lawsuits was brought for not buying products. 2) Please provide some evidence for your assertion that non-commercial pirates _as a group_ spend more money on music than non-pirates _as a group_.
"The mammals (indies) are feasting on dinasaur eggs and the dinasaurs are making excuses."
Independent labels are being hit just as hard by the downturn in recorded music sales as anyone else, so this is more rubbish from a practised purveyor of rubbish.
"It's the executives and lawyers and middlemen and the cocaine they snort and mansions they and their top tier of singers and rappers live in."
Which you resent because you're doomed to be an eternal nobody who will never earn as much in a year as they spend in a day.
"The major labels are dying, and I for one will be glad to see them gone."
This is obvious, although your rhetoric reveals that your main reason for this boils down to seething envy.
"They are leeches on the creative community, and more and more artists are starting to realize it."
If this is the case, then how are "their top tier of singers and rappers" able to live in mansions?
"As such, a large part of it may have simply been food shortages"
Even without food shortages, the fact that we could support four times as many people from the same resources would mean that we'd rapidly end up out-competing them through sheer weight of numbers.
"Look, the EU just smacked down France's three strikes internet piracy law. "
What the EU actually smacked down was a French attempt to make their three strikes law into an EU-wide directive that would require all members to implement it, nor the French law itself, which is not affected by this decision in any way.
"Aland has problems regarding snus too and their duck hunting has been trampled on. It clearly isn't that easy to just flout the laws."
The article in the link you provide indicates that Aland is rather successfully flouting the laws, because they're openly disobeying any they don't like, and haven't paid any of the EU court fines they've incurred for that disobedience. And some other interesting facts emerge after the reporter's massively biased rhetoric is filtred out:
1) The Alanders _voted_ to join the EU at a time when all the rules they object to were already in force, and were very easy to find out about. So it's pretty much a case of being given plenty of time and opportunity to read a contract and the clauses in it, get them looked at by lawyers, and otherwise find out how they might affect you, and then complaining about them after signing that contract because you're expected to respect the terms you agreed to.
2) The Alanders aren't, as the reporter claims, either teaching the EU a "lesson in democracy", or stopping it in its tracks, but are instead teaching Finland a lesson about the stupidity of making laws that let those who govern a community of 26,000 people blackmail the democratically elected government of Finland's other 5 million inhabitants.
"Flouting the laws doesn't mean those laws aren't made by a government. American tax protesters have argued that income tax is illegal and won in some instances."
If you'd checked further than Fox News, then you'd also know that Vernice Kuglin only managed to stay out of prison, but she still had to pay all the back taxes, which were taken directly from her wages by the IRS. So once again we have a case which actually refutes your point by highlighting the fact that the EU (a) cannot even contemplate putting anyone in prison, and (b) has no way of directly deducting fines from its members, or any other method of forcing them to pay.
"Some countries may ignore thing the EU but that doesn't mean everyone can."
Everyone has at some point, and both large and small members still do, hence the fact that the total of unpaid fines by member states is a huge and constantly growing sum of money. There is a provision for the commission to add unpaid fines to a country's annual membership fees (adopted from a British proposal), but this has happened so rarely and is subject to so many special circumstances that few members regard it as being even a potential hazard of not paying EU fines.
"If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck then it is a duck."
Then please provide some evidence that the EU walks or quacks like a duck before claiming that it is one, because everything you've provided so far is either wrong, or refutes your claims after the facts are isolated from the biased rhetoric that surrounds them.
"All of these costs are there regardles sif it's BMI or a smal local band."
Balderdash. Small bands don't have anything approaching the promotional costs of a major release (if they did, they wouldn't be a small band); they have no warehousing costs because they keep their small number of CDs in their own homes; and they have no transport costs because they take their CDs with them to gigs.
"The local small band also has to pay for studio time, cover design, etc."
They pay small sums to a small local studio for small local results, and usually either design their own covers, or get a friend to do it for a pittance, which is why so many of their CDs look and sound poor, especially the drums, because small studios seldom have drum booths or "engineers" who know how to mic. drums properly. Another notably absent element is the session musicians and singers that not only solo artists, but also bands use on professional recordings.
And the final absent element is of course the radio play, TV interviews, gigs in sold-out football stadiums, and the ability for the artists to live well off the proceeds of making music instead of having to finance everything themselves from a minimum-wage job. That's why the members of just about any of those local bands you cite would undergo major surgery without anaesthetic for a recording deal with one of the companies you claim are ripping us all off.
"You do understand why WalMart is driving small locals out of buiness? Economy of scale."
I suggest you check up on some facts before making simplistic statements like this, because there's _a lot_ more involved in the way Walmart achieve their low prices than economies of scale.
"The record companies are like if Wal Mart charged three times what the mom and pop stores did, then sued people for not shopping at WalMart."
More exaggerated hyperbolae:
1) You've already said the majors charge $10 for a CD _including the dealer mark-up_, which is also what you also said at least some local bands charge for a direct sale _without a dealer mark-up_. $10 isn't three times as much as $10.
2) None of the majors or their representative bodies has ever sued anyone for not buying their products, or attempted to coerce people into buying them in any way other than advertising or bribing radio stations to get their products on playlists.
""But we have all these costs because we're so big""
Which is again something you've invented because it's easier to make stuff up than go to all the effort of looking up some facts.
"HDCP is an encrypted protocol, preventing - or at least attempting to prevent - capture of video stream as it travels from the display adapter to the monitor."
Attempt is the correct word, because the only thing it actually seems to be particularly successful at is causing problems for legitimate customers, with the Apple DisplayPort issue being just the latest example of an extremely badly implemented version of a worse idea.
"HDCP is an encrypted protocol, preventing - or at least attempting to prevent - capture of video stream as it travels from the display adapter to the monitor."
Doesn't what?
"It's the viewer program which has been crippled."
That's what it looks like to me from the evidence I've seen. I can't verify this personally because I don't own one of the new MacBooks, and I'm not going to buy one for the sake of Slashdot post.
"The same files could be viewed on the same computer with another program."
Anything capable of decrypting them would be able to send the results to the DisplayPort hardware without using its HDCP capabilities, which are optional in a technical sense, although Apple are likely to be legally or contractually obliged to use it when the capability exists by some of their content providers. AV geeks won't be in the least surprised to hear that Apple's first outing with HDCP has caused problems for some Mac users, because they've been wrestling with it for about 3 years, and its many problems problems show little sign of improving, let alone going away.
"Is public patronage better? Enough better that switching is worthwhile?"
I'd say so no in both cases, and my reasoning is a simple one: bad situations tend to get worse over the long term when put under government control, even though they sometimes improve in the short term.
"But some of the objections you raised are, I think, unfounded."
The objections I've raised are based on nearly 50 years of having lived in various countries where governments have embarked on nationalisation binges that have invariably ended up causing far more problems than they solve. It _always_ looks good paper, and it often lives up to expectations initially because everyone involved is full of enthusiasm for the idea, so they do everything they can to make it work. But the utopian dream invariably ends up becoming a nightmare where battling fiefdoms each demand a bigger slice of a bigger pie that they have more control over than any of the other factions.
" think that we really don't have a choice, that the status quo won't hold up no matter how hard we try to cling to it."
I'm not arguing that we should maintain the status quo. This does not however mean that we have no choices other than nationalisation.
"Better to have some reasonable alternatives worked out rather than drifting blindly towards possibly far worse conditions-- such as complete anarchy where no one creates anything because no one can earn a thin dime on any art whatsoever as interested fans will copy it all instantly for free in unbreakable anonymity."
And the solution governments select will, as is always the case, be regulations that result in them having more power over everyone by completely removing that anonymity with the usual excuses: combating terrorism, reducing organised crime, and preventing child abuse. This is already happening, and it will get worse because those who seek power always want more of it, just as those who seek great wealth never have enough money to satisfy them.
"Taste in a modern patronage system can hardly help but be far more democratic. The masses are far more powerful now than in centuries past when elites did indeed do all the selecting."
Recent events should be enough to convince anyone that the (a) masses have very little power over anything, and (b) we're willingly handing ever more of it to our version of the aristocracy, which like earlier forms of aristocracy, isn't subject to the same rules that they force us to live by.
"Elites won't be dictating art now"
Yes they will, just like they do now by deciding what the public gets to listen to, see, read, etc. You'd simply be exchanging a commercial elite that's driven by what they think will sell for a political elite motivated by what they allow us to hear, see, and read, as for example was the case under the old Soviet system, where all art and (non-military) science was in the public domain, but the government decided who was allowed to be an artist or scientist, and told them what to work on.
"Communication and connectivity have made it far too easy to engage the masses in ways that were not possible centuries ago."
All of which is entirely dependent on what our governments allow us to do, as things like the "Great Firewall Of China" and new obscenity laws in the UK that make it a crime to distribute text containing a description of anything the morality police doesn't like amply demonstrate.
"And everyone is better educated-- unlike then, nearly everyone can read and write these days."
See above for but two examples of the fact that this changes nothing, because people have only ever been able to read and write what their governments permit them to.
"Well of course the price is too high."
The price _always_ ends up being too high even when it starts off at a reasonable level, because the compulsory nature of levies means that they can raise them whenever costs rise, so there's no incentive to maintain an efficient system.
"The people define what is art. Whatever is popular, that's what wins the money."
This is precisely the way things work now, i.e. not in anything like the same way as the patronage system that you (correctly) claimed worked for centuries, because patrons of the arts supported either what they liked themselves, or what they thought would be approved by a very small number of wealthy elite who were considered to be the arbiters of good taste. The opinion of the common horde was neither sought nor considered by such patrons, who regarded them as a bunch of easily amused philistines.
"It's not so easy to avoid supporting a mega-star you don't like Do you listen to any radio station that ever played any Madonna?".
No, I do not. And even if i did, it wouldn't my money that was supporting her, but that of advertisers, whose products I am not compelled to buy. This is a very different thing indeed from taking my money by force and giving it to her.
"Just mentioning her name as you did in your post, even to say you don't like her music, is more publicity"
It was however _my choice_ to do so rather than something that was forced on me by a government or a government-appointed company.
"Also, I hope you like classical music, because some of your tax money is very likely supporting the symphony orchestra of whatever major city you're closest to."
The existence of a small injustice doesn't make an even bigger one desirable.
"I think it could be a good deal."
Because unlike me, you don't live in a country where something like it already exists, and therefore also don't know how much both the general public and businesses detest being forced to pay _large_ levies on all blank media (including paper) and every device or component that's capable of recording, storing, or outputting content (printers, hard disks, CD and DVD burners, MP3 players, video and sound recorders, etc., etc., etc,) in return for having unrestricted non-commercial copying permission.
"Public highways save us from massive overhead on toll collection."
Public highways which, unlike canned entertainment, are vital infrastructure elements that make it possible for 1st. world countries to maintain population centres that aren't entirely self-supporting in terms of basic necessities such as food, medical facilities, building materials, and a diverse pool of skilled labour. Being forced to pay for something that the entire social structure of one's country of residence would collapse without is a very different proposition indeed from being forced to pay for somebody else's luxuries.
"So public music could save us from the massive overhead we incur by insisting on distribution via CDs or DRMed formats"
Those of us who live in countries with such systems can tell you categorically that they do not eliminate CDs, and cause a net increase in DRM as companies resort to technological means of reducing non-commercial copying because they can't do it in the courts.
"the cut that goes to the labels who do nothing but impede commerce"
Which stays the same or increases because so many artists want the promotional opportunities they provide that they're willing to make those companies the recipients of their cuts of what the collecting agencies hand out.
"and the expenses of figuring out the rights and prices for every piddling little usage"
To be replaced by the expense of applying and collecting taxes, which is of course deducted from those taxes before the rest is handed on to a monopoly agency, whose efficiency is poor because it doesn't have to compete with anyone, and therefore has extremely high overheads which must also be paid for before any money gets handed out.
"For the same music, we could pay less AND have the artists get more."
Whereas what actually DOES happen is everyone ends up paying a lot more while the artists lose out, the big media companies get more for doing less, the government has another form of revenue, and a bunch of do-nothings in an ap
"even if BMI is paying the same buck, that's nine bucks worth of profits to share with the retailer. A 900% markup ain't bad."
This is once again typical Slashdot economics which equates the difference in production cost and retail price with with pure profit. Here are some factors you didn't take into account:
1) The cost of producing the recordings that are on the disk, which involve rather more than just the studio time. These are paid from artist advances which are recouped from the artist's royalties, but those advances still have to be made.
2) Cover designs, which aren't free.
3) Promotion such as advertising, costs incurred by artists travelling to promotional interviews, getting stuff on radio and video playlists, posters and other display items for use in stores, etc.
4) Bulk warehousing costs.
5) Transport, packaging, etc.
All of the above and various other sundry costs must be amortised from sales, hence the fact that the actual profit margin the "big four" make from each CD sale for a new release from a current popular artist is around 10% (there are various sources on the Internet which publish their figures because they're publicly traded companies). The profit margin goes up for back-catalogue and compilation sales where the production and promotional costs have already been recouped, but this sort of CD usually sells for a much lower price than new releases, and its rare for annual sales to be particularly high even with the small number of artists whose back catalogues can command the same sorts of prices as current stuff.
Retailers also have a number of overheads which have to be deducted from their profit margins, hence the fact that the small outfits whose costs / unit sale are the highest tend to be the ones who've suffered most from the long-term sales downturn, with specialist chain stores being next on the list, and department stores / superstores coming last because CD / DVD sales are only a small part of their overall operation.
"the pirates of centuries ago were of course just like the amoral murderous thugs trolling off the coast of somalia today, but over time, they've developed a romantic, robin hood type quality"
The romantic robin-hood quality wasn't developed over time, but was a prominent theme in contemporary literature and popular myth. It comes from the fact that pirate ships were meritocratic democracies who had the enviable capability to go wherever they pleased at a time when people were ruled by those whose wealth and power were both permanent and inherited or conferred rather than earned. They were therefore extremely popular symbols of both hope and rebellion against authority, and a lot of ordinary people dreamed of becoming one and sailing to exotic locations where they could spend the spoils gained from "sticking it to the man" on grog, women, and expensive luxuries that they knew they'd never actually have a chance of owning.
"Most local bands here in Springfield have their own CDs, and sell them for five or ten bucks each."
That's exactly what the big media companies sell them for _to dealers_, who then add their own mark-up to cover their operating costs and make a profit. In another piece of news that that will doubtless come as a shock to many Slashdotters, my own undercover investigations have revealed that Colgate and Nabisco don't get all the money that people pay to stores when they buy toothpaste or crunchy things in packets.
"And among the literate elite, there was mass duplication when someone could transcribe poetry recitals, give it to a team of amanuenses to copy, and then sell it in the marketplace with no money going back to the author"
And each of those copies cost more than a decent townhouse did because scribes were expensive specialists who wrote in great big letters so people without glasses could read the text in dim lighting, and therefore used large amounts of expensive materials to produce those copies. I doubt we'd have much piracy around nowadays either if the copying process and materials cost more than a luxury car.
"Nonetheless, fine literature flourished and so many of the masterpieces Western civilization cherishes today were born."
And an even greater number of masterpieces that we would cherish were lost forever because their potential audience was small, so few copies were made because the copying process was so ridiculously expensive, and none of those few have survived.
"Abolition of copyright would mean the return of patrons as a motivating force in the arts, and it would probably be for the best."
We already have a patron system that supports artists who produce what the patron tells them to -- the only difference is that these patrons happen to get their wealth from selling copies of those works instead of having 200,000 slaves toiling on their farms and sending private armies to take other peoples' possessions away and then killing or enslaving them.
"We pay for a public highway system through taxes, and avoid the massive overhead involved in trying to collect tolls. We can do the same for art."
The problem with that idea is defining what counts as art, which is entirely subjective, as is any attempt to assign a quality rating to it.
"Amounts could be based roughly on popularity, which could be statistically estimated perhaps by counting some downloads, or by doing surveys or running polls."
I'd personally prefer to choose who I support with my wallet instead of having the government take much larger amounts of my money away by force and give the 1% of it that's left after the costs of their inefficient collection and distributions systems have been deducted to a bunch of people who produce stuff that I have absolutely no interest in. I don't care one whit or iota when lots of people throw _their_ money at Madonna or whoever, but I'd care a whole lot if a government was throwing my money at her.
"This could all be handled by governments or independent corporations chartered for this purpose."
Because things always work better when governments are running them or giving a private corporation a monopoly over an entire market sector.
Derivations of a public domain musical work can be (and frequently are) copyrighted, including arrangements, which as any one who uses sheet music knows, are a common way of copyrighting specific printed versions of stuff that's in the public domain. Note also that lyrics can be (and frequently are) copyrighted independently of the music, so it's more than possible to copyright a song that uses public domain music without changing anything whatsoever about that music if it's lyrics are original.
Then your principles are exactly the same as those of the people you claim to be opposing, i.e. the principle of greed and inventing justifications for that greed.
"they will continue to fight for their revenue stream at the expense of the consumer just as I will continue to fight for the freedom to experience my media with no strings attached."
That this nothing more than a justification for your own greed is evident from your next statement:
"The vast majority of the stuff I download are songs from CD's I bought years ago, or older movies which I see on paid-for cable TV"
Cable TV is a completely proprietary, DRM-ridden platform run by, and which shows content from companies who are pushing hard for restrictions that make the ones the RIAA want look positively open by comparison, yet you're not only willing to pay for it, but also use that payment as a justification for downloading stuff that the cable company probably didn't produce, and certainly didn't give you permission to download from other sources. So your "fight" amounts to nothing more that a willingness to take stuff you want that's easy to take, and pay when it's not easy, i.e. exactly what the media industry and its representative bodies are saying is the reason for them infesting their products with DRM.
"I will pay for the media when the content providers develop reasonable business models."
Like for example the one used by the cable TV service you subscribe to?
"I want to enjoy what I pay for on any device that I own without having to satisfy pointless software and hardware DRM requirements and other annoyances such as being forced to sit through previews."
Then why are paying to sit through ads and previews on cable TV that's so ridden with DRM that it requires a large proprietary dongle which can be disabled by the service provider if you breech the terms of your contract with them?
"What is the definition of the "computer with which it was sold"? Is it the case which the original electronics were mounted in and the sticker is attached to? Is it the mainboard? The HDD? Some other combination?"
MS say it's the first motherboard that was present when the OS was installed. If you change that motherboard, then you're supposed to buy a new OEM license.
"The reason why I wonder about this is that it may make upgrading your machine a EULA violation - say your mobo dies and is no longer produced and must be replaced. Does this end your license?"
Yes, it does indeed end your license.
"PCs are modular units, not monolithic (except maybe for laptops). Components can be swapped in and out over time, either to upgrade or simply to repair the hardware."
This is why MS specifically state that for EULA purposes, they consider the first motherboard that was present to be what defines "the computer" that OEM Windows versions are tied to. You can change ever other module, including putting that motherboard in a different case, but swapping the motherboard for another makes it a different computer from Microsoft's POV, even if that motherboard is an identical model from the same manufacturer.
NB: the above is only true if you or another unauthorised (by the OEM) person changes a motherboard. Repair by authorised service personnel who swap a faulty motherboard for a working one doesn't void the OEM license, although it can sometimes result in you having to reactivate your version of Windows via Microsoft.
"How do they work then? Do they downgrade the resolution of everything to an insecure display? Or just things that have a high frame rate?"
It's actually supposed to be things that are over a certain resolution, and then only when the Image Constraint Token is encountered. This is however extremely difficult to do on a general purpose computer while fulfilling the HDCP licence's terms, which insist that there be no ways of bypassing or disabling the system using either software or simple hardware hacks, so there will inevitably be some implementations that simply leave HDCP enabled all the time, as is the case now with certain HDMI-based audio-visual devices.
"If I play a game on an external DVI display, will it be degraded to sub-HD quality too?"
It would definitely be downgraded (or worse, not work at all) in an always-on implementation. Apple's current system isn't of this type, and I don't think any of the DisplayPort implementations from other hardware vendors are either at the moment, but I have no doubt that there will be at least some such systems (and perhaps even a majority eventually) if the port's popularity increases to the point where it becomes ubiquitous on low-end, low margin computers.
"But it was put into the Mac by Apple, not by VESA. Therefore Apple is guilty of it being there, and of all resulting effects."
Saying that something's part of a standard protocol rather than being in an OS was not intended as an excuse for Apple, and should not be read as such. Apple chose to use DisplayPort, and they also chose not to include any other video ports on the new Macbooks (which Dell, Lenovo, HP etc. do), so they'll have to live with the consequences of that decision. I don't personally reckon that forcing DisplayPort on people was a good idea, especially on the pro gear, which should have more than one in-built video output connector.
"The Wikipedia entry for the DisplayPort didn't explain, so please do: how does the DisplayPort prevent the user from displaying DRM'd content?"
As you seem to like Wikipedia, I suggest you read the entry on HDCP, which contains a fairly detailed explanation of how the process works.
"So what's stopping the OS or userspace program from decoding the video without involving the DisplayPort - as it must be able to do, since it was said earlier that said videos play fine on computers without DP - and then sending the resulting frames to DP as it would any other image ?"
Nothing, unless the port is one where HDCP is always turned on, which is actually more common than one might think, because it's simpler from an implementation viewpoint than having an on-off system on a general purpose computer that conforms with the HDCP licence's insistence on it being impossible to turn off or otherwise bypass via software hacks or simple hardware measures such as cutting / re-routing tracks or disabling / shorting pins. Intel were heavily involved in the HDCP specification, and they're more than familiar with the fact that programmers will find and exploit any back doors that are left open, so they did a lot of work to minimise that possibility.
NB: the information that's currently floating around leads me to suspect that iTunes is responsible for using end-to-end encryption with protected video content. My reasoning is as follows:
1) The error dialogue in the screen shot included with some reports has an iTunes icon in it.
2) Said screen shot clearly shows portions of a Mac desktop on the same display device, so this isn't a case of HDCP always being on irrespective of what's being sent over it.
3) Many users are saying that the same problem occurs with standard definition stuff from the iTunes store on Macs with Displayport, which points to it being something that happens when decoding Fairplay 3 content for playback, in this case inappropriately because HDCP is only meant for HD content, and shouldn't affect SD stuff at all.
"Linux won't suddenly cripple your output hardware because it thinks you are doing something that the MPAA disapproves of."
Neither does OS X. What's crippling things in this case is a chip which implements VESA's DisplayPort 1.1 specification as part of the DisplayPort support hardware, which operates outside the control of the OS and its drivers, and is very unlikely to have been designed by Apple or for Apple. The result would therefore be just the same under Linux if it had the capability to play protected content via the DisplayPort connectors that come with some computers from Lenovo, Dell, and HP, not just those from Apple.
This technology will start to bite users of all operating systems as time passes because DisplayPort is a cheap, low power single-chip system that's already included in some graphics chip sets, and the fact that it can be used to support older display technologies with a simple plug-in adapter means that manufacturers can (and therefore will) save the cost of connectors and internal support hardware on laptops in particular by gradually removing all other types of video connectors from their designs.
"The fact that the same video will play fine on a 2007 Mac but refuse to play on a 2008 Mac proves that the copy protection is not necessary -- if it was necessary it would be applied to all computers equally."
What it actually proves is that older Macs don't have DisplayPort connectors, and therefore also lack the chips that implement the VESA DisplayPort specification, which has always incorporated DPCP, and added HDCP in the DisplayPort 1.1 specification.
Any hardware which has a DisplayPort connector incorporates at least one form of DRM in its hardware, and two of them if it implements version 1.1 of the standard. This will of course only be an issue if one is (a) using that port for connecting to a non-conforming display, and (b) trying to view media which invokes its DRM capabilities.
NB: because the VESA-specified DRM systems are part of the DisplayPort controller hardware, they do not require any OS or driver support to prevent protected media from playing on non-conforming displays, which means that they can't be bypassed by the OS or drivers either.
Slashdot Mirror
"We have slightly different advertising standards to the US"
Standards which allow companies to advertise "unlimited internet access" with 500 MByte limits because _the company says_ that not many users exceed that limit.
Make sure that you don't repeat my mistake and buy the remarkably similar-looking iPod Touch instead, because it's the most useless phone I've ever had.
"I think the only reason why Apple might appear exceptional is because they were required to pull the ads."
That's not in the least exceptional with ASA, which considers one complaint about some aspect or other of a national advertising campaign that millions of other people have seen but not complained about to be sufficient reason for pulling it. In this case, they received (wait for it) 18 complaints, which is a veritable landslide compared with _the single person_ who claimed to have been offended by use of the word "bloody" in a lorry-side ad for The Sun, which was then forced to pull it on the grounds that ASA said it was a very bad word.
It's actually quite rare for deep sea animals such as giant squid to get washed up on shores, so many scientists really did believe that they only existed in tall tales from mariners until the 19th century, when a French gunboat brought back part of a specimen.
The word "Soma" dates back to at least the 10th century BCE, was probably in use before the 25th century BCE, and is thought to be a tea made from Asian ephedra (which contains alkaloids not present in American ephedra), a stimulant that constricts blood vessels and increases blood pressure and heart rate, so it has a very different effect indeed from Carisoprodol.
Archaeological evidence indicates that, unlike the version of Soma used by Zoroastrians, the ancient Aryan one that many historians think is the source for references to Soma in the Indian Rigveda probably contained cannabis and opium together with the ephedra, which may well go a long way towards explaining why some of the verses in that document are so confusing!
So I'll see your Wikipedia link, and raise you two more:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soma
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephedra
"How about just releasing everything world-wide, at the same time, instead of a handful of countries, or different dates for only a selected few countries?"
And how about not charging wildly different prices in each of those countries for the same album in the same cover?
"One word: Radiohead."
You're going to have to do better than this, because Radiohead signed a six album deal with EMI in 1992, and were heavily promoted by that label. They'd be complete unknowns without that promotion, as would Nine Inch Nails, who have followed Radiohead's lead in selling music from their own web site.
A person who actually knew a bit about the industry (which isn't you) would of course have no trouble coming up with artists who actually achieved fame without having it bought for them by a major label. A well-known example is the Arctic Monkeys, whose fans used the likes of FaceBook and various file sharing networks to generate a significant amount of buzz about them. I won't bother going into any more detail here because feeding their name into Google will lead you to lots of info about them.
"They pay rent or mortgage; that's warehousing costs."
They'd pay that rent or mortgage irrespective of whether they store CDs in their homes or not, so it isn't anything remotely like industrial warehousing costs. I'm really finding it hard to see why you continue to write things that make you look like a total idiot.
"The locals here produce CDs that sound as good as, or in most cases better than, RIAA fare."
You must live in an utterly unique part of the world if your local studios can afford facilities and engineers to rival those of the ones used by major artists.
"Black Magic Johnson (a blues guy)"
Black Magic Johnson is a blues group, not a blues guy.
"the live shows have two white guys playing bass and guitar."
Who are both members of the group, not session musicians. I also fail to see how anything else you mention has any relevance whatsoever to my point about session musicians and singers on professional recordings, because entire orchestras and "big bands" use session people both in the studio and when playing live, and they have a lot more than seven members.
"It surpasses ANYTHING I've seen the majors produce this century."
I suggest you back up this claim by producing some evidence to prove that your opinions about music are objectively more correct than somebody randomly pulled off the street in any part of the world.
"You know that's bullshit. The RIAA lables have fired off hundreds of lawsuits against "pirates", who spend more money on music than anyone."
1) None of those lawsuits was brought for not buying products.
2) Please provide some evidence for your assertion that non-commercial pirates _as a group_ spend more money on music than non-pirates _as a group_.
"The mammals (indies) are feasting on dinasaur eggs and the dinasaurs are making excuses."
Independent labels are being hit just as hard by the downturn in recorded music sales as anyone else, so this is more rubbish from a practised purveyor of rubbish.
"It's the executives and lawyers and middlemen and the cocaine they snort and mansions they and their top tier of singers and rappers live in."
Which you resent because you're doomed to be an eternal nobody who will never earn as much in a year as they spend in a day.
"The major labels are dying, and I for one will be glad to see them gone."
This is obvious, although your rhetoric reveals that your main reason for this boils down to seething envy.
"They are leeches on the creative community, and more and more artists are starting to realize it."
If this is the case, then how are "their top tier of singers and rappers" able to live in mansions?
"As such, a large part of it may have simply been food shortages"
Even without food shortages, the fact that we could support four times as many people from the same resources would mean that we'd rapidly end up out-competing them through sheer weight of numbers.
"Look, the EU just smacked down France's three strikes internet piracy law. "
What the EU actually smacked down was a French attempt to make their three strikes law into an EU-wide directive that would require all members to implement it, nor the French law itself, which is not affected by this decision in any way.
"Aland has problems regarding snus too and their duck hunting has been trampled on. It clearly isn't that easy to just flout the laws."
The article in the link you provide indicates that Aland is rather successfully flouting the laws, because they're openly disobeying any they don't like, and haven't paid any of the EU court fines they've incurred for that disobedience. And some other interesting facts emerge after the reporter's massively biased rhetoric is filtred out:
1) The Alanders _voted_ to join the EU at a time when all the rules they object to were already in force, and were very easy to find out about. So it's pretty much a case of being given plenty of time and opportunity to read a contract and the clauses in it, get them looked at by lawyers, and otherwise find out how they might affect you, and then complaining about them after signing that contract because you're expected to respect the terms you agreed to.
2) The Alanders aren't, as the reporter claims, either teaching the EU a "lesson in democracy", or stopping it in its tracks, but are instead teaching Finland a lesson about the stupidity of making laws that let those who govern a community of 26,000 people blackmail the democratically elected government of Finland's other 5 million inhabitants.
"Flouting the laws doesn't mean those laws aren't made by a government. American tax protesters have argued that income tax is illegal and won in some instances."
If you'd checked further than Fox News, then you'd also know that Vernice Kuglin only managed to stay out of prison, but she still had to pay all the back taxes, which were taken directly from her wages by the IRS. So once again we have a case which actually refutes your point by highlighting the fact that the EU (a) cannot even contemplate putting anyone in prison, and (b) has no way of directly deducting fines from its members, or any other method of forcing them to pay.
"Some countries may ignore thing the EU but that doesn't mean everyone can."
Everyone has at some point, and both large and small members still do, hence the fact that the total of unpaid fines by member states is a huge and constantly growing sum of money. There is a provision for the commission to add unpaid fines to a country's annual membership fees (adopted from a British proposal), but this has happened so rarely and is subject to so many special circumstances that few members regard it as being even a potential hazard of not paying EU fines.
"If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck then it is a duck."
Then please provide some evidence that the EU walks or quacks like a duck before claiming that it is one, because everything you've provided so far is either wrong, or refutes your claims after the facts are isolated from the biased rhetoric that surrounds them.
"All of these costs are there regardles sif it's BMI or a smal local band."
Balderdash. Small bands don't have anything approaching the promotional costs of a major release (if they did, they wouldn't be a small band); they have no warehousing costs because they keep their small number of CDs in their own homes; and they have no transport costs because they take their CDs with them to gigs.
"The local small band also has to pay for studio time, cover design, etc."
They pay small sums to a small local studio for small local results, and usually either design their own covers, or get a friend to do it for a pittance, which is why so many of their CDs look and sound poor, especially the drums, because small studios seldom have drum booths or "engineers" who know how to mic. drums properly. Another notably absent element is the session musicians and singers that not only solo artists, but also bands use on professional recordings.
And the final absent element is of course the radio play, TV interviews, gigs in sold-out football stadiums, and the ability for the artists to live well off the proceeds of making music instead of having to finance everything themselves from a minimum-wage job. That's why the members of just about any of those local bands you cite would undergo major surgery without anaesthetic for a recording deal with one of the companies you claim are ripping us all off.
"You do understand why WalMart is driving small locals out of buiness? Economy of scale."
I suggest you check up on some facts before making simplistic statements like this, because there's _a lot_ more involved in the way Walmart achieve their low prices than economies of scale.
"The record companies are like if Wal Mart charged three times what the mom and pop stores did, then sued people for not shopping at WalMart."
More exaggerated hyperbolae:
1) You've already said the majors charge $10 for a CD _including the dealer mark-up_, which is also what you also said at least some local bands charge for a direct sale _without a dealer mark-up_. $10 isn't three times as much as $10.
2) None of the majors or their representative bodies has ever sued anyone for not buying their products, or attempted to coerce people into buying them in any way other than advertising or bribing radio stations to get their products on playlists.
""But we have all these costs because we're so big""
Which is again something you've invented because it's easier to make stuff up than go to all the effort of looking up some facts.
"HDCP is an encrypted protocol, preventing - or at least attempting to prevent - capture of video stream as it travels from the display adapter to the monitor."
Attempt is the correct word, because the only thing it actually seems to be particularly successful at is causing problems for legitimate customers, with the Apple DisplayPort issue being just the latest example of an extremely badly implemented version of a worse idea.
"HDCP is an encrypted protocol, preventing - or at least attempting to prevent - capture of video stream as it travels from the display adapter to the monitor."
Doesn't what?
"It's the viewer program which has been crippled."
That's what it looks like to me from the evidence I've seen. I can't verify this personally because I don't own one of the new MacBooks, and I'm not going to buy one for the sake of Slashdot post.
"The same files could be viewed on the same computer with another program."
Anything capable of decrypting them would be able to send the results to the DisplayPort hardware without using its HDCP capabilities, which are optional in a technical sense, although Apple are likely to be legally or contractually obliged to use it when the capability exists by some of their content providers. AV geeks won't be in the least surprised to hear that Apple's first outing with HDCP has caused problems for some Mac users, because they've been wrestling with it for about 3 years, and its many problems problems show little sign of improving, let alone going away.
"The current system is bad."
I agree.
"Is public patronage better? Enough better that switching is worthwhile?"
I'd say so no in both cases, and my reasoning is a simple one: bad situations tend to get worse over the long term when put under government control, even though they sometimes improve in the short term.
"But some of the objections you raised are, I think, unfounded."
The objections I've raised are based on nearly 50 years of having lived in various countries where governments have embarked on nationalisation binges that have invariably ended up causing far more problems than they solve. It _always_ looks good paper, and it often lives up to expectations initially because everyone involved is full of enthusiasm for the idea, so they do everything they can to make it work. But the utopian dream invariably ends up becoming a nightmare where battling fiefdoms each demand a bigger slice of a bigger pie that they have more control over than any of the other factions.
" think that we really don't have a choice, that the status quo won't hold up no matter how hard we try to cling to it."
I'm not arguing that we should maintain the status quo. This does not however mean that we have no choices other than nationalisation.
"Better to have some reasonable alternatives worked out rather than drifting blindly towards possibly far worse conditions-- such as complete anarchy where no one creates anything because no one can earn a thin dime on any art whatsoever as interested fans will copy it all instantly for free in unbreakable anonymity."
And the solution governments select will, as is always the case, be regulations that result in them having more power over everyone by completely removing that anonymity with the usual excuses: combating terrorism, reducing organised crime, and preventing child abuse. This is already happening, and it will get worse because those who seek power always want more of it, just as those who seek great wealth never have enough money to satisfy them.
"Taste in a modern patronage system can hardly help but be far more democratic. The masses are far more powerful now than in centuries past when elites did indeed do all the selecting."
Recent events should be enough to convince anyone that the (a) masses have very little power over anything, and (b) we're willingly handing ever more of it to our version of the aristocracy, which like earlier forms of aristocracy, isn't subject to the same rules that they force us to live by.
"Elites won't be dictating art now"
Yes they will, just like they do now by deciding what the public gets to listen to, see, read, etc. You'd simply be exchanging a commercial elite that's driven by what they think will sell for a political elite motivated by what they allow us to hear, see, and read, as for example was the case under the old Soviet system, where all art and (non-military) science was in the public domain, but the government decided who was allowed to be an artist or scientist, and told them what to work on.
"Communication and connectivity have made it far too easy to engage the masses in ways that were not possible centuries ago."
All of which is entirely dependent on what our governments allow us to do, as things like the "Great Firewall Of China" and new obscenity laws in the UK that make it a crime to distribute text containing a description of anything the morality police doesn't like amply demonstrate.
"And everyone is better educated-- unlike then, nearly everyone can read and write these days."
See above for but two examples of the fact that this changes nothing, because people have only ever been able to read and write what their governments permit them to.
"Well of course the price is too high."
The price _always_ ends up being too high even when it starts off at a reasonable level, because the compulsory nature of levies means that they can raise them whenever costs rise, so there's no incentive to maintain an efficient system.
"The people define what is art. Whatever is popular, that's what wins the money."
This is precisely the way things work now, i.e. not in anything like the same way as the patronage system that you (correctly) claimed worked for centuries, because patrons of the arts supported either what they liked themselves, or what they thought would be approved by a very small number of wealthy elite who were considered to be the arbiters of good taste. The opinion of the common horde was neither sought nor considered by such patrons, who regarded them as a bunch of easily amused philistines.
"It's not so easy to avoid supporting a mega-star you don't like Do you listen to any radio station that ever played any Madonna?".
No, I do not. And even if i did, it wouldn't my money that was supporting her, but that of advertisers, whose products I am not compelled to buy. This is a very different thing indeed from taking my money by force and giving it to her.
"Just mentioning her name as you did in your post, even to say you don't like her music, is more publicity"
It was however _my choice_ to do so rather than something that was forced on me by a government or a government-appointed company.
"Also, I hope you like classical music, because some of your tax money is very likely supporting the symphony orchestra of whatever major city you're closest to."
The existence of a small injustice doesn't make an even bigger one desirable.
"I think it could be a good deal."
Because unlike me, you don't live in a country where something like it already exists, and therefore also don't know how much both the general public and businesses detest being forced to pay _large_ levies on all blank media (including paper) and every device or component that's capable of recording, storing, or outputting content (printers, hard disks, CD and DVD burners, MP3 players, video and sound recorders, etc., etc., etc,) in return for having unrestricted non-commercial copying permission.
"Public highways save us from massive overhead on toll collection."
Public highways which, unlike canned entertainment, are vital infrastructure elements that make it possible for 1st. world countries to maintain population centres that aren't entirely self-supporting in terms of basic necessities such as food, medical facilities, building materials, and a diverse pool of skilled labour. Being forced to pay for something that the entire social structure of one's country of residence would collapse without is a very different proposition indeed from being forced to pay for somebody else's luxuries.
"So public music could save us from the massive overhead we incur by insisting on distribution via CDs or DRMed formats"
Those of us who live in countries with such systems can tell you categorically that they do not eliminate CDs, and cause a net increase in DRM as companies resort to technological means of reducing non-commercial copying because they can't do it in the courts.
"the cut that goes to the labels who do nothing but impede commerce"
Which stays the same or increases because so many artists want the promotional opportunities they provide that they're willing to make those companies the recipients of their cuts of what the collecting agencies hand out.
"and the expenses of figuring out the rights and prices for every piddling little usage"
To be replaced by the expense of applying and collecting taxes, which is of course deducted from those taxes before the rest is handed on to a monopoly agency, whose efficiency is poor because it doesn't have to compete with anyone, and therefore has extremely high overheads which must also be paid for before any money gets handed out.
"For the same music, we could pay less AND have the artists get more."
Whereas what actually DOES happen is everyone ends up paying a lot more while the artists lose out, the big media companies get more for doing less, the government has another form of revenue, and a bunch of do-nothings in an ap
"even if BMI is paying the same buck, that's nine bucks worth of profits to share with the retailer. A 900% markup ain't bad."
This is once again typical Slashdot economics which equates the difference in production cost and retail price with with pure profit. Here are some factors you didn't take into account:
1) The cost of producing the recordings that are on the disk, which involve rather more than just the studio time. These are paid from artist advances which are recouped from the artist's royalties, but those advances still have to be made.
2) Cover designs, which aren't free.
3) Promotion such as advertising, costs incurred by artists travelling to promotional interviews, getting stuff on radio and video playlists, posters and other display items for use in stores, etc.
4) Bulk warehousing costs.
5) Transport, packaging, etc.
All of the above and various other sundry costs must be amortised from sales, hence the fact that the actual profit margin the "big four" make from each CD sale for a new release from a current popular artist is around 10% (there are various sources on the Internet which publish their figures because they're publicly traded companies). The profit margin goes up for back-catalogue and compilation sales where the production and promotional costs have already been recouped, but this sort of CD usually sells for a much lower price than new releases, and its rare for annual sales to be particularly high even with the small number of artists whose back catalogues can command the same sorts of prices as current stuff.
Retailers also have a number of overheads which have to be deducted from their profit margins, hence the fact that the small outfits whose costs / unit sale are the highest tend to be the ones who've suffered most from the long-term sales downturn, with specialist chain stores being next on the list, and department stores / superstores coming last because CD / DVD sales are only a small part of their overall operation.
"the pirates of centuries ago were of course just like the amoral murderous thugs trolling off the coast of somalia today, but over time, they've developed a romantic, robin hood type quality"
The romantic robin-hood quality wasn't developed over time, but was a prominent theme in contemporary literature and popular myth. It comes from the fact that pirate ships were meritocratic democracies who had the enviable capability to go wherever they pleased at a time when people were ruled by those whose wealth and power were both permanent and inherited or conferred rather than earned. They were therefore extremely popular symbols of both hope and rebellion against authority, and a lot of ordinary people dreamed of becoming one and sailing to exotic locations where they could spend the spoils gained from "sticking it to the man" on grog, women, and expensive luxuries that they knew they'd never actually have a chance of owning.
"Most local bands here in Springfield have their own CDs, and sell them for five or ten bucks each."
That's exactly what the big media companies sell them for _to dealers_, who then add their own mark-up to cover their operating costs and make a profit. In another piece of news that that will doubtless come as a shock to many Slashdotters, my own undercover investigations have revealed that Colgate and Nabisco don't get all the money that people pay to stores when they buy toothpaste or crunchy things in packets.
"In the ancient world, there was no copyright."
Indeed.
"And among the literate elite, there was mass duplication when someone could transcribe poetry recitals, give it to a team of amanuenses to copy, and then sell it in the marketplace with no money going back to the author"
And each of those copies cost more than a decent townhouse did because scribes were expensive specialists who wrote in great big letters so people without glasses could read the text in dim lighting, and therefore used large amounts of expensive materials to produce those copies. I doubt we'd have much piracy around nowadays either if the copying process and materials cost more than a luxury car.
"Nonetheless, fine literature flourished and so many of the masterpieces Western civilization cherishes today were born."
And an even greater number of masterpieces that we would cherish were lost forever because their potential audience was small, so few copies were made because the copying process was so ridiculously expensive, and none of those few have survived.
"Abolition of copyright would mean the return of patrons as a motivating force in the arts, and it would probably be for the best."
We already have a patron system that supports artists who produce what the patron tells them to -- the only difference is that these patrons happen to get their wealth from selling copies of those works instead of having 200,000 slaves toiling on their farms and sending private armies to take other peoples' possessions away and then killing or enslaving them.
"We pay for a public highway system through taxes, and avoid the massive overhead involved in trying to collect tolls. We can do the same for art."
The problem with that idea is defining what counts as art, which is entirely subjective, as is any attempt to assign a quality rating to it.
"Amounts could be based roughly on popularity, which could be statistically estimated perhaps by counting some downloads, or by doing surveys or running polls."
I'd personally prefer to choose who I support with my wallet instead of having the government take much larger amounts of my money away by force and give the 1% of it that's left after the costs of their inefficient collection and distributions systems have been deducted to a bunch of people who produce stuff that I have absolutely no interest in. I don't care one whit or iota when lots of people throw _their_ money at Madonna or whoever, but I'd care a whole lot if a government was throwing my money at her.
"This could all be handled by governments or independent corporations chartered for this purpose."
Because things always work better when governments are running them or giving a private corporation a monopoly over an entire market sector.
Derivations of a public domain musical work can be (and frequently are) copyrighted, including arrangements, which as any one who uses sheet music knows, are a common way of copyrighting specific printed versions of stuff that's in the public domain. Note also that lyrics can be (and frequently are) copyrighted independently of the music, so it's more than possible to copyright a song that uses public domain music without changing anything whatsoever about that music if it's lyrics are original.
"I will continue to download out of principle"
Then your principles are exactly the same as those of the people you claim to be opposing, i.e. the principle of greed and inventing justifications for that greed.
"they will continue to fight for their revenue stream at the expense of the consumer just as I will continue to fight for the freedom to experience my media with no strings attached."
That this nothing more than a justification for your own greed is evident from your next statement:
"The vast majority of the stuff I download are songs from CD's I bought years ago, or older movies which I see on paid-for cable TV"
Cable TV is a completely proprietary, DRM-ridden platform run by, and which shows content from companies who are pushing hard for restrictions that make the ones the RIAA want look positively open by comparison, yet you're not only willing to pay for it, but also use that payment as a justification for downloading stuff that the cable company probably didn't produce, and certainly didn't give you permission to download from other sources. So your "fight" amounts to nothing more that a willingness to take stuff you want that's easy to take, and pay when it's not easy, i.e. exactly what the media industry and its representative bodies are saying is the reason for them infesting their products with DRM.
"I will pay for the media when the content providers develop reasonable business models."
Like for example the one used by the cable TV service you subscribe to?
"I want to enjoy what I pay for on any device that I own without having to satisfy pointless software and hardware DRM requirements and other annoyances such as being forced to sit through previews."
Then why are paying to sit through ads and previews on cable TV that's so ridden with DRM that it requires a large proprietary dongle which can be disabled by the service provider if you breech the terms of your contract with them?
"What is the definition of the "computer with which it was sold"? Is it the case which the original electronics were mounted in and the sticker is attached to? Is it the mainboard? The HDD? Some other combination?"
MS say it's the first motherboard that was present when the OS was installed. If you change that motherboard, then you're supposed to buy a new OEM license.
"The reason why I wonder about this is that it may make upgrading your machine a EULA violation - say your mobo dies and is no longer produced and must be replaced. Does this end your license?"
Yes, it does indeed end your license.
"PCs are modular units, not monolithic (except maybe for laptops). Components can be swapped in and out over time, either to upgrade or simply to repair the hardware."
This is why MS specifically state that for EULA purposes, they consider the first motherboard that was present to be what defines "the computer" that OEM Windows versions are tied to. You can change ever other module, including putting that motherboard in a different case, but swapping the motherboard for another makes it a different computer from Microsoft's POV, even if that motherboard is an identical model from the same manufacturer.
NB: the above is only true if you or another unauthorised (by the OEM) person changes a motherboard. Repair by authorised service personnel who swap a faulty motherboard for a working one doesn't void the OEM license, although it can sometimes result in you having to reactivate your version of Windows via Microsoft.
"How do they work then? Do they downgrade the resolution of everything to an insecure display? Or just things that have a high frame rate?"
It's actually supposed to be things that are over a certain resolution, and then only when the Image Constraint Token is encountered. This is however extremely difficult to do on a general purpose computer while fulfilling the HDCP licence's terms, which insist that there be no ways of bypassing or disabling the system using either software or simple hardware hacks, so there will inevitably be some implementations that simply leave HDCP enabled all the time, as is the case now with certain HDMI-based audio-visual devices.
"If I play a game on an external DVI display, will it be degraded to sub-HD quality too?"
It would definitely be downgraded (or worse, not work at all) in an always-on implementation. Apple's current system isn't of this type, and I don't think any of the DisplayPort implementations from other hardware vendors are either at the moment, but I have no doubt that there will be at least some such systems (and perhaps even a majority eventually) if the port's popularity increases to the point where it becomes ubiquitous on low-end, low margin computers.
"But it was put into the Mac by Apple, not by VESA. Therefore Apple is guilty of it being there, and of all resulting effects."
Saying that something's part of a standard protocol rather than being in an OS was not intended as an excuse for Apple, and should not be read as such. Apple chose to use DisplayPort, and they also chose not to include any other video ports on the new Macbooks (which Dell, Lenovo, HP etc. do), so they'll have to live with the consequences of that decision. I don't personally reckon that forcing DisplayPort on people was a good idea, especially on the pro gear, which should have more than one in-built video output connector.
"The Wikipedia entry for the DisplayPort didn't explain, so please do: how does the DisplayPort prevent the user from displaying DRM'd content?"
As you seem to like Wikipedia, I suggest you read the entry on HDCP, which contains a fairly detailed explanation of how the process works.
"So what's stopping the OS or userspace program from decoding the video without involving the DisplayPort - as it must be able to do, since it was said earlier that said videos play fine on computers without DP - and then sending the resulting frames to DP as it would any other image ?"
Nothing, unless the port is one where HDCP is always turned on, which is actually more common than one might think, because it's simpler from an implementation viewpoint than having an on-off system on a general purpose computer that conforms with the HDCP licence's insistence on it being impossible to turn off or otherwise bypass via software hacks or simple hardware measures such as cutting / re-routing tracks or disabling / shorting pins. Intel were heavily involved in the HDCP specification, and they're more than familiar with the fact that programmers will find and exploit any back doors that are left open, so they did a lot of work to minimise that possibility.
NB: the information that's currently floating around leads me to suspect that iTunes is responsible for using end-to-end encryption with protected video content. My reasoning is as follows:
1) The error dialogue in the screen shot included with some reports has an iTunes icon in it.
2) Said screen shot clearly shows portions of a Mac desktop on the same display device, so this isn't a case of HDCP always being on irrespective of what's being sent over it.
3) Many users are saying that the same problem occurs with standard definition stuff from the iTunes store on Macs with Displayport, which points to it being something that happens when decoding Fairplay 3 content for playback, in this case inappropriately because HDCP is only meant for HD content, and shouldn't affect SD stuff at all.
"Linux won't suddenly cripple your output hardware because
it thinks you are doing something that the MPAA disapproves of."
Neither does OS X. What's crippling things in this case is a chip which implements VESA's DisplayPort 1.1 specification as part of the DisplayPort support hardware, which operates outside the control of the OS and its drivers, and is very unlikely to have been designed by Apple or for Apple. The result would therefore be just the same under Linux if it had the capability to play protected content via the DisplayPort connectors that come with some computers from Lenovo, Dell, and HP, not just those from Apple.
This technology will start to bite users of all operating systems as time passes because DisplayPort is a cheap, low power single-chip system that's already included in some graphics chip sets, and the fact that it can be used to support older display technologies with a simple plug-in adapter means that manufacturers can (and therefore will) save the cost of connectors and internal support hardware on laptops in particular by gradually removing all other types of video connectors from their designs.
"The fact that the same video will play fine on a 2007 Mac but refuse to play on a 2008 Mac proves that the copy protection is not necessary -- if it was necessary it would be applied to all computers equally."
What it actually proves is that older Macs don't have DisplayPort connectors, and therefore also lack the chips that implement the VESA DisplayPort specification, which has always incorporated DPCP, and added HDCP in the DisplayPort 1.1 specification.
Any hardware which has a DisplayPort connector incorporates at least one form of DRM in its hardware, and two of them if it implements version 1.1 of the standard. This will of course only be an issue if one is (a) using that port for connecting to a non-conforming display, and (b) trying to view media which invokes its DRM capabilities.
NB: because the VESA-specified DRM systems are part of the DisplayPort controller hardware, they do not require any OS or driver support to prevent protected media from playing on non-conforming displays, which means that they can't be bypassed by the OS or drivers either.