No we need honesty and clarity. These are tricky concepts to grasp, as you can tell from their clumsy analogies:
Mr. Eisner said in an interview that it was "easy to encourage us to overlook the pirates when you're making the sword."
So, the obvious solution is to pass a law requiring all swords to carry an automatic device to read the nametags on the person being stabbed, and magically make the blade disappear if they are not waering an approved 'stab me' nametag?
"If someone figured out how to unlock the gas in the gas station, people would be outraged," Mr. Eisner added. "They wouldn't say to the oil industry, `You need a different business model.' "
If someone worked out how to make gas from water using a chemical reaction, you would expect the oil industry to adopt it instead of passing a law against it so they can continue to spend millions drilling holes in the ground and storing highly explosive checicals every 10 blocks in our cities.
But Mr. Chernin of the News Corporation suggested that matters might be different if the tables were turned. "Let's say I decide to broadcast on my network the code for how to make Intel chips or Microsoft software," he said. "I think they'd find a way to stop it."
Yes, they'd sue you. They wouldn't lobby for a law making TV illegal. After all, Linux is being broadcast on the radio.
Jack, in your sneering Washington Post piece about copy protection, you refer to professors for whom '"innovation" is legalizing the breaking of protection codes'. Michael, in your testimony to congress you badgered an Intel exec until he told you that file copying can't be prevented, then told him he must prevent it anyway.
As you are evidently impervious to logical discussion, let me tell you a story.
This is the story of a rebel, a war hero, a persecuted homosexual, and a deep thinker. His life reads like the plot of a far-fetched movie, but if anyone fits your bogeyman image of professors who break code, it is Alan Turing.
In 1936 Turing published a paper on theoretical mathematics, in which he described the Universal Turing machine. It was a simple mechanism that could read symbols from a tape, and write back different symbols or change the tape's direction. He showed that with this general purpose machine, you could simulate any special purpose computing machine. He had invented the idea of the programmable computer.
Between 1938 and 1945, Turing worked in great secrecy on computing machines that broke codes. These were the first real computers ever made, and the codes they broke were those used by the German Wehrmacht. Without his work, it is very likely that Britain would have lost the War in Europe before Pearl Harbour.
After the war, in 1950 Turing published other famous papers that laid the foundation for modern computing, and hence all the digital gadgetry that you would like to outlaw for us (though presumably you'd keep the computers you use to edit and create effects for your movies). Turing died in 1954 by biting into an apple he had previously poisoned.
What does this story have to do with you?
Turing's Universal Machine means that you cannot have a software or hardware protection scheme that is secure. Whatever scheme you come up with can be simulated by another computer. The computer industry are not opposing your bill because they want to encourage copying, or because they are bloody-minded, they are not opposing you because of your self serving rhetoric about rewarding artists (remember Peggy Lee, Michael?), they are opposing you because what you want is provably impossible. You can only succeed by making all Turing machines illegal.
If Alan Turing had made an animated film involving a poisoned apple in 1936, it would still have copyright protection. He chose a different path, and gave the world the idea of the digital computer. I know whom I repect more.
Feel free to mail this to your friends (wiatha link back to my website, please)
An Open letter to Jack Valenti and Michael Eisner
on
Chained Melodies
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Jack, in your sneering Washington Post piece about copy protection, you refer to professors for whom '"innovation" is legalizing the breaking of protection codes'. Michael, in your testimony to congress you badgered an Intel exec until he told you that file copying can't be prevented, then told him he must prevent it anyway.
As you are evidently impervious to logical discussion, let me tell you a story.
This is the story of a rebel, a war hero, a persecuted homosexual, and a deep thinker. His life reads like the plot of a far-fetched movie, but if anyone fits your bogeyman image of professors who break code, it is Alan Turing.
In 1936 Turing published a paper on theoretical mathematics, in which he described the Universal Turing machine. It was a simple mechanism that could read symbols from a tape, and write back different symbols or change the tape's direction. He showed that with this general purpose machine, you could simulate any special purpose computing machine. He had invented the idea of the programmable computer.
Between 1938 and 1945, Turing worked in great secrecy on computing machines that broke codes. These were the first real computers ever made, and the codes they broke were those used by the German Wehrmacht. Without his work, it is very likely that Britain would have lost the War in Europe before Pearl Harbour.
After the war, in 1950 Turing published other famous papers that laid the foundation for modern computing, and hence all the digital gadgetry that you would like to outlaw for us (though presumably you'd keep the computers you use to edit and create effects for your movies). Turing died in 1954 by biting into an apple he had previously poisoned.
What does this story have to do with you?
Turing's Universal Machine means that you cannot have a software or hardware protection scheme that is secure. Whatever scheme you come up with can be simulated by another computer. The computer industry are not opposing your bill because they want to encourage copying, or because they are bloody-minded, they are not opposing you because of your self serving rhetoric about rewarding artists (remember Peggy Lee, Michael?), they are opposing you because what you want is provably impossible. You can only succeed by making all Turing machines illegal.
If Alan Turing had made an animated film involving a poisoned apple in 1936, it would still have copyright protection. He chose a different path, and gave the world the idea of the digital computer. I know whom I repect more.
I clicked on the link in my post above, and it was number one again. Maybe you're hitting a different google server than I am and the cache is out of date. Odd. I saw something like this when playing with Pocket GoogleWhacker - sometimes the score for a word would vary from time to time. Distributed systems are like that. I'm sure it will stabilise.
The author is basing this on outdated information. Google knows to crawl sites that change frequently more often than those that don't. Here is a concrete example:
I posted Two Kinds of Order by John Marks on March 11th, and mentioned this to some colleagues who might be interested. I linked to it from a Weblog or two,and Doc Searls did too. Today it is number 1 on a search for 'two kinds of order' out of over 2 million, and a search for John Marks brings the page up in 5th position, despite there being lots of other John Marks's on the net.
Thats what I call fast (and relevant)
GoogleWhack and linux
on
Google Juice
·
· Score: 3, Informative
As I invented the scoring scheme that helped this craze take off a couple of months ago(multiply the number of hits for each individual word), I would like to point out that it is a game, and not going to affect anyone's search results, as when you post the found GoogleWhack, all you are doing is making that odd combination one unit more popular. My 'Pocket GoogleWhacker' tool is still available though (yes, there is a Linux version, but I haven't tested it as I don't have a Linux box). Also note that the highest scoring googlewhack by this method often use 'linux' as one fo the search terms
No, it wasn't. Cluetrain was an attempt to educate the command and control types who run 'marketing' at big companies that markets are information systems, and the net makes them so efficient that they will never be able to get away with their current techniques based on hiding information and controlling 'the message'.
It is written in a way to get to those people, so anyone geeky enough to grok Hayek and Smith already can't see what the fuss is about.
Remember all those left-wing student politicans whose existential post-modernism got on your tits so much in college? They all went into marketing, believing themselves to be Lenin's vanguard elite to lead the masses, and secretly hate themselves for selling out. Cluetrain is a way for them to get over it and do somethign useful instead.
Given a DRM program that relies on certain inputs (encypted content, permissions etc) to produce the desired output (viewable media), one can construct another program to provide it with these inputs from another source, and divert its output elsewhere as desired.
So Eisner really does need to outlaw Turing machiens to have his way.
Vic, Vat, Rat et al all use the RTP protocol for audio video conferencing, which is what QuickTime uses for streaming, so QT player will play them back (albeit with a 3 second lag).
It looks like the FCC has got it completely backwards. Instead of regulating a separation between data transport and applications, it has reclassified data transport as a service, and thus removed open access requirements.
This is the exact opposite of the collective wisdom of the networking industry, as I collected here.
Powell today reiterated his opinion that all broadband platforms - cable, wireless, satellite and DSL - should be considered when crafting broadband policy.
"It's important to conceptualize broadband broadly," Powell told reporters following today's meeting.
It is indeed - but rather than prop up a series of monopoly rights, providing an opportunity for Howard Jonas to acheive his stated aim: "Sure I want to be the biggest telecom company in the world, but it's just a commodity. I want to be able to form opinion. By controlling the pipe, you can eventually get control of the content."
Powell should be considering how to enable maximum flexibility by separating the commodity business of transferring packets from the open applications that define what the packets mean. This is how to maximise the value of the net for everyone, not for a few local monopolists - a fine job for a regulator.
Don't think fixed, think mobile. Apple sells iBooks in 5-packs at reduced rates to education. Fit them out with Airport cards, put the basestations and uplink or whatever in the van, and have people sit on lawnchairs and use the computers in the open air, or community hall or whatever.
There are standrads for doing this already - HTML mail encapsualtes images inline, and the data: URL specifier allows inline base64 images, though most browsers don't implement it.
I have posted my correspondence with UMG on the topic - I'm awaiting a further reply.
I wrote to Universal's new address asking why they were going to stop making CDs I could play on my Mac. Here's the response I got, annotated:
On Wednesday, January 9, 2002, at 12:51 PM, MusicHelpOnline.com Support wrote:
Thank you for your feedback regarding copy protected CDs. We
appreciate your opinion, as the consumer experience with the music we all
love has always been a priority at the Universal Music Group.
I don't 'consume' music. I listen to it. It's still there afterwards (though I get the impression that you'd like it if it wasn't).
Unfortunately, over the last few years, the music industry has been faced
with a growing problem of unauthorized CD "ripping" leading to illegal
Internet distribution of music - a practice that is hurting everyone from
recording artists to songwriters to record stores. This illegal copying is
taking place on a massive scale, with literally millions of copies being
made without any compensation to the creators of the music.
Interesting progression of words here. The ripping is 'unauthorised'. Who needs to authorise it? Some ripped files have been illegally distributed, I'll grant you that, but then you say that 'copying' is illegal.
Under the Audio Home Recording Act, ripping and copying are not illegal at all; they are expressly permitted. You are confounding the legal acts of copying and ripping with the illegal one of distributing your copyright content without your permission. You are applying technology to attempt to prevent the former, instead of legal prosecution to prevent the latter. This is your mistake.
Your second mistake is take the word of someone that they can stop CDs from being copied. If someone can play your CD, they can redigitise the output, and rip that, and distribute it online. Its not worth my time and effort to fiddle around to rip the CDs in this way, so I won't buy them, but I'm sure the illegal distributors will work this out.
Net result: you have a lot of fed up former customers, and your music is still distributed online without your permission. Fewer people pay to listen to it, you get less money, and the illegal distribution goes on unchecked.
If a way is not found to protect the music from these abuses, recording artists,
songwriters and many others will be deprived of their livelihoods. The
changing economics could cause fewer new artists to get a chance to find
their audience.
The music is not being abused. It is being listened to. It doesn't need protection.
Or do you mean 'protection' in the sense of 'protection racket'?
Courtney Love wrote a very well-reasoned essay on who is abusing whom in the record industry.
Universal Music Group is committed to protecting the rights of our artists,
songwriters, and copyright holders, and, like the rest of the entertainment
industry, is evaluating emerging technologies to assess their viability while
also attempting to maximize the consumer experience. In addition,
Universal is exploring new ways to make music available in a variety of
online formats. We are also working with technology companies on new
offline formats that appeal to consumers.
Uh huh. Let me explain again. I have an iPod. (125,000 other people do too, and its only been on sale two months). It lets me carry around about 120 CDs worth of music at a time, in a package about the size of one CD box. I like this. I'm listening to more music than I was before because of it, and I will continue to buy CDs to rip and put into my iPod. If that isn't an offline format that appeals to consumers, I don't know what is.
However, you are explicitly working to stop me doing this. When I buy CDs at the moment, I look at the artists name, not the record label. Now I'll need to check that its not a Universal CD, in case you have 'protected' me from listening to it. This is one way of building awareness of the Universal brand, but probably not a useful one.
We have licensed copy protection technologies developed by others and
are experimenting with the integration of those technologies into some of
our CDs as a first step in measuring their effectiveness in an evolving
marketplace. While the CDs with copy protection may not be playable in a
limited number of CD players, UMG is currently working with our
technology providers to achieve 100% playability. We also hope to
include Macintosh-based playability on copy-protected discs in the future.
We have not finalized our plans for 2002 nor have we made a commitment
to put copy protection on all of our CD releases.
You hope. I'm supposed to buy your CDs on the basis of a hope that you can kludge something together? Let me make it clear. I want Red Book Audio CDs, the gold standard for Audio Quality. I don't want CDs that break this spec, with an extra data track that includes some ghastly software player with a clickthrough licence you have bought from some software snake-oil salesman.
I have some very nice software to play CDs, thanks. It also helps me organise my collection, and move it to my iPod. I don't want to run your software.
I trust that these corrupt, Red Book violating CDs will be clearly labelled as such, so I can tell not to buy them? Otherwise, I'll just have to avoid all Universal CDs until you commit to shipping Red Book ones again.
UMG has also established www.musichelponline.com to provide
consumers with support and to answer any questions you may have
concerning copy protected CDs.
We appreciate your business, and your support for the musicians who
bring so much to all of our lives.
You evidently don't appreciate my business, as you have gone out of your way to stop me playing your CDs. I'm sure your support for musicians is just as sincere.
However, another part of Philips has dopier ideas:
Philips is leading the charge to start yet another industry initiative to tackle digital rights management, this time focusing on the wirelessly networked home, EE Times has learned.
At stake here, said Leon Husson, executive vice president of consumer businesses at Philips Semiconductors, is the "free-floating" copyrighted content that will soon be "redistributed" or "rebroadcast" to different TV sets throughout a home by consumers using wireless networking technologies like IEEE802.11.
Rather than wait for Hollywood studios to raise a red flag over unprotected wirelessly transmitted content, some technology companies want to tackle the issue in advance and develop solutions together with content owners.
"We are dying to lobby Hollywood studios on this issue," Husson said
Meanwhile, Thomson's Lafaye seems to think people will buy lots of technology from him so they can be prevented from using it:
The SmartRight technology will honor a local "entitlement control message" -- such digital rights management rules as copy never or copy once, for example -- originally attached to the content. By putting the SmartRight technology in place, which enforces rights management in the home, said Lafaye, "we can help content owners create a new business revenue model." Content owners, for example, can start charging consumers every time their digital content is re-distributed within the home, or viewed several times during a certain number of days specified by them.
Compact Disc Digital Audio (CD-DA)
This logo may only be used on discs complying with the CD-DA specification: IEC60908 and/or the Philips-Sony Compact Disc Digital Audio System Description (also known as the RED Book).
If any Record company issues 'copy-protected' discs that violate the spec, they should not use this logo on the packagaing.
When I was involved with pressing CDs, including this logo on the artwork was mandatory. If Philips is smart, they will enforce this clause to preserve their brand as the gold standard in audio quality.
How about this: 10 years free then 1$ for the 11th year, 2$ for the 12th; $4 for the 13th etc.
You can prepay any number of years, but if you don't pay, it falls into public domain. Thus Disney can keep Mickey for 70 years, but only by paying $260, or about a billion dollars. And it keeps doubling.
This way, only works which publishers believe are enormously valuable will be kept out of the public domain, and the law of large numbers will put paid to them in time.
Think of it as a very regressive tax on copyright hoarding.
In the name of Digital Rights Management, corporations prevent you from editing or saving stuff they have published to you. This is odd, and at at odds with the spirit of Copyright.
No-one can tell you how much of their book to read, or the order you can read it in. Why do they presume to do so with sound or video? Why must I look at a green FBI notice for 15 seconds at the start of a DVD? Why should I be forced to listen to the information-thin taunts the news programs interlev with the comedy I'm watching beforehand?
It is the act of re-publishing where the potential copyright violation occurs, not the act of viewing or editing.
Is my right to selectively view defended in law?
Its obviously foolish in practice to force me to make an 'all or nothing' decision; is it illegal too?
You are talkng complete bollocks. Apple positively encourages 3rd party codecs, providing compelte smapel code to write them, and will host them on their servers and automatically download them if the content needs them.
If the Nancy lot want to drive adoption, they just need to wrap themselev sin the QT codec API.
Of course, this woudl amke it very easy to compare them directly with MPEG, Sorenson H263, On2 et al, so if they don't so this they are likely to be the next Pixeleon.
The gMedia player from generic media already has the low CPU/low colour/low res idea shipping on the Sony Clie - genreicmedia.com
Slashdot Mirror
No we need honesty and clarity. These are tricky concepts to grasp, as you can tell from their clumsy analogies:
Mr. Eisner said in an interview that it was "easy to encourage us to overlook the pirates when you're making the sword."
So, the obvious solution is to pass a law requiring all swords to carry an automatic device to read the nametags on the person being stabbed, and magically make the blade disappear if they are not waering an approved 'stab me' nametag?
"If someone figured out how to unlock the gas in the gas station, people would be outraged," Mr. Eisner added. "They wouldn't say to the oil industry, `You need a different business model.' "
If someone worked out how to make gas from water using a chemical reaction, you would expect the oil industry to adopt it instead of passing a law against it so they can continue to spend millions drilling holes in the ground and storing highly explosive checicals every 10 blocks in our cities.
But Mr. Chernin of the News Corporation suggested that matters might be different if the tables were turned. "Let's say I decide to broadcast on my network the code for how to make Intel chips or Microsoft software," he said. "I think they'd find a way to stop it."
Yes, they'd sue you. They wouldn't lobby for a law making TV illegal. After all, Linux is being broadcast on the radio.
My attempt at a clear exposition is as follows:
An Open letter to Jack Valenti and Michael Eisner
Jack, in your sneering Washington Post piece about copy protection, you refer to professors for whom '"innovation" is legalizing the breaking of protection codes'. Michael, in your testimony to congress you badgered an Intel exec until he told you that file copying can't be prevented, then told him he must prevent it anyway.
As you are evidently impervious to logical discussion, let me tell you a story.
This is the story of a rebel, a war hero, a persecuted homosexual, and a deep thinker. His life reads like the plot of a far-fetched movie, but if anyone fits your bogeyman image of professors who break code, it is Alan Turing.
In 1936 Turing published a paper on theoretical mathematics, in which he described the Universal Turing machine. It was a simple mechanism that could read symbols from a tape, and write back different symbols or change the tape's direction. He showed that with this general purpose machine, you could simulate any special purpose computing machine. He had invented the idea of the programmable computer.
Between 1938 and 1945, Turing worked in great secrecy on computing machines that broke codes. These were the first real computers ever made, and the codes they broke were those used by the German Wehrmacht. Without his work, it is very likely that Britain would have lost the War in Europe before Pearl Harbour.
After the war, in 1950 Turing published other famous papers that laid the foundation for modern computing, and hence all the digital gadgetry that you would like to outlaw for us (though presumably you'd keep the computers you use to edit and create effects for your movies). Turing died in 1954 by biting into an apple he had previously poisoned.
What does this story have to do with you?
Turing's Universal Machine means that you cannot have a software or hardware protection scheme that is secure. Whatever scheme you come up with can be simulated by another computer. The computer industry are not opposing your bill because they want to encourage copying, or because they are bloody-minded, they are not opposing you because of your self serving rhetoric about rewarding artists (remember Peggy Lee, Michael?), they are opposing you because what you want is provably impossible. You can only succeed by making all Turing machines illegal.
If Alan Turing had made an animated film involving a poisoned apple in 1936, it would still have copyright protection. He chose a different path, and gave the world the idea of the digital computer. I know whom I repect more.
Feel free to mail this to your friends (wiatha link back to my website, please)
From my weblog
Jack, in your sneering Washington Post piece about copy protection, you refer to professors for whom '"innovation" is legalizing the breaking of protection codes'. Michael, in your testimony to congress you badgered an Intel exec until he told you that file copying can't be prevented, then told him he must prevent it anyway.
As you are evidently impervious to logical discussion, let me tell you a story.
This is the story of a rebel, a war hero, a persecuted homosexual, and a deep thinker. His life reads like the plot of a far-fetched movie, but if anyone fits your bogeyman image of professors who break code, it is Alan Turing.
In 1936 Turing published a paper on theoretical mathematics, in which he described the Universal Turing machine. It was a simple mechanism that could read symbols from a tape, and write back different symbols or change the tape's direction. He showed that with this general purpose machine, you could simulate any special purpose computing machine. He had invented the idea of the programmable computer.
Between 1938 and 1945, Turing worked in great secrecy on computing machines that broke codes. These were the first real computers ever made, and the codes they broke were those used by the German Wehrmacht. Without his work, it is very likely that Britain would have lost the War in Europe before Pearl Harbour.
After the war, in 1950 Turing published other famous papers that laid the foundation for modern computing, and hence all the digital gadgetry that you would like to outlaw for us (though presumably you'd keep the computers you use to edit and create effects for your movies). Turing died in 1954 by biting into an apple he had previously poisoned.
What does this story have to do with you?
Turing's Universal Machine means that you cannot have a software or hardware protection scheme that is secure. Whatever scheme you come up with can be simulated by another computer. The computer industry are not opposing your bill because they want to encourage copying, or because they are bloody-minded, they are not opposing you because of your self serving rhetoric about rewarding artists (remember Peggy Lee, Michael?), they are opposing you because what you want is provably impossible. You can only succeed by making all Turing machines illegal.
If Alan Turing had made an animated film involving a poisoned apple in 1936, it would still have copyright protection. He chose a different path, and gave the world the idea of the digital computer. I know whom I repect more.
I clicked on the link in my post above, and it was number one again. Maybe you're hitting a different google server than I am and the cache is out of date. Odd.
I saw something like this when playing with Pocket GoogleWhacker - sometimes the score for a word would vary from time to time. Distributed systems are like that. I'm sure it will stabilise.
The author is basing this on outdated information. Google knows to crawl sites that change frequently more often than those that don't. Here is a concrete example:
I posted Two Kinds of Order by John Marks on March 11th, and mentioned this to some colleagues who might be interested. I linked to it from a Weblog or two,and Doc Searls did too.
Today it is number 1 on a search for 'two kinds of order' out of over 2 million, and a search for John Marks brings the page up in 5th position, despite there being lots of other John Marks's on the net.
Thats what I call fast (and relevant)
As I invented the scoring scheme that helped this craze take off a couple of months ago(multiply the number of hits for each individual word), I would like to point out that it is a game, and not going to affect anyone's search results, as when you post the found GoogleWhack, all you are doing is making that odd combination one unit more popular.
My 'Pocket GoogleWhacker' tool is still available though (yes, there is a Linux version, but I haven't tested it as I don't have a Linux box). Also note that the highest scoring googlewhack by this method often use 'linux' as one fo the search terms
No, it wasn't. Cluetrain was an attempt to educate the command and control types who run 'marketing' at big companies that markets are information systems, and the net makes them so efficient that they will never be able to get away with their current techniques based on hiding information and controlling 'the message'.
It is written in a way to get to those people, so anyone geeky enough to grok Hayek and Smith already can't see what the fuss is about.
Remember all those left-wing student politicans whose existential post-modernism got on your tits so much in college? They all went into marketing, believing themselves to be Lenin's vanguard elite to lead the masses, and secretly hate themselves for selling out. Cluetrain is a way for them to get over it and do somethign useful instead.
Given a DRM program that relies on certain inputs (encypted content, permissions etc) to produce the desired output (viewable media), one can construct another program to provide it with these inputs from another source, and divert its output elsewhere as desired.
So Eisner really does need to outlaw Turing machiens to have his way.
AppleTi PowerBook - $2299
Wireless trackball with 10 buttons and a scrollwheel - $124
Taco stopping his trolling on the topic of Apple mice - Priceless.
Vic, Vat, Rat et al all use the RTP protocol for audio video conferencing, which is what QuickTime uses for streaming, so QT player will play them back (albeit with a 3 second lag).
It looks like the FCC has got it completely backwards. Instead of regulating a separation between data transport and applications, it has reclassified data transport as a service, and thus removed open access requirements.
This is the exact opposite of the collective wisdom of the networking industry, as I collected here.
Powell today reiterated his opinion that all broadband platforms - cable, wireless, satellite and DSL - should be considered when crafting broadband policy.
"It's important to conceptualize broadband broadly," Powell told reporters following today's meeting.
It is indeed - but rather than prop up a series of monopoly rights, providing an opportunity for Howard Jonas to acheive his stated aim:
"Sure I want to be the biggest telecom company in the world, but it's just a commodity. I want to be able to form opinion. By controlling the pipe, you can eventually get control of the content."
Powell should be considering how to enable maximum flexibility by separating the commodity business of transferring packets from the open applications that define what the packets mean. This is how to maximise the value of the net for everyone, not for a few local monopolists - a fine job for a regulator.
It generates binaries for Windows, Mac (9&X) Linux, Solaris and bunch of other Unixes.
It has graphcial GUI design tools
It is programmable in a object-oriented language that reads like English.
You can extend it in C if you want.
It has a good free trial offer.
http://runrev.com
I built the Pocket GoogleWhacker in it for 4 platforms in under an hour.
We need legislation to split provising of packet services (Which can be a licensed monopoly, like a telco) from content services.
Lots mroe about this
Set up a public terminal that is running EtherPEG, and pretty soon people will get the message about untrusted public networks...
There are standardised ways of doing this well - have a look at http://www.zeroconf.org
Don't think fixed, think mobile. Apple sells iBooks in 5-packs at reduced rates to education. Fit them out with Airport cards, put the basestations and uplink or whatever in the van, and have people sit on lawnchairs and use the computers in the open air, or community hall or whatever.
There are standrads for doing this already - HTML mail encapsualtes images inline, and the data: URL specifier allows inline base64 images, though most browsers don't implement it.
I have posted my correspondence with UMG on the topic - I'm awaiting a further reply.
I wrote to Universal's new address asking why they were going to stop making CDs I could play on my Mac. Here's the response I got, annotated:
On Wednesday, January 9, 2002, at 12:51 PM, MusicHelpOnline.com Support wrote:
Thank you for your feedback regarding copy protected CDs. We
appreciate your opinion, as the consumer experience with the music we all
love has always been a priority at the Universal Music Group.
I don't 'consume' music. I listen to it. It's still there afterwards (though I get the impression that you'd like it if it wasn't).
Unfortunately, over the last few years, the music industry has been faced
with a growing problem of unauthorized CD "ripping" leading to illegal
Internet distribution of music - a practice that is hurting everyone from
recording artists to songwriters to record stores. This illegal copying is
taking place on a massive scale, with literally millions of copies being
made without any compensation to the creators of the music.
Interesting progression of words here. The ripping is 'unauthorised'. Who needs to authorise it? Some ripped files have been illegally distributed, I'll grant you that, but then you say that 'copying' is illegal.
Under the Audio Home Recording Act, ripping and copying are not illegal at all; they are expressly permitted. You are confounding the legal acts of copying and ripping with the illegal one of distributing your copyright content without your permission. You are applying technology to attempt to prevent the former, instead of legal prosecution to prevent the latter. This is your mistake.
Your second mistake is take the word of someone that they can stop CDs from being copied. If someone can play your CD, they can redigitise the output, and rip that, and distribute it online. Its not worth my time and effort to fiddle around to rip the CDs in this way, so I won't buy them, but I'm sure the illegal distributors will work this out.
Net result: you have a lot of fed up former customers, and your music is still distributed online without your permission. Fewer people pay to listen to it, you get less money, and the illegal distribution goes on unchecked.
If a way is not found to protect the music from these abuses, recording artists,
songwriters and many others will be deprived of their livelihoods. The
changing economics could cause fewer new artists to get a chance to find
their audience.
The music is not being abused. It is being listened to. It doesn't need protection.
Or do you mean 'protection' in the sense of 'protection racket'?
Courtney Love wrote a very well-reasoned essay on who is abusing whom in the record industry.
Universal Music Group is committed to protecting the rights of our artists,
songwriters, and copyright holders, and, like the rest of the entertainment
industry, is evaluating emerging technologies to assess their viability while
also attempting to maximize the consumer experience. In addition,
Universal is exploring new ways to make music available in a variety of
online formats. We are also working with technology companies on new
offline formats that appeal to consumers.
Uh huh. Let me explain again. I have an iPod. (125,000 other people do too, and its only been on sale two months). It lets me carry around about 120 CDs worth of music at a time, in a package about the size of one CD box. I like this. I'm listening to more music than I was before because of it, and I will continue to buy CDs to rip and put into my iPod. If that isn't an offline format that appeals to consumers, I don't know what is.
However, you are explicitly working to stop me doing this. When I buy CDs at the moment, I look at the artists name, not the record label. Now I'll need to check that its not a Universal CD, in case you have 'protected' me from listening to it. This is one way of building awareness of the Universal brand, but probably not a useful one.
We have licensed copy protection technologies developed by others and
are experimenting with the integration of those technologies into some of
our CDs as a first step in measuring their effectiveness in an evolving
marketplace. While the CDs with copy protection may not be playable in a
limited number of CD players, UMG is currently working with our
technology providers to achieve 100% playability. We also hope to
include Macintosh-based playability on copy-protected discs in the future.
We have not finalized our plans for 2002 nor have we made a commitment
to put copy protection on all of our CD releases.
You hope. I'm supposed to buy your CDs on the basis of a hope that you can kludge something together? Let me make it clear. I want Red Book Audio CDs, the gold standard for Audio Quality. I don't want CDs that break this spec, with an extra data track that includes some ghastly software player with a clickthrough licence you have bought from some software snake-oil salesman.
I have some very nice software to play CDs, thanks. It also helps me organise my collection, and move it to my iPod. I don't want to run your software.
I trust that these corrupt, Red Book violating CDs will be clearly labelled as such, so I can tell not to buy them? Otherwise, I'll just have to avoid all Universal CDs until you commit to shipping Red Book ones again.
UMG has also established www.musichelponline.com to provide
consumers with support and to answer any questions you may have
concerning copy protected CDs.
We appreciate your business, and your support for the musicians who
bring so much to all of our lives.
You evidently don't appreciate my business, as you have gone out of your way to stop me playing your CDs. I'm sure your support for musicians is just as sincere.
Just what I told them to do
However, another part of Philips has dopier ideas:
Philips is leading the charge to start yet another industry initiative to tackle digital rights management, this time focusing on the wirelessly networked home, EE Times has learned.
At stake here, said Leon Husson, executive vice president of consumer businesses at Philips Semiconductors, is the "free-floating" copyrighted content that will soon be "redistributed" or "rebroadcast" to different TV sets throughout a home by consumers using wireless networking technologies like IEEE802.11.
Rather than wait for Hollywood studios to raise a red flag over unprotected wirelessly transmitted content, some technology companies want to tackle the issue in advance and develop solutions together with content owners.
"We are dying to lobby Hollywood studios on this issue," Husson said
Meanwhile, Thomson's Lafaye seems to think people will buy lots of technology from him so they can be prevented from using it:
The SmartRight technology will honor a local "entitlement control message" -- such digital rights management rules as copy never or copy once, for example -- originally attached to the content. By putting the SmartRight technology in place, which enforces rights management in the home, said Lafaye, "we can help content owners create a new business revenue model." Content owners, for example, can start charging consumers every time their digital content is re-distributed within the home, or viewed several times during a certain number of days specified by them.
http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20020111S0060
According to the logo license agreement issued by Philips
Compact Disc Digital Audio (CD-DA)
This logo may only be used on discs complying with the CD-DA specification: IEC60908 and/or the Philips-Sony Compact Disc Digital Audio System Description (also known as the RED Book).
If any Record company issues 'copy-protected' discs that violate the spec, they should not use this logo on the packagaing.
When I was involved with pressing CDs, including this logo on the artwork was mandatory. If Philips is smart, they will enforce this clause to preserve their brand as the gold standard in audio quality.
It's an old chestnut
That should be $2^60 not $260 - slash filtered out my superscript tag.
How about this: 10 years free then 1$ for the 11th year, 2$ for the 12th; $4 for the 13th etc.
You can prepay any number of years, but if you don't pay, it falls into public domain. Thus Disney can keep Mickey for 70 years, but only by paying $260, or about a billion dollars. And it keeps doubling.
This way, only works which publishers believe are enormously valuable will be kept out of the public domain, and the law of large numbers will put paid to them in time.
Think of it as a very regressive tax on copyright hoarding.
In the name of Digital Rights Management, corporations prevent you from editing or saving stuff they have published to you. This is odd, and at at odds with the spirit of Copyright.
No-one can tell you how much of their book to read, or the order you can read it in. Why do they presume to do so with sound or video? Why must I look at a green FBI notice for 15 seconds at the start of a DVD? Why should I be forced to listen to the information-thin taunts the news programs interlev with the comedy I'm watching beforehand?
It is the act of re-publishing where the potential copyright violation occurs, not the act of viewing or editing.
Is my right to selectively view defended in law?
Its obviously foolish in practice to force me to make an 'all or nothing' decision; is it illegal too?
Ho hum. This has already been doen by genericmedia's gMovie for Palm OS.
On2's VP3 is also very integer-focused.
You are talkng complete bollocks. Apple positively encourages 3rd party codecs, providing compelte smapel code to write them, and will host them on their servers and automatically download them if the content needs them.
If the Nancy lot want to drive adoption, they just need to wrap themselev sin the QT codec API.
Of course, this woudl amke it very easy to compare them directly with MPEG, Sorenson H263, On2 et al, so if they don't so this they are likely to be the next Pixeleon.
The gMedia player from generic media already has the low CPU/low colour/low res idea shipping on the Sony Clie - genreicmedia.com