Can someone with the technical knowledge of this summarize in comprehensible terms how this works on a physical level? I *mostly* (okay, abstractly/partially) understand how it works on a theoretical level, but I have zero understanding of what's going on at the hardware level. What sort of hardware is in use here, and how does it work?
I find it fascinating that the universal response of the 'victims' in the video is laughter. They're not laughing because anything is particularly funny. It's the sort of laughter that is created by an inappropriate joke or a stressful situation that is avoided.
This speaks to the quality and efficacy of the simulation - it elevates stress enough that it causes participants to need to 'laugh it off'.
This leads me to consider the possibility of use of simulations like this ones to test for things like psychopathy. A psychopath will remain calm and unaffected by things that will trigger stress response in typical individuals. I know this is a dicey road to go down in terms of law enforcement and personal rights, but it could be a useful tool for psychologists.
In writing this, my mind went to the Voight-Kampff test in 'Blade Runner'. Perhaps, instead of an inquisitor reading off questions, a potential psychopath/replicant plays out a VR simulation of a tortoise stranded on its back...
If you're on Linux, check out KingSoft/WPS Office. It's a Chinese clone of Office that's almost 100% identical to Office 2010, and it lets you choose between the ribbon and 'classic' style. Users are reporting that it handles large spreadsheets better than both the 'real' Office and Libre/Openoffice.
Why have a smartwatch at all when we already have very capable smartphones - not much bigger than a deck of playing cards - that easily fit in a pocket?
99: Max, what's that? Maxwell Smart: An electric snake. Very good for creating a diversion. 99: That's amazing! What does it run on? Maxwell Smart: Tiny little feet.
Gotta wonder if it picked up matches for random people who are wanted for one thing or another, and if there will be follow-up investigations on those leads.
And if so, if crowd-scanning will become a precedent...
Try telling a rock climber they're better off carrying a phone in their chalk bag or whatever. Or a backpacker on a week-long hike that they're better off carrying their smartphone which only holds a charge for 3 days. (As a backpacker myself, if you told me to just carry extra batteries or portable chargers I'd laugh at you.)
I went kayaking around the New and Tarpon rivers in Ft Lauderdale yesterday for about 5 hours. My phone was in a plastic baggie in my pocket and I didn't want to pull it out and get it wet... having a watch was invaluable.
Extreme cases aside... I wear it even in the shower in the morning... nice to be able to take a long shower and know exactly when I have to get out, because I have a waterproof timepiece on my wrist.
I walk into a car dealership, and use your credit rating to walk way with a fancy new car. I pay a down payment in cash, and the rest is billed... to you.
You'd be furious that I stole your identity to buy a car. You'd call the cops. Let's say it turns out that the car has OnStar built in, and that the cops can give a simple court order to OnStar and then OnStar will pass along the vehicle's location.
Wow, this would be an easy and great way to catch a fucking thief!
Too bad... by your standards, this would be some grandiose violation of the thief's 'rights', because as you said in giant bold letters, 'PAYING MONEY IN EXCHANGE FOR A PRODUCT MAKES ME AN OWNER'.
Only, surprise, asshole, it's doesn't, because you were a fraudster. The ID thief putting a fake down payment on a car not financed in his name 'owns' that car no more than the guy buying a Verizon aircard using a stolen ID. I'm sure you're a smart guy most of the time, but you're being a dumbass about this, and you're doing it loudly, with lots of capital letters and bold fonts.
Even if you had some sort of legal framework in which you could argue that this guy owned the aircard/service because he paid for it and therefore wasn't subject to surveillance for some reason... he'd have to prove that fact, somehow. And in proving that he paid for the aircard/service - which has been demonstrated to have been fraudulently activated under a stolen ID - the perp would have to therefore confess to identity fraud.
And Verizon didn't install 'malicious software'. You're arguing about a topic that you don't understand. You don't even understand the terminology... you're using words and phrases incorrectly. I'm sorry, but you simply don't have a grasp of what's going on here or what the implications are.
(It can be argued that if the device was not paid for up front, then the identity theft victim owns the handset, having had money exchanged for it. In which case, Verizon should have asked the victim if they wanted to keep the device after being collected [arresting the perp], or if they just want reimbursement. If the victim says the want to keep it, then Verizon needs to ask the legal owner of the device if they can install the firmware. If they say they want reimbursement, then Verizon can do whatever they want with their device.)
Look, the guy had activated the aircard under a stolen ID.
Let's say someone steals your ID and uses it to buy a new Escalade at the dealership (and then skip out on the payments, leaving you with the credit hit).
Let's now assume that the Escalade came with OnStar built in.
Now let's say that in search of this criminal - almost certainly with the ID theft victim's consent, not that it matters really, as there are two victims of the stolen property here, the dealership AND the ID victim - LEO gets a court order sent to OnStar, asking them to track the vehicle's location. They do. They find the perp and arrest him.
If this were the case, would you be complaining about 'unauthorized access to a computing system' and 'theft of service', here? Hell, the THIEF is the one who has 'unauthorized service' and 'theft of service' under his belt, not the Feds.
There is really zero difference between these scenarios. I'm probably more cynical about Big Government than most, but this 'controversy' is just the defense lawyer's weak attempt to get evidence dismissed. He doesn't have a case. You can't claim that law enforcement illegally accessed his property when it WASN'T HIS FUCKING PROPERTY. That fact almost certainly HELPED law enforcement track him down, as it removed the sort of 4th amendment barriers they'd normally have to be concerned about!
I had an old Sierra Wireless aircard (PCMCIA form factor) some years ago that actually had a headphone jack on the aircard itself, and you used the 'dialer' software to initiate a call.
> companies such as Verizon should place this in their contracts something like "authorities can use your devices to track you and/or use your data for any of their investigations as they see fit".
It's not that simple. Many posters here are missing the point that this guy stole someone else's identity to establish his Verizon account.
-They probably first contacted the person who was the 'real' accountholder (the identity theft victim). -That victim says, 'Some stole my ID? Track the fucker!' to both the FBI and Verizon. -FBI says, 'Sweet, will do' -Verizon's own LEO compliance policy says 'only cooperate if an official court order is presented' -FBI got the court order, the rest is history.
Conversation with FBI and judge goes like this:
FBI: "Hay judge, this nasty ID thief guy totally stole this guy's ID and got a cell phone thingie. The victim and VZW give permission to track the perp, we just need to make it official. Howsabout a court order bro?"
Judge: "LOL cool here's a court order man"
ID thief's lawyers: "NOT COOL BRO YOU NEED A REAL WARRANT NOT JUST A COURT ORDER even-though-the-victim-consented-to-locating-what-is-technically-his-property"
The defense doesn't have a leg to stand on, and this whole event is overblown. People are up in arms about this because they think the message is that every time someone is suspected of committing a crime, the FBI will just make the carriers roll over and track down their mobiles. But this case isn't that straightforward. The guy used someone else's ID to establish the service, so he's not even the owner of the property that was being searched and, IMO, not eligible for fourth amendment protections, because it wasn't HIS 'person and papers' being sniffed by law enforcement.
This is like someone stealing your car, and law enforcement uses OnStar to track it down along with the thieves. You wouldn't make the claim that the police couldn't use OnStar from the stolen car to track the perp because it violated their rights, would you?
But the perp in question was an identity thief who had activated the device in the victim's name. In this case, the victim technically 'owns' the service/device, right? How can you claim that the FBI/Verizon violated the thief's 'private property' when it was fraudulently bought/activated in the victim's name?
If the victim gives permission for the FBI/VZW to track the device that's in his/her name, that's good enough for me. If someone stole my identity to activate service, I'd be begging for them to track the fucker down. After all, I'm the legal account holder, whether I like it or not.
You say that 'Verizon does not own the aircard' but neither does the identity thief, dammit! The victim does!
>GPS and cellphones use entirely different sets of frequencies, and I doubt that you could coerce a cellphone tower into transmitting on a GPS frequency
To be fair, there is aGPS (assisted GPS) which uses timing signals sent from cell towers for triangulation instead of/in addition to GPS satellites.
And note that no traffic was intercepted in the FBI's operation... all they attained, with the carrier's help*, was an identification of the target's device on the network, which they then pinged in order to triangulate its location. Chris Paget's cell site spoofing blows GSM wide open; nothing remotely similar has happened in the CDMA world.
*(which also required that the carrier remotely reprogram the phone so this could even take place.)
This has nothing in common with Paget's spoofing. If you have a mobile phone/aircard in your own name, and the Feds go to the carriers with a warrant, they WILL ping your location. If you're paranoid, go prepaid with a 'stage name' and no SSN attached, or establish service in the name of a company or trust that won't be traced back to you. And better hope they don't already know your phone number.
That's because he spoofed a GSM tower. You'll find that doing the same with CDMA is impossible without Verizon's help - see the bit about reprogramming the phone's roaming list in order to make the phone accept the spoofed tower.
Have you ever known Microsoft to do anything really intelligent to win good PR and sales?
Of course not. Clearly, they're the dominant OS in the world because of the first-class quality of their software and ecosystem, which is truly superior to all alternatives. It has absolutely nothing to do with market positioning and PR./Sarcasm disengaged
Asking a user to approve an action is about as good as you're going to get, and for 95% of the population, it's barely better than nothing at all.
User Account Control in Vista was an attempt to lock down the system, but users complained about having to click 'yes to allow' every little change that took place. It was perplexing to the average user, because they just initiated a command, and were (from their perspective) being annoying asked to confirm the actions they themselves just initiated. The Java auto-update (or whatever) would pop up and say, 'UPDATE AVAILABLE! UPDATE?' and they'd click YES and then Windows would pop up and say HEY ASSHOLE! YOU SURE YOU WANNA UPDATE? They'd click YES again. Eventually one is numbed to the constant pestering for approval and gets trained to click "YES" every time the annoying window popped up. Win7 got a little more intelligent about when exactly to intervene with UAC, but the end result is mostly the same.
The same is true of Linux, OSX, and Android - for the average user. Linux and OSX pester you for a password instead of clicking 'yes' to allow. Android basically does what Windows does and tells you that scary things COULD happen, and asks you to permit it.
(Side note: I'm a relatively recent Linux convert - about 5 months in, now. In those first two months, I had no idea what the hell was actually going on 'behind the scenes' virtually every single time I was prompted for my root password. To the uninitiated, a password prompt is not much more secure than Windows or Android's 'Scare Screens' that everyone just clicks 'yes' to.)
This is why good anti-malware software exists - to step in when the user allowed something they shouldn't have and (hopefully) identify bad behavior before it can damage stuff.
The population has greatly decreased Yet my chances are greatly increased Of someday getting' the chay-ance To kiss your lips I thank the Loo-yoo-ord each day For the Apocalypse
Folks are greatly disfigured or dead But darlin', I won't let it get to my head My momma's face has dripped down... into the dirt. But I'm still chasin' chitlins, whiskey and skirt!
Yeah, quoted from 20-year-or-so-old memory. Fucking loved that game. Bought the Gone Jackals albums too, and still listen to them from time to time. If anything good comes out of this Disney acquisition, it will be a damned Full Throttle movie!
No offence, but this is why you aren't in the entertainment selling industry.
Well, maybe I should be.
Total revenue from U.S. music sales and licensing plunged to $6.3 billion in 2009, according to Forrester Research. In 1999, that revenue figure topped $14.6 billion. Probably not adjusted for inflation, too. And this is an older article - http://money.cnn.com/2010/02/02/news/companies/napster_music_industry/
Check out that chart.
The things you listed all cost money to make. Then you have to distribute it to all the folks selling it. If you offer the products online, you have almost pure profit. Sure, you have to have a website, and you have to pay for bandwidth, but in reality, you have a pure profit business. You have infinite stock. You don't worry about refunds, stock control, your inventory is zero.
The way you put it, profits should be up! But they're not. They've been dropping fast and hard since the 'digital revolution'.
I will argue that piracy has absolutely affected sales. Want a song or album? It's easy and costs nothing. If you're moral and want to get the song legally? You buy the song from iTunes or Amazon, who have to compete with piracy, and sell songs for very fucking cheap, really - a dollar or so per track. Your local bar's jukebox will cost you a dollar just to play the song once.
What you fail to understand when you state that profits in digital distribution are 100% is the fact that sales are DOWN, and dramatically so. Once upon a time, in order to hear a song I liked on demand, I needed to own it. I would either buy the album, or a single, or have a taped/ripped copy from a friend. Now I can just fire up YouTube and play it any time I want. Why would I buy an album when I can listen to it anytime, anywhere, from any device that can access Youtube?
What I am suggested is that, to maintain sales, labels/bands/whatever sell added services - extra shit you get for buying an album. Aside from posters and stickers and the like, what about concert ticket discounts with a purchase of an album? What about autographed copies?
The alternative to this - bands will only be funded by Kickstarter and ticket sales, or otherwise have to resort to some sort of NPR pledge drive funding scheme. Or a national endowment of the arts. Enjoy your government-sponsored music.
That's what I was hoping. You know what would be hilarious? If Google changed their minds and decided to adopt the then-open Presto as their engine instead!
Really, though, I think Opera should have tried that first. They obviously decided to switch so they could lay off their 90+ engine developers (which they probably have to do for financial reasons)... but they could have open sourced the engine first and therefore get dev help from the community, instead of tossing Presto in the bin and walking away.
Slashdot Mirror
Have you looked into Sailfish OS?
Do they make you pull out a pentalobe screwdriver and disassemble an iPhone before shipment?
Can someone with the technical knowledge of this summarize in comprehensible terms how this works on a physical level? I *mostly* (okay, abstractly/partially) understand how it works on a theoretical level, but I have zero understanding of what's going on at the hardware level. What sort of hardware is in use here, and how does it work?
I find it fascinating that the universal response of the 'victims' in the video is laughter. They're not laughing because anything is particularly funny. It's the sort of laughter that is created by an inappropriate joke or a stressful situation that is avoided.
This speaks to the quality and efficacy of the simulation - it elevates stress enough that it causes participants to need to 'laugh it off'.
This leads me to consider the possibility of use of simulations like this ones to test for things like psychopathy. A psychopath will remain calm and unaffected by things that will trigger stress response in typical individuals. I know this is a dicey road to go down in terms of law enforcement and personal rights, but it could be a useful tool for psychologists.
In writing this, my mind went to the Voight-Kampff test in 'Blade Runner'. Perhaps, instead of an inquisitor reading off questions, a potential psychopath/replicant plays out a VR simulation of a tortoise stranded on its back...
If you're on Linux, check out KingSoft/WPS Office. It's a Chinese clone of Office that's almost 100% identical to Office 2010, and it lets you choose between the ribbon and 'classic' style. Users are reporting that it handles large spreadsheets better than both the 'real' Office and Libre/Openoffice.
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2013/03/wps-office-for-linux-looks-like-microsoft-office-but-isnt
Why have a smartwatch at all when we already have very capable smartphones - not much bigger than a deck of playing cards - that easily fit in a pocket?
99: Max, what's that?
Maxwell Smart: An electric snake. Very good for creating a diversion.
99: That's amazing! What does it run on?
Maxwell Smart: Tiny little feet.
Gotta wonder if it picked up matches for random people who are wanted for one thing or another, and if there will be follow-up investigations on those leads.
And if so, if crowd-scanning will become a precedent...
Try telling a rock climber they're better off carrying a phone in their chalk bag or whatever. Or a backpacker on a week-long hike that they're better off carrying their smartphone which only holds a charge for 3 days. (As a backpacker myself, if you told me to just carry extra batteries or portable chargers I'd laugh at you.)
I went kayaking around the New and Tarpon rivers in Ft Lauderdale yesterday for about 5 hours. My phone was in a plastic baggie in my pocket and I didn't want to pull it out and get it wet... having a watch was invaluable.
Extreme cases aside... I wear it even in the shower in the morning... nice to be able to take a long shower and know exactly when I have to get out, because I have a waterproof timepiece on my wrist.
They really should rename it "The Open Information Initiative' or something.
Wonder if North Korea was the original target, and the malware leaked out into the wild...
I steal your identity.
I walk into a car dealership, and use your credit rating to walk way with a fancy new car. I pay a down payment in cash, and the rest is billed... to you.
You'd be furious that I stole your identity to buy a car. You'd call the cops. Let's say it turns out that the car has OnStar built in, and that the cops can give a simple court order to OnStar and then OnStar will pass along the vehicle's location.
Wow, this would be an easy and great way to catch a fucking thief!
Too bad... by your standards, this would be some grandiose violation of the thief's 'rights', because as you said in giant bold letters, 'PAYING MONEY IN EXCHANGE FOR A PRODUCT MAKES ME AN OWNER'.
Only, surprise, asshole, it's doesn't, because you were a fraudster. The ID thief putting a fake down payment on a car not financed in his name 'owns' that car no more than the guy buying a Verizon aircard using a stolen ID. I'm sure you're a smart guy most of the time, but you're being a dumbass about this, and you're doing it loudly, with lots of capital letters and bold fonts.
Even if you had some sort of legal framework in which you could argue that this guy owned the aircard/service because he paid for it and therefore wasn't subject to surveillance for some reason... he'd have to prove that fact, somehow. And in proving that he paid for the aircard/service - which has been demonstrated to have been fraudulently activated under a stolen ID - the perp would have to therefore confess to identity fraud.
And Verizon didn't install 'malicious software'. You're arguing about a topic that you don't understand. You don't even understand the terminology... you're using words and phrases incorrectly. I'm sorry, but you simply don't have a grasp of what's going on here or what the implications are.
(It can be argued that if the device was not paid for up front, then the identity theft victim owns the handset, having had money exchanged for it. In which case, Verizon should have asked the victim if they wanted to keep the device after being collected [arresting the perp], or if they just want reimbursement. If the victim says the want to keep it, then Verizon needs to ask the legal owner of the device if they can install the firmware. If they say they want reimbursement, then Verizon can do whatever they want with their device.)
How do you know that's not exactly what happened?
Look, the guy had activated the aircard under a stolen ID.
Let's say someone steals your ID and uses it to buy a new Escalade at the dealership (and then skip out on the payments, leaving you with the credit hit).
Let's now assume that the Escalade came with OnStar built in.
Now let's say that in search of this criminal - almost certainly with the ID theft victim's consent, not that it matters really, as there are two victims of the stolen property here, the dealership AND the ID victim - LEO gets a court order sent to OnStar, asking them to track the vehicle's location. They do. They find the perp and arrest him.
If this were the case, would you be complaining about 'unauthorized access to a computing system' and 'theft of service', here? Hell, the THIEF is the one who has 'unauthorized service' and 'theft of service' under his belt, not the Feds.
There is really zero difference between these scenarios. I'm probably more cynical about Big Government than most, but this 'controversy' is just the defense lawyer's weak attempt to get evidence dismissed. He doesn't have a case. You can't claim that law enforcement illegally accessed his property when it WASN'T HIS FUCKING PROPERTY. That fact almost certainly HELPED law enforcement track him down, as it removed the sort of 4th amendment barriers they'd normally have to be concerned about!
I had an old Sierra Wireless aircard (PCMCIA form factor) some years ago that actually had a headphone jack on the aircard itself, and you used the 'dialer' software to initiate a call.
> companies such as Verizon should place this in their contracts something like "authorities can use your devices to track you and/or use your data for any of their investigations as they see fit".
It's not that simple. Many posters here are missing the point that this guy stole someone else's identity to establish his Verizon account.
-They probably first contacted the person who was the 'real' accountholder (the identity theft victim).
-That victim says, 'Some stole my ID? Track the fucker!' to both the FBI and Verizon.
-FBI says, 'Sweet, will do'
-Verizon's own LEO compliance policy says 'only cooperate if an official court order is presented'
-FBI got the court order, the rest is history.
Conversation with FBI and judge goes like this:
FBI: "Hay judge, this nasty ID thief guy totally stole this guy's ID and got a cell phone thingie. The victim and VZW give permission to track the perp, we just need to make it official. Howsabout a court order bro?"
Judge: "LOL cool here's a court order man"
ID thief's lawyers: "NOT COOL BRO YOU NEED A REAL WARRANT NOT JUST A COURT ORDER even-though-the-victim-consented-to-locating-what-is-technically-his-property"
The defense doesn't have a leg to stand on, and this whole event is overblown. People are up in arms about this because they think the message is that every time someone is suspected of committing a crime, the FBI will just make the carriers roll over and track down their mobiles. But this case isn't that straightforward. The guy used someone else's ID to establish the service, so he's not even the owner of the property that was being searched and, IMO, not eligible for fourth amendment protections, because it wasn't HIS 'person and papers' being sniffed by law enforcement.
This is like someone stealing your car, and law enforcement uses OnStar to track it down along with the thieves. You wouldn't make the claim that the police couldn't use OnStar from the stolen car to track the perp because it violated their rights, would you?
But the perp in question was an identity thief who had activated the device in the victim's name. In this case, the victim technically 'owns' the service/device, right? How can you claim that the FBI/Verizon violated the thief's 'private property' when it was fraudulently bought/activated in the victim's name?
If the victim gives permission for the FBI/VZW to track the device that's in his/her name, that's good enough for me. If someone stole my identity to activate service, I'd be begging for them to track the fucker down. After all, I'm the legal account holder, whether I like it or not.
You say that 'Verizon does not own the aircard' but neither does the identity thief, dammit! The victim does!
>GPS and cellphones use entirely different sets of frequencies, and I doubt that you could coerce a cellphone tower into transmitting on a GPS frequency
To be fair, there is aGPS (assisted GPS) which uses timing signals sent from cell towers for triangulation instead of/in addition to GPS satellites.
More answers than you probably want:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/22599374/Security-Encryption-in-GSM-GPRS-CDMA
And note that no traffic was intercepted in the FBI's operation... all they attained, with the carrier's help*, was an identification of the target's device on the network, which they then pinged in order to triangulate its location. Chris Paget's cell site spoofing blows GSM wide open; nothing remotely similar has happened in the CDMA world.
*(which also required that the carrier remotely reprogram the phone so this could even take place.)
This has nothing in common with Paget's spoofing. If you have a mobile phone/aircard in your own name, and the Feds go to the carriers with a warrant, they WILL ping your location. If you're paranoid, go prepaid with a 'stage name' and no SSN attached, or establish service in the name of a company or trust that won't be traced back to you. And better hope they don't already know your phone number.
That's because he spoofed a GSM tower. You'll find that doing the same with CDMA is impossible without Verizon's help - see the bit about reprogramming the phone's roaming list in order to make the phone accept the spoofed tower.
Have you ever known Microsoft to do anything really intelligent to win good PR and sales?
Of course not. Clearly, they're the dominant OS in the world because of the first-class quality of their software and ecosystem, which is truly superior to all alternatives. It has absolutely nothing to do with market positioning and PR. /Sarcasm disengaged
Asking a user to approve an action is about as good as you're going to get, and for 95% of the population, it's barely better than nothing at all.
User Account Control in Vista was an attempt to lock down the system, but users complained about having to click 'yes to allow' every little change that took place. It was perplexing to the average user, because they just initiated a command, and were (from their perspective) being annoying asked to confirm the actions they themselves just initiated. The Java auto-update (or whatever) would pop up and say, 'UPDATE AVAILABLE! UPDATE?' and they'd click YES and then Windows would pop up and say HEY ASSHOLE! YOU SURE YOU WANNA UPDATE? They'd click YES again. Eventually one is numbed to the constant pestering for approval and gets trained to click "YES" every time the annoying window popped up. Win7 got a little more intelligent about when exactly to intervene with UAC, but the end result is mostly the same.
The same is true of Linux, OSX, and Android - for the average user. Linux and OSX pester you for a password instead of clicking 'yes' to allow. Android basically does what Windows does and tells you that scary things COULD happen, and asks you to permit it.
(Side note: I'm a relatively recent Linux convert - about 5 months in, now. In those first two months, I had no idea what the hell was actually going on 'behind the scenes' virtually every single time I was prompted for my root password. To the uninitiated, a password prompt is not much more secure than Windows or Android's 'Scare Screens' that everyone just clicks 'yes' to.)
This is why good anti-malware software exists - to step in when the user allowed something they shouldn't have and (hopefully) identify bad behavior before it can damage stuff.
*ahem*
The population has greatly decreased
Yet my chances are greatly increased
Of someday getting' the chay-ance
To kiss your lips
I thank the Loo-yoo-ord each day
For the Apocalypse
Folks are greatly disfigured or dead
But darlin', I won't let it get to my head
My momma's face has dripped down... into the dirt.
But I'm still chasin' chitlins, whiskey and skirt!
Yeah, quoted from 20-year-or-so-old memory. Fucking loved that game. Bought the Gone Jackals albums too, and still listen to them from time to time. If anything good comes out of this Disney acquisition, it will be a damned Full Throttle movie!
No offence, but this is why you aren't in the entertainment selling industry.
Well, maybe I should be.
Total revenue from U.S. music sales and licensing plunged to $6.3 billion in 2009, according to Forrester Research. In 1999, that revenue figure topped $14.6 billion. Probably not adjusted for inflation, too. And this is an older article - http://money.cnn.com/2010/02/02/news/companies/napster_music_industry/
Check out that chart.
The things you listed all cost money to make. Then you have to distribute it to all the folks selling it. If you offer the products online, you have almost pure profit. Sure, you have to have a website, and you have to pay for bandwidth, but in reality, you have a pure profit business. You have infinite stock. You don't worry about refunds, stock control, your inventory is zero.
The way you put it, profits should be up! But they're not. They've been dropping fast and hard since the 'digital revolution'.
I will argue that piracy has absolutely affected sales. Want a song or album? It's easy and costs nothing. If you're moral and want to get the song legally? You buy the song from iTunes or Amazon, who have to compete with piracy, and sell songs for very fucking cheap, really - a dollar or so per track. Your local bar's jukebox will cost you a dollar just to play the song once.
What you fail to understand when you state that profits in digital distribution are 100% is the fact that sales are DOWN, and dramatically so. Once upon a time, in order to hear a song I liked on demand, I needed to own it. I would either buy the album, or a single, or have a taped/ripped copy from a friend. Now I can just fire up YouTube and play it any time I want. Why would I buy an album when I can listen to it anytime, anywhere, from any device that can access Youtube?
What I am suggested is that, to maintain sales, labels/bands/whatever sell added services - extra shit you get for buying an album. Aside from posters and stickers and the like, what about concert ticket discounts with a purchase of an album? What about autographed copies?
The alternative to this - bands will only be funded by Kickstarter and ticket sales, or otherwise have to resort to some sort of NPR pledge drive funding scheme. Or a national endowment of the arts. Enjoy your government-sponsored music.
That's what I was hoping. You know what would be hilarious? If Google changed their minds and decided to adopt the then-open Presto as their engine instead!
Really, though, I think Opera should have tried that first. They obviously decided to switch so they could lay off their 90+ engine developers (which they probably have to do for financial reasons)... but they could have open sourced the engine first and therefore get dev help from the community, instead of tossing Presto in the bin and walking away.