There was a time when every week there were 2 or 3 cds I was interested in buying. That time passed a few years ago. Every week when I get the Sunday paper, the first thing I do is open up the best buy ad to the "new cd releases" page. There's less and less to get excited about. Less in general. Some weeks there's like 1 release, and it's by a dead rapper.
No I disagree! It's very interesting that the RIAA wants us to follow the rules to a T, but they don't want to be held subject to the same rules themselves! This isn't putting away the chess set, this is more like a midgame threat on one of their more valuable pieces.
One can already get all the free music they want from EMI artists. This won't change the illegal file sharing side of things; maybe make it a little easier, but the music is already out there so what's the difference. I think it is a fantastic move to cater to what the consumers want, rather than telling them what they want.
the window of availability of the camcorded versions is very short. Counterfeiters invariably seek to improve the quality of their DVDs by dropping the camcorder versions as soon as the studios begin production of authentic DVDs (which provide the source for perfect copies).
Does anyone seriously believe that piracy is costing the movie industry so much that they are willing to abandon a country full of customers to make a point?
It's unreasonable to ask you to remember a username and password to access your account? Better call google, verizon wireless, AOL, Key Bank, Yahoo,...
f a reasonable person were to view the CGI character and identify it as Harrison Ford, and the filmmaker had not secured prior permission from Ford for the use of his likeness, then Ford would have grounds for a right-of-publicity action against the filmmakers.
I have to question this logic. I mean, if Ford refuses the role, are they banned from hiring another actor who looks like Harrison Ford? It's not like they're claiming it is Harrison Ford... that's just what Han Solo looks like.
Unfortunately, some fans were able to see through the bad script and terrible special effects to Natalie Portman, which is why my idiot friend still thinks episodes 1-3 were still good movies.
"India can live without Microsoft packages and even progress but Microsoft will find it tough without a huge country like India buying their software packages," he said.
The article almost reads like he's doing this specifically to piss off Microsoft, or to get them to lower their prices. So you're switching to open source, just do it and shut up already.
No, if they are (were) claiming that it would survive 26 drops, then that should be the minimum amount of abuse that could break it. The average should be much higher.
Well you probably are a mac fanboy. But irregardless, macs have a lot of different machines at a lot of different levels. They have the desktop workstation, the desktop powerhouse, the mobile laptop, the uber powerful laptop... about the only thing they don't have is a gaming machine, and I don't think the majority of hardcore gamers are going out and buying a dell or an hp anyways. The Zune is just one player, in three different colors. I still don't think it's doing well, but obviously they aren't going to grab 60% of the market with a HD capacity that only interests maybe 50% of the market.
You have to wonder what these numbers are really showing. It reads like it's compared to all sizes of mp3 players, from little 256mb flash drives to the 80GB iPod video. I would like to see how it compares to comparable players, instead of overall. Still these numbers are surprising, it's a medium sized player at a good price with a lot of marketing behind it.
With DRM, there is certainly a bigger risk that I'll lose access to the content I've legitimately purchased. If I download an MP3 and that pirating group decides to disappear off of the face of the earth, it makes no difference to me.
I was referring more to other security holes the software might open in your computer. If Sony decides to give themselves access to your private data, well, that's bad, but if someone finds out about it, there will be a class action lawsuit, and their reputation will get a black mark. If a pirate gets access to your private data, suddenly your credit card starts getting strange charges and you don't know why.. even if you do track it back to the pirates, the best you can do is block them and hope it doesn't happen again. And if your mp3 files become unusable... well, that sucks too, but it's not the end of the world. Also, how much time do you spend trying to find a pirated mp3 that actually works, vs finding it on iTunes?
But if Sony screws you over, at least you can sue them. You might not get much more than a sorry, but big companies can't afford the PR nightmare of messing up like that too often. Pirates, on the other hand, can do it for fun.
By no means am I saying all companies are ethical and all pirates are spreading viruses, but implying that the risk of legitimately purchased 'DRM' content has become more risky than piracy is a bit ridiculous.
Historically, no one has better understood the needs and frustrations of digital media consumers than pirates. They provide easy-to-install cracks with detailed documentation. Pirate organizations like Razor 1911 and Reloaded provide a free "service" to the public and their only competition is other similar release groups. Why do non-profit organizations provide vastly better service than legitimate for-profit companies?
There are lots of people out there willing to provide you with free access to protected content, but are they good people? They require anonymity and they have zero accountability. Sure, most of them won't burn you, but some of them do, and unlike when Sony does it, you have no recourse if pirated materials expose you to security risks.
Don't kid yourself. Steve Jobs may say, "I didn't want to put DRM into the iTunes store, it's the music industry that forced me to do it." But look at what DRM has done for iTunes and the iPod. The iPod can only play purchased music from iTunes or a independent music source. Noone who own an iPod is ever going to buy (DRM protected) music from Yahoo or Microsoft or other competitors using their own DRM. And only an iPod can play songs from iTunes (unless you burn + rerip it). So people who have bought a bunch of songs from iTunes are going to be reluctant to purchase a player from a different manufacturer. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs both see how this works, and that's why the Zune is not compatible with 'playsforsure.' Microsoft wants their own lock-in. But with companies like emusic and to a certain extent Yahoo moving away from DRM to an open format, as well as consumer unhappiness with DRM, the two CEOs are keeping their options open for the future, as well as keeping up appearances, by saying, "Well we never wanted DRM, it's the record labels." They are betting that the record labels are unwilling to give up DRM, which is true for the moment.
Is the percentage of songs sold through gift cards enough to make such a huge difference? Particularly outside the christmas season?
They are comparing two different things here. Forrester is saying, "Since January 1st, iTunes sales have fallen 65%." and ComScore is saying, "Compared to last year, iTunes sales are up 84%." Both can absolutely be correct. The ComScore numbers look like they were put together by Apple as a quick cover-up for the Forrester report. I agree that the numbers need to be looked at year-to-year as opposed to a 10 month sample, and Forrester had to expect that the media was going to run with their report of iTunes sales "dropping for the first time ever."
I think computer generated music can be really good music, and I think it's cool that this guy is doing it and has found an audience... this song wasn't that good. It was ok but there was nothing interesting about it, I found it quite simple and boring. There is plenty of better music out there, computer generated or not. Why is this guy getting attention?
Mod parent informative! It's still a slippery slope, but the summary makes it sound a lot worse than it is. The proposed bill would require reporting child pornography images. Not swearing, death threats, nudity, whatever other stuff you people are into.
Changing your liscence plate is a lot more difficult than changing your email address, and if the police happen to run your liscence plate for anything, they're going to know right away. Adding an email address/IM name is absolutely trivial, and if the authorities notice your fake email address is being used for child porn, or whatever, it's going to take more digging to figure out the email address doesn't match up with the person. In my opinion, it's encouraging sex offenders to change their email address, and in general learn to be more anonymous on the web, and also a waste of resources. Let them use my_name@aol.com for their myspace without asking them for registration, then when you catch them breaking their parole, it's that much simpler to prove.
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There was a time when every week there were 2 or 3 cds I was interested in buying. That time passed a few years ago. Every week when I get the Sunday paper, the first thing I do is open up the best buy ad to the "new cd releases" page. There's less and less to get excited about. Less in general. Some weeks there's like 1 release, and it's by a dead rapper.
No I disagree! It's very interesting that the RIAA wants us to follow the rules to a T, but they don't want to be held subject to the same rules themselves! This isn't putting away the chess set, this is more like a midgame threat on one of their more valuable pieces.
It brings us one step closer to a day when we can bombard the president with penises during his state of the union address!
It's easy to dismiss any product if you pick out the features it doesn't have and decide those are the features you want.
Only send 40 year old virgins!
One can already get all the free music they want from EMI artists. This won't change the illegal file sharing side of things; maybe make it a little easier, but the music is already out there so what's the difference. I think it is a fantastic move to cater to what the consumers want, rather than telling them what they want.
Does anyone seriously believe that piracy is costing the movie industry so much that they are willing to abandon a country full of customers to make a point?
You don't have to "maintain" anything, you just have to remember the login. Write it on a sticky and stick it on your monitor!
It's unreasonable to ask you to remember a username and password to access your account? Better call google, verizon wireless, AOL, Key Bank, Yahoo, ...
Most CD databases recognize my homemade CDs just fine. The only time I have to manually enter info is when I make a mix CD.
f a reasonable person were to view the CGI character and identify it as Harrison Ford, and the filmmaker had not secured prior permission from Ford for the use of his likeness, then Ford would have grounds for a right-of-publicity action against the filmmakers.
I have to question this logic. I mean, if Ford refuses the role, are they banned from hiring another actor who looks like Harrison Ford? It's not like they're claiming it is Harrison Ford... that's just what Han Solo looks like.
Unfortunately, some fans were able to see through the bad script and terrible special effects to Natalie Portman, which is why my idiot friend still thinks episodes 1-3 were still good movies.
The article almost reads like he's doing this specifically to piss off Microsoft, or to get them to lower their prices. So you're switching to open source, just do it and shut up already.
No, if they are (were) claiming that it would survive 26 drops, then that should be the minimum amount of abuse that could break it. The average should be much higher.
Well you probably are a mac fanboy. But irregardless, macs have a lot of different machines at a lot of different levels. They have the desktop workstation, the desktop powerhouse, the mobile laptop, the uber powerful laptop... about the only thing they don't have is a gaming machine, and I don't think the majority of hardcore gamers are going out and buying a dell or an hp anyways. The Zune is just one player, in three different colors. I still don't think it's doing well, but obviously they aren't going to grab 60% of the market with a HD capacity that only interests maybe 50% of the market.
You have to wonder what these numbers are really showing. It reads like it's compared to all sizes of mp3 players, from little 256mb flash drives to the 80GB iPod video. I would like to see how it compares to comparable players, instead of overall. Still these numbers are surprising, it's a medium sized player at a good price with a lot of marketing behind it.
With DRM, there is certainly a bigger risk that I'll lose access to the content I've legitimately purchased. If I download an MP3 and that pirating group decides to disappear off of the face of the earth, it makes no difference to me.
I was referring more to other security holes the software might open in your computer. If Sony decides to give themselves access to your private data, well, that's bad, but if someone finds out about it, there will be a class action lawsuit, and their reputation will get a black mark. If a pirate gets access to your private data, suddenly your credit card starts getting strange charges and you don't know why.. even if you do track it back to the pirates, the best you can do is block them and hope it doesn't happen again. And if your mp3 files become unusable... well, that sucks too, but it's not the end of the world. Also, how much time do you spend trying to find a pirated mp3 that actually works, vs finding it on iTunes?
But if Sony screws you over, at least you can sue them. You might not get much more than a sorry, but big companies can't afford the PR nightmare of messing up like that too often. Pirates, on the other hand, can do it for fun. By no means am I saying all companies are ethical and all pirates are spreading viruses, but implying that the risk of legitimately purchased 'DRM' content has become more risky than piracy is a bit ridiculous.
Historically, no one has better understood the needs and frustrations of digital media consumers than pirates. They provide easy-to-install cracks with detailed documentation. Pirate organizations like Razor 1911 and Reloaded provide a free "service" to the public and their only competition is other similar release groups. Why do non-profit organizations provide vastly better service than legitimate for-profit companies?
There are lots of people out there willing to provide you with free access to protected content, but are they good people? They require anonymity and they have zero accountability. Sure, most of them won't burn you, but some of them do, and unlike when Sony does it, you have no recourse if pirated materials expose you to security risks.
Don't kid yourself. Steve Jobs may say, "I didn't want to put DRM into the iTunes store, it's the music industry that forced me to do it." But look at what DRM has done for iTunes and the iPod. The iPod can only play purchased music from iTunes or a independent music source. Noone who own an iPod is ever going to buy (DRM protected) music from Yahoo or Microsoft or other competitors using their own DRM. And only an iPod can play songs from iTunes (unless you burn + rerip it). So people who have bought a bunch of songs from iTunes are going to be reluctant to purchase a player from a different manufacturer. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs both see how this works, and that's why the Zune is not compatible with 'playsforsure.' Microsoft wants their own lock-in. But with companies like emusic and to a certain extent Yahoo moving away from DRM to an open format, as well as consumer unhappiness with DRM, the two CEOs are keeping their options open for the future, as well as keeping up appearances, by saying, "Well we never wanted DRM, it's the record labels." They are betting that the record labels are unwilling to give up DRM, which is true for the moment.
Is the percentage of songs sold through gift cards enough to make such a huge difference? Particularly outside the christmas season?
They are comparing two different things here. Forrester is saying, "Since January 1st, iTunes sales have fallen 65%." and ComScore is saying, "Compared to last year, iTunes sales are up 84%." Both can absolutely be correct. The ComScore numbers look like they were put together by Apple as a quick cover-up for the Forrester report. I agree that the numbers need to be looked at year-to-year as opposed to a 10 month sample, and Forrester had to expect that the media was going to run with their report of iTunes sales "dropping for the first time ever."
I think computer generated music can be really good music, and I think it's cool that this guy is doing it and has found an audience... this song wasn't that good. It was ok but there was nothing interesting about it, I found it quite simple and boring. There is plenty of better music out there, computer generated or not. Why is this guy getting attention?
Mod parent informative! It's still a slippery slope, but the summary makes it sound a lot worse than it is. The proposed bill would require reporting child pornography images. Not swearing, death threats, nudity, whatever other stuff you people are into.
Changing your liscence plate is a lot more difficult than changing your email address, and if the police happen to run your liscence plate for anything, they're going to know right away. Adding an email address/IM name is absolutely trivial, and if the authorities notice your fake email address is being used for child porn, or whatever, it's going to take more digging to figure out the email address doesn't match up with the person. In my opinion, it's encouraging sex offenders to change their email address, and in general learn to be more anonymous on the web, and also a waste of resources. Let them use my_name@aol.com for their myspace without asking them for registration, then when you catch them breaking their parole, it's that much simpler to prove.