I will just make it a point to not watch or buy anything associated with the Olympic games. I mean, they're already tiring to the point of punishment to begin with, so why encourage abusive behavior? Maybe if enough people said "to hell with them", they might get a clue. What if they held a stadium-scale game, and nobody came? And when asked, people could just say "I don't like what's happened to the spirit of the Olympics, so I'm not going to waste any time/money on them." Do you suppose they'd get the message?
One thing that doesn't seem to come up much, if at all, is that IP and the results of it are some of the very few things that we actually export any more, and there's a lot of money in it.
I'm not an economist, but I know the money's gotta come home. You can't run a trade deficit forever or you'll run out of money unless you just print it, and if you do that, it loses value really fast.
So, I suspect what nobody who knows the real score wants to say out loud is that we dearly need to keep our IP close to the vest, or we've got very little to offer any trading partners. Once that happens, we're in deep, meaningful sheep dip.
So, ACTA? You betcha. It's not just the RIAA and MPAA - everybody wants to keep from killing the Golden Goose.
Some people leave their wifi open, which is fine, but we've already seen that the behavior can be problematic. Look at Jamie Thomas. I don't now that those songs were shared via wifi, but Thomas is definitely on the hook for the activity.
What if somebody parks outside your house and proceeds to download a mountain of kiddie porn? Even if you successfully defend yourself against such a thing, the stink is still on you, and the chances of successfully defending yourself aren't very good.
From that point of view, this whole thing could be considered something of a public service, kinda like telling someone they left their headlights on or their dog's on the loose.
I'm not sure why, but this reminds me of the Jerry Taylor/Tuttle, AZ/CentOS debacle. That was an incident completely unrelated to this, but you saw the same sort of thing happen where a supposed professional thought he was the "injured" party and was so far off base you could see it unaided from outer space, but was so unaware of the fact that it became a widespread joke.
I suspect what happens is at some point the "injured" party becomes so invested in the fiction of their idea that there's simply no reasoning with them. In their mind, they have to hold their ground or risk being labelled a fool.
Sad part is, it's the Streisand Effect at full-tilt boogie. The more they fight, the more foolish they look and the more people are looking. It becomes a train-wreck spectacle you can't look away from.
These are all clearly good arguments, but my fear is they're inadvertently writing the future amendments to copyright law in their presentation. Congress wrote a good law (for a change) and now the maximalists will have to have it amended to prevent all the defenses against their misguided actions. Here they are!
Ads have become so ubiquitous, I've developed severe ad blindness. In fact, the very existence of an ad exists tends to drive me away from a product or service and since they're wasting my time I take measures to reduce my exposure to them as much as possible.
But, assuming I'm forced to see and ad, nothing reduces its effectiveness more than a celebrity endorsement or aggravating presentation. Hollywood's denizens are fakers by design and intent. Sports players aren't the brightest pennies in the fountain, corporate lights have hidden agendas, and politicians are a combination of all the above. Getting George Clooney, Tiger Woods, Bill Gates or Nancy Pelosi to say something is a Good Thing only serves to take it off my list of choices should I need the type of product or service they're hawking.
Just that. Too funny. I don't know anybody who doesn't have nearly the entire Beatles discography stashed somewhere, and most of those people would have been more than happy to pay for it. In fact, most of those people have paid for that same content several times over replacing worn out albums, then 8-track tapes, then cassettes, then disks.
Most of them don't feel a twinge of guilt over "pirating" what they have, either, having already paid for the rights, artwork, royalties, distribution, and myriad other costs so many times.
35 hours per minute is 35x60 minutes (2100 minutes) per minute. A minute's worth of low-res video = roughly 4MB, so 2100 minutes times 4MB is 8400MB of data per minute, which translates into 504GB/hr (8400x60). Over the course of a year, that works out to over 4 exabytes (8760x504 or hours/year times GB/hr). That's huge! Even if they buy 1TB drives, they'd have to buy (and have spinning) roughly 4 million drives/yr. And don't forget that's all gotta be backed up somewhere.
Then, think about how much data the gummint is stashing. I suspect it's substantially more. Then consider Yahoo!, Microsoft, Dell, HP, et al. It's no wonder HDDs are so cheap. They've got to reproduce like insects!
How much time/money Microsoft has invested in Silverlight has little to do with its adoption or efficacy. Look how many billions they spent repainting Windows to give the illusion of a "new" OS called "Vista", only to realize a major disappointment. That's just one of many misfires they've had over the years.
What did they think, that old, disadvantaged and/or financially challenged folks can afford high-speed broadband, but not TV? Those would be the very people who aren't switching, if they've even got cable TV service to begin with.
The degree to which the entertainment industry can engage in self-delusion never ceases to amaze me. I mean, it shouldn't even take 5 seconds thought, let alone polls or studies for this kind of data to be clear. I wonder if they have to do a poll every day to find out if gravity still exists?
Regardless of what artists can do, good, bad, or indifferent, BitTorrent needs to engage/encourage any activity that shows it's not merely a way to break copyright. As it is, it looks to some like some kind of dope dealer, only existing to facilitate the misguided behavior of others. As such, it's easier to simply outlaw their existence in a misguided and ineffective effort to control that behavior.
Thing is, bittorrent is an excellent way to exchange large files at low cost. The F/OSS community, for instance, makes heavy use of it to distribute software. This is literally free stuff that the authors/owners want to be spread around (or at least don't care if it is), but due to lack of compensation aren't usually willing to sponsor large server farms and administrative oversight to do it. Bittorrent is the perfect solution. Spread the time/cost over a large base to the point where it isn't even noticed, and everybody's happy.
"We've already covered the bizarre story of Homeland Security effectively working for Disney in seizing some domains of sites that were used to file share movies (way, way, way outside of Homeland Security's mandate), and covered the sneaky attempt to defend those moves by conflating copyright infringement online with counterfeit drugs being sold online."
Perhaps the DHS feels that enforcing IP laws is pertinent to their mission since the US produces little else anymore, so protecting our only export other than dollars is essential to national security, inasmuch as a functional economy is essential to upholding the imagined value of a dollar.
We're essentially a service economy now, which amounts to a humongous circle-jerk. I pay you so you can pay him so he can pay his supporter so his supporter can pay me, with the government in the middle every step of the way brushing off crumbs into their accounts. Nobody produces anything, they just do things, like mainly think. Lose grip on your thinking, and you're all done.
Back when we made things like cars, trucks, chemicals, furniture, food, clothing, consumer goods, etc., we had things to sell to other countries. Now? Not so much. We got movies and music of questionable value, but certainly of greater value than what most other countries produce. Problem is, it's just thought. Nothing tangible, or scarce enough to raise its value. Other countries produce tangible goods, so they have something to trade.
It's a sad state of affairs we're in. I'm almost glad I'm dying soon. Ain't no flying cars anyway [grin]
When they can spend millions stashing tweets, you know the government has officially jumped the shark on frivolous spending. As if there were any question...
Anyway, if they want to piss away millions on making a game revolving around something they clearly don't understand, why not turn it into a jobs program, rather than hire Microsoft to create it? They'll just piss money away for a couple years and come out with some garbage that'll only run on Windows, and then only for a few minutes before crashing harder than Obama's numerous idiotic ideas for stimulating the economy. Then, who'd want to play the stupid thing? They wouldn't even be able to give it away.
Windsor's crime rate relative to Detroit's is so low, you could almost say there's no such thing as crime in that city. Their annual rates are lower than the daily rates for Detroit. For example, in 2007, their annual homicide rate was 1.2 per 100,000 people. So, they're understandably sensitive about appearing to be similar to the rathole they exist so close to.
You can see some of their stats at http://www.citystats.ca/city/Ontario/Windsor.html if you're interested.
I think you're right. I know in my case, I'm much more likely to see what they have to say at National Review than The Huffington Post.Those idiots at THP just don't know what they're talking about
But, what's a mother to do? There isn't a source extant that doesn't add bias to their reporting/repeating/interpreting. It's unavoidable.
I haven't subscribed to a print paper in well over 10 years. Last time I bought one was because it was cheaper than a tarp when I needed to do some painting.
I suspect the reason to any of these dingbats wants you to use specific viewers is so they can track your behavior. If they let you use whatever browser you want, usage data may not get back to them because their scripts get intercepted or blocked.
It's the only thing that makes sense. None of these guys develop viewers to make the users happy - why would they? There are a jillion of them out there already. There's no sense in reinventing the wheel, especially when you consider what it costs to do so. But, if you consider that they develop viewers to make themselves happy from a control and data collection standpoint, then you can see a motivation.
I think I must have a special account, too. I didn't get any "automatic" connections, and I was able to opt out of the whole thing as well.
I don't think it's a good idea, but I never thought Facebook or MySpace would take off, either. Shows how much I know. Apparently, a great many people are more than willing to share a lot more information than they should. Maybe I'm too private, or perhaps even paranoid or anti-social, but I don't want people to know every single thing about me and/or my friends, right down to reading our mail.
I hate to make ad hominem attacks, and I'm not a psychiatrist, but the more I hear/read of what Mr. Murdoch says, the more convinced I become that the poor man is losing his grip.
Doesn't he have boards of directors or advisors or somebody to sorta guide him along? If nothing else, get him out of the spotlight. Regardless of what people may think of the various media organizations he owns/controls, he's making them lose credibility by association.
Let them eat cake
I will just make it a point to not watch or buy anything associated with the Olympic games. I mean, they're already tiring to the point of punishment to begin with, so why encourage abusive behavior? Maybe if enough people said "to hell with them", they might get a clue. What if they held a stadium-scale game, and nobody came? And when asked, people could just say "I don't like what's happened to the spirit of the Olympics, so I'm not going to waste any time/money on them." Do you suppose they'd get the message?
Balance of Trade
One thing that doesn't seem to come up much, if at all, is that IP and the results of it are some of the very few things that we actually export any more, and there's a lot of money in it.
I'm not an economist, but I know the money's gotta come home. You can't run a trade deficit forever or you'll run out of money unless you just print it, and if you do that, it loses value really fast.
So, I suspect what nobody who knows the real score wants to say out loud is that we dearly need to keep our IP close to the vest, or we've got very little to offer any trading partners. Once that happens, we're in deep, meaningful sheep dip.
So, ACTA? You betcha. It's not just the RIAA and MPAA - everybody wants to keep from killing the Golden Goose.
It's not illegal, but some people don't understand their exposure
Some people leave their wifi open, which is fine, but we've already seen that the behavior can be problematic. Look at Jamie Thomas. I don't now that those songs were shared via wifi, but Thomas is definitely on the hook for the activity.
What if somebody parks outside your house and proceeds to download a mountain of kiddie porn? Even if you successfully defend yourself against such a thing, the stink is still on you, and the chances of successfully defending yourself aren't very good.
From that point of view, this whole thing could be considered something of a public service, kinda like telling someone they left their headlights on or their dog's on the loose.
Clueless people
I'm not sure why, but this reminds me of the Jerry Taylor/Tuttle, AZ/CentOS debacle. That was an incident completely unrelated to this, but you saw the same sort of thing happen where a supposed professional thought he was the "injured" party and was so far off base you could see it unaided from outer space, but was so unaware of the fact that it became a widespread joke.
I suspect what happens is at some point the "injured" party becomes so invested in the fiction of their idea that there's simply no reasoning with them. In their mind, they have to hold their ground or risk being labelled a fool.
Sad part is, it's the Streisand Effect at full-tilt boogie. The more they fight, the more foolish they look and the more people are looking. It becomes a train-wreck spectacle you can't look away from.
YouTube is writing the new maximalist rules for lobbyists
These are all clearly good arguments, but my fear is they're inadvertently writing the future amendments to copyright law in their presentation. Congress wrote a good law (for a change) and now the maximalists will have to have it amended to prevent all the defenses against their misguided actions. Here they are!
Lack of authority
Ads have become so ubiquitous, I've developed severe ad blindness. In fact, the very existence of an ad exists tends to drive me away from a product or service and since they're wasting my time I take measures to reduce my exposure to them as much as possible.
But, assuming I'm forced to see and ad, nothing reduces its effectiveness more than a celebrity endorsement or aggravating presentation. Hollywood's denizens are fakers by design and intent. Sports players aren't the brightest pennies in the fountain, corporate lights have hidden agendas, and politicians are a combination of all the above. Getting George Clooney, Tiger Woods, Bill Gates or Nancy Pelosi to say something is a Good Thing only serves to take it off my list of choices should I need the type of product or service they're hawking.
Too funny
Just that. Too funny. I don't know anybody who doesn't have nearly the entire Beatles discography stashed somewhere, and most of those people would have been more than happy to pay for it. In fact, most of those people have paid for that same content several times over replacing worn out albums, then 8-track tapes, then cassettes, then disks.
Most of them don't feel a twinge of guilt over "pirating" what they have, either, having already paid for the rights, artwork, royalties, distribution, and myriad other costs so many times.
Silly humans.
No wonder HDDs are so cheap
Let's do a little simple math here...
35 hours per minute is 35x60 minutes (2100 minutes) per minute. A minute's worth of low-res video = roughly 4MB, so 2100 minutes times 4MB is 8400MB of data per minute, which translates into 504GB/hr (8400x60). Over the course of a year, that works out to over 4 exabytes (8760x504 or hours/year times GB/hr). That's huge! Even if they buy 1TB drives, they'd have to buy (and have spinning) roughly 4 million drives/yr. And don't forget that's all gotta be backed up somewhere.
Then, think about how much data the gummint is stashing. I suspect it's substantially more. Then consider Yahoo!, Microsoft, Dell, HP, et al. It's no wonder HDDs are so cheap. They've got to reproduce like insects!
(untitled comment)
How much time/money Microsoft has invested in Silverlight has little to do with its adoption or efficacy. Look how many billions they spent repainting Windows to give the illusion of a "new" OS called "Vista", only to realize a major disappointment. That's just one of many misfires they've had over the years.
No surprise
What did they think, that old, disadvantaged and/or financially challenged folks can afford high-speed broadband, but not TV? Those would be the very people who aren't switching, if they've even got cable TV service to begin with.
The degree to which the entertainment industry can engage in self-delusion never ceases to amaze me. I mean, it shouldn't even take 5 seconds thought, let alone polls or studies for this kind of data to be clear. I wonder if they have to do a poll every day to find out if gravity still exists?
(untitled comment)
Regardless of what artists can do, good, bad, or indifferent, BitTorrent needs to engage/encourage any activity that shows it's not merely a way to break copyright. As it is, it looks to some like some kind of dope dealer, only existing to facilitate the misguided behavior of others. As such, it's easier to simply outlaw their existence in a misguided and ineffective effort to control that behavior.
Thing is, bittorrent is an excellent way to exchange large files at low cost. The F/OSS community, for instance, makes heavy use of it to distribute software. This is literally free stuff that the authors/owners want to be spread around (or at least don't care if it is), but due to lack of compensation aren't usually willing to sponsor large server farms and administrative oversight to do it. Bittorrent is the perfect solution. Spread the time/cost over a large base to the point where it isn't even noticed, and everybody's happy.
DHS Mandate
"We've already covered the bizarre story of Homeland Security effectively working for Disney in seizing some domains of sites that were used to file share movies (way, way, way outside of Homeland Security's mandate), and covered the sneaky attempt to defend those moves by conflating copyright infringement online with counterfeit drugs being sold online."
Perhaps the DHS feels that enforcing IP laws is pertinent to their mission since the US produces little else anymore, so protecting our only export other than dollars is essential to national security, inasmuch as a functional economy is essential to upholding the imagined value of a dollar.
We're essentially a service economy now, which amounts to a humongous circle-jerk. I pay you so you can pay him so he can pay his supporter so his supporter can pay me, with the government in the middle every step of the way brushing off crumbs into their accounts. Nobody produces anything, they just do things, like mainly think. Lose grip on your thinking, and you're all done.
Back when we made things like cars, trucks, chemicals, furniture, food, clothing, consumer goods, etc., we had things to sell to other countries. Now? Not so much. We got movies and music of questionable value, but certainly of greater value than what most other countries produce. Problem is, it's just thought. Nothing tangible, or scarce enough to raise its value. Other countries produce tangible goods, so they have something to trade.
It's a sad state of affairs we're in. I'm almost glad I'm dying soon. Ain't no flying cars anyway [grin]
(untitled comment) (as KGwagner)
When they can spend millions stashing tweets, you know the government has officially jumped the shark on frivolous spending. As if there were any question...
Anyway, if they want to piss away millions on making a game revolving around something they clearly don't understand, why not turn it into a jobs program, rather than hire Microsoft to create it? They'll just piss money away for a couple years and come out with some garbage that'll only run on Windows, and then only for a few minutes before crashing harder than Obama's numerous idiotic ideas for stimulating the economy. Then, who'd want to play the stupid thing? They wouldn't even be able to give it away.
Windsor's crime rate
Windsor's crime rate relative to Detroit's is so low, you could almost say there's no such thing as crime in that city. Their annual rates are lower than the daily rates for Detroit. For example, in 2007, their annual homicide rate was 1.2 per 100,000 people. So, they're understandably sensitive about appearing to be similar to the rathole they exist so close to. You can see some of their stats at http://www.citystats.ca/city/Ontario/Windsor.html if you're interested.
Re:
I think you're right. I know in my case, I'm much more likely to see what they have to say at National Review than The Huffington Post.Those idiots at THP just don't know what they're talking about
But, what's a mother to do? There isn't a source extant that doesn't add bias to their reporting/repeating/interpreting. It's unavoidable.
I haven't subscribed to a print paper in well over 10 years. Last time I bought one was because it was cheaper than a tarp when I needed to do some painting.
Script blockers
I suspect the reason to any of these dingbats wants you to use specific viewers is so they can track your behavior. If they let you use whatever browser you want, usage data may not get back to them because their scripts get intercepted or blocked.
It's the only thing that makes sense. None of these guys develop viewers to make the users happy - why would they? There are a jillion of them out there already. There's no sense in reinventing the wheel, especially when you consider what it costs to do so. But, if you consider that they develop viewers to make themselves happy from a control and data collection standpoint, then you can see a motivation.
Opt out
I think I must have a special account, too. I didn't get any "automatic" connections, and I was able to opt out of the whole thing as well.
I don't think it's a good idea, but I never thought Facebook or MySpace would take off, either. Shows how much I know. Apparently, a great many people are more than willing to share a lot more information than they should. Maybe I'm too private, or perhaps even paranoid or anti-social, but I don't want people to know every single thing about me and/or my friends, right down to reading our mail.
(untitled comment)
...and mother's milk leads to heroin.
(untitled comment)
I guess if you're going to write an idiotic law, you may as well go full-tilt boogie. It's all bread and circuses anyway.
I'm not a psychiatrist, but...
I hate to make ad hominem attacks, and I'm not a psychiatrist, but the more I hear/read of what Mr. Murdoch says, the more convinced I become that the poor man is losing his grip.
Doesn't he have boards of directors or advisors or somebody to sorta guide him along? If nothing else, get him out of the spotlight. Regardless of what people may think of the various media organizations he owns/controls, he's making them lose credibility by association.