We view free video sharing sites as we do radio... the goal is exposure, generating attention and interest and (one hopes) translating that into secondary sales/profits for additional content or value. I think it's fair to say a paywall (particularly $2 per channel) would reduce views/subscriptions by at least 95% right up front, probably closer to 98 or 99% in the long term when you consider the millions of casual views. That's millions of opportunities to create customers lost because you're treating the video itself as the product.
Only the best, most innovative and most dedicated/updated channels will be able to generate enough subscriptions to be profitable... and they'll have to have an extremely strong brand or high popularity before secluding themselves behind the paywall. Frankly I can't think of 50 channels that fit that bill... and they're calling this a first step.
Either they're trying to sell themselves as a vehicle for big media to use, the way Facebook supplanted many companies' websites, or they're going to have to lower the price and bundle the homegrown content to make it appealing.
... that EA has no fear whatsoever. And why should they? They can essentially utter the game industry version of "Go F*** yourself, San Diego"... and they will continue to make boatloads of money from fans whose consumerism and flashy-game addiction will always win over principles and precedents.
I hope I'm not the only one who read "dp you legally" and immediately thought of lewd sexual references. I spent 3 seconds wondering how one guy could accomplish that, and another 7 seconds wondering if that really is illegal in Louisiana.
If Pfizer didn't report a known side effect, that's definitely incriminating. I didn't see mention in the article as to whether users of the name-brand version were also reporting these symptoms.
As much as I'm not a fan of big pharma, I wonder.... would the company that patented a particular cell phone technology be held responsible once that patent had expired if other companies duplicating that technology exactly to specification created products that caused brain cancer?
It's probably unreasonable to demand that generic drug companies perform their own testing, especially after the drug has been FDA-approved and in use for 20 years.... but on the other hand it is their product.
Grounds for challenging a grade of B- on my English essay:
Mrs. Johnson,
I'm aware the essay I turned in for this assignment was substandard, but current copyright ownership issues make it impossible for me to relinquish my best effort and still reserve the right to reuse or rework said essay professionally later in life. Though I cannot show you the genuine essay lest I disadvantage myself financially or creatively, please take my word for it that I completed the assignment with A+ quality and adjust my grade accordingly.
"The UCMJ also states a serviceman does not have to obey orders which are not lawful."
Boojum already covered this. Lawful is in accordance with the current laws, in this case the UCMJ, which his actions were not. He has the option to refuse to participate in transmitting data he felt represented an unlawful action, or to escalate to an authority on interpreting the "lawfulness" of the order... but neither would authorize him to proactively broadcast confidential data on the internet.
Even diehard proponents of whistleblowing (as I am) have to acknowledge it's not possible to give people free reign to determine how best to proceed and what un-ordered actions to take in a given situation when you have even the slightest hope of a successful and cohesive organizational structure, much less corporate or national security.
If I deposit a large sum of cash and the bank teller suspects I might be a drug dealer, and the bank president orders them to simply do their job... they do not have the right as a whistleblower to make a webpage with my personal info laden with accusations. There are appropriate and often legally established methods for objecting and attempting to expose corruption. Bradly Manning did what he did, HOW he did, for one reason... he wanted to be a counter-culture leet haxor hero.
In the fantastical mythical world of reason, rationality, cause and effect..... what happens next is ServerBeach loses all of their clients who sub-host and a few of the others who have moral convictions, and see a very hurtful (potentially damaging) drop in revenue. And all the other hosting companies across the kingdom tread lightly and thoughtfully, fearing a similar fate.
Meanwhile, in reality, the peasants go on gnawing on the crusty loaf of apathy... and an academic publishing company congratulates itself for not "losing" more money by helping to foster an appreciation for education in students that might one day result in the kinds of adults who might actually read and buy academic or educational books.
Why should you have to guess? Didn't you do some digging and come up with proof to back up your claim, so it doesn't look like a snarky appeal to motive shot from the hip?
Interesting. So the question: How long will OpenStreetMap allow their services and bandwidth be used for free by other companies to make money off of consumers? ... may really boil down to "How long will the Google competitors supporting this endeavor help subsidize the shift in power?"
It will take many, many years for Google to lose the general audience on Google Maps. People are still using AOL while on broadband... there's really no other explanation than extreme consumer inertia. Losing the big companies is definitely a PR hit and results in less visibility, but I'm sure they crunched the numbers. As long as Google Maps is fully integrated with the rest of their products, and as long as they don't fall too far behind OSM in terms of usability and features, they're probably just waiting for the competitors to feel the pain of having to provide free maps while other companies use them to get rich.
"Wow! you remember what you believed when you were born?"
Our understanding of newborn brains and the human learning process leaves me confident I was also an Aconsumerist, an Acartesianist, an Amazdakist, and quite likely an Azoroastrianist as well.
"I don't think anyone knows what a baby believes..."
"Actually, we are born agnostic. An agnostic is someone who neither believes or disbelieves in the existence of a deity or deities"
Actually, we are born Atheist in that we have "no belief in God(s)" until we're taught to do so. Agnosticism, like gnosticism, is about knowledge... not about belief. Your confidence in your ability to know something and your belief one way or the other regarding God are two very different things and are not mutually exclusive. The term "Agnostic" defined as someone who isn't sure if they believe in God is a wretched and deliberately disingenuous label created by Theists as a kinder softer more redeemable middle ground, allowing them to further isolate and demonize Atheists as "people who choose not to believe in God".
The same arrogant and ignorant campaign to redefine concepts like Agnosticism, or "Scientific Theory", is what makes these people so despicable, and it shouldn't be surprising when someone jumps to the conclusion that the latest southern parent to reject a book with hardly any sex as "pornographic" is a fundamentalist Christian. It's a fairly well founded assumption.
"When you buy into a kickstarter project, you take a risk that it will be what you expect."
The word "Kickstarter" is extraneous to the truth of that statement.
"Mark my words: there will big complaints about fraud and misrepresentation with Kickstarter."
There will be complaints about misrepresentation against creators who are hosted by kickstarter. Just as there are against freelance coders on contract sites. Just as there are against anyone with whom you form a contract when the result is not to your satisfaction. It states quite clearly on the site that you are not making an investment with a specific and guaranteed return... it's more like very specifically-directed charity.
I don't actively use Kickstarter, but honestly... do you have a single legitimate complaint against their model that doesn't also apply to the universe at large?
There were some who pegged Techdirt as a converted copyright activism website over the past few years, but we all know it was a conversation well worth having and now we're seeing the fruits of the labor. The ongoing assault on personal freedoms (and the Bill of Rights in general) is by no means limited to the internet, but if we can preserve this bulwark as best as we're able there's at least some hope of a digital world worth participating in a few more years down the road.
Next stop... Lamar Smith's involuntary retirement.
Game companies have been slowly but steadily breaking us in to DRM and unreasonable requirements for several years now, to the point where consumers are now more accepting of something that would have been labeled absolutely outrageous a few years ago. A very vulgar analogy comes to mind, which I'll refrain from sharing. We're at the point now where you need a stable high speed connection, forced registration and membership to sites or services you don't want, and one or several background processes competing for CPU (and often popping up ads).. all to play an offline SINGLE-PLAYER game.
There are only two ways to express displeasure with companies like EA... find a way to pirate their games or rent them from Gamefly. In either case, when profits start slipping these large publishing companies, having completed the acquisition of smaller more innovative and actually useful development shops, will turtle up and start producing fewer games, spend less effort trying to progress the industry, and fall back to making this year's iteration of their list of tried and true franchises. And you get another couple of sports games and shooters that don't evolve beyond throwing more pixels and better hardware at the problem.
Sorry, but that was a ridiculous post made for no other reason than to continue to contradict Masnick regardless of the topic at hand. There's a point where the humor wears off.
The legislature made a specific clarification to protect the people from an overall outrageous misinterpretation of police rights. Removing this clarification muddies the water. Police will continue to abuse this overreaching interpretation to violate individual privacy rights when there is no physical threat, and citizens will have to pursue legal means after their rights have been violated, at their own expense and time, when legislation was already in place to prevent the process to begin with.
Jerry Brown has been doing a bang-up job lately of making people miss Arnold Schwarzenegger.
I was shocked and appalled to hear some of Energy Armor's business practices. First, they bought up a bunch of other companies who created and manufactured sports bracelets, thereby diminishing competition and diversity. They placed biometric chips in the bracelets to prevent the items from being resold, traded, given or shared with other people... mentioned in passing in overly complex EULA. The chips of course were unnecessarily prominent and caused abrasion, rashes and occasional jolts of electricity or burn marks on the wrists of legitimate, lawful, paying consumers. What's worse, they arrogantly dismissed requests and recommendations from their sporting customers and insisted they knew for a fact that everyone wanted their bracelets either pink or fecal brown, with clunky bulky attachments that occasionally restricted hand movement.
What's that? Energy Armor didn't do any of those things?
Then how the hell are they being confused with EA?
Here's the thing...
We view free video sharing sites as we do radio... the goal is exposure, generating attention and interest and (one hopes) translating that into secondary sales/profits for additional content or value. I think it's fair to say a paywall (particularly $2 per channel) would reduce views/subscriptions by at least 95% right up front, probably closer to 98 or 99% in the long term when you consider the millions of casual views. That's millions of opportunities to create customers lost because you're treating the video itself as the product.
Only the best, most innovative and most dedicated/updated channels will be able to generate enough subscriptions to be profitable... and they'll have to have an extremely strong brand or high popularity before secluding themselves behind the paywall. Frankly I can't think of 50 channels that fit that bill... and they're calling this a first step.
Either they're trying to sell themselves as a vehicle for big media to use, the way Facebook supplanted many companies' websites, or they're going to have to lower the price and bundle the homegrown content to make it appealing.
Re: Re: This never wears out for you, does it?
"Do you also stop reading books, or stop watching movies, just before it gets to the climax of the story?"
I get the feeling having to stop well short of the climax is part of the reason he has this much free time for trolling.
Proof positive...
... that EA has no fear whatsoever. And why should they? They can essentially utter the game industry version of "Go F*** yourself, San Diego"... and they will continue to make boatloads of money from fans whose consumerism and flashy-game addiction will always win over principles and precedents.
And they know it.
And we know it.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Tomato - Tomayto - Tomayo - Tomony -- *gasp* ALAN MOONY!
I hope....
I hope I'm not the only one who read "dp you legally" and immediately thought of lewd sexual references. I spent 3 seconds wondering how one guy could accomplish that, and another 7 seconds wondering if that really is illegal in Louisiana.
Re:
If Pfizer didn't report a known side effect, that's definitely incriminating. I didn't see mention in the article as to whether users of the name-brand version were also reporting these symptoms.
As much as I'm not a fan of big pharma, I wonder.... would the company that patented a particular cell phone technology be held responsible once that patent had expired if other companies duplicating that technology exactly to specification created products that caused brain cancer?
It's probably unreasonable to demand that generic drug companies perform their own testing, especially after the drug has been FDA-approved and in use for 20 years.... but on the other hand it is their product.
(untitled comment)
The video is funny.
The fact that it's set to a muzak version of "We Are The World" is nothing short of classic.
(untitled comment)
Grounds for challenging a grade of B- on my English essay:
Mrs. Johnson,
I'm aware the essay I turned in for this assignment was substandard, but current copyright ownership issues make it impossible for me to relinquish my best effort and still reserve the right to reuse or rework said essay professionally later in life. Though I cannot show you the genuine essay lest I disadvantage myself financially or creatively, please take my word for it that I completed the assignment with A+ quality and adjust my grade accordingly.
Re: Re: Court Martial is not the same as Federal Court
"The UCMJ also states a serviceman does not have to obey orders which are not lawful."
Boojum already covered this. Lawful is in accordance with the current laws, in this case the UCMJ, which his actions were not. He has the option to refuse to participate in transmitting data he felt represented an unlawful action, or to escalate to an authority on interpreting the "lawfulness" of the order... but neither would authorize him to proactively broadcast confidential data on the internet.
Even diehard proponents of whistleblowing (as I am) have to acknowledge it's not possible to give people free reign to determine how best to proceed and what un-ordered actions to take in a given situation when you have even the slightest hope of a successful and cohesive organizational structure, much less corporate or national security.
If I deposit a large sum of cash and the bank teller suspects I might be a drug dealer, and the bank president orders them to simply do their job... they do not have the right as a whistleblower to make a webpage with my personal info laden with accusations. There are appropriate and often legally established methods for objecting and attempting to expose corruption. Bradly Manning did what he did, HOW he did, for one reason... he wanted to be a counter-culture leet haxor hero.
Re:
".... this idiotic, always-going-to-be-extremist-and-fringe blog. What a fucking joke. You guys are a cult of idiots.
I'll see you all tomorrow."
You forgot the last line... went ahead and added it for you.
Self-correcting....
In the fantastical mythical world of reason, rationality, cause and effect..... what happens next is ServerBeach loses all of their clients who sub-host and a few of the others who have moral convictions, and see a very hurtful (potentially damaging) drop in revenue. And all the other hosting companies across the kingdom tread lightly and thoughtfully, fearing a similar fate.
Meanwhile, in reality, the peasants go on gnawing on the crusty loaf of apathy... and an academic publishing company congratulates itself for not "losing" more money by helping to foster an appreciation for education in students that might one day result in the kinds of adults who might actually read and buy academic or educational books.
Re:
Why should you have to guess? Didn't you do some digging and come up with proof to back up your claim, so it doesn't look like a snarky appeal to motive shot from the hip?
Re: Something else?
Interesting. So the question: How long will OpenStreetMap allow their services and bandwidth be used for free by other companies to make money off of consumers? ... may really boil down to "How long will the Google competitors supporting this endeavor help subsidize the shift in power?"
It will take many, many years for Google to lose the general audience on Google Maps. People are still using AOL while on broadband... there's really no other explanation than extreme consumer inertia. Losing the big companies is definitely a PR hit and results in less visibility, but I'm sure they crunched the numbers. As long as Google Maps is fully integrated with the rest of their products, and as long as they don't fall too far behind OSM in terms of usability and features, they're probably just waiting for the competitors to feel the pain of having to provide free maps while other companies use them to get rich.
Re: Re: Re: Re: I see it the other way
"Wow! you remember what you believed when you were born?"
Our understanding of newborn brains and the human learning process leaves me confident I was also an Aconsumerist, an Acartesianist, an Amazdakist, and quite likely an Azoroastrianist as well.
"I don't think anyone knows what a baby believes..."
Obviously you're an Agnostic.
Re: Re: I see it the other way
"Actually, we are born agnostic. An agnostic is someone who neither believes or disbelieves in the existence of a deity or deities"
Actually, we are born Atheist in that we have "no belief in God(s)" until we're taught to do so. Agnosticism, like gnosticism, is about knowledge... not about belief. Your confidence in your ability to know something and your belief one way or the other regarding God are two very different things and are not mutually exclusive. The term "Agnostic" defined as someone who isn't sure if they believe in God is a wretched and deliberately disingenuous label created by Theists as a kinder softer more redeemable middle ground, allowing them to further isolate and demonize Atheists as "people who choose not to believe in God".
The same arrogant and ignorant campaign to redefine concepts like Agnosticism, or "Scientific Theory", is what makes these people so despicable, and it shouldn't be surprising when someone jumps to the conclusion that the latest southern parent to reject a book with hardly any sex as "pornographic" is a fundamentalist Christian. It's a fairly well founded assumption.
Re: Re: Re: Another Paywall
"When you buy into a kickstarter project, you take a risk that it will be what you expect."
The word "Kickstarter" is extraneous to the truth of that statement.
"Mark my words: there will big complaints about fraud and misrepresentation with Kickstarter."
There will be complaints about misrepresentation against creators who are hosted by kickstarter. Just as there are against freelance coders on contract sites. Just as there are against anyone with whom you form a contract when the result is not to your satisfaction. It states quite clearly on the site that you are not making an investment with a specific and guaranteed return... it's more like very specifically-directed charity.
I don't actively use Kickstarter, but honestly... do you have a single legitimate complaint against their model that doesn't also apply to the universe at large?
Congrats
There were some who pegged Techdirt as a converted copyright activism website over the past few years, but we all know it was a conversation well worth having and now we're seeing the fruits of the labor. The ongoing assault on personal freedoms (and the Bill of Rights in general) is by no means limited to the internet, but if we can preserve this bulwark as best as we're able there's at least some hope of a digital world worth participating in a few more years down the road.
Next stop... Lamar Smith's involuntary retirement.
Re: Harder to boycott...
Game companies have been slowly but steadily breaking us in to DRM and unreasonable requirements for several years now, to the point where consumers are now more accepting of something that would have been labeled absolutely outrageous a few years ago. A very vulgar analogy comes to mind, which I'll refrain from sharing. We're at the point now where you need a stable high speed connection, forced registration and membership to sites or services you don't want, and one or several background processes competing for CPU (and often popping up ads).. all to play an offline SINGLE-PLAYER game.
There are only two ways to express displeasure with companies like EA... find a way to pirate their games or rent them from Gamefly. In either case, when profits start slipping these large publishing companies, having completed the acquisition of smaller more innovative and actually useful development shops, will turtle up and start producing fewer games, spend less effort trying to progress the industry, and fall back to making this year's iteration of their list of tried and true franchises. And you get another couple of sports games and shooters that don't evolve beyond throwing more pixels and better hardware at the problem.
Re:
Sorry, but that was a ridiculous post made for no other reason than to continue to contradict Masnick regardless of the topic at hand. There's a point where the humor wears off.
The legislature made a specific clarification to protect the people from an overall outrageous misinterpretation of police rights. Removing this clarification muddies the water. Police will continue to abuse this overreaching interpretation to violate individual privacy rights when there is no physical threat, and citizens will have to pursue legal means after their rights have been violated, at their own expense and time, when legislation was already in place to prevent the process to begin with.
Jerry Brown has been doing a bang-up job lately of making people miss Arnold Schwarzenegger.
How dare they...
I was shocked and appalled to hear some of Energy Armor's business practices. First, they bought up a bunch of other companies who created and manufactured sports bracelets, thereby diminishing competition and diversity. They placed biometric chips in the bracelets to prevent the items from being resold, traded, given or shared with other people... mentioned in passing in overly complex EULA. The chips of course were unnecessarily prominent and caused abrasion, rashes and occasional jolts of electricity or burn marks on the wrists of legitimate, lawful, paying consumers. What's worse, they arrogantly dismissed requests and recommendations from their sporting customers and insisted they knew for a fact that everyone wanted their bracelets either pink or fecal brown, with clunky bulky attachments that occasionally restricted hand movement.
What's that? Energy Armor didn't do any of those things?
Then how the hell are they being confused with EA?