The problem with all of these systems is that someone, somewhere has to decide what is "mature" content, vs. what is not.
One of our (terrible in my opinion) newspapers here in the UK, The Daily Mail, is now apparently the top news site in the world - http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2012/jan/25/dailymail-internet
If I go to the home page today, under the terrible story of the helicopter crash, is a picture story called "Tamara parades her killer bikini body in photoshoot", which will not surprise anyone who's visited the Mail website before. How does that not get classed as "Mature"?
Or how about the story "Let's just hope they used protection! Steamy footage of couple romping at Exeter University Safer Sex Ball spreads across campus"?
On the other hand, I have had to unlock my mobile as I wasn't allowed to look at the review of a pub online.
These systems are always only as good as the gatekeepers. Which makes them intrinsically flawed and open for abuse. It encourages over-censorship for fear of letting something "dangerous" through.
We know the argument - better training of children is far more effective than censorship, unfortunately, that doesn't go down well as a political argument, so until someone challenges them, we'll continue to see this trend towards locking down services.
So the US (Google+) creates a new Circle (Patriot Act) and is now happily adding countries to that Circle, whether those countries like it or not. No-one's quite sure how it's going to work out in the long-term, but it's getting a tonne of attention at the moment.
The EU (Facebook) meanwhile has created a Group and is inviting all it's neighbours, but not the US, because they only work with them.... Unfortunately most people don't give a monkey's about Groups and so all of this is likely to be ignored.
Then you have China (Twitter) wondering what all this fuss with groups/circles is about and just ploughing along as they were!
It's interesting to see this. I've been reading a book called The Lacuna which talks about Trotsky vs Stalin back in the 1930s and how Stalin manipulated the population to take control of the Soviet Union. My thinking is that this couldn't happen now, but maybe I'm wrong...
I'd like to think that social media, Twitter and the like, make it harder to pull the wool over people's eyes, but in the end, I guess a state controlled media can still manipulate the stories reaching the masses.
backing up and downloading music files is OK with limitations
What happens if someone comes up with a device that downloads the entire song before playing? You get a quick enough connection and you can download the file in what, 15-30 secs? If the player is continuously downloading the playlist in the background, you would have seamless playing of files after a short wait.
Now I know that the argument here shouldn't be around streaming vs downloading being legal or not, but if you take this to the hypothetical end, we're simply waiting for 10G or something like that when you can download a 3MB music file in 0.5 second and then the argument is irrelevant - you're not streaming, you're just copying files you've purchased legally from some cloud storage and then playing them. I'd like to know what the industry would say to that!
So we're going to have a shutter making a stupid noise whenever we take photos? But what about perverts who decide that rather than just a photo, they want a video of that young girl on the train...
Obviously the answer is to ensure that all phones have a big flashing red light that goes off when recording video, with a loud voice shouting "Recording in progress. Recording in progress". At least that won't be annoying....
"If an individual takes time to create something of value, they should get paid (preferrably what they want to sell it for)"
That's a perfectly legitimate point of view - as long as you don't mind the possibility that if people don't agree with the price you set they won't buy. Market economies are complex things - I don't understand what makes certain pieces of art worth millions of pounds, but I recognise that the market is willing to pay that price. If I throw some paint at a canvas and put a price of £1m on it that is absolutely my choice. It is also absolutely the choice of consumers not to pay that.
In the same way, the music and film industry are absolutely allowed to set the price for their DRM filled, no value added downloads at the same price (or higher) than the physical CDs. But they need to realise that consumers can make the choice not to pay that. This is not saying that piracy is the solution. It is saying that the consumers and the sellers have a fundamental disagreement about what the correct selling price for a product should be at the moment. However, rather than react to that, the seller is currently trying to dictate to the market. Until they change this approach consumers are going to continue to find alternative methods to get the product they want at a more agreeable price, which happens to currently be free (and, unfortunately, illegal).
Surely eBay can just add average transaction value to a person's account details? If it's under 5p or so, and the seller has more than 20 transactions, you might want to think twice about who you are buying from.....
So, while I'm hardly an Apple apologist... again, I'd say it's the recording industry that has itself to blame.
Certainly the industry has itself to blame for Apple not raising the prices. But the point Mathew is making is that their "quasi-monopoly" means there is no pressure on Apple to lower their prices.
It would be interesting to see Apple's reaction pricewise if allofmp3.com began to get a significant market share....
As far as I can tell, the kids have absolutely no reason to want to avoid this alarm. I'm 23, so I certainly wouldn't call myself a kid anymore, but I can't see how this is a big deal. Obviously the tracking system has elements of it that could be abused, and that is something the kids would fight against - fair enough. But if all it does is let your parents (and, hopefully, you) know if you're in an area where there might be someone up to no good, I can't see the problem. It's not like it's telling them you've gone to the mall instead of school, etc.
Having said that, I think the idea has a lot of flaws, most of which have been mentioned already. I can see this being the cause of a lot of witch-hunts unfortunately....
Forcing DRM interoperability is like forcing companies that manufacture tape players to be able to play CDs.
That's not even close to a good analogy. An MP3 is still an MP3, whatever DRM is in force on it. A better analogy would be, buying a CD signed by Sony only working on your Sony Hi-Fi, not your Panasonic, Technics, etc.
I have an iRiver, therefore I don't buy off iTunes - simple. If Apple takes DRM off iTunes, I can buy from iTunes and everyone wins. Simple.
Personally, I'm disappointed in Apple's stance here. They had a real chance to look like the good guys in the industry (even if that's questionable in reality), with only a small amount of risk to their profits in what is a small market for them.
....I think I'm right in saying Yahoo! is the auction site of choice in Japan (as opposed to eBay)? I can imagine they would not be very impressed with this development - surely it will impact on profits from their auction site?
Funny, isn't it? Google takes this scattergun approach to a business model and everyone applauds them saying it's innovative. Amazon, on the other hand, goes scattergun with it's products and it's seen as a panic approach!
I'm gonna go out on a limb and applaud Amazon. At least they're trying. Maybe they've (finally) realised that CDs are likely to be overtaken by MP3 and are trying to put into place a plan to take that into account. Who knows, you might see them implementing an extension of their recommendations system where they offer discount on the CDs when you buy a certain no. of mp3s etc.
Let's give them time to show us they really don't understand the business before assuming it!
....God this could get ugly. You can guarantee it wouldn't be long before they start an auction - "and this is Angela, she's 27, from Boston, like's horse-riding, Tom Hanks movies and swinging. She's sat in seat 22F, I'm starting the bidding for 22E at $300...." ;-)
Let's just hope the airlines don't have too much influence here. I can see the email now:
Hi Dave,
Congratulations, we have found the perfect match for you on your flight. Unfortunately, the young lady in question is flying first class. Please click here to upgrade.....
Your friendly airline!
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by Tim.
The problem with all of these systems is that someone, somewhere has to decide what is "mature" content, vs. what is not.
One of our (terrible in my opinion) newspapers here in the UK, The Daily Mail, is now apparently the top news site in the world - http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2012/jan/25/dailymail-internet
If I go to the home page today, under the terrible story of the helicopter crash, is a picture story called "Tamara parades her killer bikini body in photoshoot", which will not surprise anyone who's visited the Mail website before. How does that not get classed as "Mature"?
Or how about the story "Let's just hope they used protection! Steamy footage of couple romping at Exeter University Safer Sex Ball spreads across campus"?
On the other hand, I have had to unlock my mobile as I wasn't allowed to look at the review of a pub online.
These systems are always only as good as the gatekeepers. Which makes them intrinsically flawed and open for abuse. It encourages over-censorship for fear of letting something "dangerous" through.
We know the argument - better training of children is far more effective than censorship, unfortunately, that doesn't go down well as a political argument, so until someone challenges them, we'll continue to see this trend towards locking down services.
New Idea...
If someone says something stupid, they should lose the privilege of speech
Problem solved
Circles and Groups
So the US (Google+) creates a new Circle (Patriot Act) and is now happily adding countries to that Circle, whether those countries like it or not. No-one's quite sure how it's going to work out in the long-term, but it's getting a tonne of attention at the moment.
The EU (Facebook) meanwhile has created a Group and is inviting all it's neighbours, but not the US, because they only work with them.... Unfortunately most people don't give a monkey's about Groups and so all of this is likely to be ignored.
Then you have China (Twitter) wondering what all this fuss with groups/circles is about and just ploughing along as they were!
It's interesting to see this. I've been reading a book called The Lacuna which talks about Trotsky vs Stalin back in the 1930s and how Stalin manipulated the population to take control of the Soviet Union. My thinking is that this couldn't happen now, but maybe I'm wrong...
I'd like to think that social media, Twitter and the like, make it harder to pull the wool over people's eyes, but in the end, I guess a state controlled media can still manipulate the stories reaching the masses.
Interesting to see how this pans out though...
My original post is here btw....Streaming vs. Downloading
I'm intrigued by this line:
What happens if someone comes up with a device that downloads the entire song before playing? You get a quick enough connection and you can download the file in what, 15-30 secs? If the player is continuously downloading the playlist in the background, you would have seamless playing of files after a short wait.
Now I know that the argument here shouldn't be around streaming vs downloading being legal or not, but if you take this to the hypothetical end, we're simply waiting for 10G or something like that when you can download a 3MB music file in 0.5 second and then the argument is irrelevant - you're not streaming, you're just copying files you've purchased legally from some cloud storage and then playing them. I'd like to know what the industry would say to that!
What about video?
So we're going to have a shutter making a stupid noise whenever we take photos? But what about perverts who decide that rather than just a photo, they want a video of that young girl on the train...
Obviously the answer is to ensure that all phones have a big flashing red light that goes off when recording video, with a loud voice shouting "Recording in progress. Recording in progress". At least that won't be annoying....
Re: A different point of view...
"If an individual takes time to create something of value, they should get paid (preferrably what they want to sell it for)"
That's a perfectly legitimate point of view - as long as you don't mind the possibility that if people don't agree with the price you set they won't buy. Market economies are complex things - I don't understand what makes certain pieces of art worth millions of pounds, but I recognise that the market is willing to pay that price. If I throw some paint at a canvas and put a price of £1m on it that is absolutely my choice. It is also absolutely the choice of consumers not to pay that.
In the same way, the music and film industry are absolutely allowed to set the price for their DRM filled, no value added downloads at the same price (or higher) than the physical CDs. But they need to realise that consumers can make the choice not to pay that. This is not saying that piracy is the solution. It is saying that the consumers and the sellers have a fundamental disagreement about what the correct selling price for a product should be at the moment. However, rather than react to that, the seller is currently trying to dictate to the market. Until they change this approach consumers are going to continue to find alternative methods to get the product they want at a more agreeable price, which happens to currently be free (and, unfortunately, illegal).
Simple solution?
Surely eBay can just add average transaction value to a person's account details? If it's under 5p or so, and the seller has more than 20 transactions, you might want to think twice about who you are buying from.....
Re: iTunes
So, while I'm hardly an Apple apologist... again, I'd say it's the recording industry that has itself to blame.
Certainly the industry has itself to blame for Apple not raising the prices. But the point Mathew is making is that their "quasi-monopoly" means there is no pressure on Apple to lower their prices.
It would be interesting to see Apple's reaction pricewise if allofmp3.com began to get a significant market share....
Why are kids trying to get round it?
As far as I can tell, the kids have absolutely no reason to want to avoid this alarm. I'm 23, so I certainly wouldn't call myself a kid anymore, but I can't see how this is a big deal. Obviously the tracking system has elements of it that could be abused, and that is something the kids would fight against - fair enough. But if all it does is let your parents (and, hopefully, you) know if you're in an area where there might be someone up to no good, I can't see the problem. It's not like it's telling them you've gone to the mall instead of school, etc.
Having said that, I think the idea has a lot of flaws, most of which have been mentioned already. I can see this being the cause of a lot of witch-hunts unfortunately....
Re: Way to go...
Forcing DRM interoperability is like forcing companies that manufacture tape players to be able to play CDs.
That's not even close to a good analogy. An MP3 is still an MP3, whatever DRM is in force on it. A better analogy would be, buying a CD signed by Sony only working on your Sony Hi-Fi, not your Panasonic, Technics, etc.
I have an iRiver, therefore I don't buy off iTunes - simple. If Apple takes DRM off iTunes, I can buy from iTunes and everyone wins. Simple.
Personally, I'm disappointed in Apple's stance here. They had a real chance to look like the good guys in the industry (even if that's questionable in reality), with only a small amount of risk to their profits in what is a small market for them.
Maybe I just expect too much....
Wonder what Yahoo! makes of this....
....I think I'm right in saying Yahoo! is the auction site of choice in Japan (as opposed to eBay)? I can imagine they would not be very impressed with this development - surely it will impact on profits from their auction site?
Innovation vs. Panic
Funny, isn't it? Google takes this scattergun approach to a business model and everyone applauds them saying it's innovative. Amazon, on the other hand, goes scattergun with it's products and it's seen as a panic approach!
I'm gonna go out on a limb and applaud Amazon. At least they're trying. Maybe they've (finally) realised that CDs are likely to be overtaken by MP3 and are trying to put into place a plan to take that into account. Who knows, you might see them implementing an extension of their recommendations system where they offer discount on the CDs when you buy a certain no. of mp3s etc.
Let's give them time to show us they really don't understand the business before assuming it!
Re: No Subject Given
....God this could get ugly. You can guarantee it wouldn't be long before they start an auction - "and this is Angela, she's 27, from Boston, like's horse-riding, Tom Hanks movies and swinging. She's sat in seat 22F, I'm starting the bidding for 22E at $300...." ;-)
No Subject Given
Let's just hope the airlines don't have too much influence here. I can see the email now: Hi Dave, Congratulations, we have found the perfect match for you on your flight. Unfortunately, the young lady in question is flying first class. Please click here to upgrade..... Your friendly airline!