HomeWeekly News Roundup (18 April 2010)
I managed to ramble my way through a mid-week blog post about the future of TV. The focus on fighting piracy has so far centered on stopping the flow of illegal content, and punishing those that download them. I argue that a better strategy is to provide new unique, innovative services that betters piracy in terms of providing convenience. It is true that people download pirated stuff because it’s free, but let’s admit it, they also do it because sometimes it’s just really convenient. And as I said in the future of TV blog post, if the legal outlets are not beating pirated content on convenience (and quality), then that’s something that should be addressed. My next mad rambling will be about the future of movie viewing and collection, which came to me in a dream last night.
There’s a few news stories to go through, so let’s get started with the copyright news. Let’s get the really really outrageous stuff out of the way first, and leave the normal level of outrageous stuff for later on.
The MPAA Is Watching You
The MPAA and RIAA has proposed several new anti-piracy measures, a wish list if you will, to the Office of Intellectual Property Enforcement. Had this list been released a couple of weeks earlier, then surely people would have guessed wrongly that this was some kind of April Fools joke, but the MPAA and RIAA are not joking around. ISP level monitoring of suspicious content, permanent blocking of websites that the MPAA/RIAA suspects may be engaging in piracy, and the “best” suggestion of all is the creation of a spyware tool that sits on users’ computers, actively scanning and deleting suspected pirated content. Note my use of “suspicious” and “suspect” – without a court of law ruling for or against, that’s what all of this is. But the copyright holders and groups like the MPAA and RIAA that represents them want allegations to become evidence, for mere suspicion to become guilt, and using the government and public resources to circumvent due process. Through money and fear based lobbying, the MPAA and RIAA can achieve its goals, and this is a real threat to everyone’s freedoms and to democracy itself. This is not an exaggeration. When they are proposing things like search and seizure of people’s laptops and MP3 players at airports due to the potential of finding pirated content on them, when they want to ban people and websites from the Internet and so cut off the most potent form of communication for their opponents, to control what people can do and can’t do in their own homes with their legally purchased items, to go as far as proposing a software that monitors people’s usage of their personal computers – these are not exaggerations. The fact that the public has been kept in the dark regarding the ACTA global anti-piracy treaty is further evidence of this threat. This nice rant by CNET blogger Molly Wood says as much, in a less mad rambolic way, in a new blog entry that’s a call to arms to stop the emerging copyright police state. “Copyright police state” describes exactly what the MPAA/RIAA is seeking to create, because it’s the only way they can ensure their future, their power, is guaranteed. Otherwise they may have to, you know, change and adapt, and that stuff is hard.
And when governments are clueless about the legislations they’re passing, then the dystopic future that we all fear becomes one step closer to reality. Case in point, the newly passed UK anti-piracy bill, passed politicians that actually think an IP address is an “Intellectual Property address”, has already been exploited by scam artists scaring people into paying “pre-trial settlements”. See, this is what happens when you pass laws that bypass due process, because without the legal checks and balances, anyone can exploit the system for their own gain, and citizens who have had their rights stripped away no longer feel able to defend themselves, and so fall prey to these sort of scams. The malware itself pretends that it is being sent on behalf of well known law firms which have been engaging in “pre-trial settlement” mailings. This isn’t the only malware out there right now pretending to be some kind of anti-piracy measure, and there’s news of one in Japan where it also asks for “pre-trial settlements”, and users face the embarrassment of having their browser history published if they do not pay up. And if they do pay up, their credit card details are stolen as a result. Well, what does that tell you about these requests for “pre-trial settlements” from legitimate organisations, in that people confuse them with genuine blackmail attempts. The good news is that yet another law firm has withdrawn from this kind of activity, due to a public backlash.
But the most frustrating thing about all of this is that it won’t stop piracy at all. There are already many techniques which exists that allows people to bypass the measures put in place so they can download pirated content to their heart’s content. And by pushing people towards these harder to monitor areas of the net, it will make piracy stronger and these short sighted measures will only end up hurting the copyright holders more in the long term.
In HD news, PS3’s 3D Blu-ray support will not be coming until later the year. 3D will be coming to the PS3 in June, but only for 3D games. This would seem to be Sony’s way to give their and others 3D standalones a chance at retail, since I don’t think technical reasons are what’s responsible for the delay in 3D Blu-ray support. So for early adopters, you’ll have to look elsewhere to get your 3D movie fix.
Blu-ray 3D won't be coming to the PS3 until later in the year
Fox and Universal have made a deal with Netflix to provide more content for online streaming, but new releases will be delayed by 28 days. It’s the kind of deal Netflix and alternative distributors like Redbox have had to accept, as studios try to maximize their DVD and Blu-ray sales revenue by giving them an exclusive release window.
Speaking of alternative distributors, Seagate and Paramount are trying something new, by pre-loading movies on portable hard-drives that Seagate sells. These movies aren’t free though, they still need to be paid for and unlocked to be viewed, and as with any DRM, interoperability limitations mean these files won’t play on too many other devices. It’s an interesting idea, but the only effort that this method saves the consumer is the actual download process, which between all the DRM unlocking and the need to find a compatible player for the DRM’d file, isn’t a very inconvenient step in comparison.
The HTML5, H.264, browsers debacle continues to confuse, with Google now adding to the format confusion by making the VP8 video codec open source. Google recently absorbed On2, the company that makes the VP series of codecs. Google says that by making VP8 open source, this provides an alternative to browser makers that don’t want to pay for the proprietary H.264, but also don’t think the free Ogg Theora format is good enough in quality. If Google can convince the likes of Nvidia, ATI and Intel to provide GPU based hardware acceleration or decoding assist for VP8, then perhaps we do have a viable alternative, but it’s hard seeing anyone take on H.264, which has firmly established itself as the industry standard codec (H.264 is used by YouTube, Blu-ray, Apple, to name a few of the format’s supporters). The MPEG-LA needs to waive royalties for H.264 support for browsers, which I think is the quickest way to resolve this issue, as opposed to introducing and promoting yet another video format in VP8.
And finally in gaming, last week I mentioned that Amazon UK refunded an user who complained the PS3 now no longer supporting the “Other OS” function, despite it being promoted as one of the features of the PS3 in Amazon’s sales description.
Sony has now officially confirmed they will not be subsidizing retailers that give out these kind of refunds, and so Amazon UK either has to continue to provide refunds out of their own pocket, or most likely, stop providing refunds. Class action lawsuit time?
And I know the March NPD figures are out, and I will post the analysis as soon as possible, probably tomorrow. The Xbox 360 lost the number one spot as expected, but still managed to beat the PS3. But Sony stole the show with a strong showing in software sales, also as expected.
That’s all for this week. Talk to you again in 604800 seconds.