DVDGuy’s Blog @ Digital Digest

Good news everyone! Another edition of the WNR is ready, for you to enjoy. Actually, since I write the intro first, the WNR isn’t ready at the exact time I’m writing this. And I’m not sure why I started with a Futurama inspired phrase, except perhaps for the fact that I’ve been watching Futurama lately. I kind of feel cheated having previously purchased the *entire* Futurama series on DVD, only for the show to be revived. Let’s just hope they don’t revive Arrested Development as well, to ruin my *complete* collection. It’s pretty news lite this week, but it won’t mean I will write less crap. You’ve been warned!

Let’s start with copyright news, like I always have with the 150+ WNRs I’ve done so far. Copyright trolling is a relatively new term that’s been coined to describe the act of suing for copyright for profit, much like how patent trolls secure patents with no product, in the hope of one day profiting.

The latest trend in copyright trolling is in the dying newspaper business, and I’ve reported on the sue-for-settlement activities conducted by Righthaven for Stephens Media, owner of the Las Vegas Review-Journal amongst other papers. But it looks like another newspaper chain has signed up, with Arkansas based WEHCO Media also joining the trolling activities. These cases usually involve suing blogs and aggregators for posting full versions of articles published by the newspaper chains. Now some will argue that there’s nothing wrong with this, and as someone who has had their articles copy/pasted without permission many times, I kind of agree. But as someone who also runs websites that contain user generated content, it’s hard to ensure your users don’t also break the rules by copying/pasting articles. The DMCA safe harbor provisions should protect website owners in these kind of situations, as long as they have clear, enforceable rules in regards to copyright, but it appears the DMCA is not offering protection to those being sued, unless they go to court to claim safe harbor, as their own expense. And while I agree that it’s important to protect copyright, the attempt at monetization here seems a bit too obvious – it’s almost as if this has become a new source of income for the struggling newspaper industry. This blog isn’t well suited to discuss how to save the newspaper business, but with the iPad and similar devices, there does exist a small window of opportunity for innovation. If newspapers can deliver an unique product for devices like the iPad, based on a paid subscription service, then there is potential there. Not trying to do their work for them, not that I have the ability anyway, but perhaps by making news more interactive, with real feedback (polls, text/video comments, user video updates), by providing more in depth coverage, more multimedia coverage – they’re all directions to look at. It’s certainly a better long term solution than copyright trolling.

The US Copyright Group is scoping for more potential targets in their Hurt Locker lawsuits

And an update on the other infamous copyright troll, the US Copyright Group are moving ahead with their The Hurt Locker cases, with the first users receiving notices via their ISP after the USCG’s subpoena request to ISP Qwest. So for those hoping the USCG would quit after finding more resistance than first expected will be disappointed. What I fear, and I’ve covered this before, is that copyright trolling will be used as an excuse to bring in even harsher copyright laws. After all, three-strikes is better than the one-strike system that copyright trolls are relying on, right? This has already happened over in the UK, after all. And just like overseas, taking the same approach and suing for downloading pirated porn has arrived, and it is expected to bring in an even higher ROI. I mean when accused with downloading a movie called “Shemales From Hell”, even if you knew you didn’t download this file, would you dare to challenge this in court? Of course not, and people will pay up almost every time, and that’s exactly what the law firms are counting on. Is it legal blackmail? Does it sound like a scam? But it is legal, and expect more firms to take up this potential lucrative practice.

Speaking of scams, if I told you I could offer you free unlimited music download from all the major labels for only $25 per month, and since this is a new service, I’m waiving the $25 per month fee for a limited time, and all I need is your credit card number, then would you trust me? I know I wouldn’t trust myself, thanks largely to the Scrooge like pricing strategy of the major labels, ironically. It just sounds to good to be true, and so it probably isn’t true. So beware of sites offering too good to be true offers, because they may be offering illegal services, or worse, offering no services at all.

Moving on quickly to HD/3D news, there are a couple of important announcements regarding Blu-ray 3D. But before we get to that, why did the Blu-ray people decide to call this thing “Blu-ray 3D” and not “3D Blu-ray”? Should it be at least “Blu-ray: 3D” or “Blu-ray in 3D”.

Avatar 3D on Blu-ray, but only for Panasonic 3D TV buyers

Anyway, the first announcement is that Avatar will be released on “3D Blu-ray” in December. But only to those with Panasonic 3D TVs. It’s a shame such a high profile title is being released as a manufacturer exclusive title, but with the close links between Panasonic and the movie, this was never a big surprise. The details are still not available, so we don’t even know if the title will be free for all buyers of Panasonic 3D TV’s, or only offered to those that buy a TV during the promotional period. Those who can’t wait and don’t have Panasonic equipment, then eBay may be your friend. Otherwise, expect the general release 3D Blu-ray version of Avatar sometime in early 2011, maybe in April, exactly a year after the 2D Blu-ray release. Or sooner.

The second announcement is that the eagerly awaited 3D Blu-ray firmware update for the PS3 won’t be coming this month as promised earlier, but should still be here before the end of next month. This is kind of a big deal for 3D Blu-ray, because it would at least guarantee that there will now be millions of 3D capable Blu-ray players in people’s homes, and that may help people make up their minds when buying their next TV (whether it should be a 2D only or 3D). But it would be a bigger deal if more movies are made available on 3D Blu-ray, because the current selection is pretty thin.

Cloud storage for music and movies come to the mainstream via the new Apple TV

Apple announced new iPods recently, but buried amongst the announcements was a new updated Apple TV. Dubbed Apple’s pet project, the Apple TV has not received the same amount of attention and marketing as their other devices. But the new Apple TV is slightly controversial, as Apple is asking people to change the way they enjoy movies and TV shows this time  – by renting, and not buying. Apple plans to do this via the cloud, which is just a fancy way of saying that everything is online, and nothing gets downloaded. But I have serious doubts about such a service taking off because of a few fundamental issues. One, people still like to buy movies and TV shows, as people do re-watch their favourite movies or TV shows, and most don’t want to pay every time they do it. Two, not everyone has an Internet connection capable of streaming the HD video that Apple is promising, not without some buffering, which then becomes just downloading (so not very “cloudy” at all). And three, Apple’s argument that people don’t want to manage large video and music collections simply doesn’t stack up, to me at least, because people do that all the time. And unless Apple offers the ability to store our own sourced content in the cloud (whether it’s ripped from CDs, or purchased from other stores), then there will still be the need to manage a file collection of some sort. But as long as you only use Apple products and services, you’ll be fine, and that’s what Apple is counting on, I suppose – interoperability can take a back seat.

But the biggest problem I have with this approach is still number one, the fact that you can’t buy movies. Just because content is stored in the cloud, doesn’t mean you can’t buy them. The only difference is that with purchased content, you don’t have to pay every time you access it in the cloud, but by providing such a service, Apple would have to charge more per music/movie file made available for purchase on the cloud, compared to a download purchase. And when faced with the choice, people may still just go for the cheaper download and choose to invest a bit more time managing their own file collection locally (or via a third party cloud hosting service). And that’s not what Apple wants.

So cloud storage is great, but as long as the fundamental problems gets solved first, specifically people’s average Internet connection speeds, DRM/interoperability, and please please allow people to purchase stuff.

And finally in gaming, more news on the PS Jailbreak device, which last week say legal action in the Australian courts which led to a ban on the device.

This week though featured news that Sony won’t have liked, in that someone has managed to extract the software from the PS Jailbreak device and have made it open source. Dubbed PSGroove, the open source version won’t allow pirated games to be played to avoid too much legal trouble (although there will still be plenty of trouble, I can guarantee it), but it does allow unsigned code to run on the PS3, in other words, homebrew! The PS Jailbreak exploit is based on tricking the PS3 into thinking that it’s a USB hub of some kind, and an overflow exploit to inject code to make it all work. The nature of this exploit means that it’s easy (but not trivial) to build your own USB device, or even use your existing USB device to do it (like smartphones, for example). But what is trivial perhaps is Sony’s “fix” for this exploit, so this exploit is unlikely to work on firmware beyond version 3.41.

And so we come to the end of another issue of the WNR. Hope you enjoyed this edition as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Except I didn’t enjoy writing it 🙂

See you next week.

After my Australian NBN rant last week, there won’t be a pre-WNR rant this week. I really probably should have put that segment as its own blog entry, but then even less people would read it, and a good rant is only as good as the number of people that it reaches. There’s still no firm outcome  in the Australian election, so the fate of the NBN still hangs in the air, but I hope it goes ahead, not just because it means I can finally have an alternative to my 0.8 Mbps 3G connection that dies every 30 minutes due to congestion at peak  times. There’s a bit more to go through in this WNR, so let’s get started.

In copyright news, the RIAA is at it again, and it now wants the government to create even tougher copyright laws, claiming the DMCA that the RIAA and other groups hailed at the best thing ever, has failed.

YouTube or the RIAA ... I know which one I would choose if only one could exist ...

It has failed, according to the RIAA, because ISPs and websites can now “hide” behind it when their subscribers and users violate copyright. You see, the DMCA’s safe harbor provision protects ISPs, search engines and websites with user generated content as long as they have a copyright infringement policy which they enforce. Of course, the level of enforcement is left up to ISPs and websites, since enforcement can be costly, time consuming, and in the end, something will always get through. But the RIAA is not happy because, well, they’re never happy really. If they can’t stop 100% of all piracy, then they might have to innovate and stuff, and nobody wants to do that! But there is a reason why safe harbor exists, as otherwise Google, YouTube, and your ISP, would not survive the round after round of lawsuits that the RIAA, MPAA and others would love to throw at them, and not fail every time (haha Viacom, sucks to be you). I don’t know about you, but faced with the choice, I’d rather Google, YouTube and the Internet exist, rather than to make the RIAA and MPAA feel safer at night knowing piracy is stopped, even though it probably won’t bring them more money (since people who can’t afford to pay for stuff, still can’t afford to pay for stuff, even if you get rid of piracy completely). This Crusade Against Piracy needs to end.

But another day, and another new, innovative, fool proof, way to end piracy once and for all. The latest involved suing the people advertising on websites that host pirated content. That’s what Disney and Warner Bros. are doing by suing Triton Media which they claim supplied ads to websites hosting or linking to pirated content. But Triton Media may have been running one of the piracy websites in question, so it’s not an all out attack on advertising agencies. Yet.  Cutting the funding source for piracy websites, and thus ensuring there’s less incentive to start one, sounds like a reasonable plan, but reputable ad agencies already have policies which prevent these type of sites from signing up, but the less reputable agencies won’t care about a lawsuit or two if they’re located in places that are hard to sue. Thinking about advertising actually makes me think of adult websites (you see, I normally never think about, let alone visit, adult websites … it’s not worth the money I’m paying for my crappy 3G connection with limited bandwidth!). A lot of adult websites that host free content rely on advertising, and if there was a Crusade Against Porn (heh, it’s CRAP again), then the “Won’t Someone Think of the Children Council” or whoever is running the crusade will be going after the advertising agencies providing ads to these types of websites for sure. And I’m sure they’ll be calling on government to monitor people’s Internets so they’re not downloading pron, and asking for tougher laws against ISPs, search engines and websites that allow the spread of pron to go unchallenged. And most of us would then recognise how stupid and futile that moral crusade would be. Just like this one.

But this is about money, so the crusade has even more fervent support. But if it really is just about money, then surely record profits should at least comfort those in power that, maybe just maybe, there’s light at the end of the piracy tunnel. But it seems the only thing they’re seeing may be the imaginary piles of cash that piracy is taking away, although those piles of cash will now and forever remain imaginary, despite what happens to piracy. And then greed will ensure that they will probably ruin whatever they did right (like innovate) to earn the record profits they have. It may be starting with cinemas, which have recorded amazing profits in the last few years, but ever increasing ticket prices are now damping people’s enthusiasm for 3D and big screens, it seems. So innovate, more customers and profit, greed comes in, ruins everything. That’s about right. They want to have their cake, eat it, then have another cake, prevent other people from eating free cake, and then make people pay them for eating cake.

Apple will do everything, including disabling your iPhone remotely, to stop you jailbreak it

And then there are cases when it’s not even about piracy. Take Apple’s recent patent application which could see them disable iPhones remotely if they’ve been detected as having been jailbroken. This is despite, or may be in retaliation to, the recent DMCA changes that allows for legal  iPhone jailbreaking. Apple can put up only a very feeble attempt to portray this as a piracy problem, as iPhone app piracy is possible on jailbroken iPhones, but that’s definitely not their main concern. Their main concern, as always, is to ensure everything you do on the iPhone has something to do with Apple Corp, and if you even try to use it without Apple’s involvement, then be prepared to at least lose your product warranty (which may or may not be legal, depending on your statutory rights as a consumer), and at worse, have all your data deleted and your phone disabled. And by making sure everything has to do with Apple, it ensure their current and future profits. And that’s all it’s really about, money. There is a (good) argument that Apple puts out which says that a controlled eco-system means a better product, and that’s true. And if many of the apps that only run on jailbroken devices were made available by Apple, then hardly anybody would bother to jailbreak their phones. But for various reasons, some directly related to Apple’s bottom line, others relating to deals they’ve made with phone carriers and such (which also affects their bottom line), Apple can’t let you use your legally purchased product in the way you want to. I have a simple solution to this – don’t sell us stuff that we can’t do whatever we please with. Instead of selling us iPhones, rent us the hardware, for peanuts or even for free, and then you can get to control how we can use the device. Otherwise, if you do intend to make hundreds of dollars on the iPhones, iPads, or even PS3s, then the hundreds of dollars we’ve paid should be enough financial compensation for daring to play  with (or “hack”) our devices and to want to do more with them. The versatility of most devices these days means there’s even more incentive to do more “hacking” than ever.

And as a perfect way to segue from discussions about DRM to HD/Blu-ray/3D, the news about Samsung’s latest firmware update will do.

The Samsung BD-P4600 is just one of the Blu-ray players affected by Samsung's firmware SNAFU

Samsung’s new firmware, believed to be DRM related, screwed up their BD-P*600 series of Blu-ray players that none of them, once updated, can now play Warner and Universal studios produced Blu-ray movies. Some users managed to downgrade the firmware, but those that couldn’t are now stuck waiting for Samsung to produce a fix, which won’t be coming until sometime in September. So it’s not okay to hack our own devices to make it do more, but it’s apparently okay now for manufacturers to hack *our* devices to make it do less (Sony … cough … Other OS … cough).

Okay, so this is not like the PS3 Other OS thing, because this was an accident, not a deliberate attempt to disable functions. But once again, it goes to the heart of the argument that frequent firmware updates are bad thing, and since the Blu-ray DRM sort of depends on this, this makes DRM a bad thing. Samsung stuffed up here, and they should pay the price. Something like a bunch of free Blu-ray movies for those affected might be nice, as long as these movies aren’t from Universal or Warner, of course.

But firmware updates are good when it helps to keep your hardware recent. The PS3 is a good example of these types of good firmware updates for the Blu-ray playback function at least, as successive ones have allowed the PS3 to keep pace with Blu-ray player development. Profile 1.1, 2.0, 3D … the PS3 has survived all of these, unlike other standalone players. But if the update is related to the optical laser, then the PS3 won’t be able to keep up, and this is happening now with BDXL, the new higher capacity Blu-ray format. Sony’s new standalone Blu-ray recorders, as well as those from Sharp, will now support BDXL, and it’s expected that standalone players will probably support them soon. But the PS3 won’t, and so could the PS3 be made obsolete as a Blu-ray player? I don’t think so, mainly because I don’t think movie studios will publish movies on BDXL. It is very much a recording format, and not even one that’s likely to be mainstream. There’s just no need for 100/128 GB discs, not when it’s much cheaper and easier to just provide multi-disc sets. But if BDXL do take off as a home recording format, then the PS3 will miss out.

The Blu-ray format overall though it still looking healthy, although as I talked about last week, the rapid growth seen last year is slowing down (but the major releases aren’t out yet for the year, and we’ll see how well Blu-ray does when Inception is out). Fox Australia thinks that 3D will help to ensure growth remains healthy. While it’s possible to deliver 3D via DVDs, there’s no standard like there is with Blu-ray (not to mention the lower quality), so this is one area in which Blu-ray is going to do very well compared to DVDs. Whether it will help it overtake DVDs as the most popular home video format, I really do doubt this. My experience with 3D is that it’s pretty much still a gimmick – good to have, some will love it, but I would prefer a good film (even in SD) over a bad one with great 3D effects, any time.

And some further development in the slow brewing, so quite boring war, between H.264 and WebM. The MPEG LA, the people responsible for H.264 licensing, has promised free H.264 streaming forever. So websites like YouTube can keep on using H.264 to stream their videos without worrying about a hefty licensing fee (although for Google/YouTube, they’ll be able to pay the fee with the change they find in Larry and Sergey’s sofa). But this latest development isn’t convincing Mozilla, because their problem with H.264 isn’t because it isn’t free (and licensing fee they would pay would be quite insignificant), but because it’s a closed, proprietary format. Unlike WebM. So unless H.264 can go open source, or at least some “web streaming” version of it to go open source, it looks like Firefox and Opera will be dealing with WebM instead, and webmasters will have to produce videos that work with both codecs, which is kind of annoying.

And in gaming, and speaking of Other OS (he said three paragraphs later), now that the PS3 has been hacked, there’s been calls for Sony to bring back Other OS. I mean if disabling Other OS was to prevent the PS3 being hacked for piracy, and now that it’s been well hacked, why not bring it back?

Sony is suing retailers who sell the PS Jailbreak kit in Australia ...

But Sony have acted quickly to stop the PS3 jailbreak device, suing three retailers in Australia who are selling the device in the federal court. And the next round of firmware update will surely attempt to do something to stop such devices from working, which will probably have produce some collateral damage, and cause something to stop working.

And that’s all the news I bothered to find this week. You know, it’s not me skipping news item after news item just because I was busy watching movies or playing games or something. I do actually have to look at the news item, see if it’s some press release or one form of advertising or another (“PS3 is most excellent, says Sony’s PR department”, etc…), or that it’s not an old news disguised as “new” news (a lot of that happening now, with websites spamming Google News and whatnot … there’s apparently this new format called HD DVD, according to a “new” news article I read this week), and then decide which makes it, and which gets skipped. It’s not as easy as it sounds!

Watching movies and playing games are much easier.

See you next week.