DVDGuy’s Blog @ Digital Digest

Welcome to another edition of the WNR. In my excitement last week, I forgot to mention that I got myself a new Nexus 4 to replace my ageing Sony Ericsson. I’m absolutely loving my N4, it’s hard to find much fault with it (the lack of LTE is a bummer, but I don’t have access to an LTE network with my telco at the moment anyway). What amazes me most is the fact that it comes with 2GB of DDR2 memory. I still have DDR2 desktop memory that cost me more to buy at that time than the N4, and they don’t even fit into the same small space that a N4 occupies.

On with the news …

The UK is once again showing the rest of the world how it’s done in terms of domain blocking, with the High Court yet again issuing orders to block six more suspected piracy websites, including KickassTorrents and Fenopy.

This follows similar orders against Newzbin (and its resurrected mirror, Newzbin2) and The Pirate Bay, with these previous precedents contributing to how easily this latest order was handed down. UK’s biggest ISPs, who combined account for 94% of the UK broadband market, will have 15 working days to block these websites.

KickassTorrents, one of the six new sites to be blocked in the UK this week

With such drastic actions being taken, I eagerly await news of the huge effect this will have on not just the piracy rate, but also revenue for all creative industries. Surely, with these “majors” taken out, revenue should go through the roof for the music, movie and gaming industries, who according to their respective copyright lobbies, are no doubt losing billions of pounds every year to piracy.

I suspect not only will I not see this news item pop up in my inbox, I don’t think anybody is even trying to measure the financial impact of these anti-piracy measures, and anyone trying to do so and coming up with the “wrong” results will be publicly attacked for being biased or incompetent.

France’s HADOPI agency has been somewhat marginalised in recent times, due to a change of government, and the fact that they’ve yet to produce any noticeable results (again, with respect to creative industry revenue, not just the piracy rate). Which means now is the perfect time for the costly and ineffective government bureaucracy to expands its mandate to cover direct downloads and streaming sites, by ways of domain blocking, seizures, financial blockades and even search engine de-listings. They’ve just written a list of recommendations on doing just this, which also includes taking legal action against third parties that refuses to cooperate (so if Google refuses to de-list Vimeo for example, and PayPal refuses to stop their dealings with the video website, then Google and PayPal can both be sued by HADOPI).

To me, these are all solutions to the wrong problem. The problem isn’t the piracy rate. The problem is the monetary losses due to piracy, and it’s amazing to me that we’re implementing solutions left and right without any effort to assess its impact (mainly because we all know the results won’t look good).

Speaking of implementing solutions to the wrong problems, after a delay of what seems like forever, six-strikes is finally happening in the land of the free. The Copyright Alert System (CAS) goes ahead this week, and the major ISPs participating in the program have only just revealed what exactly will happen after subscribers receive too many strikes (refer to link to see what each ISP has in store for you).

Verizon is the only ISP to use speed limits in their “six-strikes” penalty regime

Unlike similar systems already underway in other countries, the penalties for excessive strikes will be set by each ISP, and luckily, none so far have opted for a complete account suspension (although this remains an option). Instead, the focus appears to be on education, to inform subscribers what they’ve been doing is wrong, and to let them know of legal alternatives.

So basically, it’s a multi-million dollars a year operation that is targeted at users who are proficient enough with the Internet to downloading tons of pirated stuff, but don’t actually know that what they’re doing is illegal, or know of legal alternatives that they are more than willing to pay for. Might be cheaper to just email the couple of users that fall into this category and tell them to stop it, no?

For the rest that are downloading quite deliberately, all of this will be more of a hassle than a deal breaker, that is if they use one of the ISPs participating in this program in the first place, and if they haven’t bothered to mask their activities from prying eyes (or use download methods not monitored by CAS).

A new report shows that CAS may just be too little, too late, at least where music piracy is concerned. But it’s not because CAS is far too limiting, it’s because there appears to be better ways to fight piracy. A new survey by the NPD group has shown a dramatic decline in piracy rates from 2011 to 2012, some 26% fewer downloads, from some 40% of users who say they’ve stopped downloading pirated music altogether.

Spotify and other licensed music services are dealing a blow to piracy, and also satisfying consumer needs at the same time

But instead of this being down to law enforcement action, most of those surveyed who said they stopped downloading say it was services like Spotify that helped them “get clean”. While 20% did say that the shutdown of their favourite piracy stops, and the threat of malware, had convinced them to start doing the right thing (or at least stop doing the wrong thing), nearly half said that legal alternatives were responsible.

And coincidentally, this same week, the IFPI release their annual Digital Music Report, which showed that music revenue rose 0.3%. A small rise, but the first annual rise since 1999. The rise was largely attributed to the rise in digital music spending, up some 9% in 2012. Even the IFPI, a staunch supporter of tougher anti-piracy action, noted that “licensed music services”, such as Spotify, are “demonstrably meeting consumers’ need”. Who’d have thunk it that “meeting consumers’ needs” was a better way of fighting piracy than simply clamping down on those very same piracy service that had been filling the void by “meeting consumers’ needs”.

And it’s also interesting to note that despite a 26% decline in piracy rate, only a 0.3% increase in revenue was recorded. The relationship between piracy and revenue is definitely not one to one, it seems.

If laws and monitoring isn’t working, and you can’t be bothered coming up with legal alternatives, then there’s always DRM! Another week, another anti-piracy patent by Sony. This new patent apparently uses game loading time as a way to detect if the game is pirated or not.

I guess how it would work is that there’s a database of game loading times for the legit copy of games, but if a game is being loaded too quickly (ie. it’s not being loaded from BD, but from a hard-drive), then that would see the game flagged as a pirated copy and loading blocked. Games that take too long to load (eg. from a DVD rip instead of an original BD copy) can also be flagged this way. The system does take into account different media types (eg. flash drive loaded games, versus downloads versus discs).

The obvious problem with this system is that sometimes legit discs can take too long to load too, because the disc may be damaged from wear and tear, or your PS3/PS4 is just having one of those days. It also doesn’t prevent those making piracy-enabled firmware to artificially delay game loads from HDDs to emulate an actual disc load. So anti-piracy wise, it’s unlikely to do much, but it may very well inconvenience many owners of legit copies.

“But this being a patent application means that it is just as likely to never see the light of day as an actual application, but you do have to give Sony credit in finding new and more annoying DRM” is what I posted the last time an anti-piracy patent related story popped up, and the same goes here.

And so we come to the end of another WNR. Hope you’ve enjoyed this issue, see you next week.

So a big week this week, with the PS4 being “unveiled”. I don’t know who thought it was a good idea to launch a console without having a console to show off, but kudos for all those involved that went along with the event, which had a “shit, I didn’t finish my homework – Oh well, I’ll just wing it” feel to it. The news about the lack of a console ended up overshadowing the launch slightly, and in my opinion defeats the purpose of getting one on Microsoft by “unveiling” earlier, and makes the whole thing feels amateurish and rushed. And perhaps I’m the only one underwhelmed by what that PS4 brings to the table – I mean a faster game console with better graphics is always cool, but people expect more than that for a new console these days. Microsoft is said to have their own unveil in April, or June at the lastest (at E3), so it will be interesting to see if the Redmond giant has gone with the “more of the same” approach as per the PS4, or whether they will try and surprise us with what’s on offer (AR glasses, a Kinect that can do fingers …).

Not too much news this week, especially if you discount the PS4 stuff, so we’ll get through it in no time.

The RIAA is not too pleased with Google’s anti-piracy demotions, presenting research that shows the worst music piracy sites are still ranking well in Google.

The research appears to show that for sites that are deemed as “serial infringers” (according to Google’s own publicly available data) are still consistently ranking on the first page or in the top 3-5 results. This may sound like Google isn’t doing anything about piracy, but as I explain the article linked to above, the “serial infringer” signal is only one of thousands of “quality signals” that Google looks at, each with its own weight in terms of importance. The most important signals will always be site popularity and the number of incoming links and piracy websites are usually pretty good in these two areas, much more so than legal websites.

RIAA says Google isn’t demoting popular piracy websites, despite promising to do so

For Google though, the demotion has to balance the appeasement of groups like the RIAA, and the search experience of users. The sad fact is that most piracy websites will be a much better match than what legal websites can offer, so from an user experience point of view only, it makes no sense to have some random blog that features a single line about an artist/song on page one, but having a link to listen/download the song on page 2. If the RIAA really wants piracy websites to be pushed to page 2, perhaps it should help fund the creation of new legal and relevant websites that are good enough to be deemed first page worthy.

Also, from my own personal experience, once a result ranks outside of the top 2, there will be hardly anyone clicking on those links. So while Google may still rank piracy websites on page one, or in the top 3-5, if these links were number one prior to the demotion, then the demotion is working exactly as intended, and traffic to these piracy websites should have been reduced dramatically. Of course, the RIAA would not really want to point out that, despite Google sending maybe 80% less traffic to these music piracy websites, the actual effect on music sales and even the piracy rate may be negligible. It may just mean that people will shift to using another method to get their pirated music, bypassing Google the process (I don’t think Google is the main avenue for people seeking pirated stuff these days, not when they already know of sites like The Pirate Bay). The increasing popularity of Spotify may have more of an effect on piracy rate than anything Google can do for the RIAA.

But Google’s appeasement policy will continue, as it tries to shift focus away from its search results. A report by the UK’s Telegraph suggests that Google is thinking about linking up with financial services providers, such as PayPal, Visa and Mastercard (for example), to cut off the funding source of suspected piracy websites. No details about how exactly this will work, but my guess is that Google will pass on its DMCA takedown data to these financial companies, and get them to suspend any accounts associated with these websites. Focus shifted.

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The issue of DRM for eBooks has been raised again this week after a group of three independent booksellers filed a class action anti-trust lawsuit against Amazon and the “Big Six” book publishers. The booksellers allege that Amazon’s market dominance, and their insistence on using a proprietary DRM system that cannot be used outside of Amazon apps and devices, and along with the major publisher’s reluctance to allow smaller booksellers to sell eBooks either DRM free, all amount to a violation of the Sherman Act.

Is Amazon’s DRM being used to monopolize the eBook market?

But while this seems like a crusade against DRM, one that unfortunately seems like un-winnable given the fact that the DoJ has investigated similar claims and found little reason to take further action against Amazon, what the booksellers want isn’t actually a DRM free utopia, but just a DRM ecosystem they can get their teeth into. While they would love it if publishers agreed to sell books DRM-free, the reality is that this isn’t really going to happen. Instead, the booksellers want to either be able to sell eBooks that contain Amazon’s DRM, or for Amazon to start using a DRM that they can also deploy too. And then for all the other major eBook sellers, like B&N with their NOOK device, to follow suit. Good luck to them, and you do feel for the smaller players in the eBook market, but this really is an uphill battle.

The truth is that the current situation isn’t that good for publishers either. Due to Amazon’s dominance in the marketplace, publishers basically have to do whatever Amazon tells them to do, since the entire ecosystem, from the store, to the file format, to the DRM and to the device/app, are all controlled by Amazon in one way or another. This can allow Amazon to use their market position to force publishers to agree to a lower share of the revenue, which is good for the consumer as this will lower prices, but not so much for competitors, and for the publishers and authors themselves. But with no harm coming to consumers (yet), it’s a really hard case to argue, and so this is yet another example of DRM being used for a purpose other than copyright protection.

So the big news of the week was Sony’s PS4 launch, and it was one of the weirdest console launches events ever. It wasn’t so much of a console launch event, as an event that announces the eventual console launch event, because the console itself wasn’t actually present. This is despite Sony promising the console will be available by the end of the year, but it is kind of worrying that perhaps only 9 months out from being able to buy one, Sony are unable to even show us a prototype of the console’s plastic shell.

The only pieces of hardware they were able to show off were the controller, details of which, including photos, had already been leaked pre-event, and a new PS Eye camera. The new camera accessory that will work in conjunction with the controller’s new “light bar” for motion sensing and player detection (whether this will work more like Kinect, or like the current Move controller, is unknown at the moment). All fairly underwhelming and anti-climatic, to be honest, thanks to the pre-event leaks.

A console launch event in which only the controller is unveiled? Weird.

Hardware spec wise, the PS4 looks like a real monster, and some of the game demos looked fantastic as well. The x86 based CPU will complement an AMD based GPU and 8GB of DDR5 memory, specs that already make the recently launched Wii U look decidedly last-gen. The launch games are looking good too, with the eagerly awaited console debut of Diablo III, plus more games from Sony’s own franchises, including new Killzone and Infamous games.

For those worried about a block on second hand games, everything looks okay again as Sony denied that this will be part of the system. Cloud based gaming will be a big feature for the PS4, with PS3 and previous console titles being made available this way as a form of backwards compatibility. Instant play will allow games and demos to be played without pre-downloading too. For those without a fast Internet connection, which is pretty much most people here in Australia, games will still come on discs, and the PS4 will still play Blu-ray (kind of a given, there).

So plenty of info at the event, without the very thing most gamers wanted to see. Typical of Sony to screw something like this up though, something Xbox’s Major Nelson (aka Larry Hyrb) was keen to take advantage of. I guess they may be learning the lessons from the PS3 launch (in that it was a year later than the Xbox 360), but not sure having an earlier launch event (and one that’s missing the actual launch item) gives you much advantage if both consoles are going to be launched at roughly the same time.

That’s all we have for this week. See you in seven.