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Weekly News Roundup (8 April 2012)

Sunday, April 8th, 2012

So my pretty half-hearted attempt at an April Fools Day joke did actually fool a few people, although as you’ll read later on in this WNR, that little made up news article might really have been a preview into the future.

It’s been two weeks since my last mention of Skyrim, but rest assured, I’m still playing. 125 hours through, I think I’m about half way through the available quests (but having only completed just 2 of the questlines so far). Well worth the $50 or so I spent on the game (compare that to, say, your typical 2 hour movie on Blu-ray for $20, it’s excellent value).

Now onto the news …

Staring with copyright news, I’ve made the point before that, despite conventional logic, decreasing piracy should not be the end goal of anti-piracy – instead, the goal should be to increase revenue.

And I’ve also made the argument that I don’t think all piracy leads to revenue loss – in fact, I think most acts of piracy don’t actually lead to any loss in sales, as these acts are performed by people who really don’t buy a lot of stuff, or don’t have the resources to buy any more.

France's "Hadopi" three-strikes law seems to have dramatically reduced piracy, without actually increasing revenue

With anti-piracy efforts around the world ramping up, and the closure of several well known (alleged) piracy haunts, it would be extremely interesting to see the full financial impact of this expected piracy reduction, some say by as much as 40% in specific sectors (music, for one, after the closure of LimeWire). And so when Hadpoi, the French agency tasked with managing their “three-strikes” regime, released a report detailing the success of the program, with headline making statements such as “69% reduction” in piracy rates, this might have been just what was needed to see the real relationship between piracy and revenue. But while the report made ever bigger claims about the effect the regime had on piracy, what was sorely missing though were hard evidence of a rise in revenue, which as I’ve noted above, should have been the real goal of the whole exercise.

And while Hadopi might have been coy on the financial side of things, it just happens that most industry financial figures are public and available online. Looking at the French music and movie industry, and their performances in 2011 compared to 2010 (a full year with “three-strikes” in effect), the figures, if interpreted in a silly way, may actually point to the opposite: that piracy may have been helping sales!

The French recorded music industry recorded a contraction of 3.9% in 2011, while the movie industry didn’t fare much better, with revenue down 2.7%. In fact, the music industry’s loss was actually greater than the global average of 3%, possibly significant given that most of these other countries still have laws that are perceived to be much weaker than France’s. Of course, to come to the conclusion that piracy was helping to fuel sales would be silly, and a mis-use of stats, and I guess it would also be slightly disingenuous to say that the piracy reduction didn’t have a positive effect on revenue. But what is clear is that there isn’t a 1:1 relationship between piracy and revenue loss, certainly not to the extent that the content industries have been trying to tell us.

What may be true is that the ever changing digital scene may have had a greater impact on the fortunes of both industries than the forced habit change of pirates in France. The music industry’s figures did show a dramatic increase in digital download revenue, higher than the global average, and that may be interpreted as a positive effect from “three-strikes”. But on the other hand, the introduction and adoption of new digital services such as Spotify, may actually be the main driving factor behind increasing sales. Similarly, while physical disc sales for the movie industry were down, VOD and other digital services recorded huge growth. So what may be actually happening is that new services are finally giving people, who used to pirate, the convenience (and the price point) they were craving. Unfortunately, most of these services probably earn less for their respective industries than compared to physical sales – sales that these industries had more control over. So innovation appears to be winning the war against piracy (who’d have thunk it?), but by being overly cautious and being overly obsessed with anti-piracy and DRM, the industries that had most to gain from this digital revolution can now only watch from the sidelines as companies like Apple, Amazon and Netflix take over a large part of the distribution process (and as a result, a large portion of the profits too). You snooze, you lose.

Viacom is still trying to fight YouTube, despite today's YouTube being totally different to the one it sued

It’s still not too late for them though, as they still control the content. As long as they realise the errors of their ways, and start embracing change, instead of fighting innovation, the content industries can still come out ahead as they have done with every technological transition that they have initially opposed. But that’s probably a little too optimistic, as these industries believe they’re in a fight for their lives, and they won’t quit until it’s probably too late. Take Viacom, who this week won an appeal to have their lawsuit against YouTube re-heard in court. The problem is that the YouTube that Viacom wanted to sue no longer exists, things have moved on piracy wise on the site, partially via threats such as their original lawsuit, but mostly due to changing user habits – and it is now a platform that companies like Viacom should want to be part of. Viacom, for their part, has been making the efforts, signing deals with Google to distribute their content via YouTube and Google Play and such, but you don’t really know if it’s them truly embracing the trend, or doing so reluctantly because everyone else is doing it (but still secretly want things back to the way it was). And if they do want to embrace services like YouTube, then why not just drop a lawsuit that they probably can’t win anyway?

MPAA chief Chris Dodd still holds out hope for SOPA/PIPA, and may have to "Bully" some tech companies into line to support future legislation

If the industry could only chill out and become a little bit less paranoid about piracy, perhaps we wouldn’t have the types of limitations, via geo-restriction, timed release windows and DRM, that technology providers have to contend with. And without these limitations, we may finally have a product or service that’s better than piracy, maybe not with a straight price comparison, but would be convenient and non-intrusive enough for people to not bother with torrents. Having access to all episodes of Stargate SG-1 via a $7.99 per month Netflix account, as opposed to downloading all the DVD-rips, for example (and an example that seems to be actually working in practice right now, judging by the relatively small number of leechers for the complete rip of the series on The Pirate Bay). But perhaps this too is far too optimistic, with MPAA’s chairman Chris Dodd this week still holding on to the hope that SOPA and PIPA will eventually pass through Congress (my April Fools Day joke news article aside), suggesting we haven’t seen the end of Hollywood and the record industry’s support for short-sighted and draconian non-solutions to the web piracy problem. Unfortunately, Dodd’s statement itself may not be considered that optimistic, as there are signs in the last few weeks (from the White House and beyond) that support is building again for SOPA like legislation. Meanwhile, the MPAA will certainly try to “Bully” more politicians into supporting it, while making sure this time these supporters won’t backflip just because a million or ten come out in opposition to any proposed legislation. We all need to get ready for another fight.

Speaking of paranoid, the MPAA’s latest fear is that Megaupload would somehow get access to the data stored on their (former) servers and would somehow re-launch Megaupload, perhaps in another jurisdiction. Considering the fact that the Megaupload guys actually want to avoid prison, I suspect there’s little, if any chance Megaupload could be relaunched. But this latest MPAA manoeuvre will make it harder for users to get back their legitimate files, not that the MPAA cares or anything.

In gaming news this week, I wrote a brief round-up of the latest “PS4” and “Xbox 720” rumours, starting with more creative names for both next-gen consoles.

Sony’s next console will have the codename Orbis, while Microsoft has chosen Durango. Orbis and Durango (sounds like two characters from a kid friendly adventure game), seems to have more similarities than differences, with both reported to be using AMD technology to drive both the CPU and GPU.

Not only that, both consoles seem keen to deploy some kind of anti second-hand game system, where each disc is locked to an account, and money needs to be paid (to Sony and Microsoft, who up until now have not been part of the second hand trade) to unlock a disc for another account. The latest rumours even sees Microsoft’s Durango borrow from Ubisoft’s playbook, with a requirement for a constant-on Internet connection (hope it isn’t true, because that would suck).

With neither console scheduled to make an appearance until late 2013, it’s perhaps a bit too early to take any rumours that seriously at this stage. Not that you should take anything I write seriously, April Fools or otherwise.

And on that serious/not serious note, that’s all I have for you this week. It’s not much, but it will have to do until next week. Happy Easter, Passover, and any other religious or non religious holidays that I may or may not be aware of.

Posted in Copyright, News Roundup, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (8 April 2012)

Weekly News Roundup (1 April 2012)

Sunday, April 1st, 2012

I know what the date is, and no, I’m not going do something for it. The expectation is always too high, and I can never live up to it. Besides, all the interesting ones have been done, and the rest, I’m fairly sure, constitute libel. So nobody is making a fool out of anyone else for this year, not Digital Digest anyway.

Or maybe I’m just luring you into a false sense of security …

But before we get into any April based tomfoolery, which may or may not happen, let’s get through the news roundup first.

But before that even, a linky link to Digital Digest’s “new” Facebook page, or rather, the same page with the new Timeline thingy on it that has been forced upon all of us by all knowing Facebook. The timeline feature is definitely quite interesting, and if I have the time, I might just start adding a few of Digital Digest’s milestones into the timeline (having only added in one entry for the launch of the website back in 1999, so far). I’ve never been a big fan of Facebook’s user interface, but I must say this timeline thing does look good.

First, a follow-up to a story from last week regarding RapidShare. I mentioned last week, in a brief sentence, that RapidShare may soon be forced to filter all user uploads due to a recent court decision. Apparently, this is not actually the case at all.

What had happened is that the groups suing RapidShare in Germany, a collection of book and music rights groups, had released a statement celebrating their “victory”, despite the court having not yet released the full written verdict. But now that the written verdict has been released, it paints a rather different picture, one that RapidShare says gives them an important victory as well.

Now I’m aware of the spin that is probably being produced by both sides, but it’s clear the the verdict wasn’t the clear victory the rights holders had hoped for. What the court did, at least according to RapidShare, was to recognise RapidShare’s overall business model as a legal one, while at the same time asking RapidShare to do more on the issues of copyright infringement. The court says that RapidShare needs to actively seek out links to infringing content (hosted on its servers) by visiting the common haunts for these types of things – popular forums, blogs, websites and such, and remove said content once it is aware of the likely legal status of the upload. This is opposed to scanning each and every download, without knowing anything about the legality of the download (which, according to the European Court of Justice, may constitute a violation of privacy rights). But RapidShare says they’re already doing exactly this, and so for them, the court’s verdict won’t actually affect them too much. Despite this, RapidShare still plan to appeal the decision on the grounds that while they think these measures are a reasonable part of their business strategy, they don’t believe the court has the right to order websites to comply.

Hotfile will soon scan all uploads for pirated content, but it may be too little, and too late, as far as the MPAA is concerned

Another file sharing host is taking a different approach to anti-piracy, although it might be too late, if not too little. A press release alerted me to the fact that Hotfile will start using Vobile’s vCloud9 scanning solution to scan uploads for infringing content. Apparently, the technology employs a database of known file “fingerprints”, and can even scan compressed archives to see if the upload contains infringing content. This comes after the company recently changed its affiliate program to no longer pay based on download volume (ie. heavily favoured towards pirated downloads), but instead, when uploads result in the downloader signing up to a premium account, and uploaders get a commission on that. With the MPAA still insistent on a summary judgement against Hotfile in its lawsuit, this may all be too late, and it’s probably too little as well when it comes to what the MPAA really wants (which is to shut down Hotfile and make an example out of them, probably).

For those that take an interest in things like DVD and Blu-ray copy protection, as well as region coding and stuff, you should be well aware that Fox are one of the “hard-asses” when it comes to these sort of things. Being pretty much the only studio that consistently makes its US Blu-rays region locked (even Sony has seen the light, and forgoes region control for catalogue releases), and having early on declared their support for Blu-ray based solely on the format’s preference for tougher copy protection methods (all of which has since been cracked, of course), you’d expect that Fox, and its parent company, to be the last one to have a copyright scandal. Which was why it was very ironical to see News Corp embroiled in its own piracy scandal this week, as claims were made by BBC’s Panorama program, and also separately by an Australian newspaper, that a (former) subsidiary of News Corp may have helped to fuel piracy of competitor’s services in order to gain an unfair market advantage. Apparently, the subsidiary, NDS, helped to crack rival pay TV networks’ encryption cards, and then helped to ensure the cracked codes got into the hands of people who sell pirated services. News Corp, and NDS, have both denied these allegations, but both the BBC and the Australian paper, the Australian Financial Review, say they have gathered a lot of evidence on this (with the AFR saying that this investigation has been four years in the making). With the Australian government already considering launching its own official investigation into this incident, this could be a story to watch out for.

And finally for this week’s copyright section, I have a story that hits pretty close to home. Actually, it hits directly at home like a guided missile, and for the fun of it, takes out a few neighbouring properties too. This week, the home page of Digital Digest, and two PowerDVD related pages, were removed from the Google search results due to a DMCA take-down request filed by Guardlex.com. You can read the full story here, and the DMCA notice here on Chilling Effects if/when it’s ever made available, but the gist of it is that Guardlex, probably working on behalf of Cyberlink (the makers of PowerDVD) to take down results related to pirated downloads of PowerDVD, took down our pages as part of a DMCA notice that included thousands of other URLs. The thousands of URLs also included well known legitimate websites such as Cnet’s download.com, Afterdawn, Softonic.com and other clearly legal URLs, including a dozen URLs from Cyberlink’s own website (including their home page!).

The Digital Digest home page have been removed from the Google results due to the DMCA complaint that does not seem to be valid at all

The whole DMCA removal process with Google goes something like this. When Google receives a DMCA notice, and if the notice has all the proper documentations, they immediately remove the URL from their search results (and you’ll see the “In response to a complaint we received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed …“ message at the bottom of any search results page that has removed results – do a search for “PowerDVD” right now, and you’ll see 3 such messages, meaning 3 URLs were removed). Some time later, could be days or weeks, Google informs the owner of the removed page(s), assuming they have a webmaster central account with Google, of the take-down. And a few days after that, Google may send the website owner the actual DMCA notice. You then have the option to file a counter-notification, and if Google does not receive any further notice on this matter within 14 working days, the URLs get reinstated back into Google’s index.

So even in the case of a mistaken identity, as was the case here I believe, it may take weeks to get it all sorted, with financial and a reputation loss that cannot be avoided. Under the DMCA, if I’m the victim of a mistaken take-down, I can sue for damages. The problem is that this is rarely worth the time and trouble when you factor in legal fees, and so DMCA agents can get away with these innocent and sometimes not so innocent mistakes, most of the time. This is probably why 57% of all DMCA claims made to Google are by companies out to “get” their competitors, and that 37% aren’t even valid claims. It’s clear that the DMCA is currently being abused by rights holders, and that was always going to happen if you have the level of bias present in these sets of laws.

And so it scares me very much to think that rights holders still say the DMCA is not biased enough, and they want something like SOPA or PIPA to make it even easier to take down entire websites, just for a few bad pages that may not even be bad. Sure, the major backers of the bills will say it’s only for “foreign rogue” websites, and that they will promise not to abuse it, but can you really trust them? And even if you can, can you trust all the people and companies that will have access to SOPA/PIPA, to not abuse it in the same way they’re currently abusing the DMCA?

High Definition

A couple of WNR’s ago, for an issue where I ran out of stuff to write, I enthused about how great streaming video-on-demand was, and how it look destined to be the future of home video.

It seems that the future is going to get here sooner than I though. The latest research via IHS Screen Digest (no relations) says that streaming has just overtaken discs as *the* way to watch movies and TV shows at home, having increased by about 140% in the last year alone. 3.4 billion viewings were made on streaming media, compared to only 2.4 billion on DVDs and Blu-ray, for 2011.

What was more interesting is that, on average, people only paid 51 cents for each streaming title, while they paid $4.72 for discs. The cost of an Internet connection and bandwidth is probably not counted for streaming, which will increase the cost, but I think the main idea is that people watch more on streaming, especially unlimited streaming offers, because they have access to more content for a far lower price than compared to “owning” content.

Is Netflix going to doom Blu-ray? Maybe not now, but you can't dent that VOD is the best way to access and maintain a huge library of titles

Of course, this story has led to people saying the end of nigh for Blu-ray, but until true Blu-ray quality 1080p can be streamed to most people’s homes, the reality is that Blu-ray is still very much needed.

But for those that don’t really care that much about seeing a few extra pixels or “owning” content, or for content that can’t benefit from the full bandwidth HD treatment, then $7.99 per month for Netflix may be a much better deal than having a collection of hundreds or even thousands of discs (just making available the shelving space is a pain, trust me).

But for me, having something physical to hold on to that won’t refuse to play simply because my Internet connection is down, is still worth the extra $4.21.

And with that, we come to the end of another WNR. See you next week.

Posted in Copyright, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup, Video Technology | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (1 April 2012)

Weekly News Roundup (25 March 2012)

Sunday, March 25th, 2012

Welcome to another edition of the WNR. Two weeks ago, I mentioned I was working on a project for Digital Digest that should be ready in about two weeks time. Unfortunately, the same is still true today, as I’m still working on it, and it’s still (at least) two week away from being ready.

And the delay is totally unrelated to Skyrim, or the fact that I unceremoniously passed 100 hours of play time this week. Most of what I’ve been doing in the game this week has been very “chore-ish”, having spent most of yesterday’s playtime moving from my house in Whiterun to Riften – meaning multiple trips carrying the assortment of goodies and junk that I’ve been hoarding at my old house, fast travelling the many miles between the two hamlets, all the while not wearing any clothes as to clear up as much carrying weight as possible. Trust me, it’s not as fun as it sounds.

A couple of interesting stories to go through this week, so let’s get started.

Google has dragged itself into the Megaupload affair by coming to the defence of Hotfile, or rather, the defence of the DMCA’s “safe harbor” provision.

The MPAA is currently suing Hotfile, and one of the argument that the industry trade body has made is that Hotfile should not be afforded the protection of “safe harbor”, due to the “rampant” nature of piracy that goes on on the file sharing website. Another argument is that Hotfile has not been cooperating with the MPAA fully in terms of providing the technical anti-piracy measures that the MPAA studios want. Google says both of these arguments are invalid because current case law does not strip away “safe harbor” based on “generalized awareness that unspecified (or even ‘rampant’) infringement is occurring”, and that there’s nothing in the law that says Hotfile must implement the type of content filtering that the rights holder requests, as the decision is mostly left up to the service provider.

Both of these arguments have been made against Megaupload too in the government’s criminal case against the file hosting website. And another key argument in the government’s case, which was also employed by the MPAA in the case against Hotfile, is that the website operators only removed content that had been specifically listed by the rights holder, and deliberately kept similar or even the exact same content on their network. Google argues that this is perfectly in-line with the spirit of the DMCA, with the burden of identifying infringing content belonging to rights holders (the only people that can decide which content should be removed and which should be kept). The argument works a little better for Google’s assets, such as YouTube, than for Hotfile/Megaupload though – it’s often in the rights holder’s interest to keep some “infringing” content active on YouTube due to promotional reasons, while at the same time removing others (even if it’s the same video, re-uploaded). With Hotfile/Megaupload, it’s unlikely that, for example, Warner Bros. would want to keep a copy of The Dark Knight available for download, but in Google’s view, Hotfile did exactly what the DMCA demanded it to do, nothing less, but certainly nothing more than what’s required, such as removing content that was not specifically listed.

Rapidshare, in a German court, is also facing similar accusations, and as a result, it could be forced to implement drastic site-wide filtering for all uploads.

The issue of how proactive a service provider should be is at the heart of the DMCA “safe harbor” argument, with content holders now accusing Internet companies of “abusing” the protection afforded to them by the provision, by deliberately turning a blind eye to ongoing infringement just because it has not be specifically named. But the alternative is for service providers to “second guess” the intentions, and the legal rights, of content holders, to take a “better safe than sorry” approach, the collateral damage from such actions which will mean a lot of harm to innovation and creativity (and is ever more the problem on YouTube, with its automated “Content ID” system and false positives). I don’t know what the answer is, but draconian blanket bans and filtering can’t be the best solution out there, not when there’s still so much that content holders can do to make the legal option the more enticing one. The DMCA, conceived by the likes of the MPAA, is already far too biased towards rights holders at the expense of innovation and creativity – but it seems it’s still not biased enough, hence the “need” for PIPA/SOPA/ACTA.

A letter is floating around in Europe "suing" users for uploading and downloading stuff to/from Megaupload

And the not so subtle bias in current copyright laws has also produced a climate of fear and uncertainty, with most people unaware of their actual rights when it comes to these kind of disputes. This has led to mass copyright lawsuits that use the fear, and sometimes the embarrassment, to “encourage” users to pay a pre-trial settlement fee to make the matter go away. It’s no wonder it’s been referred to as “legal blackmail”. But if you take this just one step further, something that many consider ethically suspect turns into an outright scam, and report this week suggest that Megaupload users are now being targeted. A fake mass copyright style letter is being sent to potential Megaupload users demanding a settlement fee, or the threat of a 10,000 euros lawsuit. The small matter of the law firm responsible for these letters not actually existing should be the first clue as to the validity of these claims, and also the fact that payments being made is going to a Slovakian bank account, for a law firm that’s supposed to be based in Munich.

Unfortunately, the MPAA’s actions may have only added to the believability of these scams , when they requested the web host of Megaupload to retain data, including user data, for future potential lawsuits. But even the MPAA knows the public’s distaste for this kind of thing, so they did make it clear that individual user lawsuits are not on the cards. A civil case against Megaupload and its “intermediaries”, on the other hand, now seems more than likely.

Moving on, Ubisoft this week hinted that the company might be suffering from a split-personality disorder when the company’s VP of Digital Publishing, Chris Early, spoke about intrusive DRM and how it’s doing paying customers a disservice. Not only that, Early says that Ubisoft really really wants to make DRM “go away” (I’ve got an idea where Ubisoft can put their DRM), and they think the best way to do it is through adding value to the legitimate gaming experience (they can start by not making the legitimate gaming experience a pain in the butt, thanks to their DRM). But what Early may be hinting at is the business model of MMO’s and how Ubisoft can learn from it, by incorporating some of the elements that keep people coming back (and paying) into the single player experience. I’m not sure ham-fisting MMO elements and the subscription model into single player games, along with a MMO’s requirement of always being online (which, for a single player game, is nothing more than a DRM. UbiDRM to be exact), is the best idea to be honest. Making better games, lowering the price, and providing online features, ongoing support, and exclusive content, might all be better solutions.

High Definition

Flags of truce came out this week in the HTML5 vs Flash vs H.264 vs WebM/Theora war, as Mozilla signaled their surrender. Sort of.

A little bit of background: The issue surrounds HTML5’s new ability to allow videos to embedded and played without the need to install third party plug-ins, like Flash. But just which video format HTML5 video would work with has been up for debate for a while now, with H.264 being the obvious choice (as it is the ones most used with Flash based videos today, and also an industry standard), but also the valid argument that the royalty and patent encumbered H.264 format isn’t ideal, especially since some of today’s most popular browsers are the open source variety. Mozilla, in particular, was strongly objected to H.264 support being made mandatory for HTML5 browsers. Google, sensing an opportunity, stepped up and produced the VP8 based WebM format. But the format failed to gain any traction, and so this week, Mozilla has had to do the unthinkable: start supporting H.264.

Firefox will soon join Chrome, IE and Safari as browsers to support H.264

Mozilla made the announcement this week that they would have to now offer H.264 support, especially for their mobile based products, as they see no other way forward without supporting a format that’s even more entrenched in the mobile market than on desktop/standalones. While Mozilla would not be providing a built-in decoder, they would allow their Firefox browser to use existing software and hardware capabilities to decode H.264.

In my opinion, this was always going to be the likely outcome. Google’s half-hearted support for WebM, some say hypocritically considering their Android platform offers H.264 decoding as standard, was never going to be enough to out-muscle H.264, especially since none of the major hardware makers were even interested to offer WebM support. And with Apple firmly behind H.264, and everyone else trying to out-Apple Apple, WebM had little or no chance to succeed.

So what does this mean for the average user? It means that HTML5 video now has a greater chance to succeed and become a true replacement for Flash, and that’s probably a tick in the win column for everyone, even if this is a set-back for open-source video standards. MPEG LA, the licensing authority for H.264, for what it’s worth, has promised not to charge royalties for this type of H.264 usage for the foreseeable future, so H.264 is free for the time being without being “free”, if you know what I mean.

The Girl with Dragon Tattoo DVD disc art

A real disc or a pirated one? You decide ...

And finally, a story that feels a bit “PR-ish” to me, where Sony’s DVD disc art for their remake of “The Girls with the Dragon Tattoo” is confusing people into thinking they’ve been sold a pirated copy of the movie. The disc art resembles a home made Sony DVD-R with the title of the film printed on to make it look like it was written on with black markers, and it’s supposed to be a reference to the main character of the film, Lisbeth Salander, and her hacking ways. Those that purchased the Blu-ray+DVD combo version might be even more confused, since the Blu-ray disc art is fairly traditional, which makes the “DVD-R” stand out even more.

But a closer look reveals the MPAA rating, region info, and even some copyright text on the supposed home made “DVD-R”. And the “DVD-R” being a Sony branded one, of course alludes to the fact that they were the studio behind the movie. So would it really have fooled people into calling up Redbox or whoever to complain, as was claimed by some of the news articles? Maybe a surprise at first, sure, but to be completely fooled? I don’t think so. All has happened though is that this story has given the DVD set some free publicity, which is why I’m cynically leaning towards PR campaign on this one.

Alrighty then, that’s pretty much the week as I remember it. Must get back to my “move” in Skyrim, still got 90+ each of dragon bones and scales to move, as well as my assortment of 400 iron daggers. This could take a while … see you next week.

Posted in Copyright, DVD, News Roundup, Video Technology | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (25 March 2012)

Weekly News Roundup (18 March 2012)

Sunday, March 18th, 2012

Welcome to another issue of the WNR. As promised, I put up the February US video game sales analysis earlier in the week. Nothing too surprising, just your usual “everything is doomed” set of stats. Is this a case of having a new normal, with the previous normal having been exaggerated by the success of the Wii, or something more sinister? With Microsoft saying this week they won’t be showing a new Xbox at E3 this year, and Sony in a similar state of mind, it will be up to the Wii U to save the coming holiday season it seems.

Work meant that my Skyrim adventures had to take a back seat this week, although I still had time to kill a vampire or two, a couple of giants (now much more easily dispatched via my legendary enchanted Daedric weapons), and the odd chicken via collateral damage.

Oh, it was also my birthday last week. I wonder at what age do you stop looking forward to your birthdays, and start dreading them because you’re getting older? For me, this happened on my 7th birthday.

Let’s get started with this WNR.

Big news for US web users this week, as from July onwards, your ISP will officially start spying on your net activities for big content (ie. the RIAA and MPAA).

With very little evidence showing “graduated response” actually works to increase revenue, remembering that this, and not reducing piracy, is the ultimate goal, it will be interesting to see what the American version can amount to. It will be different to the French version though, in that each ISPs can decide to take whatever action it deems necessary, including no specific action and just a continuing series of warnings – with permanent account suspension not being considered so far.

It marks an important milestone in the war against piracy, and along with the RIAA’s victory over LimeWire a couple of years ago, the closing of Megaupload (and others) this year, you’d expect that piracy rates would start dropping, if it hasn’t already. Yet, all you continue to hear is how the industry is still losing billions of dollars every year, and how the problem is getting worse. With the RIAA and MPAA getting what they wanted this time, yet again, would it then be safe to conclude that, if a year from now and with revenue still not up significantly, that enforcing copyright may not actually lead to increased revenue? I’ve always found the idea of people hoarding tons of money saved from piracy, instead of simply spending the money on something else, quite funny. As is the idea of people spending more money than they actually have, when their supply of pirated content is cut off (which is an impossibility in itself).

But according to the likes of the RIAA and MPAA, piracy is a $58 billion dollar a year problem, and that if the piracy problem is magically solved somehow, creative industries would suddenly gain most of that back in revenue. But with the RIAA and MPAA already equating every single instance of copyright infringement to be worth at least $150,000, via their much publicized lawsuits against students and single mothers, $58 billion may even seem a conservative figure. This “Copyright Maths” is the topic of a new TED speech by Rhapsody founder Rob Reid, a short must-watch video that shows how crazy the figures being thrown around really are. That an iPod classic can hold $8 billion worth of pirated songs based on the $150,000 calculation show how ridiculous it all it (a figure almost as ridiculous as the $40,000+ people are required to pay to fill up the same iPod with legal purchase).

And after the speech, Reid was asked what would be the best way to combat piracy. The answer was basically “give the people what they want”, by building legal services that people wanted to use, that makes piracy seem not worth the trouble. Do that, and the piracy problem will solve it self. Why go to the trouble of finding and downloading each song, when you have Spotify and millions of songs for instant gratification, for example. The same is probably even more true for movies, which are harder to download due to their larger file size (which also limits the amount of archived content that’s made available).

A full Kaleidescape set-up is for serious movie lovers, people unlikely to pirate movies (and more likely to overpay for them)

The problem is though that instead of giving people what they want, the movie and music industries are actually pursuing the opposite agenda. It cannot be better demonstrated than by the legal decision this week which banned Kaleidescape from selling its DVD and Blu-ray media servers. Piracy was just a convenient excuse for the body responsible for DVD copy protection, the DVD CCA, to legally pursue Kaleidescape, despite the core audience of Kaleidescape’s servers not being pirates at all. In fact, Kaleidescape demonstrated the amazing fact that, on average, each of their customers had a legal movie library of 500 titles or more. Considering the cost of these server set ups, it’s not hard to understand why this is the case, because their product is one for serious movie lovers with the required expendable income – and these people are not movie pirates. In fact, they’re probably the movie industry’s most hard-core customers.

So what does the industry have to gain by denying their biggest fans what they want? The answer is of course “control”. They’re perfectly happy to let you “convert” your DVDs to a purely digital format, with Wal-Mart this week offering a “DVD to Ultraviolet” service for $2 (or $4 to “upconvert” your DVDs to a HD digital version). But as always, it comes with a catch. You’ll have to use the movie studio’s preferred platform, live with their DRM system, which then controls how you’ll be able to use your digital copy (which may even expire in time). It will invariably mean a worse user experience than something for enthusiasts like Kaleidescape, but a better experience may mean a loss of control, and that’s just not acceptable. And if all of this means they can charge you again and again for the same thing, then that’s just a sweet, sweet bonus.

High Definition

With the new iPad still making headlines, I thought I would jump on the bandwagon and write something about what could be considered Apple’s first HD tablet (1024×768 is not HD, as if it was, then it meant that I had HD on my first 486 computer).

With the new iPad resolution coming in at 2K, or 2048×1536, that’s a resolution higher than your average HDTV. Of course, a true enthusiasts won’t just see the fact that the screen would perfectly render a 1920×1080 resolution video with a couple of pixels to spare, they will of course wonder if you could expand the resolution of the video from 1920 to 2048 and use up all of the available pixels for a 2048×1152 video.

iTunes 1080p compares well to Blu-ray, according to tests done by Ars Technica

But what may be more interesting is how Apple plans to distribute 1080p movies to the new iPad, as streaming of 25GB+ movies is not ideal, even with 4G. Ars Technica took the time to test several of iTunes’ new 1080p encodes, and compared it to the Blu-ray equivalent, and what they found was rather surprising – that somehow, a 5GB iTunes file isn’t 5 times worse in quality than a 25GB Blu-ray. By supporting the “High” H.264 profile, as well as increasing the “Level” support to 4.1, all now possible on the faster hardware of the new iPad (and iPhone 4S, as well as the updated Apple TV), the decoder can now be made to do more work, and the result is a more efficient encode. VUDU’s HDX does something similar to allow 1080p streaming on your average 10Mbps connection (Blu-ray, on the other hand, may require 30Mbps just for the video). Sure, you’ll lose a lot of fine detail, there will be banding and other aberrations, but that’s all moot on a 9.7″ screen. On a large screen TV connected via Apple TV, this may be an issue, but only for those serious about their movie watching, in which case, they would probably never consider Apple TV or iTunes 1080p anyway. For the rest, it’s “good enough”, and the convenience of it all makes up for everything else.

Mac Observer did similar tests but found wildly different results, so either Ars Technica did their test wrong, or Mac Observer did (or maybe video quality varies too much from movie to movie).

And with that, we come to the end of another WNR. See you next week.

Posted in Copyright, DVD, Electronics, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup, Video Technology | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (18 March 2012)

Weekly News Roundup (11 March 2012)

Sunday, March 11th, 2012

Welcome to another edition of the WNR. I hope you’ve had a good week. Me? I’ve been busy with a secret project for Digital Digest, something I hope I can unveil in a week or two. Well, it’s not really a secret, but it’s not ready for public consumption just yet. It will be a relatively small change on the scale of things, but hopefully one that will make navigating the website a little bit easier.

As such, I haven’t really been playing much Skyrim this week. I might also be playing the game the wrong way, because I now have quite a backlog of major and minor quests that’s going to be a pain to clear (and I keep on picking up new ones). Sometimes having too much to do in a game can be a frustrating experience too.

It's better, but what I want to know is what are the new things I'm able to do with the new hardware, that I couldn't do on the iPad 2

I suppose I should also mention the iPad 3, oops, I mean the “new iPad”. It seems I’m not the only one that’s under-whelmed by Apple’s new tablet offering (and not the only one to cringe at the “resolutionary” pun either). There’s really nothing wrong at all with the new iPad – it’s faster, it’s a little bit heavier than the iPad 2 but does not affect usability, the screen is a beauty and the price is right too. So why am I under-whelmed? For me, it’s the lack of “the new things you can do with it” that’s under-whelming – a sharper screen is better, but how does that translate into a new way to use the iPad?

Apple’s strength has always been in selling what you can do with its hardware, rather than the hardware itself (which traditionally hasn’t been state-of-the-art – see Mac vs PC debate). For example, Apple didn’t sell the fact that the iPad 2 had a front facing camera, it sold the concept of FaceTime. The iPod also wasn’t the first digital music player, but Apple sold it, alone with iTunes, as a new way to buy music. I won’t even need to mention what the iPhone meant, but even the incremental 4S upgrade introduced Siri, a new way to use your smart device that unexpected failed to make the transition to the new iPad (not yet, anyway). Imagine if Apple had launched the iPhone 4S without Siri – that, to me, is what the new iPad feels like.

With that said though, the new iPad still looks like a no brainer for people who want an easy to use tablet, so it will sell in droves regardless. But I just think Apple could have marketed it a bit better, to at least give us a glimpse of what the faster processor, better screen is capable of, that makes the iPad 2 obsolete. But maybe that’s not the strategy this time, as perhaps the major change this time is the introduction of a new budget iPad model – the old iPad 2. Good enough for most people, and at $399, it will offer serious competition to budget Android tablets.

Anyway, let’s get started on the news roundup.

The impact of the Megaupload seizure continues to reverberate this week, as the MPAA now wants to use the seizure as proof of guilt in its own court case.

Back when the Mega-seizure happened, I mentioned the MPAA’s civil lawsuit against Hotfile, and how Hotfile and Megaupload’s business models were very similar. I suggested that if no criminal case had been brought up against Hotfile, and that the matter was largely proceeding on civil grounds, then what makes Megaupload so different that the FBI needs to get involved. This week though, the MPAA made the same argument, but the one on the other side of the coin, that because Hotfile and Megaupload were so similar, Hotfile is just as guilty, and so the court should hand down a summary judgement on the matter. The MPAA is using the fact that because a court has granted federal prosecutors the right to take such drastic actions against Megaupload, that there is already enough evidence to suggest that their business model would not stand up to scrutiny in a court of law. There’s is some merit to the argument, but the government has yet to prove its case against Megaupload in a court of law, no matter how convincing their (one sided, it has to be said) arguments have been so far.

The curious thing is that if the MPAA is granted a summary judgement against Hotfile, then this decision could be used in the Megaupload trial as some sort of precedent, even though the summary judgement may have only occurred due to the Megaupload case. It’s a kind of circular logic that could very well have been orchestrated by the MPAA (since the MPAA are one of the key instigators of the Megaupload takedown), to kill two birds with one stone.

The scale of the Mega-takedown has also had consequences for other governments and law enforcement agencies not wanting to look weak on copyright (I’m sure the likes of the RIAA and MPAA have been pressuring them to match the efforts shown by the US government). The Swedish government has no doubt been under a lot of pressure to take action against “Swedish” website The Pirate Bay, particular now that the website has switched to using a Swedish .se domain name. What the Swedish government wasn’t aware of was that investigative notes were being leaked to the operators of The Pirate Bay. And from those leaks, it appears a new series of raids and arrests might be occurring soon. Having already been raided once, which took the website down for a whole three days, the new Pirate Bay seems to be designed to be much more resilient, much harder to take down (and easier to get back up again). The cat and mouse games between the authorities and TPB has only managed to create a stronger mouse – the cat simply hasn’t been able to keep up.

French "three-strikes" has been working for two years now, but where's the evidence it's actually "saving" the music and movie industry?

Staying in Europe, last week, the UK High Court handed down a ruling that paves the way for ISPs to block access to The Pirate Bay. This week, another ruling against ISPs paves the way for the UK’s own version of “three-strikes” to go ahead, as the Court of Appeal upheld the legality of such a system. Not that there’s any evidence to suggest that graduated response, the technical term for “three-strikes”, actually works. I recently read that the French version of three-strikes, nicknamed Hadopi (after the government agency responsible for it) is costing as much as $90 million per year to run. Whereas the only evidence of the program’s success so far, that has been presented by rights holder, is a measly 5% increase in revenue for iTunes over a 2 year period. Considering that iTunes sales worldwide (and with most countries not having a three-strikes regime) went up 36% year-on-year based on Q3 2011 results, the measly 5%, over a 2 year period, seems quite insignificant, and might even point to the opposite conclusion if we’re being cavalier with our statistical analysis. To me, graduated response simply isn’t worth it from a financial point of view, and it’s definitely not worth it when you factor in loss of privacy and other rights.

Losses due to piracy has always been a debatable subject. Whether someone who pirated software ever intended to buy the same thing is almost impossible to predict, as it’s really hard to know what people are wiling and unwilling to pay for. Take Warner Bros. latest idea, their “Disc to Digital” program. The program asks DVD owners to drive to a retail store, hand their original disc to a clerk, who runs the disc through a special machine that eventually produces a purely digital version of the disc, for use on iPads and whatnot (complete with DRM, of course). WB thinks people are willing to not only go to the trouble of doing this, as opposed to simply ripping it at home, but that they’re also willing to pay for the same movie twice. And so if people are not doing it WB’s way, and they’re not making this extra profit, then WB will simply count this as “lost” revenue, and blame it all on home DVD ripping.

Public Knowledge - "Legal DVD Ripping" alternative

Warner Bros. "Disc to Digital" program vs traditional DVD ripping, compared

If you think WB’s legal DVD ripping solution is convoluted, then you’re not alone, because public interest group Public Knowledge also think it’s ridiculous to suggest that consumers would embrace this “alternative”. PK is currently petitioning the US Copyright Office to legalize DVD ripping, and one of the arguments put forward by movie studios, against the idea, is that legal alternatives exist – WB’s “Disc to Digital” being one of the examples referenced by the MPAA. There’s obviously a demand for DVD ripping, even the movie industry accepts this is the case, as otherwise, they wouldn’t be offering their own solution to the problem. But if this is the industry’s idea of adapting to consumer demand, then it really just highlights again how out of touch they have become, and how we really shouldn’t trust their idea of “lost revenue”.

And finally in copyright, a story about our good friends Righthaven, and possible one of the last ever stories on the infamous copyright firm. This week, a judge granted the request to auction off most of Righthaven’s existing copyrights, including the very rights they obtained for sue-for-settlement purposes. Without having any rights to the content they’re pursuing bloggers and non-profits for copying, it really puts an end to all of their pending lawsuits (and appeals), and this, more than anything, is a mortal blow for the firm. Unless Righthaven can manage a revival of Lazarushian proportions, I suspect the next story I write on the firm will be its obituary.

In gaming news, the NPD stats for February 2012 are out, and it looks like I *will* be able to write an analysis for it thanks to there being enough data.

The Xbox 360 won the month again, although both the PS3 and Wii recovered from the January lows. All are down compared to the same month last year though. The lack of any really good releases, and the fact that we may be getting towards the end of the current generation’s sales cycle (or at least well past the midway point), suggests that sales won’t be picking up until the next-gen comes out.

Speaking of next-gen, the latest rumour says the Xbox 720 or whatever may in fact be disc-less. So definitely no Blu-ray playback if that’s the case, although I think physical media are still very much needed to distribute multi Gigabyte games to millions of gamers given the current state of high speed (ie. 40Mbps or faster) broadband saturation. The same argument exists for HD movies, which is why Blu-ray discs will still be around for a while yet.

I think that covers everything for this week, so have a nice one and see you in seven.

Posted in Copyright, Electronics, News Roundup, Nintendo Wii, Wii U, Switch, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (11 March 2012)

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Archive for the ‘Copyright’ Category

Weekly News Roundup (8 April 2012)

Weekly News Roundup (1 April 2012)

Weekly News Roundup (25 March 2012)

Weekly News Roundup (18 March 2012)

Weekly News Roundup (11 March 2012)

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