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Weekly News Roundup (27 March 2011)

Sunday, March 27th, 2011

Another week, another WNR. A pretty quiet week I think, one where I wasn’t paying much attention anyway, so it was good that it was a pretty quiet week and I didn’t miss any big stories because I was too busy wasting time. Anyway …

… let’s start with copyright news. One news that did escape my attention from last week was the White House’s attempt to make unauthorized video streaming a felony. Actually, I did see the news, and dismissed it as typical posturing. And it was just a white paper anyway, and you can buy tons of white paper at Staples for less than the price of a sandwich.

TorrentFreak is under fire of music industry expert Moses Avalon, who says the website could be shut down under new US laws

That is until this week, when I stumbled upon an online spat between music industry expert Moses Avalon and BitTorrent/anti-piracy news website, TorrentFreak. You’ll have to read my news article, as well as Avalon’s blog and TorrentFreak’s response, to get the full picture, but to sum up, Avalon surmised, from the White House white paper, that pretty soon, P2P usage would be made a felony as well. From what I’ve read, and to be honest, I only skimmed as I usually do when I come across an opinion I don’t agree with, it seems Avalon is saying that P2P, the technology itself, would be illegal if the White House’s IP Czar had her way. I believe the only connection between the white paper, and P2P use in general, is that because P2P has an upload component, it *could* make BitTorrent transfers somewhat akin to streaming. However, and I think it’s fairly clear, that there is a huge difference between illegal use of a technology, and making that technology illegal. I don’t for one second think that technology like BitTorrent will be made illegal, because it would also make perfectly legal services, like Skype, Spotify, or even applications used by the US military today, illegal. BitTorrent is perfectly legal, under any law. What some people use it for though …

And as for why Avalon thinks TorrentFreak should be put on the banned website list, I have no idea. TF is a news and information website, much like what Digital Digest is pretending to be, and sure, it has a bias, but I think one would be hard pressed to find one website (especially a niche one) that doesn’t have a bit of a bias, including Avalon’s own website. Avalon refers to “P2P lifestyle”, for which he thinks TF promotes, and that this is the area in which the new proposed laws could see TF get banned, as TF “encourages” unsuspecting youth to lead a life of crime by downloading the latest Bieber hit. “P2P lifestyle” reminds me of the term “gangsta lifestyle”. There seems to be a lot of music these days that might be what one might believe to be promoting the “gangsta lifestyle”, something Avalon should surely know about working around the music industry (Nate Dogg R.I.P – Regulate In Peace!). Is Avalon saying that the government should ban music that could be seen as corrupting today’s youth (and yesterday’s youth too, considering gangsta rap’s long history)? If song lyrics which call for the assassination of police officers or the physical assault or even murder of other people are not illegal, then I’m pretty sure TF should be safe.

The first of many instalments that LimeWire has to pay to record labels, if they had their way in terms of damages payable

LimeWire’s troubles in the courts continues, as the music labels suing the defunct music file sharing network wants a potential $75 trillion dollars in damages, more money than the global music industry has ever made since recorded history began, and greater than the entire world’s combined GDP for a year. The judge presiding over the case has called it “absurd”, although to be fair to the record companies, they didn’t really ask for $75 trillion. It was just that the calculations they used to determine the billions in damages that do actually want is so flawed that, multiplying the amount they want per download, rather than per unique work, it does work out to be in the trillions, or at least several hundred billion. This again brings up the question of just how much money the industry is actually losing to piracy. I will cover this in more detail in a news article next week (I’m like that squirrel in that well known fable – I’m saving stuff for the “news winter”, by saving some real news for next week when there might not be any real news), but it appears that since LimeWire’s shutdown, music piracy has decreased dramatically (and yes, I’m taking a huge personal risk by linking to notorious “P2P lifestyle” website, TorrentFreak – I’m calling my lawyer as I type), as expected. In fact, nearly half of Americans that pirated music have stopped doing so in the last quarter of 2010, largely thanks to the shut down of LimeWire (according to respected research group, NPD). So surely, this should lead to increased revenues, what with 12 million less music pirates in the US now? All we need now is the figure for increased revenue, divide that by the 12 million who stopped downloading, and then we can work out the real cost of piracy, per person. Of course, if revenue actually went down in the last quarter of 2010, then that could be a bit of a problem for the RIAA PR machine.

So if there was no significant revenue increase, or heaven forbid, that there was an actual decrease in revenue, then what does it mean? Another music industry and piracy expert, from the University of Queensland Australia, thinks that the solution to the piracy problem is for the music industry to compete with piracy. Reducing price and making content more available, and as easy to access as pirated downloads, say professor Stuart Cunningham, is the key. I’m not a university professor, as I barely have a bachelor’s degree, but I think this is what I’ve been saying for some time now and it’s good to hear someone who has read books and stuff to agree with me. To be honest, the piracy problem is so bad these days (I’m in total agreement with the entertainment industry on this point), that anything, *anything*, is worth a try. Even if it means having to let go of a century old business model. Cunningham also criticized the industry’s tendencies to over-exaggerate the financial toll of piracy (and this was before the “LimeWire $75 trillion” news story came out) – it’s good politics, but it doesn’t really solve any problems, and sometimes I think the industry doesn’t really want to solve the piracy problem, it only wants to be subsidized (via tax payer handouts and whatnot) for it. Or get some judge to give them $75 trillion.

In other unreported news (unreported on Digital Digest, that is), the Australian arm of the MPAA, the AFACT, is going all the way to the highest court in Australia (there I go, linking to TF again … I’ve just become a repeat offender!) to appeal two decisions so far that have seen it on the losing side of the legal battle with Australian ISP, iiNet, over the issue ISP issued infringement warnings.

Not much happening in the world of 3D, HD and Blu-ray. Is it me or is the 3D hype dying? The only news of note was one where Samsung I think producing an external 3D Blu-ray drive for the PC. Except that all Blu-ray drives are capable of playing 3D Blu-ray movies, and so really, the “3D Blu-ray” marketing here may be just in the software included, which is not even made by Samsung (it’s Cyberlink’s). The only hardware change I can figure may be the connection interface, maybe USB 3.0 instead of 2.0, but 2.0 should be more than enough for 3D Blu-ray’s requirement of 60 Mbps, considering 2.0 is rated for up to 480 Mbps (although real world performance is only a fraction of this, but 200 Mbps is still easily achievable). Any drive rated 2x or above for Blu-ray read speed should suffice for 3D Blu-ray. I guess the 3D hype isn’t dying yet when companies are still using it to promote products that aren’t really any different to its non 3D predecessor, at least in hardware.

And finally, in gaming news, more PS3 jailbreak news this week as well known Android hacker Koushik Dutta turns down a Sony job offer to protest the company’s ill treatment of fellow hacker, George Hotz.

Sony’s R&D recruiter emailed Dutta with a Software Engineering job offer, but Dutta politely declined saying that he “could not in good conscience work at Sony”. It’s good to see someone with principles.

Android hacker Koushik Dutta says no to Sony's job offer, to protest geohot's treatment

Sony, on the other hand, were busy trying to discredit geohot for taking a long planned vacation this week by accusing the hacker of trying to delay proceedings. Hotz is actually in South America, which sounds iffy, but he has clarified that the trip was long planned, and paid for using his own money, not that which has been donated to his fighting fund. He also assured Sony that he’s in contact with his lawyers.

One hack that may or may not make Sony mad is one demonstrated by Kinect hacker Shantanu Goel, when he demo’d running Kinect on the PS3, and using Microsoft’s controller-less motion gaming system to play Killzone 3. It’s all pre-alpha stuff, so things don’t work as well as expected, but it’s still interesting to see in action (YouTube video of the hack in action here). Why did I say it would make Sony mad? Well, what doesn’t, these days.

Best of all, the hack is open source, so anyone with Kinect and a PS3 can try it out for themselves.

Alright, that’s enough writing for this week. Have a good one!

Posted in 3D, Computing, Copyright, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (27 March 2011)

Weekly News Roundup (20 March 2011)

Sunday, March 20th, 2011

Last week was my birthday, but despite the auspicious occasion, I had to work, and not even on Digital Digest related stuff. I’ve always thought that people should get a week off for their birthdays, or at least a day off. I mean, it only happens once a year anyway, and we celebrate some President’s birthday, one that we didn’t even elect, and here in Australia, the Queen’s birthday, even though the day isn’t actually her birthday at all. Anyway, on a scale of 1 to 10 in terms of the amount of stuff to go through, this week is a solid 7, so let’s get started!

Starting with copyright news, last week, I reported on The Observer editorial regarding movie piracy being very much a problem of of the movie studios’ creation. This week comes a report that the problem is very much to do with pricing, and not legal enforcement.

Pirated movies are sometimes the only real alternative to movie consumption in developing nations, thanks to unrealistic pricing of the legal kind

The report mostly looked at piracy in developing nations, where pricing for movies, music or software is usually many times what it costs someone living in a developed nation, relatively speaking. When buying a movie means you have to fork out a day’s wage, then no wonder piracy is a hit. It becomes the only realistic alternative. The reason for this has to do with the usually lower level of competiti0n in these countries, where there aren’t a Wal-Mart or Amazon or an iTunes everywhere you look. But the main reason is artificial. Movie studios and music labels simply do not want to sell content cheaper in these regions, because they feel that once that step is taken, it will lead to the eventual decline in pricing in the developed regions, where most of their revenue comes from. Region control for DVDs and Blu-ray’s was the movie studios’ way to combat this phenomenon, to allow developing nations to access cheaper content, but to limit the damage cheaper content does to other regions. But this is all based on a theory that content owners, particularly in the digital age, still need the same pricing structures deployed for analogue and physical goods. And while the report looked at developing regions, the same also applies to developed regions, because not every can afford what is being asked of them, and so some of them resort to piracy.

I think this is one area that needs closer examination. The advantage of digital content is that it can be replicated perfectly with ease (compare copying a MP3 file, to say copying a tape recording, especially if you want perfect replication), with very little cost, if any. And for pure digital content, without physical media, there are also other cost savings. And yet, we are still expected to pay as much, if not more, for media-less digital content compared to the physical media version (compare TV episode prices on iTunes, add it up for a whole season, and then compare to the cost the superior DVD or Blu-ray versions, for example). I don’t know what the answer is, but I think it has to involve more people buying content for a lower price, as opposed to getting fewer people to pay higher prices.

At least Paramount seems to be wanting to try something new, as they’ve detailed plans to release the independently produced film, The Tunnel, free via BitTorrent. It’s certainly a “if you can’t beat them, join them” strategy, although this isn’t the first time the film’s producers has tried innovative ways to promote and raise funds for the movie (having previously “sold” frames for the movie, 135,000 of them, for $1 each). Paramount isn’t just giving it all away though, they still have a DVD version of the movie being released at the same time, with hours of bonus content, an alternative ending. I think they’re hoping that the hype created by the BitTorrent release will help to raise awareness of the DVD and promote sales, and I hope they succeed. I don’t think the movie is available to buy on Amazon yet, but when it does, I urge everyone to buy a copy if not to just support a movie studio trying something different, and not associating BitTorrent with piracy. I still don’t think this is the best way to make money off movies in the Internet age, because there’s no money being made by giving it away on BitTorrent, and if the DVD is still regularly priced, then it still doesn’t solve the problem of some people not being able to afford it.

Everyone’s second favourite sue-for-profit law firm (the most popular firm being USCG), Righthaven, is in the news again. But it’s bad news for the outfit trying to make a quick buck by suing those that copy, even if it’s just a small extract, of newspaper articles. They’ve had yet another case being potentially dismissed on fair use grounds. The judge in the case found that suing non-profits for profit, is a no go, especially if the claim is that somehow the non-profit profits from the alleged copyright infringement. Righthaven had another case thrown out also for fair use last year, when they tried to make the case that even partial copying, with attribution to the original publisher, was worthy of a lawsuit (or a couple of thousand dollars in settlement fees). One issue the judge found disturbing was the lack of warning Righthaven (or the copyright owner) gave to the alleged infringer. I thought that the DMCA was created to prevent just this sort of thing, where a cease-and-desist system is created to prevent copyright lawsuits from clogging up the legal system, a scenario very likely due to the Internet and how easy it becomes to create copies of other’s works. Righthaven and others “copyright trolls” bypassing the DMCA, should surely be grounds enough for dismissal. And I never though I would actually defend the use of the DMCA, and for that, it makes me hate Righthaven even more.

The Digital Deluxe edition of Assassin's Creed Brotherhood may contain pirated songs

And everyone’s favourite copyright hypocrite, Ubisoft, has done it again, this time releasing a pirated version of their own product. As you may know, they previously used a NO-CD crack by hacking group Reloaded for the digital version of Rainbow Six Vegas 2, because I guess it was easier to steal other people’s work than to create your own. And now, the Digital Deluxe version of their new game, Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood, contains the soundtrack from the game that was downloaded from private BitTorrent tracker Demonoid. This was apparently discovered because Ubisoft, or perhaps whoever packaged the Digital Deluxe release, did not change the ID3 tags from the pirated soundtrack, and so the username of a popular contributor to Demonoid showed up for the “official” release in the song’s tags. There’s actually no concrete confirmation of this, whether it was Ubisoft or one of the distributors that did this, or even if the songs were derived from the pirated version at all, but I wouldn’t be surprised if all of this were true. Ubisoft have said that they’ve launched an internal investigation into the matter. The most annoying thing was that, if the included tracks were sourced via piracy, they are actually an inferior version of the pirated soundtrack, re-encoded with a lower quality.

High Definition

In HD and 3D news, Blu-ray has just had its best ever week in terms of market share, breaking the 23% barrier for the first time. It was all thanks to the release of Disney’s classic, Bambi.

The results are slightly misleading because the release was actually a Blu-ray+DVD combo (the DVD only release will be available in April), and that combos like this are only counted as Blu-ray sales, even though with timed exclusives, it means DVD 0wners may have to buy the Blu-ray version as well. Some will say that there aren’t many that are buying the Blu-ray+DVD version just so they can watch the movie on DVD, but I beg to differ. Disney actually produces the same combo set in both Blu-ray and DVD packaging, and they produce the DVD packaging because they want DVD buyers to buy this version (so to these buyers, they are buying the DVD version with the Blu-ray thrown in as an extra, as opposed to the other way around). In fact, in Australia, I’ve bought combos that are packaged in a DVD sized slipcase, but the actual plastic case being the standard Blu-ray size – I can only guess that publishers are doing this because they don’t want DVD owners to be afraid to buy the smaller, different package.

Lord of the Rings Extended Trilogy Blu-ray

The extended LotR movies are finally on Blu-ray, but is this really the most definitive edition?

The other big news of the week was that the announcement of the Blu-ray version of The Lord of the Rings extended trilogy. Still no firm release date, but despite the pack possibly not being available until 2012, it’s already shot to the top of the sales charts on Amazon. The early details, unfortunately, don’t look great. The movies are still split on two discs each, which if the encodings takes full advantage of the space available, then it’s not such a bad news (although with a 50GB disc, even the longest of the movies can still have an average bitrate of around 25 Mbps – although if they can increase the average audio+video bitrate closer to the Blu-ray maximum, for that extra bit of quality, then I’m all for splitting up the movies on two discs). And despite using two discs, the theatrical versions of the movies does not seem to be included, which is a shame given seamless branching will make this quite an easy thing to do. But the most annoying news is that the extra features still come on DVDs, just like in the theatrical box set. This suggests very little, if any, new Blu-ray exclusive features. It all seems like a fairly lazy release, especially frustrating that it has taken so long to produce the set (which probably has more to do with Warner Bros. trying to milk money out of the theatrical releases, as opposed to the time and effort needed to produce the new extended set). Hopefully I’m wrong and that new details will emerge listing the new Blu-ray exclusive content.

Before I move on to the gaming news, and this news is sort of related, the terrible earthquake crisis in Japan seems likely to affect Blu-ray disc production, not that this is really that important in the grand scheme of things really. I’m sure the Japanese would rather people spend the money they would have otherwise spent on Blu-ray discs towards to relief effort anyway.

And in gaming news, and continuing from the story above, 3DS production seems to be okay, and the US launch should not need to be delayed. 3Ds consoles are produced in China anyway, so production should not have been affected, although Nintendo being a Japanese company, there will still be other types of disruptions.

And a clarification on last week’s story in regards to the PS3 HDD issue – the issue seems only present when one attempts to upgrade the HDD after installing the very first buggy version of the 3.56 firmware. Subsequent versions of the firmware, including 3.56v2 and 3.60, fixed the bug so that people who upgraded their HDDs after installing 3.56v2 and 3.60 did not encounter the same problem. People who had installed the first buggy 3.56 firmware, then upgraded their HDDs, are stuck unless they have the original unmodified PS3 HDD, which they need to put back into the console, install 3.56v2 or 3.60, and then attempt to upgrade their HDD again (which will now work). In any case, it’s obviously Sony’s fault for all of this because the way they silently released 3.56v2 (a “ninja” release, as some have called it), seems to me like an admission of “oops, we f**ked up” if there ever was one. And I’m sure it would be possible for Sony to do something in software to allow people still suffering to fix their PS3s, such as being allowed to roll back to an earlier firmware, or to force the install of 3.60 through. But I suspect they don’t want to do it because it will interfere with their anti-piracy efforts, which was the whole point behind the recent series of firmware updates. Hackers have already said that 3.60 appears to be secure once more, and I doubt Sony wants to reverse the improvement. At the very least, Sony should offer to repair this problem free of charge, even if just for the PR value.

And good PR they need, because according to analyst Michael Pachter, Kinect is outselling Sony’s PlayStation Move by a five to one margin. It’s largely based on the number of Kinect/Move console bundles that have been sold, so it’s not the best way to gauge actual uptake, but this is always difficult because a single PS3 owner can buy 4 Move controllers and this counts as 4 sales, whereas an Xbox 360 owner only ever needs to buy on Kinect accessory (so in fact, it should be natural for Move to outsell Kinect, even if they have the same uptake rate), and so counting bundles may not be such a bad way to do it.

Alright, that’s it for this week. Have a good one.

Posted in Copyright, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (20 March 2011)

Weekly News Roundup (13 March 2011)

Sunday, March 13th, 2011

Welcome to another edition of the WNR. For those that are new to this, this is where I usually write my introduction, or in the rare cases, I get to mention the one piece of work that I actually managed to do the whole week. This is one of those rare cases. The work in question is the monthly NPD US video game sales analysis for February 2011, which I posted yesterday. No big surprises, and the five week reporting period for this February made the figures look better than what it was a year ago, when it was only a four week reporting period, but once again, the Xbox 360 was the real winner with year-on-year growth even when you take into account the reporting differences. Kinect is a big part of why the Xbox 360 is doing well, but you do wonder how long people are willing to wait for some new games, because people I think are already bored with the launch titles.

Also, just a reminder that the draw for the Digital Digest Facebook/Twitter competition took place this week, and you can see if you’ve won here. I’ve tried contacting the winners via Facebook/Twitter, but not everyone has gotten back to me, so hopefully you’ll read this message and collect your $20 Amazon gift card.

Lots to go through, so let’s get started.

In copyright news, LimeWire is in the news again, this time for settling one of the two lawsuits it is facing. No details have emerged regarding the settlement agreement, other than both sides will pay for their own legal costs.

But the way music copyright works, LimeWire is still facing about a billion dollar worth of damages from the other lawsuit. With music copyright, copyright is split between copyright owners of the song in question, and the publisher, which owns particular recordings of songs. The settlement this week is with the publishers, but some of the very same companies as part of the settlement are still suing LimeWire as copyright owners. LimeWire is still fighting that other lawsuit though, and they’ve even gone as far as subpoenaing mega-corps such as Apple and Google to see how distribution deals are normally set up. And the conclusion they’ve drawn from the internal emails they’ve looked at is that piracy possibly even helps sales, and that the closure of LimeWire actually had a huge negative effect on legal music sales. And this will all have an effect on the possible amount of damages that LimeWire needs to pay.

Sony Pictures CEO Michael Lynton once said that he's the type of guy that "doesn't see anything good having come from the internet. Period."

Other than this piece of news, it was actually pretty quiet on the copyright front this week. Just before I started writing this edition of the WNR, I came across this editorial in The Observer, on the websites of the British newspaper. The premise of the article is very simple – that movie studios have only themselves to blame for not embracing the Internet, and allowing online piracy to fill the gap left between the traditional, outdated business model, and the consumer’s demand for something new. The entertainment industry spent the last decade basically trying to use the courts and lobby governments to intervene on their behalf, instead of actually working with the technology. And when they did work with technology, it was to invent DRM whose only function was to annoy legitimate consumers, and actually create a legitimate excuse, at least for some, to obtain content illegally. When people can obtain the same or higher quality content for free, and more easily than legal purchases, this creates the illusion that what they’re doing is perfectly justified, even when they know that it’s illegal. What the industry needs to do is to not give people any excuses, at least not good ones, to not buy legal content. And this starts with making content easier to access, to grant users access to more content, faster, and all at a price point that is reasonable. The Observer article hints at the fact that it may already be too late to act, that a whole generation has grown up disrespecting any type of legal purchase, making fun of those that do the right thing. However, I’m more optimistic, because the success of iTunes and Apps suggest that, people in this new under-25 generation do still spend money, even if their expectations are very much raised in terms of value and ease of use. It’s now up to the industry to rise up and meet those expectations, or the doomed scenario that The Observer article predicts, one where a perfect storm of “excessive budgets, dwindling finance and diminishing returns” will catch up to the industry.

You still can't re-download your past purchases on iTunes, thanks to the music industry's imposed limitations

If you want an example of the industry not embracing the Internet, then Apple’s iTunes is a good example. While the music industry was pre-occupied on cramming as much DRM into music as possible, even putting root-kits on CDs, Apple was quietly building a new business model to suit the Internet age. Sure, Apple also did experiment with DRM, with no success as predicted, but they also made sure that even if you had to deal with Apple’s draconian DRM scheme, you would at least get something back, which would be cheaper music (cheaper than buying a whole album just for a song anyway), ease of use, and hardware devices that made it all work. And Apple, a computer company, now profits from a music, where the music industry could have perfectly easily retained this revenue for themselves, if they just had the foresight to embrace the Internet, instead of fearing it. And this week, another example of the industry’s fear was on show, as news broke of Apple trying to re-negotiate re-download rights for iTunes music with the major labels. That’s right, once you buy a song on iTunes, you cannot re-download the song without paying for it again. This is not Apple’s doing, this is a roadblock put up by the industry, who greedily wants to be paid on a per download basis, as opposed to a per purchase basis. While this is a simple inconvenience to iTunes users, it just goes to show the mentality of the industry who sees the Internet as the worst thing ever (as one Sony executive put it), trying to make it harder for Apple to sell music *legally*.

I can sort of see why the entertainment industry is reluctant to offer re-download rights, and to also put out reasonable prices. They way they see it, if someone is spending $50 on 30 music tracks at $1 each and one DVD movie at $20 every month, then by lowering the price of tracks to 10 cents, and movies to $5, then they will see their income drop from $50 to $8. But the way I see it, if you do truly build a great and easy to use system, people will still spend $50, they’ll just buy more things. In fact, I can see people even spending more than $50, if every buying decision becomes a non-decision and the perceived greater value in their purchases will probably mean more purchases over time. And there will also be more people paying for content than before, because nobody but the really hardcore downloaders will find it necessary to go through the trouble of pirating a 10 cent track. Then there’s the indirect result of “teaching” a generation about copyright, not by trying to punish those that don’t do the right thing, but by creating reasons for them to do the right thing.

High Definition

In HD and 3D news, nothing much again this week. The only thing remotely related to HD was the news that you will soon be able to rent movies on Facebook, using Facebook credits.

I guess after my rant above about the entertainment industry not embracing the Internet, this is one example of the opposite. I still don’t know if this will be a success, but at least they’re trying. The problem is that it costs 30 Facebook credits, or around $3, to rent a movie that you can only really watch online, via a Flash based movie player not too dissimilar to YouTube. That sounds a bit steep for $3 to me. And the same argument I made above rings true here as well, as instead of trying to sell/rent a few overpriced movies to a small minority of Facebook users, wouldn’t it be better to sell/rent a lot of reasonably priced movies to more Facebook users – the long tail approach, where the money is made on a huge number of small transactions, as opposed to a few large ones.

And in gaming news, some better news for Sony this week as their European PS3 import ban has been lifted, and LG, which initiated the ban in court, might even be fined for perhaps taking things a bit too far.

It’s all just as I suspected, a petty patent dispute (one which, to be fair, was started by Sony), with no real consequences once both sides settle down and settle the matter, in or outside of court. But even Sony admit this one could have been costly, since supply was definitely starting to get constrained had the ban not been lifted in time.

And a new firmware is available for the PS3 as well, with 3.60 released this week to give PlayStation Plus subscribers access to 150MB of online storage to store their save games in the cloud. The firmware also addressed security issues, as I suspect every firmware release from this point will, and hackers have reported that it is somewhat effective, for now at least.

Sony encourages people to upgrade their PS3's HDDs, but refuses to fix the firmware bug that renders some PS3s with upgraded HDDs useless

While the update is good for PlayStation Plus subscribers, it’s not so good for those that had their consoles bricked due to the botched 3.56 firmware. What happened was that 3.56’s security fix to fight hackers, fought against those that had legally upgraded their PS3’s HDDs (something Sony encourages people to do, even providing instructions in the manual on how to do it). The update rendered the system unusable, and even the later 3.56 Hotfix didn’t fix the problem, although it did allow those that still had the original unmodified HDD to get the system up and running again (and once that happened, users could then upgrade their HDD again without problems – in other words, users needed install the 3.56 Hotfix by using their original unmodified PS3 HDD, and then afterwards upgrade their HDD). Everybody thought that 3.60 would then fix this major bug, and allow borked systems to work again, but unfortunately, this was not the case. Apart from paying for an expensive repair by Sony tech support, there’s no other way to restore functionality, but some have had success begging Sony to fix their PS3s for free, if they were only out of the warranty period by a few months. I urge people to talk to their local consumer rights group, to inform themselves of their statutory warranty rights, and demand Sony repair their PS3s for free, for a problem that Sony and Sony alone were responsible for in the first place.

Microsoft, on the other hand, are basking in the rays of good news, with Kinect officially entering the Guinness Book of Records as the “fastest-selling consumer electronics device”, with 8 million units sold/shipped in the first 60 days according to Guinness’ own independent research. So far, 10 million units have been shipped to retailers as of the end of February, that’s almost one for every five Xbox 360’s. Still, as I mentioned earlier, Kinect will succeed or fail based on the software offerings, and so far, what’s on offer has been pretty average.

And so that’s another WNR done and dusted. Before I go, I would just like to say that my condolences goes out to the people of Japan. Google has set up a page with resources on the crisis in Japan, for those seeking information or ways to help.

Posted in Computing, Copyright, Movies, News Roundup, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (13 March 2011)

Weekly News Roundup (6 March 2011)

Sunday, March 6th, 2011

Welcome to my favourite month of the year. Not just because it’s the month where I celebrate my birthday, but there are many reasons why March is the bestest month ever. Spring is happening (or Autumn here in the southern hemisphere, and autumn is my favourite season), the sun is shining (but it’s not too hot), the Easter break is just around the corner, and it’s just a brilliant month. Not even Sony can ruin it, no matter how many lawsuits they launch! Speaking of lawsuits, let’s get to this week’s WNR, filled with goodness that you can only expect from March.

Let’s start with copyright news, and I’m going to do things a bit differently this week by talking about some of the gaming related copyright news in this section, and some in the gaming section, mainly because most of the copyright related news items have to do with gaming.

Anti-piracy promotions have had almost no effect on the public's perception of piracy, which most consider socially acceptable

But we’ll start with a non gaming related copyright news, about a new Danish study which says that online piracy, despite being illegal, is socially accepted. In other words, most people know that online piracy is not legal, but most people don’t care. In fact, 70% of all respondents surveyed said that piracy was socially acceptable, whereas 20% even said that it was “totally acceptable”. So why do people, knowing full well that something is illegal, still goes out and does it? Is it because they feel they won’t get caught? Maybe. Or maybe it’s just the numbers, that so many are doing it, the law has become as respected as say the jaywalking law. And maybe people think that there’s no real harm in it. In any case, the entertainment industry would not have been happy upon hearing the results of the study, because it shows that the millions and millions they’ve spent on anti-piracy advertising has been totally ineffective, since the study’s results haven’t changed much since a similar study in 1997. And most interestingly, the study showed that people were aware of the difference between piracy for personal use, and piracy for profit, with three quarters of those surveyed saying piracy for profit was unacceptable. So this does point to the fact that people just don’t think personal piracy is harmful, and they’re right if a) piracy leads to sales, and b) if the “pirate” never intended to buy.

I think online piracy has reached a state of total ubiquitousness, that I don’t think you can find many Internet users that aren’t aware of the fact that pirated stuff can be found online. Now, some of these people may not know how to download it, that’s true, but I’m sure they will know someone who can help them download it, and most can figure out how to watch streamed TV shows and movies online because I assume that most people can figure out how to play a YouTube style video. What’s my point? It is that despite this, a lot of people are still buying a lot of movies, TV shows, games and everything else, and probably more so than compared to when the Internet didn’t exist. And I suspect a lot of the people that buy also pirate at the same time. If the entertainment industry wants to find out how to stop piracy, they have to first find out why these people, given the temptation of online piracy, still go out to buy stuff, and why some of them will buy some things, and pirate others. If a pattern can be found, then perhaps it can lead to a solution. And at the same time, question those that only pirate and ask why they don’t buy. If the answer is that buying costs money, then you know these were never the type to buy anything in the first place, but if it is another answer, then perhaps it too can be used to craft a real anti-piracy solution. To me, if the industry is serious about tackling the problem, this is what they should be doing. Not go crying to the government about how come their old business model isn’t working as well now as before the Internet, and about how people are stealing all their stuff.

Minecraft creator says piracy does not equal theft

And whether piracy of digital content should be considered stealing, that’s another contentious issues. I actually see valid points on both side of the argument, so it’s a hard one for me. This issue’s been in the news this week when, at GDC 11, Minecraft creator Markus “Notch” Persson said that piracy does not equal theft. His argument is that, in the real world, when you steal something physical, the owner of that something has a physical loss that has to be replaced at cost. With digital content, you can steal something and the original owners won’t even know about it, because what you’re doing is copying, not actually stealing. This makes sense, but it depends on who you see as the subject of the theft. If you’re copying your friend’s music, then you’re not stealing from your friend. But if the subject of the theft is the original copyright owners, who would otherwise have received royalty of some kind from a legal purchase, then perhaps that is considered theft. What copyright holders have got wrong, is that they believe every digital “theft” equates to a lost sale, when it only really at best represents a “potential” lost sale, and may only be a temporary one at that (if the “thief” then decides this game or movie is pretty good and I should buy a copy). There are lots of things that causes “potential lost sales”, such as a bad review (as “Notch” noted), and “temporary lost sales” (such as a missed shipping date, as “Notch” also noted). And what about lost sales because the item is priced too high? Copyright holders don’t have a right to claim a lost sale just because people didn’t want to buy their products. The only thing that’s changed is that people are now able to use said product that they didn’t want to buy by obtaining it illegally online, and that’s not a lost sale, that’s a gained user if said user didn’t like your product enough to ever want to pay for it.

High Definition

In HD and 3D news, I actually managed to find one this week, although it’s not good news really. Panasonic seems intent to milk their Avatar 3D Blu-ray exclusivity deal to the full, and it’s now unlikely we’ll see this 3D movie available for general sale until after February 2012.

But before you go bad mouth Panasonic, it seems they’re aware of the possibly bad publicity this move has (you don’t want to get Avatar fans angry! Some of those people are nutty. And blue), and so they’ve shifted all the blame to Fox, even accusing them of trying to start a bidding war between Panasonic and Samsung, as to who gets Avatar exclusivity. None of this surprises me, because Fox has always seemed like a company forever searching for short term gains at the (usually huge) expense of the long term (Star Wars merchandising anyone? Or their insistence on region-locking every damn thing). Avatards, do what the Na’vi did in the movie (you know it’s just a movie, right?), and fight the oppression dished out to you by this mega-corporation, who wants to destroy your way of life (if your way of life consists of buying Avatar 3D Blu-ray on general release and watching it on your non Panasonic equipment). But seriously, if you don’t want studios like Fox treating film fans as some kind of collateral to negotiate big money exclusive deals, then do the only thing that will hurt them – don’t buy Avatar on 3D Blu-ray when it comes out! It’s the only way that Fox will learn their lesson.

The MPEG LA is being investigated by the US DoJ

And continuing the H.264 vs Flash vs HTML5 vs … oh I don’t know, it’s already so confusing … war coverage in this section, this week marked the first shot fired in the H.264 vs WebM wars, or rather, the MPEG LA versus Google war. And interestingly the shot was fired by the US DoJ. The DoJ is investigating the MPEG LA for anti-competitive behaviour, accusing it of trying to stifle Google’s VP8/WebM. The MPEG LA says they’ve done nothing wrong, since it’s their business model to license patents, and if Google uses patents held by MPEG LA members, then Google needs to pay up (instead of go crying to the DoJ about it). I think Google’s wish to take over the web codec standard with their royalty free WebM isn’t going to work, because from what I’ve read, it will be almost impossible for WebM to escape without having to depend on at least some patents. I suspect all will be settled in court one way or another, but I don’t think the DoJ really needs to interfere, considering the MPEG LA is only doing what it has always done and it’s up to Google to ensure WebM doesn’t use any patents held by MPEG LA members.

And I suppose it is sort of HD related, so if you want to find out what’s new with the iPad 2, go here to read all about it.

Ahh, gaming news. It used to be all about fun things like Fallout 3, Kinect and Fallout New Vegas, but now, it’s all PS3 jailbreak this, PS3 jailbreak that.

Sony’s legal setback a month ago seems to have been just a temporary one, since they have now managed to get all the subpoenas they wanted, and more. The overreaching and extremely broad subpoenas, as the EFF puts it, means Sony can now request the details of anyone who simply viewed the geohot hacking video on YouTube, followed geohot’s twitter account, or even just visited his website, and then sue, sue, sue! I’ll save Sony some time now – I’m guilty on all three counts, and I even dared to embed one of the PS3 jailbreak videos in the forum, as a companion to the news article about the massive Sony security FAIL. But I suspect journalists, or “web journalists” like myself (ie. opinionated hacks) aren’t immune from the mother of all mass lawsuits Sony wants to initiate – let’s just hope that someone talks them out of this and the total PR disaster that would ensue.

Ridiculous requests by Sony, and just when you think they couldn’t over-react more to their own PS3 security failings, they go and do something like this. Sigh.

And it seems Sony’s over litigious nature do get them into trouble, and not just in the PR front either. They tried to sue LG for patent breaches back in December, in relation to mobile phones. They didn’t expect LG to fire back, let alone actually win a counter dispute, in relation to Blu-ray patents, which has now seen tens of thousands of PS3 shipped to Europe seized by customs. The PS3 shipment will be seized for 10 days, unless LG uses the option to extend to temporary sales injunction, and if this thing drags on, you could actually see PS3s being taken off store shelves all across Europe. Karma?

And speaking of security breaches, the Nintendo 3DS has already been cracked to allow pirated DS games to work. DS games were always easy to crack, but let’s see if Nintendo can stay strong against efforts to crack 3DS games.

That’s it for the week. Don’t forget, you still have two and a half days to enter our Facebook/Twitter competition, details here. Good luck!

Posted in 3D, Copyright, Gaming, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup, PS3, PS4, Video Technology | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (6 March 2011)

Weekly News Roundup (27 February 2011)

Sunday, February 27th, 2011

The last week of the “high maintenance” month of February is upon us, and it’s a relatively quiet one in terms of news stories (quantity wise, anyway). I did finally write that US video game sales 2010 year-in-review blog that I promised over a month ago. And it was pretty short as promised as well, mainly thanks to NPD no longer releasing publicly all the figures needed to do a proper analysis. But really, the story of 2010 was the Xbox 360 revival (not that it was ever close to dying or anything), with the last of the three graphs I posted in the review blog being the most telling, showing the trend of the three major home-based consoles. Anyway, onto the news roundup.

In copyright news, let’s start with more bad news for isoHunt. Not only did they get sued again last week, now, even a potential ally in Google has come out blasting the BitTorrent search engine.

Now, on first glance, you might expect Google to back isoHunt, considering both are search engines. And since Google is fighting its own copyright battle against Viacom, surely this puts them on the same side as isoHunt. But that’s not really the case. Viacom’s strategy in their appeal of the YouTube verdict is to say that it’s no longer enough for websites to be DMCA compliant, that is to remove infringing content when requested. Instead, Viacom says that there is something called “red flag” infringement, which means that if it’s somewhat obvious that infringement is occurring, then Google/YouTube should take action even without any specific DMCA complaints. The problem for Google in regards to the isoHunt appeal is that the MPAA might just win the case against isoHunt on the basis of “red flag” infringement, and it would set a precedent that would disadvantage Google. So what’s Google’s legal strategy? It’s to paint isoHunt not as a search engine, but just a really really bad copyright infringer. It’s arguing that there’s no need for the MPAA to even use “red flag” infringement, because isoHunt is plainly guilty of actively and deliberately supporting piracy, something that Google/YouTube cannot be accused of. Yes, it really hurts isoHunt’s defence that they’re just a search engine, like Google, but this is Google in self-protection mode.

The so called "red flag" infringement ruling could spell an end to online innovation

Regardless, “red flag” infringement is actually quite a dangerous precedent to set, so I do support Google’s efforts in trying to fight against it, even if it means that isoHunt will be sacrificed as a result. The problem with “red flag” infringement is that it potentially could kill innovation on the Internet, because let’s admit it, a lot of even today’s most popular and mainstream web services had to tolerate or even support “red flag” infringement, to get their business up and running. Would YouTube exist today if people weren’t allowed to upload copyrighted content back when it first started out? Would Google, the search engine, have become the most popular search engine if it blocked all piracy related search results when it was first launched? Would any of the free file hosting websites even exist, allowing us to share large (legal) files that otherwise would be too big for email? “Red flag” infringement is basically the content owner’s way of stopping all innovation, even if there is a remote chance that infringement could occur at some unspecified time in the present or future, and that’s dangerous. And it also puts the onus on identifying infringing activity on the side of the website publishers, as opposed to the content owners, which doesn’t even make sense, since how would I know what content belonged to whom and whether it’s really authorized or not (case in point, Viacom’s own employees uploading copyrighted clips under fake accounts, to create fake hype and promote their shows)?

And so we move on to the next set of news, which is also about appeals. This time, it’s the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft’s (AFACT) appeal of a verdict from a year ago which found Internet Service Provider, iiNet, not guilty of authorizing copyright infringement committed by its subscribers, even though iiNet failed to act on infringement notices sent by the AFACT. The result of the appeal was announced this week, and it’s victory again for iiNet, even if it’s mostly symbolic at this point. While iiNet won the appeal, several decision has been overturned in favour of the AFACT, and it probably paves the way for AFACT stepping up its campaign to make ISPs the copyright police. iiNet’s victory apparently was more due to technical reasons, the precise design of the copyright infringement notices which the court found inadequate, and really, the decision probably gives the AFACT a very clear set of guidelines on just how to send infringement notices to ISPs. Basically, a symbolic victory for iiNet, but probably a more substantial win for the AFACT in the long run.

What frustrates me most about these types of trials, and about ISP warnings and/or three-strikes system, is that, in the end, it will be so so easy for users to bypass monitoring and escape being caught, or even cautioned. This is because anti-piracy monitoring today is basically just based on monitoring BitTorrent networks, which is only one way to obtain pirated content. Encryption, VPNs, or even just direct Internet downloads via digital lockers, can all escape the watching eyes of the piracy police, and so with millions of dollars being spent on lawsuits, and even more millions per year for monitoring and policing, the result will, as always, just push people towards using new piracy tools that will make online piracy harder and harder to track and stop. Remember in the good old days when websites simply hosted the pirated files, and how easy that was to stop compared to stopping torrents? Civil liberties are being sacrificed to give corporations a *false* sense of security, and that’s a really really bad reason to force us to give up our rights (is there even such a thing as a “good reason”?)

High Definition

Again, not much happening for HD/3D news, and I’m not even going to mention the stupid “Inception to be converted to 3D” news, because if there’s one thing worse than the 3D hype, then it’s “taking a 2D movie and converting it to fake 3D so we can squeeze more money out of the fans” phenomenon. Note to studios: not everything has to be in 3D!

XviD 1.3.0 has been released this week

While not exactly HD news, exactly, but a new version of Xvid has been released, version 1.3.0, and it’s the first new version in quite a while. MPEG-4 ASP based codecs may no longer be as sexy or “cool” as the MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 ones, but there’s still a place for the good old Xvid codec for medium quality video files.

And the absence of real news means that I will have to plug my weekly US Blu-ray (and DVD) sales analysis feature, the latest analysis found here. It’s a place where Blu-ray fans can go to bask in the glory of “their” format’s sales successes, and where die hard HD DVD fans like myself can go and find any signs that show Blu-ray’s weakening stance, no matter how statistically insignificant (“OMG, Blu-ray sales fell 20% compared to last week – it’s doooomed!!”).

And as part of compiling the stats, I also regularly update a series of related graphs, that are never actually posted anywhere (other than on our on-and-off “Blu-ray: The State of Play” feature). So instead, I’ll post some of the graphs here right now, for your enjoyment.

Every week, there are stats to show how Blu-ray revenue as a percentage of combined disc (Blu-ray + DVD) revenue, and here’s the stats plotted that compare the most recent weeks (in red) to the same week a year ago (blue):

Blu-ray Sales Percentage: Currents vs a Year Ago (as of 2011-02-12)

The graph below shows the same stat as above, except plotted in a linear time fashion, with a trend line showing Blu-ray’s growth.

Blu-ray Market Share Trend: As of 2011-02-12

And finally, this graph shows the Blu-ray growth rate (so if Blu-ray’s market share was 5% a year ago, and now it’s 10%, the the growth rate is 100%, or doubled), again with a trend line.

Blu-ray growth rate trend: As of 2011-02-12

And finally in gaming, which these days, should probably be renamed to the “PS3 Jailbreak” section instead. Last week ended with Sony banning a bunch of users from PSN for using hacked firmware, and now the hackers have fought back by hacking PSN to un-ban themselves, as well as make it possible to ban anyone they want.

Note to Sony: don’t try to out-hack hackers.

geohot's takes the battle with Sony to rap form

Then we had the news of Sony attempting to bring out a new PS3 SKU that would be hack proof (famous last words). geohot and others have already said that the only way for Sony to really combat the PS3 hack is to release a new hardware, and it seems Sony has taken their advice. At the same time, Sony is beefing up their own legal team as they seek to sue their way out of this mess (what could possibly go wrong?). Sony have also got the German police to raid the home of PS3 Linux hacker graf_chokolo, which will please the Linux/hacking community. You can read more on these stories here.

For those that think I’ve been too hard on Sony, perhaps you’re right. Personal history with the company aside, the main reason I and a lot of people detest Sony is solely based on their recent actions, best described in this Make article/rant. I started Digital Digest talking about how to play DVDs in Windows, back when commercial solutions were few and far in between, and with Pentium 4’s still an expensive early-adopter thing, you just needed to hack your way to play DVDs on PCs smoothly, from tweaking drivers to using custom decoders and more. And from then on, it’s always been about using products and software beyond the purposes intended by manufacturers and publishers. Sony’s hatred towards anyone that wants to do things outside of Sony’s own limited imagination, and their arrogance of forcing people to use Sony products in Sony’s own prescribed manner (and it’s not just end users, it’s also developers too, having to adapt themselves to Sony’s way of doing things, as opposed to the other way around – a philosophy that Microsoft, for example, do not share, which is why the Xbox 360 is a much more developer friendly platform). And it’s also the arrogance in their response, which is almost always an overreaction (eg. CD root-kit fiasco), because it’s as if they believe that using, developing for or even selling a Sony product is a privilege, and so if you make Sony angry, expect retribution. Point out a flaw in their security design? Sony will get you. Make their products do more than advertised? Sony will get you. Sell products to help Sony users in a way Sony doesn’t like? Sony will double get you (as geohot wisely raps in his video, “I shed a tear everytime I think of Lik Sang”).

Speaking of Microsoft as a “good guy” when it comes to consumer right seems quite wrong to me, but compared to Sony, there are a lot of “good guys”. But Microsoft’s response to the Kinect hacks (not the first response, which was similar to Sony’s, but the subsequent responses by openly welcoming the hacks) is to be commended, and really, it’s the best business decision as well (Sony’s actions have often hurt themselves more than anyone else, to be fair). And now Microsoft is following up by releasing an official PC developer kit for Kinect, available for free to non commercial users and researchers. Of course, opening up the development of an console accessory is different to the reaction of seeing your product hacked into oblivion, but still, it’s hard to imagine Sony reacting to the hack in the same manner (as the Make article mentioned, the Aibo hacking incident kind of shows what a typical Sony response might have been).

Also, Kinect will work with Windows Phone sometime in the future (not this year though), which given the recent Nokia announcement regarding moving to the Windows Phone platform, can only be a good thing for Kinect. Still, Kinect needs some better, more varied games, because frankly, I’m a bit tired (in both sense of the word) from playing Kinect Sports soccer and winning 4-3 all the time (I’m not that good at goalkeeping, which for me, consists of flapping my arms wildly).

Alright, enough ranting for this week. Have a good one.

Posted in Computing, Copyright, Electronics, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup, PS3, PS4, Video Technology | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (27 February 2011)

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Weekly News Roundup (27 March 2011)

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