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Weekly News Roundup (19 December 2010)

Sunday, December 19th, 2010

Welcome to the penultimate (I told you I would find a way to use this word) WNR for 2010. It’s nearly the end of the year, and as expected, news is a bit light at the moment. But news there is, and cover it we shall. I’m sure you’re as busy as me around this time of the year, so let’s not waste any time on silly introductions that attempts to be witty even though the author doesn’t actually know what witty means. Is it the same as being ironical?

Let’s start with copyright news, Warner Bros commissioned a report into online piracy a couple of months ago, and the results are in, and are somewhat surprising.

Foreign dubs and subtitled version of latest movies and TV shows are top downloads on torrent networks

Apparently, pirates do occasionally buy stuff too. And this means that when studios are fighting pirates, they are essentially fighting their own potential customers. None of this should be too surprising to readers of this feature, but I’m sure it was a surprise to Warner Bros. And they have vowed to find out just why pirates sometimes pirate stuff, and sometimes decide to buy stuff, and if they can ever work out the formula for this, then it could really help to reduce piracy. I’m sure Warner has just commissioned another report to get to the bottom of this, but here’s a (free) hint for Warner: cheap and good = sales; expensive and bad = piracy. The other interesting findings include that while pirate downloaders are usually men, it is woman that download TVs shows more often than men. And another interesting finding was that foreign subtitled/dubbed version of TV and movie downloads often become the most popular downloads only a few days after the original English release, suggesting that there may be some kind of market that is being under-served at the moment. For many foreign viewers, this is perhaps the only way, legal or otherwise, to watch the latest movies or TV shows in particular, since the alternative could be waiting months for the official version to be released. So to add to the earlier hints: worldwide simultaneous release = good; staggered release in attempt to squeeze as much money out of each market = piracy (might also add exclusivity deals to this – more on this in the 3D/HD section). So basically, the conclusion seems to be that, no, studios aren’t doing everything they can to stop piracy because they are not really matching the market’s needs, in terms of release schedules, or pricing, or a lot of other things under their control. So instead of blaming torrent sites, and trying to sue users, maybe they should go fix their own mistakes first.

OnSmash.com - Shut down by the government on orders from the RIAA, but was it the right decision?

A follow-up to the story on the US Homeland Security, ICE operation that closed down 80+ websites in late November. We know now, via a story in the New York Times, that at least one of the websites closed, OnSmash.com, should not have been closed, or at the very least, should have left the decision up to that of a judge and jury. OnSmash.com provided hip-hop music and videos, publishing stuff that is often leaked to them directly from labels and artists such as Kayne West. These leaks might constitute copyright infringement in the strictest sense, but there’s a good reason why the leaks came from official sources such as the copyright owners themselves and artists. All for promotional reasons, a great way to reach the fan-base in this day and age. And now this way has been closed, without explanation and without any sort of paperwork that can be obtained by the defendant for probably weeks and months. To say that those in the industry were surprised would not be a lie, but it probably also wasn’t a surprise that major studios represented by the RIAA did not like the way things were working. And straight from the RIAA’s lips to Homeland Security’s ears, bypassing due process as much as possible in the, um, process. A little copyright infringement is sometimes a good thing. Sometimes a great thing. Remember Susan Boyle’s audition video? You know, the one that now has 55 million views. Was that video from an official source, or was it pirated? Would it have served the copyright owners of Britain’s Got Talent to have had this video removed, or did it serve them better to keep it up? The RIAA would have probably sued for unauthorised use of ‘I Dreamed A Dream’, or got their ICE buddies to knock down a few doors.

Dutch anti-piracy agency BREIN wants to get in on the website closure business too, and they’ve had 29 websites shut down, with visitors redirected to the BREIN website. And they can keep doing this because the minute those 29 websites were shut down, hundreds probably sprang up in their place. Hurray for perpetual war.

Meanwhile, more bad news for law firms seeking to profit from mass lawsuits, as another judge has declared that little things like jurisdiction does matter, even in embarrassing porn lawsuits. So it means that copyright trolls will now have to work a little bit harder, to determine just where the people they’re suing are actually located, before threatening people with massive amounts of damages and public humiliation if they don’t pay up by the close of biz tomorrow, capiche? But these little things to add up, in terms of cost, and if the EFF can keep up their small victories, eventually, it will all add up to a major victory when it no longer becomes profitable to pursue these kinds of lawsuits (and more on how you can support the EFF financially, and also get some great games for peanuts, later on).

High Definition

In HD/3D news, bad news for Avatar fans that don’t have Panasonic 3D TVs – no Avatar for you until 2012, maybe.

Be prepared to pay higher and higher prices for Avatar 3D Blu-ray, as the exclusivity deal with Panasonic may last until 2012

A Panasonic UK spokesperson has confirmed that Panasonic’s exclusive Avatar 3D Blu-ray deal actually lasts until 2012. So until then, it’s paying $200 (if you’re lucky on eBay) for a copy, or those willing to risk it can get it from less then legal sources. I don’t condone piracy, but really, if these are the choices, then what would most people do? I just hope Fox is getting enough money from Panasonic for this deal, because by the time 2012 comes, how many people would have found another less than legal way of obtaining the 3D version of this film already, and how much would that cost the studio in terms of lost sales (assuming the 3D hype is still around by that time). My opinion, which is absolutely opposite of the actual legal position, is that if I can’t buy it, then I’m free to try and obtain it in any way I wish.

And these kind of exclusivity deals destroys almost all the progress made by unifying the 3D Blu-ray standard, because it’s back to the bad old days of buying hardware based on the movies that are available for the platform.

But I think something will give before 2012, because I just can’t see companies like Samsung standing idly by, or Fox having the patience to wait it out until 2012 when the demand for it is there, and not when they see the 3D BDRip torrent of the movie doing great “business” on the net.

The H.264 vs WebM vs Ogg Theora vs HTML5 vs Flash war just got even more confusing, with Microsoft helping competitor Firefox by producing a H.264 add-on for the open source browser, allowing Windows 7 Firefox users to experience HTML5 H.264 videos. Of course, Microsoft never helps anyone without gaining something themselves, and as staunch supporters of H.264, this is not a surprising move. So to summarise, Firefox and Opera don’t want HTML5 to adopt H.264 because it’s incompatible with their open source licenses, while Apple, Microsoft love H.264 because they hold patents to it (and it is an industry standard that’s widely supported already). Google remains on the fence and has been playing everyone off everyone else – even though they’re the ones that came up with WebM/VP8, Chrome also natively supports H.264, so the only one that stands to gain regardless of the result is, once again, Google. Meanwhile, Adobe sits in a dark corner cursing everyone, while stabbing pins into a Steve Jobs voodoo doll. And that’s what you missed last time on Glee.

And in gaming, The Humble Indie Bundle is back. The deal is simple – five highly rated indie games that normally retail for $85 can be had for the princely sum of … anything you want.

That’s right, you decide what you want to pay for the bundle of five DRM-free games, and you can even direct part of the payment to one of Child’s Play charity, the EFF or the people who are running this campaign. So if you’ve been porn or Far Cry mass-sued, and want to give something back to the EFF, or if you hate DRM and want your voice heard, or you want to support a very worthy charity, or just because you actually want to buy the five excellent games included, this is your chance! The top amount paid so far stands at $3141.59 at the time of writing, but the average is $7.66. The million dollar barrier has already been broken as well.

A Kinect update. Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter says that he has access to NPD figures that show the Kinect Xbox 360 console bundle outsold the Move PS3 console bundle by more than a 5 to 1 ratio in November. That’s not surprising considering the half a billion dollars that Microsoft threw in to promote Kinect, and the subsequent hype the motion sensor device has since generated. And I’m not just talking about Oprah or Ellen Kinect appearances/give-aways, but also with independent developers “hacking” and the various impressive demo videos. The same kind of hype is just not being generated for Move. And with free DLC downloads already appearing for two of Kinect’s most popular games, thanks to commercial sponsorship, and software updates that promises to make Kinect even more accurate (like finger tracking), the momentum is definitely with Kinect at the moment, even if Microsoft says no to Kinect sex games. The only thing holding it back is supply issues (just checking now, it’s out of stock on both Amazon.com and Wal-mart.com, while the PS Move is in stock on both, albeit in very short supply on Amazon).

And that’s pretty much it for news this week. Short and sweet. Or at least just short. See you next week.

Posted in 3D, Computing, Copyright, Electronics, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One | 3 Comments »

Weekly News Roundup (12 December 2010)

Sunday, December 12th, 2010

Another pretty quiet week, but with the NPD US November video games sales figures being leaked out in a timely fashion, I was able to get the analysis up. The big surprises were how well the Xbox 360 did (up 68% from the same time last year!), and how poorly the Wii *didn’t* do (up 1% from last year, much better than the usual 30+% decline in previous months). The PS3 continues the trend in recent months of year-on-year declines, which is mostly due to the post Slim/price cut bump from last year, but it’s still somewhat of a concern that the PS3 didn’t even manage to sell half as many units in November as the Wii. And with Kinect being a bigger hit than Move, and with Blu-ray players being dirt cheap these days, Sony may have to re-evaluate pricing to spur sales. Speaking of Kinect, I managed to buy one this week. I haven’t had much time to play with it yet (especially on the PC), but I can see the potential and the appeal (for casual gamers in particular), although the space requirement thing is kind of annoying. Let’s get started with the news roundup.

In copyright news, more bad news for the US Copyright Group, as they had to drop 97% of the unnamed defendants in their “Far Cry” lawsuit.

The judge in the case ruled that due to jurisdiction reasons, most of the defendants had to be removed from the case, and so now, only 140 remain. The USCG has previously said that this wouldn’t hurt their business, as they had always planned to do it this way, but with having to respect jurisdiction and having to file multiple lawsuits all over the place, the USCG’s business case may have been damaged. These mass lawsuits rely on defendants paying up quickly, and so all these extra court procedures may very well be expenses that eventually make these lawsuits unprofitable.

The Drudge Report is the latest victim of Righthaven's mass lawsuits

The other famous mass copyright lawsuit law firm at the moment is Righthaven, doing the exact same thing but for posted newspaper articles. Even though they’ve had even less success than USCG, and have had to backtrack a few times when they sued the wrong high profile target, they’re not giving up and have instead picked an even larger target this time – The Drudge Report. Righthaven is suing Matt Drudge and both drudgereport.com and DrudgeReportArchives.com for using images owned by The Denver Post, the latest newspaper to join the Righthaven stables. Righthaven is demanding Matt Drudge hand over these two domain names to them so the serious copyright abuse (of using one single image owned by The Denver Post) can be stopped post haste. According to my own estimates, the drudge.com domain name is worth about $7.8m alone (just the domain name, not the content), so I guess that’s how much Righthaven thinks a single image is worth. Of course, picking on such a high profile target has its own problems, and although it will get Righthaven in the news, it could also backfire if the Drudge Report mount a legal defence instead of just paying the settlement fee, which appears to be the case.

But still, $7.8m for a single image may seem like a lot even when you compare that to the insane damage amounts being handed out for MP3 downloads. The most famous MP3 download case of all, you know the one, has had some development this week too, with Jammie Thomas-Rassett’s lawyers asking the damages, of $62,500 per song, to be reduced to $0 per song. Yep, I can really see the RIAA agreeing to this latest demand. But Thomas-Rassett’s lawyers do have a point in saying that the RIAA has not proved the financial damage being done by their client’s actions, but with the current copyright laws and statutory damages, the RIAA does not need to prove actual damages,which I think is really unfair. I can see the value of statutory and punitive damages in commercial copyright cases, in which sometimes it is difficult to proof actual damages, but when you’re suing students, single mothers and other net users, I just don’t think it is appropriate. And judges don’t think it’s appropriate either, which is why the Thomas-Rassett case is still unresolved in terms of damages. The thing is, if the RIAA is trying to use this case to scare off other downloaders, it’s not exactly working is it? And I think the laws needs to be updated so that a fairer punishment can be handed out. $50 per song, for a song that costs $0.99 to download (but one must also consider uploads in cases such as these), should be more than enough. It certainly shouldn’t be $62,500, and such large amounts should remain for commercial cases only, such as when a TV network broadcasts a song without permission.

Eircom has made a deal with the devil, to offer free music streaming for spying on customer downloads

The RIAA’s answer to this is three-strikes, or something like it. Strategically, it makes sense to keep pursuing Thomas-Rassett, keep on getting awarded huge damages, and they too can use it as example of how the current copyright laws do not work. But the change they want will be to their own benefit, so that it would make it easier to sue and suspend downloaders, and lawmakers may just make this dream a reality via Three-Strikes. But before the music industry seeks government cooperation, they’ll do a bit of ISP threatening to get them to adopt Three-Strikes “willingly”, and it appears this strategy is working, at least in Ireland. Eircom has agreed to the Irish music industry’s demand for Three-Strikes, and will begin to ban users from their network after spying on their downloading activities and detecting anything the music industry finds offensive. And to stop the mass exodus of users to other ISPs that don’t spy on their paying customers, Eircom and the music industry has come up with some sweetners, such as unlimited music streaming and cheaper music downloads. Of course, if they really believe that music streaming and discounted music downloads can help people move on from piracy, they should have just offered this, without three-strikes, in the first place.

I’ve talked a lot of nonsense in the copyright section of the WNR in the last couple of years (yes, it really has been that long!). But I think if I had to sum up my opinion on web anti-piracy, it would this: be pragmatic! It’s clear that the technological solutions, namely DRM, has failed. Whether it’s Blu-ray releases like Avatar that come with “enhanced” anti-piracy solutions, or the latest Ubisoft game – the only disruption these new DRM measures usually cause is to legitimate buyers, with pirates still easily able to pirate the content (and without the pesky annoyances brought on by DRM, and so pirates are actually getting a better product thanks to the use of DRM by publishers). One news I found interesting this week was that pirates have found a way to pirate 3D movie screenings at the cinemas, using a special lens on video cameras. If pirates are going to this length to pirate a movie, I just don’t think there are any technical solution to piracy, nothing that can’t be bypassed, hacked or simply ignored.

The legal solutions, like the mass lawsuits or Three-Strikes either have no intention in stopping piracy (only to monetize it), or will only push people towards piracy solutions that cannot be tracked, and that means they don’t work either. So why not be pragmatic, and seek a real solution, instead of band-aids or measures that will only give the industry a false sense of security, and at the same time, cause massive collateral damage in terms of consumer and civil rights.

But the industry is obsessed with doing things the wrong way, and with all the powers granted to them by governments, they are getting more and more belligerent. The MPAA’s latest demand is for Universities to crack down on students downloading movies, or face the possibility of losing federal funding, following the RIAA’s footsteps in making similar threats. But they could only make this threat if they can back up their threat, and unfortunately, they can, via the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008. So the RIAA/MPAA have gone to a lot of trouble, a lot of money spent on lobbying, to get the act passed, and this act forces Universities to divert funding away from education, and towards deploying anti-piracy tech, and what has it all achieved? This is what I mean about being pragmatic, because I don’t think this “solution” solves any problems. College students downloading movies may be stopped (or maybe they’ll just use their own personal Internet accounts to do so), but how much money has that made for the RIAA/MPAA? Will these students, many of whom have trouble paying their tuition fees, all suddenly stop downloading pirated content and start paying for everything? And all of this “result” after millions and millions of dollars, was it worth it? And is it really worth it to endanger the education of tomorrow’s workforce so that the RIAA/MPAA can chalk up another “theoretical” victory, which gains them little, if any, actual benefit? It is really worth it?

And to round off the copyright news, LimeWire is shutting down again, but this time, it’s the legal part of LimeWire. It was originally set up to appease the music industry and to transition LimeWire to a legal service, but it looks like it failed to achieve either of its objectives. The service will shut on at the end of the year.

High Definition

In HD/3D news, not much going on really. I suppose I should cover the fact that Blu-ray has just had its best Black Friday sales yet.

Blu-ray Sales Percentage - Year-on-Year Comparison (As of 29 Nov 2010)

Blu-ray sales growth has slowed this year, but this Black Friday (last entry in graph) was a good one for the HD format

$83 million dollars worth of Blu-ray movies were purchased during the Black Friday sales week. This in itself is not a record, and “only” represented a 20% increase on last year’s Black Friday results, but what was more impressive was the market share, which traditionally favours DVDs during this period (due to aggressive discounting). This year, Blu-ray’s market share was 16.82%, an improvement on last year’s 12.33%. It seems that the aggressive Blu-ray pricing has had an effect.

The next few weeks will generally favour Blu-ray as well, so while Blu-ray growth has slowed a bit, it is at least growing, which cannot be said of DVDs. The economy, Blu-ray, and downloads are all taking market share away from DVDs, so its decline isn’t too surprising either.

And on a personal note, the Blu-ray’s I picked up during Amazon’s Black Friday sales arrived this week. This is why I prefer to shop from Amazon: not only did they upgrade shipping from standard to express at no charge (the item arrived from the US to Australia in only 4 days, and one of those days was a customs delay), they didn’t even make a fuss about it – I only found on when they sent me the “dispatched” email with the shipping details and tracking option, which is normally not available with standard shipping. This contrasts to an experience I had with an Australian online store this week. I purchased Kinect Sports from Big W as part of their online sales at the end of November. My credit card charged immediately. But having not heard anything about the order, and with their online order tracking system down, I emailed customer service. I only received a response a day later, and was told that in fact, my order had not gone through due to an IT problem, and that instead of resolving this and sending out my item, they had simply cancelled it. My credit card has yet to be refunded! And the worst part is that I could have picked this title up for even cheaper just a few days after my original order, but I chose to stick with Big W since I thought, wrongly, that my order had already been processed and dispatched. Was I angry? Well, put it this way, it’s unlikely that I would shop at Big W ever again, online or in store. Not if I have a choice.

Not much to say in gaming, nothing that I haven’t already covered in the NPD analysis anyway, so I’ll skip it for this edition. Although I will add that the NPD analysis focuses on US sales only, and the global picture, especially in Japan, is actually very different, with the PS3 outperforming the Xbox 360 and the Wii quite consistently. Global sales wise, the PS3 has nearly caught up, or has already caught up, to Xbox 360 sales, whereas in the US, the Xbox 360 still has a 1.6:1 advantage over the PS3. But if Kinect is the next big thing, or really just the next Wii, then even global sales may start to reflect the Xbox 360 dominance, because finally, we have a console that can do almost any kind of games – from the hard core, to the casual. The only thing it doesn’t do is Blu-ray, but with standalones so cheap these days, the PS3’s advantage in this area is diminishing, especially since multi-platform games aren’t really taking advantage of the space offered by Blu-ray, and the PS3 version is often worse than the Xbox 360 version, due to the more difficult time devs have with PS3 development.

And this “PS3 is harder to develop for” isn’t just a myth, or can be attributed to lazy programmers. I’ve heard this personally, and constantly, from people working in the industry, and it seems the main issue is the whole hardware architecture of the PS3, which will always makes it more difficult to develop for than the Xbox 360 – even doing the same things on the PS3 takes a lot longer than on the Xbox 360, and so while developers may be able to do more with the PS3, time constraints means that they end up doing less (or just the minimum required to get the game running at the desired FPS). It seems Microsoft, being primarily a software company, did a lot of work to ensure the Xbox 360 was easier to programme for, while Sony, being primarily a hardware company, made a superior piece of kit. So it’s no surprise, really.

Okay, no more writing. Head hurt. Want Fallout gaming. NOW! See you next week.

Posted in Copyright, Electronics, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup, Nintendo Wii, Wii U, Switch, PS3, PS4, Video Technology, Xbox 360, Xbox One | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (12 December 2010)

Weekly News Roundup (5 December 2010)

Sunday, December 5th, 2010

Damn it. November went by and I didn’t even get to mention that it was the ‘penultimate’ month of 2010. I love to use the word ‘penultimate’, and so you can imagine how disappointed I am. There’s a surprising amount of news this week. Surprising because I still managed to play something like 25 hours of Fallout New Vegas, so I don’t know how I managed to find the will to quit the game and search for news. So let’s get started …

… with Copyright news. The cracks are starting to appear in the US Copyright Group’s attempt to monetize anti-piracy, and they’re bringing out the kitchen sink to stop anyone getting into their way.

Document lawyer Graham Syfert is just the latest to try and stop the USCG mass lawsuits, and he did it by producing and selling self-help documents and selling them to those that have been sued. These documents can be used to keep the USCG busy, in the hope that they will eventually drop the case because it’s just not worth the trouble. The documents can be purchased for as little as $9.95, but according to the USCG, it’s costing them thousands. Which is why the USCG has just sued Syfert. Apparently, it’s only okay for the USCG to make money off anti-piracy, and anyone getting in their way is a bad person. Syfert, being a lawyer himself, has fired back claiming that the USCG’s actions are “completely insane”. And if that wasn’t bad enough for the USCG, they are now facing a class action lawsuit filed by one of the defendants of their ‘Far Cry’ case. The class action alleges “fraud, extortion and abuse” on the part of the USCG. I’ve always been told that the US is a particularly litigious country, and so I guess the USCG should have expected something like this to happen. And it’s interesting to note, that apart from some porn lawsuits, there aren’t too many other law firms taking up the anti-piracy settlement business, at least not many that are high profile. Perhaps they’re all waiting around to see what becomes of USCG’s business model, whether it is workable at all. Which is more reason to hope that USCG fails completely to monetize, so it puts an end to this sort of thing. And hopefully with the porn lawsuits, someone will step up and also claim “fraud, extortion and abuse”, particularly the extortion bit, because threatening to make public one’s sexual habits does seem a bit extortionate.

Demonoid.com - No longer .com, now .me

The fallout from the recent Homeland Security domain seizures, and the threat looming from the controversial Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA), it seems that BitTorrent websites are taking pre-emptive action to protect themselves. Which is why this week, private BitTorrent tracker Demonoid has decided to move away from its .com roots, and instead move to .me, to counter the threat of having their domain seized by US authorities (who have jurisdiction over .com domain names, I suppose). Several private DNS systems have also been set up recently, in case COICA becomes law and thus giving the US government the ability to tamper with the Internet’s domain name system. This fracture into a public (both censored and uncensored) and private Internet is exactly what academics and engineers have warned about when they first heard about COICA. And it also again shows that even with the risk of catastrophic damage to the Internet as we know it, the actual effect of COICA in stopping piracy is negligible, because people can simply switch their DNS to an offshore one, and continue to access all the websites the US government doesn’t want you to look at.

Google Torrent Auto-complete Recommendation

Google will soon remove piracy related terms, like torrent, from auto-complete recommendations

Viacom is eager to get back to court so they can lose again to Google/YouTube, as they filed their appeal against the June decision which say their copyright lawsuit thrown out of court. More money wasted instead of pursuing innovation, but I guess the lawyers will be happy. In totally unrelated news, Google is beefing up its anti-piracy credentials by buying DRM firm Widevine, as well as implementing several features on their websites that will make it about 2.3% harder to find pirated stuff on the Internet. The first major change is to remove piracy related keywords, such as “torrent”, from auto-complete suggestions (so that when you search for “Megamind”, the phrase “Megamind torrent” isn’t a recommended search term, and only maybe shows up if you type the first few letters of “torrent”). This adds keywords such as “torrent”, or maybe even “free download”, to the list of naughty words such as “lesbian” that Google keeps out of the recommendation list. I’m sure this will make the entertainment industry slightly happier, although it makes absolutely no difference to those actually searching for torrents (because, what, if Google doesn’t suggest it, people are going to stop searching for it?). I’m sure the entertainment industry will be a lot happier if Google actually blocked displaying results for bad keywords, but that would be censorship of the worst kind and would go against everything democracy stands for, which just makes the entertainment industry want it even more. And the idea that “torrent” automatically means piracy should be challenged as well, and unless Google’s system is clever enough to distinguish between legal and illegal torrents, then searches like “Windows Vista Service Pack 2 Torrent” will be blocked too from auto-complete recommendations.

And I guess people searching for what about keywords such as “rapidshare”? There are still lots of people searching for “Windows 7 activated rapidshare” (it’s the third post popular recommendation), should that be blocked too? I mention Rapidshare because I wanted to segue into the news about Rapidshare being ordered by a German court to pay eBook publishers a hefty 150,000 Euros fine for not successfully blocking out pirated eBooks from being uploaded and downloaded, as ordered by the court back in February. I guess it’s only fair that Rapidshare do make an effort to block these downloads after a court order and everything, and if every publisher wanted to get their content blocked, then they should also go an get a court order. Of course, filtering is never really foolproof, and so the court should take this into account too. After all, it’s the users of Rapidshare that’s committing the real crime here, and if Rapidshare did their best to prevent it (even if their best does not match up to the content owner’s expectations), then they should not be found guilty. This is basically why Viacom lost its lawsuit against YouTube.

And in this week’s “Oh no, what has Sony done now” section, Sony’s latest SNAFU is to demand music that it doesn’t own to be removed, despite the fact that it was uploaded by an artist belong to a competing studio. This “innocent mistake”, or so Sony claims, even went as far as Sony lawyers writing to Mediafire and getting them to remove the uploaded home demos, although they did eventually write back to say “never mind”. Now this is but one, fairly high profile, mistake. How many other lower profile mistakes have been made by Sony, and other labels and studios in their anti-piracy hunt? And should they not double check that they actually have the legal right to sent off legal threats? But I guess if banks can foreclose houses they don’t even own, anything could happen I suppose.

And Ubisoft is back with another form of annoying DRM, but this time I can see the funny side of it. Those that pirated Ubisoft’s new Michael Jackson game on the DS will find that all of the music have been replaced with annoying vuvuzelas sounds.

High Definition

In HD/3D news, regular readers of my Blu-ray sales analysis (which also includes DVD sales figures) will have noted the year on year decline of DVD sales, which is pretty much the norm for most weeks.

And this drop in DVD sales has many in the industry worried, and many are blaming downloads and streaming content, the legal kind, for it. I guess the term “blame” is perhaps the wrong word to use, because this shift was always coming. Music is mostly sold via digital means these days, and with faster Internet connections and more generous bandwidth quotas, the same will be true of movies. For really high quality stuff, stuff that can’t be downloaded easily, there’s Blu-ray (which has recorded year on year growth). For everything else, downloads and streaming should suffice. And it will really take off once pricing because a bit more reasonable. In the article, there’s a guy from the BBC that says that “long tail” is where the future is. And I think I touched on this in my TV Networks for the 21st Century blog post, basically the future may be one where people pay very little per download, but they download a lot more and from a vast library of titles where every TV show, programme, episode, is available to download 24/7 instantly. This is very much a “long tail” approach, as opposed to the more traditional approach where content owners rely on people downloading the latest and greatest in great numbers, while limiting access to their entire catalogue (mainly due to technical reasons, not exactly intentional). And the reason why DVD/Blu-ray has been a huge success (despite what Hollywood wants you to believe … the home video sell-through market basically didn’t exist before DVDs), that’s to allow people to access their old favourites. And many of Blu-ray’s biggest hits have been classics, not new releases – like all the Disney animated classics, Sound of Music recently, classic TV shows – these all have done just as well, if not better combined, than a single new release. And with digital downloads and streaming, the access could be even greater, especially if delivered in an on-demand fashion. There aren’t any technical hurdles any more to achieving this (at least for SD content), so the only reason why we’re not able to select and watch any episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air or Bewitched is more to do with other reasons (irrational fear of unauthorised copying, and also of fear of losing a grip on their existing, outdated, business model).

Also, I’ve been thinking about the 3D Blu-ray of Avatar and how it’s selling for $400 or more. With no signs of a general release (director James Cameron’s comments about “2 more years” is worrying), I wonder if this exclusive deal may actually do more damage than good. I’m sure Panasonic paid a lot of money for the exclusivity, but I think this move is actually driving people to consider piracy as an alternative to paying $400 for a single movie, and how will this hurt sales when it becomes available via general release? People have purchased 3D TVs in anticipation of Avatar really, and if the general release is not just around the corner, then expect 3D Blu-ray Avatar to be the most pirated Blu-ray movie of all time (even if it takes about a week to download).

And finally in gaming, I have bit the bullet and ordered Kinect. I’ve always wanted one to see what it can do, especially when the hardcore games arrive next year (and they will arrive), but in the end, it was all the crazy PC hacks that have been posted in the last couple of weeks. It makes me, as a software developer, want to get my hands on one as quickly as possible just to see what kind of things I can make Kinect do.

Kinect vs Move - the battle of sales figures begins already

But it might be a while before my order arrives, because according to my local (as in Australia) wholesale sources, stock is a huge issue for Kinect at the moment. And a quick search online reveals pretty much the same thing, with most online stores (again, locally) out of stock of the sensor + Kinect adventures pack. This leaves buying Kinect as part of a new Xbox 360 bundle the only option for many. It is also sold out on Amazon.com as I type, with 4.5 stars average rating after 320+ reviews. Microsoft has revealed that 2.5 million Kinect units have been sold to customers in the first 25 days of release, which could have been even better had stock been more plentiful. Sony later countered with their own “sales” figures of 4.1 million since release (a bit more than a full month longer than Kinect), but it was later revealed that this figure is the number of units shipped to retailers, not the actual number sold to customers (cue thousands of web editors updating articles at the same time). Although the demand for the Move means the shipped to retailer and sold to customers number may not be that far apart, some of the 4.1 million units may be reserved (ie. stock held) for yet to commence December sales at the time of Sony’s sales data, and so in any case, the two numbers cannot be compared without more information.

Michael Pachter of Wedbush Securities has revealed, based on access to NPD data, that his predicted “to customers” number for Move is about 2.5 million, the same as Kinect, although over more than double the time frame (since late September for Move, 25 days for Kinect). And of course, every Move controller sold is counted as a single unit, even if purchased by the same household for multiplayer (whereas Kinect has built in 2 player support). Without knowing the pairing rate of Move controllers to PS3s, there’s no real way to compare to Kinect sales numbers. If the pairing rate is 1.5 Move controllers per PS3, for example, and taking into account that the Move has been released for twice as long as Kinect, then even taking the 4.1 million as total sold, Kinect is already twice 1.8 times more popular than Move. If the pairing rate was 2, then Kinect is 2.4 times more popular. If taking Pachter’s estimates of 2.5 million sold through, then Kinect is 3 or 4 times more popular if the pairing rate is 1.5 or 2. If my maths is right. Which it usually isn’t.

And some news outlets are incorrectly stating that the Sony numbers do not include PS Move sales not part of the standalone bundle (with PS Eye) or console bundles. The numbers, from what I can gather, do include it, it just doesn’t include separate PS Eye and Navigation controller sales (the Navigation add-on is useless without the Move wand, and you can almost say the same thing about the PS Eye these days, given how poorly it was selling before Move arrived).

It’s all quite confusing really, and I think Sony should have just kept their mouth shut unless they really did outsell the Kinect, which looks unlikely at this stage. The same wholesale source I mentioned earlier showed that the Move bundle still had plenty of stock, and more online stores had stock of them on my last search.

Okay, enough fanboi baiting for this week. Have a good one.

Posted in Computing, Copyright, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (5 December 2010)

Weekly News Roundup (28 November 2010)

Sunday, November 28th, 2010

Another week, another WNR. I know it’s easy to get cynical about the Black Friday sales in the US (particularly if, you’re like me, not actually located in the US), just like it may be easy to get caught up in the hype, but if you’re do your research, there are potentially a lot of bargains to pick up without leaving the comfort of your home. Since Blu-ray is a major topic of this website, I’ve posted some of the best Amazon Black Friday Blu-ray deals on this page. Most of the discounts are still available, and there will be more on Monday as well, so it’s a good time to stock up on some Blu-ray movies. The prices are so good that they’re almost HD DVD level! I’ve purchase a dozen of so movies myself as part of this sale, as there are some really good bargains around for the movies that I had planned to buy anyway (and that’s the the trap, is that you end up buying things you didn’t really want or need just because they were cheap). More on this in the HD/Blu-ray section of this WNR, including one confession about how I compromised my principles a bit!

I continue to play through Fallout New Vegas, encountering another quite annoying glitch during the week. This one involved the companion Veronica, and how she become frozen in one spot after a certain mission. And this leads me to recommend one most excellent resource for Fallout games, The Value. It is a Wikia for all the Fallout games, and it gives precious advice on how to overcome glitches. And this is also why I prefer playing Fallout on the PC, because you get access to the console, and this allows you to fix the most stubborn glitches. In any case, I solve the Veronica glitch after reading a tip on The Vault. The glitches in this game almost ruin the game, but it’s actually quite satisfying when you do find a solution or workaround, and it has become part of the Fallout/Bethesda experience really.

Not a huge amount of news by any standard, but still enough to do some ranting, possibly between the 1800 and 2400 word mark, by my best guestimate. So let’s get started.

In copyright news, news broke not too long ago that The Pirate Bay founders have lost their appeal in the Swedish courts. This means that, following the original verdict, the founders now face a hefty fine and prison time of up to 10 month.

Prison time for Pirate Bay founders confirmed, at least until further action in the courts

Only three of the original four defendants were part of this trial, the other missed out due to illness, but will be certain to face the exact same result. Despite jail time being handed out, the likes of the MPAA are still not satisfied at the result, claiming that the $6.5 million dollars of damages isn’t anywhere near the $17 million they had wanted. Talk about being greedy! The case will now most likely go to the highest court in Sweden, even if the prosecutors seem to think this case won’t go that far. I can’t be bothered to dig up the previous edition of the WNR where I said that this case won’t be decided until it is examined by the highest court in the country, and I think I also mentioned that I don’t hold much hope that any appeal would yield satisfactory results for the TPB. The cards were stacked against them from the start.

The copyright news this week doesn’t really get much better unfortunately, but there was at least one bright spot when there was at least a sign of common sense on Capitol Hill this week, when US Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) torpedoed efforts to enact the controversial Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA) into law. He has placed a hold on it and it won’t be heard before the senate until next year. Unfortunately, I can only see this as a temporary delay, because with so much support for this ridiculous act, it will be made into law and we’ll all have to suffer the consequences. Most support it because they don’t know any better, or have received enough incentive to support it without asking serious questions. And most know there’s no political points being earned by going against the entertainment industry in the US. And that’s partly our fault too, for not pressuring out representatives in government in doing the right thing. But the thing is, unless you’re someone who reads this or similar blogs and websites regularly, you won’t really be aware of the issues, or understand (or care) about them, and it then boils down to an issue of whether people should or shouldn’t “steal” (a dumbed down talking point that the entertainment industry has been pushing), and most people wouldn’t support stealing. Except we know that copying and stealing are two different things entirely, and that even if it is possible to stop piracy (it isn’t), there are certain things that are far more sacred than protecting the dying business model of the entertainment industry. Things like our right to privacy. And freedom of speech. And due process, which systems like ‘Three Strikes’ attempt to short-circuit by assuming guilt and denying people their right of appeal (or to even address the matter in a court of law, like they’re entitled to). And this goes back to what I said a couple of WNRs ago, that we must do more to protect our rights and treat this more than just a matter of being able to “downloading movies and games and stuff”, something that the copyright lobby and their supporters has tried to reduce the arguments to. This is about protecting our democratic rights, which politicians these days are too eager to sacrifice in the name of “protecting” us (whether it’s terrorism, or the perceived and possibly imaginary threat to the economy, due to piracy).

Seized domains now display only this seizure notice from the DoJ, IPRC, and Homeland Security

And so we move on to the news this week that Homeland Security closed down another 80 websites suspected of providing pirated content. The only positive is that due process was followed, that warrants were obtained via the court, but it doesn’t really matter if the process itself is flawed. My biggest problem with this is that I have no idea if any of the websites/domains seized were really illegal, and who determined their status. I don’t trust most judges’ level of technical understanding to pass judgement on technical issues such as this, and perhaps when faced with such overwhelming force (Justice Department, Homeland Security, ICE), and some scaremongering about the consequences of piracy (billions of jobs will be lost!), most will just go along with whatever is in the warrant request. And if one of the 80 websites was truly innocent, what’s the process of appeal, and what kind of compensation would be due if the website was deemed by a court of law as not guilty, compensation for the financial and emotional damages caused by the temporary closure of the website. I mean, this is not like going after drug dealers or counterfeit drugs, there are a lot of complicated issues involved in determining whether a website is guilty or not of copyright infringement, issues that must be addressed in court before any punitive actions can be handed out. And what if the domain really did host illegal stuff, but it was uploaded unknowingly by third parties, or as part of a user-generated section on the website – is if fair that the entire domain is taken offline? It would be like shutting down blogger.com because somebody created an account on there to share pirated MP3s. This scenario could be avoided via a DMCA takedown notice, but these seizures bypass the very laws that were created to avoid situations like this. And this is why COICA is so controversial, in that it gives the US government even greater power to do all of this and more, and on a much larger scale as well, potentially killing off tens of thousands of websites in one fell swoop, and many by “collateral damage”. And this is why anyone who knows and cares about the Internet ought to be against COICA, and many prominent companies and individuals have already spoken out, but all will be silenced by the constant chattering of lobbyists into the ears of those that can decide the fate of COICA. Senator Wyden excepted.

And so the next step would be to even make talking about piracy illegal, which is what the RIAA attempted to do this week, and caused some collateral damage of their own in the process. PCMag.com posted an article after LimeWire was shut down, examining the possible alternatives that are still left. This is a valid discussion, because it points to the fact that even though it took years and millions of dollars to bring down LimeWire, the next LimeWire could pop up in a matter of weeks or could already exist, and thus making the whole process an expensive, and pointless, exercise. And for this, the RIAA and its cohorts sent a letter to PCMag.com’s CEO, attacking the website for daring to suggest alternatives and supporting and encouraging piracy in the process. It then attacked PCMag for simply referring to another article, published by TorrentFreak, regarding LimeWire being resurrected. The problem is that PCMag didn’t write that article, it was PC World, by facts and accuracy does not matter when one is acting the bully like the RIAA and Co. are. PCMag are standing firm by their journalistic principles, and refuse to be silenced and used as a scapegoat in the RIAA’s attempt to blame someone, anyone, for the piracy problem. Anyone except for themselves for sticking with a dying business model, even when alternatives and opportunities were presented, opportunities that were eventually taken by the likes of Apple with iTunes. The only bit of innovation the RIAA and its members have come up with recently has been new ways to sue and intimidate those perceived to be their enemies (the Internet and anyone who uses the Internet), and of course the whole failed DRM experiment.

The Witcher 2, to be released next year, will be DRM free

And DRM has been in the news this week too, but in regards to the use of it in the gaming industry. Gamasutra, one of the most respected gaming industry website on the Internet, has had one of its bloggers write an interesting article examining the failure of DRM, and how illegal copying can be prevented. The conclusion seems to be one that I’ve come to as well, in that the solution is to add value to the gaming experience, not to take it away via horrible DRM. Value adding explains the success of Steam, and even though it does use DRM, it is pretty weak stuff, and in fact probably better than buying off the shelve due to the lack of need of a DVD check. The best DRM should prevent casual copying, but should otherwise be invisible to the end user, and if it forces gamers to connect to an online service for authentication, free value added services should be given as compensation (achievements, community, social features …). But even the best, or worst (as in draconian), DRM will not prevent copying by those that really want to copy it, and groups with the skill to hack away, as Ubisoft’s DRM experiment showed recently, and so really, there’s no point to DRM at all. And this is a point shared by at least some game developers, including the developer of The Witcher series, and operators of the classic, DRM-free, gaming website GOG.com. In fact, their CEO and co-founder, Marcin Iwiński, goes on to say that DRM treats customers like criminals. Iwiński believes there’s no need to debate whether their upcoming game, The Witcher 2, should use DRM or not, simply because he believes DRM doesn’t work. And this is why The Witcher 2 will be released DRM-free. Iwiński also criticized the way DRM adds restrictions that the pirated versions are free from, calling it “totally stupid”. He also attacks online based protection, saying that it isn’t fair to people who want to play games when they’re away from a reliable Internet connection. And it’s hard to argue against any of these points really. The industry, when it relies on DRM, is basically trying to sell something that’s not as good as the pirated version even when you don’t consider the price, and then getting mad when it’s not selling well. I mean this is an industry that isn’t even bothering to print manuals any more, and yet it expects us to jump through hoops just to play a badly bugged game that it rushed through testing. But luckily, there are still the smarter companies that are doing more innovative things to stop piracy, things like bundling physical collector’s items that can’t be pirated, building immersive online experiences and communities, being innovative with pricing, and either not using DRM or at least not overdoing it. And then you have companies like Ubisoft.

High Definition

Moving on from the ranting to happier grounds, as mentioned before, I did take part in the Black Friday sales on Amazon, trying to take advantage of the historically favourable AUD/USD exchange rates (not as favourable to be honest this week).

Yes I know I said I won't buy it out of protest, but they were really really cheap!

And yes, I did completely compromise my principles on an issue I’ve ranted about a lot right here. That’s right, I purchased the theatrical Blu-ray version of The Lord of the Rings movies, despite bitching about it for weeks back when it was first released. My rant then was about how the trilogy boxset should have included the extended edition, as opposed to the theatrical edition, and should have at least featured some new extra features and put them on Blu-ray at least even if they weren’t HD (the extra features are actually on DVDs, and probably could have fitted onto a single dual layer Blu-ray, but that would have made the boxset look famished). Also, the first movie had a sub-standard transfer, although some of it was unavoidable it seems (a fact that wasn’t available at the time of my original rant). In my defence, I didn’t buy the box set, but only the individual movies separately for $7.99 each. And at that price, some of these shortcomings, can be forgiven (certainly better than paying $65 for the boxset anyway). So “I won’t be buying it” really meant “I won’t be buying it unless it’s heavily discounted and I must join in the hype of Black Friday or I will feel left out”.

Well, at least I didn’t pay $400 for a copy of Avatar on 3D Blu-ray.

Kinect is in the news again this week, and funnily, it had almost nothing to do with gaming. The news broke last week that only a week after the release of Kinect, it had been hacked, and Microsoft couldn’t have been pleased at the development.

It's always nice to see technology used in a way to benefit humanity as a whole

Then it turn out that they didn’t really care either way, because the “hack” wasn’t really a hack at all, at least according to Microsoft’s definition of what a hack is. What happened was that somebody wrote open source drivers for Kinect so that it can be used on the PC, and because Microsoft intentionally (or they claim now) left the USB thingy open, Microsoft claims they were always hoping something like this would happen. I’m not sure about that, but Microsoft do have a history of mixing Xbox 360 and PC compatibility (the wired Xbox 360 gamepad works perfectly on the PC, and even the wireless one can be made to work via a dongle). And “unofficial” drivers aren’t new, the Sony Sixaxis controller has a PC driver, and even the Wii-mote has one too.

Anyway, what was more interesting was how people decided to use the open source drivers and write their own PC based Kinect applications. And if you follow the link above, you’ll see videos of object recognition, a Minority Report style web browsing experience using a simple Javascript add-on. And even a man boob tracker (not a typo). It just goes to show that Kinect has serious potential, but only if the right software is there for it. But that’s always the hard part, and the reason why the Wii is struggling now is because, apart from Nintendo, nobody really knows how to makes good games for it.

And I was way off. I’m already over the 2700 word mark, and so my guestimate wasn’t really close at all. But if you remove the Black Friday and Fallout related waffle, then it just about gets in there. So I probably should stop typing now, wish you all a great week, and type something along the lines of “see you next week”.

See you next week.

Posted in 3D, Computing, Copyright, Electronics, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup, Xbox 360, Xbox One | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (28 November 2010)

Weekly News Roundup (21 November 2010)

Sunday, November 21st, 2010

I managed to get the second edition of the now “neutered” NPD analysis up yesterday. Thanks to timely leaks, I was still able to get the sales figures for the three home based consoles. It was another good month for the Xbox 360, and a really really bad one for the Wii. The momentum in the this-gen format war has definitely shifted away from the Wii, and Nintendo would be wise to release the Wii 2 as soon as possible, but as I noted in the analysis, there may not be much Nintendo can do. I mean, if they come out with a more accurate Wii-mote, then that’s basically the Move. If they ditch the remote altogether, then that’s basically Kinect. And even if they add Blu-ray and HD, then they would only be doing catch up with the other consoles. The only thing in Nintendo’s favour is that they’re good at making family/casual games, so Wii Sports 2 will probably be better than anything Sony, Microsoft and their third party developers can come up with. But Nintendo are good at surprising the market, so I won’t rule them out yet, but it’s not looking great.

In the analysis, I also notice that Fallout New Vegas was the second best selling game (all platforms combined) for October. Just saying, like. The rest of this paragraph talks about FNV, so feel free to skip ahead (and I promise this will be the last time I talk about FNV in this edition of the WNR). I’ve also experienced my first serious glitch with FNV this week, in that I was not able to get Boone’s Bitter Springs mission to start, even after getting the quest and then travelling to the marked point in Bitter Springs. What happened was that I wanted to do the Bitter Springs quests first before starting Boone’s mission (as recommended, since it may be impossible to finish those quests after Boone’s quest), so I had him wait just outside the town while I did those quests. This somehow glitched the quest and it was not possible to proceed with the quest afterwards. I solved it by returning to an earlier save (this is a Bethesda game, so save often, and keep the save files, don’t overwrite them), travelling *with* Boone to the marked location to advance the quest (to go to “Coyote’s Tail Ridge”), and then left Boone somewhere safe so I can then proceeded to finish the Bitter Springs quests alone, before retrieving Boone again to finish his quest. FNV is great so far, but it’s not as well structured as Fallout 3, especially with the main storyline, but there’s so much more to do in this game (maybe even too much to do – I’m 30 hours in and still have barely discovered a third of all the locations). Still a highly recommended game though, especially for Fallout 3 fans. Anyway, I’ve now got the FNV stuff out of my system, so we can continue with the WNR.

Let’s start with the copyright news. We first start with porn downloads, and the lucrative business of suing the downloaders of the pirated versions.

The Chicago Tribune profiles the main man behind the lawsuits, Chicago lawyer John ‘Pirate Slayer’ Steel. Steel has portrayed himself as the saviour of the porn industry, but really, anybody can see it’s all about the money. And as I’ve mentioned before, suing for porn downloads has the added advantage of further embarrassment, which may force the alleged downloaders to pay up, even if they don’t really think they did it. And then there’s the issue of discrimination, as hinted by the EFF. For many who are not out in the open about their sexual preference, being identified in downloading non mainstream porn may be an extremely terrifying experience, and this kind of “legal blackmail” (not my term, but one that has been used before to describe these kinds of lawsuits) is not helpful, especially with the recent issues with sexual discrimination and bullying. Isn’t this a form of bullying as well, to threaten to make the private (even if illegal) activities of the accused public and demand payment to keep it quiet?

But all will happen is that people will stop BitTorrenting porn and get them via other sources that are not being monitored by these law firms, like the many “Tube” sites or Usenet. And how does this actually help the porn industry, exactly? Of course it won’t, but it will help people and firms like John Steel’s, and that’s what this is all about really.

John Steel's Law Firm in Chicago is heading the "porn lawsuits"

While porn lawsuits may be making big money for the law firms involved, suing bloggers for using only excerpts of newspaper articles may not be. It appears that Righthaven, the law firm leading these types of lawsuits, appears to be facing far too many obstacles in their attempt to make money. First of all, the people they go after are usually bloggers, writers, business people and usually people with opinions that are not easily suppressed via lawsuits, nor are the type that are easily embarrassed. So going after the likes of Democratic Underground (DU), probably the largest political forum for left-leaning Americans, was not really the best idea to begin with. And it appears Righthaven is now in retreat mode, and wants to drop the DU lawsuit if the other side agrees not to pursue legal costs, something that would make their mass lawsuits unprofitable. This comes after they already lost a lawsuit in which they tried to get a Las Vegas Realtor to pay up for using excerpts, a lawsuit they ended up losing. So it hasn’t been smooth sailing for Righthaven, and perhaps in time they’ll realise that it’s just not worth the trouble to sue bloggers, many of whom want nothing less than a full day in court, which would make great material for their blog, not to mention the publicity.

And while this suing for settlement thing is just getting started in the US, it may already be winding up in the UK, after their legal authority has started investigating these practices, with key players facing punishment. At the heart of the issue is the apparent fact that lawyers for the law firm Davenport Lyon (which has since stopped participating in these types of lawsuits) may have knowing proceeded with lawsuits even when they may have been aware that the alleged parties were innocent. This is largely due to the fact that IP addresses can hardly be considered to be conclusive evidence of illegal activities, especially when IP addresses can be shared between many users, at different times of the day. And at best, it identifies which ISP account was used to make the download, it does not identify the individual, or whether the account holder even had knowledge of the act, let alone gave permission. The legal system really needs to examine whether just a single IP address is enough to prove infringement, because remember that I could connect to a BitTorrent swarm for just a single second, and have my IP address recorded, but have I really committed copyright infringement? For just a second? In my opinion, they should at least establish how long it would typically take to download the content in question (say 1 hour for a movie at typical download speeds), and if the identified person’s IP address(es) hasn’t been connected to the swarm for at least this time period, then you cannot say that the person even managed to download the file in question. And via the same system, they can work out how much was uploaded, and count the number of infringements based on these two numbers. Because I don’t think it’s fair that “attempted infringement” is punished in the same way as actual, mass, infringement (if someone stays a seeder for say weeks, compared to someone who attempted to download the file but failed and didn’t upload much in return either).

Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT)

Bipartisan support in Washington? Yes, but only on the issue of online piracy

But the legal establishment is mostly too clueless to understand these arguments, or just how BitTorrent works. And the same goes for the government as well, and both groups are easily persuaded by lobbyist, if not by the political/financial favours, then at the very least by the scary, Armageddon scenarios that the industry likes to invent (“Hollywood will be bankrupt, millions more unemployed, if we don’t stop college students from downloading Avatar”, for example). And Hollywood relies on this to further their aim of *not* having to evolve their business model. But it appears that not everyone in Hollywood agrees with what the bosses think is the best way for the industry to move forward (by not moving forward). Many seems to believe that innovation is still at the heart of the solution for the piracy problem, and even though I’m not in the industry, I have to agree as well.

Just look at the Netflix and their trouble of getting their Android app. Now, some of it is due to the way the Android system is set up (fragmentation, the lack of a common DRM/security platform), but in the end, the problem comes down to DRM, and the way major studios demand DRM to be in place before Netflix can get an app up for Android. Now, how many people are going to be pirating movies via their Android phone? For one, the video quality provided will be quite poor, sub-DVD standard crap that any decent rip online would better. And who pays for a Netflix streaming service and then pirates videos, when they can skip paying and still pirate movies from the variety of sources. But nevertheless, innovation, which can actually lead to more profits for movie studios in the future and a new way to deliver movies to consumers, is stopped dead in its track. If record labels had gotten their way in regards to DRM and making sure portable devices won’t play non DRM’d music (as to not “encourage piracy”), then they would have ensured failure for the iPod/iPhone, and does that really help anyone? It certainly would have hurt Apple, but lawmakers are more than happy to put up with the ridiculous demands of one industry, even if it means hurting another. So the likes of Netflix, Apple and ISPs have to suffer in order to protect the dying business model of the entertainment industry, and somehow this is fair?

And now the US government (and by that, I mean both sides of politics) is willing to screw up the entire Internet, just so the MPAA can block The Pirate Bay, with the controversial Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act passing unanimously through committee. The MPAA immediately defended the decision, via their usual way of lying and exaggerating about everything. What this means is that the US government can effectively censor websites that the MPAA (and RIAA) deems “bad”, and this could be anything from The Pirate Bay to perhaps an innovative competitor that could become a threat. And this kind of Net censorship destroys the United States’ moral authority on online freedom of speech. That’s far too big a price to pay just to give the MPAA/RIAA a false sense of security, because people will still find a way to download pirated content.

StarCraft II is one of the most downloaded games of all time, but it also a best seller

And remember, this all assumes that piracy is costing the industry millions and billions every year, and there’s no way to tell what the monetary damage is, because we don’t know what people who pirate a lot of stuff will do if all pirated content is removed. The industry say that these people will *all* start buying things, which is as ridiculous as saying that *all* shoplifters would become customers if we make it impossible for them to steal (and we all know how the MPAA/RIAA likes to use the shoplifting analogy). Perhaps all that will happen is that a very small minority of downloaders will convert to customers (and they will buy much less than they download today), and the rest will simply find something else to occupy their times, with barely an improvement in the bottom line for the industry (and all this achieved at great costs, both financially, and in terms of civil rights). Just look at the best selling game in recent times, StarCraft II. It made huge amounts of money, some 1.5 million copies of the game was sold in the first 48 hours alone. And yet, it is the most pirated game in history! And sales continues to be brisk, with 3 million copies sold by the end of September. Blizzard, the company that made the game, have been extremely happy with the results, and have made little if any noise about the high piracy rate. And despite the game being easy to pirate (although online multiplayer is not available in the pirated versions, again this goes towards innovation and making an online experience that’s just not “piratable”), people are still buying and I suspect many that downloaded the illegal version have “upgraded” to the paid version, bringing more profit to the company. So piracy will probably always exists, not all piracy will automatically convert to sales if piracy is prevented, but piracy can lead to sales if the product/content is good. Only those industries that churn out crap and expect consumers to lap it up will be ultimately hurt most by piracy, and I guess that explains why the entertainment industry is so concerned.

High Definition

In HD news, the stats for the week that Toy Story 3 was released came out, and it wasn’t as good as I had expected (didn’t break any records, for a start), but it was certainly still a great week for Blu-ray – you can read the analysis here.

There was one story which caught my eye, and I’m still not sure if it was a hoax or not, but Best Buy UK offered all the Harry Potter movies on Blu-ray, and a Toshiba Blu-ray player, all for only seven pounds, which works out to be $11 USD. And it wasn’t a typo either. But the condition of sale was rather harsh – you had to have the same legal names as one of the three main characters of the film, Harry Potter of course, Hermione Granger or Ron Weasley. And even if you were unfortunate enough to share their names, you had to be the first 100 to get the offer (although are there really 100 people, even in the UK, named Harry Potter, Hermione Granger or Ron Weasley?)

That’s one interesting sale, but some more mainstream sales will be here this week as part of the US Black Friday sales. I’m on the lookout for some bargains too (mainly focusing on Amazon), and perhaps I’ll post about any deals I find on the blog, or in the deals section. Something like Iron Man 2, Avatar for under $10, and some older titles for under $5, won’t be too much of a surprise.

And in gaming, I’ve already talked about the NPD analysis above (as well as rambled on about Fallout New Vegas). I’ve thought more about what I said last week about Kinect, and I still firmly believe that Kinect will be more successful than the Move.

The main reason is all those families who have Wii’s but are now bored with it, and looking for something new. They will look at the Move and say, well, I’ve already got something similar, is it really different enough, even if it is better? Those that want Blu-ray players may go for the PS3 + Move, but others will look at Kinect and feel that this really is something different. And Sony goes on about the Move being for hardcore gamers, but really, that’s not where the money is or has been ever since the Wii was introduced. Microsoft’s plan, on the other hand, seems to be to convert every casual/family Wii owners into a Kinect owner, and if they succeed, then it will enable to comfortably win this generation’s console war. It’s risky, but it might just work.

The people behind the PSJailbreak has a new piece of software, called PSDowngrade, which will be added onto the existing function of the PSJailbreak device. What it does is allow the PS3 firmware to be downgraded to an older version that supports the PSJailbreak device, namely 3.41. So there is a way out for those stuck with the new firmware, which has become a requirement if one wishes to play some of the latest games. It just goes to show how resourceful hackers can be, and that any so called foolproof system will not be for very long.

And that’s all for this week. More next week.

Posted in Copyright, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup, Nintendo Wii, Wii U, Switch, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (21 November 2010)

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Archive for the ‘Copyright’ Category

Weekly News Roundup (19 December 2010)

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