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Weekly News Roundup (14 November 2010)

Sunday, November 14th, 2010

I’ve been playing a lot of Fallout New Vegas recently, which isn’t very surprising for those who remember how fond I was of Fallout 3. And as a result, the quality of this issue of WNR may not be up to the usual high standards (haha), as I’m a bit distracted thinking about the best way to earn the caps needed to get the implants that I want (long story). FNV seems a much bigger game than Fallout 3, but this isn’t always a good thing, since it feels a bit less cohesive, as a game, to me. And it also means a lot more bugs, and I’m not talking about the radioactive kind.

And with so many distractions, I’ve only managed to find a few pieces of news before I got bored and started yet another 4 hour FNV session. So let’s get through this week’s news quickly so I can get back to figuring out the best way to get to the peak of Black Mountain.

In copyright news this week, it always surprised me that it didn’t happen sooner, but the FBI has finally gotten involved with the global anti-copyright protest launched by 4chan/Anonymous, otherwise known as Operation Payback (is a bitch).

The FBI is investigating the devastation caused by 4chan's Low Orbit Ion Cannon

The FBI has started investigating the denial of service attacks aimed at anyone associated with the pro-copyright lobby, from the RIAA/MPAA to copyright law firms. Despite making headline news several weeks ago, the FBI has only just gotten involved (or rather, they’ve only made their involvement known this week). But who do you arrest though? The whole point of the Low Orbit Ion Cannon is that anyone can join in the attack, anonymously. Will they go after 4chan? Or some of the individuals that joined in on the action using their own private, and more deadly, DDoS resources? Anyway, as I said earlier, this doesn’t surprise me at all. In fact, the first thing I thought of after reading about Operation Payback was what the FBI response was going to be, because as we all know, the FBI has practically become the private security force of the entertainment/pro-copyright lobby, having many times prioritized copyright operations over other more serious crimes.

The FBI aren’t the only law enforcement organisation to be overworked with copyright cases these days. The police departments of University towns may be completely overwhelmed if Universities start to follow the example set by Georgia’s Valdosta State University, by reporting any and all P2P usage to the police as suspected piracy activity (or at least threatening to do so). Note that I said “any and all” P2P usage, including legal usage, which the University appears unable to distinguish from the illegitimate kind. So Comp Science students downloading that latest Linux ISO (every “legal P2P” discussion has to feature the much talked about “Linux ISO”, doesn’t it?), might be disciplined by the University and have the incident reported to the police. This comes after the US government decided to link education funding to the ability of colleges and Universities to stop piracy (and to be fair to the current government, this was some left over legislation from the previous one). Putting education at risk to help out a multi-billion dollar industry in stopping acts that typically don’t cause them any harm anyway, is exactly the type of screwed-up pro-copyright legislation you would expect these days. And with funding at risk, how far will these colleges and Universities have to go in order to fulfil their federal obligations? Random computer searches? iPod inventory inspections? Full body cavity search for illegal MP3s?

The MPAA is fulfilling its duties to the US government this week by handing over a letter containing a list of “bad places”, websites that could offer illegal content, and regions in which these websites operate out of. For those interested, the list of “bad countries” include Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, South Korea and of course, the most evil-doing country in the world, Sweden, home of The Pirate Bay. The websites listed also included cyber-locker website, RapidShare. Not to be outdone, the RIAA came up with their own, even more broad, list of bad places, which included China’s most popular search engine, Baidu. The Baidu listing is interesting, because it fulfils the requirement to single out China as a bad bad country, which is always a popular political move, and also it gives notice to the likes of Google that they need to continue to cooperate or face being added to the naughty list too. VKontakte, Russia’s answer to Facebook, with Myspace/YouTube rolled into one service, was also placed on the RIAA’s list, perhaps as a warning to Facebok and YouTube as well. Both the MPAA and RIAA made it clear that their list was by no means an exhaustive list of all the Internet’s bad spots (a list like that would be like twenty thousand pages), but I have a suggestion for them that could save them a lot of time and reduce the list to just one entry. All they need to do is to simply write down “The Internet” as their list of “bad places”, and be done with it – we all know they want to. And then the US government can do their bureaucratic duties, and get “The Internet” banned, and receive their just reward of +15 Karma, 500 Caps and 800 XP and receive the “Idolized” reputation with the MPAA/RIAA. Must. Resist. Urge. To. Play. Fallout. New. Vegas…

One website that didn’t make the list this year was LimeWire, having been recently closed down. But despite the ban on the software, enterprising pirates have continued on and released a pirated version of LimeWire Pro, called LimeWire Pirate Edition, so that LimeWire can live on forever in infamy. The LimeWire people are not too pleased at this development, which could cause them more legal trouble, especially if it is found that they are connected to this “leak” IN some way, something they are strongly denying. But all this just proves that for all the effort gone into making the legal case, all the hours of billing by lawyers on both sides, and the years of investigative work done on the case, the result is that piracy continues unhindered once more. While I’m still not convinced who actually came up with the phrase “innovate or die”, but whomever did was a hundred percent correct, and instead of trying to stop piracy by fighting it head on, perhaps innovation is the key. Litigation certainly doesn’t seem to be working.

Steam Achievements, such as for games like Fallout New Vegas, adds to the gameplay experience

And I know this probably goes into the gaming section, but the point I wanted to make falls right here in the copyright section. A lot of retailers have begun to complain about how publishers are “encouraged” by Steam to add Steam related features to their games, even if the games themselves are being sold through other channels, including services that are competitors to Steam. You can sort of see their point, since every game like this they sell, they are actually promoting their competitor and accelerating their own demise, which is why some retailers have indicated their desire to boycott games that feature Steam. You can see why Steam is doing it as well, to grow their business, to get people hooked on their free add-on service so that they will buy games directly from Steam the next time.

So what does this have to do with copyright? Well, the way Steam has revolutionized digital delivery for PC/Mac games, despite using a healthy dose of DRM, perhaps shows the way, the only way, in which DRM can be used. With lower pricing (especially during sales), and add-on features like achievements and multi-player modes, and not having to insert the original DVD, people seem accept that the price for all this is a little bit of fairly non intrusive DRM. Now, if this kind of innovation can be extended to the movie and music, perhaps creating exclusive online content (much better than your typical BD-live crap), creating a healthy online community for music/movie lovers to share the passion, and at the same time, lower prices for digital download or streaming version of movies (and perhaps even free streaming of music, with options to purchase), all of this could help combat piracy by providing innovative features that people can’t get with the pirated versions.

High Definition

Moving on to HD news. Microsoft has taken advantage of Apple’s reluctance to support Blu-ray and produced a promotional video to highlight this point.

Yet another gratuitous Fallout New Vegas reference ...

The video basically shows how Windows 7 supports Blu-ray and Macs do not (I shall skip a more detailed description of the video, since you can watch it for yourself, and also I didn’t think it was particularly witty or clever to be honest). As for the claim, yes, it is correct that you can watch Blu-ray movies in Windows 7 whereas you cannot easily do so on a Mac, but Windows 7 doesn’t offer native Blu-ray playback support at all, not out of the box anyway. But hardly anyone watches Blu-ray on their computer, mainly because it doesn’t look that much better on a small screen (especially the laptop screen demonstrated in the video) than your typical DVD, and the less said about the laptop speaker produced sound, the better. If they want a better selling point, why not produce a video showing Fallout New Vegas working in Windows and highlight the fact that the game isn’t even available on a Mac? And that the game needs a fairly powerful GPU, and options are very much limited on a Mac even if you use Bootcamp? Just make sure you don’t mention the way the game crashes every 20 minutes, although that’s not really Microsoft’s fault (Bethesda Softworks, for all their brilliance, really need to invest a bit more into beta testing).

You see what I did there, how I’m basically turning every issue into one about Fallout? Is it a deliberate attempt at humour, or am I subconsciously still thinking about playing FNV?

No need to ponder the reasons, since this fairly short WNR is at an end, and that means Fallout time! So until next week, have a great one, hope you get lucky at the Ultra-Luxe, may your locker/mailbox/metal box scavenging bring you a vast amount of valuable goods and/or caps, and watch out for the Deathclaws (which are a real PITA in FNV).

I need help.

Posted in Computing, Copyright, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup, Video Technology | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (14 November 2010)

Weekly News Roundup (7 November 2010)

Sunday, November 7th, 2010

Well, we’ve reached November, the final set, the last quarter, the penultimate inning, the last ten minutes before the start of injury time, and many other sports terms that I have absolutely no idea about. And despite getting near the end of 2010, we still haven’t made contact, and with all the world’s problems today, an alien intervention may not be the worst thing ever, although hopefully not the kind of intervention that recent movies are predicting. The news are a bit more plentiful this week, but by no means a busy week in terms of copyright, HD/3D or gaming, I think mostly due to other more important events taking place in the US at least. But there are still a few things to talk about, so let’s get started.

Starting with copyright news, and trying to find some connection to the big news of the week, we have this story about the effect of the the US midterm election results on the issue of copyright, particularly Internet copyright.

The US House of Representatives may have changed hands, but don't expect any changes (not good ones anyway) in respect to digital copyright laws

The conclusion? Probably business as usual. A lot of people are unhappy that the developments in the last two years in terms of Internet copyright has been very much biased towards the content owners, big business, and so some naturally blame the people in power, the Democrats. But I think that’s partially unfair, because if you look at the pro-copyright bills that’s been brought up in Congress, you will find that these bills always receive bi-partisan support. It’s about the only thing in D.C. that the two major parties can agree on, and that to me, is a very sad state of affairs indeed. And with the Republican’s generally pro-business ideology, things will probably get worse in the next two years, not better. But it is also fair to blame Democrats too. If you allow me to go slightly off topic and talk politics for a minute, then I think the blame for the pro-copyright bias is still very much on Democrats, even though both parties support the pro-business, anti-consumer and anti-privacy agendas of the RIAA and MPAA. The reason I blame the Democrats is simply this: they should know better.

I’m not surprised Republicans will eventually support three-strikes, or make it easier for corporations to sue individuals, or otherwise go out of their way to help big business – it’s what their politics are about. However, being the left leaning party, the Democrats ought to stand for principles such as privacy, freedom of speech, and as progressives, they should embrace the Internet and support innovation (they certainly did during the election campaign that saw Obama and the Democrats use the Internet to great effect in terms of campaigning). The last thing they should be doing is to cosy up to big business, to help them suppress innovation, the way they have done in the last two years. It’s not their M.O, or at least it shouldn’t be. Now I do realise that Hollywood and the Democrats have a great relationship traditionally, but that’s mainly the people who work in Hollywood, the left leaning actors and actresses, and their support of the more progressive aspects of Democrat’s policies. The relationship should definitely not automatically extend to the people who own Hollywood, the multi-national conglomerates like Sony or 20th Fox and the groups that represent them, like the MPAA. For these companies and groups, their sole aim is to protect their ageing business model, even if it comes at the expense of the hard working people in the industry (the writer strike being a prime example). If Obama and the Democrats want to have a serious chance to get back some of the things they lost last Tuesday in two year’s time, they need to go back to their roots, to support policies that their core supports, or at least stand for something. And maybe even that would not be enough, but maybe it will help promote some positive change, or at least put up some kind of fight for those that rely on them to be their voice in government. It’s about principles, stupid.

You *are* being watched ... privacy protection loses yet again to piracy protection

One of the principles I mentioned earlier is privacy, which in this day and age, becomes somewhat incompatible with the business goals for big business. In an ‘1984-esque’ development, a new technology has been developed in the UK that allows complex system to watch the watchers (of cinema, that is). Instead of going to the cinemas with your family, having overpaid for everything, the last thing people expect will be that they become some kind of lab experiment, where their every emotions are recorded so that big business can find better ways to get you to pay for stuff. While ‘1984’ was very much about the authoritarian governments, but corporations are just as dangerous, because they now have enough power and money to directly influence governments, if not control them outright. So something like this, which many will object to (if they knew about it), would probably still get the nod in the US because the lobbyist will ensure they get enough support in government to nullify opposition. And because the same system can be used to prevent piracy, then that becomes the perfect Trojan Horse to make it all nice and legal. Terrorists support torrent downloading or something, and so if you’re against spying on cinema-goers, then you’re supporting terrorism. And do you really want to be labelled as a terrorist supporter when you’re up for re-election in a year or two?

But while this technology has been developed in the UK, the newly elected UK government (well, new as in since May), may in fact be changing directions in terms of digital copyright law. Or not. The previous so called left leaning, progressive Labour government, who got UK into two wars against the wishes of the people and general progressive principles (it’s that word again!), was also very pro big business in its support for controversial copyright laws, including the planned introduction of a three-strikes, and widespread spying of people to prevent them from downloading too many MP3s. The more left leaning coalition part of the current government, who are in a coalition with the conservatives (their politics is probably more progressive than the Democrats, by US standards, according to some UK friends), are probably responsible for the review of copyright laws, which will look at things like fair use. Reversing the previous government’s “achievements” may also have played a part in the decision. But I suspect the review will come, some fair use provisions will be added, but it won’t make the laws any better than what’s already law in the US. In fact, the Prime Minister has already signalled that they will be doing the review by looking at the US laws. It may very well be a case of the blind leading (or in this case, following) the blind.

And sorry to get back to politics again, but I must say that the current screwed up state of things is very much to do with us, the electorate, than any government or lobbyist. We allow our freedoms to be curbed in the name of helping big business because we simply do not care enough. Perhaps there are too many other more serious problems to consider, but I would have expected more discontent at government action to give corporations the power to spy on our Internet usage. Yes, the Operation Payback from 4chan/Anonymous is something, but I think in the end, it could backfire and alienate the mainstream. Because many of them, probably most of them don’t download things illegally, and they may even support harsher sanctions against downloaders, pirates, who have been demonized by the RIAA/MPAA through advertising (“They support terrorism and organised crime and are no better than common thieves!”). But it’s the rights of everyone that will be affected when ISPs can legally spy on your downloads (and it won’t end there either). When they came for the pirates, I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a pirated … etc. Okay, that may be a bit dramatic, but big business have been trying to erode our rights, as citizens and consumers, for years now, but they’ve never faced so much apathy. The EFF and the ACLU can only do so much, if we don’t voice out discontent, in a mainstream fashion.

Bad news for Jammie Thomas-Rasset again, another seven figure damage award against her this week for sharing 24 songs

And to present further proof of the struggle we face, not just against big business, but also against our fellow citizens in terms of fighting for fairer copyright laws, a jury (or her peers, apparently) has rewarded Capitol records, a subsidiary of a multi-billion dollar company, $1.5 million against the most famous music pirate of all time, Jammie Thomas-Rasset. This is the third time damages have been awarded against the Native American mother of four, $222,000 originally, then $1.92 million and this week, $1.5 million. Now I understand juries are under instruction to award certain amount of damages based on the law, but if one jury can award “only” $222,000, why would other juries give out seven figure awards? Is there no sympathy for someone who has done something that millions of other American have done, and are doing, every day? It says something when usually the pro-business judges (and they are pro-business, because the copyright laws are pro-business, and judges must make judgements based on the law, however biased it is) are the ones coming out against such extravagant damages being awarded. By giving record labels and movie studios what they want, these juries of our peers are just giving these corporations the ammunition they need to make it legal for them to sacrifice everyone’s privacy for their bottom line, because anything is better than seven figure damages being awarded against individuals, right?

And it’s decisions like this that have emboldened certain law firms in their mass-litigation attempts, the latest and greatest way to make money off of this is to sue for porn downloads, with more than 7000 being sued in the latest case. And there will come a time when there are so many lawsuits, that people will say enough it enough, but then the industry will put forward a better alternative, and that will be the three-strikes, “we spy on you for our own gains”, method. And many freedom loving citizens will eat it up because they will say it’s better than being sued, and since they haven’t done anything illegal on the Internet, it won’t affect them. Except it will, one day, when they will be spied upon for anything and everything. Because if one corporations can spy on you for their own gains, then another corporations should be allowed to do the same, and then surely it makes sense for governments to spy on you for the nobler aim of law and order too. And it’s ironic that in the end, it may be other corporations that stand up to this in a more meaningful manner than the general public, because what’s good for one industry may very well come at the expense of another, just like three-strikes takes money away from the Internet industry and gives it to the entertainment industry. And this is why we have the good news that UK ISP, BT, have put a stop to at least one law firm’s mass-litigation attempts by deleting subscriber usage histories, histories that the law firm in question, Gallant Macmillan, needed to proceed with their case. And even the recent UK copyright review, mentioned above, was recommended in an indirect way by the owners of Google, who say that the UK’s unfair copyright laws meant that a company like Facebook, Google or YouTube can never have been created in that country. Copyright is hurting innovation, and companies that rely on innovation, even if they’re faceless mega-corporations, will put up a fight for their own self interest. It’s time, that ordinary people like you and me, also put up a fight ourselves, for our own self interest.

High Definition

Moving on to happier pasture, in HD/3D news. I’ve noticed a trend recently whereby studios are releasing more and more Blu-ray exclusives, especially for classic titles (such as Sound of Music, Psycho, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Apocalypse Now, to name a few).

The Sound of Music Limited Edition Blu-ray Set

Blu-ray exclusive releases of classics, and premium sets, are popular

This is good news for Blu-ray, as it signals studios may be shifting away from DVD altogether. And it’s also good news that these classics are selling well on Blu-ray too, meaning there is definitely a market out there for people who want to watch their favourites classics with audio/video quality that hasn’t before been possible on a home video format. Certainly, a lot of people have home theater set-ups that beat the quality available at the best cinemas at the time these classics were first released, and it’s a real pleasure to be able to enjoy quality movies this way, in the comfort of your own home. If you want an argument for Blu-ray, then this is the best one. Which makes the Lord of the Rings Blu-ray disaster even more disappointing.

Moving on to something completely different, some have already accused Google TV of being fragment on release. I don’t want to go into too much detail on the arguments for and against this, since I’ve already covered it in my forum post, but as someone who has done a little bit of Android development, I have to agree that fragmentation is a big issue, and that the way Google are doing things, it’s making fragmentation a real problem. The freedom that Google gives manufacturers may not be worth whatever benefits that it provides in the short term (more varied range of devices).

But a closed system, like Apple’s, have their own unique set of problems. The latest involved the VLC app for iOS, which may very well be withdrawn from the Apps market due to the issue of copyright. But unlike most copyright disputes, this time, it’s almost the other way around. Instead of arguing that Apple have stolen their copyright, the creators of VLC are arguing that Apple is imposing too many copyright restrictions on their open source media player. The issue is complicated by the fact that the app wasn’t produced by the creators of VLC, but by a third party (they’re allowed to do it because VLC is open source). But Apple’s apps are limited in that, even for the free ones, they come with licenses that prohibits their sharing (to 5 devices only), which is totally against the open source principle to which the people behind VLC not only believes, but is also bound by law to respect. And this isn’t the first time some open source based app has faced this issue with Apple, with Apple’s previous actions being to remove the app, rather than change their somewhat draconian copyright/DRM attitude. And it will probably be the same with the VLC app, so for those that want it, you should download it ASAP, before it disappears, if it hasn’t already.

And finally in gaming, Kinect has been released and it’s doing very well, at least according the Amazon sales charts (currently the 2nd best seller, just behind Call of Duty: Black Ops).

And with two more Kinect titles in the top 10 (Kinect Sport at 5th and Dance Central at 6th), and the Kinect bundle at 8th, it looks to be a very good holiday period for Microsoft (the top selling CoD: Black Ops is also the Xbox 360 version, btw).

Kinect could be a big success, if it overcomes hurdles such as space requirements and the fact that people look really stupid playing it

Kinect is not perfect. Not even close. And Sony’s Move appears to have many advantages over it (like being more much, much more accurate, and easier to integrate into hardcore games). But what sells well is less about perfection (the Wii wasn’t perfect, neither are top selling devices like the iPhone). It’s more about hype, potential, being different to everything else on the market, and Kinect beats the Move in all of these aspects. Sony producing just a more accurate (and of course, better) version of the Wii, in my opinion, will not work as well as they will hope. And if you just look at the way the PS3 is designed, especially the XMB user interface, it just doesn’t scream “casual gaming”, as much as Microsoft’s cute avatars (stolen shamelessly from Nintendo, but hey, whatever works, right?). And the casual gaming market, is where the big money may be had, especially if you include the new generation of casual, Facebook and mobile phone, gamers.

Of course, for Kinect to be a success, it has to at the very least work adequately. That’s where it may fail, if the requirements for a relatively big space is too much for most families, or that the lack of accuracy makes gaming too random (although it seems to not have worked against the Wii’s initial success), or that it just doesn’t have the right games to take advantage (the most likely scenario for failure). But unlike the Nintendo Wii, Microsoft have always had a great range of third-party titles that take full advantage of the console. And Microsoft will have to rely on these companies to make compelling Kinect games, and avoid Shovelware that characterizes most third-party Wii titles. If publishers take Kinect seriously, Kinect can be a very exciting platform.

And on that note, it’s time to end this week’s WNR. Hope you’ve enjoyed this one a bit better than the absolutely horrible last one, and here’s hoping the next one will be even better (don’t bet on it though).

Posted in Copyright, Electronics, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup, Nintendo Wii, Wii U, Switch, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One | 1 Comment »

Weekly News Roundup (31 October 2010)

Sunday, October 31st, 2010

Welcome to the Halloween edition of WNR. In this issue, you’ll read about extra scary stories about how big business is taking away your civil rights with the support of both major sides of politics, how your privacy is being invaded by greedy corporations, and how enterprising law firms are planning to make millions by suing you for downloading porn (whether you did it or not).

So basically the same as usual, I guess.

Actually, it’s not the same as usual, because there has been a real lack of news this week. I have to say some of it is down to me being extra busy this week, but I really did try and find news, honest! And I guess you might also be busy what with the last minute costume changes, the stocking up of rotten eggs/toilet paper, or if you’re just high on candy, so let’s make this quick.

In Copyright news, LimeWire has finally closed its doors. After it lost a major lawsuit in May, the consensus was always that it would be only a matter of time before the music sharing website had to close down, but the dreaded change finally took place this week.

Visitors of LimeWire were shown this official notice this week

If you go to the LimeWire website now, you’ll see an official notice simply saying that the website is under a court injunction to stop distributing the LimeWire software, with a link to the actual court orders. The owners of LimeWire still plans to launch a legal version of the website/tool, much like how Napster went legit, but that all depends on the amount of damages that LimeWire has to pay.

With LimeWire gone, the illegal music sharing world is very much now just a collection of Torrent sites and P2P networks, nothing to centralised that it can be sued out of existence anyway. And however much money has been spent fighting websites like LimeWire, the issue of piracy still exists, and it was only through innovation (iTunes, cheaper tracks, no DRM, Spotify …), that there is actually some proper “competition” to illegal downloads. But if the industry keeps on pushing, and force people to adopt new ways to download that more effectively hides their activities, then there aren’t going to be big, soft targets like LimeWire (or even The Pirate Bay) to sue any more, and all while the downloads continue. So for their sake, I hope they do take innovations seriously and try different models, even if some will ultimately fail, because what they’re doing now certainly isn’t succeeding (despite the court “victories”).

And a couple of issues ago, I mentioned the Warner lawsuit against Triton Media (that’s the Triton Media of Scottsdale, Arizona, not the Triton Media Group that comes up top in the Google results). Well, this week, Warner has won its case against Triton. A refresher on what the case was about – basically, Triton Media acted to provide advertising to websites that possibly hosted illegal streams and downloads, and at the same time, it also ran its own possibly illegal streaming website. And instead of acting like a traditional online advertising company, Triton apparently went the extra step of helping to act as a sort of match-maker in matching potential advertisers to websites. And it’s these actions that has ultimately led them to lose the case.

The dangers of this precedent is that it could then allows studios to sue the likes of Google and Yahoo, both of whom have their own advertising networks. With so many publishers signing up to Google and Yahoo’s advertising programs, and with so many ads being served for all kinds of keywords and on all kinds of web pages, it should be easy for studios to find advertising links to illegal streaming/downloads, advertising showing up on searches for illegal downloads, and advertising revenue flowing to publishers of these sites. Suing a small fish like Triton will make it easier to sue a big fish like Google. But unlike Triton, Google has no personal, one on one relationship with most of its publishers and advertisers. And Google certainly don’t run their own video streaming website that may be serving up pirated content … oops, forgot about YouTube. In any case, there seems to be a shift towards suing revenue sources for piracy websites, but it still won’t stop those that are not engaging in piracy for profit, which I think would account for the majority of downloads these days.

Which brings up to a rather strange story this week. A developer who says he has come up with an anti-piracy platform has decided to protest the fact that nobody in the industry seems to be taking him seriously by, wait for it, turning his anti-piracy tool into a MP3 download website. Apparently, the tool allows for instant monitoring and searching of source of illegal content, and so would allow content owners to easily identify where pirated copies existed, and get them removed (it appears to be a tracking tool for HTTP based piracy, not for Torrents). But when the developer, only known as Dominic, was ignored by the various anti-piracy organisations after demonstrating his tool, the same tool that found illegal downloads now served them up to anyone who wanted them, as a form of protest. And it appears his stunt worked, sort of, and he has had to remove the downloads after a cease and desist notice from the Australian Music Industry Piracy Investigations organisation was sent to his web host.

Apart from ignoring the potential of his anti-piracy tool (which, if the served up MP3s were any example, it works quite well), Dominic also protest what he sees as “contradictions, corruptions, ignorance, and an overwhelming fear of change” that’s rife in the entertainment industry. From his work, he has also identified companies and even governments that advertise on websites that distribute illegal content (he has a list of them up on his website), some of them the very companies “going after mums, dads, kids, ISP’s, and pretty much anyone else they can think of” when it comes to illegal downloads.

These leaked images from engadget shows the PlayStation Phone is real!

And unfortunately, that was pretty much that in terms of news this week. I know, it’s barely three stories. I guess I could have mentioned something about the Sony PlayStation phone (as a recent convert to Android, adding dedicated game controls makes perfect sense), anything on the Black Friday sales, or even the news that Spotify may be closing in on a deal that could see the service arrive in the US. But hopefully, there will be more next week.

So for the rest of the WNR, I shall dazzle you with some Blu-ray sales graphs, showing you whatever you want to see depending on your point of view, something that stats and graphs are very good at showing. See you next week.

This first graph shows year-on-year comparisons for weekly results based on Blu-ray’s market share. Notice how the differences have narrowed in recent month, mainly on the backs of the previous year’s figures shooting up.

Blu-ray Sales Percentage - Year-on-Year Comparison

This second graph simply show Blu-ray market share over time, note the flattening trend, but as with any sort of sales, there are seasonal variations and we’ve yet to his 2010’s peak month.

Blu-ray Market Share

And this third graph shows the Blu-ray growth rate, basically taking weekly market share figures and comparing them to the same week a year ago, and then plotting the growth (or decline). Again, notice how growth has slowed, and there even a few weeks of decline, but things will pick up again slightly in the next few months. And as with measuring any kind of growth, a slow down doesn’t necessarily mean a bad thing, because going from 5 to 10 may be a 100% increase, but going up by the same amount from 10 to 15 is only a 50% increase.

Blu-ray Growth Rate

Posted in Copyright, Gaming, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (31 October 2010)

Weekly News Roundup (24 October 2010)

Sunday, October 24th, 2010

So I did manage to get that NPD analysis done, thanks to some timely data leaks. Looks like that will have to be the order of the day from now on, relying on leaks from the likes of Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo to trumpet their own “magnificent” sales, and from other analysts who have access to the full NPD data. As for the actual data, as expected, the Xbox 360 won the month again thanks largely to Halo Reach. The only real loser though is the Wii, and that’s becoming a disturbing trend for Nintendo lately. Otherwise, it was a relatively quiet week, so I think we can get through this WNR quite quickly, so I can go back to playing Starcraft 2, umm, I mean my other work.

Let’s start with the copyright news. Could the solution to the piracy problem be to make legal purchases cheaper?

Cheap non decision purchases, like apps, may means big money and reduced piracy

Regular readers will know this is a rhetorical question around here, since I have often expressed my view that cheaper purchases will mean people will buy more, while those that can only afford to pay a little can still pay, and not resort to piracy. It seems I’m not alone in thinking this, and this point of view has gotten support from an unexpected source, the former head of Warner Music, and one time President of the UK equivalent of the RIAA, Rob Dickins. Dickins believes by making music purchases a “non-decision” by making prices low, that people will buy more and that the piracy problem will be solved. There is some evidence to support this point of view though, because if you look at the smart-phone apps market, or ring-tones before, people are willing to pay, when these “micro-transactions” are small enough to make them not think about the buying decision, and they end up spending quite a lot of money when it’s all added up. And on Steam, when games go on sale, they are snapped up quickly, and I know this to be a fact because I’ve done that plenty of times recently, and also the fact that Steam now seems to hold sales every other day. By making prices low so that those that are resorting to piracy due to lack of funds can at least pay something for a legal purchase, then that’s something at least. And those that can afford to pay, will they pay less to get the same content as before, or will they get more content, now that prices are lower? It’s definitely something to think about, and critics shouldn’t dismiss this idea completely, to only look at the possible risks to short term gain.

Speaking of being short-sighted, it seems CBS and ABC have classified as Google’s attempted revolution in Television, Google TV, as more of a threat than an opportunity. Both networks have banned their content from being shown on Google TV, because they believe that Google TV can be potentially used to located pirated content, and they want no part of this. I’m not sure if they’ve realised that by taking legal content “off the air” from Google TV, that means the only ABC and CBS shows available on Google TV will be from illegal sources, and just how exactly does this help ABC and CBS? Shouldn’t they be out there trying to get a foothold in Google TV land, to fight off the threat of illegal sources by making the legal ones available, push out a few apps for the platform, and then perhaps make some deals with Google for ad revenue and the such. You know, gaining viewer loyalty, creating Internet hype, trying to expand the audience of your new shows, you know, the stuff they should be doing instead of a petty boycott of a new TV platform just because, despite Google’s best attempts to reduce pirated content, that some may get through. I mean, ABC and CBS already have YouTube channels, and YouTube is well known to occasionally host pirated content, so why aren’t they boycotting YouTube? The real issue may be that if people starting watching Google TV as a replacement for regularly TV (and you just know that this fits into the global domination plans of Google), then the traditional TV networks actually become content providers, while the only TV network is in fact, Google. Now that is a paradigm shift, and could be a threat to the traditional TV networks model, but it’s up to them to work it to their advantage, not to whine about it. And aren’t they only whining about it because they didn’t think of it first?

Anyway, as I posted about in my TV Networks for the 21st Century blog post, the traditional TV network model won’t survive for long, and things needs to change. People now want choice, want things on demand to fit their busier lifestyles, and traditional TV can no longer deliver this, not even with the help of TiVo. So it’s not a time to resist change, but to embrace it and see how you can benefit from it. At least the Internet freedom advocates are innovating, with the Pirate Parties International detailing a plan to launch a “pirate balloon”. I don’t know about this, I think it could backfire. Imagine a balloon entering US air space, and the US Air Force determine that it’s a threat to national security. BAM, the next thing you know, downloading pirated content is now a national security issue. I just hope they have enough room at Guantanamo for all the downloaders.

I think it's time to bring back this poster, because throwing communists off the Internet after three-strikes makes perfect sense

So the alternative to innovate is to litigate and legislate, and the MPAA has been busy on both fronts recently. This week, MPAA head Bob Pisano is in Japan promoting the merits of “Three-Strikes”, calling it “forward-thinking”, which makes sense coming from an organisation that has almost everything ass backwards these days. So the MPAA’s “forward-thinking” plan is to just ban everyone from the Internet and go back to the time when, you know, when the Internet didn’t exist? With these forward-thinkers in the likes of the MPAA, ABC and CBS, no wonder the piracy problem is as good as solved and piracy is in no way increasing in popularity or anything.

But the MPAA wasn’t alone in promoting Three-Strikes this week, with one of the biggest proponents of the system, French President Sarkozy, also trying to hijack a Internet freedom conference to promote the agenda. That’s right, hijacking a conference about freedom and speech and *against* Internet censorship by promoting his own Internet censorship plans. What’s going on here? Is Sarkozy too cheap to host his own conference, that he has to, dare I say it, “steal” someone else’s conference.

Scaring people way from piracy isn’t going to work unless you can guarantee that you are capable of scare them, and that they’re not going to move to a download service that is nice and encrypted and/or prevent Big Brother from finding out just exactly what was downloaded. And when (not if) that happens, what will the MPAA and Sarkozy suggest we do then?

One solution that has been used so far is some kind of piracy tax, where people are taxed for blank media purchased, on the assumption that they’re using the blank media for piracy. It’s not really fair on those that don’t piracy, and I think it sends the wrong message, that since you’ve already “paid” for pirated goods, then go ahead, download as much as you can so you can fill up the DVD/Blu-ray with as much stuff as possible. For for businesses and non profits, this tax is insulting in more than one sense of the word, and it seems it’s illegal too, at least according to the EU Court of Justice. The court has ruled that anyone other than private individuals should not be levied with the tax, since it’s not fair to assume that these businesses and charities are all engaging in piracy. But is it really fair to label private individuals all by the same brush? Just because the problem is too complicated, in that it’s impossible to determine who is pirating and who isn’t, shouldn’t give governments and courts justification in simplifying the problem by making *everyone* guilty. How would drivers reacts if they were hit with yearly mandatory fines, because you know, statistically, most will have broken some kind of road rules during the year? It should be the same with downloads.

There’s bad news for copyright trolls everywhere, as newspaper copyright law firm Righthaven has lost a case, one of the thousands they filed. The judge ruled that Las Vegas realtor Michael Nelson’s posting of 8 sentences of a 30 sentence newspaper article is considered fair use, especially when he also linked to the original article. But there’s some confusion as to what has really happened, as it appears Nelson had settled the case with Righthaven. Did he settle too soon (and if he did settle, then why did the matter go to trial), or was this all part of the settlement deal? Who knows. But just because your industry is dying, it doesn’t give you the right, nor will it help you, to pursue people who were enthusiastic enough to like your articles and link to them. Now, if they were just content scrapers, then okay, sue all you want, but at least allow them to post a sentence or two, perhaps even helping them out by providing the linking code with the snippet that you want others to use. I can talk all day about why the newspaper business if failing, but I think news in general is failing because there is now a lack of trust in the coverage being provided. The bias ridden, badly researched, deliberately misleading, simplified to the point of being totally pointless stories that we call news these days is very much responsible for the apathy people feel these days. When everything is a “gate”, can something like the Watergate stories break again? I just don’t think so. And yes, I’ve been watching season 5 of The Wire recently, how could you tell? Yeah, but let’s just sue those that actually like our articles enough to link to them, that will work!

Jammie Thomas-Rasset is going back to court for the third time, this time to decide just how much in damages she should pay. The original controversial amount was $1.92 million, reduced to $54,000, and now the RIAA will try to increase this again to something “more reasonable”, so they can use Thomas as an example to scare others into hiding their downloads a bit better or something.

High Definition

In high definition news, the week ending 10th October was Blu-ray’s second best week on record.

It was largely down to Iron Man 2, released the previous week, and Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, with 20.58% of the market belonging to Blu-ray, just below the record set by the week Avatar was released.

Blu-ray combos are helping to boost Blu-ray sales figures

However, and as I’ve noted in the analysis, and the subsequent posts, the numbers are slightly misleading, because you cannot say that 20.58% of all sales were for Blu-ray. This is because the numbers include all combos sold, and in Disney’s case, they only release combos for the first month, so anyone wanting the DVD edition must buy the combo during these first few weeks. In fact, all combos are counted as Blu-ray sales only, even though they all include the DVD edition. And with studios pricing combos at only a few dollars more than the deluxe DVD edition (assuming one is even available), they’re obviously subsidizing the combo version at the expense of DVD only versions. The fair solution would be to count combos separately, and this would also give us stat freaks another set of numbers to analyze to death (or at the very least tell us if consumers like combos or not).

But this isn’t to say that Blu-ray hasn’t been selling well, it has. A lot of titles are now dominated by the Blu-ray version, despite cheaper DVD versions being available (for example, Avatar on Blu-ray’s has seldom had a market share less than 40%, despite actual Blu-ray penetration being at a much lower percentage). With Toy Story 3 and Inception coming in November and December respectively, the next couple of months should be huge for Blu-ray, even without combo related number cooking.

Not much happening in gaming except the NPD stuff. And the latest news is that Sony’s PlayStation Move has “moved” over a million units, which isn’t bad at all. Now it’s Microsoft’s turn with Kinect, and all signs point to it being a even bigger success (stories of the motion gaming device being sold out, and the Oprah endorsement can’t have hurt when trying to penetrate the casual gaming market, just in time for Christmas too).

Anyway, that’s the week that was. More next week, as we follow the adventures of Nicolas “Sarky” Sarkozy, and the crazy gang over at the MPAA, as they fight for what’s good, and right in this messed up world of ours: the ability to kick people you don’t like off the Internet. Until then, have a good one.

Posted in Copyright, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (24 October 2010)

Weekly News Roundup (17 October 2010)

Sunday, October 17th, 2010

Let’s start this relatively quiet week with some bad news. It is very likely I will have to cease updating a long running feature here. Sorry to stop all of you from leaping for joy at the demise of the WNR, I’m sorry to say that’s not what I’m posting about. Instead, it’s the NPD US video game sales analysis, in its 38th monthly edition already, but it looks like 39th may very well never arrive. You see, NPD is no longer releasing hardware and software unit sales numbers, and this makes writing an analysis very difficult. Luckily, there may be some data leaks by manufacturers, publishers and other analysts with access to the NPD numbers, and when that happens, an analysis may still be posted. So far for this first month, there does seem to be some leaks, so the 39th NPD analysis may very well be posted early next week.

Anyway, let’s start going over the news in this, as previously mentioned, relatively quiet week.

In copyright news, the Irish High Court has dealt a blow to the music industry’s attempts to shift responsibility of online piracy unto ISPs.

The court ruled that provider UPC was not responsible for what users do on its network, as Ireland had not yet implemented the EU directive on copyright. The next step for the music industry is to cry to the government and get them to help stop the nasty ISPs from hurting their billion dollar profits, and I’m sure they’ll find a sympathetic ear. As I’ve mentioned a billion times before, I don’t get the argument of the record and movie industries. If ISP should be made responsible for subscriber downloads, then why not the phone company, as most downloads are still done via good old phone lines and exchanges. What about the companies that maintain the routers and switches for the Internet – illegal traffic has to pass through their hardware eventually, so why not make them responsible too? So it’s only the websites that host torrent files (which don’t directly link to pirated content), the users who upload and download, and ISPs that the music/movie industries hold responsible (maybe Google and other search engines as well), but everybody else gets a free pass? Will hard-drive makers get sued too because they keep on making bigger hard-drives that are used to store pirated files? Where does the buck stop?

This is a question they can never answer, because the industry is passing on responsibility of fighting piracy to others, even though they are the only ones to benefit from any action taken. Governments can be lobbied take some of the responsibility, but other private companies are not just going to sit by idly and let the music/movie industries get away with it. And if the government, via new laws, make ISPs responsible, then what they are effectively doing is subsidizing the very profitable music and movie industries by taking money out of the Internet industry, just because one industry has a better lobbying organisation than the other. But I believe the saviour of the music/movie industry, if they need saving at all, will lie in the Internet domain, and so there’s more reason for them all to work together, giving users more innovative solutions, as opposed to working against each other while fighting the futile fight against piracy, while consumers are the ones hurt by all of this (either the lack of innovation, or financial and legal consequences, even for those that don’t pirate music and movies). But that’s just me.

Media Copyright Group is being sued by US Copyright Group for Trademark Infringement

And speaking of companies not working together for the common good, more evidence this week that copyright law firms don’t really respect copyright, as they steal (or allege others of stealing) from each other. The US Copyright Group is suing the Media Copyright Group for stealing their name, even though they have different names. This is after the USCG was caught earlier in the year stealing another copyright law firm’s website design, and even earlier when UK copyright law firm ACS:Law accused of another UK copyright law firm of stealing their mailing templates. But I’m not surprised that these firms are suing for each other, or that some of them don’t respect copyright. Because first of all, and just like the Scorpion and the Frog fable, it’s in their nature to sue anyone and anything. And second of all, they don’t respect copyright because their work means that they don’t need to respect copyright, because it’s all about the money. In fact, these law firms would have no business if piracy was stopped tomorrow, so it’s actually in their interest for piracy to continue. Is it going too far to even suggest that these firms are making money off piracy? Well, all I know is that when home users download a torrent, and subsequently upload portions of it while they’re downloading, they’re not making a profit from the operations, other than saving the money of purchasing the content. Some torrent website may make some money through advertising, but overall, online piracy is one “industry” that’s not really about making a profit – unlike the industries that has sprouted up to combat it.

But if money is to be made from piracy or anti-piracy, then Google wants a piece of it too. Instead of giving in to movie studio demands to take responsibility for sites in its vast index (by this principle, Google may very well be responsible for all the world’s ills at the moment thanks to all the websites it indexes. Except for News Corp sites. So that’s one less evil Google is responsible for, I guess), it has suggested, shock horror, that studios may need to pay a little bit of money to reduce piracy and improve the studio’s bottom line. I’m sure the studios are outraged at the suggestion that they would have to pay for actions that benefit only themselves. Crying to Congress about it may be their only hope!

An update on The Pirate Bay appeals case, it has now concluded and a decision is expected on November 26th. I have deliberately avoided covering this trial because I suspect there is only one outcome, and that the original verdict will be upheld. Or maybe I was just too lazy to keep track of it, I don’t know.

High Definition

Not much happening in HD/3D land, except that Iron Man 2’s stats came out, and while it was impressive, it did not really outsell the likes of Avatar.

Iron Man 2 sold more copies on Blu-ray than on DVD, well sort of

What the Blu-ray version did manage to do was to get more than 50% of the market share, not the first time this has happened, but the first time for such a high profile release during the first week of release. In other words, when Iron Man 2 became available at retail outlets, most people purchased the Blu-ray or Blu-ray/DVD combo version, as opposed to the DVD only version. While this may suggest that Blu-ray has now replaced DVDs as the dominant format, there are a couple of caveats to this stat. First of all, overall Blu-ray market share is still only around 10% to 15% (it was up to 18% for Iron Man 2 week), mainly because not all titles are release yet on Blu-ray, but largely because people are being very selective when buying Blu-ray editions, as opposed to DVD editions. It’s all about the expected picture/audio quality I suppose.

Another important thing to note is that with the current pricing, it’s very bad value to buy any of the DVD-only editions, especially if one plans to upgrade to Blu-ray any time in the next couple of years. The reason for this is that the Blu-ray single disc version of Iron Man 2 was only priced a single dollar more than the equivalent DVD-only edition. The Blu-ray/DVD combo was even better value, at only $2 more than the 2-disc DVD edition. Now, even if I didn’t have a Blu-ray player, if the pricing differential was so insubstantial, I would never buy the DVD only editions. For $2 more, I can future proof my movie collection right now, and although I miss out temporarily on the extra features on the second DVD if I didn’t have a Blu-ray player, in return, I get two copies of the same movie, as opposed to just one. At the end of the day, even if I didn’t have a Blu-ray player, I still get to enjoy the movie on DVD and I will know that when I get a Blu-ray player, I won’t have to re-buy the movie. Of course, I think what has happened is that people were buying the single disc DVD version, as opposed to the combo version, which works out to be around $8 in savings. Still, when the two disc DVD edition costs more than the cheapest Blu-ray version ($5 more), if this doesn’t convince people to go and get a Blu-ray player, then I don’t know what will. The consumers that aren’t convinced will be difficult to convert into the Blu-ray cult, I think.

But Inception will be released in December, and I think that’s will be the title to beat for 2010.

Sony has announced its range of Google TV supporting TVs and Blu-ray players. It’s basically the tried and failed Internet TV platform, but now with a Google twist to make everything just a bit easier to use. Add the eventual support for the Android marketplace, and it can even become a surprisingly capable gaming platform for simple casual games. This convergence thing, that people, including me, were talking about years and years before, seems to be happening right in front of our eyes. Is a Sony TV with Google TV really just a TV, or a computer that can access the Internet, or a PVR that can record TV shows, or a games console? It only does everything, I suppose … oops, wrong company’s slogan.

And finally in gaming, as mentioned above, the lack of NPD stats make the NPD stats analysis feature a bit more difficult to write. But I have some experience in writing much about nothing, so maybe I’ll manage.

But for September’s figures, I think I will still be able to come up with an analysis because of some of the leaked numbers, which suggests the Xbox 360 won the month easily again, while both the Wii and PS3 were actually down compared to a year ago, 45 and 37 percent respectively. The PS3 numbers might surprise a few people, since it has seen huge year-on-year growth recently, but as I mentioned in the last few NPD posts, we’re finally comparing apples with apples, or rather, slims with slims (whereas before, we were comparing the low priced slims with the high priced fats) – and as I have been trying to explain, the recent PS3 sales figures aren’t that impressive at all when you take this into account, and September’s figure prove this point.

Halo Reach has become one of only three games to sell over 3 million copies in the first release month

The other interesting fact was that Halo Reach sold more than 3.3 million copies, only the third title ever to sell more than 3 million copies in the first month (in the US) – the other two are Modern Warfare 2, and the previous major Halo game, Halo 3. No specific figures were available for the Move, but the accessories sector grew compared to last year, the only one to do so, and this means the Move bundle probably sold well, but not well enough to have dragged the PS3 console sales any higher.

Anyway, I better stop writing before this turns into a fully fledged NPD analysis.

In other gaming news, Sony has a new way to combat the use of the PS Jailbreak device – new games, such as the new Medal of Honor, will come with firmware updates that disable the device, and if you want to play these games, you are forced to install the firmware. A typically heavy handed action by Sony, but it will probably work. Until someone pirates a hacked version of MoH that won’t require the new firmware, that is.

And that’s it for this week. Not a lot of news as I mentioned, but hopefully enough to tide you over until next week. So until then …

Posted in 3D, Copyright, Electronics, 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 (17 October 2010)

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Weekly News Roundup (14 November 2010)

Weekly News Roundup (7 November 2010)

Weekly News Roundup (31 October 2010)

Weekly News Roundup (24 October 2010)

Weekly News Roundup (17 October 2010)

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