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Weekly News Roundup (1 August 2010)

Sunday, August 1st, 2010

Still busy with the move I’m afraid, it’s not the big things that’s the problem, it’s always the little things that you have pack carefully, and then move over bit by bit. So not a lot of time left to do any real work unfortunately, and it was a pretty light news week anyway. So we can get through this WNR pretty quickly it seems, sparing you of the pain of reading through a bunch of badly written crap nobody cares about. Or something.

Let’s start things with the copyright news, which in a week with few news items, actually produced two quite important pieces of news.

Jailbreaking the iPhone is now legal, thanks to new exemptions in the DMCA ...

First up is The Library of Congress’ announcement of newly added exemptions to the DMCA. I’ve gone through the exemptions in the linked post, so you should read up on that, but the two biggies are the allowing of of iPhone style jailbreaking, and the exemptions to filmmakers in regards to DVD ripping. For DRM hacking on phones, as long as you do it for interoperability reasons, and not for piracy related reasons, then it’s now allowed. Of course, Apple will have something to say about this, but their attempt to stop jailbreaking has never really been about copy protection, even by their own explanations (which are more to do with protecting the integrity of the platform, blah blah blah). It’s an interesting fact that the US Copyright Office, who made these changes, acknowledges the role DRM now plays in not stopping copyright infringement, but actually preventing interoperability in order to allow companies to gain a financial advantage. In other words, it’s anti-competitive.

The other biggie is that filmmakers and educators can actually break DRM on DVDs (and I suppose Blu-ray movies as well) in order to use clips for use in education, criticism or comment. The exemption had existed for educators, but the new exemption has the MPAA pretty riled up. And even with educators, remember when the MPAA demonstrated how teachers can record sections of DVDs and Blu-ray movies without breaking DRM (either the digital kind, CSS/AACS, or the analogue Macrovision kind), by using a camcorder to record a TV playing the DVD/Blu-ray? But now with filmmakers able to rip to their heart’s content, it’s no wonder the MPAA isn’t happy. But the basis of a free and democratic society is that there should be no barriers to genuine criticism and comment, and unfortunately, DRM is a barrier created by corporations, some of them the very target of the criticism that DRM prohibits. That the MPAA even has the temerity to question such an exemption, just shows how out of control and out of touch they really are. They’re bullies, nothing more.

... Filmmakers also benefit from new exemptions that means they can break DVD/Blu-ray DRM to use clips for comment or criticism

The other exemptions were all in a similar vain, an attempt to fix some of problems created by the DMCA, the consequences of which meant that fair use was prevented. It’s a step in the right direction, and there are still many steps to take before the DMCA can be truly called fair. But the message is clear – don’t use DRM for anything other than protecting the rights of license holders, and even when doing this, make sure you don’t infringe on the existing rights of consumers.

And almost at the same time, we have a court ruling that gives hope that further steps in the future will be taken to ensure the above. A judge has ruled that merely breaking DRM is not enough to trigger the anti-circumvention provision of the DMCA. The DMCA was created as an extension to existing copyright laws that did not properly deal with copyright protection in the digital era. The fact that *any* DRM breaking is considered as breaking the DMCA is too wide an interpretation of the anti-circumvention provision, and I’m very glad that a judge has finally made a ruling that takes this into account. As the DMCA is an extension of copyright laws, then anti-circumvention should only be prohibited if copyright laws are broken as a result. Once again, it’s the idea that DRM should only be used to prevent copyright abuse, and that breaking DRM isn’t illegal if it’s not used for an illegal act. To use an analogy, it’s the difference between buying a knife and using a knife to stab someone. Breaking DRM, buying the knife, should not be illegal unless it leads to a crime, that is to stab someone with the knife. But the industry wants to ban not only knives, but people who make knives, talk about knives, or anything that even remotely looks or functions like a knife (everyone look out, it’s a fork!). In other words, copyright holders want to make the act of DRM breaking illegal, even if you’re doing it for completely legal purposes.

And if we interpret the anti-circumvention clause in the same manner as Judge Garza, then the DMCA makes much more sense from a consumer point of view. If making a copy of your legally purchased content, a backup, is not illegal, then breaking DRM to do so should not be illegal either. If I want to break DRM just for the heck of it, then I should be able to do so, as long as I’m not hurting anyone else’s commercial interests. And in fact, if DRM prevents users from exercising their rights, then that DRM should be illegal. And this make sense, because no individual has ever lost a court case just because they broke DRM to make a backup, and if the MPAA tried to sue, they will lose each and every time. And even the MPAA and anti-piracy agencies will admit to the fact that they would never go after anyone breaking DRM for personal, non commercial reasons. So why not put this in writing by adding further exemptions to the DMCA (or rather, just clarify the mess that it is)? All of this show just how ridiculously flawed the DMCA is as a piece of legislation, but at least there appears to be hope that something fairer will exist someday.

But then the industry will say, yes, many people will use Blu-ray rippers, for example, to make backups, and many more will use the same software to pirated movies. And a new study does show that there are increasing numbers of people doing the so called rent, rip and return, and now with Blu-ray, as opposed to just DVDs. Well my response to this is that, let’s take a look at the people not breaking the law but still breaking DRM, and see why they’re doing it. If they’re doing it to protect their legally purchased goods, for example backups, and if DRM prevents them from doing that, then the implementers of the DRM should provide tools that allow backups to occur, but not piracy. If people are breaking DRM so they can play games without the original disc inserted into their drive, then make something that will allow them to do this, but without enabling piracy (Steam, anyone?). And you know what? If they do it right, they may actually make money out of providing these solutions to the problems that DRM creates. And then there’s the piracy problem, which according to the same study, is becoming more of a casual piracy problem (ie. people copying movies they buy so they can share it with friends and family). But the industry’s response will be the introduction of more and more complex and “fool proof” DRM systems. It’s like watching Wile E. Coyote goes after The Road Runner, the industry versus piracy, and instead of ACME products, it’s DRM. And just like the cartoons, not only will the industry certainly fail to stop piracy, they’ll probably end up hurting themselves in the process. But like most of society’s more complex problems, one should always try to examine the cause and find solutions, most of them not easy, not quick fixes. There is no magic bullet to the piracy problem, no magical DRM that will prevent all copying forever, not without seriously impacting on the usability of the product, so stop looking there. Instead, look at why people are participating in casual piracy – and don’t say because they don’t know it’s wrong or illegal, they do (most of the time) – but seriously examine why people, knowing it’s wrong, still do it. Is it because it’s fun? Or because it’s easy? Or perhaps it’s because people can’t afford to pay the money that’s being asked of them for the goods in question. And if stopping piracy means dropping prices, possibly reducing revenue in the short term (but probably good for the long term), is that a solution the industry is willing to adopt? Or if the alternative is that high prices with higher (short term) revenue, but with some piracy to be expected, then is this not good enough? The MPAA can’t have its Roadrunner, and eat it too.

R4 and similar carts to receive banning in the UK

In gaming piracy news, the UK is set to ban R4 style DS carts that allow pirated games to be played on the portable console, after a recent court ruling in favour of Nintendo. There’s no question that R4 style carts are predominantly used to pirate DS games, but these types of carts also have other uses. Primarily, it allows gamers to carry hundreds of games store digitally in memory cards, as opposed to carrying their purchased carts everywhere. Also, there’s almost always some multimedia function built in that otherwise does not exist for the console, and lastly, it enables development of homebrew software. While the ban is understandable, because DS piracy is rife, but just like Sony’s recent decision to pull Other OS/Linux support for the PS3, there are unintended consequences that hurt the platform. Nintendo will introduce the ability to store games on memory cards, but without an apps platform, homebrew development and the development of non gaming software for the DS will be severely hurt. This goes back to what I mentioned earlier about finding solutions to the problems that DRM creates (or in this case, the problems created by a legal decision to ban these carts), and then profiting from the solutions. Look at Apple and Google with their apps platforms, and don’t you think the DS needs something like this too?

High Definition

There’s a surprising lack of HD or 3D news. Those that follow my weekly Blu-ray sales analysis will notice a slight drop off in Blu-ray market share in recent times.

There’s no need for panic (yet), as most of this is due to the lack of A-list releases. The overall trends is still of positive growth, but growth may be slowing down. The biggest enemy of Blu-ray is that the fact that DVDs are still pretty darn good value, and that a lot of movies and TV shows won’t really benefit from the full HD treatment, not at a considerable higher price. But if studios drop prices, then Blu-ray loses its ability to earn more revenue for studios, because it’s definitely not cheaper to produce and manufacturer a Blu-ray movie compared to a DVD one.

Studios will hope 3D Blu-ray can keep the format at a higher price premium, but people want their stuff and want it cheaper than before, and this has always been the driver behind the ever dropping price of movies. Ironically, I think dropping prices may be the key to increasing revenue – instead of having people buy a few movies at high prices, how about getting them to buy tons of movies at low prices. For that though, possibly some kind of digital distribution is needed, because if my recent house move has told me anything, it’s that having hundreds of discs to pack, ship and then store at the new place is a lot of trouble.

And finally in gaming, another firmware update for the PS3 and another round of problems being reported. What was supposedly a simple update, firmware version 3.41, to add a “recommend” feature to the PS store has turned out far more complicated.

Apparently, the new firmware stops people upgrading their HDDs, a feature that Sony has often promoted as being superior to the Xbox 360’s use of official hard-drive accessories (and they’re right, the Xbox 360 hard-drive accessories really are a rip off). It’s very likely just a bug, as opposed to another “Other OS” situation where firmware updates actually remove previously supported features.

I’m not a big fan of the PS3’s firmware update schedule. It’s a good idea to add new functionality to the console, but it’s a bad idea to update every couple of weeks, because there’s always a risk with every update, with software of firmware. Imagine if Microsoft released a service pack every month for Windows, and you get the reason as to why there are so many problems with the PS3 updates. Do a major update every 6 month or so, with small patches to fix bugs and issues in between, and that’s more than enough. If firmware releases come too frequently, there’s no way Sony can do any sort of comprehensive testing to ensure bugs are not present.

Okay, that’s all I’ve got this week. There *has* to be more next week, I hope, so until then, have a good one.

Posted in Copyright, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup, PS3, PS4 | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (1 August 2010)

Weekly News Roundup (25 July 2010)

Sunday, July 25th, 2010

Hello. I’ve finally completed moving house, by completed, I of course mean that there’s still tons of stuff that needs to be moved over. But this is the first WNR at the new place. But the roundup must go on, as they say, despite aching limbs and a sleep deprived brain. One good thing about the move was that I was finally able to test Blu-ray 3D playback via PowerDVD 10 Mark II to my Samsung 3D plasma. More on that later.

Let’s start with copyright news. The US Copyright Group is in the news again this week as they step up their campaign targeting thousands of web users accused of downloading pirated movies.

The latest development sees the USCG hiring the services of smaller law firms signalling the next phase of their plans – going to court. It was always understood that firms like the USCG would avoid going to court whenever possible, since the costs are higher and so are the risk (of losing, and hence, setting a precedent that could hurt future business). But it appears the USCG is pressing ahead anyway, no doubt going after those that are easy to beat in court. It may also be their way of showing that they do intend to go to court, a criticism that critics have used in the past to attack similar actions, and if they can get a few easy victories under their belt, maybe a high profile one, then this can be used to scare more people into paying up. And as for working with the EFF to draft a user friendlier notice to send to suspected pirates, it seems the two sides just can’t get along and both may have to go and see the judge again to see how they can get things moving. This isn’t the biggest surprise in the world, as one side wants to make the notices are serious as possible to get people to pay up, while the other want the notice to be informative enough to allow people to defend themselves – it was always difficult, if not impossible, to meet both objectives.

The Last Vegas Review-Journal is suing those that use its articles without permission

While the USCG aren’t winning friends with web users, ISPs and rights groups, they are making friends in other media circles, and at least one law firm is now copying their strategy, except going after those who pirate newspaper articles, rather than movies. Suing hundreds of websites and blogs is Las Vegas based Righthaven, representing the owners of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. While most newspapers use DMCA takedown notices to get their full articles removed from forums and blogs, there is no money that can be made by taking this approach. But if the threat of a lawsuit, and the request for a pre-trial settlement works for the USCG on movie downloaders, then the thinking is that website owners will do the same as well, even when the offending content was posted by one of its users, not the website itself. The recent Viacom versus YouTube action showed that user generated websites do have protection from the safe harbor provisions under the DMCA, as long as they have a clear anti copyright infringement policy in place and enforces this policy consistently. So one might think this would apply to forums where users have posted full articles against forum rules, or blogs where users have made the same post in the comments. But the fear of an expensive lawsuit means that many will simply pay the settlement fee to avoid the trouble, although others are willing to challenge the claims in court. If this model works, expect all other newspaper owners to follow suit, as most of them are struggling to keep profits from dropping in what many calls a dying industry.

Irish ISP UPC is going to court to fight three-strikes

Moving to Europe now, it appears ISPs in many countries are not happy at their respective government’s three-strikes policies, and are going to court to fight it. Three-Strikes, or similar laws, may appear to be aimed at users who download pirated content, but it is in fact aimed at ISPs, making them responsible for monitoring and “sentencing”, for want of a better word, their own subscribers. The cost of the operation will have to be absorbed by the ISP, and mistaken identifies or other errors could even see the ISPs sued. The ISPs argue that since the music labels and movie studios are the one that will supposedly benefit from piracy being reduced, they’re the ones that should play a more active role in enforcing three-strikes. The content owners, however, will argue that they’re the victims in this and that ISPs should just pass on the cost to subscribers. The big question is if this wasn’t about the Internet, would government, who are normally clueless about Cyberspace, be so willing to give in to the demands of copyright holders? If people were committing copyright infringement via the telelphone, let’s say something silly like reading out loud books or newspaper articles to the person on the other end, should the telephone company then be tasked with spying on users’ conversations so they can put a stop to this illegal practice? Should the government then help to make spying legal and part of the copyright laws? ISPs are nothing more than utility companies, like the gas, electricity or telephone companies, and making them responsible for what their subscribers do with the service just doesn’t seem right. And if there are any technical advantage that make ISP level “spying” easier, then it would still be unfair to make ISPs bare the entire cost of the operation. It’s forcing one industry, and tax payer money, to protect another industry’s revenue stream for no reason other than it’s the easy thing to do.

The Swedish Pirate Party wants to do something about ISP snooping though, and they are planning to launch their “Pirate ISP”, which will ensure no data about users if kept, so that their privacy is protected. The idea is nice, but I can already see the lawsuits and search, arrest warranty being typed up, probably before the ISP is even launched.

And when Hollywood is finished getting the government and ISPs to do their bidding, for free, they will turn their targets on those that try to innovate too much. Because innovation could eventually lead content being published without having to be controlled by publishers, and that spells bad news for revenue. Google TV is next in Hollywood’s cross-hairs it seems, as the new proposed system which aims to present a common interface for viewing media, online and offline, on TVs may just be too innovative for Hollywood’s liking. In their submission to the FTC, Hollywood studios claims that Google TV could potentially allow users to interact with both legal and illegal media, in the same interface, and that’s will encourage users to all become pirates. Instead of seeing how such an innovation could revolutionize the way people buy content on the Internet, and instead of supporting Google, a company with a history of knowing how to get money out of the Internet and its users, they yet again focus on the piracy issue and the issue alone. Just like how music labels refused to work with digital music retailers and instead focused on more and more complicated layers of DRM, and then having the likes of Apple iTunes swallow up a huge chunk of Internet related profit that otherwise would have gone to the labels, Hollywood appears to be making the same mistake.

DECE has a new name and logo: it's now UltraViolet, but it's still an new, annoying DRM

Instead, their solutions is, you guessed it, more DRM. Hollywood’s new fairer DRM scheme, supported by pretty much all the studios expect Disney (who have their own proprietary system in the works), is now called UltraViolet. How is it friendlier? Well, it plans to make DRM protected files more portable, working in more players and systems, but it still has the stench of DRM all over it, and thus, all the same usual problems: lack of universal compatibility, the need for online authentication, and don’t expect the files to work forever as there is no guarantee whatsoever that any DRM system will be kept supported and updated (at high cost by the DRM operators) forever. The IEEE is also working on their own “fairer” DRM, which will make digital files more like physical objects, in that ownership can be transferred, so sharing something with a friend could mean that you lose the ability to use the file forever if your friend do not return ownership back to you. The scheme, called P1817, could even work in conjunction with the monster that is UltraViolet, to make everything a bit fairer you see. The funny thing is that by acknowledging the need to make things fairer, content owners have just acknowledged that DRM, at least in past forms, have not been fair to users. I would go one step further and say that DRM is always unfair to users, so if you want them to accept it, make sure you give them back something in return. Whether’s that lower prices, better services, or even just less hoops to jump through, it is needed. Content owners should not take users for granted, as they may just go elsewhere (and if there’s no legal alternative, guess where they will be, and have been, heading to?)

High Definition

In HD/3D news, as mentioned in the introduction, I managed to get PowerDVD 10 Ultra 3D with the Mark II patch to play a Blu-ray 3D movie and have it display as proper 3D on my new Samsung 3D plasma TV.

It took a bit of work trying to get it to work, but I’ve posted the instructions here for those that want to give it a go. The 3D effects are great, even if you’re not getting full 1080p resolution, but that will only be possible when updated drivers are available for my ATI Radeon HD card. For now, it means I can play Blu-ray 3D movies in 3D without a standalone Blu-ray 3D player (although my free bonus one, part of a promotion Samsung were running here in Australia, should be on its way from Samsung, hopefully arriving before the PS3 gets its Blu-ray 3D update).

And sticking with the theme of logos ... BDXL won't play on existing Blu-ray players

But while I wait for my Blu-ray 3D player to arrive, it may already be obsolete, thanks to the idea of “upgradeable hardware” introduced by the Blu-ray format. The idea says that, like software, there may be a new version out every year and you would need to pay to get the new version, if you want the latest features. We’ve already had Profile 1.0, 1.1 and 2.0 players, and I guess Blu-ray 3D counts as 2.5 or something. And when BDXL movie discs arrive (if they arrive), then we’ll all need new players again (4.0, since 3.0 is already taken by the fairly unused Blu-ray audio format). It’s nice having 128GB capacity, but not so nice when I have to yet again upgrade my Blu-ray player, despite how cheap players have become. Even the always versatile PS3 won’t be able to support BDXL, since the only thing that the PS3 can’t update through software, the Blu-ray drive itself, will need to be updated. And soon after Blu-ray 4.0, we’ll have Super-Blu-ray 1.0, with Sony promising a 1TB disc using an even more powerful laser. Downloads, streaming, storage lockers … if only everyone had the bandwidth to make download a Blu-ray quality movie a matter of minutes, rather than hours (or weeks, in certain Internet backwaters, like Australia), then we could get rid of the disc altogether, or burn our own discs by only replacing the optical drive in your computer, as opposed to an entire standalone player. It’s bad for the environment, bad for our wallets, and it’s just annoying.

But at least one thing to do with Blu-ray is going disc-less. Netflix streaming on the PS3 will finally work without a Blu-ray disc, and it only took a year after Netflix was first available on the PS3, and several after the Netflix was originally launched on the Xbox 360 (which had disc-less streaming from the get go). Better late than never, I suppose.

And finally in the ever rarer gaming section, Microsoft has finally revealed the official Kinect pricing. Which is exactly the same as the unofficial pricing all the retailers have been using for months.

The only surprise, and a good one, is that the $149.99 price includes a free game, Kinect Adventures. But it was Microsoft’s other announcement which were a bit more interesting, like the new “Arcade”, the Xbox 360 4GB, which is basically the same piece of hardware as the new “Slim” Xbox 360 250GB, except without the 250GB HDD of course. The price for this new console is $199, but if you buy it with Kinect in a bundle, it will be $299, so that’s another $50 off Kinect’s pricing if you buy it with the new console. Some will say that this attempt to compete with the Wii is doomed to failure, because the Wii will be much cheaper. But the Xbox 360 doesn’t need to be the same price as the Wii, since it’s a much better console (certainly plays more types of games than the Wii, in HD too). There’s no Xbox 360 250GB Kinect bundle, which is a shame because that’s the one I would like to buy. Kinect pre-orders on Amazon jumped back to the top 5 after the pricing announcement on Wednesday, but has since dropped down to 21. The Move bundle is at 49th.

And that’s the news I have for this week. Sorry about the rushed nature of this WNR, what with all the mistakes and mindless rambling, moving house takes a lot out of a person. You didn’t notice any differences? That’s good then. What do you mean “it’s same crap as usual”? Huh? Anyway, here’s to a less crappy WNR next week.

Posted in 3D, Computing, 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 (25 July 2010)

Weekly News Roundup (18 July 2010)

Sunday, July 18th, 2010

It’s like London buses, they say, you wait ages for one and then two comes along. That’s what happened this week with mid-week blog posts – two of them in the same week! I finally updated a feature that I haven’t touched in more than a year’s time, with a new edition of the “If I were to buy a new computer today …” feature. This feature helps to satisfy (a small part) of my desire to buy new tech all the time, as I can live vicariously through my readers (the use of the plural version may be inaccurate) by researching and finding out what kind of system I would buy, if I were to buy one today. I think I enjoy the research more so than the actual new computer itself, for some odd reason. I posted a couple of specs for different systems, so while everyone will have their opinion on what’s best, this may be a good start for those that don’t like the research part.

The second blog post was the June NPD US video game sales analysis. It’s come quite soon after the May analysis, but that’s because the May figures were delayed by NPD. Some good news in there for Microsoft, as their Xbox 360 console beat pretty much everyone except the DS, thanks to the new Elite “slim” form factor. I’m definitely on the market for one of these new slims, but I’ll wait until the holidays period to pick up a bargain (perhaps a bundle with Kinect, who knows).

Not a whole lot of “new” news this week, but some follow-ups of previous stories, and I am running a bit late today/tonight, so I’ll get through things quickly (and if you want more stuff, you can read my *both* of my mid-week blog posts, of course).

Starting with copyright news, despite the legal authorities trying to clamp down on law firms getting into the anti-piracy-for-money business, the pre-trial settlement style letter campaigns, more law firms are getting into the lucrative business it seems.

7000 people who have downloaded a Ministry of Sound compilation in the UK will receive a letter soon asking them to pay £375 to settle the matter out of court

The most recent is Gallant Macmillan, who represent the copyright holders of Ministry of Sound albums, amongst others, and they will be asking for £375 from those suspected of pirated a particular MOS compilation. But they claim they are doing things a bit differently, perhaps to avoid a public backlash, or to prevent authorities from finding fault with their actions. The funny part is that the £375 actually includes the cost of the compilation itself, which normally retails for £8.75, and so suspected pirates can actually keep turn their illegally downloaded songs into legal songs by paying the settlement fee. An expensive way to buy music, for sure. And instead of a situation where the copyright holders aren’t dealing with the law firm directly, but through another party in between (possibly to avoid the bad publicity if it all turns sour), Gallant Macmillan will only directly represent the copyright owners who have intention to sue, and not just the the threat to sue with no real intention other than to get some money through settlement fees. The law firms will all say the high fees, compared to the actual cost to the copyright holders, is high due to investigative costs and other legal costs, but the real intention perhaps is to scare people into paying and maybe even scare them enough to stop them pirating in the future. Of course, for every person that is scared into submission, there are hundreds of thousands that will still go on downloading.

And if these “small time” lawsuits (or threats of one) can’t scare people, then perhaps the government can do so through some kind of global treaty like the ACTA. And scary it is. Claims that hundreds of thousands of people in the UK alone could be jailed if the ACTA is adopted as law, by making copyright infringement a criminal matter, not a civil one, and even making “attempted piracy” a crime (so do a search on Google for “Toy Story 3 torrent” and you may be headed for jail). But most scary of all is that it’s all very secretive, as if the government know that the people that they represent will not like what’s in the ACTA and have done everything they can to avoid the public knowing about it – the US negotiators have been the key backers of keeping the negotiations secret. However, when the EU Pirate Party (remember that they now have a member in the EU parliament) invited themselves to a meeting to discuss the ACTA, and then were told that not only are they not allowed to discuss any aspect of the meeting of the ACTA with the public (which may very well be illegal under the EU parliament rules), that even notes weren’t being taken for the meeting in case it gets leaked. And it is then that the Pirate Party walked out on the meeting in disgust. But the leaks do continue from people that find the secretive actions unacceptable, but the more we read about the ACTA, the more scary it becomes. But you can just imagine members of the RIAA and MPAA sitting in the shadows, smiling contently, watching as their wishes becomes reality. Sort of like Cancer Man in the X-Files (the first few seasons, anyway).

The RIAA is spending millions to get back thousands, fighting piracy through legal channels

And you can see why the likes of the RIAA and MPAA want government to take over their job of preventing piracy. Because it’s expensive, and relatively unproductive. The RIAA’s latest accounts showed that in 2008, they spent $17.6 million in fighting online piracy, but only got $391,000 back in damages. Of course, they’ll say that getting money back from past acts of piracy is not the main point, the main point is to stop future piracy. But I’ll leave you to judge whether their efforts in 2008 have paid dividends or not in 2010, whether piracy is more or less common now. But not everyone in the music biz thinks the fighting piracy head on will result in anything. Peter Jenner, president of the International Music Managers Forum, a group that present feature artist music managers, says that the current thinking about copyright enforcement is no different to the 1930’s thinking about alcohol enforcement, also known as prohibition. And both, he says, are laws that is “offensive” to the general public. Jenner proposes some kind of levy to help pay for content being shared online, much like how people in the UK pay their licensing fees for the BBC. I’m not sure I agree with a “piracy tax”, since it’s unfair on those that don’t download pirated stuff on the Internet, however if there is a legal, publicly owned point of distribution, say a BBC for the Internet, and where a small costs are paid to access a good amount of content, then perhaps the solution has some merit. Much like how free to air TV exists, perhaps a free to download service, paid for by taxes and levies, might also exist to provide a good amount of digital entertainment to those that cannot afford to pay for premium content on a subscription based service, much like subscription TV. Using the same analogy, there will always be people who will try and succeed at getting “illegal cable”, but you can’t prevent all piracy, that’s just impossible.

And speaking of expensive lawsuits, Viacom’s billion dollar lawsuit has cost Google $100 million to defend (successfully, for now), Google’s CFO revealed. It’s money well spent (and peanuts to a company like Google, to be honest), and it’s an important victory for the Internet, not just Google. However, you can only imagine how much money was spent by Viacom, and you add both together, and apart from making a lot of lawyers happy, what else did it really achieve. Piracy is a cost to the economy, but sometimes anti-piracy is also a cost, and perhaps more costly if lawsuits had stopped websites like YouTube before it got off the ground.

High Definition

On to HD/3D news. The news last week was that the PS3 will get the Blu-ray 3D firmware sometimes in September. It’s good news for buyers of 3D TVs, and for 3D TVs in general, since it suddenly means there are millions of potential Blu-ray 3D capable players on the market all without people having to pay anything for it (other than the loss of the PS3’s Other OS feature).

The PS3 will start supporting Blu-ray 3D in September, but it's not known whether there are any limitations imposed by the PS3's relatively older hardware

There’s still some confusion about whether HDMI 1.4 will be needed, since the HDMI hardware on the older PS3 predates even HDMI 1.3. But Sony seems to think that this won’t be a problem, and I guess you have to trust them on this, and they even went as far as saying “The [June] upgrade basically makes every PlayStation 3 HDMI 1.4 compatible”. I don’t remember anything about an update that made the PS3 HDMI 1.4 compatible, other than the “HDMI deep color” option added in 3.40. But as long as the HDMI hardware can handle high bandwidth transfers, then it should work perfectly with Blu-ray 3D, without having to limit the resolution for each eye to only 1080i or something. And as part of the announcement, 3D support for YouTube will be coming to the PS3 soon, which will be interesting. It’s either going to be the same kind of 2D to 3D feature that exists on Samsung, Sony and a few other manufacturer’s 3D TVs, or it will mean that YouTube will accept uploads of native 3D content in the future and display it as so. Interesting anyway.

Not much going on in gaming other than what I wrote for the NPD analysis.

And that’s another WNR for another week. I hope you have a good week ahead and see in at the same place, same time next week for another edition of the WNR.

Posted in 3D, Copyright, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup, Video Technology | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (18 July 2010)

Weekly News Roundup (11 July 2010)

Sunday, July 11th, 2010

Hope you’ve had a good week. It’s been busy again for me, but mostly non website related stuff. So no mid week blog again, but I am working on something (honestly), and it should be up early next week. It was a relatively busy news week, so let’s get started.

In copyright news, the big news occurred late in the week and it relates to one of the infamous RIAA lawsuits. Infamous due to the amount of damages awarded to the billion dollar industry trade group. The latest decision relates to the smaller of the damages (“only” $675,000), awarded against PhD student Joel Tenenbaum.

Joel Tenenbaum now "only" has to pay $64,000 for downloading 30 songs

The judge for the case, Nancy Gertner, has finally ruled on the damages awarded by the jury and has reduced what experts have called an “unconstitutional” amount. The new amount is now only a tenth of the original amount, at $67,500, or $2,250 per song. Interestingly, this is exactly the same amount per song that was awarded against single mother Jammie Thomas, after the judge in that case also reduced the amount of damages. However, even this amount was critisized by Gertner as “severe” or “harsh”. Despite this, the RIAA is not pleased at the judge’s decisions, and they have stated their desire to contest the ruling. I’ve previously analysed the original verdict and the original amount of damages, and it’s easy to see why the judge would think it was excessive. If you take into account the retail cost (not price) or songs, and the number of people that Tenenbaum or Thomas provided a full copy of the songs to, then it would take years of continuous sharing on a fast connection in order to rack up the amount of damages that the RIAA was originally awarded. There is punitive damages, but you have to question when so many people are doing exactly the same as Tenenbaum and Thomas, why only go after these two individuals? So the RIAA’s intent was to make an example out of these two, but I’m not sure the court appreciates this, especially when these two hardly represents the most notorious of song sharers, or someone who actually profited from their illegal activities. Perhaps the RIAA chose poorly when deciding to go after a student and single mother. I guess it’s better than trying to shake down 10 year old girls.

The Pirate Bay survives another day in Belgium at least

The “good” court news continues with a news item that was just posted today. A Belgian court has ruled that ISPs don’t need to cave in to the demand by anti-piracy agencies to shut down access to The Pirate Bay. It’s a big blow to The Belgian Anti-Piracy Federation (BAF), who had wanted the court to order the ISPs to blocks its subscribers from accessing The Pirate Bay. Instead, the court sided with the ISPs, which believe that it isn’t the place for Internet service providers to place judgement on whether websites can or cannot be viewed by its customers. The BAF obviously strongly disagreed, calling it the legal protection of “illegal websites”. It’s becoming clearer that anti-piracy groups wish to circumvent legal establishments entirely in their crusade against copyright infringement on the Internet. And this is exactly why they wish to avoid going through the legal system, since the result can often be quite unpredictable. The truth is that only a court can decide whether something is illegal or not, and only the legal system can provide avenues of appeal to make the system fair. What anti-piracy agencies are proposing, with some success, will remove many of the basic legal rights people have been enjoying for the last few hundred years, all in the name of a “speedy resolution” and an extremely biased outcome. This is a threat to the fundamental principles behind democracy and rule of law, and I’m always surprised that so called democratic governments go along with the demands of the industry without raising any of these issues, but I guess that’s easy to do when the same industry bombards you with scary figures about the “real cost” of piracy, some figures that have no basis in reality at all.

But not all government take the approach that everything the copyright holders say is correct. The Brazilian government is proposing changes to their own copyright laws that will copy aspects of the US DMCA, but at the very least, they are also considering the issue of fair use. Where the US DMCA practically overrules fair use whenever any kind of DRM is used, the Brazilian model will ensure that DRM can only be used on content that actually warrants protection, and that once materials fall into public domain, then the DRM should “naturally” wither away. A sort of timed DRM system, that automatically shuts off once copyright holders lose their rights on the content. It would also make it an offence for DRM to restrict access to content that otherwise should not have restrictions, such as public domain content, and that if DRM exists on such content, users will be free to hack away at it to remove it or disable it as they see fit. While it would still be illegal to circumvent DRM for copyrighted content, these provisions at least take into account the side effects of DRM, its ability to lock content forever and affect the way the content can be used. It’s one thing for DRM to prevent copying, but many rightsholders are using it as a way to shape way users use the content, and copyright laws should not permit this if these actions interfere with fair use. For example, if a publisher releases songs that can only be played on a certain device, thanks to DRM, and they secretly make deals with the device manufacturer, then how is this good for competition and thus the economy?

The 3DS will feature stronger anti-piracy features that are making publishers excited

And then we have publishers that are obsessed with DRM, to the point where if a good system isn’t available, they choose not to publish content to that system. Speaking of Nintendo’s new 3D DS console, the 3DS, THQ VP of global publishing expressed his excitement at the new 3D technology, but was even more impressed by Nintendo’s promised new anti-piracy technology, citing THQ’s reluctance to publish new titles for the original DS console due to piracy reasons. Now this strikes me as having exactly the wrong attitude. Or perhaps the right attitude when a publisher is not confident in the quality of its products. While popular games get pirated more, popular games also sell more. It’s only the poor games that almost always have a higher piracy-to-sales ratio, and in an industry where quality hasn’t always been the top priority (think of the number of poor to absolutely unplayable games being released every year), piracy is hurting. Of course, DS piracy has been made extremely easy by the use of R4 flash carts, but I’m absolutely certain that without the “easy to pirate” factor, the DS would be less successful than it is today. And it is this success that creates the large userbase in which game publishers can take advantage of, buy only if they produce good games that people want to buy. It seems too often anti-piracy measures are used not to stop piracy, but to stop people finding out too easily or too soon how crap something is, and this goes for content like movies and music too, not just games.

High Definition

Let’s move on to the HD/3D news. The big news of the week was Cyberlink’s release of the “Mark II” patch for PowerDVD 10 Ultra 3D users. The patch adds Blu-ray 3D support, making it the first Blu-ray 3D solution for the PC that is available for general sale.

PowerDVD 10 Ultra 3D Mark II Blu-ray 3D Options

PowerDVD 10 Ultra 3D adds Blu-ray 3D support

So for those with Nvidia’s GeForce 3D Vision technology, or a suitable 3D TV to connect to, then Blu-ray 3D is now possible with a PC based solution (and if you have the right GPU, it may even be hardware accelerated). Of course, the lack of Blu-ray 3D content means there’s not much to use PowerDVD 10 Ultra 3D Mark II on. Due to various reasons on my end, I cannot test Blu-ray 3D playback on PowerDVD Mark II with my Samsung 3D TV yet, so that’s a shame. PowerDVD 10 does include support for anaglyph red/cyan glasses, and I tried the 3D effects on the Monsters vs Aliens Blu-ray 3D disc, and it worked remarkably well (obviously poor colour reproduction, but that’s to be expected with an anaglyph system).

Speaking of software updates, Sony has finally put a date on the launch of the Blu-ray 3D update for the PS3, with Sony reps stating that it will be made available sometime in September. Once again, the PS3 has shown why its flexible architecture makes it a great Blu-ray player, if not the best (to be fair, standalones have caught up in terms of loading speed and versatility, although 2D players still can’t be upgraded to 3D mostly). What will be interesting to see is if the PS3’s older HDMI port can handle the increased bandwidth required by 3D, whether it can provide 1080p to each eye. In theory, it should, but we’ll have to wait and see.

But not everyone is interested in 3D, not even in tech-loving Japan. A recent survey showed that only 31% of those surveyed were interested in 3D TVs, with most citing cost, lack of content and having to wear uncomfortable glasses as major turn offs. I would also add that there are many that just haven’t experienced the new wave of 3D technologies (including 3D filmmaking), instead remembering back to the bad old days of red/cyan glasses as a benchmark for 3D performance. 3D definitely isn’t for everyone, and after playing around with my 3D TV, I would say that I definitely don’t want to watch hours and hours of content with the shutter glasses on, but it’s definitely something worth trying out for yourself. And it’s easy to get a demo, since every electronic store will surely have a 3D display set up by now thanks to the 3D hype. Of course, the cost requirements will be high right now, and many just don’t feel like replacing their recently purchased 2D Blu-ray player with a 3D player.

HDBaseT could take over from HDMI and use your existing cabled home networking setup

While recently purchased 2D Blu-ray players may already be considered obsolete, thanks to the bad precedent set by the introduction of Blu-ray profiles (ie. constantly upgraded specifications for hardware), HDMI itself may be obsolete, thanks to a new connection format called HDBaseT. The genius behind HDBaseT is that it’s entirely dependent on current technology – it users Ethernet cabling and ports, but instead of transferring data, it transfers audio and video (and data, like HDMI 1.4). The advantage is that because almost every device these days already have an Ethernet port, then turning that port into something that can also take audio/video would seem to make sense. And with HDMI not so good a long distances, the HDBaseT’s cable length of 100m should solve this problem as well. In fact, people are already using Ethernet cabling to extend HDMI, so this is really just taking an existing solution and turning it into a standard. With Sony, Samsung and LG backing the format, could it threaten HDMI? I for one don’t think so because HDMI is too well established. At best, HDBaseT will complement HDMI, but HDMI is here to stay. The bigger question is why didn’t we just move straight to something like HDBaseT, since HDMI has far too many shortcomings (like handshake issues, length issues, confusing version numbering, non hot pluggable …)

There really isn’t a lot of new things in gaming, unless you count the news that Hulu Plus on the PS3 won’t require PlayStation Plus as gaming news (which I don’t), so this is as good as any place to end this week’s WNR. Have a nice week and see you in 7 days.

Posted in 3D, Computing, Copyright, Electronics, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup, PS3, PS4 | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (11 July 2010)

Weekly News Roundup (4 July 2010)

Sunday, July 4th, 2010

It’s been a busy week on my end. The first piece of good news is that my Samsung 3D TV finally arrived, and it was delivered to me on Wednesday. I haven’t had much time to play around with it, but early impressions are very good indeed. Not sure I’m a huge fan of the 3D though, I’ve always felt it was a bit gimmicky, but I’m only buying the TV for the 2D – the 3D is a nice bonus that will keep me entertained for a bit and allow me to experiment with a few things (like perhaps providing some 3D trailers for you all to download in the near future). I also got a bit of work done, to my surprise. The much delayed NPD US video games sales figures for May were finally made available, and my analysis of it is here. No big surprises, but the video game industry is not immune to economic conditions, and so is still suffering. June will be interesting because the Xbox 360 “Slim” went on sale in the middle of the month, and we have the E3 hype as well. And in terms of other news, there were a few as well, so let’s get started (and finish quickly, so I can go play with my new TV).

Let’s start with the copyright news. A couple of weeks ago, the judge in the isoHunt copyright cased allowed the MPAA to submit keywords that would be censored on the BitTorrent search engine, but now the founder of isoHunt, Gary Fung, says that instead of trying to stop piracy, it’s now bordering on censorship, or at least an attempt to completely cripple isoHunt, even for the legal stuff.

Mininova.org Pageview Ranking (Alexa.com)

Alexa's pageview ranking for Mininova shows that it's not easy for torrent sites to go legit

Part of Fung’s argument is that very keywords include common words such as “21” or “Dad”, as these are words used in movie titles. If you had a list of every movie title, then surely that would cover so many words as to make the search engine completely non effective. A more logical and fair way to do it would be to remove common words from the list of “banned” words, and to only block phrases, as opposed to just words (so “Born on the Fourth of July” would get blocked, but the keywords “Born”, “Fourth” and “July” aren’t blocked). But this decision was never about logic or fairness. It’s interesting to analyse the decision again given the recent YouTube ruling. Of course, YouTube’s main purposes contains a lot more “fair use” than say a Torrent download website, but the important aspect of the YouTube ruling was the copyright holders are partially responsible to locate and remove infringing content (after all, only they can decide what’s infringing, and what’s not), and putting it all on the website operator is not fair. So if isoHunt had a policy where they block out the obvious pirated torrents, and then add a function to allow studios to request removals of others, then that would be enough. Of course, whether isoHunt would still be viable as a commercial operation, without pirated content, is up for debate. Mininova was never the same after it removed all of its infringing content, but it’s still a relatively big website, although that may fade due to incoming links being removed and stuff.

ICE Officers raids and seize assets from nine websites suspected of offering pirated content

Following last week’s announcement of a crackdown on online piracy, US Immigration and Customs (ICE) has acted quickly this week to close down and seize the assets of nine websites suspected of offering pirated content for online streaming. It’s good to see the government reacting so quickly to a current ‘crisis’, as opposed to say waiting days and weeks to get a response through. Like Katrina and BP’s Gulf of Mexico disaster. It’s good to know where the US government’s priorities are in these dangerous times, what with Hollywood studios on the verge of bankruptcy and everything. The other crime wave affecting the US right now is of course college students downloading films. And this is why Congress in 2008 passed the Higher Educational Opportunity Act which, amongst other things, forced educational institutions to join the fight against online piracy, or face the risk of losing federal student aid. This act has now come into effect. So if US colleges don’t spend their own money and time stopping students from downloading The (new) Karate Kid, then they’ll lose funding and will have to close down. Sounds like a fair compromise to me, risking education of the next generation to prevent them from downloading MP3s. It’s definitely fair to the music labels and movie studios, who don’t have to move an inch now and can get colleges to do their anti-piracy work for them, all for the price of a few lobbyists.

This week was also when the judge overseeing one of the US Copyright Group’s mass lawsuits was to decide on a challenge from the ACLU/EFF as to the legality of putting so many defendants in the same lawsuit. Unfortunately, the US Copyright Group won their motion, although the ACLU/EFF also had a few victories of their own. So the judge has decided it is okay to put a bunch of people together, most of whom have never communicated directly or indirectly with each other, in the same lawsuit. But the USCG must now also work wit the ACLU/EFF to draft a warning notice (to forward to people listed in the lawsuit), and this is where the ACLU/EFF will ensure that the notice contains plain English and perhaps contain language that doesn’t scare people into paying for the pre-trial settlement, if they really do believe they’re innocent. The judge also ruled on Time Warner Cable’s motion to quash the subpoenas, as it violated a previous agreement with the USCG to limit the number of requests per month. The judge ruled just shy of a complete quashing, but did rule that the agreement was valid and that the USCG must limit request to 28 per month, which should really slow down USCG’s efforts (although they’ll probably just pick IP addresses from other ISPs to “sue”).

High Definition

Onto HD (3D) news (I really should update the “section graphics” to your left, or above if you’re reading the newsletter, to include 3D). For those hoping Blu-ray would arrive soon on the Apple range of hardware, well, your wish is unlikely to be answered.

Still no Blu-ray on Apple Macs ... not if Jobs has anything to say on the issue

Apple boss Steve Jobs has once again, this time in an email, showed his disdain for the Blu-ray format, predicting it will be beaten by digital downloads and streaming services. He compared Blu-ray to all those “failed” HD audio formats, none of which has managed to replace CDs, let alone MP3 and other digital formats that has replaced CDs. As you may recall, he previously called Blu-ray a “bag of hurt”, due to the licensing requirements of the format. When the person communicating with Jobs stressed that Blu-ray does have uses in data and video archiving, Jobs was quick to point out that streaming and digital rentals means that you don’t need massive amounts of local storage for movies. And I guess for data archiving, with the price of external HDDs dropping so quickly, these offer good portability, and excellent value for money, compared to Blu-ray discs, you have to say. Even USB drives are approaching capacities beyond that of your typical dual-layer Blu-ray, which may explain why the Blu-ray people have added BDXL and larger capacity discs to the specifications (unfortunately, they’re not backwards compatible, so new burning hardware is needed to take advantage – a disadvantage that USB drives don’t have).

I could have put the next piece of news under gaming, but it’s probably more relevant here. The much rumoured Hulu subscription service is now a reality, and it’s coming to a whole host of devices, including the PS3, Xbox 360, and TV and Blu-ray players from Samsung, Vizio and Sony. PS3 owners will be amongst the first to get it, with the $9.99 monthly cost possibly on top of the PlayStation Plus service cost (rumoured only). Xbox 360 owners may be the last to get it however, but don’t fret, the best Hulu experience may yet be on the 360, as Hulu are working to make the service Kinect compatible (so gesture, voice commands to control the Hulu interface). All of this means nothing to me because Hulu isn’t “available” in Australia, even though I have a Samsung TV and soon will have a Samsung 3D Blu-ray player (free by redemption), both of which are capable of supporting Hulu.

And a further blow to Adobe this week as adult website Digital Playground announced that they may choose HTML5 over Flash. It seems a lot of websites now have to make the choice, because supporting both may be expensive, and Google’s WebM/VP8 now means websites don’t have to sacrifice quality (too much) if they choose the HTML5 codec.

And finally, in gaming, a new PS3 firmware is available. Firmware 4.0 adds Facebook support and support for the new subscription based PlayStation Plus platform. After criticizing Xbox for asking users to pay for Xbox Live Gold, it seems Sony finally saw the light and decided to have a go at their own premium platform.

Luckily, multiplayer gaming is still free, as are many other features, but as speculated above, some of the premium features like Hulu may require the Plus platform.

A brief look at Amazon shows that Kinect is still selling better than Move. But the latest news is that Kinect may only offer two player simultaneous play, even if it does support tracking of up to 6 players. What this means is that up to 6 players can “join” the game, but 4 will have to wait their turn at any one time, while two can play. The limited angle of the camera lens may be responsible, as well as the hardware requirements of processing too many people at the same time. This would appear to make the Wii or Move the platform of choice for 2+ player motion gaming, but the PS3 only supports 7 connected devices, including any other controllers or wireless devices, so 4 player simultaneous play with both Move and Navigator (“remote” and “nunchuck”) is not possible either. Plus it would also cost quite a bit to get it going. Of course, there’s still no actual official confirmation, the information on hand is from leaked specifications which may or may not be final. But since none of the demos so far has been for four players, and the limited angle of any camera system, I suspect this to be true.

And that’s the news for this week. More for you next week I should hope. Until then, have a good one.

Oh, almost forgot to mention that today, 4th of July, is a very special day indeed. Yes, it is the birthday of Digital Digest, in its 11th year. I don’t plan on making a big deal of it like last year, so much so that I’ve nearly forgotten!

Posted in 3D, Computing, Copyright, Electronics, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (4 July 2010)

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Weekly News Roundup (1 August 2010)

Weekly News Roundup (25 July 2010)

Weekly News Roundup (18 July 2010)

Weekly News Roundup (11 July 2010)

Weekly News Roundup (4 July 2010)

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