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Weekly News Roundup (15 April 2012)

Sunday, April 15th, 2012

Welcome to another edition of the WNR. Not a very busy weeks judging by the number of news stories, so hopefully we can get this done rather quickly. I’ve been busy working on that little update for Digital Digest, which I promise will be launched next week, even if it’s still only half-completed (to be fair, it’s more like 80% completed). And you know I’m serious about meeting this rather artificial deadline by the fact that I didn’t even play that much Skyrim this past week!

One development that came too late in the week to be included was the March NPD results, and I’ll write the full report early next week.

Let’s start with the copyright news, starting with the revelation that, even within the MPAA itself, not everyone was convinced that SOPA was the right solution for the web piracy problem.

It seems the anti-SOPA/PIPA sentiment was also alive and well within the MPAA itself (photo credits: Alain-Christian @ flickr)

When the anti-SOPA Internet Society hired a former MPAA executive, there was a bit of a controversy as you would expect. This prompted the MPAA’s former chief technology policy officer, Paul Brigner, to come out and explain a few things about his new appointment, including his apparent opposition to SOPA/PIPA. It seems Brigner left the MPAA at least partially because he felt SOPA was not the right solution to the piracy problem, and that SOPA and other “mandated technical solutions” are not “mutually compatible with the health of the Internet”. If the MPAA can’t even convince it’s own tech policy officer of the merits of SOPA, perhaps it really doesn’t have much merit at all.

But you get the feeling that the MPAA will never be fully satisfied until they get the power to not only squash any website it wants, but also to force others (like ISPs, governments) to help them do most of the heavy lifting. They will have ruined the Internet by then of course, probably only to find out that piracy has not only not slowed, but it has shifted to other parts of the Internet that can’t be easily controlled or legislated. And that, without argument, would be a far worse situation than what the one today.

It appears “blowback” invariably happens every time the copyright lobby launches a new crackdown, especially using technological measures. Every DRM has been met with an even stronger anti-DRM. Going after torrent sites have only resulted in more resilient torrenting methods. Which seems to indicate that going after video embedding, the MPAA’s latest manoeuvre, may backfire as well. The MPAA is getting itself involved in a legal showdown that originally only involved an adult entertainment company, Flava Works, and myVidster, a website that allowed people to post and share their video embeds, but now includes the likes of Google, Facebook, the EFF, and of course, the MPAA. The tech giants saw the original court ruling, which was in favour of Flava Works, as severely flawed, setting a precedent that could have huge repercussions for the entire Internet. The judge in the case failed to make the distinction between linking/embedding, and hosting, something that could make Google Images liable for the copyright infringement of any image in its database for example, or make Facebook sharing a legal minefield. There was also the issue of a “repeat infringer” policy, or Flava Works’ claim that myVidster did not have one, and how it relates to linked/embedded and hosted infringement. It seems to me that the DMCA is rather unclear about what a “repeat infringer” is, and it seems the law leaves service providers and Internet intermediaries to define what it actually means and what kind of policy to implement, even if it is one not to the satisfactory of content holders. And since myVidster did have a working DMCA take-down process, and that it did not host anything, the ruling seems a bit harsh. Also, you have to question why Flava Works went after myVidster, instead of going after the hosts of the actual videos, the dime a dozen porn tube sites. The responsibility cannot keep on flowing downwards until you get to someone that’s easier to sue.

Hotfile's expert says the most downloaded files on their network were two open source files

An anti-MPAA theme seems to be developing this week, since the only other copyright story is also MPAA related. This one has to do with the MPAA’s lawsuit against Hotfile, where the MPAA, using their own expert, argued that 90% of all downloads on Hotfile were infringing content, and that the Hotfile had few, if any, legitimate uses. This week it was revealed that Hotfile’s own expert, Duke University law professor James Boyle, found that this really wasn’t the case at all. Professor Boyle found that in actual fact, the two most downloaded files on Hotfile were actually open source software, with more than 1.5 million downloads between them. And while the “90%” figure wasn’t entirely debunked, and I think it’s hard to argue against the fact that a large percentage of total downloads on file hosting sites like Hotfile and Megaupload are of the infringing nature, I think in terms of the sheer number of different uploads (ie. not taking into account the number of downloads), I suspect there is also a large percentage of non infringing files on these networks (your typical spreadsheet, Word doc, PDF, home videos and other files too large to share via email, that may very well only be downloaded once, but still a key reason why people use file hosting sites).

This really is another grey area in the law. Take an extreme example where 90% of all different files on Hotfile were non infringing, but 90% of all downloads were infringing, then would Hotfile’s non infringing uses make it legal, assuming the website had a working DMCA process? How much is too much, and how much is “enough” when it comes to anti-piracy?

High Definition

I read an interesting article this week on Forbes’ blog, where the headline was “Sony’s Blues Caused By Blu-ray”, a rather controversial title if you ask me.

The actual article, despite the headline, did cover more than just Blu-ray, and it did raise a couple of interesting points. So are Sony’s recent woes caused by Blu-ray? The recent woes being the global layoffs and the lack of profitability, of course, but to blame it on Blu-ray seems a bit counter-intuitive, considering Blu-ray seems to be the only recent success for Sony.

But what the Forbes blog, written by contributor Stephen Pope, was perhaps trying to say is that while Blu-ray is a victory for Sony, it just wasn’t a big enough victory to help the company stay profitable, and that in the end, it may even only a fleeting victory, considering the growing popularity of streaming vs discs.

Sony's Blu-ray victory may be short lived, as consumers are keen to move onto streaming (photo credits: mroach @ flickr)

I’ve long held the believe that Sony lost its dominance in the gaming sector by allowing the Xbox 360 to be a viable successor to the PS2, due to the one year delay in releasing the PS3 and the high initial cost of the hardware – both factors very much related to the included Blu-ray support. So while the PS3 helped Sony win the HD format wars, it also hindered Sony in keeping their dominance in the gaming arena. Looking at the current range of multi-platform games and the quality difference between the PC/Xbox 360 DVD version of the PS3 Blu-ray version, it seems the Blu-ray disc’s superior capacity has done little to actually benefit the gaming experience. And while the platform exclusives do try and make the best use of Blu-ray, they just aren’t selling enough to make a huge difference compared to the mega multi-platform franchises of Call of Duty or FIFA or GTA.

And streaming certainly does look like the future, if only for the fact that discs and the drives that read them are just not compatible with today’s portable devices. There is also a trend to consume more content (often for less money), and the physical cost and space that discs (and their packaging) requires, puts a limit on this consumption (while raising the price of it – last year, the average price people paid for streaming content was 51 cents, compared to $4.72 for discs). And access, with discs being limited to what you have purchased or what your rental outlet has in stock, just can’t compete with a streaming digital library of hundreds of thousands of titles that will never “run out of copies” (or suffer from bad scratches).

And even in terms of data storage, the 50GB Blu-ray offers, or even the 100+GB of BDXL pales in comparison to the TBs of data people need these days for their digital needs. So you have a multi-TB drive the size of a small book versus shelves full of BDs that you have to take time to burn, label, organize, that actually costs many more times than the drive – even in data storage, Blu-ray may be too little, too late.

So Pope certainly makes a few valid points, although I would say the biggest problem for Sony is that it is neither the design powerhouse that is Apple (Sony is at times too preoccupied with things like copy protection to consider things like ease of use, in my opinion), nor can it compete in the value stakes with the likes of Samsung (a company that’s also doing more on the innovation front than Sony, in my opinion).

For gaming, the March NPD was yet another victory for the Xbox 360 (that’s 15 months in a row where the Xbox 360 has been the top selling home based console), although being the best of a bad bunch may not be such a meaningful award.

Also interesting was the news that Mass Effect 3 sold 4 times as many copies on the Xbox 360 than on the PS3 (I’m assuming this is North America only). This is perhaps a special case because the game carries on your saved progress from the last game in the series, not helped by the fact that the original game wasn’t even available on the PS3 (instead, relying on an interactive comic to record the key decision carried over from the first game). Also not helping is the fact that the PS3 is getting itself a rather bad reputation for having inferior multi-platform games, not just on ME3, but also on the other mega franchises such as Skyrim and CoD.

And I guess I also have to mention Skyrim’s upcoming Kinect support for the Xbox 360 version. The preview video looks pretty cool, although it looks like the game will only take advantage of Kinect’s voice support (and so the same features can probably be replicated via the PlayStation Eye’s microphone, if Sony really wanted it to happen by giving Bethesda some financial incentives, or making it really easy programming wise to do so. Some of the new Kinect features are already available via PC mods though, with a normal microphone, or even via the Kinect connected to your PC).

Screaming Fus Ro Dah at your TV is probably the geekiest thing anyone will do this year!

The unrelenting force of my addiction to Skyrim means that, just by mentioning it, I now have the sudden urge to play it for another hour or two. Which of course means we’ve come to the end of this WNR. See you next week.

Posted in Copyright, Electronics, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup, PS3, PS4, Video Technology, Xbox 360, Xbox One | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (15 April 2012)

Weekly News Roundup (1 April 2012)

Sunday, April 1st, 2012

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

High Definition

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Weekly News Roundup (25 March 2012)

Sunday, March 25th, 2012

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

High Definition

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Girl with Dragon Tattoo DVD disc art

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

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

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

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

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

Weekly News Roundup (18 March 2012)

Sunday, March 18th, 2012

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

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

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

Let’s get started with this WNR.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

High Definition

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Weekly News Roundup (26 February 2012)

Sunday, February 26th, 2012

Welcome to another edition of the Weekly News Roundup. I’ve just finished writing the PowerDVD 12 review, and it only took me a month! Writing the obligatory PowerDVD review has become a sort of ritual for me, as I’ve been doing it since pretty much version 1.0 of the software (it’s now version 12, not quite 12 years, but close to a decade at least). Over that time, the review has morphed slightly into a “how to” guide, or at the very least, an overview of the major functions. For this particular review though, I’ve completely restructured the review sections so that it’s a bit easier to read. Now all I have to do is to write the review for the comparable WinDVD 11, which is only overdue by 5 month!

Skyrim update: Just managed to get my Alchemy and Smithing levels up to 100, now to get Enchanting up to 100, and to get the relevant perks so I can start making awesome, unstoppable armor and weapons. Had to purchase another house so I could more easily manage my hoarding.

We start the week with two stories that I briefly touched upon in the last WNR. First up, federal prosecutors have expanded the case against Megaupload, and revealed that over $50 million in “Mega assets” have been seized so far.

The newly added charges relate to the allegation that when content holders requested a file to be taken down, Megaupload merely removed the specified link to the file, without removing the actual file in question. This is problematic as the same file can be linked multiple times based on the way the Megaupload’s server works, and so Megaupload was doing “just the minimum” (or not even that) when it came to file removal, even though they could (and should) have done more. It’s a lesson to other file sharing/user generated websites: take removal requests seriously if you want DMCA safe harbor to apply, otherwise, you might as well just ignore the take down request, since you’re not fooling anyone. Pro-active content removal will help to make the case that you do care about copyright infringement, but the law does not require such actions, other than for really obvious cases of infringement. Had Megaupload done what was needed, then the criminal case against them might have been impossible to establish. On an unrelated note, Kim DotCom, the owner of Megaupload, was released on bail this week.

The Pirate Bay sails on as domain changes from .org to .se, to avoid unwanted US intervention

The Pirate Bay has had a busy February as well. Not only are they planning to remove all .torrent files, replacing them with Magnet Links instead, they’ve also changed domain names, from their original .org domain to .se. The reason for the change is fairly apparent – .org domain names comes under the authority of the United States, and so it could easily be seized by the US government (and I’m surprised they haven’t done so). The fact that a Swedish website wants to avoid falling under the jurisdiction of the United States is perfectly understandable to everyone. Everyone except for the RIAA, of course, who came on attacking TPB for blatantly trying to “escape U.S. laws”, the very same laws that doesn’t apply to a Swedish website anyway. The RIAA appealed again to xenophobics, using phrases such as “foreign rogue sites” and blabbing on about “American jobs”, despite music being a global industry, and piracy being a global problem. It’s something ‘Winston’ from The Pirate Bay spoke of when he wrote a response to the RIAA’s latest attacks, that the America-centric view coming from the likes of the RIAA and MPAA, that somehow only US interests are important. Via SOPA/PIPA, the RIAA and MPAA have also started pointing the finger at the rest of the world, blame “foreigners” for all their copyright woes, despite research showing their own short-sighted greediness (ie. release windows) is at the heart of the problem.

Another thing that Winston touched upon is the disingenuous use of the phrase “creative community” by these trade groups that often only represent a small number of major labels and studios. The truth is that not only are they not the creative community (or any kind of community, as Winston points out), but they’re the ones that are most aggressive at exploiting and profiting from the same community, often at its expense (and that of real artists and real creativity).

And in order to keep exploiting and profiting, the major rights holders have shown they’re willing and capable of doing anything in order to keep the money rolling in. For them, little things like censorship, privacy and the right to innovate, if counter to their own interests, can all be sacrificed. Which is why despite various EU rulings on the possible illegality of web censorship, the music industry is still pursuing, and winning, their case against The Pirate Bay in the UK, and it’s looking increasingly likely that UK ISPs will soon be forced to block access to the website. Not that it would actually stop people visiting, since earlier blocked sites such as Newzbin2 are still being frequented by UK visitors using tools that were quickly developed to bypass the blocking filters – the operators of Newzbin2 says that 93% of their former UK visitors have continued to visit the website thanks to these new tools. There are also all sorts of jurisdictional issues involved, such as whether an UK ISP has the right to block access to a Swedish website to protect the interest of US companies.

And with the web now an integral part of most people’s lives, nobody wants to see it irrevocably damaged. But even so, I was really surprised to see so many people protesting the controversial ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) treaty in the streets of Europe. And it’s working, with the EU suspending ratification of ACTA until the legal positions are studied in further detail, which should have been the case all along, as opposed to cowardly caving to corporate interests. The usual critics will demean these protests as “freeloaders wanting to keep the free stuff coming”, but people who say that are also devaluing the importance of critical issues of censorship and privacy, issues at the heart of any democracy. I guess in some ways this is a delayed response to the sacrifices that have been made in the last decade to these core issues, due to fears of terrorism. I strongly agree that people who would sacrifice freedom for security deserve neither, but at the very least, that response is an understandable human one (even if it is the wrong one). But sacrificing freedom for the benefit of a select few mega-corporations is just not acceptable, and I’m glad others feel the same way too. Freedom and democracy is worth protecting at the expense of everything else, in my opinion.

High Definition

With this WNR coming in a little bit short, I have a bit more room to share a few recent thoughts about where things are headed in terms of home entertainment.

VOD is the future of TV, as once viewers get a taste of the power of choice, they won't want to go back

While I’ve long been a supporter of Internet based streaming, and the benefits of video-on-demand, I’ve not really had much experience using it, since we’re pretty behind the rest of the world here in Australia when it comes to these sort of things. Having got a Kindle Fire to do a bit of development work, I soon became absolutely hooked to Amazon Prime SVOD. It’s really my first taste at what Americans have been enjoying for a while now (and with better services than Amazon Prime, and not having to route it through a VPN), and it completely confirms for me what, up until that point, had largely been a theory – that we’re on the verge of a major revolution in how we watch TV and movies. It’s not so much what we watch, as what we have access to. It feels incredibly powerful and freeing to know that you have access to, for example, every episode of Star Trek ever made (which is available for unlimited streaming on Amazon Prime, as long as you pay the $79 per year membership fee), and the phrase “there’s nothing on” could very well become extinct if the technology continues to advance, and if content holders continue to support innovation in this area. And once you go VOD, you don’t really want to go back to a time where executive in suits determine what you should watch, and when.

And it’s a huge financial opportunity as well for all involved. From an advertising point of view, ads can be targeted, interactive and non repetitive, and the tiered subscription model provides value, as well as ensuring stability revenue wise (compared to a model based purely on ads). That nearly 1 in 3 American households now regularly enjoy streaming content on their TV (so not just something you do on a tablet, or a computer, but in the living room) shows that people want it. It’s now up to the tech companies and the rights holders to knock out a deal that would make the ability to access everything an affordable reality, and I look forward to the day this is all available in Australia.

On that bright note, it’s time to say goodbye to this issue of the WNR. Have a good one, and see you next week.

Posted in Copyright, Movies, News Roundup, Video Technology | 1 Comment »

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Weekly News Roundup (15 April 2012)

Weekly News Roundup (1 April 2012)

Weekly News Roundup (25 March 2012)

Weekly News Roundup (18 March 2012)

Weekly News Roundup (26 February 2012)

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