DVDGuy’s Blog @ Digital Digest

I don’t get to talk about coffee much here in the WNR, mainly because I’m not a huge consumer of it. I do have a Nespresso machine, one that I bought for a single cent during a sales event at an Australian daily sale website, and I have been buying “compatible” pods for it. I’ve always wondered why Nestle didn’t put DRM into their pods as to prevent the use of compatibles, but I suspect a fair segment of their customer base are far too pretentious to even think about using compatible pods. I’m looking at you George Clooney!

(just kidding, Clooney is awesome)

I occasionally buy Blu-rays from the UK (and by occasionally, I mean all the time), and one thing I’ve noticed is that the anti-piracy message has softened a lot since the days of “you wouldn’t download a car” (I would if I could!). For example, Universal has a “Thank-you” message on its UK Blu-rays that thanks the viewer for not pirating. A nice and positive message that I think plays much better than accusations of criminal activity (and false accusations too, at people who have already paid for the movie).

So it turns out that this wasn’t accidental, but was the result of extensive research on having the most effective anti-piracy message. The same research may have also included the fact that some of the biggest pirates are also the movie industry’s best customers. And for the first time that I can remember, a British anti-piracy group has openly admitted this fact.

And its new anti-piracy will focus on the positive viewing experience of going to the movies and asks users to pay for a little bit more and pirate a little less, asking instead of demanding. I’ve always said that going to the movies has no equal experience wise, not even if you have an uber home theater set up, and so placing more focus on the uniqueness of going to the movies is a good idea. Not treating potential customers as criminals is also a bit more productive, I think.

Keurig’s new coffeemaker will incorporate advanced tagging technology to prevent unlicensed compatible pods from being used

Not treating your customers like cash machines is also a good way to run a business, and as someone who just spent another $70 buying ink refills for a $200 printer, I can relate. Unfortunately, the coffee pod business, already using the same business model of cheap machines vs expensive refills, is borrowing another trick: DRM’d pods.

Well, it’s not strictly a DRM since there are no digital rights being managed. Instead, it’s your coffee drinking rights that is being messed around with, by denying cheap compatible pods from being used. But in the same way you can’t use non-official game discs in your Xbox 360, this system does the same with coffee pods, and so it is the same form of licensing control. Makers of compatible pods will call it anti-competitive, and consumers will be worse off because there will be less choice and higher prices, but this sounds like the kind of thing that will eventually end up in court, especially if a competitor tries to break the authentication.

The makers of this new coffee machine and pods explains the use of the authentication, which consists of a proprietary “taggant material” on the pods (something akin to an RFID tag, I suppose) and a camera that scans this in the machine, is “critical for performance and safety reasons”. The same reason why you should never use compatible ink cartridges because they’re lower in performance and could damage your printer – according to the printer companies, that is.

In case you haven’t gotten sick of hearing me talk about  my new Australian website Streambly, I’m going to talk about it some more. With good reason this time, as it turns out I’m one of 200,000 that subscribes to Netflix here in Australia, courtesy of a geo-unblocker (but I’m guessing I’m one of the few who has created a website telling the 20,000 others who have read my Netflix guide so far on how to do it).

Australians are enjoying Netflix in their homes without Netflix actually being available in Australia (and obviously also in not as nice homes, compared to the one in the picture above)

The apparent popularity of a service that isn’t technically available here has our TV networks, and local Netflix wannabes, in a twist. The “P” word (erm, “pirates”, in case you’re not sure) has already been used to describe those that sign up to Netflix here, despite our previous Attorney General specifically stating that using VPNs to access Netflix isn’t considered infringement under current copyright laws.

I can understand their fears and frustration. Here’s a $7.99 per month service that gives you thousands of movies and TV shows, and it’s up against local TV networks that often air new episodes a year after their original broadcast in the U.S (if they air them at all), and a local video streaming service that perhaps only has 10% of the content on offer from Netflix. With catch-up services ranging from non existent to poor, there’s no Hulu or Hulu Plus equivalent here either. All we have is a single cable TV provider that has a market monopoly and is willing to use its market position to get exclusivity to shows like Game of Thrones. No competition. No value. Sometimes just ‘no’, in terms of legal streaming or download options. Yep, I can understand why they fear Netflix.

Adapt, Evolve, Compete or Die. It’s their choice!

Finish, Writing, Play Games or Be Bored. That’s my choice. See you next week.

Welcome to another WNR. Been having trouble sleeping lately, and the heavy workload for the week eventually culminated in a mild bout of the migraines. All but recovered now, but there’s nothing worse than having a deadly headache just short of a deadline.

It’s been a good week news wise, so no need for me to make excuses this time.

Is six-strikes working? It’s been more than a year since the start of the voluntary industry-led six-strikes graduated response regime, and the people running says it’s been a success, despite the complete lack of any evidence to support the claim.

Other than revealing that “a large number of alerts” have been sent out, there has been very little information being released from the system which, in the past, has been accused of being lacking in transparency. The absence of good news, in terms of a piracy rate drop or an increase in sales as a direct result of the regime, most likely suggests that things are not going too well. Which is not all that surprising, considering the French version has already failed.

Indirectly, there are stats that indicate things are actually getting worse. U.S. traffic to sites like The Pirate Bay has actually increased since the introduction of six-strikes, and we all know that many people have signed up for proxies and VPNs to avoid detection (or to use another form of downloading that’s not monitored).

The MPAA has been throwing money in the direction of Republican groups recently

When we do see some stats, it will most likely paint a rosy picture that points to misleading conclusions. A ton of alerts will have been sent, BitTorrent traffic may drop, more likely due to Netflix than six-strikes, and the number of fifth or sixth strikes will be a lot less than the number of first and second strikes, which will be used as “evidence” that things are working as expected. But there will be no real drop in piracy, no real rise in revenue, and no real effect for a regime that was never really about real results, just imaginary safety.

And if industry-led action doesn’t work, there’s also government intervention. The MPAA has been busy spraying money around, and according to the Wall Street Journal (paywall) and The Hollywood Reporter, they’re spraying it in increasingly GOP directions. Both articles highlight the MPAA’s increasing lobbying payments to right wing political action groups including U.S. Chamber of Commerce ($100,000), Americans For Tax Reform ($200,000) and Let Freedom Ring, and also key appointments that have Republican ties. This is perhaps not surprising considering who controls Congress at the moment, so if that situation changes, expect the MPAA’s political leanings to change too. They’re far too smart to play politics, when spreading money to everyone seems to be the best strategy these days in the lobbying game.

Netflix’s deal with Comcast has been discussed in the webosphere as the inevitable result of the death of net neutrality, but the actual deal has nothing to do with it. Whereas net neutrality is about ISPs messing around with last mile delivery of content, this deal is all about the interconnections between Netflix and ISPs, namely Comcast, which has been the real cause of performance issues in recent times.

The Netflix/Comcast deal’s only real effect is a better viewing experience for viewers .. for now

Despite rumors suggesting Comcast has been throttling Netflix traffic, something they are now allowed to do with the death of net neutrality, the congestion has actually been occurring higher up the chain. This deal will see Comcast connect directly to Netflix’s servers, as opposed to through a third party network – in exchange, Netflix will pay Comcast for traffic that flows from their servers to user’s homes, money they would otherwise have paid to third parties like Cogent and L3. In essence, this is a peering agreement and is nothing new, and has nothing really to do with the net neutrality debate.

With that said, the sheer size of the likes of Netflix and Comcast (thanks to their planned absorption of Time Warner Cable) means these peering agreements may be something to worry about in the future. It’s all easy and good for the big guys to make big deals, but this will end up hurting content providers that don’t have the clout of Netflix when it comes to making deals with a behemoth like Comcast. So some of the very same issues that people are concerned about over net neutrality may apply to these kinds of increasingly secretive deals (had Comcast not announced their Netflix deal publicly, none of us would have ever known – just as we don’t really know what kind of deals Netflix has with others ISPs).

The PS4’s Japanese launch was, as expected, a huge success. The PlayStation brand has always been well received in Japan, even when PS3 sales were disappointing elsewhere. But with the PS4 being an international hit already, the home islands weren’t going to offer up any surprises. Early data indicates that the PS4 is selling four times as many PS3s when comparing both console’s launch, so there we go.

The PS4 will remain stock limited until at least April, says Sony

The success of the PS4 in Japan isn’t good news for gamers still waiting for a console elsewhere though, as stock problems could continue well into April. It appears that Sony has severely underestimated the demand for the console, PlayStation UK managing director Fergal Gara even admitting that the company had a hard time believing the pre-order numbers were correct, even thinking they may have been faked for some reason, or that people were making pre-orders at multiple places in order to secure a launch day unit.

The PS4’s success is bad news for Microsoft though, and a price cut for their Xbox One has already been rolled out … in the UK. Gamers in the UK were already overpaying for the Xbox One, even compared to smaller markets like Australia, so this price cut is unsurprising, even if the timing is slightly surprising given how new the console is. But even with the price cut, the Xbox One (with Titanfall) is still $USD 80 more than the PS4 in the UK.

For all the differences between the consoles, and their different philosophies this generation round (almost a reverse of the last gen, where the PS3 concentrated on media capability, while the Xbox 360 focused on hardcore gaming), I think all things being equal (and the PS4 and Xbox One are equals, with the Wii U a step behind), pricing is probably the key factor. The Xbox 360 only surged ahead of the PS3 and the Wii in the U.S. after its price cut, for example.

So it’s time for Microsoft to rethink its strategy. Either go for broke (possibly literally) and drop the Xbox One’s price to equal that of the PS4, perhaps by repackaging the console to make Kinect an accessory again, or dramatically increase the value of the console bundle to entice buyers. Something needs to be done, and it needs to be done quickly to ensure the Xbox One remains competitive.

I think that’s it for the week. Hope you enjoy this March, my favorite month of the year and not just because it’s the month containing my birthday 🙂

A very short WNR this week, and that’s partly my fault. I took part last night in Melbourne’s second annual White Night festival, and that and other distractions during the week meant that I just didn’t have time to scour the interwebs for interesting news stories. So as compensation, I present to you these creative commons licensed, rather common and uncreative photos of my own taking, of some scenes at White Night. This is probably the most interesting part of the WNR for this week, unfortunately.

Here’s goes anyway.

The Pirate Bay ship may soon sail unencumbered in the waters of the Netherlands, after the country’s second largest ISP forced anti-piracy agency BREIN to agree to a lifting of a ban on visits to the notorious piracy website. This comes after January’s ruling by The Court of The Hague which found that the banning was ineffective and anti-business.

The Pirate Bay blocking may be about to become history in the Netherlands

Other ISPs will probably follow suit (nobody wants to be at a competitive disadvantage), and could be the clearest signal yet that Dutch anti-piracy BREIN may be throwing in the towel when it comes to its website banning ambitions.

The Court of The Hague’s ruling was based on a report that found website bannings to be ineffective in stopping piracy, and also unfairly restricts ISPs’ freedom to conduct business. BREIN has yet to decide to appeal the ruling, but even if they do, it could take years for a final decision. To continue to ban The Pirate Bay during this time, when a court has already ruled against the banning, would not be in the best interest of anyone involved, even BREIN, and perhaps this is why BREIN agreed to the lifting (even though this court decision did not apply to the ISP in question, UPC).

I’m hoping this court ruling sets the right precedent and forces anti-piracy groups to rethink their strategy on website bannings, but I suspect it won’t. It’s not the first time that these anti-piracy crusaders have ignored facts and common sense in their pursuit of a victory against piracy, and so I don’t expect anything different this time.

You know it’s a slow news week when I have to talk about bacteria and other microorganisms in the HD/Blu-ray section. Ironically, this was actually the most interesting story of the week, as scientists have discovered a new way to use a Blu-ray player: for lab work!

Using a standard commercial Blu-ray disc and the Blu-ray player’s laser, scientist have found a way to use these to identify the type and concentration of bacteria, and to a degree of accuracy that matches much more expensive lab equipment.

I don’t know about you, this is one feature that I will demand to be part of my next Blu-ray player!

Well, that’s that for the week. I’ll try harder next week. I promise!

Welcome to the WNR. Hope Valentine’s Day was a nice one for you couples out there, and for you singles out there, I hope at the very least it was a decent Friday.

Let’s get started.

Despite RapidShare’s appeasement policy towards rights holders, the file hosting site has been re-added back to the “notorious pirates” list by the USTR (United States Trade Representative). The new updated list also includes software firms Aiseesoft and SlySoft, two companies that both sell DVD and Blu-ray ripping software.

RapidSharre no longer a friend of Hollywood and the music industry, despite its draconian anti-piracy measures

It appears sucking up the rights holders did not work as well as RapidShare had hoped. Neither the implementation of quite draconian anti-piracy methods, nor its infamous manifesto helped to prevent rights holders from dobbing in the file hosting website to the USTR for inclusion in this year’s list. You can’t win, really. So you probably shouldn’t try to.

The other new inclusions are interesting too. Despite their products being around for what seemed like a decade already, and with many other companies producing similar software, both Aiseesoft and SlySoft gets special treatment this time around by the USTR. Now I don’t have much personal love for Aiseesoft, having seen either their representatives, their marketing agency or just really really fanatical customers spamming my forum for ages (forcing me to implement a filter to automatically change all references in forum posts from ‘Aiseesoft’ to ‘Aispamforums’). But it’s just one of many, possibly hundreds of companies that are churning out software with the same functionalities, so why pick them out, I have no idea. The SlySoft listing is perhaps a little bit easier to understand, given the company’s higher profile.

Nobody likes being blacklisted, but it probably doesn’t mean much for these companies in the long run.

——

Well that didn’t take long. A week ago, in this news article on yet more viewing restrictions for Game of Thrones in Australia, I wrote “Given these new restrictions, it’s very likely that the piracy rate for the new season (of Game of Thrones) will be even higher, which may prompt the new conservative government of Australia to take action.”

Three strikes and domain blocking may be coming to Australia

And just a few days later, Australia’s Attorney-General George Brandis has issued the clearest call yet for three-strikes and website censorship to be part of new copyright reforms aimed to modernising existing copyright laws.

This is despite mountains of evidence that graduated response does nothing to curb infringement activities, as well as a recent Dutch court ruling that found website censorship is disproportionate and ineffective – all of which conveniently ignored by the copyright lobby or dismissed as bias.

And none of it addresses the real cause of piracy, which is a problem with access. If users are not getting the choices they want, at the prices they want, then rightly or wrongly, they will seek alternatives. This may be grey imports or circumventing geo-blocking to access the likes of Netflix or Hulu Plus. Or it may be mean piracy. And until these problems are addressed, no technical or legal measure will do a damn thing to curb the piracy problem.

A major development in US video games sales with the release of the January NPD results showing the PS4 having a big lead over the Xbox One, despite the former’s stock constraints.

While none of the consoles really sold in great number, not compared to December anyway, the PS4’s 271,000 (based on a pretty solid estimation) put the Xbox One’s 141,000 in the shade. Had PS4s been more widely available in stores, the gap would have been even greater.

Xbox One struggling in sales already? Price tag probably main reason for gamers choosing the PS4.

To illustrate how poor the Xbox One numbers were for January, the first January since launch, we can compare it to previously generation consoles. For the PS3 and Xbox 360, their first Januarys meant between 240K and 250K in sales. The Wii U only managed 57K during its first January.

Multiplatform games also sold better on the PS4 than on the Xbox One, with the exception of CoD: Ghosts.

With the PS4 beating the Xbox One comfortably in other markets, and with the Japanese market expected to be dominated by the PS4, North America remains the only major marketplace where the Xbox One has a realistic chance of beating the PS4. On these figures, these chances seem less and less realistic.

Worryingly for Microsoft, it appears the PS3 outsold the Xbox 360 in January as well. In fact, even the Wii U may have done better (although still most likely below 50K).

While it’s far too early to eulogize the Xbox One, there are some pretty clear reasons as to why the Xbox One is not doing as well as it should. The extra $100 Microsoft expects gamers to pay for the largely useless included Kinect 2.0 is the main factor, as is the console’s perceived hardware disadvantages (which are not really showing up dramatically in games, but nevertheless is a factor for buyers).

It’s almost the same mistake Sony made with the PS3, having been released at a higher price with a feature (Blu-ray) not many people needed at the time. This time, Sony listened to gamers and gave them a console that did all the important things right, and it appears the company is reaping the rewards. Microsoft, on the other hand, tried to force excessive DRM onto users, then backtracked, but still ends up with a console that doesn’t do anything particularly better than the cheaper PS4. Only a price cut, and one that has to occur this year before the PS4’s lead grows by too much, can turn things around, in my opinion.

That’s it for the week. See you again in seven.

Welcome to another edition of the WNR. It’s been an annoying week so far for me. First with my ADSL modem dying on me, which took a while, and a lot of crawling on the floor and pulling out cables, to diagnose. This backed me up in terms of work, so I’ve been playing catch up ever since, during a week which was particularly busy as well. And then there was the Arsenal match last night … urgh.

Still not a great news week, but here’s some stuff that may be interesting.

Game of Thrones piracy is about to get really ugly here in Australia, thanks to a new HBO deal with our (one and only) cable provider, which will now prohibit iTunes and other digital providers from making available new episodes of season 4 until the season is over.

This Oatmeal comic is appropriate again, thanks to more HBO led efforts to prevent people from watching their shows – click through to read the full comic

Not only will it cost cable subscribers at least $USD 67 per month to access the channel that includes new episodes of GoT, the lack of access to HBO Go means non set-top-box viewers will have to rely on the cable provider’s mobile app to watch these new episodes, made worse by an exclusive deal between the cable provider and Samsung which prevents the app from running on non Samsung Android devices.

It’s almost as if they don’t want us to watch the show.

With Australia already the top country when it comes to GoT piracy (and not just a percentage of the population thing, but raw numbers, which sees Australians top US and UK downloaders in the piracy charts), this is the exact kind of bone-headed move that will ensure Australia retain the piracy thrones for season 4 too.

——

Should domain registrars be made liable for the content being stored on registered domains? A court in Germany seems to think so, as the ever expanding liability circle is once again expanded to help the entertainment industry find better (and by better, I mean easier) targets to legally threaten.

According to the ‘about’ page of the domain registrar that I regularly use, Namecheap, they have over 2 million registered domains from 500,000 clients. And if the Germany ruling were applied to Namecheap, this would be a hell of a lot of liability for a company that has no legal right or even technical ability to access and monitor the contents stored on these 2 million domains.

It’s easy for the record or movie industry to go after registrars and web hosts, because they’re usually visible companies that can be easily sued and harassed, legally. And this is why considerable effort has been made to expand the list of just who is liable for content published on the website, from the actual owner/publisher of the website, to the web host, to search engines, and now all the way to the registrar. It’s only a matter of time before even browser makers are made liable, as you could easily argue they have the ability to block access to obviously illegal websites, and so they should. Heck, why not sue modem/router makers too, for that’s where the illegal data flows through to your computer. Although not my old modem, obviously, since it’s now broke.

It’s North versus South. Korea that is. Proving that the Wii is still being played at least somewhere in the world, official North Korea photos shows that the country has finally entered the video game age (even though they’re still a generation behind). And they even have a Wii Balance Board!

Not to be outdone, South Korea has managed to one up their northern neighbors by utilizing Kinect to protect the DMZ between north and south. A Kinect based system is being used to help their infrared detection grid tell the difference between animals and humans in the DMZ, which is now one of the world’s best wildlife sanctuaries due to the lack of a human presence in the area. South Korea is already thinking about an upgrade to the Xbox One’s Kinect 2.0 for even more accurate detection. Will the North respond by buying a PS4? Only time will tell …

The game that occupied too much of my time in my pimple and angst ridden nerdy teenage years

As a side and totally unrelated note, I spent a lot of time this week reading this piece on the history of Street Fighter II, time that I probably should have spent working or at the very least, sleeping. As someone who spent more than $100 (a lot more in today’s money) back when buying a copy of Super Street Fighter II for my SNES, as well as playing not only the arcade versions, but also bootleg versions on bootleg NES/Famicom systems, the article brought back a lot of good memories. If there’s one game that I would still like to play on SNES, it would be this one. If I’m allowed two, it would be a hard choice between Super Mario World, Super Mario Kart and Contra III. The first time I figured out how to beat Vega in single player mode (figuring it out all by myself by the way, since the Internet hadn’t been invented yet), was a true moment of joy in my fairly joyless nerdy teenage years.

And as a followup to last week’s story about the Blu-ray-less $399 Xbox One, Microsoft has issued a response, of sorts, to the rumor. Aaron Greenberg, Chief of Staff for Devices and Studios Group at Microsoft tweeted the response “No, you cannot believe everything you read on the internet,” when asked directly on the rumors of the cheaper Xbox One. So a less than concrete denial, but I would still be very skeptical at Microsoft moving forwards with this plan.

I think that’s enough waffle for this week. Same time, same place, next week.