| Spain Says Broadband Is A Basic Right
November 18, 2009 at 9:40 pm
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| Slashdot alerts us to the news that Spain will be following Finland's lead in declaring broadband as a basic legal right. I'm still not convinced that declaring it as a full legal right makes sense, but it does show how important broadband is becoming to society. It will be interesting to see how this growing trend matches up with the efforts from the entertainment industry to have countries pass laws to kick people off the internet for file sharing. It would certainly appear that the two positions are not compatible.
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| Entertainment Industry Wants More People To Know About OpenBitTorrent Tracker
November 18, 2009 at 7:22 pm
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| The definition of insanity, the saying goes, is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. For the past decade, the entertainment industry has sued one site or service after another that was used for unauthorized file sharing at some time. In every single case, the act of suing that site or service ended up only serving to massively increase attention and usage of those services. Suing Napster made Napster into the service to use. Ditto with Kazaa and Grokster. The Pirate Bay wasn't that big until Hollywood got Swedish authorities to raid the operations and confiscate the servers.
So, here we go again -- except this time it's even more ridiculous. Entertainment industry representatives have filed a lawsuit against the OpenBitTorrent tracker's hosting company (Update: noting that the lawsuit is against the hosting company), which is not a file sharing site or service at all. It's just an open tracker. Now, I recognize that folks in the entertainment industry aren't particularly knowledgeable about how technology works, but at some point, aren't they supposed to at least understand the basics? The tracker alone is not responsible for anything here -- and even more ridiculous is that the OpenBitTorrent guys (despite not being in the US) set up a DMCA-like process for taking down any info_hash if they want (which, by the way, was the reason the industry claimed it didn't sue Google -- because it took down links on request -- but now that OpenBitTorrent does the same thing, it's a problem?). Either way, with the rise of trackerless solutions means that even taking this site down won't much matter. Still, it makes you wonder what they're thinking over in the entertainment industry other than ways to increase their legal bills.
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| Trojan infecting Modern Warfare 2 gamers while they play?
November 18, 2009 at 6:18 pm
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| If PC gamers weren’t angry enough about the lack of dedicated server support in Modern Warfare 2 they now have another reason to not like Infinity Ward. The system that replaced dedicated servers, called IW.net, has apparently been compromised in such a way as to download a trojan to a connected machine while the game [...] |
| It's The TSA, Not CSI: Actions Limited To Security, Not Crime Investigation
November 18, 2009 at 6:00 pm
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| I'm actually writing this post just minutes after passing through TSA security at JFK, where I was stopped to investigate the fact that I have a candle (a gift) in my carry-on luggage. I'm not sure if this sort of thing makes us any safer (I have my doubts about this kind of "security theater"), but the overall experience was fine and the TSA folks were perfectly nice and professional and let me go on my way (yes, with the candle) in less than a minute. However, apparently some TSA agents have decided that they should serve a purpose well beyond their assigned domain of air travel security. They've been investigating other crimes as well, sometimes going on pure fishing expeditions if they think something looks suspicious, even if it has nothing to do with air travel safety. For example, people have been detained for traveling with large quantities of cash. However, after being sued multiple times, the TSA recently agreed to change its rules to limit its agents actions, so that they are no longer allowed to investigate random crimes and are officially limited to just focusing on air travel security.
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| The More Innovative You Are, The More You Get Sued; Yet Another Patent Lawsuit Over Shazam
November 18, 2009 at 4:49 pm
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| Earlier this year, we noted that Apple and AT&T had been sued for patent infringement concerning Shazam, the popular service for identifying music. At the time, we noted how this was a clear demonstration of the difference between just the idea and the actual innovation. Shazam has been around for ages, and despite having a good idea (ability to identify music just by hearing it), it struggled for many, many years until the iPhone came along, and there was a platform on which its concept made sense. During that time Shazam kept trying out new things and improving its service. The basic concept behind Shazam (identifying music) isn't that interesting. It was all the work that Shazam kept doing over the years to find the right mix of things that consumers wanted that made it worthwhile.
But, of course, patent holders continue to insist that it's the original idea only that's important.
So, once again, Shazam's service is involved in a patent lawsuit, this time from Digimarc, who has sued Shazam directly, claiming infringement. Now, Digimarc claims that Shazam is infringing on its patents, even though Digimarc does not offer a similar service at all. In fact, Digimarc is in an entirely different business: it's really a DRM company who wants to try to stop people from sharing or appreciating content, by locking it down. More recently, Digimarc has been focused on patenting its watermarking concept (despite plenty of prior art), and going the lawsuit route.
So, we have the tales of two companies who have been around for quite some time. One is focused on providing unique and compelling solutions that make consumers' lives better. And the other is focused on locking things down and talking about its intellectual property. Guess which one's getting sued by the other? So, please, explain again how patents encourage innovation? Once more, it looks like patents are being used to prevent actual innovating by those who prefer to lock up ideas.
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| Activision exclaims CoD:Modern Warfare 2 breaks entertainment industry records
November 18, 2009 at 4:04 pm
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| No one can deny thatthe highly anticipated title, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 isa major hit with gamers. Since its releaseon November 10, the latest chapter of the first-person shooter saga has apparently set a staggering worldwide sales record in the first five daysalone,amounting to the tune of $550 million.So proud of this fact,that [...] |
| Oh No! Nobody Reads! Oh No! It's Too Cheap For Everyone To Read!
November 18, 2009 at 3:36 pm
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| We recently wrote about how booksellers were freaking out over the "price war" between Amazon and Wal-Mart, whereby they're starting to offer certain books at a very cheap price to bring in more customers. The whole thing was a bit silly. Reader Robin Trehaeven alerts us to a fantastic opinion piece in the Library Journal by Barbara Fister, a librarian at Gustavus Adolphus College, in which she does a superb job mocking what she refers to as the "accessibility paradox" where those who are used to being gatekeepers to information at the same time as they're supposedly promoting the benefits of greater information, suddenly start whining when information really does get more accessible. This includes those booksellers: I'm also taken aback by the horrified response of the book industry. I thought the big crisis was that nobody reads. Now it turns out the problem is that books are so popular with the masses they're being used as bait to draw in shoppers.
Come on, guys, get your story straight! Which is it? But most of her brilliant sarcasm is directed at those in her own profession, who both work hard to get information for free, at the same time they complain about how the internet has made it so easy to route around librarians:It strikes me that this issue is somewhat parallel to the love-hate relationship that many academic librarians have had with the Internet. Although our complicated relationship is improving, there are still some silly assumptions floating around. Oh no, our reference stats are down! Hurrah! People are able to find answers without our help. That's awesome! Anybody can publish on the web, unlike scholarly journals which are peer-reviewed. Fine, but don't tell me all peer-reviewed journal articles are shining examples of reason and academic brilliance. A lot of them are finely-sliced research rehashing the same findings, or are closely examined and exquisitely detailed trivia. Besides, there are plenty of examples of peer review failing in spectacular ways--and examples of wonderful peer-reviewed journals that were born free online.
But this is my favorite: Unlike information you find on the web, we pay for the information in our databases, and you get what you pay for. No, actually, with what you pay for you get a lot of junk that you don't even want, but you have no choice.
You want this journal? You have to subscribe to this pricey bundle. Either that, or you purchase one article at a time for your users, something more and more libraries are doing. You spend less, but the information never visits the library--it goes straight from the publisher to the desk of one user. All the library gets is the bill. Apart from failing on its merits, the argument that paid is better than free is self-contradicting. We can't tell students that purchased information is by definition better than free and, at the same time, beg faculty to recognize how broken the current system is and please, please, please make their work open access. It's a great overall column, and nice to see a librarian lay the smackdown on hypocrisy within the bookselling and librarian worlds.
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| We See Your 'Copyright Contributes $1.5 Trillion' And Raise You 'Fair Use Contributes $2.2 Trillion'
November 18, 2009 at 2:15 pm
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| The copyright industry lobbyists absolutely love to throw around the bogus and debunked stat that copyright contributes $1.52 trillion to the economy. That number is derived by taking any business that kinda sorta maybe touches copyright (including things like furniture and jewelry) and then assuming that all of the revenue they make is entirely due to copyright. Yes, that's ridiculous. But, if the copyright lobbyists are going to use such bogus methodology to push their agenda, it seems only fair for those on the other side to use the same methodology. Last week, we wrote about a biased editorial by two newspaper industry lawyers in the WSJ (who failed to note the conflicts of interest), claiming that Google violated copyright law, and attacked the concept of fair use.
In response, Ed Black, from the Computer & Communications Industry Association wrote a letter to the editor highlighting those lawyers factual mistakes as well as the importance of fair use throughout the industry (thanks to Yano for sending this in). Most of the (short) letter discusses all the wonderful things that fair use allows, and then has this wonderful line at the end:Businesses dependent upon exceptions to copyright contribute $2.2 trillion to the U.S. economy. They are responsible for one in eight jobs, for a total payroll of $1.2 trillion in 2006. Fair use is serious business; it is the glue that holds the Internet and new technology together. It is worth protecting. This is fantastic. Of course, the number is just as bogus as the $1.52 trillion used by copyright maximalists, but I think that if they're going to use their methodology to make such ridiculous claims, it's only fair to do the same for the contributions to the economy of exceptions to copyright, and as the CCIA clearly demonstrates, the businesses that rely on weaker copyright contribute significantly more to the economy than those that rely on copyright. Thus, by the copyright maximalists own logic (and numbers), shouldn't we be fighting to expand the exceptions to copyright law?
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| Cable Industry Joins MPAA In Asking FCC To Allow Them To Stop Your DVR From Recording Movies
November 18, 2009 at 12:55 pm
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| Ars Technica has allowed the cable industry lobbyists' top lawyer to explain why the cable industry supports breaking your DVR in a misguided effort to add more windows to movie releases. Not surprisingly, he simply repeats the MPAA's flat out lies and misrepresentations on this particular issue. For example, he claims that the movie studios need this or they won't get content out to the industry early enough. But that's wrong. There is nothing stopping the movie studios from releasing content whenever they would like. In fact, we've already seen that some of the major studios are releasing movies in exactly this manner (prior to DVD release), despite claiming that it's impossible to do so without enabling this form of DRM.
If the movie industry wants to add a new window where they release movies for pay-per-view offerings before they come out on DVD, there is nothing stopping them from doing so today. Nothing.
The claim that this is about preventing "piracy" is flat out bogus. Even the movie studios themselves claim that nearly every movie is already "pirated" by the time the movies hit the theaters. And these pay-per-view offerings (they like to call them video on demand, but it's really pay per view) are for a window later than the theater release. So the movies will already be available via unauthorized channels. That won't change at all.
So, what are we left with? The two main arguments simply don't make sense at all. There's nothing stopping the studios from adding this window now. And enabling selectable output control (SOC) to stop your DVR from recording these movies won't do a damn thing to reduce unauthorized file sharing of the same content. The only thing it will serve to do is make legitimate customers pissed off, because they'll be confused and annoyed when the DVR they purchased to record what comes out of their TV sets refuses to record this movie that they legally are accessing, but want to time shift (which, again, is perfectly legal).
Contrary to the MPAA and the NCTA's bogus claims, this has nothing to do with enabling some "awesome" new service. This has everything to do with trying to lock down your TV and DVR in an age when consumers are finally getting back some control. What's amusing, of course, is that this comes just as the TV industry is finally realizing that letting consumers do what they wanted with DVRs didn't harm the TV industry, but helped it. One of these days, maybe the MPAA and the NCTA will come to that realization as well. In the meantime, though, they want to get a foot in the door to let them stop your DVR from working as advertised, in the misguided belief that they need to push back on what legitimate consumers want to do with the content they watch.
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| Sony Pictures Having Its Best Box Office Year Ever... Still Blaming Piracy For Killing The Business
November 18, 2009 at 11:44 am
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| Sony Pictures' CEO is Michael Lynton, the guy who recently claimed that "nothing good" has come from the internet, and that piracy is killing the movie business. He made that statement less than a month ago. And yet, as Dave Title points out, Sony Pictures just announced that its international box office results have already set a new record for the year, hitting $1.63 billion. The company is bragging about this new record -- as it should. But it does seem a bit disingenuous to brag about revenue records just weeks after claiming that piracy was destroying your business and asking for government help to protect the business model. Someone might notice that these two things do not seem to agree.
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| Kotick sells more Activision shares, makes $37 million in two weeks
November 18, 2009 at 11:39 am
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| Does Bobby Kotick know something we don’t? Last week he decided to sell 2 million Activision shares he had held on to since 2000 netting him $20 million in the process. If you offered most people that amount of money they’d probably be happy for life, but not Kotick who has decided to sell again [...] |
| Jenzabar Finds 'Expert Witness' Who Will Claim Google Relies On Metatags, Despite Google Saying It Does Not
November 18, 2009 at 10:30 am
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| It's been widely known for years that Google does not use metatag description comments in ranking its search results. Indeed, this simple fact is part of what made Google more reliable than other search engines, since many website owners used fake metatags to "optimize" their results in search engines. While this was quite obvious for many years, Google had never publicly admitted it (it doesn't like to talk about its algorithm) until just a few months ago. Still, the company was just confirming exactly what was widely known for the better part of a decade or so.
And yet, for years, people would bring trademark infringement lawsuits, insisting that metatags represent some sort of trademark violation. In one recent case, that we've discussed, the CEO of software company Jenzabar, Ling Chai, has sued the makers of a documentary about the Tiananmen Square uprising. Chai had been involved in the uprising and doesn't like how the filmmakers portrayed her role. The filmmakers, on their website, mention that Chai works for Jenzabar, and included the word "Jenzabar" in the metatags, which Jenzabar insists violates its trademarks.
The documentary makers brought on Public Citizen lawyer Paul Alan Levy, who noted in a blog post the simple fact that even Google says it does not rely on metatags, and in response, Jenzabar tried to block his being brought into the case, by saying that Levy's pointing to the Google blog post was hearsay.
Now, the company has gone even further. It's found an "expert witness" who will claim that metatags do, in fact, influence Google results, even as the company itself insists they don't. The guy in question, Frank Farance, claims in his affidavit that "metatags are used by every Web search engine to determine search results and rankings." It's not clear how he has expertise in this particular realm or how he knows that Google uses metatags when pretty much everyone in the space has known for years it does not and Google itself has publicly denied using metatags to rank results.
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| China Says Microsoft Violates IP With Windows, Bars Sales
November 18, 2009 at 8:52 am
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| For years, Microsoft has been among the loudest complainers concerning "piracy" in China, so it's a bit of a surprise to see things switched around a bit. Mesanna was the first of a few to alert us that a Chinese court has found Microsoft guilty of violating the intellectual property of a local firm, Zhongyi Electronics, and demanded that the company cease selling Windows XP throughout China. The issue is the Chinese character fonts. According to Zhongyi, Microsoft licensed them for Windows 95, but not other versions. Microsoft, of course, insists that it is not infringing, and says it will appeal the ruling.
Still, with this ruling, as well as the recent attack on Google for violating copyright in China, it makes you wonder if China is doing this in an attempt to show American firms what might happen if they actually get what they "want" in terms of stronger copyright enforcement in China.
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| ATI Radeon HD 5970 worlds fastest gfx card, but will it fit in your PC?
November 18, 2009 at 7:57 am
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| Today AMD has launched the world’s fastest graphics card in the form of the ATI Radeon 5970. Not only is this card packing some serious performance, but it’s so big you may get it home to find you also need to buy a new case.In terms of performance you aren’t left wanting. Here’s the important [...] |
| Don't Post Comments On StlToday.com Or They Might Tell Your Boss
November 18, 2009 at 7:01 am
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| Via Romenesko comes this little gem of how the online editor of StlToday.com got upset about a "vulgar" comment that was left on a story. The editor, Kurt Greenbaum, noticed that the commenter in question's IP address was a local school, and contacted the school to alert them that someone from there had left a comment. And then:"About six hours later, I heard from the school's headmaster...The headmaster confronted the employee, who resigned on the spot." Lesson of the day? Don't post comments on StlToday.com or its editors may call your boss.
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| Recording Industry Making It Impossible For Any Legit Online Music Service To Survive Without Being Too Expensive
November 18, 2009 at 4:50 am
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| You just knew it would happen again. Every time the recording industry finally agrees to license a new music service to try to take the "sting" out of "piracy," it demands licensing terms that are ridiculous. From the execs at the labels' perspective, unless you pay an arm and a leg, you don't get to offer music. So, a few companies agree, and then realize it's impossible to make any money and shut down. In the meantime, the whole point of those legal licensed music services (to compete with "pirate" sites and services) is lost entirely. Wired is chronicling how all of the legal music sites are finding it impossible to survive and offer a free music service -- including MySpace music (which beyond not offering much of value in terms of user experience) "is struggling to keep up with its own payments to music copyright holders."
Of course, it's really no surprise that most of these sites have struggled. Beyond the ridiculously high licensing rates that the labels forced on them (often by negotiating through lawsuits), none of these sites put together a well thought-out business model. Instead, they all seemed to think that they could just slap ads on the site and that would be enough. But, of course, when you're listening to music, you're not looking at that website or paying attention to the ads -- and if the ads got too intrusive, they'd just go elsewhere. A real business model would have been setting up something more comprehensive, that gave listeners a real reason to buy associated with the music. Eventually we'll get there, but in the short-term, the graveyard of failed "licensed" music startups will grow, just as more and more "unauthorized" sites grow in popularity.
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| Apple rejected another political caricature app in 2008, costing developers $15,000
November 18, 2009 at 3:54 am
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| From the beginning, Apple’s iPhone App Store has been heralded as a place where the small developer can leverage a static hardware platform and a built-in distribution channel to shrug off the expenses and technical difficulties of developing applications, while still reaping huge profits. To a certain extent, that’s still true, but Apple’s mercurial App [...] |
| Crackdown On Loyalty Program Scams Shows How Ridiculously Sucessful They Were
November 18, 2009 at 2:01 am
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| It's no secret that there are a bunch of companies out there that trick users into signing up for a regular monthly subscription service that's usually nothing more than an excuse to charge your credit card every month. Many of these are incredibly sneaky, such that many users have no idea they signed up for it until they get their credit card statements. Even worse, many of the "tricks" involve getting legitimate sites to offer these "services" to their users -- and those included Continental Airlines, Classmates.com, Priceline, 1-800-Flowers and many others. The government is finally cracking down on some of these, but its latest investigation -- into just three such services (and there are a bunch more) named Webloyalty, Vertrue and Affinion -- found that those three alone brought in over $1.4 billion. Not surprisingly, the folks who work there know quite well that they're misleading users and tricking them into signing up for stuff they don't want and don't need.
It's a bit surprising, by the way, that the investigation was done by the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, rather than the FTC, who you would think would be in charge of stopping these sorts of activities. Of course, perhaps that's because the FTC has been quite busy with other scammers, such as BlueHippo, who the FTC had already reached an agreement with before and then decided to ignore it. The company basically collected millions from individuals without ever sending the promised computers. At one point, BlueHippo had delivered just one computer. After the FTC started investigating more thoroughly, suddenly BlueHippo found more computers to send, but still wasn't delivering computers to many of the people who qualified.
It's really stunning how many blatant scammers there are out there, who are able to get away with these things for so long.
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| Just Because People Say They'll Pay For Something, It Doesn't Mean They Will
November 17, 2009 at 11:56 pm
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| I've been ignoring this one, but people keep submitting it. BCG came out with a report over the weekend on a survey it did, claiming that about half of all people would pay for online news. It was amusing to see people react to this, as some reported it as "most won't pay for news" and others reported it as "oh my goodness, a lot of people will pay for news." Of course, the reality is that this is just a survey of what people say they'd pay for -- and history has shown that surveys are notoriously poor indicators in terms of getting people to accurately reflect what they will and will not buy. Besides, just a day later, a totally different survey claimed that 80% of people wouldn't pay for news online. The answer is that no one knows how many people would pay for content online, but I'd bet that the number is lower than what both of these surveys predict, and we'll see that soon enough.
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