-- Sure, but why would the recipient of the file *WANT* to check it? --
This was all said in the context of whether it is right for the **AA to prosecurte a downloader. If there is a legitimate way for a downloader to find whether a download is legal or not, then whether they choose to use it or not is immaterial - it takes away their defence of not knowing. If I owned file sharing site I would point users to such a tool to get my site off the hook.
I guess the next problem is that if the tool was completely automated (as it could be) then the **AA could insist that the filesharing site used it to screen uploads, rather than simply hiding behind safe harbour and making it the punter's problem.
And by logical extension, the **AA could insist that any ISP that hosts files has a duty to see if they are indentifiable music files and if so check legality.
This would cost all internet users as the ISP's would pass costs on, but to be honest I'd rather pay for that (a once per upload application of a server algorithm) than pay for a huge overhead of watching surfers' traffic looking for infringement.
It's an interesting though experiment though. if the **AA spent the money developing such a tool and made it freely available to all and sundry, what would the implications be ?
There'd have to be logal redress for false positives (I can imagine otherwise the **AA developers adding )
if (songNotRecognised)
{
status = NOT_FREELY_DOWNLOADABLE;
}
Like any DRM, however, some smart people will get round it. They will find a way to mangle an MP3 so that it sounds almost the same but is unrecognisable by the algorithm. But a lot of illegal copying is about convenience. It is just so easy to rip a CD and post it online.
-- Are you suggesting that somebody could somehow actually tell the difference between an illegal and legal download? How would you propose that anyone do this, particularly since both controlled and freely distributable content are both just a bunch of 0's and 1's when being transmitted digitally?---
There is an iPhone app that allows your iPhone to "listen" to a tune playing on a the radio an immediately identify it (then buy it if you want to).
The "is this an illegal download" tool I alluded to would
- identify the tune (using the same database the app referred to above uses)
- interrogate the database to see if said tune is currently legally available free.
If the song has ever been legally made available free with unlimited copying rights then I would suggest that it is meaningless to later assert that a download is illegal. But I would guess that most commercial music would not be in that category and the tool would tell you that it was dodgy to expect the tune to be free.
I'm not sure that you could do this in real time as a browser add on (as you are downloading) since torrent sites get fragments from different places simultaneously, but you could certainly check the file after receiving it.
What this tool could not do so easily is tell you whether the apparently legit looking music download site with paypal payment was entitled to sell you the MP3 (Amazon) or not ("fly-by-night-cheap-mp3s.com ). But in theory the database behind the tool could tell you that too.
This is not rocket science technically if
- someone wanted to do it
- consumers wanted to use it
Specifically MS Office. Once MS have produced it is is, by TD's definition, an infinite good. However, plenty of people with a choice are prepared to pay a lot of money for it and do every year.
Noone can fault MS's business model - there are a lot more MS millionaires than OpenOffice millionaires or linux millionaires. You are free to opine MS would make more money in the long run by giving Office away but I fear you'd find it hard to convince many (including me).
I don't think anyone would argue that after MS have invested what could amount to millions in a new version of Office, that they there is some moral reason why they should give it away, not that someone who chooses to illegally pirate it has some moral defence.
Sure, in a country or market sector where noone can afford it, MS might be better of turning a blind eye to piracy rather than see OpenOffice take market share but this is a decision for MS alone to make. They invested the money up front to create value for people.
The major reason that there is not huge ubiquitous piracy of Office is not because people are respectful of any moral arguments or even of the rules of copyright. There are simply technical hurdles (aka DRM) and a well funded policing operation that finds and punishes businesses that break the clear rules.
And when software as a service becomes uniquitous, there will little or no pirated software. When Office is served from the cloud, how will OpenOffice compete ?
Who will pay for the servers that are required for OpenOfficeAsAService ?
Once again, I'd defend to the death your right to say that MS would be financially better off giving Office away, but I would not agree.
Now compare this with music. The ONLY difference is that preventing and punishing piracy is technically more challenging. The value per item is less and there is little control over the enivironment in which the product is used. But music, like software, is digital content that can be copied infinitely at almost zero marginal cost.
( Music in the cloud (aka streaming) will simply be recorded and then pirated. The old Radio DJ trick of talking over the intro won't work for a streaming service )
Now I fail to see how just because it is harder to protect music from actions the creator has not approved, that somehow changes the morality of the situation.
It may well be true that the musician / label is on a hiding to nothing now the genie is out of the bottle but that doesn't make it morally wrong for the artist to want to sell the content (noone has to by it) nor does it make it right for someone to copy it without his/her permission.
It may well be true that the industry would find a whole different business model more profitable than the RIAA/DRM approach, but that doesn't mean their current approach is morally wrong. The RIAA's main fault is their overreach and excessive behaviour, and the way they seem to get absurd backing from the legal and political establishment, resulting in ludicrous financial legal awards, but if these things were not so, they would not be per-se morally wrong. A guy/gal who uploads an album with the express intention of enabling illegal sharing should arguably be punished as if he/she had shoplifted one copy. It is well nigh impossible to meaningfully prosecure the downloaders unless tools exist for them to verify what is a legal/illegal download. (As an aside, the industry could easily create such a tool and make it widely available - why don't they ?).
Without these excesses, the RIAA would be little different from the alliance of software producers (whose acronym eludes me) that send people into sizeable companies to catch them in the act of using 200 pirated copies of Office.
Are they morally wrong ?
Someone posted earlier saying how they create software for themselves and then are happy to freely share it for others. That is all well and good but I suspect that
a) The software he refers to is not 20 man years of effort
b) Giving code away for free is not his day job
I must say, with a Sonos as my primary music system (plus a few cheap MP3 players for running/dogwalking) I would rather buy an MP3 album for £5 from Amazon than pay more than twice that for a plastic disk that I have to rip as soon as I get home. But £5 is fine, and the artists have to eat. I'd rather they made money off the music and toured to meet the fans, playing small, unprofitable venues even in towns where the turnout might not be high, rather than played a few stadiums I cannot get to to be sure they make a million from the tour.
You could tell me that DRM is not a business model but MicroSoft might disagree.
An example springs to mind. The "Build a bear" stores that have opened now in the UK allow a child to construct their own bear including putting a voicebox in. Kids in Wales asked if they could get pre-recoprded phrases in Welsh. They were told no, you can't even have English without the US accent.
I once hear some idiot from the music industry explaining that personalising music (ie water marking on a mail order CD as a non obtrusive form of tracking who might be uploading) would be too expensive. Put another way, they won't add 10c to the cost of what they sell for $15 however much it could be better for them in the long run.
This sort of cheapness is why the archetypal US conglomerate will be beaten by more nimble mindsets. We've all heard stories of how the marketing depts in US car companies keep trying to insist on worldwide car model names
(The Opel Corsa in mainland Europe is the Vauxhall Nova in UK. They almost launched in Spain with "Nova" = "doesn't go").
And of course GM would rather lobby for lower emission standards than just innovate and keep up with Toyota on the world stage. It's what you get when you have a single fairly homogenous market in your back yard that is so big you THINK that you can survive by ignoring the rest of the world altogether. Not something a Luxembourg based company would ever suffer from...
If I understand this correctly, we're not talking here about someone "copying a commercial without permission" or "passing off". Simply a claim of unfair or inaccurate advertising.
When I was at University 20 years ago an acquaintance called either the Times or the Telegraph science correspondent and told them Cambridge University Eng dept now had working superconductors at temperatures far less cold than anyone had ever achieved. After a half-hearted attempt to check the story, the journo ran it and may I recall have lost his job in the end.
Not a tabloid, and well before digital news stole the paper media's profits.
Nothing new here.
In the UK there used to be a thing called the net book agreement. This seemed to mean noone could sell a book for less than the RRP.
This means supermarkets made a huge markup on the few books tghey sold, for example, but tiny specialised bookshops could still survive qas some margin was guaranteed. In those days it was believed that if the NBA went away, small niche book shops would disappear because they'd never sell any "normal" books and the specialised books would not keep them in profit.
However, there have been a couple of developments since then.
One, Amazon etc al and the "long tail" have made it possible for a book that sells only 100 copies to just as profitable per book as one that sells a million.
Two, small niche dealers can still reach a worldwide market via Abebooks.
With these two developments, I don't think anyone could defend the NBA today.
You could maybe criticise Walmart for selling books dirt cheap as they only carry high volume books and don't care about the low volume stuff which might suffer as a result, but Amazon don't suffer from that problem. No reason why they can't sell every book cheap if they want to.
Plus Amazon can reprice everything in minutes if they want and Walmart simply can't be that responsive.
Suppose this guy legitimately represents several groups. He writes 1 form letter then sends it 3 times, each wearing a different "hat".
I do marketing for several clients. If there was a legislative issue that affected them I might write to my representative from each of them. And if I was really lazy I might re-use some of the letter.
In addition to replacing boilerplate text I'd probably reword a few paragraphs too...
But if I was 77 I woudl reserve the right to have a senior moment and forget to replace something.
I'm not saying that I believe this for a minute in this case - simply that if you, Mike, cannot think of a single scenario where the guy might be telling the truth then you have a fairly limited imagination.
I'm sure within the last few days I read you criticizing Virgin for seeking to legally prevent folk from reprogramming phones for another network.
So what happens when someone starts reprograming their "free" Palm Pre ? Or is that different ?
Also, in the UK, cellphone usage really rocketed when they introduced "pay as you go" tariffs (people hate contracts and being surprised by big bills).
Now PAYG and contracts probably hold comparable market share. You can't heavily subsidize a phone on PAYG so people see the real price of the phone.
When people can compare the price of the phone on PAYG with that on a contract they figure out how much of the plan is paying for the hardware.
The decision between PAYG and contract thus gets distorted.
C'mon Mike, you have implied that a paywall for a news scoop will never work because someone else can just repost the content and offer it for free
and YET
you claim here that the very concept of someone copying and reposting content is imaginary.
Personally I've seen my own content which I placed on Wikipedia re-served verbatim through some other ad filled site, so this automated scraping definitely goes on. Why it would not happen for news is a bit hard to fathom.
(And if you read the Wired article on Demand, you'll know that it is possible for scrapers to determine automatically what is the most profitable stuff to scrape).
2. Watermarking.
If the UK intelligence services have (say) 10 copies of an intelligence report for 10 different authorised readers, each one is subtley different in wording so that if it ever gets leaked they can see whose copy the leak came from. There are computer programs to determine when a high school essay has been plagiarised from known sources.
Similarly, any automated news scraping service can easily be proved to have got the content from the originating website. (Watermarking pictures is unnecessary). Copy and paste won't defeat this - it will take active rewording by a human and THIS would kill the scrapers' business model. The question (if you agree with the logic of taking action against offenders) is whether the scraper is reputable enough to sue or run by spammers who cover their tracks.
What I imagine the newspaper could do is ask google to suspend the adsense account of anyone who is clearly making money from plagiarised content. Not sure what Google would do, but if it was happening hundreds of times per day, the two parties would probably agree a streamlined way to handle it.
This is not ideal (like automatic takedown actions without due process) but google have the talent to automatically decide for themselves if page x is actually plagiarised from page y (or vice versa) based on content scanning and publishing dates based on their own spider visits. They could even sell this to the newspapers as a service (subscription based). They would (for paying customers) check all pages submitted by the users to see if they are currently plagiarised by any pages currently serving Adsense ads. If they (google) believed that there was infringment, they could send an automatic takedown request to the offender, and follow it up with an Adsense suspension. Or else channel the adsense funds to the content originator instead.
What if, you ask, the newspaper actually plagiarised some blogger and claimed it was the other way round ? Well, they could offer anyone a chance to have their new posts "timestamped" by google ? I dunno, if there was a need, there's a way. After all, they now offer a potential wiki sidebar on every page on the web so this would not be too hard.
Now I know that, Mike, you think that trying to fight online plagiarism is like trying to hold back the tide. It might be futile, it might not be the best business model, but that does not make plagiarism RIGHT.
The point would be that you'd maybe miss the book and ask for it back and the borrower would go and get his own.
It would also stop you behaving like an unauthrosied public library at the expense of the author.
Have to agree with the poster who says nopt all DRM is pure evil.
Demanding that everything be free just because someone somewhere can get round DRM is not a defensible position.
When DRM becomes evil is when it inconveniences the innocent (like CD's that won't play or rootkits).
Google have the size and legal power to at least resist until court order.
Many small ISP's would probably have rolled over with no court order when suits froma major bank came knocking.
I'm leaving my mail with Google where I can see they will at least hold out until forced by law.
(I think the law is what was at fault here, but Google have to follow it).
If as I understand it, Virgin (who have made a lot of money out of doing far better at giving people what they want than most of their competitors) have a business model that allows people to pay less for the handset but pay it back in the calling charges over time, then this is a good business model. But if someone then unlocks the phone and uses it on a different network that have not had to subsidise the handset, then the business model is defeated.
Is this because Virgin (seeing that some people don't want to pay so much up front for a handset) have a BAD business model ? Is it wrong to offer cheap or free hardware and get the revenue back from the service ?
Obviously this business model needs some form of protection. They probably hoped to rely on technical protection but someone got round that so they fall back on legal protection.
This is like training as a pilot with British Airways then expecting to skip off to some other airline who pays for no training but offers higher salaries, the moment you qualify. BA would (rightfully) ask for the training costs back, as the contact you signed said they would.
I just had my credit card breached (details apparently appropriated by some website though not sure which as I tend to use only reputable online vendors). New card arrived, activated it online.
Today I went to supermarket, got right through checkout and new card failed. It was all I was actually carrying. A bit embarrassing. They agreed to hold my groceries for 45 mins (in cold storage, helpfully).
I was due elsewhere and while there I called credit card co. Apparently activation had NOT worked. So they did it there and then. "Your card is now ready to use, sir".
Back to supermarket. Got my groceries from storage. payment refused again. Called credit card co. They said it was now definitely not them,perhaps supermarket had some sort of block. Supermarket said "oh, yeah, we probably do, need to reset that". So they tried that a few times. Still nothing. Ran to a nearby ATM, tried to get cash (yes, on a credit card, I know, but I REALLY wanted groceries). That didn't work either. Well THAT can't be the supermarket's fault.
Said sorry and headed home without groceries.
Called card company again.
Apparently there is a fault on my card (deep in one of their IT systems) meaning it won't work right with some retailers (but they can't tell me which retailers), and it might take up to 24 (or maybe 48) hrs to resolve and "didn't the last guy you spoke to tell you this already" !? WTF !!
This level of IT incompetence makes me wonder if the "fraudulent transactions" that let to my card being cancelled at the beginning of this story were actually a crossed wire deep in the bowels of their IT system.
Because one of the retailers who was fleeced told me that the fraudster got through "3d security" including "Verified by Visa". How exactly a bogus website could capture my "Verified by Visa" details (other than by spoofing the Verified by Visa screen itself ?) I don't know.
I'm not sure I believe any of what they tell me any more.
I buy eBooks from eReader.com, and read them on my Palm.
The file I get is unique to me. The unlock key is basically my credit card details.
Yes, I could post them on the internet for free illegal download but I'd be also posting my credit card details. I could probably do my immediately family a copy safely, but that's as far as it would go.
If a library could generate personalised eBooks with similar DRM, there would be no issue with borrowers copying books massively, though possibly an issue with people not deleting them when they are due to return the "loan".
(I pretty much end up with the eBook forever, if I'm prepared to wind back the clock on my eBook reader).
It depends of course on there being an eBook reader at the other end that respects/understands the DRM. Until this is universal it means the library supporting a lot of formats but it would only take a single piece of software to achieve that, which, once developed, could be present in every library.
As far as "how many simultaneous loans can the library make"... Mike seems to confuse the possible with the fair.
If he thinks libraries should buy one and lend out hundreds at a time (becauwe they can) then he presumably also believes libraries should get them free (almost the same thing) because the publicity is so good for the author.
But this is not what libraries are for. Libraries are supposed to pay for books and then lend them out. Like Netflix pays for movies it lends out.
I would expect Netflix to pay more than $10 for a DVD it has the right to lend out 50 times, even though the price for a consumer to buy the DVD might be $10. Their business model expects it. Libraries, of course, are not businesses as such, but that doesn't make authors charities.
Pissing off authors/publishers by allowing their eBooks to be flagrantly copied is going to set back the progress of the eBook by years.
(My local library lends CD's but there is a cost per CD in addition to library membership. This is because even though (unlike a book which you read once,) it could be argued that the CD is listened to as a precursor to buying, we in fact all know damn well the CD's are being copied )
I would not be surprised if there are many authors/publishers who prefer their hardcopy books not to go into libraries. Or at least not while they are still on the best seller lists !
If they would all just say
- here's an MP3, uniquely watermarked to you at purchase time
- take it where you like, copy it, play it on any device but DON'T upload it to the web please.
- you agree if we ever find YOUR copy of the MP3 on the web or in a file sharing situation, you'll be fined.
- your friends agree if we ever find your copy of the MP3 in their possession , you and they will be fined (so don't email copies to your mates) though we're unlikely to cath you for this and we don't care that much as this is small beer compared with downloading
- in return for this we'll make it a sensible price ($3-5 for an Album)
For most people
- this would not in any way limit their legit enjoyment
- even if they wished to share it they would not have the wherewithall to remove / modify watermarks
Then they could chase down most piracy with an almost automated spider.
For real added value, you'll be able to log on to your account and stream anything you already own even when you find yourself away from your home hard drive. Say on your net connected smartphone.
The key point here is, they could catch the guilty without inconveniencing the innocent, which almost none of their efforts so far have done.
Subscription is a no hoper simply because people want to keep music they like and when you stop paying it has to go away with a subscription model.
Kids these days generally are not skinny. Overweight kids (boys and girls) far outweigh the small numbers who have anorexia. Shifting the population bell curve towards the slim end would not be a crisis.
Point 2
I find the idea that skinny Parisian catwalk models are responsible for teenage anorexia to be garbage. If you look at a teenager's role model it is more likely to be a TV or movie actress or a pop star (or a sports figure), than some skeleton in New York wearing a dress that looks like a cake.
These pop stars are all generally fairly fit, well proportioned people. Most pop stars these days perform dance routines (not so many pale goths in teen culture these days) and if a teenager with half a brain cell wants to look like their role model they know it will take 200 sit ups and some running, not starvation.
So if there are anoprexic kids, it's isn;t coming from skinny models.
It is the adults around them, and the advertising, that messes kids up. Regardless of target weight, the problem is the prevalence of ideas that
a) self esteem is inseparable from looks
b) changing one's body shape is caused by dieting, not a change in exercise habits. This is the predominant dietary message of all advertising that is targeted at the teenager's mother.
If kids eat proper food and do the hour a day of proper exercise they need, the amount they eat won't actually be an issue.
Back to the original post....
I have not yet understood for certain whether the original photoshopping was done by Ralph Lauren (RL) or was part of the parody. I assume the latter, so has anyone located the original ?
I'd have thought that showing the parody without making it clear this was photoshopped (and not by RL)was defaming RL (implying RL condoned skinny models).
But DCMA ? It's a transformative work, surely.
Suppose artist A sees his work (and I'm assuming it IS his, not some record label's) has been uploaded to YT by fan B
But he decides that in fact that is cool and sits back to see how many people view it.
Some other "do gooder" (C) writes to YT stating (correctly) that the work is infringing (even though artist A doesn't actually mind), and demands takedown.
Does C have to prove his credentials to YT before they move to takedown ? Will YT refuse, saying "you're not A" ?
Or will YT let anyone request anything be taken down ?
On the post: The Moral Argument In Favor Of File Sharing?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Lets consider software
This was all said in the context of whether it is right for the **AA to prosecurte a downloader. If there is a legitimate way for a downloader to find whether a download is legal or not, then whether they choose to use it or not is immaterial - it takes away their defence of not knowing. If I owned file sharing site I would point users to such a tool to get my site off the hook.
I guess the next problem is that if the tool was completely automated (as it could be) then the **AA could insist that the filesharing site used it to screen uploads, rather than simply hiding behind safe harbour and making it the punter's problem.
And by logical extension, the **AA could insist that any ISP that hosts files has a duty to see if they are indentifiable music files and if so check legality.
This would cost all internet users as the ISP's would pass costs on, but to be honest I'd rather pay for that (a once per upload application of a server algorithm) than pay for a huge overhead of watching surfers' traffic looking for infringement.
It's an interesting though experiment though. if the **AA spent the money developing such a tool and made it freely available to all and sundry, what would the implications be ?
There'd have to be logal redress for false positives (I can imagine otherwise the **AA developers adding )
if (songNotRecognised)
{
status = NOT_FREELY_DOWNLOADABLE;
}
Like any DRM, however, some smart people will get round it. They will find a way to mangle an MP3 so that it sounds almost the same but is unrecognisable by the algorithm. But a lot of illegal copying is about convenience. It is just so easy to rip a CD and post it online.
On the post: The Moral Argument In Favor Of File Sharing?
Re: Re: Lets consider software
There is an iPhone app that allows your iPhone to "listen" to a tune playing on a the radio an immediately identify it (then buy it if you want to).
The "is this an illegal download" tool I alluded to would
- identify the tune (using the same database the app referred to above uses)
- interrogate the database to see if said tune is currently legally available free.
If the song has ever been legally made available free with unlimited copying rights then I would suggest that it is meaningless to later assert that a download is illegal. But I would guess that most commercial music would not be in that category and the tool would tell you that it was dodgy to expect the tune to be free.
I'm not sure that you could do this in real time as a browser add on (as you are downloading) since torrent sites get fragments from different places simultaneously, but you could certainly check the file after receiving it.
What this tool could not do so easily is tell you whether the apparently legit looking music download site with paypal payment was entitled to sell you the MP3 (Amazon) or not ("fly-by-night-cheap-mp3s.com ). But in theory the database behind the tool could tell you that too.
This is not rocket science technically if
- someone wanted to do it
- consumers wanted to use it
On the post: The Moral Argument In Favor Of File Sharing?
Lets consider software
Noone can fault MS's business model - there are a lot more MS millionaires than OpenOffice millionaires or linux millionaires. You are free to opine MS would make more money in the long run by giving Office away but I fear you'd find it hard to convince many (including me).
I don't think anyone would argue that after MS have invested what could amount to millions in a new version of Office, that they there is some moral reason why they should give it away, not that someone who chooses to illegally pirate it has some moral defence.
Sure, in a country or market sector where noone can afford it, MS might be better of turning a blind eye to piracy rather than see OpenOffice take market share but this is a decision for MS alone to make. They invested the money up front to create value for people.
The major reason that there is not huge ubiquitous piracy of Office is not because people are respectful of any moral arguments or even of the rules of copyright. There are simply technical hurdles (aka DRM) and a well funded policing operation that finds and punishes businesses that break the clear rules.
And when software as a service becomes uniquitous, there will little or no pirated software. When Office is served from the cloud, how will OpenOffice compete ?
Who will pay for the servers that are required for OpenOfficeAsAService ?
Once again, I'd defend to the death your right to say that MS would be financially better off giving Office away, but I would not agree.
Now compare this with music. The ONLY difference is that preventing and punishing piracy is technically more challenging. The value per item is less and there is little control over the enivironment in which the product is used. But music, like software, is digital content that can be copied infinitely at almost zero marginal cost.
( Music in the cloud (aka streaming) will simply be recorded and then pirated. The old Radio DJ trick of talking over the intro won't work for a streaming service )
Now I fail to see how just because it is harder to protect music from actions the creator has not approved, that somehow changes the morality of the situation.
It may well be true that the musician / label is on a hiding to nothing now the genie is out of the bottle but that doesn't make it morally wrong for the artist to want to sell the content (noone has to by it) nor does it make it right for someone to copy it without his/her permission.
It may well be true that the industry would find a whole different business model more profitable than the RIAA/DRM approach, but that doesn't mean their current approach is morally wrong. The RIAA's main fault is their overreach and excessive behaviour, and the way they seem to get absurd backing from the legal and political establishment, resulting in ludicrous financial legal awards, but if these things were not so, they would not be per-se morally wrong. A guy/gal who uploads an album with the express intention of enabling illegal sharing should arguably be punished as if he/she had shoplifted one copy. It is well nigh impossible to meaningfully prosecure the downloaders unless tools exist for them to verify what is a legal/illegal download. (As an aside, the industry could easily create such a tool and make it widely available - why don't they ?).
Without these excesses, the RIAA would be little different from the alliance of software producers (whose acronym eludes me) that send people into sizeable companies to catch them in the act of using 200 pirated copies of Office.
Are they morally wrong ?
Someone posted earlier saying how they create software for themselves and then are happy to freely share it for others. That is all well and good but I suspect that
a) The software he refers to is not 20 man years of effort
b) Giving code away for free is not his day job
I must say, with a Sonos as my primary music system (plus a few cheap MP3 players for running/dogwalking) I would rather buy an MP3 album for £5 from Amazon than pay more than twice that for a plastic disk that I have to rip as soon as I get home. But £5 is fine, and the artists have to eat. I'd rather they made money off the music and toured to meet the fans, playing small, unprofitable venues even in towns where the turnout might not be high, rather than played a few stadiums I cannot get to to be sure they make a million from the tour.
You could tell me that DRM is not a business model but MicroSoft might disagree.
On the post: Nestle's Kit Kat Bars Give Consumers An RtB In Japan
The great American franchise operation
I once hear some idiot from the music industry explaining that personalising music (ie water marking on a mail order CD as a non obtrusive form of tracking who might be uploading) would be too expensive. Put another way, they won't add 10c to the cost of what they sell for $15 however much it could be better for them in the long run.
This sort of cheapness is why the archetypal US conglomerate will be beaten by more nimble mindsets. We've all heard stories of how the marketing depts in US car companies keep trying to insist on worldwide car model names
(The Opel Corsa in mainland Europe is the Vauxhall Nova in UK. They almost launched in Spain with "Nova" = "doesn't go").
And of course GM would rather lobby for lower emission standards than just innovate and keep up with Toyota on the world stage. It's what you get when you have a single fairly homogenous market in your back yard that is so big you THINK that you can survive by ignoring the rest of the world altogether. Not something a Luxembourg based company would ever suffer from...
On the post: AT&T Sues Verizon Over 'There's A Map For That' Ad Campaign
So this is not a copyright or IP battle
So remind me again why this is on TechDirt ?
On the post: Pepsi Told To Pay Over A Billion Dollars For 'Stealing' The Idea For Bottled Water
Bottles of urine
That's where Red Bull came from...
On the post: Filmmaker Gives Newspapers Bogus Stories To See If They Fact Check
Same 20 years ago
Not a tabloid, and well before digital news stole the paper media's profits.
Nothing new here.
On the post: Booksellers Claiming That Competition And Lower Prices Are Bad For Consumers
The Net Book Agreement
This means supermarkets made a huge markup on the few books tghey sold, for example, but tiny specialised bookshops could still survive qas some margin was guaranteed. In those days it was believed that if the NBA went away, small niche book shops would disappear because they'd never sell any "normal" books and the specialised books would not keep them in profit.
However, there have been a couple of developments since then.
One, Amazon etc al and the "long tail" have made it possible for a book that sells only 100 copies to just as profitable per book as one that sells a million.
Two, small niche dealers can still reach a worldwide market via Abebooks.
With these two developments, I don't think anyone could defend the NBA today.
You could maybe criticise Walmart for selling books dirt cheap as they only carry high volume books and don't care about the low volume stuff which might suffer as a result, but Amazon don't suffer from that problem. No reason why they can't sell every book cheap if they want to.
Plus Amazon can reprice everything in minutes if they want and Walmart simply can't be that responsive.
Can't see the problem, myself.
On the post: Retired Telco PR Exec Who Sent XYZ Corp. Letter To FCC Insists He Wrote It
Can't a guy represent more than 1 group ?
I do marketing for several clients. If there was a legislative issue that affected them I might write to my representative from each of them. And if I was really lazy I might re-use some of the letter.
In addition to replacing boilerplate text I'd probably reword a few paragraphs too...
But if I was 77 I woudl reserve the right to have a senior moment and forget to replace something.
I'm not saying that I believe this for a minute in this case - simply that if you, Mike, cannot think of a single scenario where the guy might be telling the truth then you have a fairly limited imagination.
On the post: Why Sprint Should Be Giving Away The Palm Pre For Free
Inconsistent, Mike ?
So what happens when someone starts reprograming their "free" Palm Pre ? Or is that different ?
Also, in the UK, cellphone usage really rocketed when they introduced "pay as you go" tariffs (people hate contracts and being surprised by big bills).
Now PAYG and contracts probably hold comparable market share. You can't heavily subsidize a phone on PAYG so people see the real price of the phone.
When people can compare the price of the phone on PAYG with that on a contract they figure out how much of the plan is paying for the hardware.
The decision between PAYG and contract thus gets distorted.
On the post: AP Convinces Newspaper That Watermark Will Stop Mythical Evil Copiers
Arguing against yourself
C'mon Mike, you have implied that a paywall for a news scoop will never work because someone else can just repost the content and offer it for free
and YET
you claim here that the very concept of someone copying and reposting content is imaginary.
Personally I've seen my own content which I placed on Wikipedia re-served verbatim through some other ad filled site, so this automated scraping definitely goes on. Why it would not happen for news is a bit hard to fathom.
(And if you read the Wired article on Demand, you'll know that it is possible for scrapers to determine automatically what is the most profitable stuff to scrape).
2. Watermarking.
If the UK intelligence services have (say) 10 copies of an intelligence report for 10 different authorised readers, each one is subtley different in wording so that if it ever gets leaked they can see whose copy the leak came from. There are computer programs to determine when a high school essay has been plagiarised from known sources.
Similarly, any automated news scraping service can easily be proved to have got the content from the originating website. (Watermarking pictures is unnecessary). Copy and paste won't defeat this - it will take active rewording by a human and THIS would kill the scrapers' business model. The question (if you agree with the logic of taking action against offenders) is whether the scraper is reputable enough to sue or run by spammers who cover their tracks.
What I imagine the newspaper could do is ask google to suspend the adsense account of anyone who is clearly making money from plagiarised content. Not sure what Google would do, but if it was happening hundreds of times per day, the two parties would probably agree a streamlined way to handle it.
This is not ideal (like automatic takedown actions without due process) but google have the talent to automatically decide for themselves if page x is actually plagiarised from page y (or vice versa) based on content scanning and publishing dates based on their own spider visits. They could even sell this to the newspapers as a service (subscription based). They would (for paying customers) check all pages submitted by the users to see if they are currently plagiarised by any pages currently serving Adsense ads. If they (google) believed that there was infringment, they could send an automatic takedown request to the offender, and follow it up with an Adsense suspension. Or else channel the adsense funds to the content originator instead.
What if, you ask, the newspaper actually plagiarised some blogger and claimed it was the other way round ? Well, they could offer anyone a chance to have their new posts "timestamped" by google ? I dunno, if there was a need, there's a way. After all, they now offer a potential wiki sidebar on every page on the web so this would not be too hard.
Now I know that, Mike, you think that trying to fight online plagiarism is like trying to hold back the tide. It might be futile, it might not be the best business model, but that does not make plagiarism RIGHT.
On the post: The Perils Of Extrapolation: Who Knows What The Next Disruptive Innovation Will Be
Decentralisation
For example the "next big thing" will be talked about in facebook and on Twitter.
On the post: eBook Market Gets More Crowded... But... Still Many Limitations
Re: True lending
** And the point of that would be?
The point would be that you'd maybe miss the book and ask for it back and the borrower would go and get his own.
It would also stop you behaving like an unauthrosied public library at the expense of the author.
Have to agree with the poster who says nopt all DRM is pure evil.
Demanding that everything be free just because someone somewhere can get round DRM is not a defensible position.
When DRM becomes evil is when it inconveniences the innocent (like CD's that won't play or rootkits).
On the post: Google Destroyed Missent Bank Info Email Unopened... As More Legal Questions Are Raised
Think your ISP is better ?
Many small ISP's would probably have rolled over with no court order when suits froma major bank came knocking.
I'm leaving my mail with Google where I can see they will at least hold out until forced by law.
(I think the law is what was at fault here, but Google have to follow it).
On the post: If Your Business Model Requires An Overly Restrictive Contracts... You Have No Real Business Model
Virgin Mobile
Is this because Virgin (seeing that some people don't want to pay so much up front for a handset) have a BAD business model ? Is it wrong to offer cheap or free hardware and get the revenue back from the service ?
Obviously this business model needs some form of protection. They probably hoped to rely on technical protection but someone got round that so they fall back on legal protection.
This is like training as a pilot with British Airways then expecting to skip off to some other airline who pays for no training but offers higher salaries, the moment you qualify. BA would (rightfully) ask for the training costs back, as the contact you signed said they would.
On the post: Using A Security Breach As An Upsell Opportunity?
Topical rant
Today I went to supermarket, got right through checkout and new card failed. It was all I was actually carrying. A bit embarrassing. They agreed to hold my groceries for 45 mins (in cold storage, helpfully).
I was due elsewhere and while there I called credit card co. Apparently activation had NOT worked. So they did it there and then. "Your card is now ready to use, sir".
Back to supermarket. Got my groceries from storage. payment refused again. Called credit card co. They said it was now definitely not them,perhaps supermarket had some sort of block. Supermarket said "oh, yeah, we probably do, need to reset that". So they tried that a few times. Still nothing. Ran to a nearby ATM, tried to get cash (yes, on a credit card, I know, but I REALLY wanted groceries). That didn't work either. Well THAT can't be the supermarket's fault.
Said sorry and headed home without groceries.
Called card company again.
Apparently there is a fault on my card (deep in one of their IT systems) meaning it won't work right with some retailers (but they can't tell me which retailers), and it might take up to 24 (or maybe 48) hrs to resolve and "didn't the last guy you spoke to tell you this already" !? WTF !!
This level of IT incompetence makes me wonder if the "fraudulent transactions" that let to my card being cancelled at the beginning of this story were actually a crossed wire deep in the bowels of their IT system.
Because one of the retailers who was fleeced told me that the fraudster got through "3d security" including "Verified by Visa". How exactly a bogus website could capture my "Verified by Visa" details (other than by spoofing the Verified by Visa screen itself ?) I don't know.
I'm not sure I believe any of what they tell me any more.
On the post: Do Libraries Need Permission To Lend Out Ebooks?
Why not lend eBooks ?
The file I get is unique to me. The unlock key is basically my credit card details.
Yes, I could post them on the internet for free illegal download but I'd be also posting my credit card details. I could probably do my immediately family a copy safely, but that's as far as it would go.
If a library could generate personalised eBooks with similar DRM, there would be no issue with borrowers copying books massively, though possibly an issue with people not deleting them when they are due to return the "loan".
(I pretty much end up with the eBook forever, if I'm prepared to wind back the clock on my eBook reader).
It depends of course on there being an eBook reader at the other end that respects/understands the DRM. Until this is universal it means the library supporting a lot of formats but it would only take a single piece of software to achieve that, which, once developed, could be present in every library.
As far as "how many simultaneous loans can the library make"... Mike seems to confuse the possible with the fair.
If he thinks libraries should buy one and lend out hundreds at a time (becauwe they can) then he presumably also believes libraries should get them free (almost the same thing) because the publicity is so good for the author.
But this is not what libraries are for. Libraries are supposed to pay for books and then lend them out. Like Netflix pays for movies it lends out.
I would expect Netflix to pay more than $10 for a DVD it has the right to lend out 50 times, even though the price for a consumer to buy the DVD might be $10. Their business model expects it. Libraries, of course, are not businesses as such, but that doesn't make authors charities.
Pissing off authors/publishers by allowing their eBooks to be flagrantly copied is going to set back the progress of the eBook by years.
(My local library lends CD's but there is a cost per CD in addition to library membership. This is because even though (unlike a book which you read once,) it could be argued that the CD is listened to as a precursor to buying, we in fact all know damn well the CD's are being copied )
I would not be surprised if there are many authors/publishers who prefer their hardcopy books not to go into libraries. Or at least not while they are still on the best seller lists !
On the post: And Here Come Another Round Of Yawn-Inducing Music Subscription Services
Watermarks
- here's an MP3, uniquely watermarked to you at purchase time
- take it where you like, copy it, play it on any device but DON'T upload it to the web please.
- you agree if we ever find YOUR copy of the MP3 on the web or in a file sharing situation, you'll be fined.
- your friends agree if we ever find your copy of the MP3 in their possession , you and they will be fined (so don't email copies to your mates) though we're unlikely to cath you for this and we don't care that much as this is small beer compared with downloading
- in return for this we'll make it a sensible price ($3-5 for an Album)
For most people
- this would not in any way limit their legit enjoyment
- even if they wished to share it they would not have the wherewithall to remove / modify watermarks
Then they could chase down most piracy with an almost automated spider.
For real added value, you'll be able to log on to your account and stream anything you already own even when you find yourself away from your home hard drive. Say on your net connected smartphone.
The key point here is, they could catch the guilty without inconveniencing the innocent, which almost none of their efforts so far have done.
Subscription is a no hoper simply because people want to keep music they like and when you stop paying it has to go away with a subscription model.
On the post: Ralph Lauren And Its Lawyers Discover The Streisand Effect On Bogus DMCA Takedown
Skinny teenagers ?
Kids these days generally are not skinny. Overweight kids (boys and girls) far outweigh the small numbers who have anorexia. Shifting the population bell curve towards the slim end would not be a crisis.
Point 2
I find the idea that skinny Parisian catwalk models are responsible for teenage anorexia to be garbage. If you look at a teenager's role model it is more likely to be a TV or movie actress or a pop star (or a sports figure), than some skeleton in New York wearing a dress that looks like a cake.
These pop stars are all generally fairly fit, well proportioned people. Most pop stars these days perform dance routines (not so many pale goths in teen culture these days) and if a teenager with half a brain cell wants to look like their role model they know it will take 200 sit ups and some running, not starvation.
So if there are anoprexic kids, it's isn;t coming from skinny models.
It is the adults around them, and the advertising, that messes kids up. Regardless of target weight, the problem is the prevalence of ideas that
a) self esteem is inseparable from looks
b) changing one's body shape is caused by dieting, not a change in exercise habits. This is the predominant dietary message of all advertising that is targeted at the teenager's mother.
If kids eat proper food and do the hour a day of proper exercise they need, the amount they eat won't actually be an issue.
Back to the original post....
I have not yet understood for certain whether the original photoshopping was done by Ralph Lauren (RL) or was part of the parody. I assume the latter, so has anyone located the original ?
I'd have thought that showing the parody without making it clear this was photoshopped (and not by RL)was defaming RL (implying RL condoned skinny models).
But DCMA ? It's a transformative work, surely.
On the post: YouTube Smoking Guns? What Constitutes Actual Knowledge?
Proof of ownership ?
But he decides that in fact that is cool and sits back to see how many people view it.
Some other "do gooder" (C) writes to YT stating (correctly) that the work is infringing (even though artist A doesn't actually mind), and demands takedown.
Does C have to prove his credentials to YT before they move to takedown ? Will YT refuse, saying "you're not A" ?
Or will YT let anyone request anything be taken down ?
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