Archive for March, 2005
These are a few of my favourite things - to hate
There’s an interesting discussion on Plastic about the irritations of modern life: pizza places where the smallest pizza is called the “medium”, cyclists and so on. As rampant negativity is always good fun (and I’m in a particularly foul mood), I thought I’d start my own wee enemies list. Your contributions, as ever, are welcome :)
* Coffee machines that lie. My coffee maker’s jug says there are ten cups of coffee. So why, then, does it only fill my Spider-Man 2 mug (you’re jealous, I can tell) twice?
* Evangelists. Not the religious type (although I hate them too), but evangelists for X band, or Y operating system, or whatever. “Yeah but OK maybe Apple did kill your entire family but at least they’re not Micro$oft!”
* People who write Micro$oft when they’re not taking the piss out of people who write Micro$oft.
* Supermarkets. I want Rowats pickled onions, not Tesco Value, Tesco Finest or Tesco We’ve Stopped Selling Rowats Ner Ner Ner onions, but can I find any? No. Bastards.
* Other people’s stereos. Why is it that when someone next door plays loud music, it’s never, ever, ever something you like?
* People who sit in the pub and play every sodding ringtone to their friends.
* Everyone at Jamster.
* People who send text messages to get answers to pub quizzes. Use a GPRS connection and Google it, you daft twats!
* Press releases where the words “press release” are the only bits I understand.
* Junk mail, junk email, cold callers, charity muggers, chain letters, hoax virus warnings…
* Leaflets in magazines. Not the ones you shake out in the supermarket - they’re fine - but the ones that live in a hidden compartment inside the magazine. Exactly two minutes after you relax in the bath and start reading, the secret compartment opens and ten tons of dead tree lands on your knackers.
* People who have the Nokia Tune as their “new text message” sound. Particularly if it’s at full volume.
* People who adopt the “if I pretend I can’t see him, he’s not allowed to run me over” approach when walking out in front of fast-moving cars.
* People in doorways. Not big issue sellers, or beggars, but the people who decide that the doorway of a shop is the perfect place to stop dead and have a conversation with their (real or imaginary) friend.
* Hangup calls on my answering machine. Leave a message!
* Xbox games that don’t let you save your progress, kill you for no apparent reason and then send you back to a part of the game you completed days before.
* Psychic reviewers on Amazon.com reviewing games, albums and books that haven’t even been started, let alone released.
Gaaah, I’m getting angry now. More later, I’m sure…
This is why you shouldn’t trust digital music
The Inquirer - and lots of other sites - reports that Apple has tweaked iTunes to reduce its functionality again.
This time, it’s streaming: iTunes used to let you deliver audio streams to five different users at the same time; now, it’s five users per day. The last time Apple tweaked what you can and can’t do with music, it was protected music playlists: you used to be able to burn ten copies of a playlist, but that was reduced to seven (although to be fair, the number of authorised machines per track was increased at the same time). So what’s next?
It’s a classic example of the problem with digital rights management technology: what you pay for today might not be what you get a few months down the line. If you purchase unprotected music, you know exactly what you’re getting: a track that you can do what you want with, forever. When you purchase protected music, each track contains a time bomb. All that’s needed to activate that bomb is a software update: download the update, and you lose some functionality. Refuse to download the update and your music collection can’t be expanded, because the music store only works with the very latest version of the music software. Older versions are not supported.
We’ve seen endless examples of software firms announcing that, as of X date, they’ll no longer support older versions of their packages; in some cases the firms have then crippled features (such as online banking in accounts software) to force their users to upgrade. There is absolutely no technical reason why the same can’t happen with music.
Allow me to put on my tinfoil hat.
In the 1980s, the music industry discovered something amazing. If it introduced a shiny new format, people would rush out to the shops and buy their record collection all over again. For the record companies, this was fantastic news: they’d already paid for those old recordings, so the cost of putting them on the new-fangled CD format was minimal; thanks to some clever wangling, they even managed to cut artists’ royalties on CD (because it was a new format and might not succeed - those reduced royalties were still in record contracts a few years ago, 20-odd years after CD became a soaraway success).
During the 80s the music business wasn’t in fantastic shape, but selling old stuff on CD kept the money rolling in. They tried to replicate the success of CD with some new formats: MiniDisc and DCC. They both bombed, and MiniDisc was reborn as a medium for recording rather than a format for buying new music. The industry waited a few years and tried again, this time with DVD-Audio and Super Audio CD. To date, neither format has been a huge success: we’re perfectly happy with CDs.
And then, digital music arrived. However, while the record companies had some success selling old records in the new download formats, there was a fundamental problem: people could simply rip their CDs to MP3 (or AAC, or WMA) without paying any extra money. So under the banner of anti-piracy, the shelves started filling with copy-protected CDs. The copy protection didn’t prevent those songs from being pirated or swapped on peer to peer networks, but that wasn’t the point: the copy protection stopped Joe Punter from ripping his CDs to his computer. If he wanted digital music, he’d have to buy a shiny new copy from iTunes or Napster.
Let’s fast-forward a bit. The music industry continues to decline, every CD is copy protected, and the market for downloads is saturated. You’re the boss of a giant record company, your share price is in the toilet and the shareholders are revolting. But there’s a solution: thanks to DRM, you know that if you flick one little switch, you can force - not persuade, but force - people to upgrade their record collections all over again. It wouldn’t happen overnight; rather, the downloads would die of a thousand cuts. You’d still be able to play the music, but you wouldn’t be able to stream it. The latest generations of music hardware (with mandatory copy protection technology) wouldn’t support it. And so on.
It’s not a question of “would you flick that switch?”; it’s a question of when.
Happy listening.
A Freudian slip?
A nice wee story from today’s Herald Diary:
Someone in the health service assures us that a patient’s notes included: “Examination of genitalia reveals that he is circus sized.”
Collateral damage in the copyright wars
I’m just back from Radio Scotland, where I took part in a discussion about the BPI’s legal action against file sharers. As it’s daytime radio, the angle was whether parents should be worried; the discussion featured two teenage music downloaders - neither of whom realised that sharing could land them in hot water - and a mother-of-two, who wasn’t entirely sure whether her teenage girls’ downloading was legal or illegal.
Should parents be worried? Absolutely. In many cases people don’t realise they’re breaking the law (especially if they pay for file sharing software - it’s understandable if they assume that if they pay for the program, then their downloads are legit), or they don’t realise they’re sharing hundreds of files with the entire internet; I’m sure that in some cases the first indication parents will have of any problem is when the legal letters come thudding through the door. By which time, of course, it’s too late to do anything.
Leaving aside the net community vs the evil record industry arguments, these people are the collateral damage in the copyright wars. They don’t know or necessarily care about the music industry, digital rights management, copyright law or anything else; however, they’re caught in the crossfire between the cynical companies who sell software based on copyright infringement, and the determination of the music business to break butterflies on a wheel.
It’s a thoroughly depressing situation, and while I think the music business should be ashamed of itself when it crows about relieving parents of two months’ wages, I think we should be equally appalled by the behaviour of some of the file sharing software firms whose profits ultimately depend on the financial ruin of their customers.
More than ever before, we need the entertainment industry, the software industry, the telecoms industry and possibly governments to knock some heads together and find a solution to the file sharing problem - because let’s face it, file sharing isn’t going away. My gut feeling is that a PRS-style royalty system and a small broadband tax would be the answer; there may be another, better, solution. I don’t care what it is, but we need to find a way to stop ordinary people from being caught in the crossfire of a war they didn’t even know was raging. This could - and should - have been solved years ago.
Allofmp3.com is legal - in Russia, anyway
The Register notes that the Russian prosecutor won’t be taking action against Allofmp3.com, thanks to a loophole in Russian copyright law. I’m still unsure whether using the site is legal or illegal for you or I, though - any legally-minded types willing to hazard a guess?
Legality aside, Allofmp3.com is a great way of providing music: you pick the tunes, choose the format, select the bitrate and then pay according to the resulting file size. So if you want 128Kbps MP3s, you can - but if you want the original WAV files, you can have them too. If only our legal download shops would do the same.
File sharing settlements aren’t a legal victory
The BPI’s settlements with 23 file sharers aren’t a legal victory, because the cases haven’t been heard in court. Instead, people have settled to make the lawsuits go away, and as a result the record industry’s claims haven’t been put under the legal microscope.
Of course, it’s possible that had the file sharers ended up in court, they’d have lost badly and ended up having to pay even more damages; however, it’s equally possible that the cases might have been thrown out, or the damages reduced to a negligible amount. To win in court the BPI would have to demonstrate that file sharing equates to lost sales, and for every survey that suggests that’s the case there’s a survey that says the exact opposite. A verdict in the BPI’s favour is not a foregone conclusion.
As with the RIAA’s actions, the BPI’s actions make me very uncomfortable. As file sharing is covered by civil rather than criminal law, legal aid won’t be available to the defendants; as a result, even if they won in court the legal process would be horrifically expensive. So what’s happening here is that the BPI is going after people who could possibly win a court case, but the cost of that court case would be much, much more than the cost of settling out of court. Settling doesn’t necessarily mean that people are guilty; it just means they can’t afford a lawyer.
Back in August, I wrote about the RIAA’s out of court settlements:
anyone targeted by the record industry is faced with Hobson’s Choice. If you fight and lose, you could end up being fined hundreds of thousands of dollars; if you fight and win, you’ll still face thousands of dollars in legal fees. As a result, the RIAA can demand sums of $3,000, $5,000, $10,000 from the people it accuses of file sharing, safe in the knowledge that any sensible person would pay up.
In effect, the record industry doesn’t have to prove that it’s right, or that the people it’s targeting are breaking the law; it just needs to have more money than the people it targets. Guilt or innocence are utterly irrelevant.
We’ve already seen how that can be abused; last year, Lawrence Lessig described the way in which copyright law and big firms’ deep pockets can be abused: a programmer who developed a search engine was targeted by the RIAA on the grounds that, because his search engine could also find MP3s, it was clearly a tool designed solely to make musicians homeless. I blogged about it back in August:
it’s pretty clear that the developer wasn’t trying to create a tool for pirates, but instead was essentially trying to build a Google-style service for his university network. However, fighting the case in court would have cost $250,000 *even if he won*, while the statutory damages in US copyright law meant that had he lost, he could have been liable for up to $15 million in damages. Faced with Hobson’s Choice, the developer handed over his life savings to the RIAA to get them to withdraw their lawsuit.
There’s a line in the BPI press release that, unintentionally I’m sure, demonstrates the problem:
“These settlements show we can and we will enforce the law.”
The last time I checked, enforcing the law was the courts’ job.
UK filesharers settle out of court
The BPI reports that of the 26 ongoing cases against UK file sharers, 23 have been settled out of court:
The 23 settlements announced today arise out of the 26 cases announced by the BPI in October 2004. Three cases are still in negotiation and legal action may follow.
The settlements include internet users from all over the UK – 17 men and six women. The average settlement is more than £2,000 – more than a month’s salary for the average UK worker. Two illegal filesharers are paying more than £4,000 each to settle their cases.
…The BPI announced that it will be going to the High Court today seeking orders for the disclosure of the identities of a further 31 illegal filesharers on a range of peer-to-peer networks, including KaZaA, eDonkey, Grokster, Soulseek, DirectConnect, Limewire, Bearshare and Imesh.
I think I need a holiday
I’m spending too much time following digital music and related hardware: last night I had a ridiculously detailed dream about a new Sony iPod killer that combined video, music and a torch in one simple device. It was a bit like a pair of earphones, but the left hand “phone” was a large blue rectangle the size of a cricket bat, with a torch at the end. And there was a huge battery pack that you had to strap around your waist like a diver’s weight belt. The Video WalkMan had a piano keyboard, lots of flashing lights and on the bit nearest your face, a video screen. Oh, and it was a really horrible, vivid metallic blue.
To sell the device Sony came up with an ad campaign featuring Bono and showing him in two situations: with an iPod, and with Sony’s video WalkMan. So you’d see him on a plane with his iPod, bored and asleep; then you’d see him with an electronic cricket bat strapped to his head, watching the video for Vertigo and rubbing his hands with glee.
I think I need a holiday.
Squander Two’s temporary change of address
Due to hosting problems, Squander Two’s blog has been temporarily relocated. You’ll find it here.
Why don’t we take games seriously?
Reporting on the BAFTA awards for video games, Media Guardian notes that the UK games industry is a £2 billion-a-year business [free registration required to read the article]. It’s an industry that’s ignored at best and mocked at worst, and yet it’s bigger than the UK film industry (worth £1.42 billion in 1999; I can’t find more recent figures) and almost half the size of the UK music business (£5bn per year). Globally it’s even bigger: to take just one example, Halo 2 racked up $100 million in sales in just 24 hours.
Mark Rawlinson, deputy director general of the trade body ELSPA, says:
“It is our desire that games will start to be reviewed alongside music, books, films and theatre and not be confined to the techie pages. They’re about entertainment, art and culture.”
I couldn’t agree more.