response 26 of 104:

Jul 24 13:42 UTC 2002

I agree with the last paragraph of #25. I believe the courts have ruled as
much with trademarks: Companies can lose some of their trademark rights if
their product name becomes so ubiquitous it's a de facto synonym for the
product itself (examples include Kleenex, Coke, and Xerox... how many
companies have a Minolta Xerox machine, and how many people blow their noses
on Puffs Kleenex?). Unfortunately, that's trademark law, not patent law,
although I'd think some of the concepts would be extended.
 
I haven't read the details on this. Is this any different than the GIF flak?
It was ultimately decided that end-users couldn't be held responsible for GIF
trademark violation, only programmers of graphics packages (more detail than
that, but that was the basic gist).

response 28 of 104:

Jul 24 15:07 UTC 2002

Bah, that's as bullshit as the GIF argument, but they're probably assuming
that because the GIF suit went that way, they can go there with JPG too.
*sigh*
"Henry Ford announced today that, since the automobile is popular, all
manufacturers of the automobile are infringing upon a patent that he would
have filed had he known how popular the automobile would be, and they all have
to pay him money fore very car they build."
bullshitbullshitbullshit

response 30 of 104:

Jul 25 13:20 UTC 2002

Re #29: I'm sure they are.  They're not my color bars, I snagged them
from another site.  IIRC, the site did note that they didn't imitate the
proper brightness levels because there's no way to ensure that in a
digital image.  Dunno if the 'blue filter trick' for adjusting
saturation and tint would still work with them.  Probably not, which
makes them sort of useless for monitor adjustment purposes, but I just
wanted an image with some sharp edges and areas of solid color.

response 32 of 104:

Jul 29 14:21 UTC 2002

An Australian Federal Court has ruled that Playstation mod chips are not
illegal when used to play legally purchased disks from other countries:
http://www.theregus.com/content/54/25764.html

response 34 of 104:

Aug 14 21:50 UTC 2002

Cnet carries a story from Declan McCullagh on the looming possibility
of criminal prosecutions for file sharing users.
 
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-949533.html

The actual hard news in the story is that a group of leading 
Senators and Congressmen from both parties, including Sens. Biden
and Feinstein for the Democrats, have written to the Justice Department
urging that such prosecutions begin.  The Cnet story contains a link
to the letter.  Under the NET act, I have written before, such 
prosecutions would be a slam dunk.  It would be sort of like a lottery.

response 36 of 104:

Aug 20 19:56 UTC 2002

Business Week runs an overview story reporting that the music industry
is finally starting to look seriously at Internet distribution models
which might work.  The industry is driven by the continued collapse
of physical CD sales, with sales figures down 12.8% from a year ago
through August 3, following the 2001 decline of 10%.  (I think those 
are dollar value figures, not units.)
 
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/aug2002/tc20020812_4809.htm
 
-----

Somebody called Forrester Research releases a study claiming that MP3
trading has not been the cause of the crash in music sales; Forrester's
study blames the recession, and competition from videogames and DVDs
for entertainment dollars.
 
http://www.globeandmail.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/front/RTGAM/20020813/gtmusic
/Front/homeBN/breakingnews
http://www.forrester.com/ER/Research/Report/Summary/0,1338,14854,00.html
 
 
(above from the forest of links following a Christian Science Monitor
 overview story, which does contain the news that I missed, that the FCC
 has mandated anticopying technology in "the next generation of 
 televisions.";  you can find that story from wired.com)

response 38 of 104:

Aug 21 13:11 UTC 2002

This could get interesting.  I mean, what we have here is probably the most
widespread example of popular disobediance of a law since Prohibition.
Widespread prosecutions are going to be highly politically unpopular, and
you may suddenly see people caring enough about this issue to actually
pressure their representatives to not knuckle under quite so thoroughly to
the MPAA and RIAA.  (Other than the geeks who already care, I mean.)

response 40 of 104:

Aug 22 00:08 UTC 2002

The Washington Post has an interesting overview piece:
 
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A42239-2002Aug20.html
 
"A New Tactic in the Download War:  Online 'Spoofing' Turns The Tables
 on Music Pirates."
 
Nothing terribly new, but it rounds up some choice material.
The hook/lead is about the appearance of bogus / fake MP3 files on 
the file swapping networks; the music companies are not 'fessing up 
to being behind this, but the idea is to clog the networks and 
get users to waste time, get frustrated, and go to the CD store.

(Digression:  I get the impression that the music industry thinks they
 can fight P2P file sharing to a draw with this tactic, but I have not 
 run into anyone complaining about such bogus files yet.)
 
Quote, after talking a bit about the music industry's 
quest for an uncopyable CD:
 

          "All this smacks of desperation," says Eric Garland,
          president of BigChampagne, a company hired by major
          labels to measure online file-sharing traffic. "When you've
          got a consumer movement of this magnitude, when tens of
          millions of people say, 'I think CD copying is cool and I'm
          within my rights to do it,' it gets to the point where you have
          to say uncle and build a business model around it rather than
          fight it." 

       ...


          The record labels have been spurred to action by figures
          they find terrifying: The number of "units shipped" -- CDs
          sent to record stores or directly to consumers -- fell by more
          than 6 percent last year, and it's widely expected to fall 6 to
          10 percent more by the end of 2002.

Most intriguing to me is the mention of a new MP3 recorder, the Ripflash,
priced at $179.   Google points to their website:
 
     http://www.pogoproducts.com/ripflash.html

This is, to my knowledge, the first self-contained MP3 recorder which
touts decent music quality.  As such, it's probably flatly illegal under
the Audio Home Recording Act (AHRA) because MP3 files do not incorporate
Serial Copy Management, to prohibit endless recopying.  I've seen about
two previous stand-alone MP3 recorders, and both of them were positioning
themselves as voice-only recorders for dictation and recordings of 
meetings, presumably in an attempt to stay under the RIAA's radar.
 
I might digress some more and mention that the AHRA is why so many people
are playing and recording music on their computers.  The AHRA mandated
that consumer digital audio recorders had to prohibit making copies of 
copies (Serial Copy Management System, or SCMS).  No product designed 
to conform to this law has had more than modest niche success in the 
market:
 
    Digital Compact Cassette is dead.
    Digital Audio Tape is a marginal pro-audio format.
    MiniDisc appeals to a small number of gadget freaks or people who 
       need really portable, decent-quality recording.
       I know about half a dozen MD users, including myself.
       The format appears to be fading; Best Buy is slower and slower on 
         restocking the Minidisc blank media
    Audio component CD recorders just haven't gotten any market impact,
       despite the glossy TV ads from Philips.

However, the AHRA exempted general-purpose computers from having to 
implement copy controls; thus, once the PC got a bit more powerful,
the race to move music into computers was on.   Consumers, almost
unanimously, have rejected Congress' intent that they should not have 
access to unrestricted digital copying; they have rejected this by 
the tens of millions.  To crib from someone else:  we are starting to 
move into real "consent of the governed" territory here.

(Sorry, I'm blathering again.)

response 42 of 104:

Aug 22 15:10 UTC 2002

The Rolling Stones are the last major rock band whose CDs still sound
crummy.  Slashdot reports on a plan to fix that starting in a week or 
so, with pointers to a story in Slate.  The new remastered Stones 
CDs will be done as dual layer CD/SACD discs.  SACD take an interesting
approach to copy prevention: they incorporate a "physical watermark,"
a bit pattern which is not part of the musical data stream, to 
identify an authorized copy.  SACD players will refuse to play any 
disc lacking the physical watermark bit-pattern. 

(Oh, SACD: Super Audio CD, yet another new format.  Reviews rave
about the sound quality.)

http://slashdot.org/articles/02/08/21/2012213.shtml?tid=141
http://slate.msn.com/?id=2069628
http://www.bitwareoz.com/sacd/faq.html

response 44 of 104:

Aug 22 17:34 UTC 2002

Is this an online or offline system?  By online, I mean that they
contact some sort of server, either via phone line or internet.  By
offline, I mean that the box in the store contains everything needed to
make the disk work.

response 46 of 104:

Aug 22 20:40 UTC 2002

I'm one of the people who is of the opinion that the perceived sound
improvement from SACD discs is due to the placebo effect.  Record
companies really like the idea, though, because they're hoping to sell
people all the same albums over again.  And audiophiles, who have always
been suspicious of regular CDs, will sign on.

response 48 of 104:

Aug 23 04:28 UTC 2002

  But that would be illegal!  :-p