response 66 of 165:

May 2 22:17 UTC 2002

OK, enough drift.
 
Did anyone run into the US webcast protest/shutdown on May 1?
According to news reports in many online sources,  many US webcasters
shutdown their normal operations: either they were completely silent
or else they ran announcements on how the proposed Internet broadcast
royalties would wipe them out.   The protest generated a lot of 
news coverage, at least, and there have been some suggestions that 
they are getting some traction in Congress with their argument that 
the proposed royalty rates would shut down almost the entire industry,
because the royalty rates are vastly in excess of the commercial 
webcaster's gross revenues, and way above anything hobbyists can 
afford.   Not to mention the problems in complying with the 
planned rule that *every connection* from *every listener*
be reported to the copyright industry.

response 68 of 165:

May 3 06:08 UTC 2002

Lots of noise about digital TV issues, and no clarity at all, 
except a general sense that the copyright industry appears intent
on stealthily imposing absolute, totalitarian control on viewer's
use of television. 

The best summary seems to be the EFF's weblog at 
    http://bpdg.blogs.eff.org/

The Newsbytes imprint of the Washington Post reported a story that 
the copyright industry and the hardware industry had reached agreement
on technology to control user's ability to manipulate digital TV
signals, and the two industries were asking Congress to pass 
legislation enforcing the agreement.  No details were specified.
However, Philips (the electronics firm) seems to be in fairly 
serious disagreement with the alleged consensus.
 
One of the EFF entries discusses the copyright industry's proposal
for forcing technologies and devices off the market if they are 
found, after they have been widely distributed, to be insufficiently
protective of copyright.    
            http://bpdg.blogs.eff.org/archives/000061.html
Also, sending any high quality video to a computer is to be 
strictly forbidden.
 
-----

Meanwhile, Slashdot passes along this one, from the San Jose
Mercury News:

http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/3186191.htm
 
In the copyright suit by the TV industry against the Replay TV 4000
digital video recorder, well, I'll just quote it:
 
> A federal magistrate in Los Angeles has ordered SonicBlue to spy 
> on thousands of digital video recorder users -- monitoring every 
> show they record, every commercial they skip and every program they 
> send electronically to a friend.
>
> Central District Court Magistrate Charles F. Eick told SonicBlue to 
> gather ``all available information'' about how consumers use the 
> Santa Clara company's latest generation ReplayTV 4000 video
> recorders, and turn the information over to the film studios and 
> television networks suing it for contributing to copyright 
> infringement.
...
> The plaintiffs asked SonicBlue to turn over information on how 
> individuals use the recording devices. SonicBlue said it does not 
> track that information. The magistrate, who is supervising discovery,
> ordered the company to write software in the next 60 days that 
> would record every ``click'' from every customer's remote control.

response 70 of 165:

May 3 12:43 UTC 2002

Well, that's it.  I'm definately not buying a PVR.

I think the *worst* thing they could do to digital TV is impose DRM on it. 
Think about it.  One of the big problems HDTV is facing is a lack of
consumer interest.  People just aren't buying into it in large numbers.  If
you start telling people they can't record their favorite shows, they're
going to stay away in droves and it will become the next DIVX, except with a
whole lot more development money down the drain.

response 72 of 165:

May 4 00:32 UTC 2002

I heard about the webcast protest/shutdown.  Consequently I did not 
attempt to listen to any webcasting that day.

I'm pretty much off listening to web music anyway.  It's most handy 
when I'm doing boring stuff at work, but the boring stuff I'm doing 
eats my processing power, or something, and the web music is constantly 
stopping to rebuffer.  This is particularly true if the boring stuff I 
have to do involves web searching, and yet we've got a huge pipeline 
here.  Thinking of bringing in my CD-Walkman instead.

That SonicBlue item is just stunningly awful.  Insert rant here; and 
yes, I think this is part of the same privacy invasion that's leading 
to useless intrusive security measures.

response 74 of 165:

May 4 19:12 UTC 2002

Yes, because the proposed copyright royalty only affects US webcasters.
(At least, I have not heard about any proposals to try and levy it 
on, say, the BBC.)
-----

Slashdot has a roundup of a couple of stories.
First, Vivendi Universal is talking about trying to make the upcoming
Eminem CD copy-prevented on all editions worldwide; previous 
copy-prevention efforts have been limited to one geographic region, 
mostly to test consumer response.  Reuters story from May 1 is at:
   http://news.com.com/2100-1023-896391.html

And a followup on the band Wilco and their new album
"Yankee Hotel Foxtrot," which was discussed above in resp:39 for about 
ten responses.  Their old label Reprise cut Wilco loose rather than 
release an album Reprise saw as uncommercial; Wilco also, according 
to an article in The New Republic, made the album available for 
online downloads while they were between record deals:
   http://thenewrepublic.com/doc.mhtml?i=online&s=edlund041502
Anyway, first week sales figures are in, and Reprise looks clueless 
for dumping Wilco, and the band looks like a genius for offering the 
album on the net:
   http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/trib/20020502/lo/wilco_defies_experts_as_fo
xtrot_gallops_1.html
 
In tabular form:
 
          title                     first week sales      billboard chart #
1999   SUMMERTEETH                    19,000                around #80
2002   YANKEE HOTEL FOXTROT           55,573                       #13

First week sales almost three times as great as the previous album, 
despite the tracks having been available for Internet download for weeks
or months.

response 76 of 165:

May 7 13:31 UTC 2002

I hope this goes through, but given all the money stacked against it I 
doubt it has a chance.
http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,52298,00.html

WASHINGTON -- Rep. Rick Boucher is finally ready to try and dismantle a 
key part of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. 

Boucher, a Virginia Democrat, said last July that he wanted to amend 
the DMCA to permit certain "fair uses" of digital content, such as 
backing up an audio CD by bypassing copy protection technology. 

In an interview on Thursday, Boucher said he now has sufficient 
support -- from the tech industry, librarians, and Internet activists --
 to feel comfortable introducing his bill "in the next month." 

"If I had introduced it six months ago, you wouldn't have seen this 
kind of support," said Boucher. 

As soon as it's introduced, Boucher's proposal seems certain to be 
targeted for defeat by content lobbyists including Hollywood, the 
recording industry and the publishing industry. 

Boucher plans to rewrite section 1201 of the DMCA, which says, "No 
person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively 
controls access to a work protected under this title." 

It doesn't require that the person bypassing the scheme is doing it to 
infringe on someone's copyright. Boucher believes that people should be 
allowed to circumvent technological protection for research, criticism 
or fair use purposes, such as reading an encrypted e-book on another 
computer. 

response 78 of 165:

May 8 16:00 UTC 2002

In the early days of radio, the record companies tried to prevent the radio
stations from broadcasting their music on the theory that nobody would buy
the records if they could hear them on the radio.  Then they discovered it
was worth their while not to charge, but to PAY, the radio stations to play
their music.  I don't understand how it would not equally benefit CD companies
to let their CDs be webcast.

response 80 of 165:

May 8 18:24 UTC 2002

  And it's equally about the record companies being able to control
  what gets played..

response 82 of 165:

May 8 21:25 UTC 2002

I was looking for classical music webcasts and many of the stations are no
longer in operation in the US.  Europe still has plenty, then there is Hong
Kong and Chile.  Maybe people will start listening to more 'foreign' music
of other genres and the US music companies will lose business before they
realize what idiots they were.

response 84 of 165:

May 9 01:01 UTC 2002

In the Netherlands everyone pays a yearly fee for any radio they own which
is hooked up to cable, and they all get to vote on what programming they want,
and the amount of each type of programming is based on the vote.  At least
for the noncommercial tax-supported stations.  There are pirate stations
broadcasting from ships.  I assume some of the for-pay cable TV stations are
also commercial free, am I wrong?  Requiring that one listen to ads in order
to hear music makes as much sense as requiring college students to play
football or vice versa.

response 86 of 165:

May 9 06:51 UTC 2002

For-pay cable channels are generally interuption-free.  They generally
run blurbs for other shows as fillers, which is a form of advertisement.
AMC used to run on the same system, although they now seem to be
evolving away from this.

response 88 of 165:

May 9 15:26 UTC 2002

The entire point of cable in the first place was to be ad-free.

response 90 of 165:

May 9 16:58 UTC 2002

re #88: There was cable TV in Houghton, MI in the 1950's because there 
were no locally accessible TV stations there.  The original point of 
cable was sharp reception and greater selection of programming.