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| Author |
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| 25 new of 165 responses total. |
krj
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response 81 of 165:
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May 8 20:54 UTC 2002 |
This quote from a current Business Week magazine interview with
Stanford Law professor Lawrence Lessig is directly relevant:
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/02_19/b3782610.htm
> Q: The current debate over Web radio is a good example. New fees
> that the U.S. copyright office has mandated threaten to put small
> Webcasters out of business.
>
> A: Web radio is a perfect example. In the course of its testimony
> before the CARP hearings [the Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel,
> the government group responsible for setting compulsory license fee
> for Webcasters] the RIAA argued that higher rates would reduce the
> number of competitors to four or five big players. That's their model:
> To wipe out diversity and get back to a place where only a few people
> control delivery.
(The article, titled "The Dinosaurs are Taking Over," argues that
the old-economy giants are moving in to control the Internet and
squeeze out independent service, independent content, pretty much
independent everything, and that in this power grab, Congress has
been the willing servant of the corporate powers.)
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keesan
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response 82 of 165:
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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.
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krj
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response 83 of 165:
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May 9 00:26 UTC 2002 |
Everyone's probably seen this one by now, but I'm putting this in here
for brighn anyway:
"TV exec says skipping the commercials is THEFT" :) :)
http://www.2600.com/news/display.shtml?id=1113
Jamie Kellner, chairman and CEO of Turner Broadcasting,
had a wide-ranging interview about the TV business in CABLEWORLD
magazine. To a query about why digital TV recorders
such as the Replay 4000 are bad, Kellner responded:
"Because of the ad skips.... It's theft.
Your contract with the network when you get the
show is you're going to watch the spots.
Otherwise you couldn't get the show on an ad-supported basis.
Any time you skip a commercial or watch the button
you're actually stealing the programming."
((I assume he means, "hit the fast-forward button"))
Kellner did allow that there was "a certain amount of tolerance" for
viewers going to the bathroom during commercials. How thoughtful!
2600 did include a link to the original article, but it has now been
moved into the pay section of inside.com. I did read enough of the
original interview, before it was restricted to paying users, to satisfy
myself that Mr. Kellner's views were not being distorted.
http://www.inside.com/product/product.asp?entity=CableWorld&pf_ID=7A2ACA71-
FAAD-41FC-A100-0B8A11C30373
-------
Slashdot pointed to the best followup I have seen:
http://research.yale.edu/lawmeme/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=198
"Top Ten New Copyright Crimes"
which is a Letterman-style list...
"Number 9: Changing radio stations in the car when a commercial comes on."
-------
Slashdot finds a further followup from "Broadcast and Cable" in which
Kellner suggests that users should be charged $250 per year for the
privilege of skipping commercials.
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/05/06/232213
http://www.tvinsite.com/broadcastingcable/index.asp?layout=story&doc_id=84804&display=breakingNews
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keesan
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response 84 of 165:
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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.
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senna
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response 85 of 165:
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May 9 03:07 UTC 2002 |
Big entertainment business has become so insular that skipping commercials
is now THEFT? I don't recall there being any contract signed for me to watch
broadcast television, so this is news to me.
Thank you, Ken, for your occasionally alarmist tracking of copyright issues
which brings to my attention very real idiocy, and, in situations like this,
outrageously humorous examples of the effects of frontal lobotomy.
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mdw
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response 86 of 165:
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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.
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slynne
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response 87 of 165:
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May 9 12:49 UTC 2002 |
Yeah, I have been bummed to find commercials on AMC. But I guess they
have to make a buck just like everyone else.
Personally, I would love to see everyone get a TiVo to skip the
commercials because that really would make that advertising time less
valuable which could mean that companies that advertise would look
elsewhere. This would mean a big loss of revenue for the TV/cable
networks, unless the "elsewhere" was product placement within the shows
themselves. It would probably mean that they would have to be forpay
services. I know that if I had to pay a few bucks for *each* channel I
got, I wouldnt get very many. But it would be worth it not to have the
commercials. If a lot of folks get TiVo, it could result in a loss in
choices as probably some networks would find themselves unable to adapt
to a new model. It *could* also result in lower quality programming but
I like to think that it would be the lower quality stuff that would get
lost if networks go under.
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void
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response 88 of 165:
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May 9 15:26 UTC 2002 |
The entire point of cable in the first place was to be ad-free.
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remmers
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response 89 of 165:
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May 9 16:30 UTC 2002 |
Now that AMC does commercials, I don't watch it anymore. Same
goes for Bravo, with rare exceptions. Wouldn't wanna be guilty
of stealing. :)
Re #84: Yes, I remember that when "pay-TV" (which later evolved
into cable) was first being discussed in the 1950s, one of the
selling points was going be freedom from commercials. Um...
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jep
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response 90 of 165:
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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.
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tpryan
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response 91 of 165:
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May 9 17:00 UTC 2002 |
The other end of it is the the local advertiser now has
a harder time than ever of getting their niche market into
the cable station slots.
I am sure some nightlife spot in Ann Arbor would love
to advertise only on Comedy Central's Insomniac. But no, instead
we get the ComCast self promotion ad instead. To me, it looks
like ComCast is not interested in the small order business.
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gull
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response 92 of 165:
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May 9 19:53 UTC 2002 |
Cable TV started as "community antenna television." (This is where the
acronym CATV comes from.) They'd put an array of single-channel Yagis
on top of some tall structure, pointed at the various local channels,
then amplify the signals and feed them out to residents, to avoid the
visual clutter of every house having its own outdoor TV antenna.
Obviously that wasn't commercial free since it was just another way to
get broadcast TV.
Even today most cable systems, as part of the francise agreement, have
to offer a cheap "basic service" level that mostly just provides area
broadcast stations. They rarely advertise that fact and will often
charge an arm and a leg to install it, but it usually exists.
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keesan
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response 93 of 165:
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May 10 01:33 UTC 2002 |
Last I knew the local basic service here was $30/month, hardly cheap.
It had suddenly gone up from $8.
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ea
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response 94 of 165:
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May 10 01:46 UTC 2002 |
92 - the acronym CATV has since been modified to be "Community Access
TV", which may go by other names including Public Access, or Community
Television.
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jmsaul
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response 95 of 165:
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May 10 03:53 UTC 2002 |
Re #88: I thought the point was to be able to show naked people and use
naughty words.
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dbratman
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response 96 of 165:
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May 12 09:43 UTC 2002 |
Well, there's two origins of cable tv, and they tend to get confused.
One is the provision of tv to back-country areas that get poor
broadcast reception, and that's always been commercial, simply because
it was a feed of broadcast stations. The other is cable-only channels,
intended in the first place for urban customers, which came along
around 1980, and that indeed was originally mostly commercial-free, the
idea being that subscription fees to cable would pay the cost. So much
for that notion.
Kellner's remark about stealing is profoundly disturbing, for several
reasons.
First, as several people have pointed out, applied to print
publications it would require that you read all the ads (and various
corollaries about electronic media suggest that you'd have to start at
the beginning and read the whole thing, read it only once, and you
couldn't pass it on to somebody else). It also suggests you can't flip
stations during commercials, either.
Second, it flies in the face of the whole basis of advertising, in
which the best ads are designed to actually attract attention and not
just lecture to a captive audience, and more than that, in which ad
rates are set with the specific understanding that there won't be 100%
feed-through.
Thirdly, if you can be required to watch the ads, you can also be
required to buy the wonderful products being pitched.
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gull
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response 97 of 165:
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May 14 15:01 UTC 2002 |
A couple interesting tidbits about copy-protected CDs, from The Register:
http://www.theregus.com/content/54/24940.html
First, it turns out some CD copy protection schemes can be defeated with
electrical tape or a Sharpie marker. The idea is to cover up enough of
the outer, intentionally corrupt track that the computer will ignore it.
Secondly, a new copy-protected CD release apparently does nasty things
to the flat-screen iMacs. Not only does it fail to play, it locks up
the computer and prevents it from rebooting properly as long as it's in
the drive. (iMacs, you'll recall, will try to boot off CDs.) It also
locks the CD tray, keeping you from remedying the situation by removing
the disc again. I'm sure this wasn't intentional, but it's an example
of what can happen when you start putting out intentionally non-standard
discs.
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gull
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response 98 of 165:
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May 14 15:07 UTC 2002 |
Here's Apple's page about the problem:
http://kbase.info.apple.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/kbase.woa/wa/query?searchMod
e=Ass
isted&type=id&val=KC.106882
They suggest several ways to try getting the disc out, but admit you may
have to take the machine in for service if it's a model that has no
manual eject hole. They seem to be taking a pretty hard-line stance on
these discs:
"CD audio discs that incorporate copyright protection technologies do
not adhere to published Compact Disc standards. Apple designs its CD
drives to support media that conforms to such standards. Apple computers
are not designed to support copyright protected media that do not
conform to such standards. Therefore, any attempt to use non standard
discs with Apple CD drives will be considered a misapplication of the
product. Under the terms of Apple's One-Year Limited Warranty, AppleCare
Protection Plan, or other AppleCare agreement any misapplication of the
product is excluded from Apple's repair coverage. Because the Apple
product is functioning correctly according to its design specifications,
any fee assessed by an Apple Authorized Service Provider or Apple for
repair service will not be Apple's responsibility."
Think there's the possibility of a class-action lawsuit against Sony
from people who have to pay Apple to have these discs extracted from
their systems?
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jmsaul
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response 99 of 165:
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May 14 15:12 UTC 2002 |
I'd hope so. The rumor is that putting a disc in actually damages the
firmware somehow, though I don't know how that's possible.
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gull
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response 100 of 165:
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May 14 15:26 UTC 2002 |
I doubt it's that. It sounds to me like it just confuses everything enough
that the drive can't eject the disc. I've heard of places having to strip
down iMacs and physically remove the disc by hand, but I haven't heard
anything about having to replace or reprogram the drives yet.
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dbratman
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response 101 of 165:
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May 14 16:53 UTC 2002 |
I applaud Apple's very hard-nosed, snotty response to the "nonstandard"
copy-protected CDs, but I have to say that the problem equally lies in
the Mac's equally bizarre and non-standard way of ejecting disks.
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krj
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response 102 of 165:
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May 14 16:59 UTC 2002 |
((One of the copy-prevention systems was rumored to screw up a
Windows PC to the point where the CD-R driver software had to be
reinstalled, but I cannot remember the details.))
((Not having an emergency manual eject is a really, really dumb
design decision, for reasons that should now be obvious...))
It's been suggested by someone I won't name (in case it's a really
stupid idea) that copy-prevented CDs which crash computers could
legally be equivalent to a malicious computer virus, and that there
could be liability under the Michigan law which was used to prosecute
the M-net vandal of two summers back. Hmm, should we draft a note
to the Attorney General?
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other
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response 103 of 165:
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May 14 18:12 UTC 2002 |
Not that it takes much to force system software to have to be reinstalled
on a windows machine anyway...
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mdw
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response 104 of 165:
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May 15 05:11 UTC 2002 |
I'd have to say that a cd-player that can't eject a cd that adheres to
the physical standards for a cd is defective, or at least, has a faulty
design. The manual eject button should only be necessary in cases where
it's no longer possible to safely apply power to the drive (ie, the
computer power supply is dead, the cd drive has somehow shorted ouet,
etc.) If the computer crashes because of the defective cd, then I'd say
the computer has other software or perhaps OS driver issues.
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krj
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response 105 of 165:
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May 15 12:14 UTC 2002 |
Wired and Cnet report that Napster Inc. took another step closer to the
corporate graveyard on Tuesday:
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,52532,00.html
The Napster corporate board of directors is torn by a bitter feud
between John Fanning, the uncle of program author Shawn Fanning,
who provided the earliest funding, and representatives of the
venture capitalist firm who provided the second round of Napster's
funding. The Napster CEO Konrad Hilbers, who unofficially represents
Napster's third funder, the Bertelsmann conglomerate (BMG), quit
on Tuesday because the board would not approve selling Napster
outright to Bertelsmann.
Bertelsmann had the foresight to make its $85 million investment in
Napster in the form of a loan; this means that in the looming bankruptcy,
Bertelsmann is probably in the driver's seat and gets any Napster assets
it wants anyway.
Napster's employees have been given two choices: quit immediately and
get severance pay, or else take unpaid leave for a week while the
company desperately searches for another buyer. The company is just
about out of operating funds.
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