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.

response 92 of 165:

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.

response 94 of 165:

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.

response 96 of 165:

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.

response 98 of 165:

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?

response 100 of 165:

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.

response 102 of 165:

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?

response 104 of 165:

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.

response 106 of 165:

May 16 04:32 UTC 2002

Wired thinks Napster is finished and runs an obituary written 
by Brad King, their Internet music correspondent:
 
http://www.wired.com/news/mp3/0,1285,52540,00.html
 
-----
 
The Kazaa music sharing operation has been suggesting that 
ISPs should pay a fee-per-user to the copyright industry, since
the ISPs are making money selling high-speed connections to 
users who want to swap files.   There's a tweak to the proposal
suggesting that the money should go directly to artists, with
nothing for the record company, and today's story in USA Today, 
referenced via Slashdot, says that Verizon is now supporting 
the idea.
 
http://slashdot.org/articles/02/05/14/232237.shtml?tid=141

response 108 of 165:

May 16 14:18 UTC 2002

www.fatchucks.com points to a huge parade of Napster obituary stories.
I'll single out this one from the Boston Globe for a few quotes:
 
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/136/business/The_legacy_of_Napster+.shtml
 
> 'Napster was absolutely a groundbreaking technology that changed the way
> consumers listened to music, discovered music, and interacted with music,'' 
> said Stacey Herron, an entertainment and media analyst with Jupiter 
> Research in New York. ''Napster so fundamentally changed the way people 
> interacted with music that there's no turning back.'' 

Matt Bailey, of Redshift Research, a "consulting firm that covers the 
digital entertainment industry:"

> ''If you take the three top free file-sharing 
> systems together - Kazaa, IMesh and
> Gnutella - they had an average of 2.15 million 
> users logged on at any given time in
> April,'' Bailey said. ''In February of last year, 
> when Napster was at its peak, there
> were only 1.57 million simultaneous users on the system.''

-----

Also via fatchucks.com:  Sony is trying to use the Scour technology to 
whip up a little P2P enthusiasm for a limited number of artists.
The songs can only be played for 30 days, and only if you are a 
registered user:

http://news.com.com/2100-1023-913534.html?tag=fd_top

There's a really mean review of this "service" at:
 
http://www.slyck.com/newsmay2002/051502a.html

response 110 of 165:

May 22 18:09 UTC 2002

Reported everywhere:  The new webcast royalty rate proposed by the 
CARP panel has been turned down by the Librarian of Congress, who 
for some obscure DMCA reason has the final say on setting the rate.
No news on what happens next for a month.

response 112 of 165:

May 22 23:29 UTC 2002

Dreaming about what I'd do if I were Librarian of Congress ...

Make Nicholson Baker pay all the royalties?