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20 Jun 2009 08:07
6/20 Is this what it takes for Blu-ray to really take off? Enter the $99 Blu-ray player. It's only profile 1.1 but what did you expect as long as 2.0 isn't mandatory?
1.9 million USD - that's the RIAA's latest favorite number. It's the amount of damages awarded to them in the retrial of the first P2P trial in the US. That amount comes from 80'000$ damages per song shared (24 in total). If you think that number is completely out of whack (and there's no way the defendant will ever to be able to pay it), you're not alone. The defense will appeal and one of the arguments is already known: they're going after the constitutionality of the statutory damages (damages that have no relation to the actual damages that the plaintiffs incurred - if we take $0.99 as the price of one song, 1.939 million people would have to download one of those 24 songs (and have no intention of paying for it if they couldn't get it for free) for the labels to lose that amount of money). Apparently, there's prior case law on just that topic - and if you think about it, 80'000 times the value of the content, and for something done without any financial motives, does seem just a little bit excessive. And on top of that, also this time around, the jury wasn't told the plaintiff needed to prove that dissemination actually took place (so that somebody actually downloaded those songs in the shared folder)
That didn't take long - didn't I say it's a matter of time until Germany's Internet block list is to be expanded beyond its original aim? It took one single day, ladies and gentlemen, though I'm a bit surprised that the first attempt wasn't made by the copyright industry - instead conservative German politicians want to block violent content. Unfortunately, since there are elections later this year (makes you think why we got the whole child porn agenda just now, doesn't it?) and since the teenager who ran amok and killed 15 people last March just happened to play a round of Counterstrike, politicians immediately forget common sense and look for an easy target to blame. After all, it's obvious and scientifically proven that playing Counterstrike will turn you into a killing machine, right ;) As horrible as it is to lose somebody in such a tragedy, there's no excuse to put blame where it doesn't belong - any psychologist worth his/her salt can tell you that such actions cannot be attributed to one single source - it's a combination of many factors that make up the whole.
6/19 The popular Popcornhour media streamer is coming out in a second generation model: the C200 is powered by the latest Sigma Designs chipset and handles pretty much every format you throw at it - including Blu-ray if you add a drive to the unit. The unit should launch in July (August in Europe), no price has been set and there's no information yet as to whether Blu-ray ISOs are also supported and about the region code capabilities of the unit. But make it play those ISOs and region free and my A100 is going to retire and I'll finally have a Blu-ray player in the living room.
Is Internet cutoffs without due process coming back to New Zealand copyright law? The government is looking at reworking the controversial section that was scratched shortly before the law went into effect. To do that, they're consulting multiple parties, but curiously absent are ISPs and any subscriber advocates - so effectively it'll come down to a choir championed by the copyright cartels singing Vive la France. How can any law be fair and balanced if you don't have all the interests at one table and they all have the same amount of influence?
Yesterday, the UK's "Digital Britain Report" has finally been revealed. It is all about expanding Internet access, higher speeds and another major section of interest: copyright law. As expected, there's no three strikes but instead ISPs should forward copyright notices from rights holders and there's the potential of technical measures against filesharing. On top of that, ISPs are supposed to keep records on file sharers, to be turned over to the industry when they intend to sue one (provided they get a court order)
Finally, under the guise of protecting the children, Germany is following such stand up nations like North Korea or China to censor the Internet. A secret list (and no oversight) of websites to be blocked is to be created and then all ISPs have to block access to those sites. The list of supposed to only contain child pornography, and those that pushed the agenda claim the law contains safeguards that would prevent sites containing other content to be added to the block list, but I bet you that within a month, we'll see the first attempt to include other kind of content - most likely sites that the copyright industry would like to see blocked (so on top of that list will be The Pirate Bay). And since the block is done on a DNS level, all you need to do is use an out of country DNS server to circumvent the measure - and even though the law contains some last minute additions that require that an attempt is first made to take the offending site offline, but since the whole thing is secret, we'll never know if this will really lead to more people who abuse children and put their "exploits" on the net will actually be brought to justice. And, to really show the law is more about pulling the curtain than to get that kind of content off the net is the fact that if a site is added to the list, the hosting company is not even informed (you'd think it's in everybody's interest to take down kiddie porn immediately).
Pro industry legislation that screws over the regular folks seem to be all the rage these days (and have been for a while) at least if technology and copyright is concerned. Here's one that's decidedly pro consumer and the industry will be screaming bloody murder about it: Eric Massa's Broadband Internet Fairness act, which would require regulatory approval of any usage based billing for broadband access. In other words, ISPs would have to justify to the FCC why they want to impose massive price hikes when cost per user when cost has consistently gone down over the past years (so making a case would prove rather difficult and hence expect fierce opposition by the pro cap lobby).
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