HomeWeekly News Roundup (11 July 2010)
Hope you’ve had a good week. It’s been busy again for me, but mostly non website related stuff. So no mid week blog again, but I am working on something (honestly), and it should be up early next week. It was a relatively busy news week, so let’s get started.
In copyright news, the big news occurred late in the week and it relates to one of the infamous RIAA lawsuits. Infamous due to the amount of damages awarded to the billion dollar industry trade group. The latest decision relates to the smaller of the damages (“only” $675,000), awarded against PhD student Joel Tenenbaum.
Joel Tenenbaum now "only" has to pay $64,000 for downloading 30 songs
The judge for the case, Nancy Gertner, has finally ruled on the damages awarded by the jury and has reduced what experts have called an “unconstitutional” amount. The new amount is now only a tenth of the original amount, at $67,500, or $2,250 per song. Interestingly, this is exactly the same amount per song that was awarded against single mother Jammie Thomas, after the judge in that case also reduced the amount of damages. However, even this amount was critisized by Gertner as “severe” or “harsh”. Despite this, the RIAA is not pleased at the judge’s decisions, and they have stated their desire to contest the ruling. I’ve previously analysed the original verdict and the original amount of damages, and it’s easy to see why the judge would think it was excessive. If you take into account the retail cost (not price) or songs, and the number of people that Tenenbaum or Thomas provided a full copy of the songs to, then it would take years of continuous sharing on a fast connection in order to rack up the amount of damages that the RIAA was originally awarded. There is punitive damages, but you have to question when so many people are doing exactly the same as Tenenbaum and Thomas, why only go after these two individuals? So the RIAA’s intent was to make an example out of these two, but I’m not sure the court appreciates this, especially when these two hardly represents the most notorious of song sharers, or someone who actually profited from their illegal activities. Perhaps the RIAA chose poorly when deciding to go after a student and single mother. I guess it’s better than trying to shake down 10 year old girls.
The Pirate Bay survives another day in Belgium at least
The “good” court news continues with a news item that was just posted today. A Belgian court has ruled that ISPs don’t need to cave in to the demand by anti-piracy agencies to shut down access to The Pirate Bay. It’s a big blow to The Belgian Anti-Piracy Federation (BAF), who had wanted the court to order the ISPs to blocks its subscribers from accessing The Pirate Bay. Instead, the court sided with the ISPs, which believe that it isn’t the place for Internet service providers to place judgement on whether websites can or cannot be viewed by its customers. The BAF obviously strongly disagreed, calling it the legal protection of “illegal websites”. It’s becoming clearer that anti-piracy groups wish to circumvent legal establishments entirely in their crusade against copyright infringement on the Internet. And this is exactly why they wish to avoid going through the legal system, since the result can often be quite unpredictable. The truth is that only a court can decide whether something is illegal or not, and only the legal system can provide avenues of appeal to make the system fair. What anti-piracy agencies are proposing, with some success, will remove many of the basic legal rights people have been enjoying for the last few hundred years, all in the name of a “speedy resolution” and an extremely biased outcome. This is a threat to the fundamental principles behind democracy and rule of law, and I’m always surprised that so called democratic governments go along with the demands of the industry without raising any of these issues, but I guess that’s easy to do when the same industry bombards you with scary figures about the “real cost” of piracy, some figures that have no basis in reality at all.
But not all government take the approach that everything the copyright holders say is correct. The Brazilian government is proposing changes to their own copyright laws that will copy aspects of the US DMCA, but at the very least, they are also considering the issue of fair use. Where the US DMCA practically overrules fair use whenever any kind of DRM is used, the Brazilian model will ensure that DRM can only be used on content that actually warrants protection, and that once materials fall into public domain, then the DRM should “naturally” wither away. A sort of timed DRM system, that automatically shuts off once copyright holders lose their rights on the content. It would also make it an offence for DRM to restrict access to content that otherwise should not have restrictions, such as public domain content, and that if DRM exists on such content, users will be free to hack away at it to remove it or disable it as they see fit. While it would still be illegal to circumvent DRM for copyrighted content, these provisions at least take into account the side effects of DRM, its ability to lock content forever and affect the way the content can be used. It’s one thing for DRM to prevent copying, but many rightsholders are using it as a way to shape way users use the content, and copyright laws should not permit this if these actions interfere with fair use. For example, if a publisher releases songs that can only be played on a certain device, thanks to DRM, and they secretly make deals with the device manufacturer, then how is this good for competition and thus the economy?
The 3DS will feature stronger anti-piracy features that are making publishers excited
And then we have publishers that are obsessed with DRM, to the point where if a good system isn’t available, they choose not to publish content to that system. Speaking of Nintendo’s new 3D DS console, the 3DS, THQ VP of global publishing expressed his excitement at the new 3D technology, but was even more impressed by Nintendo’s promised new anti-piracy technology, citing THQ’s reluctance to publish new titles for the original DS console due to piracy reasons. Now this strikes me as having exactly the wrong attitude. Or perhaps the right attitude when a publisher is not confident in the quality of its products. While popular games get pirated more, popular games also sell more. It’s only the poor games that almost always have a higher piracy-to-sales ratio, and in an industry where quality hasn’t always been the top priority (think of the number of poor to absolutely unplayable games being released every year), piracy is hurting. Of course, DS piracy has been made extremely easy by the use of R4 flash carts, but I’m absolutely certain that without the “easy to pirate” factor, the DS would be less successful than it is today. And it is this success that creates the large userbase in which game publishers can take advantage of, buy only if they produce good games that people want to buy. It seems too often anti-piracy measures are used not to stop piracy, but to stop people finding out too easily or too soon how crap something is, and this goes for content like movies and music too, not just games.
Let’s move on to the HD/3D news. The big news of the week was Cyberlink’s release of the “Mark II” patch for PowerDVD 10 Ultra 3D users. The patch adds Blu-ray 3D support, making it the first Blu-ray 3D solution for the PC that is available for general sale.
PowerDVD 10 Ultra 3D adds Blu-ray 3D support
So for those with Nvidia’s GeForce 3D Vision technology, or a suitable 3D TV to connect to, then Blu-ray 3D is now possible with a PC based solution (and if you have the right GPU, it may even be hardware accelerated). Of course, the lack of Blu-ray 3D content means there’s not much to use PowerDVD 10 Ultra 3D Mark II on. Due to various reasons on my end, I cannot test Blu-ray 3D playback on PowerDVD Mark II with my Samsung 3D TV yet, so that’s a shame. PowerDVD 10 does include support for anaglyph red/cyan glasses, and I tried the 3D effects on the Monsters vs Aliens Blu-ray 3D disc, and it worked remarkably well (obviously poor colour reproduction, but that’s to be expected with an anaglyph system).
Speaking of software updates, Sony has finally put a date on the launch of the Blu-ray 3D update for the PS3, with Sony reps stating that it will be made available sometime in September. Once again, the PS3 has shown why its flexible architecture makes it a great Blu-ray player, if not the best (to be fair, standalones have caught up in terms of loading speed and versatility, although 2D players still can’t be upgraded to 3D mostly). What will be interesting to see is if the PS3’s older HDMI port can handle the increased bandwidth required by 3D, whether it can provide 1080p to each eye. In theory, it should, but we’ll have to wait and see.
But not everyone is interested in 3D, not even in tech-loving Japan. A recent survey showed that only 31% of those surveyed were interested in 3D TVs, with most citing cost, lack of content and having to wear uncomfortable glasses as major turn offs. I would also add that there are many that just haven’t experienced the new wave of 3D technologies (including 3D filmmaking), instead remembering back to the bad old days of red/cyan glasses as a benchmark for 3D performance. 3D definitely isn’t for everyone, and after playing around with my 3D TV, I would say that I definitely don’t want to watch hours and hours of content with the shutter glasses on, but it’s definitely something worth trying out for yourself. And it’s easy to get a demo, since every electronic store will surely have a 3D display set up by now thanks to the 3D hype. Of course, the cost requirements will be high right now, and many just don’t feel like replacing their recently purchased 2D Blu-ray player with a 3D player.
HDBaseT could take over from HDMI and use your existing cabled home networking setup
While recently purchased 2D Blu-ray players may already be considered obsolete, thanks to the bad precedent set by the introduction of Blu-ray profiles (ie. constantly upgraded specifications for hardware), HDMI itself may be obsolete, thanks to a new connection format called HDBaseT. The genius behind HDBaseT is that it’s entirely dependent on current technology – it users Ethernet cabling and ports, but instead of transferring data, it transfers audio and video (and data, like HDMI 1.4). The advantage is that because almost every device these days already have an Ethernet port, then turning that port into something that can also take audio/video would seem to make sense. And with HDMI not so good a long distances, the HDBaseT’s cable length of 100m should solve this problem as well. In fact, people are already using Ethernet cabling to extend HDMI, so this is really just taking an existing solution and turning it into a standard. With Sony, Samsung and LG backing the format, could it threaten HDMI? I for one don’t think so because HDMI is too well established. At best, HDBaseT will complement HDMI, but HDMI is here to stay. The bigger question is why didn’t we just move straight to something like HDBaseT, since HDMI has far too many shortcomings (like handshake issues, length issues, confusing version numbering, non hot pluggable …)
There really isn’t a lot of new things in gaming, unless you count the news that Hulu Plus on the PS3 won’t require PlayStation Plus as gaming news (which I don’t), so this is as good as any place to end this week’s WNR. Have a nice week and see you in 7 days.