HomeWeekly News Roundup (14 November 2010)
I’ve been playing a lot of Fallout New Vegas recently, which isn’t very surprising for those who remember how fond I was of Fallout 3. And as a result, the quality of this issue of WNR may not be up to the usual high standards (haha), as I’m a bit distracted thinking about the best way to earn the caps needed to get the implants that I want (long story). FNV seems a much bigger game than Fallout 3, but this isn’t always a good thing, since it feels a bit less cohesive, as a game, to me. And it also means a lot more bugs, and I’m not talking about the radioactive kind.
And with so many distractions, I’ve only managed to find a few pieces of news before I got bored and started yet another 4 hour FNV session. So let’s get through this week’s news quickly so I can get back to figuring out the best way to get to the peak of Black Mountain.
In copyright news this week, it always surprised me that it didn’t happen sooner, but the FBI has finally gotten involved with the global anti-copyright protest launched by 4chan/Anonymous, otherwise known as Operation Payback (is a bitch).
The FBI is investigating the devastation caused by 4chan's Low Orbit Ion Cannon
The FBI has started investigating the denial of service attacks aimed at anyone associated with the pro-copyright lobby, from the RIAA/MPAA to copyright law firms. Despite making headline news several weeks ago, the FBI has only just gotten involved (or rather, they’ve only made their involvement known this week). But who do you arrest though? The whole point of the Low Orbit Ion Cannon is that anyone can join in the attack, anonymously. Will they go after 4chan? Or some of the individuals that joined in on the action using their own private, and more deadly, DDoS resources? Anyway, as I said earlier, this doesn’t surprise me at all. In fact, the first thing I thought of after reading about Operation Payback was what the FBI response was going to be, because as we all know, the FBI has practically become the private security force of the entertainment/pro-copyright lobby, having many times prioritized copyright operations over other more serious crimes.
The FBI aren’t the only law enforcement organisation to be overworked with copyright cases these days. The police departments of University towns may be completely overwhelmed if Universities start to follow the example set by Georgia’s Valdosta State University, by reporting any and all P2P usage to the police as suspected piracy activity (or at least threatening to do so). Note that I said “any and all” P2P usage, including legal usage, which the University appears unable to distinguish from the illegitimate kind. So Comp Science students downloading that latest Linux ISO (every “legal P2P” discussion has to feature the much talked about “Linux ISO”, doesn’t it?), might be disciplined by the University and have the incident reported to the police. This comes after the US government decided to link education funding to the ability of colleges and Universities to stop piracy (and to be fair to the current government, this was some left over legislation from the previous one). Putting education at risk to help out a multi-billion dollar industry in stopping acts that typically don’t cause them any harm anyway, is exactly the type of screwed-up pro-copyright legislation you would expect these days. And with funding at risk, how far will these colleges and Universities have to go in order to fulfil their federal obligations? Random computer searches? iPod inventory inspections? Full body cavity search for illegal MP3s?
The MPAA is fulfilling its duties to the US government this week by handing over a letter containing a list of “bad places”, websites that could offer illegal content, and regions in which these websites operate out of. For those interested, the list of “bad countries” include Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, South Korea and of course, the most evil-doing country in the world, Sweden, home of The Pirate Bay. The websites listed also included cyber-locker website, RapidShare. Not to be outdone, the RIAA came up with their own, even more broad, list of bad places, which included China’s most popular search engine, Baidu. The Baidu listing is interesting, because it fulfils the requirement to single out China as a bad bad country, which is always a popular political move, and also it gives notice to the likes of Google that they need to continue to cooperate or face being added to the naughty list too. VKontakte, Russia’s answer to Facebook, with Myspace/YouTube rolled into one service, was also placed on the RIAA’s list, perhaps as a warning to Facebok and YouTube as well. Both the MPAA and RIAA made it clear that their list was by no means an exhaustive list of all the Internet’s bad spots (a list like that would be like twenty thousand pages), but I have a suggestion for them that could save them a lot of time and reduce the list to just one entry. All they need to do is to simply write down “The Internet” as their list of “bad places”, and be done with it – we all know they want to. And then the US government can do their bureaucratic duties, and get “The Internet” banned, and receive their just reward of +15 Karma, 500 Caps and 800 XP and receive the “Idolized” reputation with the MPAA/RIAA. Must. Resist. Urge. To. Play. Fallout. New. Vegas…
One website that didn’t make the list this year was LimeWire, having been recently closed down. But despite the ban on the software, enterprising pirates have continued on and released a pirated version of LimeWire Pro, called LimeWire Pirate Edition, so that LimeWire can live on forever in infamy. The LimeWire people are not too pleased at this development, which could cause them more legal trouble, especially if it is found that they are connected to this “leak” IN some way, something they are strongly denying. But all this just proves that for all the effort gone into making the legal case, all the hours of billing by lawyers on both sides, and the years of investigative work done on the case, the result is that piracy continues unhindered once more. While I’m still not convinced who actually came up with the phrase “innovate or die”, but whomever did was a hundred percent correct, and instead of trying to stop piracy by fighting it head on, perhaps innovation is the key. Litigation certainly doesn’t seem to be working.
Steam Achievements, such as for games like Fallout New Vegas, adds to the gameplay experience
And I know this probably goes into the gaming section, but the point I wanted to make falls right here in the copyright section. A lot of retailers have begun to complain about how publishers are “encouraged” by Steam to add Steam related features to their games, even if the games themselves are being sold through other channels, including services that are competitors to Steam. You can sort of see their point, since every game like this they sell, they are actually promoting their competitor and accelerating their own demise, which is why some retailers have indicated their desire to boycott games that feature Steam. You can see why Steam is doing it as well, to grow their business, to get people hooked on their free add-on service so that they will buy games directly from Steam the next time.
So what does this have to do with copyright? Well, the way Steam has revolutionized digital delivery for PC/Mac games, despite using a healthy dose of DRM, perhaps shows the way, the only way, in which DRM can be used. With lower pricing (especially during sales), and add-on features like achievements and multi-player modes, and not having to insert the original DVD, people seem accept that the price for all this is a little bit of fairly non intrusive DRM. Now, if this kind of innovation can be extended to the movie and music, perhaps creating exclusive online content (much better than your typical BD-live crap), creating a healthy online community for music/movie lovers to share the passion, and at the same time, lower prices for digital download or streaming version of movies (and perhaps even free streaming of music, with options to purchase), all of this could help combat piracy by providing innovative features that people can’t get with the pirated versions.
Moving on to HD news. Microsoft has taken advantage of Apple’s reluctance to support Blu-ray and produced a promotional video to highlight this point.
Yet another gratuitous Fallout New Vegas reference ...
The video basically shows how Windows 7 supports Blu-ray and Macs do not (I shall skip a more detailed description of the video, since you can watch it for yourself, and also I didn’t think it was particularly witty or clever to be honest). As for the claim, yes, it is correct that you can watch Blu-ray movies in Windows 7 whereas you cannot easily do so on a Mac, but Windows 7 doesn’t offer native Blu-ray playback support at all, not out of the box anyway. But hardly anyone watches Blu-ray on their computer, mainly because it doesn’t look that much better on a small screen (especially the laptop screen demonstrated in the video) than your typical DVD, and the less said about the laptop speaker produced sound, the better. If they want a better selling point, why not produce a video showing Fallout New Vegas working in Windows and highlight the fact that the game isn’t even available on a Mac? And that the game needs a fairly powerful GPU, and options are very much limited on a Mac even if you use Bootcamp? Just make sure you don’t mention the way the game crashes every 20 minutes, although that’s not really Microsoft’s fault (Bethesda Softworks, for all their brilliance, really need to invest a bit more into beta testing).
You see what I did there, how I’m basically turning every issue into one about Fallout? Is it a deliberate attempt at humour, or am I subconsciously still thinking about playing FNV?
No need to ponder the reasons, since this fairly short WNR is at an end, and that means Fallout time! So until next week, have a great one, hope you get lucky at the Ultra-Luxe, may your locker/mailbox/metal box scavenging bring you a vast amount of valuable goods and/or caps, and watch out for the Deathclaws (which are a real PITA in FNV).
I need help.