HomeWeekly News Roundup (15 April 2012)
Welcome to another edition of the WNR. Not a very busy weeks judging by the number of news stories, so hopefully we can get this done rather quickly. I’ve been busy working on that little update for Digital Digest, which I promise will be launched next week, even if it’s still only half-completed (to be fair, it’s more like 80% completed). And you know I’m serious about meeting this rather artificial deadline by the fact that I didn’t even play that much Skyrim this past week!
One development that came too late in the week to be included was the March NPD results, and I’ll write the full report early next week.
Let’s start with the copyright news, starting with the revelation that, even within the MPAA itself, not everyone was convinced that SOPA was the right solution for the web piracy problem.
It seems the anti-SOPA/PIPA sentiment was also alive and well within the MPAA itself (photo credits: Alain-Christian @ flickr)
When the anti-SOPA Internet Society hired a former MPAA executive, there was a bit of a controversy as you would expect. This prompted the MPAA’s former chief technology policy officer, Paul Brigner, to come out and explain a few things about his new appointment, including his apparent opposition to SOPA/PIPA. It seems Brigner left the MPAA at least partially because he felt SOPA was not the right solution to the piracy problem, and that SOPA and other “mandated technical solutions” are not “mutually compatible with the health of the Internet”. If the MPAA can’t even convince it’s own tech policy officer of the merits of SOPA, perhaps it really doesn’t have much merit at all.
But you get the feeling that the MPAA will never be fully satisfied until they get the power to not only squash any website it wants, but also to force others (like ISPs, governments) to help them do most of the heavy lifting. They will have ruined the Internet by then of course, probably only to find out that piracy has not only not slowed, but it has shifted to other parts of the Internet that can’t be easily controlled or legislated. And that, without argument, would be a far worse situation than what the one today.
It appears “blowback” invariably happens every time the copyright lobby launches a new crackdown, especially using technological measures. Every DRM has been met with an even stronger anti-DRM. Going after torrent sites have only resulted in more resilient torrenting methods. Which seems to indicate that going after video embedding, the MPAA’s latest manoeuvre, may backfire as well. The MPAA is getting itself involved in a legal showdown that originally only involved an adult entertainment company, Flava Works, and myVidster, a website that allowed people to post and share their video embeds, but now includes the likes of Google, Facebook, the EFF, and of course, the MPAA. The tech giants saw the original court ruling, which was in favour of Flava Works, as severely flawed, setting a precedent that could have huge repercussions for the entire Internet. The judge in the case failed to make the distinction between linking/embedding, and hosting, something that could make Google Images liable for the copyright infringement of any image in its database for example, or make Facebook sharing a legal minefield. There was also the issue of a “repeat infringer” policy, or Flava Works’ claim that myVidster did not have one, and how it relates to linked/embedded and hosted infringement. It seems to me that the DMCA is rather unclear about what a “repeat infringer” is, and it seems the law leaves service providers and Internet intermediaries to define what it actually means and what kind of policy to implement, even if it is one not to the satisfactory of content holders. And since myVidster did have a working DMCA take-down process, and that it did not host anything, the ruling seems a bit harsh. Also, you have to question why Flava Works went after myVidster, instead of going after the hosts of the actual videos, the dime a dozen porn tube sites. The responsibility cannot keep on flowing downwards until you get to someone that’s easier to sue.
Hotfile's expert says the most downloaded files on their network were two open source files
An anti-MPAA theme seems to be developing this week, since the only other copyright story is also MPAA related. This one has to do with the MPAA’s lawsuit against Hotfile, where the MPAA, using their own expert, argued that 90% of all downloads on Hotfile were infringing content, and that the Hotfile had few, if any, legitimate uses. This week it was revealed that Hotfile’s own expert, Duke University law professor James Boyle, found that this really wasn’t the case at all. Professor Boyle found that in actual fact, the two most downloaded files on Hotfile were actually open source software, with more than 1.5 million downloads between them. And while the “90%” figure wasn’t entirely debunked, and I think it’s hard to argue against the fact that a large percentage of total downloads on file hosting sites like Hotfile and Megaupload are of the infringing nature, I think in terms of the sheer number of different uploads (ie. not taking into account the number of downloads), I suspect there is also a large percentage of non infringing files on these networks (your typical spreadsheet, Word doc, PDF, home videos and other files too large to share via email, that may very well only be downloaded once, but still a key reason why people use file hosting sites).
This really is another grey area in the law. Take an extreme example where 90% of all different files on Hotfile were non infringing, but 90% of all downloads were infringing, then would Hotfile’s non infringing uses make it legal, assuming the website had a working DMCA process? How much is too much, and how much is “enough” when it comes to anti-piracy?
I read an interesting article this week on Forbes’ blog, where the headline was “Sony’s Blues Caused By Blu-ray”, a rather controversial title if you ask me.
The actual article, despite the headline, did cover more than just Blu-ray, and it did raise a couple of interesting points. So are Sony’s recent woes caused by Blu-ray? The recent woes being the global layoffs and the lack of profitability, of course, but to blame it on Blu-ray seems a bit counter-intuitive, considering Blu-ray seems to be the only recent success for Sony.
But what the Forbes blog, written by contributor Stephen Pope, was perhaps trying to say is that while Blu-ray is a victory for Sony, it just wasn’t a big enough victory to help the company stay profitable, and that in the end, it may even only a fleeting victory, considering the growing popularity of streaming vs discs.
Sony's Blu-ray victory may be short lived, as consumers are keen to move onto streaming (photo credits: mroach @ flickr)
I’ve long held the believe that Sony lost its dominance in the gaming sector by allowing the Xbox 360 to be a viable successor to the PS2, due to the one year delay in releasing the PS3 and the high initial cost of the hardware – both factors very much related to the included Blu-ray support. So while the PS3 helped Sony win the HD format wars, it also hindered Sony in keeping their dominance in the gaming arena. Looking at the current range of multi-platform games and the quality difference between the PC/Xbox 360 DVD version of the PS3 Blu-ray version, it seems the Blu-ray disc’s superior capacity has done little to actually benefit the gaming experience. And while the platform exclusives do try and make the best use of Blu-ray, they just aren’t selling enough to make a huge difference compared to the mega multi-platform franchises of Call of Duty or FIFA or GTA.
And streaming certainly does look like the future, if only for the fact that discs and the drives that read them are just not compatible with today’s portable devices. There is also a trend to consume more content (often for less money), and the physical cost and space that discs (and their packaging) requires, puts a limit on this consumption (while raising the price of it – last year, the average price people paid for streaming content was 51 cents, compared to $4.72 for discs). And access, with discs being limited to what you have purchased or what your rental outlet has in stock, just can’t compete with a streaming digital library of hundreds of thousands of titles that will never “run out of copies” (or suffer from bad scratches).
And even in terms of data storage, the 50GB Blu-ray offers, or even the 100+GB of BDXL pales in comparison to the TBs of data people need these days for their digital needs. So you have a multi-TB drive the size of a small book versus shelves full of BDs that you have to take time to burn, label, organize, that actually costs many more times than the drive – even in data storage, Blu-ray may be too little, too late.
So Pope certainly makes a few valid points, although I would say the biggest problem for Sony is that it is neither the design powerhouse that is Apple (Sony is at times too preoccupied with things like copy protection to consider things like ease of use, in my opinion), nor can it compete in the value stakes with the likes of Samsung (a company that’s also doing more on the innovation front than Sony, in my opinion).
For gaming, the March NPD was yet another victory for the Xbox 360 (that’s 15 months in a row where the Xbox 360 has been the top selling home based console), although being the best of a bad bunch may not be such a meaningful award.
Also interesting was the news that Mass Effect 3 sold 4 times as many copies on the Xbox 360 than on the PS3 (I’m assuming this is North America only). This is perhaps a special case because the game carries on your saved progress from the last game in the series, not helped by the fact that the original game wasn’t even available on the PS3 (instead, relying on an interactive comic to record the key decision carried over from the first game). Also not helping is the fact that the PS3 is getting itself a rather bad reputation for having inferior multi-platform games, not just on ME3, but also on the other mega franchises such as Skyrim and CoD.
And I guess I also have to mention Skyrim’s upcoming Kinect support for the Xbox 360 version. The preview video looks pretty cool, although it looks like the game will only take advantage of Kinect’s voice support (and so the same features can probably be replicated via the PlayStation Eye’s microphone, if Sony really wanted it to happen by giving Bethesda some financial incentives, or making it really easy programming wise to do so. Some of the new Kinect features are already available via PC mods though, with a normal microphone, or even via the Kinect connected to your PC).
Screaming Fus Ro Dah at your TV is probably the geekiest thing anyone will do this year!
The unrelenting force of my addiction to Skyrim means that, just by mentioning it, I now have the sudden urge to play it for another hour or two. Which of course means we’ve come to the end of this WNR. See you next week.