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Archive for April, 2011

Weekly News Roundup (24 April 2011)

Sunday, April 24th, 2011

No luck with waiting for leaks of NPD data, so I can continue with the NPD analysis, so it looks like that’s the end of that feature, which has been going on for more than two years already. Instead, I think what I will do is to combine the feature with the WNR, and just post whatever stats I can find in the gaming section below, starting with this issue. It appears the analysts that usually leak data has been warned, legally, not to do so by the NPD, who themselves are probably under pressure from certain gaming companies, which shall remain unnamed, that are often too ashamed of their sales results and don’t want the negative publicity.

Not too many interesting news stories this week, thanks to Easter I suppose, so let’s get started.

In copyright news, critics of the DMCA and harsher copyright laws have often warned that they can be used to prevent freedom of speech, and this week, we have a story that seems to perfectly illustrate the dangers of giving too much power to copyright holders.

Doctored Reviews: A new website to help fight the practice of using the DMCA to remove bad doctor reviews

Apparently, there’s a company going around removing bad reviews of doctors written by their patients. The company, Medical Justice, provide the service to doctors that are concerned about their reputations being tarnished online, whether justly or unjustly. Doctors can force patients to sign an agreement prior to receiving medical care, and this agreement actually hands over copyright of the patient’s reviews over to Medical Justice, allowing the DMCA to be later used to remove bad reviews. Obviously, this is quite an underhanded practice, and it’s probably a good thing that certain websites now maintain a list of doctors that use the service of Medical Justice, as you can just refer to that list, assume these are all bad doctors, and *avoid* them. And many doctor review sites now ignore DMCA take-down requests of bad reviews, preferring to take this matter to court if necessary, and a couple of UCLA law professors have even set up a new website, Doctored Reviews, with the aim of publishing bad reviews of doctors that Medical Justice wants removed, probably hoping the matter goes to court. This is really only the latest example of copyright laws being abused this way, and if governments around the world continue to pander to the copyright lobby, then there will be more and more such cases in the future. Imagine buying a PC game, you agree to the EULA as you would normally do, except in the 200 page document you just agreed to, there’s a provision saying you hand over all online reviews of this game to the publisher, and this means they can use the DMCA to silence anyone who says a bad thing about the game. Nobody should be able to take away your rights so easily, which in my opinion, is a form of copyright infringement as well. And nobody should be able to use the DMCA or other copyright laws to settle non copyright related issues. But if governments are still intent on handing over *your* rights over to corporations, then there’s not much we can do.

Anonymous takes on New Zeland, as the island nation passes new harsh copyright laws

The latest country to do is New Zealand, having rushed through legislation without much debate (seems to be a trend these days in relation to copyright laws, from the rushed Digital Economy Act in the UK, to the secretive ACTA discussions) to please the copyright lobby, lobbies that mostly represent non New Zealand interests. The latest story is actually about Anonymous’ plans to attack NZ government websites, but the bigger story is about the new copyright laws and how unbalance they can be. For example, the laws make owners of connections responsible for copyright infringement, something the entertainment industry has been pushing for. You see, it’s hard, if not impossible, to go after the person that actually committed the “crime”, because you would actually needs things like evidence. It’s like if a car was stolen to rob a bank, it’s would be far too hard to actually catch the people that stole the car and robbed the bank, so the police can make it easy on themselves by arresting the owner of the car. Hyperbole aside, the real implication of these ill thought out changes means the end of public Wi-Fi networks in New Zealand. So no more free Wi-Fi at McDonalds unless the fast food joint wants to accept responsibility for pirated downloads. Innovation and competition, has given away to protectionism of an industry that is trying so hard to avoid innovation and competition.

This is just the latest trend in copyright laws that goes against everything a democratic and lawful society is supposed to stand for. The over-exaggeration of the piracy problem by copyright lobby is directly responsible for these over-exaggerated responses by clueless governments being led down the wrong path by the smell of lobbying cash. And I’m convinced the copyright problem, much like every other problem, cannot be addressed until the root causes can be identified, and this starts with real stats and figures on the cost piracy, not “estimates” of “potential” losses (which mostly assume the cost of piracy equals the number of pirated items times the full retail cost of said item). Once we have a real understanding of the scale of the problem, we might then decide that enforcement in all but the most extreme copyright cases might not be in the public interest at all, due to the financial cost of it all. But if there is a substantial problem related to piracy, then no matter how serious the problem is, one should not have to sacrifice the basic tenets of society just to make the problem go away – the ends do not justify the means, especially when the “ends” is not even certain. Innocent until *proven* guilty, with the copyright holders responsible for having to proof that copyright infringement has occurred, and also to proof the extent of actual monetary damage. And they should have to do it in a court, with full rights of appeal for the alleged offender. We’re often told that piracy is just like stealing a car, but the problem is that car thieves actually have more rights than a downloader when it comes to copyright laws of countries like the UK and France, and now New Zealand. With a car theft, first of all, there is conclusive proof of material loss or damage, and then the police have to proof, beyond a reasonable doubt, who actually stole the car, arrest them, and then a judge decides the verdict, with the offender given full rights to argue his or her case, and then to appeal if needed. With downloads, the “victim” is the judge, the jury, and in some cases, the executioner (or at least they organize the execution, by forcing ISPs to act), and all before actual damages have even been proved. The argument is that proofing all of this is too hard, too time consuming, but when is taking shortcuts when justice is concerned ever the right thing to do? Anyone who wants to subvert justice this way should be considered an enemy of the state, an enemy of the people, but it’s the opposite right now, and so it’s no wonder you’ve got movements like Anonymous taking action against what they, and many of us, perceive to be an attack on our freedoms.

High Definition

The week ending 2nd April proved to be a milestone of sorts for Blu-ray, except it turns out the week after was even more, um, “milestonie”. Blu-ray finally broke through the 24% market share record, and the week after, it broke through the 25% as well (I still need to post up the analysis for that week, when it’s up, it will be on this page).

Unfortunately, combined revenue, of both DVD and Blu-ray sales, is actually quite disappointing. This is mainly because DVD sales continue to fall, quite dramatically at times, and the increase in Blu-ray sales haven’t really been enough to even slightly offset losses. It’s no good having $20 million increases in Blu-ray sales, when DVD losses are $100 million or more. The economy probably has a lot to do with it, and perhaps it just shows people are buying a smaller number of better and more expensive products (eg. Blu-ray), but buying less overall. Perhaps they’re turning to piracy, since you can only buy what you can afford. Maybe they’ve turned to digital distribution, Netflix and the like, or cheaper rentals via Redbox. Or maybe they’ve just stopped watching. It’s not as if there’s a dearth of free, legal, entertainment these days – just the free apps on smartphones can occupy someone for ages.

Which is why, as reported by one of our new news contributors, the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 Blu-ray and DVD situation is so frustrating and unhelpful in the current climate. Not only are there 5 editions of the same movie across the two formats, two of the editions are exclusive to two different stores. And while Warner Bros may have maximized their revenue potential by signing lucrative exclusivity deals, it’s the consumer that ends up having less choice in terms of where to purchase, and more confusion as to which version to buy. I’ve always respected WB for being pioneers in adopting new video formats, they were one of the very few to support VCD, and a major backer behind HD DVD before they decided to abandon the format, and they also abandoned region coding for Blu-ray. But they botched the Lord of the Rings theatrical release, want to make us sextuple dip the LOTR franchise, and will probably do something similar with the HP franchise as well. But it’s their right, and it’s our right to not get sucked in and do more research before parting with our cash, that is if we decide to part with it at all.

And finally in gaming, the story that everyone is talking about this week has to be the downing of the PlayStation network, which appears to be still down as I write. Of course, everyone pointed the finger at Anonymous, but group has said that they didn’t do it, or at least it wasn’t an official “op”.

The PlayStation Network has been down for the last few days, Sony says "external intrusions" are responsible

And with Sony being their usual selves when it comes to being transparent, there’s not a lot of information about just what went wrong, and what is being done to fix the problem. Speculating blindly, I think this is probably more hacking than denial-of-service. It doesn’t look like a DDoS, the traditional attack method of Anyonmous, because first of all, those are quite easy to stop, certainly would not take two or more days, and it would also mean completely dis-connectivity, but there are reports that people’s queued downloads are still downloading fine. So it looks like hacking, probably a security exploit that someone took advantage of and managed to get deep into the PSN infrastructure. The subsequent fixes to ensure whatever exploit is patched is probably what’s taking so long, so it looks like quite a serious, structural problem.

Now, you can blame the hackers, but just like with the PS3 hack, nobody could have done a thing to it if the exploit was not there in the first place, and exploit and weakness present due to programming errors on Sony’s part. Same with the PSN. The hackers may have tore your house down, but they wouldn’t have been able to so if it wasn’t made of straw, if you know what I mean. So Sony are ultimately responsible, and that’s the way it should be. However, since PSN is mostly a free service, nobody can complain really. Only those that paid for the PSN Plus should demand some kind of compensation, as would Xbox Live Gold users if XBL Gold ever went down for such a long time.

Anyway, it’s the last thing Sony needs, having come last again in last month’s US console sales. I’m going to assume this because otherwise Sony would have touted the fact that they beat the Wii, which sold just above 290,000 units (down 47% compared to March 2010) according to Nintendo. Microsoft did release the sales figures, mainly because they’re not ashamed of having come last I suppose, and with 433,000 (up 28% compared to March 2010), the Xbox 360 was once again the best selling home based console for March 2011, in the US. Only Sony knows just how bad the PS3 results were, although they did say that the PlayStation platform overall sales rose “double digits” compared to a year ago. This could mean anything though, especially with the PSP price drop, and again, I point to Sony not making a big deal of outselling the poor performing Wii as evidence of the PS3’s poor performance in March. And if that’s the case, the the PS3 re-starts its recent trend of sales declines compared to the same month last year, having had a pause in February. And recent events won’t have helped PS3 sales in April, I bet, but we may never find out.

So that’s it for the week, and for this very much abridged version of the monthly NPD analysis. See you next week.

Posted in Copyright, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup, Nintendo Wii, Wii U, Switch, NPD Analysis, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One | 1 Comment »

Weekly News Roundup (18 April 2011)

Sunday, April 17th, 2011

I was hoping to bring you another monthly edition of the NPD video games analysis, this time for March 2011, but unfortunately, Sony, my long time nemesis, decided not to release figures for the PS3. This means I’ll have to wait until the many Boffins I’ve already sent out to return from retrieving the information – I really hope not too many of them die as a result. See, this is why the NPD was under pressure from game companies not to regularly release data, because otherwise it would have been much harder to hide a bad result. And so Sony not releasing the data, causing me to not have anything to write about, must mean the PS3 results were even worse than, well, the recent results (despite Sony claiming blah blah blah double digit growth blah blah blah for PlayStation hardware platform blah). This can only mean one thing, and that is that PS3 sales for March was negative – more people returned PS3s in March than people who actually purchased one #NotIntendedToBeAFactualStatement

So until my Boffins return, there’s no NPD analysis, and if none of them make it, then I’ll probably have to make up some figures. Come on Pachter, do your thang!

(In unrelated news, figures were also missing for my weekly Blu-ray/DVD, so no analysis there either. Also the above statement seems to suggest that Michael Pachter is a Boffin, which is not the case as far as I’m aware)

Let’s get started with the WNR proper with some copyright news. My reference to a particular South Park episode might have gone unnoticed with my headline of Fighting Around The World, Piracy Edition, it was still interesting to find out just how much anti-piracy stuff was being debated around the world. Because, as everyone knows, the most pressing political, economical and social concern for countries around the world, and the most important of the “war on” wars, is in fact the war on piracy (and not even the African coast kind).

Only 7.35% of people got my reference to South Park in one of this week's headlines

So you have super-conglomerates forming in Australia to stop a country with a super huge population of almost as many people as Texas to stop the piracy problem that is costing the industry more than $60 per man, woman, child, in Australia, according to industry estimates. All of this because they couldn’t get a judge to go along with their plans to make ISPs responsible for the billion dollar problem, and so they’re trying to bypass the court’s decision and head straight to government lobbying and “exerting pressure” on the communications industry. Over in the UK, pretty much the same thing is happening, with ISPs defending their case in court, while copyright holders go crying to the government for assistance. The copyright movement these days seems to want a government run blacklist of websites that they deem to be against their interests, so while The Pirate Bay is a shoe-in for the list, other websites, blogs and services that may disrupt the entertainment industry’s attempt to hold on to their dying business model may also just make the list, with little avenue of appeal for those being listed.

Certainly something like this is being considered in Denmark, although since it actually costs money to run such a scheme, MPs there are suggesting that yet another industry should shoulder the burden of helping another industry avoid having to innovate. MPs there are saying that browsers makers, who they say have been so successful in blocking malware websites (yes, because hardly anybody gets malware these days and most people don’t even need to install security software #NotIntendedToBeAFactualStatement), should apply the same thing to websites not cooperating with the entertainment industry and the copyright lobby. Cue some respected law professor complaining about the trivial matter of freedom of speech and information, blah blah blah. And yes, a browser based blacklist, that surely won’t ever get bypassed, assuming people just don’t switch to one of the billions of other browsers available for free on the Internet. And this might even spur TPB to make their own browser, they can call it Internet Exploder or FireF#@(, which would not only get around the blacklist, but also randomly inserts torrent links into any web page you visit. That would be awesome.

And it’s not just respected law professors, it’s also senior advisors to EU judges that are warning against implementing the type of anti-piracy measures the copyright lobby has been pushing, namely ISP based three-strikes monitoring, and filtering schemes. Apparently, just because people, whose connections have been suspected of being allegedly used to download possibly copyright infringing material, or websites that may have participated in providing infringing content, but we’ll never be sure because the issue hasn’t been debated and decided in a court of law, might not have allowed the individual(s) affected to “challenge it or object to it”, or for the overall systems to have “adequate safeguards”, may all be an issue when it comes to human rights and stuff. I certainly don’t need (or have) a senior legal advisors to tell me that by giving power to the entertainment industry to arbitrarily add to a blacklist of websites they don’t like, that this somehow would get abused due to the lack of checks and balances and avenues of appeal, and that by turning a matter usually decided in a court of law into a simple matter of copying/pasting a new line into the blacklist spreadsheet, is somehow taking away people’s rights.

EA/Bioware proofed this week that pirated games are so much better than paying for the original by not properly maintaining their DRM authentication servers, and blocking legitimate gamers from playing the offline, single player Dragon Age: Origins game for 4 days. People who pirated game were unaffected. I could make my usual rant against DRM, but I think in this instance, nothing more needs to be said. Except I must question why is DRM still needed for a game that’s one and a half years old? Surely, anybody who wanted to pirate it would have done so already, and people who wanted to buy it would have done so already in one of the many Steam sales. Surely most of the pirating happens in the first few months anyway, and so that’s really the only when publishers need to use DRM (to ineffectively prevent piracy), so why not release a patch after the first three month to remove the DRM and avoid having to finance DRM authentication.

Garry Newman of Garry's Mod fame attempts to embarrasses pirates

Or how about DRM that uses the reverse logic of most DRM schemes – how about making pirates jump through hoops, and giving legitimate customers a better experience? That’s exactly the point Garry Newman or Garry’s Mod tried to prove this week, when it introduced a bug in the pirated version of the popular Source game engine mod kit, asked if people were having issues with the bug, which then successfully identified and embarrassed all the pirates, while giving buyers “something to be smug about”. But thick skinned pirates won’t care, and might go around the Internet bragging about using pirated software, which means that DRM, other than the odd bit of fun, is not really effective at all. And poorly made and maintained efforts like the EA/Bioware one may in fact drive people to piracy, a point made by Good Old Game’s PR manager, Lukasz Kukawski. As I’ve always said here, if DRM has been proven to not work as intended, that is to stop pirated versions from being downloaded and used, then what’s the point? Game publishers are better off saving the large amounts of money they devote to developing, licensing and maintaining DRM, and use that money to make a better game, or even provide some physical collectable object in every game box (or redemption online for digital copies) – add value to purchases, not take away value, that’s all I’m trying to say here.

And it’s not just game purchases that needs added value (as compared to the pirated version). TV shows, one of the most pirated types of content on the Internet, is another example where value subtraction is being used by copyright holders in a vain attempt to squeeze every dollar from licensing deals. What I’m talking about is that it takes months for a TV show episode that’s aired in the US to make its way around the world, that is if it makes it across at all. Copyright holders expect more money to be paid for early viewing, and so overseas TV networks often take the cheaper route and delay broadcasts. And so, given people’s need today to have everything and have it now, most will have to source the content from illegal outlets. Yes, some episodes are available for purchase on iTunes or whatever, but why should have to buy something that’s free for people in the US, and not just on broadcast TV either, but via Internet outlets such as Hulu? And even those, like me, who pay subscription fees for cable/satellite TV, often still do not get new episodes aired until a week or more later, again probably as the result of greedy copyright holders and TV networks not willing to pay up. And this all causes piracy. UK’s Sky is trying to solve this problem by airing shows hours after the original US air date. Sure, the air time might be in some unholy hour of the night, due to time differences, but some Sky boxes capable of scheduled recording, that’s not a problem for many. I think it’s time for release windows to end – global release and airing times will help reduce piracy, as it saves people the trouble of downloading an inferior, even if ad-free, version (this is particularly true of HD broadcasts). Don’t subtract value from legitimate content by having stupid release windows – all you end up doing is to lose money to piracy, while gaining only a small percentage of that loss back through better licensing agreements).

YouTube’s copyright school? Almost not worth mentioning considering how ridiculous the whole thing is, and how it won’t stop copyright infringement on YouTube. Yeah, I’m sure a 4.5 minute video and a 4 question quiz, in which you only have to answer 75% of the questions correctly, will solve the YouTube piracy problem. Because obviously, people are only infringe copyright because they don’t know the law, not because they just don’t care.

High Definition

In 3D/HD news, NPD has a new report out that tries to explain why people just don’t like 3D. And it’s not surprising to find that having to wear glasses is actually the most common reason for the 3D hate.

People who hate 3D hate having to wear 3D glasses, a new report tells us

Last year, price was a major issue, but with 3D TV pricing dropping every day (the report found that, amazingly, 3D plasma TVs have on average dropped 59% in price!), having to wear glasses is now a bigger problem. And it’s a bigger problem than with cinema 3D, because cinemas use passive glasses, which are easier on the eyes for those that suffer from motion sickness, whereas active shutter passes can make someone like me nauseous in about 10 minutes of wear.

The survey did find that 3D Blu-ray was the preferred method of getting 3D content, ahead of 3D broadcasts, and that 3D awareness was higher than before. I’m still going with my prediction that 3D will be standard by the end of this year, and it will be marketed in the same way having Internet access on TVs is being marketed today (ie. not much marketing at all, and certainly not much of a price premium).

And finally in gaming, the big news of the week was that Sony finally decided to settle its lawsuit against George Hotz, aka geohot.

Geohot has been criticized for accepting the terms of the lawsuit, which dictates that he must not come near a Sony equipment if his intentions are not pure, but geohot explains this isn’t a problem because he’s boycotting Sony products anyway, and wouldn’t come near one even if it had a “hack me” sign painted on it. Still, Anonymous are not happy at the settlement conditions, and has planned more attacks on Sony servers.

I'm surprised this is the first time I've actually used this anti-Sony graphics in the WNR

A Sony boycott used to a lot more painful, because they’ve made some decent stuff over the years. But these days, it’s not too hard to avoid having to buy a Sony product, because they no longer make the best of anything, not TVs, not game consoles, and certainly not portable music players (how did they ever screw up the Walkman brand, I’ll never know). Blu-ray is about their only real success recently, although you can still buy the best Blu-ray equipment and still completely avoid Sony products.

Despite being too scared and embarrassed to release March PS3 figures, no doubt because it reveals that even the PS2 outsold the PS3 for that month (#NotIntendedToBeAFactualStatement), Sony were eager to boast about going over the 50 million mark worldwide for the PS3 (just shy of the Xbox 360’s total), and the 8 million Move controllers shipped since launch. The Move number doesn’t compare too badly to Kinect’s 10 million shipped figure, although it doesn’t compare too well either, considering the Kinect number (of 2 million more units) was reached a whole month earlier, despite being launched one and a half month later. In other words, 8 million Move controllers in just shy of 6 month, while Kinect shipped 10 million units in 4 month. Not quite the 5:1 Pachter was suggesting, but Kinect’s console attach rate is probably at least twice that of Move if you take into consideration two player gaming needs (you need two Move controllers for 2 player gaming, counted as 2 purchases, while the same can be achieved with a single Kinect purchase).

Oh, almost forgot what I was trying to post about, is that Netflix for the Xbox 360 now has Kinect support as promised. But it’s very much limited and not quite useful, but it’s free, so whatever. Hopefully, the Hulu Kinect interface will be less of a rush job.

Alright, that’s that for this week. Still no word from my Boffins, but I can probably guestimate the PS3 numbers using the vague statements Sony have made (double digit growth for the PlayStation family, which is probably closer to 10% than 99%, PSP also grew thanks to price cut, so have to take that into account and since Sony did not say PS3 sales grew in double digits, I also suspect it did not, but can’t confirm so will give Sony the benefit of the doubt) and the boastful statements they did not make (the PS3 obviously did not outsell the Xbox 360, and I doubt it outsold the 3DS as otherwise Sony would be screaming the news from top of the roof, or at least Jack Tretton anyway considering his views on the “babysitting” 3DS), which puts the PS3 numbers somewhere between 345,290 (10% up from last year) and 380,000 (the 3DS number). Elementary my dear Watson.

See you next week.

Posted in 3D, Copyright, Gaming, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (18 April 2011)

Weekly News Roundup (10 April 2011)

Sunday, April 10th, 2011

Welcome to another edition of the WNR. I have a feeling this is one of those editions where the number of news items is actually not all that great, but they’re all stories well made for a good rant or two (of five), and so it’s one where people are going to have a look, and say “oh no, not another ******* essay”. If by essay, you mean angry incoherent rant, that is. So let’s get started.

So let’s start this week with copyright news, the rantiest of sections, as per usual. While politics in Washington seems more and more divisive, with the entire system almost grinding to a halt this week, and the two major parties locked in an epic ideological struggle, there still exists some signs of cooperation between the major political entities. Unfortunately, the cooperation only seems to exist when the issue of copyright is being discussed, which suggests that the MPAA and RIAA’s lobbying effort has been a very apolitical one.

The only political contest, in relation to copyright, has been from parties and members competing to show just who loves the entertainment industry the most, and it is one fierce fight for the title of teacher’s pet. The House Committee on Intellectual Properties have been holding hearings all week, grilling the likes of Google (more on that later) on copyright issues, and trying to pass new legislation, that COICA thing I mentioned last year. The MPAA has taken the opportunity to hail the success of Operation In Our Sites, the Homeland Security ICE operation that seized dozens of websites suspected of providing copyrighted content. Yes, this is the same operation that seems to have had no actual effect on piracy activities on the Internet, an operation where many of the closed websites have already been replaced with new websites, or even the same websites under a different domain name, the same operation led by a junior agent whose legal paper work consisted mainly of copying/pasting previous MPAA statements on copyright, and an operation where due process was bypassed, where those accused did not have adequate avenues of appeal, and where we know for a fact that a lot of the closures were questionable to say the least (including a few websites with good credibility within the industry for allowing artists places to leak content to for promotional purposes, but ones that the RIAA didn’t personally approve because it might have threatened their domain, and so had the US government close these websites just to be sure using piracy as an excuse).

And of course, in US politics these days, it’s all about jobs. Except the fact that nobody is actually lo0king to put in any concrete actions to create any jobs, the “oh noes, piracy costs jobs” excuse has been brandied about quite a lot this week. You see, COICA is not about making the FBI, Homeland Security and ICE the private police force of the MPAA/RIAA, allowing them to bypass due process if and when needed. No, COICA is about protecting “property rights and American jobs”, and it’s so great that it will “not only save jobs” it will mean the United States can even “gain jobs”. And before you want to point to a political party and blame them for all of this, you cannot, just like you couldn’t really with the Global Financial Crisis, the investment banks and the fiscal and regulatory policy at the center of it, because this baby is a bi-partisan effort, which in Washington these days just means the lobbyist managed to distribute financial favours in an equal and fair manner, to all concerned, no one was left out. How socialists of them. Why spend millions on research and development, testing new innovation and meeting market demands, when you can simply bribe the right people to get the tax payers to fight your fight. And that’s exactly what is happening, with COICA promising millions and millions of tax payer money to help the MPAA and RIAA not have to change their business model, even as the two parties bicker over trimming the deficit.

Congress asks: If Google can topple a government, with a tiny little bit of help from the people of that country, why can't it stop piracy?

But to fight the publicly funded fight, you have to have a target. And this week, the target was Google. A bi-partisan show was put on to allow Google to testify in front of the House Committee on Un-Authorised Downloads Activities, but the show trial was really just an occasion for the MPAA/RIAA’s intentions to be heard, via the mouthpieces they’ve already paid for. So why isn’t Google filtering results for pirated contents, asked one mouthpiece. Why is it that Google can stop child pornography but not stop copyright infringement, asked another. Because it’s quite clear that both types of activities are just as illegal and serious as the each other, and so warrants the same type of attention (if not more for MP3 downloads, because there’s no lobby for stopping child pornography, is there?). Even when Google tried to respond that spotting child pornography is a bit easier than trying to find out which YouTube uploads used which company’s songs and who actually holds the copyright, the search engine giant was accused of of having a lack of will when it comes to stopping piracy. I mean, if Google can topple the head of a country in weekend, one politician asked, why can’t Google stop “facilitating illegal content and illegal products”? I mean it’s not like the Tunisian or Egyptian people had anything to do with what happened in those countries, right? Yeah, they helped, but Google did most of the work, and so should do most of the work when it comes to stopping the revenue decline of the entertainment industry.

The MPAA was also busy this week suing video rental website Zediva this week. Zediva had attempted to bypass the MPAA studio imposed digital streaming licensing fees, otherwise known as the anti-innovation tax, by doing something, at least to me, felt very clever. Instead of purchasing the right to stream content over the Internet, Zediva allowed people to rent physical copies of movies, and instead of sending out those copies, they streamed the content to customers and put the physical copy to one side to preserve the one viewer/one copy relationship. In other words, Zediva helped you to play the disc you rented, over the Internet, for you. And this allowed the company to skip paying the overpriced streaming license. Remember these are the same people that don’t even like it when you try to stream your discs from your lounge room to your bed room, so it’s no surprise that streaming across the entire Internet, even if a physical disc was there somewhere, was going to get the MPAA angry. And trust me, you won’t like it when the MPAA is angry. That somehow Zediva can get away with having lower expenses by actually having a physical copy of a disc for ever person that wants to stream the movie, suggests that perhaps the whole point of going digital and away from the physical (ie. lower manufacturing, duplication, transportation costs, and greater economy of scale with *more* people being able to access *more* movies, leading to lower prices) seems to have been lost.

High Definition

In 3D/HD news, a bunch of researchers in the UK have conclusive proof that if you get paid to do a study by a group with special interests, the results of your study might just be exactly what the special interests group had wanted to get out of the study.

I wonder if the 3D Blu-ray version of My Dinner with Andre would still be 7% more stimulating than the regular Blu-ray version

I kid. Seriously, researchers at the Sussex Innovation Centre has found, through the painful sounding skin conductance tests and EEGs, that viewers are more emotionally stimulated when watching 3D Blu-ray compared to Blu-ray, and Blu-ray compared to DVDs. Yes, the study was paid for by the European Blu-ray Disc Association, but science is science. So there you have it, scientific evidence that Blu-ray is in fact better than DVD, and that 3D Blu-ray is the best of all. Of course, assuming they used the same movie for comparison, watching a movie made for 3D, in 2D, is basically watching a bunch of gimmick shots that make no sense at all in 2D (“what kind of message is the film-maker trying to purvey, about the relationship between society’s ills and the total lack of compassion in today’s youth, in that scene where the five ping pong balls fly towards to camera”). If somebody ever makes a 3D version of My Dinner with Andre (yes, I watched *that* Community episode), and then use that to do the above test, I wonder if 3D Blu-ray would still come out 7% “better” than the 2D Blu-ray version (and the Blu-ray version being 12% “better” than the DVD version).

Much maligned rental company Redbox, in trouble for daring to make DVD (and now Blu-ray) rental easier and cheaper than it should be, may be hooking up with Hulu Plus, if it ever actually launches its digital service. Hulu, being owned by an actual movie studio, hasn’t really been under attack by the industry, which is strange considering it’s one of the best ways to watch free TV shows, even for those outside of the allowed regions if you’re clever enough with a VPN, making it a very good alternative to piracy (even though the actual result is the same, in that I didn’t wait for the local airing of the show, denying the local station advertising money and denying studios greater licensing fees, and also didn’t buy the show on iTunes or DVD, if it’s there, and denying the studio further income). I guess it’s not just that Hollywood doesn’t want innovation, it just doesn’t want innovation to come from places and companies where it had no control over. So not anti-competitive at all, really.

And an update on my Godfather II Blu-ray disc problem that I posted about last week, Technicolor were nice enough to offer a replacement disc even though from what they’re telling me, they’re not really in charge of Australian market, nor have they encountered this problem with Australian discs.

And finally in gaming, Anonymous is now targeting Sony, and so if your PSN connection has been on the fritz, then you know why. They’re attacking Sony’s servers because of Sony’s treatment of hackers geohot and Graf_Chokolo, amongst others.

I’m only surprised that they didn’t do this earlier, considering Sony’s history with DRM, copyright protection, and the fact that they are active members of both the MPAA and RIAA, earlier targets of Anonymous. A typical Sony response would be to block entire IP ranges where they suspect the attack may be coming from, and this may be why your PS3 cannot connect to PSN temporarily.

Nintendo may only make "babysitting" consoles, but they sure do sell a lot more of them compared to Sony's "real" machines

But for all of the PlayStation’s troubles recently, the head of Sony Computer Entertainment America, Jack Tretton, is bullish about the prospects of the PS3 and the company’s next portable gaming system, the NGP. And Sony being bullish means they have to attack their rivals, in an almost arrogant manner (almost?). Attacking both the Wii and Xbox 360 for running out of steam, Tretton laughed at the fact that the Wii (and I guess the cheaper version of the Xbox 360) does not come with a hard-drive, that the Wii’s motion control system is “cute” but not effective, and that only the PS3 has the staying power as it is “just hitting its stride” 4 years after launch. The most curious attack was against the DS, in particularly the new 3DS, which Tretton called “for children”, and that no “self-respecting twenty-something” would have anything to do with a portable console that has sold more than twice as many units as the “superior” PSP. Then Tretton went on to big up the NGP, which he says will have every “every [bell and] whistle”, even if the sale price is likely to be much higher than the 3DS (or if not, then Sony would have to eat up a lot of that in losses).

Where to start …

Despite the PS3’s technical advantage, are games on the platform *that* much more technically advanced as similar games on the Xbox 360? With the PS3’s superior graphics, sound, storage, are games on that platform so much more fun than even the game that came free with the Wii? Does superior technology actually translates to fun?

Sure, the PS3 is likely to outlast the Xbox 360 (well it should, considering the 360 was launched a year earlier), and definitely the Wii, but for how long? So when Microsoft releases the Xbox 720 using today’s best technology, are Sony confident that their PS3 can still compete, and for how long? Another 6 years from now to bring the PS3 to the promised 10 year lifecycle?

As for the DS being for babies or whatever Tretton was trying to say, is that really a bad thing, you know, to make games and game consoles for families and children? Isn’t this how the video game industry started? And isn’t that how the industry is evolving (back) towards once again? And you might as well include smartphone gaming as well, because I’m pretty sure Angry Birds’ colourful birds, slingshot, and green pigs, is not geared towards your average tech-savvy 20 year old male.

But Sony have a right to solely produce consoles aimed at a specific demographic, the twenty-something male, but that’s just another way of trying saying they’re making a console that ignores all the other demographics. Just don’t be surprised when you’re not making as much money as the other companies. While the company is busy trying to convince hard-core gamers that the Move is for them, Microsoft is simply busy selling Kinect’s, and making money off families and children that like that sort of thing (while still happily making money off hard-core gamers).

And if Tretton’s stance is any indication, the NGP will fail in the same way the PSP failed, by concentrating too much on the technology, and not enough on actually making the thing fun and stuff. I’m sure the NGP is superior to the 3DS in all ways possible, heck, maybe even the PSP is already superior, but will it be more fun? I don’t give a damn if it can run PS3 graphics or not, because I don’t want to play PS3 games designed for a 50″ screen on a 5″ screen, and I’d rather have a game designed specifically to get the best out of the portable experience, than a game that only has superior graphics.

And just like the Xbox 360, I’ve run out of steam (ranting uses a lot of steam, you see). See you in a week’s time.

Posted in 3D, Copyright, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup, Nintendo Wii, Wii U, Switch, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (10 April 2011)

Weekly News Roundup (3 April 2011)

Sunday, April 3rd, 2011

This is probably the most difficult week for someone whose “job” is to go hunt for news to write about, a day that I really hate personally. While everyone was enjoying April Fool’s Day, I’m sitting here getting paranoid about which stories are real and which are not. The worst part is that some people fire off AFD news stories a day early, you know, to be clever and stuff (it’s not clever, IT’S CHEATING!). Did isoHunt really hire an anti-piracy tech guy? Did Obama really get caught downloading a pirated MP3 version of Rebecca Black’s Friday? Did the RIAA really try to claim a trillion dollar worth of damages … oh wait, that’s real.

So, disclaimer warning, some of the stories I will summarise in this WNR may very well turn out to be someone’s idea of a joke, so I make no guarantees, and if you quote something as fact and it turns out S0ny didn’t really kidnap geohot’s cat in a bid to try and get him to return from South America, and people point and laugh at you and stuff, it’s not my fault!

So let’s start this week’s news roundup, with increasing trepidation, with some copyright news. While the major music labels are trying to squeeze a trillion or two from LimeWire, it turns out that LimeWire’s demise has had a really positive effect on reducing online music piracy.

NPD reports that music piracy is down, probably for the first time in ages, in the last quarter of 2010, with 12 million less pirates, and fewer songs pirated per person. This shouldn’t really come as a huge surprise, considering the popularity of LimeWire, although also as expected, other downloading methods picked up due to the shut down, and over time, the download rate might creep up again. What I find most interesting though is that, given all of this took place last year, we have no heard a single peep from the RIAA about just how much more money (trillions?) they’ve made thanks to reducing piracy, quite dramatically I might add. Where’s the press releases from Sony, BMG and co about just how effective their anti-piracy measures have been in terms of increasing revenue, because this was the whole point behind the expensive anti-piracy efforts and lobbying, right? If reducing piracy does not increase profits, then why bother reducing piracy? And if piracy does not equal lost sales, then just what is responsible for the decline in revenue in recent years?

The decline of CD revenue has not been filled by the increasing digital revenue

By the RIAA’s own graphs, revenue has decreased, on a per capital basis, to a point lower than any time in the last 40 years, and I don’t actually doubt this figure. It’s based on a per capita basis, and since population has grown, it doesn’t actually mean that music industry revenue is lower than ever. And because it tallies results only based on sales of recordings, it does not take into account live music revenue, which from what I gather, is up. But looking at the graph, sales weren’t exactly hot just before CDs came out, and sales are only bad in comparison now because of the high peak that CDs sales managed in the early 2000’s. CD’s decline does coincide with the growth of the Internet in the last decade, but interestingly, it also coincides with the rise of DVDs. Is there no correlation between people spending more on DVDs and the same people spending less on music? I think most people have finite budgets, so it’s not inconceivable that this limited budget is being spent on other forms of entertainment, like video games (an industry also on the rise for most of the last decade), or not even on entertainment at all due to rising living costs and the poor global economic condition. But instead, all we hear are the billions and billions being “lost” by the music industry due to piracy. Once upon a time, companies realised that peaks and troughs exists in business, and innovation is what helps rejuvenate the cycle. Now, there’s this obsession with revenue, as if revenue has to rise every year, and by a significant percentage, as otherwise, the company or the industry is suddenly “in trouble”. The work force is downsized and/or moved offshore, books are being cooked, all just to avoid the share price decline, a decline (or rise) is largely determined by speculation these days, as opposed to it being an accurate reflection of company value and revenue expectations. And then, of course, they blame the Internet for it all.

Newzbin2 now uses Tor to allow its website to be accessed without a domain name

And so the powers that be, trying to please their corporate buddies, will try more and more things, even if it means screwing up the entire Internet. The US government has hinted at implementing domain name blocking, at the behest of the RIAA and MPAA of course, a move that experts, including those that invented the Internet (working under Al Gore’s leadership), have warned will damage the Internet irrevocably. And you know what, it still won’t stop people who want to download pirated stuff. In response to the imminent threat of domain blocking, Usenet website Newzbin2 is now using Tor to allow its website to be accessed even without a domain name. So even before domain blocking has been launched, it has already been circumvented. Decentralized, encrypted, piracy would be almost impossible to monitor, let alone stop, and that’s the direction we’re headed towards. And when we get there, egged on by an obsessed industry that’s too arrogant to change their business model, what will we do then? When people know for a fact they will never get caught pirating songs or movies, how will the RIAA and MPAA stop them then?

And there’s always the slim hope that the industry might embrace the Internet, and allow innovation to blossom and create new revenue streams. Or they might just sue Amazon for daring to allow people to store their legally purchased MP3s in the cloud. Instead of working with Amazon to create a new distribution method, one which gives consumers more freedom, and also perhaps allows for a new way to make money in the Internet age, the RIAA labels simply voiced their arrogant displeasure at Amazon daring to make things easier for users without gaining their kingly approval first. They argue that Amazon, by allowing people to stream their music from their cloud accounts to their Android devices, that this somehow breaks licensing agreements. But Amazon argues that this is no different than playing your MP3s from an external drive, the only difference being that this external drive is accessible from anyone where there’s an Internet connection. But the fact of the matter is that if people legally purchased their songs, then streaming them to their Android device does not harm the record industry in any fashion, since there’s a million ways to get songs to an Android device. Now, if people are storing pirated songs on their Amazon cloud drive, then the people that do that have broken the law, and I don’t see how Amazon is in any way responsible (because if companies handling data transmission can be found liable, then every Internet and networking based company in the world would be liable for all sorts of piracy, because raw data simply goes through everything. But of course, suing Amazon is easier than suing individuals, just like Viacom suing YouTube is easier than suing the actual users that upload pirated content, so that’s where we’re headed, where another piece of innovation may be stopped in its track (or severely limited) because one industry does not want to change and adapt to the times.

Meanwhile, in Righthaven-land, another week, and another lawsuit, although this one didn’t last for very long. Righthaven this week sued tech website Ars Technica (or at least a writer for them). What for? For using a photo that Righthaven sued Drudge report for. Except this photo wasn’t the original photo. It was black and white for a start. And it also came from Righthaven’t own legal documents, that they’ve submitted to court. Not to mention that fair use would have covered Ars Technica’s use of the photo anyway. And also the fact that Righthaven sued the writer of the article, and not Ars Techinca. Even Righthaven realised that something was not right and pulled the lawsuit only a day later, but it brings up the question, if they can make a mistake like this with a high profile target like Ars Technica, how many other mistakes have they made in their filings? And when you can “accidentally” sue someone, perhaps it shows that these lawsuits are not really worth the paper they’re being filed on.

This week’s anti-DRM message is brought to you by Christofer Sundberg, and Avalance Studios, makers of the Just Cause franchise. And the message is, DRM is stupid and useless. And it is a message that I think is hard to argue against, simply because I’m a pragmatist, and DRM simply does not work at stopping piracy. It works well in annoying legitimate buyers though. And controversially, Sundberg says that making better games will mean more people will buy those games. Having to make a better product to keep your customers? How does that even work, and more importantly, why do you need to do it when you can simply lobby the government to destroy competition and innovation.

High Definition

Not much happening in 3D/HD this week, but I’m contractually obligated to write something for this section at least once every fortnight, and so I will write something this week.

While doing the weekly Blu-ray/DVD sales analysis, I’ve noticed that so far for 2011, there has only been one week in which Blu-ray and DVD revenue, combined, have produced an overall gain compared to the same time last year. In other words, almost every week of 2011 has been worse, usually to the tunes of at least $20-30 million, compared to the same week a year ago. That’s an alarming decline, and while some of it is down to digital distribution (which is not included in these figures), still, the decline seems too rapid to be just due to downloads.

Piracy? Perhaps that’s a cause, but piracy has always been a problem, not just in the last year. Only one of the weeks did Blu-ray revenue actually drop compared to last year, so the decline is definitely all DVD related (which makes sense, since digital distribution should affect DVD the most, considering most downloads and streams are still SD or relatively low quality HD, that does not compete directly with the quality offered by Blu-ray). I think the economy has a lot to do with it, and also the quality of the releases.

And a warning to those, like me, that buys movies and don’t test them out until you decide to view them, which could be weeks, months or even years after the purchase, you might want to think twice. I purchased the Godfather Blu-ray trilogy pack way back in 2008, and for whatever reason, I never got around to watching it until now. It turns out the second movie’s disc is faulty, a known production glitch, and it only took me two and a half years to discover the problem. Apparently, Paramount may still have a recall program for this disc, so I’ll try my luck and hope that they won’t require explanation as to why I waited so long to watch, what are, some of my favourite movies.

And finally in gaming, lucky Xbox 360 gamers in the US can sign up for a new beta-test with the reward of a free copy of Halo Reach. The testing is apparently for a new disc format that promises to allow the dual-layer game DVD, which is now limited to 6.8GB, to hold a GB more, as well as new anti-piracy measures.

Yet another Xbox 360 Blu-ray rumour surfaces ...

And of course, the old time tested “Blu-ray coming to Xbox 360” rumour came out again. I’ve tried to explain why I think this rumour keeps on getting repeated, having blamed it on PS3 and Blu-ray fanboys who think that Microsoft supporting Blu-ray is the ultimate trophy in the Blu-ray vs HD DVD war, and an admission that Sony was right in delaying the PS3 for a year while they waited to put the Blu-ray drive in. Anyway, it looks like if a Microsoft console is to have Blu-ray, it will have to be the Xbox 720 or whatever it will be called, and if I were a betting man, I would definitely put money on Blu-ray being used for the next-gen Microsoft console.

Speaking of fanboy wars, the news this week was that global PS3 sales finally overtook Xbox 360 sales, which has PS3 fanboys so so excited. “We we we so excited”, so they will all say. Xbox 360 sales are largely non existent in Japan, I think it was outsold by the Sega Genesis last week, and they haven’t been doing too well in Europe either, although the “slim” and Kinect has helped the Xbox 360 do well in 2010 in the UK at least. But in the US, the Xbox 360 continues to dominate.

Anyway, I think that’s all there is this week. Yes, I conveniently ignored one news story I wrote which, if it isn’t clear to you by now, was a very much failed attempt at an April Fools joke. I hate doing these kinds of stories, either you’re too subtle and nobody even notices that it’s fake news, or you’ll have to make it so obvious that you might as well just put “April Fools Joke” in the headline. And even when it’s a good one, when people think it’s true, you have to beg and cry on the phone to the MPAA’s lawyers and explain just why you don’t think you’ve libelled them when you posted that they were forming a partnership with Al Qaeda.

I hate April Fools.

Posted in Copyright, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (3 April 2011)

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Archive for April, 2011

Weekly News Roundup (24 April 2011)

Weekly News Roundup (18 April 2011)

Weekly News Roundup (10 April 2011)

Weekly News Roundup (3 April 2011)

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