HomeA solemn start to this week’s WNR. Our thoughts go out to those affected by the events in Norway. Tragedies such as this makes the issues that the WNR covers pale in significance to the many other problems in the world today, and while this is true, just because something is less significant, it doesn’t mean it’s not significant in its own limited way, it shouldn’t become an ignored topic. And life, as cliche as it sounds, must go on.
But, and I’m going a little bit off topic here, what really struck me was the media coverage immediately following the bombing, and, when looking back at it now, how slanted it was. I think many people, if not most, immediately came to certain conclusions about the terrorist attack. Conclusions that ultimately painted the suspect(s) as Middle Eastern. This, I can understand, because we are human beings, and we are emotion creatures and ones that that need a sense of understanding, when an event that makes little sense happens. We we jump to conclusions, join the dots even if it meant drawing some of our own dots to complete the picture. It’s understandable.
Once upon a time, the news meant facts. And in the absence of facts, the media kept us safe from our own human nature, or at least attempted to, to prevent us from jumping to conclusions, to remind us to hold our judgement until the facts, and the full facts, have emerged. But that today’s news media, and even the so called respected sources, all became cheerleaders for the view that only terrorists of the Islamic fundamentalist persuasion could have been responsible for the tragedy in Norway, shows us how news has become entertainment, how facts (and fact checking) has become optional, how accuracy has given way to expediency and the need to set a clearly defined narrative, and why all of this hurts our democratic society in more ways than even the most insidious terrorist masterminds can hope for.
Anyway, this was just something I wanted to get off my chest before we start this week’s, very much opinionated, narrative drive, and fact-check-lacking WNR (and you should consider yourself lucky that a hack like myself is not allowed to cover the more important issues), so sorry for the interruption.
Starting with copyright news, we start with the FBI’s arrest of members of the hactivism group, Anonymous.
Anonymous members are arrested by the FBI, but the attacks continue
I’ve expressed the opinion before that I was surprised the FBI or other law enforcement hadn’t taken action against Anonymous. I thought that, sooner or later, one of the targets Anonymous chose, and they did choose quite deliberately, would come screaming to law enforcement for assistance (as some of them were targeted *because* of their “too close for comfort” relationship with governments and law enforcement via lobbying). I don’t really want to get into a debate about the right and wrongs of hacking, leaks (wiki or otherwise), and hacktivism in general, but groups like Anonymous don’t exist in a vacuum – they exist and they are supported because of real (and sometimes perceived) bias, and until these biases are addressed, and the disenfranchaised feel they and their opinions are represented, there will only be more groups like Anonymous and LulzSec, not less, no matter how many arrests the FBI makes.
And you know something is not right when a private company, really out there to protects its own interests, end up being more representative of the general public than the government that the people have elected. This time, it’s Google arguing against the recently passed, and soon to be adopted, copyright law amendments in New Zealand. The NZ government, under pressure from the entertainment industry (and not even the industry in their own country), passed three-strike type laws, which allowed rights holders to force ISPs to issue warnings to suspected copyright infringers. But these kind of laws always assumed that an allegation equals guilt, that an IP address is enough to “convict”, and Google is arguing that, this shouldn’t be the case. The NZ laws actually specifically state that all allegations should be treated as fact, when the tribunal set up to deal with cases hand down rulings, even if the tribunal felt that the evidence was not enough. The whole rationale behind graduated response is to short circuit the legal system, to turn allegations into facts, because the problem is otherwise “too big” to deal with via the courts. An IP address is circumstantial evidence, at best, and the quantity of such evidence should not improve their quality.
A different kind of pirated porn
As otherwise, we might end up doing something silly like suing 70 year old grandmothers for illegally downloading porn. Oh. As far as I’m concerned, there’s not a huge bit of difference between the “sue for settlement” gang, and the graduated response proponents – both are taking flimsy evidence and trying to make a buck (or to prevent a possibly non-existent buck from being lost). So we have a grandmother who doesn’t even know what a torrent is, using a wireless router set up by a family member probably, one that was subsequently unsecured, and hacked into for “nefarious” usage. And we have the law firm involved allegedly telling her that the “unsecured router” defence was not a sound one, and that she should just charge the thousands of dollars in settlement fees to her credit card or possibly face a six figure amount in court. Other than the fact that it is a defence, and one that has been used even recently, there’s also the fact that had she gone to court (and it seems she’s determined to do so, good on her), there’s no way that any judge or jury, in their right minds, would ever reward $150,000 against her, that’s assuming the law firm involved even turns up to court. Expect the case to be dropped double quick, now that the media is involved (so I guess the news media is not entirely useless these days, not when it comes to potential “sensationalist” stories such as this one). But the 30 year old single males, using the same defence, probably won’t get very far, unfortunately, nor would he get the same kind of media coverage, despite probably being just as innocent.
The madness that is copyright enforcement these days all center around the idea that, stopping piracy is important because piracy is bad, M’kay. But is stopping or even just caring about piracy really that important? Not according to Super Meat Boy (no, this is not the porno the 70 year old grandma downloaded) developers, Team Meat. Super Meat Boy, again not a porno, is an indie game for Xbox Live Arcade and PC, and a pretty popular one at that, with 600,000 buyers as of April. The popularity of the game also means that it’s pirated a lot, but Team Meat’s Edmund McMillen says he just doesn’t care about piracy, his exact words were “we don’t f**king care”. It’s all about word of mouth, McMillen says, and piracy helps to spread it. I would add that people also tend to buy good games, or anything they feel has value, regardless of whether it’s available for free (illegally) or not. Nobody likes “stealing”, or at least committing morally ambiguous actions, and if they can afford it and it it’s good “value”, they will buy. So if game developers cared less about piracy and stopping it, and cared more about making good games like Team Meat has done, then maybe, maybe, piracy will solve itself (it also helps for Super Meat Boy to be part of a lot of Steam sales – I got my copy for $3.75).
In HD/3D news, a milestone of sorts for Blu-ray this week as Disney announce their release plans for ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides’.
Instead of having a Blu-ray+DVD combo, a Blu-ray only and one or two DVD editions, for the first time ever on a new A-list release, Disney will delay the DVD-only edition of the film for a month, and forgo the Blu-ray only edition entirely. So when the movie comes out on disc in October, it will only be available in two different combos (three, if you count the “DVD packaging” edition), including a 5-disc combo that also includes the Blu-ray 3D and Digital Copy versions, for $4 more (on Amazon). And since Blu-ray combos, even the ones with DVD packaging, are counted as Blu-ray sales, it effectively means ‘On Stranger Tides’ will be a Blu-ray exclusive, until the DVD only version is released a month later.
Disney is not new to this kind of release schedule, previously employing this for their classic animated releases like Snow White. And it has worked wonders to boost, artificially in some respect, Blu-ray sales numbers, making these Disney releases some of the most popular on the HD format. And it looks like ‘On Stranger Tides’ will be the next record breaker (although ‘Deathly Hallows Part 2’ might have something to say about this).
Is this really a big deal? I think it is. It’s the first step towards making DVDs obsolete, although it might mean they’re still around in combo form for some time yet. The truth is that, it doesn’t really cost studios all that much to include a DVD copy with the Blu-ray version (or vice versa), so it’s all about demand, perception of value and all that.
Digital Copy - insert, enter code, transfer, copy ... and then only in the "allowed" formats, is not worth the trouble
There was also the news that Fox is bringing Digital Copy to Android phones, which I didn’t think was big enough of a news item, since I already have a Fox Blu-ray that has a digital copy for Android (Unstoppable), and when UltraViolet rolls out, cross format compatibility of digital copies may not be such a huge issue any more. But it is kind of annoying, that if studios don’t include the right digital copy, your only choice to enjoy the movie on the platform of your choice is to buy it again, or illegally rip it (but the kind of “illegal” that nobody would get into trouble for, if you don’t share the copy with others). When we “buy” a Blu-ray, we’re not really buying the movie, or even licensing the movie itself – we’re only licensing the copy of the movie that appears on the platforms/media we are paying for.
And in gaming, not much, expect that I did manage to get the NPD analysis written, using the “guestimated” (ie. made up) numbers of the PS3 that I threatened to use in the last WNR.
The Xbox 360 was once again the king of consoles, although I predict the year on year growth the console has been experiencing may experience a slight pause, thanks largely to the larger than expected bump the console got last year this time for the then new “Slim” version of the console.
Story that I didn’t really cover this week included one about the PS3 3D headset. I’m sorry, but VR headsets, to me, are so 90’s, and you can never really make them light enough for them not to be a literal pain in the neck. The idea is sound though, that instead of having headache inducing 3D glasses based on flickering between images for your left and right eye, have goggles that actually give each of your eye a different picture, and then add head tracking to boot.
There’s also a story about the next-gen Xbox 360 having “Avatar-like” graphics. Maybe it’s just me, but I might be the small minority that thought Avatar’s CGI still looked quite fake, and some of the plants definitely had a “game console” look to them.
That’s all I have for the week. See you in seven day’s time.
