Archive for September, 2006

Soo… its presently noon on Thursday. The group still hasn’t organized a time to exchange the notes.
I assume you guys will come accross the frontpage of the site, or this blog. I wrote up the notes I took that day in MS Word.

Download Rough Notes Here: GEO3166_Lab2 (MS Word)

Over the last few years, FOX News has become known as being a de facto mouthpiece of the Republican party. The transparent extent to which its commentators are polarized, and the continual basis on which they violate all principles of journalistic integrity, have rightfully earned it that reputation. There’s even been documentaries exploring the issue.

Bill Clinton was invited for an interview with FOX the other day. When it was clear that his interview was to be misconstrued into something else, he reacted quite adversely. The exchange was quite livid, and the resulting transcript has just been released online.

The reporter’s ensuing questions only made it that much more clear that this was always intended to be an interview to get Clinton in a bind.

Update: See the video here. FOX seemed to have edited the video to obfuscate the part where Clinton highlights that this interview was done under false pretext. They reordered Clinton’s remarks, cleverly sidelining his objections. This was not done to make the conversation more cohesive to the audience. It was done to manipulate the audience’s perceptions of FOX.

15. Until the contemplated new legislation has been introduced and passed, SONY BMG is of the opinion that there is a legal vacuum around TPMs in Canada.

Excerpt from Sony BMG et. al. vs. Vladimir Louis Jaques et. al.; a document deleneating Sony canada’s reasoning as to why Canadians should not be compensated for the Sony Rootkit fiasco.

The document then goes on to say that for the actions in the US to apply to Canada, this country would have had to ratify the WIPO treaty of 1996, which mandated anti-circumvention legislation of TPMs. While this does seem like a rather weak substantiation, I’m not a legal expert, and so I am not in a position to question these findings. That said, I do wonder about the necessity of inserting such comments given the other, arguably more solid, reasoning listed in the document. This seems more a politicization of the document as a means to wedge the government into action.

Because of the other reasons delineated in the document, it is highly unlikely that BMG would of compensated Canadians even if such legislation were in place. This brings further the idea that this point was a subversive attempt to pressure the government, perhaps as means to highlight its dissaproval of the current silence on the state of copyright reforms.

While my stance is on the side of Sony at this point, in I agree that they are not entitled to compensate Canadians for the outcome of legal proceedings in the US, I remain cautious of comments such as argument no. 15.

You can download the full document from here.

PS. It’s not that I oppose the said legislation, I simply oppose using false claims to further a political goal. This applies to any party, whether they be a major label or M.A.D.D.

I’ve just completed work on Black&White v0.5, a skin for [the free and fantastic] Quintessential Media Player. I’ve been wanting to design a new minimalistic skin for a while now, but never invested the time. Then finally, last week, I just went ahead and started on the basics of the skin. Then, yesterday, I made it functional. The result is the compact little bugger you see here:

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…And with its playlist extended:

You can download Black&White v0.5 from here. [116kb]

Quinnware’s official page for the skin can be accessed here.

Leaders in both the music and film industry fear the repercusssions of mainstream piracy taking hold. However, I really do wonder about the validity of some of their decisions.

Case and point: HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. In addition to an encryption scheme more advanced than that found on common DVDs, these discs have the additional artificial requirement of specialized encryption hardware. I say “artificial”, because the discs will work reguardless of whether that hardware is in place. The catch is, that without that hardware, the discs will refuse to play their movies at high-resolutions. They’ll instead be bumped down to DVD quality, or not play at all.

The problem arises from the fact that alot of people (youths especially), will watch those HD-DVD/Blu-Ray movies on their computers. However, no computer on the market today has that encryption hardware. It’s not just the PCs themselves either: they’ll need to buy specialized (read: expensive) monitors. Current monitors will play high-end resolution material just fine as is, but they don’t have that specialized encryption module the industry wants them to have. Now whereas it may take three-four years for computers the eventually carry that equipment, it will take far longer for the monitors themselves to be replaced due to their exhorbitant cost.

So ultimately, that means that all legitimate customers wanting to play the movies on their computers will be blocked from doing so in high-resolution. So one has to wonder, what’s the point? Why not just go for DVDs, which are *alot* cheaper to boot instead? In its quest to minimize piracy, the industry has defeated the very reason why anyone would adopt to this new format. This is like the owner of a stable shooting all their horses so that no one will steal them.

But what of the pirates that plan on making copies? They don’t even deal with the encryption problems to begin with. They get their stuff from plants over in China and so forth. In the Internet Age, all it takes is for one copy in the world to surface. Once that’s done, all the bootleggers jump on it and distribute it. Whether these new medias have heavy encryption or not won’t change that, nor the amount of time it gets for illegitimate copies to surface.

I suppose that I’m getting riled up about this because I’m one of those legitimate customers that watch movies on their computer. What I see here is something that will impair me, in the name of something it won’t even hinder. I do understand the need to have checks in place to hamper expanding piracy, but is this really the way we want things to be?

The answer is that it doesn’t matter. Because ultimately, consumers won’t ever know the difference. Of those who do, fewer will even care. It’s only the techies like me that get upset at the artificial constraints being placed upon us. The fact is that in a few years, whether they’re worth it or not, HD-DVDs and/or Blu-Ray optical drives will be installed in computers. Then, a few years later, everyone will have the necessary hardware. It’s at that point things will work according to the imaginary plan. However, that wait of five years, for myself, is absurd. But if I’m the only one that will ever care… well, then it doesn’t matter what the industry pulls off.

PS. I keep saying “industry” because there’s not just one player in this. It isn’t just the MPAA, it isn’t just the hardware manufacturers, it isn’t just the likes of Sen. Orrin Hatch. It’s the combination of the whole.