I Still Don't Want To Be Part of Your Fucking Ecosystem
shkspr.mobi
shkspr.mobi
Because the barrier to entry to creating your own fork, should Big Cutlery™ decide they want to prevent your access to one, is very low.
Come to think, that's pretty hilarious actually.
Maybe force all bowls to be too big and heavy to easily lift?
There's literally one report from 2005 from one A&E (ER) dept that suggested it would be a good idea. Others disagreed.
1) Amazon bundling a video service with their free shipping program.
2) Amazon's proprietary software locking in you into whatever platforms that are in their business interests.
3) Panasonic's proprietary TV platform that people can't be bothered to develop for.
4) Digital Restrictions Management that prevents one from downloading a movie via Amazon Prime and playing it in any other video player on any other platform.
This is just the usual awful situation when you rely on proprietary software. Stop using Amazon Prime to watch videos. Write to them about the problems you have. I recently wrote to Audible because their ebooks come with DRM and cannot be played on GNU/Linux using Free Software.
DRM is basically digital signing w/encryption right ? Linux doesn't have that ?
The only way of making it sort-of, maybe achieve anything in software is through obscuring the key and decrypted data sufficiently to make it more effort than it is worth.
This means the DRM implementations are all closed source, and Linux ports are pretty much bottom of the priority list of any of the companies providing DRM solutions, not least because it gets massively harder to lock down access to the data on a system where tons of people know how to rebuild the kernel and modify drivers and otherwise try to intercept it.
Because proprietary systems never get cracked; and it always takes more than one person to do it. For example, geohot.
My point is that Linux DRM is possible. But all DRM sucks anyway, because ultimately to lock down the system implementors choose to reduce the number of devices that can operate with it and sooner or later it's just one or two devices.
It's never about locking it down fully - they're not quite stupid enough to believe they can prevent copying. After all they know perfectly well that most torrents are not originating from copies ripped by average consumers.
DRM is about a perceived tradeoff between the cost of DRM and how much copying they can stop by making it too cumbersome or difficult for a reasonable proportion of regular users.
It doesn't even necessarily have much to do with reality, but just as much to do with sheer fear.
Once you have bought into the rigmarole that this can somehow be effective, you have to test and support various platforms. Doing that for Windows is cost-effective, doing it for MacOS is less so, and doing it for anything smaller is not a money-making proposition.
Of course, if you could add 2 + 2 to get 4 in the first place, you would use an open standard and be able to sell your media to everyone.
I think I have a new .sig.
Very, very simply, here is the premise behind DRM.
1. I know a secret 2. I want to tell you the secret 3. I don't want you to tell anyone else the secret 4. I don't trust you
Perhaps you can see now why there's no solution to that scenario.
Another good short one:
DRM 'manages access' in the same way that jail 'manages freedom.'
Also, analog hole.
http://blog.netflix.com/2010/11/netflix-on-android.html
Netflix delayed their offering, and then restricted it to a few devices for quite some time, and now makes heavy use of the Android DRM framework. This doesn't exist on desktop Linux, and I doubt it could even be incorporated (however pragmatic) given the knee-jerk reaction to anything DRM.
I have a 30-year-old amplifier that still works just fine, despite having been built before CD players and MP3 players came along. Sure you could buy an all-in-one device that integrated the amp and the tape deck, but a lot of people avoided those because they wanted flexibility, expandability, and robustness.
Similarly, back in those days it was quite common to see little TVs with an integrated VHS player. But if you were the sort of person who bought individual audio components, you probably also avoided those things, because you recognized that the function of projecting a moving image on a screen was independent of the function of reading a signal from a strip of magnetized tape, and so keeping them in two separate devices bought you flexibility, expandability, and robustness.
Now, apparently, those old lessons are still useful. I'm not very much into TVs, so I don't know, but to me the real "ecosystem" problem here is that the TV apparently is not just a display device. It's pulling double duty as a web browser also (and who knows what else is in there). Unfortunately, a year and a half is a long time in terms of web technologies, so a perfectly good device for projecting moving images onto a screen is now deemed obsolete.
In other words, a TV that also plays online video is great as long as there's an open, standardized method of delivering it.
For a while, the appeal was that it was cheaper and simpler to just buy a smart TV that had Netflix, etc integrated than it was to put together some other solution yourself.
Turns out the reality is that the integrated smart functionality tends to be slow, clunky, and rarely updated. Now that things like Roku, Apple TV, and Chromecast are so cheap and easy, the tides have turned there.
While I was somebody that bought a smart TV a few years ago for those reasons, I've gotten to where I haven't touched those features since Chromecast launched. If anything, it's become an annoyance that my TV has a 15-20 second boot time when I turn it on. I know I've decided that my future TVs will be TVs only, and that seems to be a common theme among others I've talked to with smart TVs.
This was my immediate assumption as soon as I saw advertisements for "smart TVs". I assume it's even worse for in-car smart screen thingies, since you buy a new car even more rarely than a TV.
Add me to your list of people who will only be buying a dumb tv in the future.
Bundle solutions seem to offer more issues than they offer simplicity. Like you, I own a ~30 year old amplifier which does only does a few simple things thing: running my speakers, switching between two inputs, and supplying power to my PS3 (bluray player).
The two inputs are my TV and 3.5mm audio jack (for phones), my TV handles digital input, namely my PS3, my laptop, a RaspPi, and eventually a Chromecast when I get around to it.
My laptop makes my TV an audio visualisation screen (Project M), a Netflix screen (Chromium-Pipelight), a YouTube screen (Chromium/Minitube). A multipurpose media screen, without any smart-TV'esque clunkiness.
Chromecast is one of those things that is either purposely or coincidentally replicating this kind of setup for a more average user. You can use your tablet (extremely practical) to do pretty much everything I described above. Once again I find Google trying to be my (huge and scary) buddy, instead of hugging me to death by ecosystem lock-in. (Yes, I see the irony of Android with that statement.)
Hoo boy, speaking of proprietary issues, I unplugged mine over a year ago, and haven't missed it. I used the PS3 for Netflix and sometimes DVD/Bluray playing. The trouble is, you never knew when it would decide that it needed to update itself. Every update takes like half an hour to run, can't be postponed or run in the background, and your device can't do much until you run it, since naturally, you can't use your Netflix account, which ought to be completely separate, without logging into a PSN account that I have no use for. And of course, the Netflix interface is slow and terrible, and it doesn't really support anything else.
I replaced it with a Roku that does everything better and is a third of the price. Being tiny and taking almost no power are nice too. If it updates at all, it does it silently in the background, which is how I like it.
The reason?
The television I purchased before that was an LG "smart" television. At the time I bought it, LG promised that it would provide additional software for its TV platform that would enable additional services. It never happened. That particular TV still does exactly the same stuff it did on the day I bought it. And then I heard rumors floating around about how some "smart" televisions phone home and serve ads.
Screw that. There are any number of discrete devices with a network connection on one end, and a HDMI port on the other. I don't even need my television set to have its own tuner. So starting from my last purchase, I will now be buying televisions only as passive display devices with a variety of video input ports.
(And the device that translates the Netflix and Amazon Prime feeds to video will not be the Xbox, because there's no way in hell that I am paying Microsoft rent just to use the network interface on the box that I own to connect to a third party server. I already have at least 4 uncrippled computers in the very same room that can do that at no additional charge.)
Even more, if your VCR went rogue and started taking out tapes, you didn't have to throw out your TV. This mentality is now completely gone, because you're expected to throw your TV (or phone or whatever) out every 6 months.
Forced obsolescence is always a boon for manufacturers.
As another example, on the same front page of HN that this article is on, is another entitled "When is it Stealing?", whereby the author begs the question by just blithely assuming that bits can be owned like physical property.
Don't get me wrong, I think attribution is a very important part of sharing information, but at the same time, too many people get caught up in believing they are special, when history has shown time and again that most "new" ideas were built upon the bedrock that is the thousands of years of our civilization, and usually multiple people get the same idea around the same time.
Panasonic, a company not known for quality software -- what was he expecting? Just get a freaking $50 rokubox and be done with it. Then it won't matter if android or his tv doesn't make coffee to go with his salty tears. And it'll work with whatever shitty Smart TV he decides to buy into next.
I just wanted fast shipping with no additional costs ¬.¬
Edit: it's probably not your browser, but you do have to install silverlight.
If you want my money you'll have to provide at least the same amount of service. And stop being assholes trying to pass massive surveillance laws every three months.
I think the pro-piracy position is just totally irrational. If I'm gay and I don't like Chick Fil-A's anti-gay message, should I: a) refuse to do business with them; or b) steal chicken sandwiches instead?[1] The big media companies don't have a monopoly on content. The costs to both produce and consume indie content are lower than they ever have been.
[1] At this point someone will bring out the "copying isn't stealing" hypothetical. Technically true, but consider this: any product has a delta between its market price and its marginal cost of production. The marginal cost of producing a copy of a piece of digital content isn't zero, but it's very close to it. But lots of products sell for far more than their marginal cost of reproduction. Is it okay to steal sandwiches from Chick fil-A if you leave an amount of money that covers the cost of producing the next sandwich? Apply that reasoning to products like Apple computers or Prada handbags that sell for far more than their marginal cost of production. Is it okay to take those items and leave an amount of money that compensates for the cost of replacing it? Or do we have a general understanding that companies that produce things have a right to the profit they can earn on each item?
Don't they?
The problem is not with what they create, it's how they want to limit your options of using what you legally bought.
It is perfectly possible to believe that the way copyright terms have been extended and the way usage restrictions have hollowed out public access means the balance has been distorted to a point where the bargain is no longer justifiable.
The widespread acceptance of piracy indicates that the support for the current copyright regime is likely to crumble, and my guess is that it is largely down to the way copyright holders have massively abused their position to shift the balance ever further towards them.
In other words, despite pretty much never pirating anything these days - I have a collection of about 500 or so legally bought DVDs: I have very little sympathy. They've largely brought this on themselves. They do need to realise that their copyright protections are artificial restrictions that comes with a price, and that can be rolled back or revoked.
The much more telling thing is that there is no public moral outrage from large numbers of "intellectual property crusaders" who decry the lack of enforcement - the limited outrage there is almost entirely corporate and/or paid.
This shows how disconnected copyright law has become from prevailing culture.
The copyright holders have already for the most part lost - the question is not if the legal framework will change, but how long they can hold it in place.
That's true of every property right. In the state of nature, I have the "right" to trample all over your yard, to kill you and eat you. When the government comes along and creates the "right" to land and the "right" to life, that is a trade off between society and property owners.
> It is perfectly possible to believe that the way copyright terms have been extended and the way usage restrictions have hollowed out public access means the balance has been distorted to a point where the bargain is no longer justifiable.
And the way to handle this is to lobby to get the right redefined to have the sort of scope you want. And nothing would help this effort more than supporting indie content creators, undercutting the wealth and power of the traditional media companies.
> and my guess is that it is largely down to the way copyright holders have massively abused their position to shift the balance ever further towards them.
The "abused their position" canard is becoming toothless in the face of how much money is on the opposition side now, in companies that specialize in distributing content (Youtube, Apple, etc). The lobbying dollars are there to weaken copyright protections to give these distributors a better negotiating position. It's a hard political sell because in the U.S. we just believe in really strong protections for property rights. My parents have this huge back yard that they never use. But if a homeless squatter sought refuge on a tiny portion of their land, an infringement that would cost my parents basically nothing, they can still have the police come and kick that person out. We like our property rights absolute, and that's why the media industry has found it so easy to drive copyright protection in that direction.
So the appropriate response to a rigged game is to just buckle down and try harder?
(Youtube, Apple, etc)
Did you even read the article? Google and Apple are part of the problem; they created the walled gardens!
Historically this difference is highly noticeable: Property rights to physical items and land have existed pretty much as long as humanity to various extents, even in societies with no formal concepts of jurisprudence and no centralised enforcement. It has been codified in laws pretty much as far back as we have records - the first codified property laws are more than 4000 years old.
While copyright came into being as an Act of Parliament with the Statute of Anne in 1710, which was an explicit restriction of rights, and it took a further 150 years or so to solidify the modern copyright system, because it was essentially all invented from scratch with no basis in previous human history. Most of these efforts explicitly recognised copyright as a bargain where the public gave up rights, while property law has systematically been justified with the idea of a natural right to control that which you can physically possess and protect.
Incidentally I believe property rights are too extensive too, and e.g. in Norway where I'm from there are substantial ancient exceptions from private property rights (on the basis that too extensive property rights also involves the public surrendering freedoms) - the "freedom to roam" ("allemannsretten"), but historically they are still of a fundamentally different character in that at least the underlying concept of property law basically devolves to the idea that someone does not have the right - though the may have the power - to deprive you of access to that which you physically possess.
> And the way to handle this is to lobby to get the right redefined to have the sort of scope you want.
Meanwhile most people are not interested in a crusade - they just want to go on with their lives, and carry out actions they largely don't see as morally wrong. History is full of laws that have fallen because enforcement became impossible due to total public disregard for the law.
> The "abused their position" canard is becoming toothless in the face of how much money is on the opposition side now
As long as the copyright terms are as long as they are, the DMCA is still on the books in the US, and sites like Youtube enforce far stricter standards than they are legally obliged to, it is by no means toothless.
> The lobbying dollars are there to weaken copyright protections to give these distributors a better negotiating position.
Of your two examples, one (Apple) has a strong self-serving interest in protecting copyright, and the other is a site run by a company with a strong self-serving interest in protecting copyright, thanks to iTunes and the Play store respectively. I don't see why you believe that either Apple, Google or similar companies have much to win by lobbying for weaker copyright protections. Nor have I seen any kind of evidence that they do.
> It's a hard political sell because in the U.S. we just believe in really strong protections for property rights.
Copyright is not a property right, no matter how many times they repeat the term "intellectual property". Copyright law exists in the first place exactly because property law fundamentally is based on the concept of possession. Copying does not remove possession of anything, and so it could not be a violation of property rights.
And the extent of piracy in the US too demonstrates quite well that whether or not people think it is "right" in abstract terms, a substantial proportion of the population does not consider it wrong enough to stop participating in it. Copying and sharing has been an ingrained part of human culture since before written history. In fact, large parts of human culture throughout history has depended on widespread copying and sharing.
So on hand, the historical state has been one of freely copying and sharing, while on the other hand the historical state has been one of rapid and continuous strengthening of enforcement of physical property rights. The two are about as opposite as they can get.
> We like our property rights absolute
Not even the US has property rights that are anywhere near absolute. Try erecting a ten story building on the plot of your suburban house without applying for planning permissions and fighting all your neighbours. Try buying a house right in the path of a long planned road and fight the application of eminent domain. Try starting a brothel most places. Or dumping hazardous chemicals. Or refusing black people access to your store.
Many US states further have exceptions that limit your ability to even prevent access to your property in certain situations - e.g. you may not be able to prevent access to the shore-line.
Your freedoms and rights to do things with your property are continuously weighed against and limited by the concerns for the freedoms and rights of others. Your property ownership does not exempt you from business regulations, or anti-discrimination laws or environmental regulations or a whole host of other laws and regulations that limits what you can do to or on your property.
And that is the one thing that brings property rights closest to copyright laws: They both reflect tradeoffs between the freedom and rights of the public and freedom and rights of the owner.
Copyright infringement is more like trespass than theft, but trespass is a property concept as well. You've mis-characterized property law here. A property right isn't just about possession, it's the right to exclude. It doesn't just keep you from dispossessing me of my land, but allows me to arbitrarily exclude you from it, even in situations where your use of my property doesn't cause me any loss or deprivation.
> While copyright came into being as an Act of Parliament with the Statute of Anne in 1710
Before the Statute of Anne, operating a printing press require a royal license, so large-scale copying wasn't possible. In other words, copying has been restricted almost since the technology has existed to allow it.
> while property law has systematically been justified with the idea of a natural right to control that which you can physically possess and protect.
Yet we consider it a crime to engage in activities like embezzlement, which specifically involve money or property you do not physically possess. This is quite an unnatural concept if you think about it: you give someone else possession and control of property, then expect the government to intervene if they use it in a way different than you intended? That has no natural analogue and is indeed relatively novel in the history of criminal law.
> I don't see why you believe that either Apple, Google or similar companies have much to win by lobbying for weaker copyright protections. Nor have I seen any kind of evidence that they do.
Google, and Apple, as content distributors, have a great incentive for copyright to be weak, which gives them more leverage in negotiating with content companies. Google and Apple would love not to have to pay for the content that appears in the iTunes or Play stores.
> Copyright is not a property right, no matter how many times they repeat the term "intellectual property". Copyright law exists in the first place exactly because property law fundamentally is based on the concept of possession. Copying does not remove possession of anything, and so it could not be a violation of property rights.
Property does not require possession of anything, nor can they only be violated by dispossessing someone of something. Someone walking onto my property without permission does not dispossess me of it, but is a violation of my property right. Abstract concepts like transferable contractual obligations are also property rights.
> Not even the US has property rights that are anywhere near absolute.
I mean "absolute" in the sense that property law rejects the idea of sharing. Say I have a big plot of land that I don't live on or use for anything. Some people come along and camp in it. The value they gain from camping is greater than the loss to me of the use of land I never use anyway. Property law does not consider that. It gives me the right to exclude people from the property. The government is of course empowered to regulate my usage of my property, but other individuals can't raise "the public good" as a defense to infringement of my property rights. They can't say "this benefits the public a lot more than it hurts the owner."
> weighed against and limited by the concerns for the freedoms and rights of others.
If you think about it, the fact that you can't cut across someone's land is a much bigger infringement to "natural freedom" than the fact you can't copy someone's song. At least the song is something that is the product of its creator. It wouldn't have existed without an act of creation. But the land is natural. It's the earth. It existed long before any property owner ever laid claim to it. Yet, we very strongly defend the right of people to exclude other people from patches of earth they didn't even create. So is it surprising that we have strong protections to allow people to exclude others from works they did create?
Theft denies the owner their rightful property. Trespass denies or restricts the owner the use of their rightful property.
Copyright Infringement does not, on its own[1], does not stop the rights-holder[2] from using their copy.
The important distinction here - that is often conspicuously avoided by people that attempt to conflate copyright infringement and theft - is scarcity. Physical goods are scarce, so we invented laws to discourage theft. Land is scarce, so we invented laws to discourage trespass. Copyright, on the other hand, was enacted not out of fear of losing a scarce resource; we hoped it would give society faster/better access to "science and the useful arts".
As an investment, it is something society may decide it to stop paying for (i.e. no longer providing the temporary monopoly). People hoping to exploit such monopolies should really keep that in mind, because society may choose to invest in something else if their investment isn't providing adequate returns (access).
[1] If I have to invade your property to do the copying, I could probably be charged with both copyright infringement and trespass. The two activities are still distinct; they just happen to occur at roughly the same time.
[2] "owner" isn't really appropriate when speaking of copyright infringement, for the same reasons. You don't "own" the abstract concept behind a work, you only own a particular instance.
But... I can't really do all of this, I don't have the money. If and when I have the means to do this comfortably, I'll do it! Until then, this is the way I'm gonna go. And the thing is, if I was not pirating all of these things and simply abstaining from enjoying these costly goods, it still would all be the same to the entity I'd buy it from -- because from their view it's a) simply not consume, or b) consume -- and for the time being at least contribute to fulfilling a network effects popularity of the thing, or at least get interested enough to be a willing buyer sometime in the future, (see Adobe and Microsoft leaked documents expressing their being okay people pirating their products. I'm sure you understand that Adobe and MS would indeed that you rather use a pirated copy of Windows/Photoshop than to go with Linux (or GIMP)... because this way you at least get hooked/familiarized with it, and might buy it legally when you're a business owner or something).
I'm poor and I like chicken sandwiches because all my friends like chicken sandwiches. I can't afford chicken sandwiches so I steal them instead so that I can fit in with my friends (sometimes I leave a couple quarters on the counter because that is all it costs them to make one and I'd like them to break even). The company I steal them from shouldn't be upset with me because I've been able to find out who has the best chicken sandwiches and when I have money I'll pay for my chicken sandwiches.
Yes, the company can say "consume and pay or don't consume" because they paid all the money to make the content in the first place. Any other option is stealing.
Have you checked out the selection at your local library?
My parents go down there and take out multiple movies a day, for FREE. I also hear they have books there.
Free from the library, free from The PirateBay, who cares, right? Either way you're not eating into anyone's profits.
That doesn't necessarily apply to you specifically, since it's dependent on your financial situation and how much you consume various media. Imagine yourself in a hypothetical world where it wasn't physically possible to pirate any music, TV shows, movies, software, etc. Would you really completely abstain from enjoying those goods, or would you simply reduce your consumption while actually paying for it? I think for many people, it's the latter.
No one is going to buy a TV for Amazon Instant Video support. They will buy the TV, see that it does not support the service, and promptly pirate the content they want.
We will adapt to this situation, or lose to those who will. And if no one adapts? Then many will pirate. And all our diatribes against freeloaders will do nothing to stop them.
I'm not saying it's good that it's this way. I pay.
Actually, a client bought a "smart" TV to watch BlazeTV. When he realized it wasn't smart enough to offer the channel he wanted(licensing, crap proprietary software) he called me to "make it work". I bought a Roku, delivered & set it up. He watched < 4 hours of the target channel, called me up and told me to pack the whole thing up. Gone are the Roku, the TV and all subscriptions cancelled. Here's a target consumer who wants to pay but is not willing to pay, pay more & then jump through a myriad of hoops.
edit, forgot your 2nd paragraph: he doesn't pirate the content, it's not that important to him. He does listen to the live audio offered free of charge on his phone now that I set that up for him.
However, producers don't get to complain about piracy by people who aren't in their market. Unless they eventually put the product on sale at some point, a pirate has no impact on the bottom line. In the simple (one-price-forever) case, the producer lost nothing - not even potential profit, because the consumer was already priced out.
My ire is directed at the people who treat piracy as some sort of moral high ground that they're taking.
No.
By his reasoning it would be okay to go into the store, copy the bag and leave with the copy.
The other reason is that the store's supplier has a finite number of handbags - and selling one for $1,000 is clearly worse than selling one for $10,000. With data, there's an infinite supplier willing to sell you more at the same marginal cost. In that case, I'm back to not seeing why the store owner would care.
Copying data is frictionless - in fact, it's invisible. The store owner would never even know it happened.
My point is that it's ridiculous to make a categorical distinction between digital and physical goods based on the premise that digital goods have a zero replacement cost while physical goods have a non-zero replacement cost. It makes it seem like as long as a producer is not out the replacement cost, then stealing a product is okay.
Think of it this way. If, during a peak holiday shopping weekend, a thousand people not in the target market descended upon a store and replaced all of the bags with their strict cost-to-eventually-replace amount, this would be a major blow to the company's expected revenue. The same scenario does not hold for digital products. A thousand people could pirate the digital product, and as long as the pirates are not in the target market (an assumption made in these analogies so far), there is no analogous loss of potential revenue.
I think the 'magic' analogy is still a bit more apt because of the difficulty of quantifying that temporary lost opportunity. Maybe it could be about using your own 3D printer to duplicate a product exactly.
A better example would be a Honda car (or Ford, or whoever makes boring cars these days). Say you go to the factory, provide the raw materials and pay the workers to do one extra car which you then drive off in. And suppose otherwise you wouldn't have bothered buying a car at all.
Does Honda have something to complain about?
Putting that aside though, once you're out of positional good territory some providers of goods and services are indeed willing to accept different prices from different customers depending on their capacity to pay.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_segmentation
If I can make 10% profit out of you by charging a lower price whilst still being able to make %200 profit from the next client through the door because they can pay more, then it is rational for me to do so. The trick is that it is difficult to convince rich client A to pay twice as much as poor client B if A knows that B is getting the same good for half the price, but if you can pull that trick off, then it is totally rational to modify the selling price based on the customer's capacity to pay.
You now have lowered the impression of price of the good to everyone who knows what you did. Now when your friend wants to buy a car, why would they buy one from Ford when they know they can just go down to the factory with the raw materials and a little cash and get the same car for less. Ford should be PISSED!
You can get a loan, buy the handbag for $10000, and disassemble it to create a copy pattern. Then you make and sell 10 copies at $2000 to pay off your loan, and sell an 11th copy to pay for the 12th, that you keep for yourself. At that point, you can continue making copies to serve all the customers that Hermes is excluding by setting its price so high, and profit from their narrow market focus. But you can't put a Hermes logo on your copies. Trademark.
This happens all the time, because fashion has no copyrights.
Copying isn't stealing. Stealing is stealing. You can't be a fashion monopolist, because there are trivial barriers to entry and no legal protections. Therefore, in order to price higher than the marginal cost of production, you have to sell the protected monopoly good--your trademark.
Hermes can charge $10000 for a $1000 item because it has created $9000 worth of brand value in its trademark. So, theoretically, it should be value-neutral for you to take the Hermes bag and leave $1000 on the counter, provided that you also remove and leave behind every trademarked element on the item. That's the only way Hermes breaks even. And the only way you can do this non-hypothetically without it being considered theft is by purchasing a knock-off bag for $1000 instead.
The difference is that they don't have a frictionless way of "pirating" electronics, so they are actually forced to choose between paying for the good and abstaining from it. With media, it's easy to rationalize that you wouldn't be giving the producer money anyway, but I'm skeptical of your ability to honestly evaluate that when you have the option to trivially enjoy the good for free.
However, there is an incredible amount of content out there available via free and legal means. That is to say - technology has made the barrier to entry very, very low and so content creation is a really competitive market. The relevant question is not whether, strictly speaking, the pirate can afford the product - I can afford an Hermes bag if I save up for a while - but whether their willingness to pay exceeds the price. I'm priced out of the market based on my willingness to pay, not my ability to pay.
If we were to take a typical pirate and transport them to a hypothetical world where piracy was physically impossible, I think you'd generally find that they're not actually priced out of the market for many of the goods that they currently pirate. They'd likely cut down their consumption in a major way, but I strongly suspect that they'd still be willing to pay for a significant portion of the goods they currently pirate.
If you paid for it, you were willing to pay at least the asked amount. In a "pay what you want" scheme, your willingness to pay is something between infinity and what you wind up paying. If you don't buy a thing, your willingness to pay is something below the price being asked.
There's no magic. It's an immediately available revealed-preference system - you either pay or you don't. I won't disagree that the availability of a free, well-functioning, DRM-free, easily available alternative reduces people's willingness to pay for locked-in, degraded, or even available-but-overpriced alternatives. That said, we live in a world where the piracy alternative exists, whether people like it or not.
Adjust your business model accordingly. Valve is making a killing selling software via Steam.
When I talk about being able to honestly assess willingness to pay, I'm talking about the pirate who claims that they wouldn't buy a good anyway so they might as well pirate it. It might be true, but all we can really say from the outside is that they value the good at least $0 worth, so their willingness to pay is somewhere between 0 and infinity. You can't put an upper bound on their willingness to pay just because they didn't buy the good when they got the good for free.
I don't particularly care if people pirate, but I find that pirates tend to do a fair bit of mental gymnastics trying to justify why piracy is ethical; I think the "I wouldn't pay for it anyway" argument falls under that umbrella.
I really doubt that.
First your last sentence. Which one is it? Either you cut down on consumption in a major way, or you still pay for a significant portion of your current consumption.
Then, questions about this hypothetical world. Does free music (net.labels, ektoplazm.com etc) still exist in this world? If not then I'd expect music culture to become a rather elitist hobby, if it even still exists in any meaningful form at all.
If free music still exists then I expect it to flourish much more than it does in the real world. I'd probably mostly listen to that, because that's where the innovation will happen. I'd probably buy a tiny number of some classic genre-definers that happened to end up on the "paid" side of the fence.
The latter situation is where we're moving with piracy as well.
I'm not GP, but I think the real problem is lack of competition. There's no real competition in this marked, they all collude.
One example: If Big-Movie-Studio-A sold their movies online as downloadable, DRM-free content, I would be much more inclined to buy their movies instead of the competitions. There's hundreds of ways the movie studios could differentiate themselves, but they don't. They obviously do not want to compete on most fronts.
A lot of people are seeing their internet use throttled for certain services lately, so even the supposedly "simple and fast" alternatives are taking a beating in the race these days.
(Bittorrent) P2P technology is a marvel to me. It's such a simple concept and the recent advances at distributed links, encrypting and/or obfuscating the traffic etc. have done a good job keeping up with attempts at limiting it. It's fast, takes little effort to use and makes incredible use of the resources that the internet offers while being more true to its core values (fault tolerance, distributed data, "route around censorship" etc.).
If you want to (and have a modern connection), you can find TV Shows in high definition shortly after their original broadcast, with zero advertisement interruptions and at download speeds that vastly exceed realtime streaming. Even in the rare cases where you cannot stream what you have downloaded so far (because of early missing chunks), simply waiting a minute or two will usually do the trick. What I would call the "inconvenience level" is down to where the time you need to wait for your content to be ready is about what you need for getting a round of snacks. Ergo: Virtually Zero.
A content consumer like myself, in particular using a GNU+Linux system, is receiving vastly superior service at pretty much zero cost (save for effort and internet fees). Not to mention that for a content publisher, bittorrent is a mindblowingly simple and cost effective tool.
For a while, I was actually considering moving away from my usual routine of "watch first, buy properly (in disc form) later". With all the BS they are still attempting to shovel into those, however (in particular the recent net-neutrality and surveillance crap), I find it harder and harder to ease up on my stance.
In my opinion they should burn it all down, put it on bittorrent and charge in crypto money. Pretty sure we will be moving to some form of that eventually, might as well get it over with before we have to endure even more collateral damage from outdated monopolies trying a little too hard having it their way.
Aye, there's the rub.
Then I tried teaching someone who's not tech savvy to do it. She didn't have adblock, so she was confused by the Russian wives for sale and by the multiple Download buttons. She was deeply suspicious of having to download uTorrent and completely lost as to how to choose which of several available torrents she should pick.
I don't know. I try to use Netflix on someone's Xbox and have the exact same problem. How the hell am I supposed to navigate with a joystick? Is it A or B to select? How do I go back?
Maybe we're all just getting old.
The media industry is no longer designed for more than a handful of massive vertically integrated companies to operate, because there's only a handful of massive vertically integrated companies that operate the media under a thousand different names.
It may sound quaint, but production costs used to be the big hurdle to creating and distributing an independent work. As production costs approach zero, collusion and M&A have risen in a complementary manner to compensate.
(EDIT: And I'm very glad I did, as just the other day I bought a book that in its original format causes the Android Kindle app to go back to the main screen if I remain on the same page for more than a few seconds(!) and lose its position in the book - thanks to Calibre I know I have alternatives, including converting it to other formats and/or reading it in other readers, if Amazon doesn't manage to figure out what the issue is; that's within the first dozen books I've bought from the Kindle store)
I will start buying video online when I'm equally confident I can do the same.
The free videos via Prime I'll be more lenient with. Even rentals. I don't mind DRM on that per se. Except that the DRM generally prevents me or make it hard to access it on all my devices. If they won't run on my Linux laptop (they might, as I understand it, via Pipelight, but I've not tested), or on my Android TV stick, or on my Android phone, they might as well not exist.
In that case the value of Amazon Instant Video to me is arguably negative: I receive zero value, and there's a an added negative value in having it shoved in my face knowing they're choosing to artificially limit my access. I'm less happy about my Prime subscription today, knowing the amount of potential hassle might be involved in trying to get access to these videos than I was before I received the e-mail saying they'd added Instant Video to the UK Prime accounts last night...
Or Netflix: runs on everything. But if your "ecosystem" is limited to particular devices (see: iMessage, or the OP) then it may as well not exist as far as I'm concerned.
Hell, even Apple knew iTunes needed to run on Windows to matter. Eventually, anyway.
The example I like is Netflix on Linux. Now, boredom will find a way - and I use Wine and FireFox - but, does it really have to be like that?
I understand Linux is (without looking it up) something like 1% of the desktop market. But really... why should that matter? I know, business..but it's a consumer product.
When I'm trying to look through Netflix's website to see what's supported, all I can find is them trying to sell me proprietary devices. I don't mind so much, because I still like Netflix.
It's cheaper for Netflix to have you use their box than it is for them to develop & support a Linux client for the relatively small user base.
Licensing restrictions and other politics likely prevent them from accepting open source clients, even if they wanted to.
There has to be a good solution.
I know of no place to legally purchase DRM free content that you would find on Netflix. It's a sorry state to be in.
> Maybe launch a startup that has only public-domain videos to start?
See: http://gondwanaland.com/mlog/2013/05/03/a-kill-hollyweb-plan...
Feel free to take the idea and run with it.
> There has to be a good solution.
I think you or I or someone else needs to make the solution. Though the problem is not simply technical. It's social and political, too.
There is a good solution, and it'll solve several other problems (some way more important than copyrights). I just don't know how to implement it - does anybody have any idea that does not resemble Ucrania?
Public domain does exist: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_in_the_public_dom...
Or do you mean something else?
I think what the GP meant with "public domain does not exist anymore" is that it is effectively is no longer relevant.
This can be done bluntly (via privileges) or sneakily (by making sure compatibility is not easy). But yeah usually ecosystems => lock-in and walled gardens.
iBookstore, Nookbook store, and Kobo -- the other three big players also have eBook DRM (via Adobe). Kindle is no "worse" than them.
Job's anti-DRM letter was published 8 months before the public beta of Amazon MP3 in September 2007. The first DRM free music from EMI was available on iTunes in May 2007. Google Play Music opened in 2011, two years after iTunes music was fully DRM free in the US.
"Eventually" is a bit harsh, it isn't a given that Amazon MP3 and Google Play Music would be DRM free if it wasn't for Apple pushing for it back at the start of 2007.
Seems that every thread has someone claim that if it wasn't for Apple, X would never exist and I'm frankly tired of it.
If it doesn't run on Ubuntu and RedHat, it doesn't run on everything.
That said, I see your point; what I'm worried about is the "HTML5 DRM" specification and the binaries for them not being released on Linux. Then we're entirely screwed, with no work-arounds.
That's how I felt, until it wasn't perfect. I have a lot of DRM free tech books from publishers like O'Reilly. I'd like to be able to read them on my Kindle and sync my notes with the Kindle desktop app or "Cloud Reader". Doesn't work. Notes and highlights only sync between desktop apps and the Kindle e-ink device when you're reading Kindle books bought from Amazon.
That's the problem with a closed ecosystem. No matter how hard they try, the creator of the ecosystem isn't going to be able to foresee/support every use case.
Lovefilm were one of the most flexible and adaptable service providers although I don't know the extent to which this still applies with Amazon.
I don't blame Panasonic for not supporting Flash/Silverlight in the TV. Adopting either of these is likely to require unpleasant licensing terms AND opaque binary blobs into the TV software.
On the service provider side they cannot just drop the security measures (DRM or other security measures) as that would likely be breaching their own licenses from the content owners (film companies). If not supporting a major recognised DRM approach it can be a real sticking block.
[0] Including placement, branding, design and obviously any revenue share arrangements.
What's not widely known is that, unlike smartphones, HTML5 is the dominant platform for TV-based apps. That's why every TV has Netflix, not because Netflix is employing an army of engineers to make a new app for each TV model.
However, TV based apps are still apps that are installed and controlled by the TV vendor. Which means Amazon has to strike a deal with Panasonic to get their generic HTML5 app on Panasonic TVs.
If HTML5 DRM (which, to clarify, I am opposed to) becomes a standard this whole mess could be avoided and Amazon could serve their videos on any TV with a modern browser.
Evenmore, Android doesn't support standards very well. E.g., the default IMAP mail client didn't (probably still doesn't) have IDLE support, it doesn't have CardDAV/CalDAV support (luckily, there are external connectors), and XMPP federation is gone, so you can only talk with your Hangouts buddies via Hangouts.
The 'problem' is that from a user's perspective Android is great. The integration with the Google ecosystem in Android is impressive. And given that many westeners already have GMail et al., Android provides a great and smooth out of the box experience. So, there is little reason to switch, as long as the ads don't become to intrusive.
Everybody and their brother wants to lock you in to their platform (whether it's a phone or an ISP) then split, differentiate, and bundle the product in so many complex ways you'll be lucky if you even understand what you're purchasing.
Cell phone companies have already done this. Airlines as well. So have insurance companies. They make money by farming the walled garden in such a way as to make it look like you have increased choices, but, mirabile dictu, all the choices end up with you paying more money each month.
Enough is enough.
Net Neutrality means handing control of the internet to the government. Regulatory capture and special interests will ensure any Net Neutrality legislation is an unworkable mess that sets investment in the internet back decades.
For video things would be even worse. Do you want Congress telling Amazon which video formats they have to use, and which formats the devices they sell must support? When Amazon doesn't want to support some proprietary standard that congress members got bribed to pick then the thugs with guns will turn up at Amazon HQ and Amazon will be unable to defend themselves.
We know that markets are inherently self-correcting, we just need to have patience.
Nobody's asking for regulations here. I think in a digital age, "Product Definition" benefits everybody in the marketplace, and there's no reason we can't come together on that, whether by industry association or legal definition.
No regulators or laws necessary. I simply need to know when I'm buying an "apple" that I get a red thing that's somewhat round and good to eat -- all without spending 3 years studying the nuances of apple law. That's good for everybody because it encourages and supports a free and open market. This is what we want, no?
I'm not asking for a bureaucrat, or an agency. I just want bins in the market where vendors put stuff where I can easily tell what the thing is, that's all.
I bought an apple and you gave me a squash. What's going to stop that? My taking you to court for damages, that's what. But it won't just be me -- it'll be everybody you ever did business with.
Do you want to face one regulatory agency, where regulatory capture is always present, or do you want to go to court with a million angry customers, perhaps one at a time, that bought one product and were delivered another?
But I'm asking a slightly different question. I'm operating from a definition of "net neutrality" as "non-discrimination of all kinds of bits flowing through internet wires/beams/tubes." And my question is: what stops VeriComAO&T from selling internet service defined as 2kbps of Netflix and 75gbps of CrapVideo(tm brought to you buy VCA&T)? What guarantees/enforces that kind of net neutrality, if not laws or regulations?
No, it really doesn't: it commoditises the product, which tends to drive down margins. Vendors love lockin and lack of clarity. It benefits the customers. It tends not to happen unless it's enforced in some way. Food is a good example of this: what are you buying when you buy an "organic apple"?
Cell phone companies have already done this. Airlines as well. So have insurance companies.
As a matter of fact: It's precisely the other way and airlines are actually unbundling their services.
Bundling is when everything (luggage, food, seat assignment, check in fees) are included in the price of your ticket, if you want it or not. Unbundling is exactly the opposite.
I.e: You pay for the basic service (the flight) and if you want to check in luggage, order a meal, assign a choice seat , or whatever you pay for those extras.
I actually don't mind this practice, provided that an airline is transparent about it, it's clearly lined out during the booking process (if the final price say 232$, I don't have any mystery charges for that booking on my credit card) and as long I'm not sandbagged at the airport (for example: paying an additional 10$ "check-in" fee).
I don't know anything about the specific deals here, but I wouldn't be surprised if an open Amazon Instant Video was an Amazon Instant Video without very much content you'd care about.
Sign into Amazon. Hit this link: https://www.amazon.com/gp/ays
View->View By Type->Music->Amazon MP3
But then tried to actually download my music or Kindle books. You're right. It's actually quite difficult to. Not pleasant.
EDIT: Apparently I'm a dolt; see /u/thaumasiotes's response below.
IMO it should be called Your Music instead, because people want their music, not Amazon's software for playing their music, which is exactly what this article is complaining about.
But, the problem comes when everyone thinks that they can be the guy with the tolerable lock-in. Use MY video service -- anywhere, MY platform -- running on anything, MY app store -- on anyone.
Amazon's model is illustrative. It's hard to read non-Amazon content on a Kindle (harder than any other platform!) but easy to read Amazon content on any rival platform. They've been less successful with video because they aren't able to leverage their existing near-monopolies as well.
I have The Cloud. All I want is a system that lets me read and sync all eBooks (and PDFs too please!) on all readers. Does anything like this exist?
I don’t know of any company competing with Amazon in that space, sadly.
http://www.amazon.com/Information-Rules-Strategic-Network-Ec...
If the smart TV runs android I'm ok with it the apps are already there but if anything else i would rather have the "smart" part outside my TV and just get a regular old TV.
Say for instance using XBMC I know it's a lot less likely the apps will get out of date or I'm going to be forced by some vendors whims to use certain service because they need to increase their profit margins.
Also, fuck the "cloud".
I don't understand the basis for making such a statement. The last Silverlight release is not very old; the linked "lifecycle search" lists mainstream support for the latest version of Silverlight until 2021; there are no announcement that the product is being abandoned. Is it just hyperbole?
I think people are overreacting to the fact that Microsoft improved support for HTML5+JS in Win8 apps, WP8, etc, and are assuming they will let all other technologies die. Even if true, how long of a death it will be?
People have also assumed Flash is completely dead as of _now_ since HTML5+JS is getting increased attention. Then putting Silverlight in the same position and calling it a day. IMHO, these technologies will stay with us for a while.
Their blog hasn't been updated in 2 years - http://blogs.msdn.com/b/silverlight/
They haven't tweeted for 3 months - https://twitter.com/silverlight
Perhaps they're all working really hard on Silverlight 6...
If you're not going to be the above, then act like a pipe-able Unix process.
It's hard to innovate when you're an investor, so those who do manage to sell in a certain market tend to milk their users instead of trying to get more customers. They don't really understand very well why people use IT products, so they tend to take no risks and lock in.
This could be solved like this:
* Be a company who doesn't lose lawsuits to patent trolls. I don't really know the details of that. I don't know how the justice system technically manage those things.
* Fix the patent system to have an healthier innovation landmark.
* Have a business model where companies who do innovate refuse to be bought, and only agree to do partnerships with other companies so to avoid the lock-in between giants. If you get bought by google or microsoft, it will indeed change how your product will end up being used or not. This solution is naive.
I generally respect Amazon, Bezos, most of what they do and their business strategy, but this is a real shitbag move towards paying Prime customers.
You want to be able to consume X on any Y.
Companies want to sell you X on the expectation that you've bought their Y. Given that they've already been extremely successful doing this, X is only available on their Y.
Why should they change?
Remember when all phones expected you to use their own proprietary OS with their own proprietary apps and developers had to make apps for every brand and model separately?
That's vendor lockin taken to such an extreme that people can't even be bother to make apps anymore.
Plus these apps are quickly going to become obsolete or outdated base what developer can be bothered to keep up with all that crap.
Same logic applies just this time it's not phones it's smart TV's.
Where does the profit in the new marketplace come from?
The combination of excellent implementation of a touchscreen in the phone (it was done multiple times before but every other implementation sucked) and the combination of that with a proper app store (by today's standards) gave them the push necessary.
Notice it wasn't any of the regular players at the time that took it in the right direction but a no name in the phone industry. Everybody else was too busy fighting each other instead of innovating.
The profit is where it gets a bit odd since most likely the only profit the manufacturer of the TV gets is the price of the TV and maybe some bonuses from the companies whose app get installed by default on the TV.
No different then a laptop now.
The TV may become popular because of its great flexibility app wise but the bulk of the profits will be earned by software companies distributing the apps through adverts or by charging for the app.
Because there's the example of the iPod. It wasn't the music player to have until Apple employees wore down Steve Jobs so they could let it connect with Windows.
The more you can treat the underlying OS as "dumb pipes", the more valuable/easily spreadable your ecosystem is.
Long term vs. short term.
1) People purchase products from you because they are happy that they can use those products anywhere.
2) People purchase products from you because they are happy they work on the device/service/ecosystem they've invested in, and they don't have lose their sunk cost.
I feel that 1 is a great lead in for new customers - if they have options. I know that 2 definitely wins in the long run - people want to avoid the pain of their sunk cost. That's why lock-in works.
The core of the issue is that people are asking companies who are wildly successful with locking people in to open up their ecosystem on some nebulous promise of future earnings based in popular goodwill.
Sadly Microsoft, Google, Netflix and BBC want this in HTML 5.1. We can only hope that Mozilla [1], Apple, Adobe, etc. won't support DRM in their products.
I haven't found a source that details Apple's plan.
I'd like to believe that HTML5 will eventually be the standard for video delivery, but this may never happen. There's no incentive to standardize streaming content delivery because it would increase competition and take power away from the corporations.
Just... just be a display and let me connect whatever proper devices to it, instead of trying to put a crappy and slow YouTube app that gets obsoleted within a year.
Or, do I run one box that magically supports them all? Apart from DailyMotion who've decided they want me to buy their special adapter....
A computer? That's what I would use.
You know what ecosystem is nice? Earth's. Go outside and play in the snow for fuck's sake.
They get a TV, smartphone, PC - it works, cool. That feature is missing - oh, shucks, whatcha gonna do? It was probably too hard to implement anyway, right?
Which is why ecosystems exist - once people learn how to use that one simple system, they'll tend to buy stuff from the same company for convenience's sake. Most poeple don't want to figure out how to install apps, why this web page isn't displaying correctly, or how to make those mp3 files smaller.
I don't view Prime Video as an ecosystem but more as an added value type of thing. Beyond that, it's opt-in, therefore not limiting.
If the OP wanted Prime Video on their TV they should have purchased a TV that offered it, or buy a box that does it as an add-on.
I'm not a Panasonic fan, but I would guess they a) can't afford to add Prime and/or b) are trying to offer what they can in place of it.
There are business reasons to avoid interop (it costs money, it removes branding opportunities, blah blah blah), but let's not pretend they are anything else.
Sorry but crapping about ecosystems is crapping on a fundamental construct of human organization.
If this information is valuable (and I think it is!) even small fluctuations on the index could push a given product up.
Around 1980 you'd buy an Apple ][ or a TRS-80 or a Commodore VIC and they all were incompatible, although most of them still had Micro$oft BASIC.
One could not reasonably expect the same software to work unchanged on a MOS 6502 based computer like the VIC or the Apple ][ and in a Z80 based computer like the TRS-80. And there were many more differences at the hardware and ROM-kernel level that made cross-platform software largely unworkable.
Behold the genius of Bill.
Also of note, I first learned programming in QBASIC. And by programming I mean dozens of GOTO loops.