In 1998, record companies and Hollywood lauded the DMCA as a way to stop piracy, which they said had accelerated because of digital copying technology. But the DMCA has since evoked buyer’s remorse in many lawmakers, who fear they handed copyright holders far more control than intended while eroding Americans’ fair use rights. They also worry that the law has criminalized otherwise innocent activities, such as making a personal copy of a purchased CD, or trying to get a DVD to play on a Linux computer. (read more)
Ya think? Let me break it down here — Movie prices aren’t rising because of piracy… piracy rose because of movie prices. In places it’s edging toward $12 to watch a damn movie … I might as well just wait for the DVD if I want to take someone with me to see a film. But instead, the prospect of downloading a film gives me an opportunity to see if I want to purchase a DVD (sorry, m0vi3z people… the quality still doesn’t compare to DVD, and neither does the storage commitment) because after all, isn’t it rather irresponsible to charge someone to use a product for the first time? Almost every form of software has a trial period before purchase, now music does too with amazon.com and itunes and such. I can even flip through a book in the bookstore before I buy it. And don’t tell me that the movie previews are in any way similar… they’re edited beyond recognition. They made Matrix Revolutions look good and Gigli look interesting. They even made Chronicles of Riddick look like it had some sort of substance. It would be like advertising a book with the following:
“Jesus … had … vast wealth … and … was … a … stud” – an editing that makes the plot of the bible seem a little different than it is.
Hollywood producers need to get over themselves. Yes, actors should be paid. Yes, writers should be paid. Maybe the production companies should even get some ungodly proportion of the profits… but let me demo the movie first. Let me watch the first 15 minutes and then pause it and charge me or let me leave if it’s stupid. Or allow me to get a substantial refund within 30 minutes of ticket purchase/movie start time.
Microsoft’s brand-new version of Office for Mac OS X has been highly praised in reviews, but for many users it can’t hold a candle to the 13-year-old Word 5.1. (read more)
And people are surprised? What has Microsoft done to their software since then other than add handfuls of useless features (why is hiding the bottom and top margin between pages useful?) and that insipid Clippy avatar with the secretarial awareness of a five year old (“It looks like you’re writing a letter. Do you want help?” No, you dolt, I’m obviously on the right track, aren’t I?) Oh, and I forgot the pricing. It’s another one of those movie-ticket-price things… No one in their right mind would pay $479.99 for Office … I’ll use TextPad or whatever it’s called that comes with MacOSX if I have to. The price didn’t go up because of piracy … piracy grew because of the price. It’s worth almost $500 to exactly no one to type stuff. Think of the alternatives — StarOffice (free, if a tad slow), Notepad, Wordpad, SimpleText, TextPad… And what are you paying for? Built-in spell-check in Traditional Korean and Azerbaijani. Hey, Microsoft? Offer the product in English, Spanish and French only, and then have free downloadable add-ons for other languages. Don’t jam up my hard drive with logic to check ninety languages. Don’t commandeer my clusters with code that passes for Clippy’s (or F1 or Mother Earth’s) brain. And finally, if you have to have hundreds of megabytes of help files, it’s time to make the software easier to use.
Mike Nash, chief of Microsoft’s security business unit, told reporters that Microsoft is developing software to protect personal computers running Windows against malicious software, the worms and viruses that have plagued users with data loss, shutdowns and disruptions in Web traffic in recent years. (read more)
Microsoft ain’t anemic-y, because it’s got irony to spare. Let’s put it in generic terms: A company makes a product that ships with holes in it (think ‘boat’). For a largely unknown reason, 90% of the market seems drawn to this product. The company sells a product that closes the holes in their other product (think band-aids for boats) at an additional fee (think: extortion) Oh, wait, extortion? Pay us (for protection) or something you value (your data, your communication ability, your legal innocence) will be taken away from you through a means we control (‘Windows’)? It’s like the heyday of the Mafia … protection rackets and extortion and all. The rational mind wonders whether Microsoft should not just, you know, *not put holes in their product*… not like it’s hard to write decent code… tens of thousands of UNIX, Linux, Apple, BSD, AIX, IRIX, TI, and other programmers have been doing it for decades. And Microsoft, what the living hell is Remote Scripting for? Why did you build in the ability to have your computer controlled remotely by just about anyone into the operating system? Why does your email client automatically run whatever it’s sent? Why does the user operate as a very powerful user when no other operating system allows such deep and powerful access to core files by normal people? I sincerely hope these issues will be addressed in the next version of Windows. I’m a Mac-evangelist for a reason. And it only has a little bit to do with the pretty cases they come in.
Elsewhere in the world, other stupid people are pushing DVD’s that expire hours after you open them… talk about insulting your consumers. What if General Motors made a car that only lasted for 10,000 miles? What if your computer worked for 30 days before you had to purchase a new one? What if your shoes were only good for five thousand steps? What if a door only opened a hundred times before sealing itself shut? These things are all the same in the intellectual property arena… things I have purchased that I expect to be able to use. I haven’t paid to consume these things, as I would a hamburger or a coffee drink. I’ve paid for the use of them, and I expect to be able to continue using them or I have a right to a refund when they cease to function. And what’s to keep young (and older) folk from cracking open the DVD case, ripping the data off with any computer on the market today, letting the DVD expire, and having a non-expiring version of the data? Seems as though it would promote piracy to me. It’s also terribly environmentally irresponsible. Sure, it’s recyclable, but that doesn’t mean people will recycle it (pay for something that breaks, it breaks, and then go out of my way to dispose of it the way Grand Arbiter of Morals tells me to? No way.) Irresponsible disposal will bring higher production (likely from cheaper materials) which will increase demand of petrochemicals (yes, DVD’s are made of plastic just like everything else) which will cut into our (declining?) global oil supply. Think of it — the media will raise your gas prices. The upside to expiring DVDs? A lifetime supply of cheap coasters. Just think about it — no one else would propose a product that expires like this. (“Hey, check out my new ten-day shirt!” [hissing and smoke ensue] “Oh, it must have passed its expiration date… it’s cold out here…”)
