Apparently some ISP's are complaining that people using P2P software like Kaaza are eating up too much of their bandwidth and that they're going to have to start instituting limits. One that's described as not too drastic is limiting P2P users to only trading files with users on the same ISP. Yeah, sure. Sounds more like Hollywood pressure to do anything they can to discourage the use of file sharing software. On the one hand they claim they want to encourage more users to upgrade to broadband with the claim that they'll be able to watch streaming movies and such, then they turn around and cry that people are using too much bandwidth. What do they think watching streaming movies will do? And what happened to the idea that Broadband was the perfect option for moving large amounts of data?
P2P Limits (http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103_2-1009456.html)
In other news, Sony is planning to try out a new movie download format that not only scatters the movie all over the HD and requires special software to play, it self-destructs after a set period of time. Disney is also planning to release rental DVD's that become unplayable after two days. DIVX (discs not the codec) anyone?
Self Destructing Movies (http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103_2-1011581.html)
they always have to ruin our FUN!
*teases JohnL*
I don't get the self-destructing movies. Why put out a rental DVD that stops playing after 2 days when you have to return rentals anyway? Unless they're planning on it being disposable. I also don't see how they're planning to do it without special players. As far as I know, normal DVD players have no provisions in them to stop playing a DVD after a certain date. Even if they did, would that be two days after the DVD turns up for rental or two days after you take it home? What if it doesn't get rented for 5 days?
As for the downloaded movies, I don't think that's going to work either, simply because of the way they describe it as scattering the parts all over the HD. That's just begging for trouble and they're likely to get sued the first time it screws up and erases some data. Not to mention that a month or two after it goes into use, there will probably be utilities that will convert the various parts into a single avi/mpeg file.
In my opinion, all these companies looking to limit what people can do with videos and music are idiots. The more protection and limitations they stick on, the more people rebel. They should put up a web site that doesn't require a seubscription fee where users could go to download a completely unrestricted copy for a small fee. Who's going to bother with trying to find stuff on a P2P network and download it from flaky servers, not knowing the quality ahead of time when they can go to a web site, find exactly what they're looking for and be assured of downloading a perfect copy?
i agree absolutely.
i'd pay a small fee for something if i could make sure it was a decent copy and i'd not have to troll every P2P for it.
but i SURE as hell wouldn't buy a dvd that i couldn't watch in a month when i want to have that film festival.
hey JohnL, i have an idea....
let's you and me get some of these DVD's together and uhhmm..hole up for 2 days to see what happens when they self-destruct...
Honestly, a lot of copyright infringement goes on via P2P. That was one of the big things that killed Napster. Their whole "winking at the file sharers while telling the court something else" is what got the service killed.
I would honestly bet that the reason the ISPs are banning it is not Hollywood pressure, but bandwidth. P2P eats bandwidth big time. That is why almost every college has a package shaper to limit the amount of external bandwidth used by Kazaa. It is prohibited on military computers.
On the other hand, the services have legitimate uses. Napster being used to distribute the songs of independent musicians was a great thing. And, what is happening is helping to push the forming of a legitimate MP3 music download service.
The RIAA and MPAA are such bastards about our rights that they really annoy me. Heck, look at the fact that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act makes it illegal to break encryption, even for Fair Use. We didn't need the DMCA. In fact, some parts of the DMCA take away our right to due process. Right now the MPAA could get have my server's connection shut down by my ISP by saying I am infringing on copyrights. No review, no warrant, nothing. I'd then have to go through a process to get it back online. When the crazy bill was introduced last year so that the RIAA and MPAA could attack and hack computers that they said were infringing on their copyrights (with no penalties if they were wrong), I wrote my state's (DE) representative.
Digital Rights Management (DRM) blew up in the face of TurboTax this year. Hopefully that will slow the issue down for other companies.
If you are interested in this sort of thing, drop by the Electronic Freedom Foundation's website. They are a worthwhile group to make donate to as well.
http://www.eff.org/
And I am always passionate about the Bill of Rights. If you are an American - read it, know it, cherish it, and help protect it:
http://memory.loc.gov/const/bor.html
>let's you and me get some of these DVD's together and uhhmm..hole up for 2
>days to see what happens when they self-destruct...
Probably something boring, like just stop working. We'd have to bring along some more interesting things to watch. :)
>Honestly, a lot of copyright infringement goes on via P2P. That was one of the
I agree, but limiting P2P will also limit the legimate uses of it as well.
>big things that killed Napster. Their whole "winking at the file sharers while telling
>the court something else" is what got the service killed.
>I would honestly bet that the reason the ISPs are banning it is not Hollywood >pressure, but bandwidth. P2P eats bandwidth big time. That is why almost every
I know it eats a lot of bandwidth, but the main selling point of broadband has always been that it transfers data much faster than dialup. What's the point of having a high-speed connection if you're not going to use it to download a lot of files? I mean web sites don't exactly load in seconds on dialup, but nobody would get broadband just for that. And if you're only going to download the occasional file, dialup may be slow, but it gets the job done. Really, the only reason to get broadband is so that you can suck down tons of files. Or for watching streaming video, but then you're going to use up just as much bandwidth. It kind of like cable companies advertising that you can have over 100 channels and then complaining when people start watching them all.
>On the other hand, the services have legitimate uses. Napster being used to
>distribute the songs of independent musicians was a great thing. And, what is
>happening is helping to push the forming of a legitimate MP3 music download
>service.
I've said it before; The music companies should either put up one big site, or each put up their own. Put their ENTIRE catalog online where people can browse it. Each song would have a 30 second sample available in either RA, WAV or other widely used formats that anyone can listen to or even download and keep. When you find a song you like, you buy the right to download an unrestricted copy of it in your choice of formats, MP3, Ogg Vorbis etc. Each month there would be free downloads, people coule purchase package deals such as so many songs each month for a set fee, or an entire album for a single fee. For a small extra charge you could even download a printable CD insert. No monthly subscription fee, no restrictions on the files etc.
Yes, some would get pirated, but if people knew that they could legally download perfect copies of what they're looking for, for a small fee rather than deal with the hassles of P2P networks, I think the majority of people would buy the music. This would cut down on piracy (it will never completely go away though), make money for the music companies and go a long way in soothing over the negative feelings the recent anti-piracy measures like protected CD's and crackdowns on the P2P networks have caused.
>The RIAA and MPAA are such bastards about our rights that they really annoy
I agree. The MPAA would like to make it impossible for people to even record TV broadcasts, or at the very least, make sure you can't keep them indefinitely or loan them to other people. One idea I heard was that every device capable of recording video would be designed so that it puts a unique ID number on the recording and they would refuse to play back any recordings where the ID doesn't match its own.
>me. Heck, look at the fact that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act makes it
>illegal to break encryption, even for Fair Use. We didn't need the DMCA. In fact,
>some parts of the DMCA take away our right to due process. Right now the
I agree with this also. As far as I know, the DMCA hasn't once been used to stop piracy, only to threaten researchers and bully companies making products that the software company doesn't like.
>Digital Rights Management (DRM) blew up in the face of TurboTax this year.
>Hopefully that will slow the issue down for other companies.
How so? Do you have a link for an overview of this? (I haven't heard about it)
Here's one story on it:
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-980600.html?tag=nl
Basically, Intuit's anti-piracy addition to Turbo Tax really screwed people -- if you ever reinstalled Turbo Tax, you needed to get a new activation code, basically you'd need to rebuy the program (such as if you reformatted the harddrive, bought a new harddrive or computer.)
It was a total fiasco for Intuit.
>Here's one story on it:
Thanks.
JohnL wrote:
> I don't get the self-destructing movies. Why put out a rental
> DVD that stops playing after 2 days when you have to return
> rentals anyway? Unless they're planning on it being disposable.
> I also don't see how they're planning to do it without special
> players. As far as I know, normal DVD players have no
> provisions in them to stop playing a DVD after a certain date.
> Even if they did, would that be two days after the DVD turns up
> for rental or two days after you take it home? What if it
> doesn't get rented for 5 days?
The "self-destructing" movies are not intended for rental. Disney wants to put them out to combat Blockbuster Video, who have been in a p**sing contest for quite awhile - due to Disney claiming that BBV was screwing them on revenue sharing quotes. And then BBV broke street date on 'Signs'. Disney's plans is to get a non-returnable DVD into every gas station, convenience store and WalMart in America. However, this doesn't hurt only BBV, but also everyone else in the rental industry. This should be DOA. But the fact that Disney might be doing this out of spite might mean they are willing to take a loss on it for a time, to try to get it to work
>Disney's plans is to get a non-returnable DVD into every gas station,
>convenience store and WalMart in America.
But how do they work? Unless I'm missing something, DVD players don't (yet) have the capability to store information about what DVD's you've played and to stop playing them after a certain date. Unless they make them out of a sub-standard material that will suffer laser-rot after a couple days, I don't see how they can make a standard DVD only play for a limited time.
I think it uses chemicals. They're gonna make it so once you open it and oxygen hits the surface of the DVD it won't work after 2 days. So as long as its still in the package it will be okay. I don't like the idea of it though it sounds like a garbage nightmare.
love colleen
I work in tech support at a local ISP. The broadband thing is a major issue. We have three different military bases in our area that we supply DSL to. Since most of the people on the bases are younger (18-25), these are the main ones who will be downloading the movies and music. The owner here has found a way around it. He setup a gaming server for each base (UT2003). He figures that if they're going to be using the bandwidth, then they should be using it on his WAN.
As for restrictions with other types of connections, well they're already here. We also have satellite services that we offer to our more rural customers. Your speed drops with the more downloads you make. Say you make a download of 100megs. Your bandwidth will then go down from 500k to around 450k, and it drops progressivly from there.
As for P2P services, I recently recieved an email here in the tech support office from Waner Bros. One of our customers had traded Matrix Reloaded online. Warner Bros caught their I.P. and wanted us to cancel their service.
Crazy stuff.
argh.
this is all so much bullpluckey.
what the heck is high bandwidth for if we can't use it to download and trade files?
true enough people whine and moan about folks trading music and movies.
well i have yet to hear of any industry taking significant losses due to P2P sharing.
remember back when VCR's first came out? Hollywood didn't want people to own them because, well, they might start taping movies off TV and quit going to the theater.
why don't they fix the radio so people can't tape from it?
this is ridiculous. so what someone got the matrix reloaded from the internet. that's not going to stop millions of people from going to the theater to experience it on the big screen with surround sound the likes of which they wish they could afford. it's not going to stop millions of people from going to the store to buy the DVD with all the groovy features and the slick cover they want.
so someone downloaded a Madonna song online. i download all kinds of stuff for several reasons.
a) if i haven't ever HEARD anything by this artist, i'm sure as hell not going to go blow $13 on their CD. i want to dip my toes in first. and i'm not going to go by their "#1 radio hit" since the #1 radio hit is often the best song on the CD.
b) if this artist managed, on a fluke, to make one good song and the rest of their tunes sound like a dying moose in heat set to polka, i'm not going to want their entire CD. and i simply can't justify paying the money for a sick, sad, and sorry collection of music just for one song. unfair, you say? isn't it just as unfair to make me take up space in my CD holder for something that can't even make good bad movie music? if McDonald's makes a burger that tastes bad, they'll find out noone's buying and stop selling it. i say these artists need to do the same. they need to get on it and make quality stuff worth buying. if it's good, i'll buy it. i don't have time to download entire albums, but someone's got to get on the quality control. seems a lot of "musicians" make stuff that's 90% crap and 10% not too terrible. i cannot justify purchasing something for the sake of my conscience when my sanity is at stake.
c) as someone mentioned before, there are a lot of unexposed folk who use P2P sharing as the beginnings of a fan base. it is fair to tell them "New Technology bad! don't use!"? i think not. we may as well ease ourselves into the fact that file sharing is here to stay.
d) lots of songs i have heard a snippet of, may be old, may be obscure, may be foreign. i want it. can't find the CD. but oh look, there's the mp3. should i enjoy the music or should i just drop 'em, bend over, and let the RIAA show me what the boys like to do to pass the time in jail?
as far as i am concerned, file sharing shouldn't be a crime. there's this debate over what kind of theft it is. is it intellectual theft? nobody is claiming to have made Madonna's "American Life." so it's not theft of intellectual property. but neither is it the theft of real property, since i highly doubt one can own ones and zeroes. maybe they should come a'knockin' on our doors and see who all taped Cher's farewell concert. because surely enough, next time they pop it into their VCR and enjoy the music, Cher won't be getting paid for it.
what the heck is high bandwidth for if we can't use it to download and trade files?
Better scores in online video games
oh. i don't play online video games. but that is a good use for high bandwidth...
>I think it uses chemicals. They're gonna make it so once you open it and oxygen
>hits the surface of the DVD it won't work after 2 days. So as long as its still in the
>package it will be okay.
Hmm, if that's the case, I wonder if spraying the entire DVD as soon as you open it, with a clear sealer would stop it from degrading?
>I don't like the idea of it though it sounds like a garbage nightmare.
Me either. It would be fine if they were free, but I don't like the idea of paying money for something of limited use. A local bargain store sells older software for $4.99 each and just the other day I bought three games. I was looking at the boxes last night and I noticed that one of them was marked (in small print) "Special Edition* Contain three levels from the full game!" Later today it's going back to the store. If I wanted the demo, I would have downloaded it!
>As for restrictions with other types of connections, well they're already here. We
>also have satellite services that we offer to our more rural customers. Your
>speed drops with the more downloads you make. Say you make a download of
I don't have broadband because I can't afford $50 a month, but if I did and an ISP pulled this crap, I'd cancel my service double-quick. In fact, if they advertised unlimited usage, I think I might even go so far as to report them for false advertising. If I'm going to pay for highspeed access, I'm going to want it for downloading and maybe the occasional upload.
>100megs. Your bandwidth will then go down from 500k to around 450k, and it
>drops progressivly from there.
Can you please provide more information on this? Is this per download, per day or what? In other words, does the speed reset after a certain point, like when the download finishes, or does it just drop down and stay there no matter what the user does? Is this only for downloads from web sites, or does this just go by the entire amount of data transferred? Will it still kick in if the user is watching streaming videos?
Lastly, is this policy clearly made known to your users?
>As for P2P services, I recently recieved an email here in the tech support office
>from Waner Bros. One of our customers had traded Matrix Reloaded online.
>Warner Bros caught their I.P. and wanted us to cancel their service.
And did you? I could be mistaken, but I don't think they have any legal grounds to ask you to do that. From what I've heard about the DMCA (which I think is a very bad law that should be repealed), they can only ask you for the user's information and then it's up to them to take action.
>what the heck is high bandwidth for if we can't use it to download and trade files?
I agree!
>why don't they fix the radio so people can't tape from it?
I hate to tell you this, but there are actually some groups working on things like this. I have no idea if they'll ever succeed, or get hardware makers to go along with it (without buying new laws I mean), but the idea is to put a digital 'watermark' into all videos and music and then to make every device capable of recording look for that watermark and refuse to record if it finds it. So if someone tried to bootleg a movie from the theater by using a camcorder, it would see the watermark in the film and shut off.
>it is fair to tell them "New Technology bad! don't use!"?
They've done it before, that's why you can't buy digital tape recorders here in the US (I mean consumer models). The record companies were afraid that people would use them to make digitally perfect copies of CD's.
>should i just drop 'em, bend over, and let the RIAA show me what the boys like to
>do to pass the time in jail?
Must you inject sex into every post??? :)
>maybe they should come a'knockin' on our doors and see who all taped Cher's
>farewell concert. because surely enough, next time they pop it into their VCR and
>enjoy the music, Cher won't be getting paid for it.
I could be wrong, but I think even that might be technically illegal since the recording of TV broadcasts is intended only for time-shifting of shows.
Of course they know that people do it, and nobody really cares. I tape some TV shows to keep and I've even copied them for people that missed the airings and wanted to get caught up before the next episode. This is illegal to do, but nobody is getting hurt by it, so going after people who do this isn't a big priority. Of course if the various media groups get their way, there will be provisions in the digital TV standards that will prevent you from doing this, or even loaning your tape to a neighbor to watch. They haven't had too much luck getting their lackey's in congress to pass such laws yet, so they've been meeting in secret (well, semi-secret) with the companies who make TV's, VCR's etc, and trying to pressure them into including 'digital rights management' AKA copy protection, into the standards. Jack Valenti and the MPAA are leading this idiotic operation :<
Q:"Can you please provide more information on this? Is this per download, per day or what? In other words, does the speed reset after a certain point, like when the download finishes, or does it just drop down and stay there no matter what the user does? Is this only for downloads from web sites, or does this just go by the entire amount of data transferred? Will it still kick in if the user is watching streaming videos?"
A: The bandwidth will stay that way for the entire month, until the new billing cycle rolls around. The service is 39.95 per month, but as I said there is the bandwidth cap. The more you download per month, the slower the connection will get. The company who owns the actual SATS isn't a very big company. We have atleast 600 customers with them at the moment, and they only have 3 offical tech support workers w/ their company. Which means that we are stuck with the SAT calls....which are the hardest to troubleshoot...off topic. Anyway, I think if you download up to 2GIG in a month the speed will eventually drop off to around 64k per second. Still better than Dial Up, but sucks compared to the 500K
Q: And did you? I could be mistaken, but I don't think they have any legal grounds to ask you to do that. From what I've heard about the DMCA (which I think is a very bad law that should be repealed), they can only ask you for the user's information and then it's up to them to take action.
A: I have no control over who gets cut off. That is left up to the head honco here. If it were up to me, I would not cut the user off, but let's just say that the user will be trading movies for a long time to come. ;)
>The bandwidth will stay that way for the entire month, until the new billing cycle
>rolls around.
That sucks. If I had broadband, Id be downloading a couple gigs every couple of days.
>I have no control over who gets cut off.
Well, by "you" I meant the company.
Thanks for the reply.