09.30.05
Posted in Social Media at 1:18 am by
It’s no secret that mutednoise is less than fond of Utah’s Orrin Hatch. Misguided on policy, puppet of the entertainment industry, Orrin continually introduces policy that jepordizes ‘fair use’, ‘public domain’, and much more.
That’s why it is great pleasure in introducing his challenger, Pete Ashdown, in an exclusive mutednoise interview. Founder of Utah’s oldest ISP, former rave promoter, and passionate individual, mutednoise wholehearted supports Pete’s run for Congress.
You can read the interview here:
http://mutednoise.com/article.cfm?article=Ashdown-for-Congress
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09.29.05
Posted in Social Media at 12:44 pm by
Cory Doctorow, author, activist, and all around swell guy has put up his anti-DRM talk given to HP’s reseach lab. Lots of great points in there, including gems like:
In privacy scenarios, there is a sender, a receiver and an attacker.
For example, you want to send your credit-card to an online store. An
attacker wants to capture the number. Your security here concerns
itself with protecting the integrity and secrecy of a message in
transit. It makes no attempt to restrict the disposition of your
credit-card number after it is received by the store.
…
In DRM use-restriction scenarios, there is only a sender and an
attacker, *who is also the intended recipient of the message*. I
transmit a song to you so that you can listen to it, but try to stop
you from copying it. This requires that your terminal obey my
commands, even when you want it to obey *your* commands.
However, Windows Vista is supposed to change all that. It’ll do what you want it to as long as that doesn’t conflict with what the entertainment industry wants you to do. Ugh.
There is also this:
The presence of DRM *cannot* entice a user to make use of the
conditional access system to acquire his media. Indeed, DRM acts as a
disincentive (there is no user who woke up this morning crying out for
a way to do less with her music). Where users buy DRM-locked files, it
is *in spite of* the DRM, or in ignorance of the DRM, but never
*because* of the DRM.
A familiar refrain from rightsholders is that “you can’t compete with
free.” It is certainly true that when your costly product is inferior
(because of use-restrictions) to the free alternative, it will be hard
to compete with free.
I’m so glad I’m not employed by one of these DRM Labs. What a futile pursuit.
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Posted in Social Media at 12:33 pm by
Not surprisingly, a senator from California (Hollywood, baby) is suggesting that file-sharing networks either need to have government regulation or be shut down completely.
Intellectual property protection “can’t function in a country where the high-tech services become such that you can’t protect copyright,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, said Wednesday at a U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. The session centered on the landmark Supreme Court decision on MGM v. Grokster, which ruled that file-sharing services can be liable for their users’ infringing behavior.
Pointing to what she called a “rise in peer to peers” since the Grokster decision, Feinstein said current law is not effective enough to deter illegal file swapping and the government must enact stronger enforcement measures. “If we don’t stop it,” she said, “it’s going to destroy these intellectual property industries.”
Now the anarchist in me says ‘fine, let ‘em burn, a strong capitalistic society will derive money from other activities’ but there is a point in the fear mongering. However, government oversight is the last thing that is needed. This is the same government, remember, that is paying 4 times the normal cruise cost to put Katrina victims in cruise ships for six months.
Also interesting is this story in light of this weeks announcment of Harvey Danger releasing their new album using BitTorrent and Chris Rock’s new sitcom promo available for free. By going extreme and shutting down file sharing networks we are closing the artists ability to do an end-run around the bloated and fickle media corps. An artist should be able to take their works directly to the people. By shutting down the file sharing networks are we only protecting the middle-man?
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Posted in Social Media at 12:15 pm by
Harvey Danger (big hit a few years ago called ‘Flagpole Sitta’, remember?) is releasing their latest album for free on the Internet. Obviously they aren’t the first to do it, and probably not the largest band ever to release non-DRM tracks for free. But their reasons why are some of the most articulate that I’ve read.
We embark on this experiment with both enthusiasm and curiosity—and, ok, maybe a twinge of anxiety. Why are we doing this? The short answer is simply that we want a lot of people to hear the record.
However, it’s important that people understand the free download concept isn’t a frivolous act. It’s a key part of our promotional campaign, along with radio and press promotion, live shows, and videos. It’s a bet that the resources of the Internet can make possible a new way for musicians to find their audience – and forge a meaningful artistic career built on support from cooperative, not adversarial, relationships.
We realize that digital files are the primary means by which a huge segment of the population is exposed to new music; we also believe that plenty of music lovers in the world will buy a record once they’ve heard it – whether via radio or computer.
Definately worth a hop over to their site for the full read and to pick up the tracks.
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Posted in miscellaneous at 12:11 pm by
I wonder how the success of online MMOG’s have affected D&D sales. Are they catering to the same market?
The linked to ad makes a good point – and made me laugh.
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Posted in Social Media at 11:59 am by
No, I’m not talking about the brutal and mindless destruction of books. I’m talking about the creation of whole new models of authorship.
P2P, iTunes (and many other current sources for music downloads) liberated people from having to buy entire albums of crap to get at the one song they liked. The upside is incredible for everyone: people get only what they like without having to pay for filler, they can do so at a reduced cost ($0.99 a song as opposed to $12.99-17.99 an album), and while the artist might not be selling as many albums they are making more per track.
So why can’t we apply these same lessons to books? Of course, it’s not an immediate home run. First of all, it won’t work for all books. Technical references seem to be a perfect fit – just buy the chapter you are interested in and leave the rest. Fictional stories with an end to end narrative probably wouldn’t work.
Second, with songs you can easily get a streaming preview and then decide if the song is worth purchasing. If you are looking for detailed technical information how will you know if a chapter is worth buying until you’ve actually read it? And if you’ve read it why would you buy the chapter? It’s a messy catch-22 that I’m not sure how to resolve.
Any ideas?
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Posted in Social Media at 11:46 am by
Google and NASA are going to get all co-mingling. Together, they’re going to bust out a million square feet office joint that promises:
large-scale data management, massively distributed computing, bio-info-nano convergence, and encouragement of the entrepreneurial space industry
The space, currently dubbed ‘the GooglePlex’, could be interesting and its good to see that Google is continuing to churn plenty of greenbacks into R&D. One has to wonder when they’ll get a viable revenue stream other than advertising.
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09.28.05
Posted in Social Media at 2:01 pm by
mutednoise is pleased to present a new interview with monochrom, makers of the free adventure game Soviet Unterzoegersdorf. More than just mindless clicking, it offers a challenging look at a Soviet future that never was.
Read about it here:
http://mutednoise.com/article.cfm?article=Soviet-Game-of-Future-Lost
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09.27.05
Posted in Social Media at 10:46 pm by
There are all kinds of distributed video and video search services popping up as broadband becomes common. Now comes the announcement that the new Chris Rock show will be distributed for free over Google video.
It’s an important first step and one that we can count on seeing more of. Promotional items, like music videos and series pilots are perfect for this kind of distribution. Release it for free, get some buzz going, and hopefully sell some product. This is all depends on having good content, of course.
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Posted in Social Media at 10:36 pm by
It’s chilling news that’s coming out of DC: The FCC announcing a new policy proclaiming that people have the right to Internet software – as long as they have backdoors built in to allow the government to spy.
According to the three-page document, to preserve the openness that characterizes today’s Internet, “consumers are entitled to run applications and use services of their choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement.” Read the last seven words again.
The FCC didn’t offer much in the way of clarification. But the clearest reading of the pronouncement is that some unelected bureaucrats at the commission have decreeed that Americans don’t have the right to use software such as Skype or PGPfone if it doesn’t support mandatory backdoors for wiretapping. (That interpretation was confirmed by an FCC spokesman on Monday, who asked not to be identified by name. Also, the announcement came at the same time as the FCC posted its wiretapping rules for Internet telephony.)
Somewhere Orwell is rolling over in his grave. It was supposed to be fiction, not prophecy people! 
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