A German company is reportedly developing a DRM-free DVD that will self destruct in 48 hours. The disc’s life is measured from the time it’s taken out of its vacuum-sealed package. The company also has a recycling program, and the discs themselves use fully recyclable plastic and stuff.
Will you buy a self-destructing DVD if it’s cheap and free from DRM? Why buy and not rent if you want to watch it only once? No matter how environmentally friendly the disc may be, I’m sure the manufacturing process will also have an impact on the environment.
MediaSentry continues to flout the law, operating illegally, despite a cease and desist order from a court. This is no surprise to me, since RIAA and MediaSentry have garnered reputations of being the hoodlums of the Internet. The news has been around for a while, and the latest site to report it is Ars Technica, but I only just got fed up enough to post my opinion of it.
I think I said it before. If you want others to respect your rights, you have to respect their rights too. Otherwise what makes you different than a thug?
I’m sure you’re sick of the start up tune that Windows XP plays. I am. Well, this video actually makes the XP tune beautiful. It was composed/played by Jim of Seattle who makes his music available for free download over the Internet, and some of them are quite good.
The MP3 of this tune is available directly from the composer’s site.
This is really sad news: Stage6, the free video sharing using DivX, is going to close at the end of February. It’s really sad, because it was one of the better video sharing sites around. Unlike YouTube’s crappy video quality, Stage6’s videos are high quality, and you can zoom to full screen without seeing any pixelation if the person who created the video uploaded a good quality version. YouTube’s videos can never be anything but crappy since the resolution is restricted to 320×240.
I guess with the demise of Stage6, I can finally uninstall my DivX. The only reason I installed it was to watch Stage6, which doesn’t work with the free Xvid codec.
I don’t know if this is news sensationalism or not, but things look grim for HD DVD. It seems that Toshiba’s statement, “Given the market developments in the past month, Toshiba will continue to study the market impact and the value proposition for consumers, particularly in light of our recent price reductions on all HD DVD players” has been taken to mean that it is considering killing support for the format.
I’ve been following the developments in my blog in the past, most recently on the HD DVD roller coaster ride and the declarations that the reports of HD-DVD’s demise are greatly exaggerated. I still don’t know whether, format-wise, Blu Ray or HD DVD is superior. But this is probably an academic question now. With everybody predicting doom and gloom for the format, the predictions are fast becoming self-fulfillling prophecies. Even if it were not true previously, it will be now, since everyone believes it. I suspect that a lot of people want it as well, if only to end the pesky format war that is depressing sales of the high definition videos.
According to a judge, RIAA was not behaving correctly when it joined lawsuits against multiple John Doe defendants in one lawsuit. I guess this is not really news to those of you who have been following the news about RIAA’s continued persecution of music fans. They expect others to follow the law when it suits them, but themselves break it with impunity.
I actually don’t believe in music piracy, in spite of what you may think when you read my opening paragraph. I think that copyright laws serve a useful purpose, which is why when I first heard that Coelho was releasing his books for free on the Internet, I wanted to check to make sure that it was really true before I drew attention to it.
What I cannot stand is big corporations abusing their power, which is what I see nowadays with RIAA and MPAA abusing the legal system in its pursuit of more wealth. I mean, what do you make of RIAA’s illegal use of Media Sentry in its investigations? Where’s their credibility when they themselves break the law?
If you thought that HD DVD was dead, think again. Nielson announced that HD DVD sales are growing for a third week in a row. Not only that, two HD DVD titles made it to the top 10 movie list! So much for its demise.
Now for the other half of the roller coaster. Netflix has announced that it will drop HD DVD titles from its stock and only supply Blu-Ray.
Whoopee! It’s official. The writers’ strike is now over. They didn’t get everything they wanted though. They managed to negotiate for the residuals for things like the streaming video and whatnot, but had to give up their goal of increasing their share of revenue from animation and reality TV.
But don’t get your hopes up that the TV series will spring back to normal. It will take from anything like one to two months before the post-strike scripts can get back on the air.
Some time back, I wrote about the Internet-savvy strategy of author Paulo Coelho, who asked his readers to pirate his books in order to become more well-known. It looks like Tor Books is now making digital copies of selected books available free of charge. All you have to do is sign up at their site, and each week, you will receive a link to download a digital copy of one of their books.
I must applaud this strategy of taking advantage of the Internet to get free publicity. After all, they don’t really have to release all their books for free, just a volume or two of each series, so that people can sample it and see whether they like that particular author/series.
Due to my hunger for entertainment, I keep an eye on the news on the Writers’ Guild strike, about which I have written before. Now rumors are floating everywhere that the strike is just about over - with this Saturday’s probably being the last. But the Herald Tribune’s article doesn’t put it down as a certainty. It uses words like “on the brink of” which to me indicates that the other newspapers are jumping the gun. Probably trying to sell newspapers.
I hope the writers negotiate a good agreement. Yup, I’m on their side. There’s a lot of money flowing around in the industry. The writers, as the creators of the ideas, should get a decent cut.
I had to do a little investigation before I wrote this post. When I first saw the Pirate Coelho blog, I was a bit suspicious at first. The blog claims that the author allows his books to be freely distributed, and in fact lists links to all the sites and torrents that have his books. But, as you know, copyright infringers can say things like that too, to make their site look legit. So I tried to find the real author’s blog, and to my surprise, he links to the Pirate Coelho site! In fact, his picture has him wearing a black patch! LOL!
This is truly an author who understands the Internet phenomenon and knows how to take advantage of it. I mean, honestly, if not for this stunt, I’d never have heard of this author let alone buy his books. Now, I’m going to download a book to see if I like it. If I do, I’ll buy it. It’s easier to read stories in print than online. Plus I can cart it around when I travel. Plus I can support the enlightened chap.
According to the NPD group, the HD-DVD format isn’t quite dead yet. The poor sales of HD-DVD in a particular week, according to them, doesn’t mean that it is a trend - there were extenuating circumstances in that week that led to the fall in sales.
Anyway, news aside, I’m not sure what to think about this Blu-Ray HD-DVD format war. I do know however that unless one format wins in the end, sales of either format is not really going to increase. What I’m not sure is whether Blu-Ray should be the winner. If I’m not wrong, there are DRM issues with this format.
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