Two interesting stories on wired today:
MTV plans to get into the download music bidness, competing with iTunes, napster 2.0 and any number of other pay-to-play music services. Music on MTV? Great! How uncommon; last time I checked, MTV was about ¼ Road Rules, ¼ Real World (never tiring of the irony of that title), ¼ guest VJ sessions and ¼ carson daly and fred durst popping up, showing how little I should actually respect the creativity of any popular performer, and a smattering of Tough Enough, "for taste." Not many videos, so not much music. When they occasionally played videos, there were annoying comments that popped up in balloons, about as clever and entertaining as someone kicking the back of your seat during a movie, and making their own running commentary. Is MTV even popular as a brand anymore? I thought the big money was in all the 70's and 80's Flashbackers who like VH1.
The other story is more frightening and confusing; the broadcast flag chip has been mandated by the FCC as a requirement. What I don't really get is the ability of the FCC to require something for the production of hardware. It seems reasonable that the market should dictate what succeeds or does not, and requiring any hardware seems like it is an abusive move on the part of a government agency to assist the existing businesses unnaturally sustain their profit model in the face of technological advancement. To put it another way, this is like the dinosaurs petitioning to cease the fall of meteors that are altering their environment and hastening their extinction... and succeeding. How can the FCC mandate that a chip goes in a player/recorder? Can't companies sell TVs without tuners? VHS decks with no line-in? They could even try to sell VCRs with no line out, but there'd be no point, and the product would flop. But how can the government dictate what hardware goes into each and every box we can buy?
According to the wired article linked above, "The MPAA convinced the FCC that if TV producers weren't able to protect their shows from piracy they would begin to sell their shows only to paid outlets like HBO." In some ways, that sounds like a business deal. In another way, it sounds like extortion. Here are the players whom opportunity in America has made rich, making threats against the government. Can't we lock up these ass-hats under the PATRIOT act?
Between this, and the copyright extension stuff I've covered earlier, I feel like Big Media and the copyright industry is pissing on my shoes.
MTV plans to get into the download music bidness, competing with iTunes, napster 2.0 and any number of other pay-to-play music services. Music on MTV? Great! How uncommon; last time I checked, MTV was about ¼ Road Rules, ¼ Real World (never tiring of the irony of that title), ¼ guest VJ sessions and ¼ carson daly and fred durst popping up, showing how little I should actually respect the creativity of any popular performer, and a smattering of Tough Enough, "for taste." Not many videos, so not much music. When they occasionally played videos, there were annoying comments that popped up in balloons, about as clever and entertaining as someone kicking the back of your seat during a movie, and making their own running commentary. Is MTV even popular as a brand anymore? I thought the big money was in all the 70's and 80's Flashbackers who like VH1.
The other story is more frightening and confusing; the broadcast flag chip has been mandated by the FCC as a requirement. What I don't really get is the ability of the FCC to require something for the production of hardware. It seems reasonable that the market should dictate what succeeds or does not, and requiring any hardware seems like it is an abusive move on the part of a government agency to assist the existing businesses unnaturally sustain their profit model in the face of technological advancement. To put it another way, this is like the dinosaurs petitioning to cease the fall of meteors that are altering their environment and hastening their extinction... and succeeding. How can the FCC mandate that a chip goes in a player/recorder? Can't companies sell TVs without tuners? VHS decks with no line-in? They could even try to sell VCRs with no line out, but there'd be no point, and the product would flop. But how can the government dictate what hardware goes into each and every box we can buy?
According to the wired article linked above, "The MPAA convinced the FCC that if TV producers weren't able to protect their shows from piracy they would begin to sell their shows only to paid outlets like HBO." In some ways, that sounds like a business deal. In another way, it sounds like extortion. Here are the players whom opportunity in America has made rich, making threats against the government. Can't we lock up these ass-hats under the PATRIOT act?
Between this, and the copyright extension stuff I've covered earlier, I feel like Big Media and the copyright industry is pissing on my shoes.
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