Skip to main content

dirty deeds, which should have been DIY, done not-so-cheap

Consumerist is reporting "Circuit City Flouts The DMCA For A Tenner" - Is this widespread? I am stunned that anyone would pay for this service, but even more stunned that a major retailer would offer a service that so clearly involves software that is in violation of US federal law.

Incidently, I am using Instant Handbrake to get DVDs onto my iPod, and find it to be the the cat’s pyjamas. (Make blog)

Comments

  1. It's not common as far as I know, and was apparently just something someone in the local store decided to offer (someone who may no longer work there, I suspect).

    It's not surprising that people would pay for the service. Joe Consumer probably has no idea why he hasn't been able to figure out how to do something that seems so obvious.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yes, just as I mentioned to you in mail the other day -- it is WEIRD to think that I can buy a CD, rip it, listen to it in iTunes, and burn all or portions of it in a mix tape for friends, or just a backup CD.

    In contrast, my DVD of Rob Zombie videos cannot be similarly natively ripped into iTunes, and even if I buy the videos from iTMS, I am unable to do anything other than watch them on my mac or iPod.

    If Joe Consumer is confused, it should not surprise us.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tony diTerlizzi and classic D&D monsters

The sixth entry of his series on drawings of classic D&D monsters is up. He's one of my favorite fantasy artists. His work tends toward the charming and cozy, rather than others' focus on machismo or melodrama.

sad fate

“Our legendary personalities are evergreen ‘brands’ with the benefit of worldwide recognition,” reads a message on the Richman agency’s website. Guardian UK Article *vomits* Where is the line drawn between “public figure” and “celebrity”? How can a dead person have an agent, particulary where there are no specific works concerned other than a sense of character? It’s one thing to insist that Duck Soup is a work that should be protected (which any more simply means controlled by whomever has the most buX0rs), but shouldn’t personalities and such pass into the public domain as well? ( boingboing : Bill Gates 0wns Einstein, Groucho , Freud, Asimov, Fuller, et al )

on sheeps and androids

The movie Blade Runner is very dear to my heart. It is a treatise on the nature of existence expanding on, and perhaps exceeding the reach of the Phillip K. Dick work which inspired it, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Perhaps I have missed out on some greater subtlety of PKD's work, but the point of DADoES pursues the definition of fake, while Blade Runner instead focuses on what is real. Where the replicants in the novel are sociopathic monsters who emulate emotions solely to gain traction against humans who may hunt them, the humans there rely on machines to dictate their own emotions for them. They dial for "energetic determination" or "six-hour self-accusatory depression." As much as the replicants are machines incapable of real emotion, humans are similarly reliant on a machine to simulate emotion for them. In contrast, the movie's central them is spelled out for us in Deckard's apartment, when Rachel is playing the piano. She professe...