Technobriefs
March 26, 2007
DRM/DMCA: its been a busy week on the digital rights management and copyright front. After Viacom's billion dollar suit against YouTube, a transparent ploy to strengthen their hand in licensing negotiations, there was this little embarrassment: Infringing videos on iFilm could cause problems for Viacom. Some fallout over a parody of a parody: MoveOn.org files suit against Viacom over online video ("Activist group says parody media giant asked YouTube to remove is protected") Then this twist: NFL violates copyright law, YouTube collaborates with them and NFL Continues To Help Professor Demonstrate How Copyright Owners Abuse The DMCA ("As Seltzer points out, this clearly violates the DMCA, which states that the copyright holder filing a takedown cannot claim the material is infringing when they know it is not.") The television industry was having a hard time deciding if distribution of programs over the web was evil incarnate, or maybe the best thing since sliced bread: Media industry unveils YouTube challenge and NBC/News Corp. Video Site to Be 'Mostly Free'. While this new TV industry site provides a flexible new distribution channel for TV, few think this will cut deeply into YouTube's popularity which is based on its Web 2.0 nature: user-created content, and collective filtering of user-selected TV clips. In the end, it may be the bottom line that kills DRM technology, it could be just too expensive to use: DRM causes 75 percent of tech support calls, which cites: Musicload to get rid of DRM. RIAA making friends everywhere: their new target of choice is the hapless college student: A Heart-Warming Message from the RIAA, RIAA University Campaign Sputters: Group Asked To Pay Up For Wasting School's Time and RIAA Bosses Try To Explain Why Suing College Kids Is Good For Business. Ideas about how to oppose the madness: Poll: Are We Doing this RIAA Thing All Wrong? The RIAA will be pleased to hear that their "friends" in the music sharing business have managed to do what the RIAA's ham-handedness never could: P2P is killing CD piracy.
AppleTV: a
lot of analysts have been getting excited about the potential of
AppleTV which has recently gone on sale, for example: Will
Apple TV be bigger than iPhone? ("Some
believe Apple TV, due out this month, is a more important product")
and Apple TV: Will it
open up Hollywood and create a $11.4 billion market? Back in September
2006 I made similar predictions ("The new device, called iTV for now,
provides an end-to-end solution for
delivery of video content from the online store to your digital TV. To
me this seems huge. Both Blockbuster and Netflix ought to be worried
about this: forget schlepping around plastic disks, just download your
DVD quality movies over your broadband connection. But wait, since you
can buy TV shows at iTunes too, do you really need that TiVo? Heck, do
you really need that cable TV feed? There may be a time soon when all
the movies and TV shows you want to watch can be bought or rented at
iTunes. The money that you now pay to Netflix, TiVo and the cable
company could be used to buy individual shows at iTunes.")
Space: remember the cool images of a lunar transit of the Sun last week? The new probe Hinode is sending back incredibly detailed images of the solar surface: International Spacecraft Reveals Detailed Processes on the Sun. More planetary news: Mars Has Cave Networks, New Photos Suggest could Martian life retreated to the protected environments of these deep caverns?
Technobits: Florida officials warned of e-voting glitch prior to election Losing candidate says slow response times may have caused undervote in Sarasota County --- MIT to put its entire curriculum online free of charge OpenCourseWare expands --- PS3 Triples Folding At Home's Computing Power --- The Thinking Machine on Jeff Hawkins and the Numenta AI system --- Brain Injury Said to Affect Moral Choices is compassion built into our brain? --- 10 Most Magnificent Trees in the World --- Pelagic sea slug looks like Jim Woodring creature a cool blue creature.