Issue 21:
Don't Bother Me, I'm Thinking
By
Medulla Vesuvius
In this second and final installment of “The State of the Art,” I will continue to ruminate on issues highlighted in Dr. Roger Korby’s article called DRM -or- Why Your Technology Isn’t As Cool As It Could Be. As a general primer, I would suggest you also read his article diplomatically called Digital Rights Management or User Experience Takes One Up the Backside.
1. There is a proposition in this new technological age that is troublesome to me: namely, the idea that content providers, (read: “owners of copyright, or those acting on behalf of the owners of copyright”), should loosen up their formats and ditch DRM, (Digital Rights Management), so that the technology sector can “create some kick-ass hardware.” This is a natural, technocentric view for a technology-type person to have. But the problem is that the makers of DVRs have no claim to the ownership of whatever is stored on those drives.
Suppose I write a book. As the sole owner of the book, over the months or years of its creation, I would decide what I want the world to know and what cool ways I would say it, in what order chapters would go, what should be bold-faced, italicized, and pending my agreement to sell it to a publisher, how many copies should be made. Did you notice? At no point in this process did I as the author or did the publisher consult the printing house and take any suggestions on how to make the book small enough to fit in a vest pocket, (only problem being that you would need this magnifying glass to read it, which the printing house sells by the way.) Also note I didn’t consult the reader whether they thought my writing should be available for free.
Of course the technology sector would think DRM is an unnecessary encumberance. They have no real investment in whether or not piracy is combated. Fighting piracy is only a concern further down the stream–to content providers and the original artists creating the works of art. These two entities have money invested in the creation of the art, (paying screenwriters, actors, technical people and on and on), so they naturally would want to recoup those costs by getting paid for as many available copies as possible. And furthermore, to think that companies building DVRs have only the goal of building the ultimate recording device for their consumers is a little simplistic. In actuality, they have a vested interest in building only what will sell at certain price points. To make a business, (on either side), out to be the great hero of this whole mess is just absurd. When lots of money is at stake, there are no heroes. But it’s a good idea to ask who has the most to lose in the reality of piracy: those who make money from legal sales of copyrighted material or those who make the consumer technology, (which is often used for piracy.)
2. Dr. Korby’s article also mentioned piracy as an ever-present reality. I agree with his assessment. Piracy will always be around. However, up until now, the “analog hole” is exactly why various types of copy protection worked. Twenty years ago, it was a lot of effort just to make a one-to-one copy of a copyrighted work with degradation on the first copy and exponential degradation on all subsequent copies. But with internet distribution and digital codecs, it has become relatively painless to, in effect, make a one-to-millions copy with little to no appreciable degradation. As a musical artist who makes money off of my albums and songs when they are actually purchased, that idea keeps me up at night.
And that is why I happen to agree with the owners of copyrighted material in their pursuit of protecting their financial interests. The gist of technophiles’ argument is that DRM disallows consumers to use media files in a completely free manner and thus it is an egregious affront to a consumer’s rights to “fair use.”
But “fair use” is a troublesome term. We should not fall into the trap of thinking that its’ definition has been carved in stone since the days of the caveman. The idea that copyrighted material should be portable and editable at the discretion of the consumer is actually a new one. Twenty years ago, the “fair use” of music for consumers was basically to listen to a tape in your car or on your living room stereo and to make a degraded copy for back-up purposes. (The music labels were fine with this, since the blank tape manufacturers paid them some restitution.) Remember when “fair use” for a VHS tape was basically to be able to play it?
So, the questions present themselves: 1) Who decides what qualifies as “fair use?” Consumers? Manufacturers of consumer electronics? Creative artists? Technophiles? Luddite internet columnists? 2) Is a consumer’s ability to make a perfect “back-up copy” even a reasonable expectation? Just because the technology exists to make copyrighted works portable and infinitely copy-able, does that mean that we should?
After all, if we must look at entertainment media as strictly a product for sale, why should it be any different than a toaster? Whenever I buy a toaster, I don’t expect the right to have a back-up for free or the ability to enjoy making toast in my car. Nor do I expect the manufacturer of the toaster to give me the schematics so that I can make a toaster that is more amenable to use in my car. So, if we’re going to discuss entertainment media as products in a marketplace, why should they be any different? Just because some kid in his college dorm room, with no discernable understanding of basic copyright law, came up with a way to digitally “share” somebody else’s product?
3. Finally, Dr. Korby’s article mentioned the wish for his dream DVR to edit out commercials from television programs and burn discs. However, there is already a remedy in place for this: buying the DVDs from the creators! Sure, you could save some money by getting your content for free from broadcast and burning it for the cost of a blank DVR. I know it’s terribly unpopular to suggest supporting a creator or a company that distributes their creation. But like I said at the outset, I’m cranky, crotchety, and old-fashioned. And on top of that, I feel that if entertainment media is of any value, at the very least, it should be a critical concern to make sure its’ creators’ financial interests are protected.
Up until recent history, that has involved record labels and film production companies and a complicated royalty system. It’s no secret that these industries’ perceived value has declined with the introduction of new, supposedly more democratic distribution methods like the ubiquitous Youtube and Myspace. However, how these websites will translate to dollars for creators remains to be seen. For instance, suppose an artist decided to release a video for a new song on YouTube. Even if it is a HUGE hit, viewed by every person who visits the site, the only entity seeing any direct income from that is whatever conglomerate owns YouTube at the time, through ad revenue. In this situation, said artist is really just trading one “oppressive, evil corporation” for another. (However, at press time, there is a buzz about Myspace that looks promising- namely the ability for artists to SELL their music directly from their Myspace profile. This functionality, combined with the ability to get your name in front of like a gazillion people, is very attractive.) What I’m really seeing with these two “democratizing” phenomena is people’s value for hype. There is now a perceived value in how many people’s names you can connect your product with, i.e. how many people you can get to hear your songs. But if that’s the end result, it’s a hollow victory. If my livelihood relied on making money from the music, I’d take cash rather than 4,000 people using my songs on their profile page.
In conclusion, one thing is for sure. Consumer-side digital technology has opened a Pandora’s Box for issues of intellectual ownership and consumer’s rights that shan’t ever be closed again. I predict a future in which copyright ceases to exist. For if the culture, spurred on by technocentric evolution, decides that protecting creators’ rights is not worth the hassle of enforcement, i.e. stifling “user experience,” then there is no reason for the idea of creative rights in the first place.
Issue 21:
Life in Space
By
Mr. Atoz, The Librarian
This week we’ll take a look at the second best character in the Star Trek serial, as well as the greatest captain the U.S.S. Enterprise has ever known.
His name is James Tiberius Kirk from Iowa. James Kirk was developed by Gene Roddenberry as a “space-aged Horatio Hornblower.” To the Trek outsider, it’s always been joked that Kirk was a ladies’ man who had sex with green women. That’s only partially true. Kirk was more than just a ladies’ man.
He is a little bit harder to identify with than Spock because of his lack of serene introspection. At some points, Kirk comes across as a Type-A, shallow man of action and nothing more. However, there are moments where we get glimpses of Kirk’s Everyman depth. Case in point, the episode Requiem for Methusaleh shows that Kirk is not merely a starship captain, but is a lonely man who connects deeply with a woman he cannot have, and his emotions get in the way of prudent decision-making.
That’s the Kirk that I like.
Another underappreciated, (or maybe not), aspect of Kirk is his fighting skill. When it all comes down to it, Jean-Luc Picard is a nancy-boy. Jim Kirk is a fighter. I would argue that some of the most entertaining moments are when Kirk fights. High comedy ensues when you see the move Kirk puts on evil rogue starship captain Ronald Tracy to win the fight in the episode The Omega Glory. And you won’t be able to watch the fight between Kirk and an Andorian assassin in the episode Journey to Babel, without roaring in laughter at the awkward choreography of the fight. (Pay close attention to the little knee-drop bounce move Kirk puts on the Andorian to end the fight.)
Kirk had his tough fights though. He was essentially killed in a fight with Spock in Amok Time, and, (in what was almost the biggest upset in Star Trek fight history), proconsul Jerrus, deceiving us with his white collar, nancy-boy, Old Man Moses appearance, gave Kirk a decent enough fight in The Cloudminders. All of this is to say that Kirk was a fighter, while Picard was merely an administrator. Picard’s famous line was, “Make it so.” Kirk would scoff at “make it so” and would push that daffodil Jordi LaForge out of his way to “make it so” himself. And Wesley Crusher? Kirk would have fed him to the Horta.
Also, in the episode Mirror, Mirror we get a brief glimpse of the Imperial commander Jim Kirk. He doesn’t look any different. My fanboy version of parallel universe Kirk would have had him smoking a cigar, maybe have a tattoo on his forearm.
However, I can’t hammer Picard too hard for saying “make it so” without getting onto Kirk about how many times he says “my ship.” Kirk is obsessed with the Enterprise to a disconcerting degree. There are times I have to ask myself if Kirk is referring to the people on board, or if he really is all for preserving that hunk of metal. I mean, any time Kirk is threatened, he always says “my ship.” What is Kirk concerned about? Is he concerned about the lives involved, or is he more concerned with how much money Starfleet would lose if the actual vessel was lost?
All told, I believe Kirk is a good guy. But he takes himself so seriously that he crosses the line into unintentional comedy. We never get the sense that he is really the “rock” that he is rumored to be.
I would argue that McCoy is more of a source of security than Kirk. Jim gets stressed out pretty easily, and wants to fight at the first sign of trouble. In many ways, he’s the ultimate guy. He represents some of the flaws of our gender…..the males. Guys, if we’re honest with ourselves, when we are threatened and afraid, what’s the first thing we want to do: fight. When I’m sick, I feel threatened and imagine the sickness taking human form and having a fight to the death. When I feel the credit card company is trying to screw me over, I want to fight. I can’t do anything… can’t function… until we fight to resolve the matter.
Yes, oddly enough Jim Kirk, the hero of Star Trek, represents human error. In that way, it is not McCoy who is Spock’s opposite, but rather Captain Kirk himself. Kirk represents how we respond to fear and threat: we don’t take a step back and realize that there is a resolution to the problem with time and patience. We want it resolved right this very instant with our might and with our emotion.
Issue 21:
Spotlight on Technology
By
Dr. Roger Korby
What do you get when you mix Back to the Future II, a naive twelve-year-old and a format war? You get one of the more disappointing experiences of my childhood, (and it’s not even that bad so I should probably just shut up.) What happened was I had been loaned BttFII, which I had been told was a really cool movie, (”Hoverboards?!! Are you serious?!!”), and was really excited about getting home to watch it. (By the way, I grew up in Taiwan and things like new movies and American TV shows were sometimes hard to come by.) To my dismay, the tape did not even fit in our VCR Recorder, (I technically shouldn’t make this Borat reference because we had a lame VCP Player.) I was a casualty of the Betamax/VHS war and I was not happy. I think I eventually tracked down a Betamax player from a neighbor, but there was still something wrong with the tape because I don’t remember actually getting to watch BttFII until years later.
You would think that we would learn from the past and not let another format war like Betamax vs. VHS spill out into the consumer world. Unfortunately, this is just what is happening with the two formats, (HD-DVD and Blu-ray), fighting to replace standard DVDs. DVDs store from 4.7 to 8.5 gigabytes of data, which translates to about two and a half hours of standard definition video, (the sort of video we’ve all been watching for the last 20 years.) The new formats can hold a lot more data, which opens the door for movie studios to release much higher quality versions of their movies. High-definition (HD), TV’s will eventually become the norm and we will need a supply of actual HD video to watch on them. These new DVD formats offer one way to get high definition video delivered to your living room. Other methods include HD broadcast feeds through the airwaves, HD cable and satellite, and HD downloads to devices like the XBox 360, (more on this later).
A word about HD video. One assumption that is made when talking about these next generation DVDs is that you will have an HDTV to watch them on. If you don’t, then they don’t really make much sense. Regular non-HD TV’s, (aka Standard Definition TVs or SDTVs), go up to 480i, which means there are 480 lines of detail in the video image from the top of the screen to the bottom. The i stands for “interlaced,” which means that the screen only shows every other line and then quickly switches out to show the other set of lines. It happens so fast that we don’t really notice that we’re only seeing half the detail at a time. So SDTV’s use 480i. HDTV’s come in several flavors: 480p, (which is also called Enhanced TV or EDTV), 720p, 1080i and 1080p. The p stands for “progressive” which means that all the lines of detail are displayed simultaneously, (as opposed to interlaced, where they are constantly traded out.) The result is a clearer picture. 720 and 1080 mean that there are that many lines of image detail from the top of the screen to the bottom. Most computer monitors these days run at a resolution of at least 1280×1024. The second number, 1024, is referring to the same thing as the 1080 in HDTVs, so your computer monitor is in effect high def, (and this should be pretty obvious - computer monitors are much clearer than SDTVs… that’s why we work in front of monitors and not televisions.)
So what are the differences between these competing formats? The main differences that I’ve seen are in the amount of data they hold and the price of the players.
Blu-ray
- Blu-ray holds 25-50 gigabytes of data which is good for about 5 to 9 hours of HD video.
- In theory, blu-ray discs eventually could hold up to 100-200 gigabytes, or a lot of hours of HD video.
- 7.1 surround sound.
- Blu-ray movies currently cost from $25-$35 (btw… does anyone else think $35 for any version [HD or not] of Click is too much?)
- Blu-ray players are currently really expensive: $1000 for a Samsung Blu-ray player at Best Buy.
- Sony’s PlayStation 3 has a Blu-ray drive and plays Blu-ray movies. Eventually you will be able to buy one for $600. As of press time, though, (which was the PS3 launch date), pretty much the only way to get one is to drop over $2000 for one on Ebay!
HD-DVD
- HD-DVDs hold 15-30 gigabytes of data or 4 to 8 hours of video, (from what I’ve read, the video on Blu-ray disc will be higher quality than HD-DVD… that’s why Blu-ray holds fewer hours of video relative to HD-DVD.)
- According to the official HD-DVD website they have a theoretical limit of 60 gigabytes.
- Like Blu-ray, they can handle 7.1 surround sound.
- HD-DVD movies currently cost from $25-35.
- HD-DVD players cost less. Best Buy is selling one for under $500.
- Microsoft will have an HD-DVD add-on for their Xbox 360. It will cost around $300.
So what does all that mean to me?
It really sucks that the industry is letting this format war be decided by the consumers. People will have to choose one and hope that their format wins. It’s also possible that both formats will survive. (This happened with writable DVDs: there are two formats: DVD+R and DVD-R and eventually hardware manufacturers just supported both.) However, the two next gen DVD formats are different enough that building machines that could play both would be challenging and expensive.
If I had to guess which one would win, I’d have to lean towards Blu-ray. Blu-ray players cost more, but there’s one built into the PS3, (as opposed to the $300 HD-DVD add-on for the 360.) Sony is really struggling to get these systems out, but eventually there will be millions of them in households and this will go a long way towards solidifying Blu-ray’s hold on the market.
If I had to make a recommendation, I’d say “Don’t get either.” You’ll really be kicking yourself if you buy a $500+ device and then have nothing to play on it in a year. Just keep watching your regular DVDs for a year or two.
Finally, as if two options weren’t enough, there will soon be a third way to get HD video. Microsoft recently announced that they will offer HD video downloads to Xbox 360s. This is kind of cool because it’s good quality video delivered to a device that is already in your living room. From what I’ve read, the HD movies they rent, (I don’t think they plan on selling downloads yet), will be about 6 gigabytes each which will really tear through the 360’s meager 20 gigabyte hard-drive. Hopefully Microsoft will soon announce larger, (100 gig+), drives, which would make this HD download service a little more appealing.
Issue 21:
Tournament of Villainy
By
Rascal Stallion
| Name: Donkey Kong |
|
Name: Carmen SanDiego |
| Occupation: Pet Gorilla |
vs. |
Occupation: Criminal Mastermind |
| Origin: Donkey Kong |
|
Origin: Where in the World is Carmen SanDiego |
Donkey Kong had stolen from Carmen San Diego and now he was going to pay. She tracked him all the way from the scene of the crime to here, his home atop a large construction site.
Several clues she found at the crime scene incriminated the large ape. One eyewitness claimed the perp smelled like bananas while another claimed to have seen him with a white flag with a red circle in the middle. Yen were scattered along the ground, but most incriminating of all was Donkey Kong’s wallet he dropped on the ground.
Carmen approached Kong’s construction site and tried to stealthily make her way to the top. She had just made it through the entrance when he noticed her and began furiously jumping up and down. Carmen quaked as the steel girders around her began shifting and bending. Grim determination crossed her face as she knew it was now on like Donkey Kong.
Carmen hurriedly ran towards the top but was aghast to look ahead to see Donkey Kong throwing large barrels of oil down at her. She leaped over the first barrel. Unfortunately, Rockapella was not so lucky. Her theme music had been following behind her, but now lay quietly flattened in a mangled heap of misshapen limbs.
Carmen leaped a second barrel and then a third as she climbed another ladder, taking her closer to the top. The barrels she leaped crashed into oil drums beneath her, inexplicably bursting into flames. Sweat greased her brow as the flames began creeping up behind her.
She pressed on, but her stomach dropped when she saw that Donkey Kong had hurled a dreaded double barrel her direction. She would have to time this perfectly.
Carmen’s legs were begging to grow weary. She waited until the last moment and tried to leap the hurtling drums but her tired legs did not cooperate and her foot hit the first barrel as it rumbled past her. Her body pinwheeled with the force, causing her face to embed itself into the second barrel. Her cheekbone and orbital socket shattered, sending bone fragments through her brains, which subsequently splattered across the barrel.
Her days of crime were over.
View Tournament Bracket
Issue 21:
Tournament of Villainy
By
Rascal Stallion
| Name: Syndrome aka Buddy Pine |
|
Name: Medusa |
| Occupation: Super Villain |
vs. |
Occupation: Mistress of the West Gate of Death |
| Origin: The Incredibles |
|
Origin: Greek Mythology |
Syndrome had a great idea for a new superweapon but he was still missing one key component- he needed the head of Medusa and some of her Gorgon blood to make his invention complete. He piloted his velocipod to her home at the entrance to the Underworld on the side of the Western Ocean.
Once inside Medusa’s lair, Syndrome donned his special thermal goggles that would allow him to look at medusa without turning to stone. He slowly made his way around the frozen statues of the adventurers who had journeyed here before him as his eyes acclimated to the thermal goggles. Suddenly he detected a blur of motion speeding towards him. Medusa’s two-headed pet wolves were upon him!
Syndrome blasted the first one with his zero point energy beam but the second one bit deeply into his arm, crushing the energy beam and lacerating him deeply. He quickly blasted upwards with his energy boots, engulfing the dog in flames. He emerged from the attack victorious but he was wounded and his primary weapon was destroyed.
Syndrome decided he needed to regroup and return later. He mounted his velocipod but before he could take off he heard a chilling laugh followed by a shrill voice, “Who dares enter the house of Medusa?”
Syndrome steeled himself and tried to sound more confident than he was actually feeling. “I’m Syndrome” he said “and I’ve come for your head!”
“Syndrome?” replied Medusa. “You sound more like the singer from Stillwater. Nonetheless, here’s where your adventure ends, boy.”
She advanced towards Syndrome as he started up his velocipod and charged at her. The four spinning blades of the craft hissed as they sliced through the air, their motion only momentarily impeded as they slashed through Medusa’s body. Pieces of Medusa went every which way, (including loose), and her head toppled clumsily to the ground, her last thoughts wondering why she couldn’t be immortal like her sisters.
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