That's Arts Technica.

olddeegee: For the first time in our country's history, almost all social ills can be traced to corporate greed.

I disagree, but only a little. Apple has shown that corporate greed isn't the problem in this instance.
It's the failure to understand and utilize the advances in technology that is causing the problem. Instead of making it easier for the customer to use their purchase in a reasonable use case, they are trying to legislate against the tools that would make them money in they took the 5 mins to think levelheaded and come up with a better solution.

Most people aren't pirates and most people wouldn't want to invest the time and energy in piracy is the alternative was easier to achieve. They just want convenience. Give it to them and they will pay a fair price.

Virtual Pariah: Most people aren't pirates and most people wouldn't want to invest the time and energy in piracy is the alternative was easier to achieve. They just want convenience. Give it to them and they will pay a fair price.

And unfortunately, the consumer's and the corporation's idea of a fair price rarely match up, which leads to more piracy. So yes, it does still come back to greed in the end.

Virtual Pariah:

Most people aren't pirates and most people wouldn't want to invest the time and energy in piracy is the alternative was easier to achieve. They just want convenience. Give it to them and they will pay a fair price.

Nah, easier to force your customers to sit through 15 minutes of outdated movie previews that they aren't interested in and an FBI warning so that they don't pirate the movie they just bought. I mean, if we make the experience we sell shiatty enough, it's not like people will have a reason to go pirate our movies.

/don't get me started on the fact most of what Hollywood produces is unoriginal and uninspired crap they'd have to pay me to watch anyways.

What an arse.

olddeegee: For the first time in all of our country's history, almost all social ills can be traced to corporate greed and politicians. This is simply one battle in the long war to infuse sanity and reason into the existing corporate domination of most of the planet.

FTFY

R66YRobo: /don't get me started on the fact most of what Hollywood produces is unoriginal and uninspired crap they'd have to pay me to watch anyways.

Or that many of the scripts passed off in Hollywood borrow heavily, if not outright duplicate, from other people's scripts. In fact, most of today's media is just rehashing of existing ideas. It is very rare for a new idea to be presented.

Interesting read on the subject.

Virtual Pariah: olddeegee: For the first time in our country's history, almost all social ills can be traced to corporate greed.

I disagree, but only a little. Apple has shown that corporate greed isn't the problem in this instance.
It's the failure to understand and utilize the advances in technology that is causing the problem. Instead of making it easier for the customer to use their purchase in a reasonable use case, they are trying to legislate against the tools that would make them money in they took the 5 mins to think levelheaded and come up with a better solution.

Most people aren't pirates and most people wouldn't want to invest the time and energy in piracy is the alternative was easier to achieve. They just want convenience. Give it to them and they will pay a fair price.

Sure, but convenience is hard work for content producers. This is classic cheese moving for studios. There is the potential drastically reduced costs and induced demand, but these guys are so set in their ways, they can't see it. The brick-and-mortar retail model is all they know. Eventually, each of the studios will set up their own portals for one-shot movie viewing, making them the primary pos, but not until this generation of execs retires.

R66YRobo: Nah, easier to force your customers to sit through 15 minutes of outdated movie previews that they aren't interested in and an FBI warning so that they don't pirate the movie they just bought. I mean, if we make the experience we sell shiatty enough, it's not like people will have a reason to go pirate our movies.



/obligatory

Fish in a Barrel: R66YRobo: Nah, easier to force your customers to sit through 15 minutes of outdated movie previews that they aren't interested in and an FBI warning so that they don't pirate the movie they just bought. I mean, if we make the experience we sell shiatty enough, it's not like people will have a reason to go pirate our movies.

[i29.photobucket.com image 500x534]

/obligatory

obligatory and true. I don't want to sit through ten minutes of bullshiat to watch the movie that I already paid for, therefore, I will continue to pirate.

Fish in a Barrel: i29.photobucket.com

Great example.

I hate Prohibited User Operations (PUOs) with a passion. It was a major factor in my decision to rip my entire DVD collection onto my HTPC. The other reason, ironically enough, was that my Toshiba SD-4700 was incompatible with Sony's ARccOS protection scheme. I had to rip the movies in order to view them.

Dinjiin: Fish in a Barrel: i29.photobucket.com

Great example.

I hate Prohibited User Operations (PUOs) with a passion. It was a major factor in my decision to rip my entire DVD collection onto my HTPC. The other reason, ironically enough, was that my Toshiba SD-4700 was incompatible with Sony's ARccOS protection scheme. I had to rip the movies in order to view them.

Beyond the PUOs, my experience has been that BluRays are just excruciatingly slow. I just got Archer seasons 1 and 2 on BluRay, and it takes roughly 5 minutes of booting and loading before I actually get to content. And I'm not using an ancient player.

I'm thinking of building an HTPC so I can more easily rip and watch, plus I'd be able to watch Hulu on my TV. I had Hulu+, and I even bought a Roku, but very few networks actually allow you to watch on anything other than the PC.

What OS do you use for you HTPC?

Guy writing for the MPAA doesn't know the difference between copyright infringement and theft. Stopped reading blog post there. Seriously, if you're going to be a public-facing mouthpiece for your organization, at least get your basic concepts nailed down.

Also, I see that his blog has a "follow us on twitter" link. I think I've seen people quoting song lyrics on twitter before. They should probably blacklist this "MPAA.org" for their flagrant violations of the RIAA's IP rights.

germ78: Same here, even though I have never had a problem with the unskippable previews. For some reason all the DVD players I have had have allowed me to hit the menu button and skip the previews to go directly to... the menu.

Ironically, cheap, low-end DVD players tend to omit support for that kind of thing. Since DVD players aren't exactly cutting edge tech, that alone makes the cheapest devices better than their more expensive competition.

germ78: StrangeQ: Fish in a Barrel: R66YRobo: Nah, easier to force your customers to sit through 15 minutes of outdated movie previews that they aren't interested in and an FBI warning so that they don't pirate the movie they just bought. I mean, if we make the experience we sell shiatty enough, it's not like people will have a reason to go pirate our movies.

[i29.photobucket.com image 500x534]

/obligatory

obligatory and true. I don't want to sit through ten minutes of bullshiat to watch the movie that I already paid for, therefore, I will continue to pirate.

Same here, even though I have never had a problem with the unskippable previews. For some reason all the DVD players I have had have allowed me to hit the menu button and skip the previews to go directly to... the menu.

Except that some movies disable that feature. If they can disable 'fast forward' and 'skip,' what's to stop them from disabling other means of not viewing the previews?

/Or worse, they could code the DVD so that hitting the Menu button goes to the start of the unskippable previews that you have to sit through before you can reach the main menu.

ProfessorOhki: Guy writing for the MPAA doesn't know the difference between copyright infringement and theft.

"Theft," colloquially, has a broader definition than the legal term "theft". For example, we refer to being "robbed" of opportunities, "stealing" someone's spotlight, etc. Perhaps the former is the one he's using?

Also:
ProfessorOhki: Guy writing for the MPAA doesn't know the difference between copyright infringement and theft.

Also, I see that his blog has a "follow us on twitter" link. I think I've seen people quoting song lyrics on twitter before. They should probably blacklist this "MPAA.org" for their flagrant violations of the RIAA's IP rights.

Guy writing on Fark doesn't know the difference between Twitter and the MPAA.

serial_crusher: Remember when tech blogs were about tech, not politics? Can we go back to that?

No. The two are inextricably bound now.

Theaetetus: ProfessorOhki: Guy writing for the MPAA doesn't know the difference between copyright infringement and theft.

"Theft," colloquially, has a broader definition than the legal term "theft". For example, we refer to being "robbed" of opportunities, "stealing" someone's spotlight, etc. Perhaps the former is the one he's using?

Perhaps, but you might expect someone fulfilling that role might have the forethought to use less colloquial language? Notice as well that both in the "opportunities" and "spotlight" examples one is depriving another of that which they are gaining, making those examples more consistent with a traditional definition of theft. A better example might be "stealing" a joke and since Mencia and Cook remain free men, I doubt this meets the legal definition.

Theaetetus: Also:
ProfessorOhki: Guy writing for the MPAA doesn't know the difference between copyright infringement and theft.

Also, I see that his blog has a "follow us on twitter" link. I think I've seen people quoting song lyrics on twitter before. They should probably blacklist this "MPAA.org" for their flagrant violations of the RIAA's IP rights.

Guy writing on Fark doesn't know the difference between Twitter and the MPAA.

Hyperbole, however if Twitter was considered a "rogue site" under SOPA, linking to it could be construed a violation.

Fish in a Barrel: R66YRobo: Nah, easier to force your customers to sit through 15 minutes of outdated movie previews that they aren't interested in and an FBI warning so that they don't pirate the movie they just bought. I mean, if we make the experience we sell shiatty enough, it's not like people will have a reason to go pirate our movies.

[i29.photobucket.com image 500x534]

/obligatory

Wow, you get a lot more stuff if you are a paying customer.

serial_crusher: Remember when tech blogs were about tech, not politics? Can we go back to that?

What's the point of technology if laws prohibit it from working?

Snarfangel: Wow, you get a lot more stuff if you are a paying customer.

Hah! Sadly, I think the MPAA would say that without a trace of irony.

Fish in a Barrel: What OS do you use for you HTPC?

I use Windows 7 Home Premium on an ATI 785G motherboard with an Athlon X2 chip.

I don't use any sort of HTPC front-end. I tried MythTV long ago, but it was choking on some of my MKV files and the drivers were a bit crashy with my board. I looked at some commercial ones for Windows, but since I don't use my HTPC as a DVR, wrote them off as eye candy.

I primary use Media Player Classic with ffdshow. It can handle nearly any video I throw at it, even some weird MKV files with obscure subtitle formats, H264 streams with 16 b-frames and M2TS rips from Blu-rays. When I spit the audio over to ffdshow, it can take any multi-channel codec (LPCM, DTS, MP2, AAC, etc...) and convert it to AC3 for output over SPDIF to my receiver (you can only do multi-channel LPCM over HDMI). It works perfectly.

I also use PowerDVD for encrypted Blu-ray discs (Netflix rentals), and it generally sucks, but was free.

Another benefit is that some online streaming sites will restrict video playback if you're using a smart TV, console or hand-held device. If you're using a PC with VGA, DVI or HDMI output, you're fine. It doesn't seem to notice [yet] that the device on the other side of that HDMI connection is an HDTV.

In short, it isn't pretty, but a generic PC box is about as versatile as you can get. I've been using one for about a decade now.

Virtual Pariah: olddeegee: For the first time in our country's history, almost all social ills can be traced to corporate greed.

I disagree, but only a little. Apple has shown that corporate greed isn't the problem in this instance.
It's the failure to understand and utilize the advances in technology that is causing the problem. Instead of making it easier for the customer to use their purchase in a reasonable use case, they are trying to legislate against the tools that would make them money in they took the 5 mins to think levelheaded and come up with a better solution.

Most people aren't pirates and most people wouldn't want to invest the time and energy in piracy is the alternative was easier to achieve. They just want convenience. Give it to them and they will pay a fair price.

Apple isn't a problem? They're responsible for the suicides of many workers who are chained to their factory's productions lines in china and paid nothing. But apple isn't a problem? ....ok then...

ProfessorOhki: Theaetetus: ProfessorOhki: Guy writing for the MPAA doesn't know the difference between copyright infringement and theft.

"Theft," colloquially, has a broader definition than the legal term "theft". For example, we refer to being "robbed" of opportunities, "stealing" someone's spotlight, etc. Perhaps the former is the one he's using?

Perhaps, but you might expect someone fulfilling that role might have the forethought to use less colloquial language? Notice as well that both in the "opportunities" and "spotlight" examples one is depriving another of that which they are gaining, making those examples more consistent with a traditional definition of theft. A better example might be "stealing" a joke and since Mencia and Cook remain free men, I doubt this meets the legal definition.

Not really - as I'm sure you'll readily admit, "theft" is more emotionally charged as a word and aids his side. Since he can reasonably claim it's an accurate definition, for some common definitions of the term, then he is using the proper forethought.

ProfessorOhki: Theaetetus: Also:
ProfessorOhki: Guy writing for the MPAA doesn't know the difference between copyright infringement and theft.

Also, I see that his blog has a "follow us on twitter" link. I think I've seen people quoting song lyrics on twitter before. They should probably blacklist this "MPAA.org" for their flagrant violations of the RIAA's IP rights.

Guy writing on Fark doesn't know the difference between Twitter and the MPAA.

Hyperbole, however if Twitter was considered a "rogue site" under SOPA, linking to it could be construed a violation.

Not under SOPA, no. I mean, you'd get what - inducing inducing infringement? Nah. Not in the statute.

Fish in a Barrel: Dinjiin: Fish in a Barrel: i29.photobucket.com

Great example.

I hate Prohibited User Operations (PUOs) with a passion. It was a major factor in my decision to rip my entire DVD collection onto my HTPC. The other reason, ironically enough, was that my Toshiba SD-4700 was incompatible with Sony's ARccOS protection scheme. I had to rip the movies in order to view them.

Beyond the PUOs, my experience has been that BluRays are just excruciatingly slow. I just got Archer seasons 1 and 2 on BluRay, and it takes roughly 5 minutes of booting and loading before I actually get to content. And I'm not using an ancient player.

I'm thinking of building an HTPC so I can more easily rip and watch, plus I'd be able to watch Hulu on my TV. I had Hulu+, and I even bought a Roku, but very few networks actually allow you to watch on anything other than the PC.

What OS do you use for you HTPC?

Go to the Hardforum HTPC and SFF subforums and ask your question there (and get some build ideas).

Personally, I'm just using Windows Media Center + VLC in my desktop combined with some decent organization that I enforce on myself.

Theaetetus: Not really - as I'm sure you'll readily admit, "theft" is more emotionally charged as a word and aids his side. Since he can reasonably claim it's an accurate definition, for some common definitions of the term, then he is using the proper forethought.

If proper forethought means being intentionally deceptive; I suppose is par for the course for these guys though, so I guess you've got me. I just don't know if I'd give him that much credit, given that he got the name of his adversary wrong.

Theaetetus: ProfessorOhki: Theaetetus: Also:
ProfessorOhki: Guy writing for the MPAA doesn't know the difference between copyright infringement and theft.

Also, I see that his blog has a "follow us on twitter" link. I think I've seen people quoting song lyrics on twitter before. They should probably blacklist this "MPAA.org" for their flagrant violations of the RIAA's IP rights.

Guy writing on Fark doesn't know the difference between Twitter and the MPAA.

Hyperbole, however if Twitter was considered a "rogue site" under SOPA, linking to it could be construed a violation.

Not under SOPA, no. I mean, you'd get what - inducing inducing infringement? Nah. Not in the statute.

I was thinking more along the lines of considering the ToS of using the Widget to essentially make them an Internet Advertising Service on behalf of Twitter, but you're right... the worst they'd get is an order to remove the Widget, which I'm sure they'd comply with.

Of course, it's important to note that the MPAA's blog doesn't allow any sort of comments. I suppose that's both out of legal necessity and "no one ever says anything nice about us!"

True enough. :)

Dinjiin: I don't use any sort of HTPC front-end. I tried MythTV long ago, but it was choking on some of my MKV files and the drivers were a bit crashy with my board. I looked at some commercial ones for Windows, but since I don't use my HTPC as a DVR, wrote them off as eye candy.

I've been using XBMC and I only have one or two biatches:

1) I can't seem to play mkv

2) Playing videos off of my upnp server, I can't seem push skip and go to the next video in the list. I always have to go through the menu system.

Ars Technica is very pro-copyright infringement. Slashdot is the same. Hell both have come out and said that The Pirate Bay in now way contributes to copyright infringement. Where is the surprise in that they got called on it?

Virtual Pariah: They just want convenience. Give it to them and they will pay a fair price.

If someone pirated it, your company failed.

electronicmaji:
Microsoft isn't a problem? They're responsible for the suicides of many workers who are chained to their factory's productions lines in china and paid nothing. But Microsoft isn't a problem? ....ok then...

FTFY.
Or more accurately, you should really remember who else uses Foxcon, before you try throwing stones. Silly anti-Apple cultist.

Fish in a Barrel:
What OS do you use for you HTPC?

It honestly depends how complex and all encompassing a system you're looking to build and how much your willing to get your hands dirty setting it all up.
The Microsoft Media Centre thing is, actually, pretty good. It's not THAT flexible but it's really easy to get going; good for a single machine with capture cards & such feeding your TV.

OTOH something like MythTV will feed every room in your house from a central server, scales as high as you can dream and is more flexible than a limbo dancer on muscle relaxants. It is, however, a good solid 10/10 on the difficulty rating to get going reliably.

You can even get freaky and split the frontend duties to something like XBMC and keep MythTV has your household DVR.

Dangl1ng:
1) I can't seem to play mkv

MKV isn't a format per say. It's a wrapper, so playing back what you think is something akin to a .mov might actually require AC3 audio and Theora video support. It's not like say .M4V where you know you're going to encounter h264, AAC, AC3 and mayby some farked up version of text for subtitles.

That's assuming it's not some retarded Anime fansub encoded by some tweaker than thinks if he sets the bitrate higher than Blu-Ray it'll somehow make Robotech not shiat compared to Macross. Dude, swap to decaf and cut that shiat out. If you've made a 30fps@720P video that chokes a Core 2 Duo you have done it farking wrong.

Best bet would be to collect the MKV's you want to play but can't and poke them with the mkvtools to see what's inside; then make sure your system has codecs for THOSE formats installed as well as the MKV handler.

btw. If it is Anime, insert a good dose of Handbrake set to AppleTV 2. It beats the sensible back in to them 90% of the time.

Weaver95: you either follow the party line or you are THE ENEMY! And what do we do with the enemy? we WADE into the! spill THEIR blood! shoot THEM in the belly! when you put your hand...into a bunch of goo that a moment before was your best friends face...well, then you'll know what to do.

Take your lithium today Weaver?

unyon: I highly recommend the read on the source of the economic costs of piracy that was linked in that article. It's a fascinating read on how decisions are being made on a foundation of pure, unadulterated, bullshiat (new window) passed off as data.

No. you want to see pure unadulterated bullshiat, look at the Federal Reserve.

sarah_t_s: That's assuming it's not some retarded Anime fansub encoded by some tweaker than thinks if he sets the bitrate higher than Blu-Ray it'll somehow make Robotech not shiat compared to Macross

You know, just when I'd written you off as ALL HAIL APPLE, you have to go and say something profoundly right.

Fish in a Barrel: What OS do you use for you HTPC?

I'm not the one who said anything about this, but I'll throw in a vote for either Windows or OSX with Plex as a frontend. I just moved from Boxee to Plex due to the discontinuation of Boxee's desktop version, and I'm kicking myself for not making this move sooner.

Dangl1ng: I've been using XBMC and I only have one or two biatches:

Interesting. Never heard of it before but I'll definitely check it out. But with the majority of my video library being in MKV format (mkvmerge is about 10x faster than mp4box and chokes a heck of a lot less), that may be a deal breaker.

And speaking of MKV, there is a module out by the DivX folks that allows for Windows Explorer thumbnails for MKV files. It makes browsing MKV files a lot nicer under W7 if you're not using a front-end.

sarah_t_s: OTOH something like MythTV will feed every room in your house from a central server, scales as high as you can dream and is more flexible than a limbo dancer on muscle relaxants. It is, however, a good solid 10/10 on the difficulty rating to get going reliably.

This is another reason for Plex. It has the same "frontend/backend" structure as MythTV without nearly the complication.

Unfortunately, it doesn't support live TV, but if that's not a requirement, go to town.

Load movie, wait for first preview/fbi warning. Stop -> Stop -> Play. I've yet to see a movie/dvd player that wouldn't just skip the previews and take you directly to the title menu.

/the more you know