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[glynor]

I would feel proud if I were French.

[hit_ny]

.. if the French bill becomes law.

It's just that. A bill..

They managed to pass that legalise P2P bill over the x'mas holidays, when many members were out for the x'mas holidays. It got through with a vote to spare.

It's too early to say what if anything comes out of this.

Last i checked copyright Law was very much alive & kicking in France.

[LonWar]

I agree with all of it except for the Apple part at the end.

If apple wants to sell products on there site in there format, then they should be allowed.

[glynor]

I agree Gamer.  That "forced non-DRM" part of the bill was the only part I didn't agree with.  They should allow legal use of tools that remove DRM but not force Apple to offer the files in a government mandated format.

Actually, the non-circumvention clause of the DMCA is the only part of the law that I find really troublesome.  It basically lets the companies violate our Fair Use Rights through technological means (granting themselves powers that Copyright law does not allow) and prevents us from reclaiming those rights.

[jgreen]

For the record, Glynor, I would feel proud if you were French, too.

Everyone loves the idea of regulating daily life, at least other people's daily life.  But only if we get to make the rules.  Somebody else's rules?  Well, that's a different thing.  But once you have rules (somebody else's), then you have to enact laws to make everyone obey the rules.    And suddenly, while the penalty for the most severe crimes is getting more lenient, the penalty for disobeying the French is getting more severe.  When does it stop?  When the regulators run out of ink.

I hate DRM as much as you do, but I would point out that once we got WMA DRM we got Napster, 1,000,000 + songs for $10 a month.  I don't think anybody expected that a world-class library would eventually cost only $10 a month.

Turtleneck Boy was once quoted saying that the way to beat piracy was to force the profit margin of piracy down below minimum wage.  I think the RIAA has done this, albeit kicking and screaming.  But only DRM allowed them to do this.

The Fair Use doctrine implies that you can copy something for personal use, as long as you can copy it.  This is why Fair use does not apply to Bill Gates' Mercedes Benz, because it can't be copied.  Same for WMA DRM, IMO.  And for $10 a month, who cares?

Well, you care, apparently.  And your brethren in the Thought Police are on the case!  Liberte for all, whether you want it or not!  I would only point out that 1,000,000 + songs for $10 a month is the next best thing to stealing, and in the USA it's perfectly legal.

[GHammer]

I care. I do not agree that whatever is good for business is good.

I do agree a $10 monthly fee for DRM'd music is next to stealing. For the companies.

[LonWar]

I do agree a $10 monthly fee for DRM'd music is next to stealing. For the companies.

If you want to use a portable it's 15$, But you can't use an Ipod....

[GHammer]

Ah, yes.
Can't do this.
Don't use that device.
Play only on Tuesday within 2 miles of Starbucks.

No thanks. I don't need 'The largest, most restricted music library' especially when I have no control over future pricing and current (and future) listening.

What happens when one of these ventures goes belly up? How do your licenses work then?
$120 (or $150) a year buys lots of cutout bin or 2nd hand CDs. The ever present CD clubs are actually a good deal if you remember to not take the selection of the month.

Many ways to own what I like without strings.

[jgreen]

Here it is January, 2006.  Budget $120 for Napster (all you can download), $120 for Itunes ($.99 per song), and $120 for the theft tax that the French propose to levy on everyone so that artists (and bureacrats) can be compensated when no one buys music.  At the end of the year, which method got you the most music?

And the idea that $10 a month is a ripoff?  In certain parts of L.A. basic cable is $75 a month.  And for that The Man tells you what you can watch and when.  Mostly reruns of "Laverne and Shirley",  as far as I can tell. 

Hammer, I have no doubt that 500 channels of "Laverne and Shirley" reruns might seem like refreshing variety compared to your current options.  But contrast this to $10 a month for all your music how and when you want it, and it seems a little less like a rip, IMO.

[GHammer]

Oh, I was not comparing this with other silly expenditures.
I'm not a real passive person so I could care less about TV in whatever form as a rule. Likewise with movies.
Pay TV, ha! What a great idea. I do have a dim recollection when cable was brought to my hometown. Boy! No antennas needed and as a bonus we could watch TV all the way from Chicago. Except when a program was on that the local stations didn't want shown, then you got a black square with some FCC regulation posted.
I liked to watch channel 17 from Atlanta, some oddball guy named Turner ran it.

Then along came MTV and HBO and big business and I guess you pay $75 and up to watch The Knitting Channel or whatever is so intriguing.

My point is that with your $120 on Napster or iTunes at the end of the year you have music that is controlled by someone else. They can (and will) tell you where you can listen.

My $120 will give me music that I can take where and when I want with no worries about a subscription or an internet connection to authorize me to listen or copy.

As for how I want it, I've yet to see the APE files offered by those services. Have I missed some announcement recently?

Finally, much like your cable channels, I really doubt if many of the millions of songs on Napster are anything I can't live without. I have pretty broad tastes (look at my last.fm page), but "My Hump" isn't gonna make it onto my machine in the foreseeable future.

P.S. You can watch CCTV 9 via the 'Net and enjoy the same fine programs and excellent journalism as I do. http://english.cctv.com/index.shtml

[jgreen]

Ham--
10-4 on the knitting channel, pet psychiatry channel, channeling for past lives channel.  Anyone spending $1,000 (and a lot more) a year on something they can't drive or play has earned the right to get what they ask for.  Note that I have friends who buy the cable to get a couple hours of peace and quiet out of their young kids.

So,with your $120 music budget this year, you're going to buy CD's?  That will get you "My Hump", "My Prerogative", and two or three other current hotties, and that has to last you until 2007.  Hope you like Britney. 

I'll find a way to make the best of Napster.  Yes, it is lossy, controlled by somebody else, and it is a highly profitable business for somebody else, at my expense.  But short of the French approach, this is the quickest, easiest way to get a library of music going.

[hit_ny]

$120/yr vs. a cable tv subscription ia an interesting comparison. When you put it that way it does not see like much even tho you dont get to keep what you download.

If you want that in lossless there is always that russian site.

[GHammer]

Well, the original issue is that the French approach is wrong and that the DRM purveyors are good or at least ok.

I'll stay with the French approach.

It's wrong to lock people into the various lower quality methods. From my viewpoint, simply because I know all these services are not going to survive and at that point the licenses will be useless along with all the music you've been 'paying' for.

[hit_ny]

What French approach ?

..it's just a bill. When it becomes law we can call it such. High odds of that not passing. All i see happening is maybe the penalties will drop from the draconian level they are at now (yet not as enforced to the saem extent as in the US). But eat all you want P2P for a fixed price, heh, that's still a long way off.

I don't disagree with what you said. But i remember a time when i used to use a VCR to record shows quite often. Then 100s of channels started propping up and i felt less of a need to have a copy of what i saw.

Now with music, we are still used to and want to keep a copy ( i certainly do). But if more options start then the need for it might become less. You are paying a fraction of what you would for cable TV, its on demand, you select what you want to hear not when they say.. There is the portable side of things, can't hear the net when you are on the road, for that there is already iTunes.

Will the market support the new Napster model, still early to say.

[GHammer]

It's a faulty comparison, TV to music.
iPod video notwithstanding, TV is not real portable and it demands your attention.
Music is extremely portable and requires no attention to enjoy.

When I lived in Daegu years back, there were guys who taped every movie, every TV show. They'd have 100s of VHS tapes.

Wonder what they do today?

Doesn't matter to me, I will not submit to DRM to the best of my abilities.
I bought a new motherboard this year to avoid the new chipset of 2006.
In a year or two, your hardware will prevent you from doing anything that's 'not allowed'
You can get more info from the Intel site about their new technology. Aimed at securing the system at the BIOS level. Well, except BIOS will go away.

Anyway, it's good to see others stand up to the Hollywood lobby and the ever compliant US government.

This arguement has existed since the dawn of personal computers in one form or another. The difference today is that the US government has gotten in bed with one side at the expense of the other.

I'll note that Windows is likely more stolen than any music CDs and likely has a higher cost both for development and for support. Microsoft isn't declaring bankruptcy just yet.

Why? Because the value delivered draws paying customers.

Perhaps the entertainment industry should look towards that idea instead of draconian laws to prevent people from doing what has always been allowed.

[hit_ny]

It's a faulty comparison, TV to music.
iPod video notwithstanding, TV is not real portable and it demands your attention.
Music is extremely portable and requires no attention to enjoy.

Sure but think of it this way.

MC with UPnP server, you listen to your collection at work or anywhere else that has a fast enough connection.

Now imagine instead of your collection you're hooked up to commerical service(s), in an ideal world and alot of assumptions you get to keep the same MC interface.  You can create your playlists and rate whatever and even assign meta-tags if you must.

You can call up what you want anytime as often as want.

Does it matter whether you own the music or not ?

For me & you it may, but for a lot of non tech savvy users, this could sound interesting. No need to know how to rip stuff etc, no need to worry about storing/managing it properly and then about losing it. Oh you want to share recommendations or playlists, no problem just get your friends to sign on and share away.

Best of all it gives you the chance to make an inspired buying choice. Nobody's saying that you won't be able to buy the music and own it if you want later on.

The only hard part is making this as pleasant and seamless an experience as possible. That's easier said than done but its something a lot of ppl are trying to do. iTunes has a slight edge for now.

Doesn't matter to me, I will not submit to DRM to the best of my abilities.
I bought a new motherboard this year to avoid the new chipset of 2006.
In a year or two, your hardware will prevent you from doing anything that's 'not allowed'
You can get more info from the Intel site about their new technology. Aimed at securing the system at the BIOS level. Well, except BIOS will go away.

Anyway, it's good to see others stand up to the Hollywood lobby and the ever compliant US government.

This arguement has existed since the dawn of personal computers in one form or another. The difference today is that the US government has gotten in bed with one side at the expense of the other.

You mentioned this earlier, i'm not entirely convinced that business will necessarily go for it. For personal users maybe. Means we might be seeing business class systems vs the home systems you can pick up at PC world. With the business ones being slightly dearer and free-er vs the cheaper locked down consumer pc. Only a matter of time when some one else makes free-er consumer pcs. Might be illegal in the US, but elsehwere hmmm. Why will every country be that interested about protecting US copyright vs their own pressing problems ?

i don't believe they will manage a complete lockdown immediately. Maybe a cpl more generations. Hard to call.

[GHammer]

Why would business NOT like a platform that locks out viruses/worms?
That allows me to ensure license compliance. That prevents documents from being sent outside or to unauthorized people even in the company?

Go do the research. One thing that Apple liked was that Intel's new boot method (hardware) is not a BIOS. You can allow or not allow apps to be loaded. But for you and I, you have a document blacklist. That applies to any doc, including Word, music, things that Bush doesn't like, things that a Mullah doesn't like.

As for other countries, well, the US is not the only country that likes to know/control what is published, downloadable, whatever.

Further, why does anyone want to make a BIOS and OS for this country, that country? Not economical.

Nope, you're being sold down the river. Get used to it.

http://www.cypherpunks.to/TCPA_DEFCON_10.pdf

[hit_ny]

Why would business NOT like a platform that locks out viruses/worms?
That allows me to ensure license compliance. That prevents documents from being sent outside or to unauthorized people even in the company?

This part can be done effectively right now with a competent Active Directory admin. Corporate pcs are far easier to secure than public ones cos many times you don't have much rights to install anything on them anyways assuming you are using W2K onwards.

As for transmitting sensitive information outside there are many safeguards in place at companies where this matters for dealing with it. They had a lot of these safeguards in place many yrs ago. Won't stop the occasional leak but then a "protected" platform won't either.

A reason i think companies will not go for it is business's dont like being told by other business's what to do with their data on equipment & software they have fully paid for. They cant afford to piss off corporates since that's where the bulk of thier revenue comes from.

TCPA means there is a public crypto key in the hardware. THERE IS NO PRIVATE KEY. This means that the owner of the computer CANNOT SIGN CODE!!! (by owner I mean, the IT department). The fact that the owner cannot sign code is the ONLY difference between TCPA and all the well-established security schemes in existence.

The entire purpose of TCPA is to make sure that people cannot program their own computers. It is not a magic thing that is going to suddenly make software have no bugs!! It is going to sign those bugs and say they are "trusted"

Compare the private & corporate versions of the latest MS office, one had activation the other has none whatsoever.

The so called protection of the platform is being done mostly to raise the bar for the public. Of course its being sold as a way to protect them.

So now you got unencumbered business pcs and cheaper protected consumer versions. It woud be impossible to enforce and ultimately fade away. If the so called protected platform even happens.

I feel the reason we are hearing all this protected PC stuff is vendors as usual exploiting the current political climate in the US. They did it quite effectively with Y2K as well.

http://www.cypherpunks.to/TCPA_DEFCON_10.pdf

Interesting read until i realised that it was dated 2002 !!!

Hollings retired in 2003 acording to this article

Does that mean there is no more Fritz-Hollings bill anymore ?