what happens if SOPA passes?

at least we can all agree that Adobe is a horrible company to deal with lol

how does DRM have anything to do with idiots like Monster Cable screwing over rubes with "high quality" HDMI cables at Best Buy?

thats the gold bullshit, but every hdmi cable manufacturer has to pay for a licence to make a hdmi cable, which raises the costs for everyone. This was so they can try and prevent people making cables that would fuck with hdcp content "protection"

and apple
xp

advertising is increasingly the basis for the entire economy and culture, you might wanna rethink its importance.

carts are increasingly coming before horses

things bankrolled by advertising: Google, Facebook, every news site, television, rock bands, rap acts, films, Pitchfork etc etc

xxp

how does DRM have anything to do with idiots like Monster Cable screwing over rubes with "high quality" HDMI cables at Best Buy?

thats the gold bullshit, but every hdmi cable manufacturer has to pay for a licence to make a hdmi cable, which raises the costs for everyone. This was so they can try and prevent people making cables that would fuck with hdcp content "protection"

― stet, Wednesday, January 18, 2012 5:06 PM (58 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

didn't know that, but honestly if you go on amazon or newegg or something it's down to pretty low, like a $1/foot for HDMI now, unless you actively want to get suckered

stet's point is that the cost of DRM is passed on to the customer (who has already done the right thing by paying for the thing that's enforcing the DRM).

http://www.thefader.com/2012/01/18/swizz-beatz-is-the-ceo-of-megaupload/

!!!!

We've explained why that's a nonsense argument but clearly you don't want to listen.

I think it's hilarious that the "people WANT to pay for things, if only we could figure out HOW" angle is essentially unchanged (and just as wrong) as when it was first proffered at the turn of the century. Are you going to be making this same argument 50 years from now when companies still can't figure out how to get people to pay for content? People clearly don't want to pay for things. If something's free and convenient, they take it.

xp

omg @ that swizz thing

things bankrolled by advertising: Google, Facebook, every news site, television, rock bands, rap acts, films, Pitchfork etc etc

So it's good for who that they all punish their paying/legitimate customers by forcing them to watch advertising that the pirates don't have to watch?

I think it's hilarious that the "people WANT to pay for things, if only we could figure out HOW" angle is essentially unchanged (and just as wrong) as when it was first proffered at the turn of the century.

that's not the argument here. the argument is that the free version is better than the paid version. i'd sure as hell pay for a service like Oink if one existed!

I think it's hilarious that the "people WANT to pay for things, if only we could figure out HOW" angle is essentially unchanged (and just as wrong) as when it was first proffered at the turn of the century.

The turn of the 20th century? That's the century that made the content industry rich by selling squillions of records, newspapers, books, magazines, audio tapes, video tapes, CDs, DVDs and video games, yeah?

People clearly don't want to pay for things. If something's free and convenient, they take it.

If you stopped generalising you would begin to understand out point.

Shakey, read this (even just the headline will do): http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/05/netflix-traffic/

If something's free and convenient, they take it.

If something's free and a bit of a hassle vs cheap and convenient it's totally not so clear what people will do.

Like there are entire luxury industries predicated on the fact that people will pay a bit more for convenience. Like you could give away blocks of cheese and some people would still buy grated cheese in bags.

Downloading from iTunes is in a lot of cases a lot less hassle than finding a good-quality torrent w/loads of seeders. If you don't know how to torrent or how to evaluate them, the margin is even wider.

So it's good for who that they all punish their paying/legitimate customers by forcing them to watch advertising that the pirates don't have to watch?

you're missing my point entirely. is Google punishing you? the NY Times? Pitchfork? My point is that all of these services can't make money providing content or even a service, they make all their money from advertising. advertising has become a foundational sector of the global economy, so much so that basic infrastructural and cultural institutions cannot even exist without it. I'm not saying this is a good thing (on the contrary I think it's an absolutely idiotic and horrible thing) but it is a reality.

I think it is a good thing that google is free

lol

Netflix streaming movies now fill more of the United States’ internet tubes than any other service, including peer-to-peer file sharing, which long held the top spot

also was this article before or after Netflix totally shot themselves in the foot with the increased fees thing.

Netflix not exactly a thriving company/economic model at this point, iirc

Downloading from iTunes is in a lot of cases a lot less hassle than finding a good-quality torrent w/loads of seeders.

you know what's even easier is just downloading a zip file of megaupload or mediafire

OFF megaupload or mediafire

bemoaning advertising while complaining about the weird but quite capitalist music biz at the same time is strange to me. do you think the pre-internet music business could have existed without its various forms of advertisement?

about the death of* the weird

Netflix not exactly a thriving company/economic model at this point, iirc

Absolutely, but it indicates that there are still a hell of a lot of people willing to pay for content.

you know what's even easier is just downloading a zip file of megaupload or mediafire

finding them can be tough especially when there are a bunch of links full of trojans

My point is that all of these services can't make money providing content or even a service, they make all their money from advertising.

Of those three, only the NY Times have tried to charge, and they made a mess of that. I don't think the Times paywall is a great idea, but it's apparently washing its face. I would pay some hefty money for ad-free GMail too, if only they'd ask me.

That's ignoring the ones who are trying to sell a lower-quality product and then say "you can't sell it, people want free stuff, we need to rely on ads, that we will force them to watch [and make our quality worse, so that people will pirate even more, and remove the ads, which we rely on because we sell low-quality alternatives]"

so yeah, they make all their money from advertising, but that's in no way an inescapable law of digital economics or something.

man i have been craving sopapillas constantly the last few days because of this stupid fuckin legislation

is Google punishing you? the NY Times? Pitchfork? My point is that all of these services can't make money providing content or even a service, they make all their money from advertising. advertising has become a foundational sector of the global economy, so much so that basic infrastructural and cultural institutions cannot even exist without it.

Yes, and it's only as powerful as the number of people who respond to it. In your example, if everyone installs ad blocking software and the advertisers don't get a return on their investment, the advertising stops.

Worth bringing up, I guess, that the various industries are even in a position to complain because they famously pushed through massively favorable copyright extension legislation some years ago. I'm curious to know how they'll deal in, say, the UK when suddenly all these monster catalogs go public domain.

Oh, wait, they pulled a fast one there, too: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/13/arts/music/european-union-extends-copyright-on-recordings.html

And also because the VCR saved them, after them trying to kill it too.

Which is another way of saying they screwed up (which we all know) by not grabbing onto MP3s as the logical revenue-stream successor to CDs. They broke the cycle by myopically focusing on CD dough.

Yeah, because they could control CDs end-to-end but had no control over MP3s.

In your example, if everyone installs ad blocking software and the advertisers don't get a return on their investment, the advertising stops.

uh that is not how Google and Facebook make their advertising/marketing money

advertisers/marketers pay those firms to mine their data, in turn using that information to target consumers etc. it's not a straight eyeballs = $$$ scenario

again you are attacking advertising while complaining about the demise of a certain capitalist sector

er sector's the wrong word, but you know what I mean

I'm just describing how advertising works. I don't like it but it is what it is. I dunno what complaining I've done re: the demise of the music industry - I mean think it's sad that artists essentially make less money these days, across the board, but I don't hold any particular love for the music industry, which was fairly monstrous in its heyday and had plenty of horrible practices.

I see what you mean Shakey but I don't know whether data miners are advertising something per se.

http://static.someecards.com/someecards/usercards/MjAxMS0xZWMwMDAyNDU0Y2MzMWU0.png

i just thought that was funny, not directed really anywhere

I mean yes data mining leads to targeted advertising, but advertising is advertising, and all of it requires people's attention in order to survive xxp

this thread is a lot more fun after i gave up caring and just decided to watch shakey and frogbs and iatee circle around each in a festive dance of faulty logic and useless generalizations

your welcome

bad spelling, too

i'm not sure how much data mining is actually being sold vs being a scare story for potential future sales. Like where on FB can I go to give them money to target single white guys aged 24 who eat pot noodles and didn't make new friends at Christmas? They let you do that only if you're targetting ads which they will then serve -- they definitely don't return you a list of users to do anything with.

same deal w/google. They mine on your behalf, but they never give you the data. Your only way of interacting with the mining is to buy a display ad

I'm just describing how advertising works. I don't like it but it is what it is.

you consider one piece of 20th century capitalism to be objectively evil but you're sad about the death of another piece of 20th century capitalism, when really they are mixed together and you have to look at the macro picture and not just isolate things you like and don't like.

yes these things are all intertwined.

I'm glad we agree

this just in: if you enjoy buying free range tomatoes you are also required to enjoy purchasing products from big pharm. and firearms.