Digital Equipment Malfunction
I've neglected this blog lately not due to lack of programming, but because I'm only coding on projects that I've already discussed on here. I had planned to do a mundane post about new features on the DungeonRunner character viewer, but then I stumbled across some stories that work well together.
Remember the 'equipment malfunction' during the Super Bowl a few years back? How it was a severe understatement, as well as a stupid excuse for a dumb plan? The MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) has just made a digital version. They traditionally blame college students for all manner of atrocities, everything from wanting to watch legal DVDs on their Linux machine to downloading movies. A wee bit ago (2005) they announced shocking statistics that proved college students were responsible for 40% of all illegal movies downloaded. This led to a campaign of terror at many big-name schools, as well as lobbying to force Congress to add in stipulations for cracking down on file sharing in new higher education funding. It turns out, they were wrong. Taken from their statement:
While in the process of recently updating that study with current data, we discovered there
had been an isolated error in the LEK process two years ago that resulted in an inflated
number for piracy by college students. The 2005 study had incorrectly concluded that 44
percent of the motion picture industry’s domestic losses were attributable to piracy by
college students. The 2007 study will report that number to be approximately 15 percent...
That's right, they had a little math error, and inflated the number by 3 times its value. That's a nice sized oops. Of course they're very apologetic, but that doesn't really change the fact that after the 2005 study MPAA increased its lobbying in Congress to punish college students. This increase resulted in two bills now going before Congress, the College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2007, which will require schools to crack down on filesharing or lose all federal financial aid, and the Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property, which will increase fines and create a new federal agency devoted to tracking down 'large-scale' infringers. Thankfully both of these bills haven't been passed yet, there's still time to call your representatives and tell them to vote it down! Do you want your kid's college losing financial aid because they haven't devoted enough resources to tracking down music downloaders instead of teaching your kid? Do we really need a new Agency (your tax dollars at work!) to protect the money of MPAA or RIAA?
There is an upside to all this, believe it or not. Amazon is releasing its MP3 service now. It sells MP3's (no issues with having to change format for iTunes, Windows Media Player, or any other player) that are DRM free! Plus it has songs from the four big labels, the first DRM free site to do so. And, though it may vary by song, the songs are cheaper than Apple's DRM'd music (I saw hot new singles at 89 cents each). This is a huge win win situation. Not only are the songs relevant (3.3 million and counting), and cheap, but DRM free and supported by a major company! I'll be supporting this site for sure, if more people use Amazon as opposed to your other favorite (lets say iTunes, remembering that all Amazon songs can be put into your iTunes library as well) hopefully the industry will get the idea that DRM is bad.
