Shouzer

I happened to catch this article on Engadget about Sony adding it’s music catalog to Amazon mp3. It’s amazing to me how quickly all the major studios have come around on drm-free downloads after EMI showed that it was perfectly sane.

EMI couldn’t have put drm-free mp3s on iTunes anymore than a year ago. I don’t actually remember when it was, but seriously… After such a long-fought “battle” against college students, you’d think one of these companies would have jumped to this conclusion a little earlier.

As far as I’m concerned, DRM of all forms is anti-consumer. It’s not pro-copyright or anything like that, it’s just plain old anti-consumer. Bought the first couple seasons of The Office on iTunes? Too fucking bad, you’re going to have to get the next couple on Amazon Unbox, and you’ll have to watch them on different devices. Fuck that shit. You know what that’s going to do? That’s going to make me more likely to pirate it. That’s the only way I have any guarantee that it won’t quit working at some point.

Today I’m passing out a few free links to whoever wants them.

First up is an interesting article right here about a portable generator that produces its power from waste. It really doesn’t say what type of waste it accepts, but it’s cool nonetheless. It makes me think of the “Mr. Fusion” that the Doc had on the Delorean at the end of the first Back to the Future.

Next is a bit of a strange story from /.. Found here, it’s about Gorbachev apparently asking Bill Gates to step in on the side of a headmaster being charged with piracy. Apparently, if the unlucky headmaster is convicted, he could be sent to a Siberian prison camp. It seems more than a little disproportionate.

Third on the list of links is this link to the current rankings in college basketball. SIU has managed to make it into the top 20 in the coach’s poll. It really shouldn’t come as a surprise, given that they have all five of their starters back from last year. Still, it’s nice to see them getting some respect. Hopefully they can keep playing the way they have lately, because they did have some dumb losses early on.

Up last is something I’m pretty happy about. For those of you that don’t remember, I’ve posted more than once about my belief that the Real ID Act was a bogus piece of shit (a fact exemplified by its being attached as a rider to a supplemental spending bill for the war in Iraq). Well, you can read here about a number of states that have basically said they won’t do it. Hurray for some states standing up for their citizens when the federal government won’t.

On that note, I also read over the weekend that minimum wage is being raised by about $2. It’s about time, but apparently it took the Democrats coming into power to make something like that happen.

The Pirate Bay was taken down yesterday by Swedish police. It’s been covered pretty heavily in the news. The thing thing I found hilarious, though, was that the MPAA had an offical press release about it.

“The actions today taken in Sweden serve as a reminder to pirates all over the world that there are no safe harbors for Internet copyright thieves,” said Chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) Dan Glickman.  “Intellectual property theft is a problem for film industries all over the world and we are glad that the local government in Sweden has helped stop The Pirate Bay from continuing to enable rampant copyright theft on the Internet.”

First of all, what a douche. Didn’t everybody laugh when he said, “there are no safe harbors for Internet copyright thieves”. Could you take yourself more seriously? It’s ridiculous, really. Sorry, but I’ve got more things to worry about than making you wealthier, Mr. Glickman.

Secondly, the part of the intellectual property theft. That’s just a misnomer, and after taking a bit of psych and having to take a decent amount more, I’m rather offended by it. Nobody is stealing your intellectual property. If they did, you wouldn’t have it anymore. There’s no way to take somebody else’s knowledge for your own. Yet they think up this horrible-sounding name for it, and that’s something that will, without a doubt, affect public opinion. Well fuck you, I don’t feel sorry at all for the MPAA/RIAA. I hope piracy is hurting you like you say it is (despite the fact that it’s obviously not). I hope both organizations (read: cartels) collapse under the weight of their stupidity.

Story

Some rock bands are suing Sony for breach of contract over online music sales. I think this quote from the story sums it up well:

“Tracks sold over the Internet usually go for about 99 cents. About 70 cents of the sale price goes to Sony. The bands are getting about 4 1/2 cents per song, according to the suit, rather than the approximately 30 cents they claim is rightfully theirs.”

The French are talking about legalizing music and movie downloading. I can’t believe it. The French are actually doing something right for once. It’s unbelievable.

First, they sued a bunch of their potential customers over file sharing. Then, Apple came along and introduced iTunes, which kept them happy for a while, but now they want more money.

“We are selling our songs through iPod, but we don’t have a share of iPod’s revenue,�? he said. “We want to share in those revenue streams. We have to get out of the mindset that our content has promotional value only.�?
Warner Music Group CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr.

So he wants some of Apple’s profits on the iPod. I wonder if this guy thinks before he opens his mouth because this is ludicrous. While we’re at it, Warner should get a share of Sony’s profits on the diskman, Creative’s profits on their MP3 player, etc.

I guess it doesn’t really matter to me anyway, since I use All of MP3. Props to Jared for introducing me to it.

Source

Hahaha, this is one of the best ripoffs I’ve seen in a while. The funny thing is that it’s probably quite a bit better, due to the LCD.