Posts by Rich of Observationz
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Hard News: Mega Strange, in reply to Dylan Reeve,
Roughly, copyright law proscribes *any* form of copying (of content that claims to be copyright) and then creates technology and content type specific carveouts.
- it's illegal to make any copies of a file that isn't audio or a computer program
- it's illegal to have more copies of your audio file than you have playback devices
- this comment is copyright me. You may not copy it for any purpose including viewing. Hey, you, Russell and his hosting company (but not your ISP) just broke the law!This is obviously completely out of kilter with most people's idea of what should be illegal. Only by highly selective enforcement can it be sustained (a bit like drug laws in that regard).
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So why aren't we seeing press releases decrying [e.g. Google]
Google has a market cap of around $280 billion, 5% of the NASDAQ. That's big enough to give it immunity - if the FBI raided Google, there'd be a whole lot of California congressmen and senators on their case.
An outfit fronted by an offbeat German in an obscure and docile satellite state is a much easier target.
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our investment class is risk averse
What about that jetpack thing?
This is not how capitalism is meant to work
It's exactly how it works. Investors everywhere are generally unwilling to take a punt on anything they consider risky (they may be convinced that the risk is less than generally thought, as in the jetpack guy). Typically, they look to offload risk onto suitable mug punters, such as 'Dumb and Mad' investors, or governments.
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Hard News: Mega Strange, in reply to nzlemming,
The encryption point is one I'd missed in passing, but that would also wreck de-duping, yes?
I assume that Mega have sacrificed the ability to save disk storage by de-duping for end-end encryption. I don't know if their disk usage limits allow for this.
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Hard News: Mega Strange, in reply to BenWilson,
Yeah, quite.
Pead are the guys who do the free food, right?
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It doesn't help that the text publishing industry is going down the same DRM loop that failed for the music industry.
If you make books deliberately awkward to use with DRM that has side-effects ranging from not being able to copy and paste code snippets to Amazon deleting people's whole library then there's a strong temptation to try and grab an illicit copy - because that copy isn't just cheaper - it's *better*.
(And a book is easy to rip, because its such a small chunk of data).
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I'm all for putting more money into NZ On Air (which makes maybe a thousand hours of TV for about the same input as the Hobbit subsidy) as a straight cultural public service. Or even a state owned commercial film investor like Film4, with the aim of making a profit (maybe we could con some overseas taxpayers into giving *us* money).
If we do those things, we boost our film industry, tell our stories and aren't handing taxpayers money to overseas multinationals.
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I’m a screen industry contractor who would rather jump off the bridge than line up on the dole line- which I won’t.
I'm sorry? That's exactly my point - so if you haven't got a subsidised film to work on, you won't be unemployed and you'll still be earning. So the subsidy isn't entirely creating employment - it's substituting employment to some degree.
And how moral is it to be engaged in a contest with South Africa for how much government money we can give to the international film industry - money that the SA government then can't spend on stuff like improving housing?
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Hard News: Movie Disaster, in reply to Phil Gregory,
unemployment is exactly what happens when our government doesn't match rebates of other countries.
Why? If that's the case, you're implying that there a group of smart, talented people who can only work on big-budget movies and if they can't do that, they'll sit at home and draw the dole. No possibility that they might find another career, or move elsewhere, or transfer their skills to something that doesn't rely on taxpayer dollars.
Are all the people who would have worked in car plants putting CKD cars together now unemployed?
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Hard News: Movie Disaster, in reply to Phil Gregory,
This study from Oxford University
It's a study from Oxford Economics, a commercial body, commissioned and paid for by film industry clients and not apparently peer reviewed (it doesn't even name its authors).
The whole "multiplier" theory of economic benefits is deeply dubious. It assumes that were there no government subsidised movies (or yachts/stadiums/jet fighters) those working in the industry would be unemployed and unproductive. Given they are, as stated in the report, mostly qualified graduates, this is unlikely. They might be employed at a lesser salary, but again, they might end up doing something that's less sexy but more remunerative, like writing accounting software instead of graphic rendering.