Posts by chris
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Damn the 15 minutes...
And please excuse this omission, but it's not limited to technology companies, As I watch my nightly movie on one of the free Chinese movie sites, exposed to ads by Hyundai, Acer, Apple, Maybelline and for a while there even the NZ company Zespri, knowing that this money is not going to the IPR holders, it's pretty difficult to feel much in the way of personal accountability for this twist of fortune. I'm still at the bottom of the food chain.
When the government enacted the most recent law to prevent file sharing by citizens did they also enact any legislation to dissuade New Zealand companies from exploiting piracy by advertising on intellectual property right violating platforms?
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Certainly Stephen, my words are often picked from the pantry willy-nilly I apologize if I misrepresent. I use armament and crimes specifically in reference to the recently implemented NZ legislation which I feel is remarkably hard line compared to the relative freedom accorded to citizens, by other governments.
With regards to guns not killing people and related morality issues, I think it's unwise to underestimate just how ensconced file sharing behaviour is in Asia, it's not even an issue, it's just the way it is, and so pragmatic financial solutions would ultimately seem to be a must. Obviously I'm no lawyer Stephen, I don't know if there's any kind of case. But to me it seems pretty obvious that a lot of this profit generated by technology is done so by capitalizing on this very human desire to freely share media, whilst someone somewhere has lost billions.
For me it seems mainly that many technology companies make very little effort to ensure their products are not exploited in this way, and therein lies a degree of accountability.
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This doesn’t make much sense given that Apple are a leader in the legal digital music market.
As well as making copious amounts of money selling hardware in markets with massive IPR issues, with an awareness of how these products will be used. To be fair I'm not singling out Apple, they are one of many such companies, that have facilitated this revolution. But they'll market their products in countries where 90% of media consumed breaches IPR, as hard as the next company.
I don't buy that logic at all. Apple, Microsoft, Google, Sony, etc etc don't make anyone behave in that way. (BTW, I didn't say I deeply disliked people who grab entire catalogues via BitTorrent -- I dislike it as a way of acting. It's a bullshit way of being a music fan.)
My apologies for that misquote their Russell, when I went to change it, my 15 minutes was up. I don't mean to imply that these companies force behaviour, people have been sharing forever, that's the single biggest reason our species has survived. I'm maintaining that they are knowingly and willfully (Apple less so than others) enabling this process, that they are the facilitators of this, and such such are making fortunes from it. That to me is also in it's way a bullshit way of supporting music.
The fundamental difference between the multinational corporation and the insidious downloader is their respective financial positions. We can judge this phenomenon, but our judgement won't pay the artists. The billions lossed by the entertainment industries will never be recouped from individual breaches, and whether we like it or not this shift in public behaviour and attitudes and habits are here to stay.
In all fairness I do agree that Apple does make more effort than most (in the west). Compared to say Microsoft whose new messenger has a movie sharing capability, they don't seem to be actively undermining the western IPR laws as much as say the Android compliant mobiles, which offer a greater degree of flexibility. But ultimately, they have the money (billions) to show from this shift in attitudes to IPR, and the means to rectify the issue. To me, finding legally binding solutions via big business to ensure the artists get paid seems significantly more pragmatic and sensible than attempting to alter public behaviour via punitive schemes that net the artist nothing. And it would seem that the biggest profit from this shift is very visible.
To be fair Stephen, I'm not really concerned with assigning blame here, as I don't consider this a crime as such, I'm not talking about past innovations, I'm referring to companies, now making absolutely massive profits from this behaviour,
Capturing sounds as bits and shipping those bits around is an obvious and inevitable development.
I agree. And some companies lost a billions of dollars in the process, and now their scratching in the dirt to recoup that, and it's quite clear to me, that without my Intel chip, my Microsoft operating system, my Sony DVD burner, my Hitachi portable hard drive, my Asus motherboard, and my China Unicom internet connection I wouldn't be able to do that. These companies are not long dead. They're are generally speaking, thriving.
And conclusively, they are doing very well marketing their products in developing countries where there virtually no consciousness at all that sharing media is any kind of violation at all. That's half the world. The companies didn't cause this behaviour, it's a natural use of the technology they provide. No significant shift in attitudes is imminent or likely.
Samsung The world's No.2 mobile phone maker reported its fourth-quarter net profit rose 12.6% from a year ago.
April 2011, Apple reported quarterly net profits of $5.99bn (£3.6bn), nearly double what it made a year ago. Revenue was $24.67bn, a rise of 83%.
$5.41 Billion Microsoft Profit In 1st Quarter Of 2011 Fiscal Year
April 2011. Intel posted blockbuster first-quarter net income of $3.2 billion, up 29 percent over the same period last year. Revenue came in at $12.8 billion, up 25 percent year-over-year.
Simply , the losses to the industry due to IP violation are non-recoupable as long as the the armaments remain aimed at the average citizen. Why one would want to make a case for why the Entertainment industry shouldn't seek renumeration from parties who are well positioned to pay out and knowingly enabling this behaviour in huge markets, seems to a degree anti-artist.
I don't think you or any of us are anti-artist, but I do think we've become quite accustomed to accepting and blame for (relatively innocuous human behaviour) crimes from which big business cynically derives huge profits.
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Hard News: Perception and reality in the…, in reply to Islander,
There are still gross injustices in our legal system-
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I deeply dislike the phenomenon of people who can damn well afford to pay for work grabbing artists’ entire catalogues in one torrent.
Russell, while you deeply dislike these people, you (and correct me if I’m wrong here) do seem to hold a great deal of respect for hardware and software companies such as Apple and Microsoft that have facilitated this sea change, companies who make billions of dollars of profit facilitating people’s desire to share media.
And I don’t think it’s an inaccurate to suggest that a significant amount of this profit generated by these hardware/software companies comes from people who bought these products for the specific purpose of sharing media.
Given that these companies are the facilitators of piracy, and certainly they do have billions to show for it, and collectively could easily afford to pay for all loss incurred by the creative industries, why on earth is the venom directed at the user who does little more than use the equipment/ OS/ software etc according to factory recommendations?
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This brings to mind and has the potential to turn into the type of situation I've observed in Beijing where large areas slated for redevelopment have been all but entirely bulldozed save one building (or in some cases half an apartment building), the occupant of which has simply flatly refused to accept the developer's offer for their apartment.
"over my dead body..." etc.
In such cases desperation for relocation on the part of citizens works in the redeveloper's/ Government's favour, so delaying any announcement of these settlements is advantageous to their proposed soluxion....
The NZ Government should ideally be doing everything in their power to preempt these kinds of adverse incidents and the potential costs.
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This being the the most recent of a number of drug related posts this year, I’m concerned that this intent focus on psychoactive substances has become something of a glamor topic in the blogosphere. In this specific case, touting the restriction of availability of Kronic at dairies (with the entailing costs) does seem an unduly anti-holistic angle to take with human health given that on the whole, a vast proportion of the products dairies offer, fuck us up one way or another.
Among adults with natural teeth, one in four (23%) had experienced trauma to one or more of their upper six front teeth, as had one in six (16%) children and adolescents aged 7–17 years.
There was clear evidence of unmet need for dental care among adults, with nearly half of adults feeling they currently needed dental treatment. In the past year, nearly half of all adults had avoided dental care due to cost and one in four adults had gone without recommended routine dental treatment due to cost.
Dental problems have an indirect cost to society, with one in ten adults aged 18–64 years having taken, on average, 2.1 days off work or school in the previous year due to problems with their teeth or mouth.
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That's just fucked David, really pissed off to read about this. Whoever wrangled this piss poor sorry excuse for a solution should set about remedying their oversight quick smart.
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Hard News: What the kids do, in reply to DexterX,
The fines for any outlets selling to minors should be substantive perhaps starting in the order of $100,000 per offence and a permanent cancellation of the license.
Or if you'd prefer to see a rapid change in societal attitudes. fine the parents - $100!
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I really do think you’re drawing a long bow saying that the Smokefree policy has had no effect.
I didn’t mean to imply there was no effect Russell, simply the time wasted and the massive expense hasn’t made a significantly cost effective dent in the issue. Some things, such as the banning of smoking in public places, work better than others.
As Chris Waugh said:
I’ve seen very young kids buying a bottle of booze and some cigarettes for Daddy from their neighbourhood store,
Harking back to the late eighties when the major furor about the sale of cigarettes to minors kicked in. I recall a friend at school received a sitting ovation in assembly for his part in an underage tobacco sales exposé written by his mother , the editor of a local paper in Masterton.
she made news with an ambitious article about the sale of cigarettes to minors. the research for which involved her driving around the town's dairies and sending her son in to buy cigarettes for her.
I'm not sure if this was an isolated incident or if a number of newspapers were doing this at the time, but this kind of activity had a large impact on public opinion culminating in the 16 years age restriction being enacted in 1990.
It unequivocally proved that dairies were selling cigarettes to minors, but more poignantly it indicated that parents were successfully sending their own children to buy cigarettes for them. That this had become a standard practice left a door open for underage smokers.
Most of us have seen the film ‘Boy’ and I think it executes the potential for wayard parental influence with an adequate degree of accuracy, boy sees dad knocking them back, he starts drinking, boy sees dad puffing on the wacky backy, he has a puff.
The fundamental element missing in that albeit caricatured example is good parenting. Good examples. Good communication. By introducing these prohibitive age limits we hasten the elimination of trust in our society, a boy goes to a dairy to buy cigarettes which he claims are for his mother, why should the dairy owner disbelieve him? Why should the parents not be able to smell the smoke on his jersey? Why don’t they care?
I’d wager nary a person reading didn’t drink alcohol underage. We probably couldn’t buy it in dairies way back when, but we didn’t need to because as others have mentioned, anything can be sourced if you know the right people.
Most worryingly in all this is that elected representatives and prominent political and social commentators who make a living off insisting that the responsibility for the well being and health of our children be placed on businesses. That is exactly what these legal age restrictions do, and these people will spend hours of their lives trumping the benefits of age limits, when that time could be better spent communicating with their own children, their nieces, their nephews, the kids next door or down the street – and these kids' parents. Most importantly this time could be better spent setting good examples.
These people who fritter away hours of their own time advocating business and government take responsibility for their and others children rather than taking direct responsibility for their own, themselves.
I’m firmly of the belief that the freedom of self-determination begets personal responsibility, when we decide we can’t take responsibility for our children, that the responsibility for their alcohol intake should be foisted on non-affiliated business owners, then we are giving up responsibility for our families, it’s an admission that we don’t trust our children, an admission that we can’t communicate with or adequately educate our children, an admission that as a society our parental abilities are left wanting, and acknowledgment that we are ill equipped to educate our society how to be better parents, that we can’t deal with the source of the problem, we’re only just able to fight fires if and when they combust.
Back-to-front governance.
And when legislation like this comes about due to factors as arbitrary as a newspaper editor exploiting her parental responsibility (I mean no disrespect to her in saying that - this was a rabidly consumed media spin fest) for her 12 year old son to further her career by grandstanding on an issue which in turn diminishes filial trust nationwide, then perhaps something is amiss.