CNet has a harsh review of Amazon’s new video download service:
I left work after that and rebooted my laptop at home. That’s when the real trouble began. I noticed that the Amazon player had launched itself. Annoying. I looked in the program for a preference to stop it from launching itself, and there was none. Typical. So I went to msconfig and unchecked Amazon Unbox so that it would definitely not launch itself at start-up. When I rebooted, it was no longer there. However, my firewall warned me that a Windows service (ADVWindowsClientService.exe) was trying to connect to the Net. I clicked More Info in the firewall alert and found it was Amazon Unbox. Downright offensive. It still was launching a Net-connection process that even msconfig apparently couldn’t stop. Forget it. That’s not the behavior of good software. I went to uninstall it.
After the Install Shield launched and I chose uninstall, I got a login screen for my Amazon account. I just wanted to uninstall it. I shouldn’t have to log in to my account to do that. So I canceled the login, and the uninstall failed. I tried that three times, and it failed each time. Finally I gave up and logged in and the uninstall finished.
So, in summary, to be allowed the privilege of purchasing a video that I can’t burn to DVD and can’t watch on my iPod, I have to allow a program to hijack my start-up and force me to login to uninstall it? No way. Sorry, Amazon. I love a lot of what you do, but I will absolutely not recommend this service. Try again.
As Ed Felten has explained, it’s not a coincidence that DRM software tends to act like spyware.
Via Patri Friedman, there’s a controversy brewing over the boundaries of online privacy. Ryan Singel at the Wired blog has a good summary:
A guy who identifies himself as Jason Fortuny, a 30 year old network administrator, posted a graphic ad on Seattle’s Craigslist, pretending to be a woman wanting some BDSM sex.
Not surprisingly, many men responded, many with photos and more than a few with pics of their genitals.
Some used their work accounts, provided their real names and gave out their cellphone numbers. One looks to be a contractor for Microsoft, while another used a .mil address to reply.
Fortuny, whose MySpace profile says he likes to “push people’s buttons” then posted all the photos and correspondence on what may be the web’s lamest wiki, Encyclopedia Dramatica.
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As I mentioned back in July, Tim Carney was kind enough to send me a review copy of his new book, The Big Ripoff. With dozens of example, Tim does an excellent job of documenting just how frequently Big Business and Big Government are in bed together.
I particularly liked chapter 7, “Regulators and Robber Barons,” which is chock full of real-world examples of regulatory capture. Carney demonstrates that much of the time, the standard media story of big government pushing regulations on businesses and businesses resisting them is wrong. In many cases, what happens is that established businesses argue in favor of regulations that they perceive as hurting their competitors (often smaller competitors) more than themselves. For example, in 2001, the largest biotech companies lobbied for increased FDA scrutiny of biotech crops which, as the FDA’s own proposed rule acknowledged, would have a disproportionate impact on smaller biotech companies that lacked the resources to jump through the FDA’s hoops. He tells the story of FedEx, an upstart cargo carrier who in the 1970s was prevented from expanding by government regulations that were strongly supported by the Flying Tigers, the then-dominant air cargo company. And he discusses the controversy over “a la carte” cable regulation, which most of the cable industry opposed, but which CableVision–a company that had already invested in the equipment to offer a la carte services–lobbied for. Carney argues that CableVision calculated that imposing a la carte mandates would hurt its competitors more than it would hurt itself.
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A quick recap and then some thoughts. As part of the digital TV transition, broadcasters will return spectrum they currently use in the 700 MHz band to the federal government. Congress decided that 24 MHz of that returned spectrum will be given to public safety agencies and the rest (36 MHz, I believe 60 MHz) will be auctioned.
The system by which spectrum is doled out to, and used by, public safety agencies is broken. If you or I want mobile communications, we don’t file for an FCC license or build our own towers, we simply go to a wireless carrier who has a comparative advantage and economies of scale and buy capacity from them. Public safety agencies, on the other hand, build their own infrastructure, which, as Thomas Hazlett has said, is much like “shipping each police department tons of steel, plastic and rubber to make them responsible for constructing their own patrol cars.” Not only is that inefficient, but because they don’t often coordinate, their different systems are incompatible.
Nextel founder Morgan O’Brien’s new venture, Cyren Call, recently filed a petition with FCC that proposes creating a nationwide, completely interoperable wireless network that could be used by public safety users. To help finance it, private users would also be sold capacity on the network, but would be bumped off in case of emergency to give public safety users priority. The catch, however, is that Cyren Call’s plan calls for this network to be built not on the 24 MHz of spectrum set aside by Congress for public safety, but on 30 MHz of the spectrum slated for auction, which Cyren Call wants (Congress, presumably) to give free and clear to a national “public safety broadband trust.”
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The Bush administration has been dealt another setback in litigation over its NSA surveillance program:
In this particular case, one of the plaintiffs, the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, claims that the government froze its assets during an investigation prompted by a warrantless wiretap, a claim that is verified by classified documentation (referred to in the judge’s decision as the Sealed Document) inadvertently given to the plaintiff. The government claims that national security would be threatened if the government confirms or denies the assertion that Al-Haramain was the subject of wireless eavesdropping. The basis for government’s argument extends from the belief that a suspect who knows himself to be a target of government surveillance could “change his pattern of behavior, jepordizing the ability to collection intelligence information.” The judge points out that the government’s argument is irrelevant in this case, because “the government already inadvertently disclosed the Sealed Document to plaintiffs, thus alerting the individuals or organizations mentioned in the document that their communications have been intercepted in the past.”
The government also claimed that, should the lawsuit be allowed to move forward, national security would be at risk, simply because certain details of the case could potentially be accumulated to reveal additional details. Known as the “mosaic” theory, the government’s argument is “that any disclosure of any information related to the Surveillance Program or the Sealed Document would tend to allow enemies to discern, and therefore avoid, the means by which surveillance takes place under the program.” The judge rejected this assertion, because he does not think that the case will necessitate public disclosure of “information regarding the al Qaeda threat” or “non-public details of the Surveillance Program.”
Any terrorist stupid enough not to worry about the U.S. government eavesdropping on him is probably stupid enough not to be a serious threat. And you could make the same argument about any surveillance program.
Indeed, that’s why Congress set up FISA in the first place. They wanted to give the executive branch a leak-proof forum for getting judicial oversight of its top-secret surveillance activities. If the Bush administration had gone through the FISA process, or lobbied Congress to change the FISA process to accommodate their new program, they wouldn’t be in this situation. But instead, they chose to simply ignore the law and conduct their illegal surveillance program without judicial oversight. The chickens are now coming home to roost.
Quick plug: I have a new article up at Tech Central Station in which I argue that reports of TV’s demise at the hands of the Internet are greatly exaggerated. A teaser: “The success of the iTunes Music Store and the iPod has not spelled the end for radio broadcasting or CDs, and the same is likely to be the case in the video market. Satellite radio, iPod and iTunes have shown, however, that consumers are hungry for new ways to access and consume media. The telephone companies’ efforts to roll out robust broadband networks in order to compete with cable, helps get everyone closer to a competitive market. Not only will these networks offer new services and increased broadband capacity, but the burgeoning competition will also spur cable companies to make upgrades of their own, as well as lower their prices.”
Amazon has unveiled its long-rumored video download service. I share Randy Picker’s skepticism about the service’s potential for success:
You get content through the Amazon unbox video player, which is the control center for managing downloads and control over the content. Once the show or movie is downloaded, you can watch it on your computer or on an approved video device (but no iPods or Macintoshes and nary a word about Linux). And if you know how to do it, you can hook your computer up to your television and watch the TV show there.
All of that is reasonably straightforward, until you start to break it down. Although this is video on demand, you need to plan your demand a day in advance. Amazon estimates that it will take more than seven hours to download a two hour movie over a 750 kbps line. The system does implement progressive download, meaning that you can start watching immediately as the content comes, but at these download rates, you’ll run out of content quite quickly.
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Every week, I look at a software patent that’s been in the news. You can see previous installments in the series here. One of the amazing thing about the software patent issue is just how pervasive software patent litigation is. When I started this project, I was afraid I’d have to scramble to find a new controversy to write about each week. Boy was I wrong. Most weeks, like this one, all I’ve had to do is run a Google News search for “software patent” and there’s new lawsuit on the first page of results. This week’s dispute is between i2 and SAP over seven patents related to project management software. Here is the oldest of the seven patents.
This patent is akin to the Guatemalan database patent and the Friendster patent I covered in previous weeks: it seems to simply describe a software product in great detail, as if a list of mundane features constitutes an invention.
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If you’re a video game fan then by now you’ve heard the troubling news that Sony has announced there will be yet another delay in the eagerly anticipated launch of its PlayStation 3 gaming console. As a headline in the London Times read: “This year’s must-have toy is cancelled for Christmas.” (Needless to say, that’s about the last headline you want to read if you’re in the Sony marketing or PR department!) The new delay will mostly impact European customers, but North American customers will apparently see fewer boxes shipping our way during this holiday season when the box is set to launch here.
As a video game fanatic and former business school student, I must say that this entire episode has turned into quite an interesting case study of how three major competitors go about launching major new business technologies / platforms. Microsoft has taken the “KISS” (keep-it-simple-stupid) approach with their new XBOX 360 and offered a unit without any digital HDMI connections or a built-in high-def disc drive. (A HD-DVD “sidecar” player is scheduled to be offered later this year but the price has not yet been announced). And MS even offers a bare-bones “core” model of the XBOX 360 without a hard drive for just $299, $100 less than its premium $399 unit.
As a result, the company was able to get its system on the market back in November of last year, a full year earlier than Nintendo and Sony’s new systems are due to hit store shelves. Millions of consumers, including some like me who grew tired of waiting for Sony’s PS3, have made the plunge and purchased a XBOX 360. This constitutes a huge advantage for MS in the platform wars. Some predict that 10-15 million XBOX 360s will be sold before Sony finally gets around to pushing out the PS3 in some markets.
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I’m pleased to see that Tim Wu took the time to respond (here and here, scroll down to the bottom of the comments) to my recent posts on his paper on Hayek and intellectual property. Here’s what he had to say on the spectrum issue:
The point made by Tim Lee is decent. It is certainly true that the FCC would have to state some kind of standard to make possible permissionless entry into the spectrum market (as it does for the garage band used by 802.11b). In addition, private actors could, if they wanted, similarly allow permissionless use of spectrum. The question is why they would want to.
In general I cannot understand the strength of Jerry’s and others’ objection to the substance of rules that would create permissionless market entry into the spectrum market. In my view, reflected in that paper, permissionless market entry is one of the holy grails of an effective market system.
Perhaps Jerry will jump in with his thoughts, but I think it’s crucial here to distinguish between short-range and long-range spectrum. For short-range transmission, Wu’s argument has a lot of merit because short-range wireless applications are nearly non-rivalrous. Cordless phones and WiFi seem to work quite well in an unlicensed environment.
A big part of the reason for this is that there are only a handful of people who want to transmit short-range signals in any given geographical location. There are only half a dozen WiFi networks within range of my apartment, and I live in a dense urban environment. Because I’m only competing with a handful of people, informal sharing mechanisms work pretty well. In this case, the WiFi protocol can operate on several different “channels,” and access points self-organize by selecting a channel where their signal won’t interfere with others (at least that’s my rather limited understanding of it–geeks please correct me if I’m wrong).
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The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.