Mike Masnick wonders if Lala is engaging in Newspeak when it describes its tracks as “DRM-free.” Something certainly smells fishy:
We noted the oddity of supposedly DRM-free files only being able to be loaded onto iPods, since that suggested there clearly was some form of restriction on the files. However, it’s becoming clear that there are certainly some types of DRM being used. In Bob Lefsetz’ latest blog post, he notes that each file has a watermark that identifies its owner, and if you’re not the owner, you won’t be able to play that song. In other words, the supposedly DRM-free tracks… have DRM. It’s just a slightly different type of DRM.
I don’t think this is necessarily true. It’s possible, for example, that it’s just a watermark, in which case the files wouldn’t play in other Lala players but it would play in any other music player. Of course, that would be kind of a stupid business strategy, because it would put your own software at a disadvantage. But maybe the labels, who are not exactly known for their business savvy, were convinced that would be an effective piracy deterrent.
I haven’t had time to look into this in a lot of detail, but so far I haven’t been able to find a clear description of how the watermarking system would work. The Lefsetz reference is rather vague. Does anyone know if Lala has made a clear statement of exactly what format the songs will be in and how the watermarking will work?
Danny O’Brien points out that ATI is releasing software “upgrades” that reduce the functionality of its hardware:
The latest update to ATI’s Catalyst drivers now offers”improved TV quality and Broadcast Flag support which enables full US terrestrial DTV support”.
It’s a little unclear from that README whether the new support is for a new, hardware revision of ATI’s Theater 650 digital TV tuner, or simply a new software implementation of the digital TV copy control for current owners of the Theater 650. However you look at it, though, “broadcast flag support” is hardly an upgrade.
Prior to such support, you could be confident that you could use these cards for their given purpose: to record whatever you want off the air, whenever you want, in whatever format you want. Now, ATI, recently purchased by AMD, is announcing support for equipment’s right to take that power away from you, and substitute a crippled subset of their tuner’s capabilities whenever a broadcaster commands it.
But this isn’t just an unfeature: it’s an unnecessary unfeature. You can have full terrestial HD support without the Broadcast Flag – mainly because thousands of concerned citizens fought hard for that right. AMD must surely have noticed that the Broadcast Flag proposal has been dead for over two years, ever since the courts threw it out as FCC overreach. Thanks in part to your letters and calls, no politician has managed to sneak it into law since.
It doesn’t seem like reducing the functionality of your products is a very good business strategy.
Ever since the American Spectator reported a few weeks ago that the House leadership would “aggressively pursue” reinstatement of the FCC’s old Fairness Doctrine, there’s been lively speculation as to whether the regulation will really be brought back to life. Despite much discussion, Dem leaders have — pardon the pun — maintained complete radio silence.
So how to determine the likelihood of this actually happening? Through markets of course. Yesterday, the online “prediction market” InTrade.com opened a market on the question of whether the fairness doctrine would be brought back by the end of this year. Essentially the system works like a stock market, with investors buying and selling future contracts on the event, which will pay a set sum if the event occurs.
So far there haven’t been any contracts completed — the market is just one day old. But bids so far have ranged from 10 to 20 or so (translating into a 10-20 percent chance of regulation.
That seems high to me – I don’t think reinstatement is that likely for 2007 (2007 is another story). But I’m not sure I’m willing to bet on that.
The Washington Post reports on an effort by Public Knowledge, Google, and others to change several parameters of the upcoming 700 MHz auction:
The groups called on the FCC to require that the winners of a chunk of the spectrum allow “open access” — sell access to competitors on a wholesale basis. The open access requirement would allow a nearly unlimited number of competitors to offer wireless broadband services, said Gigi Sohn, president of Public Knowledge.
The groups also want the FCC to conduct anonymous auctions — where bidders wouldn’t know whom they’re bidding against. In the past, large wireless carriers have used transparent auctions to drive up prices on chunks of spectrum being bid on by small competitors, said Gregory Rose, an econometrician and game theorist working with open access proponents. In many cases, many larger carriers then dropped their bids after the smaller carriers were eliminated, he said.
Some carriers have also engaged in retaliatory bidding against other companies that bid on spectrum they were interested in, he said. The retaliating bidder will bid on spectrum the second company is interested in, “as a signal to say, ‘back off on the license I want, or I will drive the price of the license you want through the roof,'” Rose said.
As I wrote last week, I’m skeptical about the FCC telling the auction winners what to do with the spectrum once they’ve purchased it. But requiring that the bids be anonymous strikes me as a sensible idea. As I understand it (and I haven’t looked into the relevant research in any detail), in a less-than-liquid market like this, the details of the auction rules matter quite a bit. We should all be able to support the idea that the auction rules should be carefully designed to minimize the potential for collusive behavior by bidders.
I’ve gotten too busy to do my weekly software patent series, but if I were still doing it, this would be a great installment. Mike Masnick says this is the patent in question:
A database search system that retrieves multimedia information in a flexible, user friendly system. The search system uses a multimedia database consisting of text, picture, audio and animated data. That database is searched through multiple graphical and textual entry paths. Those entry paths include an idea search, a title finder search, a topic tree search, a picture explorer search, a history timeline search, a world atlas search, a researcher’s assistant search, and a feature articles search.
A search engine that lets you search using multiple types of media and multiple criteria? It’s no wonder Britannica is legendary for its innovative products.
Here’s one other section of Braden’s post that I found problematic:
You don’t have to be a Nobel prize-winning economist to understand that an emphasis on building an ICT sector around inexpensive labor will drive wages down. In a global economy, a worker in a lesser developed country could live on just dollars a day. A race to the bottom is the kind of race the EU will wish it hadn’t entered, let alone run.
The FLOSS study authors say that developers will be so inexpensive that even small and medium-sized companies will hire them to work in-house, which they say will help local employment. However, in a globalized race to the bottom, it’s not a stretch to say that the EU would lose to even cheaper programmers in China, India and the former Soviet bloc. In the U.S., for example, the cost savings of IT offshoring in 2004 reached $7.0 billion, according to a study by ITAA — a 36.2% savings rate…
By increasing demand for FLOSS through preferences and mandates, the EU will find that in a “Flat World”, lower cost developers from other countries would rush to fill that demand. The result is more likely to be an increase in offshoring to China and India—not job creation in the EU.
I think it’s debatable if free software will drive down programming wages, or if most of those jobs can be outsourced to China in either event. But let’s assume he’s right about both of those things. When he writes that this would be “a race to the bottom is the kind of race the EU will wish it hadn’t entered, let alone run,” he seems to be suggesting that such a “race to the bottom” would be a bad thing. It seems to me that this is at odds with the principles of basic economics.
In this fifth installment of my series to coincide with “National Internet Safety Month” (Here are parts 1, 2, 3 and 4), I will be outlining search engine filters and kid-friendly web portals.
Safe Search Tools
Parents can use tools embedded in search engines to block a great deal of potentially objectionable content that children might inadvertently stumble upon during searches. For example, Google offers a SafeSearch feature that allows users to filter unwanted content. Users can customize their SafeSearch settings by clicking on the “Preferences” link to the right of the search box on the Google.com home page. Users can choose “moderate filtering,” which “excludes most explicit images from Google Image Search results but doesn’t filter ordinary web search results,” or “strict filtering,” which applies the SafeSearch filtering controls to all search engine results.
Similarly, Yahoo! also has a SafeSearch tool that can be found under the “Preferences” link on the “My Web” tab. Like Google, Yahoo! allows strict or moderate filtering. Microsoft’s Live Search works largely the same way. Other search engine providers such as AltaVista, AskJeeves, HotBot, Lycos, and AllTheWeb, also provide filtering tools. Working in conjunction with other filters, these search engine tools are quite effective in blocking a significant amount of potentially objectionable content.
I thought Braden made some good points in his post yesterday about free software in Europe, but I thought this argument was a bit wide of the mark:
OTJ training has always been a great way to learn programming skills. But is working on FLOSS projects the only way to learn how to code? Buried in a footnote (#48), the report says that “perhaps” OTJ training works for proprietary software too. However, it is a different kind of experience, according to the authors. They say FLOSSers can start in their teens and can learn at home, whereas developers of proprietary software have to learn on the job or start their own firms.
Does FLOSS actually promise new and better ways to learn how to write software? Not really. Aspiring developers have always been able to learn programming skills pre-employment and on their own time. And there’s always been a network of online resources and training material for developers of proprietary software (think: Novell and Microsoft developer certifications).
It’s obviously possible to pick up some programming skills using online resources and proprietary developer certifications, but there are some important differences that make free software decisively better when it comes to developing job skills. In general, practice is more useful the closer it is to the real thing. When you contribute to an open source project, you’re making real changes to real code that are being used by real people. You learn about software development in its full complexity and nuance. There’s just no way that an MSDN training manual can compete with that, no matter how well-written it might be.
Secondly, your contributions to a free software project can often lead directly to paid opportunities helping clients to integrate the software you’re working on into their environment and customize it for their needs. I rather doubt anyone is able to get consulting work based on the example programs they write on their MSDN certification test.
Finally, your contributions to a free software project can allow you to stand out in a way that an MSDN certification cannot. By necessity, a certification program focuses on whether you’ve learned a fairly fixed set of skills. You can demonstrate basic competence through an MSDN certification, but it’s difficult to stand out from the pack. In contrast, when you contribute to free software, it provides a much more nuanced basis on which to evaluate your performance. The MSDN certification shows you studied for a test. The free software contribution shows you can actually produce working code. I have trouble imagining a competent IT manager being more impressed by an MSDN certification than a significant contribution to a free software project.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.