Time Magazine and CNN took at look at the biggest tech-flops of the past decade. I’m not sure I agree with a lot of ‘em, but here it is.
And in case you don’t feel like reading, here’s the list.
Vista
Gateway
HD-DVD
Vonage
YouTube
Sirius / XM
Zune
Palm
Iridium
Segway
From MikeHudack.com:
EMI has told Danger Mouse that his latest CD won’t see the light of day due to “legal issues,” so he’s responding by releasing the disc as a blank CD-R in a jewel case with art and liner notes. Fans can just download the music off a P2P site and burn it to the CD-R.
So ridiculous. Maybe it showed bad judgment, but in this day and age of “scoop or be scooped,” I’m baffled at the firing of Fox News columnist Roger Friedman.
The friggin’ movie is available online. Sure its incomplete and lacking some special effects, but it seems that the punishment doesn’t quite fit the crime here. Glad that its OK for bloggers (for now) to point out what is floating around in cyberspace, even if the mainstream media can’t. Apparently you can only write about the fact that the movie has been stolen and is actively being distributed, but you can’t comment on whether the movie is any good.
Hell, I wrote about how many bad versions of Star Wars had been leaked. Took me at least 5-6 tries before I found a copy without a timecode, with proper Dolby Digital 5.1 and accurate color balance. Too bad the movie still sucked.
Congrats, Roger. You’ll have a job at a real media outlet soon enough. Like this one. And at least the movie was good.
Maybe its just me. I dunno.
twitdown2
In a soon to be famous Twitter crash, the micro blogging service is down for the tip-off of the NCAA Championships.
I guess there’s too many people tweeting the game and the simultaneous live prime time TV??
Twitter Down for Tip Off
Telnor issued a statement regarding file-sharing haven The Pirate Bay today.
Telenor rejects the demand from the IFPI to block access to the Swedish website, The Pirate Bay, and finds there to be no legal basis for the demand for ISPs to control and/or assess the content users download. At the same time, Telenor does not condone pirating of material and illegal file sharing.
“Asking an ISP to control and assess what Internet users can and cannot download is just as wrong as asking the post office to open and read letters and decide what should and should not be delivered.”
“This is by no means a new issue, and it applies to the entire Western knowledge-based economy. Telenor sympathises with Intellectual property rights holders whose content has been illegally
distributed, but in our opinion, it is wrong to claim an ISP is liable for any illegal activity by its users on the Internet,”
Cracked me up.
So the RIAA didn’t exactly give up its efforts to crack down on piracy, or leave it entirely in the hands of ISPs either.
Shelly Palmer reports:
Yesterday at Macworld, Apple announced that it may have killed the golden goose. Or pulled the ol’ bait-and-switch on the goose. And became a hero to everyone who likes to eat goose.
Enough with the goose reference, and apparently, enough with DRM for Apple. Seems the iEverything people struck a deal with the labels to set the music free…for a small price. 10 million songs from the iTunes store will be available with no DRM.
Apple marketing guy Philip Schiller announced that iTunes song prices will come in three tiers: 69 cents, 99 cents and $1.29. The labels get to choose the prices.
Additionally, Apple announced a “Set My Music Free” tax / fee. For $.30, Apple will replace the DRM tracks you’ve previously purchased with the restrictions for tracks without any. The upside to the charge is that a) you don’t have to pay it, and b) you’ll get a higher bit-rate track in return. Hopefully everyone has done the math and will make this model work.
Personally, as I’ve said before, I’ve never had any problems with music with DRM preventing me from doing anything that falls within “fair use.” Only when you start to do the things you aren’t supposed to do you run into trouble.
Bottom line - the solution to the DRM crisis isn’t to abandon DRM. It is to put a sensible DRM solution in place that works well enough for everyone to stay in business.