Tag Archive for 'digital rights manufacturing'

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MPAA To Teachers: Don’t Rip DVDs, Camcord Them!

Published by Zacqary Adam Green at 12:04 AM on May 8, 2009 in Commentary. View Comments Tags: , , . Short URL: http://plankhead.com/B0

Current hearings in Congress about exemptions to the Digital Millenium Copyright Act are focusing on the following: should it be legal for teachers to circumvent copy-protection on DVDs so that they can show video clips to their classes?

No, says the Motion Picture Association of America. Besides, why would you want to do this? There’s a perfectly reasonable alternative: point a video camera at the screen!

MPAA shows how to videorecord a TV set from timothy vollmer on Vimeo.

Two things:

  1. Not every teacher has a high-quality monitor and camcorder, so it would cost educational institutions an enormous amount of money before this ridiculously convoluted workaround could produce usable results.
  2. The jokes write themselves.
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YouTube Blocks Content ID Matches Worldwide Except In Everywhere

Published by Zacqary Adam Green at 4:11 PM on May 1, 2009 in Commentary. View Comments Tags: , , , . Short URL: http://plankhead.com/LD

I got a very odd notice from YouTube. Apparently their robots finally detected my fair use of a copyrighted Universal Music Group song in one of my ridiculous convention videos. However, this was not cause to automatically take down the video, nor to automatically mute the audio. Instead…

As a result, your video is blocked everywhere except in these locations:
American Samoa, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Christmas Island, Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Cuba, Fiji, France, Germany, Guam, Heard Island and McDonald Islands, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kiribati, Mexico, Nauru, Netherlands, New Zealand, Niue, Norfolk Island, Northern Mariana Islands, Papua New Guinea, Puerto Rico, Solomon Islands, South Korea, Spain, Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu, United Kingdom, United States, United States Virgin Islands, Vanuatu

So, wait, where is it blocked, then? Most of the countries I’m not seeing on there don’t have their own versions of YouTube. Um…China? Is it blocked in China? Oh, no, that’s all of YouTube, sorry.

I’m very confused. Oh well. I’d imagine that it’s still accessible everywhere regardless, now that I submitted the fair use dispute. This is the third time I’ve had to do that, and it’s kind of annoying. Why can’t I just submit the fair use claim when I upload the video? I know it’s got copyrighted music, I state that in the description, so let’s just cut to the chase, shall we?

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Kindle Text-To-Speech Now Up To Visually Un-Impaired CEOs, Not People Who Need It

Published by Zacqary Adam Green at 2:42 AM on March 2, 2009 in Commentary. View Comments Tags: , , , , . Short URL: http://plankhead.com/HXH

A few weeks ago, whoever the fuck the Authors Guild is proved they’re just another association filled with complete idiots unable to comprehend adapting their business model to current realities. Unfortunately, their threats to shift their industry’s revenue stream to the lawsuit market have caused Amazon to cripple the Kindle 2′s text-to-speech abilities. Now, instead of allowing the Kindle 2 to read anything aloud to visually impaired users, children, or anyone else who might need or want such a thing, this option will be up to the book publishers.

Let’s think realistically about this for a second. Amazon hasn’t removed the feature entirely, so as long as a publisher allows it, their book can certainly be read aloud in a robotic, monotone voice. Still with me on this realism thing? Okay, now tell me how many publishers are likely to do this? To be fair, we don’t know. But looking at precedents set by the digitization of music and movies, I’m guessing the number of publishers allowing that will be less than or equal to the number of independent, smaller publishers selling Kindle books through Amazon.

I really hope, though, that I’m wrong. I hope, to the bottom of my heart, that the publishing industry has about as much respect for the Authors Guild as, well, any author I’ve ever met. I would be so happy if publishers prove me wrong and universally offer the text-to-speech option, because they know that negative reinforcement doesn’t make a customer want to buy another “license” from you. But I am not at all optimistic.

I should note that my argument about the visually impaired doesn’t seem to jive with the Guild; they state in their “rights alert” thingy that “Kindle 2 isn’t designed for such use” by people with bad vision or blindness. I could question who the hell the Authors Guild is to question how useful something is for visually impaired people, but I think the National Federation for the Blind can do that better than me.

But oh well. Looks like there’s nothing we can do but fire up our BitTorrent clients in protest.

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Finally, YouTube Will Let You Download Videos Without A Stupid Grabber Tool

Published by Zacqary Adam Green at 4:53 AM on January 19, 2009 in Commentary. View Comments Tags: , , , , , . Short URL: http://plankhead.com/UeZ

I love how Google decides to publicly test new features without issuing a press release. I guess they figured that the blogosphere notices anyway so why bother with the fanfare? But here’s something rather nice: they’re using Already President as far as I’m concerned Barack Obama’s channel to test out their new ability to download YouTube videos from the site.

But Zacqary! There have been lots of tools that let you download YouTube videos for years!

That’s a valid point, Helvetica Bold 10.5 Dark Orchid, but all of those have required you not only to download an extra program or Firefox extension, but they grab the crappy, compressed Flash Video version that you’d see anyway on YouTube. Now, not only do you click a little link below the video, but you also get to download it in H.264 format! That’s the same encoding that they use on Blu-Ray. BLU-RAY! (Though, granted, the YouTube download has a lower resolution and bitrate than a Blu-Ray, but seriously, it’s an improvement)

I grabbed one of the Obama videos to compare, and yes, it’s quite nice:

H.264 is better than standard YouTube FLV

H.264 is better than standard YouTube FLV

If you view that full size, you can see that the downloaded video has better contrast and is a lot less fuzzy. Keep in mind, though, that it downloads at 480×270; I resized it to 640×360 so it would be the same size as the video on YouTube. But the YouTube video is probably scaled up too.

Sadly, it isn’t the same quality as YouTube HD:

The download is still lower res than it could be.

The download is still lower res than HD, unfortunately.

Again, I scaled the download up. At this level of scaling you start to see where the downloaded copy loses detail. Though the contrast still looks better…maybe that’s Firefox’s fault?

Now, this is still only available for Obama’s channel, but in the coming weeks, Google claims that everyone will have the option to enable their videos to be downloaded. Personally, for the sake of the common Internet user, I’m hoping that it’s an opt-out system. That way the only reason someone would have to stop being lazy and edit their videos is if they want to be an asshole or a corporation.

Speaking of which, when do I get to replace my old videos with HD versions? They’re all ready to upload as soon as you let me, Google.

[Source: Ars Technica]

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Jiggle Physics On the iPhone Are Only Acceptable If Used On Real Boobs

Published by Zacqary Adam Green at 7:53 PM on January 16, 2009 in Commentary. View Comments Tags: , , , , . Short URL: http://plankhead.com/ksz

Some time ago there was an app submitted to the iPhone App Store called iBoobs. This was an application which displayed a pair of 3D boobs (wearing a bra) and read accelerometer data. Essentially this means that every time you moved or shook your iPhone, the boobs would jiggle. How funny. But as you can maybe see from the link if the German translation is comprehensible, the app was not approved by Apple because “Applications must not contain any obscene, pornographic, offensive or defamatory content or materials of any kind (text, graphics, images, photographs, etc.), or other content or materials that in Apple’s reasonable judgement may be found objectionable by iPhone or iPod touch users.”

But yesterday Apple apparently did approve something called Wobble. It’s an application that allows you to add “wobble regions” to photographs. These regions will jiggle when you shake your iPhone. (Hint: You put them on boobies!!!!)

Seems Apple’s being their hypocritical selves again. After the jump, videos explaining why…

Continue reading ‘Jiggle Physics On the iPhone Are Only Acceptable If Used On Real Boobs’

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