American rapper 50 Cent has already stated that piracy is part of music marketing. Now a UK ISP reveals that fighting piracy costs far more than piracy itself.
British music labels claim losses of up to £200 million a year due to piracy. Their lobbying has prompted UK Business Secretary Peter Mandelson to propose forcing ISPs to monitor their networks on behalf of the labels. British Telecom consumer division head John Petter objects that such monitoring would actually cost £365 million a year. BT would have no choice but to pass that expense to consumers, raising everyone’s broadband bill by £24 per month.
Of course, the fact that the labels’ £200 million figure is rubbish makes the added expense of fighting piracy even more ridiculous. As Petter puts it, “Their claims are melodramatic and assume people would buy all the music that is illegally downloaded, which is nonsense.”
Now here’s the question you must answer, dear law-abiding Internet user: are you willing to shell out your hard-earned money to protect the music labels’ dying business models?
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski recently gave a speech entitled Preserving a Free and Open Internet: A Platform for Innovation, Opportunity, and Prosperity, outlining the basis and benefits of net neutrality, and what the FCC will do to protect it. Download the full transcript here.
In the artful words of the Chairman, preserving the innovation fostered by net neutrality is something no one should be neutral about.
“Given the security issues with plugins in general and Google Chrome in particular, Google Chrome Frame running as a plugin has doubled the attach area for malware and malicious scripts. This is not a risk we would recommend our friends and families take.”
Love how he sticks in your family to tug at your heartstrings. Good luck making people believe such FUD. Chrome was the only browser left standing after a recent hacking contest. If anything, Chrome is more secure than IE.
Even to people who don’t follow browser hacking contests, Google is the most trusted brand in America. It’ll take a lot more than Microsoft’s blatantly anticompetitive mumblings about security to break that trust.
(Photo via Odyssey Consulting. I actually do have a migraine right now; I’m allergic to bullshit.)
I wish Apple would stop trying to keep its exclusive mobile network partners happy and just open up the iPhone to any network, then it wouldn’t have to pander to their tightfisted demands.
In fact, Apple shouldn’t have to pander to the network operators as it is, particularly after the rather derogatory labels Steve Jobs has applied to them in the past, yet their demands still seem to cause apps to get blocked, at to detriment of paying customers.
The latest app is one that British iPhone users would no doubt relish. The 0870 application quickly finds alternative geographically fixed phone numbers for the pesky non-geographical 08** numbers that companies frequently use and cost an absolute fortune to call from cellphones. More →
It’s been a busy time for Vodafone. Earlier this week the mobile giant announced a deal with Warner Music that now sees the company become the first global mobile network operator to offer its customers over-the-air access to a DRM-free music catalogue spanning the big four companies: Universal, Sony, EMI and Warner.
Though the days of criminalising music sharing are nearly over, it is good to see more companies just getting on with offering music in formats not crippled with proprietary formats or copy-protection schemes — which generally hurt and confuse the average consumer more than those hellbent on copying and distributing music on a large scale. More →
Vodafone has officially announced its new suite of synchronised mobile and PC Internet services, launching across eight European countries before year end.
Keeping address contacts, online status updates, messaging services and multimedia in check at home and while on the move, data is automatically backed up and synced across devices, similarly to services such as Apple’s MobileMe but with the inclusion of web data such as Facebook and IM contacts. More →
Nokia is calling application developers in the UK to create more innovative mobile software for its handsets, across five categories including social location, business and productivity, communications and social networking, games, and “just for fun”.
The developer who wins each category will get £2,500 and his or her app published to the Ovi Store, while the overall winner gets £20,000, expenses paid entry to a Nokia developer event in Spring 2010 plus sponsorship to become an Ovi Store publisher plus a one-year membership to Forum Nokia Launchpad. More →
Google usually learns about websites by silently watching user behaviors and link patterns. Soliciting sloppy human-generated metadata has never been their thing. They have good reason to stay away from that: you often learn a lot more from watching how humans behave than listening to them talk. That’s why Google SearchWiki was such a departure from the norm. Now Google bravely forges deeper into the social muck with Google Sidewiki, a collaborative annotation service for Web sites. More →
UK Xbox-loving music fans will have the chance to alter some aspects of a number of autumnal gigs as “Xbox Reverb” launches tonight.
Users need to sign up to the Facebook group or follow on Twitter, after which they will get the opportunity to provide their own suggestions for how certain upcoming gigs should look.
The first three gigs feature Danananakroyd (Birmingham, September 29), Pulled Apart by Horses (Leeds, October 5) and Esser (December). More →
