YIAAL - Slashdot User

Submission + - James Lileks on Videogame Addiction (instapundit.com)

Submitted by YIAAL on Friday June 22, 2007 @09:35PM

YIAAL writes: We're hearing more talk about videogame addiction again, but Star-Tribune columnist James Lileks isn't having any of it: "If everyone who was addicted to games spent six hours in front of the TV every night, what would we call them? Right: normal. . . . Every kid has a misfit stage, unless they're a pearly-toothed Class President type. Every kid spends some time in a fantasy world. In the 50s they worried terribly about comic books, and the effect they had on tender minds; kids were getting hooked on the gore and horror. It's always something. The difference today: we develop names and syndromes and diagnoses, which somehow makes basic human behavior seem like a mechanism we can fine-tune back to perfection." How about less social-engineering and more leaving people alone?

Submission + - The Analog Hole is worth 24 Cents

Submitted by

YIAAL

on Friday April 13, 2007 @01:44PM

YIAAL writes: "How big a threat to record companies is the so-called "Analog Hole" in digital copy protection? That's the question that professors Douglas Sicker, Paul Ohm, and Shannon Gunaji tried to answer in this paper. Conclusion:

Although the analog hole has been widely decried by content providers, surprisingly little is known about fundamental aspects of how it operates. Can average users exploit the analog hole, or is this limited to sophisticated users? Does analog hole copying significantly degrade the quality of music or video? Will people pay for music that isn't a perfect digital copy? Intuitions and guesses abound, but nobody has ever conducted a study to answer these questions. . . . What's the analog hole worth? Based on our survey, twenty-four cents. That's how much less our respondents were willing to pay for a music track when a perfect digital copy was replaced by an analog hole copy. Although our results need to be replicated on a larger scale, they suggest many conclusions that have never before been proved: people are willing to pay for less-than-perfect analog hole copies of songs; people will pay much more than half the price of a typically-priced digital music file for its degraded alternative; and even self-avowed "pirates" show a willingness to pay for digital music, albeit at prices well below today's market standard of ninety-nine cents a song.
In a blog entry about the study, Professor Ohm (love the name) wrote:

What does this all mean? If it wanted to, the music industry could probably price discriminate in the way we've described. If it offered lower-quality music downloads for less money, it would probably find a market. Although lower-quality tracks are no cheaper to produce than the standard-quality tracks sold today, lower-quality files are usually smaller, resulting in less bandwidth to distribute, leading to possible cost savings. Also, lower-quality tracks may be good enough for an iPod but not for a home audio system, which could possibly spur multiple purchases of the same song by the same consumer. More likely, the music industry will follow the lead of the EMI/Apple deal, and attempt to price discriminate for higher prices, if at all. It is unclear whether our result is generalizable to that situation.
I'm guessing that it is. Of course I don't know much about making money from downloadable music. But then, neither do the record companies, by all appearances . . . ."

Submission + - Tennessee Libel Bill Targets Internet

Submitted by

YIAAL

on Thursday February 01, 2007 @11:53AM

YIAAL writes: "Bill Hobbs reports on a Tennessee bill that would require that allegedly defamatory material on the internet be removed within two days of a complaint being made. The bill provides:

An owner or licensee of a web site or web page shall have fifteen (15) days to remove any defamatory statements about a person from such web site or web page; however if the owner or licensee has been given notice that such statements are defamatory then that owner or licensee shall have two (2) days from the date of the notice to remove the statements from the web site or web page, whichever is less. Failure to remove defamatory statements as provided in this section shall create a presumption of malice intent.
As the poor grammar suggests, this may not have been very well thought out, and it's almost certainly invalid under any reasonable interpretation of Federal (and Tennessee) constitutional law, not to mention the Communications Decency Act. But it serves as a warning that politicians remain anxious to shut down Internet criticism — and, of course, "reasonable" interpretations aren't always the interpretations we get in these cases. Were this bill to take effect, web publishers would basically be forced to remove material upon any charge that it's defamatory, as the risk of not doing so would be higher than most commercial concerns, or impecunious bloggers, would be willing to face."

Slashdot Top Deals