Boycotting is a tool used by advocates to bring up media attentions and raise public awareness.
Its surely a useful tool, but not the only one. We can still say no to Hollywood when they try to attain ownership of our private owned hardware, our software, our networks.
It is quite ridiculous that in a very capitalist oriented society the consumers end up owning nothing. Not even the movies they payed to watch, or the smart-phones in their pockets are really their property.
Well, "the intellectual property" which prevents me from selling a copy of movie or book I bought, seems to supersede private property.
I miss the old days when my money could actually buy things and I could trade with the goods and services that I bought.
Now they want to take ownership of my user agent, my browser, they want to impose their intellectual rights on it, instead of mine.
Try buying your smartphones from China, from places like AliExpress.
I just bought a Samsung Mega clone, 1.2 GHz quad core, 1G ram, 16GB storage, 2 sim cards, 2 batteries. Camera's even better than the Samsung offerings too. $200 US. And they come unlocked and prerooted, ready for your hackings and exploits.*
You just have to be smart where you do business. Our US dollars really are an effective weapon to wield against other entities. Especially in cases of locked devices, there are answers we can respond to. You just have to be aware that those choices exist, rather than say the Galaxy Note 3 with region SIM locking.
And I also have 0 problems with piracy, at all. I haven't a problem with paying for content and services. I've paid for a fair share of DVDs, VHS, CDs, tapes, and other forms of media... many times over. And then, they want me to pay for it again just because it's in another format? Nope. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, and I take matters in my own hands.
Any concern that your device might include some not-so-ethic Chinese software? Chinese companies have no pressure from consumer organization, let alone government, to push them to protect their user's privacy, so they happily track you as much as they can.
I wouldn't be surprised if the phone included a modded version of some Android components so that your web traffic go through Chinese servers, you know, just to "enhance" your user's experience with better ads.
There was no cracked software on this device at all. And also, there were absolutely NO ads, until I installed a few apps that introduced some AdMob ads. But I knew about them. You know, informed consent and all of that.
Although I did run a packet sniffer on my router to see if there was Chinese server contact, and there was. That was because the GPS config had NTP servers polling from China. I kind of expect that for a device sold to the Chinese, so it didn't exactly set off buzzers in my head.
Once I changed that, no more talkey to China. I guess there could be a few packets of UDP per week that I'd not catch, or cell-only data transmit. But tell me: how's that any worse than say Motorola?
I'm not familiar with Motorola but I used China Telecom's 3G dongle and was amazed by the amount of sneaky tracking they were doing. Frequently, I could see (in Chrome web inspector) that random pages were wrapped in iframes, with extra JavaScript for tracking. The JS was pinging Chinese servers and sending visited pages, clicked links, and who knows what.
Any Chinese software you install will do something similar. You install one software (for instance, a popular messenger like QQ or some online banking software) and get half a dozen processes and services running all the time with admin privileges (which they've asked during installation).
It's a mix of carelessness and greed, and there's no limit to it since consumers here don't have much power to change anything. That's why I'd be careful with a Chinese smart phone.
Sure. It's the profile (except thickness) of a Samsung Mega. The actual viewable screen size is smaller than a mega but larger than the Note 2. You need to see it to understand how exactly big this phone is. It's by far one of the biggest phones I've seen (and used). I paid extra for expedited shipping, and the total was $213, and got it in 6 or 7 days.
It comes with 3 cases: a standard back, a snap-on hardcase for the back, and a back with a cloth-hard flap lid. I use that third one so it protects the screen. If you want 3rd party equipment for this, AliExpress does have _some_ n7889 stuff, but nothing like the OtterBoxes. The phone itself feels sturdy, and not like a bootleg. Also note, there's no samsung logos anywhere (unlike some of the fake iphones that have peel-off stickers of the apple logo).
The first thing I noticed is how buttery smooth everything is. I like that mushroom live wallpaper, and I've never seen a frame drop or lag at all. Don't get me wrong, I'm not much of a gamer, but Angry Birds is also perfect too. Everything just is so fast (faster than my few year old laptop). Do note, that the screen is a BIG battery eater. Then again, it's a big screen.
There is a GPS on the device, however weirdly there is no compass. So the Google skydome does weird behavior. But that's not a big deal to me. Also, the stylus is NOT a S-pen. It's just a capacitive touch end, and the stylus does NOT work on the touch 'Back' and 'Home' buttons. I'm not sure if they do or don't work like that on the Note's, either. However, the screen can take up to 5 inputs (that does surprise me). You can see that with mobileuncle tools and go into engineer mode.
The device DOES have an FM radio, unlike Samsungs. And you can record FM channels (coooool), but you need headphones hooked in. I also notice better antenna and cell strength than my previous iPhone 3GS. And about the Cell: there's 2 sim cards. The first slot supports 3G AT&T frequencies, and the second slot is a 2G. The idea is you can do calls on both, and fast data on the first slot. There's a sim manager in the settings that you can do cool stuff like bind a user to a certain SIM.
It also supports Miracast, or "Wireless Display". Went into a Best Buy and demoed that out. Evidently, the Samsung phones cannot handle miracast when you change orientation. This phone can. Ive never seen this before, and it was DAMN sweet :P Ended up playing Psy's Gentleman (it was a HD video I grabbed and threw on there to see the quality of the screen).
It's running Android 4.2.1 and uses MTK chipset. I don't think it'd be terribly hard to update the rom, as there are 2 3rd party rom mods for this phone. Phone model is Haipai Noble n7889
True, but I do wonder about the future of that. It's a licensed Google product, and I'm sure Google Services would have little trouble detecting unlicensed devices.
I don't think Google would have any reason to prevent the services from running on a random device, would they? Seems like the more endpoints running their applications, the more data they collect and the more ads they can serve.
Yes, but just like Microsoft did in the 90s, they'll happily let people "pirate" them to reach a dominant position. Once they have >90% of the market, they can introduce Genuine Advantage.
Do you know of any sites that give a good list of phones to buy? The 6" one you linked to is a little large for me, but I'd be interested to see what 4.3" phones they have... but without buying a clunker by mistake.
The Chinese ones are hard to figure out. My own 'trick' was to find a reputable dealer (using an escrow, like AliExpress) and use Youtube to look at the phones. There's usually _someone_ who has uploaded a video of a phone you're interested in.
Also, be extremely careful in buying "clones" that don't care about trademark. Word on the websites I deal with are they are the ones that don't care about quality. The 'mostly clones', that don't mind attaching their own name to the product are usually pretty solid devices.
The guy who I've been buying from is http://www.aliexpress.com/store/108763 , ELE Team. I have a phone from them, as did a buddy here in the office (I work at Indiana University IT). He got the same model just shipped in a few days ago. We both absolutely love the phones. I've also been eyeing the ELE Team's $200 retina Android tablet. Pretty crazy cheap tech.
The other big trick is to check which frequencies the phone uses. If you use a TMobile or subsidary, you're getting 2G because of the whole lack of 1700MHz.. But that's because TMob chose a pretty much oft used GSM frequency.
Movies are probably the most easily justifiable for DRM. They aren't the sorts of 'products' that people watch over and over again (unless they get a cult following).
A single viewing of a movie reduces the value to a point where it may not be purchased. That's why distributors release them in as many stunted, protected, phases as possible - they want a return on their investment before it becomes relatively worthless.
Media distributors have all the right to modify their works in any way they feel like. It is after all their property and they should enjoy the Property rights associated with it. If they want to encrypt it, scramble it, create CDs with strange sectors, they are completely free to do so.
My hardware however is not theirs, it's mine. I should have the same property rights to my property as they should have to theirs. Goods that still are controlled by the manufacturer has thus been designed to infringe on my property rights after ownership has been transfered. It is wrong, and should be illegal.
DRM is a technical design to corrupt property rights. The actual owner has none of the rights in "Bundle of rights"¹. One losses any of the control associated with property rights². It removes the concept of private property in ways we should never allow. It is simply a worse crime in history than eminent domain, mostly because everyone nowadays carries it in their pocket.
If you (the collective "you", not you specifically) did not subvert their property rights through piracy, they would not feel the need to subvert yours through DRM.
It's a mistake to think that content creators are in the business of selling bits and bytes, and then complain about not being allowed to trade those bits and bytes as you would physical property.
The reality is right there in the name: it's called "intellectual" property. What you think you paid for, the disc or the bandwidth or the bits, is simply the medium used to deliver that which what you really paid for.
"Intellectual property" is weasel words made up by those who most benefit from it. There is no such thing. There are exclusive rights, given by We the People, and not for any other reason than to advance science and the useful arts. Anything else is selfish egotistical aggrandizing.
> "Intellectual property" is weasel words made up by those who most benefit from it. There is no such thing.
Yes, there is.
> There are exclusive rights, given by We the People, , and not for any other reason than to advance science and the useful arts.
No, they're given by Congress. The power to give those rights is given to Congress by the people via the Constitution, but Congress is the one giving the exclusive rights. And that limitation applies to the subset of intellectual property which is dependent on the copyright clause in the US, which isn't all of intellectual property.
But, in any case, even where that applies, it illustrates the existence of intellectual property, since an exclusive right with regard to something protected in law is what property is.
Real property is an exclusive right protected in law with respect to land.
Tangible personal property is an exclusive right protected in law with respect to some tangible object not permanently affixed to the land.
Intangible personal property (of which intellectual property is a subset) is an exclusive right protected in law that is not attached to land or to some tangible object.
So you mean if you make use of other's "intellectual property", you derive no benefit from it? If not, why do you make use of it? Maybe there's a reason we as a society have accepted the concept of Intellectual Property
Also: if you don't make use of it, why do you care what they do to protect it? Firefox and Chrome are open source, and as the refrain goes, you can always remove any DRM bits you don't like and use that.
Lets not forget the laws against reverse-engineering.
Lets not forget that people were seriously wondering if "jail-breaking" their iPhones is illegal or not. Thats how far it has gone. Its a disgrace to anything that a democratic liberal society is.
What is next, you are not allowed to run a certain program on your devices? Then it will be illegal to access certain web-sites with your devices. Then perhaps it will be illegal to have read a text on a print-out. Watch out, citizen, what you are writing is illegal, you are not allowed to do that!
Remember Eben Moglens talk on the war against general purpose computing.
It is already illegal to access certain websites. It's just that those websites are generally considered morally abhorrent. I'm not necessarily arguing against your point, except to say that slippery slopes are generally more complicated than the people warning against them think they are.
If you're referring to "the children," I can't recall a case when someone asserting that we were starting down a slippery slope after some child-protection legislation had been passed has been wrong.
All of these national level DNS website blocks were sold as kiddie porn blocking.
"What is next, you are not allowed to run a certain program on your devices?"
That's what software licensing decides. I can have perfectly valid executable binaries on my computer but if I don't have a license to use them, then it's technically illegal to ./execute
Thats is true. Im no angel but I do not have pirated and unlicensed software on my computers, thats one of the reasons I only use Linux and pay for IntelliJ. At least with software we have an option.
I was saying that more in the context of oppressive regimes, sorry I mean safe democratic governments, that some programs are illegal to write.
> Movies are probably the most easily justifiable for DRM. They aren't the sorts of 'products' that people watch over and over again (unless they get a cult following).
Children watch movies VERY MANY TIMES. They also manage to destroy the physical media.
I'm not sure what the law is about making a backup of the disc (is backup exempted, or am I circumventing an effective copyright measure?) but morally I think it's okay to make a back up of a DVD.
Having said that, I'm on my 3rd DVD of Despicable Me.
These kids are destroying property that does not belong to them. This is a felony punishable by prison time and hard labor. You'd better turn them in at the nearest police station before Hollywood finds out and sends their hired thugs after you.
What? I mean, full marks for hyperbole, but even DIVX never tried to claim the buyer didn't own the physical medium. It's the ownership of the bits stored thereon that's under discussion.
Making backups as such is legal under general global copyright laws. In USA however, if a content seller makes it very difficult to make a backup, then distributing devices to circumvent that may be illegal under DMCA.
Are they scratching the disks to cause the damage- or are they actually wearing the disks out??? (Just curious- I agree 100% that you should have the right to make a backup of a DVD in case it gets destroyed.
I dislike DRM in all of its forms, and hope that Mozilla does take a stance against having it in FF, but I agree with this sentiment.
I don't want to own a movie, I want to watch it.
I don't want to own music, I want to listen to it.
What I don't agree with is the assumption from content producers that DRM is particularly useful. If the content is displayed on a screen or played out speakers, DRM isn't going to work.
Except if you don't own it you may be told you can't watch the film with more than 2 friends or on Friday evenings or Christmas Eve. You may be told you cannot listen to your music if travelling to another country, or copy it to your new $10,000 hi-fi so you can really enjoy it.
Nothing is justifiable for DRM. Even if you don't watch movies over and over again, you can watch them once in a while. Good movies have good replay value. And bad movies won't get any more sales, just because they'll use DRM for some reason.
So is it "a viewing" that is being sold? Are they buying my eyes, am I selling? How much do other companies pay for my eyes to see their shit advertisement even though Im not selling? And I dont get or see any of that money.
I already payed for the bandwidth to see the movie, it was already on my private property, it is my right to save it and to re-sell it or to mix it with other movies. But no, the intellectual right of the creator supersedes private property, and even my own intellectual creativity - no remixing.
Send intellectual property and rights to the trashcan, write into the constitution that anything written and created is available for remixing and redistribution by any means.
Though enforcement is a gray area as long as it's a noncommercial release and is not a realistic substitute for purchasing the original copyrighted content. Even the RIAA never tried to sue DJs releasing free online mixes they made.
