They make it hard to do the right thing

Studies into file-sharing patterns at American universities repeatedly show that the major factor involved is less price and more convenience. It's often been said that you can't beat free, but in fact you can: it's worth paying something for fast, reliable, good service.

There aren't a lot of television programs I watch, but there are a few. I have most of them on DVD box sets, but for the couple remaining, what to do? I for one would never Break The Law, but it gets tiresome watching the latest episode of Heroes by remote viewing: psychic powers are notoriously fickle and unreliable, and can sometimes be slow and flakey.

So I was very excited to receive an email from Amazon telling me that, as somebody who had purchased the Heroes Season One DVD, I might be interested in purchasing Season Two episodes for just ninety-nine cents. Would I ever -- with the current exchange rate, that's around the "sweet spot" that I'd be prepared to pay for Internet downloads.

Alas, it is not to be. They don't want my money:

Before you can download your Unbox video, you need to install the Amazon Unbox video player. ... Currently, the Unbox video player only works on PCs running the Windows XP operating system (see all system requirements) and is only available to our customers located in the United States (see all terms of use).

This is wrong in so many ways...

• There are standard, open formats for video that are viewable on any computer fast enough to deal with video. Your old Apple II won't make the cut, but there's no technical reason for restricting users to only people using Windows XP.


• Bittorrent and other file sharing technologies don't restrict users to those in the United States. If the studios want to compete, they better start learning that the marketplace is now global: 95% of potential viewers are not in the USA.


• Don't try to lock people into your shoddy, proprietary technology: I expect to use the browser and video player of my choice (within reasonable technical restrictions) to watch the videos.

Get with the program guys. You can compete with free, because people do want to pay for the videos they watch. You just have to make it easy for them to give you money, and provide a good service.

Why the writers are striking

Thanks to Bek for pointing this out to me:



Or go here to see it on YouTube.

I've often said that there are copyright thieves and pirates, and most of them work for the studios. I for one have all but stopped watching television. I have my DVD collection and *cough* off-site backups, and while I'm sorry that the strike will interrupt Heroes and Battlestar Galactica, I support the strike whole-heartedly.

A Tale of Two Peters

Some weeks ago, Mrs. Impala and I went to see the latest Spiderman movie. Afterwards, I asked her if she wanted to go home and watch the (then) latest episode of Heroes, and she replied "No, I don't think I could deal with watching Peter Parker playing somebody who isn't Peter Parker immediately after watching Peter Parker being played by somebody who isn't Peter Parker."

Peter Parker playing somebody who isn't Peter Parker.

Peter Parker being played by somebody who isn't Peter Parker.

I don't think Tobey Maguire is a terrible Peter Parker, but he just isn't quite right. Milo Ventimiglia, on the other hand, was born to play Peter Parker. Let's hope that if there is a Spidey 4, Maguire is indisposed and the producers have the sense to turn to Ventimiglia.

Invincible

One of the best science fiction TV programs around these days is Heroes. Despite the derivative premise (sort of a three-way mutant hybrid of the X-Men, the X Files and 24) Heroes is quality television: well-written, well-acted, well-made, with excellent production values and characters you can really care about.

Alas, one thing really grates on my nerves: an egregious mistake in plain English by the voice-over at the start of many episodes. One of the heroes is schoolgirl Claire Bennet, who has the power to regenerate from virtually any physical injury. That makes her invulnerable to permanent injury.

Not according to the voice-over, which describes her as "invincible". As in, can't be beaten or defeated.

I'm not the only one who gets annoyed at this mistake. Wandering teh Interweb more or less at random, I stumbled across this post on LiveJournal:

every time the voiceover at the start of an episode refers to Claire as "invincible", we shout "GET A DICTIONARY, DUDES!" Sure, she's effectively "invulnerable" and apparently, well, ultimately ~coughs~ unkillable. But invincible? No bloody way. All it takes to conquer her, as it were, is Daddy Bennet saying, "Claire, you're grounded!" :P

The Internet killed the talk-show wuss

Ezra Klein has noticed an interesting shift in television talk-show guests, one which may bring balance to an industry dominated by Right-wing ideologues. Thanks to the ability of the Internet to distribute short videos very efficiently, the incentives for "playing nice" and not fighting back while some lying sleeze misrepresents you is rapidly disappearing.

Say you were going on Fox News (or whatever) a decade ago. And say you delivered a whipping to the host. The host, the show, and likely the network would be loathe to invite you back while, simultaneously, just about no one would ever know the beating you delivered. So you'd lose your channel into the media without any commensurate reward for your performance.

Conversely, for liberals going on television now, a smackdown of a conservative host can be distributed and replayed virtually endlessly [...] Suddenly, picking the fight has become a surer way to notoriety and name recognition than playing nice in hopes of an invitation back. And that's been a decidedly healthy shift.

It is too much to hope that it will lead to some actual intelligent debate on American television, but at the very least it will lead to some real balance.

Tough questions for the Entertainment Industry

The EFF is asking the entertainment industry some questions they don't want to answer, including:

• The RIAA has sued over 20,000 music fans for file sharing, who have on average paid a $3,750 settlement. That's over $75,000,000. Has any money collected from your lawsuits gone to pay actual artists? Where's all that money going?


• Major entertainment companies have repeatedly brought lawsuits to block new technologies, including the VCR, Digital Audio Tape recorders, the first MP3 player, the ReplayTV PVR, and now P2P software. Why is your industry so hostile to new technologies?


• Unlike the major record labels, many popular indie labels offer mp3 downloads through sites like eMusic. Why won't you let fans purchase mp3s as well?


• The major movie studios have been enjoying some of their most profitable years in history over the past five years. Can you cite to any specific studies that prove noncommercial file sharing among fans, as opposed to commercial DVD piracy, has hurt the studios' bottom line in any significant way?


• Is it legal for me to skip the commercials when I play back time-shifted TV recordings on my TiVo or other PVR? How is this different than getting up and going to the bathroom?


• Why are there region-code restrictions on DVDs? How does this prevent copyright infringement? Is it illegal for me to buy or and use a region-free DVD player, or to modify a DVD player to be region-free?

The Big Brother turkey slap incident

The latest catastrophe controversy over Australia's Big Brother "reality TV series" is the so-called "turkey slap" incident, where two male contestants, Ash and John, are said to have sexually harrassed a female contestant, Camilla.

The following is a transcript of the events:

Ash and John call Camilla to their bed
Camilla: "Why, what are you doing? You're not going to fart on me, are you?"
John: "No, better."
Camilla: "Did you just fart?"
John: "Get in the middle."
Ash: "We're not going to do nothing, seriously."
Camilla laughs
John: "Lie down and shut your eyes."
Camilla: "Why?"
Ash: "Just lie down and shut your eyes."
Camilla: "What are you going to do? You're not going to turkey slap me, are you?"
Ash: "No."
Camilla: "You are, you liars. Let me in. I'll hurt you if you do. I'll come and bite it."
John: (pins Camilla's arms in bed) "Go."
Ash: (as he unbuttons his jeans and pushes his penis into Camilla's face) "Check this out, hold her down, hold her down."
Boys both laugh
Camilla: (screams) "Hey ... I just got turkey slapped!"
Boys cackle
Camilla: "You guys are mean to me."
Ash: "It's funny though."
Camilla: "You're mean. That was so mean."

What a wonderful invention reality TV has become!

Was this tasteless and childish? Absolutely.

Was it sexual harrassment?

I find it hard to understand how we can even talk about sexual harrassment in an environment which is as highly sexualized as the exhibitionistic Big Brother. The contestants talk about sex, masturbate and have public sex -- if not directly on camera, at least just off camera. And the contestants are all volunteers. This is something like the tenth series of BB on Australian television -- it is just not credible that the contestants didn't know that BB is a sexualized environment. There are no innocents on BB.

If you are a boxer, being punched in the face in the course of your job is not assault and battery. (This is not open-season on boxers; boxers still have protection from being assaulted outside of the constraints of the boxing match.) If you are a soft-core porn actress, you're going to get penises stuck in your face from time to time -- it's part of the job, like miners get dirt on their faces and boxers get punched in theirs. And, let's be honest here, being a BB contestant is being a soft porn actor or actress. Sure, the TV executives don't actually give you a script that says "Tim and Jill have sex here", but the expectation is that there will be lots and lots of sexual tension, and just enough sexual relief to keep the viewers from getting bored.

As the transcript shows, Camilla expected that the guys were going to turkey slap her. When they denied it, she called them liars, and still insisted that they let her into the bed. If this was real life, we'd say she was stupid and foolish to put herself in danger like that. But BB isn't real life, there was no real danger. It is a game, as artifical as any other movie or television series despite the lack of script. Camilla knows the rules of the game (as, no doubt, do John and Ash, and the TV executives). The good people at home want to see penises waved about, they want that tiny little thrill of seeing a woman held down against her will (even if she volunteered to be held down against her will) and most of all they want to be shocked, SHOCKED!, at how terrible it has become.

Camilla's response is telling. "You guys are mean to me." Is that the response of a person who has been harrassed? No way -- that's the response of somebody who is pretending to be upset. It's a knowing wink -- "What you did is socially unacceptable, and I'm supposed to be upset, so I'm going to tell you you've been mean to me, but I don't really mind." I'm not saying that Camilla enjoyed the turkey slap -- although it's conceivable that she might have -- only that "mean to me" is such a weak, watered-down, tongue-in-cheek protest that it is beyond all credibility that she was genuinely upset at the treatment.

Rude, crude, childishly stupid, nekulturny and obnoxious -- but not harrassment. And also, no doubt, incredibly good for ratings.

The Clownification of Civilization

Stephen Pizzo at Alternet discusses the clownification of Western civilization:

We have indeed become a nation of frivolous, self-indulgent, overweight, undereducated, unserious, clowns. When an event of such monumental unimportance wins precious front-page status, what other conclusion can be reached?
...
And, unless the losing singer on "American Idol" pulls a gun and opens fire after hearing the verdict, everything else about that show belongs in the entertainment section and NOT on my front page. The same rules apply to everyone and anyone whose only claim to fame is that they sing, dance, submerge themselves in a Plexiglas globe, eat the most hot dogs in the shortest time or own a cute dog that fetches beer on command.

None of that is news. Not one word, factoid or photo-op of it is news.