 |
Audible.com SUCKS - Why Audible.com 'free' is NOT FREE (WARNING RANT)
Yes, I'm pissed at Audible.com - Audible.com deceptively claims to offers "FREE" downloads of all sorts of political materials. The only problem is they lock it down in their proprietary closed non-free audio format so you can't do whatever you like with it such as listening to them on your mp3 player. Assholes. Yes. I said assholes. I haven't used it before on that blog, but this is just the sort of time when it should be used.
To put it in other words audible takes FREE, public domain, content and makes it deceptively NOT FREE by locking it into a DRM (digital rights managed) format using it as leverage to get you to sign up for an audible.com account and marketing to you. You will NOT be able to put this proprietary format on your mp3 player, you will not be able to sample it and you will not be able to share it with your friends. You will not be able to convert it into an open format without some pain-in-the-ass and potentially illegal circumvention of their proprietary format. To clarify it would be potentially illegal under the DMCA ( Digital Millennium Copyright Act), though it would likely NOT stand up in a court of law as it's clearly unconstitutional. In fact DRM should be called DCCR as it is a technique for "digitally circumvention of constitutional rights".
Back on point: You will also not be able to play this content without maintaining an audible.com account or share this content with others. If you ever expire your audible.com account you will lose access to this content though you may have the file in your possession. Each time you play this content on a new computer or box it must be played on a player that supports audible.com's proprietary format and you must have online access so you can type in your username and password so you can ask the assholes audible.com if you can play your public domain "free" content.
This content is all public domain, but as of yet I have not found another source for all this content. They make me want to take all this content rip it into open MP3 formats and start an alternate parody website at audiblesucks.net or freeaudiblesucks.net that mocks their stupidity and liberates this content back into the public domain while giving them a black eye.
Free my ass. Audible, you lie and YOU SUCK. Stop shitting on potential customers and the public domain. What is most perplexing and most pisses me off is this DRM'd format is COMPLETELY unnecessary in this scenario. I would have been happy to sign up for an audible.com account to get this content in an open mp3 format. They'd probably garnish a lot more exposure, downloads, signups and a lot more positive feedback and press if they weren't such assholes about introducing unnecessary technological problems such as DRM to choke the value of the material.
LINKS: Audible.com SUCKS because they LOCK DOWN all this content which should be public domain.
Final thoughts, This is a primary example of why I hate DRM ( digital rights management) and why the DMCA ( digital millennium copyright act) is such bad law. The two work together to allow corporations such as Audible to bastardize the public domain and threaten those such as me, who would seek to circumvent the roadblocks to free speech. The Induce Act would then go one step further to make even my words here as illegal as they strongly suggest that people should go about circumventing Audible.com's DRM format.
In closing I repeat: Audible.com STOP SUCKING and change the format of all your audio files you claim are "FREE" into the mp3 format which is actually free and open so your potential customers can sing your praises instead of expressing outrage and crying foul over your deception.
Rumsfeld's war: watch the full program at PBS.org
This is an extention of my original post at: mmeiser blog: Rumsfeld's war: watch the full program at PBS.org
I have composed the following feedback on the Windows Media Player format and submitted it to PBS here.
I am posting it here for comments and feedback. The url is included in my feedback to PBS and I will consider recomposing and resubmitting this feedback if I recieve a worthwhile response in the comments to this post. Dear Frontline,
I had many problems viewing this excellent Frontline special. As such I write this with some frustration and hope you will seriously consider my proposal.
Why the poorly accessible windows media format? Why not one large mpeg or other open widely supported file format offered via bittorrent. This would not only reduce your costs and increase distribution but would offer a much better experience for your customers. The points are as follows.
- reduce costs - greatly reduce your hosting/bandwidth while still allowing you to track downloads
- improved distribution - greatly increase your potential distribution capacity. Technology like bittorrent will allow you at no cost to quickly scale distribution up to reach a larger audience more quickly while in such scenario a streaming WMP format will collapse and fail under a heavy load frustrating users. See "slashdot effect" on wikipedia.org: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashdot_effect
- decreased time / cost of publishing - decrease time and cost in digitizing your content as little no cutting or editing need be done and no proprietary software need be used for editing compressing and serving
- improved experience - allow users to watch the video in it's integrity - either on their computer or on their TV or media server as it was meant to be watched without constant clicking or other interactions
- improve usability - allow users to explore the program, skipping around, fast-forwarding, rewinding - an overall better experience
- improve accessibility - allow users with slower or unstable connections to view the content when otherwise they would not
- operating system independent - allow access to users on ALL operating systems, WMP is currently only supported on Windows, with limited support on the Apple / Mac OS.
- increased portability and accessibility - allow users to download content and take it with them to watch at their leisure when they are not online - see "pod casting" on wikipedia.org: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podcasting
- archival issues - take advantage of archival hosting solutions like archive.org to preserve public access to your content over the long term. Win media at least as you have implemented it is not archival.
- possible revenue - keeping content in a complete format will allow you to embed limited sponsorship or other revenue placements as an added value to your sponsors and for your revenue-- i.e. at the end of such an excellent special you might (with a short promotional advert and url) find that people are very willing to donate on your website as both a thank you and a sponsorship of future content of this type.
Please, please, please use an open format. I have provided this feedback a permanent home on my blog to collect comments and feedback at: http://mmeiser.snth.net/blog/2004/10/rumsfelds-war-watch-full-program-at.html
Thank You, Michael Meiser - pbs-org@mmeiser.com I have already noticed two points I missed.
- author once - no need to author in multiple formats (ie. WMP and Real Video)
- improved compression - new mpeg compression formats are equal to or better than those found in WMP or Real Video
Hilary Rosen ex-RIAA talks about the creative commons
Quote from: Techdirt:Hilary Rosen Suddenly Understands Creative Commons"Slashdot notes that Hilary Rosen, now that she's no longer in charge of the RIAA, has suddenly found the time to find out what Larry Lessig's Creative Commons is all about and decided that, it's really not such a bad thing after all. This is what's scary. Many people supporting Creative Commons and other views on business models for the recording industry have been trying to clearly explain how these things can help the industry, and repeatedly the industry refuses to listen -- assuming that the only people who are suggesting changes are simply trying to destroy the industry. So now, quite some time after she's out of the office where she should have actually listened to what was being said, she suddenly realizes that it's not so bad, after all (though, some of her statements aren't exactly a ringing endorsement of the idea"
From Slashdot | Hilary Rosen Loves Creative Commons"'Former RIAA CEO Hilary Rosen has written a piece in Wired extolling the virtues of Lawrence Lessig's Creative Commons licensing, providing such juicy tidbits as 'I'm still cynical about its origins, but I've come to love Creative Commons,' and 'the industry ought to embrace Creative Commons as an agile partner providing tools for new ways to do business.' She's not quite ready to pooh-pooh the current all-or-nothing licensing regime just yet but this sounds like good progress.'"
LINK: Wired 12.11: How I Learned to Love Larry
Wired News: Internet Users Want a Voice
Wired News: Internet Users Want a Voice: "As part of its ongoing project, Pew recently distributed a questionnaire asking whether individuals took part in online rating, or reputation, systems. The most recent study follows a previous report that showed that 44 percent of American adults had contributed thoughts or content online."
Via: Techdirt:Let Us Speak Up Online!
Cspan interview with Jon Stewart
This is a must see for the John Stewart fan or media critic. It was the day after the last presidential debate. I would have posted it sooner, but I couldn't watch it. Some sort of server problem I think on C-span's end.
C-Span John Stewart Interview
Over three quarters of Bulgarians have never used the internet
Never mind conquering the digital divide in Africa, 77% of people in Bulgaria have never used the internet. How's that for perspective.
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage: "Over three quarters of Bulgarians have never used the internet, and 23 percent do not know what the word means, a survey published in daily newspaper says."
Are we Headed for a Wiki World? — Heck no
Are we Headed for a Wiki World? — Heck no, but somone told me this was a good read.
Slashdot | Are we Headed for a Wiki World?
Eminem's Anti-bush music video in all it's glory
Eminem anti-bush video (31.4mb)
Guerrilla News Network
The ideal city bicycle - MoCoLoco: Alta
The ideal city bicycle - MoCoLoco: Alta
UPDATE: Sprint Says Treo 650 WILL Support Bluetooth Dialup
"In an earlier post this week, I railed against Sprint for disabling the use of Bluetooth on the new Treo 650 for laptop Internet access. Jeff Shafer from Sprint Business Solutions Public Relations contacted me and said the following:It is important to note that the characterization [in your post] is inaccurate.
Due to some development deadlines, the phone has been launched as described, without the DUN [dial-up networking] capability. However, as part of a scheduled maintenance release of software (timing pending some testing), the DUN capabilities will be supported. We also support the functionality in the just released PPC-6601 (Pocket PC device). In no way is Sprint suppressing the functionality as you describe or with the motivations you assert.
My thoughts: Skepticism. Let me tell you a story, right when Sprint rolled out the 3G, almost two years ago, I was told by several Sprint employees that I would be able get 3G data over my phone with my laptop, but just prior to the rollout Sprint pulled all the data cables to connect the phones to laptops. I was told once again by multiple sprint emplyees over the phone and in Sprint Stores that they had cancelled the offering of data through phone because they had no way to track it and they would roll it out when they could track it. Well, it's nearly two years later, and Sprint is still in denial that people are buying data cables through third parties and using them to access the internet via Sprint.
Well if you looked at Sprint's arsenal of phone you would notice that they have been avoiding carrying any phones with bluetooth because they have in 2 years done nothing and been in denial over the fact that people want and can get highspeed data through their laptop. Bluetooth would allow customers to get that highspeed data on their laptop wether they had a cable or not. So Sprint withheld all bluetooth phones from the market. Meanwhile bluetooth has become ubiquitous. Untill finally they had to deal with the problem with the Treo 650.
The shit finally has hit fan with Sprint carrying the Treo 650. They obviously thought they could just ignore the problem by disabling the the bluetooth and crippling a primary feature on the phone, but they were obviously wrong because the majority of people will not buy a very expensive PDA phone that has been obnoxiously crippled so it cannot even sync with their laptop. There is after all no point to many in having a PDA if they can not sync their address book, contacts, calendar, and what not. This was pretty obviously foolish on Sprint's part.
All that said Sprint very well be working on developing some way to track the amount of data a customer is using on their phone, but come on it's been two years, people are obviously using Sprint's 3G data via cell phone in widespread fashion but Sprint has taken no initiative to offering it as a legitimate service. Sprint has instead waited until the problem came and bit them in the ass with the Treo 650.
So when Sprint says they are being "charaterized inaccurately". I say bullshit. Sprint has had their head buried in the sand for so long on this one that no amount of back peddling and excuse making is going to make it OK to disable the bluetooth connectivity on a PDA. Sprint is going to have to figure this one out, and I'm betting based on the fact that it's been two years already that they're not going to roll out this service anytime soon. I'll be patiently anticipating it Sprint, just as I have been for almost 2 years, with my handy USB cable that is.
Don't take my word for it though, read some of the comments on the bottom of the O'reilly post and do a quick search through the blogosphere with technoratti, blogdex or bloglines. Sprint is in full PR spin mode pretending like they didn't just sit on a much needed funcitonality while rolling out dumb ass services services like voice activated calling and purchaseable ringtones and screensaves, and I despise them for it.
UPDATE: Sprint Says Treo 650 WILL Support Bluetooth Dialup
Errol Morris and 52 ways to change democracy
Oscar-winning documentary maker Errol Morris has made a series of political 'Switcher' ads for Move On.
Morris uses the same format as the Switcher commercials he made for Apple. But instead of PC users who switched to the Mac, Morris interviews dozens of people who voted for Bush in 2000 but will now vote for Kerry. And there's also no annoying Italian circus music. First there are 52 of these ads on Errol Morris's site. 52! All organized by handy topics like the Environment or the Economy. All you need is pick your topic. It's enough to keep a person busy for hours. This format, and I don't mean the Apple 'switch' format he all but invented, I mean this format of laying out the topics in videos on a web page and organizing them on simple themes like respect, hope, retirement, inflation, integrity, etc... This format is perfect in its simplicity. It is great and new. I'm ecstatic. I wish someone would also throw up an equally good response that was pro Bush, not that I don't support Kerry, but because I believe this can enrich the debate in a whole new way. We must get beyond TV based advertising as the primary tool of democracy.
Screw getting this stuff on TV, lets just publicize the hell out of them on the blogosphere. The only thing that's lacking in this format is the mere suggestion that people should promote a singe or couple videos for topics of discussion on their blogs and bulletin boards where they can not only be seen and dispersed by others but discussed and debated widely within MANY varied forums. I'd love to see these ads individually debated on Slashdot, Plastic, kuro5hin, WorldChanging, and every Tom, Dick and Harry blog, BBS, e-group, and bulletin board. (That's a call to you fellow blogger and anyone else who reads this.)
These commercials are FAR, FAR greater thing on the internet than TV. On the internet they can be interlinked, dispersed, debated and remixed. Each one is single thread of objectified truth, an unscripted, honest and unrehearsed point of view from a single individual. Online each one is far more effective and infinitely more truthful than any of campaign commercials on TV right now, which at best try to hard to summarize and simplify multiple points thus missing the point. Online they are not foisted upon us, online we choose the forum, the context and the light in which they are viewed. Online the people can contribute to the debate in whatever manner they see fit.
I look at the TV and I am disgusted at the campaign commercials for both parties with all their false truths, misrepresentations, perpetuation of sheer stupidity, and lack of representation of the people's voice. We need richer debate. I'm appalled and disgusted that TV advertising is the biggest single factor in our democratic process. I've long hoped for it to be supplanted by a new richer form of communication where people's voices are not only represented in the debate, but actually are the debate. There should be no separation between the debate as broadcast and the debate happening in our homes and on the internet. The debate should be fluid, where ideas can compete cleanly with one another wether they are from a housewife, a long winded blogger (see hear!), a film maker named Errol Morris or a media mogul named Rupert Murdockor or David Smith. That is the hope anyway.
In these ads Errol Morris has made himself a conduit for peoples voices. Unbiased, no. But then what does bias of single conduit matter when it is itself an individual competing with a million other voices on the internet. I look at Errol's ads in this format and I see the voices of people and they reflect MY voice. I see a hope for a stronger and more effective democratic process. I wonder what Joe Trippi would make of this? This is what remains of the ideological party Joe Trippi started with Howard Dean, a party of active participants, and a medium of people. He said in his books something miraculous had happened that he'd seen for the first time ever..."the candidate lost, but the party and the people one".
Perhaps my words are full of immodest pomp and wishful thinking but I hope that these videos will be the sounding boards of many a discussion board, BBS, IM session, and blog. This is the way to change minds, not advertising. The sooner we stop selling a presidency and start discussing it and living it the better. Let the internet be the new sounding board and a catalyst for real world action.
Background: Errol Morris is the man responsible for the documentary "Fog of War", one of the best documentaries ever made in my opinion. There is a tremendous amount of amazing content on his website including (a little humor) such amazing commercials as these two zen-like monkey commercials for Quaker Oats. I have no idea what he or Quaker Oats were thinking, but they make me laugh none the less. I couldn't help but get side tracked for the last couple days checking out this site.
Primary Link: Errol Morris: Election '04
Quote From: The Cult of Mac Blog
See Also: Boing Boing: BoingBoing endorses John Kerry for President
How to Lose Treo 650 Customers, by Sprint
Here Here. [It has] a bunch of new features, including Bluetooth. Unfortunately the rocket scientists at Sprint decided to turn off Bluetooth for dialup from your laptop (though other networks allow it). Why? Well, they want you to buy *another* $250 product from them (their "connection card") so they can charge you as though you own two cell phones. The phone looks great -- too bad Sprint decided its customers are idiots. Link: How to Lose Treo 650 Customers, by Sprint
Via: Boing Boingt
Mathes Evergreen Farm
Sweet Architectural Ruin photos - Mustard Gas Party
Mustard Gas Party
Joi Ito's Web: Small but growing number of corporate bloggers
 Joi Ito's Web: Small but growing number of corporate bloggers
The First Post for the backchannel
I have created this blog as a backchannel. In the course of an average day I may make a dozen or so draft posts for my primary blog, just quick bookmarklets if you will of interesting articles. However, very few of these things actually make it live on the main blog. This backchannel blog is for my shifting sorting, chronicling and finding of lesser gookmarks, articles of note and information.
|
|
Chicago, IL
