Hard News: Google Trending and MGMT
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There is Zoterp, which will take all the bibliographical information for you, but I don't think it has a 'send the librarians to work' function yet. Actually, I think it's secretly trying to put the librarians on the dole line.
Hmmm, I did wonder whether there was something already out there. Actually, Otago have a think called article linker, which will attempt to find what you're looking for in their e-journals and then provide a link for interloaning, but you still have to fill out the form. Except now I have Lazarus. For a former library staffer, I should be having less glee...
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So for me, DRM isn't actually the major issue,
Its not a major issue for you cos you're looking at it from only one perspective, ie an audience member. you don't take into account why DRM is needed, you just see it as an inconvenience., because you're on the otherside of the argument, and a man who only sees one side of any argument is a man who can't give a valid balanced judgement.
you're only looking at it like a consumer, which is one valid side of the picture. If you're going to be a good media commentator you're going to have to give some other sides to the situation. why do you think media content people might want to control copying of their product? What might be the repercussions of them not making efforts to control distribution of their product?
Do you think that maybe the current reaction of some companies is a stop gap measure till other measures can be taken? what do you think other measures might be.We've already seen the movie industry come out swinging in recent months attacking severely Torrent site operators torrent spy etc, asking govts to make ISP responsible for the piracy carried out over their networks etc.
If you think the powerful and rich media industry is going to lie back and let people take their livelihood without making everyone's life a lot more difficult you're not giving them due credit.
its sad that you are inconvenienced by an industry struggling to get the world up to speed on their situation but perhaps patience and support for a difficult situation would be a better approach, or maybe you don't really know how bad their situation is.
an effective drm might save the industry you say you're so into.
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Geoff, I, too am not down with the whole buying downloads. Call me a fogie, but it's a bit ephemeral for my taste. CDs are my backup, and also my full-quality copy for pulling into FLACs, amongst other things.
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Although I'm slightly surprised it's taken this long for you to turn up.
been spending time giving a little back to the community. doing Brendan Smyths work. Awesome young band. I'll flick you a copy when its done.
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(2) And more importantly, Google needs us to continue to place trust in it,
I don't need to trust the company that tells me where to find information on the net, I just need it to do it efficiently.
any company that accumulates vast swags of money is inherently evil especially when masses in their own communities are finding it difficult to make ends meet, however nicely that company might recycle their office paper.
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So I'm out of the loop. It's quiet here.
could also be that music journo's aren't informing you of music you would like. I does seem that convincing valid music is dying out, if you trust what you see and hear in the mainstream media, but there are people making interesting good music out there. is just really difficult to find.
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I do feel that someone has to keep these local outlets going, and presumably else must be buying as well as me.
kudos for your actions Geoff. nice to see someone looking at the bigger picture and not just from their self serving perspective.
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While I know that it's not really the point of the argument ... can I say that the MGMT album isn't really worth getting worked up about? I mean, the singles are quite good - "Time to Pretend" and "Weekend Wars" do an adequate job - and "Kids" is one of the best songs of the year, but the rest is really a forgettable mess. Nice enough to listen to, but you'll find yourself skipping to the big tunes after a few listens as the stuff in between gets too much. Or maybe not. I could be wrong. I often am.
My personal solution to the issue of rewarding artists, or at least feeling like you are, by buying their stuff is to get it on vinyl. So I'll usually download stuff when it comes out, and listen to it a bit to see whether it sinks or swims. If it swims, I'll pop down to Galaxy Records and get Dave to order it in for me. Most big indie (is that an oxymoron?) records these days will come out on vinyl - so I've got things like the Arcade Fire, the Shins, Juan Maclean, LCD Soundsystem and Of Montreal this way. Still waiting for Hercules and Love Affair to get a vinyl release though... They usually cost about $40, but given the superiority of vinyl, it's not much more than a crappy CD. Then I take the vinyl home, leave it untouched (as i currently don't own a record player!) and continue to listen to it on my iPod or computer from the initial download. Also, most of the records I have got recently actually come with a download ticket, so you can have a legal, high quality download of the album, erase any torrented version on your computer, as well as any remaining guilt.
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Not sure if i agree Rob. My problem is finding the time to listen to all the music I want to hear.
I found a record shop closing down in KL this week..90% off everything. Even at that discount it can get pricey when there is swags stuff just sitting there that needs to be acquired.
When one couples that with all the new stuff that I find plugged all over the web, there simply isn't the time sometimes.
The vast array to net-zines devoted to music, MP3 blogs (which are a great way to taste before purchase) and new release emails provide so much information and temptation.
And yeah, Ed..I love my vinyl too. It's just so right. So substantial.
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I've just come back from the future I can tell you it's great*. Everyone downloads music digitally and if you want the packaging you print it out and construct it yourself (but that's really just the old farts, the kids just download). All downloads are DRM but they're as cheap as chips. And because you can't copy the files you can try-before-you-buy. The download is free for 10 days, by which time you either love it or hate it. If you love it and want to keep it you pay, but it's less than the cost of a text on your mobile phone (not that anyone actually texts anymore).
The upshot is that kids have like a gazillion songs downloaded. There's also like half a gazillion Web Channels meaning you can watch your favourite bands performing live on your iMagewall anytime you want. Even buskers have a weblink, and take online donations.
*Once you get used to the idea that NewsCorp owns Microsoft and Google. And that the music player is a nanobot device wired to your brain. It's one of many implants we've come to accept as necessary.
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I'm pretty sure they said explicitly that Analytics data is not used. That would certainly be evil. I think it would also violate the Analytics terms of use.
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On another topic: Yes, DRM is dead. It was always doomed; there was no way it could ever have succeeded because it simply doesn't work.
During the 80's the software industry sunk huge amounts of time, talent and money into various "copy protection" schemes. They tried everything, up to and including hardware dongles. None of their schemes ever worked.
Unfortunately the music industry has seen fit to repeat that mistake. Of course there are plenty of con-men and chancers who are happy to encourage them to believe in technological pixie dust that can somehow prevent computers copying bits.
I realise this is very inconvenient for the music industry. For some musicians it will mean the difference between making a living playing music and not. It would be tragic if that "some" turned out to be "many", but even if it did there still won't be any way to make DRM work.
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@Duane
I'm pretty sure they said explicitly that Analytics data is not used. That would certainly be evil. I think it would also violate the Analytics terms of use.
They do use them, but sort of blindfolded, which I suppose explains why my numbers are different in Trends vs Analytics:
The company said its Trends for Web sites service can give a user insights into traffic and patterns for a given Web site, with a comparison of up to five sites, and information on related sites and top searches for each.
For any user, a graph can show the number of daily unique visitors. To see the actual numbers, a user needs to sign into their Google Account. Also displayed are a list of regions where the visitors came from, other Web sites visited by the same visitors, and other terms searched for.
Google said the data comes from a variety of sources, including not only Google search data, but opt-in anonymous Google Analytics data, opt-in consumer panel data, and various other third-party market research. Google added that personally identifiable information is not used.
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__(2) And more importantly, Google needs us to continue to place trust in it__
I don't need to trust the company that tells me where to find information on the net, I just need it to do it efficiently.
No Gmail account then? Google Docs? Well, they still have a whole bunch of your search data. An evil company could do plenty bad things with that.
any company that accumulates vast swags of money is inherently evil especially when masses in their own communities are finding it difficult to make ends meet, however nicely that company might recycle their office paper.
Does that include music companies? ;-)
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An evil company could do plenty bad things with that.
You could t least have made the effort of links to search engine/mail hosting companies turning stuff over to the Chinese government. You know you want to.
Well, they still have a whole bunch of your search data.
It's pretty fucking spooky the way that the Google search widget in FF starts auto-populating with search terms I've never, ever entered when I start with a word, because Google are matching up the start of my phrase with other stuff I've searched for, and stuff other people have.
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None of their schemes ever worked.
Steam is doing pretty nicely for Valve. And there are more than a few gaming studios simply abandoning the PC gaming business in part (doing console ports when they didn't bother in the past) or in full (no longer doing PC versions) and citing poor sale:piracy ratios for doing so.
So I don't think the game industry is the example you're looking for.
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Russell: Ah, thanks. I suppose anonymous opt-in usage is fine.
No Gmail account then? Google Docs? Well, they still have a whole bunch of your search data. An evil company could do plenty bad things with that.
Not to mention email sent to/from other people with gmail accounts. I'm not sure of the data they collect through AdSense but I'd imagine it would be considerable, too.
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rodgerd:
Steam is doing pretty nicely for Valve.
Steam is not just a copy protection system. Also, from what I can see from a quick google, its copy protection has been cracked. Regardless, something like Steam just wouldn't work for music. With music the data is the same every time it is played and by definition it must all be processed by the user's computer. That isn't true for rich-content games such as HL2. Requiring an internet connection to play music is not going to fly, either.
...there are more than a few gaming studios simply abandoning the PC gaming business in part...or in full...and citing poor sale:piracy ratios for doing so.
That is precisely my point. They can't stop it with copy protection. They actually leave the industry instead. The same will happen in the music business. If your business model requires DRM then your business is going to fail.
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Not sure if i agree Rob. My problem is finding the time to listen to all the music I want to hear.
of course not for an informed individual such as yourself, but you got to admit compared to past times it seems like there is less inspiring stuff around purely because the stuff you getting rammed down your throats is covering more and more bases than in the past and the noise from that lot drowns out the fringes, if you like to listen to the fringes. You can still find interesting stuff but it takes a degree of skill to filter through the noise. Compare that with the early eighties and it wasn't quite as difficult to dig up diamonds.
There's the noise factor and then there's the its harder to be original when so much has been done" factor too
I was watching the british 7 ages of rock thing and in episode 6 they discuss alternative music. They were discussing just that and how we now have many decades of the artform of 'rock' and its like many other genres of art in that there is now a huge history to be influenced by rather than past decades where it was new territory. Not to say new and vibrant ideas won't come along but just that when we've been shocked to the absolute edge already its going to be harder to push boundaries in the future. Interesting theory -
No Gmail account then? Google Docs? Well, they still have a whole bunch of your search data. An evil company could do plenty bad things with that.
and you trust anyone to not access your data?
In the current way of the world I expect them to. Trust has got nothing to do with it. My emails are stored on their servers. If I was a more interesting person I would fully expect govts to be digging through them, and large corps to bend to the whim of said govts officially of descretely. Lucky for them my life is completely non controversial and they don't need to waste their time reading through my correspondence. No aspirations of terrorism here, although I probably just triggered some search bots antenna by mentioning it.any company that accumulates vast swags of money is inherently evil especially when masses in their own communities are finding it difficult to make ends meet, however nicely that company might recycle their office paper.
Does that include music companies? ;-)
you know it does, I just wish I was one of them so I could be loathed in rich comfort (as opposed to loathed by association)
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They can't stop it with copy protection.
They could stop it with a change of attitude and copy protection though. If media commentators explained the necessity for it and encouraged respect for the media it controlled.
If society frowned on piracy instead of looking at it as a right and any attempt to stem it as inconvenience then perhaps the music industry might not be rushing as quickly to its death with people leaving the industry as some in games do. I mean if your end objective is to force artists out of the industry then fine, go ahead and push the envelope, but if you want them to stick around and push their art to new places then contemplate really how inconvenient is DRM as opposed to a fragmented and sporadic music market. -
<wading into an argument that has been here before many times>
given the nature of the internet and computers, i'm not convinced that DRM will succeed with any form of information, whether it be music / movie / tv / book. there will always be people out there smart enough to remove the DRM and put the data on the internet.
i'm not saying that DRM is necessarily wrong, it's just a lost cause.
in that respect, robbery is right - the only way artists will be paid for their work is because society decides they should be paid for it. whether that's in the form of legal downloads or attending live performances, or whatever, is what we haven't worked out yet. i don't know how it will work out, but i think david byrne was on the right track in redefining what we think about as music:
"In the past, music was something you heard and experienced — it was as much a social event as a purely musical one. Before recording technology existed, you could not separate music from its social context..."
"You couldn't take it home, copy it, sell it as a commodity (except as sheet music, but that's not music), or even hear it again. Music was an experience, intimately married to your life. You could pay to hear music, but after you did, it was over, gone — a memory."anyway, on a more positive note, i'm loving some of the NZ stuff coming out these days. the Naked & Famous are sounding particularly promising!
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With Google, I think they are certainly "less evil" than Halliburton or BAe Systems, for instance.
But that could change easily. I don't use Google products because I trust them particularly, just because they suck less than the alternatives. As they mature, they will have more people locked in and less need to look nice. Equally, being nice isn't a prerequisite to hire smart people, NSA and the banking industry have no problem, though the latter has to pay big salaries.
At the end of the day, I don't think *nice* companies are the answer. Staunch privacy, competition and consumer protection laws are a way better way to protect people.
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They could stop it with a change of attitude and copy protection though.
You may as well say "They could stop it with a change in attitude" and leave it at that. DRM is useless if people are prepared to pirate music; it is pointless if they aren't.
Change people's attitudes towards piracy -- yes, absolutely. That would work. But DRM doesn't help that cause, it harms it. Like it or not, it is inconvenient. It makes you go and install crap software. It prevents you playing music you've paid for on your own devices. It actually, ludicrously, makes it quicker and easier to get music from pirate sites than to buy it legally.
Anyway, leave aside inconvenience -- let's pretend for a moment that there is none. DRM is still useless to the music industry because it doesn't work. Even if, somehow, unprotected formats such as CD and vinyl were completely eliminated it still wouldn't work. To play music a user's device must have access to the audio data. There is no technological way to prevent people from storing and replaying that data.
Media commentators like Russell are not to blame for pointing out DRM's shortcomings. The music industry is to blame for not accepting them.
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unprotected formats such as CD
speaking of which, ripping the Naked & Famous cd to my mp3 player was a pain in the butt - are music companies still putting "anti-copy" stuff on cds?
In the end, Nero did the job. but it pissed me off.
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