In memoriam SGI

Posted on by

Quentin’s right. The news that Silicon Graphics has filed for Chapter 11 protection does represent the end of an era. It was such an interesting company in the old days. And, as Michael Lewis retailed in his book, The new new thing, what happened to Jim Clark (the founder of SGI) had a big influence on the creation of Netscape, and thereby on the evolution of the Web. (It was the Netscape IPO in August 1995 that sparked off the first Internet boom.)

Dan Gillmor says this on his blog:

This entirely unsurprising development is the culmination of years of bad decisions and hubris from a company that once led the world in its field.

The worst decision was the one then-CEO Rick Belluzzo made years ago, when he turned SGI into just another company selling Windows computers. He later moved to Microsoft, adding insult to the injury he’d done SGI.

The beautiful headquarters building — another example of hubris so common in the Valley — in Mountain View now houses the Computer History Museum. At least something good came out of this debacle.

BitTorrent goes legit

Posted on by

Interesting times.

LOS ANGELES — Warner Bros.’ video unit will sell movies and television shows to BitTorrent for legal downloads from the website that was once blamed for aiding the swapping of illegally copied films and programs.

Starting this summer, Warner Bros. will make more than 200 films available at BitTorrent.com, including blockbusters such as Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and TV shows like Babylon 5.

The pact marks a big step for Hollywood as it increasingly makes digital files of movies and TV shows available on the web because until last year, BitTorrent’s software and website were considered to be aiding piracy of major studio films.

But in November, BitTorrent agreed with the Motion Picture Association of America, which represents Hollywood’s major studios, to help stem illegal swapping of digital movies and TV shows by removing links to pirated copies.

Executives from Warner Bros. and BitTorrent said the MPAA pact and new digital rights management software from BitTorrent were key elements in bringing the parties together.

“We’ve come to a point where you have sufficient consumer demand and we have the technology that is now mature enough,” said Jim Wuthrich, senior vice president at Warner Bros. Home Entertainment.

The content will be available on the same day and date they are put on sale in retail stores, but cannot be copied and burned onto a DVD. They must reside on a computer drive…

[Link]

Jeff Jarvis has a post about this on Buzzmachine.

GMSV is nicely acerbic:

This morning the studio, which has been fighting a bitter battle against file-sharing networks, announced a plan that on the surface appears to be a forward-thinking adaptation of a new distribution system. “We’ve been struggling with peer-to-peer technology and trying to figure out a way to harness the good in all that the technology allows us to do,” Kevin Tsujihara, president of Warner Brothers Home Entertainment Group, told the New York Times. “If we can convert 5, 10 or 15 percent of the illegal downloaders into consumers of our product, that is significant.” It certainly would be. But I can’t imagine Warner will ever achieve conversion rates like that if the Torrented movies are priced the same as a shrink-wrapped DVD, yet encumbered with a robust copy protection that allows them to be viewed only on the computer to which they are downloaded. Leave it to Hollywood to “embrace” peer-to-peer distribution and all the economies and efficiencies that go along with it and then ruin it by using it to peddle an inferior and overpriced product.

Steve Jobs 1, Beatles nil, lawyers even richer

Posted on by

BBC Online report…

The Beatles have lost their court challenge against Apple Computer over its iPod and iTunes download service.

Sir Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and the families of George Harrison and John Lennon control the Apple Corps label.

They claimed the US firm broke a deal aimed at ensuring there would not be two Apples in the music industry.

But Mr Justice Anthony Mann ruled that the computer company used the Apple logo in association with its store, not the music, and so was not in breach.

The ruling means iPods and iTunes will still be able to carry the Apple name and logo.

Needless to say, the Beatles will appeal. M’learned friends are delighted. Rubies in the skies with diamonds now on order for their floozies.

What a shower

Posted on by

BBC NEWS | S Africa’s Zuma cleared of rape…

Mr Zuma said he had had a shower after sex to prevent HIV transmission and believed that a healthy man was unlikely to catch HIV from a woman.

What is it with African males? Jacob Zuma was Deputy President of South Africa until obliged to stand down because of indictment on rape and corrruption charges. He’s now been acquitted of the former, but faces trial for the latter in July.

The really weird thing, though, is that until these clouds appeared on his horizon Zuma was head of the council which advised the South African president on Aids.

The joys of tourism

Posted on by

“Part of the pleasure of travel is to dive into places where others are compelled to live and come out unscathed, full of the malicious pleasures of abandoning them to their fate.”

Jean Baudrillard, quoted by Geoff Dyer in The Ongoing Moment.

Indian contradictions

Posted on by

Bill Thompson’s in Delhi this week, and is blogging. It’s his first time in India and his reactions are interesting. For example:

When we stopped at traffic lights small children would come over to beg a few ruppees, one showing me her congenitally deformed hands with fused fingers to elicit my sympathy and encourage greater generosity. And knowing that I could never give enough money to make a difference I adopted the standard tourist defensive posture and ended giving them too little to make me feel even remotely good, and too little even to make a difference to them for the rest of the day.

It shouldn’t have bothered me, since I’m not here as a tourist, not here to wonder at the beauty of the city, not here to feel those delightful pangs of liberal guilt as I see the stark contrasts between those who have enough and those who have nothing, or seek some ersatz spiritual enlightenment from a culture which my country spend over a century trying to eliminate.

I’m here to work on a couple of shows for Digital Planet, here with the BBC World Service as a working journalist on assignment and therefore, surely, off the map of conventional morality that would cause me disquiet?  Or perhaps not, because the kids did bother me and the extra 30 rupees I gave to my motorickshaw driver as a tip didn’t help at all…

WIPO is trying to carve up the Internet

Posted on by

There’s some serious skullduggery afoot at WIPO, the UN organisation that makes life comfortable for copyright thugs. It’s an outrageous attempt by broadcasters like Rupert Murdoch (and, it seems, the BBC) to create a new IP ‘right’ which would enable them to tax most of the multimedia content transmitted via the Internet — including stuff that is in the public domain.

The lobbying to secure this is breathtaking in its arrogance. And it might just succeed. But the issue is arcane and complex, and most people — including politicians — don’t understand it, or its implications. But they are scared of broadcasters like Murdoch, who control networks like Fox News, and so the land grab might just succeed — unless citizens wake up.

Which is where James Love comes in. I’ve met him a couple of times and find him the lost lucid living guide to the WIPO netherworld. He’s just written the first clear account of what’s going on. It’s well worth reading in full, but here’s a flavour…

WIPO is debating whether or not to create a new intellectual property right in information that is distributed over television, radio, cable television, or through any wired or wireless computer network, including the Internet. This is something different from copyright. Indeed, it is designed to benefit people who cannot get a copyright, because a work belongs to someone else (the person or group that created it), or because the information is in the public domain. The new right is not a “copyright,” but a “broadcaster” or “webcaster” right. It is a bad idea when applied to television or radio, but a disaster if applied to the Internet.

In different ways, the US and the EU both think they can use this right to extract money for simply distributing information over the Internet into foreign markets.

The right comes at the expense of consumers and copyright owners — benefiting the distributors of information. It might be called the “middleman right.” This has attracted a large group of corporate lobbyists who want to see their clients named as beneficiaries of the treaty.

It works like this. If the owner of a broadcaster or webcaster publishes anything, they get an ownership right in the information, equal to the rights of copyright owner, so before you could make a copy, share or reuse the information in any way, you would have to get permissions from both the copyright owner and distributor of the work. This is supposed to “protect” the “caster” for its investments in broadcasting or webcasting…