this isn't a hit and miss proposition here - even though, there are aspects to it that seem possibly arbitrary and backwards to what is obvious to anyone who has understood the nature of digital media and how it works. especially, in this case of digital audio and/or video media; in that - and provided you wish to share the content in the first place - it is naturally more efficient and simpler to release the information in a way that is accessible to anyone and everyone who knows it's there, rather than try to limit who can access it. that is the nature of digital media: as long as you know where it is and have all the appropriate plugins, permissions for your browser, and the site password (in the case of a secure encrypted website) you should be able to download it. to use DRM (digital restrictions management) means that some part of the process (possibly the encoding of the file itself) has been rendered so that it no longer behaves in a way that is actually natural or basic for digital information.
a porn site - for example - doesn't necessarily do anything to their content besides editing, attaching some text indicating proprietary rights (domain name and/or licensing/copyright indications) in some corner of the frame and then post the video for download to site members; along - very often - with a photo gallery of the shoot. with a basic setup like this - all that is required is the creation of a secure site that cannot be accessed except by members using an encrypted and secure password. the only other thing that porn/erotica sites have traditonally done, is use a particular proprietary format as a preferred choice of actual media - or you might find a choice of 1 of 2 formats (realplayer or windows media, for example); both of which might only play on a computer, and might require re-encoding to play on dvd player, for example. although, it used to be common for commercial sites to use realplayer and have everything encoded as realplayer media - which was one of the first companies to use a DRM where the media was intended to be viewed as an embedded, non-downloading file. the trouble with this set up, is that copies of an open document (i.e. a webpage with embedded video document) might be in your temporary files and can be copied to a hard-drive. i know that this is true of flashplayer. all you need to do in order to copy an embedded flash object, is to locate it in your temporary files and copy it to hard disk and rename it to have .flv as the extension. it is possible - although the results can vary depending on the quality of the original file.
although there is no rule to this, and all individual situations deal with it differently. the trouble with this is that as soon as a user has downloaded the content - and while it might not be strictly legal - it is then possible to share this information with someone else, allowing them to download the content now from you. this is in the nature of digital media: it copies easily without loss of quality. DRM is realatively new - and to do what it does (although i actually know very little about it and it must work/depend on specific encoding of the information)... it is, at very least, an extra process that is intrusive and interferes with the nature of the media, in order to further exert controls over the aforementioned media and its content.
now what i don't understand is how does this control benefit anybody? when is it in someone's actual financial interests to take pains to control the copying of the media? certainly, professional sports, by the nature of its organization and very quickly changing relevance of information would have seem to have less need to protect their information once it has passed into its second stage of "old news", rather than more.
so, how many people are going to join the manchester united website as a premium user, in order to watch/listen to a stream that is going to be on tv anyway? what i think is weird, is that while i can understand a porn site wanting to control their content - and certainly more so than a sporting event, whose relevent cultural lifespan as actual active, sellable product is diminished in salable worth by the time of the next game. so, less restriction on internet streaming of major league sport events would seem to be the preferable norm: the advertising space of the site(s) would increase exponentially on every level, in terms of the worth of their advertising space... and maybe that's really why they would want to control that what for them amounts to nothing more than doing things in the fashion of a nickel and dime porn site...
and that maintains the status quo. whether by design or deeply, collectively and subconsciously psychological sustaining of the the thing, that's what it is. as long as the team websites don't do that much business, and appear as shady little nickel and dime internet operations that a computer savvy supporter uses to order his season tickets - or whatever... but is never thought of a potential source of revenue by, say making live audio commentary free to any user who wants to access it - or better yet - a streaming videocast!!! there's no argument that the advertising space would become worth a lot of money - not to mention current television broadcast deals - if they were to do so. how powerful could media be if it was allowed to do its job, and people were content to let it do so and learn to live and work in a changed and changing world, forever forcing into new situations and constantly demanding the creation of more art... more content... no one has a clue how upsetting this could all be. but it is true, that the past always exerts, and endevours to control the future - which is to say "the present", and we are all subject to its tyrannies to whatever degree they are generally allowed. people have a hard time imagining the future, because it will require new variations on philosophy, ethics, work, cultural value...
the BBC local stoke commentator was literally in tears this afternoon as chelsea scored a late equalizer, and then deep deep into injury time they scored the winner. he was choked up, not so much at the immediate idea of the game having ended 2-1. it was the feeling that an effort that deserved to be recognized as a real acheivment in terms of footballing and nothing else - and the brilliance, hard work, determination, and character of stoke city's play today will just disappear into the history books as another chelsea win...
and nothing goes deeper than football.
online pornography has been dealing with issue of maintaining control of copyright (distribution) of its material for a lot longer than other information industries content focus. their early solution was to just keep creating new content on a regular basis in order to keep their audience joining and re-joining; thus, paying for the services and then not bothering to - or even figuring out that they often have to - as very often membership to a site will be automatically recurring - cancel. while not a wholly satisfactory method of control, it was inventive, and required that the work be continuous - no matter how it evolves, and since porn (let's expand to include the term "erotica" as well; since i don't define something as porn unless there is actual penetration) and erotica, there will always be a niche interest in what you are doing, and will attract those who follow whatever your "subject" or "fetish" is, controlling the content to create the incentive to join is as useful to a pornographer as it is to disney and whatever puke they are presently putting out or gaining control of.
to join a premiumtv website costs about $80 a year. cheaper than joining a porn/erotica site, but more than something that should be free is worth... and the fact that you are forced to using unethical and intrusive software is so galling; and assures that i will never join and as far as the content goes, i will dedicate myself to "stealing" whatever i can... extending a big "FUCK YOU" to the premier-league and football association.
it didn't appear, from anywhere that i looked - that there was a television broadcast of the west brom/middlesborough game, at all. in which case, we would be into the proprietary copyright territory of the teams' website and DRM content. i won't go into this now...
it's many hours later and i eventually manged to see the match at 1.45 in the morning. after the week's TV schedule had been posted, i realized my only chance of seeing the game otherwise, would be on a repeat this coming tuesday at 4.30 AM...
WBA 3-0 Middlesborough
of course, i knew that we were going to win this one and was more than i could have expected. from where i was sitting it looked absolutely brilliant, save for the unusual amount of time the 'boro were allowed on the ball, which was pretty much a 45-55 split in the possession time. it was just as i had said: the baggies are going to have to look their midfield and stop all the excess discussion around the supporters about lacking strikers. brunt and koren could not have picked a better time to put some fire in the midfield attack, what with bednar out of the line-up on a suspension acquired through yellow-cards, and morrison out with the recurring hamstring problem. the makeshift defense played better than any backline has yet this season for the albion. the wins and clean sheets are finally coming, i think; and this team - especially after the acquisitions of the last few days - is a strong enough team to drag us up out of the relegation zone inside of the next four or five weeks. only they can answer if they can find the character; which the albion showed a tremendous amount in winning such an important match by such an emphatic margin.
i would suggest that that is something that has to be credit to the baggies, as there has not been, at any time, any negativity emanating from the team as represented by tony mowbray. we'll have a while, i feel, to assess what level of a manager that he can become and what zenith he might reach, as it feels like his job is safe for a few years and he'll have time to see his projects through. i think the club would be stupid not to allow him so. he has most recently - and aside from good the management that won the 4 out of the last 6 matches - he has also been a positive and intelligent spokesman for the team when they were going through a hard time, and i think he did it quite stylishly and realistically. that made us all feel better, and that we could hold our heads high at the level of footballing we were capable of, and are now learning to translate this into premier leaque successes.
so i guess, that koren is the man to play up front and get more involved in the attack, where i have been calling for greening to play further up front in attack. i really don't care who it is, but this albion team wasn't going to go anywhere until they figured out this business with the strikers and goal-scoring in general. up front, anyway, this is going to be the way they'll have to play for the rest of the season.
No comments:
Post a Comment