In the not so distant future

Fair enough, but I want it on the record that I am right and zr_ox is naughty

 

Haha...the two of you, behave. zr_ox, it would be nice to hear you phrase your points in a somewhat less, well, offending manner...I got the same vibe as mclean and I'm a bystander in this. Besides, as you cite your reports, please start reading some financial data on the effects piracy has had on the music and film industry...the answer is about zero. The term 'phantom-loss' (or 'paper-loss') comes to mind...you don't lose sales by people seeing things that they would never have paid to see. If anything, it actually increases revenue because more people are willing to take the chance to listen to it or see it if it's free, and they then buy it (see some of my previous points on shareware). The media companies are using it as a leverage point to shift the way they do business, that's all there is to it.

As for the article, Chris...your tongue-in-cheek view of the future is a very scary thing indeed. But I think you miss one important point. YOU will never suffer from this. Nor will most of us on this forum. Not because of time or technology (because I think this future is far more likely than not to happen with the next 20 years), but simply because there will always be breakers, hackers, and crackers of the technology. We are educated enough to make use of their expertise (and maybe do some ourselves), preventing us from being stuck with this. It's the average joe who's life will become this...the one who doesn't know better than to go along with it.

 

Wow...thats what its going to be like... I'm almost sure of it!

He prolly travelled back in time to tell us too! *Of course he's only renting the software to do so, and can't get home because he doesn't own it, and would have to stream it*

 

Countries with high urban to rural poplation ratios are prime pickings for this type of facist government/corporate involvement. I would say that it is not actually that difficult to achieve this type of subversion on a mass scale. However the key is the illusion of freedom, it is the idea of the Matrix or living in a virtual world where we become less and less involved in our own lives but rather leave virtually everything up to somebody else to worry about.

It begs the question of why do we want other people thinking for us, and what is the big thrill about sitting down and not doing anything all day. Electric technology is nothing but an extention of our chemical and electronic brain. It is not ment to replace our brain but to enhance it, to be more of a global village, not contain it.

 

if you asked that in a forum dedicated to dogs you'd get a different answer lol
im sorry but if they didnt bother with all this write protection and anti piracy branches they'd have more money wouldnt they... they just buy pointless bling or fasion fades with theyre money, yet I go to work everyday of the week and am forced to buy christmas presents simply to line somone elses pockets
they can cry me a river

 

Hmm , there is some in those words that can be reality
in about ten years.
The fast evolving of technology is nomore a
positive thing for us that like to use all kind
of home entertainment and home technology.
Instead , it bust us up through all kinds of
securitysystems and keycodes.
Hell , if this are our future i dont want to
live in a community anymore.

 

Jees I read it and thought "OMG! You're little girls some prodigy child running and talking at less than a year old!", then I realised it was talking about the future and there was no need to ask what you've been feeding her.

 

Would you really pay to watch Solitaire:The Movie or listen to the next James Clunt whilst eaten a food product that has finally achieved 100% inedibility after years of slow decline though?

Thinking about it, I can see the appeal of a Kill Bill remake in that context. Top article

 

wow, the future is going to suck.

i cant believe that. you cant listen to the radio without paying for it? ads printed on the pizza? when will it end! there is no industry i hate more thant he advertisement industry (no offense) they make the stupidest, most boring, most retarded ads that i wish they were all dead! i would start an uprising if this future turned out to be %10 true. if i have to pay mileage tax on my car then i hope that at least going down fighting will still be free.

 

Where's google in all this? You think they aren't like MS?

 

There'll be "ads by GooglePlex" on all the pizzas...

We'll be in the following groups, in my opinion:

Sheep. We live life precisely as described.

People-under-a-rock. We use old hardware to stay out of DRM territory. We only watch old or non-DRM independant movies (which would be kinda illegal... non-union work, and stuff.)

Rebels: We break hardware encryption, run Linux on modern hardware, dodge digital security measures, don't cary RFID tags, and cover our tracks very very carefully. We hack and break things a lot.

Prisoners: Same as the Rebels, but Big Brother caught up with us.

 

[Sarcasm]I bought Pirates of the Caribbean thats a pirate movie. [/Sarcasm]
I do aggree that if you are illeagly downloading media that it contributes to the problem.But the industry does push people that way if it wasn't for open office we would have to shell out $340 for office which i think is way to high for that set of programs. I remember about 2 or 3 years ago you could get an a copy with a computer(OEM version) for about $10-$20. That shear increase in price only make the problem worse.

 

im suprised this hasnt happenned allready. whilst we are all arguing on a forum, they are sneaking up behind us with the big DRM brain implants.... you thought 'britney', that will be $1 please, or we'll have the riaa and mpaa remove those neurons....

but on a more serious note.... pop will eat itself, or it will if the drm debacle continues. it will get worse before it gets better, then things will settle down to a happy medium, exactly the way things did with pc software (remember screaming cause you couldnt copy a disk? now games being copy protected is just accepted).

as always, those that can, will. those that cant, will live with drm. pc software went through the same schisms, music is doing the same thing. eventually people realise that no matter what protections you use, it is never enough, ever. even in the articles scenario, its not enough. all it takes is one smart cookie with two much time on his hands and a lot of patience. sooner or later everyone will stop chasing their tails and settle down to 'sensible' drm and copy protection, and the riaa and mpaa will run out of people to sue.

 

Recording/Film companies are doing something horribly wrong when you can get the same media in higher qualities, sooner and without ads for free and the only downside is it's not legal.
Everything legal has ads, comes in 7 different editions, you never know which version you want and when you do it's impossible to find, has horrible quality, and are as expensive as they can be. And f**k, my TiVo doesn't even skip commercials anymore.
With legal prosecution (persecution) of little girls and dying grandmothers record companies are going to help their image and it isn't going to fix the problem. Neither is new legislation, the DMCA and the Anal(ogue) Hole Bill (it's a real US Bill) aren't helping.
Be real capitalists, give the consumer what they want and stop trying to make it illegal for them to consume in un-ideal ways.
The age of the record company is over, if you can’t find a legitimate way to survive you don’t deserve to.

Disclaimer:I in no way encourage or condone committing any act deemed 'Illegal' and all references to the qualities of pirated material are purely speculation and do not indicate the act of criminally obtaining copyrighted material. I do not pirate material. Pirating is bad. Pirating is terrorism. Continued, so on and so forth...

 

This would make a really good book. Reminds me of 1984. I do think this is looking at the negatives and paiting a grisly picture. While some of it will no doubt happen to some extent or another.. some of it wont. I think the reality lies somewhere between that and where we are today.

Speculating is always fun though.

 

I think a lot of this is actually going to happen, but I think that it will split people between mediums. Those who just follow the corporate dragon will find themselves doing just that, and the more tech-savvy just switching out to alternate OSs. Look at the positive response to the open-source community since more user-friendly version of Linux have become more readily available. I say this with my tongue in check, as im writing this from a windows box. That's because games are made for windows, and while porting them to linux is possible, i'm just lazy.

Simple like that.

- serial_

 

Chris has painted a rather bleak view of the future but it won't be all bad. A lot of his points seem to appear in an article I wrote called "How the world should be". For example, why go down to a shop to buy a DVD when you want to watch a movie? Wouldn't it be much easier if it was streamed via your broadband TV service from a massive selection of movies? You might want to pay to watch it once or buy it to watch as many times as you want. They might even give you free versions with adverts in between. Our choices about how we watch movies remain the same the only difference is that we don't have lots of discs lying around and DVD boxes cluttering our shelves. iTunes has been a big success for music so it's bound to happen for movies at some point.

The idea that everything will be taxed or paid for probably won't become realised as much as Chris portends. Unless people accept it, it probably won't be enforced. I would have thought most people would prefer quick tasty pizza to pretty, artificially coloured pizza. There's no way people will accept to carrying around an RFID tag that could identify where they are and control what they can and can't do and if they do accept it then it will probably be because it gives more benefits than inconvenience.

Free things won't simply die out. Google is a great example of the money to be made in supplying free services. Adverts are a good thing if used wisely. Radio will always be free so long as it is possible to make money from the listeners in some way.

I could go on but in general I beleive that technology has a lot great things yet in store for us.

 

Coming to a home near your, from Sky, very soon

 

where ever there people with rules , there are more people around intent to break them. any drm will eventually be circumvented, technology can be hacked and it is up to those that can to free others from the oppresion of drm and equally oppressive and offensive tech. as long as people are willing to continue voiding warranties and give the thumb to the man(whomever the man may be) this kind of reality will never exist. it is up to us the geeks, hackers, nerds, tech gurus, (the list goes on but i won't) to make sure this doesn't happen. information is power! VIVE LA REVOLUTION! DOWN WITH THE MAN! ok sorry about that i get a little carried away somtimes but i think my point is made.

 

Glad to see some things will never change.