This weeks PD

[Briareos]

1. I don't remember anyone complaining when Clinton fired all but 1 of them?

2. I think one of the big changes that's gone unnoticed from Civil War is that all the characters aren't confined to one city. The vast majority of the characters were based around NYC and now they will be more spread out apparently.

3. I think viacom is going after whole shows being put up. You can put up to 10 minutes in a single clip so it'd be pretty easy to divide shows up by where the commercial breaks are and then stick them up and number them Episode #1 1/6, 2/6 ect...

4. Oh did you hear that Kurgan (he was that giant guy in the Truth Commision and the Oddities stable in the mid-late 90's wwe) was in 300? He plays this giant character the persians unleash on the spartans in one scene.

5. Have you read or heard anything about Annihilation (the marvel cosmic crossover from the past year)? It was very good and I'm curious if you had any opinion about it.

[MBunge]

1. I don't remember anyone complaining when Clinton fired all but 1 of them?

It's not the firing, it the firing because they wouldn't go along with prosecutorial harassment of Democrats. Imagine Hillary being the next President. Do you want all the U.S. Attorneys serving under her to know their job security is tied to how many charges, legitimate or crap, they can bring against Republicans?

And then, of course, there's the whole lying to Congress about it thing.

Mike

[bartl]

It's not the firing, it the firing because they wouldn't go along with prosecutorial harassment of Democrats.

Can you document this?

[Drew Van T.]

3. I think viacom is going after whole shows being put up. You can put up to 10 minutes in a single clip so it'd be pretty easy to divide shows up by where the commercial breaks are and then stick them up and number them Episode #1 1/6, 2/6 ect...

Correct. In other words, a quick way of getting a recently broadcast episode of a TV show on the internet...at least for a while, because these clips are always deleted by YouTube after a certain amount of time (could be a few days, could be weeks).

That said, Viacom's efforts are futile. As long as enough people want a quick-and-dirty look at TV episodes on a site that brings all those clips together, the outcome of the lawsuit does not matter, because if YouTube doesn't do it, someone else will start doing it in their place. Even if YouTube is shut down entirely, that's merely an invitation for other sites to take its place; sites which could be hosted on different continents; places where copyright laws have difficulty reaching.

And it's not like people are stealing HDTV here. For reasons of bandwidth and pragmatism (and perhaps even copyright considerations) everything uploaded to YouTube is converted to a low-quality 320x240 pixels. Which is pathetically sub-standard in the age of HDTV and super-wide LCD screens (lCD don't handle pixellation well at that resolution, it turns into a soup of moving squares when full-screened). In many people's minds, it's only useful to view things that aren't really worth viewing at high quality, let alone worth paying to view them (which is another reason why this practice is popular).

It may be better for everyone if companies like Viacom accept that there will be always a certain amount of low-quality pirating going on, and try to make the best of this new situation brought on by the inexorable march of internet technology. It's far from proven that the amount of money they lose because of this particular form of pirating makes that much of a difference to their bottom line.

[NatGertler]

That said, Viacom's efforts are futile.

If they get a billion dollars, I doubt they'll consider that futile.

ven if YouTube is shut down entirely, that's merely an invitation for other sites to take its place; sites which could be hosted on different continents; places where copyright laws have difficulty reaching.

Except that such hosting is a good way to lose big money; further lawsuit could prevent sites from having the sort of worthwhile advertising that might make such a business viable.

However, it's a question of whether the goal is to get YouTube stopped, or to get them to actually pay for the content that they've built their business on. And if the material is not to be available through YouTube, the question is whether the bigger goal is to get it off of the Internet altogether... or to get it onto a Viacom owned-and-operated site, where the advertising money is going to Viacom rather than to a competing media company.

And it's not like people are stealing HDTV here.

So? It's not like the TV business was built on HDTV. The content that is being taken cost to produce and is of value. If the only people taking it are not willing to pay for it, even with the slice of time it takes to watch an ad (Which is how most TV is paid for), then why should they get it for free?

[Drew Van T.]

I certainly agree that Viacom's best case is the part that has to do with the advertising money YouTube is generating for itself by displaying these clips.

But suppose YouTube is replaced (or joined) by a site that hosts any kind of low-quality clip without generating ad money with it (using P2P technology, there are ways to realize this). Then the whole argument folds back into the copyright and "fair use" debate again.

So? It's not like the TV business was built on HDTV. The content that is being taken cost to produce and is of value. If the only people taking it are not willing to pay for it, even with the slice of time it takes to watch an ad (Which is how most TV is paid for), then why should they get it for free?

Again, I think it's a matter of how much money they are losing. Naturally the media companies themselves claim that the number is humongous, because that is in their interest.

But there has always been this kind of "loss": e.g. when VCRs came available, people gained the ability to skip through every ad. Taped shows were being copied and exchanged among friends/neighbors. Media companies accepted this change as part of the evolving media landscape.

Secondly, it's not all loss: disseminating video through the internet functions as a free kind of publicity for the source material. Companies such as Viacom ignore this aspect entirely.

So are they losing out on some potential profit? Yes, as they always have. Can they eliminate this loss by attempting to control what consumers do with the hardware at their disposal? No, that's never been possible.

Which is where HDTV comes in: by concentrating their efforts on the high end media, companies can at least ensure a steady flow of income from that direction. Let them think of low-end dissemination such as YouTube as cheap publicity (putting aside the YouTube advertising issue for now), leading more people to buy the high-quality version of the product. That's a model that will last well into the future regardless of how technologies evolve.

[NatGertler]

But suppose YouTube is replaced (or joined) by a site that hosts any kind of low-quality clip without generating ad money with it (using P2P technology, there are ways to realize this).

Or let's suppose they are replaced by a giant lizard. I mean, if we're going to ignore the other likely scenarios...

Then the whole argument folds back into the copyright and "fair use" debate again.

The mass delivery of entire episodes of work only falls into the "fair use" debate for people who don't know what fair use is in the US.

But there has always been this kind of "loss": e.g. when VCRs came available, people gained the ability to skip through every ad. Taped shows were being copied and exchanged among friends/neighbors. Media companies accepted this change as part of the evolving media landscape.

Rather than just accepting it, they tried to fight that loss in the ways that they could find.

Secondly, it's not all loss: disseminating video through the internet functions as a free kind of publicity for the source material. Companies such as Viacom ignore this aspect entirely.

No, companies such as Viacom use internet delivery of video for publicity when they feel it will be to their advantage. They're not ignoring it at all. But when people are ever more being directed away from watching shows in the ways which generate money for the companies that produce and legitimately distribute them to sources which do not, the net effect is apt to be the entire content creation industry losing out.

Which is where HDTV comes in: by concentrating their efforts on the high end media, companies can at least ensure a steady flow of income from that direction.

Because we know that bandwidth will never get cheaper and thus HDTV is somehow permanently protected? No.

Let them think of low-end dissemination such as YouTube as cheap publicity (putting aside the YouTube advertising issue for now), leading more people to buy the high-quality version of the product. That's a model that will last well into the future regardless of how technologies evolve.

While I'm glad to "let them" do what they want, I don't expect that they will divorce themselves from reality like that.

[badMike]

Secondly, it's not all loss: disseminating video through the internet functions as a free kind of publicity for the source material. Companies such as Viacom ignore this aspect entirely.

Ignoring? Ok, so that's why they distribute Daily Show and Colbert Report videos through the Comedy Central website AND bought a video sharing service, IFILM.com, two years ago (whom I was working for at the time).

They're not ignoring the Internet, they're setting up their own web video distribution systems. Allowing YouTube to put up videos illegally cuts into their own business plans and taking away the ad revenue money off of their own web sites of which they have many. For example, IFILM has it's own special Daily Show and Colbert Report sections that it collects ad money by visitors going there to watch videos. If users go to YouTube instead, IFILM, thus Viacom, is losing ad revenue money and that's what they're suing for.

[Gingold]

1. I don't remember anyone complaining when Clinton fired all but 1 of them?

Clinton replaced them at the beginning of his first term. It's customary for all political appointees to resign at the end of a president's term. Firing several attorneys for apparently political purposes in the middle of a President's second term is rarely, if ever, done.

[Drew Van T.]

Well, the fact that this is being argued as if there are personal stakes involved has changed the tone rather abruptly, obviously.

I'm not sure that this is appropriate: in the end, this particular case is really about one corporate giant arguing with another corporate giant over ad money (and the amount of money involved might seem huge to us but is in fact only a fraction of their total businesses). It is happening on a level so far over the heads of individual creators that they might as well be ants.

And the content industry as a whole, I suspect, will not be perceptibly poorer or smaller tomorrow, in the event that things do not work out in the way that Viacom wants them to work out.

Just to revisit the high-end media vs. bandwidth aspect: bandwidth is well behind and still has plenty of catching up to do. Leaving aside the fact that much of the planet does not even have any form of internet access yet, let alone broadband, it will take some time before high definition files of 10 gigabytes or more can be effectively spread on a scale so large that it will hurt the media companies. And all this time the high end will continue to get higher, of course: the resolution of video can still be pushed further, same as with the quality of screens. Ergo, people who could afford to buy the highest-end media in the past will continue to do so in the future, simply because they don't have the patience, the know-how, or the willingness to attempt to obtain the highest-resolution files through their broadband connection...even if they have one.

[bartl]

Clinton replaced them at the beginning of his first term. It's customary for all political appointees to resign at the end of a president's term. Firing several attorneys for apparently political purposes in the middle of a President's second term is rarely, if ever, done.

The attorneys are acting in the name of the President. He can fire any one of them if he feels they aren't doing what he wants them to do.

However, if he fires them for political reasons and calls it "incompetence", he is unfairly and unjustly damaging their careers.

[NatGertler]

I'm not sure that this is appropriate: in the end, this particular case is really about one corporate giant arguing with another corporate giant over ad money

No, they're arguing over copyright and control, and that's something that extends to many of us.

However, if you want to dismiss the corrections of some of your misinformation as not being appropriate...

Just to revisit the high-end media vs. bandwidth aspect: bandwidth is well behind and still has plenty of catching up to do. Leaving aside the fact that much of the planet does not even have any form of internet access yet, let alone broadband

And are these places where HDTV has made huge inroads? That high-end media isn't exactly the going thing here.

And all this time the high end will continue to get higher, of course: the resolution of video can still be pushed further, same as with the quality of screens.

Yes, but that doesn't mean there will be much demand for same. Witness DVD-Audio and SACD to see a market deciding that largely it doesn't care for the higher resolution.

[badMike]

I'm not sure that this is appropriate: in the end, this particular case is really about one corporate giant arguing with another corporate giant over ad money (and the amount of money involved might seem huge to us but is in fact only a fraction of their total businesses). It is happening on a level so far over the heads of individual creators that they might as well be ants.

That's kind of an odd reaction. And what "personal" stakes are involved? I used the past tense. I don't work for Viacom anymore. I was just contradicting your point that Viacom is "ignorning" the internet when I've had the head of Viacom's internet strategies standing before me telling me about the company's digital objectives. But he's gone already and replaced by the head of Atom Films, another video service Viacom bought, so I don't know what the company's plans are now.

And this topic isn't so huge to be over everybody's heads. I mean, who runs and works for corporations? Ants, as you claim? This type of things directly affects millions of people directly and sets implications for all future internet businesses. Yes, this is a fight over ad revenues, but all web sites are fighting for ad revenue. Why do you think the 'net imploded the first time? And how do you think CBR tries to make money?

[Rorysm]

You just have to take anything said in Permanant Damage with a grain of salt... you just can't rely on him to give you anything but his warped Democratic spin that you can find on any blog, pop-punk band's cd, or any drunken loser in a bar with nobody else to talk to. Like that part where he tries to slip in something about Republicans trying to limit voting to certain groups... he's right... Republicans are trying to UPHOLD current laws that forbid convicted felons from voting in several state. Why? Because Democrats are trying their hardest to give these people their votes back because they think they'll vote Democratic. Seriously.. that's how bad it has gotten... Dems are looking for anything to make up the 2% they keep losing by and are willing to give votes to convicted felons because they KNOW they'll vote for them. And you wonder who to vote for...how about not voting with the felons. In Kentucky, State Rep Brent Yonts (D-Greenville) is leading the push to restore voting rights to felons, which works out nicely as his son was recently convicted of murder (he was drunk, ran over a woman, through her in the ditch and left her to die). Good Ol' Democrats for you.

As for the firings, if the Dems keep shouting long enough that they were fired for political reasons then people will start to believe it. I don't buy this crap they say about Republican congressmen calling around about Democratic congressmen. Why would an incumbent risk something like that to call about another incumbent he isn't running against. Stupid... it's just whatever Democrats can say to spin people to their side... and they have to do something now that Congress' approval ratings are below the Presidents (Gallup, 33% Approval for Bush, 29% for Congress).

Anyway... wouldn't it be nice if the four or five paragraphs wasted on yet another rehash of Liberal politics was spent talking comics? Maybe if we took out the wasted effort of propaganda then we'd be helping the industry. Maybe comics are experiencing what the movie industry is, mainstream conservatives are tuning out and not buying anything. Wonder what the cure to that is... oh yeah, balance. It'll be a cold day in hell before the CBR puts up a reviewer who talks about conservative values (if you can find a conservative who wastes their time talking comics online, present company excluded).

[Inkthinker]

1. I don't remember anyone complaining when Clinton fired all but 1 of them?

Did Clinton (or any other president) ever fire US attorney's mid-term? Or make attempts to cover up the reasoning for it (by claiming that the attorneys were fired for lack of competence), or balk at cooperation in the investigation (apparently by violating the Hatch Act)?