"Spain last night killed a controversial anti-P2P bill that would have made it easier to shut down websites that link to infringing content. The move was a blow to the ruling Socialist government, but it may be of even bigger concern to the US, which pushed, threatened, and cajoled Spain to clamp down on downloading. And Wikileaks can take a share of the credit for the defeat."
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Member since:2005-07-07
Member since:2006-01-24
It was a long time since I read Neuromancer, but as I recall he described a future where huge multinational corporations controlled the governments and the gap between the rich and the poor were enourmous. Who knew it would turn out to be true. Well, all the crappy stuff came true, we still don't have that cool matrix thingy...
Member since:2006-07-14
Member since:2007-09-06
If there are large alternative media outlets which reduce Disney's share of the market bellow 90% or so then Disney may not be a monopoly. They gotta be pretty close to legal monopoly status in kids entertainment at least. Outside of Diego/Dora.. it's pretty much all Disney.
Alternatively, if it can be shown that Disney is not capable of manipulating the market or leveraging success in one market segment to drive competition out of another then they may not be a Monopoly. Not saying they don't go out of there way to try and monopolize the market.
To complicate matters, it may very well be that Disney is in fact a Monopoly by legal definition. However, if they don't use that position as a competitive strategy, they compete through products rather than market maneuvering, they may be a natural Monopoly. The only real issue with being in monopoly position in any market is when you use that influence for anti-competitive advantage. My uneducated examples would be jacking the price of product because you are the only vendor, bundling a smaller product in with your main product so that competitors of that smaller product can't fairly compete ("fair" in legal not social sense) and similar.
Around these parts, we get a lot of US media and it really is staggering how much flows out of one or two parent companies. Companies like Disney and Viacom own absurd amounts of media production and display space.
Sadly, politics is like business.. it's not about a fair price for your product but about the maximum price you can convince people to pay. It's not about what legislation is fair for the citizens but what legislation can be snuck past to benefit the big businesses (ie. non-human legal entity campaign contributions).
Member since:2010-08-29
It only benefits a few big companies and it's not like most of the world consumes US-made content so much (well, maybe some countries do?). Many countries even have plenty of laws regarding the % of foreign movies, TV or music that can be shown/sold and the US lobbies do not even seem worried about that.
LOL! This reminds me of another discussion earlier, why USA protects big media companies. It was a quite fun and hilarious discussion. I copy and paste from another thread:
"
It is true! I am not lying!
Marlon Brando says "Jews run Hollywood, they own it" look here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marlon_brando#Comments_on_Jews.2C_Holl...
And read this, this is the most important text you can ever read! It will change your life forever!!
www.natvan.com/who-rules-america
Yes, many Jews have German sounding names: Spielberg, Beckham, Portman, Goldman, Lehman, Hilton, Silverstein, Sandler, Stiller, etc just read about them on wikipedia in the section: "Early life"!
And the Israeli lobby AIPAC rules the white house! That is the reason USA blocks every UN resolution against Israel! Look here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aipac#Steiner_resignation
So, White House is run by Israel. And Israelis own Hollywood and big media companies. That is the reason the White House protects Hollywood's interests!
Google on "AIPAC" and read more! I am not lying on this!
"
The third and final WWDC product I want to talk about is - of course - OS X 10.9 Mavericks. While iOS 7 was clearly the focus of this year's WWDC, its venerable desktop counterpart certainly wasn't left behind. Apple announced OS X 10.9 Mavericks, the first OS X release not to carry the name of a big cat.
We already talked about iOS 7 yesterday (after a night of sleep, it's only looking worse and worse - look at this, for Fiona's sake!), so now it's time to talk about the downright stunning and belly flutters-inducing new Mac Pro. As former owner and huge, huge, huge fan of the PowerMac G4 Cube - I haven't been this excited about an Apple product since, well, I would say the iMac G4. This is the Apple I used to love.
Apple held its big keynote event thing at WWDC earlier this evening, but since I was away with friends I've had to read up on it later in the evening. The company announced iOS 7, OS X 10.9 Mavericks, and they gave a preview of the new Mac Pro. Especially the Mac Pro impressed me, and while iOS 7's new Holo/Metro-inspired theme looks messy and garish to me, I do commend Apple for finally breaking the mold. This news item will focus on iOS 7 - I'll dive into the Mac Pro and OS X 10.9 tomorrow (it's late here now).
And yes, the PRISM scandal is far, far from over. More and more information keeps leaking out, and the more gets out, the worse it gets. The companies involved have sent out official statements - often by mouth of their CEOs - and what's interesting is that not only are these official statements eerily similar to each other, using the same terms clearly designed by lawyers, they also directly contradict new reports from The New York Times. So, who is lying?This story is getting bigger and bigger. Even though most Americans probably already knew, it is now official: the United States government, through its National Security Agency, is collecting the communications and data of all American citizens, and of non-Americans using American services, through a wide collaboration with the large companies in technology, like Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and so on. Interestingly enough, the NSA itself, as well as the US government, have repeatedly and firmly denied this massive spying on Americans and non-Americans took place at all.Ah, patents - the never-ending scourge of the technology industry. Whether wielded by companies who don't actually make any products, or large corporations who abuse them because they can't compete in the market place or because they're simply jerks, they do the industry a huge disservice and are simply plain dangerous. According to The Wall Street Journal (circumvention link), president Obama is about to take several executive actions to address patent trolls - which may seem like a good idea, but I am very worried that all this will do is strengthen the positions of notorious patent system abusers such as Apple and Microsoft.
With version 13.05, the developers of the Genode OS Framework take measures to ensure that Genode continues to scale well with a growing number of users and the steadily broadening platform coverage. Further highlights are the improved SoC support for Exynos 5, OMAP4, Raspberry Pi, i.MX, and new components for realizing headless systems.At the D11 conference, Apple CEO Tim Cook once again took the stage to be interviewed by Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher. While most of the interview can be replicated by picking and reading 10 random Apple fanblog stories - there were still a number of very interesting things that warrant some closer scrutiny.
So, the Xbox One disaster continues. Microsoft's policy for dealing with the used games market has reportedly leaked - and it's a clear and direct attack to destroy the used games market. Prices for used games will be set at the retail value of a new game, and retailers have to hook into Microsoft's computer systems and comply with Microsoft's terms and conditions.At an event earlier today, Microsoft unveiled the next Xbox - the third model, but confusingly named Xbox One. The big focus was TV, integrated Kinect, and all the other stuff we all expected to be forced down our throats. I think it took them 25 minutes to actually come to what should be the core of the story: gaming. Nothing groundbreaking in the gaming department, except for how Microsoft intends to handle the used games market and borrowing games from friends: pay up, buddy!
Member since:
2006-02-25
Why does the US think it's so important for their monopolic media companies like Disney or Warner to protect their IPs internationally so much, since that's pretty much the only IP that gets exported?
It only benefits a few big companies and it's not like most of the world consumes US-made content so much (well, maybe some countries do?). Many countries even have plenty of laws regarding the % of foreign movies, TV or music that can be shown/sold and the US lobbies do not even seem worried about that.