Category Archives: Culture

These posts will deal with Copyright and other cultural topics

Continued fall out from MegaUpload arrests

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A few days ago I discussed some of the actions taken by the hacker community and the impression that the MegaUpload arrests were related to SOPA. After some time we see that this arrest didn’t happen over night, you could argue the announcement and the timing was done poorly. However, I think that we should be paying attention to the ramifications of these arrests. Torrent Freak is reporting that there has been a massive response from the Cyberlocker companies. These cyberlockers were similar to MegaUpload in that a user would be able to upload a song and then anyone would be able to download it or stream the video. Now these companies are removing the search capabilities from their website and are restricting users to only their files.

While, what MegaUpload may have done may be illegal, the impact of the arrests is a foretelling of the impact of a law like SOPA. Internet companies argued that SOPA would be a job killing bill that it would kill innovation and break the internet. I think that this action clearly demonstrations that they are correct. For instance, Torrent Freak mentioned that several companies are shutting their doors and others are changing their services. Since it’s space based service, it is likely that each of these companies only has a few employees. However, they make a good chunk of change. MegaUpload was making several million and their competitors were likely making millions a month.

All of that money is going to be gone by next billing cycle. Not a single one of those companies where users were paying a premium will pay them another dime. Ad revenue will dry up, MegaUpload made almost a million alone since 2007 on ads. All of this money was getting put back into the economy through the purchase of servers, software and other equipment. It allows employees to buy stuff and was making a positive contribution to the economy.

From the different companies there was obviously innovation occurring. MegaUpload never allowed duplicates on its servers and when a duplicate was uploaded it would find another version of it and supply the link to the end user. Infringing content would just have the link removed, not the actual content. This would make searching for the real version difficult for copyright holders as it would be a game of wack the mole where the content would appear here, then with another link and so forth.

What other solutions could have been reached? I think there’s plenty of space here for further innovation for a business model. As users are using sites like this for personal storage and for video streaming, users are paying for content as well as clicking and viewing ads. Clearly there should be a way for the content owners to make money off of it as well. However, I have yet to read an article or a comment about the content industry approaching any of these companies, other than through DMCA, about working to pay some sort of royalty or set up a license agreement.

I think that a way to bring the balance back from the power being exclusively in the hands of the RIAA and MPAA (I’m just going to type RIAA from here on out), companies like Pandora.com, Spotify, Last.FM, MegaUpload (or any of its competitors), Google/YouTube, Vemeo and anyone else that uses licensed content should form their own consortium. Let’s just call it Content Users and Managers of America or CUMA for sure (I couldn’t think of anything really witty there (it doesn’t have to be just of America)). CUMA would provide a counter balance to the RIAA in that it provides equal footing and a way to combine the might of the end users. There are demands for these products, but the products simply do not demand the price premium they used to demand. Since these products aren’t able to demand the premium and the RIAA thinks that it should, they are overcharging as there are freely available alternatives which people flock to. Essentially, the RIAA needs to realize that for the websites allowing people to access the are getting paid pennies (if that) for a single view on a website. So for most sites, they can make more money if they don’t pay licensing fees. Lowering licensing fees is something that CUMA would be able to work for, to put it inline with expected ad revenue. This would allow for broader innovation in the market and reduced piracy.

It’s obvious from the amount of money that MegaUpload made that people are willing to pay to be able to watch as much content as they can when they want it. I feel like a broken record here (ha HA!), but people are willing to pay for content if it’s easily accessible.

I expect additional fall out from this. If SOPA or some similar style bill ever passes, expect this type of reaction to occur in other segments of the online industry. Online content is one of the places with a great deal of innovation and killing it would be a shame when there are possible solutions to this problem without resorting to industrial policy making and picking winners.

Update: I just saw this article Looks like MegaUpload has figured out a way to allow musicians to make money off of free downloads for original works through their site. This is some seriously awesome innovation.

The Government Strikes Back

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The internet had thought it won a great victory with the black out of some seriously major websites, however it was a short lived victory as the Fed and its allies the vicious RIAA and MPAA have regrouped and launched a stunning counter attack destroying a rebel outpost on Hoth… errr Actually, The US government has shut down MegaUpload.com and arrested several employees for copyright infringement. You may remember MegaUpload for recently being involved in a dispute with Universal over a YouTube video. Where Universal issued false DMCA take down notices which required YouTube to take down the video. However, this video wasn’t infringing and MegaUpload sued Universal for the false claims. The interesting thing about this video is that it’s about all the legal ways you can use MegaUpload. The video is essentially an attempt by the company to show that there are legitimate uses for their services which, I’m assuming, was an attempt to get them into the safe harbor provisions of the DMCA.

To me, this action really shows that the US government doesn’t need SOPA to pass for it to censor the internet. It already has the ability to do so. SOPA would just put a rubber stamp approval on the actions that the government is already taking. This should be a wake up call. Yes, we had one with the joke of hearings for SOPA previously, however this is a slap in the face of the internet. It’s basically saying, sure we heard you, but you know what? you don’t matter.

Sure it might not be as easy as it would have been with SOPA passing and it’s not breaking the internet the way that SOPA would, but it’s still happening. As much as I hate Maddox, he’s right in his post about SOPA. We really have been pretty complacent, myself included. Yes, I’ve written a bunch, signed petitions and emailed my senators and congressmen multiple times, but big deal. Right now this is a hot button topic, but this isn’t going to go away. No one spoke up about the NDAA because it didn’t impact your ability to read Reddit or surf wikipedia. That law is as bad or worse than SOPA depending on what you think of freedom and civil liberties.

When I got home last night and saw that MegaUpload had been shut down, I was miserable. It made me feel completely impotent. That I was unable to impact the way the US government acts in any meaningful way. At this point, I’m not really sure what to do about this. If any other government would be doing this the US would be up in arms (perhaps literally) and would put a stop to it. Our government is doing this in our name and it’s horribly depressing that I can’t do anything to stop it.

Maddox is right. SOPA only failed because we were paying attention and we were able to get the tech giants behind us on it. SOPA will rear its ugly head again and we might be sleeping. The empire has struck back and we need to decide what we are going to do about it. Are we going to get some ewoks and take it down or are we going to keep signing petitions?

Anonymous has decided to fight back and has launched a large number of attacks on internet websites. As citizens that are deeply concerned with the MegaUpload action we need to ask ourselves, is this an appropriate response? Is this a way of protesting and assembling in an online space? Should anonymous be locked up for doing this? I think that this is a type of protest. Anonymous is as frustrated as I am and have decided to do something in response. It’s obvious that they felt like this is a direct attack on the internet in response to the SOPA protests and the “abuse of power” the internet displayed in taking down websites to protest SOPA.

It also begs the question, what will these website attacks actually accomplish?

What are some of your thoughts on this?

Update 1: I just saw that some 9,000 Hackers have joined Anonymous

Update 2: Apparently Anonymous is using a link that directs users to a Low Orbit Ion Canon DDoS tool that uses the users computer to attack a website. This is an interesting tactic as it will make it very difficult for agents to determine who was malicious and those that were  ignorant of what they were doing. Thus making the tool a more effective protest tool. It will be interesting to see what the ramifications of this new tactic are. I think it will be used again in the future and will make it as “easy” as signing a petition to join a DDoS without having to do the hard work of setting up the LOIC on your computer. Interesting.

Did yesterday’s internet black out save the internet?

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I’ve seen a lot of commentary about how the web may have been saved because of the internet’s “abuse of power.” How parts of the internet shut down for a day. I’m sure this impacted a great deal of people, may have actually hurt our economy a little bit. However, one day of action won’t save the internet.

I’ll agree it made a huge impact as support for SOPA/PIPA has plummeted. Yes, this round of attack by the MPAA and RIAA may have been twarted, but this is just the beginning of the fight for the internet. Ars Technica, has an excellent write up for a plan for how to address some of the concerns of copyright holders in a much better fashion. A manner which would not destroy the internet like SOPA/PIPA.

However, I think that this is a case of industrial policy legislation that is picking winners. In several blogs and posts at the Urban Times, I have written in favor of using some policies to enact changes of behavior. However, in these cases it’s because a novel technology isn’t being adopted that leads to benefits for the social good. In the case of copyright holders, these policies aren’t for the common good, but are being put into place to protect an aging business model that is not innovative. The policies I recommend are to help innovators compete against the status quo.

Data has shown that increasing the availability or decreasing the availability impacts the rate of piracy for television shows. Which indicates to me, policies should be striving to push companies to increase access to copyrighted material, not to go after pirating website. The responsibility for dealing with pirates should be with the copyright holder. They have the means to actually reduce piracy through reducing the amount of licensing fees and increasing accessibility.

We should be pushing our government leaders to put initiatives in places that require massive concessions from copyright holders, if they abuse their copyright position, including losing that copyright. Subscription services like Spotify and Pandora allow users to get access to content either free, with ads, or for a small price. However, these services don’t allow users to access everything. This leads to frustration. If I was able to listen to whatever on Spotify, there’d be no reason to pirate.

What does this mean? Well, we can celebrate the change in positions of congressional members, however this isn’t over yet. OPEN act may be the next step in this battle. Free internet should be our goal, free as in speech not beer. However, people are willing to pay and I think in this case, business models need to catch up with technology.

What is the right to assemble online?

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Sorry for the long delay in posts. I’ve been a little busy and I’ve had some trouble coming up with topics as well. So, if there are any topics you’d like to see written about feel free to shoot me a message.

In the US we have an amendment to our constitution which ensures our right to assemble. This amendment is important because it allows us to protest governmental action and activities we do not like. We do not always like the way that this right is being expressed, such as the Westboro Baptist Church protesting fallen soldiers, gay suicides and a range of other things. It also protests our right to counter protest the WBC.

In the case of a protest over a company, it’s possible to protest in front of their headquarters or in front of individual branches such as Bank of America. In many ways these tactics are effective because it drives media attention do to it’s location. If someone is protesting a bank in small town America, such as my home town, Grove City, PA no one is going to care. You might get a piece written about it in the Allied but it’s unlikely to attract the attention of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette which is only 60 miles south. Even if some how it did make the news in Pittsburgh, it’s unlikely to remain in the news, which that’s something a protest in Pittsburgh would actually be able to do.

Why does this matter? Well, for a company like Amazon.com much of it’s physical locations are in small town America. They don’t have large presences in many major cities. How do you effectively protest a large internet based company? How do you protest a company when the people that want to do the protesting are scattered throughout the world?

In the past I’ve written about LulzSec and Anonymous, these groups still operate and have had some interesting ideas about how to protest. The first is what is called a Denial of Service (DoS) attack, where a company’s website is overwhelmed with requests for access to the site and it kills the server. This would be the physical equivalent of creating a lined of linked arms across the doorway to the company’s headquarters or branch. Typically, these sort of attacks don’t last very long because IT departments have become very good at finding the sources of these attacks and stopping them.

It is not possible to respond by moving across the street to continue protesting where people to see you. It is also not possible to post ads in the area as a form of protest. However, it is possible to buy ads on Google or other such sites that will display something if you type Bank of America, however, I’m not sure if this is effective or not.

Another type of protest employed is the internet petition. I’ve signed plenty of them, but it’s fairly obvious that these are as worth as much as the paper their printed on (which is to say none). These really just make you feel better, without much work.

At this point, I think that when it has come to massive protests online, Reddit has created the blueprint. Redditors have worked extremely hard to protest SOPA. This has included call your senator day, getting websites to agree to an internet blackout day, where sites will completely black out all content. This is a representation of the impact of censorship that SOPA will enact.

However, this type of protest isn’t really possible for all types of government or private business action. While the denial of service attacks aren’t very effective, they do raise awareness and have lead to other types of attacks, such as hacking and the release of data that users thought was secure. Despite the fact that it is theft of data, these actions have done more to change company behavior than any other type of internet based protests.

Is that the future of assembly online? I don’t know. It’s easy to block websites that act as a rallying point, so it will be important for people to actually meet to do their protesting as protesting on the internet doesn’t really have the same impact, unless something big gets leaked. We do need to define what is acceptable as a society for online protesting. DoS might be a way to allow protests.

More Megapixels, More Image Quality?

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We have experienced the increase of the megapixels on digital cameras during the past few years, I still remember when 0.5 megapixels was the largest image size we could find meanwhile nowadays we can find cameras with 24.3 megapixels and the megapixels will continue to increase as the camera companies keep telling users that largest megapixels translate in better image quality. Personally, as an amateur photographer and researcher in the field of image processing, I think that most of the time an image with more than 6 megapixels is a waste of memory and camera resources.

Let me start explaining the reasoning camera makers use to convince user that more megapixels is better: Printing quality. As you know, a good printing quality is achieved when the printing resolution is equal or higher than 300 PPI (pixels per inch) and, therefore, if you want to print a large image with good quality you would need to have a large image, for example with a 2 megapixels image the largest print size at 300 PPI would be of 14.7 cm x 9.7 cm (5.8” x 3.8”). You can do the math yourself, but in the page of Imagine 123 you will find a table of the image size and printing sizes you may have. The camera makers tell users that with larger pixels they won’t just be able to print in larger format but also they will obtain more detailed photographs since you will have more pixels to represent the objects in the image. I don’t say this claim is completely false, but you need to consider other aspects that aren’t as straightforward as the concept “bigger is better” and this discussion has been in the air since some years ago as you can see in this cnet news note from 2007.
If we accept as a fact that most photography enthusiasts don’t print their photos in large format, then the camera makers just have the detail in the image as the only reason to offer users more and more megapixels every day. But, it is really true that more megapixels are synonym of more detail? My answer is yes for just few cases but most of the times is a big no. Let me explain you my reasons:

First we need to consider the sensor of a digital camera, it is an array of light sensitive elements and each pixel will correspond to a small area of the sensor, meaning that the information in each pixel is the sum of the light arriving through the lenses into the pixel area. Now, if we keep the size of the sensor constant and we increase the megapixels the resulting pixel size will be reduced and therefore less light will arrive to each pixel increasing the effects of electrical noise in the sensor degrading not just the sensitivity to finer tonal gradations but also the quality of the image in dim conditions. As an example, I took two different photographs using my camera with 6 megapixels (2816 x 2112 pixels) and a 7.18 mm sensor and one of the cameras of the HORUS system with just 1 megapixel (1024 x 768 pixels) but a 8 mm sensor, i.e., more than twice larger pixels. You can see how there is more noise in the image captured with the 6 megapixels camera despite the fact that there are more pixels to represent the same object. You can see the complete pictures in my blog.
My camera
HORUS system camera

The noise is not a problem in highly illuminated scenes, that’s one of the few cases were bigger is better, but for dim conditions the camera makers try to solve the problem using clever image processing methods, for example increasing the gain of the light sensor and using filtering algorithms to reduce the noise, most of the times reducing also the image size. As you can imagine, the image processing will end up with an altered image and for purists this could be a downside of using cameras with large megapixels.  
At the end, maybe professional photographers will fully exploit the advantages of large images, but we must keep in mind that the image quality is not completely determined by the megapixels of it, we also must take into account the camera’s optics (lenses) and especially the sensor’s size and sensitivity and, therefore, we shouldn’t trick ourselves into the “bigger is better” mantra of most of the camera makers and sellers.