It's another absurd attempt of the publishers to control everything and everyone. Unfortunately, this is technically cheap now. But as I talked to a publisher recently, it's increasingly more difficult to regulate all the copyrights of anything anyone wants to publish. They dig make a trap only to end in it themselves. As publishing any content becomes too hard, publishers themselves will switch to alternatives. I think it's a good opportunity for CC and PD content to expand and become mainstream.
True advances in technology i.e. the ones which free us from slavery and stop us from risking our physical selves are pretty much suppressed by the promise of financial gain by using technology to leverage cash generation only. It's all about growth and profit, not improving quality of life or reducing risk.
It is, incidentally, the opposite reason to why I ended up writing software for a living. My objective was to ease the physical toil of people by automating the work that can be done by machine, freeing them to do more important and rewarding things.
Unfortunately, the increase in leisure time that this creates opens a big hole for consumption which is where these vultures swoop in and enslave us again via pay-per-breath DRM.
Stallman is a prophet of human nature more than technolgy.
> It's all about growth and profit, not improving quality of life or reducing risk.
And sadly, it would seem to be the attitude of SV as well. From all the discussions and submissions here I get the impression that the concept of earning money by actually helping people and/or giving them real value is slowly getting forgotten, drowned by A/B tests, ad-revenue, eyeballs & stuff.
>> People camouflaging in their living rooms so that the whole family can watch a movie?
The attitude that it would be okay to accept the license agreement with no intention of abiding by it's terms is just as bad IMO as the attitude that it's okay to market this technology in the first place.
People usually don't read those 50 page license agreements, even if they did, they have all those legal terms that make it hard to spot all the inconveniences and everybody should need a lawyer to understand all the risks, and hiring a lawyer for buying a TV is too much.
And there is also another problem, if all the vendors adopt this technology then you can only choose to not have a TV at all.
I expect things I buy to adhere to common sense rules without reading license agreements before buying, I don't like having surprises like big brother watching me or things like movie stopped because grandma entered the room and she is looking at the TV.
They could make terms and conditions plain by prefacing the movie with a big banner saying 'YOU ARE BEING WATCHED'. I'm sure the EU would enforce such a notion, just as they do cookies now.
Bull. The license agreement is an overt part of their pricing scheme. If you don't like, don't buy the service and encourage your friends to do the same. This isn't a 50-page document you have to accept before you can get back to using your software. What was suggested above is on par with pirating music and then complaining about DRM. Sure it's ridiculous and unethical, but are you any better if you don't pay the asked price and take it anyway?
I'd be more than happy to pay for television. In fact if it means i'll get more shows like "walking dead", and less shows like "shipping wars" i'd pay extra.
But then I want those programs to stream in hd, and I want to stream them on demand.
An updated bleak vision of the future can be found in the 2nd episode of the British series "Black Mirror": in a world where the only currency is a Facebook virtual currency you can use to buy extra items for your avatars, skipping commercial costs money and the omnipresent screens/cameras emitting a screeching sound if you close your eyes during the commercials.
"Black Mirror" is a rare type of near-future sci-fi with a strong societal criticism.
The third episode, "Entire History of You", is also great: what will happen a decade from now where technology like Google Glass is omnipresent?
The "popular" tv personality Noel Edmunds had a tv show on BBC tv. A small part of that was to prank (willing) viewers by hiding a camera in their TV. They'd watch the show, and suddenly BAMN they'd be on live TV; and then get invited to take part in a quiz or something.
it's not a good feature, it's just a gimmick, a good feature would be it pause if and only if I tell it to(vocally would be nice).
Also, I'm pretty sure it would make me feel uneasy having machines reading me all the time and making decisions on what should I probably want it to behave like
"Oh Breno is watching a QOTSA concert, he left to grab a beer, I should probably pause"
that's sort of goofy, but the matter is: it doesn't know what I want.. it's a shitty feature
I'll call this type of gimmick "smartass technology"
I'm pretty sure there's a design/usability guide that supports what I'm saying...
I agree. I almost think an organisation like the EFF should apply for patents like this, just so they can be used defensively in future to stop it from actually happening.
This makes me wonder how feasible it would be for a group of activists to get patents on business practices they are morally opposed to and then never license them to anyone.
On the one hand yes. On the other hand, many people seem to ignore (I'm pretty sure, it's not acceptance) such surveillance behavior if the product is sexy enough. See what happens with smartphones and their apps right now.
This idea sounds stupid, but Disney was initially against video tapes for the same reason - you didn't know how many people were watching the tape, and so how could you charge each of them?
Until the cheapest deals on TV will have such devices bundled with them, thus incentivizing people to buy them anyway, until it becomes a de-facto standard.
Than you can't watch movies, which may mean you can't communicate with regular, standard, movie-watching people, which may mean you can't get any business/job, which may mean you die of lack of money/healthcare/etc.
It's another absurd attempt of the publishers to control everything and everyone. Unfortunately, this is technically cheap now. But as I talked to a publisher recently, it's increasingly more difficult to regulate all the copyrights of anything anyone wants to publish. They dig make a trap only to end in it themselves. As publishing any content becomes too hard, publishers themselves will switch to alternatives. I think it's a good opportunity for CC and PD content to expand and become mainstream.