Comments on: Comments on 13980

Post number 13980

magullo — Fri, 18 Jan 2002 09:11:51 -0800

Sweeeeeeeeeeeet!!!!! A bit of a repeat, but absolutely justified

By: rich

rich — Fri, 18 Jan 2002 09:22:36 -0800

"In a Reuters interview Gerry Wirtz, general manager of Philips' copyright office, said that the company would be building CD burners that can read and burn copy protected CDs." This is too funny. Wirtz must have wanted to be a c00l hacker d00d3z. But I think companies fighting for standards is an important thing - or else you end up with the whole GSM/CDMA/PCS problem or Beta/VHS.

By: schlaager

schlaager — Fri, 18 Jan 2002 09:22:53 -0800

heh heh.

By: hijinx

hijinx — Fri, 18 Jan 2002 09:25:21 -0800

You know what? I tend to find that larger corporations don't stand up for the consumer, and don't care about anything but the bottom line. But this development, along with Philips' previous statement on these new non-CDs, really makes me feel good. Not warm and fuzzy (after all, it's still a company), but good for them. Plus, they make a good toaster oven.

By: pnevares

pnevares — Fri, 18 Jan 2002 09:38:58 -0800

This is how a company can make me feel good about buying their products. :-)

By: msacheson

msacheson — Fri, 18 Jan 2002 09:56:18 -0800

(begin rant) Okay, I'll be the killjoy MeFi police on this one...why is a repeat of a story covered just nine days ago justified? The last few days have seen 30+ front page posts. I think the quantity vs. quality ratio is getting really disturbed. (/end rant)

By: BentPenguin

BentPenguin — Fri, 18 Jan 2002 10:06:36 -0800

EPIDEMIC OF ANAL RETENTIVE RANTS STRIKES MEFI COMMUNITY. VACCINE RESEARCH BEGINS. Didja ever stop to think that repeat post rants are themselves a repeat post? If one is smart enuf to recognize a repeat story, why is one too stoopit to realize that they could just pass the repeat story by and read another post they don't recognize ??? It too might be a repeat, but not for them. Think about that for a while. Its not like you have to pay for MeFi by the word, or at all even. Meanwhile, Rome continues to burn...

By: swell

swell — Fri, 18 Jan 2002 10:44:30 -0800

Dunno if the Register's using an old quote, but Philips has been making RAW capable CD ROM burners for quite a while. Fact is, the music industry hasn't come up with a copy protection scheme that works on CD ROM burners less than a year old. The horse is dead, folks. Move along.

By: swell

swell — Fri, 18 Jan 2002 10:45:28 -0800

By: jpoulos

jpoulos — Fri, 18 Jan 2002 11:05:35 -0800

I'll leave it up to you all how related this is, but.... As some of you may know, copied CDs won't play in Playstation or other similar console gaming systems. There are "mod chips" you can buy, which you solder into the system's board to bypass this feature, thus allowing you to rent games from Blockbuster, and burn them onto CD. That's illegal. Anyways, Sony became aware of this and began writing code into the games that they produce to recognize a modified system. If you try to play some Sony games--even perfectly legal store-bought discs--on a modified system, the system shuts down and returns a "Modified System: please contact 800-555-1234" error. I know this because I associate with thugs and lowlifes, btw, not from personal experience. :-) Anyway, I argue that if I buy a Playstation, it's mine to modify any way I see fit. Pirating games is illegal, but taking apart one's Playstation isn't. How, then, can Sony prevent you from playing legally obtained games? As I said, this seems related somehow. I'm just throwing it out there for the helluvit.

By: Lynsey

Lynsey — Fri, 18 Jan 2002 11:19:42 -0800

I have always liked & respected Philips as a manufacturer of high quality audio products. They continue to impress me with what I like to think of as "corporate integrity."

By: jjg

jjg — Fri, 18 Jan 2002 11:20:43 -0800

Well, since you've admitted that you're flagrantly violating community standards, I guess that makes it okay. Along those lines, I have recently decided that everyone who confesses to a crime should be found not guilty.

By: howa2396

howa2396 — Fri, 18 Jan 2002 11:52:35 -0800

I'm glad to see it in English, I didn't bother reading it the first time.

By: ktheory

ktheory — Fri, 18 Jan 2002 12:59:37 -0800

Since this thread has already been hijacked by people debating whether it is a double post or not, I might as well bring up another tangent. I tend to find that larger corporations don't stand up for the consumer, and don't care about anything but the bottom line. Corporations do care a lot about their bottom line. If they didn't, the corporation would soon cease to exist. Standing up for consumers is not something that corporations neccessarily must do to surrive. It would certainly be a strange world in which corporations were really just consumer lobbying groups, never concerning themselves with making a profit. Of course, it's possible that "standing up for the consumer" is a proximate goal to the ultimate goal of increasing profits. In these cases, the corporation probably will "stand up for consumers". I'm putting "stand up for consumers" in quotes because I don't think Philips is really lobbying on behalf of consumers to the music industry. Philips realizes that there is a market for CD burners that circumvent copy-protection technologies. So, they make that product. That product happens to fit into what you think ought to be the rights of music consumers--but it's a stretch to think that Philips would continue to make devices that allow copying if it is not profitable for them. Corporations do care more about their bottom line than preserving the ill-defined rights of consumers.

By: PWA_BadBoy

PWA_BadBoy — Fri, 18 Jan 2002 13:42:22 -0800

jpoulos: In regards to your statement: Anyway, I argue that if I buy a Playstation, it's mine to modify any way I see fit. Pirating games is illegal, but taking apart one's Playstation isn't. How, then, can Sony prevent you from playing legally obtained games?
I'm fairly certain that you void the warranty on your PlayStation when you open it up and start fiddling around with it. At no point does Sony have to guarantee that after you mess around with the insides of your system that it will continue to work properly. You took the prerogative to disassemble your PlayStation and you take the consequences of it. The risks were already well defined.
What Sony did was a service. As a programmer, you could call it proper exception handling. Rather than just crash and die on you without explanation, it tells you why your game no longer works proplerly and gives you a phone number to call. That's what should happen.

By: whatnotever

whatnotever — Fri, 18 Jan 2002 14:20:33 -0800

To extend what ktheory said, somewhat... There are only three reasons a corporation would do something "morally right" like stand up for consumers: 1) They'll be punished (lose money somehow) if they don't. 2) They'll be rewarded (get more money somehow) if they do. These two are only happy coincidences which make the corporation appear to be moral. In the absence of 1 and 2, the following can occur: 3) One of the people running the corporation has strong enough morals to go against the best interests of the corporation (and cause it to lose money). Corporations do not have morals. People do. A corporation will do what it thinks is best for the bottom line, unless a person manages to make it do otherwise. It takes a strong person with strong convictions to do such a thing and stand up to the corporation (other people) that generally cares only for money. Number two probably applies in this case, of course.

By: zerolucid

zerolucid — Fri, 18 Jan 2002 17:30:14 -0800

well, there is the (rare) possibility that doing the moral thing just happens to help out the company's interests in the long run. which is the optimal situation, of course.

By: CrayDrygu

CrayDrygu — Fri, 18 Jan 2002 17:34:01 -0800

"Rather than just crash and die on you without explanation, it tells you why your game no longer works proplerly and gives you a phone number to call. That's what should happen." Except, of course, that if the modchip-detection code wasn't in the game, it would work perfectly fine. It's not "Rather than just crash, they tell you why." It's "Rather than work fine, it crashes."

By: kindall

kindall — Fri, 18 Jan 2002 17:44:03 -0800

You'd only expect a Playstation to run on a Playstation to begin with, so why would one get upset that a Playstation game won't run on what is no longer a Playstation? If you want to run Playstation games, don't turn your Playstation into something that is not a Playstation anymore by adding a "mod chip." Playstations don't have "mod chips."

By: kindall

kindall — Fri, 18 Jan 2002 17:47:20 -0800