DanZee’s BestNetTech Profile

On the post: Google Looks To Cut 'Funding' To 'Illegal' Sites It Doesn't Fund In The First Place

DanZee ( profile ), 19 Feb, 2013 @ 08:59am

UK Telegraph

I think the writer is confused about what the story really is about. It's difficult to speculate what the true nature of the story is from this article. I did a Google search, and all of the stories about this are quoting the Telegraph article, so apparently the Telegraph is the only news source on this story and if it was misstated and misunderstood, it is simply spreading that throughout the Internet right now.

On the post: Bestselling Author Of Children's Books Accuses Public Libraries Of Stealing His Paychecks

DanZee ( profile ), 19 Feb, 2013 @ 08:38am

Affluent Suburb

Well, I can see his side a little. I always bought my reading for pleasure books while I used my school's library and the public library for research, reports, and so forth. I also use to check out old sf books that were written mostly before I was born and were unavailable to buy. Neither library bought many best-sellers at the time, and if they did, it was only a copy or two and you had to put your name on a list and wait months or years to read it.

I now live in an affluent suburb and I see that instead of libraries being used for research, they mostly act to provide residents with a never-ending flow of bestselling books, CD and DVDs, and a huge lending library of kiddie books. The irony is that most of these folks make over $100k and could well afford to buy these books.

I think the mission of libraries have changed from research to providing free entertainment, which has helped to undermine bookstores, video rental outlets, etc.

Maybe libraries should not offer a book to lend until it's been out for a year or two, giving authors an opportunity to earn some money for their efforts.

Libraries are a godsend for researchers because publishers can almost guarantee sales of 5,000 copies to the nation's libraries and research books don't sell much in bookstores. But to a bestselling author, sales of 5,000 copies means losses of $50,000 to the author or more ($1 a book) if each book is loaned out 10 times. (That's a year's pay for a lot of people!)

I don't want to take away the special protection libraries have within our country, but I do think libraries are taking advantage of the loopholes available to them to try to maintain their relevancy during a time when the Internet has more information than all of the libraries in the entire world!

On the post: Teri Buhl Threatens To Sue Us And Others; Still Seems Confused About The Law

DanZee ( profile ), 07 Feb, 2013 @ 02:13pm

Crazy

She's just plain crazy. This was all fought in the 1990s when various newspapers sued the Drudge Report because he linked to their stories. And news stories always had a fair use exemption when quoting material that was newsworthy. Someone she thinks the Internet is taking money out of her picket, although like the record companies with piracy, she can't demonstrate that.

On the post: The Real Story Behind 'Super WiFi' And The Fight Over Spectrum; It's Not What You Read Yesterday

DanZee ( profile ), 05 Feb, 2013 @ 07:59am

Free WiFi

I heard this on my local radio station this morning. The newscasters were probably quoting from a reprint of the Washington Post story in the Boston Globe. The piece was that basically the government is going to offer a free, more powerful Wifi that can penetrate even through cement walls. Doing a Google search, it seems quite a lot of websites are parroting the story. Thanks for setting the record straight. I knew it was too good to be true.

On the post: 10 Years Later: Antigua May Finally (Really) Set Up Official 'Pirate' Site To Get Back What US Owes In Sanctions

DanZee ( profile ), 25 Jan, 2013 @ 08:23am

No Taxes

To get back at the US, Antigua should offer citizenship to all US artists, musicians, writers, actors, etc. and guarantee them no income tax on their earnings. That will hurt the US's tax revenue, and these "new" Antigua citizens might buy new homes in Antigua and hang out there spending the money they don't have to pay in US taxes!

On the post: Welsh Radio Station Forced To Play Classical Music, English Songs After Royalty Talks Stall

DanZee ( profile ), 07 Jan, 2013 @ 07:21am

Re: Re: Re: Bad publicity for the BBC

> Imagine a British person's view of the US election recently if only the more extreme views from the right wing were being seen there and you might have an idea of what I mean.

On the post: Camming Group Leader Sentenced To 5 Years; Barred From Owning 'Any Device' That Can Infringe Copyrights After Release

DanZee ( profile ), 07 Jan, 2013 @ 07:48am

Sentencing

There does seem to be something wrong with the sentencing system where you can get less years for manslaughter than for recording a movie, even if it was an organized effort to record movies.

On the post: Confusing Value And Price, Choir Demands £3000 Per Download

DanZee ( profile ), 07 Jan, 2013 @ 07:12am

Crazy Feminists

They're just a bunch of crazy feminists. And who knows, they might have some crazy rich feminists out there who buy the song to show support. If Obama can charge $10,000 for a chicken dinner, they can charge 3,000 pounds for their song.

On the post: Anti-Piracy Group Demanding — And Getting — Domain Names From Torrent Sites

DanZee ( profile ), 13 Dec, 2012 @ 08:23am

Easier

It's much easier this way than to go through the court system. Judges are concerned with issues like freedom and fairness. These don't matter when you're strong-arming people!

On the post: $1.5 Billion In Taxpayer Funds Go Directly To Movie Studios Each Year… And Very Few Jobs Created

DanZee ( profile ), 04 Dec, 2012 @ 11:34am

Same deal in Boston

Some politicians in Massachusetts have been pressing to eliminate the movie subsidies here because production companies have been selling the tax credits to other entities.

"Most tax credits issued by the state to film production companies end up being sold to brokers, which then resell them at a profit to financial firms, other corporations, and wealthy individuals to slash their tax bills.

"The incentives are so generous - rebates of up to 25 percent of production costs in the state - that most film companies do not end up owing nearly enough in taxes to use the credits. So they sell them at a discount, fueling a booming industry for brokers, accountants, and savvy taxpayers."

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2012/01/03/studios-credits-let-others-cut-taxes/xVbosoRxD9wLww1uQTn5tJ/story.html

For the most part, other than union construction workers, production companies only hire a few locals as production assistants. Sure, hotels and restaurants make some money, but when the state is handing out 25% of the film's budget in subsidies, the total the state benefits is very small.

On the post: New Zealand Government Admits That Order To Suppress Illegal Spying On Kim Dotcom Only Such Order Issued In 10 Years

DanZee ( profile ), 04 Dec, 2012 @ 08:19am

Re: Re:

"...Pandora may become a non-profitable venture"

Actually, Pandora has NEVER been profitable. As it gains listeners, its losses widen!

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:68OtCnuBIyEJ:online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20120829-713803.html+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

63% of its revenue goes to the record companies up from 52% last year. The licensing fees are scheduled to rise each year to eat up more of Pandora's revenues. The record company fees have made the model of "legal" Internet unsustainable!

On the post: How Software Piracy In Developing Markets Creates New Customers

DanZee ( profile ), 03 Dec, 2012 @ 10:56am

Re: Re: SO, let's ENSURE low prices result by taking excess profits away!

Actually Bill Gates has not given away much money. He's transferred a lot of his wealth to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation where it's able to sit and collect interest and dividends tax free. He's based it on the Rockefeller Foundation where it has many times more money today than Rockefeller ever contributed to it. It's just a way rich people preserve their wealth instead of letting the government take 70% through death taxes.

On the post: Fight The Power: Chuck D Sues Universal Music For Hundreds Of Millions In Unpaid Royalties

DanZee ( profile ), 03 Dec, 2012 @ 07:42am

The bottom line is paying an artist $80 when the record company takes in $700 and promises you 50% is just plain wrong. And adding fees related to manufacturing and distribution when there is no manufacturing costs and Apple apparently does all the storage and ripping is wrong too. (I also remember articles saying that Apple paid record companies 89 cents out of the 99 cents it charges, so some additional money seems to be missing from the equation too.)

On the post: Don't Promise $1 Million For Your Lost Laptop Via YouTube & Twitter If You're Not Prepared To Pay

DanZee ( profile ), 03 Dec, 2012 @ 07:17am

Fishy

Well, when a deal sounds fishy, it usually winds up in court. In this case, there's certainly some doubt about whether Ryan Leslie handled the attempted data recovery properly. Why was the hard drive sent back to the manufacturer? You only do that when you want a new hard drive, not to recover data. And then there's conflicting testimony about whether they went to data recovery companies to retrieve the data. In the end, it just sounds like the rapper tried to get out of paying the $1 million reward. He should have been careful about what he offered.

On the post: Denver News Crew Accidentally Livens Up Broadcast With An Inappropriate Image 'Borrowed' From The Web

DanZee ( profile ), 20 Nov, 2012 @ 09:06am

Paying Attention

The station could just say that it wanted to see if viewers were paying attention and to look for an inappropriate picture in every newscast. Ratings could skyrocket!

On the post: RIAA Prefers Customers Who Buy A Little To Pirates Who Buy A Lot

DanZee ( profile ), 15 Nov, 2012 @ 02:10pm

Extinction

The bottom line is the recording industry doesn't want to admit to the facts because it sees its dinosaur business falling apart. Recording companies are actually in the retail business, not the music business, and it didn't understand what its business would be like without retail. They needed to adapt just like sheet music publishers did a century ago. Music publishers stopped printing sheet music and started collecting royalties for their songwriters. Recording companies need to give up their notion of distributing plastic disks and concentrate on promoting MUSIC not records.

On the post: Is Using A Single Lyric From A Musician You're A Fan Of 'Theft' Or 'An Homage'?

DanZee ( profile ), 07 Nov, 2012 @ 02:01pm

Money

He just thinks he's going to make a million dollars from Taylor. Look at what happened to the Katy Perry song where Snoop Dog "talked" the Beach Boys' line "Don't you wish they could all be California Girls?" The record company took Snoop Dog off the album and put out a Snoop Dog-less version!

On the post: John Mellencamp: Thou Shalt Not Permit The Internet To Derail Our Gravy Train

DanZee ( profile ), 01 Nov, 2012 @ 12:07pm

Old School

Well, Mellencamp must have actually gotten some royalty checks back in the day from his publishing company and his record company. But he should talk to the 98% of artists and bands who never saw anything but advance money from their record company and meager royalty checks from their publisher. Because of file sharing, bands are able to get bigger crowds to their concerts and charge higher ticket prices. Concert money is the highest it's ever been. If you want to make some money, give away your old stuff and get out and tour. Otherwise, as someone blogged about above, the 20-somethings have never even heard of you and they won't be going to your concerts.

On the post: The Proof That Movies Won't Get Made Any More Is That… More Movies Are Being Made Today

DanZee ( profile ), 01 Nov, 2012 @ 11:58am

Hollywood always complaining

Hollywood is always complaining about something. Pirates are stealing our movies. Film production has moved to Canada. Special effects and animation companies have moved offshore. DVD sales are down. Ticket sales are down. Production costs are up. Etc.

It never talk about the real problems. Most movies are crap. Ticket prices are too high. Hollywood executives are the ones moving production to Canada and overseas. 99% of movies made are unavailable for purchase or stream. Etc.

Also keep in mind that the movies available at Cannes are mostly independently financed meaning there are still plenty of people who want to invest in making movies.

On the post: Studio To Amazon Instant Video Customer: Thanks For The $$$. Enjoy Your Blank Screen.

DanZee ( profile ), 18 Oct, 2012 @ 07:26am

Re: But wait one moment...

Let's think about this. If Amazon were required to make every film ever offered available to stream in perpetuity, it would need to be able to provide a streaming service for every single film it intends to offer, and ever HAS offered, EVER! This, at the moment, is not feasible - for technological reasons, for licensing reasons (boo hiss).

If 100 customers purchase PIB, and after 6 months 99 of them have watched it and haven't watched it *again* or data shows that the average re-viewing after six months is 1 in 100 customers, should Amazon continue to offer the movie? I say no. They've provided it for a reasonable period of time and offered the customer a chance to download it.

Well, the problem with your argument is that Amazon tells you you have bought the movie to enjoy at any time indefinitely, so whether it's feasible or not, that's what the contract is.

And it's not technology unfeasible to offer this. YouTube is now having 40 hours of video being uploaded EVERY MINUTE! That's the equivalent of 100 years of movies being uploaded every 50 hours.

And other responders have talked about the criminality of a studio taking your money and then deciding to pull the movie from Amazon. It's theft, pure and simple.

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