Support Tekzilla and Blue Jeans Cables - BOYCOTT Monster Cables

I'm ready! Let's do it!

Monster can be kinda Apple-like in their use of cease and desist lawsuits, but it looks like they might've bitten off more than they can chew this time.

Several tech/gadget blogs and news sites are reporting on the back and forth legal letters between Monster and Blue Jeans Cable. BJC is a very small company that makes A/V cables, and as far as I can tell they manufacture in the USA (woot). Apparently Monster thinks that only they should be allowed to produce shielded RCA cables. They've sent a C&D letter to BJC over what they claim is patent infringement on their design.

Let's take a look:
Huh?

[sarcasm] Gee, I had a REALLY hard time figuring out which one was the Monster cable (what with the one cable having the BIG MONSTER LABEL on it)[/sarcasm]. Picture courtesy of Gizmodo.

Well the owner of Blue Jeans just happens to be a retired copyright lawyer, and his 3200 WORD response to Monster's letter is both brutal and pants-wettingly hysterical. I wont quote the whole letter here, but this was my favorite bit:

I will also point out to you that if you do choose to undertake litigation, your "upside" is tremendously limited. If you somehow managed, despite the formidable obstacles in your way, to obtain a finding of infringement, and if you were successful at recovering a large licensing fee--say, ten cents per connector--as the measure of damages, your recovery to date would not reach four figures. On the downside, I will advance defenses which, if successful, will substantially undermine your future efforts to use these patents and marks to threaten others with these types of actions; as you are of course aware, it is easier today for your competitors to use collateral estoppel offensively than it ever has been before. Also, there is little doubt that making baseless claims of trade dress infringement and design patent infringement is an improper business tactic, which can give rise to unfair competition claims, and for a company of Monster's size, potential antitrust violations with treble damages and attorneys' fees.

So to wrap up this already WAY too long post. I just started watching today's Tekzilla, and Patrick Norton had quite a bit to say about how he felt about the situation. He says boycott, and who am I to disagree. I've been tired of their price gouging for years, and every time I see gold plated, $60, six foot USB cables, it makes me want to hurt kittens.
As soon as I'm done with this post I will be removing all Monster products from Some Audio Store.

Check out what Patrick had to say (very beginning of the show):


I would highly encourage anyone looking for A/V equipment to seriously consider ANY alternative to Monster. Blue Jeans is fighting the good fight, I've always had very positive experiences with Monoprice, and for you recording folk I think Mogami Microphone cables are some of the best XLR cables you can get your hands on, and George L makes fantastic instrument cables at very reasonable prices.

And if you're really in a tight spot, Monster cables sound about as good as a wire coat hanger (wire coat hangers soon to be really expensive at Best Buy), so there you go...

***UPDATE 4/19/08***
My blogging pal Brandon Drury is joining in on the boycott as well.
He runs the Recording Review, which is an excellent source for recording information, especially those wanting to get into engineering.
You can check out his boycott blog post here:
I Will Never Buy Another Monster Cable
someaudioguy some audio guy voice over voiceover vo demo production animation recording acting producing equipment microphones cables engineering

Antitrust lawsuit against Apple?

Well, when one company occupies such a large percentage of the online audio/video market and hardware market, it's bound to come up eventually...

Information Week is reporting on Plaintiff Stacie Somers who filed suit on Dec 31 (Happy New Year?), claiming Apple maintains an illegal monopoly on the digital music market.

Apparently the major point of contention is Apple's unwillingness to support protected media from sources other than iTunes.

The complaint takes issue with Apple's refusal to support the Windows Media Audio format. "Apple's iPod is alone among mass-market Digital Music Players in not supporting the WMA format," it states, noting that America Online, Wal-Mart, Napster, MusicMatch, Best Buy, Yahoo Music, FYE Download Zone, and Virgin Digital all support protected WMA files.

The suit goes on to claim that even though the iPod is physically capable of playing protected media from sources other than iTunes, this feature is deliberately crippled in the player's software.

What I'm unclear on, and what the article doesn't really elaborate on, is the injury to the consumer.

As for the injury to consumers, the complaint says that Apple's pricing is "monopolistic, excessive, and arbitrary," citing how a wholesale $5.52 price difference between 1-Gbyte ($4.15) and 4-Gbyte ($9.67) NAND flash memory modules results in a $100 retail price difference between 1-Gbyte iPod Nano and a 4-Gbyte Nano.
If the complaint is with the software, I don't understand what the price inflation of the hardware has to do with that, other than the obvious claim of collusion with memory makers.

Another interesting point (briefly touched on) is the recent popularity of DRM free music (Sony recently caving for example), and it's unclear what impact that might have on the suit.

Apple of course has no comment.

Read the whole article here @ Information Week

News Sound Bites

Blu-Ray BD profile 1.1, any good? Only two players can use it right now anyway...

Sony sees the light, and drops DRM, is the last major label to do so!

Sirius denied merger, in the red $1.3 billion, subscribers up 38%, good year?

Chuck D wants Def Jam, has 4 point plan to fix it!

Variety: Hollywood discovers Voice Acting more than just "talking"...

CNet slams Washington Post for not correcting RIAA story.

Guardian delivers HUGE collection of niche music sites!

Upgrading your computer monitor might cause DRM conflict in Vista, block Netflix, invalidate other legitimate purchases, only bother paying customers...

Deaf Porn? (via Wired, links on following site might be NSFW)

Avoid "Red Sauce" on your iTunes, buy the real thing instead...

Sony to license Beatles for use in music, commercials, films

Not sure how I feel about this.

It’s perfectly legal, but it will still seem to some listeners like the sound of someone making off with England’s crown jewels.
Forty years and more after the Beatles changed rock music forever, their songs have truly arrived in the 21st century as part of the rap/hip-hop art form — with the express permission of their publishers. Although there are hundreds of covers of ”Yesterday,” “Something” and the rest, this approach of ”interpolation” — essentially rerecording a portion of a song — of the Beatles’ compositions represents new access to the most famous catalogue in the world. These developments may ultimately signal a fresh attitude toward Beatles masters appearing in everything from commercials to movies.

That's not true. I don't like this idea.

read more | digg story

MSN via AP, Thanks Mrs. Audio Guy!!!

Whole Ton of Music News...

So I was reading through Idolator today, and a couple stories struck me as interesting.

Both Kanye and 50 Cent are seeing decent success with the release of their respective albums. Currently though Kanye is outselling by a sizable distance (400,000 units to Fiddy's 300,000). So even though 50 took it too the streets to advertise, it looks like Kanye will win this one. I'm glad. I don't really care that much for either, but now we'll get to see if 50 Cent will keep his promise to never record again if Kanye beats him.


To follow that up here's Kanye's new video:

I kinda hate it. Late Registration had this great "becoming a man" vibe for me. If this is indicative of Kanye's new work, I'll stay far away. I'm just not that hyped up on another rapper telling me how much money they have, that they "got mine", and even telling me "You're Welcome" for all the joy they've brought into my life. Thanks but no thanks...


And lastly in "rip off Idolator" news, it looks like we'll be seeing a crackdown on Lyrics sites. This makes me mad, as we don't always get inserts with music anymore (especially downloaded), so if I want to check out the lyrics of a song I go online now. I understand the argument that these sites make ad revenue off of content they don't own the rights to, but to me it seems like a silly target to go after. It serves as free advertising for the music, fans get what they want, and the music biz didn't have to pay for any of it. Are they wanting to charge people for this service. If I have to pay for lyrics ... oh bad things ... very bad things ...

The move against lyric sites comes as the publishing business is in the midst of rolling out official online-lyric offerings through such places as Yahoo! Music and Real Networks' Rhapsody, via deals with lyric aggregators Gracenote and LyricFind.
In those deals, publishers license lyrics for online reproduction in exchange for a portion of ad revenues from the sites. Illegal lyric sites have been in operation for years, and top ad-supported sites like AZ Lyrics Universe have attracted some of the most traffic among music-related Web sites.
Industry insiders say all take-down requests at this point are "voluntary," and part of an "educational" push on behalf of music publishers to inform lyric Web sites that reproducing the words to songs without authorization is a violation of copyright law.
However, sources warn that sites that do not cooperate will be subject to cease-and-desist notices under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. DMCA notices often serve as a precursor to music-industry litigation.

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Piracy hurts Box Office? ... Even During Record Setting Summer?

There is a fantastic article up over at Ars Technica that pretty much sums up how I've felt about the MPAA/RIAA's war on "Piracy".

Despite concerns about the extent of piracy, the movie business has
pulled in record revenues this summer, earning more than $4 billion in
box revenues in the US alone.

Media by Numbers, which tracks such things, estimates that the industry will rake in $4.15 billion
(PDF) by the end of Labor Day. That's despite record-high average
ticket prices of $6.85, up $0.30 from a year ago. That's even despite
claims that piracy is on the rise, and it's harming the industry.

It couldn't be that the movies were just a lot better this year?

It goes on to talk about the lack of forward thinking for technologies. Pretty much the same trap that the Music industry fell into around Napster. If anyone had embraced mp3 back then , I don't think music would be as de-valued as it is today (at least in album form).

Watching the Movie industry scramble to come up with newer and more confusing copy protections (which are usually cracked within weeks
09-F9-11-02-9D-74-E3-5B-D8-41-56-C5-63-56-88-C0), is pretty self destructive. These measures only serve to stop average consumers from using the content in a legitimate manner. Trust me, anyone who really wants to get around these copy protection schemes will be able to, but those just looking for the convenience of popping in a cassette tape will be sorely disappointed. Something tells me it'll most likely get worse before it gets better.

It's all wrapped up in this "consumers are pirates" mentality (read here for my take on "piracy"). Just because suits can't understand what this technology means, it perpetuates this idea of everyone trying to steal from them. If they would just consider this from a consumers point of view, for just a second, they could stand to make SO much more money. I'll give you two options:

1. Drive to store. Browse limited selection. Pick best of what they have. Wait in line at cash register. Pay, and then be asked for your receipt as you leave by big burly rent-a-cop that saw you pay. Drive home. Spend about 5 minutes or so dealing with plastic wrap, stickers, tabs. Pop DVD in player. Sit through trailers. Sit through commercials. Sit through FBI Warning. Sit through commercial telling you Piracy is wrong. Get to Disc Menu. Play movie.

2. Browse for exactly the movie you want online. Wait about 3-4 hours for it to download (over broadband of course). Burn it to disc. Pop it in DVD player. DVD menu pops up. Watch Movie.

Now, obviously today option 1 is legit Best Buy style, and option 2 is file-sharing, but what if some forward thinking exec saw option 2 and said "Wow, the consumers have already created a business model for us. All we have to do is slap a price tag on it".

Let's say option one is $14.99, and option 2 were $9.99 (no packaging, no shipping, no stocking, no paying snotty employees - just pure profit after data costs) which one would you rather patron?

Check out the Ars Technica article it is a great summary of whats going on, and where we could be.

BlogMusik is Back with Legal Free Music on Demand

BlogMusik will announce tomorrow that they came to an agreement with the SACEM, clearing the service of copyright infrigement accusations. BlogMusik is a service started in France that lets you search for mp3's on the web and listen to them streaming for free.

Another site to put up there with the 10 free and legal music sites post, I linked to a while back. I love that we're seeing more and more of this. Hopefully someone will develop a more comprehensive player app, start treating this a bit more like a streaming on demand music ... thing...

read more | digg story

Google to Offer Refunds for their Premium Video Service

Quick follow up to a story I posted last week, Google will be offering refunds to customers that had purchased content through their premium video service.

"We planned to give these users a full refund or more. And because we weren't sure if we had all the correct addresses, latest credit card information, and other billing challenges, we thought offering the refund in the form of Google Checkout credits would entail fewer steps and offer a better user experience. We should have anticipated that some users would see a Checkout credit as nothing more than an extra step of a different (and annoyingly self-serving) kind. Our bad. Here's how we're hoping to fix things:"

This is all well and good, but really I'd still have liked to see some effort made at changing up this business model. I know Google's hands are tied by the studios, but some push into unlocking the DRM would've been nice. I mean, this content will just be gone once it's no longer supported.

I just find it sad that the music industry is just starting to figure out how to make money on audio again, and instead of the movie industry learning from that, we'll all just have to wait while they stumble around for a couple more years...

Read the rest here @ Google's Blog

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TRUE Piracy

I get a little frustrated when I hear RIAA and MPAA and lawyers talking about "piracy".

They seem to equate filesharing with being a pirate.

I disagree with this.

I believe the filesharing of copyrighted material is "stealing".

I believe for a person to commit an act of piracy, there must be an intent to profit off of someone else's copyrighted material.


This guy is a Pirate:



read more | digg story

Help Fight Draconian Zero-Tolerance Piracy Laws and Boycott Regal Cinemas!

Wow,
This story is starting a nice little debate over at Digg.
On the one hand, bringing a camera into a theater is kinda stealing.
On the other, the punishment seems a little way super severe for a 20 second cell phone video.

"Free Culture @ NYU is joining the call for a chain wideboycott of Regal Cinemas over their draconian punishment of a 19 year-old girl caught taping 20 seconds of the Transformers film. We demand that Regal Cinemas drop all charges against Jhannet Sejas, and that the entertainment group issue a full apology to the teen."

read more | digg story

Television Studios Embrace BitTorrent

I've been saying for a while, file sharing is not evil. File sharing is JUST a delivery method. It only matters what files are being shared.
P2P, Youtube, etc, there may be copyright violations, but I still can't believe that they don't actually serve to drive more awareness and higher sales. Album sales were never higher than the peak of Napster, and didn't start to dry up until fans were sued.

It's nice to see a few savvy execs realize that these aren't thieves, they're fans "spreading the word". It's free advertising...

"From loathing and resisting BitTorrent and the illegal distribution of their shows to encouraging downloading and leaking pilots, TV studios have a come a long way. The creator of ‘Weeds’ is stoked that someone pirated her show."

read more | digg story

Survey says: only DRM-free music is worth paying for

I don't trust surveys.

Numbers can be generated to support any claim (83% of all people know that).

Still, doesn't mean I wont link to a survey with results I agree with!

"A survey of general music consumers shows that concern about the negative effects of DRM are on the rise, and that consumers are beginning to rule out purchasing DRM'd music in big numbers."

read more | digg story

Google plans YouTube "Irrelevance" Launch for September

...or at least that's what the article SHOULD be titled...



Quick write up from Techspot:

"Google’s YouTube is preparing to launch
its long-awaited and much-promised recognition technology “hopefully by
September”, in an effort to stop copyrighted videos from being posted
on the popular video-sharing website, according to YouTube lawyer
Philip Beck."

So apparently copyrighted materials will be "fingerprinted" and content found to be violating copyright will be removed.

While I'm happy that GOOTube is policing itself, I'm still not entirely sure I love this idea. Other similar measures tend to break more content than it protects. Also I'm not entirely sure that the short clips of copyrighted content (especially of TV shows), don't serve to drive more sales of that content. Sort of analogous to the early days of Napster driving sales of CD's (until Metallica started suing their fans).

So what do ya'll think, does this drive Youtube out, or are we happy enough with skateboarding dogs to keep watching?

Here's the Techspot Article.
someaudioguy some audio guy voice over voiceover demo recording production mp3 animation

Canadian iPod levy assumes you're a criminal first, asks questions never - Download Squad

Story up over at Download Squad. Apparently:

"Canada has moved one step closer to imposing a copyright levy on every personal digital audio device sold, which would be handed over to the worlds largest music publishers as compensation for perceived piracy."

Ok, so this is good to know, but not really such a big deal IMHO. Hasn't Canada been applying the same levy to blank media for years now. As far as I knew, while this isn't to condone unlicensed file sharing, it at least "decriminalizes" it in a sense, so you wont be facing jail time or ridiculous fines.

I dont know, am I wrong here? Should Canadians be pissed that it's assumed they're criminals, so their gadgets should cost more?

Canadian iPod levy assumes you're a criminal first, asks questions never - Download Squad

Kinda Funny, RIAA should Sue Bush's Daughters for $1,800,000 in Damages

From Digg: "Mitchell Silverman, an attorney in Florida, noticed in a recent news-story that GW Bush's twin daughters presented him with a mix CD of exercise music for Father's Day. Since the record industry maintains that making and distributing mix CDs is a copyright infringement, Silverman sent their legal offices a letter on letterhead asking them to sue."

Check out the The Scrivener story, the comments are "teh hysterical".
I love the one guy that always takes things like this literally.
Anonymous:
"I'm willing to bet that every single one of you have made or received a mix tape or CD at some point in your life -- do you feel like you owe someone $1.8 mil?"

Heh-heh...love that guy.

He posts on EVERY blog...


someaudioguy some audio guy record labels piracy p2p george w bush illegal downloading ipod
read more | digg story

What Exactly ARE Your Copyright Rights?

With the RIAA and MPAA working to "teach" kids about copyright law (from their perspective of course, not an actual legal perspective), it's good to see sites like Digital Freedom pop up.

In a world where the XXAA's would prefer we not even be allowed to back up our media, or rip our own cd's for fair personal use, setting down a Consumer Bill of Rights is long over due.

First check out this write up on Ars Technica, then head over to DFU, and get the full low down.

"With the DFU initiative, Digital Freedom wants to paint a bigger picture of copyright law for students, one that is not forthcoming from the movie and music industries. "The Digital Freedom University Initiative will fight to ensure that these thousands of college-age students, who represent future artists, innovators and consumers, fully understand their rights, and have a voice in the long- term solution."
someaudioguy some audio guy voice over music production recording demo auditions

Do The Electric Slide, Violate The DMCA???

Not quite that simple, but sure why not?
We all know about and love the DMCA (sure). For those that don't, the overly simplistic explanation of the DMCA is, you are not allowed to circumvent copy protection, and you can't post copyrighted materials online. This already technically screws us on DVD's, as we're allowed to make a back up for personal use, but anything we use to make the back up (that can get around copy protection) is horribly illegal.
Now apparently if you take a video of your crazy Aunt Iris doing the electric slide (badly) at your brother-in-law Ted's wedding (and I mean come on, who are they kidding, that wedding will never last, he's only with the skank because she pretended to have that pregnancy scare right? Right? I knOw!), and post that vid on Youtube for the whole extended family to enjoy, you can get slapped around legally for that as well. CNet has a fairly concise write up on the whole bloody affair: CLICK HERE TO READ 'Electric Slide' on slippery DMCA slope And for good measure, here's a vid of people doing the electric slide badly: YAY! DMCA VIOLATION!

***EDIT***

WHOA!
Big OLD SORRY FOLKS! I totally forgot to mention that this was a write up on Idolator, so for even good-er measure I'll also post the vid that was linked on Gizmodo:




It's two...Two...TWO CLIPS IN ONE!
some audio guy someaudioguy dmca riaa copyright law youtube