this is mikel.org

Michael Boyle's weblog

  • home
  • archives
  • about
  • words

Archives for February 2004

It was obviously intentional,

February 2, 2004 by Michael Boyle

It was obviously intentional,

and it’s somewhat heartening to note that at least in the weblog world, no one doubts that the boob flash was staged. The interesting thing, though, has been the MTV and CBS reaction – they’re clearly lying, and blatantly so.

But it underlines a reality that I don’t know many people really get. ALL news about the entertainment industry is nothing but blatant lies, deception, and creative publicist media placements. I mean everyone knows that ET stories are bought and sold like nothing other than ads. But I’m talking everything, no exceptions.

The Britney/Madonna kiss? Staged. Paris Hilton “private” sex video? Staged and widely uploaded on the QT. The restaurant fight between this week’s popstars? Cooked up by somone’s agent. The really shocking thing is that Big Media thinks that we buy it, and that they can just issue a statement disavowing their knowledge to cleanse their rep.

Tags: Media

Why Puretracks will fail

February 1, 2004 by Michael Boyle

Why Puretracks will fail

In Canada we can’t yet use the iTunes Music Store, which is bad enough, the only legal download site is called Puretracks. Trouble is, when I go to the site I get the following message:

Thank you for visiting Puretracks.com
Currently our website supports Internet Explorer 5.0 and above on the
Windows operating system (Win 98SE / ME / 2000 / XP / 2003),
and is available to Canadian residents only.
We value our Mac audience, however the Windows Media player for the Mac
platform is not currently compatible with Microsoft protected audio content.
Puretracks is currently working to make our service available to Mac users.

There are several problems with this. First of all, saying you value an audience while locking them out is NOT valuing that audience. More importantly, though, I think the companies trying to make a go of online music that tie that effort to a proprietary platform are making a big mistake and can’t, in the long term, succeed with such a strategy. The encoding method used by Apple, on the other hand, is available to anyone who wishes to use it, with no approval or license required from Apple. Tying DRM to the encoding itself is a serious conceptual mistake that a lot of people are making, and no matter how many companies signed up to play in the Microsoft sandbox I don’t think they can do well.

Tags: Apple, Canada, DRM, Microsoft, Music

  • « Previous Page
  • 1
  • …
  • 6
  • 7
  • 8

search

recent

  • Diouf Article
  • Anil Dash: We’re not being alarmist enough about climate change…
  • Learning about Gutenberg
  • From the “I thought I’d heard it all” file
  • One year since his passing: The Day Prince’s Guitar Wept the Loudest

Archives

Software GNE Sports Web Google Internet Personal Media Canada Microsoft Funny Wired Web Design Design Montreal Search Email Social Networks NYTimes Browser Canadian Politics Test Business International Affairs Blogging War Music Friend Apple US Politics Copyfight Arts
Michael Boyle Blog
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Twitter

Copyright © 2000–2025 · Michael Boyle

Copyright © 2025 · Modern Portfolio Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in