Month: November 2009

Articles like the one below really point out to me the digital divide between the upper management of large media conglomerates and the man (and especially the teenager) on the street. Rupert Murdoch wants to block Google from indexing his news. The chairman of Sony has been quoted saying “I’m a guy who sees nothing good having come from the Internet. Period.”

The bottom line is, of course, the bottom line. Big Entertainment wants to make as much money as is can and will spend millions of dollars trying to prevent the loss of a few thousand. Yes, piracy has had a major impact. But look at it now. the RIAA and MPAA are spending millions upon millions of dollars to try and stop piracy. In the end though, they’re generating so much bad publicity, resentment and spite that they seem encourage the act they rant so much about. And the weirdest bit? Digital sales are actually going up, now that new pricing and distribution models have been introduced. It’s time the dinosaurs caught up with the times. The old bosses just don’t get it, and are so entrenched in the “good old times” that they can’t even begin to comprehend that those rules just don’t apply any more.

Murdoch may block Google searches

Rupert Murdoch has said he will try to block Google from using news content from his companies. The billionaire told Sky News Australia he will explore ways to remove stories from Google’s search indexes, including Google News. Mr Murdoch’s News Corp had previously said it would start charging online customers across all its websites.

He believes that search engines cannot legally use headlines and paragraphs of news stories as search results. “There’s a doctrine called ‘fair use’, which we believe to be challenged in the courts and would bar it altogether,” Mr Murdoch told the TV channel. “But we’ll take that slowly.”

Mr Murdoch announced earlier this year that the websites of his news organisations would begin charging for access. The target had been for all its sites to charge by June next year, but indications are that this is now unlikely. News Corp owns the Times and Sun newspapers in the UK and the New York Post and Wall Street Journal in the US.

Newspapers across the world are considering the best way to make money from the internet, particularly in a time of falling advertising revenues. The risk is that charges may alienate readers who have become used to free content and deter advertisers.

Source: BBC

I’ve been lusting after a SmartPhone for a while now, and until the Android phones get some serious real-world use and reviews, the best money is still on the iPhone, even if it means selling your soul to the devil. I was really looking forward to seeing what Orange would do, price-wise, and if that would start a small price war.

Orange, you’re a bunch of stupid, stupid, stupid wankers.

The Guardian ran an article about the tariff comparisons and, in a nutshell, there is less than a quid’s difference between the two. What’s worse is that Orange, in their usual shoot-yourself-in-the-foot mentality, have decided to put a 750MB data download cap on the contracts. They have later mentioned on the Beeb that they’re “re-thinking” this policy after it caused a small bit of uproar in their potential user base… Idiots.

What’s the deal killer for me though, is that Orange’s terms and conditions for its mobile internet ban applications like Spotify, Facebook and YouTube.

In the company’s T&Cs, it says: “Not to be used for other activities (eg using your handset as a modem, non-Orange internet based streaming services, voice or video over the internet, instant messaging, peer to peer file sharing, non-Orange internet based video). Should such use be detected notice may be given and Network protection controls applied to all services which Orange does not believe constitutes mobile browsing”.

Orange has, however, commented to the BBC – saying: “We do recognise that iPhone customers will use popular streaming services such as YouTube, Spotify etc. As a result we do not intend to apply network protection controls to anyone, as long as they are within their usage allowance. The T&Cs are in place to reserve the right to restrict access should they continue to exceed our Fair Usage policy, and our other Mobile data users suffer a reduced data experience as a result”.

So yeah. That’s my main reason to buy an iPhone gone out the window. And having to rely on the good graces of Orange not to do something terminally stupid? Not going to happen.

*Sigh*

I’ll keep my much-battered LG for now and hope Vodafone have more than two braincells they can spare and/or that Android really takes off.