Universe’s Tech Blog

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Sony’s Phil Harrison has admitted that the company “overreached” with its decision to include a Blu-ray drive in PlayStation 3.

Referring to the shortages of blue diodes that forced Sony to postpone the console’s European launch until March, Harrison told Eurogamer’s Rob Fahey, “we have overreached in production of the Blu-Ray component - I can’t deny that”.

“But that’s the price you pay for adopting brand new, leading-edge technologies that will be future proof. We will resolve those issues - we are already catching up.”

“We will continue to catch up on the production, and as you know, we haven’t changed our full-year forecast of six million units [by March 2007], so we’re only talking about a ramp-up issue. We’re not talking about the fundamental design of the product itself,” he added.

“There’s no denying that we’ve had some very public challenges,” he had said. “Today, it looks like a very difficult situation - but in the weeks, months and years to come, this will pale into zero.”

Speaking as part of an interview being serialised on Sony’s semi-official Three Speech blog, Harrison also addressed the issue of HDMI’s late inclusion in the lower-end PlayStation 3, the 20GB model.

“The reason for the change was in reaction to a market trend, which is that much more displays are being sold with HDMI, earlier, than had been previously forecast. Not just Sony, but all the other TV manufacturers,” he said.

“Although we didn’t say it at E3, I think that the unspoken assumption was that we would always merge everything into HDMI eventually. We just made that decision earlier.”

The Supreme court has decided that T-Online, one of the largest ISPs in Germany has to delete all IP logs to guarantee the privacy of their customers. This ruling makes it impossible for anti-piracy organizations to trace an infringing IP-address back to a customer of T-Online, once their dynamic IP address has changed.

The decision (German) does not mean that T-Online is now obliged to delete all their IP-logs, the customers first need to complain. But, if they ask T-Online to delete their IP-logs, the ISP has no other choice than to comply. A lawyer from Frankfurt already sketched a sample letter to make this process easier.

The court ruling is the result of a case that was initiated by Holger Voss, a 33 year old man from Münster. Voss was sued for making a sarcastic comment in an Internet forum back in 2002.

After the district court and the regional court, now the Supreme court decided that T-Online has no right to store the IP-logs without a legal reason. This ruling can be considered as a huge breakthrough, and it is good to see that at least some countries still value privacy.

A Danish court ruled against the Danish ISP Tele2 and ordered to block all access to the site Allofmp3.com. According to the ruling, the ISP is willingly infringing copyright if their customers use AllofMP3 to download music.

IFPI Denmark sued the ISP, Tele2 in July. It asked the judge to force the ISP to block access to AllofMP3.com. A few days ago, the judge ruled in favor of the IFPI, but Tele2 will appeal this decision.

The verdict hasn’t been taken well by ISPs the world over. It is a milestone in the IFPI’s efforts. According to the IFPI it will be referenced in future cases, not only against Danish ISPs, but ones in other EU countries too.

The verdict could have very strong implications for the future. It clearly states that an ISP can be held liable for temporarily (milliseconds) storing infringing data on their routers. This means that ISPs can be forced to block websites, if the court decides (read: assumes) that these sites are mainly used to spread “illegal” content.

These are the most critical passages in the IFPI vs. Tele2 ruling :
# Under section 2(2) of the Danish Copyright Act, reproduction is regarded as any direct or indirect, temporary or permanent, and complete or partial reproduction in any form or manner whatsoever. Thus, any form of copying falls within the scope of section 2.
# Based on this, the Court finds that the fleeting and random fixation of the work of music in the form of electronic signals conducted in the various routers during the transmission of data packages via the Internet also falls within the scope of section 2 of the Danish Copyright Act.
# Furthermore, Tele2 cannot invoke the right of temporary reproduction under section 11a of the Danish Copyright Act, since this provision presupposes that the reproduction is based on a legal copy.

The head of a Danish telecommunications industry group told Computerworld Denmark that they “are horrified over this judgment, to say the least. It means that we must now keep an eye on what our users are doing online. And blocking user access to certain websites will never be a perfect solution.”

We had the chance to talk to Sebastian, spokesperson for Piratgruppen. Piratgruppen is the sister organization of the famous Swedish Piratbyrån, an organization whose goals are reforming current copyright law and protecting consumers’ rights. He said: “This case shows that it has never been the question if Allofmp3 were legal or not. Its part of IFPI’s more general attack on the freedom of the Internet. They have lost control over their customers, and they want it back at any price.”

“The verdict is highly controversial as it brings internet censorship to Europe. It states that ISPs are responsible for the traffic they route. In this way introducing a new paradigm, where Internet service providers are obliged to block sites that the authorities dislike. The verdict is at the same time so unclear that accusations of copyright infringement can be used to censor a long list of sites. The result is the destruction of the Internet as a free space of communication, and the realization of national borders in cyberspace.”

It’s strange how people are making such a Herculean effort to block a Russian music site when millions of scam and phishing sites remain at large. The U.S. is even going so far as to put pressure on the World Trade Organisation to deny Russia a seat on the council. All for an mp3 music site! Shouldn’t we be concentrating our efforts on more important things? Sites that actually cause financial harm to individuals? Oh wait, AllofMP3 does cause financial harm to musicians. How will (insert name here) afford her next Ferrari? Just kidding. Or am I?

As the US prepares for the launch of Sony’s Playstation 3 on November 17, Microsoft has unveiled plans to use Xbox Live! Marketplace to deliver television programs and movies to its US users from November 22nd.

This is clearly designed to compete with Sony’s heavy focus on the delivery of high definition video content using the PlayStation 3’s Blu-Ray drive, and is unsurprising considering that Microsoft has always downplayed the role of next generation optical storage in its console.

It also clears up the incongruity of releasing a console with such a heavy HD focus but no HD-DVD or Blu-Ray drive. While Sony’s focus is on distribution of content on plastic discs, Microsoft is betting on the future of digital distribution. It’s been pretty clear that Microsoft has been trying to get into the digital distribution game for many years; however its attempts so far have been underwhelming to say the least.

It’s been this inability to convince content providers of the benefits of digital distribution that spurred Intel on to create its Viiv logo program. It has also meant Microsoft has fallen behind competitors like Apple in the all important digital distribution stakes.

While the press release outlines what content will be available it doesn’t elaborate on pricing. What it does mention is that television shows will be available to own while movies will be available to rent.

This spawns numerous questions as to the ins and outs of downloads, and whether they can be transferred to PC or portable devices. Does a ‘purchase’ of a show mean ownership of the copy residing on the Xbox 360 hard drive, or will the Xbox Live account be somehow flagged to allow users to re-download content that they have paid for?

Microsoft did have two videos linked from its website, videos whose links seemed to suddenly disappear. They are still online though, and a general overview of the system can be found here as well as a montage of CBS content here.

We suspect these went AWOL because they give an indication of pricing, which as I mentioned before is not referenced elsewhere in the announcement. As an example, the video on how to use the service shows both HD and SD episodes of CSI: NY costing 240 MS points ($4) and the SD version of Batman Forever costing 340 MS points ($5.60) to rent.

Renting means that you have 14 days to watch the chosen movie, however once you start watching it you have 24 hours to finish before it disappears from your console.

It is an intriguing move by Microsoft and something that we will watch very closely as it approaches launch. With Zune and the Media Centre empowered Windows Vista both launching soon, we suspect that this is but the beachhead for a more serious and consistent distribution push by Microsoft across all its platforms.