Software

Reservoir Dogs Game Pre-Review: EIEF06
It’s been a cult movie staple for over 15 years but, from Friday, you’ll be able to interact with Mr Pink, Mr White, Nice Guy Eddie and the rest of Quentin Tarantino’s be-suited robbers as Eidos launches Reservoir Dogs, the game.
Attendees of the EIEF were treated to a special preview on Tuesday by members of the Volatile Games development team.
Dressed appropriately in black suits, Ben Fisher and Ian Pestridge delivered a presentation that was every bit as slick and sharp as they game they have designed.
Fisher conceded that Reservoir Dogs was perhaps not an obvious choice of movie for a game version. It is dialogue heavy, there’s a lot of characterisation and only a few main locations. On the other hand there are excellent elements on which to build a good gaming experience; a heist, tons of gunplay, dramatic escapes and multiple different points of view.
So, what’s it like?
From the start Reservoir Dogs is a smart, hip game. From its snappy animated menus to its sleek black, white and red colour scheme, the whole look and feel of the menus echoes the retro stylings of the movie.
Each level is preceded by a recreation of a classic scene. A total of 15 minutes of movie time was recreated digitally, complete with the razor-sharp dialogue for which Tarantino became famous. The recreations set the tone beautifully before players are thrown into a variety of violent situations from which they must escape to progress to the next level.
We said the graphics were realistic but so is the dialogue and each level is accompanied by excerpts, with each character having over 200 lines.
The team demonstrated Level 1, a ‘shoot-em-up’ with Mr Blue’s escape from the heist. In superbly realistically rendered animation, the player must exit the scene of the failed heist as cops close in. So far, so standard ‘shoot-em-up’, but there is a twist. The development team has included different styles of play so you can choose to just go bananas and shoot everybody (the psycho approach) or you can negotiate, barter or just intimidate your way out of the situation (the professional approach). This addition adds variety and depth to the gaming experience; in fact Ben Fisher reckoned it’s possible to complete the entire game without firing a single bullet. The game rates your style at the end of each level and cleverly adjusts to respond to your approach, allowing you to invent your own reservoir dog.
So what about variety?
The game remains faithful to the Tarantino ‘universe’ but it would have been very linear and predictable if they had just followed the movie. Instead they have taken elements from the movie and developed additional material. Thus players can engage in the escape from the heist, take part in car chases and go to places only mentioned in passing in the movie. The team has created individual timelines for all the characters for the whole 24 hours of the movie and players can chop around, moving back and forwards in time, from one event to another.
The new material has been thoroughly researched to fit with the look and feel of the original. As Fisher pointed out, Tarantino has never directed a car chase so they were careful to draw inspiration from the sort of 70’s movies (like Vanishing Point) that would have influenced him.
This approach includes the music. Eidos licensed all the original music from the film but more was required to fit the length of the game. Some was written in-house and additional tracks were licensed including some stupendously funky 70’s driving music to accompany the car chase.
And what about that ear cutting scene?
Reservoir Dogs the game would hardly have been complete without the single most (in)famous scene from the film, the ear cutting scene. Sure enough, it is in there and, yes, you can cut off the cop’s ear (though it’s not obligatory, especially if you are playing pro style). However, Fisher was quick to point out, the team chose to carry this out in the style of the movie so the camera cuts away as the event happens allowing your imagination to do the work, just like Tarantino did.
End credits
There’s no doubt, Eidos and the Volatile Games team have gone to a lot of trouble to craft a game that’s true to the spirit of the original movie. They have lovingly recreated the atmosphere and the music but have had the imagination to extend the world beyond that in the movie to provide a rich and varied gaming experience. The multi-style mode of playing adds further depth and dimension making the game play differently every time. The whole package is as imaginative and witty as the original, play it and you’re bound to be spouting Tarantino-esque dialog for months to come.
Pre/order: Amazon UK
Reservoir Dogs (PS2)
Reservoir Dogs (Xbox)
Reservoir Dogs (PC DVD)
Pre/order: Amazon US
Reservoir Dogs (PS2)
Reservoir Dogs (Xbox)
Current trailer
24 August, 2006
Commodore 64 Emulated In Flash
How fantastic is this? A couple of turbo-code monkeys have written a Commodore 64 (C64) emulator that runs within Flash on a Web browser.
Darron Schall from Pennsylvania and Claus Wahlers from Brazil have been working together to create this beauty.
The Flash code emulates the C64 main CPU, the 6510 (a derivative of the 6502) and most of the other chip-ery, allowing the loading of old Commodore 64 programs and run them.
The C64 was a revelation when it was first released in 1982, opening up personal computing to a whole new generation, offering the shockingly large 64k of RAM and the ability to load and save programs to a trusty audio tape recorder.
Software emulating old computer circuitry has been around for quite some years, with MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) being a very strong example that’s coming up for its 10th birthday.
MAME was a huge revelation when it first arrived, letting users load up the ROM sets from old arcade machine and play them as if it was on the original hardware.
One of the problems with the original approach was a need to write a different version of the code for each hardware platform. This, over time, lead to MAME on Dos, MAME32 on Windows xMAME for unix-based machines, and MacMAME for Mac OS X.
The benefit of writing it in Flash is that, by writing it for a software platform (Flash), it should work on all machines that run Flash, without it needing to be re-written.
All of the emulators are a clear demonstration that the power of hardware has increased tremendously.
Software like FC64 reminds us that any hardware, or software that runs on it can, in time, be emulated as processors continue to become powerful. Beyond the fun of video games, security system can also be emulated, an argument used by those who oppose their blind use.
FC64
FC64 emulator demo
(via BoingBoing)
24 August, 2006
Inanimate Alice Episode 3 Premieres: EIEF06
Inanimate Alice is a story about a games developer called Alice created by Kate Pullinger, Ian Harper & Chris Joseph. The story tells of her childhood and how she created and played games as she grew up in different countries around the world. Inanimate Alice a multi part episodic, interactive game which is available online at inanimatealice.com.
The story was written by author Kate Pullinger (author of The Piano) in conjunction with script writer Ian Harper & multi media designer Chris Joseph. The idea grew out of a David Puttnam project Harper was working on. Pullinger brought in Joseph, whom she had worked with previously on the game The Breathing Wall.
The team have a well developed concept for the sequence (which has just reached episode 3) which should see 10 episodes of the game with potential for development into other media including graphic novels, a multi-player online environment and, ultimately, film.
The newly completed episode 3 was premiered for the audience. Part game, part film, part text, Inanimate Alice utilises a wide range of styles and techniques to engage its audience. Combining collages with CGI action, stylised animation within animation, and narrative text overlaid on the visuals, Inanimate Alice is visually extremely attractive. There’s also a clever soundtrack that marries pumping action music with atmospheric effects, electronic noise and interference to achieve a rich multimedia experience.
In a question and answer session the trio revealed that the project is aimed at the widest possible audience (especially non-gamers) but is currently most popular amongst 16-35 year old females.
Pullinger is also appearing at the Edinburgh Book Festival later this week. Unfortunately Inanimate Alice will not be on her list of topics. “Book publishing” she said, “is decades behind in terms of interactivity and convergence. Interactive narrative content is not of interest to literary festivals.”
Which is a shame, as Pullinger is amongst a new breed of writers who is happy producing material for a variety of media including print, radio, movies and now games.
For the moment, Inanimate Alice remains a Web project, but the team are looking at all possibilities for developing the project. The suggestion by one audience member that players could direct the plot in future episodes was warmly welcomed and Pullinger cited tv’s Lost as the type of experience the team were modelling Alice on. A new type of narrative with a strong story at the core and lots of spin off projects and interactive elements to keep the audience interested.
The session finished with a panel discussion, including Rosanna Sun, on movie and game convergence. There was a broad consensus that content was the most important aspect of any media project. Technology, while important, was felt to be secondary to the telling of a good story.
22 August, 2006
How The Matrix Video Game Was Developed: EIEF06
The second day of EIEF got underway with seminar on media convergence with the first speaker being Rosanna Sun of Velvetelvis.
Sun chatted about the genesis of Velvetelvis in the Wachowski brothers’ Matrix movies, giving an interesting insight into the beginning of the convergence of movies and games from the Hollywood perspective.
As a film producer, Sun was involved in producing The Matrix movie sequels when the Wachowski’s asked her to make video game at same time. They wanted to treat it as part of the movie, integrated with all the production elements of the movies.
Rosanna’s task was to coordinate the content across all the different companies and media involved in the whole Matrix project to turn it into a game. She told the audience of the huge effort required in getting all the different aspects to come together.
Each different media (movie, games etc) has different production schedules and sharing ‘assets’ amongst them became an enormous scheduling problem. Visual fx shots are typically done last in movies, for games they needed to be ready 6 months prior to launch. This meant some sequences had to be literally re-directed from movie sequences.
On the positive side, this process became a creative driving force, making all involved (visual fx team, set designers and wardrobe) think more creatively. Imaging material for the virtual game worlds allowed the teams to stretch their imaginations without being held back by the requirements of the physical world.
After her experiences on The Matrix, Sun realised she was working in a new world of convergence. She created a company with her partner (a visual effects designer) to do a further Matrix game. When that fell through, they decided to continue to utilise their hard won, cross-disciplinary knowledge to develop projects across the games and movie industries.
The company has worked on a variety of major projects including Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, 6 legged freaks, Matrix games, Swordfish, The Relic, Fantastic Four and Xmen 3.
During Q&A
Following the presentation, Sun took some questions from the audience. When asked about the possibilities of developing into mobile games, she revealed that Velvetelvis was about to launch a viral mobile game in conjunction with the movie Crank. The game will allow players to rack up a score, arcade-style, and then forward it to their friends.
When a questioner observed that he had never seen a great movie become a great game or vice versa, Sun said “it’s about making a great story rather than game or movie. You need to step back from the product, think about the IP (intellectual property) and the content.”
22 August, 2006
Greenphone Announced by Trolltech
Trolltech may not be well known, but they make a software product called Qt (pronounced “cutie”) which is used by many. It’s a package that allows developers to write code that works across several platforms (Windows, Linux and MacOS X) so only one set of API’s (Applications Programming Interfaces) need to be learnt.
Qt is used both commercially and in the open source community (it’s the basis for the Linux KDE windowing environment). Commercially there are several well known programs using it, including Skype and various packages from Google and Adobe.
Qt has been around for quite a while and more recently introduced Qtopia a complete Linux development environment, using Qt as a basis for its user interface.
Qtopia comes in several editions including a phone edition which is used by several vendors including Motorola. It uses Embedded Linux (version 2.4) and then Qtopia sits on top, offering various standard interfaces (including the user interface and standard Qtopia applications like calendaring, contacts, etc).
Qt and Qtopia are designed to make writing applications easy, however it’s still a relatively complicated task. Supporting lots of flavours of hardware further complicates things.
Trolltech Greenphone
In addition to Qt and Qtopia, Trolltech have come out with a mobile development device, known as the Greephone. Unsuprisingly it has a green casing, just so you don’t forget. The phone only supports GSM/GPRS.
The Greenphone comes with Qtopia Phone Edition 4.1.4 and the Linux kernel 2.4.19.
The hardware consists of a touch-screen and keypad UI QVGA LCD colour screen, Intel XScale 312 MHz PXA270, 64MB RAM & 128MB Flash, Mini-SD card slot, Broadcom BCM2121 GSM/GPRS baseband processor, Bluetooth and Mini-USB port.
Though it’s not designed to be used in production, it is designed to allow developers to rapidly prototype applications that can then be moved on to a real phone before expensive prototypes are made.
Applications, new kernels and versions of Qt and Qtopia can be loaded on to the Greenphone through the mini USB connection.
The Greenphone comes with a complete Qtopia SDK (software development kit) which provides a complete environment for developing and modifying application software for Qtopia Phone Edition. It can produce packages that run on the Greenphone itself or run through the virtual phone included with the SDK.
There are already over 4 million Linux phones utilising Trolltech’s software, this just allows manufacturers to develop Linux applications and get them to market more rapidly.
The mobile phone market is already a crowded space with Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0 and Symbian dominating the market. Maybe this will give Linux the mobile boost it needs to push it into the mainstream.
17 August, 2006
Edinburgh Interactive Entertainment Festival: Strong Lineup
You’ve no doubt have noticed that we had the Edinburgh Interactive Entertainment Festival (EIEF)
As a reader of Digital-Lifestyles, you well know that Convergence isn’t just about your mobile phone and toaster becoming one (!), it’s also about content types coming closer together and, in some cases blending. At the extreme, we think it’s arguable that TV could be in a whole heap of trouble when video games become photo-realistic. Why watch TV when you can _be_ in the programme?
We went to EIEF last year and were impressed with the quality of the sessions and the delegates, who were all jolly friendly.
As you’d expect, we’ll be covering it from the ground next week, not hiding in an office waiting for the press releases to arrive like many other publications.
Set over Monday 21st and Tuesday, there’s a host of strong conference sessions arranged, covering a wide range of subjects, not just the obvious. Here’s our highlights.
In the Monday Keynote David Gardner, Executive V-P and COO of EA’s World Wide Studios is delving in to the challenges and opportunity of developing for the next gen consoles, such xbox360, Sony PS3, Nintnedo Wii.
The UK press has occasionally thrown a fit about the realism of video games, in some cases leading to the changing of blood colour in some games. This is basis of the Green Blood vs Red Blood session which will debate the implications of HDTV and photorealistic graphics for the games industry. Wise to debate it in advance, rather than wait for the censors.
Ben Sawyer of Serious Games explores “Games That Heal ï¿½ the medicine of interactive software.” Examining how games are being used to help patients with conditions ranging from cancer to post-traumatic stress disorder.
To end off the night, Edge will be holding their Award and networking party at the Jam House.
Tuesday
If you’re living your Digital-Lifestyle, you’ll be aware of Machinima – where computer games are used to create films. One of the original was Red vs Blue where the footage was grabbed from Xbox mega-title Halo and voiced-over to create a drama. This has now grown to have many episodes – at least 83 we’re aware of.
In the session, find out just how far Machinima has gone into the mainstream and yet has managed to retain its rebellious and experimental approach.
The icing on the cake of this session is the world premiere of a live machinima performance from Rooster Teeth, the creators of above mentioned Red vs Blue.
The other session highlight is ‘When Alice Met Elvis’, which explores taking games beyond the screen, into other medias and how it impacts the creative process.
Author Kate Pullinger will unveil the World Premiere of the third part of her Inanimate Alice series, a ‘unique kinetic experience’, part game, part novel, part film.
When you want to bring all of those elements together, it’s not something that’s going to happen if you leave it to the last moment. To bring this into focus the founders of Velvetelvis will share their experiences in trying to encourage the “fusion” of all potential commercial elements ï¿½ film, games, music, web, books – at the very beginning of a new project.
As if all of that wasn’t enough to keep you busy, there’s a series of screenings at the Odeon cinema on Lothian Road of Lord of the Ringsï¿½ Online: Shadows of Angmar; Reservoir Dogs video game; Spongebob Squarepants; and Crackdown from Dave Jones, creator of the Grand Theft Auto series and Lemmings.
We told it was a strong line up, didn’t we? See you there.
EIEF
15 August, 2006
Opera Widgetize: Make Instant Widgets
When we saw the Opera Widgets launch with Opera 9 Beta, discussion went around the team that this sounded like a good idea, and we’d create one for Digital-Lifestyles. But you know what it’s like when you’re constantly staying on top of convergence news and being showered with great gadgets to review – things like News Widgets slide down the list of things that need to be done.
Having said all of that – it’s with great excitement that we can announce the arrival of the Digital-Lifestyles Widget for Opera browsers. [Sadly FeedBurn, our RSS handler, appears to be being a bit flaky at the moment. If so, you may not see the news.]
How the heck have we found time to do this? Well, with a couple of mouse clicks actually, thanks to Opera releasing Widgetize, this afternoon, a simple to follow, form-driven way to make simple Widgets.
By stepping through four screens and typing in a couple of fields, you quickly get to the finished product.
There’s thirteen different skin designs currently available with any RSS or Atom feed simply turned in to a Widget.
Not slow on making the most of online social sites, if you don’t have your own feed setup, there’s simple integration with Yahoo! 360, Blogger, LiveJournal, Xanga, MSN Spaces, WordPress and Opera’s own community site, My Opera.
So get yourself in gear, install the Digital-Lifestyles News Widget, or get making your own.
Opera Widgetize!
19 July, 2006
Fizz Traveller 2.3 For Pocket PC/MS Smartphone Review (69%)
Wedging its foot firmly into the territory currently ruled by rival application World Mate, Fizz Traveller for Pocket PC is a mobile travel companion, compatible with Windows Mobile 2003/2005 and Smartphone editions.
As befits its travel aspirations, the program comes stuffed with information useful to globe trotting types, offering world time, international weather information with forecasts, alarms, to-do lists, Internet-updated currency conversions and more.
Loading up the application on our i-mate JAM, we were taken to a large clock with some daft confetti stuff stuck all over it that promptly sent us looking for the ‘how we did get rid of this’ option.
A rummage through the menus revealed that the developers were pretty keen on the eye candy, with customisation options letting users fiddle about with various themes, background images, clock styles and colours.
Great if you like that kind of thing, of course, but we’d be happier with just one clean, crisp and professional interface than a load of bubbly, baubly spinning things.
We found the overall interface a bit of a pain too, with an animated menu system needlessly complicating matters, although we were impressed with the information that could be (eventually) displayed.
On a more positive note, the Today plug-in that ships with Fizz Traveller was a well designed addition that could be configured to show the current date/time and weather information, and cycle through other modes.
Talk about the weather
The program comes with 58,000 pre-programmed world wide cities, with the option to display more detailed time and weather for six user-selected ‘Favourite Cities,’ along with a pretty little map.
Sadly, you couldn’t zoom into the map so it wasn’t the greatest of travel aids.
The weather information was, however, impressively comprehensive, offering min/max temperatures, precipitation, forecast maps, satellite maps and 2/7 day forecasts, as well as an “Airport Delays” option which didn’t seem to be particularly useful.
More useful was the currency conversion section which, like the weather forecasts, could be configured to update wirelessly at preset intervals.
Wrapping up the feature set was a mixed bag of conversion tools for temperature, length, weight, area, volume, speed, power and torque.
We can’t recall the last time we found ourselves needing a program to convert horsepower into Kilowatts when we were on out travels, but we’ve certainly got one now.
Conclusion
There’s a lot to like about Fizz Traveller, with the program offering lots of useful, travel-related functionality and a well executed Today plug in.
We liked the weather maps and there’s no denying that the interface has been buffed and polished up to a very high standard with lots of options for folks who like to customise their app.
The only problem was that in their quest to produce the prettiest travel application around, usability occasionally flew out of the window.
Compared to its chief competitor, WorldMate 2006, the program often felt clunky and slow, and at times we found the pop up navigation system downright annoying.
It’s not all bad news for the Fizz crew though, as the program offers similar levels of functionality to their rival but retails for substantially less ($20 against WorldMate’s $35), so we’re sure some will be prepared to put up with the quirks of the interface to save themselves a few bob.
Features: 80%
Ease of use: 60%
Value For Money: 75%
Overall: 69%
Fizz Traveller 2.3 for Pocket PC
14 July, 2006
Why I Still Love The Palm: A Short Guide To Best Treo Apps
Here’s the third in Mike’s three part review of why the Palm Treo rocks his boat.
Iambic Agendus application on the Palm OS.
When partnered with the optional Agendus Windows Desktop application, the program is a masterclass in interface and usability design and is – in our opinion – a good enough reason to move to the Palm OS alone if you’re after a world class PIM.
Despite the enhanced feature set, more powerful processor and more modern software, I constantly found Windows Mobile to be a frustrating experience, with many functions unnecessarily complicated.
Word!
Even with Microsoft’s own products, the Palm did a better job, with the bundled Documents to Go application on the Treo proving far more effective at handling Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents than its Microsoft Mobile counterpart.
When it comes to email the Treo ended up streets ahead again, with the hugely powerful third party email application Chatter Email beating everything I’ve seen on the Pocket PC platform (the less said about Palm’s built in Versamail client the better, however.)
It’s the same story with SMS, with the built in text messaging interface on the Palm remaining streets ahead of its Pocket PC rivals, with the superb auto-threading conversations making it easy to keep track of text conversations. It really is a delight to use.
Being a mature platform, the Palm OS has grown has a ton of capable, office-related, third party programs for taking care of finances and budgeting, databases, project management and travel etc., so you’re sure to find something for your needs.
In our next installment, I’ll be looking at Palm’s connectivity and having a moan about the lack of Wi-Fi.
14 July, 2006
Music Industry Grouping Proposes Digital Age Copyright
“A wide music industry grouping representing the independent record industry, composers and songwriters, musicians and performers, music managers, music publishers and their collecting societies hosted a crucial round table meeting yesterday, chaired by the Smith Institute, to debate the creation of a progressive and innovative copyright framework that is fit for purpose in the digital age.”
Which is the official line anyway, whether it has any relevance to the real world is a mute point and potentially completely misunderstood.
After the “industry” round table, a press conference was held, with the following representatives: –
Adam Singer (Chief Executive MCPS PRS Alliance) (below right), Alison Wenham (Chairman, Chief Executive, AIM) Dave Rowntree (Drummer with Blur + Ailerons) Andy Heath (Managing Director 4AD Music, British Music Rights Board) David Ferguson (Chairman, British Academy of Composers & Songwriters) Doug D’Arcy (AIM Board, Managing Director Songlines) Horace Trubridge (Assistant General Secretary Musicians Union) Jazz Summers (Chairman Music Managers Forum, CoFounder Big Life Management)
A value recognition right
This is the whole premise of their argument. Anyone involved in the distribution of content (whether they are aware of it or not) should be considered part of the value chain and therefore subject to licensing constraints.
The Copyright Levy laws were designed for analogue, but digital changes everything, control has passed to other players (ISPs, mobile operators, iPods etc) rather than traditional channels with physical controls. So the intent is to license these distributors. This will of course require working with them, understanding their business models etc.
It’s all about a mechanism for creating a better working relationship with distribution channels.
The groups are already lobbying government to change the law so that these new distribution channels will now be considered actual distributors as the content is adding value to the distributor, therefore the industry should get a cut of the added value.
It’s estimated that £0.5 billion has been lost in license revenues due to illegal sharing. Current copyright law actually forbids copying a CD to iPod (or any other kind of digital copy).
They agree there is more work to do and they’ll publish the report in September including transcripts of discussions held yesterday morning.
These issues don’t just apply to the music industry and they’re gaining traction from other content industries and internationally.
Statistics are everything
One of the major stats used to justify their argument is that 60% of Internet traffic is file sharing, initially it was stated that this was “music sharing”, but this was changed to general sharing. There is a lot of P2P traffic and though a lot of it is probably music sharing, services such as Skype and other legal P2P services will also make up a good percentage.
They then utilise these figures that as so much traffic is P2P, users are signing up for broadband because of file sharing i.e. P2P is adding value and therefore attracting users and they want a cut of the added value.
It’s actually probably the other way around, people sign up for broadband for many reasons. Nowadays, because it’s given away free as a bundle with other services, but also because it’s cheaper than (or near enough the same price as) dial-up. Customers then find P2P is easy and therefore use it.
The margins on broadband are extremely low, Carphone Warehouse (CW) is actually losing money on every customer they sign-up, EVERY month (this will eventually change when they install their own kit in BT’s exchanges). They are buying market share. P2P doesn’t help their situation at all, they’d much rather not have users eating up all CW’s bandwidth which costs them lots of money.
Bulldog have just pulled out of the retail market and have decided to concentrate on the wholesale side and compete with BT Wholesale. Though part of this is that their parent Cable and Wireless (C&W) are trying to consolidate to fewer larger customers (i.e. broadband suppliers who then have lots of customers), part of the problem with having retail customers is you have to constantly upgrade your network to meet their growing bandwidth needs, and this gets very expensive very quickly.
With a wholesale customer base, they only need to provide a certain amount of bandwidth per customer to the retailer, who then has to provide connectivity elsewhere and meet the growing bandwidth requirement pains.
Retailers using BT Wholesale have very small margins, equating to maybe a few pounds per month to provide all the back-end services that customers demand.
Broadband to all
Broadband is becoming a commodity and it’s the value added services that will generate revenue, and what are the value add services? Licensed content, initially likely to be TV (as in IPTV), but other services will follow.
In France broadband is available for 18 Euros per month for 24Mb/s ADSL2+, this includes Internet access, basic TV channels and all you can eat national French dialing. Yes, the companies support P2P, not because they want to, but because customers demand it. The basic service will just about pay for itself, or even make a loss, but then once customers have the broadband in place, they buy premium content and that’s where revenue comes in.
This model is coming to the UK, BT’s broadband hub service is their first foray into an IP connected world, BT Vision (IPTV) is coming.
Stealth Tax
The music industry has gotten very bad press for suing consumers, so now they are trying to make the problem go away by taxing (licensing) the distribution channels and hiding the effect from users themselves.
The distribution channels would rather the traffic wasn’t on their networks in the first place, but are being put in a position (which could be driven through by law) where they have to pay for their users’ (mis)use of the network where margins are incredibly low to start with.
This means the channels will have to put up pricing (which means users notice) or absorb the costs themselves and they make even lower margins.
The music industry needs to rapidly have sensible discussions with the ISPs and other distribution channels to sort out the real economics of distribution or it’s likely a stealth tax will come into force which could kill the distribution industry in doing so, which wouldn’t benefit anybody.
13 July, 2006