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Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/06/02/letters/

Bladerunner chases VAT robot through Web 2.0

No Natalie Portman though, sadly

By Lester Haines

Posted in Letters, 2nd June 2006 13:53 GMT

Free whitepaper – Reshaping IT

Letters It's official: AllofMP3.com is illegal [1], according to the music biz. This analysis found little favour with Reg readers, as the following emails demonstrate:

So, the only decent mp3 download site is deemed illegal. This is a sad day for music. One can only hope that the music industry takes note of what allof mp3.com were offering - good quality, DRM-free music.

OK, the prices were rock-bottom, but people were still paying for it, and 44% of online music sales is a lot of dosh, even at their prices. The reason I used to use allofmp3.com was because the music was DRM-free and because I could choose a good quality encoding. It cost me about $US2 per album. I'd happily have paid more.

Howie

Forgive my legal ignorance, but could someone explain *why* it is illegal to purchase music from AllOfMp3.com? What laws are the purchaser(s) breaking by buying music? If it's OK by the Russians (and via El Reg reports this has been tested in court and they didn't have enough evidence?) then why should it be illegal in another country?

In Australia we have paralell import laws for various goods and my limited search shows that Russia has been a member of the Berne Convention since 1995, so by International standards they are playing by the rules.

At best, I hope the Russians will tell them to f*ck off, and at worst, I hope AllOfMp3.com add 5% to the cost/Mb and give that directly to the artists, bypassing the Recording Industry altogether. After all, if the music industry claims it's true, it must be bullshit.

Gavin

Why I know about allofmp3.com....

I am a registered user of their site. I have never downloaded a track as I can see the legal leap that they make that can not be made, i.e. it is legal here and you look out for whether it is legal in your country.

Why did I end up there, because I object to DRM on the tracks I have downloaded from OD2 sites. I beleive all other legitimate download sites also have the same restrictions.

I want to be able to purchase and listen to my music where and how I like and not have to count the number of times I have put it on my 1GB MP3 player or the number of times I have burnt it to CD. I have no problem with the authors knowing how many times I have done this, but I don't feel that it is right that I can only do this x times.

This kind of restrictive DRM will not deter bootleggers, but does push legitimate users towards AllofMP3 and to P2P sites (or friends who can get copies of tracks that you already own, but without DRM).

I feel strongly about this as I see that the music industry is playing at the same game as anti-virus software, i.e. spending a lot of money (which must reduce the artists and recording industries % of fees and / or get passed onto the consumer), instead of tackling the actual cause (i.e. criminals & criminality of stealing an artists music). Also, like the AV industry, they can never win as hackers are as bright as the engineers producing the DRM.

Well, I feel better now. Please feel free to contact me if you want a more lucid and less ranting explanation of the above.

JAC.

These people disgust me!, some of these poor recording artists are really struggling to keep up the payments on their Lear Jets, apparently one of them (who I can't name for legal reasons) is struggling so much he has to work almost one hour EVERY month!!. I think The Register should start a collection for them, personally I know I have way too much money and would really like to give it to those poor needy artists. If only the record industry would try a bit harder and sue a few more 12 year old girls for thousands we wouldn't have these problems.

Phil

I'm sure this comes as a huge surprise to all those trusting souls who willingly gave their credit card information over the internet to a bunch of copyright infringing russians.

Lorez

Ah, the one dissenting voice, crying in the wilderness...

Venturing boldy now into the wonderful world of Web 2.0, Professor Sir Tim Berners-Lee recently gave forth [2] as to how said utopia could improve web accessibility:

Nice to see Prof. Berners-Lee ensconcing himself firmly in the "soft 'n fluffy" camp where I always thought he belonged.

As with most starry-eyed idealists, he's overlooking the stonking great issue here. Going out of your way to provide disabled access at source level costs effort to address a small minority of your potential audience. The only way to get providers (note - small "p") to do this is to legislate. This will only cause providers to move to areas with more lax legislation as the internet is by it's very nature global.

Access considerations need to be sorted out at the client end. Yes, as in, "you want extra features, you pay for them". Harsh, but true. It's also a bloody sight more simple (e.g. the simplest solution to requiring bigger text is a bigger screen operating at the same resolution). By definition there will in the majority of cases be a required client investment that isn't fundamental to web access anyway (e. g. try doing text-to-speech with no speakers).

This is where I get roasted by the huggy-feelies, but I'll press on. I am fully aware that, by it's very nature this strategy disenfranchises the disabled of the less well off parts of the world. Let's face it, this is not a new phenomenon. In the developed world you get braille books and braille typrewriters, elsewhere you go to hell in a bucket. In the developed world you get subtitles on TV teletext, elsewhere you get to go.....get the picture? You cannot blame the internet and those who produce its content for problems that are fundamental in the world and would exist whether there was, or was not an internet. The sad part of all this is that if the effort and money Prof. Berners-Lee and his friends poured into breast-beating conferences on where it all went wrong were actually directed to some of the vast number of organisations that exist to improve the lot of the disabled, it might make a difference. You never know, they might even aquire a sense of proportion.

Thought exercise for the holier-than-thou Web crowd: How do you convince some poor sod in the Sudan who's lost a limb to a landmine that a full multimedia experience is in some way a worthwhile substitute for a prosthetic leg?

Tim

I disagree with your equating of "The Semantic Web" and "Web 2.0".

The Semantic Web is all about providing greater contextual meaning to the information that's out there, whereas Web 2.0 is a somewhat airy-fairy "user-generated content" type concept.

Wikipedia is a perfect example. It's undeniably Web 2.0, being nothing BUT user-generated content. But it's definitely not Semantic Web, as per the following example from this week's WWW2006 conference:

Can you use Wikipedia to find out the population, and name of the mayor, of Edinburgh? Yes, probably, it's likely someone will have added that information to the Edinburgh entry.

Can you use Wikipedia to find out the ten largest cities in the UK with female mayors? Almost certainly not, unless some wikipedia author somewhere has pre-compiled that list for us.

However if Wikipedia's content were marked up in Semantic Web fashion then we could point a robot at it to retrieve just that sort of information.

Cheers, Harry

Robots, eh? That's exactly what the VATman has been pointing [3] at eBay, in an attempt to claw back unpaid taxes:

"Caveat vendor: the UK taxman has unleashed a £250,000 "web robot" to track down VAT-dodging high-volume eBay traders who have absent-mindedly forgotten to register for Value-Added cash extraction.

According to thisismoney.co.uk, the "robot" in question is an advanced search engine which pinpoints said rogue traders. HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) estimates it will net £1m a year in extra VAT and "force an extra 20 businesses to register for the tax".

Those pesky VAT men will do anything to gain a bit of cash - force an extra 20 businesses to register?

Andrew

Yes, impressive stuff, isn't it?

Only a government department would think of spending £250k on something that could easily done by a few school-leavers with access to the web and a spreadsheet (or just a pocket calculator). One can only assume that VATmen don't use eBay much, or they would know that the feedback records provide a pretty effective audit trail, and you can obtain someone's address by the simple expedient of buying an item and offering to pay by cheque...

James

Check out the terms and conditions of use at the ebay website, and you will find that robots are not allowed. (section 7.4 of the user agreement). This means that special permission must be granted by ebay for HMRC to use the robot on the website.

Wouldn't it be easier for HMRC to just ask eBay for the information? eBay could charge HMRC a fee for running standard sql queries and reports on the ebay database. It would be cheaper and more profitable for both sides.

...I wonder how much money was wasted on the vat robot?

Anthony

Er, £250k.

VATman robots and eBay? LOL. All that means is if a trader knows he is going to be over the limit, he will just create two accounts and trade as two people. Unless the robot keep ordering things to check for the return addresses....

Cheers,

MAllen

Aha, the old "multiple identity" ploy. Cunning.

Hi Lester, serves em right if they had a real website they could block robots if they wanted ebay is a nuisance for people trying to sell in the normal way on line as they bloat the serp's with redirects to the same ebaystores for any search combination most of the time the items are already sold so I have no sympathy for people who use that online fleamarket if only they could pay more and more till they either give up or get a host a real website and join the market as adults. --AD

"Online fleamarket"? We like it.

Here's one you won't find on eBay yet - the forthcoming final, definitive, that's all folks version [4] of Bladerunner:

Interesting article. However, I don't know of any Bladerunner aficionados who look forward to another release of the "Director's cut".

The Director's Cut hacked off the original ending and took out the Harrison Ford voice-over. I'm not sure what the director was smoking that day when he made these hack 'n' whacks.

Having the original release on the new DVD will be most welcome.

Richard

Ridley Scott smokes cigars, we gather. Really, really big rich bloke Cuban cigars.

You can't re-release a re-release! What a joke! What happens when they release it on UMD and then in a few months time on Blu-Ray and then HD? They would be better off just remaking the damn thing and being done with it. It was a crap film anyway!

Stuart

No doubt the "Final Cut" will include scenes of a recently widowed blacksmith, who in a fit of depression builds himself his own replicant bride, then fleeing to Minas Tirith battles an army of Bladerunners lead by Frodo for the Kingdom of Heaven* in a 4 hour, Can't Find Any More Discarded Film Clippings, We Want More Money From Old Movies Cut.

*Admit it, who else bought the 3 hour 14 minute extended edition of Kingdom of Heaven, complete with such marvels as an actual Intermission scene and the obligatory introduction from the man himself (apparently he felt outdone by Peter Jackson and took the war scenes from the LOTR as a personal challenge to his previous work).

Andy

You left out a naked Natlie Portman. No sci-fi mashup is complete without our Nat with her kit off.

Or what about Jacqueline Pearce, for example?

One does not have to be a Linux programmer to have an appreciation of cinema-frozen moments of lust. But why Linux programmers in particular. Do COBOL programmers seek out DVDs of Barbarella? Are these things regionalised, so that American programmers have fantasies of Erin Gray while their British contemporaries still dream of Jan Chappell? Or possibly Jacqueline Pearce?

Though the essential timelessness of cinema means that Lauren Bacall persuaded me to practice whistling. You know how to whistle, dont you?

David

We reckon the average Linux programmer wasn't even born when Jacqueline [5] graced our TV screens in Blake's Seven. Happy days...

...and while we've still got an image of Ms Pearce in our minds, let's consider the fact that Rochdale council's pesky email filtering system doesn't much like [6] the word "erection":

Perhaps the cue for an article on why there are so many clueless f***wits who think filtering is a good idea ?

There are far superior techniques, which are both more effective, and more importantly as this article shows, do not silently drop mail (the sender will get a non-delivery notice if it is blocked).

Simon

More abysmal local authority performance, more abysmal local authority excuses trying to pass the buck onto someone else. What halfwit puts an e-mail filter in place without a) being able to monitor the e-mails coming in and going out and b) being unable to amend the naughty words list?

Answer: Rochdale Council. What utter crap they spout in this case. There are plenty of words used in construction which would trigger off an e-mail monitor - cock, butt, and screw being three of them. Had they put someone in place to manage the system sensibly they would know this.

"Manchester United" and "Wayne Rooney" should also be added to any e-mail monitor's profanity list, IMHO.

Jamie D

There are plenty of Liverpudlians who'd agree with you on that latter point.

Hi Lester, I recently bought a pen from ebay. I tried to leave feedback, commenting that "the pen is great". Ebay asked me to try again, removing the disallowed words. After careful scrutiny I realised that they didn't like my penis.

Chris

Well, that's their prerogative as far as we're concerned. Are you sure you aren't being a little hard on eBay?

Ok, you know the drill: it's Friday, so let's get down to some further top-notch frivolity, starting with the launch of MS's OneCare [7]:

Hi,

OneCare, reminds me of the hilarity caused when Wang called their customer service, WangCare...

Of course it could just be my Bedfordshire accent

Peter

Nope, it works for us too.

In the usual tradition of mocking Bill's latest efforts (hey, he can take it), I would like to claim that the best way to undermine the, no doubt, painstakingly researched product name "Microsoft OneCare" is by pronouncing it in a comedy French accent.

Think Clouseau, Kenny Everett's "Marcel Wave" etc.

Good clean fun.

CJ

Yes, we can imagine Peter Sellers turing up at Redmond with a "Alo, I am looking for ze wan care..." Delicious.

Speaking of films, it's time for a bit of "spot the classic line" in last week's letters [8] - snappily entitled "For you, Tommy, ze warez is over":

Dear Mr. Haines,

intesting article! For me it was new that Britons call Germans "Tommy". Is "Kraut" no longer en vogue? The same word, "Tommy", is in German a nickname for British soldiers. We Germans call the British "Inselaffen". You don't want to know what that means.

It is true, though, that many Germans have difficulties in pronunciating the "th" correctly (ze). At least Germans learn one, two or even more foreign languages. Not many British people to that. When I listen to BFBS (British Forces Broadcasting Service) it is ridiculous how German city names are being pronounced by the speakers. Especially the German Umlauts (ä, ö, ü, ß) are never ever been pronounced correctly. For certain cities like München and Köln different names were introduced by the British because of their inability to speak that out correctly.

I think Germany is the only nation worldwide that made an intense and long lasting impression to British people.

German police, which is internationally been regarded as one of the most efficient ones (Scotland Yard is still better, though) found out some 40,000 IP adresses. But only 3,500 were from German users. That means 36,500 were from non-German eDonkey users. These are most certainly from countries located near to Germany. (Would a Japanese user connect to server located some 15,000 km away? Not!). You can imagine that a lot of users were British. After the German police will have passed that list to Scotland Yard, any Schadenfreude will vanish.

Regards,

Martin Grotegut, Essen, Germany

As it happens, we do know what Inselaffen means, you cheeky continental monkey.

Regarding this Tommy business, we'd normally patiently explain where the reference comes from for the benefit of our German friends, but since you've been so bloody rude about the average Brit's excellent command of German, you can just go and look it up for yourselves.

Anyone fancy a quick poll? You've already consigned "mobe [9]" and "lappy [10]" to the dustbin of linguistic history, so what about the following outrage?:

Now, I know that readers of El Reg regularly rail against certain words which they feel should be expunged from the sphere of humanity and I'm sure many are rather trivial, but this time, the problem goes further and I think you Reg hacks should take note.

In the article [11] about junk science and the wisdom of chimps by Andrew Orlowski, he uses the alleged word 'groupthink'. This is not the first time I have come across this bastard hybrid but at last the last person I saw use it was an 18 year goth who had taken a short psychology course and therefore thought he knew everything there was to know about everything. What's your excuse?

It's not a word, it's a hideous mutant spawned by people who want to appear intelligent when in fact they are trying to hide the fact that they have no idea what they're talking about. It does not exist. Do not use it. In fact, the author denigrates his own article, rubbishing junk science but using the very words that are spawned by it in his well-intentioned dismissal of such pseudo-scientific fluff.

I believe that this should immediately be put to a vote of readers of the legendary Reg and let their sensibilities decide.

Yours in head shaking disappointment

Steve Pettifer

Well, what do you think?

And finally, a couple of quickies on the farmer's huge arse [12] spotted on Google Earth:

Okay he google thingy, ARSE what is the translation?

The Yake In Seattle

You mean you couldn't be bothered getting off your fanny to look it up? For shame.

My favourite story concerns another farmer in Cumbria* who was so tired of low level RAF training flights over his farmhouse he painted in large white letters across the roof of a barn 'FUCK OFF BIGGLES'

Grenville

Good show old chap. The Reg Inselaffen will be back next week with more from the Vulture Central postbag. Have a lovely weekend. ®

Bootnote

*Actually, the Biggles thing was apparently in Wales, and the message slightly less rude. There's a lovely picture here [13], and ta very much to Bill Longley for the clarification.