RealNetworks has decided to settle the lawsuit against them over the RealDVD software. RealDVD was software that would allow one to legally make a computer copy of their DVDs to play back on a media centre pc. RealNetworks also intended to sell a set-top box which would allow the same function as the software and would contain a hard drive that would hold approximately 70 or 80 DVDs. The set-top box would allow you to insert a DVD, copy it to the box, and then place the DVD in storage for safe keeping. One could use the set-top box to browse through the whole DVD collection stored on the unit without needing to insert any DVDs for playback. RealDVD actually added the DRM back to the copy stored on the media centre or the set-top box. The RealDVD software and the set-top box are dead. Real Networks agreed to settle the lawsuit and will pay $4.5 million to the studios that brought the suit against them for court costs and refund the purchase price of about 2,700 customers who bought the product if they agree to uninstall the software and stop using it. The software retailed for $30.00.

It is not a case of piracy that bothers the recording studios. The Digital Rights Management (DRM) encryption has been circumvented for some time now and anyone who wants to copy DVDs to a media centre pc has no problem doing so. Just google, "ripping DVDs" and you will find all the information and software you need to copy a DVD. The real case is about control. Anyone, or any company, that wants to market any device for playing DVDs has to buy a license from the DVD Copy Control Association (DVD-CCA); for blu-ray discs it is the Advanced Access Content System Licensing Administrator (AACS LA). The licence grants the company the right to decrypt the DVD for playback. The licence also has a whole list of things that the company can not do, and one of them is copying DVDs. The idea is to stifle innovation and to prohibit new technology that does not originate with the recording studios. The real case here is about protecting the current business model of the recording studios.

Now DRM would be worthless except for a piece of legislature that prohibits circumventing any digital rights management system. The recording studios managed to push a badly written piece of legislature through Congress known as Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), codified in section 1201 of the Copyright Act. This act makes it illegal to circumvent the DRM of DVDs and Blu-ray discs, or for that matter any copyrighted works that have DRM included. The DMCA makes no exceptions for fair use rights. Fair use rights have been upheld in numerous court cases and has been codified in section 107 of the copyright law. However, any works that have DRM included violates the owner's fair use rights. RealDVD was about allowing fair use rights when one purchased a DVD or blu-ray disc. However, the recording studios does not want one to have any fair use rights at all. Recently, the recording studios have been offering to buyers of physical DVDs the option to buy a downloaded digital copy of the film to their portable devices; in effect making you have to buy your fair use rights.

Efforts at amending the DMCA to allow for fair use rights have proven futile. The recording studios are big and have a lot of money to buy politicians. In fact, the recording studios are hard at work to introduce even more limitations in the DMCA. The recording studios have tried to force hardware manufacturers to include DRM directly into the devices. The computer industry flat out said no to the recording studios, so the recording studios decided to just make it a part of the DMCA. Every new technology that threatened the business model of the recording studios was attacked; they brought lawsuits against the VCR, DAT recorder, the MP3 player, and the PVR. The recording studios even have gone as far as to invade a user's privacy and introduce security vulnerabilities in computers; remember the rootkit that Sony-BMG installed on user's computers without their knowledge?

Congress has rejected all efforts at amending the DMCA and to return fair use rights back to consumers. The MPAA has routinely filed one lawsuit after another against anyone that threatened their business model and cash cow. RealDVD decided not to continue fighting the recording studios. I wish they had continued in the fight because each win of the recording studios is a lost for consumers. What is needed is a class action lawsuit against the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) with the class being the tens of million of citizens that have purchased DVDs or blu-ray discs. The only way to stop the abuses of the recording studios is to fight back using the same tactics they use. Let's start bombarding the MPAA with one lawsuit after another until we regain our fair rights use. At the same time, let's write daily to our representatives demanding they amend the DMCA and return our fair rights use back to us.

Just two days into March and yet again another winter storm. This time it was a relatively mild event and the ground was warm enough to prevent a lot of build up of snow, and the streets remained fairly clear; a condition that actually contributed to more accidents as drivers were not being as cautious. The snow continued to fall steadily throughout the day and into the night with an accumulation finally reaching somewhere around 9 cm (3.5 in.). Today was bright and sunny with temperatures around 5.6°C (42°F) so a lot of the snow quickly disappeared. My front garden is still covered with snow, but the forecast is for sunny days with increasing temperatures throughout the remainder of the week. This has not been a pleasant winter and I am really looking forward to the first blooms of spring.

While snow is often troublesome, it also produces pretty and interesting works of art. I walked around the gardens and took some photographs to share of nature's work of art using my shrubs and bushes as canvases and snow as the medium. I hope you enjoy them.

Snowy Drive

Past Summer October Plant

Porch Railings

Snowball Bush #1

Snowball Bush #2

Back Garden Forsythia

Fencing

Front Garden Deutzia scabra

Front Garden Deutzia scabra (close shot)

As my readers may recall, we had a bad winter storm during the first week of February that resulted in a large number of trees coming down.

Power lines all over my county were broken and many roadways were blocked. Even now the cleanup from this storm continues. I heard the road crew working on the cleanup and went out with my camera to record the process. I include a few videos as well as a series of photographs. The videos contain a bit of hand shake; I have a pair of sticks for my camera, but I did not think about taking it with me when I went out to the street to record the cleanup. The cleanup crew was using an industrial size chipper and I was surprised at the size of tree trunks they could feed into that machine; this is no home garden chipper. When they were finished, all the trees that had fallen were gone and in their place was a heavy mat of tree chips.

As we move into March, winter continues and we have seen snow in Hickville as late as mid April. I just hope we don't have any more destructive winter storms for some time to come.

Shoppers queueing at register in a Canadian shop.
(photograph courtesy of nowpublic.com)

I headed out to the shops this evening to pick up a few things that I needed. I entered the JC Penney's Outlet and first went to find the items on my list. Once I found the required items and placed them in my trolley, I spent some time browsing the racks and wishing I had the money to purchase some of the things that caught my fancy. I finished my wishing and headed to the register to purchase the things I had selected. The register was a dual queue and I entered the one on my right as there was just one gentleman in front of me. As luck would have it, the man had left his wallet in his car and needed identification to finish his purchase that had already been entered into the register. A woman entered the queue behind me at this time. The man ask the young woman working the register to call his wife to come to the register since she was shopping with him. When the man's wife came to the register, she too did not have any identification on her; she was not carrying a handbag and had fleece trousers absent of pockets. At this point I knew that it would take a bit longer for the gentleman to finish his purchase as he had to head out to the car park to retrieve his identification. It was either wait in the same queue, or move to the other queue since the register was locked out until the transaction was either cancelled or finished. As I headed over to the other queue, the woman; a very large woman I will add, behind me decided to move over to the other queue as well. I notice the woman did not wait for me to pass and instead got into the other queue in front of me. Wait, it does not work like this, the order of the queue does not change just because we move to a new register. I said to the woman, "excuse me, but I was in front of you", and I moved my trolley around and pushed it between the people already in the queue and the large woman who thought she had the right to jump queue. The woman did like the idea that I was going to make her honour the order of the queue, and said, "What does it matter?" I thought to myself that she would not have liked it if I had jumped the queue in front of her. All I said at that point was, "It is the queue" and proceeded to purchase the few items I had and ignored any other comments she had to make. After I purchased my items, I went to place my trolley in the bin. However, there were several trolley in the way, left by the previous shoppers. I place my trolley as well as the others in the bid and left the shop.

I wish I could say that the above experience was an exception instead of the rule, but it is not. Americans, on the most part; not all, but on the most part are rude. They push and shove and think they should always be first. They can not wait patiently in a queue but moan and groan about why is it taking so long. They will jump the queue on a regular basis and if a new queue is started, will push anyone out of their way to be first. I once had a woman to literally shove my trolley out of her way as I was moving over to a new queue and she was nowhere near the next person in the queue. Not only do they think they have to always be first, but they think they don't have to do courtesy things such as replacing the trolleys in the bin. The very next shop I visited had trolleys out in the way at the front of the shop, right next to the trolley bin. It just gets worst as the adults are rearing a whole new lot of rude and self centred brats that act worst than the adults. I was taught to respect my elders, but you don't see that with the majority of today's children. I hate to think how America will be when the new generations reach adulthood.

I visited whitehouse.gov to see the new healthcare reform bill. I did not find a bill, but I did find a page; http://www.whitehouse.gov/health-care-meeting/proposal, outlining a series of proposal. Unfortunately, it appears that for the most part it is just a return to the Senate bill. Once again the president is back to insurance as a means to healthcare reform. Insurance companies do not provide healthcare; it is the doctors and hospitals that provide healthcare. I keep hearing about comprehensive healthcare reform and then see that it is just about the insurance. Comprehensive healthcare reform would mean all aspect of healthcare including the pharmaceutical companies and big corporate healthcare providers. If the president and congress really wanted to help with the problems of healthcare, they would include all aspects of healthcare.

Health insurance is such a big business because of the problems with the cost of healthcare. One can not even afford to go for basic healthcare because of the expense involved; if anything, health insurance has given healthcare providers an excuse to charge more. Why isn't the issue of healthcare costs rising faster than the inflation rate being addressed? The main problem with healthcare in the US is that healthcare costs are excessively high compared to the quality of care provided. The heathcare industry is defrauding the public and the government has let it go on for decades upon decades. Even now with healthcare reform they are going to do nothing about it! The pharmaceutical companies have been defrauding the public for decades and the government has done nothing about it. Americans don't even have the rights to purchase their medications outside of the US, a move that would help to save Americans millions of dollars a year on healtcare.

There are problems with health insurance that needs to be fixed. For one, remove the anti-trust protection that health insurers now enjoy. Secondly, allow Americans to buy their their health insurance across state lines. Increasing the competition would help to drive down the cost of insurance. The proposals presented by the president will not help to lower the cost of healthcare, but will increase the cost of health insurance. Trying to cap the premium rates will only eventually end insurance companies providing healthcare policies since nothing is going to be done about the rising costs of healthcare. If heathcare insurers are paying out more in claims than they are taking in from premiums payments, they would have no choice but to stop insuring people for healthcare.

The first step in healthcare reform is to fix the problems with the excessive costs of healthcare; the excessive medication costs, the overcharges and doubling billing, the fraud and scams, being perpetrated by the healthcare industry. Healthcare in the US is a big business with the only concern being the bottom line. If the problem with the excessive costs of healthcare were fixed, then the cost of insurance would follow. We would see lower premium rates since the insurer would be paying less in claims. As long as the focus in on health insurance instead of the real problems with healthcare, Americas will not see any real healthcare reform. They will continue to pay more and more while receiving the same, or lower, quality of healthcare.