Online Spotlight officially ruined

I’m not sure how many of you actually use the “Online Spotlight” function on your HTPC, which is part of Media Center. I occasionally click on it and let it play out while Im getting ready in the morning. Well I havent touched it in about 5 months, and this morning I turn it on, and guess what I see? Well f–k guessing, I’ll tell you, commercials, yah that’s right, goddamn commercials, on net broadcasted news. I think the only reason I chose to use this on my HTPC,  (referring to the Online Spotlight) was for the simple reason, that it had news, without commercials, without spam. When I find a way around this, whether I have to bittorrent news that has been pre-tivo’d, or I’ll tivo and upload myself if I have to, but I will find a way to enjoy, no spam, no advertisements, no commercial, television, I’ll let you know.

Digital Content, Itunes, and media marketing…

With itunes already launching videos for download (I think currently around 1.99 or 2.99) , and the future promise that they will also rent digital content in teh very near future, it makes you ask yourself, would you rather own or rent the content? Ive already predicted that the web based media, movies and music, will over dominate the theaters, and music stores within the next 8 years completely, so let’s make some simple foundations of ideas here on what we are ready to settle for.

First off, let’s go back to 1999, when the original Napster came out. For the few of us that were fortunate enough to have high speed, and the knowledge of what was transpiring in front of us, we got a lot of free music downloads, way before anyone caught onto what the hell was going on. It’s like Eve, eating from the apple tree, once you’ve had a taste, you can’t go back. Where did we all go wrong? By spitting out the internet without any solid guidelines, and letting all the tech saavy guys have a “free at will” with it. We didn’t set a solid foundation and since then, things went haywire. With the fall of the original Napster, we had the Gnutella network, Bearshare, Limewire, Audiogalaxy, and about a thousand others spring from Medusa’s head, cut one down, and two popped up.  I can imagine that my frequent readers are probaly reading this and thinking that my analogies almost sound appealing towards RIAA desires, but I assure you, I am NO fan of the RIAA, or MPAA, what-so-ever.

What I am simply trying to convey here is that by not setting a solid foundation with rules from the beginning, we allow things to get out of hand. We, as a digital community, need to shout out what were willing to settle for, what we expect, and what were willing to negotiate.

I’ll tell you a funny story… A long time ago there was this amazing invention, where you could tune in to numerous channels, and listen to music, and talkshows, all over the country, for hours and hours uninteruppted, it was called the radio. Well I guess we f*cking completely forgot about those times, because now we actually have to pay monthly subscriptions to listen to music without commercials (and most still do have advertisements, hence Sirius, or one of the other monopolies of satellite radio. The same thing with television, were paying higher fees, for the broadcasters that offer less commercials. Those that are really tech saavy, have already seen this occuring with online TV shows, and short media clips from gaming websites and what not. On youtube you have media companies fighting over “airtime”.

Personally it makes me sick, becase we settle for this, we accept it, at least majority of you do. I refuse to watch commercials, and view advertisements, I want a filtered browser world, un-beknown to the world around me. So I use Torpark (a firefox browser that allows you to browse the net anonymously), with exstentions like flashblock, and adblock, and Noscript, so that way I dont have to watch the stupid flash games, advertisements, or the annoying “cover my article with a retarded add”. I get the net, the way I want it, when I want it.

Because of the advertisements, I got a Tivo, and remove the commercials, and because of advertisments, it almost forced me to start using bittorents to download my favorite Tv shows, pre edited for no commercials, no waits, in high def, 5.1 audio, for FREE. But hey, this isnt exactly kosher with the entire internet world, or our government. It’s not entirely illegal yet, but it’s pretty damn close. I mean technically Tivo isn’t legal, it’s complete copyright infringment, but it’s ok if the masses accept it.

I would rather own a digital movie, for the simple reason that with todays hectic schedules, cell phone calls popping in, emails popping up, friends stopping over, and not to mention tight work schedules, I would like to know that if I pay for digital content, that I can view at any time, as many times over as I would feel free to. With a busy schedule like mine, it takes me *weeks* sometimes to have enough time to view an entire movie, that has probably played over and over at least 6 or 7 times. Now I know this can be a total exception, but let’s just do long term planning…if we agree to this today, and set a concrete “yes, this way works and is fine”..trust me, everyone’s schedule eventually gets busier as time progresses, so lets lay our foundations now.

I say fight, for free media content, with no commercials, advertisements, for free or next to free digital downloads, the right to copy media a thousand times, and pass them out to friends at christmas, because if we lay down now, we get steamrolled in about 10 years from now.
Anyways, thats just my two cents…