BurnhamUp!

A recent Facebook conversation caused me to rethink the legality of the streaming service VidAngel. I won’t be considering the filtering aspect of the service, because my concern is that the underlying streaming is not legal.

Their sales model is a little convoluted since you actually buy the movies for $20 and can then sell them back for $18; they explain that you need to own the movie to be able to filter it. Essentially rentals are $2, which is half the price of rentals from Google or Apple. I had assumed that they were selling streaming licenses and had direct relationships with the major movie studios. However, what they actually sell you is a DVD.

“VidAngel provides a service that allows its Users to buy or sell physical media, such as DVD and Blu-ray discs. While a User owns any physical media purchased from VidAngel, VidAngel will provide streaming services to permit the User to stream the Video Content associated with that physical media as many times as desired…Using the VidAngel Services, a User may purchase physical media from VidAngel, whom then stores the physical media in VidAngel’s physical media vault.” (VidAngel Terms of Service 5.2)

Their whole business model reminds me of a site that does something similar with video games. Console Classix lets people pay a monthly fee and then borrow any game that is available. They keep track of how many copies of the game they have, and only allow those copies to be played. They’ve been around since 2001, and almost instantly were contacted by Nintendo. They claimed that they weren’t just a rom downloading site, and have probably stayed small enough that Nintendo never bothered to launch a stronger legal assault. It always seemed like a neat way to combine a library with a reason to preserve the decaying cartridges.

Is it legal?

Does selling you a physical disc entitle VidAngel to stream the content to you? I doubt it. All you really get is a disc that you can play in a DVD player. Amazon’s closest version of this feature is a “Read While Your Book Ships” that lets you read a small sample of the eBook. This may be the same sample Amazon already provides for free.

How does VidAngel get their digital copies? Presumably they use the physical copies that they own. However, ripping DVDs and BluRays is mired in controversy. Even if backing up a movie for personal use can be claimed as fair use, does that protection extend to a company producing digital copies to stream to customer?

They do adhere to inventory control, where they only rent out as many copies as they have physical discs. Their FAQ mentions that some movies may appear to be out of stock.  

I’m worried that this amounts to VidAngel being sued for massive copyright infringement.

Is it ethical?

I think so. Their service is essentially the same as RedBox, without the need to actually visit a machine and retrieve a physical disc. The experience that the customer has is exactly the same. 

What’s in store?

VidAngel hasn’t been sued yet, and I think it’s because they haven’t been noticed yet. That lawsuit is coming. But if they can shake that off, they will have other problems. As they grow bigger, they will run into problems acquiring enough discs to meet customer demands. Redbox had the same issue and couldn’t get enough stock from Target and Wal-Mart. For their pricing model alone, they will face the same problems that RedBox had getting established

I’ll continue to use VidAngel because of the price and the convenience. (I’m not sure how I feel about using the filters, but I can just ignore them for now). I wouldn’t buy any stock in the company though.

I’ve been playing a Free To Play game recently and thinking about a lot of the issues surrounding it. I’m playing Pokemon Picross, which I was excited about because I like Picross puzzles and thought the Pokemon theme looked interesting.

My main gripe is the pricing. The game is free, but you can spend money on an in-game currency that provides a variety of effects. The problem is that the pricing is very excessive compared to the other Picross games you can buy. The most recent one “Picross e6” sells for $6 and includes over 300 puzzles. By contrast, $6 gets you enough currency to unlock around 40-50 puzzles. That knowledge means that before I can even think about spending a few dollars on Pokemon Picross, I have to realize that I’ll get a much more complete and full experience for the same price. The free to play monetization means that they charge more for a lot less content.

My second gripe is an extension of the first. The mechanics of purchasing and spending becomes a tedious exercise of value. The most important thing you can do with the ingame currency is unlock new content, but the game also lets you spend it on less important upgrades and fleeting consumables. If you were to spend the currency on recharging power ups or filling up your energy bar, you’ll have gotten even less to show for the money you have spent. It’s feels like a store where some of the items are grossly overpriced, and the merchant hopes you won’t notice. These microtransactions makes it really easy to completely waste your money.

Now in Nintendo’s defense they are explicitly not trying to exploit anyone. There is a hard cap on how much money you can spend on microtransactions. After spending around $32 the shop will close and simply grant you as much of the in game currency as you want. In a world where free to play bases their entire business model on the ‘whales’ spending thousands of dollars a week, this feels incredibly refreshing. But it still feels like they are seeing what they can get out of people. Can they get away with charging $32 for an experience that they value at $6 if they don’t charge someone all at once? Maybe that’s the appropriate trade-off considering that patient players can eventually unlock all of the content by spending a few minutes each day for over a year. Overcharge some players in order to let others play for free.

What is my role in this? I can’t bring myself to spend money on the game, considering I’d much rather pay a one time price for a complete game. And I don’t buy one of the other games because I don’t really want Picross that badly. I’ve been doing the free daily challenges because they only take a few minutes out of my train ride. But… my 3DS is constantly advertising to other people that I’m playing Pokemon Picross, serving as a walking billboard for the game. At least I can take comfort knowing that I won’t lead anyone into spending thousands of dollars on a simple ‘game’.

My son Curtis loves trains. Some of that he gets from me. When I was a toddler, I could see train tracks from outside the apartment and would always rush to watch the trains go by. I got a train set for Christmas that year, a train set that Curtis has also loved playing with.  I think I passed this on both genetically and environmentally.

When I would watch those trains go by, I really wanted to ride on one. Sadly, this dream wouldn’t come true until I was nearly five. I wanted to spare Curtis this disappointment, so I’ve been plotting for weeks to find a time to take him on a train. Finally, it all came together last weekend. To prepare Curtis for the day, we found videos online of BART trains pulling into stations. Our plan was to take the train a few stops away, have lunch, and then ride home. By the time we were in the car, Curtis was bouncing in his car seat repeating “Train! Train!”. He saw a train go by as we drove over. “TRAIN!! TRAIN!!”. He was jumping with excitement when we got out of the car. “TRAIN!!!”

Heading to the Train Station

Getting tickets

Using the Ticket

Waiting for the train. Curtis liked seeing the tracks, but wasn’t fond of the loud highway traffic or the wind.

He was quite loud, so it was a good thing the train was almost empty.

Mischief Managed

I’m trying really hard to ‘get’ comic books. Over the last two years I’ve read most of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, The Watchmen, and a collection of the best Batman books (The Dark Night Returns, Hush, Year One, The Long Halloween, The Killing Joke, Arkham Asylum). I’ve enjoyed most of these stories, but I still don’t think I understand.

As a recent example, I got issue #1 of a new Star Wars comic in a Loot Crate. I read and enjoyed it, but didn’t think too much of it. And then I see that the book has sold over 1 million copies. And I read this rave review. And I don’t really understand. I can’t imagine paying $30 for a year’s worth of issues. I really dislike the short lengths of the stories (around ~24 pages). I noticed while reading the larger volumes how surprised I was by where the individual issues are broken up. I think the breakdown might be in the artwork. I enjoy the visual storytelling, but I don’t spend much time looking at the details of the art. I know the art is probably the most difficult part to produce, and part of the reason comics are so expensive. (I imagine the other reason is low circulation).

I don’t think I’ll ever become a regular reader of comic books, but I’ll probably look for the bound volumes from time to time.

Some days being a grown up is hard.

I just got off of a week where I was just completely exhausted and not getting ahead. And it’s a disaster when it comes to the weekend and all I want to do is sleep, but we have to manage a grumpy toddler. I took some time on Sunday to fast and pray about what I should do. I was hoping that I would just be blessed to have the extra strength and energy I needed, but I had the clear impression that I really need to go to bed earlier and better. Of course.

Doctrine and Covenants 88:128

Cease to be idle; cease to be unclean; cease to find fault one with another; cease to sleep longer than is needful; retire to thy bed early, that ye may not be weary; arise early, that your bodies and your minds may be invigorated.

Sarah also suggested an earlier bedtime. So we’re trying to refocus on going to bed. It’s hard. But there’s no way around it. I like getting into work early so that I can be home earlier. Having that extra hour in the afternoon makes all the difference when Sarah is dealing with an unhappy child. That means I need to wake up early (around 6:15). And that means an early bed time. We’ve pushed back our bed time reminder to 9pm, which gives me the time to shower, read scripture together, and so on. And I’m working on not letting the Internet and games keeping me up later than I want to. I’m hoping that after a week or two of this, I’ll be a more disciplined and we can go back to getting ready at 9:30pm.

My computer wouldn’t turn on one evening, and after opening it up and poking around I figured out the problem was the graphics card. Once I removed it from the computer, it turned on. Ostensibly I’m blaming my son, since he dropped a remote behind the computer and it might have been the cause of the damage. Realistically, the computer is five years old, the graphics card is two, and I may have been overloading my power supply with the new card.

I got excited about the prospects of building a computer from scratch, but found a computer for about half the price it would cost to build one.  When it arrived, however, I couldn’t just turn it on and use it. I wanted to move my SSD from the old computer to the new, and I wanted to save all my data. And this where I make things difficult for myself.

My plan was to backup the SSD and install Windows 8.1 on that drive. Then I would copy backed up files to the new computer’s drive. Then I would reinstall Windows 7 on the old computer, since it would then be missing its operating systems. Things did not go to plan.

The first wrinkle was that I couldn’t find a flash drive to place the Windows 8 installer on. I went to the store and got the cheapest and smallest flash drive I could find (an 8gb sandisk). They had screwed something up on these drives so that they appeared as fixed hard drives and not removable drives, so Microsoft wouldn’t allow me to place the installer on them. I had to use a third party installer to create my install media.

Then I was worried that I couldn’t find a sticker with the Windows 8 license on it. So I had to use the Belarc Advisor to extract that, just in case I needed it. However, I wasn’t ever asked for it, so I’m not sure how Windows 8 handles activation. Windows 7 is kind enough to wait until you’ve wiped your drive and its too late to go back.

I opened up the new computer case and found that they didn’t have any empty hard drive bays. This really surprised my, since my old case seemed to have three spots for placing things, and it’s really common for people to use SSDs now. I read online that hobbyists often use velcro to attach the drive somewhere safe in the case. On the plus side, the computer came with 8GB of ram, and I was expecting 4 2Gb cards, but it came with a single 8GB card. I transfered a RAM upgrade over to bring it to 10GB.

Trying to get the system to boot from my drive was a huge pain as well. I finally turned secure boot completely off, and then ran into problems figuring out which drive was booting. I think there is still an MBR floating around the drive that I need to be careful with.

The part of my plan that I hadn’t thought through was the copying forward of data. I tried to use the drive enclosure that I had, but it was a SCUSI enclosure instead of SATA so it wouldn’t work. Finally I just plugged the drive into the new computer and did the copy with the case off.

Finally I installed Windows 7 back on the old computer. This went smoothly, especially since you can install Windows on a drive without erasing it.

It would have been a lot easier to just use my new computer that way it came…