Microsoft Kinect = Big Brother?
So, I know this is pretty small beans compared to some of the scandals that are currently being investigated, but I thought I would share some tech news. So a new Xbox, Xbox One, is coming out and it is essentially everything I despise about the latest trends in gaming (required internet connection, can't share games with friends or play used games
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It's not like I needed another reason to never buy an X-Box (in addition to the bad game selection, lame controllers, the crappyness of the Knect, etc). But if I wasn't already committed to never getting one, this story would have CEMENTED my resolve. Oy vey....
The Kinect will be able to detect how many people are in the room watching a movie and if more than four are detected, it will stop the playback and ask for a fee (since four is the maximal amount considered a private screening).
Wait! The maximum for a "private viewing" is really FOUR!? REALLY!!?
WTF!? Most American families are bigger than four people! Furthermore, a lot of people watch movies at parties, gatherings, etc (and I've never heard of a party with only four people in attendance). And do public schools pay a fee whenever they show films like Schlindler's List to students?
and it is essentially everything I despise about the latest trends in gaming (required internet connection, can't share games with friends or play used games ( ... )
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I am certainly no legal expert, so if anyone knows better, feel free to correct me, but I do believe that when you purchase a movie, you are technically purchasing the rights to show it to an absurdly small number of people at any given moment. I believe if you want the option to show it to larger numbers, you legally must pay a fee for a public audience, and if you are charging money for the event at which you are showing the movie, you have more arrangements to make. I vaguely remember trying to figure out a way to legally show a movie at a fundraising event I was partially in charge of for high school. The issue was that we were selling tickets to the event, which meant that we were technically selling tickets to the movie. I can't remember the loophole we used (this was almost ten years ago), but it was a real pain in the you-know-what.
Another thing that pisses me off is when modern games don't include a multiplayer option for the second controller port.I know, ( ... )
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They wouldn't. The educational institution exception to copyright law is absurdly broad. I worked in the marketing department for the college of agriculture at a major university and found out while working there that I could use absolutely any piece of music at all--including Disney songs or the "Olympic Theme" they use on NBC--on official media from the department and so long as that music was not immediately downloadable/rippable from the media in question (i.e., it had to be on streamed media and not downloadable media...which is not much of a safeguard, but at least requires some effort on the part of the pirate) then we were in the clear where copyrights were concerned. We weren't even required to send the rights holders so much as a heads up on it. All because we were an educational institution. (I ended up using music from Brian Tyler's Children Of Dune, if you're curious ( ... )
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Seriously, the list of things you listed with Xbox One is scary.
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Literal FACT: The Xbox One has "native game recording technology" within it. So if Microsoft was so concerned with too many people seeing games content, why would they allow you to record (and probably stream) the gameplay via the device itself? Furthermore, MS hosted a special live Q&A session exclusively via Twitch: now why on earth would Twitch allow a company supposedly bent on destroying their business to host anything on their site, and why would Microsoft want to defile itself by going to such a venue that relies on freely sharing streamed games content to MILLIONS? Just because a patent was filed doesn't mean the tech will be used; it just means they filed a patent on their tech ( ... )
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However, I am a touch paranoid, and I tend to worry not about how a company will use new tech, but how they (or others) could use new tech. Yep, recording and detecting audio are different, but I still worry about that slippery slope between the two. Is that approach fair to the companies who produce new tech without malicious intentions? Eh, probably not. But at the end of the day, I would rather worry too much over a new piece of tech that turns out to be utterly harmless than ignore a new piece of tech that ends up being more invasive than I would like. That is how my brain functions, and I fully ( ... )
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