Happy Birthday Internet!!

On Internet 40th birthday I got this video which tell the complete story of the internet in 8mins

History of the Internet from PICOL on Vimeo.

File sharing problem solved!!

I was reading a tech blogs and I found this post to the blog where the author of the blog has kinda provided a solution for the file sharing problem.

An open letter to the RIAA: Illegal file sharing problem solved?

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 6:11 am

Dear the Recording Industry Association of America (the “RIAA”),

I know I’ve said some harsh things before, and to be honest, I still stick by them. The Family Guy musical sketch describing the characters’ opinions of the FCC could well be replicated here in view of your own organisation.

However, today I offer you a potential solution to the illegal file sharing problem that seems to have gripped the world stage.

In a nutshell, if you live in the United States and are caught downloading illegally, you can consider yourself already bankrupt, as the RIAA will sue you into the ground. However, under new legislation in the UK, instead of hefty fines, the Government could order your ISP to cut off your broadband connection.

This has annoyed the ISPs on this side of the pond because they claim while they provide the service, it is not their job to police how their customers use it.

The problem

I honestly believe that with the price of media at the moment, the vast majority of people would be content in buying media online - provided they could have it there and then in a download. The problem is that many popular items are simply not available online to buy. Granted, this has changed with the Amazon and iTunes wave of technologies and services,but it still isn’t up to scratch.

Also, the peer-to-peer technology and online file sharing is an open Pandora’s Box and now cannot be closed. You can attempt to take random people to court and financially send them back into the Stone Age, but you cannot convict everyone.

The recording and broadcasting industries must change to survive. You cannot sustain the business model you once had because the times have changed, along with the content delivery system and the generation of people.

The solution

In the UK, to effectively raise enough revenue to help roll out super-fast fibre-optic broadband, the Government added a £0.50 “tax” on top of every monthly phone bill. There are roughly 34 million landlines in the UK, so that will generate £17 million a month. Add another £1 to this and you’ll generate (an obvious) £34 million.

The UK’s equivalent to the RIAA is the PRS - the Performing Right Society. Every time a record is played on the radio, the royalties are paid by the radio station to the PRS, who then divide up all the money from that month (or other specified amount of time) and pass on the royalties to the artists. No doubt, this is what the RIAA does also.

So with the £34 million generated each month, the PRS can use the already-available technologies to see what is being downloaded, take some of the money for their own inconvenience and divide the rest up to content creators.

When using torrents, it’s clear to see when you are (or have) downloaded an episode of a popular TV series, so in that case, a small portion of the overall royalties can go back to the creators of the series.

The under-belly

A £1 tax a year sounds harsh to some members of the tax paying community. Over here, the very vast majority of us pay roughly £0.70 ayear on paying for the Royal Family which brings in huge revenues from tourists who, quite frankly, could be easily entertained by giving them a balloon on a stick instead. An extra £1 would generate huge revenues and the PRS would be able to do their job much more effectively.

Of course, the numbers can be interchangeable but with a greater population and exchange rate differences, $1 should suffice.

The system works, in a way, very much like the UK’s National Health Service. We all chip in pretty much the same amount of money through taxes, but as you would expect, some people need more treatment than others. Here, we don’t mind doing that because if we switched to the American system then a good proportion of the country simply couldn’t afford medical treatment - even in an emergency.

In conclusion

But because we live in the digital age that we do - we cannot be waiting around for months at a time for the latest Harry Potter film to be released to DVD. So we search alternative sources and download it illegally. Release the online download as soon as the film is out, and then we can buy and watch it there and then. You won’t be losing out in revenue, because at least this way you

a) won’t have people downloading it for free, and

b) when those people are caught, you’re not spending tens of thousands of dollars bringing them to court.

This is why cable companies are bringing popular U.S. television shows to other countries as and when they are broadcast in the U.S. You can’t have a programme floating around the Internet for half a year and expect people to wait patiently until it arrives in their region. No, they’ll turn to the weband they’ll download it for free.

It makes sense, and everybody wins - so do something about it.

Kind regards,

Zack Whittaker
Contributing writer, iGeneration, ZDNet

I totally agree with the idea that revenue should be generated from the internet consumer in such as business model which would create an win-win situation for all.

For Eg.. The movie kaminey... http://www.mininova.org/search/?search=kaminey&cat=0

has a many torrents for it and each torrent on an average has 1000 downloads over it. The practical solution for the problem would be charging a fee for the ISP say 100rs per month. Wont it generate a huge income for the producers, ISP and the government considering the number of downloads of hindi movies per month and considering the number of internet users.

Zack Whittaker has provided an ideal solution for the whole piracy and file sharing problems. Cheers!!

Apple`s New iTab

Apple announced that it will develop a tablet pc which can be called as iTab. Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, who founded the company in 1981and who currently had an liver transplant operation, is now pouring all its attention to this new iTab project. Steve Jobs for the past few years have introduced us many products such as ipod, MiniMac, OSX etc... Come September 9, he will introduce us with this new product which would be described in one word.."Awesome".

Even though other blog and techie sites have assumed many things. Some have tried to make an assumption that it maybe a multitouch computing tablet.Hackers at DIY has tried to hack Mac and made them in Mac Tablet. I certainly feel that Apple and Steve jobs has the capacity and innovative thinking to think beyond just making an MacBook Laptop into a multitouch tablet like PC.

According to me, I would say that ITab would be as thin as Macbook air, not only with the multitouch functionality but with many new innovations. These innovation may result into the death of the keyboard and mouse.

To end the surprise, we would have to wait till September 9, where this iTab will be unveiled.

OLPC - commercial use!!!

I was currently reading about the one laptop per child program of Nicholas Negroponte in which he has decided to sell a laptop for 100$ to all the developing nations worldwide. Negroponte who is a co founder of MIT labs created this scheme back in January 2005 with aim to revolutionize the way children are educated.

Negroponte`s scheme is very generous and innovative. It breaks the barrier of the education systems all over the world which are somehow hindrances for children`s development. Though the program suggest of education the children through laptops it makes it more fun and interactive with the children. The kids of Y generation need to be introduce to new technologies and maybe this program would achieve the same.

Even though I think, This scheme can be used for commercial purposes such as for example. If that laptop costs 100$ which means it costs about 5000 Rs. So why cant it be sold for common people for the same or for some extra price. It has basic things which every one needs so why cant it be sold for a normal Pc user for a price not more than 15k

Facbook and Youtube 5 Years from now...

Sorry guys for late postings. I will try to post more and more.

Coming to the point, The Founder of Youtube.com and Facebook.com are discussing the future of the Information Sharing. Truly speaking they or Mark Zuckerberg, is discussing about his own survival. Today, 2009, Facebook may be doing good business now, but the Founder of TechCrunch.com has asked the apt question. Whether are you people going to last for the next five years.

Marck Zuckerberg answered the question in a very intelligent way saying that his company will keep on providing services to survive in this tough competative Internet market. Hope to see more from facebook.com

You Tube and Twitter`s political help..

In the midst of all the chaos in Iran. Websites like Youtube.com and twitter.com helped the Iranian people to protest against the elections which were alleged to be illegal.

Twitter postpone the maintenance at the peak hours of Iranian protests. On the 17th June, 221,000 tweets sent about Iran, 3,000 videos were uploaded onto YouTube said, Mark Pfeifle, Deputy National Security Advisor to George W. Bush,

He went on more by saying this....

“If there’s anybody that should possibly get a Nobel Peace Prize in the next time around, it should be the founders of Twitter”

If websites change the world so much, we must create more of such websites. I personally feel that the web has not been yet explorered and its still a virgin territory. Thank you twitter and youtube.

Microsoft`s new strategy to attract users.

This maybe the weirdest strategy that Microsoft has ever used to attract users. They have started comparing their IE8 with other alternatives to show their superiority over others.

Though Internet Explorer 8 maybe the best IE after IE6, which we have used for years with WinXP. But there are other alternatives which are better in some or the other ways.

Firefox for example is type of browser which has lots of addons, and by installing those Addons make it similar to that of Internet Explorer 8. The only drawback of the Firefox system is that it does not have crash recovery and multitab multi process feature which apparently Google Chrome has.

Comparing all the browsers with Google Chrome, currently my favourite web browser. Its very light fast and does not crashes very often. It has a sleek look and which makes it better than browser currently.

Microsoft`s strategy to provide false information to users will truly offend the people using other browsers. This may be the worst kind of advertisement ever done to any Microsoft product.