All Posts by Paul

Copyright Board of Canada Plans to Tax Legal Music Downloads

Paul

Oh, Canada. You already tax MP3 players and blank CDs. Now you want to tax downloads themselves? The Copyright Board of Canada has given the thumbs-up to a tax of at least 2.1 cents for individual tracks and 1.5 cents per track for whole album purchases from online stores. Even subscription services will have taxes tacked on—5.7 to 6.8 percent of the monthly fee. Better still, the tax would be retroactive to Jan. 1, 1996.

The rationale proffered by the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada is that it’ll help replenish artists’ wallets raided by piracy and that “the right to copy a song from an online store demands the same sort of levy applied to copying a retail CD,” according to Electronista. (Our eyes started bleeding halfway through the PDF.) Making legal downloads more expensive probably isn’t going to boost sales—pissing people off with more taxes might even drive them right to The Pirate Bay, where artists will get zero compensation.

What would you guys do if your iTunes purchases started being taxed tomorrow? [Electronista]

This just makes people want to get the music free because there is to much tax as it is. Then above all to back taxes to 1996 wow, I hope you didn’t buy anything to major.

Xbox 360 to get built-in HD DVD drive in late 2008?

Paul

This certainly isn’t the first time we’ve heard this rumor, but SmartHouse is reporting that Microsoft and Toshiba are working on an updated Xbox 360 with a built-in HD DVD drive. If that were all, we wouldn’t bat an eye — it’s gotta happen sometime — but there are some other, crazier aspects to this version of the rumor that set off some red flags: SmartHouse also claims that the new box will be Toshiba-branded and have dual HDTV tuners, electronic program guide capabilities, built-in wireless networking, and sport an “MP3 player” dock, which we’d imagine would be for a Zune. That’s a hell of a box, right there, and while we’ve seen similar devices like Sony’s PSX, they didn’t exactly take the world by storm. Our money is still on a simple bump of the existing 360 to HD DVD, but get ready to hear a lot of about this rumor in the weeks to come.

[Via Joystiq]

Hmm, I was wondering about that. After all PS3 has Blue-ray!! It was going to happen sooner or later.

Joost Coming To The Browser?

Paul

Joost CEO Mike Volpi just suggested on stage at Web 2.0 that Joost is working on a browser-based version of its peer-to-peer Internet TV service. “At some point, when we can deliver the quality that Joost is known for, we will deliver an in-browser experience,” he told the audience here. I got up and asked him if he faces any legacy issues, since Joost is based on a peer-to-peer client that must currently be downloaded. His answer was that it is possible to separate the file-sharing from the viewing experience and that in fact Joost is working on just such a browser-based solution. It’s not clear whether people would still need to download a separate piece of software to do the P2P file-streaming or whether that could just be a browser plug-in. But with in-browser Flash video about to get a whole lot better over the next few months, Joost will have to respond with it’s own browser-based expereince.

Does that mean it will be integrated into Internet Explorer 8 when it comes out?

EA wants an open gaming platform

Paul

Considering EA is the king of repackaging the same game for multiple consoles (and multiple years — hello, Madden), you wouldn’t expect the company’s head of international distribution to call for a single universal platform, but that’s exactly what Gerhard Florin told the BBC he wants. “We want an open, standard platform which is much easier than having five which are not compatible,” he said, adding that “You don’t need an Xbox 360, PS3 or Wii — the consumer won’t even realise the platform it is being played on.” Florin’s comments were based on his prediction that set-top boxes would eventually contain enough horsepower to stream and run games over the net, a development he said would kill the market for dedicated consoles in the next fifteen years — which means he’s obviously never had to struggle with a cable company DVR, because we think we’ll stick with a console that can register more than three button presses without locking up, thanks much.

[Via Gamesindustry.biz]

That would so rock, I get tired of having a console war with all these makers. “One console to rule them all, One console to bind them!!”