Star Citizen is likely in financial trouble - <AUTHOR> http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1396987 <comment><USER3> The fact that any bank considered lending to a tiny company like this with no revenue stream is actually a positive sign. As for pledging all their "assets", that is completely standard. They have no assets to speak of - <USER2> "IP" is 100% worthless without future sales, which will never happen if the game doesn't get released. And further, because the money was raised from crowdfunding, the only equity holders that might suffer are the creators.

It's really important to understand finance if you want to understand the world and it's not that hard.

/thread

<comment><USER4> Who will suffer are backers who supported this project.

<comment><USER5> There is no scenario where Crowd Funding backers profit. I don't know why people who Crowd Fund act like they are owed anything.

Funding a business via Crowd Funding is in most scenarios the dumbest economic decision you can make. Comparable to throwing money out the window in terms of ROI.

<comment><USER4> People who crowdfund are investors in the project. If it succeeds - they get the benefit they backed it for. And if it fails, they lose. Not every benefit is supposed to be measured in profits. So there is clearly ROI there, but not the way you described it (monetary gain).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> To quote a reddit comment :

I should point out that this is not necessarily a bad thing, nor is it clear what the loan is for. What this tells us is that money has been loaned and secured against assets owned by CIG - this is fairly common practice in the case of commercial loans.

To bank with Coutts you must have at least £1,000,000 in tangible assets and in any event they are selective about their clientele; which implies CIG is doing well.

To be honest as much as the terms are huge, they didn't go to a loan shark neither a shitty bank. It's the bank that manage the assets of the Queen. I don't think they give loan that easily hence the huge collaterals.

<comment><USER7> "they didn't go to a loan shark neither a shitty bank. It's the bank that manage the assets of the Queen. I don't think they give loan that easily hence the huge collaterals."

Irrelevant. Why would they care which bank the money comes from?

It would be careless to take any deal on less favourable terms than you could get elsewhere, which implies this Coutts deal was the best they could get.

It could easily be a deal on a REALLY good rate to extend their runway well into the release cycle of a finished game, but the lack of disclosure implies otherwise.

Anyone here old enough to remember the original boo.com?

That was also an emperor-has-no-clothes fiasco of epic proportions. Which is ironic, because their problem was that they couldn't sell any of the mountains of clothes they had in storage.

<comment><USER8> > Irrelevant. Why would they care which bank the money comes from?

I'm sure they're looking for good terms, but being able to secure financing from a more reputable entity is still a signal. If they were some sort or real estate developer and could only get loans from someone like the Russian Mafia then we'd have a little more insight into what kind of business they must be running. In this case, going to a reputable bank is probably the best strategy for minimizing the cost associated with the loan.

The more reputable the bank, the more selective they are about their loans, and the closer to the LIBOR rate they'll charge. You can get a much better loan from a large bank than you can from a loan shark.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Seems like incredibly poor budgeting given that they had $150M and couldn't deliver even a limited version of the game.

Maybe I'm underestimating the costs somehow, but you could easily pay pretty high salaries for 100+ people's time over a few years of development with that kind of money. I wonder what they did with it?

<comment><USER10> I'm guessing this will involve unaffordable office space.

<comment><USER10> Yeah so I did some research, there's 250+ employees at the subsidiary foundry 42, which would indicate far more than 100 employees to pay for cloud imperium. If it's 400 people or something working at that company, burning through 150 million starts to sound more possible.

Also 4 nice offices in non-cheap locals.

<comment><USER11> Locations or locales isn't the same as locals

<comment><USER10> Thanks

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Not very surprised, the game has been a trainwreck in the making from the beginning. Total scope was just _way_ too overambitious, and people weren't going to plow hundreds and thousands of dollars into spaceship jpegs forever.

<comment><USER13> Care to qualify that?

I'm not following this at all, but I can't see anything particularly obvious that's a 'train wreck'.

They have a game. It's playable, if not particularly good. Some people are playing it (or something? Someone is posting gameplay videos anyway).

I have zero investment in it so I don't really get it; I see a lot of unhappy people making :( faces.

Games take time and money to make. They're making it. It's not done yet. They're keeping in touch with people and releasing regular updates.

I mean, what do you want them to do? Not make it? Make it faster? Communicate more? Communicate differently?

That's _really good_ compared to some crowd funding people... isn't it?

...? Where's the drama?

<comment><USER14> The drama basically arises from where common people are a good source of funds but actually terrible investors, giving personal money by impulse, usually without being equipped with the industry insight to evaluate the risks, or fully accepting there are risks because they are too emotionally invested in the product.

<comment><USER15> Maybe so, but it's probably important not to enact regulations preventing people from doing this. Otherwise we'll lose all the things that Kickstarter et al. helped create.

Anyone who's loved the game Undertale will tell you that was a fine use of their funds. But games like that wouldn't be possible without unsophisticated investors throwing their money at it in small quantities.

<comment><USER16> There's a lot of stuff on Kickstarter that looks a lot like fraud, I think people see this as part of a trend. You don't have to ban it, just give the "investors" more recourse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Just more FUD. Here's the explanation.

[https://i.redd.it/3yddemsdku5z.jpg](https://i.redd.it/3yddemsdku5z.jpg)

"We have noticed the speculations created by a posting on the website of UK's Company House with respect to Coutt's security for our UK Tax Rebate advance, and we would like to provide you with the following insight to help prevent some of the misinformation we have seen.

Our UK companies are entitled to a Government Game tax credit rebate which we earn every month on the Squadron 42 development. These rebates are payable by the UK Government in the fall of the next following year when we file our tax returns. Foundry 42 and its parent company Cloud Imperium Games UK Ltd. have elected to partner with Coutts, a highly regarded, very selective, and specialized UK banking institution, to obtain a regular advance against this rebate, which will allow us to avoid converting unnecessarily other currencies into GBP. We obviously incur a significant part of our expenditures in GBP while our collections are mostly in USD and EUR. Given today's low interest rates versus the ongoing and uncertain currency fluctuations, this is simply a smart money management move, which we implemented upon recommendation of our financial advisors.

The collateral granted in connection with this discounting loan is absolutely standard and pertains to our UK operation only, which develops Squadron 42. As a careful review of the security will show and contrary to some irresponsible and misleading reports, the collateral specifically excludes "Star Citizen." The UK Government rebate entitlement, which is audited and certified by our outside auditors on a quarterly basis, is the prime collateral. Per standard procedure in banking, our UK companies of course stand behind the loan and guarantee repayment which, however, given the reliability of the discounted asset (a UK Government payment) is a formality and nothing else. This security does not affect our UK companies' ownership and control of their assets. Obviously, the UK Government will not default on its rebate obligations which will be used for repayment, and even then the UK companies have ample assets to repay the loan, even in such an eventuality which is of course unthinkable.

This should clarify the matter. Thank you. "

</comment><comment><USER18> I know SC initial funding is unprecedented, but is taking out what amounts to a line of credit really that uncommon? It doesn't necessarily mean the initial 150M has dried up -> thus the sky just may not be falling?

<comment><USER19> The terms of the loan we're really, really unfavorable. They essentially pledged every piece of IP they have to get the loan. It's not the kind of loan you take if your company is healthy and has easy access to financing.

<comment><USER20> IP which is basically worthless if the game doesn't ever release.

A bank that gives out loans to a failing company with collateral that is worthless if the company fails doesn't seem that smart.

<comment><USER11> But the queen banks with them! /s

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This story reminds me of ION Storm [1], John Romero's cash rich baby that failed miserably with Daikatana. [2]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_Storm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_Storm)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daikatana](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daikatana)

<comment><USER22> > Porter became CEO of ION Storm and the Dallas Observer said "He turned down > a deal with Compaq computers that would have paid ION 75 cents to $1 for > every Compaq computer sold with Dominion already installed, and would have > guaranteed ION a minimum of $1.5 million."

It's funny to think that selling your game for $1/each is a standard thing these days for mobile games. They only ended up selling very few of the games in retail and obviously should have took this deal.

Thanks for the link, interesting story.

I would love an office with a 'crash room' to have power naps in. That's the main thing I miss from working at home.

<comment><USER23> I've seen a fair few law offices with nap rooms.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Who could've guessed?

The game designer suddenly gets $150m and rather than iterating, he goes for the dream.

I looked him up and he apparently has produced AAA games before so what's the deal here? Shooting for the moon on the first go in any software development processes is a recipe for disaster.

<comment><USER25> _> I looked him up_

I'm guessing you haven't played a little series called Wing Commander?

<comment><USER26> That's true for most of the world's population.

<comment><USER25> Most of the world's population isn't posting comments in English on a computer-oriented site.

I'd expect most people commenting on games could at least name some of the major 90s studios. Origin was kind of a big deal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Ahhh Star Citizen. The first crowdfunding campaign I ever backed, and I backed it to the tune of $120-150 (I don't even remember). I figured it was a gamble, but their demos were and continue to be extremely impressive, and what's life without a little risk? I doubt all the other backers will be so forgiving, however. Things are likely to get pretty ugly if the company folds.

</comment><comment> git-pull You have to admit, they made really good commercials for in-game content. They stayed in character, too. A few hand-picked favorites:

\- _Imagine: Star Citizen_ : [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJJ9TcGxhNY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJJ9TcGxhNY)

\- _Star Citizen - MISC Freelancer Commercial_ : [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vO7RxsZpcKc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vO7RxsZpcKc)

\- _Star Citizen: Consolidated Outland Mustang Commercial_ : [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BR07oZC0QHU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BR07oZC0QHU)

\- _Introducing the 2944 Aurora_ : [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvDs7RDKCag](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvDs7RDKCag)

Full playlist: [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVct2QDhDrB0QRjv9oN02...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVct2QDhDrB0QRjv9oN02f8mGsml8tcK9)

<comment><USER28> In the first video the barrel roll [0] followed by a person in an EVA suit in the interior of a (different) vessel [1] made me wonder about zero-gravity spatial relationships.

(Before continuing, please excuse my ignorance in the subjects of gravitational physics and aeronautical nomenclature. Also, I do not intend to troll. I'm honestly wondering. I'm also a little embarrassed at the brainteaser-like character of my question.)

Presume a human being is inside a vertically asymmetrical vessel with no interior atmosphere. The vessel is at rest with regard to a nearby (< 1 million kilometers) planetary system (similar to ours) and the vessel is in (essentially) zero-gravity. If the vessel accelerates around the axis that runs stem to stern (executes a barrel roll) will the occupant spin with the vessel or will the vessel spin around the occupant?

[0] [https://youtu.be/lJJ9TcGxhNY?t=106](https://youtu.be/lJJ9TcGxhNY?t=106)

[1] [https://youtu.be/lJJ9TcGxhNY?t=116](https://youtu.be/lJJ9TcGxhNY?t=116)

EDIT: Change "subject" to "subjects".

<comment><USER29> You can test it on earth! Take a glass, fill it with water. Put something in it that floats, keep it away from the sides. Rotate the glass.

<comment><USER28> Thank you for your suggested experiment, though the set ups are different in one crucial regard.

The water molecules interact with the glass, each other, and the floating object.

The vessel's occupant (as mentioned in my earlier post) is in the vessel's interior which has no atmosphere (vacuum).

<comment><USER30> The vessel will spin around the occupant. The glass of water test is equivalent to the case where the vessel contains air, and the answer is the vessel still spins around the occupant for a while, until the fluid transmits the motion to the occupant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Not surprised. The whole enterprise seemed fishy from the start. I contributed to the Kickstarter but basically gave up on it once they moved to their new campaign website and their business model became so complicated I didn't know what they were offering or I was buying anymore. Endless offers and perks with no have in sight didn't help.

Weird that Roberts didn't know better.

</comment><comment><USER32> Should kickstarter have a clause for failed software projects to be open sourced/the source code/assets be given to the backers? (Not sure what the non-technical users could do with it, but at least they could get what work has been done so far) Of course I'm not implying Star Citizen has failed, this is just a general thought

</comment><comment><USER33> Funny how everyone loves to jump on the hate wagon against this game and company, even on HN - you get a clickbaity sketchy article from neogaf and suddenly everyone is a banking expert?

They already released a response, but it's kinda sad that they have to justify stuff like this to "journalists" all the time.

[https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/for...](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/forum/1/thread/re- uk-tax-rebate-advance-for-foundry-42/277779)

</comment><comment><USER34> Most interesting thing about SC is Amazon has a game publishing arm and star citizen is using lumberyard. I hope that AGS has an interest in keeping it's most high profile client alive. Some of my most nostalgic childhood memories are playing privateer with my brother.

Having someone who could say no to chris would probably be an overall win for everyone.

</comment><comment><USER35> CIG have just released a statement regarding this ([https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/for...](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/forum/1/thread/re- uk-tax-rebate-advance-for-foundry-42/277779)). Pasted below for those who can't or won't visit the previous link:

        Ortwin: We have noticed the speculations created by a posting on the website of UK's Company House with respect to Coutt's security for our UK Tax Rebate advance, and we would like to provide you with the following insight to help prevent some of the misinformation we have seen.
        Our UK companies are entitled to a Government Game tax credit rebate which we earn every month on the Squadron 42 development. These rebates are payable by the UK Government in the fall of the next following year when we file our tax returns. Foundry 42 and its parent company Cloud Imperium Games UK Ltd. have elected to partner with Coutts, a highly regarded, very selective, and specialized UK banking institution, to obtain a regular advance against this rebate, which will allow us to avoid converting unnecessarily other currencies into GBP. We obviously incur a significant part of our expenditures in GBP while our collections are mostly in USD and EUR. Given today's low interest rates versus the ongoing and uncertain currency fluctuations, this is simply a smart money management move, which we implemented upon recommendation of our financial advisors.
        The collateral granted in connection with this discounting loan is absolutely standard and pertains to our UK operation only, which develops Squadron 42. As a careful review of the security will show and contrary to some irresponsible and misleading reports, the collateral specifically excludes "Star Citizen." The UK Government rebate entitlement, which is audited and certified by our outside auditors on a quarterly basis, is the prime collateral. Per standard procedure in banking, our UK companies of course stand behind the loan and guarantee repayment which, however, given the reliability of the discounted asset (a UK Government payment) is a formality and nothing else. This security does not affect our UK companies' ownership and control of their assets. Obviously, the UK Government will not default on its rebate obligations which will be used for repayment, and even then the UK companies have ample assets to repay the loan, even in such an eventuality which is of course unthinkable.
        This should clarify the matter. Thank you.

<comment><USER36> Please don't use two spaces to quote text. That quoted text is barely readable on desktop, and unreadable on mobile, because of the horizontal scrolling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> It's not nearly as bad as they make it seem. Loans/debt are a completely healthy source of financing.

<comment><USER38> Excepted it wasn't planned like that.

<comment><USER39> Source? Not all loans are bad, it wouldn't make sense to plan on never taking a loan.

<comment><USER38> I'm pretty sure they blew through most of their estimates.

The projects was always hailed as one of the big crowdfunding break and nothing indicates they considered borrowing to finance the project given the massive amount of money they got and the time estimates they posted.

By all means, check for yourself.

<comment><USER39> Why would you assume a company would never use a loan?

Apple takes out loans and they have billions. There could be tax incentive to take out loans.

<comment><USER40> Apple takes out loans in the US because their offshore billions are subject to 30ish % corporate tax if repatriated, which is indeed a tax incentive albeit a perverse tax dodging one...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Wouldn't we all love a breakdown on how someone spends that kind of money. So far the game is solid. But I wonder if someone had their eyes on another WOW killer.

<comment><USER42> $150M isn't that much of money if you consider their studious locations, game scale and quality of their marketing materials. I guess they spent a lot more money on marketing and communications with community since it's the only reason they managed to get so much money through crowdfunding.

For instance one of best and largest games recently produced is Witcher 3. It's cost about $81M [1] (half budget is marketing and probably localization, not sure what is source on this) and more than 250 [2] in-home developers (and 1500+ [3] people in total include localization) worked on it. And this is developers from Poland with significantly lower salaries and overall burn rate.

Now for instance about year ago Chris Roberts announced [4] they have following studios working on game: Frankfurt (50), Manchester (180), Los Angeles (60) and Austin (50). So it's about 350 developers and even if you take something like $80,000 burn rate per employee it's going to be a lot of money and actual number likely higher than that.

[1] [https://www.gamespot.com/articles/this-is-how-much-the- witch...](https://www.gamespot.com/articles/this-is-how-much-the- witcher-3-cost-to-make/1100-6430409/)

[2] [https://www.develop-online.net/interview/the-wild-road-to- th...](https://www.develop-online.net/interview/the-wild-road-to-the- witcher-3/0207553)

[3] [https://www.vg247.com/2016/01/13/over-1500-people-worked- on-...](https://www.vg247.com/2016/01/13/over-1500-people-worked-on-the- witcher-3-wild-hunt/)

[4] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9T48l7Oq0Q&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9T48l7Oq0Q&feature=youtu.be&t=6m45s)

<comment><USER43> Minor correction, the communication with the community is funded by "community subscribers" separate from the game development crowdfunding.

<comment><USER42> Thanks. I didn't knew they funded it separately.

I still think some part of developers working time going on it. And due to how their marketing works they likely had to adjust usual development pipeline. In most of "normal" games there can be untextured models, unfinished animations until very end while on Star Citizen they try to show eye-candy updates all the time. So I guess this would likely drive development cost up.

<comment><USER43> That's true, I'm not sure how they account for dev time spent on community videos. But at least on the level of the video equipment and the staff who record and edit the shows, they're not spending out of money donated for game development.

I don't know about untextured models and unfinished animations driving up costs. At one point they showed a demo with early draft facial animations and got slammed for it (The Morrow Tour), and since then they've been hesitant to show things that aren't near finished. Stuff's getting to that level of visual polish either way, I think this is more likely to impact whether they publish early drafts of visual features, rather than having an impact on their actual development process.

Not that we don't see progress on stuff though. The procedural planets have been repeatedly featured in videos since back since the first teaser (Pupil to Planet) when it had a single material covering the entire planet. More recent demos are much more detailed and have shown what's slated for release in alpha 3.0, including the Levski landing area.

Other things like animations do get shown in untextured demo levels, and I remember recently seeing one with a person putting a box on a shelf and clipped his arm through a solid object. So they're not total perfectionists, but they're not 100% open about in-progress features either. If you show something too early and it changes significantly before release, somebody's bound to get upset about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> One way to think about this is: bank software dev is incredibly delivery / customer oriented. Maybe that will transfer over to this game dev ? ;)

</comment><comment><USER45> Well, I feel a little better about my small personal debt in comparison.

</comment><comment><USER46> EVERYBODY PAUSE!

This is not abnormal at all (in itself). If you were going to lend money to a software company, what else would you take as security other than IP?

A floating charge is just there to establish the bank as a preferential creditor in case they default. Otherwise if the company became insolvent, the bank would only be entitled to its share of what is left of the assets in proportion to what they had lent. If the bank expected them to default then they would not have lent them any money! A floating charge does not mean necessarily that the bank would be entitled to those assets, if they were of a higher value than what the bank had lent them, for instance.

I just took a look at the December 2015 accounts and they show that they burnt £1m in the year, and had £1.1m left. Again, the bank will know their provisional 2016 numbers and their forecast by now, and would not have lent them money that they didn't have the cashflows to repay.

The game may be rubbish, the project may be a failure, but a registration of a charge is not a cause for concern in itself. Maybe for instance, the company saw an opportunity that needed more cash?

<comment><USER43> I'd expect the loan is effectively borrowing against anticipated Squadron 42 sales (the single player game) to keep development moving faster. God forbid they delay that again.

Once that's out they can pay the money back and continue work on Star Citizen's persistent universe.

As to the ongoing debate over whether the project is "a train wreck", it would be prudent to wait another month or two for alpha 3.0 to land. This contains the first procedural moons, landing locations, significant overhauls to networking, more fleshed out NPCs/missions, initial version of cargo hauling, and more.

If they can't deliver on that then by all means get all doom-and-gloom. But it's not that far off to wait. Official schedule still has it targeted for July, but a slip back to August won't surprise anyone.</comment></comment>


One-Third Don't Know Obamacare and Affordable Care Act Are the Same - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/07/upshot/one-third-dont-know-obamacare-and-affordable-care-act-are-the-same.html <comment><USER2> The Republicans labeling the affordable health care act "Obamacare" and attacking it from day one was a significant propaganda victory, as we can see. In fact the law is very pro-corporate and could have been written by a moderate Republican - was very similar to the Massachusetts health care program instituted by Mitt Romney.

Another very significant propaganda victory, about half of people in the US who think global warming is not caused by humans, or not happening.

<comment><USER3> Isn't it a common practice to find nicknames for pieces of legislation? In that case, the Republican found one that stuck. The name "Obamacare" is nothing more than a portmanteau of "Obama" and "Health care", and as such it does not entail any political message _per se_ , except that it's supposed to name an health care legislation in which Barack Obama was particularly involved.

So, calling the use of this word "propaganda" seems highly incorrect.

In fact, IIRC Barack Obama himself appropriated the name and said something like "I don't mind this to be called Obamacare, because I do care" (I'm paraphrasing).

<comment><USER4> It seems to be increasingly common to make the name of the legislation propaganda in itself. Naming the ACA 'affordable' would be an immediate example - a less contentious example would be "USA PATRIOT" (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act), as attacking PATRIOT immediately sounds politically worse than attacking state surveillance.

Countering 'Affordable' with 'Obamacare' was a very successful propaganda win. Affordable sounds good, Obama sounds bad (to the intended audiences). That you can realistically ask people to take sides between the two (whether they prefer Obamacare or ACA) illustrates this perfectly (if Kimmel is a source, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6m7pWEMPlA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6m7pWEMPlA))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Americans Think Cloud Computing Comes From Actual Clouds"

[http://www.webpronews.com/americans-think-cloud-computing- co...](http://www.webpronews.com/americans-think-cloud-computing-comes-from- actual-clouds-2012-08/)

Personally I think people are most ignorant when they're most comfortable. The number of people reading & talking about politics right now, at least in my circles, is higher than it's ever been.

Much of what they're saying it led by FUD and isn't balanced at all, in my opinion, but that's a different issue.

<comment><USER6> I can't find another source that says literally that of this poll[0], but Slate's article[1] resonates similarly:

"Wakefield developed a questionnaire that delved into Americans' misunderstandings of "the cloud." By releasing a less B2B-focused survey, Citrix was able to, for the first time, connect the brand to "the cloud" for the wider consumer population – not just in B2B circles. Stats such as, "51% think inclement weather interferes with cloud computing,"

[0] [http://www.wakefieldresearch.com/works/citrix](http://www.wakefieldresearch.com/works/citrix)

[1] [http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/08/30/cloud_computi...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/08/30/cloud_computing_a_survey_says_most_americans_think_it_has_to_do_with_literal_clouds.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Another example of why democracy does not work at least in its current form. So is democracy really something that countries and people should be pursuing?

Example: US presidential election. I'm not the worst enemy of Trump and I'm not his supporter either, but I still can easily understand why many people voted for him. He was direct and gave simple answers to (seemingly) simple problems and what's more, he actually has kept his promises so far. I can't say I remember any politician ever doing what they promised during the elections, but Trump has done it.

Still person like Trump with his ideas is not fit to be the president of United States or any other country either really for the obvious reasons that have been discussed here as well many times. However, as long as we live in democracy things like Trump can and will keep on happening. I hate to sound arrogant, but if you give equal rights to vote for all people despite their level of education, understanding of the world, politics, environment and many other things there will be more Trumps and other kinds of problems. I'm not trying to support dictatorship, but instead maybe there could be some kind of limited/modified democracy or something which is somewhere in the middle of dictatorship and democracy.

Considering the current events, I don't think there will be much choice soon.

<comment><USER8> That's what the Constitution is for in a democratic republic, like the U.S. It limits the damage a single populist can cause to our lasting institutions.

Unfortunately, it's eroded over time. When we want big government policies, we don't care if it's truly regulating commerce "among the several states", and we don't bother to amend the Constitution to add the powers we feel are appropriate.

Out of all the people that want gun control, none advocate for an amendment to revoke the second. They all seem to conveniently believe that it's constitutional. I understand why some people feel that way, but surely a reading of the second amendment would lead some of them to want to revoke it, but it doesn't, because nobody cares what the second amendment or any other part of the Constitution says.

<comment><USER9> None?

How about a former Justice of the Supreme Court?

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-five-extra- words...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-five-extra-words-that- can-fix-the-second- amendment/2014/04/11/f8a19578-b8fa-11e3-96ae-f2c36d2b1245_story.html)

<comment><USER8> I exaggerated. But very few people bother to say it should be revoked/amended compared to the number that just don't care.

Edit: interesting article, but he is not claiming that his preferred policies are unconstitutional, and that we should change the Constitution to allow them. He is saying that they are already constitutional, and we should update the amendment to more closely match his interpretation.

That doesn't require any courage. It's just another way of saying "I'm right; let's update the text to say so."

<comment><USER9> Why does it have to be courageous?

It's an acknowledgement of where the law needs to be fixed. That's advocating for gun control in the constitution.

<comment><USER8> No, because he's also saying that it's already constitutional, and he just wants to add the text to end arguments against him.

It doesn't have to be courageous. But it's not a counterexample to my point that people don't care what the Constitution says -- they only care about their policies and conveniently find that the Constitution allows them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is such a pernicious problem because (1) people are very susceptible to wishful thinking and (2) there's no mechanism for self-correction when the misinformed don't know (or refuse to accept) that they're misinformed.

</comment><comment><USER11> Lol. Are the majority of people as dumb as they seem?

I'm continually amazed at how well propaganda works on people and how easily they'll go against their best interests.

Voting seems to be just a battle of propoganda to sway dumb people instead of two sides presenting scientific evidence to back their views and people actively working to make things better with rigorous scientific method.

Maybe I'm naieve but it seems humanity will keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again until we run government scientifically with peer review.

<comment><USER6>
      Are the majority of people as dumb as they seem?

In fact, almost half of them have below-average intelligence.

But seriously, media-managed perceptions have a lot of effect. Most Americans have low approval ratings of Congress in general but much higher approval of their individual Congressmember.

<comment><USER11> Yeah but isn't insane how politics and government is just a media managed propoganda battle?

These people running our entire society have absolutely no scientific methodology for determining their policies. It's all just propaganda and some politician on a commercial making a bunch of promises.

It's so insane to me.

I wouldn't go to a doctor who had really good commercials, I would want to see their success results,and I want to know and what is going on with my treatment at all times, and see how successful the treatment is, etc.etc..

Yet this is how we elect people to run the entire country??

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Then why are we trying to "get out the vote" to send these people to the polls?

Let's encourage people to inform themselves, and participation will come naturally in time. Encouraging participation puts the cart before the horse.</comment>


BBC Attacks the Open Web, GNU/Linux in Danger - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2013/02/bbc-attacks-the-open-web-gnulinux-in-danger/index.htm <comment><USER2> The BBC makes a lot of content available for free. (The licence fee is payable whether you watch BBC tv or not).

The BBC doesn't produce all the content they show.

Rights owners have considerable control over what happens to the content.

Thus, many BBC radio programmes are downloadable as MP3 and can be kept forever. An excellent programme _In Our Time_ [1] has made their entire back catalogue available, but a programme that has music ( _Desert Island Discs_ , or any live concerts on BBC Radio 1) will have much more restricted download conditions.

iPlayer (hateful stupid ridiculous name) really is amazing. The BBC led OnDemand viewing in the UK. And what we've got now is very very much better than the RealAudio kludge we had years ago.

So, really, the target here should be stupid rights holders who don't understand the benefits to greater viewership.

They need to come up with some other way of paying people who create content. The BBC is (at least, I hope they are) collecting a lot of data about how often programmes get watched or downloaded over their various online services; so maybe payment could be linked to download amounts somehow.

Paying content creators in a better way would also help "archive" services like BBC Radio FourExtra, which suffers from heavy rolling repeats.

<comment><USER3> It's payable if you watch any TV "as it is broadcast" so that means watching via a cable/satellite/freeview or watching stuff that is being streamed on iplayer the same time as on TV.

Weirdly though you don't need one to watch iplayer "catch up" content which is usually available about an hour after the initial showing.

So if you watch a lot of iplayer catch up you don't have to pay, but if you consume no BBC content and just use your TV to watch Sky1 or whatever then you do have to pay.

<comment><USER4> Incorrect. You need a license to watch the BBC online.

<http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/check-if-you-need-one/>

<comment><USER5> The very first paragraph on your link:

> You need to be covered by a valid TV Licence if you watch or record TV as > it's being broadcast. This includes the use of devices such as a computer, > laptop, mobile phone or DVD/video recorder.

You just confirmed he was right.

<comment><USER6> What are you trying to say exactly??

iPlayer itself displays a ton of warnings that you need a TV license to use it.

<comment><USER7> That's only for the live feed, not any of the catch up content.

<comment><USER6> Get a clue, the Windows setup says something like "Do not install without a license"

<comment><USER8> They really are correct. I've had this confirmed by the TV Licensing folks directly.

<comment><USER6> My bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Attack articles will not change the views of those working in the BBC's policy department. If you/we believe there are societal/economic benefits to the open web, they must be argued persuasively and clearly.

Too many digital commentators and bloggers do not engage with these issues in any productive way.

Attack articles do not reform political procedures, substantive policy suggestions do.

The BBC quite obviously, and validly, worries that open use of its content will put it at a competitive disadvantage. They can foresee International producers withdrawing content from its platforms if its distribution channels are not duly protected. That does not seem like an unfair concern.

There might be space to argue that the BBC is being short-sighted. That is to say, that while we understand its concerns on this issue, the introduction of DRM will negatively affects its longer term success. That is to say, the success of the BBC has been prefaced on the wide distribution of its original content around the world. In fact, it wouldn't be too strong to say the BBC's reputation rests on the free, worldwide distribution of its news programming -- today this has been inherited by its news website.

We might press the concern that locking all of its content behind DRM technology will harm the wide distribution of its content, hurting awareness of its international brand.

We ask the BBC to consider the following example: fears of recording radio programming have existed since the early 20th Century. If the BBC, cracked down on its distribution in response to those issues in the 50s-, we believe the BBC wouldn't be the worldwide powerhouse it is now.

Locking up its content is not in the long term interests of the BBC brand, esp. as the developing world -- China, Brazil, Russia -- start looking online for reliable programming.

Therefore, we call on the BBC to initiate a review into the implications of its policy decision, and its effect on international brand awareness.

This isn't my argument, but at least it understands, appreciates, and responds to their economic concerns.

<comment><USER6> The guys who control BBC are not employes of policy or any other BBC department. The old boy networks in UK currently see the open Internet as extremely dangerous and will do almost anything to monitor/limit/regulate/restrict it.

<comment><USER10> This is exactly the sort of the thing the grandparent talks about. Your post has rhetoric but no substance. If you want to be persuasive, show your evidence and make an argument. A bunch of unsupported assertions just reads like a temper tantrum.

<comment><USER6> Well, I'd say any person with a bit of practical experience will understand that the way BBC (one of the most influential medias in the world) policies are set is not by hiring people and letting them work based on high morale criteria. I have myself worked for BBC, all the important decisions in the department I was with were run trough and ultimately dictated by some Lady, that was the boss of some media fairness committee. That committee was privately funded, completely outside of public control.

On the Internet politics in UK, just look at the laws the Parliament passes. All the traffic in UK is now logged by the providers and available to the government agencies. There are a few black lists. The government is spending a ton of money on the Cisco, IBM, Oracle systems also employed by China and Saudi Arabia.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> So, how exactly BBC attacks the whole open web? Do they demand, that _all_ web content should be DRMed? How did it become so, that wanting some feature means you are attacking all those who don't want and don't need that feature? Say HTML5 gets DRM. So what? What exactly forbids you not to use it? The web is open because there are people wanting to give away content for free, not because there is no DRM tech built-in in HTML. You cannot force openness for those unwilling. If some company thinks it needs DRM, let it have it. If they think it is essential and web does not provide it they just won't use web tech and will have some proprietary plugins for that. How exactly GNU/Linux is in danger there? They don't like it, they don't implement it. End of story. Seriously, people, calm down. I am being sick from all that hysterics about attack on web (just because somebody chose to develop a native app, shock and horror), walled gardens, etc.

<comment><USER12> HTML itself is a fundamentally open standard on which the entire op web is built.

Adding DRM to that ends that. Period. No hysterics.

The attempt to add DRM to HTML is a full frontal attack on the open web. This is not subject to interpretation or nuance, that is equivalent to being "a little bit pregnant".

<comment><USER13> > Adding DRM to that ends that. Period. No hysterics.

Your post is nothing but hysterics.

Adding DRM support allows browsers to decide what to do in their UI in a standard way. It doesn't force unwilling content providers to use it and claiming that it closes the web is like claiming that HTTP should not support passwords because someone could use them to prevent open access to a page.

<comment><USER14> >It doesn't force unwilling content providers to use it

This is like claiming there is nothing wrong with Microsoft's traditional efforts to promote developer tools that can't produce software for non- Microsoft operating systems because "it doesn't force unwilling software developers to use it." The problem isn't for Microsoft or those who develop for Microsoft platforms, it's for those who want to use or develop non- Microsoft platforms.

It's not about Hollywood, it's about everyone else. If you put DRM in HTML then I as a user can't use it from an open source web browser on an open source operating system. If you put DRM in HTML then I as a software developer can't write a competitive web browser or operating system without permission from Hollywood.

It's not about "protecting content" -- all the content is already on The Pirate Bay and Hollywood is doing fine -- what it's about is creating gatekeepers. It's about leveraging the dominant position the studios have over the market for video production into a gatekeeper position in content distribution, so that they can use it to make sure smaller content producers can't get access to customers without using their approved devices with their approved software, which ultimately allows them to collect a toll even for things they didn't create, and choose what message gets seen by the people and use that to frame the public debate as they've traditionally been able to do.

Even if you don't think that's what it's about or that's what their goals are, that's still what it enables and why it needs to be stopped.

<comment><USER13> > If you put DRM in HTML then I as a software developer can't write a > competitive web browser or operating system without permission from > Hollywood

Look, I dislike DRM at least as much as you do but whether or not we like it, DRM is not going away any time soon. When you protest HTML5 gaining a standard way to specify this, you're saying "I would prefer most of the internet run on close binary plugins controlled by a single vendor until the rest of the world adopts my political views". Since most people are going to stop using Netflix, Hulu, etc. I would at least like the system to be standard, competitive and well-secured.

Finally, it's a canard to make this an open source issue: it's really about control of the underlying platform: if the decryption key is extractable, it's game-over – and so the studios desperately want to end general purpose computing. Neither Windows nor WinDVD were OSS and yet the first DVD key extraction happened there shortly after release.

<comment><USER14> >Look, I dislike DRM at least as much as you do but whether or not we like it, DRM is not going away any time soon.

I don't understand where people got this idea. The only reason it hasn't gone away is that we haven't made it go away. If the likes of the BBC and technology companies would collectively say "sorry, DRM is poison, we're not having any part of it" then it would already be gone. Sympathizing with or defending their refusal to do so only makes them less likely to do it, and makes the day when DRM only exists in the history books take that much longer to arrive.

>When you protest HTML5 gaining a standard way to specify this, you're saying "I would prefer most of the internet run on close binary plugins controlled by a single vendor until the rest of the world adopts my political views".

How do you imagine any DRM could possibly work that isn't based on "closed binary plugins controlled by a single vendor"? Perhaps "closed binary plugins controlled by a cartel of large colluding vendors"? How is that better?

You can't actually publish how the DRM works in the standard or it isn't DRM anymore. You can't allow competitors to produce their own independent implementations or "competitors" from Russia will produce implementations that allow copying. Open standard DRM is an oxymoron. What they're talking about is adding to the standard a flag that says "use this proprietary DRM solution" -- in other words, promoting more binary blob nonsense, instead of encouraging content distributors to just be rational and abandon the whole idea.

>Finally, it's a canard to make this an open source issue: it's really about control of the underlying platform: if the decryption key is extractable, it's game-over – and so the studios desperately want to end general purpose computing. Neither Windows nor WinDVD were OSS and yet the first DVD key extraction happened there shortly after release.

How is it a canard? It isn't a matter of which platforms are secure, it's a matter of which platforms are legal. No DRM is secure. But open source exposes the facade of DRM security so comprehensively that no such implementations are allowed to be licensed. Or, if you're being more cynical, the point of DRM is to claim that against open source implementations in order to justify prohibiting them, so that they can prohibit free and open competitors to the Hollywood-sanctioned wall gardens that allow major content distributors to collect unjustified rents from smaller content providers and control the public discourse.

<comment><USER13> Again, you're confusing DRM with access to the private keys. Any time you say you can't publicly specify how DRM works, you are either speaking in ignorance or trying to deceive, both of which help the pro-DRM PR campaign.

If we can't get Hollywood to accept reality, we would at least be better off with the open W3C proposal (you _did_ read it, right?) rather than continuing to entrench a massive proprietary plugin.

<comment><USER14> >Again, you're confusing DRM with access to the private keys.

How do you imagine DRM could be implemented _without_ access to private keys? Somewhere there exists a piece of proprietary software or hardware that holds the secret. By putting this in the standard you make the standard impossible to fully implement without including that proprietary software or hardware.

>If we can't get Hollywood to accept reality, we would at least be better off with the open W3C proposal (you did read it, right?) rather than continuing to entrench a massive proprietary plugin.

Did you read it? This is from the abstract: "This specification does not define a content protection or Digital Rights Management system."

In other words, they're not standardizing DRM, they're bastardizing the standard so that inherently non-standard proprietary DRM solutions can interface with it and fragment the web into a series of proprietary walled gardens based on which DRM system (if any) your platform implements.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I felt this was a fairly poor article. One of the most telling (for me) quotes was: "Dedicating itself to sharing knowledge and creativity - not just in the UK, but everywhere in the world - is an important and worthy cause, and I will happily pay my (compulsory) £145.50 each year to support the BBC in this."

This, I feel, misses the entire point of DRM. It is the belief of the BBC that adding DRM makes them money, by making it easier for them to sell their content, both as DVDs and overseas. I don't believe the BBC would put DRM on their content purely for the fun of irritating people.

So, the question isn't "would you pay your £145.50". The question is, how much more would you pay?

Taking some very vague numbers, there are just under 25 million TV licenses, and BBC international made £160 million profit last year on a turnover of £1bn. I'm not sure how much of that turnover is "value for the BBC" (are they paying to make TV programs?), but this means I can badly handwave that removing DRM might cost between around £7 to £40.

Would most people in the UK accept an increase in their licence fee of £7 in return for DRM free, and allowing everyone around the world to get free access to BBC programs? I suspect, unfortunately, the answer is no.

(Sorry if this is a bit simplistic, a true "the money of DRM" would be interesting, if contraversal. But, I feel this article really is ignoring the real most important issue, the money).

<comment><USER14> >this means I can badly handwave that removing DRM might cost between around £7 to £40.

How do you come to the conclusion that it would cost the BBC anything to remove DRM? If anything it would save them any money they currently spend implementing it and hopelessly attempting to secure it.

The "cost" of not having DRM, if any, is that some content distributors may refuse to license to them without it. The article itself points out that this has demonstrably not occurred in the past, but even if it did, why is that a cost to the television licensee? The money not paid to license that content is still available to license some other content from someone not so irrational on the point of DRM, or to fund new original BBC programming, or (if you're more worried about the cost to the public than providing more content) to use to reduce the price of a television license.

Let me say that again: It costs nothing to remove DRM and it costs something to implement it. It is costing the British television licensee money that could be used to create original programming to instead be used to restrict what they can do with their own devices. Why are they doing this again?

<comment><USER15> The (possible) cost of removing DRM, as I said, is that the BBC currently makes money by selling the content it makes, both direct to consumers and the TV and DVD companies in other countries. If the BBC released all its content DRM-free, then this money might dry up.

<comment><USER14> It seems like you're assuming contrary to evidence that the DRM is actually effective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I find it very surprising that the organization supposedly promoting the open "web for all" is even considering baking in DRM handcuffs.

It seems so short-sighted. Copyright is just a bunch of laws this society agrees on today. The web is not about today's laws, social mores, or profit motives, but of connectivity, sharing, and freedom of information and expression. When I see things like this even being considered, I sometimes think that we don't deserve such freedom.

If we're going to start DRM'ing media, why not just DRM the entire web page and be done with it? Why send HTML over the wire at all when we can send an encrypted blob? That'd be the ideal world for the media companies--total end- to-end secrecy, with users just being warm bodies with credit cards.

BBC, Netflix, MS, and--of all companies-- _Google_ should be ashamed to be involved in this.

<comment><USER17> >BBC, Netflix, MS, and--of all companies--Google should be ashamed to be involved in this.

Why should any of them be ashamed? They all have copyrighted digital content or at least have sites that host copyrighted content. They all clearly gain from this.

I know whenever DRM is mentioned everyone likes to get out the pitchforks and yell about "openness" and "freedom of information". But let's be honest, the majority of media would not be made if it was going to be handed out for free. Everyone seems to express this idealized utopian world where content is freely distributed, everyone contributes, and we all live in electro-social bliss. Sorry, until the Singularity occurs or the Age of Aquarius dawns that world doesn't exist.

>Copyright is just a bunch of laws this society agrees on today. The web is not about today's laws, social mores, or profit motives, but of connectivity, sharing, and freedom of information and expression. When I see things like this even being considered, I sometimes think that we don't deserve such freedom.

I'm not going to try and defend copyright completely, it clearly needs a lot of fixes to it, but this is just a bunch of random hogwash. Furthermore how does some sites enabling DRM limit anyone else's connectivity, sharing, or freedom of expression? Just because BBC starts limiting their iPlayer to license holders doesn't mean I can't have my own iPlayer website with my own open content that I share with everyone. You've created a rather weak strawman argument here.

>If we're going to start DRM'ing media, why not just DRM the entire web page and be done with it? Why send HTML over the wire at all when we can send an encrypted blob?

What are you even trying to communicate here?? HTTPS is basically transmitting an encrypted blob. The difference is that it (usually)contains HTML; which is an open standard that everyone uses so that you only need one program(browser) to interpret and display the blob from many sources(websites). Nothing about enabling DRM will change this, it will only limit those who want their website to be limited.

The only thing that is really questionable about this is whether W3C should be using resources to help standardize/implement such a feature. Given that the browsers will likely have to spend a lot of time/resources on making their software compatible with the new standard is a bit unfair.

I'll just say these content provider companies are going to use DRM methods to restrict use of their content one way or another. Whether it's through private plugins like silverlight, flash, etc. or though an open standard, all of the major browsers will have to be compatible to get users. I think it makes more sense from a security and usability perspective to push it into an open standard, but I can see both sides of the argument.

<comment><USER16> > Everyone seems to express this idealized utopian world where content is > freely distributed, everyone contributes, and we all live in electro-social > bliss.

The web should be designed as if we were targeting a utopia. The web as a technology doesn't care about today's laws or profit motives, but burdening it with them will only hinder what it can become in the future.

> Furthermore how does some sites enabling DRM limit anyone else's > connectivity, sharing, or freedom of expression?

Baking in DRM software into what should be an open medium of exchange is a first step. If the standard continues to evolve in that direction, the web will become something much different, and I think worse, than what it is today. W3C should be thinking about the future it wants to be in, not the profit motives of today's entrenched media interests.

> HTTPS is basically transmitting an encrypted blob.

HTTPS protects communications from eavesdropping, but both parties are still fully open to _each other_. DRM is not the same--it closes off the communication from one of the parties in the "discussion" and puts one party in total control. This is fundamentally different than being able to ensure two parties can communicate without being overheard.

<comment><USER17> >The web as a technology doesn't care about today's laws or profit motives.

The web as a technology doesn't care about anything because it isn't a human being. Why are you anthropomorphising it and adding idealized moralities? If you have certain morals and worldviews, go ahead and express them in the first person as your own opinion. Because "the web" is a loose group of technologies being developed and shared between a lot of different competing humans/groups all with their own ideologies.

>Baking in DRM software into what should be an open medium of exchange is a first step. If the standard continues to evolve in that direction, the web will become something much different, and I think worse, than what it is today.

So vague paranoia about the web "evolving" into something bad is why this shouldn't be allowed? You have any specifics on what you think might next happen? I mean once the media companies have DRM in HTML how else would they need to change it? I would think they'd basically gotten all they need at that point.

>HTTPS protects communications from eavesdropping, but both parties are still fully open to each other.

That depends on what you mean by fully open. I can open an HTTPS connection to gmail.com, I still need to provide some credentials for anything to happen. gmail.com still has "total control". In fact in most any client/server HTTPS connection one party is going to have what amounts to "total control". I don't understand how DRM within HTML is fundamentally changing that situation. It's just giving the server copy protection over the media it allows the client to access. It eliminates the need for plugins such as silverlight/flash/etc. that are already being used. It's not like these content companies hand out their media unprotected as it stands.

<comment><USER16> > So vague paranoia about the web "evolving" into something bad is why this > shouldn't be allowed?

We _should_ be paranoid. Media companies do not have our interests or the interests of an open web at heart. Give an inch and they'll take a mile. Why shouldn't they? The fact is that DRM benefits media companies almost exclusively while seriously harming user freedom. That's not vague paranoia, and imagining it evolving into something worse isn't an unfounded fear either.

> I can open an HTTPS connection to gmail.com, I still need to provide some > credentials for anything to happen.

Do you mean logging in to Gmail? That has nothing to do with HTTPS. HTTPS ensures that two parties can communicate in any way they wish without being eavesdropped on. (And it also suggests trust, but that's a different issue and the spec allows the same eavesdropping protection using self-signed certificates.)

<comment><USER17> >We should be paranoid. Media companies do not have our interests or the interests of an open web at heart. Give an inch and they'll take a mile. Why shouldn't they? The fact is that DRM benefits media companies almost exclusively while seriously harming user freedom. That's not vague paranoia, and imagining it evolving into something worse isn't an unfounded fear either.

It is vague paranoia. You're still just throwing out rhetoric without any concrete reasons. It doesn't harm user freedom, I don't know how to express this any clearer: "THEY'RE ALREADY DISTRIBUTING THROUGH DRM-ENABLED PLUGINS". All this would do is standardize it and allow users to access DRM content from website like hulu/netflix without needing two different private closed-source plugins.

>Do you mean logging in to Gmail? That has nothing to do with HTTPS. HTTPS ensures that two parties can communicate in any way they wish without being eavesdropped on. (And it also suggests trust, but that's a different issue and the spec allows the same eavesdropping protection using self-signed certificates.)

>In fact in most any client/server HTTPS connection one party is going to have what amounts to "total control". I don't understand how DRM within HTML is fundamentally changing that situation. It's just giving the server copy protection over the media it allows the client to access. It eliminates the need for plugins such as silverlight/flash/etc. that are already being used. It's not like these content companies hand out their media unprotected as it stands.

You're still ignoring the meat of my argument. Lets just drop the whole HTTPS analogy/credentials analogy. The rest of what I said is still valid.

<comment><USER18> > It is vague paranoia. You're still just throwing out rhetoric without any > concrete reasons. It doesn't harm user freedom, I don't know how to express > this any clearer: "THEY'RE ALREADY DISTRIBUTING THROUGH DRM-ENABLED > PLUGINS". All this would do is standardize it and allow users to access DRM > content from website like hulu/netflix without needing two different private > closed-source plugins.

The only way to get DRM to work is to require a closed-source browser. If you implement your DRM in open-source browser code, that code will almost certainly end up patched to produce decrypted/unprotected output and the patch would then be redistributed.

Ultimately, you cannot combine technology that prevents the end user from doing what they want with open-source software that attempts to guarantee such rights.

<comment><USER17> I agree that would be a problem, but I understand there would be a way to implement the current proposal without requiring a browser to be closed source.

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5232033>

[https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/html-media/raw-file/tip/encrypted- med...](https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/html-media/raw-file/tip/encrypted- media/encrypted-media.html)

It's not a perfect method, it would require some additional potentially closed-source OS-level software to be installed for the browser to interact with. But people who don't want it don't have to get it, and the browser can implement the standard without becoming closed-source.

<comment><USER18> That's also true, but as you point out, still requires a closed-source or a hardware DRM decoder to avoid kernel-level attacks. That would seem to rule out Linux support even if Windows or OS X Firefox/Chrome can safely use it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's funny how all the rage is descending upon BBC while the 3 other companies that back up the DRM proposal (Google, Microsoft and Netflix) entice zero attention.

<comment><USER12> The other companies are not publicly funded organisations. The BBC is supposed to be acting in the public interests.

Besides, everybody already knows which side of the fence Google and Microsoft are on, both in terms of self-interest and semi-political ideology.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Is it just me or is the copyright debate the wrong problem to be working on ?

Around the world we have people trying to speak freely about matters of justice, life and death, and they are being arrested, shot, mortared and harassed.

TOR and similar are steps in the right direction, but mobile hardware is still clearly identifiable and root is getting taken from people and given to the network operators.

Solve the problems of those who cannot speak freely, give them tools and anonymity and innovation around freedom once more and we shall see the problems of copyright solved in new ways.

Solve for X.

<comment><USER3> These problems are sort of related. If you build technology to allow people to communicate anonymously then most likely that technology can also be used for piracy.

So enforcement of systems that are less anonymous and offer less overall control to the end user can be justified under the grounds of protecting intellectual property rights.

If you can reform IP law in some way then perhaps you can remove roadblocks towards the adoption of systems which are more open, more secure etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> > the BBC is a public service broadcaster primarily funded by the licence fee > paid by UK households

So DRM-ing BBC programmes would be very much alike, uhm... publishing publicly funded research in journals that require paid subscriptions? ...ain't that cute

<comment><USER22> Not exactly, because it'd be against their own rules - the BBC is actually forbidden to encrypt its broadcasts. That's why their DVDs were always region 0 and bereft of copy-protection.

Things get a little more murky where we're talking about "downloads" as opposed to "broadcasts" - both the BBC and theit regulator, Ofcom, have confirmed on numerous occasions that it's mandatory that the BBC's "public service content remains free to air i.e. unencrypted." ( <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8352241.stm> ) but they've been allowed to place limits on downloaded content such as iPlayer not letting you store content forever.

I suspect this is less about "BBC wants DRM" and more about "BBC is under massive pressure to use DRM"

Either way, I was disappointed when I first saw their submission to W3C talking about their support for DRM'd media - I've always been gratified by the way the BBC was the only big media corp. out there that wasn't chasing the dream of total control over its content. If they're making a U-turn on that I'll have to rethink my policy on paying the license fee.

(Before anyone steps up with the "it's mandatory" - it isn't if you don't own & use a TV, and I'd feel no sorrow at all about getting rid of my TV)

<comment><USER23> To be clear, it's mandatory to pay for a "TV license" if you consume live broadcasts in any way, regardless of the platform on which you do it [1]. Getting rid of your TV isn't enough if you keep your web browser tuned to BBC One on www.bbc.co.uk.

[1] <http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/check-if-you-need-one/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> So far it looks like the rights owners have chosen not to support standards if the standards lack support for DRM functionality they feel are necessary for protecting the content. Instead of HTML5 video we are still seeing Silverlight, Flash and similar solutions.

<comment><USER25> This - I wish I could up vote multiple times. Fundamentally, distributors want to be able to use DRM to protect their content. If open standards won't provide a way to do that, there is no surprise that they turn to Silverlight etc.

<comment><USER26> What's the issue, then? They still find a way to distribute their content but Web Standards aren't tainted. Seems like things are working as they should.

<comment><USER27> The issue is that I need a proprietary plug-in with frequent security problems (Flash) to watch the videos. It would be better if they could deliver their content through a standardised protocol with more secure clients.

On the whole, that benefit isn't worth the downsides of adding DRM provisions to an open standard. And of course, I'd prefer they could do without DRM at all, but that still seems like a pipe dream.

<comment><USER14> >I'd love a youtube where I could pay a monthly subscription instead of watching annoying ads. If DRM gave me that option it'd be great.

The pipe dream is working DRM. DRM is inherently a failure. Anything we can do to make it less convenient or harder to use will only convince more content providers not to use it -- especially when the inconveniences cause more normal users to complain, which can only be a good thing.

Or to put it another way, why are you advocating polishing a turd so that it appears less objectionable and can be more common? It needs to be less common. Hollywood is not omnipotent. They are capable of being convinced to change their ways. Witness music DRM. Witness the broadcast flag, which was defeated but HD content continues to be distributed without it. This "we won't distribute content without DRM" is just bloviating from pompous industry executives who hope you won't call their bluff. They need to be called on it far more often.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm sorry, but I don't see how "GNU/Linux in Danger".

This is actually _good_ for Linux, as adding DRM to HTML will alleviate the need to use closed-source technologies like Flash and Silverlight to stream DRMed content. Getting rid of closed-source Flash and Silverlight is a _good_ thing.

<comment><USER14> What is it that you imagine they'll be replaced with? There has to be a binary blob somewhere whose purpose is to attempt to make the decryption and display process opaque. That's what DRM is. I'm not sure what it matters whether you call it Flash or something else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> What kind of crappy article leads with a false dichotomy. DRM isn't any different than a paywall. It doesn't make the internet suddenly not open to allow sites to protect video content and for users to choose to view that content or not.

</comment><comment><USER30> Why add DRM? It is consistently bypassed. The BBC only needs it for iPlayer, but DRM there is pointless since everything on iPlayer was broadcast prior on unprotected terrestial TV.

Just use HTTPS, check referrers, prevent iframing and require passing a one- use token, locked to IP address, embedded in the page. That won't protect you from people stealing the content, sure. But at least it prevents bandwidth- stealing.

<comment><USER2> > Why add DRM?

The only reason: The people selling content to the BBC require that the BBC has DRM measures in place.

<comment><USER31> if bbc is a big enough customer for such content ( and i believe the bbc is), it can dictate terms when buying such content. If it is not doing so, we can only assume corruption and collusion as reasons.

<comment><USER32> Is the BBC big enough to fend off ITV, C5 or Sky who don't have to worry about such issues? Remember Occam's Razor before jumping to conclusions about corruption...

<comment><USER31> you are right. Assuming corruption is unnecessary here, as business interests fairly explain their behaviour.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Surely even with baked in support at the operating system level such a thing would be trivial to bypass?

Simply run a DRM compatible OS in a virtual machine, capture the video output from the VM in the host machine and encode that?

<comment><USER33> Hence the rider about ensuring their ability to sue the people bypassing their DRM.

<comment><USER34> Good luck suing a nameless ip in Russia.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> This article (especially the headline) is honestly a joke.

The BBC wants encrypted media extensions in HTML5. That's DRM for stuff like video.

The logical leap to GNU/Linux collapsing is astoundingly ridiculous.

<comment><USER36> Boing Boing generally is ridiculous because Cory Doctorow ;)

<comment><USER37> This is an article in Computerworld UK by Glyn Moody. How are Boing Boing or Cory Doctorow relevant?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> If google is behind this as the article states, it just shows their hypocrasy behind their mantra of "supporting the open web". Given that companies with w3c leverage are behind this proposal does anyone think it will get through? Personally, I can't imagine anything worse for the future of the web than DRM. It would be like forcibly going to back to a dark ages that never existed for the web medium.

</comment><comment><USER31> Shame on you BBC. Technology cannot prevent IP theft. You can outlaw it and hope fear will stop people from sharing. Or else you can find better ways to monetize your IP. BBC should be working on putting that license money to better use.

Our greed knows no bounds. People with money and power have the means to act on their greed. Left in their hands, the internet will become as useful as the tv is today. Anything that is not certified by the moneybags will become illegal. Shame on you bbc for taking money from the same people whom you intend to screw.

<comment><USER39> This isn't the BBC screwing people over. This is likely a constraint introduced by licensing American (or foreign) exports for broadcast over here. If the licensors want DRM as part of the agreement, then there's not much choice left for the BBC unless they want to reduce the diversity of their content.

<comment><USER40> That is not true, since there is a significant commercial part of the BBC and since the parts of the DRM submissions quoted referenced reasons of control over BBC identity (mixing streams etc.).

But lets say for the sake of argument it is true, then there would be no need for the BBC to actively campaign on a part of a standard that they themselves would not/could not have elected to use and would only be imposed on them by others.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> How could they possibly prevent a custom no-DRM fork of a browser?

Seems like a waste of time to me; it'll be about as effective as having a 'no download' flag on images.

<comment><USER42> The currentl proposal [1] mandates content decryption modules that are not part of the browser but rather plugins akin to current NPAPI ones (Flash etc). Those will most likely be platform-specific binaries. That makes operating systems like GNU/Linux or BSD-likes unable to decrypt content depending without the correct CDM.

[1] 1[https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/html-media/raw-file/tip/encrypted- med...](https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/html-media/raw-file/tip/encrypted- media/encrypted-media.html)

More reading

<https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=20944> [http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/02/unethical-html- video...](http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/02/unethical-html-video-copy- protection-proposal-criticized-by-standards-stakeholders/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I can't believe how many apology-niks are on here trotting out the old merde about how we _need_ DRM, and won't somebody please think of the rights- holders. Here in the UK we pay the TV license fee. Now, granted most of the output it funds is utter crap, but hey, we paid for it. There should be no reason for DRM to be applied at all, but especially not if delivered via the web.

If the standards wonks permit this, we really need to fork the standards, and avoid this.

If the open web does not support your intended business model then go away and change the model.

<comment><USER44> The conversation has spread beyond the UK. I would even hazard a guess that a majority of HNers are in the US, where there is no such fee and most content producers are on their own.</comment></comment>


What's Amazon's market share? 35% or 5%? - <AUTHOR> https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2019/12/amazons-market-share19 <comment><USER2> I think most people recognize and understand that amazon neither has a relevant market share nor a monopoly in the traditional sense of the word. The author makes a good point that it is very much political as much economic.

The latter is important because the traditional understanding of a monopoly is somewhat antiquated with tech and has led to many people arguing to change its definition.

The most prominent example is Lina Kahn's wildy successful/read paper in the Yale Law Journal about amazon's antitrust paradox and how a company can operate in monopolistic ways without having a significant market share.

[https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust- parado...](https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-paradox)

A similar case is Apple and Spotify competing to grow their music streaming service.

It will be interesting to see how the current political framework is adjusted for this new economy dominated by big tech.

<comment><USER3> The modern view is the traditional view in the back to normal sense.

In the US Robert Bork's book "The Antitrust Paradox" started a period of time where the antitrust law was only about benefits to consumers and overall efficiency. The traditional and the modern viewpoint is that the role of antitrust laws plays role in controlling economic power in the public interests. Vertical agreements and price discrimination can be prohibited.

<comment><USER4> I've been reading The Economist's Hour by Binyamin Applebaum[1], which presents the dramatic changes of antitrust interpretation in some depth. Recommended read btw.

Bork credited Aaron Director, one of the first generation of the Chicago School and Friedman's brother in law, as his main influence. So making the consumer and efficiency the focus can be considered an early casualty of the wave of neoliberal deregulation we've been living with for decades.

Of course what is not considered is impact on workers, innovation, political power, market etc. Essentially it's hollowed out to benefit large business.

[1] [https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2019/08/31/when- eco...](https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2019/08/31/when-economists- ruled-the-world)

<comment><AUTHOR> You might enjoy this podcast interview with Applebaum:

[https://www.econtalk.org/binyamin-appelbaum-on-the- economist...](https://www.econtalk.org/binyamin-appelbaum-on-the-economists- hour/)

<comment><USER4> Thanks for that, a marvellous listen!

Really refreshing to hear two knowledgeable people who disagree on so many of the conclusions having such an engaging and positive conversation. Then find shared common ground so easily with both good at staying on point. Nice to hear he had a high opinion of the book too -- outside those conclusions drawn.

I'd have quite liked them to keep going... :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Just looking at the numbers in the title, I assumed this article was going to be about AWS.

The numbers are roughly 35% of commercial cloud market share and something like 5% of all websites. (The actual numbers are 1-3% less)

But in light of the discussion here, I only see this as a good thing.

Amazon puts heavy pressure on the competition in the cloud market (and retail). Competitors like Microsoft and Google very quickly develop their own services to match those of Amazon, serverless being a great example. Or, take Walmart and Target's foray into internet retail.

Amazon is a very interesting company. They constantly bring about new innovations and the market validates them often. And, competitors adapt to match their offerings.

I see Amazon as a company with quite a lot of growth potential left, but that's not to say it will remain in the position it's in. Just observing cloud market share, Microsoft is heating up, and taking a lot of those customers. As a consumer of both these products, cloud and internet retail, I respect what Amazon is doing. Even though I'm not a Prime member and only really buy books on Amazon, I constantly see their impact in pressuring other markets, and I benefit as a consumer.

<comment><USER6> > 5% of all websites (The actual numbers are 1-3% less)

Source?

It's not even clear whether this means

\- 5% of servers running

\- 5% of registered domains

\- 5% of user traffic

<comment><USER5> Sorry, that was poorly presented on my part. I believe the most recent estimate was around 2-3% of all internet traffic was served on a web server being hosted by Amazon.

I can't find the original source, but this Quora post[0] and included primary source[1] suggest the same.

[0] [https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-estimated-percent-of- inter...](https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-estimated-percent-of-internet- traffic-that-is-served-by-AWS)

[1] [https://www.netcraft.com/internet-data-mining/million- busies...](https://www.netcraft.com/internet-data-mining/million-busiest- websites/)

<comment><USER7> I'd be curious what type of insight they're getting from markets such as China, India, Russia, South America and SEA. I couldn't find much on their site. Their estimate could still be relevant for their target market, while being completely off globally.

Also, only looking at public internet traffic is a mistake since this isn't solely where AWS is trying to compete. You need to consider _all_ hosting, including government, intranet and other private players, which AWS does attempt to capture.

<comment><USER5> This is a really good point and really reinforces the take that Amazon isn't as big as many of us believe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I spent a decade working in American Malls prior to the turn of the century and think Amazon has done a brilliant job of flipping the playbook and the playground of retail the past 20 years.

Instead of competing with 800 lb gorillas, Amazon turned many of the prior juggernauts into 2-tons of turd by making them move. Seeing anchor stores shutter and go bankrupt was a good indication of how slow businesses move, even post dot-com era.

In the "monkey see, monkey do" modern world (of commerce [too]), they keep on implementing things the monkey can't do (<48 hr shipping, airline fleets, AWS, space, etc) and provide the new curve to aim ahead of in commerce (analog, digital and hybrid) for the foreseeable future.

Amazon has to thoroughly annihilate a larger piece of the market(s) before they can be called a monopoly (its slash and burn farming in a way). We'll see how much longer they can keep the champagne flowing.

</comment><comment><USER9> The 5% figure is out of _total US retail_, not online retail.

Just the fact that Amazon is now measured up against all retail is kind of frightening.

<comment><USER10> And yet it still pales in comparison to Walmart.

<comment><USER9> It doesn't pale. It's like a quarter or WalMart in terms of US sales, if I'm not mistaken.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is Amazon a monopoly? Does Amazon indulge in monopolistic practices? Rather than dance around an issue, state outright the real question that is being addressed or being glossed over.

Market share of what exactly? and is 5 or 35 even important as figures. For example the Walmart figure - does that include overseas assets. Walmart own Asda in the UK for example. Amazon act in mysterious ways in quite a few supply chains that say Walmart could not even dream of. I don't think the examples, figures etc are rigorous or useful.

So, what question is the blog really answering?

<comment><USER12> Not every article is even posing a question, let alone answering it. You could argue that's what a good article does. But some articles are just a series of things the writer finds interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> >Splitting out GMV is important because Amazon isn't setting the price or choosing the selection for the third party Marketplace

Well. In some cases, Amazon will drop a third party's price for them and reimburse the difference - in other cases Amazon will simply unpublish the buybox/add to cart buttons.

Anyway, IMO the relevant market definition is online orders with 2 day shipping. I believe Amazon has well over 50% market share there.

This is relevant because if you're ordering something to receive within two days, buying from another site that only promises to get it to you within 4 days may not be an option for you.

<comment><USER14> I fail to see how third pary sellers, of which Amazon take a cut, are significantly different that suppliers if traditional retail outlets. The primary difference is less risk for Amazon, but otherwise they seem to have a very similar relationship of traditional retail <-> supplier. Not the same, no, but similar enough not to split hairs on the topic when discussing Amazon's market influence.

<comment><USER13> Agreed. Recently Amazon stopped showing addresses to sellers for FBA orders. If you don't even know who your customer is, it's hard to argue you are the retailer.

<comment><USER15> Emails and phones have been gone a while. Essentially all you get is a generic amazon hosted forwarding email address if you want to talk to your customers.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, it's the physical addresses that were removed recently.

Phones were removed about two years ago if I recall correctly.

<comment><USER15> Phone removal happened in waves. The most recent wave was about 6 months ago. Fba phone numbers went to amazon owned phone numbers with giant extensions

<comment><USER13> Iirc, FBA phones hadn't been available for two years, it's MF phone numbers that got proxied to Amazon phone numbers six months back. Then 1-2 months ago FBA addresses vanished.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It depends... When asked by regulators, 5% market share. When asked by customers, 35% market share.

Joking aside, Peter Thiel has great commentary on how companies avoid the monopoly label by claiming to be part of a larger community. A classic example is that Google search has at least 70%+ market share. However, when asked by regulators, they're a "tech company" with many competitors and have a significantly lower market share.

</comment><comment><USER17> We know how big a mess Marketplace is but I never realized how awfully big that was:

1\. 58% of global Amazon ecommerce is actually made by third parties using its platform, not by Amazon itself

2\. This 58%, the global third party sales were $160bn

3\. Amazon charged a whopping $43bn in fees for this. That's 27%... and it is still worth sellers to use the Amazon platform.

<comment><USER18> How much of the 58% are fakes or worse, then we can start figuring out really how worthwhile it is for sellers

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I didn't like the analysis because markets are mushed together. Amazon market share for cars and books is different. It is meaningless to analyze the monopoly impact where monopoly is defined as the whole market for all us goods. They have to be broken out or corrective action will be postponed for too long.

<comment><USER20> The author makes this exact point if you read past the 3 bullet points up top, such as the part about how Amazon has 50% of book sales, noting that to regulators it matters how you slice it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Is Amazon "monopoly"? Yes, just like Google. How to verify it? Block every single address used by Amazon (or Google) and watch your internet and gadgets revert to the stone age and stop working completely. That is a de-facto "monopoly".

</comment><comment><USER22> I wonder if there is a potential likely scenario that one or more tech companies infiltrate the political system and slowly transform it into an evil techocracy. Maybe we are in that progress already.

<comment><USER23> Pretty much the definition of lobbying...

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I think the more important number is not market share but profit margin / cost per goods sold. That's the number stores have to beat or compete with.

</comment><comment><USER25> Why are people so concerned about Amazon but not about Google?

<comment><USER26> I believe it's becouse Google is more abstract. Local stores are not shutting down due to Google. However I am equally concerned about Google.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Amazon's current market share (whether online or overall US retail) is not the point.

The point is how fast is that market share growing and where will it be in (say) 10 years time?

</comment><comment><USER28> What's scary about Amazon for me isn't its future takeover of the US market. I'm more worried about it taking over all markets in the civilized world. Europeans are already using Amazon to purchase things online massively and I don't know what the situation is like in Australia but I'd bet a keg of beer that Amazon will have a substantial market share on all continents and in most civilized countries by 2025 if it doesn't already. There's very little one can do to stop this kind of juggernaut enterprise barring some local laws and sanctions. Amazon is also going to change the future of commerce, already has, really.

<comment><USER26> On the opposite. It is really easy to stop big corparations barring laws. Way easier than small.

If authorities would hold Amazon responsible for the scams and IP infrightment on their platform Amazon would have to kick out half of their sellers.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is it time for a privacy rating system for the web? - <AUTHOR>

A simple rating system for the privacy of a particular website. Perhaps in the form of traffic lights as seen for calories on food products in the U.K. Any way which makes it easy for everyday users.
A system such as this could have a very positive effect on making the layman more aware of privacy. It may also act to discourage sites from those "Red" ratings.
There are efforts such as Mozilla Collusion (https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/collusion/) which acts as a plugin. The problems with these systems is that is puts the onus on the users and totally excludes non-expert users from privacy.
What are people's thoughts/ideas on implementing a web wide system such as this or are there any efforts to do so which I am unaware of? <comment><USER2> Isn't such idea counter-intuitive? The most successful websites, the ones who rake millions from targeted ads & deals with third parties, will have least reasons to open their system up. So you will ultimately end up with several hundred niche, privacy-friendly websites never visited by the general surfing public.

</comment><comment><USER3> A web-wide system isn't feasible. A websites respect for your privacy is an issue of trust and not something you can easily quantify. For example, DuckDuckGo promises not to track you (and I believe they don't) but proving this claim is impossible without access to the server.

</comment><comment><USER4> Have you come across [http://tosdr.org/](http://tosdr.org/) yet? Not precisely what you're talking about, but it does seem they take it into account in their ratings</comment>


Unmute (PC-DOS app) – redirects buzzer output to headphone - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Kaproncai/Unmute <comment><AUTHOR> Essential for retro-demoscene party organizers! Listen the beeper on your amp! It's also useful for capturing the PC speaker sound from DOS games and demoscene stuff. It's open source - please, help the author by adding and testing different sound cards!</comment>


ThinkGeek TK-421 iPhone keyboard case review - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2010/12/01/thinkgeek-tk-421-iphone-keyboard-case-review/ <comment><USER2> Sold, it is the one thing I decry about the iPhone. I prefer the side kick style physical keyboard. I am a happy camper right now.</comment>


Another App Store ratings snafu, or Garage Sales are for mature audiences only - <AUTHOR> http://www.igaragesaleapp.com/blog/17-up-rating-explained/

<comment><USER2> In this case (and all the other cases) where an app can be used to gain access to general content on the internet I completely agree with Apple.

People who point at Safari/Mail/etc are missing something - parents can restrict the default apps but they cannot restrict third party ones. For third party apps all they can do is set an age limit.

Thus if your app allows unfiltered internet access, it is given a 17+ rating because there is really no way of controlling what someone may come across.

Now - I do think that there should be separate categories for 17+ applications that are intentionally adult and those that just happen to allow unfiltered internet access, but until that happens this is the best alternative.

<comment><USER3> You make a good point, but after so many problems with the current system, Apple really ought to introduce a separate category for such Apps. They're explicitly telling customer that that App contains "Frequent suggestive themes" and "Frequent bad language". At that point I would assume that the App was badly named and not really what I thought it was. Those are actually very inaccurate statements about the App.

However, since the integrity of parental controls needs to be maintained, I don't see why it would be so difficult to flag an app as allowing a user unfiltered access to the Internet. The problem I see with the current situation is that the statements being made in the App store are false and misleading, even though they're there for a legitimate reason.

edit: I just re-read your last statement - I guess we're not disagreeing after all. Still, I'm really surprised such a change has still not been made. I don't even follow Apple much, and even I knew about problems like this one long before the recent big updates.</comment></comment>