Following up on his previous article, David Pogue’s Take Back the Beep Campaign urges readers to complain to their cell phone carriers about the annoyingly long recordings you hear every time you try to leave someone a message.
Update: here’s part two.
A reader of The New York Times’ David Pogue, responding to his post about ringtones:
If you told me 20 years ago that, in 2007, we would have online worldwide maps/satellite photos and downloadable ringtones, I would have believed you. But if you told me that the former would be free, and the latter would cost money, I would have said you were nuts!
It’s no real secret that the ringtones racket is a racket, but [this Daring
Fireball piece lays it all down very clearly][1]. What’s funny is how even
though Apple’s screwing people here, they’re still better than Sprint, whose
ringtones cost $2.50 and *expire in 90 days*.
[1]: http://daringfireball.net/2007/09/the_ringtones_racket (Daring Fireball: The Ringtones Racket)
Far be it from me to get my legal advice from Engadget, but there’s an interesting nugget in this piece about the legality of making your own ringtones:
[T]he RIAA wanted to be able to distribute ringtones of its artists without having to pay them big money to do so (surprised?), and it won a decision last year before the Copyright Office saying that ringtones weren’t “derivative works,” meaning they didn’t infringe on the copyright of the songwriter.
If you want to sample a song, or create a new mix of it (a “derivative work”), copyright law requires you to obtain the permission of the artist who wrote the song. It’s set up that way to allow artists control over what happens with stuff they write, but it ends up kind of sucking for rap artists. On the one hand, there’s tons of cool new art you can make by sampling other people’s songs (see The Beastie Boys, lots of other early hip-hop, and tons of techno), but on the other hand if you make tons of money with a song based around someone else’s hook, and don’t pay the person who wrote it originally, that’s pretty unfair for them (see: Ice Ice Baby vs. Under Pressure). A good solution to all of this would be compulsory licensing, but at the moment, if I write a song that you want to remix, you can’t do it unless I give you my permission.
The question of ringtones came up because the record industry wanted to be able to sell them without negotiating new contracts with artists. If ringtones are derivative works, then the artists own the rights to them, and record companies would have to pay for the rights to sell the songs as ringtones in addition to selling them as albums. If ringtones are not derivative works, the record companies can make a killing selling them and the artists don’t see any additional cash.
As a consumer, this is one of the few times the RIAA’s greediness pays off. There’s no reason that you shouldn’t be able to play a song, once you’ve bought it, anywhere you want, even on the crappy speaker built into your cellphone. But the RIAA didn’t ensure that ringtones weren’t derivative works just to be nice and kindly let you copy them from your computer to your phone, they did it so they could sell you the separate file, and spend a lot of time making sure that their contracts with cellphone makers required that the phones refuse to play any file they didn’t sell you. So it’s all kind of funny. The RIAA worked to make sure it was legal to create your own ringtones, then worked to make sure that you couldn’t do anything with them once you did, hacks aside.
For weeks now I’ve been getting occasional automated messages from Charter Communications telling me that I am scheduled for new service installation the next day. I’ve been ignoring these calls and assuming that whoever is actually supposed to be getting the new service will eventually get sick of their installation man not showing up, call Charter, and provide them with the correct phone number. This week I’ve gotten seven such calls, including four today. Charter doesn’t service my area, so I’m positive that it’s their error and not mine. The message gives a phone number that I can call if I have questions, but I can’t call it from my phone because they don’t service my area and somehow have their phone system set up to reject incoming out-of-area calls.
Charter’s website does not provide an easy-to-find customer service number. I eventually found one, and talked to a very confused woman who normally assists custmers in Wisconsin. Being that I don’t even know what they think I’m supposed to be signing up for, she had no idea how to fix the problem.
My phone number is registered with the National Do Not Call Registry, but since these calls aren’t marketing calls, I can’t threaten file a complaint with the FCC on those grounds.
I’ve used their email contact form (providing my law firm email address for extra oomph) so we’ll see what happens next.
Having a high tech camera-phone is fun, but I haven’t had much success actually sending my bad low quality photos to other people. MMS does not seem to be implemented in any standard way from one carrier to another. This is bad. It means that you can’t really be sure your recipient is going to see your message correctly, and to even get it to them at all you have to know both what company they use and how that company’s phones handle incoming pictures messages. All phones that can handle picture messages also do email, but all mobile carriers charge different rates for email than they do MMS. So you can’t reliably send a picture message to an off-network phone, and if you want to email it to them instead the price of that email won’t be included in your picture rate. Plus there’s the problem that you have no way to know if the recipient has configured email on his phone anyway.
I did a quick sweep across the various mobile providers’ websites to drag up some information on why my picture messages always bounce back, and here’s what I found:
I have T-Mobile, but I’ve been unable to send photos to Gabe even though he does, too. My guess is that you have to send pictures to their T-Mobile email address and not just to their phone number. T-Mobile’s email format is: 5551234567@tmomail.net. Their website has very little information about picture messaging, and doesn’t mention compatibility with other service providers.
Verizon’s website says that its phones cannot send pictures to non-Verizon phones. I’m not sure that this is true in practice, but it would surely work using standard email if their MMS format fails. I wasn’t able to send a picture to Chris White using his phone number, so again I suspect that if it works at all messages have to go to their Verizon email address: 5551234567@vzpix.com or possibly 5551234567@vzwpix.com.
AT&T’s website makes no mention of compatibility with other networks. It says that messages can just be sent to an AT&T Wireless 10-digit phone number, but doesn’t say if off-network pictures should go to the phone number or to an email address, nor does it provide a format for such an address.
Cingular’s site does say that picture messages can go to other networks’ phones, but disclaims compatibility. It also doesn’t mention if it prefers 10-digit numbers or email addresses.
Sprint PCS Vision sends pictures as images embedded in HTML, so I’m guessing that most non-Sprint PCS phones have very little chance of getting the picture.
The problem with all of this is the compatibility snags harm the technology, but no provider has a great need for standardization. They’d all prefer you just get all of your friends on their network where interoperability can be assured and bandwidth costs are low. And since corporations tend to pick one service provider and stick with it, the cash cow professional market has very little sway in pushing for standards adoption.
The good news is that posting to webpages from cell phones is very easy. TypePad is doing great things in this field (though the term “moblogging” has to go), as is Text America. Of course, for the moment all that means is that it’s really easy to post crappy, grainy pictures to your website (here’s mine!), but it’s good to set up the infrastructure before camera-phone technology matures.
After much deliberation, I’ve decided to switch to AT&T Wireless from Sprint PCS. We’ll see if frequent dropped calls and poor service are just a Sprint thing.
The fun part is that I now have a shiny new Sony Ericsson t68i to play with. I’ve already very pleasingly used iSync over Bluetooth, putting all of my phone numbers on the new phone in under a minute and set “Take On Me” as my ringtone.
Even better, the phone works on AT&T’s GSM network, which is some sort of next-generation digital technology that isn’t at all backwards-compatible with other towers. So with the features and potentially near DSL-speed data transfer rates comes the problem that my new phone won’t work outside of major cities (and the entire state of Florida for some reason). The upside is that they’re only building GSM towers now, and at the rate of one or two a week, so within a year it’ll be an amazing network. It seems odd to be moving to a superior technology that doesn’t work as well, but I like to live on the cutting edge. And hey, without the “eXtreme” I’d just be “dav.”
I just read a CNET announcement of Windows Mobile, a new operating system for handhelds and smartphones. After discussing the new version of CE, the author goes on to discuss some new PDAs coming out. At one point, he mentions that one of them “has 64MB of RAM (random access memory).” Now how useful is that parenthetical? If the reader doens’t know what RAM is, is explaining what RAM is an acronym for really going to help, keeping in mind that most people call their computer tower their “hard drive.”
The Fourth Rail’s review of Hulk gives the film a very fair shake. It doesn’t include any major spoilers and should help anyone who isn’t sure if they want to see it or not. I may write up my own thoughts if I can scare up the inspiration, but my general recommendation would be to catch an afternoon showing or wait for the rental, though I did enjoy it a whole lot.
I didn’t win the lottery. To top it off the winning ticket was bought in Baltimore. I hate that city.
After a good deal of personal debate, I’ve decided to go with cable internet instead of DSL. For one, I already use my cell phone for all of my calling needs. Two, since I primarily use my cell, $20+ extra a month for a landline, even if split with a roommate, seems like a lot of money. Three, I understand that TiVo can now work over ethernet, so if I get it I won’t have to have a phone line for it. Four, even if digital cable is a requirement for cable internet, the added cost will be lower than or just about the same as that of a landline which would be required for DSL, plus I’ll get extra chanels and another fun box to stack up with a DVD player, a VCR, my stereo, and potentially a TiVo box and a video game system. Five, I’m reasonably sure that my Airport Base Station can dole out IP addresses so that multiple computers will be able to share the connection.
These all seem like good reasons, but it still seams strange not to have a phone.
Dre’s post reminded me of a few deals that I’m upset I’m not in the market for.
One, due to contract disputes, Target is going to stop selling iPods, which means that they’re on clearance now for 15% off. I think they only sell the Windows PC version, but other than the cable it comes with they’re exactly the same machine.
Two, Amazon is now selling the Sony Ericsson T68i cell phone for -$30! That’s right, they’ll actually pay you thirty dollars to buy that phone. It’s I understand about the best cell phone on the market. It has a color screen, works on all networks, and has built-in Bluetooth. The catch is that you also have to sign up for T-Mobile service with it, and though I intend to change providers when my contract with Sprint runs out in August, I don’t think I’ll be going to T-Mobile.
