Vista: better than expected
p2pnet.net News:- Bill and the Boyz’s business Vista is doing better than expected, says the NPD Group. Hmm. That’s a surprise. Many reports have been predicting it would be the opposite, suggesting significant numbers of companies have been thinking twice about ‘upgrading’.
It, “made more of a splash than most industry watchers expected, according to a research group,” says Associated Press, quoting the NPD Group, And, “Sales of Windows Vista to businesses were stronger than expected during the operating system’s debut month, according to a report from [the] NPD Group,” says ZDNet News.
But wait! The NPD Group? Isn’t it that market research firm which spotted the opportunities offered by the corporate movie and music companies from afar and almost overnight became an expert on p2p file sharing with, “highly questionable statistics blatantly slanted towards the entertainment cartels?” – as p2pnet wrote at the end of 2005. We went on:
“This is the outfit which came out with a report which claimed iTunes was beating LimeWire.
“Back in 2003, when NPD first started producing reports on file sharing, and so on, we emailed them asking how many years’ experience they’d had in the field. We didn’t get an answer and when we visited their site, we weren’t able to find a single music industry client. In fact, three representative companies on NPD Group’s client list, plucked from the top, centre and bottom, were: adidas International; International Flavors & Fragrance; and, Wrigley.”
The RIAA, owned by Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG, the members of the Big 4 Organized Music cartel, used to make a practise of regularly announcing it had “sued’ around 750 American men, women and children for allegedly sharing music with each other.
These monthly events were always carefuly presented to suggest these people, thieves, RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) calls them, had been tried and found guilty of the non-existent “crime” of file sharing when none of them had been anywhere near a court or a judge. And the “lawsuits” were subpoenas, pieces of paper telling someone he or she is expected to appear in court.
But the mainstream media lapped it up, carrying the reports as though they were genuine press releases with accurate material from credible sources.
In our 2005 story, “The latest batch of RIAA lawsuits comes a day after market research firm NPD Group issued numbers claiming illegal downloads have fallen 11 percent since the Supreme Court ruled in June that Grokster and other P2P companies were operating illegal businesses,” we said, quoting internetnews.com.
However, the NPD numbers were disputed by Eric Garland, ceo of p2p research and media measurement firm BigChampagne who stated, “In fact, in every month since Grokster, P2P activity is actually higher …”
Also See:
Associated Press – Big Biz Buys Vista, Research Group Says, January 11, 2007
ZDNet News – Report: Vista’s business sales stronger than expected, January 11, 2007
p2pnet wrote – Happy Christmas from the RIAA, December 15, 2005
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January 13th, 2007 at 3:29 pm
I don’t care HOW well it does, frankly, I would not want to touch it and the 12 different kinds of DRM in it with a stick!
Mabye someone will come along with a “clean vista”…but until then, I am sticking with XP and SP2….they still work so why should I switch right now?
In the future, we’ll see just how many people get locked out of their computers because of vista once it is released and then mabye we can know how many lawsuits will come because of it.
January 13th, 2007 at 5:40 pm
Is that a smirk on her face?
January 13th, 2007 at 7:19 pm
Frankly there’s nothing in Vista I need at present. I’ve no driving need to even consider the OS.
Just as with all OSs in the past, you can bet this one is as buggy as a bee hive. It was rushed to the market after one turmoil and delay after another. It’s already set up to be the next XP for patches alone.
As the other poster mentioned, I’m not ready to accept the conditions of inclusive DRM, the watchdog. I’ve always had an aversion to protection schemes and that’s never changed. It has increased my dislike over the OS to have it forced into the package.
Then there’s the cost of moving up. A totally new computer system will be required to meet the operation requirements. Since my old computers are working just fine at the moment, I’ve no need to do that sort of purchase. Plus any old hardware I have now won’t work in the new computer. I don’t really want to start over rebuying hardware. I’ve found in the past that most of what I really like in hardware I could move from computer to computer till it either wore out or became so aged that it was worthless for the benefits. But that won’t be allowed in a protected environment such as Vista that must watch everything within its signal path. Mainly because those pieces of hardware don’t have the latest greatest protection systems on them.
So it all sums up to being no driving need to have the new OS and plenty of cash reasons not to go that way.
January 14th, 2007 at 6:40 am
“Back in 2003, when NPD first started producing reports on file sharing, and so on, we emailed them asking how many years’ experience they’d had in the field.”
And how much experience did you have, Jon, when you first started p2pnet? Everyone is an expert, didn’t you know that? Me too, simply by posting anonymous comments on your site. This entitles me to an opinion (to be taken as fact) that matters. Oh, it doesn’t? Never mind then…
January 14th, 2007 at 6:01 pm
‘Everyone is an expert, didn’t you know that? Me too, simply by posting anonymous comments on your site.’
yes you are an expert, in the field of trolling.
January 14th, 2007 at 7:03 pm
I don’t make money, lots of money, through “studies’ purporting to be accurate, unbiased representations.
Nor am I trying to sell my “expertise” to vested interests with a powerful need to present a distinctly distorted view.
Cheers!
January 14th, 2007 at 8:19 pm
NPD analysts are now busy trying to undo the effects caused by the following:
http://p2pnet.net/story/10823
http://p2pnet.net/story/10982
January 14th, 2007 at 8:22 pm
Because according to the paper below, future hardware will be less capable than the present hardware, unless something extraordinary happens:
http://p2pnet.net/story/10823
January 15th, 2007 at 8:57 am
Stating that file sharing, in and of itself, is or is not a crime can not be proven to be either true or false. File sharing with permission from the rights holder is not a crime. However, since the NET act of 1997, non-commercial infringement of copyrighted works without permission of the rights holder in the United States IS a crime. It just happens that the NET act is only enforced by the government in raids, and the act is usually only referenced in trials of warez groups and similar organized infringements. Unorganized non-commercial infringement, although still illegal under the same act and able to subject the infringer to criminal liability, is not typically punished by the government directly. Rather, the government typically leaves it up to rights holders to enforce civil liability upon unorganized non-commercial infringers.
Nevertheless, you are right in that a small minority of those targeted b the lawsuits have actually been prosecuted and convicted of infringment.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NET_Act