Where credit is due

I took my wife and kids out to breakfast on Monday. We had just moved into our new house a few days earlier, and the thought of trying to scrape together a suitable breakfast in our box-filled kitchen seemed rather prohibitive. We settled on an old-fashioned little place called Howard's Pantry. When we had finished our breakfast, I headed to the counter to pay our bill. I pulled out my checkcard and handed it to the lady running the register. She looked at me like I had just slipped her an envelope full of anthrax. She tried to remain calm as she informed me that they only take cash or local checks. Possessing neither of the acceptable forms of payment, I left my family as a deposit and headed out into the balmy 25° morning air in search of an ATM. Ten minutes and a $2.50 "foreign ATM fee" later, I returned to Howard's fine dining establishment to remunerate with old-fashioned paper money.

I may just be getting cranky in my old age, but it seems absurd to me that any merchant/vendor/restaurant wouldn't accept credit cards. I understand that taking a 1.75% hit each time a customer pays their bill isn't an exciting proposition for most business owners, but it beats the alternative. In this case, I had to spend $2.50 on ATM fees just so the restaurant owner could save $.35 on a $20 tab. When I have a job to get to and two young children to get into the car, my time and convenience are worth significantly more to me than the dime and a quarter some guy named Howard was able to pocket at my expense. I hope that $.35 was worth it, because we won't be dining at Howard's again anytime soon.

Preemptive strike

Having tried for years to catch up with the digital "file sharing" explosion (and its subsequent influence on the collective bottom line of the film industry), the MPAA is taking steps to make the showing of copyrighted films in unsanctioned home theaters illegal. From the article:

The MPAA defines a home theater as any home with a television larger than 29" with stereo sound and at least two comfortable chairs, couch, or futon. Anyone with a home theater would need to pay a $50 registration fee with the MPAA or face fines up to $500,000 per movie shown.

"Just because you buy a DVD to watch at home doesn't give you the right to invite friends over to watch it too. That's a violation of copyright and denies us the revenue that would be generated from DVD sales to your friends," said Glickman. "Ideally we expect each viewer to have their own copy of the DVD, but we realize that isn't always feasible. The registration fee is a fair compromise."

The article also states that "various motion sensors and biometric technology" will be used to track the number of viewers and details about what is being show.

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OK… so, it's satire. But, given some of the recent activities of the MPAA, it would be fair to assume that your fair-use rights for digital materials you have legally paid for will be under fire for the foreseeable future. Is not being allowed to rip DVDs to your video iPod the newest definition of unbearable suffering? Well, probably not. But, it is still irritating.