Mexico’s Drug Cartels Profit from Pirate Disc Business, Says Government

Piracy is “no longer a victimless crime” in Mexico, where murderous drug cartels now take a cut of bootleg DVD sales as well, according to the Motion Picture Association (via The Washington Post). Mexico’s attorney general says that the cartels gain “considerable” resources from the distribution and sale of pirated discs: for the country's La Familia mafia, video piracy could bring in $2 million a day, according to a 2009 government estimate. The cartels do not seem to be involved in disc manufacturing, however; Mexican law enforcement continues to raid pirate duplication operations, recently seizing 1,000 DVD burners and 12 tons of discs.

Apple To Unveil Cloud Services Next Week; Is Music In the Mix?

In a preview of its June 6 Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple says that it plans to unveil an “iCloud” service next week, along with new generations of its computer and mobile device operating systems. There is word yet on iCloud will include at its launch date, which also remains TBA. The trade press has reported that the company has closed deals with three of the world’s four major record companies to offer a consumer service for cloud-based music streaming and storage.

Analysts Debate 3D Box Office Receipts

With 3D screenings accounting for less than half of the opening-weekend revenue for DreamWorks Animation’s “Kung Fu Panda 2,” some financial analysts fear that consumers have begun to tire of 3D films’ premium ticket prices (via The New York Times). The performance of “Kung Fu Panda” — relatively soft compared to previous 3D movie openings — follows analyst disappointment in 3D receipts for Disney’s “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides” earlier this month. Other analysts, however, continue to believe in 3D films’ general consumer appeal, attributing any underperformance of a given title to other factors (via Home Media Magazine).

More of Today’s News Headlines from CDSA

AEG Digital Media and Akamai Have Landmark Month in Online Video Streaming (AEG Digital Media) Sony: PlayStation Store Back This Week (CNET) ‘Call of Duty’ Sets Sights on a Fee (The Wall Street Journal) Nielsen: Android’s Lead Over iOS May Have Stopped Growing (Fortune) Mr. Dodd Goes to China (The Wrap)

Blockbuster Renews 99-Cent Video Rentals

In its first promotion as a Dish Network subsidiary, Blockbuster is seeking to drive traffic to stores by renewing a 99-cent-per-day rental price for “thousands” of titles. The campaign echoes past efforts of the brick-and-mortar chain to keep pace with Netflix and Redbox. Blockbuster also offers customers free movie rentals through July 4.

Netflix’s Ted Sarandos Among ‘Fast Company’

He might not be the most interesting man in the world, but Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos is apparently climbing the ladder.

Sarandos is ranked 22nd among the 100 most creative people in the world in 2011 as detailed in separate pithy graphs in the latest Fast Company magazine.

Among the CCO’s accomplishments cited by FC: Introducing streaming episodes of “Shark Week” to monthly subscribers, also described as “animal porn.”

Sarandos’ ranking sits among an eclectic group of overachievers – many of whom you’ve probably have never heard of and some you have.

To wit, No.1 is Wadah Khanfar, deputy director of Al Jazeera, No. 2 is Scott Forstall, who created the Apple operating system (iOS) that runs the iPhone, iPad, and iPods, and No. 53 is Chief Almir, a tattooed activist tribal leader in the Brazilian Amazon, who works with Google to track illegal logging in the rain forest. His notebook of choice: Apple.

Oh yeah, there’s also Conan O’Brien (#8), Oprah Winfrey (#12), Tina Fey (#39) and Ryan Seacrest (#72).

 

Is our scientists learning to write?

In a recent issue of Science, Cary Moskovitz and David Kellogg consider the way students are taught science and science writing in laboratory courses, and whether current approaches really provide the best tools for the job. They conclude that inquiry-based writing might be better than the current approaches—writing to learn (WTL) and writing as professionalization (WAP)—at developing students' skills of scientific inquiry.

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Weird Science enjoys a pint of Guinness more in Ireland

Those pretentious beer snobs may be right: Ever get told that, to really appreciate a Guinness, you have to travel to Ireland? Four researchers took it upon themselves to travel the globe and find out, collecting "data on the enjoyment of Guinness and related factors." The enjoyment of the stout was tested in 71 pubs spread over 14 countries, and the conclusion is that it really is more enjoyable on its home turf, a finding that "remained statistically significant after adjusting for researcher, pub ambience, Guinness appearance, and the sensory measures mouthfeel, flavor, and aftertaste." However, the researchers admit that their study has some limitations, so they're hoping to expand on it a bit.

The illusion of being Barbie: This paper is actually focused on a rather significant cognitive question: what's the ultimate reference point for our visual system? Is it our body, or do we piece together a reference point from our surroundings? It's the method for getting at the question that's a bit weird: the authors used virtual reality goggles to convince people they are the size of dolls—they literally call one of their setups the Barbie doll experiment. Another setup gave people the sense they were giants, up to 13 feet tall. "Our own body size affects how we perceive the world," the authors conclude.

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Week in science: neutrino detectors and clam reproduction edition

Ars photo essay: standing in the beam line of a neutrino detector: Join us as we travel underground at Fermilab, get bombarded by neutrinos that can't be bothered to interact with us, and get some photos of the detectors that capture these enigmatic particles.

Understanding why Japan's recent quake defied expectations: Three papers piece together what happened during the March earthquake in Japan, and raise cautions about other subduction faults around the world.

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Mobile Music Firm: iTunes Users Listen to Just 19 Percent of Their Libraries

A firm that helps iTunes users transfer music playlists to Android devices says that its customers never play most of the songs and albums they have acquired. “The average iTunes library has 5,409 songs of which 4,195 have never been played. Put another way: we listen to about 19% of the music we own,” according to Music WithMe, which tells Music Ally that it derived its figures from anonymous customer data. The company concludes that services such as Google Music, which invite users to upload their entire music libraries to cloud-based lockers, largely represent a waste of users’ time. (While in its beta version, Google’s music storage service is free.) Some question the accuracy of WithMe’s numbers. Digital Music News points out that song play counts reset in iTunes when a collection is loaded onto a new computer; the mobile music firm does not appear to account for zero play counts in rebuilt iTunes libraries.

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Cinema Production Complex, Ukraine

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Sony DADC, Ibaraki, Japan

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