Slashdot Mirror

It's the size of a 30" TV, according to this.

(Link shamelessly blagged from a post further down the /. page, so don't bother moderating this "informative".)

There's more to the story than the simple Reuters blurb that the CNN/Money article above shows ... internetnews.com has got a more in-depth article about this.

Also interesting to note is that IBM says this is the same processors that will be in next-gen consoles from Nintendo and Sony that are due out next year ... but I thought that wasn't gonna happen ...?

Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Comcast to Offer Online Music

2003-11-11 13:10:14 Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Comcast to Offer Online Music (articles,music) (rejected)

Wal-Mart will launch its own digital music download service through its Web site later this month. Not to be outdone, Best Buy will also launch an iTunes-type online music store - with the ability to buy through in-store kiosks - based on the MusicNow service (formerly FullAudio). And today Comcast announced music downloads via Real Rhapsody for its 5 million broadband Internet subscribers. The Washington Post's Cynthia L. Webb writes about the online music frenzy and the resultant advertising onslaught due to the sheer number of entrants into the music download market, while Bloomberg's Holly M. Sanders offers an analysis of Walmart's imminent entry into online music, which is significant since Wal-Mart already controls 14 percent of global CD music sales. More at the New York Times (via SeattlePI).

I know a lot of /.'s American readers might not care so much, but as a belgian, I'm glad this has finally started. I read a story about this a few days ago, and it was still undecided how MS would proceed. I wonder how the EU will see this in light of the recent warning from america's government about the Shop for Music mess. Feature my arse. Anyway, we europeans have got to do our part to fight software patents and monopolies, and I'm glad to see the EU might be up to the task.

T-Online might just be the middleman, designed to make the purchase look legitimate.

The real buyer could be Microsoft.

Of course Microsoft would have to work through a middleman in order to avoid scrutiny from U.S. regulators, especially in light of Microsoft's monopoly-practises conviction. But the fact that their actions are illegal has never stopped Microsoft before.

This would be one more step in Microsoft's plan to control the Internet, and its protocols.

It appears that T-Online and Microsoft have had close ties for quite some time:

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2000/Jan0 0/TOnlinePR.asp

> T-Online Adopts Windows Media as Digital Media Platform

> Jan. 31, 2000 - Microsoft Corp. and T-Online today announced that T-Online, the largest Internet service provider in Germany, has adopted Microsoft Windows Media Technologies as a digital media platform and will use Windows Media for streaming and downloading digital media for its new broadband services.

http://www.internetnews.com/xSP/article.php/112260 1

> May 15, 2002 - Microsoft Reportedly Mulling T-Online Stake

> Microsoft Corp. might take a 25-percent stake in Europe's largest Internet service provider (ISP), according to a German business magazine.

> If consummated, the partnership would create a challenge to AOL by extending the reach of MSN, Microsoft's Internet unit.

http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/1 0_990751

> March 13, 2002 - Two German Giants Go .NET

> Microsoft Corp. trumpeted a major victory in the telecom market Wednesday, announcing that Deutsche Telekom [owns T-Online] -- Europe's largest telecommunications company -- is adopting its Microsoft .NET Platform for its mobile and solutions businesses.

http://www.t-online.net/c/06/68/92/668922.html

> T-Online brings Xbox gamers onto the Internet

> Xbox users in Germany will soon be playing via T-Online. Thanks to cooperation with Microsoft, T-Online will be the first Internet service provider in the German gaming arena to be certified "Xbox Live compatible" as of the European release of "Xbox Live" on 14 March 2003.

T-Online might just be the middleman, designed to make the purchase look legitimate.

The real buyer could be Microsoft.

Of course Microsoft would have to work through a middleman in order to avoid scrutiny from U.S. regulators, especially in light of Microsoft's monopoly-practises conviction. But the fact that their actions are illegal has never stopped Microsoft before.

This would be one more step in Microsoft's plan to control the Internet, and its protocols.

It appears that T-Online and Microsoft have had close ties for quite some time:

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2000/Jan0 0/TOnlinePR.asp

> T-Online Adopts Windows Media as Digital Media Platform

> Jan. 31, 2000 - Microsoft Corp. and T-Online today announced that T-Online, the largest Internet service provider in Germany, has adopted Microsoft Windows Media Technologies as a digital media platform and will use Windows Media for streaming and downloading digital media for its new broadband services.

http://www.internetnews.com/xSP/article.php/112260 1

> May 15, 2002 - Microsoft Reportedly Mulling T-Online Stake

> Microsoft Corp. might take a 25-percent stake in Europe's largest Internet service provider (ISP), according to a German business magazine.

> If consummated, the partnership would create a challenge to AOL by extending the reach of MSN, Microsoft's Internet unit.

http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/1 0_990751

> March 13, 2002 - Two German Giants Go .NET

> Microsoft Corp. trumpeted a major victory in the telecom market Wednesday, announcing that Deutsche Telekom [owns T-Online] -- Europe's largest telecommunications company -- is adopting its Microsoft .NET Platform for its mobile and solutions businesses.

http://www.t-online.net/c/06/68/92/668922.html

> T-Online brings Xbox gamers onto the Internet

> Xbox users in Germany will soon be playing via T-Online. Thanks to cooperation with Microsoft, T-Online will be the first Internet service provider in the German gaming arena to be certified "Xbox Live compatible" as of the European release of "Xbox Live" on 14 March 2003.

Try and find out who their customers are and urge them that they shouldn't be paying the LINUX LICENSE until the courts say so.

Try and find out who's SCO's fortune 500 customers are !!!

Microsoft on Tuesday included three 'critical' security patches in its new monthly bulletin, including a cumulative update for Internet Explorer, the world's [$#ittiest] Web browser.

The November alert, which is the second monthly update issued under Microsoft's plan to release security patches on a monthly cycle, also includes a fix for another 'critical patch in the Windows Workstation service that could allow harmful code execution.

According to the second monthly alert from the software giant, five newly discovered security holes were detected in Internet Explorer that could allow remote code execution and browser takeover.

The cumulative patch replaces the one that is provided in the MS03-040 update and affects IE running on Windows 98, Windows Millennium Edition, Windows NT Workstation, Windows NT Server Windows 2000, Windows XP (and XP Service Pack 1) and the newest Windows Server 2003.

The flaws affect Internet Explorer versions 5.01 through 6.0.

Of the five new vulnerabilities, Microsoft said three involve the cross-domain security model of Internet Explorer which keeps windows of different domains from sharing information. "These vulnerabilities could result in the execution of script in the My Computer zone," the company warned.

Microsoft said an attacker could host a malicious Web site containing pages designed to exploit the cross-domain vulnerabilities to take over a user's machine. "An attacker who exploited one of these vulnerabilities could access information from other Web sites, access files on a user's system, and run arbitrary code on a user's system. This code would run in the security context of the currently logged on user," the company warned.

Holes have also been plugged in the way that zone information is passed to an XML object within Internet Explorer. This vulnerability could allow an attacker to read local files on a user's system.

A fifth vulnerability patched involved performing a drag-and-drop operation during dynamic HTML (define) events in the browser. "This vulnerability could allow a file to be saved in a target location on the user's system if the user clicks a link. No dialog box would request that the user approve this download," according to the alert.

As with all previous cumulative patches for IE, Microsoft noted that the update will cause the window.showHelp( ) control to no longer work if the HTML Help update is not applied.

Oh, for God's sake. The Army's switch to WebStar on Mac was reported all over the place when it happened four years ago. It's common knowledge. Here, here, and here are some links.

The ever-popular "WIMP"

"Those e-mails went out in error. They never should have been sent. We have apologized and we're requesting that customers disregard them," AT&T spokesman Dave Johnson told internetnews.com.

"It was an honest human error. Sometimes, folks makes mistakes," Johnson said.

Human Error Leads to AT&T's Anti-Spam Gaffe

Telco giant AT&T (Quote, Chart) on Wednesday rushed to withdraw two notices sent to business partners and customers asking for the IP addresses of all outbound SMTP (define) servers because of a "human error" gaffe.

With a significant increase in incoming spam over the past few days, AT&T sent out the notices demanding the IP addresses, presumably to create a white list of gateways from which e-mail will be accepted. But a company spokesman now says customers should ignore the requests.

"Those e-mails went out in error. They never should have been sent. We have apologized and we're requesting that customers disregard them," AT&T spokesman Dave Johnson told internetnews.com.

"It was an honest human error. Sometimes, folks makes mistakes," Johnson said.

see article.

Wow, remember the cost estimates MS was pushing to justify how much cheaper it was to by into their software assurance plan? Pay every 1,2 or 3 years instead of once and get "free" and immediate upgrades? Considering it will be at least 5 years between XP and Longhorn, I would say everyone who used those initial numbers of a 3 years cycle for a total cost calculation got burned pretty badly.

Here is an a piece from another page:

Software Assurance is an annuity-based licensing offering, under which subscribers pay Microsoft 29 percent of the total cost of the software per year over the life of the contract, though Wilcox noted the fee schedule can be a bit more complicated when factoring in the license plan itself (Open Value, Open or Select), or when accounting for CALs.

I vote for collusion. Granted, two of the links I included discuss only flaws in IE 6.0 which aren't likely to be exploited on a server, but you never know what the customer may do. Finding critical flaws like this in just 5 months doesn't look too good. Try googling before you speak next time.

As far as I can tell, the big change that Microsoft made for the Windows Server 2003 release is that it ships with more services closed. If users want them, they have to open them up. This, inherently, makes the OS more secure, and all it does is follow the advice that security experts have been giving for the last several years. I highly doubt that Windows Server 2003 is some monster rewrite of everything, and I would fully expect that most of the same exploits waiting to be discovered in Windows 2000 are also present in Server 2003, along with some new ones.

Having had first hand expierence with a patch blocking internet access I have become a bit more careful these days. It took me the best part of a day to get the machine working again. You really get to appreciate internet connectivity when you lose it ;) But since it took me quite a while to get the machine working again (and I consider myself tech savvy), just imagine what it could have done for the masses. They would probably have thrown the PC out of the window.

And no, you could not deinstall the patch.

Have now said that "there are currently no plans to sue SGI".

I suspect they'll "terminate" SCO's SysV license with as much success as they had with IBM. I.e. their stock price will bump up and that's about it.

Some relevant quotes from Sun on Linux, wrt SCO's case

"Also, let me really clear about our Linux strategy. We don't have one. We don't at all. We do not believe that Linux plays a role on the server. Period."

"If you use Linux on the server, even if we sold the distribution to you, you are on your own."

"While they [IBM] have done a superb job of telling the world that Linux is the future, but sadly it may be true for them because they don't own an OS. We, on the other hand, have a safe, compelling and affordable product called Solaris that runs on Intel, Opteron and SPARC."

On Sun's relationship to SCO:

"Meanwhile, Sun hopes to capitalize on its strong contract relationship with SCO for the Solaris operating system to cherry pick IBM AIX customers worried by the revocation."

Also, it is interesting to note that Sun didn't pay SCO for rights to Unix, they paid for access to the source of some unnamed device drivers:

"They made a buy versus build decision (for Solaris x86 Platform Edition) to get access to a bunch of drivers for contemporary versions of Intel (Corp.) hardware,"

[sarcasm]Because, you know, SCO's Unix is just so well supported by hardware vendors![/sarcasm]

Great, "more than 60 million U.S. citizens ... use file-sharing software" - so they can't be wrong either then? ;-)

With regards to the OS, here's just a little more interesting plot info. I just noticed that Internet.com has this article which mentions that Microsoft launched the official beta of Windows XP 64bit as a "precursor" to AMD's launch today.

AMD! Don't cater to the evil Redmond mole-men! ;)

That article

Trillian Pro 2.0 includes Jabber support

Out of curiosity where do you go every morning for 5 minutes of bug checking?

CERT's vulnerabilities page makes a good start, covering almost anything worth noticing.

For the really big exploits, such as Blaster, just checking Slashdot and/or NewsForge daily will inform you of their existance at least a few days before they hit the mainstream press (and, more importantly, before the Script Kiddies have a nice and tidy all-in-one package to take advantage of the problem). That alone leads me to the statement I made about lazy admins not doing their jobs if they ignore major patches - Not a single regular reader of Slashdot has the teensiest bit of "plausible deniability" regarding the recent Blaster worm problems.

Unfortunately, we can only hope that CERT remains a decent source of info on this topic, what with them recently agreeing to act as the lackeys of the US government. But I can hope that they'll at least remain moderately valuable in reporting exploits early enough to avoid damage.

Intel has budgeted at least $300 Million for Centrino's marketing budget.

To get the "Centrino" cert, you need to use a mobile pentium, the Intel 802.11 chipset, and one of the low power intel chipsets.

If you are a WISP, this is great. You can tell your customers to get either an Apple with Airport or a PC with Centrino. Sure a lot of other WiFi solutions will work, but Centrino is the easy solution.

I'll stick with the mac though :)

"I don't recall ever having to install "CRITICAL SECURITY UPDATES" for Mozilla because of some worm going around." Please give me your IP addy. Check this out: one, two, three. I can go on if you want...

I wouldn't declare upgrading to post-1.0 Mozilla a "CRITICAL SECURITY UPDATE". I would call it a "CRITICAL USABILITY UPDATE."

"I don't recall ever having to install "CRITICAL SECURITY UPDATES" for Mozilla because of some worm going around." Please give me your IP addy. Check this out: one, two, three. I can go on if you want...

Access sucks. So spake the wise Seth. Why? Please grace us with your obviously paramount knowledge of everything software related. And what, pray tell, is the Open Source alternative? Text files indexed through a bunch of perl scripts outputting LaTEX? Sure.

But you go on, saying Honestly, LaTeX has been superior to that piece of closed-source crapware for 15 years. It appears to me that, frankly, you have no clue what Word is since you insist on comparing it to Latex.

Finally, please grow up and stop writing "Micro$oft". It is idiotic. Trust me on that.

Because that's the only communications system the government has any business regulating.

Since the affordable installation of phone lines and fiberoptic cables was only possible by government application of eminent domain, the public (whose property was infringed) have a persistent right for the government to regulate those services on it's behalf.

However, the recent decision that VoIP services can be regulated as a phone company is completely wrong. The physical wires transmitting the packets are already subject to regulation- to impose any more control over them is "double dipping".

internet news

Heh, speaking of DDOSing SC0...

Someone beat us to it

Jaysyn

"Well, I just couldn't believe the insanity of this claim, so I did some research. Turns out Infospace, Inc does own linuxsucks.com. However, it was originally owned by Go2Net (scroll down to the bottom), and Go2Net was bought by Infospace Inc in 2000, so the domain is now hosted by Infospace Inc/Go2Net. Go2Net offers hosting, and is therefore hosting the site as a subsidiary of Infospace Inc; it has been hosting LinuxSucks.com since before Infospace Inc's acquisition.

Hence, LinuxSucks.com is an amateur effort; it was neither created, nor funded my Infospace Inc, nor was it created or funded by Microsoft.

As for Microsoft's supposed ties to Infospace Inc? Microsfot did a case study of Infospace Inc's use of "Microsoft Message Queing 3.0", and how it "Reduces Costs While Improving Reliability at InfoSpace". Hardly the deep, cash infused ties this tin-foil hat wearing zealot implies.

Sorry, but that was just SO moronic I couldn't stand it."

• So far, the only major company [August 8, 2003] to publicly endorse SCO's claims by taking a license is Microsoft, the company that analysts say has the most to lose from the spread of Linux.
• IBM used the notion of FUD, once coined for IBM but now synonymous for Microsoft, to finger Microsoft as the culprit via this usage:

  In an internal memo obtained by internetnews.com targeted for IBM's sales force, Bob Samson, vice president of systems sales in IBM's Systems Group, discussed his company's thrust behind the SCO suit. "We see no merit in their claims and no supporting facts," Samson said. "Significantly, IBM counter sued SCO on a range of issues. Simply put, SCO's scheme is an attempt to profit from its limited rights to a very old UNIX operating system by introducing fear, uncertainty and doubt into the marketplace."

The Harris Poll people, operating out of harrisinteractive.com and using 0mm.com and messagemedia.com to send their junk is part of that $10 billion drag. They are themselves unrepentant mainsleaze spammers.

Harris and their polls are pro-spam. Check out the July 17th article here in which Harris is described as attempting to interpret their data as meaning that annoyance with spam is tapering off. Every able techie should add Harris's IP ranges to firewalls and router blocklists until they shrivel up and die.

From Internet News:
"On the day that IBM (Quote, Company Info) and SCO Group (Quote, Company Info) escalated their ongoing legal battle of misappropriated source code, SCO Group received some surprising backing of its claims that the 2.4 version of the Linux kernel contains code copied from SCO's Unix System V kernel.

"Our review of source code and documents appears supportive of SCO claims, though we are not legal experts and IP matters are not always transparent," Deutsche Bank Securities analyst Brian Skiba said in a research note Thursday after visiting SCO's headquarters in Lindon, Utah, Wednesday.

"A direct and near-exact duplicate of source code appears between the Linux 2.4 kernel and Unix System V kernel in routines shown to us."

Skiba agreed to a non-disclosure agreement in order to view SCO's evidence. He noted that he does not own SCO stock, nor does Deutsche Bank have a banking relationship with SCO, though he did say that Deutsche Bank's asset management firm may own some SCO stock.

The report comes on the same day that IBM filed its own counterclaims lawsuit in a Utah court against SCO.

Skiba also pointed out that none of the allegedly copied code shown to him was contributed by IBM.

"They said it was from another hardware vendor, but they didn't say who," Skiba told internetnews.com. "I think it's clear that they didn't mean HP (Quote, Company Info) or Sun (Quote, Company Info)."

He added, "We didn't discuss it, but I didn't get the feeling that the issues with IBM were related to literal copying. I think the issue with IBM is predominantly around derivative work."

Linux Brings In $1 Billion in Revenue for IBM
This was reported on Slashdot. Additional stories: 1 2 3 4
Why do you think he just made up the number? You don't know, so noone else does either?

Linux Brings In $1 Billion in Revenue for IBM
This was reported on Slashdot. Additional stories: 1 2 3 4
Why do you think he just made up the number? You don't know, so noone else does either?

hmmm....very interesting. I'm curious, tho. Of those 9 linux vulnerabilities, how many required a national alert from the US Government's Office of Homeland Security? And not just one but TWO.

And there were certainly more than just 2 windows vulnerabilities in the . Nice FUD, but you might want to check against Microsoft's own security list

sure it is:
Enron Opens Bandwidth Commodity Trading Service
Enron rings opening bell for bandwidth exchange
Making bandwidth a commodity: Reality or just a good idea?

seriously though, the fact that everyone's favourite company started trading it as a commodity doesn't mean it isn't so... :)

InterTrust aren't really a little guy. They're a stick in the hands of Sony and Philips, particularly Sony, used to bash MS. Sony have been fighting MS on many fronts for a long time now (going with PalmOS instead of PocketPC, PS2 vs X-Box, trying to push smart electronic applicances in the home rather than PCs).

...I lay the blame on US companies for selling out their own people -- but I believe the US may have no choice but to take a dim view of this. Unfortunately there seems to be no good solution.

Of course the companies have a choice in this. IBM recorded $1400 000 000 in profit link last quarter. Just how "competitive" do you need to be to stop shafting your own people?

Viva La revolucion!

I still do not grasp this fascination with "itunes." So what if it sold a lot of music to the fanboys stupid enough to pay all that money for a mac? I know a few people with macs and every single one of them would buy farts in a jar from uncle steve if only given the chance.

This is cool for cdbaby, although it would be much cooler to see them doing the online distribution themselves in a format (ie MP3 or OGG) that the truly free world embraces. Giving money to Listen.com or any of the "established" providers still means supporting the dino-co's that own them - and, thus, the RIAA - and there is no way in hell I (and many others) will ever do that... never again.

DoubleClick's entire business model is based on gross invasion of what little privacy we have left, intensive data mining, consumer profiling, spamming, etc., ad nauseum. Far as I'm concerned, they deserve this!

Some examples: In 1998, the spammed Princeton U, trolling for job candidates. In June of 2003, DoubleClick announced their own so-called anti-spam initiatives that, according to the article, will "focus on finding out how consumers identify spam, to give marketers a better idea of how they can avoid being unfairly singled out as spammers." (For the record, spam is any E-mail received that tries to sell you something or, in the case of political spam, get your vote, and that you did not ask for).

Want more? No problem. In 2001, DoubleClick two unnamed E-mail marketing companies to, according to a quote in the article from CBS's Market Watch, "increase its junk e-mail capabilities."

Still not convinced? How about this thread over at the Firewall-Wizards site from 1999?

In summary, it looks like DoubleClick has long attempted to redefine spam as "That Which We Do Not Do." It also appears that their ethics are questionable at best, especially in light of those FUI banners on web pages.

DoubleClick, if you're reading this... You brought it on yourselves, and you have nothing but your own shady practices to blame. May you go down in a nice, pretty set of multicolored flames, and may the ashes be used as space filler for the next five Great Deconstructed Architectural Makeovers in FunFun Town. Nick Danger could probably use a new office...

"What? Why doesn't MS support this SVG thing natively?"

Microsoft and Macromedia are business partners.
SVG is a potential threat to Flash*.
Do the math.

* Macromedia is ideally positioned to become the premiere vendor of SVG tools, but may see security in a home-grown file format**, not unlike some of their business partners.
** At least Flash is largely open, unlike some of their business partners' formats.

More info here, here and here. Here internetnews.com state that 3 vulnerabilities (not 2) where patched.

Here is the report from the people who found the vulnerabilities (or at least one of them) which includes a proof-of-concept paper and code.

But it seemed they were more concerned with the short term business model than the long term business model. Drop an insignificant minority here, gain some newbies there, raise subscription rates for 3 months. Seems okay on the surface, but by shunning long time players and relying on a constant flow of newbies, your game is destined to fail.

This is true for any service. It could explain why AOL lost over a quarter million subscribers this year.

I think you've stomped on a few too many mushrooms, fella. You need to get out more.

The Unix server market was $4.3B in 1st qtr 2003. Of that HP and Sun are tied for first, IBM gaining rapidly. The SCO debacle is mostly about competing with IBM for the big server market, less about holding off Linux, which after all, will run on any hardware. Look at IBM's "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" approach toward Linux.

• IPv6- The Next Generation Internet - About IPv6.
• IPv6 Forum
• IP Version 6 (IPv6) - IPv6 at Sun.
• No shortage of IP addresses - Cnet Asia
• Big players push IPv6, but masses resist.
• Ready for IPv6 - PC World
• Ready for IPv6, Part 2 - PC World
• Verio Brings IPv6 to North America
• NTT Com Expands IPv6 Coverage
• KDDI Labs Pilots IPv6 Network Between Japan and the US
• Foundry Does 10GigE for N+I
• Perspective: IPv6, the Net's next frontier

That this article says that Corbis is using the DCMA. So does that mean they're both using it... and if so isn't it a win-win situation? If either one of the large-corp-backed or large-corp entities loses out without settling, then the DCMA gets a firm kick in the pants.

Is it my imagination, or have MS and affiliates been doing a lot of nice things for us lately? First going after spammers, now Amazon. I shouldn't go to sleep tonight... I'm afraid if I wake this will all have been a dream.

You completely miss the point of the lower court ruling. Microsoft licensed Java. They didn't adhere to the contract they signed with Sun. This was part of the remedy of that lawsuit. It was thrown out today.

No, I'm afraid you missed the point of the lawsuit.

Sun already sued Microsoft on contract infringement relating to Java, and settled out of court two years ago.

This is a new lawsuit as part of Sun's Strategic Litigation division. (look for the name Lee Patch and check out his title) Sun is now claiming that they were harmed by the earlier lawsuit they settled, after Microsoft announced they were going to pull all versions of Java out of Windows XP.

Well whatever. Anybody who has been in the industry for a while knows why Java failed no the desktop. It had nothing to do with Microsoft's JVM for Internet Explorer. If you wanted to run client-side Java you had to download Sun's JVM anyway. The Microsoft JVM just let you run Java applets in the browser.

But Java applets in the browser never took off, not because Microsoft made a JVM that allowed developers to hang themselves if they wanted to.(Apparently Sun believes developers aren't smart enough to realize interfacing with COM components means your stuff won't run on a Mac) No, Java didn't take off in the browser because it didn't work well. Instead Macromedia came out with what they called Flash which had the same concept of running applets, but was a higher level language that was easier to create content with.

The "chilling reminder" is that, is you do ANY business with Microsoft, prepared to be screwed, with no legal recourse.

Once again, the chilling reminder is that strategic litigation and whining doesn't improve your market position.

Just gotta love those Microsoft apologists.... Geesh.

No, you've gotta love people who don't understand the history of the internet and believe whatever sob story someone tells them.

Please, people, engage your brain!

Please read this article which clarifies many of the misconceptions about the RIAA's position on fair usage. I think some of you will be very surprised (I know I was).

I agree that there's often too much hysteria and name-calling (in both directions), but you gotta admit, the RIAA can be pretty nutty at times. From the first paragraph of that article you cited:

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) sued four students on April 3 for allegedly operating music-sharing Web sites, accusing them of enabling large-scale copyright theft. Although the RIAA initially asked for $98 billion in damages, it settled the case on May 1, with the four students paying fines ranging from $12,000 to $17,500.

$98 billion?! I thought that must be a misprint, but this article says:

The RIAA is seeking damages of $150,000 per song traded on the networks. While it is impossible to accurately quantify how many songs are swapped among users, the RIAA's lawyers are expected to argue that millions of copyrighted songs have been downloaded and shared on the offending networks.

So maybe that wasn't a misprint, after all: Millions of songs times $150K each = hundreds of billions of dollars. Jeez. Whatever their stance on fair use, their impression of the damage caused by file copying is insane.

When I read it, it was standard news, and not FUD. Now, there seems to be a claim of Urban Myth. Since this really was in the news, I don't think that it is an Urban Myth. I'm posting this as AC, and redirecting the conversation to a similar thread, here, if you want to continue the discussion.