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I think the attribution area is normally covered under concepts like plagiarism. If I take your book (even if it was in the Public Domain), slap my name on the cover, and try to pass it off as my own work, then that's plagiarism. If I take your book (not in the Public Domain) and make copies to distribute at the nearest street corner (without your permission), that's copyright infringement.

I'm in favor of returning copyright to the terms originally set by the Founding Fathers. Copyright owners would get 14 years of copyright protection. After that, they could opt in for a single 14 year copyright extension. I'd be willing to compromise by phasing in the changes (like I posted here http://www.jasons-toolbox.com/?p=119 ), but beyond that I don't see why a creator's great-grandchildren should financially benefit from a work that was created when they (the great-grandchildren) weren't even around. How is giving royalties to an author past his death giving him the incentive to create more works? Are we to expect a string of zombie authors will rise up if only copyright is extended a little bit more?

Here's a link:

http://www.jasons-toolbox.com/images/ASCIISpam.jpg

Obviously that mess of characters between "www" and "com" was their URL which I've munged so as not to give them any traffic.

I was going to suggest Amie Street, but it looks like you've already found it. What I do is subscribe to their RSS feeds for Recommended songs. Then I check it a couple times a day for new and interesting songs/groups. The preview functionality can usually tell you whether it's a song/group that you like. You could also find people who have recommended songs that you liked and see what other songs they've recommended.

On the off-chance that you like the same kind of music that I like, here's my playlist: http://www.jasons-toolbox.com/what-im-listening-to.php

Then I'd recommend Amie Street. Amie Street has no monthly fee or download limit. You pay for the songs as you buy them. Songs start out as free and then rise in price (up to 98 cents) as more people buy them. I've spent $10.38 so far and have purchased 123 songs. (Here are sampler versions of the songs I've purchased: http://www.jasons-toolbox.com/what-im-listening-to.php in case you're interested.)

Between eMusic, Amazon's new store, and Amie Street, you should be able to get a lot of great music for much less than you'd pay on iTunes without any DRM.

The problem with the "I don't like the RIAA therefore I'll stop buying music entirely" argument is that it assumes that all music is "RIAA music." Check out eMusic or Amie Street for a lot of great music from artists not affiliated with the RIAA. Since March, I've bought all of my music from Amie Street and I'm loving the artists that I've found. A lot of them deserve their own multi-platinum record deals... except that would lock them into the RIAA's anti-artist contracts. So I hope that they do what is unlikely right now (but becoming more likely each day) and get a huge hit without being signed to a large record label.

I'm not sure about eMusic, but as far as the artist's cut on Amie Street goes, Amie Street gets the first $5 in sales of a song. After that, the artist gets 70% of the take. Using tools that Amie Street provides for their artists, I figured out that songs reach the $5 mark after only 41 sales. (This translates to a price of about 37 cents. So if a song is 38 cents or more, the song has broken even and the artist is now earning money from it.)

And just to help those artists out a bit, here are samples of their music: http://www.jasons-toolbox.com/what-im-listening-to .php

This is really good news. There are some good songs to be had on Amie Street for not much money. So far, I've bought 91 songs and have only spent $6.29. That's about 7 cents per song. With no DRM at all. Beat that, iTunes! ;-)

Oh, and if you happen to be interested in what I'm listening to, here's my playlist: http://www.jasons-toolbox.com/what-im-listening-to .php

I've never really been interested in online music as I didn't want my legally purchased music to be locked down on me. What little music I bought was mostly obtained via used CDs. My first online music purchases were four Barenaked Ladies songs when I found that they were selling their music online without DRM. Then I found AmieStreet.com. For those who don't know, their model is that the songs start out free and rise in price (up to 98 cents) as people buy them. A song I bought at 23 cents (Hoku's Perfect Day) is now up at 47 cents (when last I checked). The advantage to this model is that you can experiment on new songs for little cost (or even for free), or you can buy the 98 cent stuff assured that it must be pretty good.

Add in the extended previews and the excellent recommendation system that can earn you money back when songs that you like rise in price and you have a system that encourages people to find and buy new music. So far in the about 2 weeks that I've been using their service, I've bought 10 songs, spent 89 cents, and been exposed to tons of bands that I otherwise wouldn't have even known existed.

Shameless plug: I happened to do a decent sized review about Amie Street on my blog just the other day. It includes a promotional code for $2 and 4 free RECs in your account as well as a link to the 10 songs I've bought. (Preview versions, of course.) Here's the URL: http://www.jasons-toolbox.com/?p=94

This program allows you to move sites to and from IE's "Trusted Sites" list. It then is trivial to disable all Java/ActiveX/JS/Cookies in the "Internet Zone".

I do like Firefox a lot. It is a wonderful browser, and it is improving at a rapid pace. But I will not use it until the devs get their heads out of their arses. It is not as secure as IE for one simple reaon: no javascript whitelisting. IE has it in the form of security zones.

If firefox ever adds jscript whitelisting to the main app or someone develops an extension for it (that is kept up to date with current releases) I will switch in an instant. Unfortunately I am getting the impression that the devs are very pro-jscript and have no interest in making it easy for users to browse with it off completely. Instead they want to only allow disabling it's most annoying and obvious features. This is a woefully inadequate solution.

With IE I can browse with javascript completely off while still being able to shop at sites like newegg or amazon with jscript (and activex if necessary) automatically enabled. There are many sites nowadays (created by incompetent web designers)that won't even load without javascript. I will either ignore such sites or take the chance on giving them temporary trusted or partially restricted status.

People talk about how insecure and dangerous ActiveX is and they're right, but javascript is almost as bad. IMO, anyone who surfs the internet with javascript on is asking for trouble and shouldn't be surprised when they find it. And, no,I am not talking about popups. Javascript is a hell of a lot more than just the window popup or resize functions. The recent slammer worm, while an example of an exploit of bad IE security in the form of BHOs is also an example of the dangers of javascript. This worm could not function without it and it did not rely on popups or resizing. It used javascript that would never be blocked by the kind of partial blocking that firefox uses.

Mozilla has also had security zone capability through user pref javascript settings for a long time, but a UI for it has never been included in the official browser. At this point it looks like it never will.

There was some effort expended at actually producing a UI for the zones but nothing seems to have come of it. The devs who were working on it gave up when they saw this which unfortunately is not capable of javascript whitelisting at least in current versions of mozilla or firefox.

There have been some attempts at extensions to add in jscript whitelisting to mozilla, but there is nothing that works with current versions of either mozilla or firefox.

All of this work is at least 1-2 years old. Some of it is as 3-4 years old. Nothing is currently being done with any of it. Obviously the devs don't consider it an important feature. In fact they consider it so unimportant that even when it's already in the code, they can't be bothered to make a UI for it it.

So thank you very much, but I will stick with a much safer browsing experience on IE with pwrtwks to give me two click security zone control and trust setter and IE Zone Editor to give me even more control over IE's wonderful security zone features.

For the one remaining gigantic IE annoyance, those popup "warning" windows you get when browsing with activeX turned off on sites with activeX, there is a way to turn them off. It works.

Actually, it's very true. Here is a demo.

I agree. That response was like saying, "Hey look at that wide open door! I'll secure it by building a brick wall in front of it." Around the time the ILOVEYOU virus came out, I came up with a program that will stop it in it's tracks. It doesn't do this by disabling scripting functionality (which I actually find useful), but by changing the associations. With my program installed, scripts pass through it and the user gets alerted to possible security risks (registry reading/writing/deleting, file access, etc.). If the user still wants to run the script, they can opt to. (And often run scripts can be marked as "Safe" to avoid needless prompts.) Of course, my program is freeware (with the option of making donations if you feel it's worth it). Check it out at: http://www.jasons-toolbox.com/scriptsentry.asp

While I can't help with 2-4, I wrote 2 things that help with #1. My web site offers to ability to Test Your E-mail Defenses by e-mailing you a harmless VBScript file. (It reads your registry, but doesn't change anything or send any info out.)

I also wrote Script Sentry which traps those VBS scripts (as well as DOC, XLS, SHS, SHB, REG, HTA, and more), shows you details as to what it would do if run, and lets you decide whether or not you really want to run it. So if a user opens up that new Love Letter they just got in the mail and sees a "This will change your registry" message, hopefully they will be scared/wise enough to cancel the action.

While I can't help with 2-4, I wrote 2 things that help with #1. My web site offers to ability to Test Your E-mail Defenses by e-mailing you a harmless VBScript file. (It reads your registry, but doesn't change anything or send any info out.)

I also wrote Script Sentry which traps those VBS scripts (as well as DOC, XLS, SHS, SHB, REG, HTA, and more), shows you details as to what it would do if run, and lets you decide whether or not you really want to run it. So if a user opens up that new Love Letter they just got in the mail and sees a "This will change your registry" message, hopefully they will be scared/wise enough to cancel the action.

When I launched my site I wanted to give away my programs for free, yet I needed to recoup costs of my web account. My solution: Voluntary payments through PayPal. The results so far: Very good. I've raised enough in 3 months to run my web server for 8-9 months.

I think there are 3 key elements to a successful micopayment system. All of them are pretty common sense items, but here they are:

1. It must be voluntary: I'm not paying any amount to a site I just found before I get to review their content. And I'm very leery of "pay-per-month" sites. I just don't visit them enough to justify the cost. However, a voluntary payment system lets me say "Hey, I really liked your article on DeCSS/Online Security/whatever, here's $5."

2. Custom payments amounts: As another poster mentioned, different people value the same content differently. I might think an article is worth $5, but you might think it's worth $10, or $2, or nothing. So let people choose how much something's worse. (From experience: Sometimes they choose an amount much more than even you thought it was worth! Not that I'm complaining. ;-)

3. Must be easy to use: If the system is too complex, noone's going to give anything. I find PayPal to be good, but there's always room for improvement. The more complex the system, the more possible donars will back out before the transaction is complete.

I think what you mean to say is that banner ads can support a site if there are enough page views.

Sorry, but this is just plain wrong. And I know this from personal experience. I used to work at an online magazine called Winmag.com (formally Windows Magazine) which folded in March. We had great content, a "sticky" site (people would come back to us often), and a lot of page views (around 1.6 million a month). However, we weren't making any money from the banner ads we had up. So, CMP (which owns Winmag.com along with Byte.com and a bunch of other publications) folded it.

Ok, maybe if we were getting 1.6 million page views per day we might have broken even, but then we would have been the exception rather than the rule. Banner ads are quite simply ineffective when it comes to generating revenue.

Now, for my own site that I launched soon after Winmag.com's demise, I decided to leave out all banner ads. (Save for one for my fellow ex-Winmaggers which isn't intended to produce revenue.)

Instead, I set up a PayPal account and let people donate what they thought my site's services were worth. In the 2 1/2 months my site's been up, I've collected enough donations to keep my site running for over 9 months.

I honestly think voluntary donations are the way to go for all but the biggest site. As long as you're providing good content/services, people will be willing to donate. (Note: I said donate, not pay. Pay-per-use sites also aren't too successful, with the exception of the porn sites.)

Actually, there have been many problems with that patch. Besides, it doesn't address the core issue, the scripting features (while possibly very useful) can be used to easily make viruses.

Excuse the blantent plug, but instead of telling users to hack into their Windows registry (not soemthing most users are capable of), I devised a program, Script Sentry, that seizes control of the VBS extension (as well as quite a few others, but only after you approve it of course). This way, when the script is run, Script Sentry opens up, scans the script for possibly malicious code, and then alerts the user.

For example, in a momentary lapse of judgement, I open that "Love Letter" attachment I recieved. Instead of being infected though, Script Sentry alerts me that the "Love Letter" would have deleted files, edited my registry, and accessed Outlook. I tell Script Sentry not to run the script and crisis averted.

Oh, and the program is 100% free (although I have a means for people to "donate" if they feel it's worth the $$$).

In case anyone's interested, the URL is http://www.jasons-toolbox.com/scriptsentry.asp

I had a similar setup with my site URateIt.com, except that my site was too small for the ad networks. Then I opened up another site (Jason's Toolbox) on the same server dedicated to some applications I wrote. I made them freeware, but put up a Paypal form so people could pay whatever they thought they were worth if they so chose. In the month that the site's been online, I've recieved enough money through Paypal donations to keep my site running for 5 months. (Some people gave as much as $20 for a program that I would have only charged $5 for, had I made it shareware.) I'll need to get a few more months under my belt to see if this is a fluke, but it is promising.