Slashdot Mirror

I will gladly pay the protection money to Yahoo to keep DRM away.

Not me. I not only want downloads to be free of DRM, but free of cost. MP3s should be the same as a commercial - they cost the band/label/company a small sum up front, but result in later sales.

If my friends can get you to listen to their stuff, you're likely to like it and go to their shows and buy their CDs. Buy their CDs, not "license" them. Unlike the RIAA labels and the bands (and bands' copyrights) the labels own, most indie musicians (including my friends) aren't thieves.

As Michael Crawford pointed out several years ago on K5, there are Tens of Thousands of free, Legal Music Downloads on the internet, which he linked in his article (I believe he has the story mirrored on his own site).

As I pointed out on my site, Yahoo sucks! If you use their "music search" (unless they've fixed it; the linked blagh entry is from Oct 2005) their only links are to music download sales. Free music isn't listed at all! I won't redundantly go into detail in this comment as I ranted enough two years ago. Where'd those horse bones go?

What's worse, "do no evil" Google is no better. Despite the fact that the love of money is the root of all evil, money is all they're about. Google's "advanced search" lets you search for specific file types, but not MP3s!

Yahoo (and Google) are on the side of mammon. Our internet (yes, fellow nerds, OUR internet) that started out as a free repository, free as in beer and free as in speech, has been nearly 100% co-opted by the god of Mammon, so badly that none of you remember the old internet, where we would bitch and moan and threaten boycotts of any site that dared es much as showed a banner ad (yes, even I've caved somewhet, having Google ads at the bottom of pages).

Now the internet is nearly 100% about commerce, with only a few truly free places. Yay sites like Wikipedia and Uncyclopedia. The Onion is another; they do commerce, but they don't shove it in your face and even have fake ads that make fun of internet advertising.

But these places are few and far between.

Someone needs to make a REAL music search; one where you can find not only The Station's CDs and paid downloads, but SHNs and Oggs of live shows. You can find them, but it ain;t easy.

This has no value at all to me. I don't buy downloads (OR bottled water, fools). MP3s are and should be free. When I buy music, I buy CDs from the bands at their shows. If I want RIAA dreck, I can get MP3s free off of the radio.

Buying MP3s, buying bottles of the same water that used to come free from drinking fountains, what's next, buying air?

-mcgrew

PS: Get off my lawn you damned stupid kids. And take your WMAs and bottled water with you!

I couldn't tell from the article, but which intellectual property is MS saying open source solutions are infringing on?

I think this one

-mcgrew

;)

1. The radio. Unfortunately, the RIAA labels are all you're going to hear there. Fortunately, if there is anything good playing (Buckcherry, the only 21st RIAA band I've heard that doesn't suck, comes to mind), in most countries it's still legal to record the radio. Young folks today are luckier in this respect than I was when I was young, as we only had tape. You can sample for a few hours and with little effort just copy and paste songs, and though they won't be CD quality they'll be better than any tape or MP3. You don't have to pay to hear or have a copy of any new RIAA song!
   
   
2. Internet "radio". Unfortunately, the MAFIAA is part of the Corporate Cartel that has purchased the American government (as well as most other governments) and have effectively killed internet radio in America. Fortunately, the US is not the only country in the world - you can still hear internet radio. This is where you'll find the good indie stuff.
   
   
3. P2P. But, er, even though your odds of being sued are around the same as winning a state lottery, it still gives most people pause. Why would I risk the one in a million chance of getting busted when I can legally sample the radio?
   
   
4. Word of mouth. If someone says "hey, I've got this great new CD", borrow it and make a copy. If it's copy protected, no problem - use the method in the above link, which will defeat any audio copy protection. No, your copy won't be perfect, but unless you have damned good speakers or phones AND damned good ears you won't hear the difference. If your friend is on the other side of the world, have them send an MP3 as an email attachment.

I'm a blu-ray fan, I'm not really apologizing (problems are problems), I thought I'd clarify, especially the bit about the ps3.

Does your PS3 come with a rootkit? People like you are part of the problem.

I suspect you work for Sony or are heavily invested in them. If so, FUCK YOU AND YOUR ENTIRE FAMILY. Sony is the only company in the world that has managed to not only match, but exceed Microsoft's level of evil. As the linked text says, if you work for Sony (esp in a high level position) you belong in prison and I will cheer if and when I read of your employer going out of business.

-mcgrew

I'd like to know if it can steer, and if it can land in such a way that it can fly again.

Strap a rocket to a bull's testicles and it will steer.

-mcgrew

"If assholes could fly, this place would be an airport." -Sign on the wall at Farley's Pub in Springfield.

It's not even copyright infringement! When an evil entity" Whose President and CEO and board members should be in prison says something is "wrongdoing", you can be sure it's the RIGHT thing to do.

Sony, you lost my business when my daughter played a PURCHASED Sony-BMG CD and you rooted my box with it. You never had my respect to lose - you are evil. As the (fairly old) linked blog says, YOUR COMPANY SHOULD DIE HORRIBLY.

Funny, I recall hearing a lot of Lynard Skynard on the label-sanctioned Pirate radio station. Isn't Van Zandt one of the artists whose CDs you put rootkits on? Speaking of Skynard, my CD of Second Helping was sampled from my vinyl copy. Fuck you and the mangy horse you rode in on. Sony's executives are IMO all shiteating scum.

Did they repeal the Audio Home Recording Act of 1978? Didn't that specifically LEGALIZE taping my albums? Oh, but I forgot - copying is stealing, war is peace, freedom is slavery, and of course, ignorance is strength! .

I was going to say that Sony can go to hell, but I just remembered that they will - every one of the evil pigfucking bastards who run it.

-mcgrew

(capcha is fittingly "steams"

It's not even copyright infringement! When an evil entity" Whose President and CEO and board members should be in prison says something is "wrongdoing", you can be sure it's the RIGHT thing to do.

Sony, you lost my business when my daughter played a PURCHASED Sony-BMG CD and you rooted my box with it. You never had my respect to lose - you are evil. As the (fairly old) linked blog says, YOUR COMPANY SHOULD DIE HORRIBLY.

Funny, I recall hearing a lot of Lynard Skynard on the label-sanctioned Pirate radio station. Isn't Van Zandt one of the artists whose CDs you put rootkits on? Speaking of Skynard, my CD of Second Helping was sampled from my vinyl copy. Fuck you and the mangy horse you rode in on. Sony's executives are IMO all shiteating scum.

Did they repeal the Audio Home Recording Act of 1978? Didn't that specifically LEGALIZE taping my albums? Oh, but I forgot - copying is stealing, war is peace, freedom is slavery, and of course, ignorance is strength! .

I was going to say that Sony can go to hell, but I just remembered that they will - every one of the evil pigfucking bastards who run it.

-mcgrew

(capcha is fittingly "steams"

Wrong. I was born in 1952, you're WRONG.

In the 1960s doors didn't open automatically like they do in today's stores. There were no digital watches or calculators. Cars had no seat belts, there were no stereo FM rock stations (link documents the first, in 1967), nor were there FM car radios.

In the 1970s doors opened automatically, there were digital watches and calculators, but no VCRs or microwave ovens (well, IIRC my mom had a microwave in the very late '70s, it was incredibly primitive and cost a shipload of money). There were no PCs (again, there was the Commodore PET, etc, in the very end of the decade, the Altair doesn't count). No CDs.

In the 1980s there were no DVDs, no cell phones, no CD burners for PCs. No flat screen TV sets. Air bags, ABS, and fuel injection was only on insanely expensive cars; they were brand new.

In the 1990s there were still no flat screen TVs, and there were no CrystaLens IOLs, the internet was brand new, and your cell phone was the same as a landline only more complicated to use; no email, text, or internet access on one.

Other breakthroughs I glossed over are things that we'd be better off without, such as tasers, pain rays, and the new non-nuclear super bombs.

Progress never sleeps, even if some good technologies die

-mcgrew (sm62704)

Happy birthday, geezer!

This means my site is older than slashdot, by five months! Of course, the URL has changed a few times; when I got on the internet my ISP provoded "unlimited access", and I proceeded to test the "unlimited" part by putting anything and everything on the web space they provided. I started "the springfield fragfest", a quake site, also older than slashdot (but rests comfortably at archive.org with its tits up) and shoveled patches, demos, all sorts of crap in there and my host never squealed once. But the mcgrew.info logo is the same (unlike slashdot's).

I think I found slashdot some time in 1998 or 1999, but lost my original password (therefore losing my user name when I changed hosts and email addresses). It would be nice to post as "mcgrew" again here, with that account's uber-low UID.

Happy birthday again, slashdot! You may not be as old as me, but you're older than Google and Amazon. Hey Google and Amazon, you kids get the hell off of slashdot's any my lawns! Hey slashdot, have a beer. What did your doctor say about that embarrassing personal problem, geezer? Mine gave me some blue pills.

-mcgrew

PS- does anybody remember the "suckdot" parody suck.com did? The Penguin with the scimitar was hilarious.

FTFA: 'The challenge is going to be teaching computers to recognize the suspicious behavior

Indeed; TFA itself shows its ignorance. You can teach a human, you can teach a dog, you can even teach a rodent, but you CANNOT teach a computer. Unlike humans, dogs, rodents, and even insects, computers can't think. They can only compute and display the results of their computations (including simulations derived by computation).

A computer is only an abacus with billions of wires, each with only two beads per wire... well, actually only one bead per wire. How many more beads do I need to add to my abacus before it becomes self-aware?

You don't "teach" a computer any more than you "teach" an abacus. You teach a dog, you program a computer. When an IT publication speaks of computers "thinking" or "being taught" you know that they're ignorant of the low level basic functioning of a computer, and therefore have no credibility.

Hell, I wrote a program in 1983 on a 1mz Times computer with 20k (not meg, K) of memory that will argue with you, and pretty much passes the Turing test. The version downloadable from the linked page was converted to Clipper so is almost half a megabyte, but it's basically the same 20k program with a shitload of compiler overhead.

When you come up with a computer that thinks and has no biological components, wake me up. I will have been taking a nap in the dirt for a long, long time.

If you are in IT and claim computers can or ever will think, you should be ashamed of yourself.

-mcgrew

PS- speaking of insanity, IMO it's just batshit crazy to give the cops this kind of power in a city where off duty police officers brutally attack small womenn bartenders and businessmen, and even murder other cops? Are these the sorts of people you want stalking you?

To anybody who thinks this is a good idea, ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR FUCKING MIND?????

But your complaint is absurd. If one is unable to resist the feminine wiles of an online-character, then it's his own fault, not fault of the the person playing the female character.

But if I were still into gaming and the very idea of RPGs didn't bore the hell out of me (my real life is far more weird than anybody else's fiction), would it be my fault that you gave her an unfair advantage because you were a sucker for her "feminine wiles"? From my perspective, it doesn't matter if she got the Magic Gizmo by killing the Big Badlie Monster or by suckering you out of it; she still has it and can kick my ass with it.

-mcgrew

Lawsuits in three... two... one...

-mcgrew ("On the internet, nobody can tell you're a dog")

The National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit group that monitors and reports on the ethics of public officials, supporters of liberal causes, and labor unions in the United States. Among the NLPC's more high-profile targets have been hip hop mogul Sean Combs,[1] Reverend Jesse Jackson, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (while she was first lady), and Senator Lisa Murkowski. The Center files complaints with government agencies, legally challenges what they view as abuse and corruption, and publishes reports. For its efforts, the NPLC has been praised by such media personalities as Rush Limbaugh.[2]

Sounds a bit disingenuous to me, although I haven't RTFA. The feds tax gas at 18.4 cents per gallon. As gas here is around threee bucks (I paid 2.999 yesterday), that makes the federal tax on gas 6.1 cents per dollar; 6.1%. Here in Illinois there is another 21.5 cents per gallon tax, making the combined state and federal taxes on gasoline 13.2 cents per dollar.

So this says that as of November 1, there is going to be a greater tax on internet access than gasoline? And if it's a federal tax only, it will be over twice the rate gasoline is taxed?

Sorry if I'm a bit skeptical. This kind of sensationalist reporting is NOT the way to get me to write my congresscritters.

-mcgrew

(fittingly, the mind reading capcha is "limping", but the way some letters are hollowed out makes it look at first glance as if it says "mpg".)

Not only is all new RIAA music DRM-free, it is also cost-free. And the cost-free, DRM-free music is completely legal in most countries, including the USA.

Just plug your radio into your sound card and sample for a couple of hours, then spend a few minutes editing and you will have the entire top 40. Much easier than downloading, either legal or illegal.

Of course, you still need either a download or a used record store to legally acquire good RIAA music; music that should no longer be under copyright in the first place.

And for the good new music, Kazaa and eDonkey are perfectly legal. I'm talking indie music here, bands who WANT you to hear them. Just be careful not to download that putrid RIAA drek by mistake, or they might sue you.

-mcgrew (there are links to free MP3s from the linked page)

I do (or should I say, "did") mine using Notepad. Christ, people, HTML isn't exactly assembly language!

-mcgrew

minus well? MINUS WELL? It's "might as well".

I thought he meant "midas well". You know, that bottomless pit full of gold?

-mcgrew

doesn't the store have a right to stop shoplifting?

No. The store only has the right to attempt to stop shoplifting provided they obey the law while doing so. I remember you from K5, CTS, you've always been a facist and a lunatic. Remember me telling you to take your meds?

To others: this guy has some mental issues. One of his personalities is a libertarian, one is a commie, and one is a facist. His name is Legion and he really should take his meds, like I told him to do many times (before his friend and K5 admin jongular pissed me off enough to leave the site in disgust).

okay: you're obligated to show your receipt

He's also a fucking illiterate. CTS, you are NOT obligated to show your reciept! ...as a previous poster tried vainly to tell you. They can ask for it, you are NOT obligated to comply. I'm sorry that I can't find small enough words for your tiny little neocon facist mind to comprehend.

i would suggest that such people who think so have no idea what fascism really is!

I would suggest that YOU have no more of an idea what facism is than you have an idea what literacy and sanity are.

-mcgrew (link is to an argument with CTS I found in Google).
My home page
The Paxil Diaries

It looks licke that this woman could sue the pants off of the RIAA for this. IANAL & YAAL, so please tell us that my guess is right?

-mcgrew

I "own" two ISBNs. The copyright office assigns the ISBN when you register your copyright.

Now, things might have changed since the early '80s when I registered these works (here's one) but it works like this:

You create your work, and send two copies of the work, a completed copyright submittal form, and the registration fee (twenty bucks back then). About six weeks later you will get a form letter saying your registration has been received. Then six months to a year after that, you will receive another document with details of your work and with your ISBN number.

You have to submit each work separately.

-mcgrew

...almost. It's still too early for McCoy to repeat his trademarked phrase, Jim, since the patient is still on life support (although it's apparently been brain dead for years).

I'll cheer more when Sony dies. All SCO did was to rattle sabers at the Linux community, not unlike when Nikita Khrushchev banged his shoe on the table at the UN yelling "we will bury you!" Even though I'm a Linux user and booster, there was no way SCO was going to bury Linux; SCO was little more than an annoying joke.

So I'm kind of sad, I like jokes. Even bad jokes like SCO. Here's hoping McBride's new job will be CEO of Sony. Then when he he kills that damned demon, maybe he can get a job with Microsoft?

-mcgrew

Even novice users would probably find some piece of software they wanted to run that wasn't in the system and get annoyed at symantec for breaking their computer while more technical users would likely never want to be early adopters of something like this.

If you want a real-world illustration of this, on July 26, 2005 the mydoom virus made google and other search engines unavailable. I wrote and article about it named Mom brought Google to its knees" and posted it to K5 (and note that I am not a security expert; the McGrew from McGrew Security is a different guy).

I had installed a firewall on her new shiny eMachines PC. The pertinent part of MFA: "Mom called me a week ago. 'I want you to take this firewall off of my computer.'"

I finally showed her how to whitelist, but as I said in TFA, I fully expected to have to rebuild her machine, as it was sure to be compromised.

-mcgrew

I remember a book by some hippie around 1969 (can't remember the dude's name, man. Can I get another toke?) named "Steal This Book."

I rememer now- Abbie Hoffman (IIRC, which I probably don't, man).

The "morality" of the respective industries is telling; a book publisher doesn't object to a title of "Steal This Book" (presumably meaning "shoplift this sucker") while a record label is up in arms about a singer saying during a concert "Steal my music" (presumably not meaning shoplifting.)

It's also telling that they would object to "steal my music" but not object to "I want to fuck you like an animal, I want to feel you from the inside, I want to fuck you like an animal".

It's also telling that these assholes have no objections to rappers singing about whores, pimps, shooting policemen, smoking crack, murder and mayhem (not only rappers, but even country music - "I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die"), but "steal my music" and they go postal.

Record company executives are truly evil.

-mcgrew

I mean, this thread, nit the tech party; I'm 55. My internet connection at home is down, I've been throwing away too much money on booze and hookers and haven't paid my bill lately...

But at any rate, you youngsters might be interested in an article I wrote back in 2005, Growing Up With Computers. Other young folks were interested enough to vote it up to the front page.

Come to think of it, and also on-topic, I wrote a few geezertech articles back then. Useful Dead Technologies might amuse you (How many of you young nerds can use a slide rule?), as might Good Riddance to Bad Tech.

-mcgrew

No, the stakes ARE higher. See, nobody needs the majors any more!

The old Napster was the RIAA's wakeup call - that is, Napster and Roger McGuinn (of the '60s band "The Byrds"), who was playing in bars for peanuts, all his albums long out of print, when P2P introduced a new generation to his music. McGuinn credited P2P for the resurgence of his career.

Just as it could reintroduce a long-forgotten artist, it could introduce a new one. You can "download" the entire top-40 from your radio, legal and for free. The RIAA doesn't mind a bit, since they know good and damned well that if you like it, you're most likely going to buy it (or McGuinn would still be playing bars for peanuts). That is why they killed internet radio and are trying to kill P2P - they can't control it. You might hear an indie you like. If you buy two indie CDs, that's an RIAA CD you can no longer afford (since the RIAA CDs generally cost twice as much).

The "pirates" they're really after is their legitimate, legal competetion.

Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning was the MPAA's wakeup calll. If you haven't seen this flick, do so, it's as funny and well made as any MPAA fare. And it was done by amateurs for a pittance. I'm sure there are yellow stains on every major film executive's chair!

The majors are no longer needed, not by the artists or the audience. So it is indeed a life or death situation. Either they kill the internet or die trying.

R.I.P., M.A.F.I.A.A.

-mcgrew

It's even worse - since a ringtone is but a tiny snippet, shouldn't it be covered under "fair Use"? And why can't I cut my own snippet from a song I've already purchased, either from a CD, sampled from vinyl or cassette, or a download?

Our copyright laws have been severely broken fro quite some time, to the extent that even I, a copyright holder, am starting to just not worry about them. Stupid laws should be fought, not obeyed.

-mcgrew

IANAL so those linked PDFs won't do me much more good than a schematic wiring diagram would do for a plumber.

1. I thought "making available" was what was against the law, that it was "broadcasting?"

2. If unauthorized downloading itself is illegal, how do I know the download is unauthorized? If I see the file available, why should I assume the file is illegal? If I want to download The Station's The Fog, which is an authorized download, how do I keep from downloading Radiohead's song of the same name?

3. If they're abandoning the "making available" thing, what are they doing now?

To be clear, I use P2P, but don't want to doanload unauthorized stuff. P2P and intternet radio are the only way to find good new music, since the RIAA labels' fare has turned to complete and utter drek. How can I defend myself against this organization that doesn't want me to hear indie music?

-mcgrew (not the mcgrew from "McGrew Security", I'm the "Paxil Diaries" mcgrew, aka sm62704 at slashdot.

PS- do you want the entire top forty, free, legal, and at better quality than iTunes or P2P? Plug your radio into your PC, tune to a top 40 station, and sample for a couple of hours. (mirror is here

IANAL so those linked PDFs won't do me much more good than a schematic wiring diagram would do for a plumber.

1. I thought "making available" was what was against the law, that it was "broadcasting?"

2. If unauthorized downloading itself is illegal, how do I know the download is unauthorized? If I see the file available, why should I assume the file is illegal? If I want to download The Station's The Fog, which is an authorized download, how do I keep from downloading Radiohead's song of the same name?

3. If they're abandoning the "making available" thing, what are they doing now?

To be clear, I use P2P, but don't want to doanload unauthorized stuff. P2P and intternet radio are the only way to find good new music, since the RIAA labels' fare has turned to complete and utter drek. How can I defend myself against this organization that doesn't want me to hear indie music?

-mcgrew (not the mcgrew from "McGrew Security", I'm the "Paxil Diaries" mcgrew, aka sm62704 at slashdot.

PS- do you want the entire top forty, free, legal, and at better quality than iTunes or P2P? Plug your radio into your PC, tune to a top 40 station, and sample for a couple of hours. (mirror is here

So you can alledge that a lawyer has kidnapped Elvis and locked him up in his basement along with a bunch of alien corpses stolen from Roswell and the bar association will open an investigation.

Oddly enough, My ex-wife's lawyer did kidnap Elvis and lock him in a basement with Roswell Alien corpses! I called the cops but they wouldn't do jack about it. Dumb cops.

Of course, this IS Illinois!

-mcgrew

But of course the two major parties benefit from voter apathy

We don't have two major parties, we have ONE major party with two wings. The DMCA, Bono Act, misnamed "PATRIOT" act, all were passed with 100% or close vote. There was probably more dissention within the USSR's Communist party than there is among the Republicrats.

What benefits them isn't the apathy; the apathy is rational. If you're a loveless nerd and want prostitution legalized (because dammit I'm horney), what use is going to the polls? Because they've convinced us that if you vote for a Green or a Libertarian you're "wasting your vote".

Why should a potsmoker go to th epolls when all the candidates want dope to remain illegal? What's the fucking point?

But personally, I feel that voting for one of the Republicrats is a waste of my vote, because they only vote against my interests. Better to vote FOR a Green or a Libertarian, even though they will lose.

The Republicrats have lost my vote. The last few elections I've split my vote between the Greens and Libbies.

The corporate media brazenly showed its true colors last Presidential election, and nobody seemed to notice. Ralph Nader, the Green candidate, got tons of press despite the fact that it was mathematically impossible for him to win office; he wasn't on the ballot in enough states. The Libertarians, OTOH, were on the ballot in 49 states and NONE of the corporate media had squat to say about them.

But "corporate" is the key here. The Republicrats are funded by corporations, who "contribute" to "both" parties. Doesn't matter which candidate loses, the corporation wins.

Nobody should be eligible to contribute to a candidate he, she, or it isn't eligible to vote for, and nobody should be able to contribute to more than one candidate in any given race. But don't hold your breath waiting for these reforms to happen.

The WTA rules the whole world, make no mistake about it. Unbeknownst to any of us, Italy won WWII. Why else is the whole world now Facist?

-mcgrew

PS: SLOW DOWN, COWBOY! Slashdot requires you to wait between each successful posting of a comment to allow everyone a fair chance at posting a comment. It's been 25 months since you last successfully posted a comment. Loser!

Paper trails aren't enough to ensure accurate vote counts, according to the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.

ITIF said this week that paper trails increase costs and can actually reduce the chances a voters' choices are accurately counted. Congress is considering a "Voter Confidence and Increased Accountability Act of 2007," which would mandate "voter-verified" paper audit trails.

The bill, H.R. 811, aims to increase the security and reliability of electronic voting. It is similar to legislation that several states could pass as well.

ITIF plans to release a report next week, stating that paper audit trails have "serious limitations that diminish their ability to effectively verify election results." ITIF said it opposes a federal mandate to require paper audit trails because it would prevent the use of other voting technology with more security, transparency, and reliability.

ITIF wants to spark discussion of how new technology can solve the problems. The report outlines innovations in voting machines that offer "end-to-end verifiability." It explains the cryptography the systems use and says that Congress should pass legislation based on S. 730 and H.R. 2360, which require verifiable audit trails without specifying that paper be used.

The report will be available online.

ITIF is a non-profit, public policy think tank. It states that its mission is to promote state and federal technology policy that will encourage productivity and innovation, while supporting a digital economy.

Last year's mid-term elections revealed several glitches in electronic voting. The U.S. Election Assistance Commission plans to issue new guidelines that address the problems. The guidelines are likely to include recommendations for paper trails.

Fair use generates some money to a lot of people. Copyright generates a lot of money to some people.

Art, like science, is not created in a vaccuum. As Isaac Newton famously remarked, "If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants". The phrase did not originate with him.

The "content creator" is the one who profits from fair use, therefore all of us do (assuming the art has something new to say).

This is why today's extreme copyright lengths are so burdensome, and lack of fair use is as well. ZZ Top's record company (who owns copyright to ZZ Top's songs) was sucessfully sued by Howlin' Wolf's record company (who likewise owns Howlin' Wolf's songs) for the song La Grange, despite the fact that a reasonable person would conclude that the "how how how how" (what ZZ Top was sued for) was fair use, and despite the fact that the Howlin' wolf song was thirty years old at the time, twice the length of copyright in 1900.

Current copyright laws and their interpretations are detrimental to the creation of new art.

-mcgrew

Damned lousy searches... unless this damned thing is better than Google, I'll not worry (or worry more). Yesterday I recounted here about how the FBI, DEA (wearing a ski mask in July), and local cops terrorized me and two young ladies, thinking we were buying drugs (You can guess what I was doing...).

Now I can't find the post, either with slashdot's search or Google's advanced search (all the words "mcgrew police" exact phrase "ski mask" site slashdot.org"). I was also going to make a joke comment referencing a years-old K5 guy with the name "terrorists". Couldn't find that, either.

In fact, one promising Google hit about bars written by a bartender surely had this fellow posting, but searching for "terrorists" with IE's (I'm at work) "Edit Find" locked up the damned browser!

So to hell with it; I'll just link an old posting from my blog.

-mcgrew

You, like most posters to this discussion, are confusing ethics and morality. They are not the same thing.

A code of ethics is a set of written guidelines laid out by the management; e.g. "No employee may turn a fellow employee in to the local law enforcement agencies" would be part of the Cosa Nostra's code of ethics (assuming their code is written).

Following that above rule of ethics when someone had been murdered by the orginazation would be immoral, as well as illegal.

For the RIAA's lawyers to not sue dead people, grandmothers, and 12 year olds would be unethical, as the RIAA's code of ethics states that their lawyers must do these things. Following that code of ethics is immoral.

-mcgrew

PS- Although I disagree with the parent poster (abviously), I fail to see why he was modded "flamebait".

If you have morals and intelligence, you usually don't need ethics. The trouble is, there are a lot of amoral and immoral sociopaths who don't know the difference between right and wrong, and morons who can't figure it out, either. And codes of ethics that are occasionally beyond reason and sometimes in themselves immoral; the one cited in the blurb, for instance, where ethics prevented someone from snitching on a child molester.

In the IT profession I'd say there are fewer morons than sociopaths or psychopaths, although I'll grant that most morons, sociopaths, and psychopaths are in the board room.

-mcgrew

I haven't read the other comments, but I'm sure most of them are saying the same thing. The answer to your question is none whatever.

targeted mostly to corporate users.

These are normally users with budgets for software and policies in place that say they should pay for it.

While I don't wish to burden legitimate users

Any copy protection burdens legitimate users. In fact, the #1 reason I switched to Linux was to avoid entering the God Damned Product Key (TM) when reinstalling Windows.

I do want to prevent most piracy

You can't. Like someone else has said, making bits not copyable is like making water not wet. I would not want to buy software from anyone ignorant enough about computers that they would not know this. Even if you finally decided to do without copy protection, I would still not use your product, let alone buy it, because your post convinces me you know little about computers and computing.

Is it acceptable for the software to phone home?

NO NO NO NO NO NEVER ARE YOU FUCKING RETARDED????? JESUS H. CHRIST I WOULD NEVER USE ANY OF YOUR SOFTWARE, EVEN IF YOU GPLED IT!!!! WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?????

You are going to have casual "piracy". There will be folks who use your software without paying for it. If you can't deal with that, go into another line of work.

-mcgrew

Agreed. If their business model doesn't match reality, that's their problem, not mine.

I'm not going to RTFA, since C|NET is a horrible, terrible, shitty shitty shitty site with thre paragraphs per page for the sole purpose of shoving ads in your face, so I'll just comment on some egregious bullshit in the blurb itself.

moral and legal issues involved in client-side web advertisement blocking

There are none. Period. I am under no legal or moral obligation to load youf fucking ads. And I'm not going to. You don't like my browser? Fuck you, block it; there are billions of web pages, I can sure as hell do without yours. In fact, not just "fuck you" but fuck the pig you rode in on, too.

Whereas TiVo users freeload

No, it's not freeloading. YOU are freeloading on my time by serving up that crap. I am under no obligation whatever to watch it. And it's worse with TIVO, as if you're on cable you're PAYING to watch. Come to think of it, I'm PAYING to get on the internet.

When I first got on the net back in '98, there were very few sites that even had ads. A few had a single banner at the top, that was it. Only when the unwashed masses started swarming to the internet did these disgusting moneygrabbing assholes start shoving intrusive ads in my face.

users of web ad-blocking technology are actively denying website owners revenue that would otherwise go to pay for the bandwidth costs of serving up those web pages

Tough shit. In fact, I'd like to see every single site that is full of ad-laden, three para per page screens off the internet for good. That's YOU, C|NET.

are you engaged in theft?

Hell no.

Is this right?

What's not right is that you shove that shit in my face. Blocking ads IS my right.

The only ads on my site are google text ads at the very bottom of articles. There are none whatever on index pages. But that site's been live since 1998 under various URLs; the main index has changed little, and still uses the same logos. So maybe I'm a little old fashioned? C|NET can get the hell out of my yard and no, the young whippersnappers can't get their balls back!

-mcgrew

Hmm, destruction of your whole business model, financially costly? Really?

Not if your business model is fatally flawed and/or obsolete.

The fact is that the labels' current business model is untenable. Fifty years ago it took LOTS of money to make a record. Today it only takes a couple thousand; just about every local band (link is to friends of mine) in Springfield has at least one CD recorded in a studio and professionally duplicated.

They don't HAVE to sell a million to make a profit - the things only cost a buck or two apiece, anything above that is profit, so long as they're sold at the bands' shows.

The RIAA labels' only current hold on music is that they still control radio and empty-v. THAT is why they killed internet radio and are trying to kill P2P - they can't control it and keep the indies off. These two outlets are the indies' meal tickets and the labels' worst nightmare.

If you're trying to find, say, a live version of The Station's song The Fog on Kazaa (say someone told you about them), you're likely to find a Radiohead song by the same name, and get yourself sued. But the labels' fear is that you'll be looking for Radiohead's tune and find The Station by mistake. You buy their two CDs (or downloads from iTunes) and you no longer have the money you spent on those two CDs and now can afford one less RIAA CD, since they cost twice as much as most indie CDs sold as shows.

This isn't about "piracy", it's about destroying the competetion.

-mcgrew

The study was not about Republicans and Democrats, it was about liberals and conservatives. Do you think these findings only apply in the US?

I saw a FA at New Scientist about this the day before yesterday and submitted it. In a nutshell, they took 43 people and gave them a questionairre to determine if they were liberal or conservative. Then they had them stare at a computer and decide within 1/2 second whether a letter on the screen was an M or a W, with one letter showing 80% of the time.

Liberals did better at the test.

-mcgrew

Indeed, I have yet to RTFA (eye muss knot bee knew hear) but from the post, it looks like the research must have been done by either a group of dyslexics or the researchers went to the study on the short bus.

If I had to pick out words a letter or two at a time it would take a month to read a novel instead of the two or three hours it takes. Maybe I'm some kind of a wierdo, but I look at the whole word, perhaps groups of words. I haven't picked words up two letters at a time since the first grade when I first learned to read.

I hate seeing shit like this, it's bad enough that it takes less time to read the four paragraphs of a FA (click for page thirty seven) than for the next ad-laden page to load, this'll give them an excuse to cut the content-per-page down even more.

Actually, since I was reading at an 8th grade level in 2nd grade I MUST be some kind of wierdo! Now if y'all wil excuse me, I'll go RTFA now. Be back in about fifteen seconds... that is, if they diodn't split it into 74 two paragraph "pages".

-mcgrew

(Mind reading capcha="speeder". Good work, guys!)

I've used Cingular for three years now, with no surprises and no unpleasantness. I alsays got an itemized bill showing calls placed and minutes used in those calls, and never went over my minutes.

Then AT&T bought them out, and I got a nasty surprise in the mail - instead of my normal <$50 bill, it was doubled. And the bill was no longer itemized; there was no way to do the math myself.

Then the next bill came - GULP! Four hundred God damned dollars! And still not itemized.

AT&T is run by thieves. I'm using a cheap Trac phone now until I can find another carrier. AT&T are now in my "Die, damn you" list of evil corporations. Sony replaced Microsoft as first place in my list of Pure Evil (TM) corporations when they trojaned my PC with their BMG XCP rootkit, now MS has slid to #3. AT&T is now a very close second to Sony. May their President, CEO, board of directors, and stockholders all catch cancer and aids and die horribly, and may that God damned company go bankrupt and be liquidated.

Mods, this isn't flamebait it's an informative FLAME. As I'm posting AC you know I'm not karma-whoring.

As I'm too busy unsucsessfully chasing women to blog about evil corporations lately, this is probably all I'll have to say about these bastards.

-mcgrew (sm62704)

There was a huge black man standing before the judge. Apparently this fellow was unemployed and hadn't been paying his child support.

"Look, Judge, I gots no problem with child support."

"Yes, you do," the judge replied. "You may not have a problem with the idea of child support, but you do have a problem with actually paying it.

There was some nearly subaudible back and forth between the judge and the large man standing before him, when the judge said "Do you think this is a joke, Mister Johnson?"

Mr. Johnson replied quietly, too quiet to hear. The judge repeated, "I'll ask you again, Mr. Johnson," very firmly, "Do you think this is a joke??"

"I gots no fuckin' money!" Johnson replied. "You gonna sent me to jail?"

"Would you like me to cite you for contempt, Mr. Johnson?"

"Fuck you, motherfucker!" Gasps and giggles from the gallery...

"Contempt of court!" the judge ordered. "Take him to jail."

"Fuck you!" Johnson added rather stupidly.

"That's two" the judge said.

"Fuck you! Eat shit cocksucker!"

"That's three."

"Kiss my big black ass, motherfucker. Fuck you!"

"That's four!"

"Suck my dick bitch!"

By the time he got to eight, Mr. Johnson was being led out in handcuffs. The judge shook his head in wonder. This was more entertaining than a TV courtroom drama, for sure.

Another black man came in through the door Mr. Johnson left through, wearing Sangamon County's black and gray striped jail uniform. I always thought prison stripes were only in cartoons, but I guess this is Springfield.

Apparently this fellow had run afoul of the judge before, ignoring a court order or something. Or maybe he, too, had called the judge a motherfucker.

With the majority of music in existence now belonging to the RIAA in some way

If you're counting all the 20th century music by all those dead people, perhaps. But if you only count new music (lets say from the present century), most of it is indie.

In the last century, a bar band needed a label to record; studios, pressing, and distribution were all controlled by the labels. But we have computers now; five hundred bucks for a machine more powerful than the biggest supercomputer in existance when CDs were invented.

Hell, I have friends with CDs out, and none of them have an RIAA contract. A label tried to to sign Joe and he told them to go to hell. The link is to a blog posting with links to MP3s of live recordings (acoustics in the clubs aren't good; find a copy of Posamist's CD for quality). Some other friends have 2 CDs out and SHNs at Archive.org. And those are just a couple of my friends; here is a Michael Craford article linking to thousands of FREE MP3s. The article is several years old, there are more free MP3s posted on the internet every day!

"Piracy" is a red herring. You can "download" the entire top 40 in a few hours by plugging your radio's headphone jack into your PC's sound card and sampling the RIAA dreck. The RIAA's problem is that they control radio and empty-v, but they can't keep Joe and Dave and the other thousands of bands Mike linked to off of P2P or internet radio. That's the real reason they have attacked both of those outlets (and very sucessfully, too).

It's not about copyright infringement. It's about destroying the major labels' competetion. There is no reason whatever to download or upload top 40 crap with P2P; it's easier to sample it from the radio. Old John Lee Hooker tunes, and indie music, are what P2P is for.

-mcgrew

Better late than never

Isn't that what the Titanic's pilot said?

-mcgrew (link is to a rant about the American Secret Police)

Fortunately for Gonzales, he will probably soon forget he held the position and made a mockery of the judicial system...

Dude, this is the US. Making a mockery of the "justice" sysyem here is like making a mockery of clowns.

-mcgrew

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

How fucking stupid can you people be? Stop buying Sony!

-mcgrew

Original title was "DOOMed rocket crashes and burns". Apparently the present title was the third incarnation. ScuttleMonkey should have left the original title!

The Firehose was wrong, too - I didn't post anonymously, although I wasn't (and am not now) logged in.

-mcgrew (AKA

I know, I know, I have sacrificed my principles for a cheap joke

Not as cheap as mine. The headline as submitted was "DOOMed rocket crashes and burns". Scuttlemonkey turned it into a single paragraph, too. I guess he must not be a mcgrew fan.

-mcgrew

...basalt, a grey-black mineral that forms much of the crust on Earth and the other inner planets

How do we know wht is INSIDE the inner planets? Hell, we have two robots on Mars right now and before they were there we didn't even know if there was water on the surface or not.

So, bad writing, bad information, I'm stupid, or a combination of the three?

-mcgrew