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The offending post was published in 2007, which is true, however the material (questionnaire) that was posted was 38 years old.

Astonishing but still within the copyright term length. Abhorrent? You bet. But I wouldn't go around attacking publishers and would instead focus on reducing the law that governs said term length.

Worse yet, the questionnaire was a suicide prevention questionnaire, so its existence in the public domain might actually save lives.

So what you're saying is that if I want to make money publishing my research, I should stay away from publishing suicide prevention materials since placing a copyright on that is morally reprehensible because if it's public domain it might actually save lives?

So a DMCA request pulled down millions of blogs because one page that was originally published nearly 4 decades ago supposedly has some copyright value to someone.

So I'd like to point out that from what I've read they were given 24 hour notice from their provider and they failed to remove the article from their cache (although they did remove it from their site). If you're running a site that costs $6,954.37 just in hosting service per month, I would hope you would be a little more competent about complying with DMCA requests. Do they not have anyone on staff who knows how to flush a Varnish cache? And in defense of the hosting company, it's not their job to pick through and block each individual page you host and play their own version of whackamole. It's terrible that so many educational resources went down but the incompetence is shared between the people who run that operation, the hosting provider, the dumbass politicians who gave us the DMCA and the citizens who don't complain to their representatives about it. If you don't like the law, change it. But what you're attacking are symptoms of this law and you should be railing against the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Be prepared, people are going to want to know how you think we should balance the rights of the artists and authors who create material (and subsequently their income) and the benefit of the public from that material.

I'm telling you right now, the way you described how horrible this is makes me never want to produce any sort of writing that might be construed as beneficial to society because then I won't be paid for my work or I'll be a monster. If Pearson can't make money off these texts, goodbye Pearson. It's that simple. And yeah, that might be the future with self publishing on the rise but right now they have those texts under laws that are legitimate US Laws.

These times we live in, they're literally not far off from a lot of books I was encouraged to read in high school, but was told would never actually happen.

Did you know that many if not all of those books are copyrighted and those authors benefited from copyright? Also before you go around equivocating this to burning books in Fahrenheit 451 you should probably come up with an ideal middle ground between where we are now and everything is public domain. Hyperbole doesn't really help this debate.

Even the traditional media cartels acknowledge that a broader music industry exists, in fact, they publish reports about it:

Another way of looking at the music industry is through the numbers that the IFPI (International Federation of
the Phonographic Industry) publishes on what it calls “the broader music industry.” In 2005, the IFPI estimated
the global music industry to be worth $132 billion -- which included revenues from music in radio advertising,
recorded music sales, musical instrument sales, live performance revenues and portable digital music player
sales (among a few other income categories). By 2010, the IFPI estimated the market to be worth $168 billion,
but it had also changed how it categorized some of the revenues and added categories such as audio home
systems, music-related video game sales and music revenues from TV advertising (in addition to a few other
categories).

From the Sky is Rising report (page 26).

You don't know that half of it

DRM was about encrypting end-users copies. This is a centralized command/control framework that manually checks the content of each model.

The difference might seem small, but this is more akin to Hollywood's wet dreams of magical control over everything that happens online. Good luck with that.

Somebody already did.

He doesn't need to prove anything that is not already on the press. It is obvious what MPAA and its lobbyists have been doing:

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120120/14472117492/mpaa-directly-publicly-threatens-politicians-who-arent-corrupt-enough-to-stay-bought.shtml

http://publicknowledge.org/public-knowledge-advises-movie-lobby-stop-threaten

It's insane, but not unprecedented. A quote from the Copyright Act, in the context of how the copyright royalty board should set rates:

To minimize any disruptive impact on the structure of the industries involved and on generally prevailing industry practices.

"The first important change in organization came in 1949 with the creation of the Armed Forces Security Agency, which, as its name implies, was responsible for collecting and disseminating intelligence at the strategic level for all services. So well did the new system work that three years later it was decided to expand the organization into the newly named National Security Agency, the octopus that today handles intelligence and cryptography for virtually all U.S. agencies, that has extended its activities to surveillance of Americans at home and abroad, and has been built into the central agency essential for the running of any police state." [emphasis mine]

Keep in mind this book was published in 1977. This year Wired reported "The NSA Is Building the Countryâ(TM)s Biggest Spy Center" (http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/all/1.

/. and techdirt regularly report on governmental overreaching and grabs for power (http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110714/09102815090/dhs-requests-300-million-to-purchase-even-more-devices-that-dont-work.shtml, http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/09/07/195218/fbi-launches-1-billion-nationwide-face-recognition-system, http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120106/03474817298/ice-propaganda-film-pats-itself-back-censoring-web-promises-much-more-to-come.shtml, http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/10/07/151258/dhs-goes-ahead-with-pre-crime-detection-project, http://news.slashdot.org/story/12/01/14/233203/dhs-monitors-social-media-for-political-dissent, http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/09/12/1231227/gao-slams-dhs-over-biowatch-biological-defense-system). The list seems endless.

With all this governmental activity, who is going to protect the constitutional rights of ordinary citizens?

"The first important change in organization came in 1949 with the creation of the Armed Forces Security Agency, which, as its name implies, was responsible for collecting and disseminating intelligence at the strategic level for all services. So well did the new system work that three years later it was decided to expand the organization into the newly named National Security Agency, the octopus that today handles intelligence and cryptography for virtually all U.S. agencies, that has extended its activities to surveillance of Americans at home and abroad, and has been built into the central agency essential for the running of any police state." [emphasis mine]

Keep in mind this book was published in 1977. This year Wired reported "The NSA Is Building the Countryâ(TM)s Biggest Spy Center" (http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/all/1.

/. and techdirt regularly report on governmental overreaching and grabs for power (http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110714/09102815090/dhs-requests-300-million-to-purchase-even-more-devices-that-dont-work.shtml, http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/09/07/195218/fbi-launches-1-billion-nationwide-face-recognition-system, http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120106/03474817298/ice-propaganda-film-pats-itself-back-censoring-web-promises-much-more-to-come.shtml, http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/10/07/151258/dhs-goes-ahead-with-pre-crime-detection-project, http://news.slashdot.org/story/12/01/14/233203/dhs-monitors-social-media-for-political-dissent, http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/09/12/1231227/gao-slams-dhs-over-biowatch-biological-defense-system). The list seems endless.

With all this governmental activity, who is going to protect the constitutional rights of ordinary citizens?

First, http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120920/23570020453/when-even-hilarious-web-comic-artists-are-mocking-insanity-patent-system.shtml

Admitting my primitive understanding of this subject, I have some questions; Is sandboxing undervalued? is sending all cache to unique directories that can only be read by the source they were created for practical? Would generating random or shared generic user-agent data for each domain for each encounter have any effect? I have taken simple privacy measures like chmod 400 ~/.macromedia and ~/.adobe; installing noscript, flashblock; bloating /etc/hosts with loopback redirects, thrashed around in about:config, piously used bleachbit, etc.-- but I guess there are still kissmetrics and other mysterious things to deal with.

I remember trying the EFF's panopticlick, which tests your browser for its unique fingerprint. I was a little surprised at the results. What does something like the time-stamp mean for anonymity? How many people in the world have identical installation times and zip-codes, etc.? Why does this and other data need to be there as it is?

I get confused when contemplating why such promiscuous features are included in browsers in the first place. Are we simply using stupid browsers? Would creating a secure browser break its functionality? I know noscript can be a pain in the ass. What really confuses me is why a browser would store persistent cookies and other data -- after being deleted -- unless it was built to do so. If so, then why? If not, then why? When I start a browser from a fresh install or USB, it works just fine. If I reboot and do it again, it continues to work fine. Why the persistent data?

Finally, it should be alarming in itself that so much knowledge is required now to have even a measure of privacy. Those who understand, often take their knowledge for granted. But even for someone practically living and working in the web, it is not an overly simple subject. Is privacy an esoteric delusion, or is it an esoteric reality?

I love the article, but you didn't tell me anything we as an industry don't already know.

I guess you skipped the important part. Again.

Of course people want cheaper media and easy delivery. Tell us how to do it and still satisfy both users and investors.

Cheaper media? You've got a one-off production cost then zero distribution/duplication costs. The main problem with people like you have is not seeing the zero.

Easy delivery? Your customers are connected to the network. If it's difficult for them it's your own fault.

I guess you closed your eyes when you got to the part about Steam and iTunes. They both addressed these two points and they're both making money hand-over-fist.

There's a whole series of articles here (click around and follow the embedded links to find the others).

Here you go butthurt fanboy:
Jobs: Nobody needs multitasking on a phone.

led by the Department of Homeland Security

Anything led by the DHS is bound to go from "voluntary" to mandatory (or hyper peculiar) too quickly. I can't imagine the same band of brigands doing such things as this, this , this, or that, and so on and so forth could offer anything constructive to the interweb or anything else.

led by the Department of Homeland Security

Anything led by the DHS is bound to go from "voluntary" to mandatory (or hyper peculiar) too quickly. I can't imagine the same band of brigands doing such things as this, this , this, or that, and so on and so forth could offer anything constructive to the interweb or anything else.

Val Hogan, is that you?

I don't see an answer to the problem other than DRM. But how do you maintain DRM without punishing the legal users? Computers were designed for the ultimate in information freedom, and while they excel at playing, editing, and transferring musics and other media there is a domain mismatch when it comes to maintaining rights. No one has a right to music unless they pay for it.

Human history disagrees with you.

For a more humorous counterpoint I refer you to an artist who also disagrees with you. Dan Bull

Paying for music is precisely the same as paying for land or any other form of property. While you have a system that relies on money and property being held by individuals as exchange for work or whatever, it is simply unreasonable to expect musicians or others whose work can be copied easily to give their work away for free and have to find another way of earning a living.

We don't expect accountants, doctors or engineers to work for nothing because they are good at what they do, why should musicians or other artists?

I don't see an answer to the problem other than DRM. But how do you maintain DRM without punishing the legal users? Computers were designed for the ultimate in information freedom, and while they excel at playing, editing, and transferring musics and other media there is a domain mismatch when it comes to maintaining rights. No one has a right to music unless they pay for it.

Human history disagrees with you.

For a more humorous counterpoint I refer you to an artist who also disagrees with you. Dan Bull

It's important to call things by their common names.

For those not familiar with the CAFC, here's a brief backgrounder:

The short-take is the CAFC is stuffed to the gills with Reagan, GW, and W Ayn Rand freaks who think anyone who ever cut a fart and cleared a room has done something "innovative and useful" and deserves a patent.

The longer story is the CAFC was created under Reagan with nation-wide jurisdiction, (which makes it more influential than any other national circuit court ) special subject matter (patents) and only "optional" oversight by SCOTUS which means it's usually the last stop for decisions on patent matters irrespective of how fucking crazy and ignorant those decisions ware or how disastrous follow on consequences. IP attonreys love he CAFC because its been so reliable in fulfilling its (unspoken) mission statement- ram as much IP up the world's ass as you possibly can because everything is some form of private property, there is no such thing as a commons or shouldn't be, and the more private property there is in the hands of the smallest group of people possible, the more the world looks like what Jesus and Ayn Rand (choose one) meant it to be.

That's why they're so active in overturning huge numbers of carefully considered decisions of the lower courts, and just making up what the fuck ever law they want from their positions on the bench... that Reagan made-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_for_Molecular_Pathology_v._Myriad_Genetics http://inventivestep.net/2012/08/16/federal-circuit-holds-isolated-genes-to-be-patentable-subject-matter-again/

They're an equal opportunity infringement -finder , who considerately gives everyone a chance to play the role of IP infringer:

http://www.techdirt.com/blog/?tag=cafc

and they shed crocodile tears when their insane interpretations and overturning of lower court decisions blows everything the fuck up and turns whole industries into innovation free, IP attorney goldmining zones

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080728/0236131808.shtml

They're sort of to innovation what Greenspan, Rubin and Summers were to the economy.. Maoist-level acolytes and zealots for a psycho version of How The World Works with the power to force everyone else's life to be part of the Grand Experiment.

There must be corruption of the rankest sort involved here. You're telling me these judges aren't invited to parties of friends, which are indirectly paid for by lobbyists of the corporations and law firms who are the ultimate beneficiaries of this courts radical decisions, at which parties they have the fantastic good luck not just to overhear highly reliable stock tips but also become the focus of strikingly good looking women who are unnaturally attracted to them and proceed to suck them off to completion in the 15th unused bedroom of the party house on like, regular basis?

Is that what you're telling me? Is it??? Is it??? Because I don't believe you.

It's important to call things by their common names.

For those not familiar with the CAFC, here's a brief backgrounder:

The short-take is the CAFC is stuffed to the gills with Reagan, GW, and W Ayn Rand freaks who think anyone who ever cut a fart and cleared a room has done something "innovative and useful" and deserves a patent.

The longer story is the CAFC was created under Reagan with nation-wide jurisdiction, (which makes it more influential than any other national circuit court ) special subject matter (patents) and only "optional" oversight by SCOTUS which means it's usually the last stop for decisions on patent matters irrespective of how fucking crazy and ignorant those decisions ware or how disastrous follow on consequences. IP attonreys love he CAFC because its been so reliable in fulfilling its (unspoken) mission statement- ram as much IP up the world's ass as you possibly can because everything is some form of private property, there is no such thing as a commons or shouldn't be, and the more private property there is in the hands of the smallest group of people possible, the more the world looks like what Jesus and Ayn Rand (choose one) meant it to be.

That's why they're so active in overturning huge numbers of carefully considered decisions of the lower courts, and just making up what the fuck ever law they want from their positions on the bench... that Reagan made-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_for_Molecular_Pathology_v._Myriad_Genetics http://inventivestep.net/2012/08/16/federal-circuit-holds-isolated-genes-to-be-patentable-subject-matter-again/

They're an equal opportunity infringement -finder , who considerately gives everyone a chance to play the role of IP infringer:

http://www.techdirt.com/blog/?tag=cafc

and they shed crocodile tears when their insane interpretations and overturning of lower court decisions blows everything the fuck up and turns whole industries into innovation free, IP attorney goldmining zones

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080728/0236131808.shtml

They're sort of to innovation what Greenspan, Rubin and Summers were to the economy.. Maoist-level acolytes and zealots for a psycho version of How The World Works with the power to force everyone else's life to be part of the Grand Experiment.

There must be corruption of the rankest sort involved here. You're telling me these judges aren't invited to parties of friends, which are indirectly paid for by lobbyists of the corporations and law firms who are the ultimate beneficiaries of this courts radical decisions, at which parties they have the fantastic good luck not just to overhear highly reliable stock tips but also become the focus of strikingly good looking women who are unnaturally attracted to them and proceed to suck them off to completion in the 15th unused bedroom of the party house on like, regular basis?

Is that what you're telling me? Is it??? Is it??? Because I don't believe you.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57500358-37/exclusive-apple-samsung-juror-speaks-out/
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120830/02063020214/samsungapple-jury-foremans-explanation-verdict-shows-he-doesnt-understand-prior-art.shtml
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-57500504-71/legal-analysts-suggest-apple-samsung-verdict-may-not-be-safe/

Other news besides /.

"I think the jury did an admirable job making sense of the case they were given. They certainly did better than much of the tech media, which have made a complete mess of the verdict."

The jury *completely* screwed up. They started by ignoring the prior-art argument[1] samsung made, and then the foreman proceeded to sway everyone[2] with an "I got my own patent so listen to me" bullshit. The jury was an ill-fated catastrophe from the beginning of deliberations.

[1] http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120826/23534320161/applesamsung-jurors-admit-they-finished-quickly-ignoring-prior-art-other-key-factors.shtml

[2] http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4394863/Jury-foreman-recounts-Apple-vs--Samsung-case

How could one person force 11 other people to vote his way? And what "send a message" are you talking about? A message about what?

Or in the Apple-Samsung case, simply by claiming to be an expert on patents, prior art AND jury duty because he filed a patent himself and was on juries three times already.
Also, there were NINE jurors, not twelve.

As for sending the message... Well, besides the "Velvin Hogan is Batman" (4th jury duty? What is he, a professional juror?) there's that literal quote of his...

"We wanted to make sure the message we sent was not just a slap on the wrist," Hogan said. "We wanted to make sure it was sufficiently high to be painful, but not unreasonable."

Which is kind of an issue, since that is EXACTLY what the jury was instructed NOT to do.

There. Now you know.

The general consensus seems that the stress of starting diaspora* lead him to suicide; but I've never fully accepted it, even though it's reported he suffered Asperger's and that his mom thought he was depressed. I have never been able to find details on his suicide other than reports that he died of asphyxiation -- something that can be difficult to achieve without the right "tools". Almost immediately after his death, a "suicide note" was posted on the internet, then removed shortly after. From what I remember, the coroner's report was delayed for a few weeks or more, and the police-report didn't mention what item Ilya used to kill himself, yet "suicide" was prematurely announced by nearly every media outlet.

It was a project that caught a lot of attention; from the NY Times, Wall Street Journal, to Mark Zuckerberg himself.

At one point in their startup, Papal froze their donation account.

Whatever the truth of the situation be, I don't dispute any aspect of it. I do remain curious though. Here's an old interview with Ilya: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=3QwvlnhpDSo

Is it possible to set up an alternative RIAA? Trade group monopoly must be broken.

Well, I'm not in the business but used to gig. After seeing people that should have some minor record deal being signed to littler labels like Afternoon Records or Asthmatic Kitty, it's my opinion that the best replacement for the RIAA is no replacement at all. The RIAA is restricting their member labels and being destructive "in the interests of their members" ... sometimes this is helpful but in the instance of online radio, it's quite the opposite. Meanwhile a lot of the smaller labels affiliated with the RIAA suffer while the top executives make millions. The way I see it, by setting up an alternative RIAA, you'll inevitably fall prey to that sort of bullshit. Like the best capitalistic systems, the music industry would be healthier if the labels competed with each other and actually desired exposure (which they do) like online radio and no single entity was acting as a self-appointed policeman to how that system worked. Then and only then would you see.

Here's an example, I just purchased Headlight's latest album on vinyl and minutes later I had downloaded the MP3s. I can list tons of non-RIAA labels that do this and you can go on Bandcamp and see a third party system doing this for labels and selfpublished artists (for example, here's the album I just bought). Now, from the RIAA point of view this is super bad. I just got TWO copies of an album for one price and on top of that you can stream that album right there for free, possibly forever. Oh my god, copyright violations! Now, if you were the RIAA or a replacement for the RIAA you would find yourself in the position of making a decision about this sort of sales tactic. And that's bad whether you weigh in one way or another. Fine, let Metallica or whoever else I don't care about put up a picture of their album and ask for $20 from their fans for it before even hearing it. They can do what they want. But you'll find that if you throw your lot in with RIAA, you won't be able to upload live videos of your own concerts to YouTube, you might have ads on your music videos and you'll be restricted by this umbrella. Furthermore, no matter how forgiving you are of your fan's misdeeds, the RIAA is not. And I think a replacement is a bad thing.

Frankly put the advent of the internet and digital distribution means that artists shouldn't have to depend on the RIAA or an RIAA replacement. They should exist in hundreds of different labels acting, innovating and competing on their own terms (diversity is a good thing).

Right now it feels like an exacerbated Pareto Law inside the music industry and it doesn't have to be that way. Your attention, your ears, your money and your support should be spread around and free of restricted influence by some massive entity.

Right now, there's music out there that you like that somebody somewhere is making. But if they're not on a label that's part of the RIAA, you're most likely never going to hear it. That's why internet radio stations are so important to upending the RIAA, self-published groups from Portland can be heard by Brooklynites and vice versa. That's why I think the RIAA is trying to impose arcane radio royalty fees.

Don't be so certain of that:

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080130/020249125.shtml

Is this the same notorious patent troll owned by former microsoft bazillionaire Nathan Myhrvold? The company that makes nothing but taxes just about everybody in the tech world and claims to be doing God's Work by not actually selling a mosquito-killing laser gun?

google play ratings are as reliable as my own imagination is as an authoritative source. Most people will rate an app as follows, and you can replace "game" with "app" if needed.

"this game is awesome!" 5 stars
"this game is awesome!" 1 star
"this game crashes my phone! minus one star until it's fixed!" 4 stars
"this game crashes my phone!" 1 star
"this game crashes my phone!" 5 stars.

Ratings on google play are not only gamed (and yes, we know when they're being gamed), but have probably the most useless ratings of any system I've ever seen implemented. This is like saying "look at my yelp rating! look at my metacritic professional rating" while failing to acknowledge the hilariousness of said scores.

My argument does hold water, you're just too ignorant to accept that piracy has NOTHING to do with how you define your own quality. Your customers will pirate your app if they are not given the features they want in the app, which is reflective of that the quality of the app is not where they want it to be. But yes, please grandstand like you are an amazing app developer! we really care! (not really). If 95% are pirating, the question should be: How can I support those underwhelmed fans? Not: how do I fight it/piracy is bad. Fighting piracy does nothing for piracy rates, and to believe otherwise is to delude yourself. This has been covered a million times showing that piracy is beneficial .

In short, there is absolutely no valid argument that exists to complain about piracy, because it is beneficial. It is your own fault if you can't figure out how to take advantage of that.

google play ratings are as reliable as my own imagination is as an authoritative source. Most people will rate an app as follows, and you can replace "game" with "app" if needed.

"this game is awesome!" 5 stars
"this game is awesome!" 1 star
"this game crashes my phone! minus one star until it's fixed!" 4 stars
"this game crashes my phone!" 1 star
"this game crashes my phone!" 5 stars.

Ratings on google play are not only gamed (and yes, we know when they're being gamed), but have probably the most useless ratings of any system I've ever seen implemented. This is like saying "look at my yelp rating! look at my metacritic professional rating" while failing to acknowledge the hilariousness of said scores.

My argument does hold water, you're just too ignorant to accept that piracy has NOTHING to do with how you define your own quality. Your customers will pirate your app if they are not given the features they want in the app, which is reflective of that the quality of the app is not where they want it to be. But yes, please grandstand like you are an amazing app developer! we really care! (not really). If 95% are pirating, the question should be: How can I support those underwhelmed fans? Not: how do I fight it/piracy is bad. Fighting piracy does nothing for piracy rates, and to believe otherwise is to delude yourself. This has been covered a million times showing that piracy is beneficial .

In short, there is absolutely no valid argument that exists to complain about piracy, because it is beneficial. It is your own fault if you can't figure out how to take advantage of that.

German scientists? Isn't Germany the country that made it illegal to have an open wifi network? So if you want to give free wifi access to Joe Public, you're going to get your ass fined. But I guess if the state wants to use your bandwidth, hey, that's just dandy.

Belgian Appeals Court Says Google Must Pay Up For Linking To Newspaper Websites
Belgian Newspapers 'Give Permission' To Google To Return Them To Search Results

Belgian Appeals Court Says Google Must Pay Up For Linking To Newspaper Websites
Belgian Newspapers 'Give Permission' To Google To Return Them To Search Results

If the military doesn't want to end up bleeding and dieing for nothing or for private gain then democracy needs to work. This requires an informed electorate, and not enough information has been provided by those with a duty to provide it. The information gap was bridged for a time by a foreign civilian and a homosexual. Few others have had the balls to put themselves in as much danger for this cause (with exceptions of course), but the story has become about them and not the information which is a pity - you're buying into that and it isn't helping. Besides, accusing wikileaks of putting people in danger isn't new, and thus far it has proved to be false.

If the military doesn't want to end up bleeding and dieing for nothing or for private gain then democracy needs to work. This requires an informed electorate, and not enough information has been provided by those with a duty to provide it. The information gap was bridged for a time by a foreign civilian and a homosexual. Few others have had the balls to put themselves in as much danger for this cause (with exceptions of course), but the story has become about them and not the information which is a pity - you're buying into that and it isn't helping. Besides, accusing wikileaks of putting people in danger isn't new, and thus far it has proved to be false.

Before you ask: No, they are not "content creators". That's the facade they are trying to hide behind. The artists receive only a small percentage of sales.

So what do these these very important people of untold wealth do when they suddenly find that their golden nipple dried up? Use some of left over cash to throw some poor schmucks in the pit, that's what!

There was just one two years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Austin_plane_crash If that's not enough, here's some more TSA Fail: https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/newark-airport-terminal-shut-baby-checkpoint-unscreened-article-1.1068800#ixzz1tHJ5bW5z http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/new_jfk_security_breach_PB8L58gzpwjmyqktLHRssN http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/TSA-Agent-Slips-Through-DFW-Body-Scanner-With-a-Gun-116497568.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1357012/TSA-causes-outrage-confiscating-pregnant-womans-insulin-ice-packs.html http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120509/10161518848/congress-tsa-is-wasting-hundreds-millions-taxpayer-dollars.shtml http://consumerist.com/2011/12/tsa-agent-finds-pot-in-rappers-bag-leaves-note-rather-than-confiscating-it.html http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/boarding-pass-arrest-nigerian-slipped-jfk-airport-security/story?id=13963831

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120405/04390118385/tsa-security-theater-described-one-simple-infographic.shtml

According to a number of sources, the reason this happens is related to the way YouTube partners with companies like Scripps. Essentially, when one of YouTube's enterprise customers uploads a video, in the process of making it available YouTube kicks off an automated search that immediately goes looking for other copies of that video, already online.

This is why a video that's been on YouTube for months or years and is clearly someone else's property can get shown on a late night talk show and then suddenly get a copyright takedown

In short, YouTube assumes that if one of their paying partners uploads a video, it must belong to the company, and no matter how long that content has been on YouTube before Scripps, NBC, or whoever uploads their copy, it must be a pirated copy.

Because anecdotally I hear lots of Linux users that are chomping at the bit for Steam to to come and looking forward to paying for games

"Anecdotally?"

What makes what you hear any better evidence than his?

Furthermore, the Humble Indie Bundle has shown that there are gamers on Linux that will pay

80% to 90% off retail list for the bundle.

The return on the HB is about $8 from the Windows gamer. 3/4 of the total.

For games which have seen have broad exposure and frequent discounts on the Windows platform.

$12 from the Linux gamer. 1/8 of the total.

The return from the HB is split among charities, developers, and Humble Bundle itself.

Linux users always have the highest average and a leaderboard of top contributors. The leaderboard has regulars, too, like Minecraft developer notch, and the "HumbleBrony Bundle" (a group that does a collective fundraising effort within the Brony community), both of whom contribute to the tune of thousands.

Latest Humble Bundle Of Pay-What-You-Want Indie Games Raises $1-Million In Five Hours

The problem with big ticket donations is that they projects Linux sales through a rose tinted lens. Things look better than they rare.

I agree with the parent. If you were giving money to hardcore racists every time you purchased a transistor...then yea, I would have a problem with them. Same way I have a problem with people supporting the tyrannical organization that is the IOC. In order to host the Olympics, the host country must pass laws that essentially abolosh all civil rights in any cases where the Olympics are involved. You no longer have any right to free speech (assuming you did before they came...,) you are assumed guilty until proven innocent of any IP violations, they cause forced evictions, violate safety laws for the workers building the Olympic facilities...by supporting the Olympics you are supporting the IOC, and the IOC is just generally a horrible organization.

See:
http://www.vice.com/rule-britannia/the-vice-guide-to-the-olympics-part-1
http://www.techdirt.com/search.php?cx=partner-pub-4050006937094082%3Acx0qff-dnm1&cof=FORID%3A9&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=Olympics

...dying business model of the entertainment industry.

I'm sorry, Netcraft has not confirmed that. Of course, in order to avoid honoring its obligations, the industry will tell you they didn't make a dime.

I agree in the case of competitors duplicating your goods and competing with you on the market. That forces you to lower your prices and gives you a shorter time frame in which to recover your development costs.

However, there's evidence that illegal file sharing has no impact on music sales, or maybe even a small positive impact. (Industry Canada)

If that seems paradoxical, consider that the money people don't spend when they download a pirated song must go somewhere -- like buying another song. And indeed, there are numerous studies showing that the people who pirate the most, are also the ones who buy the most music. (TechDirt)

It seems like people pirate music to get access a wider selection for the same amount of money, not to save money.

No :-)
YOU set up that straw-man, by saying "You think the labels don't actually pay their artists anything?".
I personally don't have a clue what the labels pay. Do you? Please, share it with us.

However, I read the following two articles (not a "reliable source", for sure, but convincing me):
Courtney Love does the math, where she gives a hypothetical example and comes out at -200% . MINUS 200%. So "No, they don't." is a euphemism: it would be more honest if GGGP had said "No, the artists actually even have to pay the labels".
And RIAA Accounting: Why Even Major Label Musicians Rarely Make Money From Album Sales, which summarizes "That report suggests that for every $1,000 sold, the average musician gets $23.40.". That's arguably not nothing but you're splitting hairs: the creative source, without which the product wouldn't exist, gets 2.3%?

The current system only works because musicians have the music in their blood, and want to make it anyway even though the bloodsuckers reap the profits.

Please give us your reliable source that the labels pay a significant percentage of the royalties to the artists.

Uh, how was it circumventing paying for content? If you mean that he paid them directly (more profit directly to artists) instead of through the label, then yes.

Since when is it his job, even remotely, to monitor how people use his service if it's not a child porn issue? In no country on the planet does such a requirement actually exist except China, I suppose.

He has indeed tried to pay artists as highlighted by the anon post - in taking this down a number of artists *lost* a revenue stream for distributing their music. Plenty of Independent artists started on megaupload.

Emily White violated the copyrights on the music she acquired ("I've swapped hundreds of mix CDs with friends. My senior prom date took my iPod home once and returned it to me with 15 gigs of Big Star, The Velvet Underground and Yo La Tengo"). You'd think RMS would be against that, since the GPL expresses (admirable IMO) restrictions on what you can do with it under those same copyright laws. His arguments why Emily "did nothing wrong" are mostly the lame tired shit piracy apologists have trotted out for decades now

After all, how can we support musicians? Buying recordings from record companies won't do it. For nearly all records, the musicians get none of that money; the record companies keep it. See this article and this article.

Untrue. Artist royalties are often ~20% of the sales price; this chart says $.09 for an iTunes download, and artists self-releasing through CD Baby keep 75%. The meme that artists don't get money seems to be a deliberate misunderstanding of the money record companies advance against royalties so artists can make a quality record (The Trichordist explains this well). Regardless of the percentage it is not the consumer's right or job to decide if that's a reasonable or obscene deal from the record company and online store. FFS, if you don't like a song enough to pay $0.99 for an unprotected DRM-free legal copy of it so the artist gets some money in exchange for your enjoyment of her creative endeavor:

1. Skip it and enjoy the zillions of free songs out there — under CC share licenses, out-of-copyright, in the public domain, live performances from trade-friendly artists on Internet Archive, etc.! As RMS knows from software, there are great free alternatives to restricted paid works, so go support those!

2. If you whine "Waahhh, this song I want ought to be free like all those others" so you pirate it anyway, your parents raised you badly.

RMS goes on

Practically speaking, the only effective and ethical way you could support musicians was through concerts.

Not true. Paying for the copyrighted recordings you want and love works great and delivers money to artists so they can make more! It's insulting to suggest artists should instead try to collect money for something completely different — "touring and T-shirts&quot. (No Sgt. Pepper for you, John Paul George and Ringo are going deaf on another tour that only their teenybopper fans attend.) The idea that artists should not charge for a quality studio recording has been immensely damaging to "the Progress of Science and useful Arts" in the area of recorded music, it's a big reason why today's songs are made on laptops instead of with crack session musicians. And as RMS later acknowledges, touring doesn't even work for those bands that do perform live, because they can't afford to travel to all their fans, then on any night only a fraction of fans in an area make it to the show.

RMS is on better ground with the first of his two ways to support artists

Put a tax on Internet connectivity, and divide the money among artists.

Great idea, let's hope it happens. But his second is a fantasy:

Give each player device a button to send 50 cents anonymously to the artists.

It's been tried, the Fairtunes service during Napster's golden era. I ponied up money for a song I shared, but in several y

Both MegaUpload and ISPs knowingly help people distribute copyrighted works. ISPs monitor traffic for technical reasons, and can see that a very large part of their load is BitTorrent traffic, which is mostly used for illegal filesharing. They can also monitor which sites are most visited (thepiratebay.se, for example), and yet do nothing to block those sites.

To be liable, you need to intentionally help people distribute copyrighted works. And that's what I believe will be hard to prove. The DOJ's evidence seems to be mostly circumstantial.

This article explains some of the problems with the indictment. (Techdirt)

This already happens in reverse. Sellers algorithmically set prices, but instead of going lower they go a bit higher. The end result is books that cost millions of dollars.

It also happens without algorithms. Try grabbing a random book off your shelf and see what it's worth on Amazon. Chances are it's worth $0.01 there, because supply is way higher than demand and everybody trying to undercut each other has sent prices to the bare minimum.

You seem to misunderstand what people like me mean when we say "profiting from others pain" - while your pain is relieved, the profit premium can make drugs unaffordable to some others. If you could afford the drug without profit, but cannot afford it with profit, then Big Pharma is profiting from your pain.

Consider the case in India regarding a compulsory license for a kidney and liver cancer drug.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120312/02424818071/putting-lives-before-patents-india-says-pricey-patented-cancer-drug-can-be-copied.shtml

"For the first time since re-instating patents on pharmaceuticals, India has granted just such a compulsory license, covering a kidney and liver cancer drug marketed under the name Nexavar. Indian generic drug company Natco requested a license, noting that Nexavar was in short supply in India and exceptionally expensive. A typical dosage costs around $70,000 per year in India -- something Bayer says is necessary to recoup the drug's R&D costs. However, reports show that it cost less than $300 million to develop this drug (not to mention that the US government subsidized the process) and Bayer has already made billions selling the drug around the world."

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120523/03175119032/generics-drive-down-drug-prices-india-tpp-trying-to-stop-that.shtml

"Cipla, another Indian manufacturer of generics, has announced that it too is coming out with a version of Nexavar, pricing it at $125 for 120 tablets. That's even cheaper than Natco's price of $163, to say nothing of Bayer's $5,128 for the same course."

5128 / 125 = 41.024. That means that Bayer was charging over 41 times as much for a drug that had already recouped all development costs multiple times over.

Tell me with a straight face that Bayer is not trying to profit from kidney and liver cancer at the expense of treating people who are sick.

You seem to misunderstand what people like me mean when we say "profiting from others pain" - while your pain is relieved, the profit premium can make drugs unaffordable to some others. If you could afford the drug without profit, but cannot afford it with profit, then Big Pharma is profiting from your pain.

Consider the case in India regarding a compulsory license for a kidney and liver cancer drug.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120312/02424818071/putting-lives-before-patents-india-says-pricey-patented-cancer-drug-can-be-copied.shtml

"For the first time since re-instating patents on pharmaceuticals, India has granted just such a compulsory license, covering a kidney and liver cancer drug marketed under the name Nexavar. Indian generic drug company Natco requested a license, noting that Nexavar was in short supply in India and exceptionally expensive. A typical dosage costs around $70,000 per year in India -- something Bayer says is necessary to recoup the drug's R&D costs. However, reports show that it cost less than $300 million to develop this drug (not to mention that the US government subsidized the process) and Bayer has already made billions selling the drug around the world."

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120523/03175119032/generics-drive-down-drug-prices-india-tpp-trying-to-stop-that.shtml

"Cipla, another Indian manufacturer of generics, has announced that it too is coming out with a version of Nexavar, pricing it at $125 for 120 tablets. That's even cheaper than Natco's price of $163, to say nothing of Bayer's $5,128 for the same course."

5128 / 125 = 41.024. That means that Bayer was charging over 41 times as much for a drug that had already recouped all development costs multiple times over.

Tell me with a straight face that Bayer is not trying to profit from kidney and liver cancer at the expense of treating people who are sick.

No. http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20091211/0810217306.shtml

You must have missed this:
Bill put forth to expand TSA into Mass Transit. - http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120627/00501819503/rep-jackie-speier-puts-forth-bill-to-extend-tsa-to-mass-transit.shtml