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Implications For Software Like Napster And Gnutella?
vsync64 asks: "My employer hosts the main Gnutella site, and with the recent ruling against Napster, our servers are being pretty much crushed by the flood of Napster refugees. I'm wondering how much longer people believe this software will be usable. Obviously, given past events such as the whole DeCSS thing, the software will never disappear. Since there is a long tradition of "piracy" and sharing, going back to world-writable FTP sites, IRC channels, and BBSes, the practice won't disappear. I'm just curious as to what options the government and major corporations have in trying to stop it. They could probably get the software removed from the main sites, and possibly enact legislation to criminalize 'systems [and software] for the primary purpose of violating copyright', but what would the media and the unwashed masses think of this? Could copyright violation become stigmatized, much as smoking has, or could such an action be the final straw that turns public opinion against the large corporations once and for all?"
your servers can't handle the current demand so you put a link to it on Slashdot!?
Some people doesn't seem to get it, the point is that with the death penalty you don't have any way back. If the state kills an innocent by death penalty (which they do), the state too commits _real_ murder. It's not worth sacrificing one innocent to make sure 100 criminals are dead, when you might as well put them in lifetime prison.
That assumption couldn't be more wrong. If there were no copyright, then there would only be two types of source code:
First, there would be public domain code. All open source projects would fall into this category. This code would be open, available, and owned nobody and controlled by noone. Anyone could use this code for any purpose.
Second, there would be code that nobody ever sees. Individuals and organizations who wanted to produce closed-source software would have to shield, obscure, and otherwise protect their code with contracts, usage licenses, and security.
The big difference would be that the public domain code would have no protection whatsoever from being absorbed by closed-source projects. There would be no protection for programmers who wished to enforce their choice of open source development on others.
In a world without copyright (and therefore no GPL) there would be nothing to prevent Microsoft from using any and all of the Linux kernel code in their own closed-source products. Without copyright protection, if your code was open, it would have to be public domain.
It is copyright law, and nothing else, that gives the GPL its teeth. Don't believe for a minute that the lack of copyright protection will somehow eliminate all closed-source software. The truth is, without the protection of copyright, there's no middle ground and we'd see less, not more open-source code.
Anyone who was around and using software in the late seventies and early eighties knows exactly what the software world would look like without copyright. Back when nobody knew what "software" meant, it was very unclear exactly how much protection copyright offered for software. Copyright law took several years to mature and adapt to the computer revolution and during that period the growing pains were sharp and harsh.
Would we really want to return to the days of dongles, hardware copy protection, usage contracts, and burdensome licenses? Without copyright, that's what software houses would have to fall back upon to protect their intellectual property. It wasn't until copyright established itself in the software world that we were finally able to move past those cumbersome and ineffecient methods.
If this concept bothers you, ask yourself why? The foundation of the GPL is that programmers should have the right to dictate how their code is used. If you accept the GPL, you accept that a programmer has an inherent right of control over their code that they can then be able to say "this code should never be used in a closed-source program".
How is it that programmers should have this right and musicians should not? Why should software have protections that music should not? Shouldn't a musician have the same degree of control and be able to say "this song shouldn't be made freely available"?
While I'm sure you'd love to write off the "GPLNet" guy (cid #17) as just a simple troll, this isn't the case. The theoretical GPLnet that the AC proposes circumvents the wishes of GPL programmers in the same manner that napster circumvents the wishes of artists who do not wish to have their music freely distributed. Instead of calling those on the other side of the argument trolls and stating your opinion as if it was an undisputable truth, why don't you take a stab at actually supporting your position with some reasoning and logic. Then, perhaps, we could take your opinion seriously.
Tell your father that the CD copy of his John Denver album is an entirely legal one. If he has a copy of the album, it is totally acceptable by principles of fair use to have a CD copy of the same material. Who says so? The U.S. Supreme Court, for one. See the Sony Betamax case.
Makes sense. Thanks!
--Joe--
Program Intellivision!
While true on a pedantic level, the reality is, in the absence of copyright, authors of software would have many fewer reasons to sit on the source if they're distributing the binary.
--Joe--
Program Intellivision!
Yes, I did, and yes, my position is largely based on opinion and I don't have a room full of hard data to back me up. I'm not sure you completely understood what I was saying, but still, you did point out that I have some hidden assumptions I'm making. I don't believe they're entirely unreasonable.
First, let me point out that I did not say that people would be motivated to share source. Rather, I said they would be less motivated to sit on it. It's an important distinction. I still believe there are cases where companies would sit on their source code, for good reasons or bad, but in the grand scheme of things, there would be sufficient shared software that the unshared portions would be a minority of all software, rather than a majority. In the long run, that may cause things to shift so that companies are motivated to share their source as well, but that's a ways off. In general though, things will be more open.
Why do I feel this would be so?
When you look at the current state of intellectual property laws, all of the current pieces have grown up together in an intertwined fashion, such that it's often difficult to tell where one set of laws ends and another begins. (Notice how people invariably confuse copyrights, patents, trademarks, and trade secrets, even here on Slashdot. Each is a distinct concept, but they all protect intellectual property in some way.)
Because all of the pieces are built on each other, you cannot remove one piece without changing the others accordingly. A political climate that would result in copyright being pared back to its original scope (limited monopoly on creative output, rather than the unrestricted monopoly in perpetuity that it is becoming) would inherently also see patent laws weakened somewhat. To compensate, likely trade-secret and trademark laws may offer more protections, but with greater restrictions and/or finer-granularity of control rather than the broad claims that are allowed presently. Mainly, you'd see the focus shift from "protecting the past" to "protecting the present and future". By this, I mean that we would no longer focus on protecting Steamboat Willy (one of the first Mickey Mouse cartoons) or even Led Zeppelin's Houses of the Holy, but instead on protecting whatever I've created today or will create tomorrow.
In the present market, copyright protections actually favor existing works over new works, since existing works have proven commercial viability whereas new works do not. New works can be phased in as they prove their commercial viability, and then milked for all they're worth once proven, or buried when shown to be unviable in the volumes that big business desires. The current copyright protections (many of which will extend into our grandchildrens' and/or great-grandchildrens' lifetimes for works that are being created right now) build an artificial market around nostalgia, and also serve to bury many aspects of our culture. Witness all of the recent hub-bub about arcade and video game emulation for games written 20 years ago. Those games are a huge part of our culture, but sharing them is illegal. Game companies today are only interested in selling you new games, because the old games don't have a broad-enough appeal, but simultaneously, they must fight illegal ROM distribution lest it erode their intellectual property rights -- they want / need to "bury" these old games.
The current copyright protections also act as a rudder that allows the larger companies which are producing content to steer our culture as they see fit. I don't particularly like that, as it means that themes which are unpopular with the content producers never get aired to any large extent. It also means that they can effectively control the speed of the so-called consumer treadmill. How often have you been forced to upgrade hardware because software vendors refuse to sell the older versions of their software that work fine for you on your old machine? What if I was happy with WordPerfect 5.2 running under MS-DOS 3.3 on a 286? Well, if I wanted to build that setup, I could legally acquire the 286, but I'd have a difficult time legally acquiring WP 5.2 or MS-DOS 3.3. (With most computer licenses these days, you couldn't even sell me your copy if you happened to have a copy -- even if you transferred all documentation and media to me!) I'm forced into a computer upgrade. Same story for musical tastes. What if I'm into a particular genre of music? If the group isn't a chart-topping million-seller, I'm going to have a difficult time finding their music. Even if I know someone who has a copy of the music, I can't make a copy of their music for myself legally, even if the group has been dead for 20 years. I need to stay inside the lines drawn for me by record companies.
One result of this over-protection is that most new works are often not all that great. They often don't represent great advances on any axis -- instead they're careful extensions of what's known to work. New software titles often seem to be the same as the old title, only with more useless eye-candy thrown in. (I probably use 1% of the new features in Word97 vs. Word95. Why should I need to upgrade?) Same with other media -- you end up with the vapid top-40s hits we have today, as well as uninspired movies and TV shows. (Exactly what percentage of sitcoms can be described as "put N quirky people into X awkward situation and wackiness ensues"?)
Another problem with the current copyright protections are that they prevent society from building on its past works to create new interpretations / derivations. This is an important creative avenue that one can only travel if one's pockets are deep enough. This again takes a measure of control out of the individual artists' hands and puts it in the "property" holder's hands. If I want to write a piece of fan-fiction, or write a new feature in a word-processor, or sample an existing song in a new song I'm making, I can only do this if I work for the right people, or can buy the rights to do so.
With shorter copyright protection, the emphasis shifts from "reproducing what works according to time tested formulas" to "let's do something new, because we no longer can keep selling the same old stuff." The very few new things we get these days are total crap-shoots (such as South Park). Where current copyright protections keep old works from competing with new, lesser copyright protections would add new competition in these markets. (Recall, as many have pointed out, Microsoft's largest competitor is itself. The same is true in all media, actually.) Now, companies would have to do more than just add a little more bloat in order to justify making a new version of software. Rather, they would actually have to add something truly useful and valuable to entice people onto the new platform. Disney might actually have to come up with something other than Mickey or one of their formulaic "Take characters from ancient story, write our own feel-good story around them, insert some talking animals for comic relief and sell to the masses." Creativity might actually return to media!
In a different vein, genres such as hip-hop / rap that were built on sampling and reusing old works as a substrate for new composition could return to their roots and sample once again. This flavor of music deserves special attention, actually, since it builds on sounds and samples which are familiar, but adds new lyrics and interpretations that truly are creative. After some landmark copyright lawsuits in the late 80s/early 90s (forget exactly when), this entire genre has been stifled. Albums such as the Beastie Boys Paul's Boutique aren't even possible nowadays, because, in the band's own words, it'd be too expensive to make. More limited copyright protections would enable these sorts of creative works (which, incidentally, bear only minimal resemblance to the originals and truly are new creative works) to be made once again.
Think about it. How many modern works incorporate various classical works, ranging from paintings such as the Mona Lisa, to songs (such as the Epson radio commercial which features music by Mozart), to sculptures (such as The David)?
Now considehr ow many modern works will be able to incorporate anything since World War II. Not many, unless you're doing under the auspices of Ted Turner, Rupert Murdoch, or a handful of other media moguls.
Where does software fit in, and why would sitting on code be less important, then?
In much the same manner as General Motors provides detailed repair instructions for classic cars (largely to keep customers from bugging them I'm sure) and doesn't prevent people from sharing these with each other, software houses would have a vested interest in reducing their support burden for old versions of their software. Since old versions of their software would persist, one easy avenue would be to open-source it and say "We're not supporting this, but anyone who wants to may tinker with it." They would and should be too busy working on actual innovations to worry about the old software. This is the model that idSoftware follows with their software. They're busy making the next big game engine innovation (even if they're not changing gameplay much), such that the new game is quite a step forward from the one they've just open-sourced.
You mention dongles and other mechanisms (either legal or physical) for locking down software. Those mechanisms will certainly exist, but their scope will remain small as non-restricted software will always catch up. And if it doesn't, that's fine too -- the state of software has advanced rather than stagnated, and we're in good shape. At any rate, customers will find these restricted solutions less appealing than non-restricted counterparts, and the restricted versions will die a natural death unless they consistently deliver significant value over non-restricted versions. (How many people switched from Lotus 1-2-3 to Excel or Quattro Pro just to get around stupid interactions between COPYHARD.COM and disk defragmenters / backup-restore utilities?) Lack of planned / forced obsolesence becomes a selling point for software in such a market, as customers become accustomed to preserving their investment. They already do this today with in-house packages. (My employer, for instance, used the same internal email system for about 20 years, since they controlled it -- in contrast, since we use MS-Word for word processing, we have to upgrade whenever Microsoft tells us to, since it's nearly impossible not to. If solutions that offered more control were widely available, I'm sure we'd shift towards them over time.)
We're starting to see some of this with open-source software already, with companies and countries going with open source solutions in order to keep control in their own hands rather than in someone else's. With lesser copyright controls, you've removed some of this artificial control from the copyright holder's hands, and you've made having your own control a selling point.
Anyways, I've rambled enough on this point. Let me address one more:
As with all good jokes, all good trolls are built around a kernel of truth. However, trolls are constructed in such a way to incite rather than to inform or persuade. The original post is a troll. It does not seek to discuss the issue in a positive manner. I didn't feel the need to feed the troll all that heavily so I keep my original reply short and sweet.
So anyways, that's my reasoning. Not necessarily an irrefutable tower of formal logic, but not necessarily a complete morass of unsubstantiated bunk. I'd like to think I am advancing the discussion at least a little bit.
--Joe--
Program Intellivision!
This is neat, I've seen this same post on two different articles, and both times it's gotten mod'd up as (+1 Insightful). We have ourselves a new troll, the GPLNet troll. It's Saturday, I'm bored, I'll bite.
It definitely comes across as a "witty retort" to the GPL flag-wavers that also enjoy getting their music and pr0n for free off the net. What you're failing to realize, of course, is that if the copyright system weren't so overly biased towards Big Business and the general trend was towards sharing rather than hiding information, then licenses such as GPL wouldn't be necessary, and something like "GPLNet" would just be silly.
--Joe--
Program Intellivision!
I Am Not A Lawyer
The one I haven't been able to figure out is HTH. In my best Ben Stein voice: Anyone? Anyone?
--Joe--
Program Intellivision!
There is no threat.. there's thousands of geeks out there who won't let such brain-damaged behavior occur. This is our playground - I'll be damned if I'm going to let the toys I'm used to playing with be outlawed or sectioned off by any force, public or private. They can kiss my curvy butt, because there will always be atleast one of us out here who will fight to keep the 'net open.
So chill, ok? The imminent death of the 'net has been predicted since the early 80's.. it hasn't happened yet, it won't happen anytime soon.
Legislation will never work on the global internet. Just as there are countries that are not so friendly with the US government who will launder money for you, there will be countries that host these types of services. Why would they do that? Possibly in hopes of luring skilled, high-tech workers to their locale- or keep the ones that are there right now.
The only thing that can crush these services is the lack of internet bandwidth. If they get too popular, then they will become irrelevant under their own loads.
No. I'm not a troll. Explain to me why you think that if I invest my time and money, or better yet, you do, why should anyone besides me or you (a la Napster) be able to profit from that without either of ours explicit consent? Please.
As for not for profit activities (a la Gnutella)... that's all fine and dandy, in my eyes. I just wish that people would have more respect for other peoples creations. Regardless, though, as long as no one but the creator or owner of a work is making money, it should be okay. but the moment that money changes hands, no matter how detatched it is from the transaction (advertising on a website offering mp3's for download, for instance) the first hand in line should be that of the creator or owner of a given work...
Now tell me, am I really a troll? Or just someone that you disagree with?
Sorry, second response to your rebuttal...
Movies would be made by studios paying producers totake writers scripts and making cinematic productions. Once their screen time ran out, they'ed be rented on these things called "Video cassettes" and "DVD's".
Companys' like Napster and lets say... "Videoster" would have no business creating software that enambed people to trade these files... they'ed get sued out of existance, and the memmbers of their boards of directors tortured for eons...
BUT if personal file sharing was going on, there would be no penalty. I just wish that we as a race would advance the the point of realizeing that yes, trading with your triends might not be legal, but it's okay, rather than the current "yes, i can trade whith all 30 million of my pas... how can you prove they aren't my friends"...
Cowardice hiding behind a wall of technology...
I kind of suspect that we're o n the same side of this argument, but you just misunderstood me...
Clarify?
I'm of the belief that there should be absolutely NO COMMERCIAL INTEREST in the unauthorized trading of intellectual property... That's anything that's distributed by someone one to someone else that was not created or owned by either of the parties involved, when someone stands to make money from the efforts...
So far as personal sharing of files, though... There shouldn't be any laws prohibiting that either... Otherwise, we'd face a draconian existance, where police could get search warrants based on IP addresesses that appeared in say... Gnutella...
Napster bad.
Gnutella, not all bad... I just wish that people would use the service in order to distribute things that they're authorized to distribute rather than just as a means of pirating other peoples intellectual property...
It's just sad that we've reached such an impasse as a society that only a small fraction of us bother to create works of art, instead prefering to be consumers rather than creators, hiding behind the shroud of "evil corporations run our lives" and stealing because of it rather than trying to create a means of circumventing it...
Corporations will rule your lives as long as you let them... no longer than that, though...
So, what you're saying is, the RIAA likes kiddie porn? Wow, and I thought they were bad *before*.
Most of Napster's traffic is due to trading of illegal MP3s. Justify it however you want, the record companies have their interests to protect.
Regarding your sig...
:)
Tried out KDE2 lately?
No hassle?
Don't make me laugh...
It can take hours to find an entire album (I just finished ripping my entire CD collection, and I couldn't rip any of some CDs because they were too damaged). I probably would have just bought it again for $0.20/song.
"Notice how Best Buy has raised its average cd price from $11.99 to $14.99 over the past year and a half "...", but that is the market dictating that people are willing to pay for it"
Oh, and that would be same period when the record companies were operating an illegal price control scheme to control CD prices! Jesus, if you are going to make a point, its better if you read what has *ACTUALLY* been going on.
Your argument makes no sense, tapes used to be a lot cheaper than CD's, the production costs have lowered and the prices have still risen. In fact I remember a record company exec in an interview saying how cd prices would fall when volume reached that of tape sales, what a lieing shit, volume increased and so did the size of his wallet.
Actually using napster has made me buy a lot more music that I ever bought berfore, just by bringing an interest to the fore, but while the back catalog remains un-available, while record companies operate outside the law, while CD prices are kept high, I will remain a "Pirate"
F
Don't forget the bread, fish and wine you shared with 300 people instead of making them buy it and respecting the intellectual property of the sea and the local food industry.
Computers. You can't live with them, you can't live without them.
And doesn't it seem at all contradictory that the laws say that killing is wrong, unless you are with the government?
No, why should it? There are lots of things that the government can do that others can't. Collect taxes, for example.. or declare war.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
Good, if we are going to start getting rid of laws, lets cancel that stupid antitrust thing while we are at it.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
People can be trading sound effect, comedy routines, or political speeches. What is so illegal?
Comedy routines, political speeches and sound effects can all be copyrighted. (Thankfully)
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
Some people doesn't seem to get it, the point is that with the death penalty you don't have any way back. If the state kills an innocent by death penalty (which they do), the state too commits _real_ murder. It's not worth sacrificing one innocent to make sure 100 criminals are dead, when you might as well put them in lifetime prison.
If you want to make an omelette, sometimes you have to break a few eggs.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
Yeah, there are what, hundreds of thousands of people executed wrongly every year, just in the US, right?
The odds of it happening to you are so slim its not even worth thinking about...
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
I think Oliver Wendel Holmes stated it best when he said, in his defense of the death penalty, that since life is the most preceious thing, the taking of a life demands the ultimate punishment. Who cares if it deters crime or not.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
Individuals which significantly diverge in ANY way from the population norm are usually at a much higher risk of congenital health problems. Its the bitch of mutation, it's much more likely to screw you.
So if some enzyme change makes you smarter, it stands a good chance of screwing with something else. It is only through evolution that your new advantage (lamda calculus in your head!) gets ironed out into something that is safe, because the genius can out compete most normals, but the SANE genius can out compete the genius.
-- Crutcher --
#include <disclaimer.h>
-- Crutcher --
#include <disclaimer.h>
You are. This is not a troll, or flame bait.
Flight or Flight happens FIRST in ALL responses. It is basic nurology. You cannot escape it (with out brain surgery) and you wouldn't want to. (You'd get hit by a car inside a week)
This is not 'determinism', it is how you are wired together. Fight or Flight is a demonstrable as the fact that most people have feet.
I cant stand all these people that spend so much time trying to be 'something more than an animal', if they aren't going to take the time to learn just how cool the 'animal' is. It's deliberate ignorance, and it really burns me.
-- Crutcher --
#include <disclaimer.h>
-- Crutcher --
#include <disclaimer.h>
moderate this shit UP.
Cretin - a powerful and flexible CD reencoder
Unfortunately this never works, there's always a way to circumvent anti-piracy measures. Look at the dongle, it was supposed to be uncrackable yet there are plenty of pirated copies of 3d Studio Max and Softimage around, both of which use the dongle for protection.
- Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.
What I foresee is that the sequence of bits you pay for will be tailored to the particular players that you own. That is, each player has it own cryptographic key for recovering the information. At best this will make copying difficult though not impossible. However, it will take some time and marketing savvy for this kind of information player to get a big enough market to matter.
Okay, maybe just the shallow American end of the English language puddle, then. It is tired. Now it's used by the same Dawson's Creek-watching dimwits who use it instead of the formerly popular "on drugs" term.Incidentally, this is the same group known for using the term "naturally high" and "contact high" on a regular basis. In America, drug references are invectives used by the uninformed, so the overuse should fade as these morons go to their State University of choice, get stoned, and come to terms with their own hypocrisy, if only briefly.
-jpowers
-jpowers
posting instructions on how to make a US military nuclear bomb is illegal. It is illegal because it's treason. Posting non-classified information is not illegal, and that includes HOWTOs on the production of various munitions, just not the classified ones.
And if your logic about owning/using was the law, why the hell do people keep getting arrested for drug "possesion"? I agree with your last sentence 100%, but the reason we don't focus just on the crimes themselves is because we've moved away from our original criminal justice model, which was reactive(ie you do something bad, we put you in jail). Now it's preventive, or "people who do this bad thing usually do that thing first, so let's make it illegal, too." And because the last vestiges of the original system remain in place, like trying to run Norton 4 on Windows 2000, nothing works right.
Oh well, no country's perfect, I guess. Maybe some nice company will buy our country and take all our rights away so we don't have to worry about them anymore. Then I could just sit and watch TV.
-jpowers
-jpowers
you're a white heterosexual man, right?
Yes. That's OK with you, right?
never been mugged for coming out of a "wrong" club or feared for your life because of the color of your skin?
No, but since correlation does not prove causation, I'm going to have to ask you to fill in the blank in your implied logic, there. When was the last time a website mugged you (for something other than your e-mail address)? The problem with your logic is one shared by many people, which is this: you assume that external ideas lead directly to action, which they do not. The real process of demagoguery works like this:
External Ideas--[Y/N]->Internal Reason--[Y/N]->Externalized Action
See the yes/no, there? That's where the individual determines whether or not he's going to accept the external ideas as his own and then deciding whether or not he's going to act on them. That's why we call it free will, see?
So whoever is worried about being mugged coming out of the Rumper Room or wherever needs to find a way to inject something into the hate-crime type individual's internal discussion.
Here's how things are now, under your prototype violent homophobe's process:
http://allqueersmustdie.com---> [Accept?Y/N=Y]---> Drinkbeerkillqueers---> [Act?Y/N=Y]---> Brutality commences.
So you need to inject something into this process, because limiting the website is a moral wrong. I've always liked fear, myself, so we'll say you counter with an illusion. Make a bunch of buttons that say "I'm queer and I'm the fucking NRA." Then you have your own website. Ready?
{http://allqueersmustdie.com + http://queerNRA.org---> [Accept?Y/N=Y]---> Drinkbeerkillqueersbuttheyhaveguns---> [Act?Y/N=N]--->Brutality deterred.
You can do that without buying a gun or censoring anyone. Of course, I'm not much for thinking outside the box, though, so don't go by me.
-jpowers
-jpowers
a single backup copy of any work you purchase. That includes music and software, at the very least. It's the redistribution that's illegal.
-jpowers
-jpowers
We were making crack jokes back in the late 80s, before TV censors allowed writers to use it as a joke. It's funny to see it go up from people to TV, then back down to people again. I think this new usage has replaced the word "dope" in the English language. We seem to need a term word that means both "stupid" and "makes stupid" at the same time.
-jpowers
-jpowers
Posting bomb making instructions...is illegal;
No, it isn't. Posting instructions for making bombs which are classified info (ie US nuclear weapons) is illegal. Posting instrucitons for making plastic explosives or the type of bomb McVeigh used in Oklahoma City is not illegal, though. Thanks, Anarchist's Cookbook!
-jpowers
-jpowers
OK, this is totally OT, but I have no other way of contacting this AC.
Why do you keep reposting this mangled version of a message I posted about a month ago? It's not funny, relevant, or inflammatory. Even I'm not pissed off, I just don't understand whether you're a misguided troll or are suffering from some bizarre variant of the Slashdot virus (the "this is more infomative" one).
Is this happening to anyone else?
IMHO, these issues bring up many salient points in regards to the way our intellectual property laws are structured, and how advances in technology affect them. Whether the powers that be like it or not, file sharing will continue. Closed-source software companies have been trying to prohibit copying for years, and they have found it just as difficult as the entertainment industry is.
It seems to me to be almost a law of physics that if it can be put into digital form, it's distribution cannot be controlled. The hacker credo we are all familiar with says it best: "Information wants to be free." As cliched as that statement has become, it is frequently a truism. Without a totalitarian system of government -- and maybe even with it -- the distribution of MP3s, .RARs, and other ph1l3z is almost impossible to control.
So where does this leave us? With the increasingly apparent realization that the current IP structure must be changed or perhaps (in a world inhabited by Katzians) discarded. Corporate IP attorneys can sue until they are blue in the face, but there will still be FreeNet, Gnutella, et al.
- Rev.Should revenge enter into the equation of how justice is distributed? And doesn't it seem at all contradictory that the laws say that killing is wrong, unless you are with the government? I trust the government with my life even less than I trust them with my money.
- Rev.
I guess I have always been under the impression that governments are instituted to protect the general welfare of the citizens. Imprisonment, while necessary, is done for the good of the person being imprisoned as well as for the good of society. The death penalty only serves as a vehicle for societal revenge, not for rehabilitation. And allow me to repeat my salient point: I do not trust the government with my money, why should I trust them with my life?
- Rev.
Napster does not have a sustainable business model. They can only continue to exist as long as they are operating on the wrong side of the law. Consider what would happen if they won the trial. How long do you think it would be before Microsoft Napster, Napster.aol.com, etc were launched? If the service was legitimized, they would immediately be crushed by larger competitors (possibly including the record industry itself). Napster knows this, and therefore they have no real incentive to become a "legal" service.
http://www.laural.com/
From the PAN FAQ (http://www.superpimp.org/faq.html):
1.5. Did the RIAA really sue Pan?
No. It's just a joke.
To within half a percent, pi seconds is a nanocentury. -- Tom Duff
Now, this is *my* kinda savior!
If You do this again, You should capitalize Your name whenever you refer to Your heavenly self. It completes the effect (cf. The Onion).
Your assumption is VERY wrong. If there were no copyrights and all code was open, whats to stop a programmer working for a company to throw the code out in the open ? After all, the company cant sue him for copyright or ip infringement. and how many programmers, given the choice, would lock their code up ? not many. at least not the intelligent ones. given the trend, how many people would buy closed source software ?
the difference between software and music is that there is no need to duplicate the PROCESS OF WRITING MUSIC. you simply "execute" it to enjoy the full benefits. with software this is not the case. the PROCESS is more important than the final EXECUTION. The GPLNET guy is a troll - i wouldnt give two shits about him. whats he going to do - release linux kernel binaries via napster ? sure - go ahead and everyone will laugh.
As a programmer, i'd love to see copyright/ip disappear. programmers enjoy programming new stuff - they dont enjoy duplication of effort. all code *should* be public domain. people will pay for *systems integration* - which is a lot more important. its not the code - its whether the system i want to build will work. and thats whats really important.
To use an analogy, the blueprints of a bus may be available freely, but people still buy busses from GM or wherever. and its the revenue earned from the poeple actually *using* the bus which is important.
...and as soon as you implement that "system to address the objections on a case by case basis," the people who want to make evil use of that information instantly switch to some other means of getting to it. You can't take away a tool capable of public good just to stop a few people from misusing it. It's like banning telephones because ZDnet reports that some guy used the phone to tell another guy how to steal a credit card.
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#o#
#o#
O Moo.
If they strap my wife into a chair or onto a gurney and kill her and it later comes out that she was innocent am I then entitled to hunt me up
the judge and prosecutor? Perhaps THIS is the best way to put paid to the death penalty debate. If they fuck up and kill somebody they shouldn't then the following people are to be executed:
Judge
Proscutor
Executioner
Jury
Incompentent or Corrupt Lab personnel.
A decent case could probably be made for the governor of the state as well. I'm sure justifications to execute a few more government officials could be found as well. By your logic, I am thoroughly entitled to revenge if some government "shits" kill one of my loved ones. Under such a regime, I don't think there would even BE a death penalty, not when those who deal death have to face it themselves if this power is misused. Come to think of it, most people who are for the death penalty are against abortion as well. At least this scheme would get rid of a whole lot of people who think they have the right to decide who is fit to live and who should die.
Which is all well and good unless you are one of those eggs.
exactly. they haven't been; and the point is that if guns are so much worse than Napster, then how come it -is- Napster that is getting sued, and not the gun companies?
You hope no one ever invents cash?
Seriously though, a number of patents exist for the digital equivalent of cash. In fact, most digital systems improve on the anonymity of cash. In any case, the ultimate goal of these systems is anonymous payment. Are you affraid of such systems because they are likely to be used by criminals? Do you fear cash for the same reason?
Hmmm... something like 99% of all rolling paper is used to roll joints instead of cigarettes... ever see EZ-whip cartidges for sale at your local headshop? How many people do you think buy these to make whip-cream instead of getting high off of them? Should water pipes (i.e. bongs) be illegal because they are popular for illegal purposes? Napster has legitimate uses... the fact that it has become popular because people use it to do illegal things does not make it illegal. And even if they were banking on people using it to do illegal things, their actions are still legit.
Heven forbid that someone try to sue the gun and the cigarette industry to hold them accountable for the idocy of their consumers! Seriously, yes it is illogical to hold a company responsible for problems that consumers have with the product because they are dumb enough to use it. Unfortuantly, logic is not, and never is going to be, a part of the "American Justice System" (TM).
I say that it's time for another revolution. Every generation has had a fight; a cause. There is none right now. In the 60's it was big government that didn't care about the thoughts of it's citizens. Now, it's the big corporations that do not care about it's consumers. The corporations are just getting a little ancy because they see that people are scrambling for ways to reduce our dependency on companies.
Too many people asking for sulfur to be lowered in gasoline, trying to keep the Alaskan Wildlife Preserve, and citizens wanting the US to sign the Kayoto Protocol to promise to cut down on greenhouse gases? Well, oil companies cannot let that happen! Hence the increase in the cost of gas, and the energy secretary looking bad. Who? The energy secretary who at one point was to be Gore's running mate. Isn't it also interesting how Bush has promised so many things to help the oil industry (Kayoto protocol, sulfur additives, wildlife preserve) and his running mate is an executive with STRONG ties to the oil industry? Our country is not a democracy. It's run by a board of directors.
Welcome to Planet Starbucks.
tasty and delicious
yes, the simplest argument seems to make the most sense here. MP3 is itself a market force. Cost to manufacture: $0 (all you do is click a few places on your computer). If a recording company goes out-of-business, it's not because of piracy but rather because of the free market system. (So get a new job, something different!)
When cars started driving down the roads that horse riders built, did the breeders get upset and try to ban the automobile?
Note: lots of people who get the death penalty have pleaded guilty, no contest, and have confessed to their crimes.
They're probably going to have a hard time doing that, at least with a straight face.
"See, when you take a song and deprive us and the artists of money, it's wrong. But when we use our distribution channels and expensive lawyers to take 95% of the money you pay for that song and use it to fund the system we use to catch new artists, that's right."
I realize that Joe Sixpack is a little dimmer than he used to be, but I can't see people falling for it.
Hope That Helps, I think
- Apple Computer......proudly going out of business for over twenty years.
I hate liberals. I hate conservatives. I hate libertarians and communists. If you belong to a party, or alignyourself with a political party...i hate you. Hell yeah I agree with you there. Partisan politics are wacked but people are too stupid to realize that political parties are fucked up. I wasn't saying you're a fucked up person for smoking weed, I was attempting to point out the ignorant masses govertainment based ideologies. "Political Parties are good because Ted Koppel said so" is the kind of stupidity that goes untreated. I never implied you are a loser or criminal. Or how liberals will claim eating meat is murder but being a vegan isn't even though plants are alive as well. It's kind of insulting that you'd call me a republican. Even if you don't drive an 18-wheeler while being high many dumbfucks out there do try; just as they try to drive while intoxicated and many kill innocent people while the drunk survives the crash unharmed. It's not a risk worth taking. You remind me of someone who needs to take some downers.
good. that means napster will become legal sometime soon ;-). Marijuana is being decriminalized in more and more states. The way i see it. It's only a matter of time before marijuana becomes yet another regulated drug (read: Alcohol).
It's funny how liberals will smoke weed yet at the same time yell at you for eating red meat or smoking cigarettes. So taking a drug that kills your brain cells is ok yet the occasional comsumption of steak is a sin. Sure smoking tobacco might take 15 years off your life but the last 15 are the worst any ways.
Without copyright, those licenses wouldn't be needed.
Sigs are awesome huh?
Crunch all you want,they'll make more.As noted in above rants,copyright laws have been twisted beyond recognition.They no longer come close to their original purpose.Those in power only contribute to the problem for their own ends.
Its time for the people to take back the power.PIRATE LIKE YOU WERE BLACKBEARD.ABUSE TRADEMARKS TILL THEY ARE SCARRED FOR LIFE.USE WHAT YOU NEED AND WASTE THE REST.My sentiment is similar to the one where the people keep and bear arms to overthrow corrupt government.However since
shooting the bastards is a bit severe in this case,merely undermining their authority will do
until the law is restored to its original intent.
IANAL,but I administer discipline to a couple of them for profit.One of them turned out to be an RIAA lawyer so I brainwashed him.(this can be accomplished by squeezing the enema bag REAL HARD)
Now he spends his spare time downloading and burning to disc my personal shopping list for mp3.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
What if? Who cares! What if someone went around putting up large posters containing your credit card number on street corners and billboards? What if people sent spam (electronic or dead tree) to everyone in America containing bomb building instructions? In general, you deal with the criminal, not the means for committing the crime. IF either of the former activities was considered illegal (it shouldn't be, IMHO), then would you suggest outlawing mail and billboards?
Napster wasn't shut down because it did anything illegal...
Napster hasn't been shutdown.
it failed to provide a reasonable system through which someone could request the removal of material that was harmful to them
How can information be harmful?
Such systems already exist, they are just unable to keep up with new technologies. There have always been people who traffic in illicit, "dangerous" and private data. Fake IDs, "stolen identities", it's all been here before. And there are laws against illegally distributing private or priveleged information (although thankfully, it's not illegal to distribute bomb-making instructions- just watch Fight Club!).
So, I consider shutting down something like napster or gnutella to be a short-term and short-sighted solution to the very real risk that you raise. A better solution would be to equip law-enforcement with the ability to track down the sources of that kind of criminal behavior (that'll be a long time coming, I'm sure, but you've gotta start sometime).
Shutting down napster or gnutella to stop my credit card #s from being openly distributed while the pimply faced kid at KMART (and every other store in the country) can collect hundreds of card #s a day is just silly.
What if software publishers used public/private key encryption to protect software? Or other technologies that made it lesss convenient to distribute data that's supposed to be protected? Come to think of it, that would be a pro-active open source project that could head the luddites off before they can enact all sorts of bizarre laws for things that they don't understand.
Well...I don't how old you are (or your parents) but my generation spent alot of time in jail and bucking the government, police and the status quo for things like civil rights, free speed and the draft. Question authority is still the best advise I can offer my son. I see MP3's and napster as my right. I buy CD's but I listen to and download lots of MP3's and software before I buy. No guilt whatsoever. When I was a teenager, the record stores had listening booths and we crowded in to listen to new albums before we bought them. I also had a Wollensak tape recorder that I used to record some of my favorite radio programs. This is nothing new, except that radio plays nothing but top 20 now and my recorder is a PC.
Piracy won't kill ya.
...
Whereas smoking
Looking for a great online backup: Green Backup
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
Of course, this could end the whole thing, since who wants to pay to offer a service?
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
Do I understand correctly that copying most anything for personal use only is legal? .. that's not to say that i support the organized sharing of such property on the gnutella and napster networks...
Got the following error:
Error in brand lookup: Specified brand: wego.com does not exist.
"I always wanted to be a procrastinator,
I do believe they own the "music" as in the arrangement of the song, but they also own the recording. So I don't think their specific ownership amongst various formats is really an issue.
Chaos, Mayhem, and Destruction: Not
Britney Spears?
Remember, Napster's main defense for getting the preliminary injunction stayed was that they would lose a tremendous amount of money and lay off lots of employees (interesting claim of course: can prostitution rings, drug cartel, and kiddie porn production centers make similar claims during times of government crackdown?). Yes, the source of most (all?) of their income in venture capital, but obviously they would funding if forced to shut down (and the tremendous risk of being shut down for real has probably greatly increased investors wariness).
I recommend that you read the RIAA's complaint, which will answer most of your questions.
On a purely technical level, though, napster should *not* be illegal... it's just software.
Napster is most definitely not "just software". That's the whole point of the lawsuit. It's a service, and requires continual maintenance on the parts of the operators to keep it running. If it was software, it would fall under the same category as guns, locksmithing tools, freenet software, and gnutella software. The Napster client is just software, but the whole enterprise that makes up the Napster experience is much more than just software.
Hmmm... something like 99% of all rolling paper is used to roll joints instead of cigarettes... ever see EZ-whip cartidges for sale at your local headshop? How many people do you think buy these to make whip-cream instead of getting high off of them? Should water pipes (i.e. bongs) be illegal because they are popular for illegal purposes? Napster has legitimate uses... the fact that it has become popular because people use it to do illegal things does not make it illegal. And even if they were banking on people using it to do illegal things, their actions are still legit.
But you're missing a very huge point (which is the crux of the Napster issue): the manufacturers of rolling paper have no control what happens to the paper after it leaves the factory. Napster has all the control in the world because they run the service. Therefore, they are responsible for insuring that Napster is not used to illegally steal copyrighted materials. Judge Patel goes into this in great detail, and even suggests a strategy for insuring that only legitimate materials are transferred on Napster. Why doesn't Napster do this? It is technically trivial, but they would lose all of their business if they stopped transmission of illegal files, because that's what everybody is after.
No, it's not. The MP3 recording was most likely made from a CD and while that guy owned the albums, they are two different recordings (because, for example, they are remastered). Louis Armstrong's Hot Five's and Seven's records are out of copyright and at least three record companies have re-issued them on CD, but they own the recording on the CD, which has been cleaned up to remove the surface noise. It would be illegal to copy the CD version, but legal if you copied the original 78 RPM record. If not, then the record companies could just copy each other's recording (some of which are much better remastered than the others!)
This point stunned me. I never thought of it before! We've got a significant group of like-minded, freedom-oriented people out there. I wonder how much of the increase in price from LPs to CDs has gone to artists?
There isn't as clear cut a parallel between the tobacco and gun industry versus Napster, as you cannot stop smoking through cigarettes and violence through guns as you can stop Napster-orchestrated file trading by shutting down Napster. Granted, MP3 trading will still occur, but (under your analogy) it would be knife fighting and pot smoking.
There is one thing that can be done to make sure that music sharing won't ever stop, and to reform the whole copyright issue. Napster and Gnutella are already tainted by their advertising that says that "this is where people come to trade music, join us". The ONLY thing that can withstand the courts is a non-profit piece of software that's inherently used to share information of ALL sorts. This is why they aren't suing aol because people share mp3s in their "rooms". Whether it's cooking recipes, or the anarchist cookbook, exchange of free information of any kind. Now, "if" people decide to come in and use it to trade pirated music, that's not the application developers' fault, because they never advertised it as "music sharing software". That's the only way that any of this trading software will ever survive.
I live in New York, our mayor, Guliani, recently managed to outlaw all xxx video shops, requiring them all to carry regular videos as at least 60% of their inventory. Now, the city is filled with stores named "All Kinds Of Videos", with cartoon boxes all over the front. Everyone knows that's where you get your xxx, and nobody can do anything about it. See the parallel?
Well, not precisely the next..
Apparently, the new Pirates of the Internet are trading needlepoint patterns. Unlike the RIAA's overblown claims, this showed up in substantial lost profits in a much smaller market. A Time-Warner subsidiary has lost about 40%. The lawyers are loosed.
Freenet-chat posters have decided that we really need a Freenet granny can use.
Ed Craig "Who cares what you think?" George W. Bush, 4th of July 2001
What about when they pass UCITA, requiring free software to have a license? We won't be able to write GPL'd software anymore without taking on alot of responsibility. What happens then? There will be no free software and no recourse. Seems to me like big business is going to have their cake and eat it too.
Gah
Download a binary you know nothing about, and you're asking for trouble. For that reason, I doubt the Napster or Freenet model will extend beyond a few types of material like music or porn where you don't really care if you download something corrupted or low-quality. I know people get "warez" from all sorts of sites, but it's the kind of situation that could easily be exploited by the malicious.
Ah yes. arguing about semantics is a great way to encourage mutual learning.
As demonstrated by our discussion, there are more than one type of person. I wholly admit this, and realize there are many people who go through life successfully, just like you, without realizing that there are others who don't base their actions on the same fight or flight system used by the amoeba.
Neither is right or wrong. However, most of the things that you enjoy and take for granted in society are conventions set up by those who stepped out of the deterministic path.
I think it is quite obvious to everyone that the activity that Napster facilitates IS a blatant act of copyright infringement. The true question, IMHO, is should the goverment (and essentially all of the tax payers) be obligated to pay ungodly ammounts of money in an attempt to uphold a law that will prove to be impossible to enforce. As we have already seen with Gnutella, as long as the user demand is present and the technology is accessible, progams will be written to accommodate their desire to trade information. Seriously, does anyone truly think that if Napster does go away that the approx. 20 MILLION people that currently use it will just roll over and drift off into the sunset...HELL NO. A better program will be designed (Gnutella???) and the whole escapade will flare up again and again.
Now, all of this is not to say that I do not see the many bennefits of copyrights and licensing in the web environment. However, I also believe that there should be certain sects of the internet that are exempt from broad policies that apply in other mediums. One thing I think that law makers and big corporations often forget is that the internet is a virtual world and that sometimes ideas and policies that work well in the material world shouldn't/don't necessarily apply.
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. -- Benjamin Franklin
Napster is a for profit company.
;) Is there such a thing as a "for venture capital" company?
Really? You'd better tell them. Last time I checked they were losing money out the yin-yang.
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Presuming this isn't a troll, I'd wager to say that as super high intelligence is a relatively new thing in human evolution, and not something required to survive, there are still a few bugs left to work out.
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"Music should be free, what are you trying to do - take my rights away from me?" *chorus* I want to steal, I want to steal */chorus* "Big business is the real criminal, down with the RIAA - it's evil!" *chorus* "Piracy has a long history, you think you can stop it now? Get real (fool)" *chours* "Baby-boomer lamerz, you just don't understand; This is file-sharing, and you know THAT's not illegal?" *quieter* "...Uh, there artists already have enough money; I hardly think they need me to actually buy that cd" *chorus* "Uhm...Look, do you want me to make you a cd, i can do it, and do it for free??" *chours* "Really, it'll sound just like a cd but you won't have to pay for it! Isn't this world grand?" *chours* ...
Don't you feel at least a little hypocritical putting both of these sentences together in the same post?
Certainly not. Redistributing valid credit card numbers is the same as handing someone a checkbook and saying "have at it." That is theft in the basic sense that that credit card is going to be used to steal money from someone that already has it.
When you talk about ripping a song to mp3 and then redistributing it, you're talking about intellectual property...a concept that is, basically, dumb. Are you paying for that CD, the right to do with it as you wish? Are you paying for the right to listen to that CD? Does the CD actually belong to you in that instance? What if i were to give that CD to a friend? what then? Everything get's convoluded with IP...and it's just crap. Pay the artist for a service, not for an idea.
Your argument stems from the fact that you think IP is a valid way to play the game. I don't - that keeps my post from being the least bit hypocritical. If you honestly think that stealing a credit card and using napster are anywhere NEAR the same thing then please, don't respond to this post....the argument is pointless.
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
just to clarify (i won't flame you since the others did a good job of that)
I hate liberals. I hate conservatives. I hate libertarians and communists. If you belong to a party, or align yourself with a political party...i hate you.
I smoke about a pack a day of Kamel Red Lights. I drink, sometimes heavily, sometimes a glass of wine with a nice meal. I smoke marijuana. Why? Because it makes me feel good. No other reason. I just like the way i feel after a bowl. And while i'm smoking weed...i'm not babysitting your kids, or trying to drive an 18 wheeler, or give your wife oral pleasure for another quarter sack. so shut the fuck up and quit implying that i'm a loser or a criminal.
That meal i just enjoyed a glass of wine with....it's always best if it's a big 16oz ribeye or a T-bone aged to perfection....so juicy and tender you can cut it with a fork.
In conclusion...kiss my ass you whiney little intolerant republican.
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
Would you care to suggest what "services" an artist/writer could provide as an alternative to the current model?
;-)
;-)
i've never been much for digital authorship. So i can't say that i'm a fan of digital books. That being said, the main difference between a musician and an author is that an author can't go on tour duplicating his works in a 2 hour show. Salenger can't travel the globe rewriting Catcher in the Rye for huge audiences. Musicians can...guess what...that's originally what they were payed for
Authors can, however, travel the globe giving readings and such (i always enjoy seeing Terry Brooks). They get paid for that (quite a bit more than i do). Also, the system of buying books has been around SIGNIFIGANTLY longer than buying recorded music. I don't propose to know the specifics of handling authorship as well, but let me say i will always go down to the Tattered Cover and buy books. A) to read, and B) to support the authors who wrote them. But hey, if you're Daniel Steele, i'm not sure you deserve to get paid for the crap you put out
You're paying for the right to listen to it. That's all. That's how IP works - without an explicit contract assigning copyright to you, all you can do legally is read/listen/use that material - you can't redistribute it.
what about a place like Recycle Records here in Denver? I can go up to them, and sell my CD to them for, say $6. I can also buy CD's that other people have sold to them. The artists aren't making any money off these transactions. If all i'm doing is paying for a "site license" for my music, why am i allowed this particular courtesy?
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
it's comparable to smoking pot.
;-). Marijuana is being decriminalized in more and more states. The way i see it. It's only a matter of time before Marijuana becomes yet another regulated drug (read: Alcohol).
good. that means napster will become legal sometime soon
As far as the court of public opinion is concerned. By the end of this year, there will be ~70million people using Nap. This, to me, seems like public opinion is going the opposite way of big business. This is assuming nap doesn't get shut down by Big Brother (no people...not THAT Big Brother).
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
redistributing credit card numbers == redistribution of stolen goods.
;-)
Distribution of WPP is probably illegal in that you're going to get people killed. That's not protected under free speech for much the same reason as inciting a riot or saying that you're going to kill the president isn't protected under your generic first amendment rights.
The bigges issue with napster is fair use. I think it's fair use to distribute copyrighted material for non-commercial purposes. Why does a larger scale make bootlegging any diferent? Maybe you feel differently...but that's the only argument you can bring up.
oh..and BTW - as has already been mentioned. Nap hasn't been shut down. I'm gonna go get me some more mp3's of CD's i already own
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
Personaly... I think they shoul be sued to the ground. Cause they know, that they still just want to get people addicted to get there money.
Guns and napster on the other hand... is a differnt story. Although I don't like guns -- it isn't totaly the gun-makers fault... maybe in some cases when they might have neglegted a safter issue (rare i think). But it was the person who pulled the trigger... who had the intent to kill. Same goes with napster.
Although it could be argueed either way because both the gun-makers, and napster etc.. knew what they where going to be used for.
Well... that's my NZ$0.04 (have to take into account the exchange rate these days).
High prices mean less choice for the consumer, and are a big incentive for black markets (or their equivilent -- in this case, free piracy).
I agree completely. The black market should be considered part of a capitalist system -- if your industry engenders a large black market, it should be considered a sign that there's something wrong with your business model (in this case, $15 for a predetermined set of music), rather than something wrong with your customers.
Its aginst US copyright laws making it illegal. Kind of like the guy who points the way to the illegal crackhouse, hes not doing anything illegal.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
what the hell does IANAL mean?
Gnutella IS a non-profit piece of software that does what you say it doesn't. I invite you to go to the Gnutella site, as well as visit the Gnotella site as well. Perhaps your cluon concentration will increase.
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Star Trek vs Star Wars. Take a look. You may like it.
The fact of the matter is this. The big record companies are soiling themselves because finally, there is something threatening their huge cash cow. They put a system in place to make oodles of cash with very little effort on their parts. Do you know why the artists aren't up in arms about it as much as the record labels? Because from a $15-$20 CD, the artist usually sees less than $0.50. Last time I checked the stats, the Rolling Stones made the most money per CD out any other artist out there. You want to know how much they make a CD? A whopping $1.07 a unit. Out of $15. That's less than %10. Major artists make the big money by touring. Conclusion? It truly is the record companies driving this whole anti-Napster thing, and the RIAA are just patsies for them. Trust me, the RIAA is probably raking in big bucks from the record industry. The record industry has gotten so greedy on making money so easily, it will fight like hell to keep someone from undermining their profits. If you ask me, if they want to survive, they need to think of new and unique ways of marketing their music. The old paradigm isn't going to stand up in this digital reality. My solution? Why doesn't every record company set up high speed servers that offer every song they own the rights to. There are alot of stuff that isn't available on Napster or other search engines because it's not popular enough. Heck, I have a hard time finding Bob Dylan's Highway 51. If they had every song ever recorded available for download for a fee, I think they could start making some big bucks. They could go into their archives and remaster some of the old stuff that you can only find on vinyl and offer that over the internet. They could set up a credit system, where you can buy 100 credits for $10.00, and use those credits to buy songs. The credit system seems like a good idea, people can trade credits, have contests to win more credits, hell.....have credit slot machines for goodness sake. The possibilities are limited only by the imagination. Why doesn't the record industry have an imagination?
"When you gotta shoot, SHOOT! Don't talk." Tuco Benedicto Pacifico Juan Maria Ramirez
Either that, or the show Oz is wrong :)
I saw it on TV..it has to be true!
Usually, when you plead guilty in court the sentence is smaller than if you plead not guilty and the jury finds you guilty. So usually what happends, by pleading guilty, is that the criminal will get life sentence without parole instead of the chair.
I would like to add that I'm not a U.S. citizen(Lucky me! ;-) ), not a lawyer and I'm extrapolating Canadian law to the best of my knowledge. If a lawyer could confirm or deny what I'm saying...
If you plead guilty you cannot be given the death penalty.
Please allow me to refer you to this story in the LA Times (found through NTK.net) about grannies trading needlepoint patterns. Don't tell them there is a generation gap!
I was taken back when I heard that Metallica, Dr. Dre, et al where sueing Napster. Claiming that Napster amounts to widespread theft and stealing. (and they don't have enough money?) The copyright laws allow a "fair use" exception to individuals. Not only that but, the Audio Home Recording Act. It provides individuals the express right to make copies of copyrighted material, including music, and does not forbid the sharing of those copies in a noncommercial way.
In the past, there have been arguements over new technologies. Such as, the audiocassette recorder/player, the video cassette recorder, and even the player piano.
To recap the subject. Copyrighted file sharing is NOT illegal.
Have a nice day,
Are you telling me that you don't see the connection between government and laughing at people? - Interviewer
> It's funny how liberals will smoke weed yet at the same time yell at you for eating red meat or smoking cigarettes. So taking a drug that kills your brain cells is ok yet the occasional comsumption of steak is a sin. Sure smoking tobacco might take 15 years off your life but the last 15 are the worst any ways.
Whoa, did that poster say he was a liberal? Or that he was a pot smoker? Jeez, while we are on the stereotype bit, let's just say all conservatives are KKK members...it's pure bollocks but you just said "liberals will smoke weed yet at the same time yell at you...". I can name a few liberal I know who MIGHT do just what you said, but most I know don't fit that description. I can name some conservatives who are white supremacists, but that doesn't fit all of conservatism, now does it? I could also name Libertarians that are , but that wouldn't make ALL that way, either.
I, for one, am Libertarian...I am, of course, for the legalization of ALL drugs, and I don't do any of the (currently) illegal ones...I *am* a daily user/abuser of caffeine, I do occasionally enjoy ONE beer at a meal, and yes, it might be red meat at said meal. I don't have any problem with those who want to smoke cigarettes, either, and I think a lot of the anti-smoking legislation is just ridiculous and another example of Big Government stepping into areas it has no business (private businesses).
BTW, I enjoyed the Denis Leary reference there....
> how? would you like to see an ultra
> conservative bush government censor the net?
While the IDEALS of the conservatives and liberals
might be different, in actuality, once they get into office, its business as usual, no matter if they are Demopublicans or Republicrats....
Let me quote from the Libertarian web site (http://www.lp.org):
"This country is a one-party country. Half of it is called Republican and half is called Democrat. It doesn't make any difference. All the really good ideas belong to the Libertarians."
Hugh Downs, Co-host ABC-TV's 20/20, 31 March 1997
If you value your brain cells so much, you can't touch alcohol either (dude, it suffocates your brains). Besides, people don't smoke weed the way they eat red meat or smoke tobacco. I have never met anyone I considered perpetually stoned, but I've met plenty of people who are a) always smoking cigarettes or b) eating red meat at every single meal. Weed should be treated like alcohol, its effects are very similar in many ways (except that I've never met a dangerously violent stoned person). But, this whole thread is completely offtopic anyways.
It's the principle of natural selection. Kill off all the brain cells less suited to their environment and you'll be left with only the smart ones.
Your assumption is VERY wrong. If there were no copyrights and all code was open, whats to stop a programmer working for a company to throw the code out in the open?
The contracts that that programmer signed when he took the job, as well as trade secret laws and the simple fact that "THE COMPANY" has the ability to sue an individual into oblivion, even if they have no chance of winning.
Josh Sisk
Most people I know don't give a shit about piracy. They install illegit copies of software off discs they borrowed from friends and only buy things that require a CD to run (if they're not clever enough to crack) or if nobody they know has it. We're not just talking kids here, we're talking people in their forties even and up I know who do this. That's the majority of people I know. Sure, most of them pay lip-service to the whole anti-piracy idea but just do it anyway. (just like they all pay lip-service to speed limits but are almost always 10 over) Now if an entire protocol were squashed which has myriad legit uses (i.e. searching gnutella for hack103.zip, a free program, is much easier than searching the web) in the name of stopping an illegal activity most of us do anyway, there would be considerable outrage. It would be like illegalizing the web to stop porn, or outlawing usenet to stop hate groups, or outlawing SMTP/POP to prevent conspiracies and bombing plots and such via email. After all if they're going to argue that gnutella is intended to flout copyright then the web must have been intended for porn, usenet must have been intended for spewing hate messages and email must have been intended for secretly planning violent activity by that same logic, right?
Ever get the impression that your life would make a good sitcom?
Ever follow this to its logical conclusion: that your life is a sitcom?
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
Exactly. I know this place which makes fake IDs identical to real ones complete with the holograms except for one minor detail, and they are a registered business. That is their sole source of revenue and it's legal because a) it doesn't say "Driver's License" in the same place a real one says "Driver's License" and b) they are required to come with a sticker saying something about how it's just a novelty for entertainment only. Or some crap. Yeah, right. They know people are going to peel those off and cover up the place where the words "Driver's License" should be and use them illegally, but that's not their fault. It's your problem if you do that, you're the one breaking the law if you peel the sticker and pretend to be 21, not them.
Ever get the impression that your life would make a good sitcom?
Ever follow this to its logical conclusion: that your life is a sitcom?
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
Consider this: the very thing you are building a career on suddenly becomes almost valueless. That precious program or schematic or car or crop that you were planning on getting paid for crumbles to dust. Now what?
Just because the final product can be copied, perfectly and infinitely, does it make it right? I spent hours on the graphics on this page... what claim to control them do you have?
--
LoonXTall
~~~LXT~~~
Life is like a computer program: anything that can't happen, will.
It doesn't surprise me that a significant fraction of the human race will engage in theft when there is little or no chance of being caught. After all, illegal cable converter boxes are ubiquitous, and we've all seen footage of mobs looting storefronts during blackouts, riots, or natural disasters. So naturally I'm not at all surprised that hordes of high school and college kiddies have no compunction about abrogating intellectual property rights by using Napster to trade pirated music. What does surprise me are the howls of moral outrage that many of the aforementioned Napster kiddies are letting out, now that the site which has facilitated their criminal actions is coming under legal attack. The sense of entitlement that these freeloaders exhibit is amazing. In "defense" of their thievery, many of the sponges whine about how much money "greedy" artists and record companies are taking from them, as if someone were holding a gun to their head and forcing them to buy music. Others toss in irrelevancies like the claim that Napster ultimately helps, rather than hurts, legitimate music sales; whether or not this is the case, evidently the freeloaders don't believe that the creators and owners of intellectual property have the right to promote their copyrighted works however they see fit (whether or not this includes giving it away). I've always felt that a self-righteous freeloader is one of the lowest forms of scum. I just didn't know that there were so many of them around.
www.droppingdimes.com
I've always wondered, whats wrong with napster? Its basically a search engine, showing what computers have what mp3s. They've had search engines for html for a long time, and noone has complained, even though many html sites have illegal material. Mp3s arent illegal. People can be trading sound effect, comedy routines, or political speeches. What is so illegal?
what about a little program called iMesh?? they are based in israel. Why do you think the RIAA went after scour exchange instead of them??
I hear a lot of people on here going off and hiding behind the first amendment privileges to be able to download these songs. The thing is, these songs are not THEIR speech, the songs are the property of who made them. Don't get me wrong here, I really do like downloading songs off of Napster; however, making up lame excuses such as "They already have enough money" and "it's free speech" aren't going to get us as a community anywhere. -Rick
Some one said once (paraphrase)
"They are playing a giant Internet game of whack the mole" in reference to DeCSS. This software is NOT going away. You seem to accept in principle that software cannot be banned and then go on to ask if the government could ban a piece of software!
Gnutella would be very difficult to shut down, all it takes is 2 or more people with the software and some way to tell where to point it (IP address).
and possibly enact legislation to criminalize 'systems [and software] for the primary purpose of violating copyright',
even if you could ban software (or a protocol in the case of Gnutella) you cant prove copyright violation is its primary purpose, no more than you could prove a master key was for burglary.
Democracy is supposed to be "by the people, for the people". If a law is unpopular enough it will be changed.
People like to share with their friends and this is just going to get easier and easier. You can try and stigmatize copyright infringement but that will only reduce the impact but if they can share/bootleg then it will happen (does happen).
Paying for music/video/media will become voluntary, and media companies will have to accept that their place is marketing and distribution. Artists will still make money by putting on shows.
History has shown that technology renders certain industries unprofitable, how many blacksmiths do you know? How many horse and carriage drivers do you see?
Copyright will hopefully revert to giving an artist/author due credit for their works and prevent others from profiteering on the back of their work without paying them for it. But if someone produces something of so little worth people dont feel any moral obligation to pay for then that is just tough.
--
Change is inevitable, but is it for the better?
However figures out Micropayments and makes paying for music as easy as throwing a coin in street perfomers hat could get very very rich.
Thievery is inevitable it is the oldest profession i believe, but if society does not accept it as ok then most people will do the right thing and pay for what use.
The current unrealistic markup on less than 50cents worth of plastic, and the difficutly of making micropayments is not an excuse, but it is a reason
Looks like Havenco has surfaced at the right time... if everyone moves (napster, and gnutella)their location what can anyone do?
I wonder if napster keeps their HQ here but Co-lo's the servers at havenco does the gov't have the ability to shut them down? will the jurisdiction allow them to have a server off shore?
moo.
How will the stigmatization of copyright violation be received in the arena of public opinion?
This question begs the question, "How do we gauge public opinion to know what it is?"
Generally speaking, through the mass media.
Contrary to intuition, "public opinion" is largely dictated to the public by the mass media. There are very few "original thinkers" in the "unwashed masses". Which side do you think they'll come down on?
Now think about it: The mass media is by and large corporate-owned. They're going to manufacture "public opinion" pieces for your local news that will showcase those people who are already against copyright violations and omit or misrepresent the other opinions. You'll see "man on the street" quotes from dumb rednecks who think "well, if it's against the law, it must be bad." And you'll see officials from the MPAA, RIAA, the publishing industry, etc. The opposition will seem (or rather, be portrayed) as weird radical types.
These "news items" will pollute the minds of the undecided who by and large watch the news on TV every day and don't necessarily know much about the internet or computers and who don't much care about or know about concepts relating to Intellectual Property.
Then they'll have their majority, and they'll pass their laws to protect their interests, and win their lawsuits, and control everyone else. And once the laws are on the books, they'll be much harder to repeal or change.
It's not the rock stars telling kids they should shoot their classmates that we should worry about, it's the bought man in the anchorman's chair telling you that we should trust him.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
I don't think that this will happen. If they would be charging a fee for this GPL-violating software, they could hardly be anonymous.. At least I hope no one will ever invent an ifrastructure for paying people anonymously.
Liberty.
i dont think theirs any chace of a stigma becoming attached to piracy for two reasons. 1. It only hurts a small portion of the population, unlike drunk driving where everyone is a potential victim. 2. The other efforts were all grass roots and we normally dont get buddy buddy with the neighborhood musicain whos record just went platinum.
It's strange that people who usually pride themselves of being logical individuals don't see any fault with this "eye for an eye and tooth for tooth" capital punishment bullshit. The same people who scorn religious people by calling them illogical, hysterical and "stupid people driven by emotion instead of logic", show all these characteristics themselves when discussing death penalty. Killing the criminal doesn't bring your loved one back and if revenge is all you care about, you're completely driven by your emotions and should learn how to control them better.
I don't consider myself to be particularly logical. I don't consider any human to be particularly logical. There probably are no humans that could be very logical in the case of their loved ones being murdered by some scum-sucking asshole. Emotional control in such a case is not possible.
I would want the bastard to get a life sentence with no possiblity of parole (so that he/she won't be doing it again), but no, I would not want the guy dead. Yet another loss of life would only make things even worse.
So we as a society should pay on the order of $60,000 per year to keep the fuckwit locked up? Gee, no wonder the US is in so much debt. Until we force the inmates to do some sort of money-making activity, and making it just like out in the real world, where if you don't work, you don't eat, we shouldn't be locking up people who admit to killing. Hell, there are people who not only admit to it, but ask for the death penalty, get it, and still can't be executed for 10 years, because of the US's fucked up court system.
And I am sure you are aware of how many people in death rows have been recently released by new DNA evidence. If I remember right, in some state 50% of death row inmates were found not guilty...
So would it be OK to impose the death penalty in cases where the DNA evidence does not prove the person's innocence, and make the DNA testing be a pre-requisite for imposing the death penalty? If we do that, that's as close to 100% as we will ever get without actually having recorded the murder on videotape.
Arguments for and against the death penalty are each just as illogical and based upon feeling as the other. There's no point in calling supporters of the death penalty emotion-driven. My argument is simply that if there is no doubt, than the person in question does not deserve to continue to live, especially when it's on my dime.
-Nathan
Care about freedom?
Become a card carrying member of the GOA.
The point I was making is that stiffer punishment generally doesn't have any effect on the frequency of crime. Personally, I'm neither in favor of nor against the death penalty.
I registered my hate for Jon Katz
How about making execution the penalty for IP piracy? Since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty back in the 70's, has a single murder been committed?
I registered my hate for Jon Katz
My mom started using napster when she heard about it in the media a week ago when they were talking about shutting it down. All this media attention is probably *increasing* the use of napster!
--
syrynx
syrynx
Just because they don't call it a beta doesn't mean it isn't one.
The people with the moral problem are the parasites, not the creators of filesharing software.
--
syrynx
syrynx
Just because they don't call it a beta doesn't mean it isn't one.
Anyways, software like this will exsist. The story submitter is correct. Actaully this has always been around (hence ftp) but now it's avalible in a search (archie? hehe) style formated for simple easy individuals. The record companies could go after individuals that have the material on their hard drive, but how illogical would that be? How can they prove they didn't buy such and such a song and sue them. This would probably cost a lot more then the original $15 or so spent on the cd. It's kind of a no win situation. I'll admit, I do download some mp3s, but I don't know if there are many other people like me who will support the artits I buy. I've been playing piano and guitar in bands for quite a few years and even put out a couple demos. It's very hard to make money, espicially in the begining (ugh, touring in smokey clubs sucks) so I can see why a lot of big bands are being pissy wissy about Napster and other peer to peer software. A lot of the bands today are putting themselves on Napster and mp3.com and the such to promote themselves, but how much money can they actually pull in?
When you think about it, I payed $45 to get my Iron Maiden/Queensryche ticket this summer. I know it costs a lot of money to run the event, but seriosuly thinking, there are going to be around 15,000+ people there. I think their pocket money is going to be high... Tshirts for $30.. Oh welps.
Napster is evil to some, and a blessing from God to others. GNUtella the same.
Who's the black private dick, who's a sex machine for all the chicks?
Hehehe, Terence McKenna is dead, long live Terence McKenna. (Don't mod down just because you don't understand the reference)
-----------------------------
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
National Rifle Association (NRA): 3 million members.
:)
U.S. Farmers: 5 million farmers.
American Association of Retired Persons (AARP): 22 million subscribers.
Napster: 20 million users.
Here we go misusing stats again. Some points.
Napster has 20 million registered users. There are probably at least some people with more than one account.
Point two: I would say that at least 30-60% of the users of Napster are under 18. I just pulled the number from nowhere, but it seems close enough. Remember, in this country, people under 18 really don't matter. (I know it's wrong, but thats the way it is)
This may look like a troll, but its not, honest.
-----------------------------
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Let us hope that the 'powers that be' don't get the lame idea that HDs should be copy-taxed like they do for other things (tape, CD-Rs).
- j a c r -
This msg is brought to you by the letter 'W'.. for Worthless Wuss
anyone who is motivated can find info on ANYTHING they want to on the internet. Weather it be how to make crank, fision devices, even bio or chem warfare agents. I am certainly not saying that this is a good thing but lets be realistic. You can not stop the distribution of info. And anyone who does is holding back "innovation" (not like that word has any meaning after M$'s propaganda) and the natural progression of our collective knowledge. As far as credit card security, that is their problem. They are the ones vouching for the vailidity of the info. We should not be expected to take responsibilty for the credit card companies only liability. Oh, how I love ranting...
Still gathering sigs from all you fools!!!
My biggest question is 'Will the Linux/open source Napster clones be affected by the court ruling?'
For example, Gnapster gives you the option to either use the official Napster server or other mp3 servers. Are those servers dependant on Napster's upness, or will it be more of a judgement call whether to shut them down or not whn it comes down to it?
--------------
--------------
$_='hfflbwfsbhfzp vs';s/(^.{4})(.{7 })(.+$)/$3 $2 $1/
Cyber grans needle sewing industry
On the back of the Napster scandal, a terrifying new copyright-defying threat has appeared on the Internet. Sinister bands of underground grannies with a "hacker mentality" are needling the cross-stitch industry by trading their sewing patterns online.
,br> Although the problem should be easy to unravel as there are less thieving grannies than Napster users, the scale of the illicit trading still threatens to stitch up the sewing industry. The actions of the old age pirates have forced the needlepoint industry - which refuses to have the wool pulled over its eyes - to consider legal action: "This pierces at the heart of the needlepoint industry," said Jo Weiss, executive secretary of the International Needleart Retailers Guild.
"The people who are doing this seem to have a hacker's mentality and if necessary, we will show them that we mean business," added Weiss. But the underground oldies, who have cottoned on to the new technology, continue to use PCs, digital scanners and internet chat rooms to reproduce and upload the cross-stitch designs. They are saving themselves nearly £10 a pattern and proving that a stitch in time really does save nine.
Apparently, the pirates operate out of eleven or so groups on the net and there is currently little sign of the issue being patched up. "I signed up to one such group and within a few days I got sent so many charts that I couldn't download my email," said Jim Hedgepath, president of Pegasus Originals needlepoint designers.
Let's be honest, the issue of Napster and such isn't just cd prices and the RIAA. People have always been ranting about the evils of the recording industry, yet millions of them spend several hundred dollars per year buying cds. Morality and cost are pretty much a non-issue.
The main reason for piracy is simply that people want something for nothing. "Free music, you say? That sounds enticing." And thats where it starts. When given an option to get two identical products, one of which is free, the person will always take the free way. The only reason piracy hasnt hit big until now is simply the ease. Millions of people can use Napster and get music for free. Same goes for Gnutella. Cd sales may be up for now, but in time the ramifications will show and the RIAA will report drops in income due to piracy. And what happens for those 'protestors' who pirate because cd prices are allegedly too high? Cd prices go up because of piracy. Notice how Best Buy has raised its average cd price from $11.99 to $14.99 over the past year and a half (during the time when broadband internet access became more mainstream). People who pirate out of boycott-type ambition are deluding themselves: they want free music, and they know their piracy is hurting their cause in the long run anyway.
I don't understand the motivation for music piracy (aside from the free thing) anyway. You want to pre-listen to a Cd, go to Cdnow! They have good ~30 second Real Audio samples of the songs. Sure their prices may be $15 or so, but that is the market dictating that people are willing to pay for it. You want lower prices, blame consumers and economic principle! And if you want to listen to obscure music, the reason it is so hard to find is because the masses of people are not interested in hearing it. Sure, maybe I might want an Edsel, but I can't get one because people didn't like it and it did not stay on the market. Popularity does determine what is available.
I too, dislike the RIAA, but I am highly disappointed of the excuses being made to justify rampant piracy as some sort of noble crusade.
Emerson Willowick: Thinker, Writer, Human Being.
My parents love Napster! I can't drag them away from it. It's quite funny actually. They called me all worried the other day after hearing about the Napster shutdown on the news, I just pointed them to the napagator and gnutella webistes and all was better.
>I know that yes, I'd want the individual sites >taken down, but I'd also really want the search >engine gone as well. But thats the same thing as with RIAA - you can really, really want that thing gone, but that does not mean you have the right to do it. The problem, as I see it is having a court decision wether a pointer (as html link, or an item in some database) to an illegal thing is legal or not. My opinion is that the string http://www.badcriminals.org/stolenstuff.html does not violate the copyrights of anyone. However, it is pretty easy to show a demonstration to a technically incompetent judge, that one gets the illegal material 'through' the one that gives the link, not the one that provides the material.
I may disagree with your opinion, but I will defend to death your right to speak it.
Piracy has always been around and will always be. It's just that with Napster/Gnutella, the piracy is much more visible (20 million people using your software does attract attention). Therefore when the people suffering or claiming to suffer from piracy (i'd be happy to lose -30 billion dollars Mr. RIAA) have a much easier way of stiffling piracy (attacking a company such as Napster) by getting the politicians (fed to the bone with contributions) to pass stiffer laws and allowing the FBI to give anal probes to anyone suspected of having pirated material. Pirating should be a difficult thing, and making it easy with software only makes it subject to legal attacks.
Unfortunately, the indirect result of all this "legal" (or illegal - depending on your perspective) file-sharing software will be the diteriation of our liberties because of bureauFatCats in Washington under the gun from their big money contributors. Oh well... time to move to Canada [frown]
Help me through college please!
its basically a search engine, showing what computers have what mp3s. people can be trading sound effect, comedy routines, or political speeches. an important (and supported) part of society. i think it's possible to have both copyrights we need a more developed sense of ethics online distribute binary-only executable files of software for a fee.
- ---------------
i, for one, agree with this. but am i wrong? what do you mean by "trading", exactly? maybe i'm missing the point, but i think that's a bit spurious.
developers who wish to use sections of gpl'd code, but who don't want to the distributed nature of the network, with no central directory, will the spread, or to abuse the "copyright" system to prevent me and my investors from exercising our "fair use" of their work. to invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk . she has a point, however.
i'm not sure what you mean by this. i don't mean to flame anyone, but isn't this a personal issue? who are you to comment on how i should do this? the difference between one side of the argument and the other seems almost negligible.
-----------------------------------------------
alex chebowan (alexchebow@yahoo.com)
Anyone who thinks software or music or other creative works should be freely distributable on the net has never been in the business of selling software or music. Bands like Metallica are the rare exception -- most groups (my own included) are heavily exploited by the record industry, struggle to make a living, and deserve to make every penny they can off their art.
All that's needed to enforce copyright law, and catalyze the transition to a fair system of micro-royalties, is a reliable way to recognize an encoded piece of music. Someday releasing an album will also entail releasing a host of bots that scour the net looking for unauthorized, publicly available copies of the music.
The same AI technology used in 95% of current speech recognition systems, Hidden Markov Models, could be applied to this purpose. For those of you who have been subjected to a class in theory of computation, HMMs are a probabilistic version of deterministic finite automata. Probably the only feather in the cap of AI research after 4 decades.
Let your bootay take your mind for a ride.
The government/companies will ALWAYS try to shut down operations like Napster because they have no connection to the people who use it. "They" see this: Napster=People distributing copyrighted material=illegal=SUE THEM They ignore the simple fact that most Napster users still buy CDs, and many buy MORE than if they didn't have Napster, me for instance. And all this doesn't even have anything to do with my hate of copyrights and my contempt for millionaire music artists who probably don't even do as much for society than a lawyer, who earns significantly less. But now I'm straying off the topic. Fact is, this "revolution" of sorts cannot not be stopped. Napster was only so popular because of its ease of use. Another program just like it will spring up in no time, non-commercial and just as powerful. Much harm would be averted if the record companies AND the government would try to work with such projects not against them. "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em"
You can't fight Napster, and you can't fight ALDs, so if you can't control distribution, then you have to control how your work is released in the first place.
- Artists will charge premium ticket prices to attend their concert tour's opening night. If opening night isn't sold out, the tour will be canceled.
- Artists will charge a minimum amount before actually releasing a work. If an artist like Metallica or Stephen King doesn't get a minimum "donation" first, they won't release their work at all.
But here's the "modern twist": In the old days, Kings hired musicians, Bishops hired chorus masters, rich patrons commissioned special works, and theater owners requested paid performances. More recently, producers got to decide which movies, albums or books got published... and we all know how many dumb decisions have been made about books/ movies/ records which were or weren't made!(This probably won't actually happen all that often, but it might. But no matter what, high pre-payments for concerts will become mandatory.)
They might release one song or one chapter at a time---until the full price is paid---and they might release a free teaser or a partial sample here and there, but if they can't get residuals, then they'll want to get their money up front.
From now on, people will get to decide what gets published, and the free market will clean up what the past 100 years has dirtied. Lesser-known artists will command smaller prices, popular artists will command higher prices, and the free market will finally rule the industry.
(If we could only apply this model to professional sports. :-)
--
J.V. Hovig
To anyone who has seen how easy copying
copyrighted materials has become in the digital
age, it is clear that the current copyright
system cannot hold. Unless people are willing to
accept a police state where your internet link
and hard drive are constantly monitored.
The recording industry wants us to pay for something that we can get for nearly free at the black market. In a pure economic sense music or any other form of publicly available information has no value. It can be copied endlessly creating an endless supply. Copyright tries to create a market system for something in which the laws of supply and demand inherently fail. It does so
by giving the authors monopolies on their work.
This system can work to meet supply and demand. An author may have a monopoly on his work but if his price is too high or his quality is too low, we may choose a similar work from another author.
But there is a lack of supply in the music business. Competition by creating similar works is stiffled because similar samples or music
is viewed by the legal system as derived work.
Worse, the cartel of recording companies has
made the price for copyrighter music works too high. So consumers turn to an alternative market where the price is lower: the black market of privacy.
But copyright was originally invented to protec
authors from publishers that simply copied a work
and published it without paying the author. And
this is exactly what Napster has been doing. Some
say that Napster is not explicitly meant for
distributing copyrighted material. But that does
not matter. Napster knew from day one that most
of the music was copyrighted material. Napster's
business plan was to make money from copyrighted
music without paying the copyright holders.
And it is not proper to expect musicians to work for nothing.
I think that the monopolization of music by organizations like the RIAA is wrong. But the creation of a black market in music like Napster is doing is also wrong. Consumers and producers of music should work together instead of trying to exploit each other.
While we're on the topic of music copyrights, what does the RIAA own with regards to a piece of music? The only concrete thing they own is the transcription of the music on paper, just like an author owns the transcription of his thoughts on paper. Does the artist (or his record label) *own* the sound waves generated by the instruments creating the music? Of course not! Do they own the magnetic bias on a tape recording of their music, and how about the 0s and 1s on a CD recording of their music, do they own those? Obviously, the answer to these questions is no, in which case the artist/label can only own/control the instructions for playing the music, the sheet music and other transcriptions that allow a musician to play a particular piece. They do not own the sound that is created by those instructions, only the instructions themselves.
Ike
Zeko says: "I think taking legal action against Napster is like sueing gun companies for making the guns that were invovled in killing someone."
all right, except this: the gun companies do in fact need to be sued. The gun industry, arm-in-arm with the NRA, has lobbied against any sort of regulation on something which they mysticize as a sacred right, but which is no more a sacred right than cars or happy meal toys or processed meat.
unlike every other industry in the U.S., the gun industry does not release any important policy-making information about itself, including the quantity of each kind of gun made and sold, the ownership of all the companies making the guns, the record of specific defects in each kind of gun and the efforts made to correct them, and the quantities of foreign guns imported by whom into the U.S. The gun industry also does not release any transcripts of conversations occuring between itself and the ATF. In 1997 the CDC determined that in the 26 countries it studied, 86% of all firearms deaths under age 15 occured in the U.S.
But meanwhile the industry has continued increasing lethality while at the same time doing what every business does, which is attempt to maximize sales. They have succeeded. Child protection locks were available in the late 1800s. They were abandoned because they were not profitable.
the napster issue has also been distorted. metallica etc., instead of suing people, should be finishing their contract with their labels & then posting mp3s of their songs themselves, on the honor system (which seems to have worked just fine for stephen king). Metallica is really just a bunch of weenies for suing napster to begin with since, while napster may dig into metallica's profits, metallica has already dug into other groups' profits as a result of ASCAP's means of charting songs (which is statistically unreliable to begin with). (Jesus, metallica, what happened? that dollar bill melted your iconoclasm? nihilism be damned when capital comes knocking? think PHISH: free wheeling, unconcerned about piracy, shunned corporate radio...profitable anyway).
anyway so these ASCAP dorks listen to a few stations at a few random times to take a "representative" sample of songs being played & from there determine which artists get payed for their works. Chances are very slim that they will ever chart a song by less-recognized artists, though those songs are being played. those artists are just not paid for it. ASCAP has the funds to determine _every_ song being played in the U.S. simply by requesting setlists. They have not pursued that option. Furthermore ASCAP is lawsuit-happy & almost always wins (they even went up against the Girl Scouts, for signing songs around the campfire--& lost for once) but any money that ASCAP wins goes into the coffers, not to the artists whose copyright was violated. the argument that napster should be shut down is really just reactionary propaganda put out by big money to protect itself. much like the argument that the gun industry should be unregulated.
Let them sell their CDs for $5.99 too, and maybe I would buy one. Their artists get LESS than I do per CD. Their production values are worse than what I'm able to put out (in particular, see some of my very recent work like 'B17 Flying Fortress'- you don't get that kind of lushness and fullness out of pop CDs anymore, they are compressed to _death_). Nothing about what they're offering merits prices two and three times what I sell for- it's grotesque. I totally support anybody fighting these creeps by whatever means. And if you want to 'pirate' my mp3s too- *waves* have fun! You have my permission, not that you can't download them from me for free anyhow, and give me the page hit :)
People here are in for a rude awakening sometime soon, I reckon, because on the one hand they want to ignore the "bad" copyright held on music by the studios, and on the other hand they want "good" copyright law to be strong to protect the GPL and other similar licenses.
I don't think that's going to work out.
The whole apparatus of IP, copyrights, patents and trademarks is proving to be less and less viable as worldwide networking becomes all-pervasive, as available bandwidths rise and as the media converge with the Internet to provide everyone with access to everything without legal nor corporate controls.
That won't stop (short of a global police state), so we might as well bite the bullet: so-called "Intellectual Property" is dead, at least in the sense of being a commercial asset with a price tag, and destined for burial along with it are all the other bits of legal nonsense invented by lawyers with excess time on their hands. We're well on our way down the road towards global recognition that once information of any kind enters the public arena, it is thereafter totally public with no strings attached. The supporters of yesterday's worldview will just have to adjust.
As for the GPL, it wouldn't make much sense without copyright law, but I don't really think that would matter much. Our commmunity is bound together with informal bonds that are much stronger than the legal bonds of the GPL, which really is just symbolic for us. The community has strength in depth within itself, not merely strength because of the luke-warm support of lawyers and judges. I venture that the community will survive the loss of IP and copyrights and the other related nonsenses regardless of what happens on the legal front.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
I agree that suing gun makers is ludicrous. Guns don't kill people. People kill people.
BUT we should and do have every right to sue the tobacco companies. You think the entertainment industry is insidious and sneaky and without morals when it comes to MP3/screwing artists/etc? You ain't seen nothing - nothing - yet. In terms of morals, tobacco companies make RIAA and the MPAA look like they were sanctified by the pope himself.
You take for granted the fact that smoking is addictive, but people didn't always know that. Tobacco companies knew that for about 60 years and never told anyone because it was such a great way to make money. The jacked up the levels of nicotine in cigarettes to hook more smokers. They advertised to kids (Joe Camel?! Hullo?). They are just complete scumbags and slimeballs and the simple truth is that they've done everything short of forcing cigarettes into people's mouths. One wonders how many smokers took up the habit just because they were smoking cigarettes that were engineered to be more addictive - that figure has got to be in the millions. As far as I'm concerned RJR, B&W, and all the rest of the tobacco companies can rot in hell for all of eternity and no one would really be worse off.
--
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
Without copyright, those licenses wouldn't be needed.
Assuming copyright laws were repealed tomorrow, how would I make sure source follows binaries? Everything created would be in the public domain. Some person could distribute a version of Linux with all kinds of proprietary modifications they've made, but keep their modified source a secret. Since they didn't have Linux licensed to them under the GPL, this would be perfectly legit. I guess we could hire thugs to kick down this person's door and seize their source code modifications, so maybe we wouldn't technically need copyright licensing to enforce the terms of the GPL... =^) Anyway, this is why you see rms wanting to legislate enforced-sharing terms similar to the GNU GPL rather than just abolishing copyright.
> made my father a John Denver CD from Napstered
> mp3s in a spate of feeling guilty about breaking > his old turntable. He is really glad to have the
> music back
I take this to mean that he owns the records
of everything you've put on the CD.
What people don't seem to understand, and one
of the main points about the whole debate is
that it's LEGAL for him to have and use this CD
made from the MP3's of the songs he has a right
to use because he OWNS THE RECORDS. The royalties
were paid, and he's exercising his explicitly granted right to fair use by listening to the CD
you made.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
You're wrong, or at least your statement is misleading. The user can make any modifications they like, as long as they don't give modified binaries to anyone else. If you distribute your modifications to others, then you have to give them the source code if they ask. However, if you're writing and (presumably) selling modifications that you wish to keep private, you're not just a user, are you?
As for RMS and IP, I've heard him talk on the subject, and (IIRC, and to paraphrase) he feels that the whole concept of IP is wrong-headed. Rather than attempting to paraphrase him, go read some of his writings.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Buddy, I'm a Boomer, & I know the details about Napster very well thankyouverymuch. (And I figure if the foks at RIAA had a clue, they'd stop racheting up the prices on every CD, & make it worth people's whiles to buy high-quality CDs over free, but lower-quality mp3s.)
In a nutshell -- yes, there are a lot of clueless people over 30. But the majority of people under are also clueless. Remember this when you decide to change the world. It just might help you to suceed.
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
Yes, I know that, I was slightly inattentive with my words. However, I was right in spirit, whereas you just seem to know a few key words. It is obvious and well known that RMS has an axe to grind with more than just the concept of intellectual property. He hates the notion of closed source/proprietary code in general. They are not one in the same, and if you care, I'm sure you could find many statements of RMS to that effect.
The GPL explicitly extends beyond the mere lack copyright protection on that code, and even on the whole world in general. Put it this way: If I were to use a piece of GPL code in an IP-less society for a product that I sell, I would be required to distribute that source code. There is nothing inherent in the lack of IP that naturally incorporates the idealistic sharing that RMS envisioned. Afterall, well before formal intectually property rights really existed, many craftsman and artists relied on a variety of trade secrets.
I suggest that you go look at the intentions of both the original poster and RMS.
First of all, Napster is more than just software, a type of "device". Napster's success hinges on their centralization of servers--it is a SERVICE. It is this service that has made napster so easy for the average user to use, unlike IRC, ftp, usenet, and what have you. You type in the text of the songs or artists you want, and it delivers a half-decent host which serves it. It is precisely that service that RIAA has been attacking.
Many still argue, that, although they are a service, they have legitimate uses and should be left alone. Let us be honest here. Today, something like 99.99% napster traffic is used for downloading materials illegally. While many of napster's supporters talk about all the supposed benefits of napster to the "indy" artist, they remain extremely vague. Just how is napster supposed to help in this department?
Napster is certainly not a promotion vehicle. All you can do on napster is text searches. These searches are only good if you know what you're looking for. What then is their substantial contribution to society? Distribution? One cannot honestly claim this is a decent method, let alone a superior method, of distribution for the "indy" artist. There is no hardly any shortage of alternative means. There are hundreds of websites and services which would be all too happy to get this "indy" business. Mp3.com? Certainly. Geocities, certainly...there remain many others. What's more they can PROMOTE and MARKET material. These alternatives means can deliver the "right" material to the "right" person and faster than napster could ever hope to.
For those who pine for a napster-like, dumbed down interface, where you might get "random" (but still legitimate) music, napster themselves could offer it (RIAA has even stated that they'd drop the lawsuit if napster just got rid of the infringing material) if they weren't afraid to kill their sacred jaurez cash cow to-be. For one, they could offer a proof-positive service, where artists can register their materials as being "legit". If that seems too draconian, napster could employ other methods to simply be more responsive to complaints by the artists, and assure prompt removal of all discovered materials. Napster might even, if they actually desired and were intelligent enough (a big IF), employ some sort of checksumming scheme to atleast filter GUARANTEED copyrighted music out.
But napster does none of that. Why? Because they're not a non-profit organization who is out there to help the "indy" artist or any other cause, napster is a for-profit corporation that simply wants to profit. Napster profits whether or not the materials are illegal. While all they want is eyeballs (so they can be used as a marketing platform), the means to deliver those eyeballs is in providing the one thing that these more acceptable services do not provide, pirated music in large and accessible quantities. It is simply not in their interest to do anything other than continuing to facilate the piracy of music.
The question for the courts and society comes down to cost versus benefit. While there still may remain one scintilla of benefit outside the scope of the alternatives, weigh them against the costs--or atleast their illegality if you don't agree with "big music", copyright law, or what have you.
...to drag this out a bit more. A more realistic comparison for napster is if they offered to be a directory of...well let's say guns for hire--hitmen. Only this service costs a lot, far more than the yellow pages. What's more, it's generally a pain in the ass to use for any legitimate uses, say, for bodyguards. The one thing the service does provide is a degree of anonymity where law enforcement cannot reach it effectively. If this services has indirectly contributed to the murders of hundreds of people, and has virtually never been used by anyone other than a thugs, would you still support it even if all they do is push information around? Why should society shoulder these immense costs when the benefits are between slim and none?
PS: Minor detail: Bomb making instructions are not published in the encyclopedia, at least not in any major one. It's covered loosely and conceptually--not enough to actually build one. However, it is covered extensively elsewhere, much of it may well be available in your local library. Certainly any competent student of electrical engineering could build one if they had the materials.
First of all, Napster is more than just software, a type of "device". Napster's success hinges on their centralization of servers--it is a SERVICE. It is this service that has made napster so easy for the average user to use, unlike IRC, ftp, usenet, and what have you. You type in the text of the songs or artists you want, and it delivers a half-decent host which serves it. It is precisely that service that RIAA has been attacking.
Many still argue, that, although they are a service, they have legitimate uses and should be left alone. Let us be honest here. Today, something like 99.99% napster traffic is used for downloading materials illegally. While many of napster's supporters talk about all the supposed benefits of napster to the "indy" artist, they remain extremely vague. Just how is napster supposed to help in this department?
Napster is certainly not a promotion vehicle. All you can do on napster is text searches. These searches are only good if you know what you're looking for. What then is their substantial contribution to society? Distribution? One cannot honestly claim this is a decent method, let alone a superior method, of distribution for the "indy" artist. There is no hardly any shortage of alternative means. There are hundreds of websites and services which would be all too happy to get this "indy" business. Mp3.com? Certainly. Geocities, certainly...there remain many others. What's more they can PROMOTE and MARKET material. These alternatives means can deliver the "right" material to the "right" person and faster than napster could ever hope to.
For those who pine for a napster-like, dumbed down interface, where you might get "random" (but still legitimate) music, napster themselves could offer it (RIAA has even stated that they'd drop the lawsuit if napster just got rid of the infringing material) if they weren't afraid to kill their sacred jaurez cash cow to-be. For one, they could offer a proof-positive service, where artists can register their materials as being "legit". If that seems too draconian, napster could employ other methods to simply be more responsive to complaints by the artists, and assure prompt removal of all discovered materials. Napster might even, if they actually desired and were intelligent enough (a big IF), employ some sort of checksumming scheme to atleast filter GUARANTEED copyrighted music out.
But napster does none of that. Why? Because they're not a non-profit organization who is out there to help the "indy" artist or any other cause, napster is a for-profit corporation that simply wants to profit. Napster profits whether or not the materials are illegal. While all they want is eyeballs (so they can be used as a marketing platform), the means to deliver those eyeballs is in providing the one thing that these more acceptable services do not provide, pirated music in large and accessible quantities. It is simply not in their interest to do anything other than continuing to facilate the piracy of music.
The question for the courts and society comes down to cost versus benefit. While there still may remain one scintilla of benefit outside the scope of the alternatives, weigh them against the costs--or atleast their illegality if you don't agree with "big music", copyright law, or what have you.
...to drag this out a bit more. A more realistic comparison for napster is if they offered to be a directory of...well let's say guns for hire--hitmen. Only this service costs a lot, far more than the yellow pages. What's more, it's generally a pain in the ass to use for any legitimate uses, say, for bodyguards. The one thing the service does provide is a degree of anonymity where law enforcement cannot reach it effectively. If this services has indirectly contributed to the murders of hundreds of people, and has virtually never been used by anyone other than a thugs, would you still support it even if all they do is push information around? Why should society shoulder these immense costs when the benefits are between slim and none?
That's not entirely true. The GPL, atleast, tries to restrain the user from more than just claiming ownership over the source code. It prevents the user from extending and making their own private modifications of it, whether or not they file for IP protection...RMS evidently felt that the dangers of IP lurk not just in intellectual property protection.
So yes, RMS might very well disagree with you here.
I'm not so sure that that is an accurate statistic. I doubt napster even keeps logs of transfers, or if they're even capable of doing that due to the protocol. I could easily see that 13% as being the 13% of the songs OFFERED on napster as being legitimate. Perhaps RIAA chose to quote this number, because it was the only firm number they could provide. Even if Napster was the provider of that data, it still demonstrates for RIAA that napster is overwhelming used for piracy.
However, even if that number is entirely accurate, that does not necessarily mean napster offers a 13% compelling benefit for society. i.e., It's possible that the vast majority of the 13% are people who come to napster for pirated songs, but while they're there download legitimate items on impulse or simply because it's more convenient than using an alternative method at THAT instant. Much in the same sense that a beer store that sells booze to minors may make 20% of their revenues selling snacks and other munchies, heh.
Personally, I do not see why people, in the free software community especially, are so willing to just let mainstream media and business characterize all users of Gnutella, etc. as thieves and pirates (not to say that a large amount of those people are not on Napster, etc. though).
It is true that the free software movement is different in many ways from the free music debate. Free software supporters do not advocate piracy as a means to fight the big software companies; instead, free software supporters say essentially "make it yourself" and then the "it will be better" part includes both "free (as in speech)" and usually develops the "quality" aspect as well.
But how does a listener (i.e., user) of music (you can argue if this is information until you are blue in the face, but that is not the main point here) make his or her own music to replace that of the music industry? In this, the free music debate cannot be solved in the same way the free software debate can.
Like it or not, piracy is a more integral part of the "civil disobedience" aspect of the free music debate. Or at least it is at the moment.
Piracy can be replaced by the alternatives being proposed by sites like fairtunes.com. But that cannot happen if services like Gnutella are somehow outlawed.
So, we have to make our voices heard to support the continuance of services like Gnutella; as I see it, Napster has helped to draw attention to the free music debate but in all the wrong ways. There are very legitimate uses of the technology, but we cannot simply allow the terms such as "piracy" and "stealing" to continue in use since that undermines the entire host of alternatives to the RIAA.
If Gnutella, etc. are made illegal, then how exactly are these alternatives ever supposed to get off the ground?
SB
Editor, DigitalRenegades -- Give your opinions a permanence on the web; submit and make your voice heard.
Personally, I'm an avid try-before-you buy kinda consumer. I own a copy of every single thing I've ever pirated. And I believe that the biggest problem with the market today is the high prices that are charges for most things. I know this has been hashed over before, but that doesn't make it any less true. High prices mean less choice for the consumer, and are a big incentive for black markets (or their equivilent -- in this case, free piracy). This is not to say that lowering the prices with fix everything; there are always people who won't even pay a dollar if they can steal it instead -- even if the time they invest in stealing it cost them more than a dollar.
Anyway, my point is that data piracy will always exist as long as it has a reason to exist (high prices, national restrictions, and egos). And killing any number of methods of delivery can't destroy them all. (You can always have stuff FedEx'ed to you. What are they gonna do? Outlaw mail?)
--
--
Look, I know the road is rough, and the work is hard; But we'll burn every bridge as we get to it, OK?
Um, well, see, fundamentally our society ISN'T any different from those of the 'animal kingdom', which, you may have noticed, we belong to.
Go hang out with the gender studies people, the behavioural sciences people, the biology people, and the psych people for a bit, and you will be trully suprised at how much behaviour is based upon Sexual/Fight-Flight/Phermonal/Primate Group interactions.
Put simply, thats it. Everything 'else' that makes us 'different' is just a result of scaleing the intelligence up in the system (and simillar traits can be found in the cetaceans, so we aren't all that different, we just have hands, something they must find terribly amusing)
And if you think there is a differance between force and cooperation, you don't understand behaviour.
-- Crutcher --
#include <disclaimer.h>
-- Crutcher --
#include <disclaimer.h>
The GPL and BSD licenses exist to use copyright laws againts themselves, to prevent people from closing up and claiming source ownership.
Without copyright, you dont NEED protection from copyright, so your argument does not hold.
-- Crutcher --
#include <disclaimer.h>
-- Crutcher --
#include <disclaimer.h>
>the entire basis of civilization rests on
>respecting the desires of others _without_
>coercion.
And silly me, I thought that civilisation was an emergent property of each individual's attempts to maximize their scarce resource allocation and genetic proliferation.
Hate to tell you this, but force is, and always has been, and probably always will, be part of this system.
-- Crutcher --
#include <disclaimer.h>
-- Crutcher --
#include <disclaimer.h>
Piracy will die down because it's not worth the hassle to save $.20.
There is no hassle. People who download GB's of music without paying for it will always have ways to actually find stuff. Why should they start paying? Not that I support that idea, but why should they suddenly change their mind?
There is no way to easily find out where downloads are illegal and where not. As long as that does not change police will not be able to fight piracy. Hence, no hassle.
Readings don't pay as much as you might think. And most authors don't get to perform them -- only a select few big names. Same goes for musicians. Their only income source from their art is through the sales market.
what about a place like Recycle Records here in Denver? I can go up to them, and sell my CD to them for, say $6. I can also buy CD's that other people have sold to them. The artists aren't making any money off these transactions. If all i'm doing is paying for a "site license" for my music, why am i allowed this particular courtesy?
You're selling your license to listen to that music. In much the same way, you can do the same with software. Or books.
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
When you talk about ripping a song to mp3 and then redistributing it, you're talking about intellectual property...a concept that is, basically, dumb. Are you paying for that CD, the right to do with it as you wish? Are you paying for the right to listen to that CD? Does the CD actually belong to you in that instance? What if i were to give that CD to a friend? what then? Everything get's convoluded with IP...and it's just crap. Pay the artist for a service, not for an idea.
You're paying for the right to listen to it. That's all. That's how IP works - without an explicit contract assigning copyright to you, all you can do legally is read/listen/use that material - you can't redistribute it.
Everything get's convoluded with IP...and it's just crap. Pay the artist for a service, not for an idea.
So presumably, if an idea takes months to come to fruition, it's not worth anything to you? Say you spent two years coming up with a novel? Is it then worthless? (in the material, monetary sense). How do you provide a "service" then?
Would you care to suggest what "services" an artist/writer could provide as an alternative to the current model?
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
You wrote:
...
redistributing credit card numbers == redistribution of stolen goods.
... and then you wrote
I think it's fair use to distribute copyrighted material for non-commercial purposes. Why does a larger scale make bootlegging any diferent?
Don't you feel at least a little hypocritical putting both of these sentences together in the same post?
Believe it or not, but the redistribution of copyrighted material without the consent of the copyright owner is THEFT. Therefore you are dealing in stolen goods.
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
let me guess. you're a white heterosexual man, right? never been mugged for coming out of a "wrong" club or feared for your life because of the color of your skin?
:)
Actually, taking your example one step further... I fit the description above, and have feared for my life because of the color of my skin.
Though I must admit to feeling ambivalent about the concept of tearing down hate sites -- there's freedom of speech on the one hand, and then there's the fact that they're completely warped and fucked up on the other.
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
You are blurring the line between *information* and copyrighted material. Bombmaking instructions, names/addresses, and even credit card numbers are NOT copyrighted nor are they protected from mass distribution by the copyright laws of the US. While other laws could be applied in certain instances (i.e. distributing witnesses addresses could be considered unlawful endangerment while credit card number distribution is obviously protected by anti-fraud laws), to put Napster in the same boat as someone trying to distribute legitimate information is just wrong.
Naspter is being shut down BECAUSE it *is* doing something illegal, regardless if you feel it is not. Knowingly trafficing copyrighted materials over your network is a crime. Even ISPs are liable if copyright violations are pointed out on their resources and they STILL do not remove them. Freedom of speech does not equal freedom to break the law or aide and abet those who are breaking the law.
The argument that MP3s are "information" will fail miserably in court which is why Napster's attorneys haven't even bothered to pursue it.
Suggesting that each violation be considered on a case by case basis is ludicrous. We have copyright law in place so that artists, publishers, or whomever owns the copyright is PROTECTED from the get-go. They should NOT have to track down each infringing action to have it removed especially when it's proven in court that Napster's only viable use is a criminal one (which will happen in the coming months, you can be sure of that.)
I'm considering helping in the development of a Mac Gnutella port or starting a Mac OS X Gnutella port. The main thing holding me back is the question of whether it's really the right thing to do. No matter how evil the recording industry is, artists don't get a dime from Gnutella/Napster/Freenet/Blocks. They do from the recording industry, even if it's not very much.
What we need is a site where we can download MP3s for reasonable micropayments ($.20 - $1.00), with half the cash going to the artists. Piracy will die down because it's not worth the hassle to save $.20. People also don't really want to rip off artists, and it will be a lot harder to rationalize when you know every pirated MP3 is money out of the artists' pockets.
Is anyone else tired of Napster discussion being beaten to death? Nothing new comes from these new threads, every argument has been made, every position explored. All there is to be done now is to perhaps share different points of view with people who haven't heard it all ten THOUSAND times, and wait patiently.
--
"Could copyright violation become stigmatized, much as smoking has, or could such an action be the final straw that turns public opinion against the large corporations once and for all?"
Copyright violation is (at least in my experience) and *should* be stigmatized. Just as stealing and murder. But as such, there are mitigating circumstances (stealing food because your family is starving, killing in self defense). To my knowledge there are a lot of people who like the flexibility of MP3 and are only using it because there *is* no way to legally buy the ones they want. Of course there is a majority of lamers who say they're doing it for the same purposes but just want warez. In any case, MP3 needs to be legitimized and business models incentivized so people don't *have* to steal/copy/copyright infringe.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
There's a cosmological concept that's been mapped onto socialogical theory that (I think) applies here. When the rules break down, either in physics or in society, you have a singularity... no one knows what's on the other side, what the new rules will be. Whether it's an event horizon or the future in a time of great change, all that you DO know is that things are going to be radically different.
With communication technology practically nullifying all concepts of ownership of information, if we already aren't in a societal singularity, we soon will be.
'Intellectual Properties' are uncontrollable in the wild. To base an economy on them is just stupid.
no need. I'm a humble son of god. No reason to think I'm better than most of creation just because I AM, silly.
Bad things often happen to good people,
It is up to them to see that they remain good.
because they have my blessing. Yes, I, the current incarnation of Jesus, fully advocate file sharing utilities. it is not for you to own, but for you to share with your fellow man. If you buy a cd, it is your obligation to share the .mp3s such that I might decide if I also wish to buy that cd. Sharing is devine, trust me, I would know. Ditto (yes, christ says ditto. Have a problem with that? heathen.) software and pornography.
Now, I know that last statment might have set a few of you off. But hear me out. The CHURCH is against pornography, not me. I hung out with a whore on my first go-around, for My sake. Sex is pretty okay, if you ask me, and I understand that you are not full of Devine Grace, such as myself, and cannot readily get a date with whom you choose. And like the true son of god, I forgive you for that. So thus I have provided pornography and lubricants, such that you might be satisfied until that time when you might "socialize" again.
Do not berate your fellow man, if he chooses his own loving over the loving of others, for there is wisdom to be found therein. But lose respect for the man who does not share his pornography, his music and his software. This is my word.
Bad things often happen to good people,
It is up to them to see that they remain good.
The key here is education.
One man's education is another man's propoganda.
The shareholder is always right.
What are you talking about? Music is dirt cheap in this country.
All that it will take for opinion to turn against the free music crowd is for them to be seen as criminalistic freeloaders. Considering that a.) MP3.com has settled with most of the RIAA and will soon reopen it's My.mp3.com service (with paid options to offset the million$ in settlement options) b.) The major RIAA labels are all rushing to create flat rate music subscription services and c.) Napster will eventually need to make money to recoup all that VC funding and the according to Webnoize's survey over half of current Napster users would willingly pay $15 a month to use the service.
Eventually there will be several different ways to get music online and pay for it. Similar to the way that the MPAA fought VCRs and now there are many places we can rent videos. Currently people who watch movies for free (i.e. movie pirates, har har har) are considered freeloaders and criminals. It is not hard to conceive then that Gnutella users will become the w4rez d00ds of the music industry.
Napster already has a write-to-Congress page. Gnutilla probably should have one, too.
In the end, popular music will probably be free, but it will have ads. Look for big growth in product placement.
I think taking legal action against Napster is like sueing gun companies for making the guns that were invovled in killing someone. The gun companies didn't fire the gun, the person who aqquired the weapon did. It was the individual's choice to pull the trigger. Same with smoking. They want to sue the tobacco companies for making people smoke. Now this is more of a grey area because smoking is addictive, BUT.....the individual had to at one point make the choice to start smoking in the first place. Napster has plenty of legal applications. Why sue Napster when it's the individuals out there that are making the CHOICE to distribute copy-righted materials. It's the individuals the record companies should be going after, not the organizations that provide the service. I mean what's next.....are they going to shut down the police services because some currupt cops make the choice to abuse their powers for illegal ends? People make choices......they are the ones accountable. Quit trying to blame everyone else.
"When you gotta shoot, SHOOT! Don't talk." Tuco Benedicto Pacifico Juan Maria Ramirez
This might explain religion... ;-)
Instead of worrying so much about the piracy thing, how bout a way to prevent it? i know there are some very skilled people out there that can get around alot of it. Instead of stoping software that is so nice as a sharing tool, why not focus on keeping your software safe?
Shhh, it's just the noizes in your head.
I think services like Napster, Gnutella, et al are the agents of change (I like the term 'creative destruction' that was coined to describe the phenomenon). The fact that the Napster shutdown threat has caused a huge run on Gnutella and other sharing services is evidence that it just isn't going to be possible to reverse course; people have gotten accustomed to getting what they want, when they want via the net. The only question remains is what will the corporations whose revenues are affected going to do to counter the trend, or at least adapt to it? My personal vote in the music realm would be for an all-you-can-eat service. I'd like to be able to listen to any song ever recorded in return for some monthly fee. I'd be willing to part with some reasonable sum in return for not having to deal with the flakiness of a Napster or Gnutella.
Whatever emerges, the world of intellectual property has changed irreversibly.
I forgot to include a link to this story in the NY times (free registration required). It talks about how German publishers are trying to stop the sales of books at a discount. It's just one more example of how the net is tearing down the old ways of doing business. And I think it's a good thing to, once in a while, clean out the old, ossified structures and replace them with something fresh.
Just couple of points I thought I'd share:
1. Napster is not shut down.
2. Your logic has a flaw. Posting bomb making instructions, credit card numbers, etc. is illegal; most will agree on that. But many will argue that such distribution of songs is not. At least it hasn't been proven yet. There are legal, fair uses to copyrighted material, and other laws that will be tried in court. You are assuming that this case has already been decided against Napster and equating it with other criminal offenses.
Assumptions are your worst enemy.
Copyright is not a binary thing -- either on or off. There is a lot of gray area as to what constitutes fair use, and what rights copyright holders can restrict the public from having. It's not about whether copyright is good or bad -- it's about where the copyright holder's rights end and fair use begins.
This distinction is not trivial. It is probably one of the most important issues that we have to resolve as we enter the networked world.
The question of what constitutes fair use will not be answered until it is asked -- i.e., until it is raised by events on the ground. Napster raises these issues in ways that were probably inevitable. Is it legal for me to have friends over to listen to my new Metallica CD (leaving aside for the moment whether doing so will allow me to keep my friends)? I think most of us would say yes. So how does that right translate to "virtual" space? Can I let them listen to a copy of it? Can I stream it? Maybe I can and maybe I can't, but the question will not be answered until I try and someone else challenges me on it.
Also, Napster does have legitmate, lawful uses. Should it be shut down or otherwise hindered to prevent the unlawful uses it also enables? Again, this issue is not just restricted to Napster; it applies to many other technologies that have emerged in the last few years and will emerge in those to come. Remember: RIAA tried to prevent Diamond Multimedia from selling the Rio for similar reasons.
It's not about being "for" or "against" copyright law, though the RIAA would probably like the issue framed that way. It's about what kind of copyright law we want to have, and what kind of solutions we can come up with to resolve the fuzzy bits. The Napster case is part of the national conversation that we are having to try to settle the issue.
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Give me liberty or give me something of equal or lesser value from your glossy 32-page catalog.
If a Napster shutdown is mandated, I will use Gnutella. If Gnutella is forced down, I will use the next flavor of the month to get music for free. For those of you who are wealthy enough to get financially raped by the RIAA, I encourage you to continue doing so. I am not, and thus, I will not relent in my search for stolen music. I do not encourage anyone else to follow my lead, but do encourage you to consider exactly who is profiting each time you choose to purchase a CD, as it is certainly not the musician to any notable degree.
This is a world where each individual must look out for number one, which is why I simply don't give a shit about any of the anti-pirating sentiment. If artists, in the process of looking out for themselves, decide to quit making music due to people like myself, I truly feel sorry, but that does not move me any closer to justifying the price of legitimate media. I was thoroughly screwed on the 100 CDs I purchased, some for as much as $30, before pirating became as simple as it currently is, so I have absolutely no regrets over performing the same sexual act on the recording industry. The RIAA, due to the disgusting percentage paid to the artists themselves, are essentially a pimp in this situation, and I can't remember the last time anyone was chastised for financially jerking a pimp around. I do not fault the RIAA for their ongoing attempts to curtail my activity, as it is a sound business move, but there is simply no way to stop people like me now that the word is out. I will never go back to paying inflated prices for music.
I am so tremendously sick of this moral and legal debate. Go ahead, call me part of the problem, because it may be true, but I can't afford to care. Ideally, I would love to walk to the music store and purchase several CDs at two bucks a piece, but that will never happen, so I will steal it until I simply can steal no more. I will be happy to send a buck to the artists themselves, should they ask that I do so, because I appreciate their art. In that situation, I will be paying for the priveledge of enjoying their creation. The buck that I send is far more than they would receive from their pimp if I had purchased the music legitimately. I seriously doubt that any role the RIAA actually plays in the production or marketing of an album is worthy of a 99.5% cut into the profit.
To summarize, screw the RIAA because they screw everyone else first. How would you sheep respond if big, bad Microsoft paid one slave laborer $0.10 an hour to code product they then sell for $100? You'd hit the roof, yet portions of the same group suddenly get all high-and-mighty in a situation like this. To that segment of the Slashdot population, I say to hell with you. This is the wrong place for anyone to be taking a moral highground.
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Slashdot: News For Zealots. Stuff That's Hypocritical.
I see this as the next huge conflict between our government and the people. Just as the War on Drugs has tried to stop something that millions of people do, the War of Copyright will be the next tool of control of the American people.
Whenever the Government "cracks down" on something that is illegal that a huge subculture practices, bad things result. What it gives them is the tool to control everything that almost everyone does. It will be a war that the Government doesn't want to win. By criminilizing the acts of large groups of people, it gives them the tools they need to supress the members of the group that speak out against the Government.
It isn't even about copyright anymore. It's more about the government and control of individual rights. Think about it.
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I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Last time I checked the BRG people are doing exactly that! I couldn't get TRW to remove all of my info if I tried. And they share it will all of their fellow evil corporate empires. Sure they require money, but they have plenty. They think a mere "privacy statement" is enough reason for trusting them with our info. I dont know them I have never met them and I do not trust them. Yet they have info on us that most people wouldn't share with their mom. My spending habits are none of their business, yet it is their bussiness somehow. How did we let them pull this wool over our eyes? BRG sell and share any info they want, when we share info and it is not in their best interest it becomes illegal. I just saw a FRY's Electronics a cd with "Info on 10 million consumers" for $10. I bet they didnt ask those 10 million people for their permission. Not to mention paying them anything for their info. Enough of my ranting
Still gathering sigs from all you fools!!!
As hard as it might be to believe, the vast majority of people I deal with don't really care either way. They don't see how it affects them. They just assume it's the same people that steal software (possibly true) and that they'll get into trouble for it and it will end.
We're unlikely to get favorable public opinion in the near future. Big business will win this battle, stigmatize the whole process of "free music" downloading, and it'll continue essentially as it is now. I don't think it's comparable to smoking...it's comparable to smoking pot. It's illegal, that doesn't slow down anyone that wants to do it.
My two cents at least...
Well, there is a long history of copyright law in the US. Its initial intent comes from the US Constitution.
To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;
This was initially interpreted fairly narrowly, and the time of copyright monopoly was comparably short. In the last 100 years, the copyright monopoly period has been extended and extended, primarily on the behalf of large corporations like Disney (who wants to continue monopolizing original Mickey Mouse films).
The original intent of copyright law - to PROMOTE the release of material for eventual public domain status - has been corrupted. Copyrights no longer expire. Technically they do expire, but copyright law has been extending copyright periods faster than they can expire. Thus, the copyrights no longer pass into the public domain at all.
The digital technology can change all of that. Copyright holders of a medium amenable to digitization, such as movies and music, are scared. Previously, I could copy a CD to a tape and give it to my brother. These actions are essentially unprosecutable and unpreventable in a society with some privacy rights.
Now, in a digital age, I can rip a CD and email it to my brother. This action is also unprosecutable and unpreventable (assume I use PGP on the email). This underscores the movement of a digital copyright into public domain. It is unstoppable on technical grounds.
Napster and Gnutella facilitate the same actions - but on a much broader level. So they raise the issue - how does copyright law apply ??? And how should it apply ??
A bigger issue still is the record companies. They provide almost no digital internet distribution even though there is a market of more than 20 million consumers. How scared must they be of digital distribution to do that ??
They will eventually adopt a small pay per download market. They have to. It will largely calm down the napster commerce. And napster/gnutella can still be used on uncopyrighed materials like concert tapes, or copyrighted and approved materials like band demo songs.
Fundamentally, sharing music or moveies with one's neighbor is not something you ought to be prosecuted for.
Every single person who reads this post has probably been in a situation where someone else took advantage of them. It doesn't matter if it hurts directly or not (witness the Slashdot/Hellmouth debacle), people don't like it when their things are used in a way they don't like. Upsetting other people because you can get away with it is the enemy of civilization.
So, from a societal standpoint, it is important that it be made as difficult and stigmatized as possible. Of course it can't be stopped; what can? Nonetheless, this is just social darwinism. Get used to it.
There's a whole lot of emphasis on Napster at the moment, but the stakes are much higher than that. Consider the lawsuit that got launched at the folks that wrote PAN not too long ago. These people are after any and all means for transmitting information. Taken to a logical extreme, many of the core features of the Internet are at stake, since any of these tools can be used to distribute copyrighted works.
If a Usenet reader that decodes binaries is a violation of copyright, how much longer before other apps fall prey? FTP? HTTP? If it's found that the means by which binaries are distributed on the Internet is itself a copyright violation, how long before the Internet itself is the target of this kind of lawsuit.
This is a war folks. This war is about who controls the keys to the gates of information. MP3's are nothing more than the initial battleground. The music industry is scared as hell right now over possibly losing the 50 year absolute control they've enjoyed over this art form, with the movie industry also bringing up the rear guard. They have the legal, monetary, and political backing to turn that fear into something destructive against anything that threatens them.
If Napster falls to these gate keepers, you can damn well be assured that they are only to be the first. For those of you in the "I don't collect MP3's, so I don't give a crap" I guess we'll just wait for you to jump on board when something that does concern you eventually does fall under attack. Of course, by then it'll most likely be too damn late.
The line must be drawn here. This far. No further.
It's been interesting to see my parents' reaction to Napster. My mother at one point referred to it as "anarchist," which really cracked me up until I thought about it. She has a point, however. Napster (and Gnutella) are a bunch of people doing what they want regardless of existing law (be it correct or not, I don't want to get into that debate). I made my father a John Denver CD from Napstered mp3s in a spate of feeling guilty about breaking his old turntable. He is really glad to have the music back, but he is still pretty nervous when it is playing. Kind of like he is afraid he will get caught. All of this goes to show that while the world is still run by boomers, Napster will never really become an accepted mainstream critter, and the corporations will continue to win legal battles. B
"Fifty million Americans can't be wrong," said Rep. Billy Tauzin. Gore - 50,999,897 Bush - 50,456,002
These sorts of problems will continue for as long as future generations grow up believing that they are entitled to those things that previous generations had to work for. To read some of the newsgroups and forums (especially the one at http://forums.napster.com), so many of those people truly believe that they're doing absolutely nothing wrong, that they're not stealing from anyone (because bits are not "tangible"), and that in fact they're happy in punishing an industry that reaped the benefits of a prosperous economy.
The key here is education. The recording industry and/or artists need to find a way to explain to people that through their actions, they are indeed stealing. Intellectual property has real value, and when it's copied around with no compensation for the creator of that work, it's value is decreased.
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
Without copyrights, tools such as the BSD license and Gnu Public License, which allow open source development to happen with some modicrum of protection and safety, would not be possible.
I think it's possible to have both copyrights and relative freedom of information, and we need both. While information may "want to be free", we need a more developed sense of ethics online if we want other beneficial aspects of copyright to remain.
What's wrong with "copyright violation becom[ing] stigmatized"? I think this would be a good thing. Big corporations would have less of a hair trigger when it came to the net, the door would be more open for a legitimate micropayment system (since it would no longer be the case that 99% of the audience wants/knows how to go it for free), and so on.
If you think copyright law is a bad thing (Disclaimer: I don't), then try to get the law changed. Don't just break the law and wait for someone else to change it for you.
to freely distribute information? So many of us balk at the shutdown of Napster; what if Napster had been distributing bomb-making instructions?
Would it have been okay to shut them down then? No? What if it were used to distribute the names and locations of people in the Witness Protection Program (That's in America, I don't know if other countries have something similar)?
or, while we're at it, what if Napster was being used to distribute your credit card number?
Napster wasn't shut down because it did anything illegal, it was shut down because in fervantly protection free speech, it failed to provide a reasonable system through which someone could request the removal of material that was harmful to them. True, the only people that were "harmed" were big and rich and greedy, but that doesn't mean that only BRG people *can* be hurt. If you had awakened one morning to find your name, address, phone number, cc #, and photos of you and your wife in bed being distributed through Napster, how would you have gotten them removed? Who would you have contacted? You would have had no options to solve the problem.
Systems like Napster are great, and the freedom they provide is an unarguably nessecary component, but there has to be some system to address the objections raised on a case by case basis.
Judge Pag, the Learned, Impartial, and Very Relaxed
Napster wasn't shut down because it did anything illegal, it was shut down because in fervantly protection free speech, it failed to provide a reasonable system through which someone could request the removal of material that was harmful to them.
/easiest/ protocol to deal with individual users on who were acting up. So you see any of these four major protocols is worse than napster. Napster was shut down because it's /primary purpose/ was exchange of mp3's, a majority of which were copyrighted, a majority of those by RIAA clients.
Sorry, that just isn't true. If it were, then email, irc, usenet and the web would all have to be shut down. To go to your example, I could post bombmaking instructions to any of them without being permanently removed. I could be using an anonymous remailer for three of them and for irc, they could ban my IP from the server but I would probably be at the library and could just go to one of the other myriad libraries in the area. Or I could take advantage of the fact that my ISP uses dynamic IPs and use a diff. username each time, but then I risk getting reported and tracked so I would prob. do the library thing. Napster was actually the
BTW photos can't be put up on Napster. have you ever even used the fscking service on which you are commenting? You can put mp3's in your directory for d/l and there are chat channels where you can type stuff. That's it. IRC is 100x more dangerous. Also if you didn't notice large numbers of ppl w/ mettalica songs were systematically removed from the system at one point. How hard would it be to do that to people doling out credit card numbers, as well as logging their IP to report to their provider? You can't hide behind a wall of anonymity with napster, at least not without being seriously being traceable, the way you can with other protocols. So then the law tracks them down and prosecutes them. Whereas we know of people distributing credit card numbers elsewhere online who haven't been caught.
Ever get the impression that your life would make a good sitcom?
Ever follow this to its logical conclusion: that your life is a sitcom?
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009