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Slashback: Universities, Piecemiel, Yakkin'
Allegedly U.S. $299, allegedly end-of-year, allege, allege. Good news for those of us equipped with the quaint alternative to Palm Computing's organizers, even if less than impressed by most combination PDA / phone attempts -- InaneBoy writes: "Handspring's got a bunch of pictures and details of their new 'Visor Phone' Check it out! Super-keen!"
Of course, hemos is right -- there's a reason that most phones aren't as wide as your average PDA. This one looks like a reasonable -- if expensive -- way to combine the two items, especially if it will work with the combination mic / speaker earbud things. (But shouldn't the people making Springboard modules be a little busier with my GPS reciever?)
Plus, many colleges have declined to ban copying machines, tape recorders and ethernet. carlocius writes: "It appears that my college, Michigan State University, just handed Metallica and Dr. Dre another loss in their attempt to get Napster blocked on large Universities. MSU's administators stated that the Acceptable Use Policy of the university already covers copyright issues and there is no reason for Napster to be banned before a trial. GO STATE!!!"
Likewise, jellings writes: "The University of Pennsylvania joined the ranks of leading universities who are refusing to shut down access to the Napster on their campus, according to an article from the university press. U Pres. Judith Rodin said that "banning the Internet service would go against the University's educational mission by denying students freedom of inquiry and expression" and pointed to the Digital Millenium Act for further justification, saying that limiting access is not her responsibility ("Internet service providers cannot be held accountable for illegal activity on their networks if they are unaware of the activity"). Although the awareness of the activity of the issue may be questionable, it is certainly good to see a big U not yielding to the demands of Dr. Dre & Metallica ..."
The list of schools refusing to buckle under keeps growing; campus admins and sysadmins seem justifiably adamant about letting their policies be dictated by corporate vulture groups. Bandwidth reasons may be another story entirely, though.
Of course, not everyone has the awesome power of ResNet behind them ... ca1v1n writes: "The awesome power of the record labels has come through again. The Offspring have cancelled their plans to distribute their next album for free, after legal action and the threat of a lawsuit from Sony music. Yahoo! news has the scoop. So much for protecting the artists' interests."
An enquiry into establishing a curve of electronic book sales ... Triumphant former astronomy student jamie points out this CNN story on the continuing book experiment by Stephen King, who is still selling his novel online. Here's a telling snippet:
...since the first installment's release July 24, the percentage of readers paying for their downloads has dropped from 76 percent to less than 70 percent for the second installment. Part three goes up on Monday.jamie points out that 70 "but he's giving us part 3 anyway. The more telling figures: 172,004 people had paid for part one and 74,373 people had paid for part two."
maomoondog pipes in: "Apparently, King's company is upset that too few of the downloads are being paid for. Stephen King comments on the progress here. Personally, I'm impressed that 70% of the downloads are being paid for. With as low a per-item cost as a text download is, the author should really clean up in this sort of arrangement."
If you're one of the 172,004, liked the story, but are not part of the 74,373, please consider joining the second group on jamie's behalf, because as he says: "It's actually not a bad story and I want to see how it ends :)"
Creepy news... the man that hit King with a van was recently found dead in his home.
VA screwed you?
Cool. I'm gonna buy some shares.
Fuck Propaganda. And fuck BJP.
Hardly. Amnesty International and various other organizations attempt to play off your guilt by sending you something and then asking for a donation... and people respond, because geez, they've already given you something, so that means you really owe them something, right?
Sorry, no - please play again. I used to contribute to Amnesty International and a couple of other non-profit organizations that I thought did good work, until they decided that...
At that point, they didn't see me as a contributor - they saw me as a mark, someone they felt free to try to pressure into financially assisting their cause. So I stopped responding. Sooner or later, they get a clue, and send out a "The world still needs your help..." letter, which I also ignore... and soon after that, they leave me alone and move onto some other sucker who is willing to be badgered and browbeaten into funding their cause.
I suppose your acquantances only read "literature", not that popular tripe that Stephen King puts out. I can only hope and pray that I can become an acquaintance of yours so I can learn how to be an in-duh-lectual. In other words, GO AWAY!
It's TANSTA*A*FL, f'chrissakes! Mod THIS up, baby!
Or as Stephen King once said, "Please don't hit me with your van."
Are you and "Bowie J. Paog" actually the same person?
I think his model works just fine. About 4 minutes ago I made my third $1 payment and I am early awaiting part IV.
Signed,Hooked in Louisiana
Looks like The Offspring and Sony have decided to release a single on their website for free, but not the entire album.
:(
Sony is probably afraid that The Offspring are right: releasing the entire album for free on the web would not hurt sales. While this may sound like a good thing, it will undermine the RIAA's arguments about the widespread evil effects of music piracy.
This looks more like Sony is testing the waters. If the web release of the single is detrimental to its store-based sales, then the RIAA has more ammunition in its war on piracy. If the sales are higher or unaffected, Sony can blame it on other factors (for example: everyone can hear it on the radio anyways). Lame but true.
In a way, it would've been nice if The Offspring had gone ahead and sued Sony for breach of contract. But avoiding it was understandable: I wouldn't wish a court battle with Sony on anyone
Many of Piers Anthony's books are no longer in print, and the publishing companies only want more Xanth...so Piers has resorted to using internet publishing. Check out HiPiers for more info if you like The Bio of Space Tyrant, The Cluster series, Cthor, Macroscope and any other of the wonderful books by Piers Anthony besides the Xanth series.
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
Yeah; without strong support from the music industry (good luck) that'd fall apart. So what's wrong with it? Same thing that's wrong with a library...someone would copy the stream and keep a local copy (like photocopying a magazine article or section of a book.) It's also a model doomed to fail because just letting one person hear the music doesn't scale well to 10,000 teenage girls wanting to hear the same teenybopper sensation at the same time. :^) my.mp3.com's model is probably the best I've seen. Sure, there's possibility for abuse, but abuse has been there since before online content. I've got a case of cassettes here I dubbed off in high school that I don't listen to anymore (been a few years); most of them were from tapes and CDs my friends owned, and I returned the favor. IMHO they sound better than a lot of MP3s :^)
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
Awright! If you're the real Timothy, way to go. Sometimes sarcasm is the sharpest weapon. :^) (damn--I'm *gonna* have to write that down! :^)
Yeah--how many of the "big names" work at VA now? Holy farking shiz. My jaw dropped the last time I saw a VA ad with the "names" they had pictures of.
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
Follow this link and post your reply.
Thanks for sharing, Bowie...you've proven just how pathetic you are. Stick to tiles, man. The tiles rock.
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
If our college decided to ban napster, I'd be in my router the next day doing my job, banning Napster...to everyone except my machine!
I don't download (much) copyrighted music. Most everything I pull down are bootlegs. (Or things that I own on cassette, and don't think I should have to rebuy.)
Perhaps, but someone must stand up for poor, wronged "ain't" and defend it! ;)
The real irony is that I typed "you're" instead of "your", while correcting someone about contractions. Oops.
I don't know how large the download was, but lets say it was 5 megabytes. The first chapter was downloaded 170K times that the author knew of (there was probably also person to person copying which would not effect distribution costs), thats 850 gigabytes of data.
Even if Steven King had to front the full costs and assuming the bulk of the downloads were in the first month but still had to pay for the bandwidth for the second month of the experiment we're still talking less than 10 grand of expense for distribution, or under 58 cents per copy.
The costs above are purposely on the high side (assuming I didn't totally flub my guess at the size of chapter 1).
I didn't download it because he's degraded as a writer. His earlier works were significantly better, but then he only did a novel every year or so. Now he does many novels per year, there's less text in them (though the number of pages has remained the same by using larger type) and the quality has suffered. I knew I wouldn't read it so I didn't want to negatively effect his experiment for no reason.
Where can you get a $13 Stephen King hardcover? Please let us all know. Thanks.
-- There is no sig line, only Zuul.
First off, their label is Epitaph, Sony distributes them.
Second, any money the label pays for recording the albumn gets returned to said label from the artist's share of the money. The label is like a bank loan, not some generous promoter of music. And teh distributer and label take far more than their fair share out of the sales.
Third, the labels have had laws passed in congress that give them, not the artist, perpetual rights to the music, and if you want to have an albumn, they literally force you to surrender all rights to their own music. That's just bull-shit.
"God is REAL
In the US, one is not obligated to pay for anything you get in the mail that you did not explicitly ask for. They don't include postage to send the damn things back.
After all, they paid money to read the story; denying them a conclusion because other people didn't pay reeks of discrimination.
In the US, those that are deprived of their RIGHT to read the 3rd book can join a class-action lawsuit against King, the publisher, and the whole damn internet for discriminatory distribution of scary stuff.
kabloie
It looks like a Slash bug. Slash seems to insert spaces in really long URLs. I've run into that myself in the past.
And of course nobody would actually pay money to support free software, either, because there is a huge nebulous "them" out there writing it for free, and somebody else is paying for the servers and bandwidth charges.
Your analogy is off. People do pay for support, because it helps them personally. Imagine if RedHat changed their business model to "We'll provide support to everyone for free, provided 70% of the people who download RedHat Linux pay for it." That would be a closer parallel.
Does the visor phone look butt ugly.
Of course, they also state in their acceptable use policy that they can search any attached machine without any due process or notification being required.
Oddly enough, Diablo II did come with the free Windows version, when I bought the Mac version.
Shaun Nelson - Bastard Operator (From Hell / For Hire)
I'm as happy as anyone that Napster is still up and running on campuses across the nation, but I've just got to point out that it's not the "campus admins and sysadmins" that are calling the shots. It's the campus lawyers. I'm sure the admins have their own feelings on the matter, but the lawyers are the ones making decisions here.
Heinlein wrote TANSTAAFL (There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch), and not that "There's no free lunch" desecration Stephen King wrote.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!!!! *grin*
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, paperback, 272 pages, published January, 2000. HTH. HAND.
--
Preventive War is like committing suicide for fear of death. - Otto Von Bismarck
True i guess i did argue, a little bit... sorry
Any website who belives it's ok to spam should be avoided...
I don't actually exist.
If your really good the word will get out with not much effort..
If you suck all the spam in the world isn't going to save your sorry rump..
I don't actually exist.
It is perfectly reasonable for Stephen King to demand additional payments for each format of his book. For each additional download you are paying his publisher for the service of converting the content to your desired format(s).
You could do this yourself, but consider the time you spend doing it. Would it be more worthwhile just to pony up the extra buck or two and spend time reading it, or maybe spend time in the real world?
This is essentially what Stephen King is saying. If your time is worth $0, then you can buy the hardback, read it aloud onto a tape, photocopy it, and then you have an audio version and a paperback!
Some services are worth the money for the time you save. Ask yourself: Is this?
If this was *micro*pay, and not exactly the same as buying at amazon.com and getting a hardcover, except more awkward (pay 7 times instead of once), it might have had a chance.
Most likely the Universities have realized that banning Napster *because of its copywrite violation potential* is not in thier best interest. Banning Napster would be easy, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that Napster will not be the last protocol/service/etc that someone will ask them to ban. Eventually, that could lead to a huge headache for the Univerities, trying to ban dozens of protocols, URLs, etc.
Even university administrators who oppose Napster would certainly rather have Napster and the RIAA fight it out between themselves and leave third parties (like the universities) out of it.
So these refusals don't necessarily mean these universities support Napster, or won't ban it for other reasons (bandwidth). I think it mostly means they don't want to be dragged into the battle!
VA-Linux. My company has purchased 30 Full-On
servers in the last year. We've had great
support, great service, and great results from
some solid machines. They've been as reliable as
our Sun machines, at a fraction of the cost.
That's why they get my business -- when I buy a
product, I want it to perform. That's it. This is business, not a popularity contest.
In any field, find the strangest thing and then explore it. -John Archibald Wheeler
Yes, but the cops wait until you break the law. And the legality and ethics of speedtraps aren't crystal clear. If given the choice, I'd rather not involve myself in any questionable ethical actions. Sniffing around the network connections of students (including a whole herd of lawyers-in-training) just seems to iffy to me...
itachi
(who should make it clear that he doesn't work at Oberlin, he works at U of Penn)
Owning a gun isn't illegal either, but it can be used illegally. If people were fireing guns all over campus, wouldn't it make sense to check and see they were breaking a law?
No, not really. Well, I mean, the analogy needs some work, but no, I shouldn't have to take time away from preventative maintenance and trouble tickets because there is a chance that someone is breaking the law. I mean, there could be any number of reasons for the traffic, it doesn't have to be Napster. A better analogy might be cars. Lots of people drive cars, and some people speed, so should cars be equiped with a little device that prints out a ticket everytime the spedometer shows that you're exceeding the local speed limit? It would hardly be beyond present technical capabilities, but it would also be very Big Brother. It's not going to happen on my network - I'll quit first. Now if we see a problem and trace it to a single resnet wallplate, sure, lets set up a sniffer and watch them, because they're screwing with network performance for everyone. But monitoring without cause is very iffy. I think even if we wanted to, the school's lawyers might take issue...
itachi
--
"I use the words you taught me. If they don't mean anything any more, teach me others. Or let me be silent"
I read it when I was 11 or 12, and that book is nightmarish and spooky. It's one that all public school employees (including teachers), welfare officers, kids, policemen and parents should read. Absolutely mind-blowing.
I hadn't thought of it myself in several years, but for some reason the incongruity of the RIAA's lawyers trying to micromanage the network rules of universities was as darkly comic as that book.
Tim
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
That's a cool thing, and Yes, better than carrying all the pieces separately ... But I want one more in the shape of the MP3 player (which I also do not have!) or the modem -- in other words, something which just plugs in to the slot without making much fuss / muss / etc.
... ok, you can even scratch "useful" even though I think it might be ... )
(Reading cryptonomicon made me realize how useful / fascinating a GPS reciever can be
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
I wonder if Stephen King's publishers are similarly upset that people get his books out of libraries rather than buying their own copies
They are, there have been several statements from publishers lately that they are displeased with people reading (dead tree) books without paying for them i.e. by getting them from libraries or from a friend after the friend has read them. That is why publishers like the idea of e-books.
Best Slashdot Co
I know, the first thing I thought when I saw the marionette video, was "how ironic".
I wonder how those guys from "Making the Band" will fare. I mean, they can't even *pretend* not to be totally fabricated.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I think you mean "Think of the kids"...
I know it's obnoxious, but I just need to point out that, like most professional graphics software, Photoshop started out as Mac software (1990), and was only later ported to PC (1993).
I feel better now.
You won't find "hipocracy" in a dictionary©
--
No more e-mail address game - see my user info. Time for revenge.
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
No, I didn't read it. I didn't download the book either. I'm not a King fan. I only know what I heard in the media.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
I disagree. Since King said it was the "honor system", I think the shareware model applies. Download it, and if you like it, send in the cash.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
I don't think colleges are trying to say that they don't know that Napster is being used. What they seem to be saying is that they don't know who is using Napster to trade copyrighted information. It doesn't make sense to just assume that everyone is using Napster illegally(ya know...that whole innocent until proven guilty thing). Since they can claim that they don't want to prevent people from using the service legally, they say they won't block Napster. I'd be willing to bet that the real reason is that the students would be pissed as hell though, and the administration doesn't want to deal with that ;).
> then around 21 i picked up Stranger in a Strange Land just to see what the deal was, and the whole time i was reading it i kept wondering, "now, WHY is it that this is supposed to be an incredible book??"
It's not. It's ok.
Go read Heinlein's other work for some great stuff.
-_-
This post contains both serious and tounge-in-cheek statements
The design of the phone seems wrong to me. If I were to try to talk into it, I could quite easily get my greasy face all over the screen.
I usually make a point not to get smudges and such all over my screen, but this would be even worse than a finger-print. I can imagine keeping a cloth in my case to wipe off my Visor after every call. The only solution would be to get stressed out by keeping the Visor from coming in contact with your head. I was assuming that the speaker would be on the back of the device, but of course, the built-in microphone is on the front. Maybe they will start selling Handspring-brand astringent.
Trout Run? Cool!
I need to get back up to Cross Fork next summer. I haven't been there in years
(I'm sorry for posting this but he didn't pub. his e-mail address.)
- Apple Computer......proudly going out of business for over twenty years.
Actually, the convention is to leave articles and other small words out of acronyms, so either you're wrong or Heinlein is wrong.
Starship Troopers the book was far, far worse than the movie. I was shocked by the disparity.
No comment at this time
Who is to say that the 30% of people (or at least some part of that number) that King says didn't pay, just didn't like his book - and with the ease of "returning" in this form of delivery, did just that?
That's impossible. I would have expected about 75% of people to have disliked his book.
No comment at this time
Stephen King said: "In closing let me quote science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein: TANFL, that stands for There Ain't No Free Lunch."
;)
It's "TANSTAAFL", There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.
Ah well, perhaps someone can misquote him...
Think about the percentages back when everything he wrote seemed to push 1000 pages...
IT's like the prisoner's dilema.
Any given individual is better off if he's dishonest. But if everyone is dishonest then everyone loses.
I don't find that issue questionable at all. Who says it is a university's responsibility to monitor the students' usage of the Internet in the first place? A college is supposed to be a place of learning. Tracking/restricting Internet usage is censorship and flies in the face of a university's mission.
First obnoxious truth: Schmucks get rich. Go ahead and try to argue that one. I'll laugh at you.
Second, he's very likely not as anti-free speech/free beer as some of the other posters would have him portrayed. Ignorance on the net is ugly but curable just like in the real world. the only difference is on the net if you make a fool of yourself, people make links to your page and laugh at you. IRL, your friends tend to find subtler ways of curing this situation. That said, tho, it is damned annoying to run into. Hopefully someone will point out in a tactful way (ie, one that he/his publisher will listen to) that textfiles take up jack for bandwidth and bandwidth is relatively cheap. At the rates I'm used to, 600 paying customers x $1 pays for the needed bandwith and leaves half to split between publisher, agent, author, and webmaster (should be same as publisher..?).
Third, if you want online books from people who understand the media and are not going to occasionally show their ignorance, you're looking in the wrong place. Either wait for a sci-fi author to go this route (maybe they know better than to try this yet? Dunno. :) or go pay a visit to Project Gutenburg and browse the classics.
Other than that, about the only other option I can think of is if you want to email me. I'm a CompSci major but writing is what I'd really like to be doing... but I don't have time to waste trying to break into the publishing racket. And generating a useful amount of traffic on a website has it's own issues. So... if you really want something, drop me a line and tell me what genres you're interested in. I'm best at Sci-Fi and fantasy but other formats could be an interesting challenge. No charge for the first try, the real goal would be to test the waters and see what could work (and if anyone under the sun is even vaguely interested or if I should hammer away on those CS books :). And yes I know a /. comment is a strange place to advertise but what the hell.
Lanir
lanir@wildmail.com
I have all the right in the world to judge him. Who says I don't? You? Who made you king over That Which Can Be Judged? He's been judged in my court and been found guilty of Greed. Take your post-modernist rubbish someplace else.
--------
-------
"Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief."
oops, the jacket link should be http://graphics.fansonly.com/photos/schools/msu/sp orts/m-hockey/99-00roster/s-mason.jpg
somehow a space got in there.
-
while i'm interested in the whole stephen king deal, i personally don't like his writing. but i think his experiment is interesting, so i read through his little report. i was kinda galled to see him "quote" heinlein, with "TANFL". i mean, the gist is there, sure, but it is, correctly, TANSTAAFL: There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. if i had time, i'd quote title and page.
The fact is is that they're manufactured. They don't write, produce, or create anything at all. They're not actually artists. But as I said, there's much more to this than can be gone into here. There was a good article about this in USA today a few days ago. Check it out.
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Microsoft is not the answer, Microsoft is the question. The answer is "no".
Actually, I'm kind of glad there are still ppl out there that know how to spell. I'd feel better if there were more replies in this thread that related to something other than my spelling, but hey, good eye anyway.
================
================
Microsoft is not the answer, Microsoft is the question. The answer is "no".
It is destined to fail because he has set the failure switch too high - it should be in the single digits if he really wants it too succeed, and really he should have not announced the limit but rather gone ahead and gathered unbiased statistics for a whole book, and then he could set a reasonable limit for the next time. People could then have a reasonable expectation of getting something the next time.
As it is, I am highly offended by the whole concept of paying for something where you have no way of knowing if you will get it, and just posted such on his site. Maybe if a few gazillion other people post such sentiments, he might take notice.
On the other hand, if you don't agree, I got a nice bridge I might be able to sell you one brick at a time. Just send me a dollar a month...
Oracle and unix guy.
First chapter free. Pay for the rest, get it immediately after reading the first chapter.
:wq
I like evilness as a word, really, sounds groovilicious, but evil will do as the adjective.
</grammar moan>
:wq
[font=-5] (Vizor handheld sold seperately)[/font]
And I still haven't seen the service contract ;)
...vividly encapsulates that post-Watergate/pre-punk/coked-up moment when you could trust no one, least of all yourself.
These non-payers are no less dishonest than those who flagrantly refuse to pay. We pay a fee to King for his story, it's not a tip.
One can argue that a tipping model might work better for intellectual property like stories, music, etc., but that's not how King set up his project. At no point does he ask us to pay only what we think it's worth. The story is yours for a flat fee. The options are pay for it or steal it.
You are wrong about the destined for failure thing....
the number of people paying is definitely going to decrease as time goes on. People often have more than one computer in more than one location, and who wants to pay twice for something they bought?
I think this is actually a great success as an indicator of people's general wish to pay a *fair* price for stuff they download/listen to, etc.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
uhhh, if you go and look at the site, HERE you will see that the file(s) are avail for download in a WIDE varity of formats. A cursory glance says that PDF, HTML, ASCII, and a bunch of PDA formats are avail. for your viewing. If you can't figure out how to read an html file then, I dunno.
Matt
Why should Universities stop an internet service that has valid uses? After all, there are a lot of people's music available online that isn't under the copyright of a record company. Some people are actually using this new way to distribute music as a new way to distribute music.
King needs to lighten up and realize that people aren't going to pay 3 times to get the same text download in 3 different formats. Just because several different companies have different formats for their text files doesn't mean that we should have to pay multiple times for the same content. This is not the same as buying a book and a cassette, because you should be using a format like sgml that can be transformed into any other text format and then let people download this master format and allow them to translate it into the format of their choice. It's not like you can read more than one format at the same time.
As far as record companies suing their own musicians, it is the musicians own fault for signing an unfair contract. Musicians should form a guild and hire the record companies to produce recordings for them, not the other way around. Until musicians organise, they are going to be pushed around by the record companies.
-- Never make a general statement.
The answer here is for people to download once, & convert the file themselves to the desired formats. Oh wait, most people are too lazy/incompetent to do that :-P
Freedom: "I won't!"
I'd sure like to see where, exactly, it says in their contract they can't do something like this...
But let's assume for the moment, it _is_ true, and Sony has no other choice but to sue them into oblivion if they don't do as they're told. If the big 5 record companies say "we're just looking out for our artists" and then beat them over the head with contract law, what does that say? Technicall, you're right. Symbolically, though, The Offspring wanted to have the artistic freedom to do with _their_ songs as they pleased, only to have Sony crack down on them like a bunch of goose-stepping Nazis that they are in this case.
Hopefully when the contract expires, The Offspring will choose a contract that won't restrict them in these ways. I, for one, am looking forward to the day when the artist can get directly to his fan base without the middleman (or at least, the middleman is significantly reduced).
Just my two cents....
My school (the University of Minnesota) banned napster last year when everyone was banning it. Now they have (without any anouncement) allowed napster again. The really barzar part is that they anounced a new policy banning all peer to peer file transfer while reenabling napster.
It appears to us that some people are downloading two and even three times to different formats-to the Palm Pilot say, and also to whatever Microsoft uses. This may be based on a simple misperception. Let me put it this way: you couldn't go into a bookstore and say, "I want you to give me the paperback version and the audio version of this book free because I bought the hardcover." As simply as I can put it, you must pay for what you take every time you take it or this won't work."
I think Stephen has missed the point on this one. - let me explain.
If I buy the hardcover book - true - I am not entitled to the audio or paperback version... but under fair use I CAN scan it into my PC (and create an E-book), photocopy it and wallpaper my bathroom with the pages, take pictures of the pages and make a slide show... etc. I am excercising my right to FAIR USE
Same for the e-book purchasers. They purchased a license to the electronic version of the book - so if they want to put a copy on their PC AND their palm pilot.... that's covered under fair use.
[Connection closed by foreign host]
Paraphrase: "I won't argue this point anymore. Below, please read my argument."
If you were arguing, then I would be forced to argue that:
a) that's not a catch 22
b) you have no idea whether or not the person you were replying to would have heard of the Offspring; I certainly knew of them before they were signed
c) your in depth analysis of contract law falls far short of relevance, as we don't even know what the contract says
But since I'm not going to argue the point either, I won't have to point that out.
As simply as I can put it, you must pay for what you take every time you take it or this won't work.
Because if you take 1 edition for every single stupid little friggin' yuppie device you have, his experiment will fail, which he does not want. Does that make it clearer?
- w
Jake
Dating: while( 1 ){ call_girl(); get_rejected(); drink_40(); } return 0;
Let him know! There is a feedback page here.
I took a few minutes to tell him that his analogy between different print book formats and different electronic formats was bullshit, and to remind him that he's screwing up a precedent-setting experiment by being greedy. God knows if the comment will ever show up on the comments page, but at least somebody will read it. And if enough people express this (or similar) opinion, they might just use some of that money to buy a clue!
"Research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing." -- Wernher von Braun
I like the idea of giving my money directly to an author, rather than a publishing house which already has too much money. But I don't necessarily want to buy an e-book if its just a publishing house in disguise.
I'm sure there has to be some centralized links to lots of on-line authors that have previously published books the old-fashioned way.
managers...why god invented purgatory
The problem with mainstream media is that you can't avoid it. They were playing the damn backstreet boys video in the BK the other day when I went in innocently enough to buy a whopper. Now if I only had bad-music-sensitive sunglasses...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
AFAIK, that is indeed the real Timothy, one of the few Slashdot editors that actually post responses to their articles. (Jon Katz is really the only other I'm aware of.)
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
Nope, sorry, Both are correct; "could care less" is a sarcastic form of the same thing. (Find somebody who says that they "could care less" about something; the sound form is completely different than when someone says that they "couldn't care less". At least make sure you know what you're talking about before posting.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
Try reading "The Language Instinct" by Steven Pinker. He actually touches on this, including an analysis on how it's said. (Unfortunately, my copy has disappeared.) The 'loose' mistake is just an annoying mispelling, but "could care less" makes sense, is easier to say, and its meaning is obvious and well-defined (No one would take 'could care less' to mean anything but the fact that they don't care at all, much as nobody would expect a double negative to imply a positive.) Lighten up.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
Hmmm, why can't somebody somewhere start a label that will protect the artists' rights and make reasonable contracts? Maybe some of these artists should band (ha) together and form their own group to promote online publishing of music. Say, Courtney Love and the Smashing Pumpkins...
Nah, it would probably be wildly successful, and then the middle managers would rise to the top, fire all the innovators, and screw everyone again. How's come the no-talent-a-holes always take over everything cool?
In our defense, let us say that we are not so much a person, as a non-profit vegan-methodist fundraising organization, and as such can not hold personal opinions on goat-porn, or the lack thereof. Our board of governors has met and determined that the slogan "98% goat-porn free" is not legally accurate for a variety of reasons, and we have begun a standing commitee to develop an alternate catch-phrase.
We would like to extend our thanks to Mr. Coward for kindly pointing out the discrepencies in our advertising campaign, and would like to apologize most humbly to those that have been disappointed by the lack of pornography (goat or otherwise) on the PopeAlien.Com website.
Off the record, 70% of our steering commitee prefer "elastic band erotica". Thank you for your time.
air and light and time and space
It's not the napster traffic they have to be aware of, it's that the people using it are doing so to transfer music illegally. While it's pretty much a given that many (most?) will be doing this, there's no way for the university to know who's downloading what, and it's not their responsibility to burden themselves with the task of monitoring it.
If the RIAA really wants to put a stop to this, they have to go after the people stealing the music themselves. Nobody in between is legally liable just because it's cheaper and more convenient to go after them.
---
Where can the word be found, where can the word resound? Not here, there is not enough silence.
"Where shall the word be found, where will the word resound? Not here, there is not enough silence." -T.S. Eliot
The slight difference being that guns kill people.
People could use baggy clothing to neatly hide things they shoplift from campus stores, which is a closer analogy with people not being killed in a deafening bang and all... Would you expect the university to frisk everyone wearing a pair of cargo pants?
---
Where can the word be found, where can the word resound? Not here, there is not enough silence.
"Where shall the word be found, where will the word resound? Not here, there is not enough silence." -T.S. Eliot
my email address is fjordboy@iceball.net trout run is a great place.
The anti-salmon
The novel was about the same size as his others, which at the time sold for $7.50. At $2.99 per episode, the same material would bring $17.94. When the popularity of the series was established, the price for the final episode was raised to $3.99.
What this demonstrated to me was; 1) People *love* Stephen King, and are willing to be overcharged and to be subjected to a 6-month wait for the conclusion of the story, if that's the only way they can get it; 2) If there were another way they could get it (theft of advance copies of the unpublished episodes got so bad they had to be kept in a locked room), they would do so; 3) It was only the enforced scarcity of the material that made the overcharging and delay possible.
Upshot: as supply approaches infinity, the amount people are willing to pay approaches zero. Without some enforcement mechanism, digital publishing will not work, and will never become popular, at least with popular authors who want to make money.
I suggest authors release the first chapter gratis (or musicians release a single gratis), and set a predetermined number of dollar/$.50/etc. payments before the rest of the work is posted, without restrictions.
--- Submission is feudal.
Wow, too bad that you'll have to print all 1,500 pages out if you want to keep a permanent copy to read anywhere. Plus you'll have to put up with the eyestrain of reading for days on end on a computer monitor. Maybe there's some people out there with $3000 24" flat-screen monitors that can put up with that, but I cant' put up with staring at a CRT for more than an hour or two without getting a headache.
Still, I think what King is doing is very ground-breaking, but like internet sites that want to charge you $15 for downloading a whole CD worth of mp3s (wow, sub-standard audio quality and no physical media! what a deal!) and is really only worth it for the envelope-pushers and wealthy.
Interesting that Stephen King says the two following things on his site about pricing "The Plant". First he says, "In other words, you complete financial liability for the first 8 installments of this story will be $13 or about the cost of a trade paperback or a hardcover novel offered at 40% discount in a chain bookstore." Later he says, "We have also had some complaints about the cost of ink and paper. On that subject, I have just two words: oh, please. One would think the books people bought in book stores were printed on air or that the cost of ink, paper, binding and boards were not included. As Internet readers---en as printers-buyers of The Plant are being spared these last two expenses." Does this not seem non-sequitur to anyone else. The ebook will cost the same as the paper and ink version would at a bookstore, but somehow, King asserts that the internet reader is spared these expenses. Compared to what?
Everyone has done me the luxury of pointing out that King misquoted Heinlein. I'm not surprised, Heinlein was a master, King is an extortionist.
But guys, when pointing out that King got it wrong, and adding the correction, you could have done the scholarly thing and cited the source.
"The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" 1967.
". . . 'tanstaafl.' Means 'there ain't no such thing as a free lunch.' . . . anything free costs twice as much in [the] long run or turns out worthless."
--Manuel, page 129
Book one, That Dinkum Thinkum.
A host is a host from coast to coast, but no one uses a host that's close
If you've been to his site you'd know that he has stated that after installment 8 any further issues would be free of charge thus capping the price at around 13 bucks. I think the impression was that this was gona be a really short story and buck an episode would be not that bad.
...and soon after that, they leave me alone and move onto some other sucker who is willing to be badgered and browbeaten into funding their cause.
Wrong At that point they Sell your name to any number of organizations who then start their own spam campaign. You don't think they'd waste a valuable asset (your name/address/phone number/contribution amount) by dropping you flat. Silly boy.
-- we'll eat the fat ones first
i read sf exclusively for the first 17 years of my life, but never got around to heinlein. then around 21 i picked up Stranger in a Strange Land just to see what the deal was, and the whole time i was reading it i kept wondering, "now, WHY is it that this is supposed to be an incredible book??"
i had a similar reaction to some of his other stuff, which was written similarly. i guess for the time it was written, stuff like free love and telekinesis was just so subversively deep and avantgarde, but having read stuff that is still relevant after 1974, i just didn't see what was so exciting about it. it wasn't even a convincing attempt to be sf -- it was more like a sociopolitical manifesto set to fiction (which can still make for some excellent lit. but imo that's not what this was).
new
A bore like Heinlein should never quote King; King is alive, and Heinlein is dead, by comparison.
---
the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties
Hollywood, Television, has become the dream machine. We need to take that back; each of us is a Dream Machine
i was at work and in a hurry so i just slapped the link over and forgot about the spacing issue. here's the link i used, in text: http://shop.barnesandnoble.com/OopBooks/OopResults .asp?userid=2MV2P65425&mscssid=3MDCX V7Q0 NLB8GJCS385A41FXQJGFW10&title=splendid+war+kids
or you can just go to Barnes&Noble, go to the advanced search screen and type into the title field, "war between splendid kids". then hit the "More titles from our network of out of print book dealers" link and it should be right there.
really, that was one of the books that planted in me the idea of not just going along with whatever public school tried to make me, and actually tell my teachers, "Sorry, I read, I think, and I'm smart -- what you want me to do is dumb. Therefore, i respectfully decline from praticipating."
I still crack up thinking about the "Status Quo Homogenizer" or whatever it was called... hehe
---
the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties
Hollywood, Television, has become the dream machine. We need to take that back; each of us is a Dream Machine
Guns don't kill people! People kill people! We should investigate all people!
___
__
Do ya feel happy-go-lucky, punk?
It's a 'ridiculous concept' to want music to be free?
QUIZ TIME!
Art is:
a) a gift
b) a commodity
DING! Put your pencils down now. If you answered 'b', you fail.
I don't write music because I want to be rich and/or famous. I write because I have something special that I want to share with the world.
One thing that seems to be forgotten with this whole deal is the relative value of the thing. King explains that his model of payment is based on the cost of a trade paperback. So if this things goest to completion, people would end up paying $13 for the whole thing. Part of the problem I see is that the book format has a greater intrinsic value than a digital file. It takes up space, you can take it anywhere, it's professional printed--Buyers of digital books are getting a less valuable product and are saving the publisher the cost of producing the book, so the price should be greatly discounted--say 25-50% cutting out the middleman should result in a less expensive product for the consumer and more revenue for the producer.
Vote Quimby.
It must be decades since King's written a novel of only 300 pages.
Never take moderation advice from sigs, including this one.
West Virginia University announced that it is banning Napster (and similar apps) due to it consuming 15% of bandwidth. Their press release goes on to tell students that they are more than welcome to download legal MP3s from websites, listen to MP3s, and even use Napster from their personal ISPs.
Madness is only a state of mind
Thank you and good night.
-- Shamus
O brave new world, with such people in it!
Hope this isn't too offtopic (Hey Napster was mentioned in this slashback).
What if a "free library" model was used on music. What if there was a site that had legal copies of music online and allowed only 1 person to hear (borrow but not copy) the music at once without royalties being paid to the labels? What do you think RIAA would think about that?
This is different from current web broadcast since I mention that royalties would not be paid. Also, this is strictly hypothetical since I don't think the idea makes a good business model.
That Visor-phone looks like somebody duct-taped a visor to a cell phone. Bet the CAD work was really tough with that one.
Because you can't, you won't, and you don't stop...
Get it fixed, dudes!!!
You don't need to see my
Although I think it's real cool that they're standing up to MetallicA and co. but how can they claim ignorance about the use of napster on campus? For one, napster is used on every campus (especially because of the MTV coverage). And for two, haven't they noticed a huge increase in LAN traffic since napster's been around? It will be reall tough to prove.
Plus college kids are smart enough to figure out new ways to pirate music, and better ways to hide from the administration.
But wait! There's more! So go support Open Culture in their attempt to redefine online publishing. Who knows if it'll work, but it's worth a shot.
Jeff
Which is exactly why its UI sucks so much...
I always thought the Windows port looked like it wanted to be a Mac application... All those floating toolbars that get in the way
Can one assume that the technical people behind the ebook downloads at S. King's site are savvy enough to only count completed downloads?
If they just look at the GET requests in their web server logs, they are bound to get some skewed statistics - I know, because I aborted at least one download!
-- H. Wilker
Yeah. it makes you wonder. You're right about artists willing to swallow anything to get in the business. So you can't help but wonder when half the crowd walked out when Napster's inventor showed up on stage at the music awards was because the RIAA "told them to". Probably a lot of arm twisting/blackmail/lying. An organized effort like that among artists just doesn't "happen" spontaneously.
It's just too bad that the majority of the music traded on napster is copyrighted/pirated. Napster does have potential and the technology could be used (legally) for dozens of other purposes besides music. But napster has set themselves up to be the sacrificial lamb of the old guard that can't stand the thought of losing a single nickel (which by recent numbers of CD sales shows that it just is not happenning - ironically napster is probably helping sales). But you know, it's about "principal" (translation: greed).
Napster is not "the" problen though. Napster is "a symptom" of the problem. The real problem is a overly restrictive and bad copyright law (thanks to special interests buying congress), and the internet that could largely render copyright law irrelevant - but not without copyright holders giving a fight.
It really is amazing how restrictive the DMCA is, and how utterly useless also. Take a look at this link that makes the case that the DMCA won't work (besides it being unconstitutional).
I digress. I would hope that this will be an opportunity for unknown artists (and I am quite sure that there are alot of high caliber ones) can bubble up to the surface when the big labels put all their music into proprietary encrypted formats. They will be "independent", and thus free from RIAAs iron grip. And maybe people will listen to them more than major labels. That would give the labels a cut into their revenue stream that they so richly deserve.
The CDs that these "indies" will produce will be cheaper too (so that they will compete against the outrageous $20 CD - not hard to do). And artists would earn more money even with these lower price CDs. That's why the RIAA is fighting napster so hard. Not because people swap a lot of "copyrighted music". But because they want to keep the artificial price of CDs high, and their grubby hands in artists pockes.
So in the end, the RIAA and fellow cronies will only give up their monopoly business when it is pried from their cold dead hands.
One can only hope that it is real soon now.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
You should check out Robert Mcchammon. His books are outstanding! Here are a few titles I reccommend reading from him: Swan Song Bethany Sin They thirst Wolves hour (outstanding) Stinger Mine I find him far more enjoying than Stephen King. He is not as main stream as Stephen, but he is outstanding. Jim
"Life is art...Paint your destiny"
The problem with King's model is that most writers are not S. King. King spews books and stories both good and bad, and when he gets writers block it lasts maybe five minutes. He has got an essentially infinite supply of product that he can throw into the pipe, and essentially get paid for the actual writing "performance". For other writers who might produce a novel every few years, or a few stories a year (like me), this kind of model would never work. Fiction is not like music in that you don't want the same book "performed" eight times consequetively. For the time being, we are saved by the fact that paper books are still a superior product to e-books. When that changes, look out... Cheers JHVH1 `The shapes of things are dumb.' -L. Wittgenstein
> At what point does he or anybody else not need more money?
:) (sorry if i'm misusing term "communist society" here).
:)
Lets rephrase the question.
"At what point do you not need more money ?".
It's up to YOU. And nobody has the right to judge neiter Stephen King nor anybody else as far as "how much money does one need" question goes. We are not in the communist society
But I totally agree that he could give some novels away for free without hurting himself.
I'm not flaming here. I'm just saying that there is a different issue, not the amount of money one "needs".
It's my own opinion. Don't agree if you dont like it
--
--
On scale from -14 to 56 this post is '-15, Nonexistent'
> Paying for things sure does suck, after all.
:)
I just talked to your boss on the phone... He said the same thing about your work.
Or I just didn't get your joke
--
--
On scale from -14 to 56 this post is '-15, Nonexistent'
you might want to stop hanging around with a bunch of 4th graders...
"I know how hard it is to put food on your families." - GW
No one put a gun the the musician's head and said sign or die.
They don't have to, for most dedicated artists it's sign or starve...
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
Having just finished reading the comments on King, I think most of you overlooked the main point: By setting up a 75% quota, King simply extracts additional money out of his loyal fans. Almost a textbook-like example of price-discrimination(=capturing consumer surplus), with the added beauty of honest users baring all the relevant information themselves. Think about it- not only does King more or less directly encourage fans to send more than $1 per installment, he even describes the Plant as an experiment- wonder what his reasons are, curiosity, greed or a clever way of getting his publisher some information for the customer-database.
Let me know if I'm reading this wrong, but
The real telling figure is not the drop in percentage of paid downloads, but in the number of downloads.
74,373 is 70% of 106,247.
172,004 is 75% of 229,338.
Therefore, more than half the people who downloaded part 1 did not bother with part 2.
Of course, the reality isn't so black and white, but close enough.
Judgment should be witheld until the real picture comes into focus, when the book is finished and the final tally is disclosed. Only then I think it is useful to ask, was this project worth it? Let's compare Mr. King's profits-versus-costs with those of his previous works published traditionally.
Zoloft
Yes, the page on this link:
(Too lazy for tags)
http://www.handspring.com/products/visorphone/
says that it's got a built-in 14.4k modem that youc an use to dialup if you want... not super fast, but adequate for most email situations, I'd imagine...
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Of course, that 13 bucks is about the price of trade paperback, and twice the cost of a mass-market paperback. The print's easier to read, though. Chapter 3 is about 40 pages, and the whole work is about 80 pages, so far.
It looks pretty nice. It's compact, centralizes a bunch of features I'd like to have in a single device (addr book, dialer, sms, phone), but I see no answer to an (imho) obvious question: Can I call my ISP for network connectivity? Screw CDPD, I'd be thrilled to have plain old PPP dialup for other network apps. And I could even pop the sucker into a folding keyboard (doesn't Targus OEM the one for handspring?) and have wireless network connectivity, reasonable flexibility in the apps I use, and reasonably fast input. Look'a me; I'm foaming at the mouth.
Well, how 'bout it?
J
I think not...(*poof*)
You won't find it in the dictionary. Hypocracy might have a useful definition though....
----
Mike
Look. I won't argue this point anymore because it's getting soo old. The artists signed contracts. The labels paid money. That's legally binding.
You wouldn't have even heard of the offspring if it weren't for the labels. And the labels have no way to make up for the money that they spent if the offspring decided to give everything away for free.
Catch 22. If you don't like the labels, don't sign with them. But if you don't sign with them, you're not going to get nearly as much exposure...
They signed. They have to fulfill their end of their contract. It's pretty simple...
Neither can you, apparently, since it's actually "TANSTAAFL". There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.
- ethereal, Heinlein fan even after Starship Troopers: The Movie.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
I totally agree with you. The only King book I ever tried to read was Misery (because I enjoyed the film of it so much). But after reading the first 20 pages, which consisted almost entirely of describing a severe headache in terms of pounding waves crashing against a concrete sea defense wall or something, I gave up in sheer boredom.
I now assume that his books are so long because he takes 20 times as many pages as anyone else to describe something.
Columbia has also declined to ban Napster. The campus press published a story about it. The staff editorial of the day was in favor of not banning Napster, but there was a dissenting piece also.
--
There are plenty of (somewhat major) universities which are banning Napster, but not necessarily because the RIAA demanded it. Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) in Worcester, MA, has had Napster banned since the middle of last academic year; we were maxing out our 5 T1 lines to Qwest (barf) with Napster traffic; you should have seen the MRTG plummet when our manager of netops blocked the Napster servers. But then we went right back up to saturation a week later.
At the time, we were told Napster would be turned back on once the T3 (which had been on order for 9-12 months by then) got installed and hooked up. Well, it's up now, Napster was on for 6 hours (unannounced) and we managed to fill up the T3. It was blocked, again, the MRTG plummetted and we balanced out at about half of the T3 being used. The saturation of the T3, along with not wanting to have to turn over student names under subpeona orders, are the stated reasons for Napster being blocked here, not the RIAA's pressure.
Makes sense to me; while many students here feel that they don't need or want netops looking out for them, maybe they would change their minds when they got slapped with significant fines and/or criminal prosecution from the RIAA. We're all smart here, I think they can figure out how to use other services anyways. And the point of QoS remains; if we can fill a T3, how much bigger do we have to grow the pipe just to satisfy some MP3-hungry frosh?
---
Tim Wilde
Gimme 42 daemons!
It's funny how the whole concept of internet transparency has been shot to hell now.
I mean, it used to be: If you were on the net, and you supported TCP/IP.. that was it. A software developer needed to know that, and that alone.
NOw we have: dynamic IP addressing, firewalls, intranets, transparent proxies & caches, port filtering by major ISPs (like @home), etc.
They aren't selling 'internet' anymore, they are selling 'use our network to surf'.
ISPs are charging yearly rentals for blocks of IP addresses, when it in fact costs them nothing.
It's kind of sad, really.
What if they had sent the letter to Sprint? Qwest? Any other large backbone provider?
The point is, the univeristy is only providing for routing of IP to student's rooms, PERIOD. They are not filtering ANYTHING.
If you think the university SHOULD ban napster a-la port filtering or stateful packet filtering or whatever, then where does it stop? What abou tsprint?
Remember, in theory, on the internet, all are equal. Sprint just has more bandwidth. There i snothing 'special' about what they can provide, and they have no special 'status' compared to a smaller network.
I'd agree, a arrogant schmuck.
Quite frankly, I see different encodings of the books to be the same content. I'd consider a JPG and a PNG of the same photo to be covered under the same copyright, and if I bought one I'd expect to be able to use it. (You may not think the law works this way but you're wrong, and even if you weren't, I don't give a shit.)
To be fair, if I was to download a version of the story from him every day because I didn't have room to store it I'd expect to pay a reasonable download fee for the use of his bandwidth, but I'd expect it to be less than the cost of the e-book + transport...
But he not only expects people to pay for every one they download but he wants us to pay more for the story than we would in paper form on Amazon... What kind of crack is that moron smoking? He wants to be payed more, for less.
And then you get into this bastard's demanding that everyone be held liable for the actions of a few. If someone with a PC, Mac, and Palm is (oh god!) downloading three copies, he expects other people to either pay more times to offset this or risk their initial payment being for naught, and told that they're not worthy of his oh-so-marvelous e-book.
Then, the moron can't even quote Heinlein right, it's TANSTAFL, not TANFL. Yet he wants a free lunch... He wants innocent consumers to bear *all* the costs of non-paying downloads, and the risk that some script-kiddy will close it down, AND then to pay more for this text file than for a paper and ink book.
So, he wants more money, no risk, and no blame. Ummm, TANSTAFL comes to mind.
King is a shithead. (And a pathetic author, but that's beside the point...) And what the fuck is with that inch-wide strip of small-font text down the center of the screen? Has his web-designer been lobotomized or haven't they seen monitors with a higher resolution than 640x480 in Maine?
Sounds reasonable to me... After all, King accepted their payment for the first sections of the book, now he wants to stop providing to them not (and he admits) because of them, but because of the behaviour of other people who refuse to be bound by King's stupid rules.
I don't know what you guys pay for books, but I'd laugh at anyone who wanted me to pay $13 USD for a novel.
And then, if they told me I'd only have the right to read it, but it didn't come with the actual book, that I'd need to read it on the computer or print it out (paying again for ink and paper)...
Not bloody likely.
$13 might not be bad for a collectible book, like a hard-cover. But for an e-book? King's just greedy, that's all there is to it, wanting more for this than he'd make for a similar book while giving the customer less. (That is, if he ever does get off his skanky ass and write the whole thing, instead of blaming people downloading two copies and only paying once, for ruining the project for everyone.)
Does Photoshop for Windows come with a free copy of the Mac edition?
I think it's dumb that King expects us to pay for different editions. But there is a certain amount of precedent. Sure, it's APPLICATIONS that we pay for twice if we want to use them on two platforms, but they're copyrighted works, just like the documents King's selling.
This is not the same thing as making a tape of your CD so you can play it in your car. King isn't talking about what you can do with the copy you downloaded. He's talking about separate downloads.
But it's not the same as buying a CD and stealing a tape of the same CD. Because isn't not very hard to convert a file, and bits are incredibly cheap.
It's messy, that's what it is. And it's small-minded to attack the readers who have paid him.
Here's a pretty misguided thing King said in his comments:
King - "It appears to us that some people are downloading two and even three times to different formats-to the Palm Pilot say, and also to whatever Microsoft uses. This may be based on a simple misperception. Let me put it this way: you couldn't go into a bookstore and say, "I want you to give me the paperback version and the audio version of this book free because I bought the hardcover". "
In case you didn't read between the lines, that means the total percentage toward the production of future work is reduced when you get two or more versions of the same chapter!
That might be a good analogy if there were any kind of cost involved in someone taking the Palm AND the Word version. He also repeats this attitude later when remarking on the final cost of the e-book being the same as a trade paperback, saying "There's no such thing as a free lunch".
So, I guess King wouldn't be too fond of you saving your Word document to a text file to read on your Palm - or reading a book of his out loud and recording it for your blind grandmother. I was going to go and pay $1 just to help the experiment along, but now I think I'll just stick with my streak of never having read a single Steven King book yet.
I think we can file King's payment model under "Stuck-up Performer Protocol".
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Sure the "street performer protocol" works in the real world. But the real world and the 'net are not the same thing. How does the saying go? On the 'net nobody knows you're a dog. In the real world they do.
A large part of the reason why street performers make money in the real world is the same reason why street people make money. They don't "perform" but they get paid. Why? Two reasons I can think of off the top of my head:
Peer Pressure: This is more true of street performances than someone begging for money. Here you have a big crowd of people all throwing in money when the hat is passed around, there is pressure for you to do the same. Depending on the crowd, how many people you know, etc. the pressure may be greater or lesser, but it'll always be there.
Guilt: This one is pretty obvious. There you are, you stuck around for the performance, you know this is how the person makes money... If the street performer actually looks at you and hands you the hat this is a huge bit of extra pressure.
On the net nobody knows you downloaded the book / saw the performance. This pretty much cancels the "peer pressure" aspect of the event. As for the guilt -- picture the difference between a bomber pilot and a footsoldier. It's a lot harder to kill the enemy when you can look him in the eye. If you can't see the person who's producing the work you're profiting from it's much easier to rip him/her off. He'll never look you in the eye and make you feel guilty. And when the artist is Stephen King it's not hard to convince yourself you're not denying him much.
HAHAHA... hahhaha...
;-)
(ROTFL.... <thump of programmer hitting floor>)
Ouch.
Timothy, that was a grade A troll! (Oh, if I had moderator points right now)
hehe... the SGI comment was just the right touch.
( For the not-in-the-loop: SGI's 2U servers are just repackaged VA Linux 2200's. )
Thanks for making my evening.
Hypocracy: government by hypocrisy; ruling by a set of standards while acting by another.
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The reason it was banned here, though, was because it was saturating 95% of two T1's... which is insane. Granted, there are 1300 students... but it's destroying the QoS for everyone else, thus, the reasoning behind the ban.
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CAIMLAS
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
The proper phrase is "Couldn't care less": if you could care less, then you care some.
(what the hell, I'm still way above 50 karma...)
www.eFax.com are spammers
--
The shareholder is always right.
There was a huge blow-up between Brett Gurewitz (owner of Epitaph and ex-Bad-Religion guitarist) and The Offspring quite a while ago. The Offspring tell their side here, the official announcement is here, and Brett Gurewitz proves that he is a money grubbing dick beyond compare here (ps. the interview is all lies). I love when the interviewer asks Brett how he feels about being punk and in his 30's, he starts spouting about sticking to his ethics.
"Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality." -- Dalai Lama
Well King already had a hugely successful serial novel called The Green Mile. So yes, people are willing to wait for his story to unfold.
Now, these artists want to release and market their music in a new creative way, and Sony is shutting them down. Shall I go get a dictionary so we can look up "hipocracy" together?
================
================
Microsoft is not the answer, Microsoft is the question. The answer is "no".
Stephen King IS rich enough to be independantly wealthy, but like so many other rich folk, just doesn't get it. I know he enjoys writing. Why not just give it away? Probably because he feels like he doesn't have enough money.
I mean, if Stephen King had billions and billions of dollars wouldn't he still write, even just for the pleasure of writing? At what point does he or anybody else not need more money?
blessings,
"Only in their dreams can men truly be free 'twas always thus, and always thus will be."
--Tom Schulman
Tell me what makes you so afraid
Of all those people you say you hate
Ok, I'll be the first to know that I know fairly little about how band contracts work, but this just seems too ridiculous to me...
What legal leg exactly does Sony HAVE here? I was under the (aparently misguided) impression that bands simply had to go through record lables to get their works published in the mainstream. If Offspring hasn't released the album yet, how can Sony legaly make them not give it away? Or is it that they have already sold the album to Sony? (And if this is the case, how much of the rights to the album did they have to give up in order to sign a contract?!?) Does this really mean that if you sign a contract with Sony, you lose the right to distribute your own creative work?!?!?
Am I the only one who thinks that there is something terribly wrong here?
And meanwhile I have been here in Trout Run PA using my old handcrank phone....I guess I should upgrade to a rotary soon...the visor phone is gonna have to wait.
The anti-salmon
And speaking of Them, where lies the trend in The War Between The Pitiful RIAA and the Splendid Universities?
neat reference timothy, i read that book in grade school and really enjoyed it. it's one of those items i keep checking used bookstores for, since it's been o.p. for about fifteen years.
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the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties
Hollywood, Television, has become the dream machine. We need to take that back; each of us is a Dream Machine
I understand that. What Mr. King seems to think, however(from the quote above), is that we should gladly pay separately for *each* format or copy that we download. I see a problem with this logic on a couple of levels.
.pdf file(used as an example because they look so nice on my desktop), I feel I should also be able to read this on my palm on the subway(where a pdf probably wouldn't look quite as nice). This particular argument is nothing but opinion, I'll admit, but I can't imagine someone wanting me to pay twice just to get a text copy, or html document of the same data, I already purchased the right to read it, I should be able to do so in any means I choose.
1. If I buy a paperback, I may not get the rights to take a hardcover as well, however I'm free to read that paperback anywhere I'm able to read. Getting my book digitally, in say a
2. The cost of reproduction is zero. This translates to zero scarcity. The knowledge of this breaks down people's willingness to spend any more money than they have to. I don't purport that the author should not be paid, but generally the point of cutting out the middleman is to get a better deal out of distrobution. The consumers will want a better deal as well, knowing this.
3. In a bookstore environment there are often very good reasons for wanting to spend money on something you've purchased once- the special leather-bound edition with the gold leaf and the nifty fake-silk bookmark; the one the author signed that you'll never crack open again, shrink wrap and put on E-bay if you go broke, and the first printing you run across in some used book store, where the owner has no idea it's worth $32k.
I especially want to emphasis #3. I've said it before in regards to mp3's and movies. If the people who put this out want us to pay more than once for something, they had better give us a good reason to. Stephen has a pretty cute idea going with the "installment" plan on his books, and it *IS* very_good to see him offer the books in so many formats, his attitude towards people wanting to get them all disturbs me. If the content is the same I say let them get whatever they choose. It just wouldn't feel right to me to present data to a paying customer in HTML format and then charge them again to strip out the tags.
I know I'm just blathering on and on here, but I wanted to mention one other thing. It feels a little like we are being set up for a fall here, and if it were any other author, or some 4 letter acronymic agency releasing this I would not be surprised to see a big press release saying "Theives! This is why we need to use closed, copy-protected and annoying formats gauranteed to deny you your fair use rights." I was going to make a much better posting, but it's hard to think straight at work. People just interrupt you and
Fist Prost
"We're talking about a planet of helpdesks."
Fist Prost
"We're talking about a planet of helpdesks."
-Jaron Lanier
Actually, King has stated that the first three installments will be $1 each, and the fourth through eighth will be $2 each. Any remaining installments will be free. So the total you'll pay is $13.00. That's about half of what you'd pay for the book if it was printed and distributed through a publisher.
I could care less about Napster, but I'm entertained that Universities across the nation end up on the side of the students on this issue simply because it's easier for them to do so. I know that Universities don't have their interests at heart, but it's fun to see them come off as supporting the students.
:)
However, the RIAA obviously can't manage to do the same thing with their artists, which should give you an idea as to the scope and depth of their evilness.
So... anyone want to make a song for me? I promise not to lock you into an absurd licensing contract...
Will the real Bruce Perens Please Stand Up
I wonder if Stephen King's publishers are similarly upset that people get his books out of libraries rather than buying their own copies. I've read many of his books; I've only purchased one.
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
I just dropped by the Offspring website, originally planning to tell them off for buckling under.
But on the Offspring site is a much more revealing news column than the RIAA approved YAHOO news item above. You know it's going to be a good read when the link is titled "We Got Fu**ed"
To sum it up, if Offspring had gone ahead with the plan to deploy the whole CD content online, Sony would have crushed them under lawsuits that would have stopped them from releasing the songs, the CD, and thier tour. So Offspring would probably have been out on the streets for a few years recovering.
The best part of the Offspring news was this paragraph:
"It sucks," he said, "because once people get thier hands on the music, fans will have to turn to Napster and other distribution methods to take a listen, but they won't be able to find the songs at www.offspring.com. We will be the only site on the Web that will not have the Offspring's new music."
So now I plan to support them by downloading the single, and probably buy there new CD. Or, perhaps I'll just napterize the whole thing and drop them ten at the Fairtunes Offspring page...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
People aren't paying because they're suddenly realizing that, at the 1,500 page length of a King novel, it'll be a good 50-80 chapters, or about thrice what they'd pay for the book in the bookstore. Still, I beleive the number will level off at around 50%.
I remember King said he weeded 500 pages out of one of his books. It was 1,300 pages after the weeding.
This isn't a flame, but I'll be modded down anyway.
Hey, give King a break (I am a fan too); he maybe not going around it the "correct" way, but he *is* trying and he definitely has the market clout to pull it off. You also have to realize King ain't that techno-savvy. Back in '96 or so when I frequented alt.books.fan.stephen-king it was well known that King kept intentionally away from the Net (or so his good friend Peter Straub said). I dunno when he changed his mind, but judging from his various stories on typewriters and reluctance to use a word-processor, I am guessing pretty recently.
I also think King would have gotten a better response if the whole e-buying process was smoother (maybe hook up with PayPal or Yahoo! BillPay or something ask for $.50 a part) instead of the clunky way he did part I (I notice know he has switched to Amazon --maybe he had a beer with Steve Jobs).
If you buy a book online, like at Amazon, you have 30 days to return it for full credit. Of course if you just find the book mediocre you might not bother to do that, because it involves a trip to the post office, repackaging, etc.
If delivery is electronic, you have nothing to return, you just delete it.
Who is to say that the 30% of people (or at least some part of that number) that King says didn't pay, just didn't like his book - and with the ease of "returning" in this form of delivery, did just that?
People perform on the streets because they can make some money and because they want to expose people to their art. In reality, it isn't any additional burden on the street performer that's out there performing if someone watches but doesn't tip (maybe because they don't like it). In the virtual world, it's no additional burden on the artist/publisher if someone somewhere makes a copy, listens/views it and doesn't like it. What is currently missing is the way for people to throw money into the hat if they DO like it. If it's as simple as clicking a button on your MP3 player, for instance, people will tip. The difference, which will make street-performer-like "tipping" protocols successful, is potentially the entire 'Net (eventually most of the world) can view/listen to your work and leave a tip. That can add up to a sizeable income and unlike performing in a real-world venue with practically unlimited seating capacity, it doesn't take any of your personal time beyond the creation of the first copy.
Burris
...am sick of all this record-label bashing. What Sony did was completely appropriate. The Offspring signed a contract, and they are legally obligated not to break that contract, no matter how much they want their music to be free (which is a ridiculous concept in itself, but that's another subject). And anyway, if they didn't want force people to pay ridiculous prices to hear their crap, only to be underpaid and abused, they shouldn't have signed to Sony in the first place. Period. They, and anyone who is against what Sony did should stop bitching and face the facts.
Nothing about the honor system, nothing about liking it. If you read the first part and didn't like it, don't read any more and don't pay, but you've already agreed to pay for the first part. It's as simple as that.
TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE.
...From themselves?
Good lord! Its a good thing these record labels are out there to protect their artists! Elsewise they might try something new, and 'Something New' is not a viable proven income model.
air and light and time and space
It appears to us that some people are downloading two and even three times to different formats-to the Palm Pilot say, and also to whatever Microsoft uses. This may be based on a simple misperception. Let me put it this way: you couldn't go into a bookstore and say, "I want you to give me the paperback version and the audio version of this book free because I bought the hardcover." simply as I can put it, you must pay for what you take every time you take it or this won't work.
Simply as I can put it, the problem you see, Mr. King, is the overwhelming advantage to using electrons instead of dead trees. The bookstore analogy is obvious, of course you would expect to pay twice for something that was printed and bound on a physical medium. Of course I would also have then have the right to make archival copies of that work, or sell the work to a third party. With digital mediums these rights are pretty much lost. The least I would expect is either 1)A cross-platform file that I am able to copy from system to system, or 2)The ability to download it to whatever platform I like. Without either of those I fail to see any advantage at all to me as a consumer to buy digital over pulp.
Fist Prost
"We're talking about a planet of helpdesks."
Fist Prost
"We're talking about a planet of helpdesks."
-Jaron Lanier
And of course nobody would actually pay money to support free software, either, because there is a huge nebulous "them" out there writing it for free, and somebody else is paying for the servers and bandwidth charges.
Maybe King should think twice before blaming (non-)buyers. Maybe the real issue is that a lot of people paid for the first one, thought the quality wasn't worth the price but downloaded the second "just to see how it came out". I'd like to see the same experiment tried with someone who still has a few good stories left: imagine the next 3 Harry Potter books as electronic.
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Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
(Hey Ryan! Here's your proof!)
King's experiment is just that: an experiment to judge the sense of honesty and obligation that people have.
When he released Riding the Bullet, he was surprised after a reader sent him money for the story. That gave him the incentive to start his little experiment.
Forcing people to pay isn't what this whole thing is about. Your arguments are sound, if you're trying to maximize profitablity. But that's not why King is proceeding with the street performer model.
Buy Dell. Buy HP. Buy Sony. Buy Compaq. Buy E-Machines. Buy a used Packard-Bell from the classifieds.
VA sucks and has never given a red cent of their hard-earned precious money to support "the community." They also don't support their own so-called kernel-hacker "programmers," none of whom have ever done a lick of work on anything important to do with the Linux kernel.
Slashdot is nothing but a collection of subliminal ads for VA Linux Systems, which wouldn't otherwise be able to sell more than 3 servers a year to a school of drugged albinos. Their machines are awful -- they don't stand up at all compared to the nice new 2-rack unit machines from SGI.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
The administrators realized how much cheaper it is to copy things off of napster than buy the CDs themselves.
I do like his work (sue me) but I think he is screwing this one up for everyone. Not only is he buying into Big Publishings e-book pricing scheme ($13 US for an ebook? Are you nuts?!) He's also got hugely unrealistic expectations.
So we're basically screwed either way:
First outcome (most likely IMO): Experiment is an utter failure after, say, chapter 4. Big Publishing goes "Oh, look, I guess ebooks will never work."
Second outcome: Experiment is a success. Big Publishing goes "Oh, I guess we CAN charge $13 US for books that cost us next to nothing, and oh, look, we can even keep the same royalty rate!"
And the other thing that really po'ed me about his "comments" was where he basically trashes fair use.
It appears to us that some people are downloading two and even three times to different formats-to the Palm Pilot say, and also to whatever Microsoft uses. This may be based on a simple misperception. Let me put it this way: you couldn't go into a bookstore and say, "I want you to give me the paperback version and the audio version of this book free because I bought the hardcover." As simply as I can put it, you must pay for what you take every time you take it or this won't work.
I know that it's a book Mr King, but it's an E book now. That means there are no different editions.... dumbass. That customer you are talking to paid for it once. That means he can copy it (for his own use), and by extension he should even be able to download it from you again.
Argh. Ah well, had to vent.
In the law there is no overlap between theft and copyright infringement whatsoever.
If anybody is still having any delusions that the RIAA and Big Business are really out to protect their stable of cash cows, er, artists, the last few weeks destroy that notion. Courtney Love's share, anyone? Sony owning URLs for life? This Offspring deal? Etc. etc.?
Music companies could care less about their artists. And the sad thing is a lot of artists just let it happen, by not scouring contracts and not putting up a fight. Newer artists are just so happy to break into the business that they don't think about what'll happen to them in 6 months or a year. What if they leave their publisher after 5 albums and they want to set up a new web site? Oh, sucks to be you, artist, 'cause now instead of http://www.yourname.com you'll have to settle for http://listen.to/yourname, thank you very much SMEI.
The only artists now who still have the right to take a shit without their label's permission are the established, those who have been in the biz long enough that they make their own rules. But poor ol' Eiffel 65, N*SYNC and the rest (who I feel sorry for anyways, just listen to their "music") are pretty much screwed.
N*SYNC is particularly ironic -- ever see their new videos where they're being help up by strings like marionettes?
Puppets indeed.
J
Judging from informal polling of some acquaintances of mine, I'd say only 50% of those who start a 300 page Steven King novel bother to read past page 100, and only 25% bother to read past page 200.