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The Customer is Always Wrong
McSpew writes "Hackers author Steven Levy so far is the only person in the mainstream press to pick up on the the travesty of the SSSCA hearings. He points out that only the media giants could be so stupid as to think treating their customers like criminals will increase sales." Steven's a very smart guy - and very well said on this issue.
Nobody makes you pay for that content. You're quite entitled to carry on viewing, just with ads....
> Can someone please give me the slashdot defination of "hypocrite"?
Well, for starters, someone who reads, and then posts to a site for free, complaining about having to pay for it (how much did that post costs you?), is a hypocrite.
"Old man yells at systemd"
Thank you, Mr. Levy, for giving me, in Hackers, the words to express what I already knew to be true.
"Bite my [shiny metal] ass, Eisner."
OK, so my computer's version's not as eloquent. I think it gets the point across, though.
... they can build their own!
The SSSCA is just the result of a lazy slob MPAA/RIAA executives who want the PC industry to build them tailor-made-to-order PC technology to their exacting specifications, without having to invest a single penny or lift a single finger of effort. Oh, the industry won't play along? Let's pass legislation REQUIRING them to.
The MPAA/RIAA are so used to having their way with consumers, that they now believe they can hand the jar of vaseline to the PC industry and have their way with them, too.
And the scary bit is that for the most part, they're right...
See my vest, see my vest, made from real gorilla chest.
IMHO, the media companies want to take away our right as people to make moral decisions. Like the scientists in Clockwork Orange.
"It's comin' back around again..." -RATM
As always, its the "Music industry has head stuck up ass. People will be mad. News at 11."
Duh.
It's a shame people dont have the time or money to care until it actually happens.
"Old man yells at systemd"
Please! This is basically more of big, rich media companies convicting all their customers without a trial. Guilty because you own a piece of hardware. Yeah, file-sharing and copying is rampant...does it take away their profits? That's not clear...and in MY opinion, it doesn't since there's no guarantee that I would have purchased a CD containing a song I download...yet I know that many times, I've downloaded a song, liked it, then bought the CD.
As for the Apple campaign, nothing in it is promoting criminal behavior, only fair use...which is what these people would LOVE to stamp out.
"I'm not a procrastinator, I'm temporally challenged"
only the media giants could be so stupid as to think treating their customers like criminals will increase sales.
Hrm. I wonder if Microsoft will be able to license their Activation Code technology to the good people of Vivendi Universal.
"We're sorry, but someone is already listening to this pressing of the Britney Spheres CD."
--saint
It's not about piracy--its about destroying fair use and moving America to a pay-per-use business model. The whole piracy thing is arrant bullshit--content will still be created regardless of copying. After all, it's done pretty damned well even after 30 years of rampant analog copying.
The whole scare over "digital copying" is a red herring--what the RIAA and MPAA are trying to do is use this new-fangled technology thing to get rid of this profit-limiting concept of "buy once, play (or read) many times."
Get that message out there folks--its not about piracy, its about pay-per-view everywhere.
Remain calm! All is well!
"The Customer Is Always Wrong" title doens't come from /., it's the original title of the story from msnbc...
So before bitching about how slashdot isn't open-minded, read the article. Slashdot doesn't write articles, it only link to it.
I think they're safe, especially since none of these are illegal activities. Violation of copyright is illegal. Unlimited distribution without permission of the copyright holder (not "owner") is illegal. But for music you've made, or music you've purchased, ripping, mixing, and burning are entirely legal for your personal use. Not only does common sense say so. So does the law and quite a number of federal courts.
Despite efforts to grab the mindspace, the Content Cartel is simply wrong when it claims that ripping, mixing, or burning are, prima facie, illegal. Don't yield that ground to them.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
So you justify your illegal activities by saying that you 'give back'? Please yourself.
I tried to write my congressmen about this on Saturday morning. My email was rejected because it hadn't been submitted using their web forms! I think everybody should switch to web forms. Fook multiple recipients and the CC and BCC fields! I guess I'll just print the damn email out on paper and send it in. Maybe they'll read in 9 months after they've sufficiently tested it for Anthrax, fingerprints, and whatever else. Never mind that it's trivial to forge real mail and non-PGP-signed email-- especially "email" submitted via web form.
The SSSCA is *insane*. It requires every piece of hardware/software to protect copyright, which means the end of cut & paste, email forwarding, and-- most importantly-- the entire alt.binaries.pictures.* hierarchy! Oh fook, did I mention that last one out loud?
But given that the Congress is apparently techno-illiterate, I doubt they'll understand the difference.
As a company, it makes a lot of sense to try to stop people from using your products
I doan theeenk so.
What galls me most about the media oligopoly is that they think they have a right (and congress is, sadly, too eager to oblige) to have the general public shoulder additional costs so that the media oligarchs can easily apply their existing business models to new media.
What a fantastic piece!
Arguing against those who favor copy protection measures extreme as these can sometimes be difficult for people who arn't particularly technologically inclined; that's why we always see anologies to Ford making cars whose engines need updgrades like Windows does. This article does a good job of making the electronic freedom arguement without resorting to such sillyness by pointing to the underlying economic reality: treating your customers like theives will never increase sales.
Let's hope this is just the first in a long line of articles making a sensible arguments against Disney et al., and their handpicked legislators.
Specifically in the area of digital music, if this had been done right this would not be a problem. Music companies offering their catalogs for say .25 or .50 cents a song with a fat pipe and guaranteed quality would have been popular. I would have considered it myself. I would have download from them regardless of the availability of other sources such as the Gnutella network. I would have been happily legal, with clean, correct copies of my music. I think that many people would have also.
Sure, there would be quite a few people still pirating the content, but for audiophiles it would have been a no-brainer. Legal, fast, and clean would have been the watchwords. How many MP3s have you downloaded only to find out that it's a bad rip that took you an hour to get? Misnamed songs, misnamed authors, and things like that would have been things of the past. But no, we have to have paranoia, fear, and mistrust.
A company that would trust its customers a little bit could reap huge rewards. There will be piracy regardless of what they do. If it was created by man, it can be broken by man.
The first company to engender a little trust and lay on a little guilt "If one of your friends wants this song, send them to us so we can continue to offer you this premium service" would have made them money.
...Steven Levy so far is the only person in the mainstream press to pick up on the the travesty of the SSSCA hearings....
Uhmm...am I the only one who sees how obvious it is that mainstream media, controlled by the companies that are backing the sssca, wouldn't be reporting on it? Unless it wasn't going their way, that is.
Damnit, Jim, I'm an anarchist, not a F@#$!^& doctor!
The thing is that Copyright laws do allow you to make copies for your own use.
I have on my PC at work about 1500 mp3's that are perfectly legal and their purpose is to keep me from lugging CD's to and from work.
SSSCA would prevent that since the only purpose of mp3 is to steal music...
But isn't it the burden of proof on the music and movie industry to actually prove that people are pirating (and not by getting the FBI to raid homes) and not the job of Congress to pass sweeping legislation for a mass fisting of consumers?
This was brought up on here a few times over the Napster debate where the court said that the record companies had to show proof of copyright over the music that was being traded.
Why hasn't Intel or someone testifying against this brought that up. Wouldn't that be an ace in the hole?
No sig for you!!
It's written very clearly on the bottom in 12 point type "Please don't steal music".
...to link to another page with some VERY interesting stuff. Go to the page, follow the link, I just hope he is wrong. But what if hes not???
This sig is a virse, take it and use it.
LinuxWorx
Spelling errors are intentional as are gramatical error
Don't forget that if the Slashdot "Customer" is wrong, simply insult them in their own journal, even though they aren't a troll and have 50 karma...
Michael never did apologize for that, so, yes, I'm still sour about it.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Is that much of the piracy that happens is actually by EMPLOYEES of these companies.
A lot of piracy is coming from HQ. Anyone who knows "the scene" will agree. All it takes is an employee who doesn't care or wants to hook up a friend with a copy of an album 3 months early to start up a huge piracy spread of the work.
Just a shot in the dark...
It's really quite simple - the only right of a consumer is to buy stuff, so if you are doing anything else, you must be an evil, un-American, commie bastard criminal. Since people obviously aren't playing along and sending all of their money to groups like the MPAA, RIAA, etc. in small, unmarked, non-sequential bills left under the third tier of the right field bleachers at the high school at precisely 6pm, they have no choice but to have all of their rights removed. We didn't bow down to our lord and god Big Business, paying tribute to its greatness with gifts of gold and promises of eternal servitude, so it shall smite us with the sting of a thousand legal restrictions. It's really quite fair when you consider that we've been given such wonderful gifts as the opportunity to pay for Britney Spears "music" and cinematic gems like "Super Troopers." So get out your checkbooks and bend over America, it's time for your medicine...
This can't happen, if it did, you wouldn't be able to write your own code for your computer since it
would need a key to unlock the Northbridge and Soutbridge. This won't happen. I write databases and stuff for a living. I don't have a Kiosk that magiclly brings up a #ucking Disney movie.
Hey if this bill make it to law I will never watch
another movie again, as well as my wife and three
boys. This is bullshit.
Actually I'm not justifying anything. I'm not saying that its less wrong because I bought the CD...just that the act itself made me buy the CD. Which means that in this case, this illegal activity gave them profit rather than reduced it as they would claim...
"I'm not a procrastinator, I'm temporally challenged"
... they're always saying "content holders"? Or content providers?
Nothing is going to change until the content producers -the artists - rebel. Nothing short of a mutiny by the bands and filmmakers will get the industry to change.
There have been attempts. The Offspring come to mind, with their pro-Napster stance. (Question: are the still pro-p2p? Are they still a BAND?) But their rebellion was too early, and they were "just a punk band" so I guess few listened.
Until you have Ms. Spears do a press conference stating that she is not going to sign with [whomever] when her contract gets renewed, because [whomever] only produces copy-protected CDs that her lil' girlfriends can't listen to on their Nomads or iPods, and other artists follow suit, there willbe no change. I hate to say it but this is one fight where drastic change is going to need a little violence, if only in the legal sense.
ZOMG I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS ON MACINTOSH VERSUS WINDOWS, VI VERSUS EMACS, AND HOW YOU'RE NOT A DORK
Here's yet another reason why increasing the size and power of Government will only deteriorate the rights of the common man. These anti-speech measures will only increase in number as long as the average person votes for the three parties above.
Advocating liberty means supporting the decrease of big government. Stop asking for handouts, no matter what type (corporate subsidies, welfare, social security, etc) because those handouts come with reductions in our rights, like the big corporations want. If you want to end these ludicrous and obviously unconstitutional laws, then vote for the only party that advocates disassembling any law that is unconstitutional: the Libertarian Party.
I hate being a broken record, but ALL these laws (SSSCA, DMCA, etc) are unconstitutional, but as long as Congress is more powerful than the Constitution allows, they will never be repealed.
My view on copy protection: let manufacturers make an unbreakable copy protection scheme if they want. Let hardware developers get in bed with software developers. But DO NOT LET THEM have laws that prevent reverse engineering. Do let the free market consumer power choose between an encrypted uncopyable format, and possibly an open format advocated by another group of software publishers.
As long as we allow the RIAA and MPAA and other large organizations lobby Congress to overextend Congressional power, we'll always be victims. The free market works, but only if you get government out of it.
They already do. Most of Apple's RipMixBurn and iPod materials have "Don't steal music." at the bottom.
So here's Mr. Levy being bothered by the SSSCA, which could allow the intellectual property industry to force consumer electronics manufacturers to include copy prevention technology in their products. And yet he still chooses the cop-out of saying that digital downloads aren't bad because somebody could come up with a "feasible" DRM system. Hello -- am I the only one who sees the contradiction? Move along, folks, nothing to see here...
Breakfast served all day!
Ok, so the only real way that a consumer has of telling the RIAA & MPAA how they feel is with their wallets..
So, short of not buying any more music or seeing any more movies, what are my alternatives?
Where can I find movies and music that don't grease the MPAA and RIAA wheels?
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
And how on earth could calling a hacker a hacker do anything to alienate the real paying customers? Regular people with jobs and families who work and earn money and spend it on fine music CDs and movies don't even know any hackers. Unless they are really unlucky.
So the consumers who keep the world running smoothly have no reason to mind the prosecution of those who do things that normal folks would never dream of doing. And that is why the regular media over in the real world has ignored this story.
Only over the fantasy world of the hacker "community" is it even noticed.
I disagree somewhat with his article in that I don't think that there is alot of opportunity for the media companies on the internet. What we are witnessing is a transformation of the industries. This will inevitably result in the deaths of some of these companies, like dinosaurs. To artificially prop them up is just plain wrong. Who knows what greater heights can be achieved without them in the way? I for one will happily kick the chair out from under them.
All my friends who burn CD's do it from their own collections, I will too, once I get my new system together. I've supported the RIAA and MPAA over the years by purchasing hundreds of CD's, seeing hundreds of movies and buying several tapes and now some DVD's. I'm clearly public enemy #1 in their eyes since now I want to make my own mixes, employing an operating system (Linux) and freely available tools to do this awful deed. Unthinkable that an open source operating system could exist where users could easily bypass RIAA and MPAA mandated (via SSSCA) controls, surely it's a dream come true for Microsoft, it's a wonder they aren't out trumpeting this fact.
Heaven forbid that I should consider sampling my cruddy (and probably illegal as all heck) VHS collection of Ren & Stimpy, Alf, Star Trek:TNG, Max Headroom, etc. and weed out the 15 year old commercials and burn them onto DVD's which I could watch at my leisure. Well, damn them all to heck, since they don't make this stuff available anyway. If they would, and let's face it, they could put more resources into making all this content of the last 80 years (film, music, radio, etc) available over the web or by subscription, like Netflix, I could dump cartons of old tapes. Nah, that wouldn't work. Need to legislate morailty, strip freedoms, control control control, continue to push crap. Next you'll be paying Hollywood tax on a new guitar, because you might play a few bars of something copyrighted, and it should call up John Ashcroft and turn you in, if you do, just like soviet teenagers selling out their parents for a pair of Levi's...
I'm actually surprised Steven Levy's article is run by msnbc, as they're certainly part of the problem (NAB is certainly in favor of taking away your TiVo or ReplayTV, y'know) You certainly wouldn't see this on ABC...
Cheers to Steven!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
what's your point, ass?
i realize that the title was carried over from the original article...I'm just tossing out a little irony. But apparently it was lost on you, you poor little sap.
You just keep buying into this slashdot crap...sooner or later, you'll get pissed about something and you'll agree with me.
Steven Levy so far is the only person in the mainstream press to pick up on the the travesty of the SSSCA hearings.
Not true. Dan Gilmour of the San Jose Mercury News has been talking about it.
Check it out.
2002-02-28 20:27:33 Intel backs consumers over Hollywood (articles,news) (rejected)
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
Pleas and arguments to the government to "protect us" from the very consumers who help make and finance these companies should make all consumers of these company's products sit up and re-evaluate their intentions. Instead of innovating new and profitable ways to service the market, these companies reach a certain critical mass and then turn to lobbying and meaningless political rhetoric to try to bulwark their slowly degrading market share in areas that the consumer has slowly started to leave. Once these behemoths of corporate Amerika turn on to an issue, the PAC's and backdoor deals to pass legislation to "protect the consumer" inevitably follow. Capitalism is supposed to react to "market forces", not government interference. If the mass consumers WANT to steal music, they WILL!! If it causes large media organizations to fail, then let them. Ideally, whatever the consumer wants to get, it eventually will, at whatever acquisition cost it decides is agreeable.
In this case the music is "free" on various P2P networks. To the average consumer this price is acceptable, to the average unsigned band, this is acceptable. Only to the Record companies, and Major Label artists is this unacceptable. One way or another, this too shall pass and an equilibrium will be reached. What this is, I do not know. But rest assured, it will be reached, if and only if, the Government stays out of it.
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
Right on, Libertarian Brother! George Bush is a Corporate Whore, and the Bitch of Big Buisiness! Who's with me?
The ONLY reason why any form of exchange/barter/loan/transaction works, is because both parties end up in the plus. I want CD abc more than I want $20. The label want's $20 more than that copy of the CD. We go through the transaction and we're both better off. Hence these exchanges, when executed properly, are not a zero sum game.
Many industries have taken the perspective that exchanges should be zero sum. i.e. Screw your customer for your own good. When that doesn't work, screw them more. Now even cockroaches learn quickly from negative re-enforcement. How does the record industry expect us to behave?
-... ---
Americans will get tired of being bled for every dollar they have and something will happen. I'm afraid it will be a while longer of unrestrained greed but something has to give. America cannot infinitely support a one-way transfer of wealth.
Remember my.mp3.com? For those that don't, you could pop in your purchased cd at home, it would authorize you as having bought it, and then you could stream the mp3 from anywhere from that point, but only with your login. I thought it would stand up to legality as well, and used it quite a bit, authorizing at home and listening at work - no lugging! But of course mp3.com lost that lawsuit. Your example is different b/c you actually made those mp3s yourself, and I have plenty of those as well (a binder full), but proof enough that simply owning is not necessarily enough in the eyes of the law.
Please subscribe to see the more insightful version of th
Here's what I want to say to the media industry:
Ya know what? Do it. We've been patiently WAITING for YEARS for a reason to topple you motherfuckers. So do it. Let's just get it all over with - the world is hungry for a revolution.
When this is all over the media companies will be wishing they never picked this fight. Go ahead, fuckers - do it. I fucking DARE you.
Someone who does not unilaterally praise Linux, demand that all information be free regardless of any associated costs, or fail to claim that any failure to reinforce the latter is an infringement on our personal God-given freedoms.
My goodness, he knocked you for having 700+ posts? I hope he never takes a look at my user profile... And I'm not even that prolific a poster.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
I was actually disappointed by this Steven Levy article. He makes the same points that we've all seen 1000 times on Slashdot -- that all encryption will get broken. And treating your customers like criminals is a surefire way to lose sales.
But there's one question the SSSCA issue brings up that I really haven't seen intelligently discussed on Slashdot. And that is: can a combination of software encryption and hardware disabling make it impossible for a motivated user, with a few hundred bucks of special equipment, to copy a protected DVD to MPEG4 or whatever? With next-generation protected equipment, might we see the case where the protection scheme on DVD's can no longer be broken on the cheap?
I think it's fair to say that CDs can never be meaningfully protected, since the output of audio signals is so basic and so easy to recapture no matter what encryption is present.
But, should the SCCCA pass, can a case be made that a combination of hardware and software will make it essentially impossible to extract unprotected, high-quality versions of movies from a DVD?
I don't have the tech background to answer that question. But it seems like this is the question for which we all need a clear answer.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
Business-school professors could feast for years on the unintended consequences that come from treating Britney Spears tunes like nuclear secrets.
So we might have Britney Spears tunes locked up with only a select few authorized to listen to them? Maybe there is a upside (albeit a tiny one) to this after all.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Check out this log, and search for Hollings. The main point from the BlogSphere is that Hollings, the committee chairman, is bought and paid for by the entertainment industry, and why would the same industry give themselves negative press?
The good news is that the "evil" republican House seems to be willing to tell Hollings to take a leap.
Donut
Shut up wanker.
Actually, it's perfectly valid to view this as slashdot charging for the service, not the content. They organize the servers, the software, maintain the archives, etc. Through their reputation (such as it is) and their userbase, they supply the eyeball.
Hey, sort of like open source.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
By making clear that your company opposes illegal use of your product, even going so far as to lobby for the enactment of laws restricting your product's use, you remove liability from yourself and transfer it to those who seek to use your product for illegal purposes.
Unfortunately, you transfer the liability to the hardware manufaturers, the courts, and the government. Its easy to implement crappy copy protection, and then rely on other people to protect you when somebody figures out how to circumvent it.
As a company, it makes a lot of sense to try to stop people from using your products illegally.
I agree. And I have no problem with any company trying to do this. If they want to, then there should be nothing trying to stop them. I, of course, am free to not use their products, and I am free to support any company that chooses not to use copy protection that interfers with my fair-use rights.
The problem is that they are trying to pass a law to remove these rights from me. They are taking the actions of a few illegal traders (who are outnumbered by legitimate CD buyers - Somebody must have made O-Town a #1 record) and turning them into legislation that will effectively, remove my ability to choose and to fairly use my media in a way that I see fit.
This scares the hell out of me.
Do you have Linux and a DotPal? Click here now!
Copyright extention to oblivion
DMCA, no reverse engineering to get around it, either
SSSCA, everything is locked down and controlled.
See a pattern? Does this look like a balance being struck between the producers and consumers rights?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
You claim file sharing is wrong. Ok, fine, but that doesn't mean that the technology to play mp3's on your computer isn't convenient and beneficial to us.
No one sues the credit card companies for providing a service for thieves to easily steal people's money, now do they?
When will you people learn that technology and knowledge is a double-edged sword?
Read the link off of the parent articles MSNBC linked article. Seems some college students are so ticked off over M$ anti-piracy measures that they are proclaiming M$ will never have enough dollars to hire them.
you're exactly right.
what, the big sticker that says "Don't Steal Music" on your iPod didn't do this already? what about the banner that they show on all their commercials where Apple advertises iTunes, the iPod, or any other multimedia facet of OS X?
I guess ALL innovation comes from the halls of corporations. We don't need no steenking startups. If you *think* about what's really needed to implement the SSCA as currently envisioned that's what happens.
If our government thinks we're in a hi-tech slump now, just see what happens if SSCA passes. Just watch the US fall on the wrong side of the digital divide as innovation moves elsewhere.
As others have said, it's not just hardware, but software, too. You can add all the DRM hardware you want, but unless you've got a DRM OS with signatures, security, and verification everywhere, it's broken. An OSS kernel is dead in the DRM age, and userspace may well be in trouble, too. Imagine SSCA-certified compilers that guarantee the 'DRM Devices' are only used properly.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Bingo.
The reason that Metallica went all stupid was that "I Disappear" (IIRC) was put on Napster 3 weeks before it was to be made available for radio play. Radio station WRIF in Detroit (amongst others) put that copy on the air, resulting in the first round of "cease and dissist"s. Metallica then relised that they lost control of thier own production, and the rest is history. (remember Google is your friend, people)
No excuse for thier over the top cheeleading of killing Napster, but kinda makes you see where they're coming from.
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
I know it has been said and batted around, but sooner or later some a-hole politician is going to "officially" coin the term.
And it will put a stop to "piracy" just like the "War on Drugs" put a stop to all drug use in the US.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
I believe public policy is a pendulum that swings back and forth between positions on issues. Give the democrats what they want for too long, and there's a right wing backlash. And vice versa. So, instead of fighting it, give them the SSSCA, as flawed as possible. Then wait for a good backlash to set things right. It will happen - the commercial interests of Intel and hardware makers (and I think someone pointed out that Sony is more in this camp) will ensure that. Afterall, the USSR discredited anything valid in Marx's theories...
I hate to use Adult industry examples, but there is a very good example of taking advantage of a market instead of trying to shut it down.
Playboy Enterprises, Inc. was probably one of the most pirated companies in the history of media when it comes to original content. I don't know about you, but I've read hundreds of articles talking about Pamela Anderson or whoever being #1 on most search engines, etc etc.
So what did PEI do? They capitalized on the market. They didn't try to prevent you from copying JPG's and MOV's. They gave you a service so killer that it's not worth the time trying to pirate it. Most adult companies try and charge like $30 a month for a crap ass website with lousy content and slutty women.
Not Playboy. They charge like 6 bux a month. The price of a paper magazine. All of their playmates in an online archive. HUGE libraries of content. New features weekly if not daily.
Playboy recognized it could benefit from a potential source of huge revenue or it could be like the RIAA and MPAA and try to prevent it's content from being copied. By providing a service with such value at such a reasonable price point, I'm quite sure Playboy is making a killing.
I wish the RIAA and MPAA could pull their heads of out their respective a$$es and open their eyes to the REAL market they COULD capitalize on without screwing things for us: the consumers.
In Philadelphia, radio station WYSP (the #1 rock station in Philly) no longer plays music during the day time. They have had Howard Stern in the morning since 1986, they have O & A during afternoon drive, and as of today, they have another team middays.
And that's the #1 station!
Msft gets off scott free, able to leverage one monopoly into as many as they can grow tentacles (buy one, you have to buy them all! No "mix and match" no mo...) but hardware companies like WesternDigital, Maxtor, IBM etc. are required by law to put secret undocumented protection features in their products to give Msft unlimited control over distribution, installation and use ("Please enter your 24 digit auth code to begin performance of this content, or contact your vendor for assistence in obtainly a copy authorization code.").
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
So... the record company is trying to cover its a$$ in case I decide to make copies of Britney Spears to torture my cat? We're not talking about fire arms here. It's bad enough they try to claim they are losing money, but let's not try to claim that they are simply protecting themselves from all those evil, cd-burning, thieving teenagers trying to do harm.
Believe nothing -- Buddha
I've seen it in MS's Product Activation. I've seen it in the creation of Copy-Protected CDs. A customer is now seen as the enemy of the company selling it's goods and not a friend. This is a completely backwards view. These companies (MS, MPAA, RIAA, and others) don't see the customer as someone who's plunking down hard-earned money to use something they created (using "created" in the loosest sense with the RIAA/MPAA), but as someone who might pirate their work and deny them additional sales.
They will regularly trot out "how much we're losing" piracy figures. (Nevermind that some users who pirate software would do without before paying the inflated price for a legal copy.) They assume that they have a right to sell their product to everyone, charge whatever they want, and tell the user exactly how they can and can't use the product.
I imagine in their perfect world, there'd be a RIAA/MPAA/MS computer-chip implanted in everyone's brain calculating how much we use their product (so we can be billed by the hour, rounded up of course), stopping us from doing things they deem "illegal" (I'm sorry, you can't rip that. After all, you paid for it, but we still *own* it.), and turning us in the police if we persist.
If I could sit in a room with them and say one thing it'd be: "You're in for a serious wake-up call. People do not like being treated like criminals. They take offense to it. You exist to provide a service to the public (and make some $$$ off of it), the public doesn't exist to send money to you." Of course, I'd probably be branded a criminal by those statements and be shipped off for a "special" brain implant.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
As much as I like Levy, it's not really that great of an article. It's still propaganda and unfounded assumptions, the only difference is that we like what he has to say.
I'm proud of my Northern Tibetian Heritage
Well duh. I mean when Napster was big and you could get the latest from DMB or Metallica before the album was released, you had to have known that somebody on the inside leaked it.
I have the solution to the "Piracy" which should make everyone happy. The problem is not in the technology, it lies in the simple fact that the content providers actually give consumers the first-generation copies in the first place, which facilitates second-hand copying. This practice needs to be stopped.
The solution is deviously simple: when a someone goes to the record store and buys, let's say, the hot new Alicia Keys CD, they should only get a copy of the liner notes, not the easy-to-copy CD.
Voila! No original, no copies, and the problem is solved. You can't pirate a CD that you don't have. Sure, album reviewers might have a harder time with this scheme, but your average Britney Spears-listening vegetard won't know the difference. They'll still be a part of the excitement as they clutch their empty CD case, their small, vapid minds unaware of the change. Since most pop music is brand and marketing, the music studios could concentrate their efforts more efficiently.
It will save money on studio and recording fees as well.
Someone get Sen. Fritz Hollings on the phone, if he helps set this plan into motion, there's a nice vacation condo waiting for him!
Remember, though we rail against this and the system that has produced it, write your Congress representatives in the House and the Senate.
The EFF has a very nice form letter you can copy and paste and send to your elected officials.
Make your voice heard. They do check their emails and do make tallies of what issues their constituents are writing and calling about.
Well, I know it's a given for people who *GASP* have common sense, I.E the populous of most of this board, but it just goes to show how these labels want to blame everyone else but themselves. If they have 50 advance releases of a CD floating around the office and one of them leaks out, you can't blame some 14 year old in Michigan on it, which is what they always do.
It's always the kid with the cable modem that causes the problems, never the person who's complaining in the first place.
For those who are unfamiliar with the details of the bill, you will find them here
Also, please sign the online petition that is posted online here
It would also be good if you write your elected officials, but at least add your name to the petition.
The future you save just might be your own...
When faced with a problem, many web developers say "I know, I'll use JavaScript!".
Now they have two problems.
I know I'll get mod'd down for this but I just had to point it out.
/.'d and people purchase the movie (which is bound to happen), he will get a percentage from the sale! Talk about using the /. effect to one's advantage.
The guy who submitted this story included a link to purchase the movie 'Hackers' from Amazon.com (as opposed to the movie's website which would seem more logical) as part of the stories description.
I was curious about this for a minute until I released that he included a referer ID in the URL so as the URL gets
Capitalism is wonderful, isn't it? I'm amazed that the editors let that slip by. I think this is a whole new category of karma whoring...
int func(int a);
func((b += 3, b));
They complain about losing their business model, but I think they have gained a better one. This is an old arguement, but one that I see holds true amongst myself and my peers. I have illegally take music from Napster and Morpheus to listen to. Those tunez that I enjoy, I end up buying the CD... infact in many cases I endup buying all the CD's from a band at one time. Those that I don't listen to... I disgard or neglect. Now if the media companies were actually succesfull in their pursuit... I would not be allowed to sample music (especially because I do not listen to top 40 hits on the radio... but prefer the hard to find music)... I will not buy nearly as many CD's as I do now. Infact I have no need to buy any more, as I have got a large collection that should keep me happy for years to come. There is course a generation where this is not the case. Younger generation may not appricate owning a CD.. but I am sure that they appricate supporting the groups that they enjoy. The biggest thing that annoys me about the lost revenue totals that these companies project to the government is that it does not calculate how much actual revenue would be lost if there was a perfect anti-piracy plan in place. How many of us would go out and but that game or CD if it really costs us 40/15 dollars? Of all the games or CDs I've got free over the net... I would pay for 40% of the CDs (and do), and maybe 0.01% of the games that I check out. I am not going to pay 40$ to get a game that I do not think is adequate.
Before you flame me, I realize there is a distinction in that supposedly you paid for that DVD you only want to make a backup copy of. But if the seller of the DVD and law say that is not what you paid for, then why are you arguing with the seller? You should only be arguing with law.
So maybe that's the commonality of the two opinions, both advocate that the law should be changed in the consumer's favor. One to allow consumers access to strong encryption, one to to allow consumers the common law right of fair use to DVDs they have purchased.
* BTW, Why hasn't SlashDot reviewed Levy's new book yet? It's been out for two month's now.
Work for Change & GET PAID!
Hear Hear!
I voted Libertarian last election, and everything I see happening on the political front does nothing but continue to solidify my belief that the Libertarian Party really has the right idea about the _real_ issues.
What I continue to find sad is when I'm with a group of people fussing about taxes, or laws, or governmental intrusion, all I have to do say "If you vote Libertarian, then all that has a chance of coming true. If you don't then you're doing nothing more than whining while at the same time contributing to the problem." All of a sudden I get looked at like I just landed from Mars.
I'm still an optimist from the standpoint that I truly believe that eventually people will see that the path that's being followed is _extremely_ hazardous to our basic freedoms, but sometimes it's hard to stay upbeat. Especially when I see big players in Industry and Government repeatedly and unabashedly squelch the freedoms and liberties granted by the Constitution.
RFC2119
Why is it that the software industry can have suffered from piracy for longer than most of you have been alive, but just a few years of Napster warrant stepping all over our freedom and forcing us to lose control of the hardware we purchase?
OK, I'll play devil's advocate.
" Consumer advocates are appalled that the copy-protected discs deny users their legal rights to copy music for personal use on digital devices like computers and MP3 players."
Sometimes people say "right" when they mean privilege. A right is something guaranteed by the Constitution and cannot be taken away without due process. You have a right to freedom but it can be taken away if you break the law (Say by stealing someone's intellectual property) after you receive due process (A trial). A privilege on the other hand can pretty much disappear with little or no due process. Lawmakers can simple create a law (Usually a bad one.) and POOF! Privilege gone.
Like it or not, unauthorized trading of copyrighted music is stealing from whoever controls the copyright. Period.
So, rather than bitch, piss and moan about the reaction of the victims of unauthorized trading of copyrighted music, why not have a discussion about how we can stop the thievery without losing our privileges?
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
which if we're only talking about 'Mericans, means roughly 200,000 South Carolinians (Senator Holling's home state) that the Senator has named as thieves. If each of them and 10 friends realise this.... well that's 2.2 million people the senator doesn't want voting for him. Oops, that's over half the state.
The music/movie/software/everythingelse industry is not interested in spending a lot of money to completely eradicate piracy. What they want to do is to prevent casual copying (ie napster) and distribution. If they put out crippled CD's that can't be copied by the common person, then the volume of piracy will go down. Similarly, if they go after the major file sharing networks then they make it harder for the _average_ person to pirate their goods then the volume of piracy will go down. People like me (and most of slashdot) will always have the skills to get things for free, but if most of the rest of the population doesn't know how then the losses due to piracy are far lower.
Some people equate digital copying with analog copying, but the primary difference is the volume of piracy, and that's what they're scared of.
The more and more we hear about restriction of the end consumer's rights the more scared I am of our government. All it takes is one bad precident to start years of screwing people over for what used to be legitimate practices. Unfortunatly what really NEEDS to be done is replace the people in power at the big corperations with people who have a better understanding of the digital world and possible buisness modles for the internet. My one hope is this will happen with time.
I like to think that the current people comming out of our nations buisness programs realize that turning your customer base into criminals and trying to restrict their rights to increase profit margins is not the way to go. Yes there will always be the piracy, it sucks but it's true. Big corporations just need to learn the way to fight it is not to out law it but make it too much work. If there was a network out there where I could logon, download a song for $1 to $3 a piece encoded at a nice high quality (320K or some such) I would be spending $20 - $35 a month right now. As it is though I spend $20 every other month on one CD from which I listen to 2 maybe 3 songs. Yes the music could be pirated but it would be more work with lower quality products.
my $.02
The RIAA screams every time their revenue drops that piracy is to blame. HOWEVER, note that the Grammy ratings were the lowest in 7 years. What that says to me is that this just wasn't that interesting of a year, musically. I think the music cartel needs to look at itself as to why sales are slipping (only down to 1998 levels!) The US Govt. didn't protect the buggy whip manufacturers, and shouldn't do anything similar for the RIAA.
...especially if you just happen to be purveyor of old, unencrypted hardware (just like the stuff I'm using now). For these people, all the MPAA/RIAA bullshit will be a godsend as the market for old used equipment skyrockets. So, don't throw out that old PC or Mac folks, they might be the only way you can keep your freedom.
The RIAA and all the lawyers in the world will never be able to completely stop pirating. Look at how much money the feds throw at drugs and the number of addicts on the street. If enough people want something, they'll get it.
:).
;)) in XP to fake the IP address and have it ban the hapless 'regular' user in the ISP.
To put an interesting spin on it, what if the RIAA were to attack the source of the MP3s.. Not so much trying to force Morpheus or whomever out of business, but to taint their supply of MP3s? I know one of my chief frustrations is to search for a song and either have it incomplete, or be of poor quality (e.g. pops or other defects) or to simply have it not be the same song that I downloaded. If I could search for a song, pay a penny for it and download a 'known perfect' copy at my choice of bitrates (e.g. 128, 160, etc.) then sure as heck I'd do it.
In that vein, what if RIAA / third party went ahead and started 'poisoning' the well? Started distributing broken or otherwise junk MP3s? If they could find a way to diminish the signal ratio by spewing so much junk I'd have no other choice but to find alternate means of obtaining the mp3, be it buying the CD, obtaining it from a friend, or buying the mp3 online.
Now, before you say 'That's impossible!' consider the following little scheme:
1) Entity (be it RIAA or some 3rd party company) contacts recording studio and asks "Which song/artist would you like us to poison?"
2) Record company gives them a list, and a certain amount of money (e.g. the Entity charges on a per-song or per-artist basis).
3) Entity floods the Napster / Morpheus / etc. community with junk MP3s.
Now this would take an enormous amount of bandwidth, so said Entity would have to have some sort of agreement worked out with ISPs and a mass-content provider, say Akamai. Akamai has tens of thousands of servers located in hundreds (if not more) of ISPs throughout the nation. I think on peak usage they're pushing out 100 GB/sec. in the US (if not more). Simply say "Ok Akamai, can we buy 10GB on each of your servers and push all these MP3s out?". Then you write a gnutella client for each box which offers all the MP3s up for distribution.
I can't remember how the gnutella protocol works but I think it broadcasts search requests to the nodes who store a cache of what they have and what their neighbors offer and then can pass the request off. Have your client log all the requests (so you can tell the record companies which songs were requested more) and of course offer up your files when requested. If you do this with 10,000 boxes full of identical content chances are you're going to drown out any signal out there.
If you're really tricky, you can even have the client 'fake' files so you don't actually need to have the file on the box; you could send a pre-existing obfuscated file.
Of course, all of this is moot if you still don't have a very easy, cheap method of offering MP3s online for the mass public. You could pitch it like this "Yeah, so you won't make much money off of offering a penny for each MP3. But you're a fool if you think simply shutting Morpheus off will result in even 10% of the Morpheus users buying the actual CD or using a painful, userUNfriendly pay-per-MP3 system. However, what if we have a method to net you 20 or 30% of users who wouldn't pay you anyway?" So the pitch would be "We can't get you all of them, but our method would give you more than you're getting now!". Frankly the people who post on SlashDot (from the very negative response to the Subscription model) are not a good cross-section of the vast majority of internet users out there
So in your obfuscated file you have it play maybe 20 seconds of the file and then say "Sorry, this is a copywrited file. Pirating files costs artists money. If you want to buy this MP3 for a penny, please visit http://www.somestore.com. 80% of every penny earned will go directly to the artist."
It gives them a reason to buy it - not only do you have SomeStore.com very easily accepting payment of the penny, but you ACTUALLY PAY THE ARTISTS A MAJORITY OF THE MONIES EARNED! So it can quell the naysayers who say "Well the artist wouldn't receive anything anyway!" (rant: but who are you hurting more, the billion dollar-industry or the Artist who NEEDS even the small cut they receive from each CD sold?).
Some drawbacks could be of course that someone writes a 'detector' to find and ignore the invalid MP3s, or they block the IP addresses of the servers, etc. but that is easily fixed. Most non-power users (e.g. the great and huddled masses of the internet) don't want to update their Morpheus client every time a new version is released. Heck, even programs which offer hassle-free updating (e.g. antivirus, windowsupdate.com) very rarely are by the majority of internet users. Also, you'd work out the server IP settings with the ISP so that they would rotate to a random IP in their pool - since most of the servers are located in most ISPs you couldn't ban the single IP but perhaps a subnet. But since the IPs are in the ISP, you have now banned a large chunk of users. If they are in every ISP, you will have to ban every ISP (see the problem in banning IPs?). You could also use the EVIL RAW SOCKETS (sorry had to poke fun at XP haters
So, to boil it down to a few bullet points:
*Poison the well
*Have very easy-to-use, hassle-free, cheap, reliable, etc. method for users to buy MP3s and they WILL.
Thanks,
--
Matt
To his credit, Hiawatha Bray has a good article on this in today's Boston Globe. Try this link:
A nt ipiracy_bill_a_high_tech_threat_Hollywood_style+.s html
t ml and search for "bray" . Should be there through tomorrow.
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/063/business/
or go to http://www.globe.com/globe/search/globe_search.sh
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Seriously.. i was a macworld subscriber back when they were GOOD, and i consider steven levy to be one of if not the biggest badasses in computer journalism. And this article is just about perfect-- i would have emphasized the anti-competitive nature of the RIAA middlemen, and maybe put in something noting that the sssca effectively illegalizes computer engineering research (the copyright protection-in-everything rule does not have an exception for test models, last i checked.. no?), but i can forgive that.
But the question comes up of how much help his support is. This is being printed on msnbc.com.. which is a step removed from, say, slashdot, true, but not a huge step. If someone is reading msnbc.com, there's an excellent chance they're aware of the SSSCA. These are not the people who we need to reach. The people we need to reach are the random uninformed trailer trash and soccer moms.
My question is this: this piece is copyrighted by newsweek. Is it being printed *in* Newsweek? If it is, i'm overjoyed, because that gives this issue the kind of public exposure it so violently needs. People read newsweek. Like, mass numbers of people who are not already relatively in touch with the slashdot groupthink.
We don't need a scattered collection of geeks with excellent philosophical, moral, and constitutional arguments against the SSSCA. We need a large body of uninformed persons who, while they may not be able to understand what "DeCSS" is even if you explained it to them, understand vaguely what the SSSCA is saying and understand *EXACTLY* what its repercussions would be. The congresscritters aren't afraid of lone gunmen with weblogs. They're afraid of herd behavior-- afraid of anything that the uninformed voter mass begins to do en masse that they aren't either in total control of or able to escape blame for. If a lot of people start asking questions about the SSSCA and have begun to realize an answer like "Congressman R. J. Theonomist has a tough anti-piracy stance and is pushing new digital encryption technology to help e-commerce and fight copyright theft" is just dodging the question, the congresscritters will spook and skitter away from the SSSCA like roaches when you turn on the kitchen light, trying to make sure they're not identifiably supporting the SSSCA in any way when the common voter figures out the people supporting the SSSCA are trying to take away consumer rights.
Again, it takes a lot for people to understand what DeCSS is, it takes a lot for people to understand what the DMCA does, and it seems to take a hell of a lot for people to begin to consider source code as "speech". It takes a lot to get people to the point that they understand that napster workalikes do less hurting of the revenues of the music industry than guns do killing people, much less to decide considering the first illegal and the second legal is absurd.. so there may not be hope for the DMCA anytime soon. But the SSSCA is simple to describe-- It makes it illegal for your teenage son to wire together circuitry in your garage because of the possibility your teenage son could potentially be making devices that have the effect of enabling people to listen to music without paying!-- and so there may be hope in stomping it down forever, if the steven levys of the world can bring it up to enough people..
In the meantime, i'm wondering if there's anything we can do to help that process along. Maybe starting a mass movement for computer-savvy geeks to start emailing to their less computer-savvy relatives URLs to news articles explaining what the SSSCA does would be a good idea?
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Yes, laws being put forth are indeed unconsitutional. However, they have nothing to do with the 'size' of government, and everything to do with the 'size' of companies who can bribe the government. Reduce the amount of money any particular group of private interests can make, and you reduce the likelyhood of 'purchasing' laws. Of course, Disney has been doing this for years, but we're really approaching some sort of 'make-or-break' point here. I've never really been interested in living in the US, but these days, the very thought sends shivers down my spine. I don't think its your government, I think it's the size of your companies, the size of the pot of gold to be won (tho I think that the pot of gold is largely imaginary, part of the mystic prize of unmitigated free-markets), and the complete lack of any kind of regulations banning private influence on government.
....
Incidentally, you might be interested to know that the closest thing to total-free-market libertarianism that has occurred so far in western society (UK, 18th century) resulted in MASS poverty, and the price of bread rising above levels the vast majority of the population could afford. Under totally free markets, people 'compete' until there is no time/money left over after production to inject back into the economy or use to enjoy said fruits of the system.
Most countries that have seen their GDP rise over the last 10 years (India, Japan) have done so using decidedly anti-free-market tactics (choosing and awarding development to oganizations that are more likely to help the economy in the long run than provide the 'cheapest and best' in the short run), and of all the countries in the EU that have been placed under WTO sactioned IMF reforms, where everything has gone free-market, only Poland has seen their GDP rise slightly. All other 12 countries have seen their GDP fall under true freemarket reforms; even the WTO admits nothing has worked out as planned in their 2000 annual report
So where does that leave you? With a decent system, some things to fix, and a immediate need to cleanse your political system of big business brown nosers. Life wasn't so bad in the mom'and'pop days, no matter what these huge corperations want you to believe. If you can find a non-violent way to restore your government to being more pro-people than pro-business, and temper your fears of market regulation (you dont want total regulation, of course, that doesn't work, but 'checks and balances' when things (read: MS, or RIAA) get out of hand, much like the checks and balances that supposedly prevent any one political body from owning all political decisions), you might have the greatest chance of stabilizing the situation.
"Old man yells at systemd"
"The Customer is Always Wrong"
;-)
Hasn't that always been the Slashdot creed?
*duck*
-Bill
SlashSig Karma: Excellent (mostly affected by moderatio
Actually, the main reason that MP3.com lost that case was that they made an unauthorized database of music. If they could have (somehow) streamed from an authorized database, then they probably would have prevailed in court.
"If I could live to be several hundred
I could take a walk and really wander, really wonder."
I was watching meet the press this past Sunday, Sens. Tom Daschle and Trent Lott were on and there were discussions about how to eliminate US dependency on Iraqi oil.Daschele apparently wants to force auto manufacturers to change the average fuel efficiency for automobiles (which I think is a good thing) in order to reduce importing "about two million barrels of oil per week."
Interestingly, or not, Trent Lott, said, rather predictably I suppose, "I guess there's some people that think we ought to all be driving Honda Civics." His point, and he went on to say, as part of the Republican creedo, we don't need government in our lives to dictate how and what we should drive.
The point being, it is very interesting that people who would be on the side of government installing some sort of copy protection are the Dem's and it follows almost from their ideology, it would seem. I would be interested if Lott, and his ilk, would stick to their ideology in saying that govt shouldn't meddle in this. In fact, it is other people like Bob Barr (and let me say I find Lott and Barr as a particularly vile strain of politician) who speak out against surveillance cameras.
It would be interesting to know, or to hear some of the "keep govt out of my life," "let the market rule" Repub's speak out on this issue. Especially if Hollings keeps this up. Maybe it is just in my mind that I still imagine Dem's as being progessive, but the truth is that people like John Perry Barlow and Lawrence Lessig are more Liberterian than anything. The dem's are poised to lose a lot of consumers/citizens on this one, via pissing off the voter. I wonder if any of the other party's are poised to pick it up and run with it?
...only outlaws will have CD burners.
And the funny thing is the record industry will STILL have CD burners. I wonder how they'll get around that little problem. If all CD burners have to be crippled so that they can't copy protected content, how the fuck is the record or movie industry going to produce its product?
Answer: They will have CD burners that aren't crippled. But won't that be illegal?
Answer: Obviously not. So, the SSSCA is even worse than these bastards wanting to cripple all of the electronics in the country...they want to cripple all of the electronics in the country EXCEPT FOR THEIRS BECAUSE THEY NEED FUNCTIONAL ELECTRONICS TO MAKE THEIR PRODUCTS!!!
In fact, I might support the SSSCA if it would apply to everyone, since that would fuck the content industries, and I could live without CDs or movies for a few years before things get straightened out.
When you're writing about the SSSCA to your congressmen, please point out this little piece of hypocrisy. The fact that the industry will keep for itself functional devices and deny these same devices to everyone else. If they can't trust us, why the fuck should we trust them?
Or, maybe I could declare myself to be a record or movie company and get the "privilege" of obtaining the uncrippled devices.
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
You're right when it comes to piracy, but the simple fact is there are a lot more LEGITMATE uses for hardware that can be used to pirate than visa versa.
What the RIAA wants is you to buy the same thing over, and over, and over again. They want you to have a CD for your stereo, and if you want to listen to it on your computer you need to use their online service, which in turn only allows you to listen a select few times.
Then want a copy for your car stereo, and another copy for your portable CD player. They want you to spend $60 on a $15 disc, because CD-Rs can be used to pirate.
If it comes down to having almost no control over what technology I own, I'll be a luddite.
Let's get real. The real problem here is that the record/movie companies are releasing their products in a format that is realily computer readable. Why did they do that? Because it was the fastest and cheapest way to build a critical mass. It's only now that there is that critical mass that they are crying foul. If these media companies are truely serious about preventing piracy they would stop publishing their products a a public format. They need to create a new form of player htat they feel is secure. Wrap patents and trade secrets around it and sell this new player to the public. They just need to stop selling CDs and DVDs. Come on Hollywood, if you are truely worried about poeple ripping off your DVDs, STOP selling DVDs, doh. Just don't put your garbage in my hardware. I don't want to watch your slop and I don't want to pay for your hardware in my general purpose computer using industry standsrd drives. If you don't kile my sand box, just take our toys and build your own sand box.
I think they realize that people who are capable of breaking security will keep doing it, but they also know that the vast masses are just consumers afraid of getting in trouble. The average person will simply tolerate whatever inconveniences and costs are imposed by copy protection, and blame it all on those damned hackers. People may grumble about things they don't like, but mostly they don't do anything about it. And if they have no choice, thanks to our bought-and-paid-for Congress, well... problem solved.
How about we just implant a little electrical buzzer into each Congress person. When a RIAA/MPAA Lobbyist come in to talk with them it shocks them until they're so uncomfortable they can't listen to the Lobbyist. Now THAT'S what I call rights protection.
All this bull-shit is counter productive. Try to imagine what will happen to the so-called "country of oportunities".
Imagine there's no garage development, imagine there's no Apples, and no Suns. Imagine a country that the simple fact of develop your own way to connect your VCR to your home computer is a federal crime.
Most of American's biggest technology companies has born in garages, with small projects becoming big. All this will never more happen again.
Who will win? India, Israel (if they don't kill themselves in their own war before), Brazil, China. Countries that produces big minds and today export them to US. They will not be exported anymore to US, they will build their own worldwide technologies companies in their own country. And then US won't have big technologies companies anymore. Everybody will have to use their 10-year-old DVD player bought in 2003 because brand new technologies produced in other countries do not fit into SSSCA!
Who wants this? RIAA/MPAA don't care about this, when US becomes a technologic dead country they will leave and find another country where they can win more money! The same applies to big technologic corporations, they will leave US and will go to other countries where technology development is cheapper and most of all possible.
I'm not american, I should be favorable to SSSCA, but I'd like my country to grow for their own credit. The only who have to care about this is American people, nobody else needs to worry about this.
-=-=-=-=
I know life isn't fair, but why can't it ever be un-fair in MY favor!?
I think this issue really depends on where you stand when it comes to intellectual property or the lack thereof.
/. crowd and the normal people saying or atleast mostly thinking "If you copy something for yourself then no one has actually lost anything"
Theres the record companies and the 4 letter acronyms on one side saying "If you take anything its bad bad bad.."
Then you have the
The articles says something like 10 million people 'steal' things from the internet. If 10 million people think sharing music is OK, does that make it OK? In this case, I think it does. As a society, we are saying to the recording artists of america and everyone else that we don't feel you can stop of from sharing music just by virtue of the fact that you technically 'own' it or own the 'rights' to it.
This isn't like murder, where its most definately wrong in the eyes of everyone. This is an issue that doesn't necessarily have a clear moral standing you can cling to. If everyone thinks music should be free.. then perhaps shouldn't be free.
If this means some musician might have to cut back on the drugs and underage groupie sex, does that mean its wrong? Maybe society is saying that playing music shouldn't be something you are allowed to make your living off of. Maybe society is saying musicians should get real jobs and just play music for the sheer joy of it.
Who knows.. but this definately raises some questions that people need to decide for themselves.. but if 10 million people want music to be free, then who is the united states gov't to tell them otherwise? It didn't take 10 million people to decide they didn't like paying taxes on tea to change the world.
Rip, Mix, and Burn.
I think they're safe, especially since none of these are illegal activities. Violation of copyright is illegal.
yes, and shooting someone with a gun is illegal. 99% of gun owners don't shoot people, yet look at their constant struggle with gun laws.
don't put it past our government to pass irrational and unreasonable laws under the influence of a small unethical subset of our corporate population. where there's a will, there's a way (of course 'will' in this case means lobbyists, lawyers, and millions of dollars.)
_______
2B1ASK1
Smithers: Well, Sir, you've certainly vanquished all your enemies: the Elementary School, the local tavern, the old age home...you must be very proud.
...block it out!
Burns: [stuffing money into his wallet]
No, not while my greatest nemesis still provides our customers with free light, heat and energy. I call this enemy...the sun.
[throws a switch; a control panel appears at his desk]
[another button slides the floor off a model of Springfield]
Since the beginning of time man has yearned to destroy the sun. I will do the next best
[another button raises a shield over the model town]
Smithers: Good God!
"Apple would do well to consider this the next time they tell you to Rip, Mix, and Burn."
Awhile back my car stereo was stolen along with all the CDs I had in my car. Insurance payed for the stereo, but I had to buy all my CDs back out of my own pocket. I now have a new stereo and new CDs.
I will Rip and Burn all of my CDs to go in my car.
Michael Eisner! Take your crappy movies and mouse and shove them up your ass, crap them back out then shove a bottle of Vodka up your ass so it's nice and stingy.
For those that have ever dipped into Warez, this is the way good piracy always works. Your source is as close as possible to the person responsible for cutting the "Gold" master. And then you get Win2k or any other good game a month early.
Join the Columbia CD club. Get a bunch of CDs for pennies.
Refuse delivery of any future mailings from them, until they stop mailing you.
Rejoin. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Continue until record companies go out of business.
Take the money you would have spent for those CDs at cover price, and send it to the artists directly to support their work.
The last part is what makes this civil disobedience, as opposed to just being a cheapskate stealing CDs.
I would like to commend and congratulate you on your co-sponsorship of
the SSSCA. If it had been up to me, I would have named it something
totally stupid, such as "MCPPA" (Media Cartel Profit Protection
Act). The SSSCA nomenclature is pure genius, but I guess that's why
you're a senator and I'm still a lowly peon.
Yes, indeed the time has come for the Government to require that digital
rights management be embedded in all electronic devices. I, too, have
heard those horrible rumors about people using their ni-cad battery
chargers to make unauthorized copies of DVD movies. We can't allow
this to go on, otherwise such fine 100% American companies as Sony and
Universal-Vivendi might go bankrupt, depriving thousands of American
workers of their jobs. Thank Heavens you care for your constituency!
Senator, like you, I too am a fan of Big Government. The bigger the
better. Indeed, you can't trust the Free Market, not to mention
those pesky Capitalists to do the Right Thing, and that's why
Government Regulation and Sanctions, such as the SSSCA, are always
necessary. Always. It's a mystery to me why people don't understand
this. But I guess that's why you're a senator, so you can decide what's
best for the people. And I'm thrilled the Republican party has finally
Seen The Light and begun to co-opt some of the Marxist wisdom. Can't
let the Communists keep all the Bright Ideas, can we?
For that matter, did you know that computers can be used to spread
Subversive Ideas? I strongly suggest that you immediately introduce
legislation to set up a Government agency to license and monitor *all*
computer use. These infernal machines are just too dangerous to exist
in an unregulated environment.
If the voters in Alaska, in their great wisdom, elected you as their
senator, why it must certainly be a fine place. I'll be packing up to move
there at my earliest convenience, so I can live the Wonderful Life and get
on the Welfare Rolls. Meanwhile, I'm studying Senator Hollings' opening
statement in the hearings, so I too can learn to Talk Tough and Threaten.
Not your constituent yet, but hope soon to be (please do your utmost
to increase Public Assistance payments in Alaska - $50,000/month would
be nice), and, nevertheless still a great fan of yours. Keep up the
good work.
Yours sincerely,
Think outside the box and realize America is not the only country in the world. 1stly and secondly - Europe is a lot stronger socially and politically than you might think and the UK is still the richest country in the world...
And to add to what I said. Sure the new DMB album is gonna be bought up quickly but take a slightly less popular band but one that has a good album coming out. How else do you get people to buy it? Radio? Okay. But what if you slip a copy onto Napster and a bunch of people download it and play it at a party or in their cars. Friends here it and they go buy it.
Big business is going too far to limit our rights relating to digital media.
Please come post your comments on this site. We intend to collect as many comments from concerned consumers as possible. Then we will send them in bulk to Congress. Collectively we need to make some noise as they now appear to be listening only to big industry.
Oh, I'm aware why they lost. But this was a technicality. mp3.com didn't steal the music, those cds they had legitimately, and I had the music legitimately as well. But because they made their mp3s available to me, this was unauthorized. So if you have an album but not with you, and I let you listen to my copy of it, we're both breaking the law by this logic. This case affected me even more than Napster, b/c I really liked the convenience and there is no comparable solution from anyone else.
Please subscribe to see the more insightful version of th
I love the way you take his quote,
and turn it into the very different
without even a ... to indicate the snip.
What should really gall people like you is that he's right. I don't like the music business charging what they do for materials any more than the rest of you here. But the answer is to vote with your wallets and not buy stuff, rather than to disregard the legal rights of copyright holders. As much as the young and enthusiastic here might dislike copyright and feel that everything they ever want should be free, the simple fact is that the world doesn't work that way today. Copyright, and intellectual property generally, were invented for a reason, and that is that without them, there is no incentive for people to improve or develop the products and industry concerned.
If you don't like the action that organisations like the RIAA and MPAA are taking, try blaming the people who are actually responsible for it: those who rip off the members of these organisations wholesale, blatantly illegally, and without a second thought about who it might be harming in the process.
Organisations who attempt to prevent people from doing these things using their own hardware are simply acting responsibly. You can come in here and insult them all you like, but the simple fact is that you are in the wrong, and you know damn well that you are. I hope people realise this before the mass distribution of copyright content over the internet really starts affecting the quality of music, movies and such produced. We all know you can't stop mass copying physically, but that doesn't make doing it any less damaging.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Thomas E Weber also had a say on it in todays WSJ (sorry no link) in his E-World column. Touches on DSL regulation, streaming-audio royalties and Hollings' efforts as well. Way too much to discuss in such a small column, but still...
Some of us have fallen in love with the notion of giving without reserve-Raoul Vanegiem, Revolution of Everyday Life
See? We won't have to hear Britney Spears anymore, and that means no more commercials with former presidential candidates saying, "Down boy!". Let's throw the baby out with the bath water.
testing out my trending skills
Yes, I'm sure that Microsoft will shrivel up and die, just as soon as business regulations are rescinded. And even if corporate charters are dissolved (haha), who do you think ownership would revert to? M$ would be a big partnership of maybe 10-20 individuals.
Same for every other corporation.
I hate democrats, I hate republicans. But you libertarian weenies astound me. How can I hate you guys, when you are always there with a punchline, and you nail it so deadpan serious?
The free market does not work. It's simply a little less dysfunctional than other systems.
Unfortunately the people in charge don't see it this way, even though most people agree with you.
They focus on the exception to the rule, as always. They don't look that 9 out of 10 people who download a few tracks from a CD buy it, they look at the one kid who either downloaded it and didn't like it or was too cheap, poor, whatever and didn't buy it. Que serra.
What I'd really like to see is a case study on downloading, like what was downloaded and when. Was Creed downloaded 10x more than usual when their new single dropped? Was that single download 100x more than their other work?
The saddest thing about this whole situation is I think if a million songs are downloaded, most of them are singles people heard on the radio they want to listen to when they feel like it, not that they heard a song and want the whole album. I'm sure singles at the time are the most downloaded, not full albums. Even so, people don't pay to listen to a single on the radio. If I want to listen to Linkin Park and it's on the radio, I listen and turn it off when it's done. What's so bad about downloading something for free you get for free any way?
Of course non of the lackluster sales of big Media companies has anything to do with their products. It is those thieving customers. Glitter was a disaster of both film and music. They could have made money off of that if it weren't for all the piracy. Really it's Napster's fault.
The business model of hyping mediocrity just isn't paying like it used to. So they're trying to make sure they can just do more of it on a larger scale. It's like the milk is starting to spoil and they hope that by adding more milk it will get rid of the spoilage. The milk has turned and needs to be replaced. They need to work with the customers instead of blaming the only ones who pay them.
The one thing the Media Companies don't want to have to do is make a consistent effort to produce a good product. They just can't accept that hype is less effective than quality but at least as expensive.
you probably shouldn't have read this.
Weird how the universe works. Today's Foxtrot knocks the CD copy protection garbage.
/. reader... His "UNIX Underpinnings/UNIX Underpants" strip really makes me think so...
Sometimes I wonder if Amend is a
I wish I had a kryptonite cross, because then you could keep Dracula and Superman away.
2) Make sure you read today's Foxtrot (3/4/02, should by on United Media's site in two weeks for those without paper version), which refers to copy-protected CDs. Bill Amend, what's your slashdot handle? :-)
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Compare the revenues of Intel to the entertainment industry.
... and will reduce the usefulness of our products to consumers." sounds like a warning shot.
Intel had $26 billion in revenues while the music industry had $40 billion. Add in Microsoft,which took in $13 billion in the six months ending Dec 2001. Call it a $26 billion dollar a year company for purposes of discussion. You're looking at two companies taking in around $52 billion a year and also looking for new ways and means to move product. Quite frankly, the music business is a huge "value add" for the Wintel duoply. I think the two $52 billion dollar companies should buy the $40 billion dollar industry, add the content on with very limited copy protection hassels, and tell their customers "Rip Away."
For me, the most interesting use a PC has to me is to manage my music collection. To extract the content from the large stack of 5-1/4" piecies of plastic, which are unwieldy to lug around in large quantities, and to put that content on my laptop. Then take that with me, and play anywhere. Or, for a smaller package, dump them to a MP3 portable player. I'm also interested in sharing music with my friends, and more importantly, TRYING new music before I buy it. Nothing new there - many napster-philes purchased CDs of bands they liked after finding them through napster. CDs are too "high risk" to gamble on, in my opinion. I don't want to buy a CD until I know I'm going to like it.
So, make it easy for me to manipulate content, and reward the creater of the content, not the distributors who have a lock on access to the market.
If manipulating content was hassel-free with respect to the law, those two companies would have combined revenues of $100 billion I bet.
In this context, the Intel exec's comment "[Your legislation] will substantially retard innovation
One thing that is wildly irksome about the whole music copyprotection debate is how seldom we go past the two-part question of whether or not the latest intervention by the music industry is a fair try at protecting their business from thieves, or if it is an attempt to cheat the consumer out of his right to duplicate for private use. By limiting the debate to these terms, we miss the key point: the media industry has everything that it wants.
As a business, the big media companies have created music as a commodity and they have driven the price of it as high as they can without losing substantial customers. All you have to do to prove this, is to walk into Tower Records and look at the casette tapes instead of at the CD's which have replaced them and vinyl as the main musical storage media: the casettes cost one third of what the CD's do.
The physical media are different, but the songs are the same. The only difference is what the market will bear, the price, and with the only source of the material being a very small number of media providers, the fix is in with regard to pricing.
Essentially, the media industry has used the invention of the compact disc to do what Microsoft's harshest critics say that it does, by creating a way of doing business where in order to enjoy the benefits of a technology, you have to pay a price that is set by a seller whose business model is not touched by the moderating influences of competition--monopolistic price-gouging.
People like the original poster either fail to see or hide the key fact that copyright law--a concept put in place to allow creators to enjoy a market value for their works--is not being used the way it was originally intended.
Copyright law is there in order to provide insentive to create and invent; insuring the creator that he or she will be able to derive some profit from his work. Instead of this, copyright law is being used as the basis for price fixing; putting a noose around the neck of every consumer and offering the choice of either paying a price that gives the industry the money to consider copyright-law, and copyright protection schemes as a commodity for sale by the government, or walking through life in silence.
This brings us to an the unpleasant impasse between the passive consumer and the too active producer. The media companies have the money, lawyers and lobbyists necessary to make ridiculous changes in the law of the land and they will continue to use those resources because to do otherwise would be to forego billions of dollars of profits that they have secured by the power of a frighteningly well-funded oligopoly.
With this in mind, the original poster's trumpeting the media industy's just cause with regard to Apple is a ridiculous argument. The truth of the matter is that the media industry is protecting and will continue to protect its "natural right" to define price-gouging as pricing itself even if it means writing laws that reach into every electronic device on earth to do it.
In a better world than the one that businessmen make, the solution would be a very simple reaction to the market itself: if the price of CD's were the cost of tapes, more people would be able to afford larger music collections and the time and trouble needed to rip and burn MP3's would be more of a burden by comparison.
The problem would solved: fewer people would bother to steal.
To mail me, remove the 'mailno' from my email addy.
"Yeah. It smells, too..."
THIS IS NOT MEANT TO BE FLAMEBAIT!!! Seriously, I'm confused by two libertarian ideas:
1. How does smaller government reduce corruption and waste? Waste maybe. By radically reducing government, corruption should increase as certain individuals wield greater individual power... shouldn't it?
2. How does completely free markets and completely open competition help anyone. If I read my economics theory correctly, in a truly competitive system prices would be competed into the ground with being the first factor to crash. Trickle-up poverty would seem to be more accurate.
I don't see any problem in the sense of encouraging competition and discouraging the centralisation of power -- these are both great ideas, I'm just confused by the focus on absolutes. Comments are welcome!!!
And you can't run away to Switzerland anymore... they finally joined the UN.
Your insurance should have covered replacing the CDs. You just need to claim that they are an integral part of the car. Bundling and all that jazz, you know...
Follow this gilroy: People visit the site for the Insightful well-written articles of michael or to read the posts?
90% of the success is in the posts. If there were no posts, there would be no visitors and THEREFORE nobody would pay to put ads on the site.
What they can do if they want more monay is increase the quality of the articles to get more visitors.
Typical socialist bah-ness to free markets. The Britain of the 18th century was anything BUT laissez-faire, if you properly review history. But that's another debate.
Big business only does what Congress allows it to do. Campaign finance reform will only hurt the 3rd parties, and it will only help the incumbents. The media corporations love Campaign finance reform, because it allows them to pick which representatives to cover. And guess who is buying out all the media corporations for this reason?
Limiting how Big Business pays of Congress will only cut off the medium and small sized businesses -- there will always be loopholes in how Congress can be bribed. Or, you can cut Congress' powers entirely to only what is in the Constitution.
Do not believe socialists. They condemn free markets, even though free markets have shown time and again that they work (long distance prices dropped during PROPER deregulation, the prices of computers falling as government never got involved, etc). When even a tiny bit of government remains, deregulation fails of course.
You think India and Japan grew because of regulation? Look at the facts of that. Their economies grew because of business output, not because government got involved or uninvolved. Business breeds profit and well being, government breeds corruption and distrust of your fellow man.
Libertarians fail to garner more than 3% in most elections for one simple reason: They have no common sense.
Examples:
Most Americans agree that non-violent drug offenders should not be removed from society and locked up with violent criminals while rapists and murderers go on parole. Most Americans do not want pot for sale at the local 7-11. This is common sense.
Most Americans don't want to throw the borders wide open. If we don't protect our borders, what's the point of having a sovereign nation in the first place? In this regard, Libertarians are just a useless proxy for one-world government. Most Americans see right through that. It just doesn't make sense.
The Libertarians have some excellent ideas, but until they are willing to act like real politicians and engage in the art of compromise, until they temper their idealism with common sense, they are useless.
That's why the Reform Party and the Libertarian Party need to unite. The Reformed-Libertarian Party could actually pull people from the Dems and the Republicans. Look at how well Ross Perot did despite being a paranoid with a hopeless running-mate. There is plainly a yearning in America for a party that isn't hog-tied by special interests, a party that holds true to the American ideals, but does so in a well thought-out practical manner. The Reformed-Libertarian Party could be the answer.
Just do me one favor: Leave Jesse Ventura, Pat Buchanan, and Ross Perot out of it. We need someone that mainstream Americans can accept.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Do the people of South Carolina know that their senator is the MPAA's lapdog? Isn't his job to push the Tobacco industry's deadly products instead?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Shame on Slashdot for beginning to use popup ads (via DoubleClick)!!! I suppose Slashdot contributors (aka customers) are "wrong."
Exercise for the reader: Reconcile a commitment to "open source" (and the enriched democracy/freedom entailed with this) with foisting a popup ad on a user using a separated launch of the user's browser without the user's prior consent.
Note: I was actually considering subscribing to Slashdot before the popups started.
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
...what's happening is the government HAS to hear this case. Just because they are HEARING a case doesn't mean it is going to get passed. If you think that they'll find favoriblly for the RIAA/MPAA, think again.
This is not a new issue. Remeber VHS and Cassette tapes? Remember how the RIAA/MPAA lost back then? Know why? Just because a product CAN be used for illegal purposes does not make it illegal. If I have a gun, does it make me a killer? If I have a CD burner, does it mean I'm pirating music? Really..prove it...OH you can't. OK case dismissed.
This is just going to force the industry to adapt again like they did in the early 80's. "Video will kill theater ticket sales!" OH pleeze!
"Sticking a feather up your butt does not make you a chicken."
1. The RIAA have a technology firm (or firms) in the space create a way that people can sign up on-line for a unique, encrypted "MP3/WMA-buying ID".
2. When people sign up on-line (and places like Amazon, buy.com, cdnow.com, etc... will have a part of their site where you can do this), you get a small downloadable program (MusicIdentifier.exe, MI.exe for short), which you download and install. This program is Open-Source, so it can be more easily ported to Linux, MacOS, etc..., and very simple - all it exists to do is identify and match your encrypted string to MP3s on your system that you're attempting to play. It is also open to allow easy integration into WINamp, MusicMatch, etc....
3. RIAA allows places like Amazon, buy.com, cdnow.com, etc... to sell MP3/WMA singles for $1, albums for $5, all downloadable. When you buy them, software on the server side slaps your unique ID onto the MP3/WMA.
4. Integrations into "ripping" software allow you to likewise slap the unique ID on your rips.
Advantages:
-Can be made very easy to use for the average consumer, possibly even transparent.
-The consumer will be able to play their music files on several different machines (if they own several different machines), without much hassle at all.
-The price-setting matches (or can be made to match) a price that people are actually willing to play, and the RIAA members save money on physical stock (which, everything considered, gets expensive).
-While it will be reverse-engineered (cracked), the impetus for most users to find and use such a crack is lessened by 1) ease of use and 2) the correct price-point setting.
-While some users may post their unique ID along with their music files, the prospect of having your MI.exe juggle multiple identifiers lessens this practice.
The key here is work vs. payoff.
At the moment the work involved in getting Kazaa (or whatever) up-and-running, finding that MP3 and downloading it is worth the payoff of not spending $15+ on a CD. Even here, people have pointed out that simply charging $5 for a downloadable album would get more people simply buying the album instead of downloading it for free (i.e., the average user doesn't want the hassle of using Kazaa).
In the future the work in finding and installing and configuring your copy-protection-breaker of choice may still well be worth the payoff of getting free MP3s. And it will definitely be worth the payoff of not only getting free MP3s, but also being able to rip and burn MP3s from CDs you actually own.
With this idea, on the other hand, it won't be, in general, worth the work to crack the system for a payoff of saving $1 on a single or $5 on an album, TO MOST USERS.
This is the simple economic lesson to be learned by the industry. This is the giant economic opportunity just waiting to be exploited.
Such a simple idea - shame it won't happen.
The free market has never been given a chance at all. In every situation where America has allowed the free market to operate un-regulated, it HAS worked. In every situation where government has attempted to regulate, you only see big business running amuck.
How about we try and see where it will work? Some countries in South American have deregulated their social security system, only to watch retiree benefits sky rocket when they invest in the free market. In the U.S., our system is in virtual collapse. Step by step, our country is only becoming socialist: redistributing wealth, while government takes a cut to distribute to their cronies and peers. Things will never get worse that way.
Hey. Fook yerself. The Greens rock. They had Jello Biafra as a potential candidate for president-- did you Libertarians have anyone that cool? Well? Cuz unless you can see the Greens one Jello and maybe raise them a Larry Flynt forget it! I'll keep voting for people who care about the social good but have enough brains to respect freedom of speech and private decisions.
People who think the value of music is zero will continue to feel so, no matter how much HMV is charging for the CD.
The only solution is to track down copyright violators, sequester them, search their computers, and demand to see physical proof of ownership of the media that the music came on. Without a tape, record, or CD they would be held liable for damages in the amount of the stolen music collection if bought on CD.
I have no idea what to make of your point about running out of time and money. A free market is all about allocating limited resources (notably time and money) according to people's preferences. All time and money is accounted for, even if the time is spent relaxing, and the money is stuffed under a mattress, so really, I have no idea what you're talking about.
It is true that we have not found a magic bullet for helping developing nations. Certainly most of the strategies employed over the last 60 years have performed poorly everywhere except Asia. The one constant though has been the central planning doesn't work. Nowhere ever has a centrally planned economy brought anything but ruin (Russia, the middle east, North vs. South Korea, the PRC vs. Hong Kong and the DRC, central america, the list of failed collectivist governments is almost endless). The debate then is about the rules of the capitalist game. Should a country impose import duties, and if so on which goods and at what levels? What constitutes a monopoly, and what should we do about monopolies? But selectivly aiding and beating down particular (non-monopolistic) companies gets you right back into central planning.
The other debate is on how a country can get its population to participate in an economy and respect the rule of law. A country like Russia cannot simply snap their fingers and say "we're capitalist," and expect all of the black markets to suddenly start getting legit business licenses, play by the rules, and pay taxes. When homes and land become abandoned, as often happens in the war and famine ridden third world, who should get the property? If someone moves into that property, does it become theirs? Who makes sure it was really abandoned in the first place? Questions like these, as well as dismally small tax revenues make it exceptionally difficult for the developing world to get started.
Finally, in regards to your last paragraph, I should point out that the growth of business has directly mirrored the growth of the government. The "mom'and'pop" days you so fondly refer to were by and large much less regulated (although I'm curious when exactly you are referring to. The days of AT&T's telecom monopoly? The Great Depression? The heyday of the Robber Barons? Or are we talking about the days before the industrial revolution, when perhaps 20% of the population was below the poverty line?)
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
It's not just hippie music, either. Metallica (ironically,) Pearl Jam, and Radiohead are a few bands whos live music is freely tradeable. A very incomplete list of bands who allow recorders at their concerts and subsequent trading can be found Here
burris
... as I am posting way after the topic was posted ...
... has anyone ever checked out Sen. Hollings website? http://hollings.senate.gov/
My thoughts are let them do it. More power to them.
Levy's thoughts are dead on. Of course I'd buy the CDs from someone used off of ebay. Of course I'd keep my current DVD and VCR.
Innovation will die. Period.
One of the great motivators on the technology front is ENABLING people to be creative. If they build in limitations to the products, read DIVX, people won't go for it at all.
And
The guy doesn't look like he even knows what ripping is let alone burning.
Yeah, right, how about any kind of reference to back this up. Actually, the reverse is true:
From http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/lecture17a.
That's a novel theory; unfortunately for you, history shows the exact opposite.
The record companies must be doing this for a reason. I surmise the reason is because they need the revenue from record sales. If the record companies can no longer make money, then they will disappear. Will the artists stop making music? Maybe some, but not the dedicated ones. This looks like a transition to having the artists be their own distributor/promoter/etc... This will of course weed out artists who were doing it for the money, and not for the music. (No more Boy bands?) I have no problem with big music companies dying...
However, they have nothing to do with the 'size' of government, and everything to do with the 'size' of companies who can bribe the government.
The solution to this problem isn't to impoverish companies, but instead to stop making government power a salable commodity.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
By the standards of the US economy (let alone the world economy $50 billion is peanuts. How about we call them the "media pygmys"?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
The last line in your post reminds me of another quote "Democracy is the worst system of government on earth... except for every other type." I feel the same way about the free market. Economics is not called "the dismal science" for nothing. When you're dealing with limited resources, there's never a perfect solution, but at least this one sucks less than all the others.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
I just ran to the store and bought this week's Newsweek. The article in question is printed on page 65. There's a big picture of Michael Greene, prez of NARAS, waggling his finger at the Grammys last week.
But what I want to know is, what does "Queegishly" mean?
Fight for your right to read books!
That might be fine and dandy for you, but believe me, you don't want 1000s of CDs of MY neighbour's garage band out there. Trust me. You might as well just jab icepicks in your ears and save yourself the trouble.
--------
Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
Ok... first of all, they are selling something that everyone has the ability to copy. These are called CDs.
They are complaining about something that everyone has teh ability to copy. These are called MP3s.
They make money off CDs despite the fact that they can be copied.
Then why are they not selling MP3s?
Put the MP3 versions of songs right on the CD. Maybe people will buy more CDs to get higher quality MP3s.
But they won't do it... because they are stupid.
I wish I had the money to start a record label. Because I would put MP3s in different bitrates (low for MP3 players, high for your computer, etc) right on the CD. So it could be playing in your car stereo... copied to your computer or MP3 player... without any ripping software... or downloading... and all in high-quality.
I would also allow people to buy a CD online and download the MP3 version while they wait for the CD to be shipped to them.
People make money off things that can easily be copied all the time. You just need to give someone a reason to shell out the cash.
--
"What do you want me to do? Whack a guy? Off a guy? Whack off a guy? Cause I'm married."
. . . is to get our own!
Thankfully Intel has joined the fight against the SSSCA. We need to not only write to our congressmen, but also to other big corporations who can use their campaign contributions and influence to "persuade" congress to vote against this bill. We need to write to AMD, IBM, Motorola, every computer component manufacturer, and ask them to join the fight. As IT enthusiasts and personnel, the nature and future of our jobs has a lot riding on this. So does the business of technology manufacturers.
In today's government, the will and desire of the people has been usurped by big corporations and their large pocketbooks. Thus, we must get OUR OWN big corporations with large pocketbooks to fight those we oppose.
There has never been a modern country with anything like true capitalism. All capitalist countries are ruled by governments which work to *interfere* with market forces, generally in favor of monopolies or oligopolies. It's axiomatic that large corporations can buy government protection, and that protection is inherently anti-capitalist.
While the criticisms of the socialists are somewhat off-base (because there aren't any truly capitalistic countries in the First World), anyone who argues that 'capitalism works' is talking out of his ass. There's no example of true capitalism to point to; all such examples, *every single one*, have had heavy government interference in the market. *We don't know* if real capitalism works because we've never tried it - just as we don't know if real socialism works, because *there's never been a truly socialistic country*. The labels 'socialism' and 'capitalism' don't describe anything close to the actual economic models in use world-wide.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
How many of you don't think you're living in a police state?
I had one, but the wheel fell off.
...is that MSNBC is one of the only mainstream media outlets without strong ties to the recording industry. It is almost karmic that slashdoters are prasing an article from a MS affiliated outlet that can afford to be independent of the music industry due to the sheer power of its (allegedly evil) parents.
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As an owner of an HDTV that the MPAA is trying to make obsolete I am outraged. Remember this legislation effects consumer electronics as well. They are trying to implement DVI w/ HDCP encryption to new HDTV sets. They have already got the Sattelite and Cable companies to go along. They are even lobbying for encryption of over-the-air broadcasts! As of now there have been about 2.5million HDTV/HDTV ready sets that will be obsolete come fall. Current HDTVs will be able to recieve the encrypted content with a converter box but that box will downgrade the quality to normal TV. I have three words to say, "Class Action Lawsuite."
thank.you.drive.thru.
Isn't it? What are the odds of more people seeing this guy's point of view?
This isn't a case of people suddenly saying "wow! we can get this free!", if it were I doubt people would pay $300 for an MP3 player. I think, instead, people's needs have changed. They no longer want to carry tons of CD's around, instead they'd rather have one little device with their whole collection on it. That's why they're willing to spend hundreds of dollrs for units such as the iPod.
What happens when you treat these guys like thieves, though? They respond like this "I spent $400 to listen to music, and that makes me a thief?"
I appreciate MSNBC's article here, I just hope more people understand what's really at stake here. People have new criteria for listening to their music, and the RIAA has done nothing to fill that demand. The customer pays the money, they make the rules. Not the other way around.
"Derp de derp."
But the truly sad part, is that the resources aren't limited. This is no longer the middle ages, where there is only so much easy to get at fuel, only so much iron that is easy to mine.
Natural resources, with the possible exception of power, are more than plenty. And I caan't even really exclude power, that resource limitation is 100% artificial. Fusion would solve so many problems (with the exception of the problem that rich men have, that is, trying to keep their wealth without doing anything to earn it) it's not even funny. And how much do we spend on it per year? Our country should throw everything it has into harnessing it. A $300 billion a year crash course, if that's what it takes. Even if it takes 5 years at that rate, it would still be an investment (and it wouldn't take that long or that much).
Naturally limited resources are a thing out of history. Artificially limited resources are a part of our nature.
Governement isn't big brother.... Corporation will be big brother !!! Is it just me or does this sound alot like the former soviet union. Wonder how long it will take till I'll need to pass a retinal scan to boot windows and listen to my Bee Gee's CD.
Business is Business and Business must grow, Regardless of crummies in tummies you know... -Onceler
If we had Libertarian government, then when someone in power were approached with these bribes, they would have a big problem: How can they pass the requested law and yet maintain even an appearance of not being corrupt? A libertarian passing a law as corrupt as SSSCA, is like a baseball umpire making calls based upon the color of the players' uniforms.
At least under the Big Government parties, the crooks can always hide behind a pretense of trying to do the right thing (e.g. protect IP). Under a Libertarian government, the mere scope of these laws is enough to make them stand out.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Uh, ever hear of a country called Singapore?
These are good tidings indeed. I am happy and stuff. Yay for Steven Levy. Now lets see if any public informed-ness develops..
I don't know what "queegishly" means.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
but ALL these laws (SSSCA, DMCA, etc) are unconstitutional, but as long as Congress is more powerful than the Constitution allows, they will never be repealed.
Actually, you make an interesting point. In order for a law to be repealed on account of its unconstitutionality, the Supreme Court has to do it. This will obviously not happen with the current generation of Justices (interesting pun...), but eventually, the Supreme Court Justices will be aware of these situations. If you want these terrible laws repealed, get them to the Supreme Court, and if they truly are unconstitutional, they will be deemed so by the Just Seven.
It will be interesting to see what happens in, say, fifteen years when the Justices being appointed have grown up with the RIAA/MPAA/DMCA/SSSCA collective fiasco, and bring justice back.
Go Supreme Court!
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
and if they truly are unconstitutional, they will be deemed so by the Just Seven.
There are nine Justices on the US Supreme Court -- which two are unjust?
Back in 1998, such talk would have been reassuring to me and I would have supported Republicans. But now how do we know that by "existing law", he doesn't mean DMCA? If he does, then he's part of the problem. If he's not part of the problem, then he should be trying to repeal some "existing law" and go back to the copyright system that worked just fine for a couple hundred years.
DMCA passed unanymously less than 4 years ago, and there were plenty of Republicans there. I would like to think they would stand up for America, but I ain't holding my breath. Republicans' track record in this matter has been pure liberal so far, and they're going to have to do something about what happened and turn back the tide, if they want my trust.
Quoth McCain:
Where were you in 1998, McCain? McCain, do you think criminalizing DVD players and PDF readers, isn't an example of government meddling in the marketplace and selecting technological winners and losers? He's a two-faced socialist rat bastard until he redeems himself. Opposing SSSCA isn't enough, if DMCA is staying on the books.As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Guess. ;)
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
I don't know a lot about the guy, but I have "Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death." Didn't Jello throw a rock at a car, just because they shouted "Hey Faggot"? I don't want someone so thin-skinned and prone to escalate to violence, to be running the show.
Is, once a week, send your senators an E-mail discussing the SSSCA. tell them that while you agree with the motives behind it, to stop casual piracy of music, the law itself is poor and due to its overly broad speech, will restrict fair use rights of the consumer by giving the entertainmnet industry a free pass to abuse the intentions of the law. include how you like Apple computer's meathod of control where it does not restrict your ability to shift media or your ability to shift the MP3 from your PC to another or the iPOD, but that is is as far as it can go due to fingerprinting the MP3 with the originating PCs fingerprint, thus making it the only mode of distrobution of the music etc.
bug them and bug them some more, eventualy, you will be known intheir office and I am sure that by the end of the year, you could meet them and they would knbow who you are.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Oh cripes. Probably that story happened when he was all of 19 or 20. And it's not like he intended to hurt anybody. According to that track, the people in the truck had reportedly squirted him with water at least twice by this time. So he dents their big phallovehicle. BFD. They did proceed to chase after him and threaten him with actual bodily injury. I believe getting one's ass kicked by jocks was Standard Operating Procedure for most punk rockers in the late 70's and early 80's. I believe the point of the story is that the jocks were so damn stupid that when the cop came out and was all set to arrest *Jello* over an incident the jocks started, they screwed it up by howling like apes for blood and that the cop ended up driving Jello home and telling the jocks to buzz off. It's not like Jello was set to bomb eastern Europe over it. He's a damn peace activist after all.
Besides, if the Libertarians had their way he would have been armed to the teeth!
is the way to go. So you want to stop the digital copying. Try stopping analog copying. My 4 track Tascam works just fine. All I have to do is go from speaker out to line in. Sure I won't get the digital experience but I will get the tunes. Then put the analog back into digital for via my sound card. Ain't technology cool. No matter how hard they try, they can't stop the copying.
...but you guys all realise that the SSSCA would make the use of Linux illegal within the United States, right? Just checking.
-----
PGP Key ID 0xCB8FF658
Well... Interesting points but doesn't work. This kind of law would never pass in Europe, where in general the governments are much stronger than in the US. So the power of the government doesn't really have much to do with it.
It's actually funny how some Americans seems to miss that there are other countries, trying out other ways for good and for bad. There is nothing wrong in learning from each other instead of guessing. But that's another issue.
Look, the people you are after are the people you depend on. We write your software. We fix your servers. We connect your calls, We render your effects. We guard you (from DDOS) while you sleep.
Do not fuck with us.
With Apologies to Tyler Durden ;-P
The only thing that's missing is another Boondocks cartoon parodying the RIAA's paranoia and campaign to paint all people with the worst color brush.
Curse you, record labels! Curse you straight to Hades!
No argument here. But let me state something so obvious it's trite: If there were no slashdot site, there would be no slashdot posts. Without the site there is no such thing called "slashdot" and the audience is, conceivably, vastly fragmented. This site provides a service in that it offers "one-stop shopping", a communal marketplace of ideas (some good, some less so), and a place to go. People whine a lot... but they apparently keep coming back, so it must offer them something.
If all the posts to slashdot were distributed all over the Net, each would receive much fewer reads. Indeed, due to the loss of feedback, most likely there would be a lot fewer posts. And I believe that the higher quality posts would suffer the most.
I'm not trying to say that the posters are unimportant to the success of slashdot. Being one myself, I have a very high opinion of them.
Time will tell if they add enough value to entice people to subscribe. But there is nothing illogical, immoral, or inconsistent for their asking.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
A big, powerful State is the best guarantee that the rights of the little guy won't be trampled by big business. But at only one condition: that the little guys firmly keep the government in check through the democratic institutions, and prevent them from being corrupted by croporate largesse.
A good start would be outlawing political contributions by croporations, limiting individual contributions to $100, and probibiting political advertising by non-politicians/political parties.
This is actually the case of at least one jurisdiction in North-America, and over there, the government had not been subverted by croporations during the last 20 years.
No, my problem is that while I agree with this man, I sure find it STUPID and ARROGANT to say "He is a very smart person". How pathetic... would this comment have been said about someone you didn't agree with? Kind of like when someone in a suit walks into an area full of [issue] 'conscious' people dressed in The Official Conscious gear, like the goofy hat, nappy trousers, torn up shoes, etc... he is berated before they even know him, by a bunch of hypocritical prejudiced cretins that NEVER practice what they harp and bitch about. However, if that same person showed up later, acting the very same way and saying the very same things but dressed like everyone else, he would be instantly accepted. Liberal = hate, intollerance, hypocricy, malice, greed and illogic
For years Disney has shamelessly ripped off the Japanese animation industry, lifting characters and storyline from whole cloth right out of some of the most popular Japanese anime ever produced.
If the Japanese Anime industry would ever have the cajones to sue Eisner and company for all the ideas they have ripped off we would have little to be concerned with.
For just the tip of the iceberg check out: The Secret of Bluewater
Jim Burnes
A properly restrained constitutional government (say one that didn't ignore the tenth amendment), would not have power worth being bought and sold.
The Dickensian years of the Industrial Revolution weren't all bad ... after all, was it not the massive poverty and high artificial crime (stealing bread in order to feed a family of 12, etc.) rate that 'encouraged' people to move to the colonies? Was it not England's masterful management of a small disease isolated to one species of potato that 'encouraged' the Irish diaspora?
... loved coming back, what a great opportunity for another Diaspora!
Hey, without the Industrial Revolution, and its consequent industrial-scale human suffering, Australia might not exist! And neither would the (fast fading) memory of world-famous Australian socialist policies like free universal education, yea, even unto University, and free universal medical coverage.
But hey, with policies and practices that Dickens knew and
Mars, anyone?
"This is a Hollywood movie: when it comes to the Laws of Physics, they're lucky if they get Gravity!" --- my wife
1. Create an internetservice where users create accounts so they can pay for media, and keep track of what they payed for.
2. Let the p2p networks serve as your marketing.
3. Make this internetservice standardized so player devices/programs can interface them.
The player gives the listener two choices when listening to music:
a) Pay for the song and get the full-quality-version.
b) If you for some reason already got the full-quality-version pay for it anyway.
The future:
Spawn a seperate company to keep tack of all databses. Include all digitaly storable information in this system (music,books,software...)
Streaming media. PAN. Mobile devices...
Users can store listening settings on server (effekts, surround, eq, you name it)...
Why fight against the net when you can use it?
You're right. I mean, when the government FORCED auto manufacturers to put seatbelts in cars, very much against the wills of the manufacturers, people's lives were SAVED! Damn that regulation.
If only we let the auto manufacturers not do anything, imagine how much better the world would be without seatbelts!
As the great book 'Hackers' describes the 'Atari' company and what it tried to do to the game industry, the same goes for riaa/mpaa. (you all know where atari is today, not their great product, but their foul company)
Also from the book, the beuracratic stupidity and deprivement of freedom will not gain them much.
But it looks like, while back then, when billy gates posted his letter that he is being robbed, everyone got mad and furious.
Today when the riaa/mpaa are doing the same, noone cares - all people are saying is "Blah, their cause is hopeless, they will never suceed". And all the while they continue to leech our blood, there is also noone going against them, there are only hunted animals, like the file sharing program makers (napster/kazaa/etc) that are being hunted by the riaa/mpaa.
But there is noone hunting the riaa/mpaa - they roam free, while everyone else just "believes" that they will fail, and does almost nothing to stop them.
How come there are no news about the riaa/mpaa being sued for what they are doing?
If every slashdot read would send 1$ to a mutual fund, and with that money a good law firm would be bought that will fight the riaa/mpaa and kill them. Then this nonsense could stop.
Meanwhile, all I see are people trolling on slashdot, sitting comfortably in their houses and not poking their noses outside to riot and protest against the huge bloody leeches, the power of all the people that believe that the leeches will fail is completely unused. while the riaa/mpaa with the little power they have (compared to the rest of the world) - they continue to use that little power to make more money, to turn free and freedom into theft and imprisonment.
'Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated!'
-- Borg
Given that the upshot of the SSSCA is the outlawing of Free operating systems, why isn't there someone from RedHat testifying at these hearings? Why isn't there someone from the Debian project there explaining that this bill is asking for nothing less than outlawing general purpose computers?
This is true, and I think the Intellectual Property (IP) holding companies know this, but they don't really care. If they simply cut off all access to their IP, it will be up to the content consumers (i.e. y'all and me) and hardware manufacturers (e.g. Apple) to seek remedy via the courts or whatever. The former has shown a complete lack of interest in doing anything to fight them and the hardware manufacturers will be happy to sell us new hardware that circumvents (either "illegally" or via some sort of legal partnership) the protection.
No matter what, we are screwed.
Four fifths of all our troubles in this life would disappear if we would just sit down and keep still. -C. Coolidge
Regarding your fusion idea, what if we spent $300 billion a year for 5 years and ended up with nothing? That's an awfully big risk you propose taking for something as unpredictable as a scientific breakthrough. If fusion is feasable, we'll make it work. But making it the focus of our entire country, without really knowing for certain if we can do it simply doesn't make sense.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Eisner and that Luddites of the --AAs (who don't make a thing for me to buy anyway,) can kiss my wallet good bye.
They have fought EVERY technology from and since the player piano roll. They have ALWAYS lost. Not ONCE have they been able to sit on the beach and hold back the tide. But they lose only after costing their members incalculable potential revenue.
The ONLY reason I can think of why anybody in their right minds would pay this bunch of losers a dime is threat of physical violence. But then again, I am honest and have limited guile.
If you can tell me what they have actually done FOR (as opposed to TO,) their membership, please post it. I need a good laugh.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
The free market has never been given a chance at all. In every situation where America has allowed the free market to operate un-regulated, it HAS worked. In every situation where government has attempted to regulate, you only see big business running amuck.
It's quite amazing to see domesticated city people going on about the 'free market'.
Go into a tropical jungle a thousand miles from the nearest town, and there you will see the 'free market'. A perfectly self-regulating system that follows a very simple rule. The strong kill, and the weak die.
But what I think you meant by the 'free market', is a situation where people are able to exchange goods at a rate agreed by both parties.
The only problem with that scenario is that it can be subverted by someone who is unproductive (ie. cannot make goods to trade), but capable of extreme violence. This person can negotiate unfavourable terms, that is, give me some bananas or I'll beat your skull in.
This is why 'governments' were originally formed, in order to protect the 'market' from being subverted by violence. Unfortunately, in order to do this, the government needs to be capable of greater violence/force than those it is protecting the market from. This leads to the unfortunate problem that the market can be subverted by the government whose job it is to protect it.
This is THE fundamental, and basically unresolvable problem of human governance and society.
Throwing around terms like 'capitalism', 'socialism', 'communism' and 'free market', is at best sophisticated wanking, and at worst, basic stupidity.
The problems of Government in all countries, at all times will be solved the way it has always been solved. By the shifting attitudes of the people who live there, from extreme facist conservatism to laizee faire libertarian, and the events that have throughout history ALWAYS accompanied such shifts.
>>
I am the director, and this is my movie
Yes, damn that regulation. Ever heard the old adage "You can take a horse to water, but you can't make him drink"? They forced car manufacturers to put seat belts in cars. Did that mean that everyone started wearing seatbelts? Apparently not, because then legislation was created to force people to wear seatbelts, and now we have the situation where cops are doing mandatory checkpoints to see if people are wearing seatbelts, and ticketing them if they aren't. Seatbelts have been known to cause death as well, though it is certainly not as common as its ability to save lives.
So under that thinking, why doesn't government force EVERYBODY to do the right thing? Why don't they force people to take any homeless man in the street into their home? Why don't they force you to give your pocket change to the Salvation Army? Why don't they force you to spend an hour per week doing volunteer work? Because free will of people is a GOOD THING.
Legislation wasn't needed to put a seatbelt in every car...money spent by consumers could easily have done that. Just as people purchase cars with airbags over those that don't today, the same thing would have happened with seatbelts given the chance.
-Chris Hickman, another damn Libertarian from IL
take a look at look at THIS for the next target for Valenti and the other useless drones.
"How DARE anyone establish a network where people can share anything without our getting our tithe."
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Slippery slope much?
Sadly enough, I agree with you that eventually consumer money would have put seatbelts in all cars. However, I do believe that in this case, government regulation did it faster.
Ideally, the government is just the public grouping up and combining resources. So maybe the people of the time wanted seatbelts, but the auto manufacturers weren't coming around, I don't know. The people take their collective will, and use it to pass regulation. In this case, it makes sense to me.
You can apply the free market argument here if you like, but I find that the free market breaks down as the market grows. Sure, in a small village, it works... if someone starts scamming everyone, then everyone else stops dealing with him. A success of the free market. Once the market is so big that no one knows anyone else, it encourages people like that scammer. Plus, someone mentioned it in another comment; once the consumers aren't aware of all the issues, then they can't excercise their free-market power, and the system breaks down.
Given that the upshot of the SSSCA is the outlawing of Free operating systems, why isn't there someone from RedHat testifying at these hearings?
Because these things are invitation only. The committee gets to decide who to invite.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
And the RIAA all call the tune... and they're buying the stairway for $40M... violate the sign in the next guitar shop and expect 6 months until your bond hearing...
Appearances at hearings are dependent on campaign contributions. To appear at that type of hearing you would have to donate approx $50K to the members of the committee.
And no, I am not being sarcastic, I am not making it up, that is the way your Congress people behave. If you don't like it write them a letter asking them why Red Hat etc. were not invited and ask directly if campaign contributions are the reason.
The response you receive will of course make an outright denial. However the probability that Red Hat and the Linux crowd will be allowed into the hearings will increase substantially. With Cheney in hot water for selling access to Enron and his oil company friends the hint that you might fight them on the contributions front would be very frightening.
As they say in Washington, money only buys you acces, it does not buy legislation. Well the crooks who charge for access should be considered no less a crook than the ones who sell legislation.
So next time there is a hearing, go down to Washington with a nice bunch of signs saying something like 'We don't like the SSSCA, but Hollings won't hear from us because we won't pay'. Then go to his office and leave them with his staff.
Whatever you do, don't listen to the fools who tell you to play the DC game, they will walk all over you if they think you will be quiet.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Hmm. Time is the ultimate limited resource? In a way yes. Tell that to all the people that have been layed off in the USA, and I suppose everywhere else on earth. How much time did it take to recover a pound of iron in 1350? How much today? Then why are prices going up, instead of coming down? My theory is a flawed economic model.
Do you argue that fusion wouldn't be worth it, if successful? If so, then there is no way to make you see my point. If you can agree to that though, then why shouldn't we? The amount is exaggerated, but certainly 10-40 billion per year would be no big deal. It is possible, just look at the sun... or a thermonuke (from a suitable safe distance, of course *grin*). It's just a matter of time, that will be quintupled, because of vested interests (how will power companies maintain power, if electricity is so damn cheap) and because we are neglecting it to the point of stupidity. The "crisis" in California last year... nothing like that would ever happen again. Pollution would be lowered dramatically, if not eradicated. (Sure electric cars are expensive, but if elec. is cheap, and you never have to pay for gas again...) I honestly can't even begin to imagine the changes that would be possible. But many of those changes, would be business empires collapsing... and every one of them, will tell you that this is a bad thing. But only because they have their hands in our wallets, and want to keep them there.
I argue that we simply don't know if fusion can be done in a fashion that is 1) cheap 2) safe 3) provides a great deal of excess energy 4) practical here on earth (recreating the sun would not be practical). Business would LOVE to get a piece of fusion if they thought it was practical. Maybe existing power companies would be concerned, but an upstart could get funding and go for it (Enron, despite all its assorted accounting frauds, went from nothing to enourmous in a very short period of time, so it IS entirely possible). Really, fusion power would be an ideal business to be in because building a fusion plant would have a high cost barrier to entry, especially if the company that invented it patented associated technologies. It is very rare that a company is actually able to surpress a technology they find threatening, and if they do, it's always through government intervention.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
so i wrote hollings a short webmail on his site expressing my feelings. i was polite but to the point.
http://www.senate.gov/~hollings/webform.html
they probably won't get close to reading them all...but if they are smart, they will sample what's coming in to get a feeling for overall tone and sentiment.
and maybe not.
can't hurt though.
..."The customer is always right" become "The customer is the enemy"?
...the right to try to make a profit become the right to a profit?
..."The business exists to serve the customer" become "The customer exists to serve the business"?
..."Our business model must evolve to fit the environment" become "We must change the environment to suit our business model"?
..."Build a better mousetrap..." become "Buy out, destroy, or outlaw all the other existing mousetraps..."?
..."When profits are down, reevaluate our business plan" become "When profits are down, sue someone"?
All socio-economic systems have their good and bad points. I fear we are doing a superb job of demonstrating the dark side of capitalism today in this country...
DennyK
Real prices are held fixed. So even if gold was 1000 times harder to produce in 1350, than wood, for instance, and yet now it's only 857 times more difficult, the prices shall remain fixed? That's a dumb way to do things.
Wanna know how to do it right? An hour of a man's life is worth $10. If he makes a loaf of bread, and it takes an hour, that loaf costs $10. (It won't, these things are highly automated, he might be able to make 4000 such loaves for instance). People get paid for how long they do work. People that just want to exist, might get along with only a few hours per week. Politicians, since they don't work at all, will soon starve, and no one will have to put up with their shit. Real work is, creating real goods, repairing and/or maintaining them, and delivering them where they need to be delivered. Middle managers, paid entertainers, pro athletes, bankers, politicians... all gone. Now isn't that simple? When it becomes easier to make a loaf of bread, the benefit is immediately available to you (or nearly so). Now for your 10 million reasons why this is overly simplistic, undoable, and just plain insane. I'm listening.
I argue that it's unrealistic to believe that controlled fusion is either outright impossible, or unlucrative. It *might* take thousands of years... but this is only the smallest chance, the odds are with us. And I'm sure, that if that is the case, we will stumble across plenty of methods that have nearly zero net gain (this is to be expected). Don't the tokamaks and Zpinch chambers all qualify as such? And probably plenty of other ways that only some physics graduate student is aware of. We're not talking magic here, but engineering (and if it's not quite at the engineering level, it's only a few years away).
It's not comparable to anything else I'm familiar with. Want to ruin the power industry? Sure, I can see that happening. Want to ruin multiple internatioal industries, in one fell swoop? Won't ever happen. Maybe fusion will happen, but it will be at their pace, so that they can control it and rape us all over again. They won't assasinate scientists, mind you, they don't have to. Much easier to just starve them before they can discover it. You don't think energy lobbyists have things to say to politicians about fusion research?
I want all entertainment companies to pay a royalty to Internet users. Eventually they will scrape or mine some of my personal data, or surfing habits to spam me. If they haven't yet, they are thinking about it. This makes them guilty. There should also be legislation to ban them from owing servers or speakng to Internet advertisers.. They might use these tools/services to try and violate my privacy.
"I don't think it's selfish, to eat defenseless shellfish." -NOFX
Maybe our last hope may be to set up a political action committee (or PAC for short) in South Carolina next time Sen. Hollings' seat comes up for re-election to educate his constituents about his corruption. A few years ago, Madison, AL (my hometown) had an idiot for a mayor, Chuck Yancura. (He even swore in front of many elementary school students in a PTA meeting!) The residents set up a PAC called the Anybody But Chuck PAC (ABC PAC) which contributed to any mayoral candidate's campaign except those who refused the funds and Chuck Yancura's re-election campaign. The ABC PAC even put up ads pointing out Yancura's scandalous actions. Yancura was soundly defeated in the election that followed. We need to pull out all the stops and follow this model to get Hollings defeated. It is possible that the EFF, EPIC, and the ACLU would help in this effort.
BTW, the sponsors of the DMCA are Rep. Howard Coble (R-NC) and Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-UT). Its co-sponsors are Reps. Howard Berman (D-CA), Mary Bono (R-CA), Sonny Bono (who is no longer serving anymore), John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI), Frank Barney (D-MA), Henry J. Hyde (R-IL), Bill McColluum (who is no longer serving anymore), Bill Paxon (who is no longer serving anymore), and Charles W. "Chip" Pickering (R-MS). Maybe we should mount similar campaigns against these fools. One tip for success: find out how much money the evil special interests like Enron, the RIAA, and the MPAA gave them.
Is a CPU an interactive digital device? I have trouble interacting with it. What about a mobo? Graphics card? Monitor? OS? Mouse?
IANAL, but it could reasonably be argued that the bill could only apply to assembled computer systems, but not to the individual components thereof. Therefore, while the Dells of the world would have to include DRM features, the home hobbying building their own machine could well be able to construct a Hollings-free computer perfectly legally.
Here's a business model for the **AA to kick around:
Get yourself a fat pipe and fast servers (and make sure you support resuming and are dl-client friendly). Trust me, it'll pay for itself. Get yourself a good login and automatic billing system that doesn't charge the user's account until the download is confirmed complete. Make the download catalog easy to use (workable in any browser and no damned javascript), searchable, and as complete as possible.
Offer MP3s as follows:
64 kbit mono -- no charge. Okay for previewing stuff to decide whether you want to buy it or not, but not really good enough for cuts you want to keep and play a lot. (And will prevent complaints and billing disputes about songs that suck too much to pay for.)
128 kbit stereo -- 25 cents each. Good enough for most people and not too much of a bandwidth hog.
360 kbit stereo -- 50 cents each. (Or, since this system obviously will have login and tracking of purchases, just 25 cents if you already downloaded the 128kbit version -- effectively a discounted upgrade price.) This satisfies the more-devoted audiophile's need for better sound quality.
If you want to make sure no one avoids billing by stopping the download with 2 seconds to go (since incomplete MP3s *do* play), ZIP 'em, since that will largely defeat people who try to cheat the system. NO ENCRYPTION or "phone home before it can be played" crap, tho.
Yeah, people will still trade MP3s, but why should I spend hours searching for and dragging home unreliable files from some slow cranky server, when I can cough up 25 cents and get the same material, in guaranteed quality and complete condition from a fast reliable server, at the very moment I decide I want it?? Hell, for that price it may beat the bother of ripping my own.
I'm sure a similar model could be developed for downloadable movies -- a highly-compressed 320x200 preview copy for little or nothing, and a top quality copy for a buck or two. Why spend all night dl'ing an AVI that proves to be someone's grainy screencam when for a couple bucks I can get the same thing in close to DVD quality?
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
All I have to say is:
More laws == more criminals.
Sakhmet.
Ban the Nukes! Save the Whales! Screw it. Nuke the Whales!
You know, it's not really the abuse of power, but the power to abuse...
--
Runnin' around, robbin' banks all whacked on the Scooby Snacks...
There was actually a very critical piece on page one of the marketplace section of the Wall Street Journal today, about these hearings and other recent and silly government proposals for the net and tech industry. Proposals like the ones on net radio royalites (twice that of terestrial stations) and DSL deregulation (though cynics say the Bells have killed competion anyway... so why not?) The point of the article: The government shouldn't mess with something it so clearly does not understand.
One of the nation's most decidedly pro-capitalist newspapers called Holling's plan "such a bad idea it's scary." and asked why the senator should even begin to have the gall to think that the government would have better sense designing computers than the private sector, and going on to recognize, quite correctly, that the wonder of the PC is its open and adaptable nature. ("A technological swiss army knife") The article concluded by saying that the bill did a wonderful job of defending the movie studios intrests at a time when Washington's slience on consumer's needs was deafening.
It was beautiful. You could have read it here.
It isn't big business in general we have to fear. We put up with capitalism because it benefits consumers most of all when it works like we know it can. The bad guy here is, not surprisingly, special intrest. Free markets are ultimately genuinely democratic institutions, but we shouldn't forget that Government can destroy them as such just as easily as they can and should curb their admitted excesses.
Don't fear the MPAA folks. Fear tech-dumb crusaders in congress with one hand in the cookie jar.
Placing the Greens in with the Republicans and Democrats is ludicrous. While Greens may strongly support social programs (the handouts you refer to), the Green party puts people before corporations. I would surely trust Ralph Nader, the most prominent member of the Green party, to protect my rights as an individual from corporate interests before any libertarian. Nader has a proven track record of protecting consumer interests.
I find it quite interesting that you believe that you believe libertarianism is a solution to a problem rooted in big business, while placing blame primarily on government corruption (a major factor to be sure, but only because of te influence of the content industries).
The ultimate plays for Madden 2006
Okay, the 10 million reasons why your idea is overly simplistic, undoable and insane. First and foremost, all men are not created equal. If person A can make 4000 loaves of bread in an hour but person B can only make 2000 loaves, then what do you do? If you pay them the same, then person A will figure "fuck this, I'm not going to knock myself out making 4000 loaves, I'll just take it easy and make 2000 also. Hell, maybe I'll only make 50 loaves an hour, who cares?" This, obviously, is one of the main problems with communism. People are inherently lazy. Maybe not all people, but more than society can care for without some kind of competitive system. The USSR tried to get around this with quotas, but people still found ways around it. If the government said you had to produce 4000 shoes, then the factory would produce 4000 size 6 lefty sandles. So they'd say, "2000 pairs, different sizes, and different types." So the factory would produce 1999 pairs of size 6 sandles, and 1 pair of size 7 sneakers. And every time the requirements became more detailed, you had to have more and more people checking compliance, and the people working in the factories found more and more creative ways around the restrictions. Besides all that, would you really want to live in a world where if you don't make production quotas, you don't just lose your job, you're sent to Siberia?
Okay, point 2, how do you distribute labor and goods? A truck driver and a garbage man have the same set of skills, they both drive trucks. However, I think we can all agree that being a truck driver is a much better job. So, without some sort of oversight, everyone would choose the better jobs assuming equal pay. With fixed prices, this would create excess trucking capacity, while garbage would pile up on the streets. Then of course, once you produce your goods you have to get them to the people. You obviously don't appreciate the amount of effort that goes into keeping the shelves of stores fully stocked while having a minimum of products going bad. It takes lots of research and lots of (yes, that's right) middle managers to keep that running smoothly. I'm not sure if you are old enough to have any recollection/knowledge of the attempt the government made to control distribution of gasoline in the 70's, but suffice it to say that it was an absolute goddamn nightmare. They were probably only off by maybe a couple percentage points here or there, but the result was thousands of gallons of surplus or shortage in certain areas. People literally killed each other for cutting in gas station lines because the shortage got so bad. It's precisely because of that era that gas tanks to this day have anti-siphon devices on them.
Third, I've already hinted above at why middle managers are not the waste you seem to think they are (bankers fall into the same catagory of striving for efficiency in movement of resources), but what about all the rest of the jobs you would eliminate? Some people LIKE watching sports. Most of us like watching movies and listening to music. Ah, I see, you still want people to do these things, you just don't want to pay them for it, am I right? You expect someone like Mark McGuire to continue to spend (I'm making this number up) 15 hours a week in the gym lifting weights, plus another (again, made up number) 30 hours practicing baseball, just for the fun of it? You expect him to fly all over the country (how do you motivate people to spend the requisite amount of time in flight school if their paid the same as a manual laborer?), be seperated from his family for weeks at a time, and get booed by opposing fans just for the joy of the game? On top of that, you expect him to work, however much, say 10 hours, doing something "productive" so he can actually be allowed to eat? Ain't going to happen my friend. Sure, there are people that would be happy to play for free in a local park, but it's just not exciting to watch that when you know just how incredibly good a professional athlete can be.
Finally, I think your estimates on time are off. Sure, one person might be able to turn dough into loaves of bread at a rate close to 4000 an hour, but what about growing the wheat, grinding it into flour, and mixing it with the other ingredients (what all goes into bread? Yeast, eggs, sugar, and salt, I know, anything else?). Plus, of course, someone has to make all of those other ingredients too. Quite frankly, I think you'd be lucky to get even 10 loaves an hour, if you sum up the work time of everyone in the supply chain.
Okay, moving on to fusion power. I don't think fusion is impossible. Indeed, I hope I will see it in my lifetime. I just am saying that throwing an ungodly amount of money at the problem because of your conviction that it's just around the corner is a tremendous risk for society to take for not a whole heck of a lot of benefit. Electricity is pretty damn cheap as it is, I think my monthly power bills were in the range of $10 or $11 a month, and this was in California during the height of the "power emergency." I don't see how fusion is going to suddenly change the world as you seem to think. Okay, maybe fuel cells become a little more reasonable as a technology, but who does that hurt? The auto manufacturers are already working on putting fuel cells in their cars, they don't care. Any pressure from domestic oil companies would be offset by our desire to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. Seriously, I just don't see the threat (or all that much of a benefit) here. Maybe if they were virtually free to manufacture, and could fit inside a minitower case, I could see that as being a great bonus for society, but more likely they'll be at least the size of a fission plant, and cost a bloody fortune.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Funny you should mention those. None of them are truly deregulated, especially not California's electricity. In many of these situations, they were deregulated JUST ENOUGH to be considered partial deregulation, but what was still regulated let the government either cap prices (California's case), or impose a monopoly (the local telephone service case).
Canana got rid of their FAA -- one of the worst in the industry. They privatized it a few years ago, and now their flight safety and on-time arrivals are up 60% -- one of the best in the industry.
Don't say deregulation has failed -- you can't pick one case of total deregulation where it hasn't improved the situation significantly.
Considering I'm not from or in the US, this is funny.
I'm working strictly on economic and political clout, combined with history. The US wields more power than it actually has, and will continue to do so. That's the facts. It sucks badly, but it's true.
Deal with it or do something about it.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Oh cripes....
I was just kidding, but I'm happy to have provoked you.
The majority of libertarians I know believe that we need to reduce the size of FEDERAL GOVERNMENT a ton, reduce the size of STATE GOVERNMENT a lot, and do whatever we want to do with the size of local government - INCREASE it greatly, decrease, whatever.
:(
If you want safe cars, you'll go live with other people who want safe cars. If you want social security, you'll go live with people who also agree that government controlled welfare and retirement plans are the status quo.
Our Constitution was set up this way -- whatever wasn't allotted to Federal government was left for either the people or the states to decide. Instead, our Congress and Executive branch take more and more and more powers in the name of "The children" or "the elderly" or "working class citizens."
None of it is Constitutional. The end of our fine country is probably closer than you think.
Isn't the reason most often touted for bans on marijuana is it's role as a "gateway" drug, leading it's casual uses down the dark roads into full blown hard core drug addiction? How can "music" be justified in our country. It leads people to petty theft when they can't get thier "fix" from the CD dealers. Sure, the theft is small, costing nothing but the price of bandwidth, but what cost is it to have the youth of our country entering into criminal acts before they even understand the true concequences of what they are doing? Music is a gateway into hard crime, into rape, violence, murder...
BAN MUSIC NOW!!!
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
I'm afraid that if I take an economics course, I'll become just like you. No offense.
Your inflation measurements seem awfully convoluted to me. They're probably that way because the people who invent them are out of a job, if things remain simple. But let me simplify it anyway. Inflation is the condition where 2 or more powerful entities in control of different parts of the economy, try to race each other in seeing who can screw the worker the quickest.
My numbers were arbitrary, I have no idea how many loaves of bread can be made in an hour. I would think that while inaccurate, they aren't off by too many orders of magnitude. In some large food processing plant, the dough is likely mixed in a big vat, kneaded by machinery, and cut up into loaves automatically. A few people probably can run the whole thing, producing thousands upon thousands in a 40 hour work week. And to be fair, figure in a few farmers, and what not, all the middlemen. Economists do all kinds of crazy math that makes no sense, don't tell me they couldn't figure up the real value of something if they wanted to (they don't of course).
People aren't inherently lazy, in the true sense of the word. People inherently tend to avoid things that they believe (for good reasons oor bad) to not having any point. Find me a person who wouldn't be willing to do a decent amount of work, if the economic model were actually fair.. there will be a few (rich people, politicians... etc). They are the exception, and are somewhat easily dealt with. Quite a few will fall into retirement age, which means they wouldn't work anyway. Others, you just provide the bare minimum for them to survive, until they start working. Remember, they earn a fixed amount per hour, so the more they do, the more they get in life.
The other aspects of laziness are taught. They could just as simply not be taught.
The pleasantness of jobs, hmm. There will be a few that are tough, I'm sure. I don't think garbage man vs truck driver is one of them, or at least that it needs to be though.
Middle managers have no justification for existence. I'm not saying that my economic model would have worked in the 60's, it wouldn't have been possible then. Now though? I think we are on the verge of having technology that can manage this much better than humans (if it isn't already possible).
Pro athletes? This is certainly your weakest position. The others, you are at least partially right, one way or another, but this is kinda sick. I don't even know how to answer. I am unemployed right now, cog in a vast economic wheel right now, that I've never had any control over, and never will. This man makes millions, and what is his contribution to society? He aesthetizes 20 million overweight slobs for 2 hours at a time several times per week, so they don't realize what a shitty world they've helped to create?
Besides, even if sports would die, I don't think music would. One out of two ain't bad.
Fusion, providing that it is doable, would be much more than just an oil/coal replacement. Many things that aren't practical simply because they cost too much, become simple, if electricity becomes as cheap as I believe it would have to. Desalination is possible, it's just not cheap... takes too much power. However, if ocean water is your fuel, and the energy yield is as good as or better than fission...
Space travel would get a big boost. There are things that aren't easy or possible to acquire on earth. Prescious elements, including metals and the like... even some non-obvious stuff (helium 5 on the surface of the moon).
Pollution takes a hit. The effort spent cleaning things up can be spent elsewhere.
Energy independence would affect middle eastern terrorism somehow (though I can't claim it would be a good effect, it might be... who the hell can tell anymore?).
And another idea of mine, that would be difficult to explain here. It's impossible right now, sucks up too much juice. Imagine though, that you could route products around a physical network, like you did packets on the internet. We're talking mailing a letter from california to new york, in under 3 hours flat. Scaled up to cargo that could only fit in a train car right now.
At least we somewhat agree on fusion, I guess.
PS I think the initial fusion reactors will be on the scale of a fission plant, but that they could become as small as double a fridge or so. Imagine having your own. No smaller than that though.
If this act is intended to make black metal illegal, count me in.
it's getting to the point where I may not even be able to legally give my own music away for free
The point at which you couldn't give away that kind of crap was reached a long time ago.
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None of it is Constitutional. The end of our fine country is probably closer than you think.
I'd argue the end of the Constitutional Republic occurred after the Civil War.
The drug laws that were passed under the Commerce Clause just made the constitutional rubble bounce.
And RICO? Citizens of a country with RICO-type laws should be forming Militias.
Of course, they are, and WACO was a message to those militias.
Which is that while we respect (even worship) the ownership of data when it comes to privacy considerations, we abhor that very same ownership when it is expressed by others (like the RIAA & MPAA) in the form of copyrights.
If you cannot see the distinction I pity you!
* BTW, Why hasn't SlashDot reviewed Levy's new book [amazon.com] yet? It's been out for two month's now.
Probably because he's an apologist for the vested interests we oppose, why should we provide publicity for him ?
Actually, I had a similar thought in a totally unrelated messageboard earlier today. Some people were compairing perfect societies, and then one guy mentioned that trying to have ONE perfect society was part of the problem, that things would be better if multiple societies found a way to coexist peacefully. He also cited the need for a central authority with restricted powers, with the sole function of ensuring the coexistance of the societies.
It occured to me that he managed to reinvent the basic prinicpals of the founding fathers without even realizing it. In theory, the US is formed in the same way as his perfect society. He even used the cases of a redneck society where hunting and smoking and guns would be allowed, and his ideal place, with no smoking, no violence, etc.
If the feds weren't getting power trippy, and the USA was still the united STATES of america, then he wouldn't even have to move to realize his dream.
So, I agree with you. Plus, the structure that you and he discribe fits in well with my belief that the free market/democracy don't scale well to large populations. By having smaller "governing bodies" composed of the people local to, and caring about, the issues, part of that scaling is solved.
Honestly, 80 percent of the people who dont buy CDs and download stuff from the net, wouldnt buy CDs.
I mean really, if you wanted CDs you'd buy CDs. If you want music, you'll listen to the radio, you'll record it on a tape cassette and you'll have music.
Now wait, you'll say the quality of the cassette isnt the same as CD, but thats what people did before they had the net, they'd tape stuff on cassettes.
Its like saying by law all VCRs should remove the ability to record because you might record a movie from cable or satelite.
Thats just bullshit.
Its also bullshit to say that every movie you'd record from satelite you would have paid to go see at the movie theaters, thats bullshit.
Most movies arent worth paying to go see, but most movies that are halfway decent are worth recording on a blank VHS tape.
I go see maybe a few movies per year, sometimes i dont see any movies for the year.
When i go see a movie, i'm not paying to "see" the movie, I'm paying for the atmosphere, the ability to see the movie on the big screen, to have surround sound, to see the movie immediately.
Just like the movie theater vs the VCR, people will pay to get music immediately, waiting for it to be spread throughout the net is not going to work if you want the music now.
People will have to buy the music or else it wont spread throughout the internet, all the music companies have to do to make people buy their CDs, is to slow the spreading of the music, this can be done by making the CDs more difficult to crack and pirate.
Its fine to sell copy protected CDs, i dont like copy protection but I'm fine with this because the movie people have a right to do this, just dont buy their CDs if you dont want it.
As far as controlling how we use our computers, this is a totally diffrent issue, no one should have the right to control how we use our computer, NO ONE!
This is as important as our right to freedom of speech.
Tell me, 20-30 years from now, when we have some sorta brain to computer interface, Will thoughts be under copyright? By sharing illegal thoughts with someone else will you go to jail? Think about where this is going, technology should overrule copyright. Someday technology is going to be so advanced that to enforce copyright would require mind control and render us total slaves to these people so they can protect their secrets and make money.
Some things in life are more important than money, Freedom is more important than money, the USA, was it founded on capitalism or on freedom? You all have to decide, because if we keep going in this direction will we be giving up our freedom for capitalism. All the talk about communism and facism, well just wait, capitalism is going to lead to the same thing.
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Trading off one industry for another.
The content industry will kill the technology industry.
Technology and Copyright do not mix, because at some point you have to draw the line.
I'm not going to argue about if copyright is right or wrong, perhaps for our time and our current technology, copyright still has its benifits.
I want you all to think ahead about 20-30 years.
Imagine us living in a world were everything is under copyright. Imagine us having great technology, the ability to think and a computer translate your thoughts, thought based computing, AI, Imagine a new genetic medicine which is the cure to old age, Imagine someone creating an invention which allows you to have unlimited food, water, everything.
Consider the fact that all of these technologies are in labs right now, and we will all live to see these technologies.
Do we want all of these innovative technologies released in a controlled fashion, and ruined?
Thought based computing will never be released unless there are thought control mechanisms, afterall people have to protect their secrets.
Imagine the cure for old age being restricted, the medicine is so expensive that only the top 10% of the population can afford it, so you get to die at 70 while the top 10% gets to live for another few hundred years.
Imagine AI technology, which is so intelligent that it can be used to help calm people down when having panic attacks, can help people with mental problems, can stop people from commiting suicides, and many other helpful innovative technologies which can try to talk people out of situations. Imagine this technology only being availible to the top 10%, while the rest of the world is just suffering.
Consider the fact that we have some kinda nano technology, or perhaps nano genetic technology which can produce unlimited amounts of food, imagine us creating unlimited amounts of drinking water, then imagine this water and food costing more than real food and water which is no longer fresh after years of pollution.
Once again the top 10% will have pure food and water, the best medicines, longer lives, better lives, less mental problems and finally lets consider the fact that even with our technology, the quality of life for 90 percent of the planet will be the same if not worse than it is now.
Also consider the fact that this will be because of greed, not because resources are limited.
I can understand when resources are limited as they are now, but when we have technology which benifits the world and improves the world in total, this technology should not be restricted for the sake of greed(Capitalism)
I'm not saying Capitalism is bad, I'm saying greed is bad. I think we need to figure out how we want to use the technology which is currently in the labs right now, do we want to use it to benifit the world, or do we want to use it to make as much $$ as possible for a select few.
I believe that if this is a democracy and you were to have the world vote on it, They'd make the right choice.
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You mean to tell me that republicans arent the same way? Smaller government has nothing to do with it, corrupt government and size wont matter.
The government is corrupt.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Donate money to EFF and other groups which defend our rights. Whats a petition going to tell the industry who already knows 60 million+ people disagree with them from the Napster Saga.
Donate to EFF EFF
Donate to GNU
Donate to Linux Mandrake Linux Mandrake
Donate to Freenet
We should donate to all of these groups because these groups are doing the actual fighting, stupid pettitions arent doing anything. Its like a kid who gets down on the ground banging their fists crying, thats not going to stop the bully from kicking your ass. Not giving the bully the money is also not going to stop the bully from kicking your ass. Hiring people to help you fight the bully will help you kick the bullies ass. Its the only way.
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Instead of paying the MPAA and RIAA, we donate to people who are supporting our freedom.
I think the main advantage of the RIAA and MPAA is their money, they get their money from us. Why shouldnt we give some of our money to the people defending us.
Lets put the pressure on them, Donate to freenet, EFF, if we can lets donate to Gnutella, all the people the RIAA and MPAA are fighting we should fund the best we can, if we all put millions of dollars into these groups who are defending us we might actually get somewhere.
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Heh. Fook! Dammit! Hahaha. :)
(I'll rationalize my response by saying that, hey, someone might've believed you!)
We need to donate $$ to people who are defending us.
Alot of you people talk alot, how much have you donated? The EFF, FSF, Freenet, all of these people who stand up for us, how much have you donated? Donate $5, i know everyone here has $5 and if everyone here were to donate $5 to each or to one of these groups, these groups would have more money to defend us.
5x500,000= 2.5 million
If you were to donate 2.5 million to freenet it would be the next napster, if you had 2.5 million to donate to EFF, EFF would have more money to defend you when you are the one going to jail over the SSSCA crap, its these people who can make change, you have to fight back with $$, with hard work, and eventually you can have a revolution, you can even the odds.
Begging them not to change the laws by emailing or writing them isnt going to work, you have to use technology to make the laws impossible to enforce, and get people to stand up for you when they try to outlaw your sourcecode.
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First, Donate to Freenet, Gnutella and other difficult if not impossible to stop technologies.
Eventually Morpheus or some company will use this technology, let the economy form after the technology is in place.
You'll be able to buy music directly from musicians without the RIAA, musicians would make more money, you'd save money, and the technology would make buying it effortless, click "pay musician"
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Lets donate some money, and then buy some TV and billboard advertisements. Convince the voters not to vote for certain people who support this.
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The funny thing is that this would be as successful as Prohibition or the war on drugs. That is to say, not at all.
Even more interesting is that this legislation would make many, if not most, geeks into outlaws. The people who would be supposed to implement these systems. How can any law succeed in its purpose if the majority of those supposed to observe and implement that law believe it to be fundamentally wrong? Simple, it can't.
The difficulty of getting SSSCA standards created and implemented in hardware would mean that they would be effectively set in stone. Uh huh. How long would it be before software cracks were widely available? The kind of creativity and sheer bloody mindedness that goes into all those emulators we know and love would find a new center of gravity.
But, it would be illegal! Yes, and the FBI will drop the War on Terrorism to crack down on people watching illegal copies of The Little Mermaid.
I seriously doubt that even people as craven as Fritz Hollings would compromise the credibility of the US Congress in such a fashion. Even if Fritz is craven enough, there are cooler heads around. They won't let him spoil the whole game just to satisfy his corporate patrons.
A big, powerful State is the best guarantee that the rights of the little guy won't be trampled by big business.
Uh, yeah.... Try telling citizens of China of the late Soviet Union or Cuba a big, powerful state is the best guarantee that the rights of the little guy won't be trampled.
*major eye roll*
Uh, yeah. Try telling the citizens of the United States of America that a small, weak state is the best guarantee that the little guy won't be trampled by croporate giants...
I'm sorry, but if you can't see how incredibly arrogant you are being, there's not a whole lot else to say. You refuse to educate yourself for fear you'll "end up like me?" You obviously don't understand the first thing about what inflation even is, and your casual dismissal of the output of certain types of workers based on your own pereferences is downright sickening.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
You're welcome. I do look at TrollTalk from time to time. I don't do much trolling myself any more - it just seems to take too much time to come up with a good one. But I do appreciate a good troll . It's fun to watch the slashbots bite.
Notice that a compliment on a good troll is itself modded as troll as was your reply. Perhaps Taco should add a meta-troll category.
Europe is a lot stronger socially and politically than you might think and the UK is still the richest country in the world...
Unfortunatly the UK government has frequently insisted on following US "leads" even over the objection of other parts of the EU.
More sickening than advocating a system where some will always be condemned to second and third rate status? If something is worth a certain amount, then it is worth that amount. That bigshots play money games, that force others to change that amount arbitrarily, and always 3-18 months ahead of what they'll pay their workers...
I don't easily dismiss idealism. I haven't sold out. In most respects, I'm even moderately humble... I don't expect to be able to do anything about this. Just another cog in the wheel. I believe, arrogance is one of the few things I might be innocent of, and I don't really like being accused of it.
Besides, how is it that those always using human nature as a defense of these things, are the same ones who don't do a very good job of transcending their own? I know you might be defensive about your own "work", but the truth is, in a nation the size of the USA, with its infrastructure and potential workforce, none of us would have to work very much to enjoy a comfortable lifestyle. You people just make things way too complicated.
Canada is rated Category 1 (meeting ICAO standards) in FAA's International Aviation Safety Assessment Program (IASA). Air Canada, the biggest airline in Canada, last had a fatal accident in 1983, but it was in Cincinati, Ohio. The last accident in Canada was in 1978. Air Transit, and WestJet have never had a fatal accident. Canada 3000, and Roots Air, which both went defunct last year, never had a fatality in their operating lifetimes either. I can't think of another Canadian Airline.
Dude, I hate to tell you this, but Slashdot doesn't use pop up ads (or pop unders, either). Chances are, you have one of those Gator programs that pop's up ads for you. Strongly suggest you download Ad-Aware to get rid of the intruding virus.
Anyone else think Norton Et-Al should get on the ball and add these to their signatures? They could even make it as part of an alternative signature file for you to download that includes traditional viruses *and* spyware / adware.
That's because capitalism doesn't exist. It's a straw man of free-market economics. So no, there has never been true capitalism, nor will there be. However, Free-market economics is the way the world works. Men interfere and break it, but that's how it works regardless. just as we don't know if real socialism works, because *there's never been a truly socialistic country*.
And this is because socialism depends on Man being basically good, which he is not. Therefore, communism has never evolved into socialism.
The RIAA and MPAA are full of it if they're claiming that computers represent the first method of copying music without paying. Years ago I kept my little tape recorder plugged into my radio, on pause; when a song I liked came on, I took it off pause. I could also plug the tape deck into a record player to tape borrowed albums. I filled dozens of tapes this way, made some wicked mixed tapes, and never bought an album till I was in my late teens--I just couldn't afford them. I was by no means unique, almost everyone I knew at the time did this. Copying has been going on for 30 years--and suddenly we have a crisis?!? This is bullshit, plain and simple.
At least one crash can be directly attributed to the closure of a control tower "to save costs". This is one crash too many.
did you Libertarians have anyone that cool? Well? Cuz unless you can see the Greens one Jello and maybe raise them a Larry Flynt forget it!
It's not the job of a person running for positions of power to be "cool." The fact that you yearn for someone with celebrity status rather than someone who is intelligent and principled to head your political party and also use this as some kind of basis for judging the merits of political parties makes you look stupid and immature.
I'll keep voting for people who care about the social good but have enough brains to respect freedom of speech and private decisions.
Define "social good." How is it any different from "that which is moral"? In this regard, Greens and other leftists are very much like the Right-wing fundamentalists: both want to use the deadly force of government to enact that which is moral.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
The EU will obey the US the instant they tell them to do so. There will be no non-SSSCA hardware available anywhere.
-- From Denmark
Whatever. Do you know how fookin' stupid you sound? Do you even know anything about Jello Biafra? He's put out several spoken word albums filled with political speech. He's hardly a celebrity. He's more of an activist than an artist. And in my view, he's pretty cool.
As for your assessment of the Greens: I agree. It is dangerous to use the government as a club. The Libertarian approach is to let capitalists use law (and therefore "the deadly force of government") as a crutch to prop up their exploitation of the land and workers, further dividing society into classes, with no real program to offer true opportunities to those not born into successful capitalist families. Frankly, I don't know why I even bother to vote-- I have a hard time getting into any political party.
Greens socialist vegetarian anti-gun feminists. Ideal society: bland, folk-music and hugs predominate.
Democrats that government is best which governs the most. Ideal society: Lake Wobegon, only with a Starbucks. Police have the right to arrest anyone who uses language which doesn't boost the self-esteem of others.
Republicans sanctimonious militarism. Ideal society: cowboy cops can shoot drug users on sight, and the pastor is also the mayor.
Libertarians merchant class who'd prefer to be nobles. Ideal society: all business executives now considered royalty, workers are of course "free" to work their ass to the bone in factories that poison their neighborhoods for 80 hours a week.
That being said, I'm pretty tired of posts that begin with the above sentence. I wish people would worry less about their karma and more about just contributing to the conversation.
Whatever. Do you know how fookin' stupid you sound?
Certainly less than you do. Your use of slang such as "cuz" and "fookin'" and your dismissal of arguments with the churlish "whatever" stands testament to that. Improving your vocabulary and grammar would do wonders for your argument. As is, you come off like a young, immature, arrogant punk.
Do you even know anything about Jello Biafra?
Yes, I used to be a big DK fan back in the days when I was young and used to know everything. And I know of his spoken word albums as well. I decided it would be a waste of my time to listen to them since everything that seems to come out of his mouth is decidedly leftist.
May I turn the tables and ask if you know anything about Harry Browne or Barry Goldwater?
The Libertarian approach is to let capitalists use law (and therefore "the deadly force of government") as a crutch to prop up their exploitation of the land and workers,
No, it isn't. Perhaps you should read about the Libertarian party before you spout off about it. Furthermore, define "exploit." I guarantee you can't define it without some kind moralism slipping in there.
I don't know why I even bother to vote
Because lawmakers routinely make laws that govern your freedoms. You are an idiot if you don't vote.
all business executives now considered royalty, workers are of course "free" to work their ass to the bone in factories that poison their neighborhoods for 80 hours a week.
More inaccurate garbage. Perhaps reading up on the Libertarians' position on environmental issues would be helpful to you.
I don't understand where you get the idea that the government is the savior of the "working man." Do you ignore the fact that 180 million people have been killed by their own governments in the past 100 years?
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
Ah fook. How did I get myself into this? I don't even support the Greens! I'd tell you what I do believe, but I get the distinct impression you'd either dismiss me as "immature", a leftist, pigeonhole me under some other label, or tell me that I'm saying exactly what the LP says, if I'd only bother to check them out. I apologize for wasting your time.
If you've never heard an MP3 made from a master tape or even from vinyl rather than from a commercial audio CD, you don't know how bad the latter are by comparison.
... awesome to behold. And no, the operation wasn't some PeeCee audiot offering 'mastering' services, but a Sonic Solutions shop. Nuff said.
Bullshit. Utter and total and complete bullshit.
I've done an unofficial apprenticeship with one of Minnesota's best CD-Mastering houses. The Dats we got from studios were of highly varied quality.. But with 90% of them, the mastering engineer can work his magic to make them sound significantly, sometimes VASTLY better.
There are a number of INSTANCES when a mastered CD sounds worse because the record-company or artist wants the "hottest CD" - meaning the volume levels as high as other pop CDs. This unfortunately means some cheapass mastering houses push levels well into clipping, thus degrading the sound.
But the fact remains, that for 90% of CDs I've seen mastered, the A/B comparison was just
feh.. i HATE idiots who trot-out knowledge they don't have. STFU, you arrogant, ignorant, dumb-strutting twit.
That is a good point. Many of my friends did that beofe they learned how to use computers in detail when were younger(I learned to use computers when I was very, very young, thanks to my parents, but most of my friends didn't, and most of them didn't share my obsession with technology even when they finally did begin to learn.
Of course, the RIAA can validly claim that it has escalated by at least an order of magnitude with the internet compared to analog copying of tapes by hand....