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Congress to Ashcroft: Go After Song Swappers
saikou writes "Yahoo has published a news about proposal of 19 lawmakers to prosecute P2P systems' users. Allthough Texas Republican Rep. Lamar Smith, said that FBI should not go for casual users but but instead to go after operators of "network "nodes", there is not enough info in the story to see if this "should" will change to "must in addition to", if or when trying to arrest major node operators fails to curtain song swapping online. Of course, questions of what to do about foreign users and foreign music are omitted. RIAA claps its hands. I guess we should expect network congestion because of users, downloading everything in their sight to beat this initiative."
SON OF A... i just got back on kazaa! why must you take this away from me. at least the texan is a smart guy...
If we give our two cents, but it's a penny for our thoughts, do we get change back?
So how long until P2P is declared a "terrorist activity" ?
I mean seriously! doesn't the government have better things to do with it's time that this shit???
like maybe go after Enron, Worldcom, etc...?
Since they're going after nodes, they will have to arrest everyone using gnutella because each user functions as a node too. Time to build new jails, I guess...
I'm the Devil the Windows users warned you about.
Missiouri voters decided he was less fit for public office than a dead man. What more can I say?
He'll probably only take action for fear that his hit single "Let the Eagle Sore" will be pirated.
God help us all...
-------------------------------
High-Res Beer Bottle Collection
Read more about these illegal, filthy actions and more in RFC 2616.
Aw, fuck it. Let's go bowling. - The Big Lebowski
I think it's fair to go after the leechers, and not the technology. Thieves that have no respect for the hard work of others deserve to get caught and fined.
I'd much prefer this than to jeopardize the entire P2P technology.
eTrade SUCKS
Since some definitions of P2P networks are broad enough to include the web, I suggest they begin by targeting major nodes here, here, and here. Rumor is they're the worst offenders. Shut them down and maybe everything will be fine again.
Nothing, you told hte bitch twice already.
I think the rush to download everything in sight will be proportional to the rush to NOT be one of the major nodes. I mean, who wants to be arrested? That means it will get harder and harder for the average user to download his/her stuff, which is exactly what the RIAA wants. They know they can't stop the determined ones (I mean there is always usenet and IRC) but if they stop the masses it will be enough.
If they dont intend to go after individual users and I dont think they will (Napster had what? 20 million + world wide users? They cant arrest millions). How will they deal with regular users connecting to nodes based in other countries? Will they make it illegal for ISPs to allow access to certain ports?
and does this only affect P2p software? What about websites and ftp sites?
- Tempestdata
In case you haven't heard, Freenet is yet another P2P file-sharing app, but for one important difference. The files are distributed across numerous nodes (the more popular the file, the more nodes). No one knows what sort of data they're sharing, and no one knows who's searching for which file. But enter a search key and a number of hosts will send you their portion of the file. Viola!
Let's see the RIAA try to take this one on: there's no central server to sue out of existence, and there's no way to track the users of the system, so they can't sue the larger users. Unless DRM technology becomes the legally-required standard, this sort of solution will render the RIAA's legal strategy useless.
However, freenet is still in development, so buyer beware.
I guess we should expect network congestion because of users, downloading everything in their sight to beat this initiative.
Let loose the sails, mateys! Aye, we be setting course fer WinMX fer one last pillaging, arr...
Well fuckhead when they stop attacking us maybe we'll shut up. Who's side are you on anyway?
I freely invite the RIAA to cannonball their blood sucking lawyers over to the FastTrack Network's Kazaa.
Time to get rid of that Spyware infested, Computer-taking-over, garbage. Then I'll celebrate as I watch the users pour onto Gnutella - an open, free, decentralized environment.
The free (as in "Centralized") ride is over folks'.
Don't we have terrorists roaming around? Haven't half of people's retirement funds vaporized thanks to big business' gluttony? ...and Congress wants Ashcroft to bust FILE SHARERS???!!
Somethings wrong here...
REALLY WRONG HERE!!!
I'm sorry, I must not have received that memo.
I'm so glad we have vanquished Al Qaeda and their like-minded brethren, so now we can go after the REAL threats to the American way of life-- the people who are depriving Hilary Rosen and Jack Valenti from the cash with which they stuff their mattresses.
Those file downloaders can share prison cells with those kids who got 20 years for selling a shroom to a narc in the parking lot at a Phish concert. Meanwhile, the evil CEOs that have looted companies at the expense of their employees' livelihoods and 401K's continue to walk around free.
Memo to Congress: Get your fucking priorities straight.
~Philly
The vast majority of p2p traffic violates copyright. Yes, there's legal sharing of music. And yes, we can disagree about whether the illegal sharing is wrong.
/. readers
would think I got what I deserved.
But it seems the suggestion is that the FBI uphold the law. They are not outlawing p2p. They are not prohibiting legal music trades. Instead, there's a suggestion that the FBI enforce the law against users who traffic in large amounts of illegal software and pirated music.
If I put up a web page with links to tens of thousands of dollars of pirated software, I should expect either my ISP to yank my connection, or to get a visit from the FBI. And I would expect many
If I do the same thing with a p2p server, however, there seems to be a belief that I had a right to break the law.
So, before we get hysterical about "protocols being outlawed", perhaps we should look at (a) the proposal, and (b) the ethics of those 'big fish' traders who traffic in warez and mp3.
Well, this will likely get a bad mod rating because it's not all "rah rah mp3 warez". But I'm an artist who needs these protections to feed my family. Sure, I've heard that sharing music and copyright-anarchy is supposed to increase sales in the aggregate, but it doesn't work for me any the genre I work in. So I need my audience to please be a *paying* audience.
Unless they mean "our destructive corporate culture that is increasingly abusive to the public", I fail to see how they can claim that this threatens our "culture".
The ongoing erosion of the public domain because of copyright extension...now THERE is a threat to our culture. I wonder why they don't do something about that...
Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
I'd hate to see all the entertainment industry waste all that money on bribing so many of our nation's lawmakers without anything to show for it.
Seriously folks, when are we as a nation going to say enough is enough with this legal corporate bribery? Can anyone please explain the practical difference between bribery and massive "donations" ? I'm reminded of a remark made by George Carlin, who said "this country was bought and sold years ago". Was he right?
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
This isn't intentionally a troll, but if it ends up that way, well, so be it.
Isn't this what we've wanted all along? Make the people stealing the music the ones who are culpable rather than outlawing the methodology... it seems like the right answer to me.
Of course there's the implicit requirment (in order for this to be a good thing) that legal activities not be persecuted under this initiative. For that I suppose I'll have to wait and see. Honestly though, I'm not upset in the least about this. When folks download songs they didn't pay for which weren't given away for free by the artist/copyright holder, whatever the downloader's philosophy about it that activity is still theft. And let's face it, that's probably the majority of what goes on with P2P music "sharing" networks... that's certainly all I've ever seen anyone doing with them!
Behold the Power of Cheese!
C'mon now, go fetch your pills.
Among those signing the letter were:
Delaware Democratic Sen. Joseph Biden *
Wisconsin Republican Rep. James Sensenbrenner
Virginia Democratic Rep. Bobby Scott
Michigan Democratic Rep. John Conyers
North Carolina Republican Rep. Howard Coble *
and California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein. *
* We know many of these names by now, and I wouldn't be surprised if some of the other payola-beholden media-whore "lawmakers" made up the other 13 signatures.
Welcome to the world of intergenerational warfare. I'll bet no science fiction novel you ever read prepared you for this.
Under Nixon an older, reactionary generation declared a War on Drugs, which was essentially a euphemism for a war on the lifestyle of the youth of that era and the values it represented (chemical experimentation, casual sex, a healthy skepticism of authority, and so on). Indeed, the prohibition of drugs and the actions that have been taken to try and stamp out its use has caused far greater harm, in both a humanitarian and economic sense, than the abuse of the substances themselves ever did or could have.
A War on Ourselves indeed, or at least a war on the younger generation, one that began under Nixon, was escalated out of control under Reagan and Bush Senior, to the point where we now have over fifty beaurocracies fighting for the collected spoils seized from non-violent drug offendors.
Now, with the new War on Copyright Infringement, we are about to target today's youth, who trade their music, their movies, their videotapes online, instead of via cassette tape the way us older folk did when we were in high school and college.
Another front on an intergenerational war, between the dinasaurs of the Jack Valenti Generation of Greed and the emerging, technically savvy information generation they seek to repress and quite possibly destroy.
This escalation will likely claim even more victims, fill our prisons even more with people even less inclined to violence than the many drug offendors who account for half our inmate population today.
Worse, we'll have to listen to even more self-righteous tripe along the lines "but these fans are stealing bread and milk from the mouths of Lars and Britney," and "we'll win the war on copyright infringement! These pirates will never see the light of day again! God Bless America!"
What's next, a broken egg on a frying pan with the words "This represents your Life on MP3?"
Make no mistake, this is intergenerational warfare, waged by the parents and grandparents upon the children who have chosen to live differently than their elders, indeed, differently than their elders can comprehend. As we draw closer to the technological singuarity I think we can expect ever more extreme examples of the same.
Hell, I haven't even finished writing a novel set in 2057 that depicts exactly these sorts of events. How close is one to the Singualarity I wonder, when real world events overtake science fiction faster than it can be written?
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
I have long stated that I think the war on drugs, terrorism, and whatever other "wars" we have going on are far to trivial, what we need to be putting a focus on is people who trade music. When it comes right down to it, drug use may ruin peoples lives, terrorists may kill innocents en masse and corrupt corporations may break Joe Public, but lets look at the big picture, if we allow music trading to continue thats just one more corporation that's going to go down and go down hard.... Buy the corporations, for the corporations....wait I meant people....silly me.... How pathetic a world we live in when trash such as we have "in charge" of our country is allowed to do what they have done.... I am sure my views make me a terrorist though.... I honestly do not know how to express the level of utter disgust and disdain I have for this situation as a whole....
"The saddest words of mice and men, are not those which were, but should have been."
Stole what?
lets see, did they steal the copyright from the copyright holder? no.
Are they selling copied CDs on the black market? Most of them arent.
So unless you can prove they stole $$ or some tangible object, your whole statement is illogical.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Actually, I think the whole lot of them would be fucked if they went after pirates in China too hard (because surely that would cause a rise in the cost on the consumer a/v equipment that these companies are so desperate to have available cheaply enough that they can continue to peddle their wares to middle america...)
No they'd rather catch shawn downloading his mp3s off some file sharing network.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Know your enemy. Study this list of Jews trying to destroy your freedom:
- Rosen
- Coble
- Berman
- Eisner
- Redstone
The Jews never create anything. They are the parasites who wedge themselves between the producer and the consumer. The Jew takes a slice of every pie that passes by. What the Jew hates is that the Internet is cutting him off from his host. The artists can now distribute directly to their fans. The Internet has made the Jew irrelevant. So the Jew tries to buy the politician to do his bidding. The Jew tries to get bought politicians to pass bogus regulations in order to maintain Jew hegemony over the consumer.Listen and learn about the Jew in this mp3.
Learn the Truth about the Jew
These companies keep fighting p2p file sharing, when more of the piracy probably comes from people actually burning copies of CD's that they bought. If they make p2p unusable, people will have to resort to getting free music by copying entire CD's from friends rather than just downloading a song or 2 that was all they wanted in the first place.
You are 100% right.
What's wrong is that it's a government (both parties) purchased by business, not a government elected by the people. Without real campaign finance reform and/or a revolution, this will be the way of the future.
So, being a McCarthy wannabe isn't enough for Ashcroft, I see.
This guy just gives me more and more reasons to vote Libertarian. The more I see the Bush admininstration trampling our rights, the more I hate this government.
Not that Gore would have been much better, with Senator Joe "Blacklist America" Lieberman as veep and all.
Sigh...I think I'll flee this country in terror before too much longer.
I mod down anyone who uses M$ in their posts. I like to live on the edge.
Above is partial quote from Carrie Fisher
This is a victory for P2P.
The more the United States congress thinks they have done something substantial that isn't, the better off the file sharers will be.
This will not have a chilling effect on P2P at all.
The first human face put on trial for this will inspire a journalistic feeding frenzy, particularly if he looks like you and me or the neighbor nextdoor, especially if he is filesharing documents such as "Declaration of Independence.txt " or "United States Constitution.doc"
Oh, my God! Did I just type Windows file extensions?!?
Game: Player 'Donald J Trump' now has AI skill level 'experimental'.
From opensecerts.org, how much money each of the bills backers received from the Music/Movie/Entertainment industry.
JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR D, $39,324
F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER JR $21,263 (top contrib)
ROBERT C. SCOTT $0
JOHN CONYERS JR $27,000 (top contrib)
HOWARD COBLE $33,483 (2nd contrib)
DIANNE FEINSTEIN $214,638 (3rd, wow, she gets a lot of $$$)
Of course these are only the 6 yahoo news listed, i don't know how much the other unnamed 5 are.
Of those listed most have the entertainment industry as one of there top contributors, save John Conyers, I have no idea why he thinks this is a good idea.
-Jon
this is my sig.
Thats the question. How exactly do you know for sure.
Wouldnt it really suck if they ran a sting on some guy who had all the CDs sitting on a rack?
Put that in the newspaper!
Oh and as an artist myself, I want my music all over the net, theres no way i'm going to compete with britney spears without that.
By the way, as an artist, why not make your money selling mp3s? I dont understand why people think they have to sell CDs to compete with mp3s.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
it's not realistic that it be enforced, or if it is to a level that will really hurt anyone.
:-)
P2P is a legitimate technology and technology is neither good nor bad, it just IS. If you put up pirated warez and music and your ISP finds you, you probably should be yanked. If you get caught then you should face the consequences. After all you should never gamble if you are not willing to lose.
The problem is the wholesale death of legitimate technologies because someone.... oh ok,..congressmen get paid off.
To the earlier poster posing the question
technology..500B a year industry
record industry..50B a year
who's going to win this fight?
Obviously the record industry. It's just like junior high folks, we geeks don't fight very well. Never have, although our self esteem might be better these days
i wonder if sen. disney is one of the others not mentioned.
:)(smile)
I mean imagine all the illegal files traded on the internet, and the kiddie porn, its just all over the place, lets not forget all the even criminals who are robbing the kiddie porn industry of their money by sharing the kiddie porn around, or the warez traders who now have enough money to eat 3 meals a day because they dont spend $500 on every software upgrade microsoft decides to release.
Lately lets thank the Al Gore for creating the internet, we all know the democrats love piracy.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Since a few people pointed out that it was stupid that the government is dealing with things like this while we're "fighting a war against terrorism," I felt a need to say something, but didn't want to respond to just one of them.
What do you THINK the terrorists want? To disrupt every-day life, well, at least that's part of what they want to accomplish. Fact is, there's a whole country to be run, no? It's not like everything else can be ignored as long as there are terrorists. At that rate, NOTHING else would get done. That sort of thinking is actually what's allowing this government to get away with things they otherwise wouldn't- the opposition going along with conservative ideas, because "oh, we need to fight terrorism, so we should just let this go through so that we can concentrate on that."
Fact is, the government SHOULDN'T be paying attention only to the "war," and neither should we be.
That said, I don't agree with this either, but I don't think that "they should be paying attention to terrorism, not this" is a good defense. Would you also like the government to ignore welfare? Health care? Everything but war and defense issues?
some thieves dont get prosecuted, music industry is one, they steal all they can from the hard work of "their" artists, WHAT DO THEY WANT?? A NAZI DICTATORSHIP POLICESTATE? When are these morons going to stop? When they have surveillance cameras in every home to prevent, what they deem, illegal activities?? THIS IS ALL about taking away all of our freedom and replacing it with a police state.
Among those signing the letter were: Delaware Democratic Sen. Joseph Biden
Hmmm...this would be the same Joesph Biden who's 1988 Presidential bid was abruptly curtailed when it was revealed that he'd plagiarized passages in several of his speeches, and had also been involved in a serious plagiarism incident when he was at law school?
What an asshole.
Just like we can blame doom creator john carmack for inciting violence at columbine, we can blame the creators of gnutella for inciting piracy.
Lets create new laws to slowly shut down the world wide web, I mean we capitalists worked hard ot gain control of the web, and if we cant have it, no one can!
Lets show those GNU pengiun loving open source pirates that sharing is bad! Lets make them so afrraid to share that they'll be forced to work for us!
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Can someone post a list of these 19 lawmakers and their states so that we can give them our "opinions" on this matter?
I would do it myself but I'm just about to go somewhere. If there's no replies, I'll post it myself. Watch this space.
... Texas Republican Rep. Lamar Smith, said that FBI should not go for casual users but but instead to go after operators of "network "nodes" ...
Oh, dear.
Looks like I finally have to rename my machine.
Darn. Had that name since the entire list of domain names fit on three printed pages, too...
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Yes, people are breaking the law, but this is a stupid approach that won't work. Remember, they are wasting YOUR tax dollars!
Don't Baby Bush, Ashcroft, and the boys have other things to do.. Like-- Martha Stewart, World Com, Enron etc.
Anarchy for the elite, zero tolerence for hoi poloi.
The way I interpret this,
I had better go download some boybands immediately before the risk of getting caught increases. Doesn't that defeat the point?
Enron,WorldCom,RIAA,Big Brother, peoples whole lives finished (if $==life) cos another greedy businessman wanted another house/pool/chopper
and what does America do about it ?
Nothing
and the chances that these draconian laws are gonna change ?
Nothing
and what are the citizens gonna do about their freedom and civil liberties being eroded in front of them in the name of "terrorists" and "industry"
[you fill in the blank]
__________________
Who won the war on drugs?
its all about power, a powerstruggle, people who have power (the RIAA etc) will do ANYTHING they can to keep that power, and keep the things like they were - theyre merely "automatrons" who cant work in any other way than blindly doing what theyve always done
Obviously centralized P2P systems like Napster, Fasttrack, and AudioGalaxy are problematic. Sure they are fast.... but their Achilles' heel is the fact that there is a single point of failure. You go after the company or the major nodes and you can effectively shut it down.
So, I was think about the next generation of P2P. Obviously if the US Gov't and lawmakers start going after P2P networks we will need to develop a more robust, anonymous method of trading files.
If I was going to make a P2P network I would think about including some of the following features.
1) Completely anonymous (maybe encrypted?). Your machine could never be singled out by IP address.
2) The ability to add security (ie: login/password). What if I want to start my own MP3 trading club and only want to have members be "invite only"? That way you can have some control over quality and selection.
3) The ability to use HTTP (preferably port 80?) to disguise traffic and prevent ISP's or schools from blocking ports and preventing trade.
4) A built-in, updatable firewall to prevent certain IP blocks from accessing your machine (ie: to prevent companies like Ranger Online Inc from searching your machine and issuing "take down" notices to your ISP.)
5) The abilty to perform a massive DoS attack on a hostile attacker. Say some company (like the RIAA or Ranger Online Inc.) starts to "hurt" the network or tries to take it down... self-defense mode would kick-in and DoS the shit out the attacker until they stopped their interference.
6) Error correction and feedback. The ablity for the system to "weed out" bad copies of files based on user feedback. You could also have it check MD5 sums to ensure quality.
Anyone else think of things that future P2P networks will need to withstand the attack?
Alot of people are using these clients to download music. Ive done it. Ill continue to do it for now. I buy the occasional CD as a result. I buy about 1 every 3 or 4 months. I probably wouldnt buy that many if I couldnt hear the music first. Im not gonna stand around in a store with headphones on to hear it either and the radio? How many times do they forget to tell you the name of the song.
I personal wont pay 17 bucks for a CD with 1 or 2 songs I like on it. Its not worth it to me. If they were to make it so I could buy just the tracks I like in a format simliar to MP3 Id probably send a buck or two a song but I have way to many cds i bought long ago with just one good song on them. Not worth the money.
One of the major problems with the "piracy" however is rather vague. I dont have a problem with the music networks or even the software networks. Where piracy becomes evil is when someone tries to profit from it. Selling cds or cdroms is wrong. That is trying to profit off others works and thats a problem.
I used to pirate software all the time in the glory days of computers (Well before the Web) and I can say when I started I didnt have the money to buy it. I was a kid, but what I did was learn it. Ok, pirating games never gave anyone but myself enjoyment but the apps I pirated tought me about the Apps. Enabled me to get my first job and enabled me to do 15 years in office enviroments making recommendations to corperations on what to buy. If I pirated a copy of Word and then had the company I worked for buy 250 copys for peoples desktop the only people hurt by this were wordperfect(showing my age).
Piracy is ok in my opinion provided its a learning experiance. Others may argue, and there will always be abusers, but look at the ages of those that never buy CDs, Look at there incomes. They probably would have never bought the cd anyway.
The real threat is those trying to profit from piracy, What they really need is a different name to describe one or the others.
Again I think this whole thing is a seriously low priority in light of all the other problems our country has but I dont have the money to buy my own polotician and probably wont in the future.
I think the real problem however is that people can pay for poloticians, We need to get some laws against people buying them. This legalized corruption needs to go.
--- Always remember. 99.36% of all statistics are inaccurate.
prohibition, war on drugs, stamping out evil, uh, stopping file sharing ... etc.
I guess we should expect network congestion because of users, downloading everything in their sight to beat this initiative.
A better solution would be to simply stop listening to and buying RIAA music. There's plenty of good music being created and distributed by nice people who aren't hell bent on destroying our rights. Why put money in the pockets of the fuckers who are.
Welcome to the world of intergenerational warfare... Under Nixon an older, reactionary generation declared a War on Drugs, which was essentially a euphemism for a war on the lifestyle of the youth of that era and the values it represented (chemical experimentation, casual sex, a healthy skepticism of authority, and so on). Indeed, the prohibition of drugs and the actions that have been taken to try and stamp out its use has caused far greater harm, in both a humanitarian and economic sense, than the abuse of the substances themselves ever did or could have.
A War on Ourselves indeed, or at least a war on the younger generation, one that began under Nixon, was escalated out of control under Reagan and Bush Senior, to the point where we now have over fifty beaurocracies fighting for the collected spoils seized from non-violent drug offendors.
Now, with the new War on Copyright Infringement, we are about to target today's youth, who trade their music, their movies, their videotapes online, instead of via cassette tape the way us older folk did when we were in high school and college.
I agree, partially. I've wondered about actual wars too, which seem a bit like parents slaughtering their young for next to no reason. Exactly why was communism in Viet Nam supposed to be more important to each American family that the lives (and and freedom, and health and hearts etc.) of the sons we were supposed to scrifice to it?
On the other hand, the Copywrite war seems more like the corporate class, having bought both the government and the media, using their power to insure their profits. It's not about young people, it's just money talking.
Also, having law inforcement go nuts over little things seems to fit the puritanical character of American society with its odd "cultural war" as Patrick Buccanan called it.
I grew up in Canada where there is no "cultural war". Someone pointed out to me that one difference between Canada and the US is that the Canadian government doesn't have the "separation of church and state". So, since religious folks aren't officially marginalized out the government, they don't feel so threatened and the result is peace instead of societal warfare. It's an example of how badly the law of unintended consequences can bite you.
Rocky J Squirrel
Why is intellectual property the most common analogy of modern life made with physical objects? I mean, content providers say that when you take some of their copyrighted material, you have stolen just as if it were physical property. Why aren't more such comparisons made (in people's favor of course)?
For example, just as a person might own land, he would own his computer. Just as he might build a house on his land, a person would also put a filesystem/OS on his computer. Just as with a house, anything that does not harm another should be allowed on a computer.
Also, meetings over the internet such as in chat rooms or over P2P networks should be considered assemblies. Therefore, as long as such an assembly is peaceful (no laws being broken, copyrights being infringed upon), it should be allowed to continue. Of course, attacking all P2P networks would be like instituting curfews; all assembly is forbidden because some people might not be peaceful and law-abiding.
In the offline world, many handgun control folks argue that people kill people and that guns are not to blame. The generalization to draw from this specific argument is that possession of the tools of crime is not criminal or immoral. If this generalization were applied to computers, it mean that writing viruses and cracker tools is not immoral as long as they are not used maliciously. It would also mean that the P2P networks are not to blame, but instead the copyright-infringing users are.
Just something I had to say...
Homeric simile of the week: MS's Palladium is like giving the RIAA and MPAA a gun, but the default option of not requiring a signing authority for programs and media is like a bullet proof vest for computers. Sen. Hollings aims to ban bullet-proof vests with the CBDTPA.
I am sick of peer to peer file sharing utilities. Business tried peer to peer in the early 90's it sucked, what makes people think it is the next big thing for home users. Nothing like users dropping viruses on one another's hard drives.
./ inhabitants:
What is so fucking hard about going out and paying for a cd?
I guess this is the right formum for this kind of article as typical
1. Love free software (free as in I am too fucking cheap to pay for it.)
2. Love free music (see as in number 1)
3. Know record companies and any company charging money for a product is evil.
Respectfully,
Anxiously awaiting Palladium.
"never met a Microsoft zealot"
Then don't make your music so high priced! Today I just picked up a copy of Unreal Tournament for 10 bucks! Yes, it is old, but it's still a great game and has a lot more replay value than 40 minutes of music! The recording industry charges 20 bucks for one cd with maybe a few good songs on it! I'm all for not stealing, i'm very against warez and copying of software because I know for the most part the developers put lots of work into it and sometimes (like Diablo2) creation can takes YEARS and after release there is patching to be done, and keeping a network with millions of users lag free and crash free (I know blizzard tries :) )
I still buy cds, go ahead, say it, i have a guilty mind... well i do. I have only bought a few at full price though, the others i got from BMG.
What does the music industry expect? For a few weeks, a month, or even just a day of time to record a disc and maybe a few months before you get tired of it (tops...) i'd rather go put my money into a nice PC game. If a CD was 7 bucks or even 10 i would buy them MUCH more often.
Lets also not forget that cds can sell 10mill copies or so when that's the size of the entire PS2 userbase!
-=Errors always defy logic.=-
I rarely buy anything, new CD's or DVD's, go to/rent movies or even download music or video.
The way to hit them is in the pocket book, buy less from the companies so the companies and the artist both starve.
If an artist wants to make money they should be performing live, then they will be sure to get their payment. And even sell a few CD's maybe.
- DOJ crawls through the P2P networks, scanning your file swapping list, and arresting everyone it can find which they believe is illegally sharing copyrighted materials. They prosecute a buch of big-time file-sharers, winning some, losing others. But they get enough that it scares most people.
- The big P2P sharers leave the networks. Usage drops drastically. However, the P2P software makers are still in business, as they are now left alone. Music is still being shared, only now its stuff that explicitly has been allowed by the Artists to be shared.
- Now that the P2P network isn't clogged with NSYNC tunes, people actually can find (and listen to) stuff that isn't on ClearChannel or the other big chain Radio stations. Bands have small successes - releasing 128Bit MP3s to the P2P networks, and selling 256Bit ones on their websites for a couple of dimes. It becomes possible for a regional band to make a few tens of thousands of dollars of MP3 sales per year (100,000 sales @ 40 cents each adds up), and people start to flock to the P2P networks again.
- Big-time artists notice it. Those which are in controll of their catalogue (through foresight, ownership of their label, or lawsuits), decide that its possible now. Somebody big tries it, and makes a couple million in sales on their back-catalog in the first month. The artists drool, as they see 75% profit margins on per-MP3 sales, with nothing going to the label (or other middlemen).
- Artists flock to the P2P networks to sell their songs, and the big labels are reduced to what they really are: promotional marketing houses. Artists contract with them for fixed fees (or precentages of gross receipts) to do promotion and such, and label no longer get ownership of the music, as Artists now have the means to say "Fuck You" if the label demands it.
I'd love to see this scenario, and I think it's realistic given two BIG "ifs":- IF they really start to clamp down on the big P2P users with huge illegal catalogs, so we can get all the infringing crap off the P2P networks. Once it's all legal and above board, you can start running real marketing analysis and do the business case studies that you need to make it a real sales market and distribution channel.
- IF the artists continue on the current road of fighting to get ownership of their music. If they quit (and continue with the Faustian bargain of their soul for 15 minutes on MTV), then it's over. I'm hoping they have the backbone to stick it out.
And realistically, isn't this what we want? P2P networks with LEGAL music for us to try out and see what we want? And an economically viable way for the artists to produce music and get paid for it in a reasonable manner?Call it what you want, but sharing copyrighted MP3s right now is definitely illegal, and in the long turn, harmful to everyone. Don't do it - it's NOT the Right Thing.
-Erik
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.
I can't imagine what would happen if they actually tried to crack down on this, including all those who use P2P to get a few MP3's. Virtually every college student would be arrested for "stealing" songs that they freely hear on the radio. The amount of police force to pull this off would be astronomical. If the drug war is such a futile effort, just imagine the $$cost$$ of this kind of effort.
I understand fully why it is illegal to have mp3's of albums which I do not own, and why it should be legal to have fair-use mp3 copies of the CD's in the cd rack in my room. But I don't understand why distributing those mp3's is illegal across the board. What if I am transferring a copy of a CD that i own, to another person that owns that CD? If I own a number of CD's and have ripped, tagged, named, sorted, and categorized them myself, shouldn't it be legal for a friend who has those same CD's to download them from me.. thereby saving them the trouble I went through (and saving me the trouble of teaching them how to do it)? Why doesn't the legality of the file sharing apply only to the person downloading the mp3's, as there are understandably legal reasons for transferring those files to begin with?
America is fucked, the revolution is dead. From here on in the government are no longer your protectors, they're keepers of cattle. Only hubris prevents you from understanding what you've thrown away in the interest of expediancy. You're children will understand, and you'll be rightly reviled in their eyes.
I wonder if my ISP is going to get arrested for running NNTP servers. Those DARN network nodes. In other news, several owners of BGP routers were arrested for operating Network Nodes
We've already repealed enough freedoms to make it completely possible for anybody to be picked up, labeled "enemy combatant" and quietly sequestered for an arbitrary length of time until fear and intimidation can run their course.
In the new age of DRM, that's going to be drilled into our children, there will be no fair use. Anything we don't make ourselves is going to me immutable and untransferable. To play a song on two different formats we'll have to purchase a copy in each format, and any technology that sidesteps that profit chain will be the kind of thing that will land Joe-homeowner in the same cell as the thug that's serving life for things that are really wrong, and not just wrong because a bunch of white-haired fat-cats that play the politico-game shake their corpulent fingers at the public and chastise us for having a brain.
I will probably be behind the wheel of a lorry at the ripe age of sixty peforming or helping in the on-the-fly digital hijacking/reprogramming of tuners to alter DRM lockout and re-empower the citenzry--drive-by reprogramming. Might even leave a little calling card, like a graphic or something to let joe-homeowner know that they've been unshackled. Failing that, I'll probably just kick it up a notch and start performing/organizing PETA-Style data-center raids where we'd free users from databases where they had been improperly captured and enslaved. That would be some exciting shit.
I think the worst thing that's taking place today in the technology societies is that a culture of submission to corporate interests is finally coming to fruition...all that public education is going to start paying off big for businesses that can afford to buy laws for the consumers who will happily roll over...taking it and liking it. And what's even more frustrating is that as citizens we are powerless by proxy. I don't hear anything about protests, organized or otherwise, working against the erosion of our rights...even the sham they are today would be preferable to a complete amputation.
Every new form of media has it's own Requirimento
Among those signing the letter were: Delaware Democratic Sen. Joseph Biden; Wisconsin Republican Rep. James Sensenbrenner; Virginia Democratic Rep. Bobby Scott; Michigan Democratic Rep. John Conyers; North Carolina Republican Rep. Howard Coble; and California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein.
Just in case any of you out there try to pin this solely on "evil" Republicans... both parties are just as liable.
Shame on you Dianne, shame.
This is new, so pay attention to what's happening. A truly new crime has been invented--that isn't something that happens often.
Copyright infringement has never before been a crime committed by individuals procuring their own entertainment. Always before it has been a crime that could only be comitted by major distributors. After all, those were the only people copyright law applied to 50 years ago.
Stealing a song is not like stealing a car. One involves the deprivation of a personal property, and the other involves breaking a social contract.
This is new, and I wonder how long this new crime will be with us.
What if the printing press had been outlawed cause it allowed people to print hundreds of copies of a book without the copyright owners consent. Dont put words in my mouth. If anyone is a fool, its you for having called me that.
Were betamax (VHS) tapes ruled illegal? NO! Yes they could have been used for piracy (and indeed were). But there were other LEGAL uses, and just because a few people are misusing something doesn't mean that no one can use it.
what next> Ban guns? Private Airplanes? Knives? hell our society would collapse if we went around banning everything that was being abused by a few people.
- Tempestdata
..and I bet her snatch smells so bad you'd gag if you went down on her...
Is it my machine (PIII 900 - 256 MB) or is WinMX is major memory/CPU eater? Or should I configure it in some other way than the default?
Great, the same people that let Microsoft get away with a monopoly are now going to go after people trading mp3s. I wonder if we should even worry quite yet.
I second that proposal.
While they're at it, why not take down this one. There are rumors going around that they stole GPLed source code for their own use, but they refuse to release the source code that would contain it. This "source code" is like D.N.A(Deprecated Natural Ability blueprint stuff) in that it can prove guilt or innocence.
If I've learned anything from CSI episodes 1-&CURRENT, it's that those who refuse to give a DNA sample are always guilty.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
I guess we should expect network congestion because of users, downloading everything in their sight to beat this initiative.
Don't bet on it. If a significant number of Americans were well-informed enough to react to congressional recommendations, we wouldn't have shithead congresspeople in office to make them in the first place.
Instead of closing down the networks themselfs it's better to require that the police do their jobs.
No matter how much the search is encrypted in the end you always connect to another machine and download a file, if this file contains copyrighted material that person should be prosecuted.
Terrorists killed 3000 on Sept 11th? Okay, let's make scapegoats of Afghanistan civilians, kill 5000 of them, and claim victory despite not getting Osama Bin Laden.
Corporations sucking up money illegally? Okay, let's make scapegoats out of Adelphia, take our time with Enron and WorldCom, and claim victory despite the fact there are still untouchable corporations out there doing the same bullshit.
This is just a continuation of a pattern. Address the symptom instead of the root cause, make an example out of someone so you look tough, claim victory despite having solved nothing but breeding discontent. I'm telling you, the shit's going to hit the fan because you guys don't know how to police your own government.
You posted this one yesterday lamer.
It should be noted that Lamar Smith is a supporter of the legislation for hollywood to break into a user's computer and erase all of their stolen music files.
Fellow Texans- DON'T REELECT THIS GUY!
"Oh no, 3 horny women and only 2 condoms...Thank god I read slashdot"
This is ridiculous... when is congress going to be held accountable and quit being the whores for Big Business/MPAA/RIAA?? Five dollar, me love you long time.
If members of the copyright cartel believe that users of file sharing networks are infringing on their copyrights, they should file civil lawsuits against the alleged infringers. The federal government should not be involved in disputes between private parties, except as a neutral arbiter if one of the parties brings a lawsuit.
Instead, the copyright cartel has convinced a group of senators to try to convince Ashcroft to bring criminal charges against alleged infringers. This means that the entire cost of litigation in this matter where there is no clear public interest will be borne by the public. The investigation and the prosecution will be publically funded, as will the defense of any accused alleged infringers who choose to use a public defender. In the event that file sharing is found to be a criminal matter, the public will bear the cost of the penalty as well; we will have to pay for the incarceration of a large number of people. Further, we will lose the positive contributions to society those people would have made if their lives had not been ruined by the criminal convictions they received.
If you are a constituent of one of these offending senators, please write or call and express your outrage. I have done this already. Make the copyright cartels fight their own battles. And do not help fund their battles; do not buy any products of the MPAA or the RIAA.
tato (and tato only)
This post is strictly opinion, including the spelling.
See below. Here's the profile of a typical legistator who called for this. While it's universally conceded that politicians are 0wned, one would think that Senator Feinstein would be embarrassed at coming so cheap.
To put this into perspective, if 1,000 geeks cared to come up with $500 each and contribute it under the name of a single organization, Feinstein would be a fanatic P2P advocate, even if she can't spell P2P.
OpenSecrets campaign finance disclosures
Dianne Feinstein (D)*
1. Lawyers/Law Firms $485,118
2. Women's Issues $294,532
3. Retired (AARP,etc) $286,413
4. TV/Movies/Music $216,138
5. Real Estate $203,346
6. Securities & Investment $142,135
7. Health Professionals $112,494
8. Computer Equipment & Services $107,866
individual contributions
Global Crossing $24,000
Walt Disney Co $22,750
William Morris Agency $21,000
Time Warner $16,800
Vivendi Universal $15,000 Any questions?
Tech Public Policy stuff
Just because some CongressCritters have sent a letter to Ashcroft it doesn't mean he will do anything about it. The President is his boss, not Congress (separation of powers). Of course, if Ashcroft doesn't direct the FBI to do anything, Congress can always threaten to withold some funding in the next budget. And, as others have pointed out, there is this terrorism thing happening which (by all accounts) has got the FBI completely strapped for time and manpower these days. I wouldn't be too worried about it, yet...
NULL
It is my understanding that a freenet node operator may store her files in ram rather than on disk.
Say she detected that the police were battering her door down and she shut the computer off- would there be evidence for criminal trial?
I think someone mentioned this before, but can you imagine them sending a 15 year old kid to juvy just because he downloaded a few songs from the Internet of his favorite band? This will be absolutely HILARIOUS because what they're doing will finally bring all of this shit to the surface for non-techies to see and understand.
When the so-called 'masses' start seeing their kids getting put away for song swapping, they'll wonder wtf the big deal is about. It'll finally click that the record labels are manipulating the government to make some extra money (which is more viable now in light of all these big corporate busts), and I suspect the record labels will get a lot of heat.
A bit too optimistic? Maybe, but try to imagine how some of your friends and family would react if you were thrown in prison (along with drug dealers, pedophiles, rapists, etc) because you were downloading MP3s. They'll get it right away.
I've commented on this before.
Life is good in my neighborhood now and it's getting better.
Since the last time I talked about this i've moved the wire out of the hole and patched up the wall. The wire now runs into the garage where i've moved most of my equipment. Call it a silicon valley tradition!
For the 4th we used some good ol shoutcast to have a Super Stereo Effect. One house did the left and the other did the right. Pretty neat.
Sorry congress and asscroft. You're trying to dumb down our kids by restricting this technology. So what if it isn't some classroom, I bet if you ask any of these kids about the topology of a p2p network they could
tell ya. Yeah yeah, some nameserver, blah blah, it's fuckin DNS big woop.
A persons reasons for learning this technology could stem everywhere from video games, file swapping, chat. These can lead to higher things such as networking and scripting, which can go one step further which is pure code.
I own my house, i'm gonna teach my neighborhood how to rip cd's, network computers and why they need to learn it. Tough shit if you don't like it, I think it's going to add to the value of the neighborhood.
One of the coolest things we got runnin now is a webcam. I catch ppl in the act of letting their dogs shit on my lawn. It's a fuckin riot when you do a playback for them. The other neighbors are into it too, we just all point
out in our front yards.
We all gotta vote in 2 years people. Sorry for taking a political soapbox here but BUSH SUCKS! Serious guys, i'm still poor as shit, living off of ramen. Despite all attempts at finding work all I get is a temp agent baiting a
job just to get my resume. Hmm, must eat ramen to make house payments yum. Ever watch yourself lose 60lbs in a year?
It seems there is an overwhelming push by the goverment to get our young people into the military. Look at the new Reality Show Boot camp. They're trying to appeal to the MTV kids those dirty bastards.
Troll me or not, this was a pretty political story, and these are my convictions and I stand by them. I will not be made to change my opinion on the basis of what karma I might get. I urge everyone in a similiar situation
to mine if they've never voted before, please go down tomorrow and get registered to vote. IMPEACH BUSH!
thank you
--Toq
Before the inevitable "you thieves are getting what you deserve" posts please consider the following points:
S hirts
:0)
Copyright covers more than music and movies a few are:
Architecture
Books
Bumper stickers
Choreographic works
Images
News Articles
Poetry
Plays
Sculptures
Software
T-
Video Games
Copyright was supposed to be 14 years. A limited monopoly, a deal, a trade-off, a balance.
Copyright was supposed to be for promotion of, not hoarding and controlling, the arts and sciences.
Anything older that 14 years should now belong to society, that means us. It should be ours, that was the deal.
Anything older than 14 years has been stolen from the public domain. Buying laws does not make it right.
Those people in government are supposed to represent us, the people did not demand or accept a change in the deal (except through ignorance or apathy).
There is going to be a hole in the public domain until things change.
Copyright changes are about money and control, not right or wrong.
DRM makes copyright eternal or criminals out of those that break protections.
As far as I'm concerned, the deal is off!
It is off in the sense of the following:
My kids have a "correct" understanding of copyright. At every opportunity I let them know what I think is right (about everything, not just copyright.).
My kids listen to oldies or indies (my son loves 2 1/2 White Guys) and have never bought a CD.
My kids mainly buy/read books that are in the public domain (GUTENBERG).
My kids all know how to play two musical instruments (they are making their own music, and have higher tastes).
My kids understand that what they buy is theirs and they can do whatever they want with it.
My son is a nut with our camcorder. He has respect for the movie industry but higher tastes.
My kids live in a region free macrovision free home (in fact crippled CDs or software are immediately broken. They'll not hunt for the CD to a game I purchased.)
My kids use proprietary software only when there is no sourceforge alternative.
My kids hear "copyright infringement" not "pirate" or "thief".
My kids hear "crippled CD, software" not "copy protected".
My kids understand that ideas and information are free[without restraint] and can be shared with no loss to the originator ala Jefferson, and that IP is artificial based on an agreement.
My kids trade, copy, use anything older than 14 years without hesitation or reservation.
In fine, I'm helping to raise a generation that expects a certain level copyright freedom.
The real pirates, thieves, criminals are the likes of the RIAA, MPAA.
Respond rationally and you just may change my view.
p.s. I realize that I have indoctrinated my children but that is my darwinian right
Right or wrong, it's ridiculous. It seems to be one of those "last desperate act" things that an empire (or an administration) does before dying.
There are more and more of these things all the time... TIPS, PATRIOT, Drug War, Missle Defense shield... things that will do NO GOOD, as demonstrated by countless non-ideologues.
But, they make us (or our corporate sponsors) feel good, so we do 'em. Better to do a futile something than nothing? Not in my book, not when taxes pay for it and there aren't enough taxes to go around.
What a waste.
Mucous membranes are the part of your brain that, like, make you think about mucous. --Beavis
I'm not sure about the complete list, but Howard Coble is a Presbyterian. He is most certainly not Jewish. But more importantly, why are you so anti-jew? I don't see Jews as enemies, I see you as an enemy. Asshole.
Unfortunately I can't agree with your last statement. There isn't much a joe-schmoe like me can do. Gone are the days when us citizens could walk up to the white house and talk to our president. Today, the president gives his hello's-and-how-are-ya's to money. Who has money? Not me, but those corporations do. Sure the public is partly to blame. We want immediate results and we want to feel like we are winning. Its easier to go after those who we call "the others". I can go on and on over my rant. Mr. Ashcroft lost an election to a corpse, is there anything more we need to say?
Close your legs, your corruption reeks.
Could this kind of thing lead to massive disregard for the law, as I can not see anybody following this kind of law. During the prohibition organized crime became a big thing and very few people ever cracked down on "illegal" alcohol (I put illegal in quotes because everyone was drinking anyway). Could a similar thing like this happen to the online world in the US where crackers run a mok and because everyone breaks the law already by file sharing -- no one cares? Only time will tell....
copyright holders and anyone else holding a monopoly exist by the grace of the citizens of the world. They abuse their privaledge and we shall rescind it.
that if they do it will be just about as effective as the war on drugs *cough* not at all *cough* and just about anything else large numbers of people want to do that doesn't actually harm anyone
We have child molesters, kidnappers, rapists, and murderers.
But who are we going after?
Music swappers!
You have got to be kidding me. Give me a break!
How many children's lives and escaped murderers is it worth to bust some kid who copies a Britney Spears song?
I dont want my tax money going to help the RIAA maintain some monopoly. Please put our millions into getting resources for the FBI to fight REAL crime.
...because it might actually lead them to admitting something ugly about their self. I know the arguments for free software, and I agree with many of them. I'm aware that the big record labels are exploiting many artists. But, as the cliche goes, two wrongs do not make a right.
I think what angers most people is that, if this thing were taken up, they might actually have to pay for things like music instead of taking it for free. While I am against DMCA and other draconian measures, I think people involved in swapping MP3s of published music and mpegs of movies should take a serious look at what they think and what they do.
I love capitalism. We are in a capitalist economy. The idea of capitalism is that if I work hard and produce a product or service, I can make a living when people pay me for that product and service. If I produce a popular product, or a service that is outstanding, I can charge more, and the market determines my price. There is an exchange -- a fair and equitable exchange -- for my goods and/or services. I've found, with some services I provide in the way of counseling, that when I've done "charity" work and given my services for free, the client not only doesn't appreciate my help, but keeps asking for more and more.
While it sounds like something my parents or our teachers would say, the truth is people have a much better sense of appreciation when there's a fair exchange. Maybe I have a different perpsective. I prefer classical and jazz, and I know the artists are not getting rich off their recordings. I pay my hard earned money for CDs because, if I like the artist enough to buy a CD, I want the artist to make a living so they will continue making more recordings.
You can justify file swapping all you want with rationalizations all day long, but in the end, actions speak louder than words. We are what we do -- we can preach all day about what we believe, but what we do shows people who we are and what we truly believe. Someone that feels they have a right to music for free is someone that shows they don't need to pay a fair price or make a fair exchange for a product. My parents had such a word for a person: a spoiled brat.
I realize a lot of people will hate what I say, and a number will probably mod this to troll. All I can say to that is one thing I learned working in residential treatment programs for 10 years. People become the angriest when confronted with a reflection of thair actions and suddenly realize how childish or ugly those actions are. That's when they go into denial and blame the person who is holding up the mirror and creating the reflection.
Go ahead and rationalize downloading songs and movies. I just remember a friend of mine who was doing that. She showed me a copy of LoTR. I asked her if she liked it. She said, "Yes." I asked her if the filmmakers did a good job. Again, she said, "Yes." Then I asked her 2 questions she could not answer without getting uneasy. I asked if the filmmakers deserved to get paid for their hard work. Of course she said yes, but she saw where I was heading. Then I asked how they would get paid if everyone copied the movie instead of paying to see it or to buy the DVD. Her response was that enough other people would buy the DVD. In other words, she did not want to take the responsibility, as a consumer purchasing a good, to provide a fair exchange to the people providing her those goods.
There are rapists, murders, and child killers in this country.
Who does the FBI go after?
Music swappers!
I dont want my tax money wasted on arresting some kid who couldnt afford the pricey Britney Spears CD and copied it without incurring a loss to anyone (read Jefferson for info on this).
How many millions are wasted on helping xxAA ??
Money that could pay for publicity/child posters. Money that could pay for forensics and agent training.
I hate to say something cheezy but "If those millions could save one child or help catch one rapist, it would be well worth it".
Hmm... I guess it is time to load a couple gigs of open source software into my shared folders and rename everything
Pirated Warez - (Insert Program Name)
Technology is most abused by the very people it was created to help
For help in quiting, check out
Quit Slashdot.
I wonder how long a 15 year old kid would get in the slammer for downloading a britney spears mp3 vs the CEO of Worldcom who defrauded 7.1 billion dollars worth of employee's and stockholders life savings.
Manipulating and stealing Stock ok, downloading mp3's bad.
Same is true for packet sniffing and reverse engineering. Under the DMCA, packet sniffing to make a program compatable with something else is illegal and bad. However killing competetion and cutting tens of thousands of jobs who use to work for your competitors ok. If Microsoft never existed do you think Oracle, Borland and Watcom would have like 10x the staff they do now as well as enjoy healthy competition from companies that would of existed because Microsoft would never exist. My guess is that Netscape would be quite huge right now would and its software would be a whole platform and not just a web browser. Its a shame.
http://saveie6.com/
There are two problems at the root of all this. First of all, the RIAA, MPAA, etc. operate under the psychotic delusion that if one million people are sharing files, and they can somehow stop those people from doing it, that it will directly translate into one million new sales. It won't.
To illustrate the second problem, I would like to cite two quotes from Mark Twain:
"It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly American criminal class except Congress."
"Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself."
What is happening here is that the market has spoken, people want to download music, and the corporations are too damn stupid to make it happen and profit from it. Instead, they are lobbying in congress to make laws to force consumers to buy grossly overprices CDs which are usually 10% good music and 90% high-fidelity defecation.
I believe the reason so many people share music is that you can record from the radio or go borrow a CD from your local library; both for free. So people look at file sharing and say, "what's the difference?", and not one single person can answer that question effectively.
Instead of lobbying with the government, perhaps "The Industry" should actually listen to the market. To start off with, they could do the following:
1) Stop pushing one hit wonders. Nobody wants to pay $18.00 for one song and eleven nuggets talentless drivel. People will download the one song they like and leave it at that.
2) Lower the prices of CDs. Most CD stores where I live sell new CDs for $18.00. New movies on DVD are usually $15.00. There is a big problem with that.
3) Offer a service so people can download music for a reasonable price (read $0.25 or less per song you greedy bastards).
Perhaps file sharing is wrong, perhaps not. Regardless, it is very easy to justify doing it since there are many other mechanisms available to consumers to get free music; legally.
Whatever your stance on the file sharing issue, it is wrong for congress to play the ass-licking sycophants to corporations in return for monetary bribes and votes. If you can't see that this is happening and it is probably the biggest threat to our country and our freedoms, then we're in a really sad state.
I hope this made some sense. It's past my bedtime.
kudos to you my friend. I'm doing the same thing here and even with my nieces and nephews, cousins and relatives alike.
power to the people.
I can remember a time when it was Government for the people by the people... now I'm not sure who's for who.
Oops! I did it again
Let us not forget Senator Feinstein's actions when election time comes. I've voted for her before, but never again.
Think about it a second.. who actually uses these P2P networks? I'll bet it's at least 70% children between 12 and 17 years old--ie. the middle/high school crowd. I mean, can you imagine the scene? FBI knocks down door to some random house in US suburbia to find a 14 year old girl downloading NSuck albums and chatting on IM. Meanwhile, her parents, who have absolutely no idea what Kazaa is anyhow, are completely puzzled.
"laws must not be judged by what good they will do, but by what harm they will cause"
Texas Republican Rep. Lamar Smith, said that FBI should not go for casual users but but instead to go after operators of "network "nodes".
Gotta love when the message is simply: We can't prosecute everyone, let's just make examples. If something is a law, and everyone, and their mother, is busy breaking that law - perhaps it shouldn't be a law. This is a democracy after all. Or so we would claim. Heck, it doesn't even have to be everyone - just a majority. I have a feeling that those people in the RIAA aren't a majority. Even including all their artists. Even including all the casual artists.
This is one of those instances where the law must change to prepare for the times. We don't need more specific internet-only or technology-only laws. The real question is: How do you preserve someone's right to their property (in this case, music) while contending with the fact that any one, any where, at any time, may simply download it without any knowledge, much less permission.
The answer is not in mandating technological blocks. That would be a sisphyian task, as has been demonstrated already. So how do we solve the problem?
I don't really have an answer. Would you bother to buy a CD if you could download all the songs legally? Should artists become charity-only? Or rely on live tours solely (although, I've often heard that artists make no money from CDs anyway). It's a hard question. I'd be jumping the gun if I said that this marks the end of copyright law as we know it; however, it certainly warrants a rethinking of the practicals of modern law and technology.
Jake
Dating: while( 1 ){ call_girl(); get_rejected(); drink_40(); } return 0;
Scoffs the evil RIAA...
"Hahaha! For the past five months, we've placed tag info in every britney spears and nsync single available on P2P. Now when this becomes law, we'll be able to identify every one of you music pirates, and put you in prison with the rapists, murderers, and terrorists, right where you belong!"
A chill goes down my spine as I realize that I don't know anyone who DOESN'T have at least one song "by" these crappy "bands" for satire purposes.
Inmate 1: What are you in for?
Inmate 2: I blew this guys face off with a shotgun because he didn't have my money. And you?
Inmate 1: I downloaded some Weird Al mp3's and uploaded that video of the monkey sniffing his finger and falling over.
Inmate 2: Sicko. You disgust me, its people like you...
The riaa has sucessfully banned them in New York by copyright lawsuits. I assume they are banned nationwide and I also assume that books will be next. After all speech and knowledge is not public but rather a corporate property.
http://saveie6.com/
They're using such a BS excuse to shut down P2P, which as far as the rest of the country is concerned, is split almost equally down the middle amongst those for or against file sharing... Wouldn't it have been easier for them to simply claim that some folks are sharing Al Qaeda messages encoded into pr0n or mp3s instead, so they could shut them down entirely?
Most likely, the sheep that over 75% of Americans are, nobody would raise a stink about it (other than slashdotters and the EFF, of course), and would even support them, possibly attacking computer geeks at random as "terrorist sympathizers"... In fact, I guarantee if they did, they'd run reports on every RIAA associated (yes it's redundant) media corporation network in existance... Of course, this is one possible scenario...
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
when Hollings proposed that hardware be restricted everyone cried that why should our computers be crippled to stop the thieves. A common sentiment was that it should be the record companies responsibility to seek out and bring charges against infringers, not hardware makers.
Well you can't have it both ways, now that they want to actually go after the copyright infringers directly, people don't seem to happy about that either.
They *are* going to do something about all of this, and this solution sure beats the hell out of everyone having to buy crippled hardware... if you really dont think a 20$ CD is worth buying then it shouldn't bug you too much not being able to download it either.
Q: Why are Unix emulators like your right hand? A: They're just pussy substitutes!
sent to Senator@feinstein.senate.gov ......
You do not represent the people of California.
You will not be elected again in this state.
You have been highly incompotent in your reign of idiocy.
We the people will make you an example to other rent-a-politicians.
Dianne Feinstein (D)*
1. Lawyers/Law Firms $485,118
2. Women's Issues $294,532
3. Retired (AARP,etc) $286,413
4. TV/Movies/Music $216,138 ***************
5. Real Estate $203,346
6. Securities & Investment $142,135
7. Health Professionals $112,494
8. Computer Equipment & Services $107,866
Waaait;
if arrest customers, then who buys CDs?
I betcha that after 30% of so of america's teenage to young adult population is behind bars that THEN the RIAA will start to notice some SERIOUS drops in revenue. . . .
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
1) 'Annoints' himself with 'holy' Crisco oil
i ngs.wbtv.med.html
. stm
l
o night/wnt010116_pentecostalism_feature.html
a nlan.html
24052301.asp
... In Michigan in April, U.S. District Judge Nancy G. Edmunds ruled against the closed deportation hearings, noting, "Openness is necessary for the public to maintain confidence in the value and soundness of the government's actions, as secrecy only breeds suspicion..." ... Of the more than 1,000 noncitizens arrested after Sept 11 (we don't know how many) hundreds have been released (we don't know how many) and some deported (we don't know how many)--of this group, the government announced no indictments relating to Sept. 11. n dex.ssf?/xml/story.ssf/html_standard.xsl?/base /editorial/1023278144287930.xml
w s/ ashcroft001222.html
A few years ago, John Ashcroft was nicknamed the Crisco Kid after he "anointed" himself with the supermarket favorite the night before he was sworn in to the Senate. Ever since he was nominated for attorney general, there's been a widely circulating e-mail campaign to make the greasy label stick: "Say no with Crisco," it says, suggesting that anti-Ashcroft folks mail bottles of Crisco to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
New York Magazine http://www.nymag.com/page.cfm?page_id=4323
2) Writes 'Patriotic' songs, tells staff to memorize
Footage of Ashcroft singing: http://www.cnn.com/video/us/2002/02/25/ashcroft.s
America's Attorney General, John Ashcroft, has taken his fondness for morning prayer meetings at the US Department of Justice one step further - he is asking his staff to start the day by singing patriotic songs he wrote himself.
BBC News http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1854922
3) Believes Calico Cats are a sign of Satan
Shortly after becoming Attorney General, John Ashcroft was headed abroad. An advance team showed up at the American embassy in the Hague to check out the digs, saw cats in residence, and got nervous. They were worried there might be a calico cat. No, they were told, no calicos. Visible relief. Their boss, they explained, believes calico cats are signs of the devil. (The advance team also spied a statue of a naked woman in the courtyard and discussed the possibility of its being covered for the visit, though that request was not ultimately made.)
AndrewTobias.com http://www.andrewtobias.com/newcolumns/011120.htm
4) As a Pentacostal, interprets the Bible literally
What differentiates Pentecostals from other Protestants is their expressive, emotional form of worship. It's also what makes some people most suspicious of the movement -- all that emotion, coupled with an intense, literal reading of the Bible.
This has some has some critics worried that one of the nation's most famous Pentecostal, attorney general nominee John Ashcroft, might not be able to separate his religious beliefs from his political duties.
ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/wnt/WorldNews
T
5) Supports indefinite detentions without charges
"Ashcroft supports indefinite detention without the necessity of bringing charges for those suspected of terrorist activity. "
Indiana University Law http://www.law.indiana.edu/pubs/front/20011008_sc
6) Insists Staffers call him simply, 'General'
"John Ashcroft, chief among the Bush warlords, likes to be called simply 'General.' Has this ever happened before with an Attorney General? Did anyone but a mail room intern ever call Janet Reno or Ramsey Clark 'General'?"
CounterPunch.com http://www.counterpunch.org/vest0618.html
7) Sings in a Republican Barbershop Quartet
"Despite singing bass in the quartet with Jeffords, Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) and Attorney General John Ashcroft, a former Republican senator from Missouri, Lott has been unable to change Jeffords' discordant ways."
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
http://www.jsonline.com/news/nat/may01/profile
8) Supports secret trials and deportation hearings
At the end of March, in New Jersey, state Superior Court Judge Arthur D'Italia, declaring that secret arrests are "odious to a democracy," ordered the release of the names of immigrant detainees held in New Jersey county jails.
The Oregonian
http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/oregonian/
i
9) Lost an Election to a dead man
"After serving one term in the Senate, Ashcroft ran in a bitter and tense race for re-election against Missouri Gov. Mel Carnahan.
After the governor answered a request from Pope John Paul II and commuted the death sentence of a notorious murder, Ashcroft portrayed Carnahan as a liberal who was soft on crime. Carnahan tried to portray Ashcroft as a right-wing conservative. The two candidates had argued over issues of abortion rights and tax cuts.
Three weeks before Election Day, Carnahan was killed when the plane he was traveling to a campaign event crashed in bad weather near St. Louis. Because his death was so close to Election Day, the governor's name was still on the ballot.
And despite his death, Carnahan won a narrow victory over Ashcroft on Nov. 7. "
ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/politics/DailyNe
10) Spent $8K to cover semi-nude 'Justice' statue
How the *hell* is that flamebait?
Ed Craig "Who cares what you think?" George W. Bush, 4th of July 2001
"shit"
Need a group on Terrorism, check
...
Need a group on Kiddie Porn, check
Need a group on Kid Napping, check
Need a group on serial murders, check
Need a group on drug traffic, check
Need a group on tax fraud, check
Need a group on smugglers, check
Need a group on file swapers
Hmmm
Note to self: Dont pay taxes this year
Ammendum to note to self: Dont pay taxes this year and move to zanzabar and start taking opium rectally
The ultimate network admin tool needs HELP!
1 - You buy CDs and DVDs.
2 - Corporations make money.
3 - Corporations use that money to buy politicians.
4 - Politicians pass unhetical laws to give more money to their owners.
Did you guess what to do? (hint: point 1)
Since a law that forces you to buy 3 CDs and 1 DVD a year is (still) unlikely to be passed, please stop whining and do the right thing.
It's fair, it's legal and it works.
There are a lot of dumb artists.
Q: Why do our congressmen want murderers to go free?
A: Because rapists, murders and child killers have no effect on profit making. Welcome to capitalism.
We better start coming up with hand gestures:
Like, for instance, G, or "G-side" for Gnutella dudes.
We'll have fights with the Donkey Posse, to establish supremacy over the supply of cigarettes and stuff.
When we come out, we'll be huge and mean...
Word
We also have child molesters and rapistists roaming around. Should we forget about them too?
Half of everyone's retirement funds have vaporized, so now what do we do completely change the system? MOST of big business is doing very well, thank you very much, a few bad apples affecting alot of the whole, certainly not good. So are we now to assume CSCO, MSFT, C, are big business bad apples too? So Martha Stewart doesn't give us the right recipe. WTF do you want? I just don't get it. It just seems like more of this liberal seminar shit of "I'm pissed off, the American way is wrong!"
If something is REALLY WRONG HERE, then prove it, get involved and write your ELECTED officials or at least post something constructive
The only reason drugs are ruining Colombia is because they're expensive, and the only reason they're expensive is because they're illegal. Once you make something illegal, you create an opportunity for money to be made, and since it's illegal, contracts have to be enforced with the barrel of a gun.
Don't confuse the negative aspects of prohibition as being negative aspects of drugs in and of themselves. It's a classic strawman argument.
Yeah, I know I'm offtopic, but I couldn't let that one slide..
All movements for social change begin as missions, evolve into businesses, and end up as rackets.
I wonder if Virginia Democratic Rep. Bobby Scott has beed putting the thumbscrews on ISP AOL(TimeWarner) to crack down of file sharers? Somehow I think not.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
I for one wouldn't miss the States musical tastes. Too much country and western, and not enough drum and bass.
Clear the airwaves, move over...
Incidentally, did you read on the Register about someone writing about why we should create a US free internet, away from all your stupid laws...?
Get your own free personal location tracker
"I'm appauled we're still busting all those poor innocent shoplifters and breaking up domestic disputes! "
I had no idea the FBI was concerned with shoplifting and domestic disputes.
Does the US Attorney General also get involved with these cases?
What else about the US Criminal justice system would you like to share?
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Citzens of every other country except the US can safely laugh at the diffrent bills being passed there. The Lawmakers in the US seem to be happy to pass bill after bill untill they have legislated all of the technical specialists out of the US and will then have only their precious media companys which are also hated by much of the world for spreading american cultural imperialism. Living in Germany and Norway I find what is happening in the US every day quiet funny for a country which annoyingly flaunts itself as some kind of leader in personal freedom and freedom of the press. Over here in germany you can pick up any linux mag and it will have instructions on how to set up your linux box to play dvds, can't say that for Linux Journal.
Netbooks, they come with Linux or a $3 copy of Windows. Either way, Microsoft loses.
Another poorly-moderated post, this is totally ON-topic, and mere mention of the free-speech implications of campaign finance laws (which never seem to affect crooks like that shit Torricelli if they're slick enough) was enough to upset a left-wing, unthinking moderator. Please, someone unbiased, fix this.
oddsman
Maybe he isn't after the file sharers at all. Maybe he just wants to stimulate his telecom shares. File sharers have been the driving force of the internet for quite some time.
My ass... I run sound for a living and you have no idea what you are talking about. I have also been a network admin for University of Texas, and can tell you that it IS harder than that. Lifting heavy gear all day, dealing with squirrly club owners, etc... Only 1% of the bands make money off records, the rest tour/ play live for their living. If you think is anything like sitting in you living room playing guitar, you are daft.
While the Congress did provide for Criminal remedies for copyright infringement, they did so only in cases where the individual was doing so for private financial gain, or for cases where the infringement was egregious and amounting to actual privacy (at least $1,000 value in 180 days). For Justice to actually make a case against any individual would require intensive investigation and monitoring over an extensive period of time.
It is for precisely this reason that the Congress provided for civil remedies for copyright infringement including awards of an attorney fee -- so that private copyright owners can pursue their remedies on their own dime -- if it actually creates a meaningful cost to them (and presumably to society).
RIAA would like for us to spend tax money to support them, and save them the costs of prosecution. These Congressmen are engaging in the worst kind of pork by suggesting that our Justice department should waste tax and precious law enforcement resources prosecuting penny-ante civil copyright infringement cases. RIAA neither needs nor deserves such public assistance. Save Justice resources for meaningful pirates, yet, or more important, for meaningful law enforcement matters. The RIAA should take care of itself.
If I send warez via snail mail to someone do they open the package and arrest me? not usually, so why is the Internet any different? just because it is possible to snoop doesn't mean it should be done. Internet privacy is an endangered species.
I'm glad US Congress and the RIAA don't own me and as such I can still hang around in my file sharing. *sings happily*
What makes me think actually is that with all these laws people most likely in the future will look to growing economies such as India and China as a haven for new techonologies and new forms of developing them. This will make this type of countries increasingly more advanced until one day they will probably surpass the all mighty US and the EU.
I for one would place my own company in Singapore or something... would never have to abide by nazi-like rules.
-- Would it be acceptable to just put my name on my sig?
I have a share dir in my pc where i copy all song from CDs I bought. What is wrong?
hmmm; perhaps that isn't theft, but when these companies intimidate another company into handing them millions of dollars for alleged copyright violations, how is that not theft? Giving legal sanction to theft does not make it any less theft.
you've got to be kidding... 'slashdot' in the subject line of any emails to me is automatically filtered as spam!
No, its got nothing to do with capitalism. Its because the anti-crime people can't pay congress as much as the MPAA and RIAA can.
Capitalism is good.
Put aside tthe large coffers, contracting methods, and general shenanigans of the entertainment industry. Even if they turn out to be the scuzziest people in the world, even if entertainers sign contracts that give them pennies on the dollar, that's all irrelevant. Their products are under copyright, not in the public domain.
Seems to me that arguing for the "right" to distribute unlimited copies of someone else's copywritten work is a lose-lose sitatuation: lose the "right" to steal and lose the freedom of the Internet.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
When there is a monopoly, a cabal of pricks who fraternize to prevent a free market, it is theft on the industry's behalf. You are snarky kneejerk for supporting them. The are a means by which your liberty ends.
If a free market existed in music, CDs would be 2 bucks a pop, tops.
Fucking asshole price fixing monopolist elitist fascist closet-communists - I hate them. Yes, communist. communists sell mediocrity (like broken cds that don't play in computers for a start) to the masses, the sheeple, the plebeians, the proletariat, while they run off with all the fuckin money.
You know nothing of true free-markets, free information. Read up on Jefferson and Madison.
Small government, freedom of information. If its worth paying for, a free market will have millions lining up to make you, the worthy entrepreneur RICH.
HOW ABOUT THAT, free market meritocracy. Copy metal and plastic a million times will fucking over the artist that created it isn't that innovative.
And.
Did you know the fathers of copyright law in the USA, also pivotal in starting the free public library system?
You people who pervert our founding fathers intentions on our free market and free society will be forced to live in a hell of your own fucking creation. Raging perversions, loss of Constitutional rights all veiled in candy coated GREED and DECADANCE and POLITICAL CORECTNESS. I salue those who employ me, entrepreneurs, innovators and centers of higher learning. I FERVENTLY deprecate the masses of ancillary Ferengi-like "grabbers-on," you bottom feeding devoid of innovation fucks that find themselves and politicians (both "democrat" [You slimy democrat politicians who drape themselves in the suffering of the plebian and use them to get ahead then once you are in office you FUCK THEM IN THE ASS WITH A HOT CURLING IRON] and "republican"[smaller government? Where republicans, where, you make it FUCKING FATTER] seedy lawyers, knowledge and soul-less thieving officers of companies, marketing pukes, "salesman" and other worthless creatures. You stand on the shoulders of programmers, engineers, scientists, doctors, muscisans, and a myriad of real contributors. You will be judged harshly. You will hopefully be killed for you hubris and total disregard for those who make your life better. You scum will pay.
-segfault
while trying to absolutly nail Martha Stewart, I would say they were correct. They should leave Martha alone. If it wasn't for her, I wouldn't have matching stuff in my bathroom and chicks love a guy with matching stuff in his bathroom.
... Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed...
For all of you who don't vote, but enjoy the freedoms, privileges and rights given to us by the constitution (including fair use) It is now time to get up off your duff and vote. It is the only thing that will make a difference. If you really want to make a difference, get a friend to register and vote too. Vote these bums out who are taking your rights away. Do it at the primary level if party is important to you. And finally, let the people you are voting for know why you are doing so.
For god's sake, the stuff is only throw-away commercial pop entertainment. Are you going to stake the future of the Internet on the "right" to distribute, say, Mariah Carey tracks? Come on!
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
How many people here still use P2P? We've all moved on to greener pastures.
"fails to curtain song swapping "
Like, kill them? It's curtains for them?
Or is it possible that you meant curtail, and are just way to fucking lazy to look up a word of which I know damn well you weren't 100% sure.
DICTIONARY.COM - it makes you look not so stupid.
Come on you fucks. If it's going on the first page, lets try not to make us all look like fucking grade-school dropouts.
What about songs and other material that you legally CAN share on P2P networks? Artists and musicians can't use this technology for their own purpose in that case. Also, I anyone can use FTP or HTTP or whatever to spread materials anyway. In the future, the internet wont be what it once was. Sadly, the governments will do everything they can to control this too. Every time something new comes up, they are there to either outlaw it or control it as much as possible.
Will work for bandwidth
This is an OXFAM^H^H^H^H^H RIAA appeal, for the record companies of America. Every day, Music bosses loose millions of dollars. Dollars that feed their families, buy their yachts, and fuel their Learjets. Good people such as AOL-Time Warner and Disney, are doing their best to make a living for themselves, but they need your help.. Just $2 could help win a senator such as Fritz Hollings, just $2 could go towards the legal fees needed to bring down a pirate, and just $2 could press 100 music CDs or DVDs that could be sold off for $20 a piece. We need your help urgently, so, please send, just $2, or whatever you can afford...
Remember - give a man a lawyer, and he can run a company for a day. But give a man the money to bribe a senator, and he can change the law to run his company for years to come.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
...fails to 'curtain' song swapping...
If somebody read and spell-checked each part of this site, it would look so much more professional. It would probably boost the site's reputation and advertising revenue too.
hell
Moridineas writes:
FOOL ALERT!!!! Free Speech doesn't give you the right to steal someone's work. Free Speech doesn't give you the right to listen to anyone's music whenever you want to. How about some common sense please!!
Thanks. You assumed any user of P2P software is engaged in piracy. Congratulations! You are a corporate drone. Now, dispite with the RIAA and the MPAA tells you, its possible to trade stuff on a p2p network without being involved in piracy. If I want to share the entire project gutenburg collection on Kazaa, its my right. (Hmmmm, that's a thought....) If I want to share my homemade wallpapers online, that's my right. If I want to throw gimp online under the name 'graphic softwarez', that's my right. (Another interesting thought).
I'm rather fond of the idea that you have to be breaking the law before you can be arrested. Just having the knowledge to rip a cd/dvd or pick a lock doesn't mean I'm a criminal.
Oh, dearie me, what shall we do with half our government in jail for illegal file sharing? ;)
m ai n/0,14179,2874687,00.html
;)
ZDNet posted an interesting opinion piece back in July about how we should quit using P2P now that the Senate has. Check it out here:
http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/
The part that interested me most was this quote:
>> The Senate, which is now crafting legislation
>> that would further restrict the illegal sharing
>> of copyrighted works over networks, was
>> apparently a hotbed of illegal file sharing and
>> other peer-to-peer (P2P) networking activity.
>>
>> Last week, the Senate Sergeant at Arms clamped
>> down, and cut off all P2P networking within the
>> Senate. The reason? Such networking practices
>> were a security risk, and they were being used
>> to violate copyright laws.
As they say, "our tax money at work". The senators involved (it does not name names, but gives the idea that such activities were widespread) were not only breaking the law, they were using our tax money to do it. If you check the various news stories, at least two movies were illegally downloaded and watched by the senators during Senate hearings on legislation such as the Hollings bill. One of the videos was pirated by a senator, the other by the President of Disney.
If these congresspersons are correct (some of the ones asking for the FBI's "help" were senators), shouldn't the FBI take care of the most widely publicized cases first, the ones with easy proof, that involved public money?
After all, they are the ones who think this is such a henious crime that we have to pull the FBI off of child kidnapping cases and the "War on Terror" to deal with it.
Me, I think the FBI has better things to do than bother with people sampling music before a purchase and freeloading kids who wouldn't or couldn't pay for a CD anyway. But then our senators are the ones with all the file-sharing experience, not little old me. Surely they know better.
"Really, gentlemen, if that's the case, let's see the power of attorney given to you by Mothra."
Torahata "Mothra vs. Godzilla"
On of the big principles of Open Source is that people should be allowed to choose their own license and distribution method and that we respect that decision.
We don't have to like their decision, but if we are to have any hope of having our own licenses respected, then we must do the same to everyone else.
When someone decides for themselves what license and distribution model someone else's creation should fall under and they take it upon themselves to enforce their decision, they're no better than what we accuse the RIAA of being. They take the decision out of the creator's hands and assume that right for themselves.
And if that's what the movement have become, I, for one, am disgusted with it. What kind of people are we to sell out or principles for simple greed?
No Zen is good zen
Free Speech doesn't give you the right to steal someone's work.
I understand what you're trying to say for code and for text, but music is different, as there is only a finite number of melodies. There are only 12 distinct notes in an octave, and about three meaningful durations in music (eighth note, quarter note, and longer than quarter note). Thus, the musical alphabet consists of 36 letters. In the United States, having four notes match four notes in a previously copyrighted song will get you sued; the precedent is the "Yes! We have no bananas!" case. For reasons explained in music theory (namely transposition and fermata), you can ignore the first note and the last duration, giving you effectively only three symbols in a melody. (If you're unclear on the math, reply, and I'll try to explain further.)
If you take 36 to the third power, you get fewer than 50,000 possible "hook" melodies, and given the number of musical works already registered at the Library of Congress, a songwriter is bound to write a song whose hook is "substantially similar" to one of them sometime or other. Arguing the coincidence defense (which is a valid defense under US copyright law, called "independent creation") costs more in legal expenses than most songwriters make in a year. So when almost all possible melodies are copyrighted, how will anybody be able to write music?
The solution is to nix the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act and to set more realistic standards for what constitutes musical plagiarism.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Texas Republican Rep. Lamar Smith, said that FBI should not go for casual users but but instead to go after operators of "network "nodes".
How many songs and how much bandwidth is a "network node"?
10,000 songs behind a cable modem? 10 Songs fed from a T3?
Alter or remove the laws regarding copyright until it's legal to "share" other people's work without their consent.
That's called "compulsory licensing," and many Slashdot readers have suggested forms of it in comments. Under a compulsory license scheme, a copyright owner would not be able to stop a particular use of a work (e.g. AOL Time Warner refusing to show Speedy Gonzales and also refusing to license it to other networks; see this K5 story and this comment in particular) but would be able to 1. collect a royalty (copyright law), and 2. declare unauthorized works "not canon" (trademark law).
Sounds fair to me. Can you see any reason why compulsory licensing would "promote the Progress of Science" (U.S. Const. I.8.8) any less than the current scheme?
Will I retire or break 10K?
The artists signs a (very likely terribly unfair) contract with a record company. That's an agreement between two parties who (should, if they are responsible) know exactly what they're getting into, and do it willingly.
Without signing one of the Unfair And Collusive Standard Industry Contracts, there is NO way you can get your music or your recordings on Clear Channel radio, NO way you can get your CDs into Wal*Mart and Best Buy, and NO way you can market CDs to anybody who is younger than 18 years of age because only 18 and up can hold the credit or debit cards necessary to make an online CD purchase.
I smell antitrust.
A legal tranfer of rights is not theft.
But is it extortion?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Copying is only a criminal offence if (a) you do it for profit
Under the No Electronic Theft Act, when you download a pirate copy of a CD, even if you do not redistribute it, you gain a 17 dollar profit.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You're right, BUT, not mostly, almost entirely, i live/work there and there's no faster way to find yourself out of a job or unemployable than identify yourself as a non-liberal (they hate independents/Naderites/libertarians nearly as much as Republicans here - i voted for Nader in the last cycle and was savaged by a number of my friends).
Malcontent (who i modded down and some know-nothing modded back up), reflects the fashionable political ignorance of people who don't bother to look it up...
the vast majority of IP and content controls have always been sponsored by and promoted by Democratic lawmakers (and always will be).
Liberal stalwarts like Hollings, Biden, Kennedy and Lieberman tend to lead the way in Entertainment's dream legislation in Congress.
the overwhelming majority of Big Donors to the Democratic Party are from the Entertainment Industry. (What did Streisand give in the last cycle 8 or 12 million? Spielberg another 6 or 8 million? The Bloodworth/Thomasons several more million. Fred Bijan will have given the DNC about 40 million over the last few years, including buying their new HQ building for them.
Clearly a "vast right-wing plot".
There are a small handful of non-liberals (like Milius, Mann, Heston) and you will note that they aren't big campaign contributors and they are all over 50 (except Valente who's about 250).
You will also note, if you look at the voting records of such legislation, that usually far more Republicans vote AGAINST tightening content controls, and that very few-to-no Democrats vote against them.
WAIT! What am i thinking? Introducing facts into a
As a diehard political centrists and independent it's people who don't bother to fact check that cause more grief and protect the scoundrels who pass crap UCITA and the DMCA....
Just remember - When MP3s are illegal, only criminals will have MP3s
Ten quid, she's so easy to blind. And not a word is spoken...
Another example of Democracy for sale. At least in Russia its the oil companies and not the music companies that own the government. I use Grokster and live in Moscow I really hope this shit doesnt affect me. Then again Im only here till December and then its back to London. Haha Americans.... thats what you get when you elect republicans. We put Labour into power and have been happy for years. Clinton had sex with an intern big deal have some party loyalty. The man was a great president though a poor husband. Gore deserved to be elected I cant fathom why he wasnt. The one thing I learned about Russia while going to school here is that in Russia its not about party loyalty or even idealogy as it is about the individual. They have made Putin into a a quasi George Washington/Jesus figure. In Britain its more about the party and social ties to the party. In the U.S (I went to NYU) I have no clue how you determine who to vote for and thats why you have politicians who are so tied to special interests. They know that the electorate cares more about their sex lives than about the issues. If every individual participated in the democratic process either by volunteering time ot their own money the special interests wouldnt be neccesary. In Britain labour cares about the unions the conservatives use the church. Corporations are far less powerful because in manyways the post war consensus still exists or casts its long ugly socialist shadow. In Russia its a fight between Putin and the St. Petersburg Chekists and the remnants of Yeltsins inner circle as to how best to procceed with reform. The only thing both sides agree on is how to get rid of the communists (who have lost chairmanships of every comittee in the Duma) Political parties come and go every few months but the faces are the same. Putin and his people Chubais and his. The Chekists have won in terms of the path for reform, for now, but fighting over the budget and other issues goes on and on and on.
Anything goes, so long as it benefits corporations. Greed, money and power are the order of the day.
The US is heading for a terrible fall, and my won't it be surprised when the rest of the world isn't interested in helping.
Sec. 506. - Criminal offenses
(a) Criminal Infringement. -
Any person who infringes a copyright willfully either -
(1)
for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain, or
(2)
by the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any
180-day period, of 1 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted
works, which have a total retail value of more than $1,000,
shall be punished as provided under section 2319 of title 18, United States Code.
For purposes of this subsection, evidence of reproduction or distribution of a copyrighted
work, by itself, shall not be sufficient to establish willful infringement.
(b) Forfeiture and Destruction. -
When any person is convicted of any violation of subsection (a), the court in its
judgment of conviction shall, in addition to the penalty therein prescribed, order the
forfeiture and destruction or other disposition of all infringing copies or phonorecords and
all implements, devices, or equipment used in the manufacture of such infringing copies
or phonorecords.
I guess we should expect network congestion because of users, downloading everything in their sight to beat this initiative.
I've heard this in every story about increased lawsuits or prosection since Napster died. The congestion increases constantly because people want more music, etc. "free." It's called greed. I used to be the same way, till I realized I was screwing the artists I love out of the few pennies they do get. Until there's a different and more effective way to pay artists for their music, buying their CDs is about the only thing I can do. (Oh, and don't buy them at the mall and complain about prices... CDs are up to $8 cheaper on the internet if you shop around.)
_endrant_
You need to read the Moderation Guidelines again. This type of attitude breaks the system. It takes time to read all those posts below 2 but the gems down there are worth it. If you do not have the time to do this properly, you should let those points expire. What you describe is more of a popularity contest.
I watched a news report that stated music sales have fallen 13% from last years numbers.
I work for a major clothing chain.
My manager recently commented on how our business has fallen off around 13% compared to last years numbers.
Coincidence?
Maybe we should start arresting school girls who share eachothers clothing plus those damn thrift shop owners who profit from the resale of shirts and jeans. They're cutting into the original retail seller's profits.
slashdot sucks anyway just blow them out of the water
The problem is that music is not about notes and chords. It's about the distance between them.
I took distances into account:
There are only 12 distinct notes in an octave, and about three meaningful durations in music (eighth note, quarter note, and longer than quarter note).
Think of the 12 distinct notes in an octave as distinct intervals, or frequency domain distances, from the first note. Think of the durations as time domain distances. This makes only 36 (time, frequency) distance vectors from one note to the next, and fewer than 50,000 sequences of three such distance vectors. There still aren't enough sets of distances for a songwriter to be able to create original melodies.
Unless there's some other hole in my argument...
Will I retire or break 10K?
Couple hundred? More like a couple hundred thousand.
Depending on the amount of fans you have.
25 cents a song, per fan, 50,000 fans, if they all buy 8 songs, thats 200k
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
You cannot control how your art is distributed by the masses, you can only control when.
Once he released it, its out in the wild, he has no control.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Its like the war on p2p, since it causes poverty among record labels, motion picture producers, and software companies. HONESTLY FOLKS! dont they have more pressing issues for john ashcroft than stopping p2p?
"Martha Stewart can lick my Scrotum......do i have a scrotum?" -- Sharon Osbourne
There is NOTHING illegal, or ethically or morally wrong with what the music industry does today;
The populous supports the industry gladly - immediately swallowing outrageous prices for cdroms and other media.
The populous does not take action to instead support local musicians - to band together and make those successful who they think earn it without ridiculous record and recording contracts.
Frankly, we deserve it . Only in the face of hardship will the average joe respond to the outrageous prices, lack of control over purchases, and ridiculous laws. For a long time we have all been the proverbial frog in the pot of cold water, with the temperature slowly rising.
I welcome the most draconian laws they can possilby put on the American public. I wholeheartedly endorse them scanning our hard drives with impunity, making DVDs that can't be copied, making CDROMs that can't be copied - or even (via "The Road Ahead" by Bill Gates) music that you pay for EVERY TIME YOU LISTEN TO IT.
Bring it on! The decision of whether or not we deserve our freedoms is quickly coming to pass... and as far as I'm concerned, it's long overdue. As long as we continue to be collectively passive, and hold our television and mind-numbing media entertainment above our individual and collective rights, we deserve it.
RIAA's stranglehold is no different than any other illegal monopoly's. I say fsck them. It's illegal to run the same (paid for) version of MS Windows on more than one machine (in my own home). It's purported to be illegal for me to download an MP3 of a RAP song I liked in high school (but have long since lost the original cassette I bought back then and the receipt of its purchase). You know, it was pretty illegal to throw tea in the Boston Harbor all those years ago too. But SO what! I'm now sick-and-tired (as are the rest of you) of trying to correct things through the "right" and "proper" channels. I have ZERO faith in RIAA and almost as little in Congress. Fsck them all. "When the people fear the government you have tyranny;
when the government fears the people you have liberty." -- Thomas Jefferson. It's time the government remembered who butters its bread.
These are pre-defined distances. I meant with distance anything from one milisecond to one whole year.
:-)
Anyone can play any song on any instrument. Getting the melody right that it is the hard part. And melody is about the time between one note from another... I can play Stravinsky on the piano, if I can press the key anytime I want to. But that wouldn't sound right
Buy a Nintendo DS Lite
Yeah tell that to every one of my unemployed sysadmin friends.
.gov is lying about exactly how fucked up it is. Look around you, how many of your friends are out of work? Of those friends, how many have been out of work for a year or more?
Bush is the problem, Clinton did a wonderful job of keeping osama happy. We only had 1 weak attack on the WTC and some conflict in somalia during his presidency. Actually, the WTC carbombing happened during Bush Sr. reign of "no new taxes" so that puts the score of home based attacks for clinton 0, bush jr & sr 2.
The country is in worse shape than you're willing to see my friend. The
Bush cheated to get into office, and he's running the country according to his own agenda. He's cheating the american taxpayer by throwing everything into the military. He sucks he sucks he sucks.
And fuck you for saying this.
what do show is your amazing stupidity:
You can't even use proper fucking grammer you twit and you call me stupid? Fuck you. By your level of grammer i'd say you're still in gradeschool. It should be.
what you have shown is your amazing stupidity:
or even simpler
what you show is your amazing stupidity:
Unfortunately you're a moron, utterly and completly devoid of anything resembling a brain. In fact, instead of brains, you have shit. That's right, shit. Instead of a spinal column you have your colon stretching up your neck into your head. That's why when you talk shit, you don't use proper english grammer. Twit.
And melody is about the time between one note from another... I can play Stravinsky on the piano, if I can press the key anytime I want to.
I guess you're criticizing the lack of an exact definition of "short, medium, and long" note durations. Well, I defined short as an eighth note, medium as a quarter note, and long as a dotted quarter or longer. (In some songs, it's sixteenth, eighth, and dotted eighth.) I didn't try to model melodies in the detail that musical notation records them; I was trying to reduce them to what a federal judge will look at under the copyright case law standard of "substantial similarity".
Will I retire or break 10K?
I give it two weeks before technology supercedes legality once again.
As for the RIAA and their political lapdogs, I would love to see them try to take their entire consumer base to court:
*envisions some minimum wage clerk getting a 300-page stack of IP numbers*
"now serve subpoenas!"
lol
The current state of the USA is rather gloomy:
>Sure, I've heard that sharing music and copyright-anarchy is supposed to increase sales in the aggregate, but it doesn't work for me any the genre I work in. So I need my audience to please be a *paying* audience.
>
If I hear something I like, I BUY it. If it sucks, I DON'T. Therefore, if you find your music being traded, and your sales/revenues aren't going up, well, I think you can figure out the rest for yourself.
Oh well, time to fire up Grokster for the rest of the weekend. Congresscritters? Go fuck thyselves. (and Hilary Rosenbitch, too, while you're at it.)
You know, you're not legally allowed to sell yourself in to slavery in this country. No way, no how. It's simply against the law.
You also can't legally have consentual torture. This is a big issue for a lot of people in the S/M crowd, since this is what they do.
Basically, you are not allowed to waive some of your basic freedoms, no matter how much you want to. Same thing goes for killing yourself, suicide is technically illegal.
While these people might be purposely signing themselves in to a bad deal, perhaps the same ideas can extend to them? For a lot of these artists, what they are accepting is a sort of consentual slavery, with the way the industry is structured.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
If you release something and I buy it, I have the right to tell others what I think about it. I have the right to do research on it. I have the right to share excerpts, or quote excerpts from it. I have the right to make back-up copies. I have the right to loan it to convert it to a format that is more suitable for me. As long as I am not selling it or making money off it, there isn't a whole lot you can do. Physical property rights trump nebulous "intellectual property rights." If they don't trump them in legal circles, they will certainly trump them in de-facto practice as peer-to-peer services demonstrate.
Books, in general, are copyrighted. However, you can quote them without infringing copyright. Similarly, when you are sharing compressed music you are only sharing an excerpt from the music. Usually, you are only "quoting" a tenth of the information available.
However, you are ignoring the commercial aspect. You don't get money from the files you share on a p2p network. You are sharing the files in a noncommercial manner. The minute I get paid for the files I share is when I am breaking the law.
It is inevitable that as more CD's are mass-produced their price drops to a slim margin over the actual cost of materials. This is especially true for old albums. With packaging and handling that comes out to probably $3. Not suprisingly, this has happened first in classical music. I recently purchased 7 classical CDs with an average price of ~2.50 or so. Information is cheap in an information economy. If you aren't going to make enough money being a musician (and most don't) get a 9-5 and do music on the side. Better yet, teach it. There is always a demand for that.
Now, don't think that just because you get a big record contract you will actually make money. This has become very obvious lately. In the congressional hearings Roger McGuinn of the Byrds mentioned that he made very little even though his group hit the bigtime. ( http://judiciary.senate.gov/testimony.cfm?id=195&w it_id=253
) He says
So the question is, how do you make money in the business? McGuinn mentioned that touring was how he made his money. Also, check out www.folkden.com to see how he promotes himself. Another folk singer (Peter Breinholt) who also testified at the congressional hearings had a similar report. ( http://www.senate.gov/~judiciary/oldsite/1092000_p b.htm )He records his own CD's, tours heavily, and is very much a family man. He also offers many free samples of his music, live recordings, and even sheet music on his website ( www.Peterbreinholt.com ). He even returns e-mails. I am much more likely to buy his CD's for gifts (as I recently did for my brother) since I know he is an independent artist not working for the RIAA.
A freind of mine is getting his PhD in Saxaphone Performance. How will he make money when he graduates? The same way he does now -- by teaching. Music instruction will always have a market, and it is a market that is getting bigger as there are more middle-class famalies that can afford lessons or formal schooling. There are opportunities there.
There are also financial opportunities in the production of music. You can easily and cheaply make a recording studio. (I figure $10K for a computer, microphones, and sound deadening panels is cheap compared to what it used to be, and is fraction of the cost of a grand piano or a good harp) If you only apply your musical abilities to the getting of a recording contract, you are severely limiting your earning potential.
Finally, you have to realize that this is a market economy. I would like to be paid to browse slashdot, but nobody derives enough value from that to pay me. Despite a degree and somewhat marketable skills, I have worked on assembly lines , cleaned a lumber yard, and other odd jobs to provide for my family. Many other people have done grunt work as well. You have to pay your dues. You may have to work a real job, and do music on the side. Not every musician is going to make it. That is part of life as well.
"Buying" laws may not not produce legislation you see as equitable, but the law remains the law until changed. Almost all the posts here are arguing for the right to engage in criminal activity, and their main argument seems to be that it ought not to be illegal.
I agree. Sharing "Mariah Carey tracks" is not civil disobediance and will not bring any positive change. My voting and educating my children to different way, may. In the meantime public libraries and used CD/book stores are the way to go.
For god's sake, the stuff is only throw-away commercial pop entertainment. Are you going to stake the future of the Internet on the "right" to distribute, say, Mariah Carey tracks? Come on!
Mariah Carey's first album was in 1990 only 12 years ago. We will fully respect the copyright on her ablums. More to your point; It is not worth the future of the Internet for the pap that is marketed today, I agree again.
"the stuff" is NOT "only throw-away commercial pop entertainment", see my first point. The public domain is being robbed of everything for nearly the last hundred years!
Time for me to pick up a guitar and learn to play my own music because I certainly am going to stop paying RIAA tax. Ill listen to high school bands before I fork out any more money for RIAA Tax. And buy from independent labels, fuk them... I don't need thier crap. They have pushed this consumer too far. So, so long RIAA asswipes.
That's right, ladies and gentlemen! Its not those poor, misguided terrorists that are a threat to the U.S. Its those eeeeeevil music swappers! No, not the people who copy from CDs and tapes to recordable media, but those people who do the same thing using the INTERNET! Let the drug dealers, rapists, child pornographers, murderers, mafia, corporate fraudists (thats a real word, honest), and tax evaders from prisons so that we can make room for the bad internet music swappers! Its good to see that our hard earned tax dollars (and the music industries hard earned payolas) get put to good use!
- The Jews never create anything.
Have you never heard of Bob Dylan ?
Crawl back in your hole. The era of the pogroms is over.
I really want to know if there is anyone out there in DE who has decided to VOTE AGAINST THIS GUY. Just what is it going to take for you people? Just how much restriction does this guy have to place upon you, upon everyone, before you decide that you've had enough? I don't mean just about copyrights, but about EVERYTHING. Dollars to doughnuts, if there's a bill that takes away some right, or places some restriction on the population, THIS BOZO VOTES FOR IT. Damn it all to hell, what is it going to take???
Grrr... I think I'll go bite someone.
Here in Australia there has been repeated coverage of the FBI's persuit and prosecution of an international paedophile ring. This included a soundbyte of some fellow from the FBI stating that the victims of these criminals would be haunted for the rest of their lives because the images would stay on the Internet for years.
:-(
Obviously there are congress-critters who place the profits of the RIAA over the rights of children worldwide.
Didn't you mean "Soar"? "Let the Eagle Sore" doesn't make sense. In fact, it risks creating a sore spot in my mental syntax analyzer.
...hmmm..
I guess some terrorism comes in 19's.
I heard from a German friend that there is system over there for young people to download software for free for learning purposes. Thought you might be interested in knowing that governments might agree with you.
From your previous post, i rather suspected that you're (formally or informally) trolling for the Dems, but this one proves it. As much as i dislike this phony and destructive Left-Right political paradigm, people like you (and that right-wing idiot who didn't do any fact checking) insist on keeping the ball rolling.
/. Community for the excesive length, but "tossed off" facts require real context. SORRY!
My Sincere Apologies to the thinking/rational members of the
Let's deconstruct some of the above post, why don't we?
"Once again you are lying. Insdustries give much more money to republicans while unions tend to give more to democrats. It's the classic struggle. Teachers, cops, firemen, plumbers etc support democrats while CEOs support republicans.
In the last two Federal cycles, Republicans received about 625 million dollars and Democrats received 449 million, or the Democrats recieved about 70% of revenues the Republicans received. Don't know about where you live, but around here, 449 MILLION DOLLARS is a lot of money.
here are some links to real data, you can find verified numbers for just about anything, if you look;
Common Cause
Judical Watch
Federal Election Commission
Roll Call Magazine
Library of Congress' THOMAS legislative info site
Vote dot Com
TownHall dot Com
Pew Research Center (reasonably balanced/verified poll data)
You also neglected to mention some rather important things. Especially as you seem to be attempting to tie the current economic probs to a particular party.
1. The vast majority of Technology CEOs supported Clinton and Gore, and routinely give big donations to the Democratic Party.
2. The vast majority of CEOs in the Finance sectors (stock brokerages, investment banks, bond houses) are also Democrats and are amongst the Dems biggest contributors
3. The Republican Party gets much more of its money from individual "grass roots" contributors (i.e., people sending in twenty or fifty bucks) than the Democratic Party does.
Whereas, the Democratic Party gets the vast majority of its donations from corporations, with very few dollars coming from "grass roots" donations. That's a kinda important point in this discussino, since you seem to be so wound about corporate donations.
4. The two largest contributor groups of the Democratic Party are two of the most regressive and damaging special interests in America. Teachers Unions (NOT the teachers themselves -- for whom i have HUGE respect by and large) and Trial Lawyers.
Teachers Unions have gutted and stalled any meaningful educational reform in this country for 30 years, while students' test scores have plummeted (and they continue to actively obstruct schoool reform) and Trial Lawyers are making it virtually impossible for anyone to start a new business in America without hugely expensive liability insurance (which many entrepeneurs cannot afford). I've done several tech startups in Cali -- next one WON'T be here, i'm done with this messed up state.
Trial lawyers are also increasing the price of virtually every product we buy with frivolous deep pockets liability lawsuits.
The key determinent in politcal fundraising actually seems to be, not so much supposed politcal affiliation, but rather who has control of the House. When the Dems had control of the House (and the White House) they outraised the Republicans by about an average of 20%.
The actual reality is that corporations will give money to whoever can deliver the goods. That will always favor the Party in the Majority. We have the best legislators money can (and does) buy. But, why would any corporation want to waste money on a legislator in the Minority??? What sense does that make? You spend money to buy influence, PERIOD.
When the Republicans took control of the House, they found that they could outraise the Dems, especially in "party building" monies. The reason is generally held to be that whoever controls the House, controls the purse strings. If you're looking for bucks, you go to the Majority Party.
"Once again you are lying. Insdustries give much more money to republicans while unions tend to give more to democrats. It's the classic struggle. Teachers, cops, firemen, plumbers etc support democrats while CEOs support republicans."
nice troll! actually cops and firefighters vote mostly republican (about 68% nationwide), teachers do indeed vote mostly democrat (about 82% nationwide -- though that's starting to change -- there's been nearly a 10% increase nationwide of teachers who are voting republican in the last decade, whoda thunk it?)
(i have no idea how plumbers vote), you're sidestepping the fact that it's actually police and fire unions who give big amounts of their members' dues to far-left candidates.
"All of this adds up to the grim fact that republicans get a ton more money then democrats over all.
True kinda/sorta, but certainly NOT "..a ton more", through the next election cycle, there will probably be about 18-22% advantage for the Republicans. Or about the same numbers that the Dems had over the Republicans when they controlled the House and Senate.
A significant difference, but certainly not fatal. Clearly the Dems aren't attacting voters the way they used to. The Republicans are (and have always been) the "Gang Who Couldn't Shoot Straight", when it comes to image projection. So, that pretty much suggests that the Dems are just losing their appeal. The Republicans are usually not adroit enough at attack politics, they're too busy blowing off their own media toes. (Look at Bill Simon in Cali,-- this guy couldn't get a BJ in a whorehouse, what were the Republicans thinking????)
From about the 1960's to the late 1980's, the Dems had an (by your standards "large") advantage in money raising. When the Republicans and Gingrich took over the Congress in the '94 mid-terms, the money gap started favoring the Republicans.
My favorite though is "...Combine that with the conservative media and you can explain how they control the country."
Where would this conservatie media be? You've got the looney-tunes Washington Times, the spooky strange FoxNewsChannel and that's about it.
Meanwhile, the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washingpost, Time, Newsweek, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC and CBS, and most big city newspapers might as well just print the DNC's "Message of the Day".
Limbaugh gives the Republicans a pretty large presence on talk radio. (despite a decade of dire predictions by the Left about Limbaugh fading away, he's still do quite well, fascinating. i woulda never thunk it.)
But the most successful "politics" shows on TV are O'Reilly (yeech, i'm waiting for Bill to allow a guest to complete a sentence before he starts screaming at them) and Larry King, who spends more time discussing his own opinons than his guests. I can't watch EITHER of them without getting a headache. So, I don't.
O'Reilly is hardly a conservative, and while King is technically a liberal, as O'Reilly continues to pummel King in the ratings, King has drifted back to the center.
So the vast majority of media in this country is pretty much Center-Left.
It is also boring, trite and doesn't spend any real time discussing any alternatives to the obviously dysfunctional Left-Right paradigm that has captured the votes of the majority of the few voting Americans and turned off/over about half the eligble voters in America.
I voted for Nader before, and it looks like i'll be doing it again in '04.
Ten quid, she's so easy to blind. And not a word is spoken...
As a reluctant citzen of Missouri, I have this to say about Ashcroft, he was a horrible Governor. And now, after 9-11, everything that he doesn't understand becomes a target. So, I propose this, Screw it, Download everything you can. Piracy is nothing compared to the crimes that Ashcroft has committed in the last year.
eh, this sucks, I am going back to bed....
It seems unlikely a group will gain "super stardom" solely by online means.
...simultaneously indebts the artist to the label.
The Music Industry has INTENTIONALLY built a business model based upon certain assumptions, these include;
1. Artists should sell 500K+ on their 1st album
2. Artists need to "Borrow" money from the label for pricey production and some touring related costs to be paid back later (can you say "Company Store"?)
3. The label needs to put huge amounts of (recoverable) expenses into each artist, and the contract with the artist will make sure that the label recovers ALL it expenses FIRST.
All of these business practices (and numerous others, like the fact that most artists NEED to tour to make any real money) ensure (exactly as they are meant to) that any artist that can't routinely sell 2-5 million copies over a 3-album contract NEED NOT APPLY.
This is very similar to the early Movie Business and 60's and 70's aerospace industry.
You "create" a cost-structure that is expensively prohibitive for newcomers (think "high entry barriers"), so that, simultaneously, competitive new labels won't be formed every week and so that your artists are permanently in debt to the label. Combine that with 10 or 11 year contracts and you effectively OWN your artists.
The entire music business has been intentionally engineered to limit the number of viable music companies and to limit the number of successful artists and lower the artists' ability to control their careers.
The labels can afford to put 10 million dollars(or more) into a marketing campaign for a Britney Spears, N'Stink, Christina Aguilera, ad nauseam
With a ten million dollar marketing campaign my Grandmother could go Platinum (and she's DEAD)....
This simultaneously locks out equally talented artists who don't have someone willing to spend 10 million dollars on them AND...
Best of all worlds,right?
Artificially high cost structure and indentured talent. With the successful artists fully aware that there are 100 equally talented artists ready to take their place if they get "out of line".
Why don't they want usful digital distribution?
Because ANY EFFICIENT means of digital production and distribution THREATENS THAT BUSINESS MODEL BY LOWERING THE VISIBLE COSTS OF PRODUCTION AND DISTRBUTION BY EXPONENTIAL FACTORS, therefore...
The Internet (as we know it) MUST DIE.
Ten quid, she's so easy to blind. And not a word is spoken...
Why would the government pay for those classes?
All you need to think is: "Terrorist Evil, Dubya Good".
If you are interviewed, say something mindless like: "I'm behind the President 110%".
* * Always question "the National Interest" - 9 times out of 10 it is a cover for evil
Well that was a nice rant. But sorry it was kind of lame. I would go through it point by point but that would be kind of long so I will instead point out the following.
You are obviously anti union, you blame the "trial lawyers" for the countries ills and you don't think Bill O'Reilly is a conservative. Yea that sounds like a republican to me. I don't believe for one second that you voted for Nader.
As for the whole left-right thing sorry but that war is going on despite your denial. Republicans are at war with democrats. There may be bystanders but they will be killed. The democrats are losing this war and price for losing is severe. Being a prograssive person I choose not to stand by and be killed by the republican war machine. It's better to fight back at least that way you can die with honor and dignitity. I didn't start this war but I have to fight it just like you are doing. You are on the winning side at this moment but hopefully we can muster up the resources to counterattack and hold our position or gain ground soon. Otherwise we will all end up being palestenians.
War is necrophilia.
See my reply doesn't actually qualify as a rant, because in addition to using emotional neutral and adult language, i also provide data and sources and external references to validate the data.
And, OF COURSE, you WOULD go through it, but of course you won't -- because having to make a reasoned, rational, thoughtful case, rather than just spewing irrational, secular partisan rhetoric would require that you marshal facts, arrange data and make a convincing reasoned counter-argument.
Which you, of course, can't do.
Fortunately, I can. Let's do it again, shall we?
"You are obviously anti union"
Strike One; Grandpa was an AFL-CIO shop steward. I think the American worker is getting screwed and that Big Labor is helping. The rising tax burden (back up to total marginal rates of 50% in Cali, NY, Mass, et al) is eroding his buying power, and ability to put together a decent retirement package or estate for his children. In my neighborhood 100K homes sell for 1M. Inflation is destroying the real income of the middle-class.
you blame the "trial lawyers" for the countries ills
Strike Two; Gross misstatement, and wrong at that. I don't "blame" the trial lawyers for anything. "Blame" is both a childish and over-emotive term. That's Grade School talk.
I assign to the trial lawyers their responsibility for the mess they are making of our legal system and product liability laws. No more, no less. There's plenty of people helping them.
"and you don't think Bill O'Reilly is a conservative. Yea that sounds like a republican to me. I don't believe for one second that you voted for Nader."
Strike Three; No one with a brain thinks Bill O'Reilly is anything but an loud-mouthed entertainer. Even Limbaugh is more thoughtful (not to mention consistent) about his political positions. In between hawking his; website, newsletter, appearences, etc (figure about 60M/year gross take).
O'Reilly appeals to the great mass of fed up Americans, by taking their pent-up frustations at the "forces beyond their control", and putting on the entertainment equivalent of the old Soviet "show trials".
O'Reilly's show is driven by pop opinion polls. He rants, He raves. He beats up the Left. He beats up the Right. And then he pimps the vast range of O'Reilly Products, from his books through his radio show. Then he and his "victim du jour" hop in his limo and go have a cosmo together at jean georges.
Like you, he's rarely thoughtful, rarely considered and frequently just says stuff for the attention.
I been a registered Independent for over a decade. Am one of about the 3 1/2 people who actually voted for Kathy Brown for Gov of Cali (She was a twit, but at least she was a principled twit. Most of my registered Democrat friends wouldn't even vote for her. Wilson PO'd me with his support of the blatantly anti-immigrant Prop 187, without bothering to explain to us what the Cali economy would do without all those illegal immigrants that do much of the state's dirty work. Clear political scapegoating by the state's Republicans).
There is NO Left-Right War. There is no Left-Right anything is this country. There is a ruling political class, beholden to Big Business, Big Labor and well-heeled Special Interest Groups.
The Dems have their Patrons. The Right has its.
And the average American is caught between them. The average American finds both sides distasteful and extreme, and justs wants them to steer the car down the middle of the road.
But, I don't suppose that you read opinion polls either.
Ten quid, she's so easy to blind. And not a word is spoken...
It seeems that Digital Rights Management would actually save P2P. Go figure.
:-(
If clients like Gnutella were forced to reject files whose sharing violated their DRM flags, their illegal use would be restricted to non-protected data.
I hate to sound like a troll, but DRM may actually be a Good Thing. The only drawback(in this case) is that the controllers of DRM technology could charge up the wazoo to license the technology, and make it illegal not to.
But such is life in a free market economy.
"Rights Management" seems oddly fitting, in this context.
What's this Submit thingy do?
Music labels have not ruled out suing individual users, and have pushed for the right to flood peer-to-peer networks with bogus files, or disrupt them by other means.
"Have pushed for the right"? How about: have already been flooding peer-to-peer networks.
That's just lame. I mean yeah: protect your copyright and all that (whatever,) but seriously: if they would just shut the hell up and embrace the fact that free mp3's leads to people eventually supporting an artist (and if the price is right, their labels) this would cease to be converted into a "fair use rights" issue.
Something about a head and an ass and one thing being inside the other?
ad
Because I can! [Brainrub.com]
You described the recording industry prefectly. You must have been paying attension in econ class too.
"And, OF COURSE, you WOULD go through it, but of course you won't -- because having to make a reasoned, rational, thoughtful case, rather than just spewing irrational, secular partisan rhetoric would require that you marshal facts, arrange data and make a convincing reasoned counter-argument."
MMM no. Your post was mostly half truths and no I still don't feel like going through it point by point.
"Strike One; Grandpa was an AFL-CIO shop steward. I think the American worker is getting screwed and that Big Labor is helping. The rising tax burden (back up to total marginal rates of 50% in Cali, NY, Mass, et al) is eroding his buying power, and ability to put together a decent retirement package or estate for his children. In my neighborhood 100K homes sell for 1M. Inflation is destroying the real income of the middle-class."
Wow nice string of non sequitors. Let's see if I understand what you are saying.
Your grandpa was a union member. Ok that's nice I guess what does that have to do with anything?
Big labor is screwing the american worker. HAH!. Very funny! Yes blame the unions for the screwing of the american worker, that's a good one. I suppose the republicans, the chamber of commerce and the corporations have nothing to do with that huh?
Rising tax rates are huring the working people. OK so are you saying that big labor is raising the taxes on the american people? Since when do the labor unions pass legislation?
Houses are expensive where you live: Yes. Probably because the population keeps growing while nobody is making more land. Move to a place where people are moving away. Oh the unions do not have the power to raise the cost of real estate sorry to break it to ya.
"No one with a brain thinks Bill O'Reilly is anything but an loud-mouthed entertainer. Even Limbaugh is more thoughtful (not to mention consistent) about his political positions"
The only people who think that O'Reilly is not a republican are people to the right of him. That means just to the left of Reagan. And you think Limbaugh is thoughtful. Then you claim you are not a republican. HAH!
"There is NO Left-Right War. There is no Left-Right anything is this country."
What hole do you live in man? Do you watch TV? Do you read the papers? There are a lot of wars in this country. Why do you think Limbaugh calls environmentalists "green nazis"? Why does he call feminists "feminazis"? There is a war and he wants to associate environmentalists and women who want equal pay with murderous regimes who killed 6 million Jews. Why does he do that? Because he wants to incite people to kill them that's why. Try this. Put a greenpeace sticker on your car and drive to montana. See how long it takes for you to be pulled over or have your winshield broken. There is most certainly a war the people like Oreilly and Limbaugh are the propaganda arms of that war. The desired result is a subjugation of the "liberals".
War is necrophilia.
and that pretty much says it all about your position, why defend your (indefensible and inchoate) position when you can just spout cheap ad hominem personal attacks without ever having to support your claims?
nice try, but it won't fool too many people, you can ran around screaming "conservative" or "Republican" all you want, but it's just cheap demagoging.
And has absolutely nothing to do with supporting or defending your position and the your so-called claims.
The DATA that you don't wish to address are simple and consistent.
The VAST MAJORITY of the American people are relatively-to-very happy with George Bush and their own financial circumstances. They have some worries about Wall Street, the economy and the state of education across America. Some worries, some even increasing worries (the economy) not anywhere near either a crisis state or even prominent concern.
No one has to take my word for it, it's easy enough to verify;
The Zogby Poll
The Field Poll
The Gallup Poll
The Los Angeles Times Poll
PollingReportdotCom -- Great Polling Summary Site
The Institute for Research in the Social Sciences at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
CNN's AllPolitics website, frequent has latest polls
CBS News Polls
The "Left-Right" War rubbish you are talking about is disproved by two simple (and recent) votes of Congress.
The OVERWHELMINGLY BIPARTISAN vote for their own pay raise and the vote for next year's Federal budget.
Both overwhelmingly approved by both parties.
Yep, some Left-Right split. The Dems who control the Senate are so worried about their Republican "opposition" that they voted for Bush's Tax Cut and Bush's Budget and the Patriot Act and the DMCA and UCITA.
And the Republicans who control the House are so worried about the Congressional Dems that they have gone along with EVERY redistricting plan controlled by a Democratic state legislature, all across America. The Republicans have no plans to challenge ANY redistricting across America, even though the net gain will go to the Dems (about 2-4 seats in the next Congress)
And the Congressional Dems are so worried about their Republican counterparts they cut deal after deal with them for their own priorities in the current budget AND VOTED OVERWHELMINGLY with the Republicans for the Patriot Act, DMCA, Sonny Bono Copyright Reform, et al...(and i certainly don't need to mention the "Under God" Pledge votes LEAD by Democratic Congressional Leaders Daschle and Gephardt, do I?)
Or are you asserting that the Democrats and all the major polling organizations are in league with your much-detested Republicans?
Both Parties have the ability (with a split Congress) to bring the legislative process to a complete halt. Gee, strange then in a political/idealogical "War" that neither side is doing that. They are (with a few exceptions) merrily holding hands and passing budgets and spending authorizations and all sorts of other legislation with nary a discouraging word.
So, our elected officials don't perceive a "War", the American People don't perceive a "War", the Pollsters can't find a "War".
So, where is it?
You can give all the anecdotal myths you want, and for every one there's a counter-example. Like your hypothetical "Greenpeace Sticker in Montana", which anyone can respond to with a "NRA Sticker in Berkely" example.(That's the "One-to-Many Fallacy", and bigoted to the eyeballs, btw. Even should both hypotheticals evince reality, so what? No shortages of jerks in this world. One asshole just proves that he/she's one asshole.)
I've had Cali Dems tell me that I "helped get George Bush elected" by voting for Ralph Nader, here in the state where Gore rec'd 2.4M votes MORE than Bush. That called zealotry AND self-delusion.
there's more GENUINE drama on "General Hospital" than in our politics...or as was said long ago, by another 3rd party Presidential candidate, "There ain't a dime's worth of difference between the two parties."
AMEN
Ten quid, she's so easy to blind. And not a word is spoken...
"and that pretty much says it all about your position, why defend your (indefensible and inchoate) position when you can just spout cheap ad hominem personal attacks without ever having to support your claims?"
Look man I said I wasn't going to but here I will take one example to show you how wrong you are. In your original post you said.
" The vast majority of Technology CEOs supported Clinton and Gore, and routinely give big donations to the Democratic Party.
2. The vast majority of CEOs in the Finance sectors (stock brokerages, investment banks, bond houses) are also Democrats and are amongst the Dems biggest contributors"
Ok it's the truth but it's not the whole truth nor is it nothing but the truth.
First of all the tech sector and the banking sector do not form a majority of businesses in this country. Even if both statements are true this still does not represent a majority of CEOs.
Secondly I would like to see you provide one iota of evidence that "The vast majority of CEOs in the Finance sectors" are democrats. What do you mean by a vast majority? 70%? 80%? Go ahead prove it or shut up.
Thirdly. Even if a CEO gives more to the Democrats then Republicans the corporation that they oversee frequently give more money to republicans. Take microsoft for example. MS employees give more money to democrats but MS the corporation gives more money to republicans.
There is no two ways about it. Corporations give more money to republicans and unions give more money to democrats.
"The "Left-Right" War rubbish you are talking about is disproved by two simple (and recent) votes of Congress."
Listen if all it takes is two votes to prove something to you then never mind.
Sure there are times when the parties work together to screw the people but that's because the right VS Left war is only a cultural one. The rich VS poor is the economic war. There is more then one war going on and sometimes the congressman work together to advance their own side in the rich vs poor war.
"which anyone can respond to with a "NRA Sticker in Berkely" example"
you know try as I might I can't find an incident like that anywhere. Sure you hear about republicans killing abortion doctors but you don't hear about abortion doctors killing priests. You hear about republicans beating and killing gay people but you never hear about gay people hunting down republicans and beating them. You hear about republicans painting swastikas on synagogs but you never hear of jews painting star of davids on the republican party buildings. I could go on and on. Are gays objecting to republicans being married? Are gays trying to push legislation denying housing to republicans?
And BTW please don't suggest that all those abortion clinic bombers, gay bashers, swastika painters and cross burners are not republican you know perfectly well they are.
War is necrophilia.
obviously you have never been a woman, otherwise you'd realize that there is no substitute for conditioner. -binky. (spreadin the word about hair care)