Kazaa: Happy In the Global Legal Briarpatch

Steve0987 writes "The Washington Post has an article on the entertainment industry's atempts to close down the file-sharing system Kazaa. I agree that copyrighted material shouldn't be freely distributed from an ethical standpoint. However, the entertainment industry has been acting in an arbitrary manner trying to impede anything remotely impinging on their industry. Go Kazaa."

Comments

Firewalls.

[Trusty Penfold]

I've said it before and I'll say it again ... we need firewalls whereever the internet enters the country. We can filter out kazaa etc. there and be nice and legal.

And don't give me any of that "violates free speech rights" nonsense ... we can have free speech inside and keep others' illegal speech out.

Sure? think again!

[tanveer1979]

They will start making examples
Suppose, 20Mph is limit... they stop you.. then beat you to pulp in front of other drivers... how many will take chances next time? Of course we have rights(hopefully) and this cant happen, but as far as civil laws go... you have no rights.. money talks and it talks loud

Re:Anyone else find it strange?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

It seems this Washington Post correspondant didn't bother to investigate how Altnet is linked to Sharman Networks... Altnet is virtually Sharman Networks...

Maybe the reporter didn't want to get Mr. Whipple mad at hime and decided he wasn't going to squeeze the Sharman.

Re:Civil Desobedience

[dh003i]

Blah blah blah. If a law's bad, and we don't agree with it, why should be obey it? And why, according to you, if we disobey it, should we do so in such a manner as to be punished for doing so? If a law is wrong, then surely being punished for violating that law is wrong. The simple fact is, the massive number of people violating copyright/DMCA undermines those laws, which is a good thing.

Btw, its possible to do something for multiple reasons. I think that copyrights (as they currently exist) are wrong [excessive and unconstitutional scope and duration]. I also don't want to spend tons of money on CD's where most of the CD is crap, nor is $18 for the latest pop-release a "fair deal". I buy the CD's of a few modern pop artists when they come out, such as C. Aguilera and B. Spears: that's because I like most of the songs on those CD's, thus its a good value for me. But I'm not going to buy more than a few CD's per year. Thus, the music industry loses nothing when I download Eminem's latest song, because there's no way I would have bought an entire CD filled with crap for one good song (nor would I have bought an $5 single). So, in short, the music industry loses nothing on me, since I wasn't going to buy the vast majority of modern music I downloaded anyways. The artists -- who perhaps make a few cents off of each CD -- lose even less.

Btw, the vast majority of music I download is classical, all of which is public-domain.

Re:But what happens when they change penalties...

[HiThere]

PL/1 was actually a very good language. It's port to micro computers was a waste, and there were some bad subsets, but it was better than any other language available at the time.

That said, it did have it's problems. But they weren't syntax problems. The picture format specifications were a bit strange (probably because they had to match Cobol specs, but I don't know for sure). And it didn't have the slightest notion of Objects, or of Functional Programming. And it was HUGE compared to C or Algol. But it was easier to use than either, and easier than Fortran unless you were doing the kind of thing that Fortran made easy. In that case it was pretty much of a wash.