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43 Million Americans Use P2P Software
robl writes "If the NYTimes article is correct then somewhere around 1 in 6 Americans apparently are unindicted felons. In the eyes of the public file swapping is as morally wrong as speeding on the NJ Turnpike. The rest of the article talks about the RIAA's carrot/stick/education approach and how they may find themselves entering into negotiations for some forms of file sharing. Also the EFF will be running ads in Rolling Stone next month asking if enthusiasts are tired of being treated like criminals."
1 in 6 americans know how to use their computer?
If you're not using firefox, you're not surfing the web, you're suffering it.
---
the other 5 of 6 just look at porn sites
You know, believe it or not, P2P software has some legitimate uses...
:)
Like backing up all my stuff on random stranger's computers.
If anyone is guilty in here, raise your hand...
File sharing is the only "killer application" for broadband, and most people with BB use file-sharing at least some of the time.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
From the article: "Forty-three million Americans â" half of those who connected to the Internet â" used file-sharing software last month that allows people to copy music without paying for it." It is possible to allow P2P software for legal purposes only (though not very many people do so), and it is possible to use it only for movie trading, etc. The actual number may thus be somewhat higher.
Dear /.
Please stop linking to NYT articles. You know why, Thank you.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
It's named Mandrake, yet you went for the "racist" angle?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
So much for a representational government - I wonder how many Senators have kids with a pile of 'illicit' mp3s/warez/mp4s.
Ah...they're probably all out drinkin' and pukin' with Jenna.
I do wonder how much if the sharing leads to actual buying. I know there are a lot of people who would rather "Try it out" then actually buy the game to take full advantage of it, like online playing. Many don't have the know how on hacking the programs, they just want to get a taste.
Perhaps a test to see if their system will handle it, becasue you really don't want to drive out to CompUSA, find it, wait in line, buy it, wait in traffic, install it, trouble shoot it, trouble shoot it, re configure, pull out some hair, get back in traffic, and arrive at the store right when they close before a holiday...
Call it optimisim on my part, but people aren't that inherently evil... so they tell me...
"This is you left and that's your left. This is your right and that's your right. You're gonna die!
According to NORML's website, 80 million Americans have smoked pot, that horrible life-ruining plant. Additionally, Marijuana laws are enforeced much more than those that pertain to P2P programs.
Copy protected CD-like discs, encrypted DVDs that are not legally playable under open source operating systems, and games that require you to keep the god damn CD in while playing even though you install the entire thing to the hard drive all drive me insane. These people are forgetting the number one rule in business: the customer is always right. ALWAYS! If you forget that or start to justify arguing this point then you might as well not be selling stuff to consumers.
I can honestly say that I have never, nor do I plan to in the forseeable future, sped on the New Jersey Turnpike. Now the Pennsylvania turnpike is another question, but how can they honestly expect me to do 55 around Pittsburgh?
And just for the record I always obey all speed limits while using P2P software, because frankly my cable connection sucks. Because of the limitations of Adelphia, I can also say I don't download illegal music, movies, or software; I find it much easier to have someone hand me a CD for such things.
Devil Ducky
MY peers would get out of jury duty.
I'd like to see the RIAA step up to the plate on those statistics. ...And now they're in too deep to change.
The shame of it all, for the RIAA, is that they probably could have been *very* successful with an online campaign, had they embraced mp3 and sharing technologies instead of dissmissing them and taking action against their users.
I don't even think that it's just greed that made them act the way they did -- they probably just didn't have enough in-house expertise to properly advise them on a proper strategy to deal with all the new technology.
-Tom West
but I think that number is going to spike dramatically once p2p applications are used for more than swapping media files. How about p2p medical services, dating services, whatever. I think this kind of ultra-decentralised computing will be the next wave.
P2P really has endless possibilities.
SEO Copywriter. Just Say ON
that there's some resolution to all this down the pike that is fair to all concerned?
Major record companies deserve this mess; they've done it to themselves by overpricing CD's. However, they and the "stars" aren't the only ones affected by P2P copying -- studio musicians depend on royalties to live, and they are Not multimillionaires. I hear (anecdotally, but from reliably, from a friend who works for the musician's union), that those men and women are really hurting -- royalties are drying up.
Most people who make a living making music make a pretty bare living as it is. I wish there were some middle ground where people get paid a reasonable amount for real work that they have done, without it turning into a greedfest on anyone's side.
OK, now what?
No wonder the record industry is in trouble.
I would be delighted to pay, say 5 Euros/Dollars for a movie download in DivX and/or a comparable format. Knowing that the movie would't be a fake would be great too...
P2P software will continue to be used until someone gives us a viable commercial option. DVD's are 20 to 30 Euros here in Finland, and I'm not counting the rare imported stuff... There's no way I'm paying that much for a movie, especially when it probably has broken even in the theaters prior to the DVD being released.
.: Max Romantschuk
Seriously, there has got to be no easier way for someone to become a criminal without them giving it much thought. If you walked into a record store and tried to walk out with loads of shoplifted CDs under each arm, you'd get busted. And if you tried any of the following rationales:
1. But I'm too broke to afford music
2. This music should be free
3. Yes but the RIAA isn't paying the artists for these CDs that I just stole
4. Corporations are evil
5. But officer EVERYBODY does this!
6. This falls under fair use
7. I'm not going to fence them, I'm going to "share" them
They'd laugh and it'd be off to the pokey for you. Yet, introduce P2P technology into the equation, and miraculously these kind of arguments suddenly seem like they're holding water. And people think there's nothing wrong with downloading entire albums without paying for it, or ripping albums and distributing them to thousands of people who will download them without paying for them.
Sometimes, the paranoid tinfoil-hat part of my brain takes over and I wonder if the government doesn't somehow want it this way. After all, get enough people downloading files, convict the whole nation of one big felony, and just throw a big wall full of armed guards around the entire country. Then if you want to download that Kid Rock mp3 you will have to "Escape from New York."
As a perfect example of P2P: Lets show some legit usage.
You can get 5.1-RELEASE i386 ISOs right now -- before they're publicly available on the FreeBSD FTP mirror at
glow.rh.rit.edu
May this post be indexed by spiders, and archived for all to see as my Internet epitaph.
Its debateable if file swapping if morally wrong at all. Some of us believe its a personal freedom, like freedom of speech, and that its not morally wrong but morally right.
The only few who think its morally wrong are a few guys who happen to own copyrights, the average American does not own any intellectual property is cares more about defending their freedom to share files than defending some unknown CEOs freedom to own them.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
When one person owes you {money,stuff,etc}, it's bad for them. When you feel that millions of people owe you {money,stuff,etc} it's bad for you.
So, the RIAA, and the MPAA to a lesser extent are in the second category. While I don't like the MPAA's practices with DeCSS, at least thy have taken to pricing their products in a range that I as a consumer don't feel bad about paying. I'll gladly buy DVDs from the bargain bin for $6.00.
The RIAA on the other hand isn't playing so nice. When a CD is $17.00, the musician might see a few pennies, and discounts on the products aren't forthcoming, it's understandable why people copy music and don't feel bad about it. The soundtrack for many movies on CD costs more than the movie on DVD itself. There is something very wrong with the world when this is the case.
The MPAA has been lucky, since movies are large enough that copying them isn't nearly as big a no-brainer as CDs/mp3s are, but at the same time, if they keep movies cheap, we'll be more inclined to buy them instead of copying them. The RIAA's problem has been around much longer, is much deeper entrenched, and does not appear stoppable by legislation, threats, civil suits, or any other means that they have come up with. If they don't significantly change their business model it'll only get worse, to a point where artists find new labels that don't play by the RIAA's rules, and the RIAA as an organization will cease to be. If they aren't willing to change, they'll get what they deserve.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Why keep it illegal? I dont understand what the point of this is, we cannot lock 100 million people up in prison, so why waste our money filling prisons up with people who share files and smoke pot, its ridiculous.
It makes me wonder if this actually is some kinda police state, I mean what happened to democracy? IF we dont think its morally wrong, and only a few rich CEOs who happen to own the information think its wrong to share it, why should the ones who have money rule over the ones who dont? Thats not democracy anymore, thats plutocracy and if this is what the USA is about then I'm leaving.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
If an election were to be held for the president today, and Ms.Clinton sided with the P2P sentiments, she's assured of atleast 43 million American votes! Maybe much more, if the article is accurate enough.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
other idea is that if people are being prosecuted for p2p and want to continue someone will make a p2p network where the originator of files is hidden. This would be easy. Just make the transfer go through nodes just like the searches do at the moment. You'd never be able to tell who the "offender" is since you don't know if the file is coming from the node you are connected or nodes behind it. In the era of broadband and litigation this scheme is also feasible.
Current intellectual property protection approaches level, which instead of fanning, stiffles innovation. Maybe above schemes are already patented so beware if you try to implement them.
Under US copyright law, it is only a crime to download copyrighted works if you reproduce more than $1,000 in goods within 180 days. Or if you infringe copyright for financial gain.
It would appear that it is only a felony if you reproduce or distribute 10 or more copies with a total value of at least $2,500.
5 in 6 slashdotters are amazed that 1 in 6 americans can operate a computer AND use it to go online. The other 1 in 6 slashdotters didn't read the story yet.
"43 million people lose the right to vote?"
OTOH, if the cards are played right, you're assured of 43 million votes! Too good to resist.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
If you dont like the laws, buy new ones, it works for Disney.
The constitution is fake, no one ever follows it, freedom of speech? You dont have it, profit comes first.
Its funny how 1% of the population who owns the information can force their rules on the 100 million or so file sharing people who dont own any intellectual property and who dont think its morally wrong to share it.
Since when did capitalism decide the concept of right and wrong? I guess some peoples religion is capitalism, and I suppose this government is run by capitalism and not democracy.
If this is the case why should normal working class people stay in the USA? Its slavery if you cannot even get to vote on an issue such as this, no you are automatically a felon.
You get labeled some wicked name like a "pirate" when sharing has absolutely nothing to do with being a pirate, because sharing sounds so morally right they make up new words and terms to put a negative spin on it, now you are a pirate, a cyber terrorism, and every chance they get they try to compare sharing information with robbing a bank, or running into a CD store and stealing CDs at gunpoint. No you arent stealing the CD you are copying the CD, stealing means someone is missing something, either a physical object or a profit.
You can steal a profit by selling someone elses Cd, you take eminems CD, burn it and sell it, this is stealing a profit, this should be a crime.
However, if you just copy it and give it away, theres no stealing and theres no way you can convince any sane person that its morally wrong to share when it benefits society to share.
SHARE, but dont STEAL, if someone wants to pay for Eminems CD, Eminem made the music and should get to profit from his work, however if someone refuses to pay for it and just wants to hear it, why not let them?
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
only outlaws will use filesharing.
I have a hard time believing that pay per download will solve anything. I still RARELY am able to find the CDs I want when looking through my local music store.
Admittedly, I rarely listen to or buy music from major record labels. But try going into a music store and finding a CD by Juno Reactor. Or VNV Nation. No luck? How about DreamTrybe, or Thirteen of Everything. Or Kenna. STILL can't find it? Six Mile Bridge maybe? Probably not. So, I either have to hunt down those CDs on ebay or some obscure indie site (and no, not all those bands are indie) OR - I simply have to enter the band into KazAA and badaboom! I have the music I want.
Is it stealing? Probably - although I always end up buying the CD when I can find it. Is it illegal? Well, according to the RIAA - yes. Do I share my MP3s? YOU BET I DO! Who am I to be able to tell if that person downloading my file is trying to get another copy of that CD that was stolen out of his car, or if they just want to get it for free?
Kyndar: Exotic Imports, Jewelry, Candles, and Incense http://www.kyndar.com
Why not call it by its true name.
"The No Electronic Information Sharing (NEIS)Act"
Why? Because thats what it is.
Define theft,, heres theft
a : the act of stealing; specifically : the felonious taking and removing of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it b : an unlawful taking (as by embezzlement or burglary) of property
You cannot STEAL information because information by design is not physical and cannot be contained.
This is like me getting mad at someone for stealing my thoughts! Should I be able to copyright facial expressions and then sue anyone who makes that expression? Well?
If you use it you are STEALING my face right?
Thats what I thought. But believe it or not, intellectual property exists simply to protect stupid abilities and rights such as these which dont even matter while removing our personal freedom.
So we lose personal freedom in exchange for someone to have the right to "own" facial expressions, let me ask you all something, how much intellectual property do each of you own? Unless every American owns tons of intellectual property, why do we give up our personal freedom which we all currently own in exchange for something of absolultely no value to us? Sure it matters to a rich CEO, if you are one of these guys then yes you care but to me and to the average person, it only reduces our creativity and freedom.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Industry Offers a Carrot in Online Music Fight
In Battle Over Online Music, Industry Offers A Carrot
I smell class warfare. I dont think you, I, or the common man has anything to do with deciding the laws.
SO at any time our government can say "You all are criminals!" and lock us all in prison.
Look, Laws should apply only when people vote or have some say in their creation, otherwise the government could tomorrow outlaw white socks and suddenly everyone commited a crime.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Ummm. No.
It's more like, you sell me an excellent copy of your prized Picasso (think DVD), I take a reasonable quality compressed digital picture of it (think divx movie file) and give copies of the digital picture to my friends. You still have your original painting. What you have lost is the potential income of selling additional excellent copies to my friends because they are satisified with the version they received. On the other hand, they might not be satisfied with the reasonable copy and, instead, purchase the excellent version. So it is arguable that anything is actually lost. As much as the **AA would like us to believe p2p file trading is theft, it isn't any more than exceeding the speed limit or jaywalking is immoral.
Don't worry about it. The government can't prosecute you unless they can identify the infringed works and prove that they have been registered with the copyright office. The same goes for the RIAA and MPAA.
Thanks to Portal of Evil News
/. submitters should stop giving them hits.
L: poenews
P: poenews
Still,
First off, I have nothing against the RIAA really. They are a business. A corrupt and monopolistic business to be sure, but they are out to make money and survive. I can't blame them any more than I can blame ebola for trying to do the same... except about the money part.
I have a shiney new dvd writer. It has a nice button on the front. A tray that goes in and out. Oh, and it writes dvd's. Aside from archiving the family footage, and making great backups I like to do some authoring with dvd's.
Although I believe my flash animation skills are beyond question, others don't seem to think 2 hours of my artistic creations are worth the dvd they are burned to.
What I love to do is snag music videos off various newsgroups and p2p programs, and put them together on my own mtvdvd. I make custom menues, do different transitions, cut the crappy intro screenes for #lamevideos on pir8net, put the whole thing together, and everyone I know loves them! Every single person I've showed them to has begged me for a copy.
You know what else is interesting.. there is NO legal way for me to obtain the videos. Heck, the ??AA would make a killing selling these things. I know that I have seriously considered getting one of those in-dash dvd players just for this purpose (don't worry, I'm not a stupid driver).
There is obviously consumer demand for this stuff. So much demand in fact that consumers have resorted to less than legal means to obtain them. Its a shame that so much revenue is wasted.
Seeing as USA has 2mil imprisoned, this is not that far off.
fucktard is a tenderhearted description
When a business ceases to add value naturally to society they will try and find artifical means of doing so such as copyright. What value is the record industry currently adding? Not a lot, more cookie cut bands to fill a focus group identified niche that the record industry probably created though branding in the first place. Screw that, the record industry needs to add value by supporting new and interesting bands. Failing that it needs to make it easier for me to access my music whereever I am. Hey, this is what they used to do, distribution and discovery.
----
nopass
nopass
Nobody is saying it's not a crime because a lot of people are doing it. They're saying that it shouldn't be a crime because lots of people are doing it.
While that's not a perfect argument, it is still legitimate. The whole idea of a representational democracy is to give "the people" a say in the way their country is run. If a majority of people (43 million isn't a majority of Americans, but, as an earlier post pointed out, it's half of those with internet access, including those with dialup for whom file trading is less attractive) disobey that law, it would seem that at the very least the law should be examined.
If everyone speeds along the NY Turnpike, the speed limits should be examined to see if they really are realistic. If 80 million Americans smoke pot, the anti-pot laws should be re-examined. If half the people who have the opportunity to break copyright in this particular way (for personal use) break it, the copyright laws should be examined. More importantly, they should be examined with an eye to the well being of citizens before the well being of the corporations.
Of course, none of this makes those 43 million criminals less criminal. It just makes them the victim of a hypocritic government. Welcome to America, the worlds first Corpocracy.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
all those musicians could always go out and play live again, can't they :-)
The music industry have created their own downfall and I have no sympathy at all for them.
But the music won't die, just the RIAA, managers, agents, publishers and all the middleman hangers on who create nothing but take their cut anyway.
Despite what you may have thought musicians dont make a penny from CD sales most of the time, they also dont own any intellectual property most of the time.
Their contract says the record company owns anything they make,the record company keeps about 95% of what their CD makes from sales, Musicians end up getting a $30,000 a year salary from CD sales after selling millions of copies, they only make real money from tours, concerts and so on.
Do musicians care if you buy their CD? No they dont because most of them dont make any money off their CDS, CDs are marketing to get you to go to their concerts.
Learn how the music industry works.
The software industry is the same way, programmers dont own any copyrights, everything is owned by the company, programmers get paid to make the software, they dont get paid when each copy of windows or whatever is sold, those profits go to Bill Gates.
You see, the people who do all the work and who create the information, do not own the information, so why does it matter if we rob the thieves?
Because the true owners never owned anything to begin with and the current owners steal from the true owners using their monopoly power to do it.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
...asking if enthusiasts are tired of being treated like criminals.
Obviously not, or they would stop behaving like them.
The 43 million is secondary (or even tertiary) to the story. The real story is about the changing tactics of the industry and how it continues its attempts to force music-lovers to listen to music how the industry wants them to, instead of being responsive to customers as any good business should.
Now that a direct sales model is viable (iTunes, Prince and others) because the means of production and inexpensive distribution is widely available for a low cost, the industry has lost its main competitive advantage.
The oligopoly that the record companies have had is coming to an end and instead of embracing a new business model they keep trying to force everyone to adhere to the old broken model.
Also, please refer to the following articles from 2 days ago, paying special attention to the editorial:
Music Industry Changes its Tune on Sharing ... Sort Of
The NYT has a pair of stories about online music today. The first is a long article about how the music industry is trying to transform its image and its business by embracing online music and sharing ... within limits. But at the same time comments about filesharing like ''We're going to continue to address this with harsher and harsher means,'' by Universal's CEO aren't encouraging that the attitude has changed. The NYT Editorial page comes down firmly on the side of music-lovers with this gem: ''You don't have to be a 19-year-old college student to sense that there's something indecent in the concentration of the recording industry...''
* 2003-06-07 19:15:59 Music Industry Changes its Tune on Sharing ... Sor (articles,music) (rejected)
For good or bad, IP is an artificial construct which only works if everybody buys in. I think its niave to think that it will always work or even be around considering it (like laws against recreational drug use) are a microscopic blip on the radar of human history. Art, music, writing are _our_ culture - if you don't want to contribute to our culture keep it to yourself. If you do want to contribute to _our_ culture then you have to release it and accept whatever deal _society_, as a whole, has agreed to give you (which could be nothing more than being able to perform it, along with everyone else).
It worked for Mozart, Bach, Ug the Caveman, the USA 100 years ago, China, the Queen of Sheba, etc,etc. Why is the 'morality' of some CEO's in Corporate America 'better' than that of 5.99999 billion other people? And why do we owe them a living?
Sure, swapping MP3s is illegal -- but the point of this is that it SHOULDN'T be. America is a democracy, after all, and people are voting through their actions. If everyone in America started practicing bigamy, that'd be legal too. Don't believe me? Just look at the Gay-rights movement. That was only 1/10 people, far less than the number of file-swappers -- but they've been getting a LOT of laws changed over the last few decades. Besides, you can whine and complain all you like about it being illegal, but a law that no-one obeys is no law at all.
I am sick and tired of being treated like a criminal both by the RIAA/MPAA as well as the computer software industry.
Me too!
A couple of days ago I had to reinstall all the software on my laptop because of a hard disc problem.
I tried to install the MS Office 2000 Professional that I had paid lots of money for, and it told me it was an upgrade version and wouldn't install. So I searched high and low for the Windows 97 discs that I purchased six years ago, and I found them, but not the paper with the serial number on, so I couldn't install that either.
So f*** them, I've installed OpenOffice and will never buy any more Microsoft software ever again.
I will pay to download files. Give me iTunes pricing, with MP3s available and I'll happily pay for that, no problems at all.
But I'm not trekking all the way to a store to pay for an album that I then copy to MP3 anyway.
Call me lazy if you like, but until the music industry makes it easier for me to use their service than it is to use Kazaa, they aint seeing any more of my money.
My Journal
piracy doesnt kill your heroes, it duplicates them!!!!
Not only that, but I have serious doubts as to whether 'copyright' as we know it today will exist in the future.
I especially love the blatant statement that belies the fact that the industry is built around intellectual property, and that you get very little when you buy a CD. Information as a tradable entity is ok, but freedom to use that information in any way I see fit (including redistribution) needs to come with my trading rights.
Perhaps this means a change in business model for the entertainment industry, and perhaps it means that artists will not be in the running for mega-millions anymore. But none of this is earth-shattering.
Languages aren't inherently fast -- implementations are efficient
Analog taping off the radio and swapping tapes is covered under standard fair usage.
What's the difference between taping to cassette (or for the older people, to reel-to-reel) tape and to your hard drive?
What if your FM radio is an adaptor plugged into your PC that records to the HD? What's the difference between this and a portable AM-FM-cassette player which allows recording off the air by punching a couple of buttons?
The RIAA bought enough politicians to make taping to a hard drive illegel.
Only tards like you and the RIAA are capable of confusing this with any sort of moral imperative.
Tech Public Policy stuff
I have read so many half baked arguments about this really important subject on slashdot that i wish people would start to really get thinking: here is a very interesting book about the subject: INFORMATION FEUDALISM by Peter Drahos and John Braithwaite, EARTHSCAN - http://www.earthscan.co.uk. just a few citations: "Intellectual property rights began their life as tools of censorship and monopoly privileges doled out by the king to fund wars and other pursuits." Looking at England in the 16th century - the first intellectual property fights were being fought over printing, the then copyright holders were the craft guild known as The Stationers. They were fearing competion and loss of their monopoly status and thus asked the state for measures to be taken against Piracy (everybody who printed books had to be a member of the guild). Eventually the Stationers ended up as an arm of the state, having their own court and the powers to search and seize pirated material (books printed by independent printers). Does that sound familiar? ....The "pirates-printers", Bourne and Jefferson, argued in 1586 that the privilege system kept prices high, deprived the public of choice and was contrary to the common law.
--- From this point on intellectual property law keeps returning in its different guises.
What i find most alarming in this context is basically how the different distracting - "re-educational" arguments keep
coming back from people who are most likely to be hurt if the current intellectual property laws are not fought.
There is no moral element in intellectual property rights unless you adhere to the sermon that keeps coming from the copyright holders. Consider the option to be born as
an untouchable in india 100 years ago - it would have been morally wrong to take part in society and rebel against being outside of human society. Fortunately these moral forces were fought....
uff - i am getting carried away ...
check out the book mentioned above - gives you lot of insights into a problem that lies at the heart of postindustrial economy.
Actually, that isn't such a bad idea. Create a P2P program based on dating. You get to create profiles and everything. Then, just hop onto a chat channel marked for your area in town. Think Match.com, only decentralised, free, and annonomous at will (can be). And of all people, I would think geeks would be codeing tooth and nail for this project. Anyone have such as P2P program in the works at Sourceforge? Hey, I'm ready...hook me up =)
Life is not for the lazy.
Right. Except that "stealing" music on P2P is NOT stealing, NOT a crime in any meaningful sense of the word. Copyright is legal fiction, doesn't mean anything to real people, never did, never will.
The people have spoken with their actions. P2P filesharing is not a crime.
Interestingly enough, metrics for piracy have only been around as long as the internet/p2p! Did the RIAA have any chance of checking up on how many people were making tape recordings of their friends music.. and the sharing that commenced.. and later with CDs? I think not. They have been using the same technology they decry as criminal to keep track of those same 'criminal' activites. There is precedent of course... drug stings comes to mind.
In any case, how has the market changed? Just because they have metrics to describe the amount of revenue they are losing to song swappers (not file swappers, there's a difference) doesn't mean the numbers have really changed all that much. When is the last time you asked a 'real world' friend to borrow a CD to make a copy?
So if this is factual then they are not losing any more revenue from song swapping than they have historically since the advent of consumer recordable media... so much for the arguement that song swapping is killing the recording industry. It's only with the introduction of the internet and p2p and corresponding digital footprints that they've been able to track said 'piracy' and give it a value.
Clearly then it isn't the everyday file swapping which has increased RIAA losses, it is RIAA business practices which have done so. IE: Music industry is killing Music industry, not song swapping.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Let us be swappers we'll copy our fortunes together
I've got some Matrix rips here on my drive
So we grabbed the latest anime
And gigs of cutie pie
and dialled up to look for Ameeeeericaaa...
--- Hot Shot City is particularly good.
She will have a big, fat, greasy bank accound of Bill Clinton (hell, she'd probably have his SOUL after what he supposedly told her recently).
But beyond that, not much.
And don't even dream of TV interviews, or news people putting you in a good shade of light. Media are one big percentage of the "content creators," remember. Not to mention that Disney owns ABC, and such.
In true Matrix fashion: "Tell me, Mrs. Clinton, what good is a popular viewpoint / political stance if nobody can hear you speak?"
My life in the land of the rising sun.
I got about 5 or 6 different email addresses, 10 different alias's.....hell, I can hardly remember who I am half the time, but atleast I don't get spam on my *real* email address. And thats the only thing that really matters right? ;)
If anyone asks, my name is Bubba,
an 86 year old female internet consultant living in Kabul, Afghanistan.
I'm into technology and sports, so please! Send me all your spy camara ads, because well I can always use an extra secret camara.
One can define morale as Kant did: you can only act in such a way that the maxime for your action can be universalized. Thus, if you copy music without the artist's permission, you must want everyone else in the universe to do the same thing. The implications of this is that some will continue to buy the same amount of CD's, but most will buy a lot fewer, and some will even quit buying CD's. This will drive many record companies out of business, leaving only the largest ones and ones with exceptionally enthusiastic customers. The only source of income for non-performing artists will mostly disappear. I do not believe illegal copying to be an act of morale; I believe it to be pure egoism. Therefore, I don't think most of the people who "pirate" will want it to be the law, but many people will say so, in order to fool themselves, so they can continue having a nice picture of themselves as good people ("I'm not hypocritical; I do the same thing I tell other people to do" does sound a bit like morale).
IMHO, piracy can be best compared to sneaking into a movie theater just after the movie has begun, and no further tickets will be sold anyway. The reasoning is left as an excercise to the reader.
About speeding: the people who design the roads know that a certain percentage of drivers will speed by a certain amount of km/h, so they simply adjust the signs accordingly down (an official at the road department was quoted saying this in the newspaper once). So when they want to people below 90 km/h, they can put up signs saying max. 60 km/h, and people will drive in 80 km/h, and everybody wins: the drivers are kept under the safety limit, and they even think they are getting there rather efficiently, since they are driving a bit too fast.
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Everyone in Canada put together. I bet in Canada though the percantage of p2p users is alot higher since more of us can read!
Yeah, we know all your schools are still like Saved By the Bell.
I never make a serious post, but really how seriously can you take an article that assumes to have known how many p2p users are out there?
I think there are probably more people using private servers or private channels (see irc) to obtain illicit data "STEALING".
I don't believe its stealing but corporate America and likewise those golden lined suit wearing CEOs believe they own everything, including ideas.
But hey the world we live in sucks, nobody wants to change it so we can just complain on a webpage that probably has more intelligence than the USA congress, but probably alot less productivity.
-CHEERS
[cx]
The analogy to speeding was a nice one, but a better one is videotape copying and cassette tape copying. Remember those technologies that have been around for years? Remember how the record/movie industry constantly complained about them? Remember how IT DIDN'T MATTER A DAMN because people still bought movies and still copied tapes and still listened to music just the same as they always have and always will.
In all fairness, tape copying is much more cumbersome and less rewarding: you get a substantial degradation of quality which increases at each generation, to achieve maximum quality you have to copy at play speed or less, the medium you copy to costs quite a lot of money when compared to lossy compressed audio on modern mass storage devices and you didn't have access to half of all music in the world within minutes. It is a pretty damn bad analogy.
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Three reasons I have broadband.
Email server
P2P
Gentoo
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
RIAA is going to always hav eproblems..oen cannot run back the fair use definitions brought on by inventiosn such as the Xeorox copier..which if we look at copyright law before the modern digital age is allowing people to commit felonies every day by just the act of copying a page of copyrighted material..
Here is to RIAA efforts at running the too top heavy Music inudstry into an early grave..
Don't Tread on OpenSource
The RIAA is like the voice that tells you not to press the big red button. It's going to make you do it. Just like parents telling their kids not to smoke pot.
The RIAA has inspired me to download the music from p2p, simply from the fact they harass innocent people.
Next time you want to spend the 16-20 on a CD, use the money for something else, donate to bitTorrent or another free software/OS you cherish.
Its debateable if file swapping if morally wrong at all. Some of us believe its a personal freedom, like freedom of speech, and that its not morally wrong but morally right.
Each of us have our own judgments about the morality and immorality of various acts. We don't have to agree about any of your points, however, to be able to mutually function in a society.
You don't need to agree with America's social norms to conform to them -- we don't have laws to make immoral things illegal, moral things immoral or immoral things moral -- we have laws to adjust and govern our conduct in accordance with the will of the majority, tempered by the Constitution.
You needn't agree with the principles for which these laws exist to be subject to them. That is the entire point of democracy. You may vote for representatives to pass or repeal laws you dislike, and are subject to them until you have so succeeded.
Gentoo and CVS. But let's not forget Quake. 56k'ers on a Quake or RtCW server are getting rarer and rarer these days. It's pretty much impossible to compete at all if you don't have DSL or Cable.
That's true, but I was referring more to the way media companies kept claiming it was going to drive them out of business. That and the attitude of most people to the morality of it, ie "it's against the law but everyone does it."
By reading this comment, you immediately waive any and all rights regarding it.
The fatal flaw is that the Constitution counted on a watchful populace that cared more about what their government was doing than on who was going to win American Idol and The Bachelorette. Or how much beer they had in the fridge. Or if they were getting enough sex. Pleasure is the real American idol.
Because copyright infringment isn't theft. You do not deprive the orignal owner of an item (which is what theft requires, see its definition). What this would be like is walking into a record store with a device that could read the contents of a CD without removing it from its case. You then proceed to duplicate the CDs you want, at your expense, and walk out. No physical good in teh store has been taken or damaged. I bet most police would have no idea what to do, supposing they even got called.
See the difference? If you steal something, you deprive the owner of it, because it is a physical good. They no longer have it and so have to replace it at their own expense. When you infringe on compyright, you make a new copy of information that you aren't legally entitled to. The orignal owner doesn't loose anything or indeed even notice.
Now I'm not trying to argue that means that we should just make copyright infringement legal, that wouldn't work, however it should be decriminalized. It is silly that stealing $1000 of actual goods is punished LESS than someone who copies $1000 worth of songs. $1000 or less worth of theft is only a class 6 felony in Arizona and punishable by 6 months in jail. Anything under $250 is a misdemeanor. Compare that to copyright infringment where you are now talking federal crime and $1000 gets you a year.
This is really out of whack. It is even worse because obviously, a large number of people do not consider it to be a serious offence (or they wouldn't do it). Laws are supposed to reflect the will of society in our country.
I really see this as no different than if speeding were to be criminalized, if you could go to jail just for exceeding the speed limit. Yes, there is sriminal speeding but it is STILL a misdemeanor. You ahve to do something really reckless to move up into the felony category. This is much like copyright infringment. It should be a civil offence unless someone is going above and beyond, ie profiting from it.
IT is just redicilous to have something that clearly many people do not consider serious and something that does not cause harm to be a felony the same as actual theft.
Ummm...let's see 2mil*21=42mil. Most prisons in the U.S.A. are overpopulated (i.e., beyond capacity) That's 21 times the *existing* prison population, and *far* beyond the prison system capacity.
They couldn't POSSIBLY imprison all 42 million. The capacity doesn't exist.
My journal has hot
Shareaza: A Spyware-free P2P application for disrciminating clients
Shareaza allows you to use one app for all the following downloads:
- Gnutella 1 (BearShare, LimeWire)
- Gnutella 2 (Shareaza)
- eDonkey2000
- BitTorrent!
</plug>Disclaimer: No, I don't work for em. Yes, I use 'Raza.
if such a huge number of people don't feel this is a problem, can't the laws be changed to reflect public opinion? i mean, why is it illegal in the first place? american laws are made by people who represent the public, so maybe it's time to change the laws to go along with the public.
...wasn't each song priced at $150,000?
If so, you've passed the $1,000 limit with a hefty margin. Also, didn't they rewrite the "commercial gain" thing so that sharing with the intent of gaining access to other copyrighted works also was considered "commercial gain"?
I don't think anyone have measured the actual number of downloads of works, only that they are shared publically to all that want them. Whatever RIAA math they come up with for estimating the loss, is bound to exceed $1000 by far.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
In the eyes of the public file swapping is as morally wrong as speeding on the NJ Turnpike.
Apparently not!
43 million americans make up a market whose voice will be heard.
They're using their grammar skills there.
1) They were (and are) simply better connected.
They united in backrooms everywhere and formed Political Action Committees (PACs). They used television and newspaper to spin their story to the heartstrings of Joe and Jane Sixpack. They understood that their best tool was the ability to come off as harmless. "A pail full of kittens", to quote a certain movie.
2) They are, often, better off financially.
How many poor gay men/women do you know? (And "I'm gay by virtue of being in a State Prison" doesn't count.)
True, you can actually create your own content and share this with the world. P2P is just a transport service, what are being transported are unessential. Just like DHL / UPS is a physical transport service. They dont give a shit about the contents inside the boxes, just that the box get from location A to B as fast as possible. In the same way the P2P companies should not care what are being transported in their service. If it's my homemade movie/song or a hollywood movie should not matter to them, becouse this is out of their responsibility and all content should be treated equally by them. RIAA and MPAA needs to understand this.
My 5 cents.
"When a few thousand people do it, it's a crime wave. When 43 million do it, it's a customer relations problem." -Don't remember who said that--
The Time Warner half may be a giant media corporation, but first and foremost, AOL is an internet service provider.
It could be argued that any increase in internet traffic directly results in a higher bottom line for their quarterly report (since AOL is undoubtedly paid for every byte that flows through its networks originating from smaller ISPs - roadrunner, earthlink, etc). It's called growth, and it's what fuels this stock market, as was witnessed by the implosion of dot-com stocks.
If AOL tracks the statistics on their network, they may realize that a huge percentage of their revenue stream comes in from p2p network traffic. This is probably a huge cash cow in terms of bandwidth resale.
Time Warner hasn't stopped growing by any appreciable rate. Neither has AOL. Winamp and Gnutella? How much traffic does this generate for AOL's networks? How much revenue? One can only imagine. As for mp3s being a detriment to TimeWarner's bottm line - as if there's a shortage of people buying music? I don't think so.
And didn't he say he was quitting, anyway?
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
50% of all the people that try and read an NY times story and are faced with the registration option, decide to NOT go through with the registration and leave the site. This has been the case since 1999 and they have opted to keep the registration based on the argument that they serve a "quality audience" rather than sheer numbers. I don't know if this stat has been published, but its known within the New York Times Digital company.
Oh yay, another idealistic "everything in the world should be free" post that hasn't thought about the consequences of what it advocates, preferring to take cheap shots at non-representative straw men. Let's see...
Bull. Most of these people agree that it's morally wrong, and know that they should be paying for it or not having it at all. They do it because they know they can (probably) get away with it.
Since most of your population decided to vote for the guys in the two big parties who put on a snazzy show, rather than investing a handful of hours doing their homework and voting for someone who might actually act in the best interests of the population. Until you do that, you're going to get a lot of rich people in government who get richer, and the stand-up guys who put moral integrity ahead of their wallets will be in a small, cherished minority.
The problem with democracy is that in its purest form, it only works in the presence of an informed and rational population (for some values of "informed" and "rational"). Your informed and rational population in the US spends more time watching American Idol than the news. Go figure.
It's curious, actually, that 1/6 figure mentioned in the original story, and the comparison to speeding made there. Statistically speaking, although many people speed, it's about the top 1/6 who speed dangerously enough to cause a higher accident rate. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they're also among the most vocal advocates of their own driving ability, and the fact that, as they see it, they're not doing anything wrong. It's only after the accident when they've taken a life and wrecked a family that they realise the consequences of their actions.
Mass copyright theft isn't, I hope, going to have such dire consequences, but the people who think they can carry on regardless without doing long term harm are kidding themselves. The big guys are big enough to play these games with them, but the small guys in the music biz are getting hurt already.
Because you didn't put the work in to make it, so you have no right to let them, maybe?
I love this bit from the original story the most:
They're not enthusiasts. They are criminals. You have a legal system that says so, and those laws are there for a good reason. Get over it. If you don't like it, lobby for someone to hit the price-fixing monopolies who abuse the intellectual property laws, but at least aim somewhere near the right target.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
The fatal flaw is that the Constitution counted on a watchful populace that cared more about what their government was doing...
If in the next election we all voted for the liberterians or the greens, do you really think they would hand over power?
I think your a wee bit to drunk on the ideals they drugged you with in "history" class.
The truth is people who use P2P to swap files illegally *are* criminals, and it's a very fine line morally what's right or wrong. For instance if someone is hungry and steals bread, is it illegal? Hell yes. If someone wants to steal music is it illegal? Hell yes. Do you think there should be some limit on how and when people can take music without paying for it? Well that's a different situation. Let's say for instance that I want a new CD that just came out. Instead of buying it, I go online and grab it with whatever flavor of P2P software exists. Is that illegal? Yes. Is that immoral? We'll that's a trickier question. Who am I stealing from? I'm stealing from the recording industry, and to some degree from the artists and songwriters. I'm always a little suspect when someone is making a political stand to not have to pay for entertainment. Or someone who thinks that the people selling them someone are "crooks" and therefore "deserve to be stolen from". Often these are middle or upper-middle class white men who say "Because I deserve it, and I don't want to pay for it". It's never people saying "My kids deserve a good education" or "My family deserves to eat", or "I deserve to have a good job, where I'm treated with respect". It's music, or cable television. What if I was walking down the street and saw a car with some CDs in it? Could I legally take the CDs out of that car? Does it matter if the car is an old Honda, or a BMW, or a delivery truck for Walmart? I might argue that if I take the music from the back of a Walmart truck, they can afford it, and they're just a heartless corporation, so that's OK. If I take it from a BMW, I might argue that this person can obviously afford it, and they can obviously afford a computer to re-download all the music a steal from them anyway, so I'm not even costing them anything (other than a few cents for new CDs to burn onto, and some time) by taking it. If one house on the block has 3 TV sets and only 2 people living in the house, and one house doesn't have any, is it OK for the person with no TV sets to take one of the 3? Obviously the people in the house with 3 will be OK with only 2 TV sets. I'll probably get modded down for this since most geeks are very pro-free music, but I honestly feel if you're going to have some strong political views about something, it's a sorry state of the world if the thing you care about the most is if you have to pay $200 per year for 25 new CDs, or if you can get them for free without shame or fear of being prosicuted.
The whole idea of a representational democracy is to give "the people" a say
Uh, what country are you thinking of? In America, the amount of 'say' one gets depends only on the size of the check you write.. ie: the most money wins.. pure and simple..
that is how we got the DMCA, MS monopoly-legality, infinate copyrights..and other such stupidity)... certainly none of this is in the interest of 99.9% of the voters, now is it... but it got bought (err, passed) anyways..
some democracy.. (at least we still have the right to say this though.. until somebody buys a law making it illegal to criticize American style 'the govt is for sale' big money corruption too)
You have to realize, though, that the MPAA makes back their money in the opening weekend! When they go to DVD, it is pure profit. Personally, I think this is great-- I enjoy seeing a movie in the theater, and am willing to fork over $20 for two tickets and maybe some popcorn.
Unfortunately, the recording industry does not have that same initial cash flow to cover the costs of development. Each live performance has the same costs as the last, so live performances only help exposure. Radio play costs as much as it pays. Their only means to recover money is through sales of CDs.
They screwed up. They didn't realize that marginalizing 10% of their profits by allowing per-track downloads 5 years ago could have actually softened the problem that they face today: people have found an alternative to thier lock on the distribution channels with P2P and MP3s.
Such is life. No turning baqck the clock, and I can't imagine what they could do to add value back to their offerings.
The word "felony" doesn't appear in either the cited NY Times article or the cited law, so why claim that all these people are undicted felons?
A cd stolen is a loss to the store. They bought it for X$, got 0$ back. So they lost X$.
What happens if you had pirated the CD instead? The CD would still be sitting on the shelf, so they'd have X$ in unsold inventory. They have lost nothing.
Take three people, A B and C. A sells music, B and C are consumers, but can only afford one song each. Let's say A sells song 1 to B, and song 2 to C. No more sales can be made. There is no more wealth to move.
But B and C can copy each others songs, making a pareto optimal improvement. Some are better off with noone being worse off, and all maximize what they can achieve.
In short, P2P copying produced wealth that didn't exist before. In the same spirit I suppose you could say that all the people with gigs upon gigs of mp3s are all millionaires. But to pretend that this wealth existed before the copying and is "lost income" to the RIAA is silly. The copying creates the wealth, and if everybody stopped copying there simply would be no wealth for anyone.
So the question is, if I could see and hear any work in existance without regard for copyright, is then the world a better or worse place than before? Under the current pricing, we would all be insanely "rich". On the other hand, there would be extremely little commercial interest in creating new works.
Copyright law tries to balance these two points up against each other, but has gone way too far in favor of the copyright holder, concentrating too much wealth with the copyright holders and too little with the public.
Ideas are not the property of the copyright holder, nor any natural right. The entire term IP is double-speak. Copyright is a time-limited exclusive licence from "the people" on the reproduction rights, granted as a reward for having created it. And it is within the power of the people to revoke or shorten that licence, at least that is the theory of democracy.
Laws change when enough people want it changed. But between now and then, people do what they feel is what it should be. People drank during the prohibition of alcohol, now many people smoke pot. Are they criminals according to the letter of the law? Sure. Would they feel as criminals if they were caught? No.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Just yesterday there was an article on /. lambasting for allegedly (though this word seemed to have been dropped from teh accusations) violating the GPL and people were calling for the death of Linksys. How dare a company steal the work of the OSS community. Oh, wait, you mean it's morally OK to violate copyrights now? Is this one of those days of the week things? Sunday it's bad to violate copyright, Monday it's OK?
I wish people would start calling this what it really is and stop all the bullshit. You are basically too fucking cheap to purchase movies and music and instead of simply doing without you resort to violating copyrights. I say this, what goes around comes around. The next time Linksys or some other company uses GPL'ed code remember your stance here.
I am not surprised by this figure, I was discussing filesharing in the pub on the weekend with some of my friends who are not at all geeky and have never heard of /.
The five of them have widley varying careers and none of them would consider themselves criminals. 2 of them were annoyed about the DeCss saga, 1 was buying a CD Burner to download stuff and burn CD's, another was getting Broadband to download stuff faster and another was already downloading stuff. The other 2 don't have computers.
All these people and most other people I have spoken to do realise that they are probably committing a crime but quite frankly they don't care because (a) they are getting music for free and (b) who cares if the record companies are losing money over it.
Some justifications for those reasons:
People have been getting music for free off their friends for years, there are some favourite albums which have at various times been passed around 10+ people in our extended group over 10 or more years.
In the UK the record companies seem only interested in setting up the next Pop Stars / Pop Idol / Shit manufactured act they can squeeze money from. Very rarely are they promoting any band which people like me are actually interested in - last night I saw on TV that Morrisey is unable to get a new record contract when bozo bands like One True Voice just have to turn up at an audition looking nice and sign away any artistic control over their 'career' from that point on.
The record companies really are bringing this on themselves and no amount of whining and threats from them are going to stop this kind of behaviour.
That bit about speeding is absolutely ridiculous. A percentage of drivers will always speed, but that percentage will always change. I guarantee if you set a speed limit of 20km/h on a major six-lane highway you'll get a helluva lot of people breaking it.
Similarly, I suppose, if you set a $20 pricetag on a $0.50 piece of plastic and metal, you'll get a helluva lot of people copying it.
Basically, people know what they're willing to pay (or drive at), and if the price (or speed limit) is too high, they'll disobey the law. This, as I understand it, is pretty much the economic theory of the black market. There'll always be one, but if you have reasonable prices (or speed limits), it'll be negligible. There'll always be the skinflints (speedsters) who'll copy (speed), but most people will obey the law.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
What, surely you jest. Are you telling me that the War on Drugs and the Prohibition made otherwise law abiding citizens criminals! What, and there is no Santa Clause either!
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
That's exactly right. This is why in such a case (sizeable part of the population becomes unruly) governments usually build concentration camps.
Did you know you can fertilize your lawn with used motor oil?
It's just nice being able to pop in the damn disk, and play the damn game. This from a man who thinks pre-compiled Linux distros are for children and newbies. Go figure.
I do at least pipe the Video output through the TV tuner card.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
His goof was pulling all of his stupid crap in the first year of his Presidency. Time enough for us to see the emperor indeed has no clothes. And no, I'm not even going to get in to 9/11. I'm just talking about his Economic Programs (or lack thereof), trying to de-ball Environmental regulations, and the policies of Don't Tax and Spend More.
Residents of Texas, please tell me: Are you better off today than you were before Dubya?
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Yeah, I can see it now ... P2P concentration camps. 42 million people enslaved to search the Internet and P2P networks for illegally-posted ??AA-owned material. Thousands of course will be taken to the "showers" first.
My journal has hot
Have you noticed that the same contractors who build the prisons also build the schools?
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
My solution's always been to buy the band's entire in-print catalog at their concert. Sure, this means I blow 100 bucks when I go to a truly inspiring concert. But it sure does hammer home the idea that concerts are the ideal locus for this sort of thing.
Nowadays, RantRadio and whatever concerts pass through town are where I get my musical exposure...
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
Yeah, my senior year of high school I attended the local public school, Redford Union H.S. Only that was the year they decided too many people were skipping classes, so they locked all of the doors leading to the outside except for one. (Which was probably illegal due to fire regulations, but I digress).
;)
So the students renamed it RUSHA (pronounced as 'Russia') -- Redford Union Senior High Academy. Heh. Mad props to anyone from RU High? who attended that year and recognizes this little piece!
My journal has hot
...posting this as a new thread because it grew a little too large and interesting to leave as a comment.
If people like you succeed in your apparent wish to get rid of them, you'll find out the hard way. The promoters might not be worth what they charge at present, but pretending they don't do anything is just silly.
Sure it will become apparent. Any change makes *something* apparent. Whether or not the change would be good is irrelevant. It's what people want. They'll all find out what the result of their actions is when it's all said and done. If the result is not something people are happy with, they will come up with a solution. If it is, they'll roll with it for a while until something else comes out that will change their perception of the original.
Yep, no-one likes those cookie cutter bands and their cheap, cloned pop from yesteryear. If the record industry just produced new, original material like all these Indie bands, they'd do much better. That's why Britney, Kylie et al. get download figures in the millions over P2P, while most of us have never even heard of the random bands a few people cite in each thread like this one, and often don't like what we do encounter enough to either download it or go out and buy it.
Your argument here is baseless and pointless. People like Britney because she has a hot body. Some like her because she can sing well (that's also debatable given current technology). People like every artist for some reason. What does it matter if they are backed by a large company and the RIAA? It does NOT. What matters is that they have something people want; it does not matter what it is. Then, they must make sure their work is distributed so that other people will become interested.
What would happen to the "cookie-cutter" bands/artists that have nothing to offer except looks? They'll become models instead of pop singers. If they don't have a music product that people want to listen to, why are they a singer?
What would happen if the same bands/artists DID have something to offer? They'd promote their material to radio stations, people would like it, and it would become popular. They would then be able to get advertising deals (yes, agents can still negotiate deals) or other promotional spots. They would be able to have concerts and other events just the way they do today.
If the RIAA did not hold all of the keys, the industry would have to adjust. It would have to adjust to support candid presentation and true feedback. Once the feedback is presented, artists would still have their place. In this model, people would be able to truly determine who makes it or not, and that would probably ensure the music remains fresh and desireable to the public.
What does song-swapping do to the industry (realistically)? I'll tell you what it does - not a hell of a lot. Another poster mentioned that song swapping was around long before the Internet and P2P; they were absolutely correct. If songs couldn't be swapped over P2P anymore (for whatever reason), people would swap songs in some other way. The worst-case scenario is that we'd have to go back to the days of manually copying works and trading them by hand with friends.
What happens if P2P goes away? The industry loses a source of market research. The industry loses free publicity and exposure. The industry (specifically individual labels) loses prospective customers (how can you know you'd like to purchase something if you haven't heard it)?
I can't think of anything good that happens. The industry will be able to determine what artists succeed and fail. They will be able to set a price on that music, and they will be able to track the sale of albums to primary purchasers only. They can't track who trades it and where it ends up.
The last time I checked, this (the U.S.) was a representative republic, not a democracy, not a dictatorship. If the RIAA is in cahoots with the U.S. gov't to attempt and turn this representative republic into a di
The number of times I've had to get a crack for a game I've legally purchased just to play it comes to about three times a year. How sad.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
I wonder how many Senators have kids with a pile of 'illicit' mp3s/warez/mp4s.
100 Senators * 1/6 = 16.7
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
Recording companies bitch about losing their profits all the time and in order to shut them up we can do several things; here is one idea. How about outsourcing our entertainment industry? If recording companies are able to find people who will perform for less while keeping CD prices the same, they will receive their profits and forget about all copyright issues of today. I bet you we can find a lot of people in Asia and Eastern Europe that will sing, dance and do whaterver the industry wants them for like $4/day. All you have to do is to give them clean water, brand name clothing from thrift stores and some food. That's it. No red carpets, no news about their love affairs, no diamonds and other crap that comes with fame. At the end, we might end up with better performers, less idoitism and lower costs! I bet you: as long as money's floowing to record companies we'll get away with p2p, copyright and other crap issues that pollute /.
Here's a scary thought... P2P software is usually bundled with spyware...
RIAA: "1 in 6 use P2P? Hurry up and legislate before it's 3 in 6 and that whole Democracy thing takes over." It's a joke, not a troll damnit!
LilMikey.com... I'll stop doing it when you sto
Just because you use P2P does NOT automatically mean you are committing a crime..
The assumption is rather offensive as well.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Far from me to compare IP law to what did the nazi during WW2, but : quote " You have a legal system that says so, and those laws are there for a good reason. Get over it." It was a crime to protect Jew during WW2 and could lead to your deportation and execution in the best case, and in the worst case they took your family with you. So you would have respected those law ? Remmember, that the gorvernement make a law doesn't make it a freaking stone-slab-graved-god-own's-word. .
You have what you call a moral responsability yourself to think and not follow laws blealately (sorry can't remmember the spelling). And right now the IP law in all country are going too far. As other US law and "acts" but since I am not an US I let you deal with your own muck yourself.
IP law interrest me right now because they are going too far and breaking the balance with what the GOVERNEMENT should have in sight : PUBLIC trust and correctly handling the citizen. Intellectual property is only an ARTIFICIAL stuff made by the governement to encourage research in many form in their countries. When this artifical construct stamped on the public well being for the profit of few then there is something deeply wronmg with the system.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Well, I usually appear to the casual observer to be stoned, so I guess that in the RIAA's eyes, that's the 'equivalent' of smoking pot all of the time.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Law is an expression of the public will. Everyone who does anything in law knows this. So, if 1 in 6 Americans use P2P software, with many of them not even knowing that it is illegal (my mother assumes that one can copy cds, as long as you don't sell them) then wouldn't these laws not be an expression of public will? Now, I know that someone might... er... will reply and say, "WELL WHAT ABOU TMURDER IF EVERYON KILLED OU WOULD DIE@!!!!11!" Well, murder is an inherently evil act, but P2P sharing? If you believe that it is inherently evil, then you should quit your job and go to work for the RIAA.
this makes me wonder: when enough people do something illegal, does it cease to be illegal? when does something that's "wrong" become acceptable? when it's 5 out of 6 americans?
i remember this line about being judged by a "jury of your peers", which seems to mean: if they all think what you're doing is fine, whether it's illegal or not, it's fine.
That bit about speeding is absolutely ridiculous. A percentage of drivers will always speed, but that percentage will always change. I guarantee if you set a speed limit of 20km/h on a major six-lane highway you'll get a helluva lot of people breaking it.
This is completely irrelevant. I didn't say the percentage was not a function of the speed and the driving conditions. Neither is unrealistic scenerios relevant for the argument. I was trying to explain why the speeding most people currently do isn't a problem or morally wrong, while the illegal copying many people do is; there is no way to adjust the music listening public to copying just the right amount of music illegally, because the right amount is zero. You can control the speed at which people drive, by designing roads and putting up road signs accordingly. Everybody knows that a lot of people will speed, and a slightly intelligent person will know that the speed will to a great degree depend upon the speed limit. People speeding on the best highways in Norway (speed limit 90km/h) drive a lot slower than people speeding at comparable highways in continental Europe (speed limit 120km/h).
Similarly, I suppose, if you set a $20 pricetag on a $0.50 piece of plastic and metal, you'll get a helluva lot of people copying it.
Do you honestly believe that production cost of the strings of 0's and 1's on DVD's or CD's is negligible?
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I bet Hilary Rosen uses Kazaa and Morpheus...
I think his situation is the very point people are making about copy protection schemes/file format issues. Now in this case, it was only a worthless copy of M$ crap, so he's basically lucky. OOo will read all his old files, but what if he was locked into a file format and could not reinstall without paying for something all over again? Imagine you go buy a car and lose your keys. Should really have to pay $20,000 just to have a key made from the key code?
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
If you can get away with it, you can get away with it. The average person is a petty crook.
Or do you think that 1/6th of Americans, every single one of which is wealthy enough to own a computer, never buys CDs? Please ... this is their base of support they're calling criminals.
Have you noticed that the same contractors who build the prisons also build the schools?
Yes, I've heard this before. However, I would be really interested in knowing *which* contractors, or at least which prisons and schools...it would be interesting to contrast their designs.
If anyone could provide links, maybe we could all learn something from it.
http://xkcd.com/386/
OR, it could be that there is no easy way to enforce the laws as they currently stand.
If everyone were forced to buy every bit of music they ever got their hands on, because every computer that existed, and every peripheral, contained DRM support, would the people rebel? Would there be rioting in the streets? I don't think so. They just do it because it's easy. If it weren't so easy, they wouldn't do it. They'd buy the stuff and wish they had more money to buy more...
If it were easy to steal from stores, eventually, everyone would just start taking what they wanted. If those people got together and made a law to allow wholesale theft of clothing, it wouldn't really be in their best interests.
Similarly, we don't know that it would be in our best interests to allow file trading to continue unrestricted. It might in fact be a bad decision for a lot of reasons...
That if it they could just download the songs they want that they'd pay for them.
That not enough money goes to the artist, and they don't want to support that sort of system.
This is bullshit.
Even if systems were in place to allow people to download as many individual songs as they wanted for only a buck a song, and even if mechanisms were in place to guarantee that 50% of all revenues would go to the artist, piracy wouldn't diminish... In fact, it would probably continue to rise. The reason people download this stuff isn't because of any higher morality, it's because they want it, and they know their chances of getting caught is next to nil. To make an analogy, how many people speed all the time that wouldn't speed if they knew there was a copy watching them? Morality, you see, isn't affected by laws or the chance of getting caught - if people believe something is morally right, they'd do it regardless of what the chances of getting caught were.
Piracy will only continue to grow, but that's not a reason to abolish copyrights. Hell, if anyone advocates the abolition of copyrights, they probably don't even care that the artist doesn't get a fair cut of the money - they just want what they want without having to pay for it. Somehow I think most pirates are in this category, although they may not admit it.
In my opinion, musicians, writers, and software artists who have chosen to seek compensation for their copyrighted works are often deserving of the compensation they are seeking. And if it does not deserve compensation, why the hell should I waste my resources (time downloading, hard drive/CD space etc) on it?
The only thing that would ever truly end piracy would be such a gross violation of human and civil rights that it's not even worth mentioning. But then, you pretty much say the same thing about almost any crime. The most we can do is to continue to punish the infringers that are caught to the fullest extent that the law permits. It's not a very effective deterrent, but it's all we've got.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
It always amazes me when posts like this actually sound like they really do believe what they're saying, that ideas and culture, yes, your very mind is a product that is bought and sold and that's the way it should be. Well, let me give you a different perspective:
Ideas and culture are the communication medium society needs to function and survive. It's really what separates humans from animals. And it's as natural and as free as breathing. For a while certain among us have found a way to make money be imposing artificial scarcity on that free flow of information. But any attempt to cross basic human nature like the *AA's have is bound to end in failure. Copyright was an experiment, and like communism, which also tried to cross basic human nature, it has failed. What we're seeing now in filesharing is not a massive criminal spree but human nature reasserting itself.
If you really don't want others echoing your ideas and music and poetry, etc., then keep that slow-jam to yourself. Please.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
I've learned how to vote on the subject. I look for the Compact Disk logo. No Logo, No Sale. So far I've managed to escape the cripled CD. Only the kids managed to pick up one. When it couldn't properly be ripped for the MP3 player, they learned to look for the label also. Remember you do have a vote that they will hear. It's called dollars. If no logo stuff doesn't sell at all, the artists will push for their stuff to be on a format the consumers will buy.
Have you run into any indie recording with DRM junk? I've not seen it yet. So far it's been mostly EMI and SONY that most often has the Compact Disk logo missing.
The truth shall set you free!
So I guess if 1 in 6 Americans supported slavery, we should start putting people in chains again? The percentage of the population that believes something to be morally right/wrong has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on whether it is, in fact, morally right/wrong. Logicians call that the informal fallacy of argumentum ad populum. Apparently, some aren't aware of it.
here is no way to adjust the music listening public to copying just the right amount of music illegally
Of course there is, and retailers (in IP and non-IP) do it all the time; they hike up prices to compensate for losses. It's exactly the same as your speeding analogy; If people are gonna drive at 10 over the limit, and we want em to do 100, we set the limit at 90. If 10 people are gonna copy our CD, we'll bump up the price of the other 90.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Come now, I've driven on the NJ turnpike, and FAR more than 1 in 6 speed on it. In fact, I've seen shots fired for not doing so :]
Unfortunately changing the policy is reducing the amount of software I'm willing to try. I don't like buying a pig in a poke.
Examples I've run into. Hasbro Battleship (I know old game) It won't run unless you set your colors to 8. I don't reconfigure my machine each time I want to change games.. Grrr.
Nerf Arena Blast. Unable to find out pre purchase if it will spawn players or if seprate copies are needed for LAN play. The Demo worked great, The retal copy bought for a lan party required a CD in the drive unlike the demo. Grrr.. Other games I have will Spawn players for a LAN game without requiring multiple lisences & disks... Of course after opening the poke to see the pig.. It's not returnable. So the dilema is Do I pirate extra copies, Write nasty letters, or turn to P-P to get the scoup pre-purchase.
Epilog... I used the free demo version for the LAN party. It workde great. I can now enjoy the retail version after I found a hack to run it without the CD in the drive. Now it runs like the demo. I love Google!
The truth shall set you free!
If everyone were forced to buy every bit of music they ever got their hands on, because every computer that existed, and every peripheral, contained DRM support, would the people rebel? Would there be rioting in the streets?
Nope, no rioting. But you can bet your bottom dollar there'd be rebellion. People would hack their systems to remove DRM restrictions, warez groups would strip DRM protection from songs, hell, independant artists would produce DRM-less songs to get more airplay.
A post-DRM world would be pretty much the same as a pre-Internet world in terms of copyright violation. It'd still happen, but it'd be a pain in the neck and be done by less people. And for the added kick up the pants, when the DRM-protected contents drops out of fashion, it also drops out of existence, because the only people who can play it then are the rebels, and human art/history/creativity is lost.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Because if there is, "Why do you people keep contradicting yourselves? Are there actually multiple people here, with differing opinions?" should be on it.
Hopefully, this wasn't a statistic reported by Jayson Blair before he was fired.
-Everyone laughs at lemmings but no one ever wants to admit to ever being one.
Dear RIAA,
The problem is not that the world is full of greedy people who all want to steal your product. The problem is basic economics.
You make a product that can be duplicated on a massive scale for close to zero cost. Simple supply and demand tells us that as the supply of your product increased, it's cost decreases.
After a week, your product is worthless. Changing laws will not change this basic fact. It is up to *you* to find a new business model.
-Z
There are almost as many P2P users as there are people with no healthcare coverage in that fine land of America!
The world is really impressed!
Man...not only does the world post as AC on slashdot, but the world talks like Bob Dole.
I'm really impressed!
(also, flamebait or no, you should know that healthcare coverage != treatment here. coverage is for people who can afford it, treatment is for everyone.)
(also also, healthcare coverage wouldn't be so damned expensive here if people didn't file so many freaking frivolous medical lawsuits)
(also also wik...llamas!)
http://xkcd.com/386/
Well, you're right about that. Everyone would try to hack the stuff... But if it were in the processors, there wouldn't be too much anyone could do except develop their own processors...
I think that we have to implement DRM, but we have to do it in an intelligent way, implementing hard-coded limits on file protections, so the works are automatically available to the public when the time limit is up, or when the author fails to re-register for his protections... Something like that...
My first impression of the waiting room was "Damn, this is just like home room." Lots of long corridors with sealed windows, all meeting at critical nodes. That same cinder-block construction, with the same linolium floor. One visiting room had the same sort of chairs and tables I'd used in middle school. Another had a visiting room that looked just like the faculty lounge.
Think about it, how many of you remember the absolutely terrible traffic flow of your schools? How everyone seemed to have to pile through one particular intersection. It makes sense for a prison, but I think a lot of times they just cut and paste for schools.
There is also a whole lot of really cool video equipment and automatic doors. If you ever get the chance to visit a prison (and I mean VISIT, not STAY) I highly suggest it for all geeks.
If you want 2 buildings to campare: Hatboro Horsham High School, and the Montgomery County Correctional Facility. The overall layout may be different, but the details...
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
I was trying to explain why the speeding most people currently do isn't a problem or morally wrong, while the illegal copying many people do is; there is no way to adjust the music listening public to copying just the right amount of music illegally, because the right amount is zero. You can control the speed at which people drive, by designing roads and putting up road signs accordingly. Everybody knows that a lot of people will speed, and a slightly intelligent person will know that the speed will to a great degree depend upon the speed limit. People speeding on the best highways in Norway (speed limit 90km/h) drive a lot slower than people speeding at comparable highways in continental Europe (speed limit 120km/h).
Wow. So basically you're saying that since breaking the speed limit is *expected* and can be *planned for*, that speeding is not a crime, or just that it is not morally wrong?
I don't think you'll be able to explain how speeding is 'not a problem and not morally wrong' when speeders have killed many people, but trading files (which hasn't killed anyone to date) *is*.
By your definition, shoplifting isn't a crime since stores know about how much they will lose to shoplifters and raise prices accordingly. Just because a law has expectations of being broken does not mean that it is either morally correct or morally incorrect. (Although I personally believe that a law which cannot be enforced or which is selectively enforced should be removed, it has nothing to do with morality, merely logic.)
Also, for the record, I do believe that theft is wrong. However, if I can 'take' a copy of something, and leave you with the exact same thing you had before, I don't see how that's been 'stolen.' Now, if someone prevented the music industry from using their own artists' music...I just don't see how it's piracy when the original is untouched.
http://xkcd.com/386/
Morality: "Thou shalt not worship a graven image". Next time you go to church, take a look at the back - you'll see a figurine of a blocke nailed to a dod of wood. In other words - a graven image. Doh!
:)
Ask yourself how many people are praying to the *object*, believing that *it* will answer their prayers? There's a *huge* difference between a reminder or devotional aid and worshipping a graven image. One could also argue that you worship what you are totally devoted to. If you're totally devoted to that figure, to the exclusion of what it represents, you're worshipping it. If money comes before everything else to you, you are worshipping it. Same thing with yourself. If you put yourself before everything and everyone else, you are worshipping yourself. Just having something around, even important symbols, does not equal worship. Now, if instead of the cross, you had an image of the pope in every church, and people bowed or knelt to that image, and prayed to that image, and believed that the image had some sort of special powers....well then you might have a point. Personally, I prefer to worship at home, with people who believe what I do. (since I don't really like organized anything) However, that doesn't mean that I suddenly believe churchgoers everywhere are idolaters, and neither should you
http://xkcd.com/386/
Thats another great radio station. Have grown up on staple of BBC, VoA, Radio Australia and (what was then) Radio Moscow during childhood in India. Didn't understand communist/capitalist propoganda back then, but the Russian english accept sure was closer to Americal accent than British. Australian accent was, well Australian. Also heard bits of Dueshe Welle.
...
We remember waking up at nights to listen to brtish top 20 charts on BBC, and Billboard top 10 on VoA. VoA was hosted by Ray macdonald (if I remember correctly) who got married to a Calcutta girl. Then cam MTV which destroyed the snob-value of tracking charts
DXing is as addictive as Slashdot.
So basically you're saying that since breaking the speed limit is *expected* and can be *planned for*, that speeding is not a crime, or just that it is not morally wrong?
I didn't place the word "most" in front of "people" accidentaly. Neither did I say speeding is not criminal, but I said that most people's speeding is not a problem or morally wrong. Interpreting this as "speeding is [universally] not morally wrong" makes it seem like you wanted to misinterpret.
I don't think you'll be able to explain how speeding is 'not a problem and not morally wrong' when speeders have killed many people
The speeding is not the problem, and it's not even the only cause of the problem (i.e. traffic accidents). One cause is that you got into the car in the first place. Driving unreasonably unsafe is also a cause, and doesn't follow with neccesity from driving above speed limit. Driving below the speed limit can also be unsafe, and even morally wrong. Driving safely at whatever speed is what's morally correct, and that's what most people try to do.
However, if I can 'take' a copy of something, and leave you with the exact same thing you had before, I don't see how that's been 'stolen.'
I haven't said "stolen" either. I said the best comparasion was sneaking into a theatre after no more tickets can be sold. The same people who copy illegally would probably do that, if they could be completely sure to get away with it.
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Of course there is, and retailers (in IP and non-IP) do it all the time; they hike up prices to compensate for losses. It's exactly the same as your speeding analogy
Copying illegally would correspond to driving at infinite speed; when you copy illegally you aren't even slightly paying attention to the price. Hence, it's not an analogy, which is what I was trying to explain.
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Literal copying of entire programs has nothing to do with reinventing a wheel. It is simply wholesale appropriation of expression.
What copyright does is force everyone to reinvent the wheel over and over again to avoid being sued, this slows progress.
Herein lies the beauty of intellectual property law. You are 100% correct that nothing is written or invented without standing "On the Shoulders of ye Giants." (OTSOG). Nothing. Not fundamental pioneering invention, not incremental improvement. Nothing.
For this reason, OTSOG is a fundamental policy that is balanced against other policies, such as the decision of society to provide limited monopolies to promote the progress of science and the useful arts. OTSOG is one of the KEY factors in driving the case law construing the limits of copyright.
This is why copyright does not have the effect you describe. In particular, copyright does not protect ideas, just their expression. Independent coding of an idea, even if it results in a verbatim copy, is not infringement. Scenes a faire, even if it involves wholesale copying of the original, are not protected. Fair use is not protected.
In short, you are correct, if by "reinvent the wheel," you mean a freedom to wholly appropriate the work of another without consent. I am not certain this is a bad thing. But you are entirely wrong if you think that you are not free to use the wheel as often as you like to the extent we are discussing ideas, concepts, algorithms and general coding principles.
Also the EFF will be running ads in Rolling Stone next month asking if enthusiasts are tired of being treated like criminals.
But they are criminals! I am one myself. I use P2P quite a lot, but only for downloading and sharing copyrighted stuff.
What else are you supposed to use it for?
Some may wonder why the RIAA is fighting internet music and not trying to make money off of it. The case that music sharing decreases cd sales is weak at best, not to mention that there is plenty of money to be made with mp3's. But the RIAA fights it tooth and nail.
Quite simply, internet music makes the RIAA obsolete. Take Apple's iTunes for example. Anyone from any label can put their tracks on iTunes. All labels are equal. There is no difference between an RIAA label and an indie. Also take Pearl Jam for instance. Their contract expired, so they decided to distribute their music themselves. If they are successful, imagine the impact on the RIAA if other major acts go to direct sales instead of an RIAA contract.
The RIAA is a middleman, nothing more. Internet music allows artists to cut out the middleman and sell directly to customers. There will be no need for the RIAA anymore.
If a new band wants to give away some or all of their music, that is entirely up to them, and they have every right to do so as far as I'm concerned. If they're smart enough to use P2P or other technology to get their name known, get more gigs or whatever then good for them, they deserve the benefits they'll receive.
But on the flip side, you only have to know a few people who are professional musicians to see how much effort they put in. We're talking about the kind of people who play gigs in local clubs and bars for their basic income, and support that with sales of CDs and such where they play. Don't you think these guys, just trying to make a living, deserve a bit of credit for the effort they make?
And yet more than once in recent months, people I know personally who play in bands have found their own music ripped right off a CD someone's bought and shoved onto P2P. These aren't big bucks megacorps, they're family men trying to support wives and kids, or young people trying to save up to buy their first home. Tell me that P2P isn't hurting them.
No, I have no proof I can put in a post here that this is the case, and yes, you have to be wary of random anecdotes in a thread like this. But aside from being a shill for some megacorp -- and anyone who cares to check my posting history is likely to figure out the truth of that one pretty quickly -- what motivation would I have to make this up?
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
On this topic, I happened across a re-release of Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" CD. I passed it up because it was in SACD format--I didn't like having to put it back, but I didn't want to take it home and find out my CD-Rom couldn't read it, either.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
Lets see, you called him (rightly so) a "wanker" and a "cunt". I'll assume you are from Austrailia.
That's a hell of a lot, considering only 20 million Americans smoked pot this year.
Just follow the day, and reach fo
Counter-strike is the reason I have broadband.
Sure I enjoy the faster loadtimes for web-pages and the occasional P2P, but I needed the broadband so I could continue my internet gaming after leaving school.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
No wrath. Just the simple fact that if people invent words and other people start using them, they become words.
How do you think languages were created? Or the word "you" as opposed to "thou"? Jesus.
HI, MY NAME IS ISAAC.
Speeding is a public safety issue (people are more likely to die if you break speed limits) people generally do not have their life or limbs put at risk through copyright infringement.
Though, their life savings do seem to be at risk!
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
Yes well, 'same feel' 'same look' 'same kinda building materials' doesn't = same contractor. I want actual examples so that I can point out in an repeatable fashion the differences/similarities. I would like to know if the same people that build the schools really *do* build the jails. All I want is some hard data on the subject. Of course, I don't want it bad enough to expend much effort searching for it, then verifying it, then re-verifying it (after all, I have work to do, or at least that's my story)....so if you guys don't either, I won't blame you :)
http://xkcd.com/386/
Your identity is "Kjella." And I didn't even have to get a court order to figure that out.
But RIAA and Apple are working together here.
I didn't read the article, I tire of creating fake infor to register for the NYT, and I don't bother to remember the login info I make up each time.
Anyway... A lot more that 43 million Americans use P2P software. People seem to forget (or never realize) that HTTP is the ultimate P2P protocol on the Internet. The most popular content downloaded is HTML web pages.
Web servers are nothing more than fancy file servers, that take a request from a client and send out the appropriate content/page. The network is distributed, such that the content is not maintained or controlled by any one entity or server, and all connections are made peer to peer, no intervening servers are required.
While there are no "live" searches, that would be an interesting addition to a web server. If you could send a web search query "live" across the Internet, each participating node in the network passing on your request, and returning results back to you. This would allow you to build and "all internet" search engine without having to create any massive data-store.
So... who wants to overlay the napster/morpheus/grokster type live searches over HTTP and HTML?
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
see, that's the problem with off-topic modding fanatics. They can't accept humor, they think that everything has to be exactly debating this topic that they are supposed to get all worked up about.
Dear loser moderators,
It is about time you all get laid, relax, have a drink, and pass the blunt. You will thank me in the morning for this advice
YOU SUCK BALLS!
The FCC can ease up regulations on big companies but we cant have regulations eased up on us?
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Perhaps build something like this into Nullsofts Waste network?
Anyone interest in trying to do this, respond to this post.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
The rest of the research I leave to you. For an entertaining read, check out the lawsuit between the General Contractor that built the Hatboro-Horsham High School and the township.
For the record, I grep up in the neighboring township of Upper Moreland. The utter gloom of HH's new (as of 1990) building was a local legend.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
One other bit of information to help lock it all down: all of this took place in Montgomery County, PA. Sometimes cross referencing contracts by county is helpful.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
No, you can't find a DreamTrybe disc in stores right now. Maybe once their first disc's released, it'll be easier to find. Same problem with Six Mile Bridge - although I can find a Maggie Drennon disc MUCH easier. (I'll give you Ceili's Muse - I believe all their work's out of print. But "it's no longer made" is a different form of scarcity than "it doesn't exist yet".)
FWIW, I have found Velvet Hammer discs at Wherehouse Music before.
"Stupid! Stupid stupid stupid stupid! I touched the hot wire right there - I'm an idiot!"
...then I don't ever want to be Right!
It's amazing how much you miss it when you move away from the Garden state. People drive like idiots where I'm living...slow idiots.
Fast idiots, I can deal with.
Favorite
When it couldn't properly be ripped for the MP3 player, they learned to look for the label also."
I just take it back and exchange it for another copy of the same CD, since this one's defective. What? This one is defective, too? Well, let's try one more...just one more...this time for sure. What do mean you're out of the CD?
Now, at least no one else will get a defective copy from that store...
***whistling down the sidewalk***
"I might have made a tactical error in not going to a physician for 20 years." -- Warren Zevon
I just take it back and exchange it for another copy of the same CD, since this one's defective. What? This one is defective, too? Well, let's try one more...just one more...this time for sure. What do mean you're out of the CD?
Actualy we did once. We asked the store about the missing logo when the second one also didn't work. They worked in the store CD player. They tried to convince me I had a bad player. I got to educate them on defective CD's. (it's the one with the visable ring near the edge a-la sharpie fix) I told them I couldn't use any DRM stuff bucause using it (ripping it for the jukebox) was a DMCA violation. I wasn't going to risk jail time to use the CD. Either refund the money or sell me something that wouldn't send me to jail by using it. We got another title with the logo in spite of the no return policy.
The truth shall set you free!
Thanks! I will look it up. I'd like to see if I can dig deeper, maybe look into whether the schools built by contractors who build other 'institutions' have a higher rate of depression/dropout/failure.... Of course maybe I should apply for federal funding for the study because to do it properly would take more time than I currently have to give. I just think that we *should* be looking into why public schools are failing, not just throwing blame at the sacrificial goat of the day.
http://xkcd.com/386/
First of all, GPL stands for General Public License.
.
You only have to give out the source code if you're distributing the changes outside of your organization. Even then, you only have to give the source code to whomever you're distributing to (or am I wrong on this?).
Using GCC does not mean that you're automatically required to release your program under the GPL. That would be ridiculous.
When it comes to the kernel itself, it's generally considered polite to give any improvements back to the community. No one requires you to do this so long as you aren't distributing the modified version outside your organization. Remember that quite a few very large corporations have contributed code to Linux (such as IBM, Intel, SGI, and others), many of them competitors. Also keep in mind that you have continuing access to the ever improving kernel source at no cost to you whatsoever
Lastly, you really should've done more research into this. A few minutes of browsing the Internet (like perhaps on fsf.org, gnu.org, etc.), and actually reading the GPL would've told you that your lawyer was incorrect.
Of course, your whole post reeks of FUD and intentional misinformation. It has just enough truth to bait and hook someone who doesn't know better. Then it puts one over on them with bits like "the GNU Protective License", the whole spiel about having to rewrite every single bit of code from scratch for Win2K (even though your client requested you do the project for Linux; either you aren't a very good film (going against the client's wishes) or you just got caught lying), and that Microsoft's "Shared Source" is more fair. How exactly is being given the source to the entire OS for free, and in return being asked to publish the source only if you make changes and distribute them outside your organization, unfair? You even get to use the compiler and many of the libraries without having to publish the source to your programs.
The FUD-o-meter gives your post 23 FUD points.
good laugh, thanks