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Filesharing Traffic Drops After RIAA Threats
bryan writes "According to CNN, facing the threat of lawsuits from a music industry trade group, fewer people are using online filesharing applications to swap songs. Internet audience measurement service Nielsen Net Ratings said traffic on Kazaa, the leading filesharing platform, fell 15 percent in the week ended July 6 from the previous week. It was during that prior week, on June 25, that the Recording Industry Association of America said it would track down the heaviest users of "peer-to-peer" services like Kazaa and sue them for damages of up to $150,000 per copyright violation." This follows earlier reports, from the filesharing companies themselves, that traffic was actually increasing.
If Pat Robertson were to tell the truth, he might loose some of his marketshare.
The file sharing companies want to display a facade that their business is as strong as ever, even in the face of the new RIAA litigations and attempts to prevent the further theft of their products. Saying otherwise might hurt their (the file sharing companies) potential advertising campaign or the planned "pay-per-play/download" strategies.
How many of you have slowed or stopped your file sharing???
the truely interesting statistics would cover whether those who are not sharing are primarily uploaders or downloaders, and what there volume was before they stopped.
Phus. Sysiphus.
According to RIAA member AOL Time Warner
sulli
RTFJ.
I assumed that everyone just stayed at home and downloaded mp3's on the 4th of July.
I can't belive that many people really had something better to do than surf the web on a holiday.
Please mod me up - we need help with this project. Please get in touch if you can code, or have ideas, or comments.
Get your own free personal location tracker
They didn't take into account 4th of July weekend here in the States. A lot of people wnet out of town. 15% decrease with a 3 day weekend is Not a trend or a result of the threat.
'nuff said
Well probably have a better idea of whats going on from CDR sales figures.
IRC channel #mp3-d00dz attendance is up 4500%. Not to mention tons of private FTP servers re-emerging. This isn't really a big deal IMHO. There are millions of songs that have exchanged hands. Just find a friend with tons of songs, setup an FTP server, and trade amongsts yourselves from now on. We've primed the pump, so to speak. ;-)
I would not be surprised if the increase in file-sharing was due to a bunch of new folks coming on-line to see what the hub-bub was about, while the decrease is most certainly due to the folks that were sharing large collections with lots of easily trackable bandwidth that got spooked.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Internet file swapping teens take a break for 4th of July. (15% = 1/7 of the week)
Since these services are peer to peer with no centralized servers, it would be interesting to know how the measurements were made.
If they are merely asking people if they used P2P, it seems like fewer people would openly admit it.
10% claimed up, 15% claimed down, that means we should see a 22.5% up counter-claim.
Unless aces are wild, which could throw the whole thing off.
Ryan Fenton
Media claims their threats were effective and the userbase decreased...
I mean...neither of these two groups would have an ulterior motive...naaaah...
So, in cases like these, aside from using your own good (or not so good) judgement, how are we supposed to be able to tell who to believe, or if we can't believe either source, where to find a source we CAN believe?
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
obviously anecdotel evidence is dicey, but my girlfriend, who does not know what linux is, the type who thinks windows is the only computing environment, just told me she's stopped file sharing because they are suing people. so if people such as herself with limited tech experience already have heard about this, that's pretty impressive (from a getting-the-message-out pov).
Is that usage is DROPPING in the US due to lawsuits while its getting bigger outside the US due to lack of lawsuits...hence the contradiction being pointed out.
Yey!
I'm 4 episodes off from completing the whole 5 series of futurama thanks to kazaa...
(non-us resident)
And just how might the RIAA be able to track the 'heaviest users'? It seems like they're just putting pressure on some team of 'investigators' to point them out.
What happens in false-positivies? When someone's time and money are wasted because the RIAA took them to court over 'suspected piracy'? How much is the RIAA paying this team? My guess is 'more than they're losing to piracy'. Then they can add the two numbers up and profit in lawsuits.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Oops, I forgot that statistic that *could* actually mean something in the long term. How silly of me to forget it.
"But I can't get an ocean that's deep enough for my day..." ~The Frames, "Fitzcarraldo"
Maybe the decrease was because this was the week of July 4th. You know...people are outside setting off fireworks and having BBQ parties, instead sitting inside downloading music. It would be interesting to see if traffic also dropped on the week of July 4th, 2002.
...fear through intimidation
hey, by definition, doesn't that make the RIAA a terrorist organization?
Listen, fellow Americans: Don't stop file sharing - otherwise, the RIAA terrorists have already won the war.
About them File Swappers,
ain't it just wrong?
Goin' all around
swappin' them songs.
Swappin' them Mp3s,
and the movies, what the hey?
Gettin' nasty threads
from the RIAA.
Look at those File Swappers
tradin' up a torrent
Waitin' 'til the fateful day
they burst in with a warrant.
How to be a File Swapper,
don't need a ticket.
Get a P2P app,
click the file and swap it.
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
According to CNN, facing the threat of lawsuits from a music industry trade group, fewer people are using online filesharing applications to swap songs.
Fine, whatever. Just as long as the number of people sharing porn videos doesn't drop!
GMD
watch this
Legal alternative which gives me music the way I want to buy it. See RIAA guys, now that wasn't so hard was it?
We aren't all theives just looking for free music. Some of us were just looking for what we consider to be an equitable business model for buying songs. I've found iTunes and it's close enough that I'd rather buy music there than download it on Kazaa.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
ell 15 percent in the week ended July 6 from the previous week. It was during that prior week,
Hmmm kinda funny how filesharing drops on the biggest holiday/vacation/camping week in the USA.
that week most areas had massive concerts, air-fairs, festivals, beer tents, you name it than any other week of the year.
over 50% of my neighborhood were gone a large portion of that week either to shows at the local music festival or travel to detroit or chicago for their festivals/events...
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
i just got mlmac a few days ago and have been workin' the bejeezus outta the thing (kazaa, mldonkey) woohoo. thanks.
so kazaa droped. Fine, most true seeders, rippers, and sharers gave up on kazaa long before. Kazaa mostly applies to the ignorant public. When they start to crack down big time on eMule or BT, then I'll be worried. Well, at least untill I find new program on the bleeding edge of p2p piracy
YOU SUCK BALLS!
Doh! Read the links...the RIAA is talking about song-swapping going down, while the p2p perveyors are talking about traffic going up. That's a distinction...people are swapping fewer songs, but more other stuff.
My guess: Since they're all Pirates, they're downloading that new Johnny Depp movie. ARRRR!!!
Consensual sex is boring.
Maybe people were just on vacation or partying?
I just checked yesterday, and according to my monitoring, Kazaa Lite was actually running about 1 million more users than it was a month ago!
Sharing was running only slightly higher though.
For those who describe their systems as 'boxen', do you order multiple 'boxen' of corn flakes also?
Are CD sales rising comensurate to the decline in file swapping?
No wonder I was having trouble finding a decent mp3 of "Don't copy that floppy".
I would be interested to know if the 15% drop in Kazaa activity was met with a 15% increase of activity on Blubster Freenet or OpenNap.
Blaze a trail to the New World
All of a sudden last week, the sysadmins sent out notice that they will be blocking commonly used P2P ports out of fear of being sued by the RIAA. This is a small non-profit company that's just managing to keep its head above water. No way could we deal w/a lawsuit. It's another case of money buying the legal system - whether RIAA could ultimately win the lawsuit in court is irrelevant since this company doesn't have the $$ to even risk it. Personal/Non-business/just plain folks have it even worse
While the RIAA and associates have been contracting third parties to scan networks for quite some time now, do ISPs keep logs long enough to have any information to turn over to them reguarding activity, say 4 months to a year ago?
Holding *individuals* accountable for their actions actually works!? Whoo'da thunk it!? I thought we were just supposed to blame society, larger groups of people, "computers", etc. for unsavory behavior or results.
I don't agree with "up to $150,000" *per* copyright violation" - that sounds like *per* song to me... but I'm way thrilled to see these bastards going after the people who are directly responsible for copyright infringement, instead of fucking with my ISP and causing rates to go up, ports to be blocked, etc. Now if only they'd stop corrupting audio CD's.
This can be easily explained. Most universities in the country were finished in mid June and sent the kids home. The kids don't normally have access to that sweet T-3 when they are at home. So of course file-sharing went down.
I doubt it has little to do with the RIAA threat.
In other news, truancy drops by 90% after mid June.
Gee, it couldn't have had anything to do with a certain three-day holiday weekend in the U.S. that fell during that week, right? What was it again?
I just logged into Kazaa and saw just as many people offering files as usual.
Where is CNN or whoever getting their statistics from? The RIAA?
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
"How many of you have slowed or stopped your file sharing???"
We at 65.42.25.3 are still going strong.
Maybe the swappers have as much material as they want. The current offerings at the store are so pitiful that they aren't worth downloading, much less buying.
If I worked for RIAA, I would use P2P activity as a leading indicator of future sales. Reduced P2P activity means the current products are not very popular. When will they learn?
Please see GNAA post for clarification.
Sure I've pulled down songs, listened to them, and not bought the CD (and since I didn't dig the song, I deleted it). Is this wrong? I've actually found myself finding more and more groups this way to get into. I spent my college days working in Record World and seeing just how much it cost to produce a CD compared to how much the store charged. Nothing worse than buying the CD for one song and getting slayed by the rest of the songs (that are useless).
Perhaps we are nearing the end of an era?
perhaps the weather is just getting nicer and people are actually stepping outside their homes?
Freenet use is up 20%!
No one stopped sharing, they just switched to networks which are harder to monitor.
People arent stupid, they know the RIAA is looking at Kazaa.
Just as many people are on Kazaa, but if you think Kazaa is the best place to find music files you are wrong.
Face it, no one is going to stop.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
What we don't know is what percentage of users made this sharing. I mean is this 15 percent drop due to a few people doing massive shareing , or to many little ones that just got scared without reason?
I suspect that this must have affected only the US based mega-sharers. I , in europe, have no reason to fear any threats from RIAA.
Slashdot Sig. version 0.1alpha. Use at your own risk.
If you know any private eyes, you know they lie, cheat, deceive, distort facts, whatever they need to do to get their work done. They are very often only two spits shy of being crooks themselves.
So, it doesn't surprise me that RIAA takes stats from a holiday week, as has been pointed out already, to show that their threats & intimidation work.
The big problem that I see is that RIAA has essentially unlimited resources -- all that money that could be paid in artists' royalties -- while Joe Blow P2Per in the dorm doesn't. It will be very interesting if RIAA ever gets an opponent in court who has some financial backing. Of course, that will have to wait until we have a Department of Justice and not a Department of "Just Us"...
"Obviously, I'm not an IBM computer any more than I'm an ashtray" (Bob Dylan)
Wouldn't perhaps over here in the USA, the long weekend, centering on the July 4 holiday, give a -natural- decrease in file sharing traffic? Vacations, beach trips, blowing shit up with fireworks?
Don't know about you, but between pimping around on Kazaa and going to the beach and hanging out, Kazaa doesn't come close.
I'll bet you other traffic for that time period has a decrease too. I'll have to scope my server logs at home,see if I had a 15% decrease that week too.
Geez. Thats like saying that 20% of the sick days off work are taken on friday, and another 20% are taken on Mondays...
"I can't belive that many people really had something better to do than surf the web on a holiday."
I did some DNA uploading with my girlfriend.
Don't just sit there yawning while these corporate interests erode our every right. Who do they think they are telling me how I can use my computer- it is MY COMPUTER after all. I can't believe how ignorant people like you are to the evils of our society. Our rights to listen to whatever we want are just dissappearing!
Remember that Kant quote where he said that first the people came after the bakers, but we didnt do anything because we werent bakers. Then they came after the photographers, but we didnt do anything because we werent bakers. Then they came after the bakers, but we didnt do anything because we werent photographers. Then they came after the jews, and there was nobody left to defend them. These corporations are just like that.
Ok so you dont share files. hundreds of millions of people do, and hundreds of millions of people think its right.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
But of course, GNAA is a member of the set {RIAA, MPAA, GNAA}!
So while overall traffic is down, the real traffic could be increasing.
Eh, probably not.
... put a tax of about 150% on media recordable materials.
Here, it is even cheaper to buy CDR and DVDR in Luxembourg (starting from 20 CDs even with shipping) due to these damn taxes
Don't you know it is now both immoral and criminal to think beyond the next quarterly report?
I'm sure the numbers will go back to "normal" when schools starting and everybody is back at work ....
http://www.intellipool.se/ - Intellipool Network Monitor
Carrying water for The Man. Whatever The Man wants, Slashdot does.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
As one /.'er has already pointed out in a shameless plug for udpp2p (looks interesting, actually), the next step in p2p is straight-up anonymous filetransfers. It makes sesne, and it's inevitable...only a matter of time before someone codes up a decent client. And when that happens, you bet I'll be one of the first standing on their tiptoes, trying to see the RIAA's face and how they respond to that.
Personally I haven't used p2p, especially for music, in a while. If I need to get my fix though, there's always alternative routes to getting what you want...hotline/IRC/FTP sites still exist and flourish. It may not be as easy, but beggars can't be choosers it seems.
"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned for SEGA. ..."
That post was 100% true, and it was not said in a mean or derogetory way. Explain to me how it is a troll.
Morons.
Traffic on the Morpheus service also fell 15 percent, Net Ratings said, while usage on iMesh dropped 16 percent. BearShare usage dropped enough that it fell below NetRatings' cutoff point for tracking.
Check out the Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A73
Seems to me filesharing is increasing
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
..even though On Line file sharing has dropped 15%, retail sales will probably show a similar, if not steeper decline.
Personally, I buy less since It's harder to sample.
Eschew Obfuscation
The recording industry is finding new ways to market their products to offset losses incurred by music piracy. CNN's Jim Boulden reports.
...
They should get into the ISP business, and charge more than regular ISPs for the promise that they won't ever sue their users for pirating music. Threats of litigation is a real business asset for a big lobbying maffia-like organisation such as the RIAA, they really should exploit it
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Sharing RIAA music hurts independent artists. People are less inclined to look for good legitimate free music from independent artists who want you to share when they can get the RIAA peddled junk for free illegitimately.
1 T3 for 5000 ghey students, 3000 of them downloading the same bullshit.
This program "mimac" runs on OSX and it can access 8 p2p networks at the same time, at its current version it can access 3, kazaa, bittorrent and filedonkey...
Only works on macs and of course is questionable when issuing stats, the 0.6 version of mimac is far more stable than previous and now allows mac users to access the other big networks.
Jonathanjk.com
The fact is that music copies... for non commercial purposes are immune from lawsuits.
Title 17 Chapter 10 Subchapter D Sec. 1008
No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of copyright based on the manufacture, importation, or distribution of a digital audio recording device, a digital audio recording medium, an analog recording device, or an analog recording medium,
or based on the noncommercial use by a consumer of such a device or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog musical recordings
such a DEVICE or MEDIUM for making digital recordings or analog music recordings -
In definition of device or medium
Title 17 Chapter 10 Subchapter A
Section 1001
A ''digital audio recording device'' is any machine or device of a type commonly distributed to individuals for use by individuals, whether or not included with or as part of some other machine or device, the digital recording function of which is designed or marketed for the primary purpose of, and that is capable of, making a digital audio copied recording for private use, except for -
professional model products and
dictation machines, etc...
(4) (A)
A ''digital audio recording medium'' is any material object in a form commonly distributed for use by individuals, that is primarily marketed or most commonly used by consumers for the purpose of making digital audio copied recordings by use of a digital audio recording device.
(B)
Such term does not include any material object -
(i)
that embodies a sound recording at the time it is first distributed by the importer or manufacturer; or
(ii)
that is primarily marketed and most commonly used by consumers either for the purpose of making copies of motion pictures or other audiovisual works or for the purpose of making copies of nonmusical literary works, including computer programs or data bases.
I daresay that noone would say that a computer is primarily marketed and most commonly used for the purpose of making motion picture copies. The MPAA would go after DELL, etc.
A computer is not primarily designed to make copies of nonmusical literary works - that would be a copyright violation and computer manufacturers and distributors would be in trouble for that.
So, since that means software on your computer is not in the not included category, the computer and software could be considered a medium... therefore non commercial use by a consumer of such a device or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog musical recordings is immune from lawsuits.
Now that file sharings on the decline, record sales should begin to rebound, thus proving the RIAA's claims about the cause of their woes. who wants to put down bets about what effect this will have on sales.
"Ok so you dont share files. hundreds of millions of people do, and hundreds of millions of people think its right."
And HanzoSan goes for the Pinocchio award.
Either that or his ass-spread has gotten out of hand.
swapping CDs with friends and burning copies..
imagine if the RIAA could've tracked the swapping of blank tape copies when I was in high school...but they couldn't so they didn't bitch about it. now that it happens "out in the open" they can't ignore it I guess.
Instead of posting selective FUD, they should tell the whole story. Did sales go up by an equal 15%? After all, in the eyes of the RIAA, every single file downloaded is complete cd that was not bought.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
Silly File THIEVES and PIRATES use of P2P to commit robbery increases
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Interesting quote from the head of Freenet:
A speech...
Please Taco and co., please!, will you ever think about making Anonymous Cowards unable to post ?
*sigh*
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
I wonder how many other people went stir-crazy during all the June rain? Kinda nice to have some sun.
Guster's album Keep It Together was released on June 24. A couple of weeks before the release, songs from the album started popping up on Kazaa. It turns out one of the guys in the band and the sound engineer re-recorded versions of all of the songs, meowing on top of them, and then put them online. I guess they figured they could preempt anyone leaking the album by doing this, but they did it in a creative in funny way that a lot of the fans enjoyed. They're actually pretty funny and well done. Also, back in May they put up half of the album on their website anyway (streaming, no d/l) to give people a taste. I'm glad that there are musicians (even on a label - WB) that are willing to try to work with the system (instead of fighting it) in a way that can make them, the label, and the fans happy.
got biv?
I don't think the Slashdot crowd has the same mentality toward legal issues involving the RIAA as normal users.
The reason why slashdot users are passionate about things like the RIAA, the DMCA, etc. etc., than the average person is that the average person accepts the argument that sharing copyrighted files is wrong.
Thus, while the average person will share files in an anonymous environment, he or she either feels guilty about sharing or otherwise doesn't feel strongly enough about it to cause trouble, and sees it as inevitable, and possibly right, that the sites will eventually be shut down.
My advice to you is: if you want people to become passionate about IP issues, either convince them that sharing files is right and good, or that the commodified music of the RIAA is a far greater evil. Otherwise it's a hopeless task.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
All of the warez m0nkeys are home from college during the summer.
Oh COME ON!
The week ending July 6 was including a three day weekend and also Independence Day. WHO stays in and actively uses the Internet when you could be up at the cottage or out celebrating the long weekend?
you coward!!! GET A FUCKING SCREEN NAME ! You little SHIT
Do it, I dare ya.
The fundamental premise of udpp2p is broken.
Spoofed source addresses do not beget security nor anonymity, especially now that ISP's are required to "cooperate". Properly configured routers will put a dead stop to the practice, and even without that its still trivial for a big organization to backtrace you.
If you want real anonymity you need something called "plausible deniability" which you can get only from projects such as freenet.
Also, colleges are out for the summer. Unless college students have broadband at home as well (not overly likely), they will not be using file sharing networks...
:-)
So, college students who download the most are out for the summer, hence lower traffic!
One of the principal points against overreaching laws like the DMCA is that the RIAA never needed them in the first place. If the mere fact of responsible assertion of rights results in a reduction of measured likely infringing conduct, this indicates that the opponents of DMCA were right, and the RIAA was wrong in insisting that draconian laws are necessary to protect RIAA rights.
I could care less about the RIAA threats, however I'm paranoid enough to post this AC.
I'll admit that during the week in question my dl ratio went done. This had nothing to do with the RIAA threats however. I was on vacation for a good part of that period thanks to the holidays.
As well I didn't leave bittorrent or kazaa running while I was away simply because I'm starting to worry about my ISP cutting me off. I'm routinely moving 80 gig a month down and close to 50 gig a month up. Since I'm allowed 4 down and 2 up each month it's only a matter of time before I get a call from them.
I'd also like to point out that I've been dling less lately because there has been good movies for me to go see in theaters. I enjoyed T3 and badboys 2 last week, before that it was 28 days later and finding nemo.
I don't dl much music lately. Mostly because it's all crap. I spend most of my time trying to find old live hendrix or smashing pumpkins recordings and the such. Crap that will never come out on cd.
Slyck keeps weekly stats on
filesharing usage...here's the usage statistics today:
FastTrack 3,525,734
iMesh 1,175,244
eDonkey 770,032
Overnet 458,752
MP2P 199,214
These stats have actually remained fairly constant for a couple of
weeks now. Back in May there was a lot of fluctuation on the EDonkey
vs Overnet, and FastTrack was around 4.5M. I suppose it dropped
because college students went home for the summer.
At any rate, Slyck's stats have noted no increase or decrease in
filesharing in the last two weeks. So the media hype (both ways)
seems to be just that...hype.
Move along; nothing to see here.
Practice Kind Randomness and Beautiful Acts of Nonsense.
They just went to gnutella, edonkey, or what have you. Hell, with mldonkey you can do like six protocols at once. "Kazaa is being raided," they said, "so we're going to fuck off to some other network." Comcast just gave me a 1GB/mo giganews account so I'll have a nice place to get fills, I can pretty much just use USENET now even :P
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Who do they think they are telling me how I can use my computer- it is MY COMPUTER after all.
They're not you twit. They're telling you that swapping files is illegal. There's nothing new about the illegality of it either, only the enforcement.
I received this from an individual who works at Time Warner. Its contents are scary.
--
As many of you have probably read or heard, the Recording Industry
Association of America is engaged in a very public battle against
individuals using peer-to-peer Internet programs to swap copyrighted music
files. Their latest tactic, which they announced recently, is to identify
people who have made large numbers of songs available for uploading via P2P,
and then to sue them for copyright infringement. Some of these people will
undoubtedly be Road Runner customers. The purpose of this memo is to
describe for you the process that the RIAA is undertaking, and how we plan
to deal with it.
The RIAA has begun to troll the major P2P networks to collect the Internet
Protocol (IP) addresses for those individuals who are offering large numbers
of songs for uploading. These IP addresses are then tracked back to the
ISPs that control them. The RIAA then must issue subpoenas to the ISPs,
demanding that they turn over identifying information on the holders of the
accounts assigned to the IP addresses (i.e., the customer name, address,
telephone number and email address).
In the first three days of the RIAA's campaign, we have received subpoenas
directed at 18 customers in 4 divisions. Once the RIAA's campaign hits full
stride, we expect to receive several hundred subpoenas per month.
When we receive a subpoena, we will send a letter to the customer in
question notifying him/her that we are required to disclose his/her
identifying information to the RIAA. We will also provide the customer with
a copy of the subpoena, which includes contact information for the RIAA's
attorney. A copy of our standard letter is attached to this memo.
Most of the flow in responding to these subpoenas will be handled, at least
initially, by the Law Department. Road Runner has developed a tool that
allows us to tie the IP addresses to the specific customers and determine
their identifying information. The process is not perfect, and requires us
to get manual confirmation from the divisions' complaint coordinators before
the notice letters are sent to the customers. It is important that
confirmation is received promptly in order for us to provide advance notice
to our customers.
The letters to the subscribers will be signed by _____, who runs our
subpoena compliance program here in Stamford. To the extent letter
recipients want to contact TWC, we expect them to contact _____. If your
divisions receive phone calls or correspondence on this issue, please direct
the customers to ___________.
Thank you for your help with this. As always, if you have any questions
about any of this, please feel free to get in touch with us at any time.
it was a large holiday week in the US so i'd expect it to decrease some as people are out doing shit.
that of course doesn't account for the rest of the world though.
"That's why truly anonymous P2P apps are the only way."
Truely anonymous is like absolute security, and creationism. A fiction just waiting for someone to poke holes in it. I bestow "anonymous P2P" the darwin award.
I think that you mean more traffic available for the students who stayed in univ for the summer =)
Don't you know it is now both immoral and criminal to think beyond the next quarterly report?
Now, if Santana or someone else were to release an album in the next week you'd see it spike again.
Also, please consider all this is statistics and probably spun to the RIAA's liking to show their Third Reich tactics actually work. Next week: RIAA to invade Poland on the pretext that 2 poles blatantly exchanged a copyrighted performance of Pop Goes the Weasel.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
welcome to /.
Great! As if they need any more encouragement!
If you want real anonymity you need something called "plausible deniability" which you can get only from projects such as freenet.
Or, your neighbors un-protected wireless AP. You gotta love other peoples networks
college = bandwidth heaven
summer = beach, travel, or work
if( college && summer )
fucking idiots, not many people left to download!
stupid statistics...
exactly 9 out of 10 dentists (that I chose) recommend crest toothpaste
do you see why marketing is so powerful? because the common person is such a fucking idiot.
Could it be that everyone already has the music they want, and the RIAA isn't putting out anything new worth getting? It had to happen eventually.
The masses are the crack whores of religion.
According to multiple news sources, the real reason that traffic has significantly decreased is that there is a hidden clause in the new RIAA policy which states that Hillary Rosen will personally come to your house and sit on your face if you caught infringing copyright.
I mean, really... isn't this the effective equivalent of what they're saying anyway? Suing individuals for tens of millions of dollars (well, at least that's what my bill would come out to be) seems kind of pointless seeing as how if even 1/100th of the people they go after make it to court, and then 10% of those are found guilty, the odds that these individuals are going to have anywhere near the cash to "pay their dues" are certainly low.
I give the RIAA another 4 years of dwidling around like the morons they are, and on the 5th year we can all refer to them in the same joking manner with which we currently refer to captain kangaroo, yet without the empathy.
-- http://www.criticalassets.com
Please contact your local authorities ASAP for prosecution for your crimes. Also, you may need to bring a checkbook, because each of your downloaded files costed us $150,000 in lost revenue.
You are going to buy the CD? Not now!
(swoops up cape and runs away, cackling madly)
I wonder if anyone took into account summer vacations. I know that most people go away to a cabin or some other place around here so has anyone compared the loss of traffic to the average decrease in site traffic over thoes weeks?
Traffic in all the "relevant" USENET groups is also noticeably up. According to this report some of the groups have tripled and quadrupled in traffic.
Hmm this story smells like propaganda or disinformation because all I've been reading online states the contrary. In fact traffic is up as much as 10% since the RIAA sue threat came out. As always don't believe everything you read and all my sources could be wrong too. Statics are misleading 50% of the time:D
Here's one article stating that traffic is up...one of many...
P2P traffic up since RIAA sue threat
You aren't free to do anything, until you've lost everything.
So I guess that leaves the other 85% downloading pr0n safe then?
I've noticed that everyone who is for abortion has already been born - Ronald Reagan
Congratulations, RIAA, you've succeeded. Nobody downloads MP3's anymore. Move along now.
Posted AC for employment reasons...
I've gone from one application on two networks to two apps on four networks. Now, I'm not sharing B****ney, the latest processed boy band, or anything filthy. I share things you can't find in your local Used CDs store (much less Sam Goody), or things that have gone out of print.
I suppose your typical leacher will be put off by these proceedings, but those of us who are serious aren't going anywhere anytime soon.
DH out.
Here's Hollywood hooting and hollering about hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of property they expect the government to protect.
Are they paying their fair share of property tax on that property? Or have their lobbyists convinced the government that its not property as far as taxation is concerned, but is property as far as protecting it is concerned?
I know lots of P2P'ers... every time the RIAA makes a stink about advancing litigation, they say the same thing "I'm going to get out there and get everything I can while it's good."
Millions of people are feeling entitled to steal music, and the music industry is terrified. They have good reason to be, CD sales are down significantly and piracy is absolutely rampant. My cousin just announced that she's stopped buying CDs, she burns her own, she's computer illiterate, not a geek at all, and their are probably millions like her. If a huge portion of the recording industry's customers stop buying CDs, how is the industry supposed to make money? People use filesharing apps like kazza because they are free and there is just about no risk of getting caught. Most people (probably including myself depending on the circumstances) will do something morally wrong for their own benefit if they have no fear of getting caught. What the RIAA is trying to do is save the music industry by making people afraid of filesharing. So far it seems to be working. A friend of mine is now terrified to use Kazaa, she's afraid of being sued. I know I'll be modded down for this, but I don't think the RIAA is doing something particularly terrible. They are simply trying to save the music industry. Personally I think they should approach the problem differently. They should seek legislation making music piracy a criminal offense, and they should promote easy to use and affordable alternatives like the iTunes music store. Instead they are inciting a massive backlash against the industry. I don't mean to be self-righteous. I pirate music too. But no matter how you justify it, if you are using a product that someone sells without paying for it, you are stealing it. The RIAA is being mean and hard-hearted, but they are simply doing their job and they aren't in the wrong.
"...Nielsen Net Ratings said traffic on Kazaa.."
:p
Is that the same cop who goes around saying things like" "Like a midget at a urinal, I'm gonna have to stay on my toes." or "Like a blind man at an orgy, I'm gonna have to feel things out."
If it is, I sure hope he doesn't show up at my crib looking for MP3's.
He's a one man crimefighting show!
rm -rf gtk-gnutella
ok, so what is the variance in the traffic?
dropped? with respect to when?
what was the trend before?
and big deal: the week of july 4th, when people were on vacation..... I kinow that it is not a conclusive evidence, but for instance, the number of housing posts on craigslist traditionally dips on the holidays weekends..... does RIAA threaten people who post housing ads?
the short time does tell nothing! I want to see a month to month comparison over an extended period of time to draw any meaningful conclusions
I mean, I'd be surprised if what actually happened was that people with common interests went off on private servers, or mutual ftps and stuff like that. Just like in the "old" days. True, you don't get quite the same network effects as before, but it's not really that difficult to hook up with "enough" people anyway, it's more about bandwidth available. My server for friends is usually busy 24/7 at least... (All the latest Linux ISOs right? ;)
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
an open note to riaa:
sorry to disappoint. i was on vacation. shutdown my kazaa shared folder. i am back now, you can expect the traffic to go back up.
(ms. rosen: i am just kidding. pleazzz don't sue me.)
now supporting:
cmdrTaco for president '04
michael for oval office intern summer '05
I've seen a small increase in total goddam idiots on usenet who were former p2p lusers, you know, the kind of kiddee who thinks he can post 5Gb of mp3s to usenet like he used to share a 5Gb drive on gnutella.
looser!
As for me, I've switched swapping methods to avoid detection. This means I have to come out of my mother's basement and swap CDs behind the local convenience store. :)
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Most US universities close for the summer in May... UMass is generally a couple of weeks later than the rest, and I was out by the 20th.
Yes, there's summer semester, but that's generally not heavily residential.
Other possible explanations for the drop in filesharing:
-- July 4th. Even geeks have lives.
-- Summer. Same as above.
-- Summer. Less college students, who tend to be heavy users.
-- No notable "new" stuff, TV series generally aren't releasing new episodes to be downloaded over the summer.
-- Simple statistical anomaly. 15% may sound like a lot, but if it's just a weeklong trend it doesn't mean much.
And there are other possibilities too. Be creative, I'm sure you can think of some.
Man, the world would benefit so much if somebody would just take out an ad during the Superbowl or something that would explain in simple terms the difference between correlation and causation. Except such an explanation is likely impossible. Oh well.
I'm going to hazard an obvious guess here.
If you have a random subset within a larger set [p2p users in the USA], a randomly distributed decrease in the superset will correlate with a similar decrease in the subset.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
The kids don't normally have access to that sweet T-3 when they are at home.
But occasionally they do?
This reminds me of the great NY Blackout Baby Boom. Legend has it, on a Monday, 9 months after the big 1965 blackout, a nurse in a hospital noticed a larger-than average number of births. The NYT picked up on this, and reported it. By Wednesday, births had fallen off. It was later shown that there was no real statistical increase, and the numbers may have reflected normal weekly fluctuation (probably because people like to schedule planned births at the beginning of the week. see snopes for more detail.
One week fluctuations are pretty meaningless, especially when there is a huge confounding factor like the July 4 Holiday. But that doesn't mean the RIAA won't use it as evidence to coerce people.
So let me confirm those findings with my own independent research. After spending all day logged into Kazaa I saw maybe, like... one guy downloading two files. And they were MIDI tunes. Honest.
Nothing to see here anymore, move along now.
F U D?
Since the RIAA always insists that every person that downloads a song would have been a paying customer if the download wasn't available, then we should also see a 15% increase in CD sales during that time period?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Let's try for the simplier answer. We have a social problem. No one respects anyone. Technological solutions have a terrible history of solving social problems.
See if this reminds you of anything?
1-Ogg develops the principle of throwing a rock at his enemies.
2-His enemies develop a wooden shield they can hide behind.
3-They also develop a better rock thrower than Ogg's.
4-Ogg stung by both the rocks and the fact that his rocks aren't working as well, develops the Rock Thrower Deluxe.
5-Etc, etc, etc.
Now contrast this with:
Ogg:I'm sorry I threw that rock at you. Will you forgive me?
Enemy:We forgive you. Let's not fight again.
Gee who could imagine that people actually respect each other, and there be peace throughout the land, instead of a never ending battle of wills with many dead and wounded on both sides?
Maybe the drop in filesharing traffic is seasonal. New releases are not as frequent from major artists during the summer months so filesharers have less new songs available to download at present.
Still, when I hear a timeless Beatles classic on the radio and then go home to look for it on Pressplay or ITunes and it isn't there, I tend to longingly eye the Kazaa icon that still sits on my desktop, beckoning me to return to piracy.
Can't get a Beatles song? A song from one of the most mercilessly comercialized bands in all history is not on iTunes? iTunes must blow!
No commercial company can measure up to the file sharing networks. They have lost the recordings, or just don't have money or resources to digitize them. The distributed effort of all music fans created a catalogue of all kinds of music you could never get in a store. That's what you get when you let music lovers share their stuff. Some of the newer music services are gettin good, but none match Napster yet. The comercial services don't stand a chance unless they figure out how to enlist the fans. It is this fundamental failure to make work available by the current "owners" that makes them obsolete, despite legal sucess beyond all reason. People will get around them sooner or later.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I think this is less propaganda stating that the RIAA is serious and more propaganda stating that the RIAA is actually doing something. Both, of course, are utter shite.
This sig no verb.
"If they thought it was wrong, why in the polls do they all say its not wrong? why in interviews do they claim its not wrong?"
Why did OJ say he didn't do it?
Why did the embezzler say he didn't embezzle?
People don't delete fakes. It rather amazing. I heard of a guy who hard encrypts stuff he nts to archives and the names the file after a new movie or something. People download this 600+ MB files realize its not the movie, some are probably savy enough to realize its not even a damn mpeg/avi but they don't delete them. They just let thenbogus file sit on the hardrive with out evening a namechange and let it proogate. He'd come back months later and still find the file on at least three users.
Personally I blame this phenomenon on cheap HD space. I'm running a Win XP laptop with 20 gigs. I'm constantly archiving stuff to cd and cleaning the junk of my HD because I can go from 10 G free to 0 without even realizing it. Especially since software developers have seemed to have adopted the "Bigger is Better" mantra (I mean why does an Image Veiwer need to be 25 MB ?)
Makes me long for the days when 100 MB was considered more than any sane person needed and any normal person could afford. At least people would be conservative with their space.
My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle...
Computer usage usually drops off during the summer months. Look for it to be back up in the Fall/Winter.
"Care to post your credit card number?"
He can't do that.
He declared bankruptcy, morally and financially.
That drop in traffic is my fault. I just got my first Mac and I'm still looking for a good p2p client! I hope to be online soon and get those traffic levels back to normal.
Now I don't know what to keep my eye on during work... The stock market, or Nielsen's Net Ratings
Business \Busi"ness\, n.;
A scam in which all people involved perceive as beneficial...
The question is, did CD sales increase in this timeframe too?
Call me cynical, but I bet not.
"Quoting famous computer scientists out of context is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming." - K
Something like Freenet but way faster.
*shakes head*
Is it always this way with you americans?
Don't you tire of modding up the same old joke everytime there is a file sharing story on slashdot?
How about promoting original posts instead...
See GNUnet GNUNET
Research
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Just read this
Wow!
- Life is what keeps you occupied while you are waiting to die
The article doesn't speak directly about the numbers of users.. just the amount of traffic.
Couldn't this represent 1 MEGA user per network that went on vacation during the holiday weekend? *grin* I know that isn't the case; however, it is possible, given the manner in which the article was written.
Open for discussion...
They know what gets traded on the networks and it terrifies them. The catalog is so much bigger than they could ever support at a physical store that the only way for them to survive is to eliminate the networks. They are obsolete, and will never wield the power of the "big hit" again. When people are free to share what they have and pick what they want, it turns out they have much broader tastes than any music mogul ever had.
When you stand back and look at things, you might start to wonder what the purpose of the recording industry is. For decasdes it was more about promoting a small subset of all music over all others to drive sales. That's not so much a matter of promoting that one song as it about supressing all other songs. The heavy rotation play from broadcast stations never were anything more than an obnoxious advertisement. Music sharing networks cut that out and alowed music to be chosen on grounds of taste an merit, criteria the music industry abandoned decades ago.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
These programs, Kazaa, Nuttela, etc, were written specifically for the purpose of illegally downloading music.
Coulda fooled me. I always thought they were for downloading porn...
oh wait, never mind, if I download porn then it's still infringing someone else's copyright, isn't it. DAMMIT, you just can't win.
----
Free yourself. Everything else will follow.
...everyone downloads Ogg's now.
I've finally got a fan! Now what do I feed him?
Why do we let an industry over state their loses, change our laws, restrict our freedoms with the products we own, and fuck us over all to keep an old system in place , of which, consumers have completely rejected and moved past?
I can say it's our own fault for not fighting this or doing anything about it that allows it to continue. Tell me how is it possible that downloading files, copyrighted or not, and movies is frowned upon more than violent crimes? The guy who released the hulk movie on the net is going to do 3-6 years. That's more than first offenders get for violent crimes yet he's lumped in with them and he didn't hurt anyone's bottom line. Total and complete bullshit and we allow it to continue.
All it takes is a grass roots effort to put an end to this. We give them the power and we can take it away. This is about money and only when we stop buying completely will they listen and take notice. Until then keep spending and supporting the entity that is out to make a point by suing you into a financial disaster and making all of your choices for you.
As I stated in my previous post the RIAA seems to be trying out every angle available to stop filesharing. Guess what? It's not working nor will it. Disinformation seems to be a new tactic but I'm sure it'll work on the un-informed masses. In all actuality I bet a mojority of filesharers are under 18 so they aren't afraid of going to jail because they can't be charged as adults. Maybe the RIAA will sue them and their parents into poverty?
You aren't free to do anything, until you've lost everything.
Particularly when it occurs over the major holiday weekend for the world's largest population of 'net users.
"God, root, what is difference?" - Pitr, userfriendly
How about honest, nitpicking?
"What's mine is mine. What's yours is mine."
Could it be Nielsen doesn't have the best numbers?
From their press release, I can't tell how they arrived at their numbers.
I also wonder about their "unique visitor" term.
It seems to me that file sharing admins would have a pretty good idea of the traffic on their networks.
Hard to really know what's going on with so little information.
.sigs are for post^Hers.
However, grade schools and high schools finish then end of June, so you may not be totally off track.
But grade/high schools aren't likely equipped with T-3s, so your theory isn't working again.
However, kids who normally would be downloading via DSL at home, are now heading out on family vacations, going to camp, getting summer jobs, and doing other things that will take them away from the computer for the next while.
On the whole, I agree with your subject line "easy: school's out", but not your reasoning.
Is there any possibility that filesharing dropped signifigantly because of all of the college students in the country that either went home or were studying for finals away from their super-fat university pipe?
well, as long as it doesn't impede the flow of German Goo Girls.
RIAA can't touch that...
"sue them for damages of up to $150,000 per copyright violation"
How can they claim losses of $150,000 per violation? So you're saying if I download 10 songs from an album, I can be sued for 1.5 mil, but if I steal the album from a record store, I get what, a small fine and some community service?
I wonder if the RIAA would continue with this activity if the first few people they targeted with $150,000 fines were downloading songs they already owned ...
I knew Oregon was a state full of oddity...
most of the state schools here are on quarters and finished around June 15th this year.
The school I go to is on Semesters, and it's summer term ended June 20th.
My reasoning may be off, but I think it works for this whacky state, anyway.
You bring up some good points, to be sure.
I think that he was trying to make a point a-la Bill Cosby's exceclent film Bill Cosby on Prejudice .
call me crazy, but wasnt there some worm going around the windows world that week?
;)
Makes perfect sense to me. Since everyone who has an internet connection uses it to pirate music, we should all be forced to pay for this! Its not people out there use the internet for things like....oh, I don't know...shopping, or for information.
If I'm going to be treated like a criminal (and I already am, seeing as how I buy CD-Rs for data backup and mixing my own albums from music I legally own), I'm going to at least act like a criminal. Hoist the Jolly Rogers, it's time to sail the IRCs! Yaaaarrrrrrr!
Start up a non profit like freenet did and accept donations. Then use the money to hire programmers.
"Makes perfect sense to me. Since everyone who has an internet connection uses it to pirate music, we should all be forced to pay for this! Its not people out there use the internet for things like....oh, I don't know...shopping, or for information."
Never heard the expression " A few bad apples spoil the barrel." have you? I guess that shoots down the "victimless crime" argument.
First, in the late 80's or early 90's a record exec promises that CDs will be cheaper than tapes because they cost less to produce.
Prices go up.
Then MTV forgets that Music Television should play music on television.
Next, Clearchannel starts the "McDonaldization of American Radio"
Now, RIAA attacks their own customers.
Result? Those of us that see this, really do love the music, FIND SOMETHING ELSE and rip internet radio streams to our heart's content, buy turntables and pay cash for Vinyl Records of the artists we like. We find new music, enjoy new artists, NO commercials and pay money that goes to the artists we like.
And have big fat hard drives and data DVD burners.
Less big music industry. More boat parties.
And ProtonRadio.com
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
after summer has started and everybody is gone to the beach. But OK - let RIAA think everybody listens to them (sic!) so they hopefully shut up soon. Cu at the beach :-)
But Steely Dan (like several artists this year) provided a free preview, good quality stream, of the WHOLE ALBUM, even before it was released. And its still available 1 month after release. Clearly advertised/linked to on their official website, easy to find! A lot easier than searching through decoy crap
The "wanted to preview" reason for downloading ? Thinner all the time.
- Anonymous Steely Dan Fan, more than happy with the preview -before-buy provided by the artist
This is a classic example of using the Media as a marketing network. The RIAA gets Nielsen to say that the ratings have dropped and they send a press release to CNN in response to other sources which state otherwise. Had Nielsen said the ratings rose, we would have heard nothing more about this matter. If the reporter had actually done any work aside from making two or three phone calls and reading a press release, he would have reported cd sales increases/decreases over the same time period or maybe even suggested alternative reasons for the decrease. Instead of a complete report we have nothing more than a one sided commentary that is obviously self serving to the story's originator. It's quite absurd of an idea to think that a CNN reporter could not find an antagonistic opinion to present. There are more people to talk to about this stuff than a Kazaa backed lobbyist.
Why do all these grand schemes sound like the steps to getting out of work?
Maybe because they are. No one wants to take the long, boring (sounds like writing documentation) route to solving the problem. You know, the one involving politics, and laws, and lawyers. The sacrifice of doing without that favourite (shhh! don't tell your "/." friends ) group. The protesting in the hot sun. The long door to door petition drives. Things that have been shown to work (unless you don't use them of course). But of course the "geeky" (technical) solution wins out.
Those of you who remember the warez scenes of the BBS's of yore will remember that sometimes a board was taken down in YOUR AREA CODE. Within actual driving miles of where you lived. How long did it take for elite sections to open back up? 6 months? 3? one? They always did. They always will. Same today.
AyeRoxor [8i3]
The 2 party system must be abolished. Great. I can no longer take this child-minded bullshit.
Black holes are where the Matrix raised SIGFPE
Next weeks article:
File sharing on p2p networks rises 15% despite RIAA threats; ShieldW0lf buys new hard drive; has more space to download; reconnects to network.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Dear RIAA, You have won. All of us misadjusted p2p users are no longer sharing mp3s of legitimate artists. Instead, we now trade songs of our children banging on pots and pans. Sincerely, Your Customers.
"The Slashdot effect" is commonly mislabeled as a god level D-enial O-f S-ervice effect. * Where tens of thousands of computer nerds suddenly prompted to some new (read: recently rehashed) idea (and they are addicted to this constant stream of morsel sized data bites worse than any heroin victim) all try and access the data at once and bring sites to their knees, then cut off their heads and sacrifice the blood to Xanthon god of Bandwidth. In reality I propose the unsettling idea that the Slashdot effect is far more terrible... not merely a DOS attack it is in fact when tens of thousands of people suddenly lose the ability to think for themselves! They form a group consciousness (Like the Republi-Cons and the Demo-Crats, no individual thought just a mass consciousness, indeed who is to say these two variant and ever warring mind sets did not evolve from the same barren world? A concept I will explore in more depth another time) which always seems to say/write the same things ...
Beowulf cluster it!
"If ones cool 10 is 10 TIMES as cool oh yeah."
Microsoft is Evil, Bill Gates is the incarnation of Evil.
Linux is Good, Linux is the SOURCE OF ALL GOOD, the universes soul function is the evolution of Linux and hastening it is the Torvalds! a demi-deity!
RIAA are scum! Even the artists hate them! They should all be subjected to the torture of 40 days, forced to walk across rock salt with the skin flayed from their naked feet and ... etc. They have no right to come after file sharers. They don't pay artists! They are hypocrites and even worse they employ STATISTICIANS!
TIA (total information awareness) = END OF WORLD. It is against the constitution!
Standard line referenced... "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."- Benjamin Franklin
Most recently SCO are repugnant vile, scum licking litigators with no product to back their claim to existence! The US patent system is broken!
And a few other things besides.
Mostly (admittedly) the group think is if not always exactly on the mark, close.
What disturbs me though, is the *commonality* in thought, the ever present repetition.
Almost a reflection of politics, most people aren't motivated to vote (POST) but those few who do are really passionate and outspoken, and thus we develop wide ranging ideological schisms.
Consequently I will address a SMALL number of thoughts that may run counter to SLASHDOT group think. I have erected PSYCHIC iron wall discipline to deal with the backlash...
Number One.
The RIAA.
The RIAA might be scumbags, but every person who uses Kazaa to download their songs needs to stop pretending like they aren't committing a crime. They ARE. They know they are, or they should know they are. The idea that being able to listen to the song from your mp3 will inspire you to go buy the cd is a ludicrous smokescreen for most of the nerd-tech-geeks I have met. I can't even guess how many people I know with PC juke boxes filled with 20, 30, 40 gigabytes of mp3's or more, one mentioned 120 gigs. They don't BUY the cds- to do that would take the GNP of a third world nation. And if they do come across something they like, they'll burn it to a cd - with new cd players it isn't even necessary to convert from mp3 format, or they can get one of the memory laden mp3 players. Every year their capacity goes up and the price goes down... every year the incentive to get a cd fades a bit more.
Does this make it right for the RIAA to go after a few unlucky bastards and make examples of them? Not really. But it's an old strategy to hang the skeletons of criminals at the gates of the city as a warning, and it can be quite effective.
What I find remarkable (and I know you want to know it!) is that everyone derides the RIAA while at the same time slaking up the product they provide. At this point comp. tech in the sound field lets a hobbyist match a studio. Don't want to pay for your music? Then make your own, and download the works of independent artists. Don't insin
I know you can use VPNs to get much of this functionality now, but it would be better for all concerned if all the traffic were encrypted and obfuscated, not just that of people with something to hide, or those who like to thumb their nose at authority.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
track this: _|_
\m/
*** Looking up 65.42.25.3
*** Failed to resolve 65.42.25.3
Another one bites the dust...
I just imagine some RIAA lawyer sitting behind his desk and pumping his fist going "Yeah, you like that, don't you bitch?"
If you are definitely going to buy the album, why are you downloading the songs? Just go and buy the thing for crying out loud,
Gee! What do you know? A technical solution to a political problem, encounters human nature.
It's summer time, wait till the colder weather starts and we'll see what happens !!!
HAND
Pity. It seems as though many R&B singers have just ran out of pot money. I guess their cravings for drugs are uncontrollable now. They'll have to start scaring and suing some users to add to their eight-figure salary. Have fun smoking pot, RIAA.
One cannot *steal* software,movies or music. They are an infinitely reproducable thing. Otherwise, something like Kazaa would not really work.
Seriously. No one calls "patent infringment" "patent, stealing", no one calls "trademark infringement" "trademark stealing".
Copyright infringement isn't stealing either, though they can both be independently illegal. The difference here is that the copyright holder doesn't lose his rights. His exclusivity is infringed upon, but nothing is taken.
If people are going to insist on analogizing it to something else, I would suggest TRESPASSING. If I put my foot in your yard, I've trespassed. But you still have your yard; you just aren't enjoying it exclusively.
Anyone who calls copyright infringement "stealing" has an agenda, and shouldn't be trusted.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
...individuals filed fewer tax forms to Accounting offices across the nation during the April 20th - 26th week.
Of course the numbers are going to fall. Americans do enjoy 3 day traveling weekends.
For it to have any correlation to the reported drop in file sharing, 100% of file sharers would have to be teens taking 1 day off for the 4th of July.
It's completely absurd.
* The airing of a very special "Buffy" episode poignantly demonstrating the evils of file sharing.
* The never-ending influx of penis enlargement spam has forced most users away from their PCs
* Kurt Kobain, Tupac and Biggy did not release a new album this week.
* Public turned off to the new breed of rockers that refuse to comb their hair. Marilyn Manson P2P file shares increase, yet many groups such as Creed, Matchbox 20 and the Goo Goo dolls suffer.
* The size of Brittney Spears brests did not seem to change this month.
* Madonna releases yet another album that makes her old fans question their taste.
* Consumers are still in a catatonic haze over the excitement of Puffy and Nelly teaming up on a song featured on the 2fast 2furious soundtrack.
* People are unimpressed that Rob Thomas from Matchbox 20 is "scared"
* Instead of sharing files online, people have discovered that Leptoprin really does work and are power shopping on QVC instead.
Useage of BT rose 11%. Since the RIAA is so damn and blind and greedy to stopping trading on Kazaa, they don't notice this blip. Heh.
As filesharing traffic fell 15%, sales by the RIAA's members likewise rose 15%....
Right?
Did they?
I mean I thought these eeeeevil file traders were responsible for all the woes of the music cartel^Windustry.
Right?
Is it?
And now that all those eeeevil file traders have got their comeuppances, the music cartel^Windustry should be back in the black.
Right?
Shouldn't it?
Ooh, moderator points! Five more idjits go to Minus One Hell!
Delendae sunt RIAA, MPAA et Windoze
What if they made a hooker? Would it do both (suck and blow)? Would it have compatibility problems with my penis (round peg, square hole)? Would it try to kill all wives and girlfriends and monopolize the nookie market? Would it come without condoms enabled, exposing me to tons of viruses? Would it be prone to "back-door" exploits from malicious users (like my shady roommate)?
I must know!
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Sure you can use your computer for anything, however, if you use YOUR computer for ILLEGAL stuff, YOU will have to face the consequences. I thought that was simple.
/. and that is the reason my previous post was rated as a troll. It's hard to face the truth, I know that, but it was not a troll, just the plain thruth.
I know this is
At least I can sleep without having to fear RIAA, that's worth beeing downmodded as troll to me.
If you mod me down, I *will* introduce you to my sister!
Welcome to the real world, loser.
Meaning, offering the contents of my HD to anybody I know the old fashioned way: I go to their house with the HD and they copy it to their machines. I've already "merged" my collection with others and have about 60GB of music, which will last for quite a while ... at least until the music biz gets their act together and offers everything they put out in digital, unprotected form. I'm not buying another CD until then. And with all this music, I have no need to go on a P2P network and risk my ass. Just going through all the stuff on my drive will take years.
I guess it's really time for Kazaa to get on the train and start using links aka edonkey then. I know about sig2dat but that software isn't really part of Kazaa (comes bundled with Kazaa Lite though). What Kazaa is missing to get rid of those fakes once and for all is built-in support for "kazaa-links" with browser integration. You know something like "kazaa://894eaab15f64cc6fcd001/Terminator3.DVDRIP. XviD.avi" which, when clicked, starts a download in Kazaa for that exact version of the movie. Then all one need is to put up some ad-sponsored sites listing verified links. I know quite a few and none have been closed for any reason, yet they're rather well known and I'm sure RIAA are aware of them since they basically act as primary community sites for the entire eDonkey network. A problem might be that they don't *directly* link to anything. However, they do indirectly, but perhaps the question is how indirect links are disallowed... I mean, those links store something like a 128-bit MD4 checksum. Is 16 bytes enough to describe a version of Terminator 3 accurately and uniquely and get someone to court for?
I guess RIAA hasn't dared to do this in the case of being told "nope, are you crazy" by the judge (not thinking/caring about the extremely small mathematic probabilities an identical MD5 sum describe another file in circulation) and having these sites explode in popularity as an effect.
Anyway, fake files *is* a non-issue in most cases unless you look for an incredibly rare soundtrack/movie/software that none have even bothered to generate a checksum from. But those are also the most rarely faked. For common files, there is no special issue with fake files, at least when using most other p2p apps then Kazaa.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
I believe this was the one you wanted to link to.
It's easy to have "plausible deniability" using KazaaLite.
i d=ns999 93937
Step 1) Create a virus/trojan for Internet Explorer that installs a version of KazaaLite that randomly downloads files listed in a text file.
Step 2) Create a local web page with the virus.
Step 3) Aim Internet Explorer at that local web page
Step 4) You've been "infected" and now "unintentionally" share and download files.
Step 5) Send a copy of this "virus" to Symantec so that can document the virus. Make sure there are no other copies of the virus since you don't want the virus linked to you.
If the RIAA notices that you're downloading, you can claim that you were a victim, not a participant. You can "thank them for their good work in determining that you've been infected" and you will delete the virus as soon as possible. They can't prosecute you.
Such a story is believable since Trojans already exist for downloading and distributing porn:
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?
Something that a lot of these guys have not thought of, is of course, the obvious answer/truth. File sharing traffic drops in may/june and rises again in late august early september. The college students leave and go back to school with their beloved OCs. Oh dual OC3s, how I miss thee.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
too late to be seen by many, but
Couldn't this just be because kids at college no longer have massive pipes at their disposal?
Good point. However:
I know I'm not the only one who leaves my machine downloading constantly, and then occasionally checks my loot, this includes long weekends, spring break, and winter break too.
Is there a remote admin file sharing client? Then I could leave my machine there over the summer.
The biggest problem I currently have with suing individuals for copyright infringement is that the infringers are being charged a lot more than their individual infringements had been worth.
No offense to anyone who thinks one infringer's damage may equate roughly to $150,000, but I don't think so. I think it would be difficult to prove that millions of dollars worth of infringements, spread out over tens of millions of infringers, would equate to even $100 from even the worst infringers.
You can't put everyone's bill on the one guy you catch. That's like throwing in a couple of unsolved murders into a serial killer's list just to say the killer has been caught. That isn't justice.
Nielsen is meaningless, just a pacifier for advertisers to suck on.
Sharing copyrighted files is wrong. Legally and morally.
What's the problem?
And why does someone have to be convinced piracy is a-okay ("right and good") just to be passionate about IP issues? Your justification is that the RIAA is a "far greater evil?" You're a fool.
And piracy is an IP issue, you know.
"Sufferin' succotash."
In addition to the answer given in the other reply to the parent, the fossil record, of which dinosaurs are a part, contradicts the existence of a "Garden of Eden" with every animal that ever existed, existing simultaneously in harmony, as part of the same ecosystem.
The music industry is using the same exact argument that religious institutions make. They argue that society should give them special perks by saying that hurting those institutions is morally wrong.
You don't need no stinking priest to find your god, and you don't need to stinking middle man recording executive to get a song.
The greatest irony of our times it that the two most diametrically oppossed institutions in terms of ideal are completely the same after all. The religious nuts want the right to control information, and so does the recording industry. The RIAA and the 700 Club (or whatever he's onto now), are both the same thing, just in it for the power, add no value to anything, hamper the rights of users in order to stay in power, collecting a tax for delivering nothing. Both institutions are obsolete.
Time to step up to the brave new world.
Intellectual property doesn't matter because your ideas have been thought of or are obsolete.
This is my sig.
Movies are made of a photons and music is made of acoustic vibrations. Until they steal the material it is printed on, they are not stealing. Instead, they are infring on someone else's rights and possibly depriving them of income. If someone points out the difference, they can not be justifying an action since either are clearly illegal. Besides, depriving someone of income is not stealing because in order to steal from someone, must have it in the first place. Instead, they are depriving them of possible income, assuming that a person would have bought what they downloaded.
Stealing, infringing and depriving are not interchangable words. Ask an intelligent lawyer (if such a beast exists). You can not go to court and say someone deprived you of your car if they, in fact, stole it. They may have deprived you of personal mobility or your wages at work that day, but not your car.
"The catalog is so much bigger than they could ever support at a physical store"
I can get a 2.5TB disk array for about $12K, a kick-ass Linux file server with fiber channel for about $8K, and a bunch of touch-screen kiosks with CD burners for about $6K each. Set up the kiosks, using what might be called "LAN Napster" (LANster?) to pull files on demand from the server in the back room. You pick your files, they download pretty much instantly, scan the old credit card and hit "burn".
Add some soft couches, a "listen with headphones" mode, a coffee bar, and Voila! profitability returned to the music industry. Of course, they would have to be willing to sell one song at a time, and it would have to be reasonably priced, since P2P is the competition. The buying experience would have to be convenient and fun, no waiting, DRM, or other nonsense. In theory, P2P activity would drop to a nuisance level. After all, everyone knows it can be slow, you don't always get what you want, and the whole process takes time. Take way the thrill of rejecting $18.99 pricing, crippled CDs, crappy albums, and inadequate choices, and P2P loses much of its appeal.
All they have to do is abandon a dying sales model and their unsustainable pricing. The solution is so simple, and yet the RIAA could mess up a one-car funeral.
Creationist: My guess is valid because I say so and because My Book says so and because My Book was written thousands of years ago and nothing since is as good.
.... that's a difficult choice ... now if you want to argue faith, go ahead, but don't argue logic based on a book full of contradictions written thousands of years ago.
Scientist: My guess is valid because of these reasons, this logic, this immense mesh of other reasons which all hang together by logic.
Hmmmm
Infuriate left and right
From that article: Weiss said the recording industry should lobby for special taxes on CD burners and Internet access
Makes perfect sense to me. Since everyone who has an internet connection uses it to pirate music, we should all be forced to pay for this! Its not people out there use the internet for things like....oh, I don't know...shopping, or for information.
If I'm going to be treated like a criminal (and I already am, seeing as how I buy CD-Rs for data backup and mixing my own albums from music I legally own), I'm going to at least act like a criminal. Hoist the Jolly Rogers, it's time to sail the IRCs! Yaaaarrrrrrr!
SHHHHH! I'm waiting until this tax passes and then go and claim my share as a copyright owner (i.e. slashdot poster).
Recording Industry Association of America
1330 Connecticut Avenue, N.W., Suite 300
Washington, D.C. 20036
(202) 775-0101
You know... Incase you want to stop over and say hi...
Thank you for one of the most tortured analogies ever posted. Seriously, if I were to spend days dreaming up the most irrelevent and inappropriate analogy regarding any subject matter on earth, I would never conceive of an RIAA equals Christianity analogy, so credit to you, an idea worthy of present-day academia. No matter, I'm sure that if the topic were baseball or C++, you would still find some way to work in an anti-Christian slam in there somewhere, not that you might have an agenda...
You might have 2.5TB of music digitized in one place, but do you think music publishers have it? Part of Napster's power was the distributed digitizing effort. Simply locating all the music that was digitized and available on Napster could bankrupt a traditional publisher. It's doubtful a traditional music publisher would take digitizations from the public at large, so they are stuck, "digitally remastering" what they can when they can. It does not add up geometically like Napster did and it will cost them too much to do it.
This is why copyright is supposed to be for time limited. Music will go exticnt before big companies can get to it and the highest quality recordings will be lost. Fixing the laws so that work can be published freely within the lifetime it is produced would be a good start. This would destroy most of big music publishers and good riddance.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Sounds like he struck a nerve.
That people are starting to realize that they will never listen to the 100 GB of music they have already downloaded, so why bother searching for more?
Is everybody and his brother bugging, um, friends to set up P2P networks with IPSEC and SSH and other things?
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
Sir, the trolls here are fed with a special, moderate, ration. Giving them knowledge makes them overexcited and hard handle. The staff thanks you for your cooperation.
Business was off 30% the week of July 4th at my company, the rush hour traffic was cake all that week, people everywhere were on vacation. RIAA is just looking retarded right now.
Discovery Channel or National Geographic Channel showed it down here. I even recorded the first two episodes for my son (since they showed it too late for him), but then I found they couldn't decide if their movie was to be a good documentary or a bad soap-opera (the actors were lousy, the script terrible). So I gave up. There were good bit, though. The part about the evolution of the mammal/bird eye was very good.
Hail to you Mr. Oliver Wendell Jones.
No but then the RIAA couldn't complain about stealing music, because they were getting their money. In fact, I'm sure they would just make all of their stuff available online, since people burining that music to CD would be paying them, even if its indirectly. Er... right?
It is a little known fact that every person who has ever died was breathing just minutes before they died. .
Breathing must cause death. .
Ok everybody, on 3! 1,2,3 STOP BREATHING!!
Good enough???
No one is arguing that content isn't valuable, but keep in mind that "value" is a huge variable (often based upon perception) and should not itself be treated as a tangible object (i.e. if a decrease in value occurs, is that stealing? If not, why not?). e.g. Companies create stratifications (e.g. coupons, special offers, etc.) to sell the same product to different people at different prices... some even for free. Does that mean that the product is not valuable?
... take a look at almost any .nfo file if you doubt this. Everyone I know understands the importance of this and purchases what they use (if they can). Likewise with open source (donation or helping to develop).
Most importantly, keep in mind that we are artificially increasing the value of a "zero-cost duplication" product by making duplication illegal. It is the nature of the product that it can be redistributed for free. Why is it illegal? To encourage creation? To increase the public domain? And if the public domain is not really being benefitted? Is it morally wrong for me to be the judge of this? Is it morally wrong to duplicate?
The fact that some content is valuable to people is obvious from their use of it, and if people find something valuable, it only makes sense to encourage (monetarily or otherwise) the creation of more similarly valuable content. Are morals even involved in this? i.e. it is beneficial to me to donate in order to fund the creation of future products that I like.
Hence, the "pirate's" creed: "Support the creators: pay for what you use."
For many years I recorded *everything* I listened to from the radio. This is perfectly legal and yet free. Does that mean it is not valuable? Can I create copies of this for my friends? Ideally, I'd like to donate to the artists or producers, but I really have no direct avenue, so I buy CDs if I really like some music... though from the statistics I have read, the effectiveness of this type of donation is minimal... i.e. very little actually gets to the artists / producers.
I personally believe that zero cost duplication goods should be "free" for non-commercial use... i.e. anyone with a copy can make other copies and give them away for free and a fee should be negotiated for any commercial use.
Furthermore, I think effective public relations is the culprit for the modern belief that duplication is immoral, and that everyone standing between the creators and the users will find they really aren't valuable if that illusion is shattered.
Recently (The week of the 4th of July) I burned 217 of my MP3's onto a single CD and listened to it throughout my vacation from Oregon to Southern California.
About a dozen of the songs were things I really pirated, all of them by Danny Elfman (where would I buy that?). Another 2 CD's worth were albums where the original CD was broken or scratched beyond repair and I downloaded replacements from Kazaa. The rest I purchased, ripped directly from the CD's, and never , and never shared. During my vacation I purchased another $55 in music CDs, but they were on sale. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I had a bunch of pirated Monty Python songs on that MP3 CD as well, but among the $55 worth of CD's I bought were 2 Python CD's containing the songs I had pirated and much more.
Although I don't support piracy in general, small scale music piracy is not always bad. Someone who has a conscience might even buy more CD's as a result. At this moment I've purchased much more music as a direct result of piracy than I've pirated without purchasing. And most of what I haven't purchased I haven't seen on music store shelves.
If they keep threatening people for such minor violations, I might just set my radio next to my PC. I could even plug it into my line-in. Problem solved.
I don't know about how Neilsen checks internet traffic - I'm too lazy to go and weed thru their site. But, I know when they do TV analysis, they actually put a cable box in the home that monitors what channel is being watched, and sends that information back to their system. Now, if the same setup exists for their net traffic analysis, then people know their being watched. And, with the recent cases in which providers have turned over information about subscribers who are sharing files, I'd sure as hell stop using my Neilsen-monitor net connection to trade files for fear that they'd turn me in! So of course Neilsen thinks less people are sharing!
It is a holiday period for lots of people. So they can not use the computer at the office, and at home (if not gone away) they have other things to do.
And in other news..
Gosh - people spend less time in front of their computer in june-july. Somebody call the media! Oh wait, someone already has...
Gee...no faith I presume?
I can't find an explanation of how Neilsen/Netrating is getting these figures. If it's the same way as they get TV figures, then it'll be based on a tiny sample of households, fitted with voluntary tracking systems. Note that they specify "US households", not worldwide figures, so how else would they get them?
Pop quiz: if you're planning to do some serious leeching, are you more or less likely to sign up to Neilsen tracking?
For bonus points, if you're the sort of Suzie Homemaker that's on the Neilsen system because you're genuinely unaware that those Barry Mannilow mp3s you've been sucking down are hooky, and you're suddenly made aware that the RIAA Is Watching You, are you likely to spit up a hairball and suddenly stop sharing?
Looks to me like this is a survey selected to produce this result.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Science does not deal with proofs. Only mathematics and alcoholism do. Science is about the disproving of ideas, not the other way around.
:)
That said, your argument would be perfectly valid if s/proof/the ability to be disproved/g.
Ok if $150,000 drops the usage 15%, they'll just have to raise the fine up to $1 000,000.
Since July there are about 30 % less cars on our streets during rush-hour. Are they all exploded? Or may it be that it is summer and people are enjoying their holidays?
Summertime -> People have holidays -> People are switching off their computer -> People do download less or nothing while on holidays -> 15 % drop in usage.
nothing in Genesis says that all creatures were created at the same time, nor does it say that all existed at the same time, nor does it say that dinosaurs existed at the time of humans, nor does it say that a hypothetical God did not create humans using evolution and the universe using a big bang. In fact, I think that if God did create the universe, a big bang would probably be the most likely way. Get your facts straight before you rip on people for ignorance. Intelligent creationism does NOT unequivically deny scientific evidence. However science ALWAYS denies supernatural evidence by its very nature. Which one seems more blind now?
"Weiss said the recording industry should lobby for special taxes on CD burners and Internet access"
Perhaps more usefully, we can lobby for a special tax on company earnings. From the number of companies who've committed fraud recently, it's obvious that anybody who runs a company intends to steal money. The only real way for the government to combat this evil is to take additional tax from the record-companies, on the assumptions that they will commit fraud.
While we're at it, perhaps we should consider a tax on blank paper and writing implements, to recover the cost of people writing articles unfavourable to various industries. We could put it as a tax on newspapers maybe. Or even on people who stop and chat in public.
Why is it whenever someone says "copyright infringement" is "stealing" someone comes by to correct them by giving scientific explanations of why something like movies and music can't be stolen by downloading because they aren't tangible?
When you buy music, a movie, software, etc. you aren't just paying for the final product. As you say its a bunch of bits pressed onto a silver disc that costs maybe $.02. You are paying for the service provided- the mix masters, the cameramen, the programmers, etc. and you receive the benefits of that service. If you copy the software, it's copyright infringement. But if you USE that software, you are taking advantage of the service that you didn't pay for hence you are stealing.
It's like when "shell shock" became "post traumatic stress syndrome", the words became devoid of meaning and impact. Comparing "stealing" to "copyright infringement", the latter doesn't sound so bad does it?
I'm confused as to why I can go to the local public library branch and borrow a cd, and make any number of copies, rip it to my computer, etc. for free, yet we're not allowed to do the same over the internet as long as we're not profiting from it?
Why do they feel that file sharing is different than what they allow to go on legally from the library? Because I have to hop in the car or walk down to the library to borrow it?!
I love it.
./ about file sharing topics are always pro. Nobody seems to think file sharing is stealing. Someone has an opposing opinion and he gets labeled a Troll.
Generally, the most highly moderated comments on
Perhaps sharing isn't technically stealing in the traditional sense, but I think that if you're acquiring something without paying for it without permission of the seller, then that's stealing. Regardless of whether or not the product is tangible or if you had planned on buying it in the first place.
Strange my science teacher always told me it's impossible to disprove something only show that's very very unlikely and why it's unlikely. Where as proving something is easy i.e. the solar sails NASA want to try out if they fail it won't disprove the theory just show that the current sail doesn't work. But if they do work it will clearly prove the theory.
Saying Apple is better than MS is like saying Botulism is better than rabies.
Ever read the Old Testament? Anyway. We are too far off topic now. I slap my own wrist for leading the heard this far off course.
No man is an island... But I wouldn't mind having a bigger moat.
For those of you interested in this (totally unrelated side topic) you should check out this. This explains where the old 6000 year thing came from. Hey, I'm not saying all Christians are clueless, I was just demonstrating how much brainwashing one Christian organization (and many like it) did to my bro.
BTW... Many millions of dollars have been spent to try to scientifically prove many supernatural phenomenon. Many scientists believe in the positive results of those. We usually call those people crackpots. But we have a name just the same for religious people that have also closed their eyes to the evidence of the world. Fundamentalists.
No man is an island... But I wouldn't mind having a bigger moat.
We all know that the RIAA is working very hard to spin statistics that support their point. The fact that file swapping only decreased by 15% during the July 4 weekend just proves that people are not married to their computers, that they know how to shut them off and enjoy a long weekend.
The tag line says it all......
"There are Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics" - Mark Twain
Uh, Newton, Einstein, other big-name physicists thought that by figuring out the rules of nature, they were getting a glimpse of the face of God. Newton spent a lot more of his life arguing obscure religious arguments than he ever spent on physics and the theory of the calculus.
Science assumes that the universe is governed by a set of rules, that these rules are the same everywhere, and that the rules don't change. If you (or anyone) can demonstrate that's not true, science will accept that and continue. Can't honestly say the same for religion.
As several people here pointed out, the file sharing nets by virtue of their decentralized structure have a much more comprehensive catalog than any paid site is likely to develop any time soon. It just wouldn't be worth it for Apple to spend money digitizing old 1960s instrumentals, Ennio Morricone movie soundtracks, or 70s Brazillian pop music, or any of the other tracks I've seen on Kazaa because (apart from me) there is no projectable market for this stuff to justify a return on investment.
The RIAA does not seriously think it can stamp out file sharing nets. It probably doesn't even want to. Someone over there has probably figured out that if they can find a way to keep all the current releases off the P2P nets and on paid services, the industry could actually reap significant found money by collecting a toll on every other obscure track downloaded by users of Kazaa, Grokster, et al. Almost all of this revenue would be profit, since there'd be no cost for marketing, packaging or distribution.
The RIAA's current threatened legal action against P2P users may therefore be seen as an attempt to hold the P2P nets hostage as long as may be necessary to get a good position from which to begin negotiations for the download toll. It's basically extortion, but I expect this to be the way the situation will play out.
ONE way to determine whether there is a God is to apply this well- established principle: What is made requires a maker. The more complicated the thing made, the more capable the maker must be.
For example, look around your home. Tables, chairs, desks, beds, pots, pans, plates, and other eating utensils all require a maker, as do walls, floors, and ceilings. Yet, those things are comparatively simple to make. Since simple things require a maker, is it not logical that complex things require an even more intelligent maker?
Our Awesome Universe
A watch requires a watchmaker. What of our infinitely more complex solar system, with the Sun and its planets revolving around it with split-second precision century after century? What of the awesome galaxy we live in, called the Milky Way, with its more than 100 billion stars? Have you ever stopped at night to gaze at the Milky Way? Were you impressed? Then think of the incredibly vast universe that contains untold billions of galaxies like our Milky Way! Too, the heavenly bodies are so reliable in their movements century after century that they have been compared to precision timepieces.
If a watch, which is relatively simple, implies the existence of a watchmaker, surely the infinitely more complex and awesome universe implies the existence of a designer and maker. That is why the Bible invites us to 'raise our eyes high up and see,' and then it asks: "Who has created these things?" The answer: "It is the One [God] who is bringing forth the army of them even by number, all of whom he calls even by name. Due to the abundance of dynamic energy, he also being vigorous in power, not one of them is missing." (Isaiah 40:26) Thus, the universe owes its existence to an invisible, controlling, intelligent power--God.
Earth Uniquely Designed
The earth, with its protective atmosphere, is a unique home designed for us by a caring God
The more scientists study the earth, the more they realize that it is uniquely designed for human habitation. It is just the right distance from the sun to get the proper amount of light and heat. Once a year it moves around the sun, with just the right angle of tilt, making seasons possible in many parts of the earth. The earth also rotates on its own axis every 24 hours, providing regular periods of light and darkness. It has an atmosphere with just the right mixture of gases so we can breathe and be protected from damaging radiation from space. It also has the vital water and soil needed to grow food.
Without all those factors, and others, working together, life would be impossible. Was all of that an accident? Science News says: "It seems as if such particular and precise conditions could hardly have arisen at random." No, they could not. They involved purposeful design by a superb Designer.
If you went into a fine house and found that it was generously stocked with food, that it had an excellent heating and air-conditioning system, and that it had good plumbing to supply water, what would you conclude? That it all just came about by itself? No, you would surely conclude that an intelligent person designed and made it with great care. The earth was also designed and made with great care in order to provide what its inhabitants need, and it is much more complex and well-supplied than any house.
The earth was made with loving care so that we could enjoy life fully
Also, consider the great number of things that add
delight to living. Look at the vast variety of beautifully colored flowers with their pleasant scents that humans enjoy. Then there is the great variety of foods so delicious to our taste. There are forests, mountains, lakes, and other creations pleasant to look at. Too, what of beautiful sunsets that enhance our enjoyment of life? And in the animal realm, are we not delighted by the playful antics and lovable nature of puppies, kittens, and other animal young? So the earth provides many delightful surprises not absolutely needed to sustain life. These show that th
I slap my own wrist for leading the heard this far off course.
Hmm... if you're the one speaking, then technically, you're the 'heard', even if only heard by a few.
Have you ever read the old testament? You might've noticed that a group of animals is usually a herd.
Good Point! Einstein was famous for trying to figure out the "will" of god. He used mathematics. Unlike all of those fanatics that have killed maimed and destroyed millions of lives in the name of the "will" of god. They used the same book that is used today.
Also, doesn't it seem odd that fanatics of any religion are almost always fanatics in the religion that they grew up with. It seems likely then that a devout Christian would be a devout Muslim if they had been shipped off to an orphanage and given to a Muslim family. And both the devout Christian and the devout Muslim will argue until they are blue in the face that their religion is the one "truth". They may concede that the other religions have good philosophies (maybe). I don't know but it makes all of their credibility a little smaller in my eyes.
No man is an island... But I wouldn't mind having a bigger moat.
Ouch! Shot down by the grammer guy. oops.
No man is an island... But I wouldn't mind having a bigger moat.
You are funny, I hope you get modded up for that post.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Why is it whenever someone says "copyright infringement" is "stealing" someone comes by to correct them by giving scientific explanations of why something like movies and music can't be stolen by downloading because they aren't tangible?
Because they're idiots used to the years of convenience of piracy and are self-justifying to render themselves "less" illegal.
"Sufferin' succotash."
CNN published this story, they own WB records, who are one of the big 6 RIAA players. So of course they want to instill fear of downloading and using kazaa. The story is probably BS. On a side note, ever notice how any artist who complains about priated music ( insert Lars here ), is someone you really wouldnt want to listen to anyways? dont flatter yourself too much guys, the power of kazaa lies in the ability to get unreleased, rare, live and otherwise forgotten tracks that you could never buy in a SPECs or Virgin Mega store anyways. Rock on.
"What do you know, scare tactics work!"
If the goal was to stop downloading and that was it, then maybe the strategy works. But I thought the goal was to "restore industry income and profits". If someone stops downloading but doesn't buy any CDs, or some other format of RIAA member company products, then what is the benefit?
Look at it from the economists standpoint. The demand for music downloads might be almost perfectly elastic. At zero the demand is 10 billion downloads. But at a price of 1 cent, the demand might be 1 billion downloads. At 10 cents, 10 million downloads. And at $1 it might be 100,000 downloads. If that were the case, the price should be lower than what they are currently charging, but to adopt a more profitable price structure will generate pressure on the existing CD price structure, resulting in lower overall revenue. Unless selling CDs for one half the price would more than triple the sales of CDs.
In one sense, the way the RIAA member companies think of things is the ideal situation for clubs around the country is for there to be 5 cloned bands that play 5 identical play lists. The spend all their money promoting their 5 live bands. When you want to go to a club on Friday night, you pick the country band, the rock band, the heavy metal, or folk band and pay the $10 cover charge. When upstart clubs start up with independent bands, the RIAA goes out and makes sure they don't get permits, licenses, or are allowed to advertise. This is the American way - screw the customer, big salaries to those can most effectively limit choice to drive up prices.
The problem with stealing is that you deprive someone of their property. That problem doesn't apply to copying; I see no reason copyright violations are immoral.
"We have got to make Stan understand the importance of voting, because he'll definitely vote for our guy." - South Park
For the past few decades it has been possible to hear music for free on the good ol' radio. Some people even used recording devices (aka cassette tapes) to take music from the radio and listen to it whenever they wanted! There was an article about this on http://www.theonion.com awhile back. What I don't get is why Kazaa is so much worse than companies like Clear Channel. Perhaps the music industry needs to find more ways to make money.