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Inquiry Into RIAA's Piracy Crackdown Tactics
MongooseCN writes "Sen. Norm Coleman started an inquiry to check the RIAA's tactics on attacking online music swappers. He believes the RIAA's tactics may not be taking into consideration the damage they do to innocent people. It's good to know that someone remembered people in the US have Rights." As a former roadie, Senator Coleman doesn't oppose file sharing penalities, he merely wants to make sure the punishment fits the crime.
Why did they have to wait so long? Couldn't this have been done _before_ so many people lost their money/got expelled. Do we really need to make so much noise before they make things happen? All in all, I'm glad they finally got their act together, but I worry that the only reason they're doing this is because the RIAA has something else planned.. Apparently, you only have rights if you belong to a group big enough to actually influence politics.
though, i support file sharing, i agree with him on the fact that the punishment fits the crime. since there is no crime, no punishment. end of story.
I write code.
Since legally coipyright infringment damage can only me measured in economic terms of lost sales..
How can RIAA claim any loss in salse when the people sharing files do not have the dispoable income to purchase Cds in the firs tplace?
So where is the damage, again RIAA?
Its about like RIAA's position on piracy sales outside the US in that the CDs go for about $5 or less and yet RIAA claims loss at ful price not the actual money exchanged..
to me the actual money that was exchanged is the legal monetary damage of the piracy not invented figures..
Don't Tread on OpenSource
The only right good ole Mericans have is the right to pay for the new Metallica.. and if they don't like it then let the fury of RIAA rain upon them!!!
oh sorry was channelling Hilary Rosen for a minute... ewww.. I feel dirty now.
"I am a kernel in the linux army"
Somebody should put the RIAA in place ! Fine their fat millions and give it to the innocent people caught in cross-fire. Better still force the RIAA bosses to listen to the worthless songs / albums they promote.
-------- Cluster bombing from B-52s is very, very accurate -- the bombs always hit the ground.
He believes the RIAA's tactics may not be taking into consideration the damage they do to innocent people
I'd be more intrested in questioning the legality of the RIAA's 'tactics'.
I have over 70 freaks, do you?
I'm not from Minnesota, but if I was, I'd suddenly be sparked to start a massive campaigning effort for this guy.
Regardless of what side of the p2p issue you're on, you have to admit that this guy is the first Senator in a LONG time to openly investigate possible infringements on the rights of the common Joe by big business. With so many of our senators and representatives in the pockets of corporations, this man deserves the utmost respect, and if you are from Minnnesota, your vote.
Now, on to my side of the p2p battle, this is just another sign that the RIAA is eventually going to eat it for their practices. Senators hate to be wrong
Let's get one thing perfectly clear, I did not vote for George W Bush, and I do not endorse what he does or says.
"
to answer the first post - it took this long because now is the perfect opportunity for a politician to finally speak out and garner some public support for their election given the latest round of subpoena's has indicted innocent victims or third party individuals who were a matter of circumstance. It's best summed up in this paragraph:
>>> "The industry seems to have adopted a 'shotgun' approach that could potentially cause injury and harm to innocent people who may simply have been victims of circumstance, or possessed a lack of knowledge of the rules related to digital sharing of files," Coleman wrote. >>>
Before it was students etc they were filiong against and the claims were pretty justified - there wasn't much leeway for a politician to step up - now there is a distinct case to be made and popular support to be garnered from it.
Fear Breeds Knowledge
..there are no innocent people. They could give a flying flip who gets crushed under the wheels of their 'machine'.
Also, from the article:
"Theft is theft, but in this country we don't cut off your arm or fingers for stealing," said Sen. Norm Coleman, a Minnesota Republican who was a rock roadie in the 1960s.
And yet, all Coleman wants is to see a copy of the subpoenas & any measures the RIAA is taking to ensure that 'innocent people' aren't getting snagged.
How about doing something useful, Senator? How about imposing a cap on the amount of damages the RIAA can levy against its victims? You're not at all concerned that they're claiming damages upto $15,000 per song? Is 'Oops! I did it again' really fscking worth $15,000 to anyone?
This is just another example of a gubment windbag trying to grab some press for being the 'good guy' while not actually doing shit for his constituents.
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
At the end of the article:
"I must confess, I downloaded Napster, and then Napster was found to be the wrong thing," he said. "I stopped."
So, he's a former roadie, and a Senator, and he waited until the justice declared Napster the wrong thing to stop using it? when he downloaded songs off Napster, shouldn't he have sensed that guilt that should have come from his being a former roadie, and his current position as (supposedly moral) senator?
So yeah, go Senator, but I wonder if he's not just another file swapper with a louder voice than everybody else, who tries to hide the fact behind "I recognize the very legitimate concerns about copyright infringement" statements, so as to not be labeled as a pirate by the RIAA.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
...they won't start making deepcuts in the RIAA's "plan" until they stop getting those few extra hundred thousand dollars of money shoved in their pockets.
if you think that the RIAA planned to -stop- suing after this first round, you're awfully naive.
notice how every victory emboldens them? this last time they didn't even necessarily want to go to court, they were just looking for 2000 settlement checks, much like DirecTV.
and did the gov't finally get its act together? or did we, their constituents, finally get -our- act together?
if you want to protect your rights, how about you email your representatives and write your check to the EFF?
you can rail against the system, or you can use your power as a voter to get things done.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
I think one of the reasons nothing has been done before about the RIAA's ability to walk all over people's rights is because none of the higher ups understand. The main reason why the RIAA has so much power is because the people who pass our laws don't realize they have it. Our congressmen/senators are on average in their 50s, 60, 70s. Not to stereotype too badly, but most of the older folks in the US know the basics of email, word maybe, and quicken. The way the RIAA approached the whole file sharing fiasco is similar to if someone who doesn't know much about cars takes their car to the shop to get fixed, and on top of it the mechanic slaps on $2500 of fony repairs. The way everything is now the RIAA will always be right, and the average person going up against them will lose. Bad situation, but that's the way it is.
I am from a MN and I work to help get this guy elected. I put up signs, stamped letters and made phone calls.
Finally, being involved pays off.
Capitalism: unequal distribution of wealth
Socialism: equal distribution of poverty
class-action lawsuit against the RIAA by the innocent people caught in their massive web.
Fight fire with fire.
-------
"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."
-- George Orwell
Is how the RIAA rolled Verizon. That was where things really started heading down the tubes - any idiot could walk into a courthouse, lodge a form with a court clerk and the process is started.
There should be a higher burden of proof - a judge should be looking over it. Or, you'll clog the court system, as is happening with the RIAA and it's 900+ subpoenas. It would also encourage them to go after the serious people (those making money through piracy) as opposed to the college kids and grandparents (who will normally just roll over instantly due to potential legal costs).
However, I don't think it's going to take them much longer to hit critical mass for "people fucked off". Then it'll start to get interesting again. No more Mickey Mouse Preservation Acts, etc then: they'll blow the goodwill the $$$ in politicians pockets bought them.
-- james
send him a contribution, or just a kind letter thanking him for his efforts. Then explain to him that copyright infringement is not theft; it's just copyright infringement. Then if you get that far, gently suggest that content companies have bastardized the entire concept of copyright law, and that it should be done away with.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
1. Record/buy copyrights to a song which would otherwise sell a couple of thousand copies at most.
2. leak it out somehow, wait for those few thousand people to download it.
3. Sue these guys and recover $15,000 from them each.
4. Profit???
Much better than actually selling good songs, isnt it? Maybe this is why Britney & gang were promoted endlessly...:)
The Dirty Work Group
Truth is, apart from this one benevolent act, Coleman is kind of a pud and is completely in the pockets of corporations, esp. ADM. He replaced Paul Wellstone who did "investigate possible infringements on the rights of the common Joe by big business." Don't delude yourself.
As an Entity RIAA doesnt have same rights as human beings.All its actions against copyright infringement must be reasonable.
Here in UK,a farmer who shot dead a burglar in his farmhouse received a 5 year sentence for manslaughter even though he had been repeatedly burgled and threatened.His plea of self defence was accepted but even then he was jailed for use of excessive force.
The point i am making is that Riaa has to use minimum and justifiable means to ensure compliance.This they dont do and hence they deliberately target people who they know cant go to a court of law and show the riaa's abusive and unreasonable methods of copyright enforcement.
Wanted : A Signature.
I've decided to stop swapping music files and go back to stabbing hookers.
In other news, the RIAA has cut off the hands of 75 people today in Iran for downloading Busta Rhymes songs.
In a statement issued by the RIAA in Iranian newspapers...
"It will confirm that our actions are entirely consistent with the laws as enacted by the Iranian government and interpreted by the courts". The statement continues, "Yes, we realize many of our artists publish songs that support killing policemen, and raping and beating women, but downloading copyrighted material is wrong and totally unjustified!!"
Keep in mind that the form requests that Minnesotans identify themselves I suppose to let his staff triage and prioritize his email. However, that's better than a lot of congresspeople's sites, which tend to make a person feel that they don't want to hear from anyone outside of their state or district.
Unfortunately with computer technology the very act of playback requires duplication.
The copyright law foreseeing that things are often copied on a small scale by people tossed in a clause for Fair Use. Fair Use was OK when folks copied tracks of the radio, or put together custom casettes. The problem is that people are doing this Fair Use cut and paste en masse.
We ran into the same issue when the Radio was developed. As a solution we developed compulsory licensing. Everyone who owns a radio station (and hence is easily tracked down owing to their FCC license) pays a flat fee to AASCAP or similar organizations. They also track how often the play what songs, and the compulsory licence folks divvy the spoils amoung the folks who got the most air time.
The problem with the Internet is that you don't need a license. Tracking down individual "broadcasters" is a little difficult.
Now the RIAA does have a gripe. But their hands aren't clean either. They have been pushing for exorbinately high fees for internet broadcast rights. They have also been fighting the compulsory licensing scheme for internet file sharing.
The answer has yet to be found. Grabbing congresses' attention is a good sign.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Interesting that his party affiliation didn't make it into the article. If he were a democrat fighting the good fight it would have been mentioned.
And people who drive faster than the speed limit are often guilty of rape and murder!
Try again.
Check out my world simulator thingy.
" What difference does it make how the RIAA determines that you are stealing the music?"
No music theft has occured in any of the cases/whatever that the RIAA is trying to drum up. What is allegedly involved is copyright infringement, which is a different thing from theft.
No. Napster was innocent until proven guilty by a court of justice. Coleman did the right thing.
Or else, all $BigCorp had to do was spread some fud about questionable legality of its competitor, and everybody would just oblige and roll over? First let's the courts decide, and only then be part of the punishment.
Isn't this the guy ... Who, after his political opponent Paul Wellstone was killed in an airplane crash, gave his first televised interview posing against a small private plane in a hangar?
Dunno; would that be relevant, somehow? Is nobody allowed to have private planes after their political opponents die in plane crashes?
How does the RIAA determine if someone is sharing somesthing 'illegally'? If I rename "foo.txt" to "Britney Spears LOLZ Live hehehekk.mp3" do I suddenly become a copyright violator? Are they making any actual efforts in these cases to be sure that the suspected copyright violations are, in fact, violations? Granted, probably >99% of the people who are sharing mp3s have accurate names, but that doesn't mean you can do a quick search and report the names of every result you find and expect to win a lawsuit.
.mp3 extension. Nevermind the fact that some of those mp3s were not copyrighted, or were the personal works of the people who owned the computer. They just did a blanket sweep on *.mp3. Stupid, yes. Did they get away with it? No (after a lot of hassle).
My school a couple years ago shut down network access for anyone sharing anything with an
And so on. Interesting opinion. Unfortunately, it's incorrect.
Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun back, Dowling v. the United States: 'It follows that interference with copyright does not easily equate with theft, conversion or fraud. The Copyright Act even employs a separate term of art to define one who misappropriates a copyright: "Anyone who violates any of the exclusive rights of the copyright owner," that is, anyone who trespasses into his exclusive domain by using or authorizing the use of the copyrighted work in one of the five ways set forth in the statute, "is an infringer of the copyright."'
I know that this is playing to the gallery, but if we're simply going to redefine terms to suit ourselves, how about try a bit of it ourselves. For example:
Then we get a go:
Not perhaps technically accurate, but hey, they started it.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
I'm afraid that voters really don't seem to have much power, not anymore. Not when politicians have to take legal bribes to afford the advertising they need to get elected.
So if you don't have the money to get them elected, it does them little good to listen to you.
Depressing, but that's how it seems. At leasst from my perspective, not being a US resident and all.
In Australia, it often feels like we may as well be a US state in terms of how strongly US events affect our own laws and politics, but we don't get a vote in the events that largely determine our eventual laws. As if the politicians think we're another US state...
The fact that this is a daily topic on Slashdot, with a wide spectrum of opinions, suggests that this is a grey area. It's therefore asking a bit much to insist that he start following your agenda without doing some research. Or is it a good thing when politicians react in a knee-jerk fashion without looking at the facts?
He may well be a gubment windbag (the fact that he is a senator significantly increases this possibility) but at least, for the time being, on this issue, he's OUR gubment windbag. The pro-file sharing lobby has been screaming that Capitol Hill is in the pockets of the **AAs, so it's nice to see that one of them isn't. And at least calling for information is a warning shot across the bows of the RIAA that they will be expected to conform to the letter of the law. I'm relieved to see this, because the tide had been running firmly in the other direction, what with the DMCA, and the Patriot Act, and all. It's nice to see the elected representatives doing something on behalf of the people that they are representing, even if it isn't exactly what the file sharers would like him to do.
shouldn't he have sensed that guilt that should have come from his being a former roadie, and his current position as (supposedly moral) senator?
File sharing is moral
Visualize the world of wine
Point 2: The RIAA is seeking the close assistance of republicans with point 1.
Point 3: Sen. Norm Coleman is a republican.
Point 4: The parties mentioned in (3), merely question the methods that the RIAA used to get their subpoenas and whether or not the penalties are affecting "innocent" people. He does not think that P2P is legally or morally OK to use. In fact, he calls the copyright infringement "theft", which clearly it is not.
Theory: RIAA uses its connections to the Republican party to pass new laws, all the while the unsuspecting consumer is egging the republicans on because they are "talking a good talk". While I'm optimistic at the sound of this inquiry, I won't hold my breath for a favorable outcome, and I am suspicious of Coleman's motives.
...they were able to roll Congress into passing the DMCA. Verizon had no choice but to comply, because the DMCA forces them to give up the addresses of file sharers. (Or was it the Online Child Protection Act - apologies if it was). IIRC, Verizon and other ISPs lobbied against the DMCA, and were unsuccessful. Once it was passed, they had to obey the Act, because they didn't have the option of retreating to Montana and pretending that it didn't exist.
The reason he's latched on to this "cause" is because
it's safe, it gives him a populist glow with the folks
back home, and he'll get a nice suck off of that RIAA
lobbyist teat.
The only mp3 on his iPod is "Takin' care of business" .
He only won because Wellstone and Mondale were both horrible alternatives, and Minnesotans were finally waking up to that. Also didn't hurt that organizations firmly in the pocket of the elephant party, like MCCL and NRA, backed him even when there were more conservative candidates on the ballot.
Constitutionally Correct
Send you ideas, thanks, whatever to Norm here:
m
http://www.senate.gov/~coleman/contact/index.cf
This is what I sent, short and simple:
Thank you for taking a stand against the ridiculously strong-armed tactics that the RIAA is taking against innocent people. $15K to $250K per song is "Cruel and Unusual"
moo
Current music industry goes down the tubes.
what happens to society?
New music industries rise up to fill the void. New industries that may actually compete with each other for awhile.
Cut the old dinosaurs loose. They're already extinct.
Their hooked jaws are losing grip on the intestinal walls of society. They keep releasing segments in search of more vulnerable places to attach but those segments are not faring well either and are being excreted by the host at a rapid rate.
All kidding aside, the RIAA is getting pathetic. Going after children now. What's next, small animals?
At least that's how I understood it. The EFF case history seems to suggest that this is the case unless that page is out of date.
I also was under the impression that this was likely to end up in the Supreme Court because it's an issue of Congress stomping on the Constitution with the passage of the DMCA.
If it does go that far, the RIAA may be sorry for their tactics.
Shhhh, you'll foil his plot, for you see if the RIAA discovers the truth, they'll leake it to the media, and he can do no good for the p2p community!!
Noone writes jokes in base 13!
You know, I got karma to burn so mod me down too, but this guy is right. When Ashcroft does something stupid, it's "Ashcroft the Republican is at it again!!", but when a Republican does something that our little gang here tends to agree with, no party affiliation is given. It's not just this article, it's very consistant. And the converse is true as well - if a Democrat does something idiotic, he's spared the idignity of embarrassing his party here on slashdot because it's kindly left out, but if in this case the Senator was a Democrat, he'd put on his pedastool where he belonged. Just be even-handed folks, it's all many of us are asking. If you did that, I'd forget about all the spelling errors and dupes. ;-)
With as much crap that gets modded up, I can't believe this gets the "troll" label - save that for the ascii goatse.cx posts. This never happens when I have mod points! arghhh.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur
Wow... I'm impressed. Genuine political system reform - and just when it's most desparately needed.
:-P
That'll hopefully actually FIX the one massive, gaping problem with the American political system (at least as seen from outside of it). No more "Senator for auction, bidding starts at $5m". Except they never seem to be that expensive, that's the sad part.
Of course, Hollings will be out of a job, being "Mr Disney"... so sad
and ignorance of the law is a crime against civility.
I would say the only thing going against your attitude is what Grandma and Grandpa will have to pay to even *fight* to get the case thrown out
Even putting the debate on file sharing aside, if something isn't done soon the RIAA is going to have the court system so bogged down with all of these cases that others will fall by the wayside. No one group should have the right to monopolize the legal system in such a way.
DeviantArt Page
NSFWEh, I've already seen one contrived c-o-n-spiracy theory derived.
Isn't it funny that you'll recieve a lesser punishment for getting caught shoplifting a cd, then you would for getting caught sharing one song?
Guess we'll just have to get our music old school style. I wanna ask Winona Ryder for some tips.
I'm just waiting for the first television or radio commercial which advertises a cheap lawyer who specializes in RIAA Infringement Claims, rather than the usual personal injury and dui chasers.
[
Why not write to your elected representatives and propose a bill to limit the term of copyright to five years from the receipt of the first royalty payment, or five years from the date of publication if no royalty payments are rceived within that time, after which the work enters the public domain. This term should not be extensible under any circumstances and, if any technological measures are used to prevent copying, at least one unprotected copy should be placed in escrow with the relevant authorities in order that the work can actually be placed in the public domain. Circumvention of protection on a work which has, or should have, already entered into the public domain should be explicitly permitted.
The whole idea of copyright is to provide a limited term of exclusivity so you can make money from your work, in return for the promise that one day, your work will enter the public domain. Frankly, five years should be enough time for anyone to make a fair profit {which is why I think it should be counted from the receipt of the first royalty payment}; and, if you haven't made any money out of it in that time, you're never going to, so you should cut your losses.
I'll maybe rewrite this in more bill-like terms and repost it, if anyone else thinks it's a good idea.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Stay with me for a moment here, I download software, sometimes expensive sometimes not. I couldn't even own a computer if I had to buy all the software for it. I'm unfortunately running MS stuff for gaming. The first point is that people use this software, like checkpoint firewall and Oracle, 3dsmax and maya at home and then they tell their employer who will in turn buy the software because he doesn't have to train an employee from the ground up. The point is, I wouldn't be this useful to my boss if I had never downloaded anything because of supposedly ethical considerations where no one was actually hurt. Let's face it, the loss of money to a corporation that can afford it is NOT a hurtful attack (ethically speaking) Speaking as a Canadian watching shooting deaths in the states everyday, I think most of the US government has a screwed up idea of what counts as a hurtful attack.
I'm glad i live in Belgium, but i fear the same thing is coming this way. i know about EFF but is there an European organisation?. about RIAA, P2P makes the old distribution methods, like compact discs useless. P2P is even good for the environment. So with p2p artists & music fans don't need EMI, warner, virgin anymore... let the artists distribute their own music via P2P, result? cheap music, diversity, and a lot of work in upgrading the global network i hope the five big ones go broke soon Keep on sharing peepz... wait & see... they can't keep on sueing the world...
I don't know whether this is funny or insightful.
:)
Both, I guess
And you know what, not a terribly bad idea
I'm not certain that I will immediately start stealing, BUT---given the 'powers that be' disdain for my rights, why should I give two hoots about the RIAA rights?
Already, I don't believe that there should be copyrights on music, and certainly not for more than a couple of years. I know that I should 'fear the law', but, unlike some of you slashbots, I don't believe that legal code=moral code.
As the RIAA practices become less and less reasonable, so shall mine.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
It works. That's all that matters, right?
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
Since legally coipyright infringment damage can only me measured in economic terms of lost sales..
How can RIAA claim any loss in salse when the people sharing files do not have the dispoable income to purchase Cds in the first place?
So what you're saying is that if someone doesn't have much cash, then that individual should not feel obligated to live within his or her means. Hence, that nice Jaguar that I'd like to buy but can't afford should be mine for the taking. Yes, I'd be depriving the dealer of their commission and Jaguar of their cut, but we all know that the amount of money making its way into Jaguar's hands is such a tiny profit, compared to the inflated charges from the fascist middlemen, that it's really all irrelevant. Right?
I dislike the RIAA's heavy-handed tactics as much as anyone, but I'm not willing to condone illegal tactics simply because people are not prepared to live within their means. Please feel free to argue coherently against these tactics, but stop using tenuous logic to justify theft. (And despite what the semantic monkeys seem to trot out every time we debate this hoary old topic, it is theft.)
"any idiot could walk into a courthouse, lodge a form with a court clerk and the process is started."
Wait a minute. Could *I* do this? Could I perhaps inadvertantly target, say, certain industry associations, because my spidering software had mistakenly identified them as distributors of my IP? Could I then hold them to the same standards of proof that they are holding random Kazaa users, and force their lawyers to establish a precident, as the defendants, for just what you have to show in court before you can win such a case?
Seriously, it seems that there's a nice legal hack to be had in creatively abusing the ability to send subpeonas without a judge. Could someone who IAL suggest some possibilities?
Justice has nothing to do with morality.
It is clearly not theft because it does not meet the definition of theft.
You have to realize that there are a wide variety of different crimes, and because someone commits Crime A you can't automatically say that they are commiting Crime B just because Crime B sounds more serious and outrageous.
Napster users committed copyright infringement, not theft.
Jeff Dahmer committed murder, not genocide.
The kid who keyed your car last week did not commit Grand Theft Auto.
I'm no defender of the RIAA in any way, but you have shown no connection:
l acies.htm:
"CD sales ROSE at napsters peak. CD sales declined when napster was shutdown."
Just because one thing happens when another thing happens does not mean one is causing the other.
From http://www.philosophicalsociety.com/Logical%20Fal
"This might also be described as the causality fallacy: Event Y follows from Event X, so one automatically concludes that X caused Y. (A young kid walks by a neighbor's house and sees a cat scurrying away; he looks up and sees a giant hole in the window. The hole, he infers, must have been caused by the cat, who fell through the pane. The inference is hasty, because the hole might have been caused by any number of things --- a baseball that missed a friend's glove and flew over his head; young brothers fighting inside and accidentally smashing the window, etc.)."
Maybe Napster did cause CD sales to go up, but you need to have a lot more to make a case that they did other than just saying the CD sales went up.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
" That's because if a Republican makes a legimate stupid mistake, everyone, including Republicans, jump on their case. If a Democrat does the exact same thing, "
An excellent example of this is Clinton vs Nixon. Nixon (a Republican) commits crimes, and the Democrats and majority of Republicans in Congress turn against him. Clinton commits crimes, and the Republicans, but almost no Democrats, turn against him.
We know that. But it's a little bit harmed to continue using a service after armed officers have confiscated its equipment ;)
1. Revoking the corporate charters of: a. corps that are blatantly destructive to the environment and b. the members of the RIAA
2. Tar, feather and ride on a rail Bush and all his cronies for their obvious imperialistic and profiteering war mongering
Need I go on? There is no representation in American politics - we are back to the tea party and active resistance is the only way to make our voice heard.
Back on topic:
Do you think that this one senator really represents the consumer? He's just playing us in the hopes of bounding the argument. At the end of the day, it is corporation vs. consumer and our government is failing to do their duty and protect us. The only solution is to pick up your "guns" and fight. Come on all you 1337 hax0r5 - build a better Kazaa that they can't stop - force them out of business. Then you better do the right thing and build a way for the artists to get paid directly.
OK, so we all recognize that obtaining music without renumeration for the various artists that made the music is WRONG. I don't care what you call it, semantics may be useful for shaping public opinion, but the general opinion is that it is just plain WRONG to get something for nothing. The problem I see is that no one can make up their minds and decide if we are going to revolt against the music companies that rob both artists and listeners, or if we are going to be good little sheep and not do ANYTHING. In order to change the way the music business operates, either the existing structure needs to be taken down by less than desirable means, or else we need (somehow) to get our congresscritters out of the pockets of executives. It would certainly help if some high profile artists would endorse and use alternative distribution methods while abondoning the big labels. Otherwise, the only thing that will work is if EVERYONE starts trading songs with complete abandon: swamp the RIAA with massive lists everwhere... hackers writing viral song swapping code so that everyone who logs on to the net is guilty in the RIAA's eyes... I think I'd rather see a change that was initiated by the artists and consumers themselves whereby I could legally (and simply) download my music for a FAIR price while being assured that most of the $$ goes to the artist, but remember, the toothless get ruthless.
I'm worried about what they're worried about. What they enjoy most is putting on a good show so the fans have a good time. Neither of these bands, as far as I can gather, is of the mindset of "making music for the sake of music." They're all about making music to entertain people. Good lighting makes the show more entertaining. At any rate, I see your point, but I'm not sure you see mine. :) I'm not worried about groupies or lighting or even music. I'm worried about the musicians, s'all. :)
So this senator seems interested in the dealing of the RIAA, would anyone else be interested to hear his views on this and other technical things. Perhaps his thoughts on the DMCA, open source, etc. Just a thought since it looks like he may be interested in these type of things.
Let's say a person with zero assets downloads such music. How does this hurt the coprightholders?
Some examples:
here is a very crucial point:
THE RIAA SUING COLLEGE KIDS IS THE RIGHT THING TO DO BECAUSE THE KIDS HAVE NO ASSETS.
It shows that the RIAA is interested in STOPPING THE BEHAVIOR, not collecting damages. Yes, they might sue for 10B, but they'll never collect. What they are clearly doing by going after asset-less individuals and getting outrageous-sounding judgements is SENDING A MESSAGE. It's the RIGHT message - RESPECT OTHER PEOPLE'S COPYRIGHTS. The US produces a hell of a lot of IP in arts and sciences compared to, say, China largely because we have well-structured IP systems.
Are there excesses? Surely. Is the mickey mouse extension, well, mickey mouse? absolutely. but is copyrightholders going after music-infringers in order to send a message that such behavior will not be tolerated wrong? absolutely not.
the music industry is trying damn hard to provide music in digital form now - but what's the problem? the problem is that everybody's running around trying to figure out how to do this while not basically 'giving away the store' given how easy digitial redistribution is. iTunes has been a success, though it is mac only. others have had less success because they are either toe-in-the-water ventures with limited playlists or because the music is overly encumbered with DRM. but why is this so?
BECAUSE OF PIRACY!
if there were no idiots out there like you trying to justify blatant piracy on any number of grounds, that is to say, this whole cloud of pseudo-justifications for widescale copyright infringement and a general climate that tolerates such behaviour, we'd RIGHT NOW have 50c music dowloads as far as the eye could see.
we'd have LESS middlemen, MORE choices of artists, and BETTER digital portability if it wasn't for the fact that every self-styled h4xor seems to think that he is a) smarter and b) better than the law, and even if the law isn't so bad, he isn't going to get caught anyway. THAT is what's keeping a flourishing of online music from happening.. a climate that tolerates or even encourages piracy.
--- END OF RANT ---
[metaphor] Street lines aren't repainted until there are a few major accidents on the road. It's an unfortunate fact of life. [/metaphor]
That is not a "fact of life." Birth, death, and the need to consume food in between are facts of life.
Street lines not being repainted until people are injured or killed, environmental laws being repealed to appease Baby Bush's oil buddies, and draconian laws that don't get fixed until the lives of thousands are ruined or threatened with ruination are NOT "facts of life," they are the actions of an unprecedented period of corruption in high places here in America (worse than even that which followed the civil war), and the fact that nearly everyone on capital hill, democrat and republican alike, is little more than a whore for those who bribe them, legally and on the public record via campaign contributions (what some would erroneously call "above board", as though making a bribe technically legal somehow makes it OK and undoes the terrible harm it cuases our civil institutions).
It is a fact of corruption and politics in a degenerate government of, by, and for attorneys and their corporate masters, not a fact of a properly functioning democratic republic (which, believe it or not, the US had for a brief time), much less a "fact of life" in its more general sense.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Coward....
You *obviously* don;t live in Minnesota, and obviously haven't experience the difference in leadership... so stuff it.
Wellstone voted against the war, voted for people more often than not, he brought term limits to the senate, rallied for the environment.
Ventura... well he did what he wanted. Fiscally republican and democratic otherwise. That sound like free thinking to me, like it or not.
On the other hand, if you feel that downloading music is wrong, you can always download independent artists. Or you could play a prank on the bastards: make a directory with 10,000 text files saying "RIAA is evil", renamed to "(insert Britney Spears song name here).mp3".
The world can be wrong today for once.
The correct analogy would be selling copies of the cd on the street (distribution). The shoplifting analogy would fit if they were suing downloaders, which they aren't.
I live in Minnesota, and I too had a similar reaction to the fact that this was initiated by Senator Coleman. I really was pretty astonished by it.
My impression of him is of someone who's rather slippery and slimy and really only interested in furthering his political career, even if that means being overly "influenced" by corporate culture.
Sen Coleman built a large support base in Minnesota prior to being senator as Mayor. He sort of had a reputation for rebuilding downtown St. Paul. My impression of things was that this was largely because of his corporate leanings: in the case of being Mayor in a town that needs revitalized business, catering to business and corporations might not be such a bad thing.
But my feeling about him was that he didn't know when to stop, and that he generally doesn't care about the average person. I really was disappointed in the fact he became senator after the death of Paul Wellstone--especially after the death of Wellstone.
This news doesn't really inspire me to support Coleman--it just sort of makes me feel not quite as distrustful of him.
If you don't wish to send a hand-written letter (such will have more meaning to a senator versus email), send a quick message to Senator Coleman expressing support for his actions and ideas.
He can be contacted at Contact Sen. Coleman
My message follows as a model:
This post encoded with ROT26. If you can read it, you've violated the DMCA. Handcuffs please, sergeant.
I can see "as a former roadie, speakers are heavy, but the groupies make up for it". But the logic of "as a former roadie, I feel qualified to talk about the motivations of a Senator dealing with the legal issues of the music industry" somehow eludes me.
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
Wake me up when he does somthing.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Norm Coleman's big political break was getting elected as Mayor in St. Paul, Minnesota as a *democrat*. During his first term he switched to being a Republican and was elected to a second term.
He was a major booster of St. Paul during his terms, which really had slid downhill in terms of its downtown. He worked hard to get a stadium built to ensure an NHL expansion franchise and to provide subsidies for new buildings to entice major corporations to relocate there, his biggest success being the luring of Lawson Software. I think he was also involved with the new science museum built on the downtown bluffs overlooking the river.
To his credit, the St. Paul waterfront and downtown are much more attractive and vibrant, and have less of a "where'd everybody go?" run down feeling, and the hockey franchise has done good things for the bar and restaurant situation near the stadium.
A number of people have condemned his boosterism as corporate welfare built on the backs of St. Paul taxpayers, since much of his generosity was funded by city-issued bonds, along with the usual arguments about the financial 'returns' of a sports franchise.
Strangely fewer people are critical of his political chameleon act than his economic boosterism. Personally I find this the scariest and most telling, as it demonstrates a willingness to do or say anything for political advantage.
However, a reasonable person may argue that the DFL (as the democrats are known in Minnesota) party of St. Paul and Minneapolis is *radically* liberal, and Norm may have made a reasonable decision that the party no longer supported his values.
I'd bet that at least some of the Senators are P2P users anyway!
This is half of the problem though, and it's the half the RIAA won't even admit exists.
It doesn't really matter how much money you have, CDs are a pain in the ass - to buy, to carry around, to store, to have to swap in your CD player every hour or so while listening.
Downloaded music (and not just p2p) works better - it's quick to get, convenient, easy to transport, easy to store in a virtual library, and easy to get rid of when you get tired of listening to it.
Of course people are going to download music rather than get it on CD - why would anyone in their right mind pay to inconvenience themselves?
Also, there's more legitimate free music on the Internet than you can shake a stick at - we don't even need record labels any more, and they know it only too well.
There is a LOT more to this problem than the cost alone, it's just that the RIAA and other corporate assholes like them only understand the language of $$$$$$$ and are too stupid to care about reality, instead holding as gospel all the bullshit toy statistics that their marketting assholes invented for them.
Organic free-range music... yum!
Wellstone voted for the Patriot Act, which tarnishes my view of him (WI had one of the *only* guys to vote against it, IIRC)
Coleman is a shameless bush follower and votes the party line, which makes me wonder where the hell this is coming from. Yes, Dems are commonly the 'big media sellouts' whereas Repubs are more concerned with the enviroment and making sure there is no oil out there that could get on their suits.
I'm suspicious; Norm has layed low since he got elected, then suddenly this.
I tell you what Norm, you will get my vote to stay in office - hell, I will vote you for Pres if you get the DMCA repealed, shorten copyright and fix patents, shut down the Patriot act and defend me against giant media cartels.
Until I see actual stuff happening, I will count this as a shameless grab for media attention, starting from the bottom and working it's way up to the White House.
Since you have a history of saying and voting whatever our Bush wants you to, you've got some 'splainin' to do.
Get to work representing *me* Norm, and stop reading Slashdot! (And yes, I live in MN, and can/will sway votes your way. Or not.)
If each song available for download is worth from $750-150,000, why are the music companies not being charged equivalent amount for each cd they have sold over the years at prices inflated through pricefixing? File sharers profited nothing through sharing, where the music companies reaped HUGE returns through price fixing and that continues today unabated. That is what the government should be looking into. If anyone is stealing, it is the music industry itself.
Writing your congressman can only do so much...Why, as geeks, can we not post the link to the RIAA website and all donate our clicks all at the same time, and really make a difference. Just think of the difference we could make with every RIAA article that is posted.
So only because Paul Wellstone unfortunately died during the campaigns, Walter Mondale should have won the election? What would be the purpose of voting?
The polls before Wellstone's death showed a tight race, but Coleman was ahead of Wellstone a day before Wellstone's death. Sure, the tides may have turned if Wellstone was still living today, but I prefer to focus on the current reality and not the "what if" reality.
"I am not only the president of the Hair Club for Men, I'm also a member."
wolffenstein
Everything.
Neither one represent the people who voted for them. They both are elected by special interest corporate money.
I have to say, they got a good game going. If I wanted to burn in hell for all eternity, I might become a politician.
Put the damn party affiliation in all Slashdot stories! It's not like they're different; we can then see at a glance which way to jerk our knees!
Yes, I know there are those that are saying, "What about the (G)reens or (L)ibertarian parties?" Come on! Since corporations can't/won't/don't support them, they can't afford their letters...
I said in a previous post that I won't believe it until I see some action. Of course, if the RIAA throws some $$$ his way, I'll be waiting a long time.
Why are posts that 'tell it like it is' always modded troll?
I was wondering when this would come out...
Coleman, who has two children, admitted that he's faced the issue himself as a parent.
"I've had this problem in my family," Coleman said. "I'm sure my children have used file-sharing programs."
"I have confessed to using Napster," he said, adding that he does not use any file-sharing programs anymore.
Sure, Norm. You just downloaded 'Frampton Comes Alive' and 'Thriller' from my FTP server last week....
So what, the RIAA doesn't get to take my money, just make good quality color copies of it?
Note to the RIAA: only a complete MORON fights a war on multiple fronts unless it is absolutely life-or-death.
Another note to the RIAA: your argument that sales have dropped due to piracy ignores one simple fact - the economy has tanked and as such, the public has LESS disposable income with which to buy all the goodies your clients are trying to sell.
what is law and what are right are two diffrent things i personly beleave file shareing though illigal is just and heres why
copyright peroids have been extend to 50 years in the eu and 100 years in the states this is to long the 14 years intialy stated was perfectly adequit for compensating artists for there work were that still true there would a much larger range of music in the public domain basicly anything before the 90's were this the case i would feel that haveing to pay for the latest music was fair because if i dont want to i can listen to older stuff however as it stands thats not true and copyright is treated as if it were perpetual i do not agree the law is fair so i will not follow it the need to be changed to an acceptabled compromises the RIAA is behaveing like a spoild child i am willing to make consesions if they are however that isn't going to happen so and im certanly not going to give up my point of view just so they can have there way
Roses are Red Violates are Blue im not very good a poetry but i have many other redeming qualitys
... there's something everyone can do for him, even out-of-staters: campaign contributions.
Politicians follow the money much more so than they do the votes. After all, directly and indirectly, money buys votes.
If everyone who wanted a politician to stand up to the RIAA found somebody who would do it and paid him for his trouble, we'd be in a much better position to fight the DMCA. Just look at how much credibility the Howard Dean campaign gained when everybody found out that not only did he have a big grassroots following, but one that was willing to pay his way.
Every politician knows that the DMCA, the Patriot Act and other laws that infringe on privacy are extremely unpopular with some groups of people. But sad as it may be, they will continue to sit on their hands unless they can get some financial incentive to go against the grain of the corporate-financed peers.
You probably helped put that Pawlenty drone in power. Good job.
<Sarcasm> He certainly is a free thinker. Same with Coleman... look at all he has done already, that guy is a run away train of political motivation and a champion of the people. Much better than Wellstone. </Sarcasm>
By the way Wellstone voted against Arctic drilling, voted NO on preserving budget for ANWR oil drilling, voted YES on keeping CAFE fuel efficiency standards, voted YES on more funding for forest roads and fish habitat, voted NO on defunding renewable and solar energy, voted YES on reducing funds for road-building in National Forests, voted NO on loosening restrictions on cell phone wiretapping, voted YES on prohibiting job discrimination by sexual orientation, voted NO on Amendment to prohibit flag burning.
What a bastard.
Stealing X from Bob deprives Bob of the use of X. Infringing Bob's copyright on X deprives Bob of potential profits from exclusive possession of X.
and why it's bad
Here's the rub: some people don't believe it's bad. Copyright infringement is illegal, but many people don't equate legality with morality. Distinguishing between the legal and moral uses of "bad" is therefor important.
Before the printing press, the cost of replicating an idea on a large scale was prohibitive. The printing press brought that cost down to something commercial feasible. The internet brings the cost down to nearly zero, which throws issues like the legality vs morality of copyright infringement into the spotlight.
Even before the printing press, an idea could be replicated through the simple act of describing it to another person. The replication of an idea has - per se - never cost the originator of the idea anything monetary except in the context of copyright where potential profits (from exclusivity of distribution rights) are reduced through free replication of the idea. But copyright was conceived as a way to increase the public's access to ideas, the notion being that the limited-time monopolies granted by copyright might spur people to create more useful or beautiful ideas. Given today's technology, a key question is: are we really getting greater access to works because of copyright, or is copyright resulting in fewer people getting access to works than otherwise would?
In his interesting essay What's Wrong With Copy Protection, John Gilmore raises these points:
Food for thought.- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
It's better to burn crack than burn the Bill of Rights. Oh, you probably forgot what that was.
Norm's take on the party switch is that he had a *Road to Damascus* type moment regarding abortion. He came to the conclusion that he was not pro-choice and the Democratic establishment in MSP was unable to countenance this conviction. He basically claims to have been offended by the demands of political correctness on the left.
I think it smells to high heaven. The timing of his change coincided quite closely to the arrival of the Gingrich/Contract with America class of Reps in the House. Norm strikes me as particularly astute about which way the wind is blowing.
I think he's taking his freshman lumps and doing some bag-carrying for the establishment. The RIAA can look forward to referring to the passing grade they get from Normie's review when the heat starts to rise:
Our tactics have passed muster in the Senate!
illegitimii non ingravare
shouldn't he have sensed that guilt that should have come from his being a former roadie, and his current position as (supposedly moral) senator?
No. Napster was innocent until proven guilty by a court of justice. Coleman did the right thing.
The legality of Napster (the network) is quite unconnected to the legality of the users' actions. If you downloaded mp3s (where you didn't have permission from the copyright holder, was released freely or where the copyright had expired) you were guilty and if you didn't, you were not.
Even if they find some of the other p2p apps to be legal, in that they can not be held responsible for the actions of their users, it doesn't really have any bearing on the legality of what you as an individual do, just that network didn't "materially contribute" to it.
And as long as you presonally didn't do anything illegal (assuming innocent until proven guilty) on Napster, why should there be any moral qualms about it? By that same logic you can say that I by reading slashdot is part of the Internet, and so I'm in some way morally responsible for everything bad that goes over Internet? No way.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
They want to be re-elected. Over anything.
Lobbyists don't have logos.
$$$=Votes=Support. G & L parties usually reject corporate $$$ (or say they will): quid pro quo
Hey babe, I only want full disclosure. Those labels are for other's benefit.
It really bothers me when people compare stealing music (by downloading it) to stealing actual merchandise. If I download a song I am not moving the song from one computer to my own. I'm making a copy, the owner of the copy I'm downloading gets to keep his, and I get to keep my own. That's like going to a library and photocopying a page from a book. Should National Geographic have the right to charge me the full price of one magazine because I photocopied one page from it? If I copy a page from an encyclopedia, does that give Britannica the right to charge me $1,300 for the entire set of encyclopedias?
Also, if replicator's existed, and you could just make copy's of actual items (like food, clothes, that 60" plasma screen you always wanted.) and you decided to make a Porsche 911 in the replicator, should you have to pay full price for it? You're not taking any money away from Porsche since you never intended to purchase the car, and you didn't steal one that they made, you just made one of your own. Would you use a replicator to only make items that are distributed freely? Would you only use the replicator for items you own that got damaged? Or would you replace all your old junk with new, expensive, high-tech (illegal) junk?
Not *EVERYONE* was disgusted with the 2000 election.
Bush got more votes, so Gore lost. Simple as that. Get over it, quit whining and move on.
Restricting contributions to ONLY voters is unfair discrimination. However it *should* be restricted to legal US citizens.. Regardless of their voting status.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I'd be more intrested in questioning the legality of the RIAA's 'tactics'.
RIAA's is employing a multitude of 'tactics' and they don't always have to go to the court for them....
Check this out:
RIAA Rocks Around the Clock
First, file sharing is not stealing, according to the US Supreme Court. It is copyright infringement, which is a different crime. Nobody is hijacking truckloads of CD's here. Get it right.
Second, This seems to be a case of making the Crime fit the Punishment. People who committed no crime at all are just as likely to be punished by the irresponsible and confiscatory actions of the RIAA as those who do. The industry's remedy for this seems to be to declare them crimainals anyway.
" You probably helped put that Pawlenty drone in power. Good job."
Thanks! It kept the kook who ran against him out.
lol, you are stupid and funny
"By the way Wellstone voted against Arctic drilling"
I guess he wants the oil to come from Iran instead.
Specious reasoning... like antartica had enough oil for us anyways.
"voted YES on keeping CAFE fuel efficiency standards"
Get government out of this. Thanks for the tiny unsafe cars, Paul!
feul efficiency != tiny unsafe cars
"safe" SUV == dependancies on foriegn oil
"voted NO on defunding renewable and solar energy"
So he voted no on stopping wasting money on corporate welfare for energy corporations?
Lessens our dependencies on foriegn oil (kinda shoots doown your inane Iran allusion
"voted YES on prohibiting job discrimination by sexual orientation"
Yet, he favors companies firing people who do not join political organizations.
how?
ooooh and what about term limits, you skirted around that one.
What a bastard, indeed.
much less so than you
Me and my friends run a small independant record label.We had a major promo distribution system on napster.We would hand out flyers with show dates and places to download some of our music for free,mostly through napster because it worked so ewll with people being able to search user names and find our computers out there in cyberspace. These downloads regularly led to album sales and increased attendance to our shows.Then Napster went bye bye thanks to the RIAA and Lars.Does anybody out there think we have a good case for sueing the Riaa for lost revenue?
Crisis is the rule, not the exception.
I'm sure there are a lot of MP3 downloader that view downloading as a victimless crime. The RIAA and various bands don't seem to agree. But how many bands have smoked pot or done any other number of drugs and thought it was a victimless crime? How many RIAA executives have paided for a prostitute and thought it was a victimless crime? Things that make you go hmmmm....
--
Luck is just skill you didn't know you had.
Oh, grow the fuck up. The sphere of public debate today encompasses issues like abortion, gay marriage, stem-cell research, environmental protections, etc. If these issues don't matter to you at all, and you'd rather keep beating your lonely drum with your mangy crew of drug policy reformists and death-penalty opponents and antiwar activists off in the corner where it's easy for mainstream society to ignore you, then yeah, (R) and (D) are exactly identical.
But most people past the age of twelve understand there are times when you have to compromise. Just because neither (R) nor (D) support your pet issue doesn't mean there's no difference between the two. What matters most, like I said, is what's in the sphere of public debate.
yours
is that they will take the next step and start running afoul of the DMCA (if people use encryption to protect themselves) and various cracking and terrorism laws. For now though it seems like they go after those who make their collections available to the world.
Back in the early days of radio, the FCC had to step in and prevent record companies from PAYING radio stations to play their songs, so that people could listen to more than the music the record companies wanted to promote. Nowadays, the radio stations do not pay a fee to broadcast copyrighted music, though they could in theory be charged for it. The record companies know it would not make business sence to charge the radio stations for free advertising.
Nowadays, most artist's contracts are set up so that they don't make much at all from CD sales. That is the record company's cut. The artists make money from concerts. The only reason the artists bother with signing with record companies is the advertising and promotion that they provide. Without this adveritsing and promotion, artists wouldn't be able to command such large crowds while on tour.
But file sharing services have the ability to promote artists without the need for a record company to send free CDs to a radio station or put up posters and ads, or produce videos for MTV2, or market songs to Clearchannel execs.
This is good for artists. File sharing services, like radio stations are a form of airplay which serves to promote the artists. It's free word of mouth adverising - the best kind.
The record companies are scared out of their pants because they realize that they won't be needed if people can download the music they want when they want it. Without the record companie's monopoly on promotion and distribution, record companies know artists won't need them. And neither will consumers, since most computers nowadays come with CD burners.
Now freely and easily tradable, songs will compete on merit. The really good ones will make their creators famous and they will get rich off their popularity by giving live performances. Music will go on, customers and artists will be happier, but the record companies will be cut out.
OH NO! They scream! File sharing is *destroying our business model* government, protect us from these thieves!
Society as a whole does not hold 'business models' sacred enough to protect, so they say that this thieving will hurt artists and consumers. Most artists and consumers know better. The fact that record companies are on the verge of becoming obsolete is obviously a good thing. But that means their continued existance, and continued profit taking - if it is allowed to continue through legislation to protect their business models - is parasitic on the music industry as a whole and decreases the amount of fundage available for making music for consumers.
The current litigations against file swappers will, if continued, only cause people to switch to more anonymous file sharing networks. As there is a tradeoff sometimes between security/privacy and speed, consumers will choose the least secure system that they think will keep safe from the RIAA. If the RIAA breaks into that one, a more secure one will be built and used.
The record companies are doomed, and they know it, unless radical legislation is put into place to protect their 'business models' i.e. their ability to keep parasitising the artists and consumers they deal with now that they are no longer needed.
Eat at Joe's.
Bush got more votes, so Gore lost. Simple as that. Get over it, quit whining and move on.
How soon they all forget.
Gore won the popular vote - he had more ballots with his name on them.
Bush won the electoral college - he won more states.
'Sheep, thought I.' - Anthony Burgess
-72
-Those who dance are considered insane by those who can't hear the music.
Oh, please just fuck off. It was a civil suit. There was no assumption of either innocence or guilt. Get this through your thick heads, a criminal case and a civil suit are completely different entities. In a civil suit, quite often the criteria used is whether a "reasonable person" would consider an action right or wrong, so neither Joe Sixpack nor Joe Senator have any excuse for waiting for the verdict. They should be able to use their reasonable judgement to figure out that using Napster was wrong.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
""I haven't committed a crime. What I did was fail to comply with the law."- David Dinkins, New York City Mayor, explaining his charges of tax evasion
"I didn't accept it. I received it."
- Richard Allen, National Security Advisor to President Reagan, explaining the $1000 in cash and two watches he was given by two Japanese journalists after he helped arrange a private interview for them with First Lady Nancy Reagan
"I did not have sexual relations with that woman" -Bill Clinton, explaining that a blowjob isn't legally sex
"It's not stealing, it's copyright infringment" - Many Slashdot posters, explaing that nothing is actually being taken from copyright holders
All of the above are what my grandparents called Splitting Hairs; the act of using subtlety of language to mask a true act or intention. Bottom line, you know what you really did, no matter what language you use to explain it with.
We're kind of funny here. Actually, we're all about the enforcement of licenses and copyrights, as long as it's our own or something we support. When Linksys uses GPL'd software, alters it, and doesn't release the source, we get our panties in one big wad here. We rightly complain that our rights are not being respected, and the law is being broken.
Copyrights? "Fuck 'em. I want the content. And they can't stop me. And they're Nazis for trying to".
If we want rights to be enforced, perhaps we should start by respecting others?
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Go spin you warped Pro-Republican tripe elsewhere.
How this crap got modded up I'll never know.
Since were being "honest" here, how about explaining why the Republicans ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS choose white over black, rich over poor, corporate rights over worker and consumer rights, and Church dogma over individual choice? Hmm? Hmmm?
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
File sharing is piracy, and hence, stealing, which does indeed make it illegal.
Ok one more time.
File sharing is not stealing. It's copyright violation. If they were the same thing, we wouldn't need a crime called copyright violation.
Calling it stealing is nothing more than RIAA/MPAA spin doctoring. Stealing sounds a lot worse than copyright violation, doesn't it? A lot of people in the US are Christians - and there isn't a commandment against copyright violation. I wonder how many judges to to church?
Don't let the RIAA/MPAA poision your mind with their nonsense. It's NOT stealing. Stealing is stealing.
Weaselmancer
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
I live in Saint Paul, MN. Norm Colemam was our mayor for quite some time. Having been involved with local politics here to some degree, let me tell you this:
Norm Coleman is a self-serving, deal-making, conniving snake-in-the-grass. I don't trust Norm (or as we say here, with a nasal east-coast twang: 'Naaam') further than I can throw him.
Whatever it is he's trying to pull, don't get yourself comfortable with the idea that he's fighting for you. Because he ain't. He's doing it for pure political gain.
Sadly, he defeated Mondale, who replaced a *true* hero, Paul Wellstone. Paul was a real fighter. Norm is a crook just like the rest of them.
He's infamous for going on and on about how much he loves the Beatles and John Lennon, but he doesn't get how much his actions as a Republican go completely against what Lennon stood for and why his music was so meaningful. I guess it is nice to hear that he's clueful about this one issue, though.
Well, you can look at it this way: Senator Coleman used his reasonable judgement and figured out that using Napster was ok. But of course, for the court a "reasonable person" is a person with enough money in the bank to hire the most expensive lawyers, so Napster lost despite Coleman's reasonable judgment in its favor.
Fallacy: Slippery slope argument.
"why should I pay when so and so got it free?" in aggregate, the result is lost sales.
People are responsible for their own actions. If Alice downloads a song, and Bob knows this, Bob can't blame Alice when he downloads music.
The first statement is true. The second one is legally untrue. Infringements of behaviour have long been rewarded with disproportionate punishments. Hence, you get a speeding ticket for usd $100 despite that you have hurt nobody.
They have never had that right in the first place.
sure they do, especially when the work involves trademarks, but i digress. Parody is an exception - it is a specially protected form of speech. However, blatant piracy is not a protected form of speech. It just isn't, and your smoke-and-mirrors pointing to parody will not change this.
interested in knowing why you think copyright is anything more than the exclusive right to copy particular works.
Your ignorance is astounding. Broadly, even if I did restrict my discussion to just copyright (I did not - i was speaking of all IP rules), US copyright law broadly provides for at least the following:
In your opinion. I think that if the RIAA wants others to respect copyright, they should show that they respect copyright. This means lobbying for a reduction in the length of copyright terms, to better promote the public domain (that is, after all, the basis for copyright law).
Whether the length of copyright is ok and whether existing copyrights should be respected are two issues that idiots like you try to muddle in a vain attempt to confuse readers. I don't think I'm going to rebut your "RIAA should be lobbying for shorter copyright terms" because I don't really see any reasonable reader agreeing to it anyway. Your logic is deeply, deeply flawed.
What makes you think that China doesn't produce as much IP as the USA? Could it be that you are just exposed to more American IP than Chinese IP?
Your ignorant presumptions do not an argument make.
*plonk*
I'll bite.
1) Copyright and property are different concepts. Intellectual property can be taken from its possessor without the possessor losing the ability to use, unlike physical property; taking physical property deprives its owner of the ability to use it. IP does not. Thus copyright violation (illegal use of copyrighted material) and theft are different (see post #6586864).
2) Copyright is a right, but one given by law rather than the Constitution (its terms are defined by legislation rather than the Constitution). It exists because it's a good idea to let inventors profit from their ideas while allowing others to use their inventions. If the bargain of copyright is not fulfilled (if the public can't ever use inventions without paying due to DRM, for example), then the terms of copyright can be changed by law to reflect this. If enough people believe that copyright should be altered (and vote to reflect their views) then copyright law will be changed. Copying does not alter copyright law, but copyright is a very different right than those such as free speech that are specifically guarded in the Constitution, and it can be altered if the people decide it should be..
3) Another post earlier (I don't know which one) already brought up the last two points in some form. Copyright infringement has a monetary cost, though it's not entirely clear what it is. It costs the holders of copyright money that they should rightfully earn, and should be punished. The problems are:
a) the business model (hyping bad artists at the beginning of their career when the contracts are amenable to the labels, dropping them like a stone when they can determine their own contract terms, putting one good song on a record with 14 crappy ones) is doomed to fail. Another poster brought up the point that, before p2p, this didn't occur. Unfortunately, the illegal acts of some were necessary for any alternative models to be generated (the record labels didn't change until p2p forced them to).
b) the response by the RIAA and the court system (DMCA and copyright prosecution) is disproportionate to the violations.
c) the means the labels and software companies want to use to enforce copyright (DRM) negates copyright law; since DRM never expires, payment ust always be received for copyrighted material, contrary to the intent of copyright law. There are other potential problems (libraries, data archiving, access to information by the poor) that DRM and computer security techniques make, but most of all the concept of companies directly writing copyright law through DRM rather than indirectly through purchase xxxxxxx campaign donations to legislators is disturbing.
DRM (particularly Palladium) is like having to give your neighbor a copy of your house key to borrow his tools, and giving him the right to take anything he thinks you might have taken from him previously. Government is "burdened" by the concept that legislation should encode the least intrusive method to achieve an end. The RIAA and others have chosen perhaps the most intrusive means to an end.
The fact that the RIAA's model is flawed doesn't make copyright infringement right, but neither does it make it theft.
if there were no idiots out there like you trying to justify blatant piracy on any number of grounds ... we'd RIGHT NOW have 50c music dowloads as far as the eye could see.
Oh my, that's a good one. Have you submitted that to the humor section? How about Leno? I haven't heard anything that funny since Seinfeld went off the air. You really think the biz would do anything that would cut into their profits? If it was impossible to copy a file, so that piracy was impossible, the most labels would do is offer the music at the EXACT same price as a CD. As in, buy it at the store for $15, or, new and convenient!, download it now for $15! Because, if someone downloaded "Baby one more time" for $0.50, that's $14.50 they didn't spend on the rest of the CD. Net result: loss of $14.50!
Don't even think about using the phrases "manufacturing and distribution" and "pass the savings along to the customer" together, or you'll make me pee my pants.
c-hack.com |
As a Minnesotan, I can write a letter that his staffers might possibly read, a privelege you non-Minnesotans might not enjoy. On the other hand, I can't think of what exactly I'd like to say to him about this. I'm generally happy someone's trying to keep the RIAA in check, but it seems like all he's going to find is that a lot of people are breaking the law under the current system, and that the subpeonas often do reach their targets (file sharers).
So if I were to write that letter, what input would you non-Minnesotans like to have? Let me know!
When you copy a music file, you have a perfect complete re-distributable image of the file that someone might pay a dollar for. When you xerox the page from national geographic you have a blurry representation of a portion of the magazine that no one else would pay a nickle for. I am sure if you were file-trading five second snippets, the RIAA would probably care less because you would actually have an incentive to purchase full copies of the product at a later time and they would view the swapping as promotional advertising. This is the argument that file-traders employ -- I am doing the bands and labels a favor by advertising for them. The truth is that by swapping songs in their entirety in formats nearly identical to the original, you are removing the impetus to purchase that music through the proper channels.
We apologise for the fault in this post. Those responsible have been sacked. -- Signed RICHARD M. NIXON
Does any site have the text of Sen. Coleman's letter?
"Do I dare disturb the universe?"
I am from Minnesota. Mayor Quimby, er, Sen. Coleman is a whore. If the RIAA represented pharmaceutical corporations, you can rest assured that his head would be very deeply burried in granular silicon.
Brent
So only because Paul Wellstone unfortunately died during the campaigns, Walter Mondale should have won the election? What would be the purpose of voting?
I don't believe that AC said anything of the sort. He seems, rather, to be talking about the contrast in the personalities the two project -- many people see Wellstone as an articulate, moral-bound idealist, always outspoken, no matter how much that alienated half his constituents; and Coleman as the smarmy, amoral climber, who would come out in favor of eating live babies if he thought it would get him a position the next rung up. If you do view the two that way, then it's hard not to feel depressed about the election. Certainly AC's comment had nothing to with polls; discuss what he said, Wolffenstein, not some strawman you concocted.
And, I have to admit, I'm one of the people who's held a view something like this of the two candidates, so I'm surprised to see Coleman taking on an issue that puts him on the wrong side of a powerful corporation. What's he getting at? Perhaps there's more in this for him than we see -- or perhaps he's not really amoral after all. I do like being surprised to find a politician more principled than I'd expected!
If you're from these states, consider writing to them as consituents of their political body:
Ted Stevens,
Alaska
George V. Voinovich,
Ohio
Norm Coleman,
Minnesota
Arlen Specter,
Pennsylvania
Robert F. Bennett,
Utah
Peter G. Fitzgerald,
Illinois
John E. Sununu,
New Hampshire
Richard C. Shelby,
Alabama
Carl Levin,
Michigan
Richard J. Durbin,
Illinois
Thomas R. Carper,
Delaware
Mark Dayton,
Minnesota
Frank Lautenberg,
New Jersey
Mark Pryor,
Arkansas
Ask them politely and articulate to them exactly what's wrong with RIAA's interpretation of copyright infringement and/or their FUD tactics. This is how politics is done.
Ok, let just say that file sharing is a crime (and ignore the multiple and varied arguements that could be used against). If you are found guilty of file sharing all info points to you being fined +$750 per file shared. Does anybody else find this extremely excessive? Hell, I find $10 per file shared excessive (as long as we are discussing music). What does this crowd think a fine for music file sharing should be?
Touchy touchy.
FYI, I didn't vote for Bush OR Gore, I was one of the few Naders. I just clarified the statement 'Bush got more votes' - which he didn't. He got more states. You guys need to cut down on the Dew.
-72
-Those who dance are considered insane by those who can't hear the music.
Disclaimer: This isn't about the RIAA, it's about the Interactive Digital Software Association. It could have happened with RIAA, though.
A client of mine got an email from their cable ISP yesterday, claiming they were violating their agreement by offering copyrighted materials (computer games) on KaZaA. The attached log (from the IDSA) had a timestamp of June 30th, three days before my client's new firewall picked up the IP in question.
A simple phone call cleared the matter up, but what if the copyright holder demanded contact information, instead? I'd hate to end up in court just because DHCP handed me a "dirty" IP.
"completely in the pockets of corporations"
Glad you supplied references for this, else people might think you're just a wanker with a political axe to grind.
-Styopa
Also, as to the Porsche replicator, you are free to cobble together cardboard boxes and old toilet paper tubes into something that looks like a Porsche, but it ain't a Porsche...rather, you are free to grab your guitar, play your own version of "Ziggy Stardust" into some sort of recording device and enjoy your own recording of it in your own home. No one will want to buy it in place of the actual recording. Mind you it should still be illegal for you to sell it as you are depriving Mr. Bowie of his royalties much like sampling, and he should be able to demand damages up to every dollar you 'profited'.
More to the point, the actual design of the Porsche and all it's constituent parts are something that hundreds of engineers and designers spent tens of thousands of hours toiling over -- when your replicator exists, it should be up to Porsche to effectively lower their cost of manufacturing so that you are only paying for the I.P. costs of the vehicle(it's design costs) as well it's promotional costs, etc...
It is not your right to pirate someone elses designs -- better you design your own improved car and GPL the design for everyone else to replicate. There is nothing wrong with open-source design, but don't assume you have a right to other peoples expressly protected work without their permission.
We apologise for the fault in this post. Those responsible have been sacked. -- Signed RICHARD M. NIXON
I really wish someone would ask that question. Seriously, the 'crime' is copying data. The punishment is a 150K fine per instance (max). Seems *very* steep for an act that could be done accidentally.
Take this a step further, who made those laws? Content providers, naturally. So, of course it's illegal, they made it that way as well as the steep penalty! Now they attempt to apply this to Joe Consumer and we are seeing the reults.
As far as theft vs. infringement, the distinction is justified. Theft displaces wealth. While P2P may hurt record sales, it does not 'displace' money from the RIAA.
Good works will generate revenue. Crap will not. Unfortunately, there is very little to preview. To watch a movie, you have to pay. The movie might be really bad, and not worth the money. However, you have to pay money just to find that out. Pirate the movie and pay a tremendous fine or go to jail. Talk about a trap.
What a load of crap.
the fact of the matter is, as has been pointed out countless times here but you pseudo-intellectuals just don't get, is that, like it or not, what the studios do adds value.
don't believe me? start a band. now, this is 2003. you have EVERY TECHNOLOGY IN THE KNOWN UNIVERSE at your disposal. Make MP3s, OGGs, stuffed animals with chips in them that play your tunes. Give it away for free. sell it on the innernet. make 10,000 CDs for $4200 and leave them under windshield wipers. Play in subway stations, allow fans unlimited rights of reproductions - you have this WHOLE UNIVERSE OF THINGS OUT THERE.
And yet band after band after band after artist signs with labels. (are there some that do just some funky new thing? sure. are they succesful? with the possible exception of a few techno phenomena, the answer is pretty much 'no').
why? because clearly the labels do something that the bands see as worth signing on the dotted line for compared to the UNIVERSE of alternatives out there.
the terms may be draconian, but this is simple economics. clearly we have an overabundance of demand for the studios services. when high demand meets relatively low supply, supply wins.
a girl i'm dating fronts a small acid jazz band. i'm under no illusions about the realities for the artists. but i also know something about economics, and know that your arguments are naive bullshit.
if you think that piracy is good because it erodes monopoly powers, then i suggest to you that it hurts the possibility of legitimate small competitors popping up even more. it's fucking trivial to set up a clone of iTunes compared to setting up Columbia Music 2. Without piracy, there would be lower entry barriers for people into the publishing business because it would be online, and as such supply of publishers would expand past the current big five and artists would win.
but no, you keep thinking along your naive bullshit lines, and look forward to that great new eminem single! he's really rad.
tool.
It's wierd; there's a lot of things I don't agree with the senator on, but I still send letters/faxes about issues that are important to me. This is the first time an issue I've written about is spearheaded by a member of congress I've written to. It's really wierd... almost feels like you can actually make a difference in a small way. I just wish he or someone other ranking senator would put some effort into investigations against TIA and the Patriot Act.
The sending of this message pretty much inconveniences everyone involved.
Unfortunately you're going to get reamed over this, but you're right. I think you're quite correct in postulating people do this to justify "getting copies of music without paying for it". (Ahem.)
I will go further and state I think it's exacerbated by (i) sheer laziness, and (ii) snobbishness. It's simply easier to download a tune rather than go to the store (mingling with those dreadful teens who like -- ugh -- Britney and N'Sync), hunt through the racks, and shell out some cash. Forget the drama if it's not in stock; you'd have to interact with a store clerk and actually wait for the item to come in.
And, let's face it, isn't it nice to feel all superior to the Britney-loving masses? We're geeks, we are experts on our computers, and we don't need to interact with the technically feeble. We have cultivated an image of being somewhat enigmatic and mysterious geeks; we want to feel superior somehow, smug in our knowledge that we can do something our managers or clients can't. Or, if you prefer, it's the ability to stick it to the man that we crave; many of us demeaned for much of our lives by the athletes or whichever social group we missed out on, we now are able to turn the tables and engage in our own little world of anarchy.
Sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? An over-the-top caricature, with little basis in reality. And yet...how much of it seems borne out by the typical rantings whenever the RIAA or MPAA is the topic of debate?
If the laws don't matter to this guy, then it's just his personal sense of morality as to what's right and what's wrong. He thinks it's ok to "rob them blind" because his cause is just. So what's to keep him or someone else from thinking it's ok to kill someone for a just cause, *your* sense of morality?
If you want to attack someone for their draconian measures I'm the wrong guy.
"Yikes. I'll bet you argue about everything."
It takes two to have an argument and it's usually better if one of them isn't an AC.
RIAA's Hit List
Get your abbreviations right... :-)
I sent him a thank you, as well. Unlike the Senator from Disney, Norm *IS* my senator (well, the only one I'll claim; you can keep Sen. Mark "Marshall-Fields" Dayton), and he is a down-to-Earth guy. Let's hope he keeps this pressure up! -The Dog
how about changing this one, instead of moving?
oh, right, if it was by popular votes, you would of lost.
lets not forget about all the inorities that were turned away, or the video of tens of thousands of ballots that were blowing through the countryside, never retrieved.
Regardless of who you or I voted for, the moment it was found out that that many votes were missing, and that peple were turned away, there should have been another election. Now had it not been a close election, then I wouln't have had a problem with it, but snce the missing ballots and turned away people are enough to change the florida vote, definatly need a re-vote.
could you imagine what would of happened if the same situation had occured, but the parties reversed?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
" Coleman did NOT win because his opponents were horrible. Two things happened to allow him to win the election:"
He won because his opponent when votes were cast, Mondale, was terrible. He looked like they had not completely drained all the embalming fluid when they hastly pulled him out of the coffin.
I wonder if anyone had yet told him that George Mitchell was not running the Senate anymore.
I agree. Someday all music will be free and this debate and the RIAA will be relics of a bygone era. Music is already free over the radio, I can tape it. Music is free over P2P, I can download it. Someday there will be a program that automatically gathers the music it thinks I will like and I will be exposed to new artists, and will want pay to see them live. (or if there already is I would love to know about it)
Same idea with copyright and patents. I think even 3 years for everything would be perfect. If you can't manage to sell your idea/invention in that time move over for someone who can. Innovation shouldn't be held up so someone can live off of for an idea they came up with years ago. Come up with something new if you're that clever!
The sending of this message pretty much inconveniences everyone involved.
Kindbud - Next week this could be WMD found under the sand, so simmadownnow and think. In a country that's 99% sand do you think there might be a few places to hide a stockpile?
s tm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3116259.
Friday, 1 August, 2003, 11:25 GMT 12:25 UK
US forces in Iraq have discovered dozens of Iraqi fighter aircraft buried in the desert, US officials have said.
A Pentagon official told the Associated Press news agency that several MiG-25s and Su-25 attack planes were found hidden at al-Taqqadum air base west of Baghdad.
The planes were unearthed by teams hunting for alleged weapons of mass destruction.
The discovery comes as America's weapons inspector in Iraq say they are making solid progress in the search for banned weapons the US says Saddam Hussein was hiding.
Poking out of sand
"Our guys have found 30-something brand new aircraft buried in the sand to deny us access to them," said Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Republican Porter Goss.
"These are craft we didn't know about," he said.
At least one of the MiGs was found with its tail fins poking out of the sand, the agency quoted the Pentagon official as saying.
It said many of the planes were buried with little protection and might never fly again.
The Iraqi air force, believed to have numbered around 300 fighter planes, was not mobilised during the US-led war with Iraq earlier this year.
It is thought Saddam Hussein believed the ageing aircraft would be no match for American firepower, and sought to conceal them instead.
and isn't it a strange coincidence that the governor of Florida is W's cousin? hrmmm
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
All this legislation has done is turn down the gain on political organizations, corporations, and Unions while it turned up the gain on individual voters. You know, the folks who are in the whole "We the People" blurb at the top of the Constitution.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
No, I think in this case the damages also amount as punitive, and would take into account the cost of pursueing said damages. I wonder how much exactly it costs to RIAA to maintain their squad of attack-lawyers.
The wording "under penalty of perjury" is related to the claim that they possess (or are empowered to act on behalf of) said copyright, not the correctness of the accusation.
This is especially relevant for stuff like websites. If I make a web owner take down e.g. a scientology site because I claimed copyright to it (which I don't have), then I could be charged with perjury.
Likewise, if you seek an injunction (which I'm pretty sure was what Wal-Mart wanted) you may become economically liable for any loss, should it be ruled against you. But no injunction, just a court case doesn't create that liability.
Of course the normal laws regarding groundless lawsuits and other legal actions apply as much to this case as any other, but the standard isn't any lower because of the DMCA notice. And quite frankly, it's pretty damn hard to prove that they didn't share my file.
The point is that you needn't go that far, you could simply send the DMCA notice, get the info, but not file a lawsuit. And then do whatever the hell else you want with it.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Unlike the Senator from Disney, Norm *IS* my senator
Cool. Do us all a favor and vote for him again when his term is up.
And yes, I have fat fingers.
A lot of people in the US are Christians - and there isn't a commandment against copyright violation. I wonder how many judges to to church?
There also isn't a commandment against walking up to a random woman on the street and calling her a stupid fat worthless whore. Does that mean it's okay to do so?
A) This country is run by laws, not commandments.
B) Not everybody is Christian. Most of the world is not, in fact.
C) The Bible was written thousands of years ago. It's safe to assume that, regardless of whether or not you personally believe that it's the Word of God, it might just possibly not cover every situation in the modern world.
ZFS: because love is never having to say fsck
ooo, big talk from an AC. By your logic, then, "have a nice day" = "have a nice day, you drooling pusbucket".
Have a nice day.
-72
-Those who dance are considered insane by those who can't hear the music.
I voted for who I thought would make the best president. Not my fault my vote upset some kind of delicate balance within our Kodos and Kang 2-party system. Piss off, AC.
-72
-Those who dance are considered insane by those who can't hear the music.
ummm .. just one small problem with your analogy to radio stations -- they DO pay royalties to play the songs. Royalties are assessed based on a statistical sampling technique, so it is not 100% accurate especially for small, infrequently played artists who might never get paid because they are not picked up in the sampling. But nonetheless, the radio stations do pay.
When you are purchasing a used CD though, that right has already been paid for by the person that originally bought the CD. They paid for the right to listen to that music, they then sold that right to the used CD store for a sum of money, and then the CD store then sold that right to you.
You are correct that lessening the revenue that is coming in is not theft. Depriving someone of their property, in this case, their intellectual property, without paying them, is theft.
psxndc
The emacs religion: to be saved, control excess.
Erm... bonds are essentially loans, and they aren't free. They must be paid back, with interest. Typically this is done by raising property taxes. So yes, ultimately anything funded by bonds is "built on the backs of taxpayers".
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
after i saw you beginning to "logically refute" those factual bulletpoints, i stopped reading the rest of your message. you see, reality beats dork logic every time. copyright is what it is, not what you would like it to be.
*plonk plonk*
psxndc
The emacs religion: to be saved, control excess.
"There also isn't a commandment against walking up to a random woman on the street and calling her a stupid fat worthless whore. Does that mean it's okay to do so?"
No, that's wrong to do. However, if I choose to do it, it's wrong to say I'm an attempted murderer. Copyright violation is wrong, sure. But it's not theft.
"A) This country is run by laws, not commandments."
True. Don't think I'm a Christian - I'm not. At all. But a lot of people do think this way. Here's a story to illustrate: I was pulled over by a cop once. He heard me say goddammit under my breath as he walked up to the car. And then told me that he wasn't going to give me a ticket until I said that, because it's blasphemy.
Don't think for a minute that Jesus doesn't affect your life, even if you're an athiest.
"B) Not everybody is Christian. Most of the world is not, in fact."
Most of the world doesn't have to answer to the RIAA. We do. And a lot of people in power are Christians. That's why it's important to note that the RIAA is calling this THEFT. There's a commandment for that. And in a city building not far from where I live, a vote passed to keep a monument of the 10 commandments in the city building, separation of church and state be damned.
"C) The Bible was written thousands of years ago. It's safe to assume that, regardless of whether or not you personally believe that it's the Word of God, it might just possibly not cover every situation in the modern world."
I agree. But tell it to the judge.
Weaselmancer
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Well, it's more like investment. Norm and others would argue (mostly correctly, although only history can say for sure) that it's like business capital investment.
The $800M in bonding Norm was responsible for may actually generate $1.5 billion in new taxes that would have otherwise been unavailable to the city.
New capital projects can raise the value of surrounding properties (more property tax revenue), create taxable properties from non-taxable properties (ditto), as well as spur business investment and economic activity (more sales tax revenue), as well as private property development (which can increase property tax roles and sales tax).
When those things happen, like business investment, the bonds are almost like free money -- they can actually generate a profit.
When they fail, though, the burden IS on the back of the residential taxpayers.
It takes 5-10 years at least to determine this, so the jury is still out on Norm's investments. Perhaps we'll know by the '08 election cycle.
Excuse me BUT, does an artist have the right to tell you what wall you must hang his painting on after you purchase it? And what color that wall must be painted?
Can a record company tell you that because this is "driving music", that you can only listen to it in your car? Or that the tracks must be listened to only in the specified order? Or that you cannot listen to this CD and another artist's CD in successive order because it will corrupt your appreciation of the music otherwise?
I don't think so.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
So is the RIAA hoping everyone will get exhausted by their one-step-at-a-time process to get to that point...
And what if people actually do start going to court over this? Lots of people?
There's a rough ride ahead boys.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Found this posted on none other than: MTV.com...
Senator Inquiry to RIAA Tactics
Bullshit. I think the rules should apply equally to everyone. Exactly what political biases are you attributing to me? I hate the liberal every bit as much as the conservatives. But what I hate most of all is GroupThink.
Yes indeed, I believe we should let everyone speak. What I despise are the megaphones people erect in the form of Political Action Committees.
Any message worth sending resonates from the masses. It does not require an amplifier. Indeed, PACs are an idea seeking an consituancy more than consituants expressing a message. It creates a situation of Ins vs. Outs. PACs represent their interest at the expense of the common good.
To Quote:
Lots of stuff about uniting for a common good. Indeed, it would seem that the Consitution was designed to handle Americans as a whole, not in chunks.
Okay, I can here your response now... "You are only scratching the surface, the Constitution states a lot more."
You are right.
So much for any legal arguments there, the Constitution describes the basic structure of our government. Onto the Admendments.
So, there is a lot to digest, Lets first exclude everything that doesn't have the vaguest parts of what we are discussing: namely the rights for organizations to influence the political process.
That leaves us with the following items to consider:
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
The problem is that after a few iterations, you wind up with galloping bond debt. That's one of the reasons why California's credit rating has fallen to "C" (last I heard), and why my *actual* property taxes are a bit over 2% (and rising), not the fixed 1% decreed by the famous CA property tax amendment. Can local development return the extra tax it costs me every year? Well, so far, the answer is no.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
You're 100% right about radio stations paying royalties. I looked it up on Howstuffworks.com. That sucks for say bar owners with a Juke Box. They have to pay royalties on an assumed rate of song playing ( they assume songs are played constantly ) even in the early afternoon when there are no customers shoving quarters in the machine. I looked up payola to disk jockeys too. That did happen - in fact that is where the word 'payola' came from and BMI too. Performers still don't generally get a cut of those royalties though. I think the rest of my argument holds up. It is in the performer's best interest to be played.
Eat at Joe's.
Stealing sounds a lot worse than copyright violation, doesn't it? A lot of people in the US are Christians - and there isn't a commandment against copyright violation.
Now that you mentioned this.. You DO realize that you're not supposed to take the ten commandments literally, right? You're supposed to take them as guidelines and use them to help you figure out what's right and what's wrong when new situations arise.
For example, when someone invented the first gun, did that mean that it was ok to shoot people until there were laws prohibiting it, or until religious leaders got up and said it's wrong? Do you go through life thinking that way? Thinking that unless some law or rule specifically prohibits you from doing some cool new thing, then it's ok? Thinking like that is why most laws get passed. People who should know better go around looking for loopholes instead of trying to do the right thing. Then the government has to play catchup to stop those people from hurting other people.
So anyway, when you steal something, you get to use something that you didn't pay for. You're preventing someone else from getting paid for their work, since they should have been paid by you because you're using the thing they produced.
Legally, it matters whether or not the thing produced is an actual thing or a copy of something, but morally it doesn't. Copyright infringement is morally the same as stealing, regardless of what the specific wording of the law says. I know this because when confronted with a new situation like getting music for free that I would otherwise have to pay for, I can draw on my knowledge that stealing is bad (meaning you get something without paying for it when you should be paying for it) so I can conclude that copyright infringement is stealing. This seems like an obvious line of reasoning to me, but perhaps I'm a naive pussy and I should go around trying to screw people over more and spend more time looking for angles to get ahead in life. But, I don't feel like being that way.
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
Go read Federalist No. 10 (Madison's comments on rule by factions). America is absolutely NOT a majority-rules country. There are plenty of countries that are, and if you want to live in one of them, I can send you a list. If america were a majority rules country, we would not need a constitution or bill of rights; only ballots. Slavery would still be legal, gays would be oppressed (even moreso than they currently are), we would have a National American Church of Christianity (which you'd be forced to belong to and pay taxes/tithings to), and all sorts of other horrors. Rest assured, even if 99.9% of the population wants something, the minority is protected. At least in theory. Yes, a certain majority can amend the constitution, but history and the actual process involved show that that is very, very hard to do. An "Equal Rights (for women)" amendment couldn't even get passed.
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
I don't take the 10 commandments any way at all, not being a Christian. It's other people that worry me.
"(meaning you get something without paying for it when you should be paying for it) so I can conclude that copyright infringement is stealing."
What you do is up to you. But to the law, that's another matter. And the law says there is a crime called theft, and a crime called copyright violation - and they're different. I wouldn't care to debate your own personal morality - not my business. If it feels like theft to you, don't do it. But if you do, and your'e caught, you will be punished for copyright violation and not theft.
What worries me is that some Christian judge will see Copyright Violation and think Theft, and punish accordingly. This is what the RIAA wants, and we must fight that.
Weaselmancer
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Relevant - goes to state of mind. This guy has an amatuerish sense of politics - he does what LOOKS expedient. Look, if you're pecked to death by ravens, and you worst enemy makes his first public appearance cradling a raven - HELLO? A little insensitve at best and a real slap at worst?
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
I am not an American but I seem to realize what every American should know but refuse to believe.
Nowhere in the bill of Rights, Constitution or any other original documents is the term DEMOCRACY used. This is not afterthought but intentional. Your form of government is not a Democracy - period. It is a Constitution Republic. It may be turning into a democracy but it was never intended to be one. A democracy is 3 wolves and a sheep deciding what to have for dinner. A Constitution ensures that the rights of one are not threatened by the majority. In Canada we have a sham constitution that does not even protect our right to own land. Please do not keep spreading this fallacy about the US being a democracy for fear of destroying your constitution.
It bothers me that most Americans are ignorant of their history and how their great country can into being.
Stay tuned for new sig...
I consider your post flamebait, and your arguement trite. There is no reason that dissenting opinions should leave "your" nation; you are being rude and obnoxious. Dissenting opinions are not just allowed but ENCOURAGED in the U.S. of A. At least they used to be. I expect this kind of childish attack on the Fox News Channel, but not from individuals. Excepting slashdot ;-)
"My God, this must be a truly remarkable corn chip, to be so widely and confidently touted."
Bush wasn't elected by the electoral college, he was elected by the US Supreme Court, a court that his father packed with sympathetic justices.
Bush won by cheating, get over it. I'm sick and tired of you smirking chimps trying to bully people into silence. You shut up.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I'm sick and tired of spelling and grammatical errors. Really though, I think we all lost.
I'd rather change the system...then if you don't like the new one, maybe you would like to explore your residence options instead.
Mordor...a magical, mythical land where women are more rare than dragons--but where every man would rather find a dragon
Many on Slashdot are rightfully concerned about the rights of US citizens due to things like the DMCA, Patriot Act, etc. We should also be concerned about a systematic campaign to remove our right to speak freely.
The campaign finance laws that are currently in effect are a poor way to change the system. They will be challenged in the next election, and I would bet almost 100% they will be struck down by the court system.
***
Radio Shack. You've got questions...we've got blank stares(TM).
IANAL but this seems to be a perfect chance to DDos the court system. Imagine 300 geeks go to seek supoenas each day, asking for a damage of $1 for thier random yakking mp3 with filename begining "XYZ." Nobody will ever get a criminal record out of it, only a settlement of $1. The point is not winning the $1 infringement, but to show that DMCA allows ruthless supoenas.
If I and my buddy next door settle each other's mp3, then we're even. now it's up to the court system to serve the supoenas up and down the ISPs. How fun! we need to write a How-To.
I know this will probably get tossed as a flame, but Coleman is evil. Don't trust him.
"The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away" -- "Step Right Up", Tom Waits
Well, I'm not a Christian, either. I do believe in God, or whatever you want to call it, but I think all religions are essentially equivalent, and they're not really the point (as if I haven't pissed off enough people today. :)) But, I think of the 10 commandments as being a decent guide on how to live, and that's the reason they were created IMO.
I don't really buy the "Moses on the mountain" stuff with the burning bush and all that. What I think is that Moses (as such) was leading people and they were screwing up, so he gave them some simple rules they could follow so they wouldn't destroy themselves.
That's why I like them. They don't represent the Word of God to me, they represent the accumulated wisdom of thousands of years of people deciding what are the Important Things that people need to understand to get along with each other. And btw, I mean the commandments after the first couple which I realize are directly tied to religion.
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
There's no logical reason why a bond-funded capital development program couldn't pay for itself through increased tax revenues resulting from development; a variant is Tax Increment Financing, which has been around for years.
The downside is that it has to be really strategic -- it has to be the kind of investment that has a high chance of spurring further investment.
If it becomes just a political patronage tool (spend money to reward unions and contractors) without good thought as to what you're building, you can end up with a lot of concrete and zero investment.
Blaming CA's problems merely on bonding is naive. A collapsed tech and aviation sector, economic slowdown generally, a burgeoning immigrant population and a Proposition 13 have all contributed to CA's problems.
- Copyright infringement is creating a new copy of something which you are not allowed to do. That is, you gained something you should ne have been allowed to gain.
Copyright infringement is stealing alright. But it's not the song/movie/ebook that's being stolen -- what is being stolen is the right to copy that work and benefit from such copies. And although it's more abstract than taking a physical object from someone, it still consists of depriving the person to whom that "thing" belongs their benefit and use of that thing.Theft has an additional part, which is that not only did you gain something, the one you stole from lost his copy of it (since there was not any copying involved creating a second copy).
When you infringe "copyright", you are literally stealing someone's "right" to make a "copy", which is something they were granted and possess, and you are depriving them of something valuable to them. Sometimes they earned that right by their own sweat or creativity. Sometimes they bought that right with money. But it's worth something to them and you've taken it away.
Ingnorance can be cured. I assure you that there are a great many issues about which you are ignorant, just as there are many things of which I am ingnorant. The "get out of my nation" argument brandished by you and your ilk is just plain silly.
The poke at FNC did not present me as swearing allegiance to CNN or anyone else. I gather my news and formulate my opinions from multiple sources. My favorite sources are the BBC and NPR.
Lastly, I love my nation. If you, Mr. AC, think that your blind devotion to the party line makes my patriotism any less true then I defy you to either
A: Post as an actual person who's outlandish beliefs will further thier "reputation" check my previous posts; my beliefs are evident
B: Come and remove me from your nation by force.
"My God, this must be a truly remarkable corn chip, to be so widely and confidently touted."
And what may seem to forget is that by law the president is NOT elected by a popular vote, they are elected by a vote of the electoral college. Now, generally speaking, the electoral vote matches the popular vote since the popular vote in a given state determines the state's electoral vote. However this is actually the second time in the US's history that a president has lost the popular vote but won the electoral vote. Hence, by law, Bush won the election.
Now, perhpas you think the system needs to be changed to a direct popular vote. I would agree with you on this, the electoral system is antiquated in my opinion. However, until the law is changed, we still do it by the electoral college. It doesn't suddenly change to a popular vote because you feel it should, the law needs to be changed. However it is not trivial to change, it is constitutial law, so the Consititution needs to be ammended. Again, this can be done, but it does need to be done if we want to have a purely popular vote to elect the president. We can't simply declare it to be changed because we feel like it, that's not how it works.
So please, as the orignal poster asked, get over it and stop whining. Bush won as per the law. May not be what we wanted to happen, but laws don't magically change. Just like we can't get reid of the DCMA with the way of a hand, we can't change language in the Constitution without ammending it. Rather than whining about Bush "not being the real President" or the like (which is incorrect and makes you look foolish), you should try to start up a movement to get the Constitution ammeded to make future elections by popular vote. I'll certianly hop on board.
That should be:
"It's not what you say, it's how many voices you pay to say it for you."
It may be a rule of the majority, but when money buys voices, the dollar wins the day.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
As a Rhapsody subscriber, I don't have much sympathy for those NSync traders. .
Here's the rebuttle,
"THE RIAA SUING COLLEGE KIDS IS THE RIGHT THING TO DO BECAUSE THE KIDS HAVE NO ASSETS."
Is that why they are after the kids' parents, too?
"we'd RIGHT NOW have 50c music dowloads as far as the eye could see. "
Bullshit. Obviously you have no clue how pricing works. Historical pricing of CDs (as agreed by the judge in class action suit) indicates that the pop music market is a Oligopoly working as a cartel. Cartels, without a way to cheat others, price like monopoly.
You forget that the RIAA exists to make a profit. Legal action is not "the right thing to do", it's "the (hopefully) profitable thing to do." This is why Microsoft don't sue college students. Piracy has helped Microsoft gain Monopoly.
The truth is, RIAA can only sue college students and young adults because it's thier "target segment" (a marketing term) and they can only catch these people trading thier stuff. It's not because students cannot afford the settlement.
As an MBA, I don't think of these supoenas in terms of right or wrong; rather, it's a business strategy and a stupid thing to do. I'm in the opinion that everybody stop trading and listening to thier music, becuase this is what they fear most: losing money and going out of business.
This may be the most useful analysis in the entire thread.
I prefer to have slightly more of a macroeconomic bent, but it's certainly insightful.
May we never see th
They are typos and an attempt at being brief by not using proper grammar.
Some of us have other things to do then take the time to be 100% correct and proof read.
The point I was making seems to have got across, solo the added effort would have been wasted.
As far as changing the system, it works. I'm pleased with it and have no desire for it to change. So... no need for ME to discuss any changes with YOU. However you may continue on discussing with others like you. Or you may just bitch about it and move, like I would prefer you did. We don't need your kind here in this country anyway...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Obviously you have only a term of MBA economics behind you. The problem with your pricing analogy is that it is for REAL GOODS with REAL MARGINAL COSTS. In IP markets, the marginal costs of production are essentially irrelevant (because each artist is not a substitute, in the economic sense, for every other artist, and so forth), so DEMAND is all that matters. Given that any analysis of oligopoly vs competition relies on understanding marginal costs of production, your statements in this regard are bullshit.
Now, that said, the question of whether it is a cartel or not is irrelevant - in another response to my parent post, i justified the .50c claim (first, stating that it was a bit of a broad stroke - it could be $1 per song or whatever) by a little analysis - take out retailer profit, shipping, warehousing, manufacturing, subsidization of failed/unpopular artists, and so forth and you will see that, say, $6.50 profit on a $7 on-line album purchase might be consistent with current profit. I encourage you to read that post for a more thorough explanation of my point here.
Now, to this "right or wrong" business. As an MBA, you took the absurd leap of assuming that YOUR "right" thing to do means "business sense" and mine "right thing to do" means a moral or ethical sense. From what I can see, you basically came to this characterization only so you can argue some made up point about profit vs ethics that really is you talking to yourself. I made no claims one way or another.
Why does RIAA sue parents as well? Well, the message needs to get out there. I mean really--do you think they are out to collect $100 million dollars from one individual? That's highly unlikely. In all likelihood, they will just about break even given the costs of litigation and the high costs of investigation and so forth. Whatever your characterization of them going after parents as well as students is, I can't see how you can come to any reasonable conclusion other than it's to send a message. It ain't for the money.
Students of college age are the de-facto "cutting edge" - they are about to be a key purchasing demographic and they have strong influence on those just younger than them. it's the perfect group to target strategically if your goal is to send a message and to scare some people into being a little more careful.
Incidentally, any time you start a sentence "as an MBA", you're just asking to be lampooned on FuckedCompany.com. I only came back with an ambiguous version of my credentials since you whipped your weiner out first.
A very interesting statement, a very conservative statement...the RIAA knows that the majority of americans and congress are going to think the fines involved are excessive...grossly excessive...especially after the supreme court recently ruled against excessive punitive damages ...apparently they are currently safe from challenge because the law states specific remedies...but they wont be safe for long and they have to know that...congress or (possibly) the courts will trim the penalties down to size...if they're smart they'll settle any tear-jerker cases out of court -- it's the only way they'll profit from their fear campaign without getting burned with backlash and/or ending up mired in red tape whenever they want to subpoena...
i.e. how long do u think a clerk of court is going to be in charge of approving the release of personal information from an isp?
All your preview button are belong to hello kitty.
I'm not from Minnesota, but if I was, I'd suddenly be sparked to start a massive campaigning effort for this guy.
Which is a problem with the one-congress-votes-on-everything system.
I might agree with Coleman on one issue, but he votes and has influence on many issues (taxation and fiscal policy, abortion, international affairs, immigration, transportation, welfare and social spending, education, war on iraq, etc). Even if I like his stance on file-sharing, if his other positions were despicable then I wouldn't vote for him.
I am not a sig.
To the clown user id 569987:
I'm a CS research programmer at a national research lab. You work for the loser music industry as a manager? What are you doing here?
The pricing scheme of cheatless oligopolies is the same as monopoly, which is related to the demand. All pricing is related to demand, but a monopolized market can charge more than a commoditized one.
It's funny how you talk about "demand" all day long, but argue pricing on supply side pricing. The music industry has not been using supply side pricing, otherwise thier ass wouldn't have been sued. If demand side pricing is used, than there will be no difference between a physical CD and a download. I'm still waiting for my settlement check.
The RIAA is not going after the settlement to make a profit; the execs are dead sure that sales will shoot up dramatically once the trading ceases. Anyone thinking the RIAA is a non-for-profit organization is not worthy of a debate.
So you believe that a 45 year old would be just as likely to listen to Britney Spears' than an 18 year old. You also believe that NSync is "cutting edge" music? You also believe that RIAA is the world organization for justice to send messages to immoral pirates, and that RIAA has no intention of making money, I rest my case.
"The problem with your pricing analogy is that it is for REAL GOODS with REAL MARGINAL COSTS. In IP markets, the marginal costs of production are essentially irrelevant (because each artist is not a substitute, in the economic sense, for every other artist, and so forth), so DEMAND is all that matters."
Oh right, so that's why Microsoft charges minimum for thier IP products.
Oh yeah, I got a degree in economics too. This "look at demand but not look at market structure" idea is laughable.
I don't work in the music industry. I am an academic. there's one thing you say I said that I did not.
I never said that you can look at demand and not market structure. I just said that simple models of oligopolistic vs perfect competition don't work in IP markets because the critical issue of marginal cost is missing. there's another thing you accused me of saying that I did not. My point was that market structure in IP markets can be far more complex because demand is the primary driver as the goods are very imperfect substitutes.
Let's look at some more of your stupidities:
- Microsoft, as anybody with a real, rather than invented economics degree knows, is known to engage in (modigliani-miller style) limit pricing. if you can quote microsoft and just claim pure, junior-high "monopoly pricing", then your degree in economics is a joke.
- "but a monopolized market can charge more than a commoditized one." Again, this belies the fact that your economics degree is an invented one. "Commoditized" and "monopolized" are not parallels. The "C" word you were looking in the first case is "competitive." Now, that said, the main point of my counterargument is that music is not a commodity. You can make every sort of quasi-sociological observation you want about one boy band being just as good as the next, but the fact of the matter is that we're not dealing in oil or laundry detergent here--or, at least the market for music is much more like an IP market than a market for commodities.
- "If demand side pricing is used, than there will be no difference between a physical CD and a download." Umm, attention stupid sysadmin: if what you call "supply side" pricing was used, the costs of each would still be equivalent to each other (if a CD and an MP3 were perfect substitutes, which, in reality, is probably not the case)! I'll let you do this logic.. it's tiresome to argue with somebody who is obviously bullshitting a degree in economics.
- "The RIAA is not going after the settlement to make a profit; the execs are dead sure that sales will shoot up dramatically once the trading ceases." On what basis do you claim your "dramatically" term? Pulled it out of your ass, did you?
- "Anyone thinking the RIAA is a non-for-profit organization is not worthy of a debate." You just line them up, and I'll smack them over the fence. "The Recording Industry Association of America, Inc. (RIAA) is a nonprofit industry trade group that represents companies, both small and large, that create, manufacture and distribute over 90 percent of the sound recordings sold in the United States." The RIAA IS nonprofit. its constituent companies are (obviously) for profit entities. I (nor anybody else in this thread) ever claimed otherwise.
- "So you believe that a 45 year old would be just as likely to listen to Britney Spears' than an 18 year old. You also believe that NSync is "cutting edge" music? You also believe that RIAA is the world organization for justice to send messages to immoral pirates, and that RIAA has no intention of making money, I rest my case." - Now that is just blabber. It has no basis in anything I said (I never mentioned N'Sync, and I argued just the opposite- that the one guy's original post is bullshit specificall because musicians are NOT substitutes for one another). I never claimed anything about the RIAA's constituent organizations not making money.
You are a complete fucking moron. If i wasn't stuck here spoonfeeding a printer for a presentationBut you're still a fucking moron monkey coder.
And yet band after band after band after artist signs with labels.
More artists are starting to realize that they don't need the labels. Recording, production and distribution are now all quite affordable to individuals. The artists that continue to sign suffer from the "elephant restrained by a shoe-string tied to a stake in the ground" syndrome, whatever you call that. There are so many stories of how the labels screw artists out there. Artists will eventually wake up. They don't need the labels anymore. Understandably, that causes a bit of anxiety for the labels.
are there some that do just some funky new thing?
Perhaps you've heard of Gillian Welch? She's one of the most highly acclaimed artists out there in recent times. And she wants nothing to do with the big labels - she started her own. There are other examples like this that show the way.
The music is already out there. The record labels have nothing to lose by selling music without DRM, but they still refuse to. It is trivial to copy music through the analog hole. When it comes to music, DRM makes no difference to infringers, yet it still annoys the heck out of legitimate users. More importantly, DRM makes it illegal to distribute a sound system capable of playing the latest and greatest music unless you get permission from the copyright holders. That effectively makes open-source solutions illegal.
we'd have LESS middlemen, MORE choices of artists, and BETTER digital portability
copyright is a government granted monopoly. You can throw out everything you claim to know about competition as it does not apply. A monopolist will demand as much money as the market will bear. A monopolist will cut costs as much as possible. A monopolist will not bother innovating anything.
The copyright industry has done everything they could to stop every technological innovation in the industry. They tried to outlaw the player piano. The tried to stop the radio. They tried to outlaw cassette tapes. They tried to outlaw the VCR. They tried to outlaw MP3 players. Five hundred years ago, publishers even tried to regulate the printing press. Your claim that the industry would allow better digital portability is absurd.
The mass media is an out-of-control monopoly. It's time for congress to rein-in the copyright industry's government granted priviledges.
By the way, if your arguments could stand on their own merit, you wouldn't need to fluff your claims with insults.
The music is already out there. The record labels have nothing to lose by selling music without DRM, but they still refuse to. It is trivial to copy music through the analog hole. When it comes to music, DRM makes no difference to infringers, yet it still annoys the heck out of legitimate users. More importantly, DRM makes it illegal to distribute a sound system capable of playing the latest and greatest music unless you get permission from the copyright holders. That effectively makes open-source solutions illegal. In the long-run it could allow a monopoly to take over the electronic distribution industry and censor anything they don't like.
we'd have LESS middlemen, MORE choices of artists, and BETTER digital portability
copyright is a government granted monopoly. You can throw out everything you claim to know about competition as it does not apply. A monopolist will demand as much money as the market will bear. A monopolist will cut costs as much as possible. A monopolist will not bother innovating anything.
The copyright industry has done everything they could to stop every technological innovation in the industry. They tried to outlaw the player piano. The tried to stop the radio. They tried to outlaw cassette tapes. They tried to outlaw the VCR. They tried to outlaw MP3 players. Five hundred years ago, publishers even tried to regulate the printing press. Your claim that the industry would allow better digital portability is absurd.
The mass media is an out-of-control monopoly. It's time for congress to rein-in the copyright industry's government granted priviledges.
By the way, if your arguments could stand on their own merit, you wouldn't need to fluff your claims with insults.
This interests me too, because he waited until the court made its decision before he stopped using Napster. See, the job of a court isn't to decide whether something is wrong; it's to decide whether it's illegal. It's up to the legislature, of which the Senate is a part, to ensure that the law accurately reflects our moral sense of right and wrong. So when a Senator, whose job is to codify right and wrong into law, seemingly waits for a court's determination of whether something is wrong before he ceases doing it, it makes one stop and think.
Either he supports file-sharing morally, and only stopped because it was declared illegal, or he actually uses the law as his moral compass, which is a very bad thing. :-)
Just because I can't resist, have you seen this?
Weaselmancer
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
So take the time and write a thoughtful letter to your Congressman explaining (not ranting about) why these issues concern you. Make sure to mention that you want a response telling you what the Congressman thinks about the issue (I intern in a congressional office and it'll get your letter to a higher level than it would otherwise). It probably won't get read by the Member, but they will certainly hear from their staff if they start getting a lot of letters on a particular issue.
Of course IANAL, and may be missing important parts of the law. In the following long winded explanation, I think I might have stumbled onto something, but will leave it to other readers to tell me where I am wrong and where I am, well, less wrong.
First, a question which I have not seen answered in all the discussion here, namely are the RIAA subpoenas being issued against users who shared files or from whom a file was actually downloaded by the RIAA? Either way, they do seem to have legal ground for filing suit against those who have illegally distributed, or made available for distribution through file sharing, copyrighted material.
I am neither taking a stance on the legality of file sharing, nor trying to find a way to justify the behavior. Instead, I am simply attempting to view the entire approach to P2P sharing a little differently.
Let me begin with a question.
What if a user has shared some or many files within a P2P program, but used a firewall or has set up their P2P program to prevent anyone from actually downlaoding their files?
To me it seems that this person is committing no copyright infringement - while the file may be available it is not accessible. Consider the analogy of my placing a sign on my car reading "Use this car for FREE! Just drive it away!" but I have taken out the motor, removed the tires and built a 12 foot fence around it, and made it impossible for anyone to actually drive it away, I haven't really given it away.
At least not until someone drives it off, right?
So if the RIAA finds a username with thousands of files shared but is then unable to download the file, there has been no distribution and it may be hard to argue that there was intent to allow distribution of those files if other steps were taken to disallow downloads. Incidentaly, this may be an insight in the answer to my first question - wheter or not the RIAA is pursuing those who just share or are actually making files available for download.
So what if a P2P program did not immediately share but simply listed files you have on your machine? No crime in that, right? In other words, you were simply proclaiming "look what I have," but that did not allow anyone to download the file.
It seems that the inherent flaw in P2P programs (well at least when it comes to the legality of sharing) is that files are automatically available for download.
Let's imagine instead that when someone wants those files from you, the downloader has to "release" (or publish or share or copy or whatever) the file. In other words the downloader had to click OK to a message that says something like "Do you want to make a copy of this file by making it available for distribution (download) to your computer?"
Legally, it would seem that it is neccessary for the downloader to have options beyond simply saving the file to disk. There also needs to be an option to open the file without saving it. This would let the downloader view/play/open a file without being able to save it. In other words, simply borrowing the file because while it is being borrowed the file can't be borrowed or copied or used in anyway by anyone else the original "owner" included (because the copyright infringement comes from duplication and distribution). Let's say that the
What?! I doubt it. Bush is too stupid to take the honorable way out.
It's been a long time.
"...the RIAA would have to give away some MP3's to those who "borrow" but never return files."
I should have said...
"...the RIAA would have to give away some MP3's to those who "borrow" but never return files yet can not be sued for copyright infringement since the original file was physicaly transferred to the recipient, not just copied."
Morality has no place in the music industry. Never has. Never will.
It's been a long time.
I think piracy is a good idea just to piss off hypocrits like you.
But what about when the poor kids end up in debt for their next five lifetimes as a result of the ridiculous damage counts...
We've secretly replaced Slashdot with new Folgers Crystals - let's see if it notices.
You say, "There's no logical reason why a bond-funded capital development program couldn't pay for itself through increased tax revenues resulting from development" ...
In which case, I suggest applying the eventually increased tax rate only to those who directly benefit from whatever the bond was supposed to finance. Because as it is, it ultimately hurts everyone else.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
No I hadn't seen it, but as I said, I think they're a good set of guildelines to follow. Also, I like Carlin, but I think that he jumped the shark when he went on Thomas the Tank Engine :P
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
The property immediately surrounding the development generally sees a slight increase in property taxes as its assessed value tends to rise (which only makes sense). Everything else is a revenue increase from increased usage (sales tax) and follow-on development (property tax).
In effect, it's a "free" benefit because more distant property owners (generally residents) don't pay anything (other than sales tax in the newly developed areas, which they would have paid regardless) -- the users and the follow-on development pick up the tab by paying the newly-increased property taxes in the area.
The only people who end up paying more are people who don't want the development because they benefit in some way from a rundown area (cheap rents, storage, etc).
Thanks for your points. I'm not a lawyer and I've not seen anyone on /. claim they are, but in the spirit of free exchange I'll continue to be the black hat.
My business law text book from MBA school has real property and IP in the same chapter. The opening rubric states that, prior to the information age, real property was the main asset of a company. This has now changed and for may companies their IP is more valuable. I'm not saying you're wrong, but, on the basis of value, I see no difference between IP and real property.
I think that points more to the stupidity of the people doing the voting. The guy uses the same techniques as hitler to keep the populace in line (see:Patriotism as a tool), while trying to pretend that he's one of the good guys.
Personally, I think the whole system is broken, starting from the schools that forgot to teach anyone about the world around them. Tell me, if you're in south dakota, which state is directly north of you? Yeah. Some Americans answer this wrong.
It's been a long time.
Re-read what I wrote. He's using hiter-like TACTICS. I never said he wanted to slaugheter anyone(erm...except middle-easterners, but I guess tens of thousands of them are ok since it's "liberation"), but the way he's going "if you don't agree with me, you're a bad American, because you're either with us or against us" is very much like the atmosphere of patriotism that permeated Germany before WWII that allowed Hitlers rise to power and the subsequent slaughter.
It's been a long time.
A smart guy wouldn't have lied to the world. A smart guy wouldn't have placed tarriffs on their largest trading partner whose biggest exports are already controlled by american companies. A smart guy wouldn't have lowered taxes while a huge 300 billion dollar deficit looms over this years budget. A smart guy wouldn't have broken international and US law to go to war with an already crippled dictator.
A smart guy MIGHT EVEN have noticed all the talk in the intelligence community about a plan to fly planes into the WTC and the pentagon and put some saveguards in place to ensure nothing would happen.
A smart guy might -- just MIGHT -- have
It's been a long time.