Slashdot Mirror
MPAA Puts Words in Mouth of CA Attorney General
An anonymous reader writes "In another example of Microsoft Word meta data coming back to bite you, Wired News reports that a document circulated by the California Attorney General to fellow lawmakers supporting new restrictions on P2P software was actually authored by a senior vice president of the Motion Picture Association of America."
You mean government officials are just puppets to large corporations?!
MABASPLOOM!
So I'm not surprised by this. It's been happening for a long time - his pockets (and the pockets of many others) are probably lined with MPAA/RIAA green.
metadata is a good thing, as long as it is accurate and useful. Go Metadata!
Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree. -Martin Luther
if you switch a few of the words and/or key players in this issue you'd have a tin-foil hat brigade flooding the comments.
I think the MPAA has got something else in Lockyer's mouth too.
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
"But we remain concerned about the potential dangers posed to the public by peer-to-peer file-sharing technology."
Oh thank you! I am so glad that a piece of software for sharing innocous content is being watched by out government so that I am not harmed in any way by the pure evil contained inside.
If P2P software can be used to violate law, the argument goes, its makers should be obligated to incorporate a warning on the product or face liability for deceptive trade practices.
Yes, because we all know that hammers, cars, broken beer bottles, rolls of duct tape, and pieces of rope all incorporate these warnings...
We view with grave concern reports that at least some P2P software developers may be adding features deliberately designed to hinder law enforcement in its prosecution of crimes using P2P software.
Awww, I view with grave concern the fact that the MPAA is paying off government officials so that they can control their market by influencing, greatly in their favor, the laws that are passed and excuted upon everyday citizens.
Whether it is the widespread availability of pornography, including child pornography, the disclosure of sensitive personal information to millions of people, the exposure to pernicious computer worms and viruses, or the threat of legal liability for copyright infringement, P2P file-sharing software has proven costly and dangerous for many consumers.
This is my favorite. Widespread panic techniques. Mention that it has child porn abilities! The exposure to viruses is the OS' and the users' fault not P2P software.
God, what a bunch of trash. Glad that we have these people in office so that others can use them as puppets.
Our Constitution in the U.S. prevents Congress from making any law infringing on our natural freedom of speech. To me, P2P is communication, which is speech. Therefore, the federal government has no mandate to restrict it.
Our 9th and 10th amendments to the Constitution allows the State and/or the People to cover anything the federal government can not. Should California desire to restrict P2P, it should be able to. If you disagree with California's take on this restriction, you can move to Arizona or Delaware, or another state that doesn't have such a restriction.
I'm a firm believer that State governments should be manacled by the Constitution as well, and in my perfect world the State would be just as restricted in making laws against speech. But nonetheless, I'd rather see bad laws at the State level rather than the federal level.
Keep the goons in Congress restricted from making laws, and you'll find almost everyone is happier.
I am going to hell and I am going to take all of you with me.
I suppose that the words authored by the head
of the MPAA were "Iraq has WMD ready at 45 mins notice".....oh no that was Tony ("I didn't sex up that document") Blair
This new governmental policy of letting the corporations dictate public policy has just got to stop. America is being overrun by special interest politics, and with so many politicians with their hands in the cookie jar, the MPAA and related organizations essentially have a free hand in drafting legislation, policy notes, you name it.
I'd be very interested to know whether this Attorney General received campaign "contributions" from the MPAA, and how much. What do you have to pay to buy an Attorney General these days? $10,000? $50,000? I hate that everyone has their price, but what really makes me sad is how low that price is sometimes...
Use the Antiword!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Power is transferring from the state (the general state, not just California) to corporations. If this continues, companies will rule. This is perhaps the ultimate downfall of democracy, and the end point of capitalism.
It gave me an interesting idea, though. If this situation actually happens, or even if it doesn't, imagine a company run as a democracy. Regular elections for CEO (of course there would have to be some accountability rules so they don't milk it for personal gain before stepping down, but that'a already a problem anyway). I can imagine workers for such a company being more motivated, and certainly more financially healthy since the massive salaries at the top would essentially be spread around.
While a staunch anybody-but-Bush voting liberal, even I have to confess that rank corruption in the realm of intellectual property legislation is universal - the voting record declares authoritatively that both Democrats and Republicans alike have, on this issue at least, sold out to special interests with fervor and abandon.
Ah, who cares. I'll continue to reap rewards from vendors and lawyers who send .DOC files.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Considering the MPAA's activity in Tennessee this year. The MPAA is a super-powered lobbying machine, fueled by your movie theater ticket and DVD sales. We initially gave them the power to protect their products, which has been increasingly leveraged by turning consumer dollars into political "donations", which in turn allows them to increase the duration of their copyrights, ad infinitum.
take memo's and probably money from groups like the MPAA. He's already shown he doesn't have any respect for the law. As shown hereA> [CNSNEWS.com]
I have been analyzing /.'s meta data and have discovered that it is all being done by a copy of Scrivener running on a CP/M enabled Apple II.
And if you thought that was boring you obviously havn't read my Journal ;-)
CALIFORNIA ELECTS GOVERNOR FROM HOLLYWOOD, GOVERNOR OFFERS FAVORS TO HOLLYWOOD. NEWS AT 10
You elect a governor with vested interests in preventing movie piracy so he can rake in the residuals from Junior, Last Action Hero and Twins, and you're surprised when his government turns around and follows through on those interests?
These and many more support meta data. No word processor is safe. If your going to write controversial material, click File, Properties in the menu of your word processor and edit out the meta data!
However, if you kept reading your law book, you could have found that the 14th (IIRC) amendment has been established by the courts to extend the restrictions placed on the government in the bill of rights to the states as well.
IOW, California has no right to do this either.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Independents like me are also protected by copyright.
But note: if the goal is to "legitimize" p2p so that artists get paid, how would you do it?
Would you add a new Internet tax that everybody should pay?
Would you add new monitoring software so that an agency can track what people are doing on the net?
Would it actually be any more helpful to independents?
Do you think that everybody whose income depends on their ability to sell their own copyrighted work should just have to find another job?
These are the real questions...
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
The federal constitution is still the supreme law of the land. If you argue the federal government is forbidden from restricting P2P on first amendment grounds, then you can't argue that the state or local government has any more ability to restrict it.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
So you say P2P is protected by the constitution so the federal government can't restrict it, but then you say that a state should be allowed to restrict it?
Maybe you failed Government 101 but when something is in the United States constitution no states can have laws against it.
...speeches by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger are also scripted by the MPAA....
Our Constitution in the U.S. prevents Congress from making any law infringing on our natural freedom of speech. To me, P2P is communication, which is speech. Therefore, the federal government has no mandate to restrict it.
To me, the federal government is my servant and as such they should pay me taxes, not the other way around.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
I would say the document was "shared illegally".
Tsuyoikoto ha taisetsu da ne, dakedo namida mo hitsuyousa (Strength is an important thing, but tears too are necessary)
Okay I think I've almost got it. CTRL-C is cut. CTRL-V is paste. But which key is "file off the serial numbers"?
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
This is a big reason why anarchocapitalists (and most libertarians) are anti-democracy: in a democracy, power tends to trickle up to the connected few who can say they have the mandate of the many.
This country was founded on a Constitution that limits the power of the majority. 51% of the country could vote to kill the other 49%, and the Constitution does not allow them to. Don't believe the hype presented by Democrats and Republicans alike, the only mandate they have is for powers specifically delegated to them by the Constitution. Those powers are small, not wide reaching, and very limited in scope.
Living document it is not. If we are to return to personal responsibility, we need to disrupt the current authoritarian control of the federal government.
The California Atty. General is an elected office, not appointed.
metadata in Bush memo shows it was written by his dog Spot
This is not my opinion. Actually, it's not even an opinion. And I'm nowhere to be seen near it
PDF!
That's just plain dirty pool. And since when does an Attorney General have time to combat crap like this, in a state where illegal immigrants flow across the border, you have one of the largest open-air markets for drugs, and your state was just taken up the poop shoot by Energy producers.
Screw the media companies. They can fend for themselves. It's the citizens of California the AG is sworn to protect.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
That's because when you get to choose only between the Republicans and the Democrats, in reality, you have no choice at all.
It's about time Americans stopped calling themselves a democracy.
.
After reading the article on Wired, I look up, and boom. I see an ad for MSN!!
I completely agree, and my original post didn't convey the intent I had in offering a second view if P2P was not "speech." Even if P2P isn't speech, it still doesn't seem to be an area that the federal government has a mandate to restrict, regulate, tax, or otherwise deny. If P2P is something other than speech, the States should have a right to restrict it or let the People do it.
My apologies to the confusion!
thats ok .. they'll just get the MPAA to write an amendment to the constitution .. don't get lippy bwoy! ;)
This (situation) sounds nearly exactly like the energy policy of the US government in 2001. Back when Cheney headed up writing national energy policy in private / without congress or some members of the cabinet available to discuss policy.
So it seems it is possible to have something better than a blank check.
Dont people learn...
For fucks sake mods.. This is far from FUNNY. It is insightful, informative, or scary, but certainly NOT funny.
Re-moderate accordingly please.
This article's mention of product liability warnings reminds me of that Bloom County strip in the 80s where sleazy lawyer Steve Dallas is contemplating whom to sue after getting pummelled and hospitalized by Sean Penn's forehead.
After explaining why he shouldn't sue Sean Penn ("juries love famous people, and he might return to beat up the plantiff"), or his wife, Madonna ("proving liability might be difficult, and she might return to beat up the plantiff"), or Opus the Penguin ("never, ever sue poor people"), he settles on suing the Nikolta Camera Corporation, a "huge, multinational corporation with gobs of liquid cash," on the grounds that they were "criminally negligent in not placing a warning sticker on their cameras that reads, 'serious injury may result from photographic psychopathic Hollywood hotheads.'"
He then finishes up by waving a flag and declaring, "America, Land of the Lawsuit... God bless her!"
I guess the P2P software companies are likewise criminally negligent in not warning people that their products could lead to some harm.
Since there's no warning sticker on this spindle of blank CD-ROMs on my desk, I think I'll see how many of them I can shove down my throat.
On the same subject, have you seen some of the warning stickers manufacturers DO put on their products? Can I get a reply with some examples? I'll start off by citing the sticker on the baby stoller that reads "Do not fold stroller with infant inside."
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
Well sure, but think about how many different breakfast cereals are available!
Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day, but teach a man to phish...
Okay, "reviewed" may be a legitimate complaint (though I find it disturbing that flow-of-control of legislation would go through the MPAA, rather than sending him a *copy*).
However, "drafted" is roughly equivalent to "authored", for our purposes. We don't care whether the guy could spell -- we care about who is coming up with the bulk of the ideas.
May we never see th
are being studiously ignored in so many other ways?
Let's take a look at guns, for example. REPLACE([Wired Article],'P2P software','assault rifles') and suddenly you've got the arguments for every single pro-gun-control group in the USA. Personally, I'm much more worried about the imminent public danger of a submachine gun than I am worried about the threat to public safety presented by Kazaa. Yet why is the state AG not addressing gun control instead of P2P?!
If we wanted to pull this little idea out a little further, how about we apply it to speeding? Car companies sell us their cars by telling us how fast we can go! McDonalds only recently started cutting back on portion size, but I don't remember any state AGs railing against the public safety risk of a Big Mac.
It's no surprise that our politicians are in the pockets of big corporations. When I talk to people about situations like this, they most often say, "business as usual," shrug, and turn away. Not enough of them get angry and vote. Our politicians are crooked because they are ALLOWED to be.
Why should I argue rationally with someone being irrational? I'll just mock them instead.
Everyone is commenting on the fact that the MPAA wrote this document, but what is more disturbing to me is the actual precedent this kind of thing sets, as mentioned in the article:
And it's interesting that this comes right around the time that Congress is passing legislation banning liability suits against the fast food industry...
So, while Congress says "Hey you have to be responsibile for your own actions with regard to the products you use, even if you use those products as intended", the state attorneys general are saying "Hey if you get in trouble, it's the product manufacturer's fault, even if you're choosing to use the software in a way not intended by the company."
So why not take the EFF's argument one step further? If I drive a Ford to rob a bank, is Ford then responsible also for not warning me not to do so?
Of course, I'll probably get modded down for being off-topic...
can anyone say 1984?
Are people really surprised? I have to thank microsoft for the metadata feature. Without it, this particular push by MPAA would have slipped by with fewer people getting pissed. Businesses have been buying influence for a long time people. Get over it. Those who think this kind of isn't happening are living on mars. Just look at the fat tax cuts Bush gave the richest 10% of america. The rich will always try to screw us, unless we educate ourselves and make sure we don't let them. So far, it looks like the efforts of the rick to deprive the middle class is going swell. Public education is getting worse, jobs are going over-sea and business aren't hiring. Life is great, if you're rich. Otherwise, you have to keep bustin' your butt. People need to get out the vote and think for themselves. That means not buying into party lines and thinking critically for yourself.
What ever happened to, a goverment for the people by the people.
I'm no Bush fan, but you are still a dumbass.
We're a representative republic. But I guess democracy sounds so much better.
Or something.
I think the most suitable term for describing the innovation by Microsoft Word is meta-data. It symbolizes the real freedom to non-word users like me, and fight against secrets that the public should know. From the case of SCO-Microsoft, to the case of P2P-sharing, this technology opens another world of computer usage of Microsoft Word. Who's benefit from it? Of course are the public.
From another point of view, the usage of meta-data is serious, which means that if you don't want your words logged by anything, you should use plain text editor.
That went out the first time an elected official decided he could make a career out of politics.
My bad. It was a goverment for the people buy the people.
Well this time around a product of M$ actually came in handy!
Then get off your ass and VOTE, or run for office. These days the political climate is overwhelmingly in favor of the little guy, because people are so disenfranchised. If some 80 year old farmer from Vermont can get elected to congress for being a "regular hard working guy", why can't you? There's something like less than a 20% turnover of elected officials these days; our government is chock full of career politicians more interested in getting reelected than actually representing the people or working for good government.
People whine about corporate involvement in government, then do nothing when it comes time to do the one thing corporations can't- actually place a vote, or run for office. Voter turnout in this country is pathetic; 3rd world countries have better turnout than us, and they have to deal with gunslinging "supporters" and whatnot. In Russia, Putin's opponents simply disappear.
What's your excuse?
Please help metamoderate.
42.
Spot is dead you insensitive clod!
period.
The alternative would be that the CA lawyer is just running a pirated copy of MSWord, which was obtained from sources in MPAA....
It is pitch dark. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
And all he had to do was copy and paste the text into a new .doc and everything would have gone through with out any further attention.
I'm now sending all my important memos, demands, etc in wordpad.
As a P2P software developer and distributor, we believe you have the ability and responsibility to better educate consumers about these known risks, and to design your software in a manner that minimizes the risks. We view with grave concern reports that at least some P2P software developers may be adding features deliberately designed to hinder law enforcement in its prosecution of crimes using P2P software. Companies that engage in such conduct, and fail to meet the important responsibilities referenced above, harm the interests of consumers in our States.
Yes. God forbid we have anonymity or encryption.
[shrug] Well, as I said earlier, I have no interest in following directives like these. Software can be developed privately and via anonymous access through Freenet if necessary. It'd be a pain in the ass, but I'm
* Not interested in adding back doors to my work
* Not interested in stopping work on problems of how to provide secure/nonabusable/anonymous P2P systems (yes, part of that is to benefit users concerned about law enforcement attention).
If the AG wants to do something to go after people operating in legal gray area, he can go after people with radar detectors (speeding can, y'know, kill people, whereas a pirated song only means that a large company gets a small amount less money), or those committing corporate accounting hanky-panky, or any number of other more damaging actions. Admittedly, there aren't people with deep pockets and old-boy connections to the government trying to finance hunting people down (note: AG can also go after corrupt government officials, IMHO), but theoretically that AG was appointed to be the servant of the people, and as the House is demonstrating, popular support for the RIAA is awfully low.
May we never see th
Oh wait.. it's the same comapanies...
Well at least I'll hear about on the radio...
Oh wait those are the same companies too...
Well at least they will discuss it in the next session of congress...
Oh right I keep forgeting.....
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
What do you expect, that's normal business practice.
..."
It's called lobbying.
Big companies talks to politican and tells him: "We know our business better than you.
- P2P is bad for the public in gerneral and bad for my business.
- Terrorist use P2P to coordinate their attacks.
- P2P is used for distributing kiddie porn, P2P Software comes from shady sources.
- These are bundeled with spyware and zombie bots to attack other websites.
- What about $2000 I spend for your reelection champaign?
-
Grundgesetz * 23. Mai 1949 - 30. November 2007 - http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/
The same has happened in Ohio (here and here) where a new bill has been signed and is now law (thank you MPAA & Gov. Taft) directly written and influenced by big-cinema. When the public (and media) starting questioning the bill and the stealthy way it was snuck through -- also the nagging fact that a cell-phone that takes video snippets can now make you a felon if you bring it to a movie theatre.. (ok, I am exagerating, the first offense is a misdemeanor; the next one is a felony) The MPAA responded to the effect of "just pass the law like it is written and you can always go back and amend it". And, YES, in Ohio you are now a criminal if you press record on any electronic recording device in any public place that has a movie being played (ie. Walmart or BestBuy).
MPAA is also trying to sneak one through in Hartford and probably also your own state legislatures. (A similar law took effect Jan. 1 in California. Michigan lawmakers introduced legislation in December, and Wisconsin and Pennsylvania passed equivalent bills in 1999)
And you truely are a fool if you are one of those who say, well even though *technically* it is the law, they'll never *really* enforce it that way. Forget police state. Just go look at EFF, I'm starting to be worried we'll all soon be living in a corporate state.
Can anyone say bad analogy?
Meta-Black-mail. Or Meta-mail.
Meta data terrorism: Meta-Terrorism. Or Metorism.
Gotta go Meta.
[signature]
So does this mean that if I get prosecuted for using KaZaA I can then sue Sharman Networks for failing to warn me of the legal implications of my use of its software?
I'm a firm believer that State governments should be manacled by the Constitution as well, and in my perfect world the State would be just as restricted in making laws against speech.
Um, they are. States cannot make laws which (explicitly) violate the US constitution.
A recent (and highly controversial) example of this would be the US Supreme Court ruling that the Texas anti-sodomy laws are unconstitutional. The majority decision read in part - "[consenting adults'] right to liberty under (the US Constitution) gives them the full right to engage in their [personal] conduct without intervention of the government...".
(Btw, Justice O'Connor agreed with and voted with the majority decision, but in a separate opinion indicated that the law should have been overturned because it violated the 14th Amendment which guarantees equal protection for all persons. Another example of the principle of US law trumping state law).
(Also btw, I am just using the above example because it is a recent and clear example of US Constitutional law trumping state law. I don't wish to get sidelined into a flame/discussion about the validity of decriminalizing homosexual behaviour (at least in this thread)).
So, getting back to the parent's original point - if the Feds decided that P2P was inherently constitutional, it would make it extremely difficult for states to pass law restricting it. Conversely, were the US gubbamint to place significant restrictions on P2P and those laws held up in the federal courts, then that would pretty much preclude it's use anywhere in the US, given the interstate nature of the 'net.
Oh yeah - IANACLE.
- Jeff
"Long as you're not afraid, nobody can run your life for you. Remember that. Hell is being scared of things. Heaven is refusing to be scared." - Tom Robbins
Wrong. State governments may not enact laws which violate people's rights under the federal constitution.
Wrong. See above.
The AG didn't even cite the IP of the hardworking Record Industry Exec. I say he needs to pay for his flagrant copyright violation. Think of the children! What is Stevenson's children supposed to eat, when people are stealing his work wholesale.
The grass is only greener, if you don't take care of your own lawn.
The problem is that if wealth has a direct impact on the operations of government, it's easy to form a feedback loop where the richer just get more rich and powerful, and the entire nation moves further and further away from the (ideal) meritocracy that benefits almost everyone in the long run.
May we never see th
I thought we at least got to vote for the law makers.
"What do you do with the mad that you feel when you feel so mad you could bite?" - Mister Rogers
However, if you kept reading your law book, you could have found that the 14th (IIRC) amendment has been established by the courts to extend the restrictions placed on the government in the bill of rights to the states as well.
Through a process called "Selective Incorporation", meaning that each amendment is applied to the states as soom as a court says so. This is why your local/state can't violate your 1st amendment rights, but it is currently legal for cities like Morton Grove IL to outlaw handguns.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
What I want to see is the Attorney General make an official statement while a senior vice president of the MPAA drinks a glass of water....
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
Young man, turn that computer off.
I said, young man, listen up we're the boss.
I said, young man, you're causing us loss.
You've got no right to download those films.
Young man, there's a place we'll send you.
I said, young man, you're gonna ache when we're through.
I said, young man, you're gonna get the big screw.
You're gonna die young in jail.
It's fun to work for the M.P.A.A.
It's fun to work for the M.P.A.A.
You can supress, all the creativity.
And wipe out those brats for free.
Business, is the king o' the game.
I said, business, the money's insane.
I said, business, no work and all gain.
Everyone of us will get rich.
Congress, is gonna listen to us.
I said, congress, they know we's the boss.
I said, congress, we don't care what it costs.
They gonna do all we say.
It's fun to work for the M.P.A.A.
It's fun to work for the M.P.A.A.
You can work there, with your Harvard degree.
You can change all the laws for free.
M.P.A.A.
M.P.A.A.
M.P.A.A.
M.P.A.A.
Copyright RIAA, 2004. Reproduction in any form strictly prohibited and subject to excessive civil and criminal penalties.
"Since there's no warning sticker on this spindle of blank CD-ROMs on my desk, I think I'll see how many of them I can shove down my throat."
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
It has unintentionally made life miserable for some many people who actually deserve it.
Democracy isn't a system of government, it's a determination of accountability. The US has been a democracy pretty much since the beginning, even when State governments were allowed to pick Senators (because all of the state governments were democratically elected.)
Even the Bill of Rights, long held to be an example of something that trumps democratic involvement and hence, somehow proof America isn't a democracy, is modifiable should the people choose to modify it.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Well, i would easily believe that P2P software is used mainly for trading of copyrighted material and pornography. Even done a search for something other than porn or copyrighted material? Probably some people have, but not everyone, probably not even a majority
Now, I am aware of bittorrenting legally and the like (indeed, I got bittorrent banned at my work because I use it to get redhat isos), so please don't jump on me for actually supporting a point in the article.
Doesn't make it right that they write up these docs for the AG.
-- Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him? --
No monitoring software or new taxes, and independents already use it right now. Magnatune, which features the 49%-sad & 51%-hilarious slogan: "We are not evil," and doesn't seem to have work very hard to explain such a slogan these days... If you want try-before-you-buy and think artists should benefit as much as publishers (say, 50-50!) you should check out Magnatune (their music's also surprisingly-good!).
JMR
Speaking ONLY for myself (but yes, I'm commercially-biased, etc.)
Try e-gold - (contact me). I'm NOT e-
What ever happened to, a goverment for the people by the people.
the people got bought out in a hostile takeover
Go to hotbot.com, click on "Advanced Search", check the "MS Word" box under "Page Content". Then search for whatever you're interested in.
.doc file relating to SCO. One wonders what facinating goodies might be hidden in metadata in SCO documents...
For example, checking this box and then searching for "sco" returns 4600 web pages containing a link to a
May we never see th
Send PDF files that are encrypted from editing.
> corporation. Unfortunately, I forget the name
> of the person that introduced this.
> -- ravind
The company is called Semco, it's in Brazil, and the CEO is Ricardo Semler. You can read about it in his excellent book Maverick!. He's written a follow up called The Seven Day Weekend which I'm getting when it's available here in paperback.
"If democracy and self-rule are the fundamentals, then why should people give up these rights when they enter their work place? In politics we fight like tigers for freedom, for the right to elect our leaders, for freedom of movement, choice of residence, choice of what work to pursue -- control of our lives, in short. And then we wake up in the morning and go to work, and all those rights disappear. We no longer insist on them. And so for most of the day we return to feudalism. That is what capitalism is -- a version of feudalism in which capital replaces land, and business leaders replace kings. But the hierarchy remains." - Kim Stanley Robinson, Blue Mars, 1996
That's in a case where the water isn't nearly as muddy as with the MPAA's shenanigans. There are legitimate reasons for which copyright laws exist, the MPAA is maneuvering behind those.
I have 10-year-old twins, one of whom once testing a little high for lead levels in my old apartment; gee, I guess there was no danger after all. Is there any cover at all for stacking a CDC board's medical decision with voices from the paint industry?
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
It maybe that Money != Power
But money can buy you power, awful lot of it. And then it maybe that Power != Money
But power can earn you an awful lot of money. It is as simple as that.
It is not only that: the US government is willing to jail a guy for swapping an MP3, and denting the profits of a record company by, say, US$2. But the guy who stole US$7 trillion from his own employees and shareholders goes scott free.
I don't know how one can even consider US government a democracy, when it is definitely not the wish of the people that is being carried out. Money speaks: loud and clear.
The saddest part is, there's really no difference between the Democrats and Republicans when it comes to carrying out the wishes of their big corporate bosses.
And the US is the leader of the free world. And you are not safe even if you are in Australia. Right.... time for me to move to the new planet
Indefinitely Detained US Citizen
So what if artists don't get paid? Who the hell promised that they WOULD get paid forever? Will people will stop making music just because they can't sell 10 million CD:s? No. Can I get a job as a professional scribe, doing nothing but copying bibles by hand? No. Can I make a living building sextants? No.
Beautifully stated. I wish my friends in the movie and music industries would all listen when I try to tell them the same thing. But they won't, so they're doomed to follow the buggy whip manufacturers to death and obscurity.
Besides, artists will always be able to earn a living. Britney and Beyonce may not make millions of dollars a year anymore (actually, those are bad examples, since Pepsi will probably keep paying them both for a while, especially if they do a commercial where they kiss each other, but I digress), but they'll still do better than Joe Sixpack ever will. It's the industry executives, with nothing really to fall back on, who are really and truly screwed.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
I can't imagine who at Slashdot would have a problem with what happened. It's effectively Open Source Legislating (OSL). The "code" was stamped with the author's name, and was reused with attribution.
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]
Its time to take political action against the MPAA and RIAA including a campaign to try and reduce copyright length back to the originoal 14 years (with 1 manual extention allowed for 28 years maximum).
With millions of P2P users I am sure a political party (like the Green party maybe) that supports a progressive copyright reform platform can get elected.
I agree with you. I don't normally download copyrighted materials without permission (as far as I know). I have on occasion. Whooptie-doo, come get me. I do download copyrighted works with permission, from indie artists and such. And I downloaded a bunch of Metallica stuff from their website. I was a sucker and bought their latest CD. The only redeeming quality was the passcode included with it that allowed me to download a bunch of free tracks from their website. What if I put those on a P2P network?
See, here is the dividing line for me on this whole issue. There are bad guys on both sides, but there are no good guys that I can see on the MPAA/RIAA side. I don't believe their BS about "protecting the artist" for one AMD clock cycle. They are in it to retain their stranglehold on the music industry. At least with P2P, there are some legal uses for it. Placing restrictions on it for the benefit of the corporations is NOT the correct thing to do. People are using it to break the law? Go after them, that is your right. They tried this, but in a half-assed attempt and got a nice PR road rash from it. The laws are there, they don't have to get any new ones passed. Just because they couldn't easily reach out and grab the perps isn't the rest of the world's problem.
There's no "good fight" here to join...
I think the fight to join is the fight of freedom. With freedom, you have the choice to break the law or not. Without it, your only choice is to conform or to break the law. Look at the recent goings-on with Howard Stern and other DJs who are getting hammered by the puppets at the FCC. Clear Channel is using a government agency to do its bidding. I heard people at work say "I am glad Stern is getting kicked off the air, I hate him." I could have argued, but instead I educated them. It doesn't matter if you like him or not, he is being thrown off the air because he spoke out against Clear Channel, GWB, and the religious right. It doesn't matter if you like him or not, he should have the right to say what he wants to say (within the established rules, of course). He didn't violate any rules. They pulled some clips of him from 3 years ago, and said it violated their standards! And instead of fining him, they just cut his show from their stations. There was no appeal, no nothing. And what he said was nothing you can't hear elsewhere on TV/Radio. It is a farce, and it is only one of many going on in this country. And before you say "Hey, if you hate this country so much, why don't you leave?", remember this - I love this country, and the reasons this country is so great is BECAUSE of our freedom. Freedom that is systematically being taken away from the people in favor of large corporations.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Interestingly, several times I've heard mentioned today flat taxes on media to support artists. ( Rather than replying to one commentor, out of the many, I thought I should start a new thread. ) The biggest arguement to this is that "I shouldn't be charged, I don't listen to music," or "I don't burn music onto CD-Rs."
This is a silly arguement. Not everybody is on is on welfare, but who pays? There are several good reasons for there being things everyone pays into, and only a few people get benefits from. ( Welfare helps to stimulate the economy, single mothers don't horde their cash. )
However, I too think that a flat tax for music _IS_ silly. Why should any person declaring themselve an "artist" get welfare. The issue with flat taxes are not so much who pays, but WHO _gets_ paid.
You corrupt, self-serving, MPAA tool. How much money will you get from your corporate overlords on this one, scumbag?
I wonder how many other states AD's will be lining up for freebies as well?
We truly are a nation of whores. Gotta love MSWord noobs.
Will this affect my dazzling karma?
sig mind freed
Remember what happened when the PDF regarding Carnivore was released with the "sensitive material" (like developer names and such) blacked out? Someone figured out how to easily reveal the names and re-released the document, embarrassing the FBI.
You know, I'm really starting to love Microsoft. This meta-data in Word thing is a killer feature!
A lot of laws passed are pretty obviously penned by lobbyists. I wouldn't be surprised if the people voting on it even read the thing all the way through. You'd think that laws would be influenced by two main groups: Regular citzens, and law enforcement. But really, you don't have to be a Supreme Court Justice to figure this one out. As if the people of California are picketting in the streets asking for an end to P2P programs.
At least the blood isn't on my hands. I don't download copyrighted songs off of p2p networks, and I don't buy any music on any media that is produced and distributed through channels associated with the RIAA.
Fred
"A fool and his freedom are soon parted"
-RMS
If the "kids" win in your example, then Hollywood has to find another business model.
If "hollywood" wins, then I've got to change my PC, the way I use the internet, the way I use DVD's, CD's etc etc etc.
Easy choice.
Everytime I see a statement from the MPAA/RIAA they always feel the need to play the child porn card. Considering that child porn makes up what looks to be about 1% of all content from a quick search (no I didn't download anything), that is pretty sad to be calling it "widespread." I haven't bought a CD in about 2 years. It might be time to do the same with DVDs.
After all, if I'm going to be punished one way or another, I might as well take advantage.
This is the exact same reason the murder rates were ridiculously high several hundred years ago in Europe (or at least Britain). There were so many poor people, the theft rate was quite high. The penalty for theft was made death by hanging, and hey, whaddaya know, that's the same as the punishment for murder. So why not kill the guy so you can take more of his stuff with less risk of getting caught?
If the punishments for minor infractions are made similar to those for greater infractions, people will tend to think less of committing the greater. If we're forced to pay more for using the Internet because of the people piracy, well then, why shouldn't we commit piracy, too? After all, we've already paid for it, haven't we?
Of course, they'll still sue you. And levy the taxes on a dozen forms of media, and raise CD/DVD/movie prices. Because they don't get that treating customers as criminals is not the way to handle this, and all they see is $$$$.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
You should look at the memos of the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
It was totally unethical of the Republican staffers to even look at the memos, let alone leak them to the newspapers and ultimately the web. But the memos are very revealing.
Pressure groups determined exactly which of Bush's nominees they would oppose, when to raise opposition, and exactly how to oppose them.
Of course I am not naive enough to think that it's any different for Republicans.
The point is: right now the legislative process, on both sides, is almost entirely determined by a few alliances of special interest groups. The entire system seems to be set up to punish heavily any congressman who dares to think for himself and not toe what used to be called 'the party line'... though it seems that the parties themselves are slaves to the special interests.
To me, shooting you with a bullet is communication (I'm communicating that I want you dead), which is speech, therefore the federal government has no mandate to restrict it.
The fallacy you are engaging in is called slippery slope.
The first amendment is to protect political speech, or the ability to criticise government without fear of getting locked up in a gulag. Unfortunately, certain groups have successfully convinced people it is something else entirely. So while folks shout for the right to display kiddie porn, we have secret service agents hauling women off to jail in Chicago for yelling out a criticism to the President during a parade (and, no, the president wasn't Bush, it was the guy before), and we have congress ramming through a bill that is upheld as consitutional that makes it illegal for anyone to criticize a public candidate by name sixty days before an election.
Can you imagine the outcry our founding fathers would have made had they learned that in America you can now be jailed for publicly criticizing an elected official 60 days before an election? And yet most of the people on slashdot hailed it as a great breakthrough in cleaning up politics.
According to that line of thinking, Iraq had the cleanest politics in the world: One candidate, no negative ads, and a 99% voter turnout.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
Ninety-nine percent of all laws are passed by the interested parties. The law makers are just reacting to the 'paying' constituency.
Pick an issue, a 'dead dog' issue, and start up some agit-prop about it, real agit prop no the freebie email campaign kind, and you'll be able to get whatever you want passed without recourse to the law.
Your problem is that you aren't pre-emptive. You guys wait until the opposition is 'talking to its friends', who aren't its friends at all but merely respond to whoever makes the most noise, and of course they put the screws to you.
Why wasn't P2P agitating way back since the beginning FOR, instead of trying to row upriver...
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Wow!!! That is quite a plan. Surely it has to work. I think we might be in the midst of one of the greatest cultural awakenings of all time! Why don't we put them on other instrumentalities of crime, such as knives, cars, baseball bats,and guns (i forgot...people kill people, not guns...so label all of the people instead). We can make these warning labeled people register to buy panty-hose and ski masks (wait...some towns have already outlawed those). As we all know, warning lables have rid our society of smoking, drunken driving, and climbing up the wrong side of ladders. We should encourage our lawmakers to keep up the good work. As for the involvement of an organization with deep pockets, I am neither shocked nor surprised. In fact, my faith in the American Way would have been destroyed if business interests weren't somehow involved in the drafting of legislation.
Quite right! If we were truly a democracy, we could vote all sorts of evil upon any group too small to gather 50.1% of the electorate!
Don't like [insert ethnic group here]? In a true democracy, you could vote to have them ousted from the country, or make it legal to kill them. The mob truly rules.
I'm glad I live in a representative republic...
The first amendment is to protect political speech, or the ability to criticise government without fear of getting locked up in a gulag.
The first amendment is specifically aimed at preventing government from trampling on a right that is inherent in every human -- one that is God-given or natural depending on your theism or lack of it. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Our founding fathers would have not cried out against anything our governments do today, they would have rebelled again, spilled the blood of many, and stood firm against tyranny. In fact, they did this. When the U.S.'s greatest tyrant Abe Lincoln attempted to control the People, millions seceeded to form a new union of individual States, and were ultimately destroyed for their free thinking.
Most of the people on slashdot don't understand that campaign finance is a free speech issue. http://www.realcampaignreform.org/ attempted to fight this issue. The average slashdotter is very authoritarian, and doesn't understand that campaign finance would do NO harm (even if Al-Qaeda openly financed a campaign) if you shackle the hands of government by limiting the scope of their power.
this is the same guy who wouldn't stop the SF mayor from issuing gay mariage licenses. whatever you think of gay marriage, an AG is supposed to uphold the law, and let the courst/legislators make changes. he is a favorite for governor. and you wonder why my great state is so fsck'd up.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
The first amendment is to protect political speech, or the ability to criticise government without fear of getting locked up in a gulag
Not quite. The first amendment does protect all kinds of speech, no matter their original nature. If it was intended to be only political speech, it would have said as much. The question is though, what is speech, and what speech violates the over riding mandate of the government to protect the lives of it's citizens?
For example, the reason yelling fire in a crowded theater when there is no fire is not protected speech is because it poses an iminent danger to the lives of the people in that theater. Child pornography has been determined to pose a direct danger to the lives and well being of the children. That is why thise speech is unprotected.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
It sounds like you're doing exactly what you're accusing the EFF of doing. If you want to engage in substantive dialogue rather than gross generalizations, talk about what you find wrong with their clearly labelled premises and conclusions.
Personally, I think the concept of a tax is incorrect as well. However, if you've read The Future of Ideas by Lessig, or Digital Copyright by Jessica Litman, you might be more amenable to look at copyright historically, and see that the EFF is actually taking a dangerous route by allowing any compromise in this area (because in the 20th and 21st centuries, the public's side always compromises, while the copyright holder's side always has remained relatively rigid. The result is less and less rights for a public that wishes to participate in culture and not simply consume).
Copyright is an important law, but it is not a moral black/white law, and it has always functioned best when it is loose. As heretical as it sounds to today's ears (inculcated as we have been with an increasingly propertized concept of copyright over the last few decades), I don't think noncommercial usage should require payment, and I think stepping back from a 'solution' that is the only solution we should allow. Any other fix, via a tax or a 'smart' internet which charges and monitors for copyrighted-work transfer, would be a much more serious loss to all the public, including and especially future artists, than noncommercial personal copying.
Quite right! If we were truly a democracy, we could vote all sorts of evil upon any group too small to gather 50.1% of the electorate!
This is one of the common idiocies some Americans keep spouting. Truthfully, the system of American democrary in politics is not all that different from the European version. Except that the two-party system gives disproportionate power to one side, which almost borderlines on aristocracy. I wonder what would happen were it not for the powerful US courts that keep the politicians in check? But then again, the highest level judges are appointed by the politicians themselves...
And if referendums are such an evil, why do many US states hold them? Have you seen any "Vote YES on 63 to kill all Muslims" plaques around?
Here here!
You'll note that most of the greatest painters and sculptors that ever lived did just this-- they worked for commission under a patronage system, creating works of art for those that paid them up front.
In fact, I recently spoke to one established novelist pondering trying this out-- trying to get the money for a novel from his fans before-hand, with a contract holding him responsible for delivering.
This statement is solely an opinion. Kindly take it as such in all cases.
Anyone remember this p&p rpg? it was all about a world (ours) where the power had shifted to big corporations. It was scary then, and it still is
"It's about time Americans stopped calling themselves a democracy."
Yeah, I prefer the large number of choices I get in life from living under Taliban rule.
Cocoa Puffs for President!
you could tax CD-Rs which are most commonly used by P2P users for backup of the files they download
of course not, that's senseless. The only people that should pay are those that use the services, a net tax will not do that.
I wouldn't have responded had this comment not been modded up, but seriously - how is a CD-R tax better than an internet tax? I'm Canadian, and get taxed up the wazoo for my recordable media. I also tend to use it mostly for backup or archival purposes. I haven't downloaded an RIAA song in years, much less burned one. One overly-encompassing tax is no better than another.
This happens all the time. I'd say that half of our laws are drafted by people outside of government, whether they're corporate interests or other lobbyists.
Of course the process can work for the good, and many people involved in the legislative process will tell you that this is actually a good thing and only appears to be evil.
Take, for example, a reform or change in the way that the counties in a state handle exchanges of prisoners between counties. There's expenses, rules, etc that have to be uniform statewide. The counties really want the system reformed (as its in everyone's tax interest and safety interest), but its inefficient and unproductive for a group of legislators to try to draft complex rules for entities and processes its unfamiliar with (without years of study and dedicated staff time, which nobody can afford).
So the counties get together, forge a compromise about how they want this to work, draft the legislation themselves and get representatives to submit the legislation. Assuming it passes, we just got a new law that regulates something important, largely written by those most impacted.
It sucks when its obvious payback for corporate interests, but does anyone have any stats as to "good" use of this technique vs. evil?
I think a lot of the P2P piracy of audio and especially video files has to do with a lack of a reasonable paid solution.
I downloaded and watched my first Sopranos episode yesterday (no, I don't have HBO, or a TV).
There were a couple glitches in the file but it was high-quality by Kazaa standards.
Now, if HBO had let me download that (with DRM for all I care) for a buck, I would've happily paid it. Even if I could just watch it once or twice.
Of course, with something like the Sopranos (pretty good I thought), it would be smarter to let me download the first episode free, then charge me a buck for each later episode.
My point is that if it only costs a dollar, and I can get it from a reasonably fast server or maybe even a torrent, then I'm gonna *pay the buck* instead of taking my chances on file integrity off of Kazaa. And I think most people over the age of 16 would do the same.
And yes, a buck would make it a low-margin business after you count bandwidth, servers, DRM development, etc. But does it really matter? You set it up and it makes you money, a low margin is still a profit.
Generally, I agree with you, but I think the rights holders are not doing themselves any favors by refusing to *compete* with the black market.
------
my experimental new AC sig
Haha, why not? They are guilty of treason, tyranny, corruption... Spies get put to death, and these people are far more damaging to our country than most spies. Furthermore, our public officials should be held to much higher standards than citizens.
No, I don't really think killing them would be just, but given that citizens who betray this country are often sentenced to death, I say, "String em up!"
Seriously, some fucking heads need to roll for this sort of thing.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
People vote for the best possible outcome with their wallets. Do I get more from buying CDs or from free downloads? I'm much happier getting it free. I and 99% of the world (everyone except the RIAA) get a massive benefit from not buying but downloading. Until the RIAA can make buying music worth more than downloading, I see no need to spend money instead of bandwidth. Threatening me with lawsuits only means I start hating them and downloading out of contempt. That's why I give away complete sets of Metallica CDs:)
...' DVD I wouldn't download? Or candy? I can't download candy yet.
How about the RIAA gives me a motivation to buy instead of a motivation to fsck them over? Like a $15 off concert admission with the CD? Or a 'The Making of
But if the conclusion of the leaked draft is an accurate reflection of the attorney general's intent, P2P software makers should brace themselves for what could be a significant legal offensive in the immediate future
I bet the first words of said offensive are "Assume the position."
Laws being driven entirely by what is good for one particular business are wrong in principle, and these people are the most destructive sort of Luddites.
Any conservative should oppose legislated business models. If government run business or trade restrictions are destructive, how can this be anything but worse? It doesn't just make competition difficult, or irritate our trade partners to no good end. It hamstrings everyone who lives in this country and abides by the laws. This is the worst sort of protectionism and legislated inefficiency.
Any liberal should be opposed to this because public policy and individual rights are not to be determined by industry.
If you live in California, write a letter about this now. A single point, put down on paper, concise and polite. Send a signed copy to your legislators, your assemblyman, Bill Lockyear too. I'm afraid our Governator is a lost cause, or I'd suggest him too.
I'll be writing two letters to each, one about P2P and legislated business models (maybe still too complex) and one about Lockyear's shameful parroting of corporate policies that are legally outrageous and unprecedented. It would be less offensive if the letter actually made sense, but it's just a smear.
Help! There are a lot of us in California. Let's demonstrate that internet advocacy isn't totally impotent. All you have to do is find out who your legislators are, write a paragraph, and mail a leter.
Assembly is the reverse of disassembly.
And so, since my guess is that you consider most P2P use to be noncommercial, am I correct in thinking that you also think that these authors should not get paid?
"Any other fix, via a tax or a 'smart' internet which charges and monitors for copyrighted-work transfer, would be a much more serious loss to all the public, including and especially future artists, than noncommercial personal copying."
Agreed, and that's exactly what I'm taling about.
BUT all the anti-RIAA rhetoric is taking us in exactly that direction.
Again, it's fun to hate the RIAA, but when you get familiar with the details of the alternatives, they can get pretty creepy.
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
I don't like to include all the damned names and TLAs of every product that I've used in the human readable text of my resume--looks like hell--but why not pile in all the keywords that their poor software is scanning for into hidden text?
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
- Use LaTeX and xv for text and presentations
- Use Word and Presentations, and give the guy a copy
After you do the presentation, if the guy likes you, he'll do a presentation to his boss, who will pick out his favorite projects from the first filtering from his underlings. The underling you presented to is usually lazy, so in all likelyhood, this presentation will consist of cut-and-pasting from your Word and Presentations documents. If you give him the documents inIf I were a lazy administrator drone in the attorney general's office, I would have documents on my desk from MPAA, P2P United, EFF, FSF, RIAA, etc., all in .doc format. I would then read all of the documents, discuss with the attorney general what our stance should be, and cut-and-paste sections presenting that stance from all of the documents on my desk. It saves me time, and avoids duplication of work. It's how the government works.
I don't doubt many politicians are corrupted by the RIAA/MPAA. The fact that they have MPAA-authored text, however, is not direct evidence of this. The best ways to find corruption is to follow the money, as well as to look for unreasonable actions. This may be an unreasonable action, but the fact that the document went through or from the MPAA/RIAA says nothing.
How can they think a tax is the right way to go about this.
Your saying even though I dont download music I have to pay a tax to musicians I hate, and would never listen to, we should have to pay a tax?
Being musicans is their job, if they cant afford to live off their music, they should get a better job.
If the Music industry cant surive off their current technology, they need to change it, not change the world around them.
TruePunk | Games
I worked at a place that had some old-school secrataries that were incredible typists. I had a two-page document they needed, but it was in the wrong format. I was about to go back downstairs to my office to save it in another format, but they said it would be easier to retype... sure enough, a few minutes later when the smoke cleared from the keyboard, they had my document retyped, error-free. Amazing.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
our policiticians suck because the public sucks
This is the sort of non-excusing excuse that I was talking about when I said that people shrug and say "business as usual." There ARE public serving selfless politicians out there. There ARE people who run because they want to make things better. They do not get the monetary support that they need in order to compete with greedy, bribe-able politicians in the media, because they have scruples.
Stop being a sheeple and start being a human. Vote your conscience. Make a difference. Express yourself so that things will improve instead of being a part of the problem.
And the right to bear arms is a constitutionally protected right. You are correct. What does that mean, though? Does it mean that there is no onus on the government to protect the public as much as possible while still affording people the right to bear arms?
Why should I argue rationally with someone being irrational? I'll just mock them instead.
Mannheim Steamroller is a great example of a successful music group that can't live on concerts, IMHO. I love Chip Davis' work and own all the Fresh Aire and Christmas CDs. But I don't like going to their performances.
I've been to a couple, but the problem is, they sound just like the CD. One, the Ice-Capades-alike, I honestly didn't realize the band was there until the end, when they stood up for applause. I thought they were just playing a CD. Thanks to synthesizors, amplifications, click tracks, and a few other technology bits, the performances are indistinguishable from playing the CD.
If the CD can stand in that well, I don't know why they perform at all. I'd rather just have the CD, thanks.
I know they aren't the only group who does this. I know I've also seen a lot of things like Superbowl performance or Emmy performances that are indistinguishable from the CD (and I don't think they were all lipsynching, though maybe I'm wrong). Living on performances isn't a good idea for a lot of groups who make good music, but don't really gain any benefit from giving a "concert".
It's satisfying, isn't it, to watch these hapless politicians snared by metadata.
But take a moment to remember what metadata is for. What it represents.
The Soviets, I'm told, used to put serial numbers on xerox machines (and think about the fact that we are now planning on putting them on CPUs - but I digress). In a totalitarian society, information technology is a dangerous weapon.
Metadata, while it has many prosaic uses, is the tip of the surveillance iceberg in Microsoft's Office suite. In addition to parroting whatever you typed when you installed Office or changed Word's preferences, documents are tagged with GUIDs designed to uniquely identify your computer.
All of these features would never see the light of day in any office software I had anything to do with. Because, despite whatever benefits they may have, they are Soviet. They violate our privacy. They are part of an expanding constellation of invasive technologies that are rapidly eroding our very expectation of privacy - and, while not many know it yet, you don't want to live in a world without privacy.
We have only one consolation prize for what seems like the public's powerful apathy when it comes to their privacy. It exposed the pathetic government functionary, Bill Lockyer, for the weasel that he is - and there have been other, humorously similar revelations.
Here is the silver lining of the surveillance society. The hope, or perhaps the dream, that we can at least surveil those in power.
There are, of course, times where national security or respect for its citizens will require that our elected leaders keep secrets. But those times are far, and few between, in the whole scope of the government's business. And there are even ways to put checks and balances on the decisions about what should be secret and what shouldn't.
If you think about it, a real Democracy practically requires it. The Big Brother Show should be in Washington - and our politicians, and their pet bureaucrats, should be the stars. They shouldn't have a moment off camera. It's the public life, after all.
Want to Know How to Cheat the GPL? Read On!
As to the answer to your question, based on the level of the donations it looks like you could get a piece of the action for as little as $500 although you'd probably have to give in the $10K range to get the platinum level governmental access. Complete speculation on my part of course.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Our Constitution in the U.S. prevents Congress from making any law infringing on our natural freedom of speech. To me, P2P is communication, which is speech. Therefore, the federal government has no mandate to restrict it.
I agree with you as long as you wrote (and own) the "speech" you're "speaking", but the BOR cannot sanction other violations of the law such as theft, plagiarism, piracy and violation of the copyright restrictions placed on a work by it's owner.
This is where the xxAA's get involved, and despite the fact that they are too stupid to realize there are legitimate uses for P2P as well, they have a point(*): the overwhelming majority of people who are using P2P are doing so illegitimately with the intention of circumventing copyright law to distribute music and movies for which they do not own the copyright.
(*) NOTE: It may sound to the untrained ear like I think the xxIAs are cool. I do not, and they are not. As far as I'm concerned, we'd certainly be better off without the RIAA companies - the music business is soooo out-of whack, it can only be fixed by "blowing it up" (speaking figuratively, of course) and starting over. I haven't made my mind up yet about the MPAA - they are a smidgeon closer to 'getting it', but they need a lot more therapy before they stop suggesting dumb stuff like this.
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
It is obvious that artists deserve compensation for their work. Anyone who claims otherwise is a twit. However it is also obvious that the RIAA is not the way to give artists compensation for their work. I agree that it'd be nice to build a perfect replacement for the RIAA then dismantle the RIAA. Unfortunately we don't live in a perfect world, so that isn't going to happen. Whatever we replace the RIAA with will also have problems and unfairness built into it, I guarantee. I think that a "pay the musicians internet tax" is a very bad idea, as are taxes on blank media. The main reason is that a) under the current setup the money goes to the RIAA, not artists, b) it charges everyone not just people who want music, and c) It means that my money goes to support bands I don't like, I want more specific payments.
The "Tip Jar" model has multiple problems, primary among them is that it relies on the honesty and generosity of Joe/Jane average. I honestly don't know what a good solution will be, I do know that to meet my definition of "good" any solution must include the destruciton of the RIAA. Not because I hate them, but because its self evident that they are leeches who impede the idea of getting money to artists.
I do know this though: if we can find a way to get even $.50 to a band for every album downloaded they'd be making double what they make now. Hell, I'd pay $.25 per track (around $2.50 per album at an average of ten tracks per album). I think that given the relatively low price people may be more willing to pay than conventional wisdom says they are. How to get and gather those payments I don't know.
"Mission Accomplished" -- George W. Bush May 1, 2003
Yet another victim of outsourcing.
You are definitely correct, a submachine gun is most definitely NOT an assault rifle. As an avid gun rights supporter, the absolutely last thing that I would wish to do is to offend you. The way in which I glossed over any distinctions between an assault rifle and a submachine gun was done simply to ease the reading of my comment, and had no basis in fact.
As an avid supporter, not of gun control, but meaningful discourse, however, I would like to point out that both a submachine gun (which can certainly be semi-automatic) and an assault rifle (which is NOT functionally speaking equivalent to any other semiautomatic firearm) both are weapons that are expressly designed for killing other human beings. I do not have a problem with this. I do not think that their being designed expressly to end the lives of other people should mean that they should be banned. This is the reason that the right to bear arms is constitutionally guaranteed, so that we the populace can rise up and slay our oppressive overlords! In order to do so, we will definitely need to kill other humans. I do, however, think that the distribution infrastructure should be designed to ensure that life-termination tools do not become easily obtainable on the black market, as they currently are today.
The use of firearms to end the lives of others in our country is not a small problem. It is a much bigger problem than P2P filesharing. I do not think that we need to all out ban firearms, but there's obviously something wrong that needs to be addressed.
Why should I argue rationally with someone being irrational? I'll just mock them instead.
Anyone know where I can download the revision log utility to view changes in .doc files? I've searched google and usenet, and found nothing.
Just use xtraceroute!
is still making CRIBS so I don't see the issue?
In fact, there really is no reason to mention Bush here. This kind of thing has been going on since the Clinton era. Who the hell came up with the terms in the DMCA? Not a champion of the people, that's for damn sure. Special interests whores were behind that. The only reason I would mention both this guy and Bush in the same sentence is that they're both special interest whores.
P2P is an extremely disruptive technology that's going to cause a massive shift in several industries. With that in mind, and noticing the effects it has already had, some common threads have been coming up time and again in this thread.
with those things in mind, and it rankles to suggest it, but ISPs (under gov regulations) should probably be the ones to tax P2P networks, or some service provider (Kazaa, Morpheus, etc) could also do that.
Of course, that suggestion makes me shiver, as I think about the "email" tax our #1 defender of the free, Billy Boy, is punditing. After all, P2P networks are generally services run on well-known ports, even if they are outside the bottom 1024. Email certainly is a service running on a well-known port. If a collection mechanism is set up for one, how long until that is extended to the others, esp knowing how much government entities love new tax revenue sources?
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Goodbye
California has always been a state that believes in government of the highest bidder, by the highest bidder and for the highest bidder; going back to the railroads.
If you don't like it leave. Oh, wait all the really innovative technologies already are. Neeeevvvvveeeeerrrrrrr miiiiiinnnnnnnddddddd.
[quote]by the California Attorney General to fellow lawmakers[/quote] The Attorney General is not a lawmaker.
"Independents like me are also protected by copyright."
True only until somebody with deep pockets and lots of lawyers decides that your "intellectual property rights" are an inconvenience to them.
Remember Stacker disk-compression software?
They went out of business long before they were able to enforce their "rights" against Microsoft's theft of their technology.
We must be alert to the danger that public policy could become captive to a scientific-technological elite. - Eisenhower
We won't really be losing anything by having these P2P programs outlawed - we'll be just like Americans, only without all that freedom stuff to confuse the issues.
Some general tax on blank CDs/DVD's and bandwidth would probably be an answer that artists could live with. Though right now the RI-MP-AA doesn't seem to want to seek a reasonable solution to the problem.
The longer they attempt to stamp out all P2P sharing, the greater the grassroots backlash will be against them.
-------- In Soviet Russia, "Soviet Russia" sigs hate Slashdot.
Everyone is just posting comments like "this is what happens all the time". Well, that may be true, but they can always spin it to appear that they were not influenced (see: Pres. Bush) by contributors.
This is hard proof that our Attorney General (if you live in CA) is undeniably in-bed with the MPAA. If you look up the political donations, and find the MPAA as a big contributor, then not only could you get him kicked out of office, but he could potentially face criminal charges.
It's one thing when corruption is subtle. It's quite another when corruption can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
dude, you're bonkers.
In accordance with U.S. Law we are obligated to warn you that this device can be used in illegal activities such as Breaking & Entering, Public Defacement, and even Murder. We urge you to maintain usage of this tool (crowbar) in only legally sanctioned activities and remain aware of and avoid these illegal activities.
Mill Avenue Vexations
So if you hate how things are going in the U.S. get out and vote. Get your neighbors to vote. Volunteer time to assist a political party you support.
People (eg. Ralph Nader) keep whining about how corporations are running the show and that the politicians are corrupt. What they fail to acknowledge is that the vast majority of Americans seem to be okay with this. Why else are voter turnouts so low?
The RIAA isn't perfect and it does eat the lion's share of aernings from CD sales. But for most artists it's the only way to get exposure and seed money to make albums. If there is a monetary battle with the RIAA it's not between you and the RIAA, no matter what you think. It's between the signed artists and the RIAA.
If the artist gets $1.00 for each CD sold (and I'm guessing, I don't know how bad it really is) and the RIAA eats the rest it is not fait to the artist to distribute his/her/their work without any compensation just to "stick it to the Man, man!". They got a raw deal, and you screwing them doesn't make it any better.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
Time for Arnold to terminate the CA Attorney General.
"You have been...terminated."
But we remain concerned about the potential dangers posed to the public by peer-to-peer file-sharing technology.
p2p is terrorism at it's finest! It causes the death of many people, and is more fatal than second-hand smoke! Fellow members of society are adversely affected by your useage of such applications, because surely the data residing on your machine can cause heart problems for your neighbor, will cripple their offspring, and will ultimately blow up their house.
"Harmful to the public." What kind of bullshit are they trying to pawn on us? One can argue that the RIAA and MPAA are harmful to the public, by way of the negative influences upon the younger generations of society. One can argue that I could fend off an army of attacking barbozons with a spoon. One can argue that Rush Limbaugh is both detrimental and beneficial at the same time. I don't know how they can argue that p2p applications themselves, though, are harmful to society.
You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button.
It'd be nice if this kind of disclosure would be required by law. (Who had what kind of input into this Document, a Change History, etc.)
I don't think it's necessarily bad if this kind of things happens, but it should be transparent.
get 7 free Japanese lessons.
There is a term for this. Usually it occurs when there is a regulatory agency set up specifically to police an industry, but it isn't limited to those cases. The term is Regulatory Capture. It is all but unavoidable, and it is undesireable to everyone except the regulators and the regulated industry.
The fact is the RIAA/MPAA do control the marketplace artificially. The copyright protection really only does flow one way. In theory it protects everyone, in practice, it protects the very few who aren't artists, who don't do a good job finding artists, and who are almost totally ineffective at distributing art. Their function is, purely, to enforce copyright laws which they have bought with bribes at the expense of everyone else.
Tyra Banks. Pretty. Wants to be a singer. Random! What does she do? Gives away a single. If people like enough they will buy it (if they can find it).
My first They Might Be Giants? A bootleg of Apollo 18. Today I've been to concerts and own 1 of nearly every CD they've ever made. Bare Naked Ladies, a bootleg of Gordon, same deal. There is something to be said for owning the product. It's more than just having the music. It's having the music without pops, with the right art on the CD and in the case, and the lyrics so I'm not singing about asian men in the shower. I'm not the only one I know who has a history where this kind of thing is a pattern. Now my bootlegs of dance/techno/trance/etc come in the form of mp3. It's not always much easier than tracking down one of the few remaining TMBG singles that have eluded me, but I do manage to find my share of the songs I like. And if I was constrained to the radio the RIAA wants me to hear, and my god what a brutal decade THAT would have been, those artists, more independent artists, wouldn't have seen a dime. The people who care about what they put out, frequently put out something worth having. People inately feel they have a right to a survey of what's really out there. I'm not sure they're wrong. P2P fills that void. It puts the power deciding, and finding what they like in their hands, in a practical manner that truly makes their life richer. It gives them time back, and allows them to be more discriminating. People aren't going to give it up. They're taking back what was taken from them. Some of the more innocent might well be caught in the crossfire. But I'd argue on balance, they're going to reap the greater rewards through an enhanced presence that's more durable than those created by the industry hype machines.
And C89.5, the best station in Seattle, thanks for not sucking.
Nowadays in holland we are all hooked up the gas network. How does the coal man and oil man make his living? Answer they don't. They lost their job because of changes in technology. Same with factory workers. Typists. Farm hands. Miners. Type setters. Etc Etc Etc.
Artist are a spoiled lot. Everyone else has had to adjust to technology taking their jobs away. Now it is your turn. Exactly were is it written you are guaranteed to make a living selling pieces of plastic at 100 times production cost?
Maybe you will just have to go back to 100 years ago. Before copyright and the music industry and simply perform live. At least you job is not entirely gone. You will just have to work like all the other performers who work live.
Did shakespear, beethoven and all the other greats need the MPAA/RIAA?
So my answer is: YES. Others have lost their jobs because of changes. Answer me in turn: why should you be excempt?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The only way this could have happened if they used the MPAA wordfile to add their own text too.
So they did not use simply the text. They used the entire MS word file from the MPAA. You only do this if your own additions are going to be minor. At least that is how it works when I write a document.
Copy and pasting a quote, acceptable. Just adding your name to an MPAA drafter document, unaccaptable.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
If I had mod points, you would have one.
Some artists just don't come across in recordings. Actual Proof, for example, is a little band in the North East that plays incredible live Drum 'n Bass, but on disk it comes out as light jazz.
There are a few revenue streams that haven't been mentioned yet. At the risk of breaking the "me-too" format, here are some of them.
Licensed movie soundtracks
Licensed TV soundtracks
Licensed videogame soundtracks
Commercials
Corporate anthems
Ringtones (cough cough)
Grants
Webcasting fees
Radio writer's fees
I would argue against a market "equilibrium," but I should get back to work. My art, sadly, is not government sponsored.
The ______ Agenda
It should be easy to check the public records to see how much money this "senior vice president" and those who work underneath him have donated to the legislative sponsors of the bill. That could easily be construied as "paid access" to the legislature, or bribery. We will see who will be going to court first...
You usually start with the document that contains the most of the information you want. You don't just cut-and-paste into your own, but you revise from the most complete starting point. I mean, you're welcome to call this unacceptable. I agree it's subideal, but it's the way the government (and most other lazy beaurocracies) work. You do the least amount of work to get the document you need. If I get 25 drafts on my desk, and one is somewhat close to what I'm writing, I'll use it. Then I'll cut-and-paste relevant sections from the others, cut out irrelevant sections from the original, and that'll by my draft.
If you think this should be illegal, lobby your local government. You are, however, unlikely to get anywhere.
I believe 2 options is, by definition, a choice. Maybe you'd like more choices, but there is, nevertheless, a choice.
that's my word, holla...
...and what're the WTO and assorted trade agreements for anyway? US wants other countries to follow its laws, and does have many following its laws, simply because it's very wealth and powerful.
GrimRC
Magnatune
Try before you buy. When you buy, you have the option of downloading pristine versions to burn a high quality CD from.
The problem at the moment is that in order for this to be doable with an album, you need high speed internet. Otherwise it takes a long time to download a half gig.
Who cares how I would do it. The proper question is how does iTunes Music Store do it?
How do we know that someone didn't falsify the meta data, then forwarded it to Wired, knowing that Wired will look at the meta data?
"(because in the 20th and 21st centuries, the public's side always compromises, while the copyright holder's side always has remained relatively rigid. The result is less and less rights for a public that wishes to participate in culture and not simply consume)."
I'm a computer graphics artist, my short(which is never going to be finished the way i work) is something that I will give away for free. But at the same time what the EFF proposes is that the very laws that protect artists (and sadly large corrupt corperations) should be circumvented because of culture? I'm sorry to say but I just can't support the ransacking of someone's creative mind so that culture can use it as a parade float. I've become a productive internet user that hasn't had a file sharing program on my computer for 2 years now. I've grown up and realized that I don't need to run around seeing movies before they come out, or downloading someone's latest album purely for the "supposed" reason of try-before-you-buy...
I do agree the Copyright is an important law, but obviously we've seen the use of its non "moral black/white" nature in cases such as SCO...it's become the boon of the corperation, but it shouldn't be forgoten as the savior of the small business person and the very thing that created the equal business places of America.
PS: why the hell does everyone care about the RIAA and MPAA right now....their industries haven't released anything good (save LOTR) in almost 4 years.
PPS: Janet jackson, Eminem, 50 cent, and Britney Spears are not artists in the same way Matisse, Aguste Rodin, and Leonardo Davinci were artists. No matter how much P-diddy-combes claims white 11-17 year olds are steeling the hub caps off his new Cadellac SUV by downloading his music off the internet I just don't have compasion for artists of that nature....(yes i know it's a paradox to support one and not the other in this case....but i'm entitled to my paradox...or two)
Write and complaint to the Office of the Robot, er, the Office of the Attorney General of the State of California.
CA State AG Public Inquiry Unit
or
You can contact the Public Inquiry Unit at (916) 322-3360 or, within California, by calling (800) 952-5225.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
There are other options than "hating the RIAA" and "choosing social-benefit-harming alternative payment methods."
And, yes, I don't think individuals trading files on P2P should require payment or should be liable under current copyright infringement law -- law that is created to punish commercial publishers of unauthorized content. The entire concept of regulating personal noncommercial use is more persuasive in the abstract and especially so if (like you) you hold copyrights you feel are being diluted by such sharing, but the devil's advocate has a strong positiong when you realise:
A) commercial distribution, thanks to market forces, can easily be more efficient and convenient and thus more attractive than P2P, as soon as content industries stop screaming bloody murder and trying to control personal uses and instead focus on their original purpose--distributing music to fans
and
B) the social benefit that is being provided--that of exposing citizens and artists to more perspectives and enriching society through the dissemination of ideas *and* expressions-- is wholly honorable, and has outweighed commercial concerns since the time of the Federalist papers when Jefferson made his oft-quoted 'when my friend lights his taper to mine' argument against strong copyright.
Copyright law is created for social benefit, not personal reward. Personal reward is a side effect, the latter enacted to encourage the former. There has not been a cogent or persuasive argument that says P2P is any different from other 'technology' shocks of the past, from piano rolls to home mix tapes to VHS time-shifting -- and there's no reason to think that just because a person can download a CD or film online that that means that the publisher is being deprived of a sale.
Further, because culture itself is now locked up via copyright more than any other time in history, there's a very strong argument for P2P as a release valve to head off self-perpetuating class divisions. But all of these arguments are only meant to add up to one thing, which is sufficient to justify P2P under copyright law, if someone would take the unpopular but absolutely necessary position of the Framers: P2P enables more creativity and social participation than it disables, and therefore should be allowed to remain free (as in speech) in the place of any protection system, technological or legal, that would be placed on it and would inhibit the free exchange it provides.
I am not sure who you hang out with but no one I know calls America a democracy.
Warning: it is possible to do illegal stuff with this rock. Doing illegal stuff with this rock is illegal. The Maker of this rock will not be held liable for any illegal activity done with this rock.
"The document proposes an unprecedented legal theory with regard to peer-to-peer file-sharing services. If P2P software can be used to violate law, the argument goes, its makers should be obligated to incorporate a warning on the product or face liability for deceptive trade practices."
This is a common theme. This is what Siva Vaidhyanathan would say a move from "Copyright Poor" to "Copyright Rich."
In sum, you learned what you know, whether you realize it or not, from a very large body of publicly available once- or still-copyrighted material. Like the early United States, the early motion picture/recording industries, you benefitted from various 'loose' copyright protection effects. Now that you produce content, however, your tune has changed. Now that the money being made is your own, you are protective. This is unsurprising and completely rational for obvious reasons. Your position, which is now closer to a moral right position (see your "creative mind" indignant comment), is nonetheless not realistic in terms of how creativity works, and was rejected at the time of copyright's creation in the US.
Thus, I urge you to remember that as much as 'social benefits' have a bad name and are usually used more for rhetorical purposes than in actual arguments, usually those who are seeking to remove those benefits are those who have no need of them (anymore).
In a comment to an article about American legislation, why should he care about voters in other countries?
"It is quite easy for a musician to sell millions of albums and come out with a profit of around $50K. The actual financial benefit coming to an artist from an RIAA authorized CD is around $.05-$.25. The lions share of the rest of the $16-$20 goes streight to the RIAA with a small bit given to various middlemen."
Do you know of any CDs that have gone double platinum for which the artists have netted only $50K?
Artists' royalties are higher than you state. Mechanical royalties alone, when they apply, can be up to $0.70 per CD. Depending on the label (indies pay more), royalties can be between a buck and three bucks.
Believe it or not (and many people don't), the average selling price of a new release is down to $13.42 in the US. The sell-in price to the retailer is about eight or ten bucks. Anything beyond that eight or ten bucks is money that the record company doesn't see.
The difference between the artists' royalties and the sell-in cost does not go "directly to the RIAA." It pays for the engineering, production, duplication and distribution costs of the CD. It goes toward advertising and promotion. In short, it goes to salaries of all the people who are necessary to produce a CD. If the CD sells enough copies the record company will eventually make a net profit that will not immediately go to somebody's salary, but they're not required to pay a tithe to the RIAA.
By the way, major label records typically need to sell about a million copies of a CD before it breaks even. The indie labels, whose overhead is much lower, need to sell only about 100,000 pieces.
"I think that a "pay the musicians internet tax" is a very bad idea, as are taxes on blank media. The main reason is that a) under the current setup the money goes to the RIAA, not artists,"
It's a bit of a complex read, but US copyright law does clearly define who gets the money from the tariff on blank audio CDs. Most of it goes to artists and musicians. Some goes to record companies. None goes to the RIAA. By the way, that tariff is only on blank media and hardware sold expressly for audio recording. Stick to the regular blank CD-Rs and use a CD-RW drive instead of a Philips set-top CD burner, and you'll avoid the tariff.
"I do know this though: if we can find a way to get even $.50 to a band for every album downloaded they'd be making double what they make now."
Have you checked out the iTunes music store? The selection is reasonable, the DRM is easy to live with, and artists get a cut of each track downloaded. If you download an entire album, the artist will make about $1 - $3. This is an excellent deal for the artist compared to Kazaa, which pays the artist nothing.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
Put together a good web site. Sell MP3 files of your music, encoded with a good encoder (e.g. LAME) from the original master tapes. Make sure you catalog everything in the ID3 tags. Make sure it's really easy to buy an entire album and download all the MP3s together in a zip file, or just buy individual tracks. Charge somewhere from 50 cents to a dollar per track, or comfortably under $10 for an album. Put a good search engine on the front, and let people listen to a preview of the tracks before buying.
That's it. That's all you need to do. People like me will rush to purchase music from you, even though we could be pirating it. Why? Convenience. You are providing a convenient high quality product, and that's worth some money to me.
Not convinced? Look at Starbucks. I can drink free coffee in the office any time I want, but I walk across the street (in the cold!) to buy coffee at Starbucks because the quality is a bit better, the ambiance is more pleasant, and the selection is better.
Look at suicidegirls.com. OK, you can stop looking. No, really, come back... The site owner was initially angry when he found copies of images from the site on P2P systems. Then after a few weeks, he noticed that a big chunk of people signing up for the site had heard about it because they'd downloaded a pirate image or ten, liked them, and decided it was worth paying money for convenience and quality.
I'll throw in my obligatory plug for bleep.com, who have worked out the whole "online music sales" thing, as described above.
The point is, you don't need elaborate DRM, monitoring systems, or taxation, if you're prepared to settle for making a reasonable profit in spite of piracy. Just view piracy as a business overhead, a fact of life, something that cannot be eliminated--and then spend your time working out how to entice customers into giving you money anyway. Use the carrot, not the stick.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
I do feel for you, but I don't know what to do about the problem.
Here's the problem as I see it: Computers are machines that are designed to send, receive, copy, modify, and present huge amounts of arbitrary data.
The four rights you can restrict when you copyright something are the ability to copy, the ability to distribute, the ability to modify (create derivative works) and the ability to perform or display the copyrighted work.
The essential problem is that computers are designed to break copyright (not intentionally, but that's what they do) so the choice is copyright or computers. I don't know how to get around this problem, but I can't imagine restricting computers will succeed because they're too important to science, and you can't use IP to hinder the progress of science, you can only use it to promote the progress of science. (Assuming the Constitution still counts for something.)
I don't know how to help people who work for copyright, but what I would support is a separate and independent distribution and playback system where things are locked up in hardware and such (content appliances as opposed to computers), as long as people leave real computers alone. Think juiced up cable boxes hooked up to TVs/terminals in each room in a house.
I think for a reasonable price, people would be willing to get their content from devices like that, but it might not be as much money as people get now.
However, I don't see how to help independents at all since anything that will make copyright protections succeed will require massive amounts of control in hardware and the network, which means it will require giant corporations to implement, and they will still want to control the distribution channels. I think it will be impossible for indies to get good copyright protection without becoming a part of a giant corporate machine since there's nothing in it for them really.
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
let's give arnold a call and tell him you go kick his ass!
jackass.
Elton John, on the other hand ... his live playing is beautiful. It's incredible. His version of The One recorded at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles ... wow. I wish I could play like that! Flowing, up and down the keyboard, some of it rehearsed, some of it sounding (beautifully) improvised. I'd love to go to one of his concerts ... but $200 for a ticket? Come on already!
I'm a die-hard fan and I'd love to show support by going to a concert, but it's beyond what I can afford, and there aren't many live CDs available and those that are all cover the older stuff, which I do love - but I want the new stuff too, and requests to Rocket Records and iTunes so far haven't been successful -- so I did have to go to P2P for the live stuff. But I'd pay if the AACs were available! (or for a CD of live stuff if it were fairly priced!)
I don't see why it's so hard to produce more live recordings. I would think it would be quicker, simpler, and certainly bypasses the trouble of booking studio time. And this is a guy who can go from nothing to having something polished and professional in 30 minutes or less -- so it's certainly within his abilities.
i am a soviet space shuttle
So far this story doesn't appear to be getting a lot of mainstream press, but Forbes Magazine does cover it in this article. A lobbyist for the MPAA confirms that they had something to do with it, but the MPAA VP denies authorship: "They sought our input. We didn't write the letter." Otherwise there doesn't seem to be much media interest. Not at all surprising.
I wonder how many of Lockyear's words in this DVD decryption case also came out of the mouth of the MPAA.
Side observation:
In the excerpts from the letter, the attorney general uses the term "consumer" 7 times to refer to the general public. He uses the term "citizen" only once, urging the business audience to be "good corporate citizens." Our government increasingly refers to us as "consumers." Apparently they recognize who the actual "citizens" are, whose rights they diligently strive to enforce.
in both cultural and economic influence. People are now less Japanese, American or whatever. They are now either Nike jocks, generic GAP citizens, Gucci and Holt Renfrew cosmopolitans, etc.
There's a great sci-fi book called 'He, She & It' where people live in fortresses/countries, with each one being a corporation. You didn't just live in a place, you worked and "belonged to" that corporation, which had it's own laws and police force. Nations were a thing of the past. Scary.
Oh yeah, there will likely never be the possibility to "elect" a CEO, because a CEO writes the company laws, and will never undermine his own standing when he can have total power and make gazillions he's never be able to spend. They're mostly powerhungry greedy people who will not fall from being CEO, which is the top. THey wanna stay king of the hill.
On the other hand we have a technology which completely eliminates the burden and costs in distribution (and even advertising in large part), but will put the "mob" and the "teamsters" out of business. Although, idealogically, I tend to come down squarely on the side of freedom (as in speech - not beer), I am educated and intelligent enough to realize that this is NOT a black and white situation.
Today we have a huge number (admit it) of people getting something for nothing and then trying to come up with a myriad of justifications for it. This includes me ;-) I have a ton of MP3's downloaded for free. Most of them, I also already own on cassette tape from years ago - which is my justification. I know, in my heart-of-hearts that it is a very tenuous argument, because no one promised me that I would have access to that particular recording for eternity accross the various delivery formats. But even when switching from vinyl to cassettes, I still have some hand-labelled ones that represent my own recordings from my albums to blank tapes.
When iTMS came out, I was happy. I re-downloaded a butt-load of tracks that I loved, but was unable to find a decent version of on-line. The IRAA's best friend is idiots who can't rip worth a damn. I now have almost all of my primary (ie, music I listen to consistently) tracks purchased from iTMS. I could really do without the DRM, because I have 4 main computers at home and can only allow 3 to contain a copy of the tracks, but this is all but eliminated because I just keep iTunes up in the background and my family can stream all my purchased music. I also make MP3 backups of everything I download to CD for strorage and playing in my car.
It works for me and, speaking only for myself, I'm obviously willing to spend $0.99 per song for the ones I downloaded. I'd like many others, but they aren't worth that much to me - I won't listen to them that often, so I don't buy them. This brings up the point that Apple, the RIAA, etc., would get more of my money if the price-point were better - but they have to balance their costs/greed/whatever. In the mean-time, I'll download music from P2P and get the hit-and-miss encoding for the songs I'm curious about or know I won't listen to more than once or twice anyway.
I'll not even try to claim that this is ethical, moral or legal. Let me say this though: as someone who normally does NOT buy a lot of music, I have actually stumbled accross some bands which do not get national play which I have REALLY liked on P2P. And due to this I have actually gone to iTMS and purchased several full albums (if they had them) which I would never have even known about because they aren't mainstream or in good enough graces with the powers that be to get any play on the local radio stations. So, on the one hand the RIAA wouldn't get any more money out of me anyway, and on the other, P2P has introduced me to bands and performances that I have spent more money on.
I can see this is going to be a long post, since I haven't even gotten to my main point yet, so if you are still with me, cool :-)
In reading the other "business model" posts I started thinking about what the future might bring, which might have even greater imact on "business as we know it". I started to think about the 3D printers and nano-tech. What happens to industry and manufacturing as we know it, when each home has a nano-assemby appliance that can take a digital representation of an object and assemble it from raw materials (perhaps pulled from dis-assembled products and garbage)? Think StarTrek replicators.
What happens to the business models of all those industries when
"terrorism" and "pedophilia" are the root passwords to the Constitution
I agree that the issue boils down to one of supply and demand. One one hand, you have a base of people who effectively made the supply infinite, as you say. On the other hand you have the Industry setting artificially high demand through legislation and pricing (lack of fair use, price fixing).
The RIAA / MPAA are facing similar issues and have chosen to deal with them in noticably different ways. The MPAA has at least delt with the issue of value added commodities.
Lets assume for a moment that I can get a hold of a movie without hassle from somewhere on the internet. Lets say that I like the movie as well. I now have the following choice. I have availiable to me the effectively free version (movie only at reduced bitrate video, possibly reduced channel sound) and the DVD version for a cost at the store. These version differences alone are unlikely to motivate me to buy the DVD.
Ah, but wait! The DVD also includes multiple endings, film analysis, director's commentary and perhaps director's cut additional footage. These additions are the value add that the MPAA has introduced to motivate people to continue buying DVDs.
Meanwhile, the RIAA has not added value to their product while enforcing prices that do not match the value of the product. I will use movie soundtracks as an example since a valid comparison exists. The soundtrack for a given movie costs only slightly less than the movie itself. Most would reason that $(value of movie content other than soundtrack) != $(cost of movie) - $(cost of soundtrack). This is an imbalance.
Granted, the MPAA also does its share of Dr. Evil cackling (broadcast flag, region encoding, DeCSS). They, however, have started to adapt.
It is this adaptation that must continue - not strong arm legistlation - for both the RIAA and MPAA to continue in anything resembling their current form.
One of life's lessons: Its always easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.
My first job was working for a criminal defense attorney, and I can assure you that this is business as usual.
Elected officials, judges, and their ilk are quite busy, so attorneys will usually draft motions, statements, etc, and the official/judge will simply sign it. Almost every trial motion ever has been done this way, though on occasion you'll see a judge strike a sentence or paragraph (literally crossing it out and initialing it) if s/he doesn't agree with that bit.
I'm in no way pro MPAA/RIAA, but this isn't as big of a media conspiracy as you might think--it's just business as usual in the legal profession. The fact that the attorney general would agree is really the bigger deal, not who wrote the opinion.
"Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana." --Groucho Marx
Maybe he meant that they are the same, thus just one choice.
That people weren't just taking the coal and oil, bypassing the coal and oil deliverymen. They switched over to gas (and they're paying the Gas company to deliver it to their house via pipelines)
These analogies almost always break down because they ignore the fact that artists aren't losing their jobs to technology, artists are having their creative works taking by people, using technology. They're still creating works, they're just being taken because people don't want to pay for them.
No, Shakespeare and the other greats didn't need the MPAA/RIAA to protect their creative works. They relied on thugs with clubs and incendiary devices to protect their creative works.
What tax is?
Do you like paying your parents social security, the roads you don't drive on (because you use public transport.) A plethora of phone taxes that are most likely used to fund things like carnivore because their original purpose is no longer valid.
Since a majority drives, ALL must pay taxes to keep roads and infrastructure working.
Since a majority P2P's, ALL must pay taxes to keep new content being created (and pay for backbone services or some crap.)
yeah right... no
Actually i've yet to make money using rights to my work...just what I provide free of strings to my clients. for a one time charge.
But instead of assuming that my change from lack interest/support of copy rights to a strong stance in support of producers/copyrights is based on my new found production, it should instead be pointed out I came to this realization when I'm still in college throwing money down the public drain.
I'm not simply saying that because producers produce things that they should support copyrights, I'm saying it is childish, and meglothymic for people to download something that they didn't or don't have rights to.
I indeed have uses for the benefits of a RIAA and MPAA free world. I do feel that some things should be shared....such as information and public source. But what i can not condone even if i was a blue collar laborer is the theft of creative reproduction.
Tell me it's not true that what filesharers do is purely the reasoning of their Thymos instead of their MORALS.
Gee, I don't remember mentioning referendums, or implying that they are evil. That's done mostly politicians who hate the idea of living under restrictions that referendums often impose upon their spending habits. Referendums are usually hard to get on ballots, in part because it will take a lot of activism (and anger to drive it) to bring it to a vote.
As for referendums to kill some minority group, they would be struck down by enforcing our Constitution - no matter how "democratic" the referendum was.
http://caag.state.ca.us/consumers/mailform.htm
this is the web from to complain to the offender... funny it's supposed to be a place the consumer can complain about being wronged and look who is wronging who!
does anyone else (maybe just non americans?)find this line in particular a bit scary?
In the future, we will not hesitate to take whatever actions we deem necessary to ensure that you fulfill your duties as a responsible corporate citizen.
I'd like to think of myself as a free human being personally, and have feel no responsibility to any corporation, only to me, people I care about, and our dying world.
watch "the money masters" on google video
is the ability to permanently remove meta data such as this.
this is off topic, response to your sig. having been quite involved with various country fire brigades in my area, I have to say, being a fire bug (ie loving fire) is a VERY common characteristic of fire fighters. How else do you Legally get to regularly watch houses burn, bush fires etc?
watch "the money masters" on google video
..may be what's needed. I'm a musician myself, and I personally wouldn't sign with a label if offered. I would like to see an expansion of websites like Taxi and mp3.com, among others. If more artists/musicians were educated/informed about what's available for them online as far as distribution and sales, the lack of artists/musicians willing to sign with the labels would eventually make the whole point moot. Most musicians I've met have absolutely no clue when it comes to computers and the internet, and are blown away with the possibilities of independent marketing and sales of their work that are possible (not to mention keeping the lions' share of the money) online. I feel that *if* more musicians/artists were informed about what resources are already available online now to sell/distribute their work, a significant percentage would refuse to get sucked into the labels/RIAA meatgrinder, and more independent distribution/sales websites would spring up to satisfy demand. This would effectively move the RIAA comepletely out of the loop, and force a change in the industry. As long as artists/musicians continue to view the labels/RIAA as the only viable means to get their work sold/distributed/marketed, the labels and the RIAA will continue to be able to dictate terms, to both the artists/musicians, and to consumers.
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
He won't be getting my vote in the next election.
Nothing to worry about here. Relax folks, it won't happen. This is just politicians hoping for campaign contributions to their favorite political parties and leading the entertainment industry into believing they can get something for them.
As soon as they start trying to word such legislation they'll be trouble. People will ask difficult questions like:
What's peer-to-peer? If I telnet to port 25 of some host and start piping a file would this constitute a P2P network? Why not?
Where do I put the warning for my sourceforge project? Is a README.txt enough? Or do I have to have WARNING-FROM-MY-GOVERNMENT.txt? Or should the warning be embedded in the program? My program is command-line only, where does the warning go?
I'm firm believer in zero documentation. People should read the source if they need to know. Therefore I won't be including your warning. Are you going to lock me up for refusing to include documentation in software I wrote under my First Amendment right to free expression?
--
The pump don't work cause the vandals took the handle. --Dylan
The draft says:
"In the future, we will not hesitate to take whatever actions we deem necessary to ensure that you fulfill your duties as a responsible corporate citizen."
Oh, right. I have a duty to be a responsible corporate citizen now?
WTF does that mean anyway, and why the fuck should I care?
Cthulhu loves you.
the point was the difference between republic, democracy, plutocracy... etc.
i don't understand it either, one day i'll search it. but it's not a "the other guys are right" kind of argument.
Arnoolddd will just terminate it!
Karma: a simple way of silencing those with unpopular views regardless how correct or just that view might be.
I don't think any of us are under the impression that corporate america and the extremely wealthy don't get special priveleges with government higher ups.
When it's staring you in the face like this, it is deeply disturbing.
And exactly how long before the sales of the DVD plummet to the point there's no profit motive to add those "value-added" materials to any DVD?
Debunking the "59 Deceits"
This story isn't about giving government officials money, although most likely that was part of the process. It's about a government official acting on behalf of a special interest group to the extent of presenting their words as his own. At that point, Lockyear ceased to be the Attorney General. The MPAA vice president was the Attorney General, and Lockyear was just a messenger boy. That's not what he's there for.
There's a federal law against giving money, favors or anything else to any government official to influence an official act. California no doubt has a simliar law. I know it happens all the time. It's called Campaign Financing. Whether we are used to it or not, it's illegal, and the politicians who do it are criminals.
There's no easy solution, but life is full of problems with no easy solution. Lots of people manage to get through them anyway, without breaking the law or betraying the trust of others. It's called honor. We are governed by dishonorable criminals who sometimes, when it doesn't conflict with the bribes they've taken, do the right thing. When they get caught they deserve no sympathy and no respect.
In my opinion Lockyear deserves a long prison term. I'm sure many of the inmates would welcome him with open arms.
1) I must disagree. There are certainly broad areas in which the large players act in alliance. But don't believe for a second that if BMG had the opportunity to acquire Sony's market (say, by some marketing gimick) that they'd hesitate to hammer nails into Sony's coffin. And this jockeying for position is what enables markets, and prevents the thype of monopoly that is (I think) being referred to here.
Looking at it another way, the classic solution to Sherman Antitrust cases is breaking up the entity, e.g., ATT into the baby bells, Standard Oil, the IBM "Chinese wall", and the various Microsoft proposals (extra points for working MS into the thread?). Since Sony, BMG, etc., are *already* legally separate, what would break this hypothetic "monopoly"?
2&3) These points seem to be merging. Obviously each one of us puts different values on the various features of cars and music media, and therefore formulates an individual value for those goods. So it was absurd for the root post of this issue to suggest that CD prices are universally too high. It's clearly true for *many* people, but as judged by sales, there are still a very large minority willing to work within the status quo.
i'm amazed that noone has pointed out that something like this is easily faked. On the one hand, it wouldn't surprise me if this was for real, and someone from the MPAA really did write it. On the other hand, the reaction from the Attorney General didn't seem very severe at all, implying that they had some knowledge of this. Seems to me that the worst case is that they had the MPAA reviewing their document, which really isn't all that out of the ordinary in government...they had representatives from Sun look over documents in the case against MS...how is that different? And obviously, its very possible that these were faked to begin with. I wouldn't be particularly surprised if someone decided to put the MPAA president's name on a word file. This seems a lot more likely then him being dumb enough to try and fake a letter from the Attorney General and leave his own metadata.
once you go slack, you never go back
Your link overlooks the fact that it is control over supply and control over demand that determines price.
In a "free" (i.e., unregulated) market monopolies and oligopolies naturally arise. And these entities quickly use their power to arbitrate prices.
Now you may argue that the market is no longer "free" and it isn't. But that only shows how unregulated Capitalism is inherently self-destroying.
It requires government intervention to maintain Capitalism. So markets can never be "free" anymore than can surfaces be frictionless or gases "ideal".
Debunking the "59 Deceits"
But the two-party system provides an outlet through which the electorate can voice their opinion on whether upper-class politicians whom corporations have wrapped around their little fingers get into power or well, higher upper class politicians in the pockets of the corporations get into power. Dude, we have like, plenty of choices, yeah?
Yeah, Uggy said the same thing. :-)
I still think that it does a decent job of getting the idea across, though, since most people will assume the stereotypical firefighter, which isn't a firebug.
Ah, we're a cynical bunch.
May we never see th
I've had a lot of conversations about copyright, and it never fails to amaze me how misunderstood copyright law is by people nowadays. The 'theft' theme continues to pop up. People seem to adopt the notion that copyright infringement is theft, and I understand that it's an attractive idea, especially ever since the completely misguided term 'intellectual property' entered the common vocabulary.
However, you should understand that the Framers of the constitution entertained and roundly rejected any notion of copyright as a moral right, and hence on equal terms with physical theft. They have moral rights to copyrighted material in England, not in the US. Here, copyright is a temporary grant of power in order to further creativity. It has absolutely no basis in any Foucaltian concept of author as actual creator with a moral, ownership stake in their creations. Rather, the Framers understood that copyright is not a grant of nature, but of man. Yet nothing less than a natural right would allow for the property-style protection that you need in order to make the word 'theft' make sense.
It also doesn't take a genius to realize that information is a nonrivalrous resource that does not deplete when shared. It is thus fundamentally different from physical property, and cannot be 'stolen' in any but the most misleadingly analogous sense of the word.
My own position is that you did not see the light and come to understand copyright better. You simply became convinced, probably through the copious amount of 'property' language that we increasingly use to talk about information, that information and copyrighted work was or could be functionally the same as property (sadly like almost everyone else I talk to in today's copyright-fearing world). It is an easy argument to accept, insofar as it requires very little actual thought and just 'clicks' in the minds of people who already understand regular property. Heck, you don't have to do any actual analysis at all. Even many filesharers accept it as well (and just share in guilt). But it is logically and, insofar as it inappropriately confers moral standing to essentially a pragmatic law, morally corrupt to talk this way.
The voters of CA booted out one Gov, and elected an actor (the second one, IIRC), and now they're pissed because the MPAA is authoring the AG's letters?
Hmmm...
Ask, and ye shall recieve!
Not saying we're any better, but our Gov (http://www.michigan.gov/gov) is MUCH better looking!
I am so tired of this country being controlled by large and small(check your local town councils) corporations to the point where they are writing press releases for Attorney Generals/politicians and directing their lawsuits and legislation. We have lost control of this country and it will never be for "for the people again". I always thought this country would have a major change like the USSR had, but apparently the control of corporations and television is stronger that of a totalitarian state. Even now Putin has learned to control Russia like we are controlled in the US.
Talk about being caught with your pants down. lol I'll bet we've all seen the Date Created and Date Modified field cause some pretty major embarrassments over the years too! Funny that it's usually the dodgey and dishonest who suffer that fate.
-- Howto: Get +5 (1) Whine about M$ (2) Namedrop Gentoo (3) Casually Abuse Mods (4) Namedrop Early Computer Model
hmmm.... how many participants does slashdot have is the USA?
Given the low voter turn out we hear about so often, it would be REALLY interesting to see if the elections could be slashdotted. Isn't there some long standing member of respect with a balanced world view who could run?
Don't bother campaigning... just request donations from invididuals covering the application fee. Call it something like the Public Betterment Technology Party; or the Tech4U party. (suggestions anyone?) Of course, there'll now be a thousand ppl volunteering, so perhaps just the site owners, or their nominees. Also, once you get in and the corporate campaign donations start rolling in, you'll turn to the dark side and slashdot will go to sh*t.
...but heh! it could be fun, and an interesting experiment.
To add to my own comment, I'm concerned for Australia's impending homogenisation with USA's IP laws. I'll donate from here to get one of you guys in as a voice of reason. Quit all this lobbying...