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New RIAA/MPAA "Customary Historic Use" Plan
Random_Transit writes "Ars Technica is reporting that the EFF has dug up plans by the RIAA/MPAA to stifle the consumer electronics market by replacing it's "fair use" policy with something called "Customary Historic Use". This new policy would effectively keep anyone from inventing any new type of media device without the RIAA/MPAA's say-so."
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Great, this is what I want to see from the RIAA. The more they restrict how people can use their commercial crap, the more encourage independants who'll value their listeners.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Automobile banned for violating historic customary use laws for the wheel.
This isn't even in the same realm, is it? That's why I say one step...perhaps the better term would be "away" and not forward or backward. Our constitution doesn't cover the issue of fair use rights as far as I'm aware, but shouldn't legal precedent prevent anything this insane from being upheld on challenge?
ACs are modded -6. I don't read you, I don't mod you, I don't see you. Don't like it? Don't be a coward.
"At the height of their cultural power, the samurai were authorized to kill peasants for an insane number of reasons, including 'acting in an other than expected manner.' So look on the bright side: at least we don't live in feudal Japan... yet." haha
WTF?... I can't wait for these dinosaurs to kick off and shut the f*sk up. Man I hope this is just FUD! If not- we need to gather teabags, and look out Boston Harbor. Sheesh! Enough of this crap already. **AA: you're obsolete- get over it! Welcome to the 21st century!
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Please contact your lamebrained Senator to let him know what you think of the bill he's introducing.
audioLibre - freedom of music
If it's "new", it cannot be "customary historic". Thus, at least in the area of multimedia, this law will mean that from now on, no algorithms may be patented.
Either they have to admit that their algorithms are not "new", and they should not be patentable. Or they must admit that they are "new", and thus cannot be "customary historic". Now settle that among you, RIAA and patent sharks!
Maybe it's time for **AA to kick the bucket...
Per Aspera Ad Astra.
I've grown up in a country with a law defining the legal devices to replay recorded music. In this case it wasn't for home use though, but for public play like in a club or at parties. In this case it was probably to enable the state authorities to check the music for subversive content.
But the idea is the same: To control the situation, forbid any not yet controlled entity to enter it.
Slashdot news cycle:
1. Get whiff of bill potentially adding to draconian copyright protections.
2. Post leaked draft of bill.
3. Bill is introduced. Panic.
4. Bill never sees the light of day due to massive infeasibility and congressional immobility. No coverage.
5. Repeat from the top.
Since when has this country used intellectual elite as a pejorative term?
Now - I say this in the sense of only wishing to see them succeed in getting ONE of these scams err, schemes that limit fair use through. It will only stifle innovation within America on media devices - if the American public believe that they are missing out they will likely be able to get their senator/congressman/representative of the people to enact change that gives back the rights to people and removes them from this monopoly organisation
I am not citizen of the US, nor have I ever visited - my country looks like it will soon be enacting some laws to give fair use rights to consumers that currently do not exist (.AU)
Do the following really mean anything? SCSA MCP CCSA CCNA
--I'm not actually after an answer!
A simple solution is to stop watching videos or listening to music. If the **IA crap succeeds, that's what we'll all be doing anyway.
Write both of your own state's senators AND this guy. There's no reason to keep your letter-writing campaign limited just to the guy who introduces the bill. Hit up the chairs of the committees it's sent to as well.
while you're probably right to an extent, this one steps beyond the severity of something that will only try and prevent you from making copies.
I have thought of assassinating these morons many many times, all the good civil rights and justified people have been assassinated, why not scumbags who exploit capitalism. Either the Gov/Law fixes these assholes, or the people, so called "thieves" or not, WILL! Go ahead and mod me down, like you've never thought of it before.
"Customary Historic use" Something only a lawyer could come up with. Really, in 10 years everthing will be able to be downloaded relatively instantly and there ALWAYS will be rogue countries that will allow copyright infringement. Sites like Allmymp3.com will become a one stop shop for downloading media. Then, legislation will be introduced banning or making "unapproved" websites illegal to access. Heck, I would not even be surprised for the RIAA/MPAA to use whatever leftover version of the Patriot Act to stop people from downloading movies/music/media from "unapproved" countries in the guise of national security.
In a way, I don't blame the media companies for freaking out. In 10 years physical media will almost be on it's way out. You will see much more use of "keys" and "rights mangement" built into EVERYTHING. Valve's Steam network is a good example of things to come. I would go as far to suggest that there will be one world standard coming in the next 10 years for rights management. You won't be able to buy hardware that won't connect to the internet to verify the intergrated rights mangement.
The way they will get ya, is the "You can download -ANYTHING- now if you accept the new rights management built into everything." This sounds good, but the RIAA/MPAA are greedy a-holes as evidenced by the DIVX (the dvd player, not the codec) debacle; you won't own anything except limited rights that can always be revoked or blocked at any time. Let's say it's 2020 and you want to buy "A Clockwork Orange" only to find out it's blocked by your country for being subversive or obscene (like England did) Pretty much you will have no recourse, no bootlegs, no nuttin, except maybe that old dvd on ebay (if that has not been outlawed by reverse customary historic use).
I guess with the world going to a cashless society in less than 20 years, I can forsee an "all in one" digital rights card/chip that you carry around with you that will not only get you into the movie theater, but buy downloadable movies/games/music/books/etc. Find a chip/card too cumbersome to carry around? well don't worry the new ruler of europe, Anthony T. Christ, just decreed you must have a RFID chip implanted in you, for -ALL- Commerce and as a bonus will throw in digital rights mangement for free!
"Jeremy, you need to get to an internet cafe and cut and paste some appropriate sentiments about me from the world wide
If we scrape together some money we can easily have this done. Republican Senator Gordon Smith, for example, the genius behind this fair use bill, can be bought for pretty cheap: Why should record companies get all the status quo preserving laws? If everyone in this thread were to donate $10 to a special PAC, we could probably get the "Nerd Employment Preservation Act of 2006" passed easily. And we could make extra money by taking short positions on the stocks of all our employers before Wall Street finds out about our new law.
It's a doctrine of copyright law, which the RIAA and its predecessors have always fought against.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
When technology first came along and swept music into our lives, it did so en mass. Further broadening the broadcasts will cost someone, that's for sure, but locking codecs into laws, linking ridiculous software patents to laws that won't expire without being smited by a judge with common sense? Here's a funny story. When Phillips and Sony finalized Red Book in 1979, it was done based off another technology source, Laserdiscs. If someone tried that today, they would be swamped by roughly 30 letters of patent infringment warnings, and if this law passes a startup that builds it's own machine (and for arguement's sake avoids stepping on toes) based on HD broadcasts would get slapped with a violation of this new ridiculous bill. (by way of bypassing the Customary Historic Use hardware regulations) Not only is this a blatant slap in the face for creativity in business, but it is also a "Pay to use our patented broadcast flag technology in your hardware or get sued for not doing so anyways!"
And just so I don't fire people up without giving them an outlet, here's some useful links. We need to hound the government EN MASS to get this proposal squashed.
Contact List
U.S. Chamber of Commerce - This law is anti-competitive for the above reasons (and likely more). Let them know.
State-sorted contact list of state senators - Can you write effectively, and do you want to make a difference? Go here and DO it. There's no reason to sit idle if you, as a citizen here, have an objection. Get others to do it too. Send them the link. Mass email it, mail in an old fashioned petition. Senators don't read Slashdot, and don't consult geeks unless it involves upgrading computers. Go here.
In my country (The Netherlands) downloading for your own use is legal (sorry - the links you get are mostly in Dutch). I hope it stays this way for a long time; this prevents moronic laws as the one described in the article to enter Europe for a long time to come. Hopefully.
-- Cheers!
"And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed--if all records told the same tale--then the lie passed into history and became truth.
You will study a RIAA/MPAA approved course, work in a RIAA/MPAA approved media job and get your pension from a RIAA/MPAA approved company.
No lost 'clips' from the past - just one RIAA/MPAA view of the past - as they will have the only keys to all the press archives.
Political parties and families can be assured that all the bad stuff is locked away for good now.
No ghosts from the past to upset any political party 20-30 years on.
Images of young men and woman before the courts as minor officials will just not exist away as they move up the ladders of power.
Images of your now top leaders shaking hands with friendly dictators, giving testimony about arms deals or military excesses
will now all be encrypted.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
If it's "new", it cannot be "customary historic". Thus, at least in the area of multimedia, this law will mean that from now on, no algorithms may be patented.
Nice try. But your logic is incredibly flawed, even if it was meant as a joke.
The RIAA/MPAA does not and can not decide if new algorithms can be patented.
Nothing prevents you from patenting a new algorithm. But if you want that algorithm to be used for content controlled by RIAA/MPAA, their approval will be necessary - or at least they want their approval to be necessary.
I still have all my old wax cylinders. That damn punk Rudy Vallee - I showed him at last.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Sorry, but the article refers to American trade associations. I live in a country (the UK) that used to rule a large part of the world, and be by far the most advanced in industry and technology. This is no longer true. If the US wants to go the same way, just keep on stifling innovation in this way. There's nothing to stop China, India, Sweden etc etc from innovating with complete freedom.
This is not intended to start a flamewar; I've been to the US and enjoyed it, and I'd be the first to defend all the good things that have come from America (despite the current administration).
Yeah... it also lets you build houses/hotels on your property.
Protectionism
Racketeering
Fraud
Abuse of Public Trust.
The truth is the **AA has within it's capacity to protect **AA content today and has had that capacity for at least the last ten years. Their reason for this are likely to stifle potential rivalry of new services and new content providers which is not provided by them and possibly to gain revenues from consumers who do not use their content in the first place (their actual market spans less then 1/4 of the US population).
This legislation makes their authorized content the only legally available content consumers can legally digest. If I make a comical short in blender and rendered in POVray, you cannot watch it because I cannot pay the extortion fees leveed by the **AA. If we find a way around this, we will go to prison. My band and I have a web page with 20 downloadable mp3's for promotional purposes, it's the same thing.
If Senator Gordon Smith understood the implications of what he proposed, he should be in prison. If he didn't, then he has no place in the Senate.
The way to interpret this is to go back just a little ways in history and define "customary historic use" based on the highly-useful first Napster, before the RIAA censored it to smithereens.
Reread the article.
This legislation is written to prevent any new competition arising from the benefits of the electronic age.
If this legislation passes, there will be no such thing as independent ever again
Just try looking weird and strolling through the local mall. We live in a society where we have to enter private property to do almost anything. The property owner (and those who work for the property owner) can kick anyone off the property for any reason. I watched a harmless nut case being ejected last night. As far as I could tell, he had bothered no one. He just looked weird. (really weird)
On the public streets you have some rights but those are eroding. In Britain the cops have much more extensive powers than they do here. They can stop and search anyone on suspicion that they may be carrying something harmful. They don't need a good reason. The result is that lots of people get searched for walking while black.
Our forefathers started this country because they hated repression. What we're getting now is repression by the back door. The RIAA is in the vangard of our oppressors.
Record companies banned for violating historic use law of piano rolls.
...is a new technology that becomes hugely popular in Japan & Europe, but that is banned in the US because of some law introduced at the request of the *AA. Maybe then people will wake up to how these things really effect them.
Oh wait...
What everyone seems to forget is that at some point, at least for music, the signal has to be transformed into analog to drive the speakers... thats how speakers work! At that point you can record it some how, some way and there you have it... all that DRM and stuff goes right out the window.
Big Media wants a world where if you want content, you can only buy/use the content they say you can buy/use.
Contact your congressmen (preferably with a donation) to protest against Big Media. Promise to vote for the other guy if your congressmen support bills that are friendly to Big Media.
There is a mid-term election comming up in america so now is the prefect time to drum up anti-big-media support (i.e. votes).
Unfortunatly, it seems as though most of the sheeple voters in america care more about whether a woman can terminate an unwanted pregnancy or if two men can have a sexual relationship or what their kids should learn about the formation of the earth and the species that inhabit it than issues that really matter like the loss of civil liberties or the increasing power of Big Media or the various wars their givernment has gotten involved in or even wether someone in india or china will take their job tommorow.
Thankfully I live in australia where this kind of crap doesnt happen.
Even if copyright infringement is made a criminal offence (it's not right now as far as I know), to complex reality we live in means still the owner has to take some actions to sue the infringer.
Which means that the said "customary historic use" really impairs usage of content by RIAA/MPAA and those who are in the same camp as them.
The independent labels and artists need not enforce this law, and if it's really that bad, what it'll kill in the end is the usage of RIAA/MPAA content, rather than boost its usage.
So I say let's go with it and see what happens. They won't stop until their ruin themselves.
Alas, here in Europe the European (not elected) Commission will try to get these laws too when the US decides to enact them. All this in the name of Big Money ^W^W harmonisation of laws.
At this moment they are still (again) trying to push software patents to law, despite noone here does want that.
Europe, like the US, is changing from a democracy to a Big-Dough-cracy, only we are a few years behind...
What person will donate an airborne act of love?
I love their colorful Monopoly money. It's even more colorful athn the Euro and the Canadien Dollar. As to starting a flamewar, I'm a US citizen and I agree with you 100%. You won't be getting any flames from me.
Someone save me from this sanity.
Forgive me for asking, but what is the mandate governing the RIAA?
This is a US organization and have powers only in the US? Is it a semi-federal government supported body?
What are they mean to do?
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
the MAFIAA are afraid of losing power. The Internet weakens their position as artists can release their creativity directly to the users. Maybe they know they're fading away and are trying to lash out in panic to try and keep their position to some degree.
I remember the MAFIAA calling pirates 'Parasites who feed off of other people's creativity', which I thought was a cunning description of themselves.
'For we walk by faith, not by sight.' II Corinthians 5:7
In the beginning, capitalism fed the growth of technology. Competition helped spur new technologies. In roughly ten years, computers went from unknown to everyday life. It seems to me that today, things are evolving at a slower pace than in the past...[please don't flame, my opinion]. Things are starting to stagnate...home technologies have been roughly the same for a few years. The companies have consolidated and monopolized and less pressure is on to innovate and 'push the limits.' Look at cell phone carriers -- there are only about 4 major ones today (in the US)...but I digress. What the RIAA is going to do is hurt the future growth of technology in the field of recordable media, in general. First, I believe they tried to prosecute various tape companies back in the day (I have no link; i could swear i heard it though), but then that led to CD's and P2P. Suddenly the RIAA was getting involved in what you could own on your computer. Now, suddenly, for some reason unbeknownst to me, they are going to have jurisdiction over what --equipment-- I have to use?! RIAA Approved, full of their shitty Anti-Piracy stuff? In the end, (and they are already starting to), they are going to hurt their own supporters; their consumers. They are going to be very inconvenienced -- after owning a cd they could pop into any player, it sure is inconvenient to have to go buy another $.99 allowance fee to play this song in the car radio, isn't it...? I hate that music is an 'industry.' When I hear the word 'industry,' words like 'factory' come to mind. Maybe I'm crazy. Hm.
"Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies." -Thomas Jefferson
I forgot that you had to do HTML for line breaks, sorry for the long paragraph...
"Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies." -Thomas Jefferson
I live here and we have our share of stupid and retarted politicians that have no clue about the real world!
:P
And taxes did i mention taxes... 32% income tax, 25% sale tax, and the eployer must pay the govermant 30% of your paycheck before it's tax to the goverment just becuse he whants to pay you to work for you.
A consumer in sweden pays about 50% tax overall. And if you stupid enuff to start a buissnes you get to keep 1/3 of what you sell.. the rest is tax..
But that is the smal problem the real problem is the polar bears that are roming the streeets eating children..
Music and And Film Industry Associations, or short MAFIA.
Sounds a lot more appropriate.
Timo's Audio Software http://www.esseraudio.com
Well, maybe we can look at this in a good way. They won't be able to try to make another DivX player because, since the "customary historic use" of my DVD's has been that I own the right to view that content in an unlimited fashion! The irony in the bill, too, is that the "broadcast flag" is not within the "customary historic use" of television media! They've locked themselves in, the stupid fools!
This is covered, which is part of what makes this so evil:
In other words, since analog capture could possibly lead to piracy, new devices will be required to not have analog outputs any more.
For more than a year in the historical period of 1999-2001, I customarily used the original implementation of Napster to download and share audio files. Therefore, Napster or any service that models itself along those lines is a customary historic use.
I'm fine with this. You go, Senator Smith!
Michael
"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality;..."
Sounds a lot like Directive 10-289 from Atlas Shrugged...
Circumcision is child abuse.
The slippery slope of government's renting of their monopoly on the use of force is being proven right here.
Copyright can't work anymore. I'd say up until 1995 or so, you had copyright laws that were degrading but still were enforceable. It can't be done. It is time for everyone who creates content to find new ways to market it.
My typical reply to "how?" is to move to live performances and tours -- with a push to sell official merchandise on top of it. Some other people in support of my No Copyright opinions have even thought up other great ways to promote art without copyright:
1. You can charge your fans for access to your studio creation time via the web.
2. You can record your live art performance real time, dump it to DVD and sell it to the fans that were at the performance.
3. You can get a job with a larger company and be a salaried artist.
4. You can contract out with local pubs to be a regular live performance artist.
5. You can tour, often, using your cheap/free CDs or free MP3s to promote your music syle.
6. You can play cheaply in order to promote your real job: teaching others to play an instrument.
Copyright has one intent: to enable the cartels to retain control of the distribution. There is no other use for copyright enforcement longer than 3 years. I even think that 24 months sounds too long for me.
I've been debating copyright in real life for 2 years now, and I'm working on opening No Copyright Studios in Chicago, IL this spring. If you have interest in beating down the RIAA, move away from the law that supports their cartel -- copyright. If you're a band, a painter, a web designer, a sculptor or any other artist, there are ways to sell your art face-to-face for a profit and skip turning over your rights to a cartel middleman.
Some points:
1) Of all the music being made out there, the standard industry practice guarantees you'll only ever hear an insiginficant fraction of what's available, and most of that is successful because it sounds like something else. What you get is the tiniest sliver of what's possible. Most of the greatest music being made will never make it to your ears.
2) Until recently, music was a social activity (people used to be able to play instruments and entertain family and friends, for example, and they'd also leave the house at times to hear others make music). Take off the headphones.
3) Enroll in a music class. Pony up the bucks, take some lessons, learn some techniques, and -- gasp -- make some of your own music. Music is OK when it's a passive activity (listening), but nothing compares to being able to make your own.
Music is something you make, share, and become a part of. When it becomes something you buy (like cereal or beer), it's *always* going to be fettered by copyright laws, etc.
Take it back, make it your own.
"Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it." -- Donald Knuth
Let the techno-war begin. Hackers (the good kind) on one side, Neo-Luddit RIAA/MPAA on the other. I think I know which will win (us), but it's going to be messy.
"[I]t is a wise man who admits the limits of his knowledge or skill, and that pretending either causes harm." --Terry Go
Humor police
You have made a bad pun. Go straight to jail. Do not pass GO. Do not collect $200.
Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all
How can RIAA/MPAA have any say in how electronic devices are made, and what they can support and can't? How can they even propose anything about it? They're just an organization, not owning electronics companies, and not a political party. I can understand *AA protecting their distributed discs as they have the rights to do so (because the record labels being so are members of *AA), and conversely they don't have any say in protecting discs where labels aren't members, but this is looking like power on a government level when not being part of the government.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
The record company visionaries are seeing the end of the road. In the past, you bought a record. Then an 8-track (only if you were hip). Then cassette. CD. Some moved to DVD, but many are getting mp3s' and the road is at an end. I don't need to move to the next latest-and-greatest way of listening to music. My imperfect transportable mp3 collection will follow me til the end of digital time without need to buy again.
Horns are really just a broken halo.
Guess its time to bring back the analog network..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The members of the RIAA do NOT create music. Thier entire business model is based on reproducing copies of the music and distributing them.
Now, a ten year old with no money or raw materials, 15 seconds to spare, and a $200 home appliance can do the job the RIAA does. There are millions that can, and there will soon be hundreds of millions who can.
If we ever get to the point where millions of ten year olds can make their own cars with no money or raw materials, in just a few seconds with a $200 home appliance, the the auto industry will be similarly doomed.
It's not good or bad, it just is. It's reality.
Yes, it could be stopped. It is technically possible to prevent hundreds of millions of people from doing something which costs them no more time, effort or cost than reading an email - but to do that would require extraordinary control over those hundreds of millions of people. That control could necessarily only come from government.
Government control like that is possible, but is that worth it? I don't know for sure what kind of government you would call it, but it certainly wouldn't be a democratic one.
This space available.
I'm kind of surprised it hasn't happened yet - IANAL, but these shitbags are clearly working a racketeering game.
Price fixing? yup.
Stifling competition? yup.
The list is long...
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
It may not be legal, but it sure is embedded deeply in our customs.
Would this legalize file sharing ? !
"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."--Benjamin Franklin
Yea, that's exactly what happens. But more like on a Defense Appropriations Bill or something
By reading this, you have given me brief control of your mind.
... I had some of the drugs these guys are doing... they must be excellent!
chown -R us
You can kiss my sweet little shiny metal ass! I definitively won't buy anymore of your shit.
3 things about computers: they're alive, they're self-aware, and they hate your guts.
If I was a small manufacturer of electronic devices, and stupid rules like this were the law of the land. I'd make my devices with firmware that can easily be modified on a USB connection.
p perl?isbn=9781400050093&view=excerpt
I sure as hell would not officially make if open to all formats... but the day I started selling the machine, somehow would be the day the hacked firmware version was available on the internet.
I'd also not hold press conferences on exactly how to install and upgrade to this hacked version. That would be wrong. I'd probably yell at some consultant who used to work for us(and was paid handsomely) when he held the conference. I'd probably re-hire him at some point, because I am forgiving that way.
I'd denounce this hack publicly, calling it by its accurate name, so people wouldn't mistake it for some other, double-plus good firmware upgrade.
I'd even denounce my loyal and faithful software partners, who somehow seem to be giving this firmware upgrade away, in multiple formats for different operating systems, and with no spyware whatsoever... I'd make sure to expose exactly how this upgrade gets to the public. Of course, this bad behaviour by my partners would not interefere with future business relationships, all water under the bridge, really.
It would be an act of kindness of course, not to press charges on anyone who would hack their device in this way... and a demonstration of goodwill to pick up the legal tabs for anyone sued by some other party who didn't like what the consumer did to our device. Keep it in the family, as it were.
Or maybe something like Henry Ford's "lawsuit insurance" is an alternative plan. http://www.randomhouse.com/crown/catalog/display.
So the **AA wil have to pay extra royalties to some one person patent holder LOVE IT.....
Now that's a kick in the AASSS.
So by congress enacting that law will they lose their patents?
Just fuckin' w ya
How much indie music (as in independant, not as in the style of choice for myspace listeners) has exploded recently. Rappers selling as much as 500,000 copies and not being signed to major labels, rock bands going platinum and ending up on magazine covers and are in little or no way connected to the RIAA. Its getting pretty huge. And i believe the RIAA can thank itself for this.
Wouldn't historic use include recording to an archival media (such as a VHS tape) to be, legally, viewed again later?
Here's my alternative solution to this mess, and it's a very simple quote. "Pain is the most effective teacher." Yup, you guessed it, I'm suggesting beating the living shit, publically, out of every moron that even thinks about liking this proposed act, from Joe Peasant in the ghetto to Mr. Corrupt Senator and even higher up if necessary, and EVERYONE in the **AA needs it too. Remember when you did something wrong and your dad would BEAT YOUR ASS? Some of these people did wrong and never got their ass beat. It's time to make up for their under-beaten childhood!
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Veteran of the war against liberals, eh? Oh ,those RIAA libs !!! Yeah, right.
All the digital watermarking and flagging in the world will simply disappear when you push your microphone up to your speakers to re-record it. Ditto for camcorder and tv/monitor.
Since it needs to be made into an analog signal, somewhere along the line it needs to be put to a speaker. From there, it can be tapped off the speaker or recorded with a microphone. They won't put DRM in microphones because of the danger factor (already covered numerous times on this site...).
"Plugging the Analog Hole" can't. In order for you to be able to hear/see it, it HAS to go through an analog hole they can't realistically plug.
It's all friggin' stupid and we need to just remove from office all the twits pushing this BS as it's a waste of taxpayer dollars, etc. to be even discussing this as a law in Congress.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
I agree with you to a point, ie, after digital, no need to go further. However, I don't see mp3 as the ultimate in digital. Soon enough, there will be something with far more fidelity and occupying far less space.
Why don't they stop publishing content altogether? Then nobody can steal it anymore, and the rest of us can go on with our lives. The independent stuff is a lot better anyway, and I'm happy to finance that by going to concerts.
While this may seem a bit extreme given the matter in hand (basically the RIAA becoming the FDA of technology), its the matter of exploitation in principle that I'm addressing. We could switch the RIAA with Exxon/Mobil (and their shennigans in Venezuela), and we could have a case where moronic corrupt exploitation has caused death.
Lord only knows how many indirect assassinations have taken place in the last 100 years under the guise of what is "legal". "Legal" exploitation of economies (and therefore of individuals) has assassinated more people than all the sniper rifles in the world ever will. On the other hand, can sniper rifles aimed at the correct targets help to nip exploitation in the bud before famine, disease, starvation, and ecological disaster hit home? ;-)
Though its sort of off the topic, I can't help but want to quote Thomas Jefferson "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
Anyways, in WWII, an ethicist/pastor, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, became involved with some higher ups of Hitler's staff in a plot to kill Hitler. While his motives and reasons for acting in this plot are very complex, I'll simply present a list of questions that apply to the situation at hand.
1) If you wish a freezing and starving neighbor to be warm and well-fed, but do nothing to alleviate his suffering when, in actuality, you had the means, you are guilty of oppression. By extension, if your neighbor's life is in danger (through economic turmoil imposed by the all-pervasive and holy market), but you do nothing to protect him and he dies, you are guilty of murder. On the other hand, if you kill his oppressor, you are guilty of murder. (Life is replete with catch-22 situations like this)
2)Are there alternatives to the catch-22 situation that may be concidered? How long is it necessary to wait for these alternatives if they haven't panned out to halt the corruption and exploitation. Is it ethically justifiable to keep waiting when a more direct solution (assassinations of key exploiters) is available that could save lives? For instance, how long must we wait for the precious market(which you slashdot people are strangely enamoured with) to fix the situation? If the exploitation of the market, and the media brainwashings of consumers who feed that market, is the instrument of oppression - is it ethically justifiable to kill those few elites having sway over the market and media in order to free up our alternative? Would such action just give wave to another set of key exploiters and oppressors?
3) Is it even the role of the individual in a representative democracy to take such power upon themselves, or does such power belong to the lesser authorities?
The entire situation is actually very similar to the political situation in Western Europe in the late 16th and 17th centuries. Since historical analogies are dangerous and usually non sequitor, I won't make them. The ethical question is still much the same. Concerning the first two points, the Jesuits developped a system of ethics called probabilism - which is still used today in many facets. New advent puts up a good definition : Probabilism is the moral system which holds that, when there is question solely of the lawfulness or unlawfulness of an action, it is permissible to follow a solidly probable opinion in favour of liberty even though the opposing view is more probable.
In
You autograph your work at book signings- like authors have always done for years. That, and if you're good, get to be a Guest of Honor at a convention.
I'll admit, it's a little more difficult to get money that way than it'd be for a musician, but it's doable if done right- and for print, there's ways of accomplishing things in this day and age that make it still profitable for an author. After all, e-books haven't taken off for the very reason that DRM on an e-book is obnoxious (You mean I can't use this e-book on another reader (Part of what killed the eBookman, Rocket, etc...)? Oh, you mean that this e-book's tied to an old credit card number I no longer have; I'll have to re-purchase the thing? Forget it.). Yeah, they sell locked e-books. They don't sell anywhere near as many of those as they do the unlocked ones. And publishers like Baen seem to do just fine with unlocked books, and even more "insane" things like...giving the things away for nothing online and bundled in huge honking collections on CD with select hard-bound books.
DRM is NOT an answer. The old models that the media producers have been pulling their plays out of aren't an answer for this day and age either. The legislation that we're discussing is dead-wrong and not an answer- and shouldn't be done as it's just simply a prop-up for a business model that's been outmoded. In earlier times, they'd have been told by the government to pound sand and come up with a new business model. If we were coming up with Autos in this day and age, they'd probably legislate them out of existence to protect the buggy whip and tack manufacturers' business.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
And that's why they invented DRM.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
I think some legislation to abolish the MPAA and RIAA and create some more fair public organization is in order if these things go into place.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
Say you're a student in Mississippi and you want to read "Huck Finn", but it has been banned by the Samuel Clemen's Memorial Library in your town . . .
But seriously, I don't buy the doom and gloom worst-case-scenario's that predict the future lockdown of technology. In order to get away with enforcing a global standard for rights managment, you would have to have the entire globe in bed with you. If just one company in the U.S. decides that they can make more money by stripping or bypassing rights management for users, they are going to jump on that opportunity. The only way to quash this rouge company would be through broad reaching legislation (similar to this "Customary Historic Use" crap). And as a previous poster noted, there are always going to be countries that are not willing to lock down piracy.
Additionally, I can not think of a single situation where a major manufacturer of technology is ahead of the public at large in innovation. In the battle to lock down information, corporations are simply outmatched. There are lots, lots more of us. Look at the Xbox 360 for example. It was developed to be the model of trusted computing and already we're seeing individuals that are figuring out how to hack it. Its only a matter of time.
I don't know if its necessarily true that information wants to be free, but I know for damn sure that WE want it to be free.
Unlike in their paranoid delusions, everyone doesn't "pirate" their crap, I mean content, no I really mean crap. There has to be something more than blind greed here. I've been saying they want to use DRM to turn everything into a pay-per-view box. Pay to record or buy(I mean rent a limited license change/revokable at any time for any or no reason with no chance of a refund), then pay to watch and continue to pay to rewatch everytime you want play it again. And they'll probably want to ability to remotely delete any or all of your recordings. Will they ever learn that everyone don't download everything that's not free for free. Like most(I hope) people I pay for the content I have. I got a cheap usb tv card, after about an hour of recording the audio gets noticably off, fine when I'm also watching an can stop and restart the recording during the commercials and combine later. I've legaly recorded many dozens of TV eps this way. My DVD collection is over 150 disks, of course I'm inflating the number by including bonus disks and counting TV seasons by number of disks. Compared to my small pile of 19 CDs so you can see where my interest lies. I'm considering getting a TiVo to aid in the inital recording and for shows I'll want to watch once then delete, the re-encoding/compressing (yes I have a legal copy of DivX) can wait.
Instead of trying to ban all the fun new toys before they've been fully developed maybe they should encourage their developement so the price drops and everyone has one and downloading will stop because everyone can legally record things for their own personal time-shifting use. But that's just for stuff on tv.
F7 doesn't work, ignore spelling and grammar
Quoting directly from the linked article:
(b) permit customary historic use of broadcast content by consumers to the extent such use is consistent with applicable law;
Nowhere does it mention that the devices should be limited to customary historic use. It states that customary historic use should be permitted provided that it doesn't break nay applicable law. I'm not an *AA defender, but crying wolf over something that's not there does not help the fight against them. In this case, the ArsTechnica article simply states a line out of context (Notice how the same quote in the first paragraph of the story conveniently edits out the word 'permit' to completely change the tone of that line)
"When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail." - Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)
The DVD forum wont allow new high definition DVD players to send true hi-def content to
be sent over component video which was the standard for HD sets from 1990s until mid 2004.
You cant even buy a dvd player that upconverts regular DVDs over component video.
Because of this people are going to have to replace perfectly good HD sets in order to
view high-def content which is why they bought their HD sets in the first place.
With the recent scandals that have been happening lately with Jack Abramoff and Tom DeLay, it would be fair to say that the government is doing nothing but jacking off and delaying innovation by introducing these laws. If they are wise, then they'll go back to working for the people. But then again, for reasons that I won't state here, there are reasons why I'm not so proud to be an American -- this government is as stupid and immature as a student council.
So, everyone on slashdot: don't buy any CD's for one year. Tell your friends. Share your illegal music stash with them, or use allofmp3.com (that really pisses em off). After a year of minimal sales, they won't have the money to buy handfuls of techno-dunce politicians, hence they won't matter, and they won't be playahs anymore. Just quit giving em money!
"plans by the RIAA/MPAA to stifle the consumer electronics market by replacing it's "fair use" policy with something called "Customary Historic Use"."
Since when was the RIAA responsible for deciding what "fair use" is? That decision lies with the society within which the publisher operates, and if they don't like what society considers fair, then they are quite welcome to abandon society and try to sell their CDs to less demanding consumers, say, for example, trees and animals?
Of course the RIAA/MPAA would consider EVERY device in their domain. That means no news MP3 player, CD player, DVD player, CD/DVD computer drive, Television, Television card, TiVo or TiVo like device, radio damn near everything, under their control. Yes, you can release your new CD/DVD but it cannot record any audio or video.
.50 cent are top sellers you know something is very wrong.
Maybe one day the RIAA/MPAA will figure out that the reason their sales are going down is that they are releasing a bunch of crap. In a world where Ashlee Simpson, J-Lo and
The corporations keep getting more powerful, and the average Joe keeps losing more, and democracy is vanishing down the tubes. What do you do about it? File a lawsuit? Really. When an administration can torture and spy on you with impunity, what good is the rule of law going to do you?
The only thing that does any good whatsoever is to get together 5-10 friends, and go make a personal visit to your Congressman's office. Not Senators, mind you, since they all think they're little potentates and don't give a crap what you think. But House members can be influenced, especially by a motivated group of citizens in their district.
Why is that? Because in the eyes of a politician none of us is just one person. Rather, we're a node in a network of an average of 150 friends, family, and acquaintances. They piss you off, and you become a message repeater to that network telling them not to vote for that politician, which in turn could echo from each of those 150 people in your network to the 150 people in their individual networks. That sort of math adds up quickly. Sure, it could be no more than a person two or three hops removed from you saying, "Yeah, I heard that guy was a real dickhead." But you'd be surprised how many people vote based on such vague hearsay. Definitely enough to cost someone an election.
Then you throw in the possibility that you might be the niece of their biggest campaign contributor, or that you might be one of those people Malcolm Gladwell talks about who has a personal rolodex of 5,000 contacts, and suddenly the math takes off even faster. They don't know, so better for them to play it safe and not piss you off.
House members have a much smaller pool of constituents than Senators, so they're much more vulnerable to the math. For state and city elected officials, even more so.
And what happens if they do piss you off? You and your 5-10 friends make up a simple flyer, go out to the Walmart/supermarket/mall whatever for a couple hours on an weekend and hand them out like crazy. Guarantee you'll get action then. I did it with three friends for two hours on a Saturday outside a supermarket in Greenwich Village last year after a snotty state senator told us she wasn't going to support legislative reforms (like being required to actually vote) in Albany. Next day I got a nasty call from her Chief of Staff asking us what the f*ck we thought we were doing. Apparently they had gotten 2-300 phone calls from their constituents asking her to change her position. I asked her if I could quote the senator on that, and forward it to a friend at the Village Voice (a widely read paper in NY). I also said we were prepared to do the same every weekend until she changed her mind. We heard through the grapevine that the woman was so panicked that she complained to the chairman of the state party; the story pretty much reverberated throughout the state. Ultimately when the reforms came to a vote, she voted for them. 4 people, two hours, vote changed, reforms passed, worst legislature in country cleaned up.
You can make a difference, but complaining about it on Slashdot doesn't do anything. Writing letters to congressmen does make more of a difference than you think, but it's still not much. Small groups of people can make a big difference if you do it right. I'm no expert, but I've been through lots of experiences like the one above and have some idea about what works and what doesn't. Drop me a line at dakong27 at yahoo.com.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Just imagine if the buggy whip people had been this greedy, we'd either still be using horses to get around or we'd have the police checking to make sure we have license, registration, and buggy whip.
And why We* invented .ogg.
*I didn't invent it, but in an Us vs. Them world, We did.
The government which is strong enough to protect you from everything is strong enough to take everything from you.
However, in response to this horrific proposal, the EFF has launched an action site where you can easily email your Senator and remind them that "users' rights zealots" pay their taxes just like everyone else. This is especially important for residents of "Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Florida, Hawaii, Louisiana, Maine, Massachussetts, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Dakota, Oregon, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, Washington, or West Virginia." There are only days left, so drop a mail to your Senator! It won't take a minute, and could help sway some opinions. There's even a pre-typed form letter available (with a typo in paragraph 3), for those of you in a big hurry. I hate to bypass the Slashdot editorial process, but I think that the situation warrants it!
HA!
I've purchased 3 CD's in the last 8 years. I have NEVER purchased an MP3 online and I have bought 1 ring tone for my wife (a prof. musician). The kicker is - I don't download music or grab shares from friends.
As soon as I was old enough to realize that the music industry is over charging for their CD's as well as screwing the artists, I got upset. I've also lost interest in a lot of artists because the industry has no problem putting tone deaf idiots on stage even though they doctor the tracks on their CD to make it sound perfect.
The only CD's my wife buys are movie tracks put together by her favorite composers.
The DMCA already does this.
I have a modded xbox. This is illegal under the DMCA, but it plays every format, open or closed. This would have been available as a cheap set top box under every manufacturer if the DMCA were not there giving these greedy ****s complete regulatory control over the consumer electronics industries.
Why do they need this law, and why do we need to oppose it? after all, these jerkoffs in hollywood already have complete regulatory control over all devices used to access their releases, and after the transition to HDTV will have complete regulatory control over all devices used to access tv (and don't say the broadcast flag is dead.. cable has rules stricter than the flag and has an 80% market penetration in the US). So exactly how does this make things worse than they already are.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
As I've tried to explain to libertarians for years, corporations are just governments with private ownership.
really; the funny part about all this is that anyone cares... if people get sick and tired of this kind of crap being pulled all the time, they'll simply come up with their own devices, standards, and entertainment community ... its not as if instituting a law that won't be accepted by the general public will actually work. If people are happy with this supposed new law it'll work... if they're not, it won't... pure and simple. Same as with gov't and all other services. People can be convinced they have to abide for a while, but never permanently.
So they want total control over the next generation?
No. They're trying to protect a dead business model. Not the same thing by a long shot.
They're greedy and stupid, but their motivation is profit, not political control. Their efforts to lobby Congress and sway the courts are designed to keep an industry built around middlemen from imploding. However, they are also trying other approaches as well (striking iTunes distribution deals with Apple, for example).
The RIAA/MPAA know that their lawsuits are unpopular, but at the moment they haven't found an approach that (in their minds) does a better job of protecting their profits. They'd rather not spend all that money on litigation, but they feel compelled to do so at the moment. Once one of the labels gets smart and breaks ranks, then makes gobs of money by treating customers like customers rather than criminals, the rest will follow.
Also, Orwell was referring to state control, not corporate control. If you want to wallow in some good corporate dystopia, check out Ambient by Jack Womack.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Let them stick DRM tech in screens, PC hardware, players, content sold in various formats and so forth. Lets see how much of it gets sold and how much stays on the (virtual?) shelf and gathers dust.
My personal guess is that DRM protected content and players will have very slow sales and that the whole DRM project will eventually get scrapped.
I get a connection refused when following that link and also when pasting the plain link into another tab...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Going on the Offensive.
I think we need to stop just defending and reacting to these sorts of issues.
We need to go on the offensive. We need to think of some initiatives that we could push for that would help or just not affect the little players too much and yet would put a monkey wrench in the game plan of the big boys who are constantly trying to pull these stunts.
Push for this change for instance:
No more taking works from the Public Domain and making derivatives with all rights reserved types of copyrights. You can sell public domain works fine. You can make derivatives and put them under a copyleft license fine. But you cannot make a derivative of a public domain work and lock it up as you can if you had made something completely new.
I think something like this might give them the kind of scare that their stunts give us.
Any thoughts on this idea. Any other better ideas to go on the offensive?
all the best,
drew
-----
http://www.ourmedia.org/node/145261
Record a "copyleft" song and you could win a thousand dollars.
FreeMusicPush If you want to see more Free Music made, listen to Free
explain to them exactly why your NOT gonna take it anymore...
Oh We're Not Gonna Take It
no, We Ain't Gonna Take It
oh We're Not Gonna Take It Anymore
we've Got The Right To Choose it
there Ain't No Way We'll Lose It
this Is Our Life, This Is Our Song
we'll Fight The Powers That Be Just
don't Pick Our Destiny 'cause
you Don't Know Us, You Don't Belong
oh We're Not Gonna Take It
no, We Ain't Gonna Take It
oh We're Not Gonna Take It Anymore
oh You're So Condescending
your Gall Is Never Ending
we Don't Want Nothin', Not A Thing From You
your Life Is Trite And Jaded
boring And Confiscated
if That's Your Best, Your Best Won't Do
oh.....................
oh.....................
we're Right/yeah
we're Free/yeah
we'll Fight/yeah
you'll See/yeah
we're Not Gonna Take It
no, We Ain't Gonna Take It
we're Not Gonna Take It Anymore
we're Not Gonna Take It, No!
no, We Ain't Gonna Take It
we're Not Gonna Take It Anymore
just You Try And Make Us
we're Not Gonna Take It
come On
no, We Ain't Gonna Take It
you're old, Worthless And Weak
we're Not Gonna Take It Anymore
You can't take the sky from me...
Tell Gordon Smith, (R) from Oregon what you think of him and his law:
Washington, DC Office
404 Russell Building
Washington, DC 20510
Phone: 202.224.3753
Fax: 202.228.3997
Portland, OR Office
One World Trade Center
121 SW Salmon Street, Suite 1250
Portland, OR 97204
Phone: 503.326.3386
Fax: 503.326.2900
Pendleton, OR Office
Jager Building
116 South Main Street, Suite 3
Pendleton, OR 97801
Phone: 541.278.1129
Fax: 541.278.4109
Medford, OR Office
Security Plaza
1175 East Main, Suite 2D
Medford, OR 97504
Phone: 541.608.9102
Fax: 541.608.9104
Eugene, OR Office
Federal Building
211 East 7th Avenue, Room 202
Eugene, OR 97401
Phone: 541.465.6750
Fax: 541.465.6808
Bend, OR Office
Jamison Building
131 NW Hawthorne Avenue, Suite 208
Bend, OR 97701
Phone: 541.318.1298
Fax: 541.318.1396
Woot, then you have a crappy analog copy of commercial shit. Nicer than nothing, but that commercial shit is going to get worse and worse as the world's big publishers use this legislation to eliminate their competitors. Moreover, I don't even think you will be able to make that crappy copy for yourself long if the RIAA gets it's way. The analog plug will work to drive up your costs and prevent you from co-operating legally to get around the obstacles thrown in your way.
Don't you think the RIAA would love to return to the days when only experts with expensive equipment could make recordings? That's what this is really about. The proposed legislation would ban recording devices that don't respect the broadcast flag. This essentially bans general purpose recording devices.
If you think you can get around it with all the cheap, high quality sound cards you have today and free software, forget it. Sure, you will be able to do what you do as long as your equipment works but that's not forever. Consider DeCSS and what will happen to distribution of free recording software if it is similarly outlawed. Overnight, Windoze and Apple update "their" software to outlaws general recording and all you are left with is a few "experts" who are able to do it. It will be very difficult for you to to compete because your software and hardware will remain frozen in time, while the "official" studios will get the latest and greatest for their royalties and obedience. "Consumers" like you and me will be able to edit quarter vga movies with 8 bit mono sound on non free platforms with more bugs than South Florida.
On the customer side, your stuff won't play. That's the other half of the lockdown. The vast majority of future audio equipment will refuse to listen to anything but "authorized" content. While there are easy ways around that, few people will bother because most just want their device to turn on and "work". Every playback device will be like a record store is today: All RIAA or nothing.
The industry thought long and hard about this and their proposed legislation will give them what they want. That's to extend their early 20th century domination of popular culture forever.
All of the above applies the same way for video as well. The only difference between the two is that video is already horribly locked down and may never be liberated. The primary difficulty in making a free movie editor is not that video is hard to do, it's that non-free containers dominate. There's a raft of secrets and patents between you and free movie editing that you can share with your family and friends. The same tricks and more can be applied to audio.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Poor quality due to DRM is why people hate WMP. That has not kept it from being the dominant media player and most computer media from being sub par.
People will be thrown other sub par bones to cover situations like the above. Your crappy "Works for Sure" voice recorder will deliver your nephew's song to your gradfather in WMA format. The song itself will go away with the computer it was first transfered to but people will be conditioned to think that's just the way things are. They will long have forgotten that $5 worth of chips that fit in your pocket can record CD quality. As such devices are so rare today, they might never have known.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Speaking as a gay man, it's nice to know that my freedom to have a sexual relationship doesn't "really matter" and that I should be more worried about "the increasing power of Big Media" than about whether I spend the rest of my life alone.
You're supposed to be "alone". Only it's called "independance", lots of us heteros are doing it. We feel very "independant" sitting in our single apartments eating take-out Thai food and watching HBO... again. Big Media is there to make the sexless aloneness entertaining. And why have actual sex when you can watch Eva Longoria on "Desperate Housewives", or in your case whatever the gay equivalent of that is. Gay or straight, sexual arousal should just be a commodity you buy from them, not something two people can give each other for free!
Freedom: "I won't!"
How much does it cost to fill up an iPod 60GB with music legally?
It's a lot cheaper than $15,000 if you fill it up with music videos, as you allude to later.
Especially when [all-you-can-eat music rental] will all stop working when they don't pay the monthly fee.
Say you keep such a device for 3 years. Then at $5/mo just add $180 to the cost of the device, and you have the entire top 100 for the last n years at your fingertips, which could be a strong selling point to many buyers.
And why We* invented .ogg.
Nothing stops electronics companies working at the behest of major multinational record labels from wrapping Vorbis audio or even an entire Ogg stream in a digital restrictions management layer, except possibly the so-called analog hole.
ADCs are used amost anywhere any sensor would get used to convert voltages to numbers.
But it might be a violation to sell a bare ADC circuit with a bandwidth of 32 kHz or greater and an SNR of 60 dB or greater without a business license.
By using their library of works and by the stupid laws they purchase.
You have already seen the first in action. Would you buy a device that does not work with "industry standard" formats? A music player that only does ogg? A DVD that does not know DeCSS? Media companies, and there are only a handfull, decide what formats they will publish to and device makers must comply.
The second, you have also seen and it's getting worse. The DMCA has been used to keep you from viewing DVDs legally on a free system. You have to jump through various hoops that most people won't bother with. The proposed legislation will do the same for all media devices sold in the US. It will eliminate competition in the industry and maintain the current big publishers.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
They probably will wither, as they have been riding on top of a bubble that's quickly deflating. But they won't die. Their business is composed of various business models and some of them are still perfectly valid.
One example is that they are still the only organisations with the existing connections to promote the content, and to conduct studies on what is liked/disliked. Those are things that a lot of artists want and pay for.
So even if the RIAA/MPAA will loose the ability to control distribution, they won't nessesarily perish, and might even become more customer and artist friendly.
You must have a good ear and good speakers if MP3 is barely tolerable to you. I have 6gig of music on my laptop, I use it in the school's darkroom & studio and in my car when driving long distances. In both cases, it's not possible for me to have better speakers (i,e. audiophile-grade), though we will be upgrading the car stereo so that we'll have a receiver with cabled MP3 input instead of FM transmitter. I'm not going to put $1000 worth of speakers in a Toyota Matrix, it ain't worth it.
I have a very nice audio system: B&W speakers, Marantz receiver. It sounds wonderful (though it's not hooked up right now since I moved last year). For me, running my Creative Nomad into it, the audio is just fine for lowish volume level party background music. If I'm working in the living room wirelessly with my laptop, I'll frequently kick on iTunes. It doesn't sound fantastic because of the laptop's speakers, but it is adequate.
Admittedly I'm now 44 and have a hearing loss in one ear. Still, MP3 is definitely good enough for me.
When you sympathize with stupidity, you start thinking like an idiot.
Some of provisions cited in TFA sound like they could affect people's ability to play and record their own original compositions
There are no original musical compositions anymore. If you happen to make and publish a song that turns out to be similar to something you had heard on the radio ten years ago, you are liable for copyright infringement. Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music, 420 F. Supp. 177 (SDNY 1976). Safest course is to only cover pre-1923 music.
You should try the "search" feature
Slashdot search indexes only the subject of comments and not their content. Worse, Slashdot hides most of its comments behind /robots.txt so that one cannot use competing search such as AllTheWeb or Google. What search feature were you talking about?
The concept of free music having a say in all this
can be minimized now, because there are no big names
doing the free thing. We need to quickly either
turn a big star, or promote from within to show
that success can happen without copywrite, otherwise
we wont ge a say in the debate.
my two cents.
If everyone in this thread were to donate $10 to a special PAC, we could probably get the "Nerd Employment Preservation Act of 2006" passed easily.
Many activist organizations are split into a tax-exempt charity (to educate the public) and a political action committee (to lobby elected officials). Examples include ACLU, NORML, and NRA. Problem is that unlike these organizations, the EFF is a charity without an affiliated PAC.
I'd say historically broadcasts never had Broadcast Flags limiting my rights and we should go back to that again ASAP.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
There's a raft of secrets and patents between you and free movie editing that you can share with your family and friends.
Give it 20 years, or use Theora.
But, in true evil monopolistic style, you can only build a hotel on a lot that already has four houses on it, and you have to tear down the houses first :(
It may look like I'm doing nothing, but I'm actively waiting for my problems to go away.
--Scott Adams
Also, Orwell was referring to state control, not corporate control.
If the corporations 0wn the state, what's the difference? Even Mussolini called fascism corporatism.
As soon as this stuff is available outside the US, it will be available in the US.
"As soon as this cocaine is available outside the US, it will be available in the US." If the RIAA gets its way, watch audio and video equipment be tracked like a controlled substance.
My typical reply to "how?" is to move to live performances and tours
How would this work for people who produce music in the genres that are commonly called "electronic music"?
2. You can record your live art performance real time, dump it to DVD and sell it to the fans that were at the performance.
This is patented.
3. You can get a job with a larger company and be a salaried artist.
This is the record label business model.
4. You can contract out with local pubs to be a regular live performance artist.
And watch the bouncer tell most of your fans "Go away, you're not 21."
www.guardian.co.uk/race/story/0,11374,1673835,00.h tml
The law they're using is the anti-terrorism one. It's similar to the US Patriot act in that you can use terrorism to completely strip people of their rights.
Naturally, by imposing these laws, we are slipping closer to being a totalitarian state. George W. Bush said the terrorists are attacking us because they are jealous of our freedoms. Well, I guess this means that if we lose our freedom, the terrorists have won.
Actually, I take it back about them not killing you. There was the one chap who they shot on the tube (subway). The slimy bastards didn't even apologize.
I remember back in 1993, most "pirate" music was destributed via ftp. The web was considered a lawless place, and the RIAA actually publicly stated that they wanted the web to be shut down. That's right, the World Wide Web would not exist if the RIAA had its way in the early 1990's.
I laughed when they attacked P2P. Finally companies are taking advantage of it and it is becoming "legal".
YES! Porn is still legal.
I am waiting for the day someone gets jailed for dealing non-standard media players.
United States v. Sklyarov ring a bell? What about the modchip cases in the UK?
"By the way, calling people 'sheep' exposes you as an asshole."
Perhaps. But that doesn't mean he's wrong. It just means that the truth makes people squirm a bit. But they'll get over it. As long as it's on their iPod and on their new shiny flatscreen TV.
It seems to me that *AA is taking more liberties with its current position in the market. There is a very dangerous assumpion, here however, which is that people will continue to view their offerings in the same light that they do now. Instead of every hardware manufacturer asking "How high?" every times *AA says "Jump!" they could easily do an about-face and say, "This is our hardware, if you'd like to make your content available in a compatible format, feel free. If not, that's fine too. Thanks for playing, have a nice day." There would be a small period of "market adjustment", but overall, I think things might sort themselves out pretty quick.
bite me
One thing that strikes me about this is that it is too onerous. They are known for putting something extreme like this on the table and then switching to something just a bit less invasive that everyone then seizes upon as a so called compromise when in fact it was their original goal. I think we as voters need to fight this legislation to a complete end and watch for this tactic.
...Like that I want to listen to any of their new music in the first place. or that I'm interested in listening to digital radio (I'm happy that Howard the Duck no longer pollutes FM radio). As long as they produce nothing I want to listen to, their restrictions are meaningless. The only thing they're doing is shooting themselves in the bottom line.
Personally, I believe they're candidates for some future Darwin Award!
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
I am thankful that I am not an american and I hope that their general poulation never get wind of this. Not that their population is active enough to either see or react to these measures. If the americans want to make their poor quality media products unavailable to the world, who are we to stop them. OTOH maybe one day the the other 93 percent of the world's population might be exposed to media which doesn't perpetuate the myth of american racial superiority. "They must love Hollywood, otherwise they wouldn't go to see their product" the americans say (to themselves, naturally). By the same token 100 percent of the populations subject to totalitarian governments approve of totalitarianism. Only the French (go on, spit) protect their own film culture by law. Many of us want to follow. The americans have decided to be allies in this endeavour. This, I applaud.
No, you may not, now piss off.
No, it's not very funny.
In fact, it's pretty stupid, but I'm posting it anyway.
Clearly we need to stand against this crap. Of course who needs me to say it? Looks pretty self-evident to me.
The less exposure people have to a song, the less that song will sell. Radio and TV is not the best advertising for songs. Kids are.
A simple example for the **AA.
Fifteen year old Sally Sue hears a new song. She likes it and records the song. Sally loves this song so she pesters mom to buy her the song and all the other songs on the recording. She brings it to school. Other kids hear it. They like the song too. Why?, because they like Sally and they are influenced by Sally because she is Sally (she happens to be really cool). So they also pester mom to go purchase the song for them so they can be like Sally. Sally created sales for the song.
Years latter Sally gets sued because because her kid downloaded a song from the internet. Sally is pissed. Sally refuses to buy any more music for her kids.
Kids are now forced to get music however they can. Record sales go down.
Boo-Hoo for the **AA.
And to all a good fight..err...night
This has been another valuable and informative opinion from:
Catahoula!
The big issue for people living in RIAA-ruled countries (ie, where the RIAA have spent enough money to buy the politicians that are helping shape the laws) will surely be import laws on items like this (ie, no importing of items that don't enforce some sort of DRM). Then we're really fucked.
I wonder how much we would have to pay to bribe - uh, "lobby" - a senator to slip "The content industry may only produce new legislation and digital rights management that secures their customary historic rights." in to some defense spending bill.
After all, the basic system appears to be that you pay to have your law hidden in a spending bill. The EFF searches these things because the RIAA/MPAA keeps trying to pull that shady crap but you've got to wonder if the RIAA/MPAA searches them on the off chance the EFF pulls something similar.
It would be entertaining to see them beaten at their own game and no longer allowed to introduce dubious laws due to, well, someone using their own dubious tactics.
Several others in this thread have suggested that the parent should be modded "Funny." No way -- maybe it's a little exaggerated, but it's not entirely far-fetched.
... none of this is about protecting copyright. It's about controlling access and it always has been. One way or another, people will be able to copy digital content, and the RIAA/MPAA know it. They just want to make sure they remain the controllers of what you can do with it.
Listen folks: DMCA, DRM, DVD region-encoding, malware-laden music CDs,
The parent post's comparison to 1984 is entirely appropriate. The RIAA/MPAA wants to buy legislation to place itself in the role of Big Brother. Replacing "Fair Use" with "Customary Historical Use" is part of the plan: in order to change the way the consumer thinks about her rights, you have to change the way she talks about them. Big Brother has increased our rights from "Fair Use" to "Customary Historical Use". Praise Big Brother. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Knowledge. War is Peace.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
We can't depend on Silicon Valley to do this for us, the computer industry lobbyists aren't going to do anything about Hollywood until after their companies are drastically inconvenienced. Google? They just hired their first lobbying firm, and their fight is going to be with telecom and the publishing industry.
For those of us who want to practice technological arts without Hollywood interference, we're quickly running out of time, the options are to band together or to look for other countries not 0wn3d by Hollywood cartel special-interest money.
Tech Public Policy stuff
I can see that happaning with the Indie artists. The CIRA up here is saying there losing sales.
Indie artists are up.
Im starting doing a lot of recording at home in a room.... preped for recording music.
there is a lot of good equipment out there and the stuff ive recorded for others and then played back for other people are amazed at the over all sound ive got... but i want better recording equipment and more mics....(looking at about 3 k worth) its time for the Indie artists to kick some butt.
I priced a cd pressing i can get it done for 1.25 Canadian jewel case 4 colour artwork ect.
based on 1000
Makes me wonder why i should pay 20 dollars or more.......theres lots of good talent.
now the Net, word of mouth and passing around files that you want everyone to here.
All i ask is respect the artists pay the price when there useing the Net to advertize.
and pay that 10 dollars after the show. You will keep the indie artists makeing the music you will love.
Just my 2 cents.
Unlike drugs, chips do not have any distinctive smell; usage of an unlicenced ADC also does not show in a piss test, hampering the enforcement efforts. You can take a shipment of "uncontrolled" chips, swap part or all of it for "controlled chips" with proper relabeling of their casings, and send it off. Somebody would have to rat on you, or you'd have to be exceptionally unlucky, to get caught.
Alternatively, you can make a batch of Tamagotchis controlled by a DSP with 16-bit inputs, and then strip the $1 per device of the casing and displays when it gets through the customs, reflash the chip, and voila.
Legal and illegal electronics is not distinctive enough; for a naked eye, a chip is a chip is a chip. In the age of hybrid analog-digital technology, you can even pass one chip as a working device of another kind.
Not even mentioning the possibility of shipping bare dies, and packaging them only after they enter the country, or even making the whole device as a thick-layer hybrid integrated circuit. A swallowed capsule can hold an immense number of thin 4x4 mm silicon dies, and the mule risks MUCH less than with cocaine, because silicon is not poisonous. You do not even have to swallow it; methods how to hide non-smelling small things without a distinctive x-ray signature within other things are copious. In one research institute here, such hybrid circuits were being assembled by hand, including wire bonding, with old cold-war grade equipment.
Even without the bare dies, the TQFP chip cases are pretty small already.
The RIAA and MPAA have declared WAR on all consumers! War!We did not ASK for this war. So now that we know we are at war what do we do? We retaliate and fight back. Media is produced for the consumer. How do you ask someone to buy your products when you behave in a heinous manner such as this? Let the examples of SONY BMG and BLIZZARD software not be forgotten.Nor the lawsuits brought about by greed and fear. This is yet another clear example of tyranny. Write to your senators,congressman and any other politician you think will listen. Boycott thier products and sign petitions against these villianous houligans.Support the EFF. We must band together and do everything we can to win this WAR!
I am getting very tired of this. As much as I'd like to strangle the RIAA for what is amounting to racketeering, I wish somebody would put this misconception to rest in giant letters written on the moon:
Copyright is NOT a monopoly.
Let's make this clear - you cannot copyright an idea, only the implementation of that idea. You cannot use copyright to prevent others from taking the idea and implementing it in their own way. But, you can use it to protect yourself from somebody stealing your IMPLEMENTATION of that idea.
If it was a monopoly, you would be able to say that nobody can use your idea period, and prevent people from doing it. That's what the patent office covers. Please note, there IS a difference.
Seriously, get the concept right. Protecting your intellectual property does not make you a monopolist. What the RIAA is doing, on the other hand, is an abuse of that intellectual property, and is stretching copyright far beyond the spirit or letter of the law. To use the RIAA's actions to say that copyright is a monopoly, however, is like using Microsoft to say that trying to sell software in any way is monopolistic.
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
There's also mencoder.
elinks remembers the forms, which is good for passwords, but not for reply titles. Growl. Sorry for confusion.
Indeed. My grandfather set up 8MM video equipment to film Toscanini on TV, and shared it with all of his friends. My dad did the same thing to film the Beatles when they were on the Ed Sullivan show, and shared his copies freely. I myself have been copying and sharing content my whole life, from 8 Tracks through LPs and cassette tapes to videocassette tapes and then on to DVDs and CDs.
It seems like copying and sharing content IS ITSELF a "customary historic use." Heck, copying forms part of content - there really is no distinction at all between the two terms ("copying" versus "content"), for most of us. Only for the RIAA/MPAA and their paid for puppets.
Compare cell phones... a cell phone purchased outside the US can be considered a world cell phone, it works everywhere but here. A cell phone purchased inside the US... US/Canada only.
Then, there are the hot new consumer tech devices made in Japan and shipped to the US market when they get around to it, maybe in dumbed down form. Perhaps people would be pissed about not being good enough by virtue of being Americans to possess cutting-edge consumer tech if they knew about this, but this is a story the mass media isn't interested in telling.
We aren't too far from the day when with respect to technology for people, the US is going to be considered a primitive backwater.
This bill combined with the piece of shit bill Conyers is carrying in the House (see the EFF discussion) is a great big step in that direction
Tech Public Policy stuff
Back around the turn of the last Century, John Phillip Sousa suggested similar legislation regulating the invention and sale of devices like player pianos. Congress didn't put the power to control technology in the hands of copyright holders then, and if we make enough noise, they won't now. For a congresscritter, it comes down to a choice between a *AA kickback and a *lot* of pissed-off voters. Maybe the public won't get up in arms about the Patriot Act, but I bet they would about their music collection.
There is definately a difference, yet both patents and copyrights are still state-granted monopolies. There is a bit of competition in the form of a lot of *other* monopolies (other music, other movies) and alternative entertainment (I prefer books, myself :) - yet it's still a monopoly.
Eivind.
Doubting the existence of evolution is like doubting the existence of China: It just shows that you're uninformed.
if you like it, and you buy it, who gives a sheet if its about the $ or not?
The iRiver 800 series plays ogg and "plays for sure." It sure plays ogg. :)
If you make a car than you make money for each car.
And after twenty years your competitors can make your cars too. Patents expire, unlike copyrights.
"Unregulated information is pornography."
Patrolling ftw
That's a brazen falsehood.
I am legally prohibited from publishing something under somebody else's copyright.
That is because they have a monopoly on distributing it.
Copyright is a monopoly.
Previous countdowns:
I built a "mythtv" box with a SD tuner to capture cable broadcasts. Works fine, but, of course, only SD.
I have a "HD Ready" 42" TV, with DVD. Plays DVDs great, but *I* can't get an upscaling DVD player (component in only). I won't be able to use "HDTV" boxes, and next generation HD DVDs either.
All because the anal retentives won't let me. They are afraid that I might "rip off" the signal. I am NOT buying another TV (for the next 5 to 10 years). Also, archiving or recoding 36Mbit streams does not appeal to me, anyway. Too time-consuming, and life is too short.
Why not let me use the equipment I have purchased? Must be fear -- fear that little old me is going to do some KICK-ASS ripping. Maybe I SHOULD do the ripping, after all I am already "doing the time".
Ratboy
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
Perhaps the reason MPAA are waging such a furious "piracy costs us money" campaign is to cover up the fact that they can't make money because their movies _suck_.
I hate to tell this to Hollywood, but you're not going to get a dollar out of me by remaking bad 1970's series (the next one is "Miami Vica", yargh!). It's just too bad that scripts are written by committees and have to kowtow to various pressure groups.
Pretty easy to prove: Mel Gibson and Peter Jackson have done _just fine_ when they have bypassed the Hollywood System.
Don't even get me started on "Waif Rock", where a girl moans about how hard life is at a million bucks an album.
-- D
So if neither "fascism" nor "corporatism" is accurate, then what is the correct term for the situation in which all culture is dictated by private corporations using government-granted monopolies on the means of mass communication? And is such a situation, whatever it is called, desirable for the American public?