Report Says 36.4% of World's Computers Infringe on IP

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "According to a new report by Digital Music News, 36.4% of the world's computers have LimeWire installed. Given their claim that filling an iPod legally would cost about $40,000, they're pretty sure that most of those computers are infringing upon at least a few imaginary property rights. BitTorrent shouldn't feel left out, though. BitTorrent actually uses more bandwidth, but the article suggests that this is because it is used to share larger files, like movies."

Comments

It always amuses me

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Haven't they heard of NNTP?

Re:It always amuses me

[HTH NE1]

Haven't they heard of NNTP? Yes.

Re:It always amuses me

[Animats]

If this wasn't piracy, it would be straightforward to distribute the entire output of the RIAA via NNTP. The bandwidth consumption would be far smaller, because no file traverses a link more than once. The "p2p" approach is a horribly inefficient way of distributing data.

Re:It always amuses me

[Hognoxious]

Have you heard of SHHHHHHH?

Re:It always amuses me

[c_g_hills]

usenet.com is commonly confused with Usenet. One is a for-profit company; the other is a global, decentralized, distributed Internet discussion system.

Re:It always amuses me

[rob1980]

The first rule of NNTP is that we do not talk about NNTP.

Re:It always amuses me

[MBGMorden]

Inefficient as in slower (because most people's uplinks are far slower than their downlinks), then yes. Inefficient as in ammount of data transferred (as you seem to be implying), then I don't see how that can possibly be the case.

In the case of P2P, all transmissions are essentially requests for a part of of a file that a client does not currently have. Now since I'm sending data back out to others then MY OWN bandwidth usage will be much lower, but the internet as a whole won't see much difference.

Now, when you combine in the fact that on Usenet a) some of the older encoding schemes must translate to 7-bit ASCII first and hence increase the size of a file by 30-40%, and b) because of missed posts you often have to download the original + a number of parity files, I don't see Usenet coming ahead on the efficiency side of things.

Re:It always amuses me

[Kjella]

That's the upside. The down side is that everything gets pushed through every link which means more than 3TB/day. A modern design would be a cached pull system. Say you request part afba76a7b687af6b87fa6b87a6fbaf67 (hash sum), it goes to the local central, which checks local store (basicly a LRU disk cache), if not requests it from regional central, who'll again request it from the national central, who'll keep requesting it up the chain. If none of the caching servers can help, ultimately you connect to the torrent and get it from one of the seeds. Your ISP can cache it on the way out too, so you seed once and the backbone doesn't need to pull it from your seed line more than once. If the cache expires, it can be reseeded again as long as there's peers like with regular torrents. Basicly, no wasteful transfer because there's no traversal without enduser, it only passes once over a link, no expirery as long as someone is seeding. Technically, this is not really difficult it's legally the problem is. With many switching to encrypted torrents this kind of acceleration just isn't possible.

Re:It always amuses me

[squiggleslash]

Both are different? As opposed to one being different, and the other one not being different? ;-)

Re:It always amuses me

[phantomcircuit]

That's the upside. The down side is that everything gets pushed through every link which means more than 3TB/day. True

A modern design would be a cached pull system. Say you request part afba76a7b687af6b87fa6b87a6fbaf67 (hash sum), it goes to the local central, which checks local store (basicly a LRU disk cache), if not requests it from regional central, who'll again request it from the national central, who'll keep requesting it up the chain. If none of the caching servers can help, ultimately you connect to the torrent and get it from one of the seeds. Your ISP can cache it on the way out too, so you seed once and the backbone doesn't need to pull it from your seed line more than once. So basically the way DNS works? (minus the torrent part, root DNS knows all)

If the cache expires, it can be reseeded again as long as there's peers like with regular torrents. Why would the cache expire if the information is stored based on a hash? It cant exactly be updated now can it?

Technically, this is not really difficult it's legally the problem is. With many switching to encrypted torrents this kind of acceleration just isn't possible. The problem here is that the business model is broken.

The ISPs could save massive amounts of money on content distribution if only they could cache it all closer to the enduser. They cannot do this now because the distribution is illegal. DRM was supposed to solve this problem by making it so that anybody could download anything but only those with the correct permissions could use the content. DRM however is flawed in that it just cannot work, smart people who want the content will always prevail. Attack is vastly simpler than defense (a good offense is always better than a good defense).

The solution is to have the sales of music go through a third party distributor (iTunes, Amazon, Napster, Rhapsody, whatever) and have the ISP distribute the actual content. The key here is that the ISPs would have to allow any third party to sell their content through the distribution network to maintain their status as common carriers. Record labels get paid, independent artists and small record labels have the same access to a massively scalable distribution network as the big guys and best of all the load on the network goes down substantially.

Re:It always amuses me

[arivanov]

Yes and no. NNTP stands for network news transfer protocol. It has to be news. If it is not, the server very happily wipes it out. Most servers do not keep anything for more than a couple of days. After that it is gone for good (or for bad as some libel cases in the UK have proved).

Re:It always amuses me

[Cajun Hell]

One is more different than the other.

Re:It always amuses me

[Frnknstn]

You are forgetting something: Almost all usenet downloads take place from the NNTP server set up by the user's ISP. Each file is only transferred only once to each ISP via the Internet at large, rather than than once per user.

Also, you mischaracterised the the other side of the argument, too: a properly running torrent was many seed, and although each seed may have less uplink bandwidth than downlink bandwidth, the network as a whole should saturate the new peer's downstream bandwidth.

Installed Base

[HTH NE1]

According to a new report by Digital Music News, 36.4% of the world's computers have LimeWire installed. I have it installed, but I don't use it. I wonder how that figures into their statistics.

I bet it's closer to 100%

[melted]

If you count IP infringements made by software vendors. Face it, in the world where One Click patent can even exits, you're _guaranteed_ to infringe on someone's intellectual property if your code is more complicated than "Hello world". And software vendors can't guarantee non-infringement, either, because there are tens of thousands of vaguely worded patents.

Re:I bet it's closer to 100%

[Skynyrd]

If you count IP infringements made by software vendors. Face it, in the world where One Click patent can even exits, you're _guaranteed_ to infringe on someone's intellectual property if your code is more complicated than "Hello world".


Not true, actually. I patented all uses of the letters in that order.

You owe me $5.

Re:I bet it's closer to 100%

[servognome]

Face it, in the world where One Click patent can even exits, you're _guaranteed_ to infringe on someone's intellectual property if your code is more complicated than "Hello world".

Infringements:
1. Hello World is a registered trademark of Servognome Corp. Any use or redistribution without the implied oral consent of Servognome is strictly prohibited
2. Patent #45239223 - Display of the words "Hello World" on a digital device

Re:I bet it's closer to 100%

[LiquidCoooled]

I managed to patent "Now you owe me {Currency}". Now you owe me $20.

Shit! I just had a letter from my lawyer telling me I am infringing upon a patent and owe him $25.

Re:I bet it's closer to 100%

[IdeaMan]

Hmmm, how about making it so that ACs web links aren't clickable.

Re:I bet it's closer to 100%

[Larry Lightbulb]

Sorry, I've got Patent #45239222 - Display of the words "Patent #45239223" on a digital device.

Re:I bet it's closer to 100%

[servognome]

Except patents cover methods, (ie. how you make "hello world" be printed to the screen) not the end result (ie. "hello world" is printed to the screen").

Next time read the patent before trolling. The patent title just mentions display, but in the claims section it mentions:
1) Display of "Hello World" as a method for testing the functionality of a device
2) Display of "Hello World" as a means to demonstrate the ability to create a program on a digital device
3) Use of a computer program with the output "Hello World" as a means to introduce programming
.... and many more claims

That, and TFA speaks of Copyright infringement, copyright covering the conception of an idea put in tangible form (and is granted to the creator automatically upon creation of said idea in tangible form, contrary to misconception, copyright does not cover ideas). Copyright covers the right (right) to reproduce (copy) and distribute a creative work

And the post I was responding to was discussing IP in general.

Disdain for the *AA is really no excuse to not bother understanding IP.

Not laughing a joke is no excuse to insult somebody's knowledge.

thankfully

[SoupGuru]

Thankfully all of us that have eMule installed are downloading purely legal files.

That's It?

[cronin1024]

It's hard to believe that only 1/3 of computers engage in copyright infringement. Perhaps most of those 2/3 belong to business or education, but I would be hard-pressed to find someone that hasn't borrowed a copy of MS Office or copied a song from a friend.

Re:That's It?

[PPH]

The other 2/3 are still waiting for Vista to boot. Or copy one CD.

(Ducking and running from the inevitable Troll mod points.)

Constitutional Rights?

[fataugie]

So I guess screw innocent until proven guilty.

Becuase I have bittorrent installed to download Mandrake, I *MUST* have illegal things on my machine?

Screw that report and the assholes who wrote it!

Re:Constitutional Rights?

[blueg3]

Certainly you understand that statistics and expressed opinions have nothing to do with constitutional rights. They're free to make estimates and inferences all they want.

Re:Constitutional Rights?

[Entropius]

When I was an undergrad I was downloading some Linux ISO (required for work) and meanwhile playing a game of DotA, a Warcraft 3 mod.

WC3 maintains a direct connection to all the other players in the game -- it uses a P2P network model rather than client-server -- but uses a trivial amount of bandwidth (under 10 KB/sec).

The network admins saw someone with connections open to residential ISP IP addresses and using a lot of bandwidth (ignoring the connection to ftp.mandrake.com or whatever) and call me to tell me that they're killing all my open connections due to P2P download abuse.

WTF?

Re:Constitutional Rights?

[tftp]

If you have a garage full of brand new stereos in boxes and you aren't running a business yes it is suspicous and if a cop sees them he has the right to inquire

Today the separation between working for someone and running your own business is almost gone. I can work for someone from 9 to 5, then come home and sell antique stereos (or whatever, Wii if you wish) through Ebay. There is no law against this, and only IRS should know. If a police officer sees my garage full of boxes he is welcome to ask, and even to buy. But I owe him nothing else, and I can't see him getting a search warrant only because I have a pile of merchandise. (As long as zoning requirements are met.)

$40,000 iPods?

[corsec67]

Or people could rip songs from vinyl, tapes, or CDs that they already own. Or they could have cheap music from online sources that is cheaper than $1/track, like Amie Street.

How much would it cost to fill an iPod with songs from used CDs?

Re:$40,000 iPods?

[InvisblePinkUnicorn]

"How much would it cost to fill an iPod with songs from used CDs?"

I think they calculated that figure based on the average content of a computer geek's iPod - namely, exactly 42 million copies of Wilhelmscream.mp3

Re:$40,000 iPods?

[honestmonkey]

Well it says "iPod" and not what size. I did an estimate with an 80GB size. I came up with ~$17000 to fill it (20000 songs says Apple). I am guessing that most of my CDs have 12 or so songs on them. If you just use the $0.99 a song from iTunes, then it would of course be ~$20000. There is a 160GB version, so I suppose that is the $40000 they are figuring on. But, I've got a bunch of albums I've bought legally for less than $10 an album, so I don't think that it would cost me the full $40K. Worst case scenario I suppose.

36.4% of the world's computers have LimeWire insta

[sm62704]

"36.4% of the world's computers have LimeWire installed"

That's some damned weak logic, since LimeWire's real reason for existance (and the RIAA's opposition to it) is for independant artists to get their music out.

The RIAA labels have radio and empty-v. Since the RIAA effectively killed "internet radio" P2P is all the indies have.

Now someone please tell me, I heard a song by some indie whose name I don't remember named "scatterbrain". There are literally hundreds of different songs with that name. How can I get a copy of the lagal song I want without ACCIDENTALLY downloading some crap RIAA song with the same name?*

The war against P2P is a war against their competetitors, the independant musicians.

-mcgrew

* Fuck LimeWire, Morpheus has a check box where you don't automatically share downloaded files. The RIAA can go fuck themselves. Hey guess what they are!

Nice title slashdot

[moogied]

Jesus christ, do we have 10 year olds running the headlines now?

Your Rights Online: Report Says 36.4% of World's Computers Infringe on IP

...uh no it doesn't. It says 36.4 use limewire. It does not then say "100% of limewire usage infringes on IP."

In other news

[Nimey]

~36.4% of PC users are freeloaders.

It's not a foregone conclusion

[aldousd666]

That's probably more people than have floppy drives. I personally don't even know what limewire looks like, but I do have bittorrent installed and have only used it for downloading linux distro ISO's. I don't know about you, but I'd rather put useful data on my hard drive than crappy media files that waste the space on my drive. I have some mp3's, about 3 gigs of it, ripped from my entire CD collection and stuff I burnt to a disc and then ripped from iTunes, but I can attest that I don't even think of looking at bittorrent sites or limewire, eMule, or whatever, when I want something new. Anyway I used to have the old school Napster before it was abolished, but that was the end of my IP stealing days...and I haven't even a single one of those media files, because that host died long ago. Just about when I decided to make a living by producing and selling some of my own IP, I stopped deciding that I should look for ways to steal other people's. It is possible you know not to steal shit just because you can.

ip is a valid concept

[circletimessquare]

somehow, there must be a tension of powers between shared public wealth, and private corporate wealth. there is no such mechanism to legally reflect this tension in the current world. and so all we have is the the ever increasing encroachment of corporate ownership into what should naturally be public spheres of public ownership. and so none of corporate ownership can be respected. naturally, some of it should, but not the overextended monstrosity that the corporations currently expect

and it is not up to the corporations to restrain themselves. it is their job to squeeze money out of every possible nook and cranny. that is what corporations do, that is their nature, it is not their nature. we should not expect them to restrain themselves. it is our job to restrain them, so they do not become cancerous growths. and we, the legal world and our legal frameworks, are not currently doing that. so we must begin doing that then, so that some of private ownership is respected, not none of it, as currently is the case, because current private ownership laws overreach in time and in venue

as if these means somebody won't still make money, and good money! it is just that the old models won't work anymore, and the corporations are nervous about the unknown

in the current world, the legions of lawyers representing the corporations, and the congressmen they buy (sonny bono, et al) push the scales firmly in the direction of irrational monetization. in a world where i cannot play "happy birthday" without paying someone, something is seriously broken

it is not that we shouldn't respect morality. it is that we shouldn't respect a legal system that is seriously broken, and doesn't reflect morality. current ip law is nothing more than an overextended farce

The Report Continues...

[flaming error]

31.2% of computers infringe TCP.
22.9% infringe UDP.

The report doesn't mention other protocols, but as IPv6 gains ground, we're all sure to see lots more infringement.

Voluntary systems scans

[TheLostSamurai]

From the report linked to in the article, the data was collected when users went to a site (pcpitstop.com) and allowed their computers to be scanned so that the software could find "performance improvements" and make suggestions for their machine. Although I'm sure it was buried in the fine print of the TOS, I wonder how many people realized they were allowing this type of information to be sold to data mining and/or marketing companies.

Re:Voluntary systems scans

[Anonymous Coward]

So, 36.4% of computers of users who are dumb enough to use a site like that have Limewire installed?

Is this like one of those sites that tells me "YOUR REGISTRY MAY BE CORRUPT!!!"... on a linux box?

Re:Voluntary systems scans

[cgenman]

So in other words, 36.4% of all really dumb people have Limewire installed?

Sounds about right.

Re:Voluntary systems scans

[Kjella]

Wow... that's some MAJOR selection bias. Most people I know would never run anything like that, and thus we'll never get counted. Since most only go there because they're a) stupid and b) already infected with some crap that slows down their machine, the only meaningful statistic I get from that is that the people that click yes to "free" anything (free screensavers, free porn, free download enhancers, free performance scans) quite a lot also want other free stuff. Shocking, I tell you.

Re:Voluntary systems scans

[adminstring]

While I agree with you that the people sampled were probably not the brightest bulbs on the tree, AFAIK Limewire doesn't download anything of its own volition.

It's probably not so much that "limewire downloaded some crap that messed up their computer" but rather that "they downloaded some crap using Limewire that messed up their computer." I believe the NRA has a catchy slogan that could be modified to fit these circumstances.

Re:Voluntary systems scans

[Nalez]

I have no idea how they got the 36.4% number. From data on pcpitstop.com (the claimed source of the information) 1.012 percent of the computers tested by pcpitstop have had limewire installed and running (source: http://pcpitstop.com/spycheck/SWDetail.asp?fn=LimeWire.exe I have no idea how 36.4% of all computers, comes out of 1.012% of the sample running the product.

Almost all computers use IP

[corsec67]

Since the concept of intellectual property is almost completely meaningless, the title must be about Internet Protocol, and I bet close to 99% of the worlds computers have IP, and most use it every day.

Oh, you mean that 36.4% of the computers have tools installed that facilitate copyright infringement?

Can we please stop using the term "IP" or "Intellectual Property" and actually specify what we are talking about, which in this case is copyright infringement? Especially since the source articles never use either of those two term in them?

It would be very hard to infringe on trademarks using limewire or bittorrent in any way, and the same goes for patents unless the patents cover the implementation of the software.

Re:Almost all computers use IP

[corsec67]

Yes, there are a lot of laws, cases, and such about patents, trademarks, and copyrights. But, they are very different, and grouping them together confuses the issue. For example, when does "intellectual property" get protection under the law, how long does it last, and what does it give you a monopoly on? You can't answer that because it depends on whether it is a patent, trademark, or copyright.

Imagine if Coca-Cola had a copyright on the words "Coca-Cola" and "Coke", and not just a trademark on them? Or if song writers got patents for writing songs, and nobody else could do anything similar for 20 years? What if Amazon's "One-Click" thing was just a copyright, and anybody could change the name to "single-click" and not be infringing?

It doesn't make much sense to lump them together just because they are laws about non-tangible things.

This article is only about copyright laws, so why not just say "copyrights" instead of "IP"?

$40k? Why do I doubt that?

[meatmanek]

My iPod has 3489 songs on it, that's 19.49 gigs, which means about 5.5 megs per song. Until they come out with a 250 gig iPod, I disagree that it would cost $40,000 to fill one.

Re:bovine excrement

[TheLostSamurai]

I have just scanned all of the computers on my corporate network. I have concluded that 0% of the computers in my office (out of 300) have LimeWire installed. I am therefore claiming that 0% of the WORLD'S computers have LimeWire installed based on my sample group. /sarcasm

I believe this is a valid comparison as the data in question was collected when users submitted to voluntary PC scans by visiting a specific website that 99% of the worlds computer users have never heard of.

Re:36.4% of the world's computers have LimeWire in

[Locklin]

Indie artists can use HTTP (and Torrent if necessary), theres plenty of willing hosts.

The Live Music Archive The live music archive provides high quality live concerts in a download-able format. The Internet Archive aims preserve and archive as many live concerts as possible for current and future generations to enjoy. All music in this Collection is from trade-friendly artists and is strictly noncommercial, both for access here and for any further distribution. Jamendo Jamendo offers free access and free download of music tracks, published with Creative Commons licences. On Jamendo, the Artists choose to give access to their music for free to the users. Users are encouraged to donate to artists, and artists earn money from add revenue. Magnature Listen to complete albums for free. If you like what you hear, download an album for as little as $5 (you pick the price), or buy a real CD, or license our music for commercial use. MP3s & WAVs, and no copy protection (DRM). FreeIndie.com A smaller selection of independent artists in various genres. Free to download. IndieFeed A free podcast of independent artists from around the world. CBC Radio 3 A popular weekly podcast featuring new Canadian rock, pop, hip-hop, singer-songwriters, alt-country and electronica.

Re:40000 songs = $40,000 sounds right to me

[LMacG]

You are assuming that all of those songs need to be purchased at $1 apiece. What about the CDs I already have at home? I know that Sony lawyer said that ripping even one song is OMG theft, but I don't live on her world. What about all the stuff I downloaded from eMusic when I belonged? There was a cost, but not anything close to $1/song.

Re:36.4% of the world's computers have LimeWire in

[LithiumX]

The biggest problem with independent artists using services like Limewire for distribution is that they get mixed in with hordes of pirated music.

Also, internet radio is not currently affected in cases where it plays an unsigned artist's material, as royalties only apply to copyrighted tracks. Correct me if I'm wrong on that, but the only way royalties hurt IR is that it's harder to get many people to listen to a purely indie station.

I'm sure there are services out there that make it easy to find, sample, and download independent music for free. If they exist, they aren't well known enough (at least not well enough for me to have heard of them and know what they are). The only one I can think of is Myspace, and there are piracy problems there as well.

I fully agree that the RIAA is rightfully threatened by increasingly easy recording, production, and distribution of quality independent music. However, as long as this walks hand in hand with rampant piracy, they will always find it a wise move to suppress it. It's a given that P2P systems that allow sharing of entire libraries, with no restrictions, will inevitably result in heavy piracy (that's human behavior - no matter how much the recording industry complains).

Here's what I think would make for a wildly successful way for artists to distribute their work, easily, cheaply, and without fuss:

An easy to access system, requiring no login, that allows you to freely sample it's entire library of music. Let the artists themselves select their sample clips.

Focus on a combination of samples (since many artists might not want to give it all away) and full tracks (for those who want to gamble on popularity, or are trying to get their name out).

Controlled uploads - ie I can't just start sharing my collection of Pink Floyd (all legal except for my beloved bootlegs). You want it to be easy for an artist to put up their work (and keep the requirements for "artist" as loose as possible), but make it harder for someone to put up material that is not theirs.

Absolute separation from the sale of these tracks - this isn't a requirement, but will help keep the system from eventually degenerating into a profit-driven system.

Checksum system, or other similar method, of identifying a track (and allowing the uploader to retain their rights later, except for the free distribution of what they have already released).

Adoption of any current DRM models, but without utilizing it's restrictive nature - just enough to be supported by DRM-driven software.

A means to keep the servers and bandwidth flowing without requiring a standard business model (ie go for advertising revenue - everyone hates it, but it works better than subscription and praying for donations).

Tie this with a venue system (ie see where the listed artists are playing, and make it easy for them to get a gig, tied heavily to their tracks)

And of course, a good user rating system, to make it easier for truly good work to rise to the forefront, but limited enough to where it's hard for heavy marketing to do anything more than draw attention to something (ie you cannot offer prioritized placement of a track in a rating system - the best you could do is pay for banner ads highlighting the artist)

The key is to make the system as trustworthy as possible (ie any complaints the RIAA has should be spurious, and DRM is used against them in that it marks the tracks as being from a trusted source), and focus on it's main goal (distribution of unsupported artists in a way that is difficult to , and steering clear of the politics of IP). Also, there has to be a means of selling the music, though it might be a good idea for the actual sales to be done from elsewhere (so there is little conflict of interest).

End result, independent artists have an easy way to get their names out, and the RIAA has a target that they can't blame for piracy. This forces the RIAA to either put on a white hat and not interfere with some

Missing options, this poll sucks

[DrYak]

Becuase I have bittorrent installed to download Mandrake, I *MUST* have illegal things on my machine?

Yeah, exactly.

Attention **IA, this is my current seed list, you insensitive clod :

• debian-40r1-i386-DVD-1.iso [1180675963]
• debian-40r1-i386-DVD-2.iso [402297137]
• debian-40r1-i386-DVD-3.iso [24379392]
• debian-40r1-i386-netinst.iso [0]
• debian-update-4.0r1-i386-DVD-1.iso [3342336]
• openSUSE-10.3-GM-Addon-Lang-i386-iso [917504]
• openSUSE-10.3-GM-Addon-Lang-x86_64-iso [1261568]
• openSUSE-10.3-GM-DVD-i386-iso [180797440]
• openSUSE-10.3-GM-DVD-x86_64-iso [819200]
• StealThisFilm.Part1.mov [428353952]
• strip_souffle_high.wmv [0]

It's either opensource software, or a couple of movie which are freely available.

So could now please all this stupid companies stop equating "Peer 2 peer" with "Imaginary Property infringements" ?

the other premise

[epine]

The premise of this argument is that no content worth having exists in the public domain, so any use of this tool must be directed toward infilching upon proprietary content.

Half of the motivation being the Mickey Mouse copyright extension act was not just to protect Mickey's inflated infantilism, but also to keep the public domain shelf as bare as possible, so legitimate sharing doesn't cloud the wolf cries of MAFIAA, where every untaxed gratification over every untaxed wire represents a pimple-faced insurrection against the natural order bought and paid for.

More than a few oddities

[kriss]

It strikes me as odd that they single out Limewire, since Gnutella (which Limewire runs) really isn't that prevalent in the first place and other User Agents are way, way more prevalent than Limewire. Depending on where in the world you happen to be situated, BitTorrent, eDonkey, Ares or Winny/Winmx/Perfect Dark would be the preferred poison, both in terms of hosts and bandwidth consumed.

Which is not to say that there isn't a lot of gnutella out there, but 1/3 of all (consumer) hosts is sheer hogwash. No way I'll be paying for that report, but it sounds like they could be making some very odd assumptions about Gnutella based on network traffic (i.e identify *all* non-port 443 SSL as Gnutella or something equally silly), or just got an extremely skewed host pool they're looking at.

The property, NOT the law, is imaginary.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're applying the adjective "imaginary" to the wrong noun. Indeed, you're applying it to a noun that isn't even there. You may not have noticed, but not once have I referred to "imaginary property law" (which would contain the ambiguity you describe).

It is the "property" that is only imaginary, because it is a non-rivalrous good with a very low marginal cost. In other words, we can both have a copy without deleting the other person's and it's cheap to make more copies. The law tries to make it rivalrous by giving the author legal rights to prevent duplication and certain other things, but it can't do much of anything about the low marginal cost, so a black market flourishes. Yes, they've tried things like blank CD levies, but those don't seem to do much.

As for the propaganda comment, I'd say that you must be new here, but come on. Believe it or not, I do not represent any government or business, just myself. To call it "propaganda" because you think I'm sensationalizing a report that's going to get passed off to those in power as saying exactly what I said it implies is a bit much. I know the report is badly flawed. That's actually part of why it's newsworthy.

Finally, you should have realized something already, but I can't count on that if you think that adjectives like "imaginary" modify nouns like "law" that aren't there, so I'll tell you outright: I know all this because I am the submitter and I was the first I know of to coin the term "imaginary property." Don't worry, though. You can use that term freely, as much as you want.

You're welcome.

1/3rd of the world infringes on IP...

[Marful]

Oh I know! Why don't we throw 1/3rd of the world population into jail!!!!

Or maybe, just maybe, the IP laws as they stand now are not sufficient to meet the demand of the populace in what and how they expect content to be transfered/delivered/received.

Sorry... you lost your precision

[theshowmecanuck]

It was 36.4%. Or was that 36.43687286723%

When you see B.S. like this (adding decimal places to stupid statistics), it is a signal to ignore it.

What kills me is that it totally reminds me of project management bozos who track project progress to the decimal place. I can understand tracking it in 10% increments, but I realistically can only maybe tell people I am 20, 40, 60... percent complete. Sometimes on 25, 50, etc.

But then there are others who can track the details so well. "Sir, we have millions of lines of code, a few hundred programmers, testers, analysts, and we are 42.48403% complete to date." Right. :D

Re:36.4% of the world's computers have LimeWire in

[Tony Hoyle]

but if I were to download a 'backup' of one of my legally purchased CDs--mind you, I'd -never- infringe on a copyright, goodness

You just admitted that you did. It's just as illegal to download a copy of a CD that you own than it is to download a copy of a CD that you don't own. That's the way it works - when you buy a CD you buy limited rights to play that *exact CD* on your CD player. That's all. Sucks, but that's the way it is.

All from companies that Steal from Artists

[HermMunster]

Yeah, I said stolen. Those contracts they offer are nothing more than legalized thievery. Most artists don't have legal ownership of the music they perform. Each artist gets generally $.07 from each song from any album. The artists are essentially forced to enter a one sided contract in favor of the music mogals. These guys have parties that i'm sure many of you would be aghast at the bill. The music mogals had made billions of dollars off the backs of the artists.

Don't get me wrong. These artists are not getting much money. They are essentially being ripped off of all their creative work. This has happened for decades. Once the moguls found out how to steal from the creative artists they used their power to do just that, ripped them off.

I don't care about the music mogals. I don't care about the people that are loosing their jobs. I don't care that they can't pay their bills. I don't care that the moguls are no longer making billions. I could care less. They can go and shove it up their asses. They need to go back to the artists and give them their fair share. They need to grant each artists retroactively all their fair share of the royalties that they would have earned. It's just sad that these dimwits were allowed to get so powerful.

How can anyone feel bad about downloading music when it is so obvious that the music moguls stole the music from the artists. Screw them all, we all should.

DeCSS is still illegal

[tepples]

Let's examine that claim. I can buy a used DVD from NetFlix for $5.99. Likewise, I can get new DVDs at Wal-Mart for that price.

The $40,000 number divided by $5.99 means I could buy 6677 DVDs for that amount of money. If you divide the 160GB maximum capacity for an iPod by that number, that would mean that the compressed size for each movie would average 23 MB. But how will you get the DVDs into the iPod? In the United States, home of Slashdot, Netflix, and the dollar, ripping DVDs by breaking DVD Content Scrambling System isn't lawful. Defenses to copyright infringement are not defenses to circumvention. Universal v. Reimerdes. How much would a high-quality camcorder, a high-quality monitor, and a genlock between the two cost?

Lies, damn lies and statistics

[arikol]

I have it on good authority that 84,63% of all statistics are made up!

Re:statistic wrong & retracted

[blueg3]

This isn't really related to the original complaint, but yes, it would be nice if statistics were not misleading. Often they're intentionally misleading, and often "lies" would be a more accurate moniker than "misleading". But, it should generally be taken as granted, unless you're reading an original study that describes in detail its methods and analysis, that any statistic posed is far from accurate, that any inference drawn is drawn by the article's author and not by the study's author, and that summaries of that article will be even more wildly inaccurate than the article.

It's actually 17.92%

[Alibloke]

Check out this article that's recently appeared on Torrentfreak
It states that the number of 36.4% is incorrect and it's actually more like ~18%, it seems that someone got their sums wrong....