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8th Circuit Upholds $220,000 Verdict In Jammie Thomas Case
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit has upheld the initial jury verdict in the case against Jammie Thomas, Capitol Records v. Jammie Thomas-Rasset. This case was the first jury trial for a file-sharing suit brought by the major record labels, and focused on copyright infringement for 24 songs. The Court of Appeals has ruled that the award of $220,000, or $9250 per song, was not an unconstitutional violation of Due Process. The Court, in its 18-page decision (PDF), declined to reach the 'making available' issue, for procedural reasons."
Having people who know nothing about technology make case law about technology is like having a Capuchin monkey fix the brakes on your car: cute and funny at first, but ultimately a bad idea that is also highly dangerous.
Bazinga.
We will continue to share and the labels will learn their place.
Somewhat seriously. The aristocrats of the Capitalistic system are totally messing with us.
From the Wikipedia article:
1st civil jury trial Statutory damages of $222,000 ($9,250/song).
2nd civil jury trial Statutory damages of $1,920,000 ($80,000/song).
Remittitur Statutory damages reduced to $54,000 ($2,250/song).
3rd civil jury trial Statutory damages of $1,500,000 ($62,500/song).
Damages reduced Statutory damages reduced to $54,000 ($2,250/song).
Seriously, statutory damages are a joke. The number is completely arbitrary and jumping around, seemingly randomly, from $54k to almost $2m. Isn't this a pretty good sign that things are FUBAR, and "statutory damages" is devoid of all meaning? The $150,000 statutory damages maximum (per infringement) was written into law with a very different context in mind than it's being applied to (industrial scale for-profit copyright infringement). These statutory damages seriously are completely defunct, yet copyright holders are exploiting them to no end. *We* as a society have provided *them* copyright to promote the *useful* arts and sciences. I think it's becoming very clear the art they are producing is no longer useful, but a determent to society. Perhaps *we* as a society should take those rights away, or at the very least severely curb them to avoid this utter nonsense.
Industry shills are constantly trying to convince the public that piracy = theft, but punishments like this make it seem more like piracy = murder. In my home state, anyway, "a person convicted of the offense of retail theft of merchandise having a retail value not in excess of $100.00 shall be punished by a fine of not more than $300.00 or imprisonment for not more than six months, or both." Torrent the same CD, however, and you're out $150,000 ($10,000/song, assuming 15 songs on a CD).
Note to potential downloaders: just steal the goods you want. You'll get off a lot lighter that way.
Due process is guaranteed by the 5th and 14th amendments. The problem with this case is excessive fines, prohibited by the 8th amendment. Why wasn't this an issue in this appeal?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Torrent the same CD, however, and you're out $150,000 ($10,000/song, assuming 15 songs on a CD).
I agree that the theft analogy has flaws, but let's run with it for the moment: Someone who trades infringing copies over BitTorrent or other reciprocal peer-to-peer file sharing protocols is like a fence, someone who sells stolen property. If the P2P software uploaded 9,250 copies of each song to other users, then Thomas isn't paying more than retail.
I've always thought of suing file sharers akin to attacking a swarm of bees with a hand pistol. It won't do a thing to stop the bees, but your bullet *might* hit one of those bees and absolutely obliterare them. Looks like Jammie was the unlucky bee.
The major labels' profit model based around sales of shiny circular pieces of plastic is no longer valid because customers stopped patronizing them years ago out of disgust over labels suing their customers and exploiting musicians out of royalties. So their new profit model is based around litigation against customers. Looked how well that worked during the dinosaur age.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
So much for the idea that the rich don't need government or benefit from the taxes they pay. Otherwise the RIAA could never afford a global goon squad this effective. It will take decades to ring hundreds of thousands from this kid. He might never pay it off.
Because "troll" is apparently "disagree", especially lately.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
to those who are itchy to mark me troll - why? i expressed an honestly held conviction in a calm and rational matter, and supported my modest claims. c'mon, i'm just trying to be part of the slashdot community. why give me a hard time?
probably unpopular to take that tone - someone thinks you are an Apple or RIAA apologist. For my money, I too, buy the junk I listen to or watch. I may always be on the right side of things, but that never stops someone suing me if they feel they oughta and their lawyers are all sitting around the office with nowt to do.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
It's not the comments that are the troll, it's you and your green skin. ;)
But ya, I've warned people off using any sort of sharing/P2P/whatever because it's just not worth it anymore.
Until there is some major change in policy (and right now it's full steam ahead for fascism) I'm staying away until the
RIAA/MFAA(whatever) runs out of witches to burn.
Sig. Sig. Sputnik
The terrorists have won.
Support the EFF and Creative Commons. The war is coming, and they're supporting you...
Your personal convictions are not, obviously, convictions at all.
expandfairuse.org
I've read in the past about her case and this is what I remember being her main problems.
1) She had bottom of the barrel lawyers in all of her trials. If I remember correctly at one of the later trials she was actually represented by law school students who prior to the trial basically bragged that this case was going to be "easy" to win. Practicing law for real may just be a little tougher than it seems in class, boys.
2) She has been perceived extremely negatively by juries, which has definitely led to the size of the judgements against her.
3) She's been her own worst enemy when testifying, but that relates to #1 in large part. She lacks a credible excuse for her behavior and seemed to jurors to be a liar and trying to cover up what she did. That has worked heavily against her in reaching a verdict.
4) She has consistently displayed an outsized ego and an erroneous belief that she can beat the charges by going to court when in fact she has probably had the weakest case of anyone to ever challenge the RIAA. I would call her delusional.
In summary, she's got a terrible case and she's tried to win it on the cheap and the outcomes are predictable.
In the years this crazy case has dragged on, we've seen awards of $222,000, $54,000, $1,920,000, $1,500,000, and a settlement offer. We don't know what the offer was, but may have been a few hundred or a few thousand. The $54000 would have been lower if the law had allowed it. Obviously, they're having a very difficult time deciding just what the damages should be. When it is so difficult to set an appropriate damage amount, it seems to me that calls for an examination of the basic premise of the suit and the laws it is based upon.
This whole case tries to treat the defendant as if she was a distributor in an environment where the ability to distribute is uncommon, because duplication and distribution is expensive. In such an environment, it may be reasonable to suppose that she might have done the record companies out of hundreds or even thousands of sales, and so a penalty of many thousands of dollars may be a fair amount. But this is not the environment we live in today. On the Internet, anyone can be a distributor at very little cost, and duplication is very nearly zero cost. This is not 1984, when the only practical way to illegally copy a lot of music was to run a bootleg CD stamping (or even vinyl record stamping) or cassette tape recording business, which cost serious money. The law should be changed to reflect these facts. And the court ought to have the power or guts to do more than regretfully reduce the damages insufficiently to fix the real problem. They're leaving a mess, and hoping the legislature takes the hint and does something about it. Meantime, the victims of these lawsuits are harmed disproportionately.
The industry is abusing the slowness of adaptation of new principles in the law to crucify and make an example of a victim. Letting bullies run wild is a hell of a way to run a justice system.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
Because its gotten so bad that iTunes (and Netflix and Hulu and other legitimate digital distribution services) are bandage solutions to organ loss.
If "making available" a mere 24 songs will get you hit with a fine of $220,000, god help you if you share your iTunes account because thats "making available" tens/hundreds/thousands of songs to non-licensed user(s). And you can't argue that "the law is only going after evil torrenting file sharers!" because the RIAA already attempted to sue a dead person over the issue.
Despite the current and past crappy rulings on this case...the first thing I think about is what kind of name is "Jammie" anyway? Is it pronounced like "Jaimie", or like some weird singular form of the slang for pajamas ("Ja-mee")? Either way, I wonder wtf is wrong with parents and naming these days. For me, this is a hard case to read about.
to those who are itchy to mark me troll - why?
I'm going to assume that is a serious question and give you the straight answer:
The reason they are marking you "troll" is because it is the closest thing to "shill" in the mod system. Your comment is indistinguishable from that of a copyright industry shill and you have a high user ID. There's more to it than that in the way your post is presented -- it looks suspicious -- but I'm not going to tell you any more. If you are a shill, I don't want you to know where your veil is thin.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
why not take the linux or some other open source code and sell it without giving back to the community?
its just bits and i'm not stealing anything
to those who are itchy to mark me troll - why?
I'm going to assume that is a serious question and give you the straight answer:
The reason they are marking you "troll" is because it is the closest thing to "shill" in the mod system. Your comment is indistinguishable from that of a copyright industry shill and you have a high user ID. There's more to it than that in the way your post is presented -- it looks suspicious -- but I'm not going to tell you any more. If you are a shill, I don't want you to know where your veil is thin.
I thought it was a little suspect myself. Still, I would not personally have modded him down.
If the presence of shills causes us to be so suspicious of each other, to never extend benefit of doubt, to be less tolerant of unpopular speech, and above all to use down-mods as a substitute for well-written rebuttals... then the shills have done much more damage to this community than they could have hoped to accomplish. And we ourselves helped them to do it.
A genuine shill being treated a bit more kindly than he deserves, while undesirable, is a better outcome than this. The best way to combat actual shills is to know in your mind and understand in your heart why they are wrong, because hearts and minds are what they want to capture. That knowing and understanding is the product of informing yourself and does not depend on anything someone else does.
Consider also that if he actually is that much of a corporate whore, his inability to respect himself in any real way is far worse than thousands of down-mods.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Bandage solutions? Yes, $220k is a ridiculous fine, but I don't see how that negates the value of iTMS, Amazon's music store, Google Play, etc. If you don't think a DRM-free song in a reasonable bit-rate (256kbps; not as good as lossless, but better than 128) for $1.29 is reasonable, then don't buy it. Or pirate it. Why should you get someone else's work for free when their licensing agreements explicitly state that they think you should pay for them? Yes, we all hate the **AA, but remember that nobody held up these artists at gunpoint and forced them to sign.
Just because you can do something (in this case, pirate) doesn't mean you have the right to.
If you can't convince them, convict them.
This is one way to mention "circuit" and "220" in the same sentence having nothing to do with electricity.
why not take the linux or some other open source code and sell it without giving back to the community?
That is perfectly legal and encouraged. Go ahead!
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
I downloaded gigabytes of music and was losing interest in music. One day I started buying music again, and found I was enjoying it a lot again.
There's a Ph.D. idea there for someone. Some sort of perceived value factor? Or just that the geeks who posted all that free music can't encode it properly to save their ever cursed lives? Honestly, a lot of people must have had the cheapest crap MP3 players. 128 Kbps encodes. File titles were like novels. "Title_Artist_Album_Genre_Year_Label_LinerNotes_UUENCODE-OF-ALBUM-COVER.mp3"
He might have been modded troll because he's too gopddamned lazy (or perhaps ignorant) to use his shift key. I can see the logic of modding someone who writes unreadable prose "troll", although "overrated" would be better.
Note to aliterates, illiterates, those who can't do homophones or know how to use an apostrophe: All your comments are overrated and I will mod them as such, and so will many other literates who chafe at reading uneducated tripe.
This used to be a place where educated, intelligent people come. Looking like a hipster or a jock IS a troll on a nerd site; we're nerds, not jocks and hipsters. For instance, if your honest opinion is that science is useless, you're automatically a troll here, just as an honest opinion that there is no God on a Christian site is a troll, Medicare should die on an AARP site is a troll, and an opinion that sports are stupid on a jock site is a troll.
So he and everybody else can take their hip "txtspk" and go somewhere else; they're not welcome. They are trolls. They need to go away and stop bothering those of us who read books once in a while.
Free Martian Whores!
So, according to you, because I don't toe the slashdot monoculture line, I must be a troll and a shill.
No. According to me, because of the way you presented your opinion, you are indistinguishable from a shill.
I believe in the benefits of a lively and spirited debate from people who are steeped in the issues.
You were not presenting a spirited debate about the merit of a policy, you were attempting to pursuade people to engage in a particular behavior in response to a threat posed by bad policy. In effect you were telling people to be more obedient or face the wrath of the legal system. That is not spirited debate, it is authoritarianism.
I'm sorry for you that you feel differently.
Awww, that's pretend nice of you to say. I guess I won't slit my wrists now that I know you care.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
c'mon, i'm just trying to be part of the slashdot community. why give me a hard time?
You might try using your shift key so you look less like a hipster trying to be a nerd nerd if you want to fit in (I notice you don't mind the shift key to make a question mark... LAME!). This is a nerd site, not a hipster site. Get with the program, dude. Read a book once in a while.
And don't give me that e.e. cummings shit, he wrote poetry. His prose used caps and punctuation.
Free Martian Whores!
His signature is in and of itself a troll. If you post it, just because you put it under two little dashes doesn't make it immune to moderation.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
Is the judge allowed to tell the jury about jury nullification? If he is, then his/her hands are never tied.
Historically, jury nullification freed the Klansman and hanged the black man.
It freed the good old boys and not the outsiders. Three guesses as to whether the geek will be found on the side of the angels. Three juries cheerfully took turns hammering Jamie Thomas and her pro bono attorneys into the marble flooring.
If you don't like it, lobby your lawmakers.
And who will "your" lawmakers listen to, you or these guys?
Lobbyists
Interest groups
PACs
If the presence of shills causes us to be so suspicious of each other
Being suspicious of the existence of shills is the correct response to the existence of shills.
to never extend benefit of doubt
Nobody suggested that was the case. I, and I suspect most people here, assume every post is genuine unless it triggers our suspicion. Like this one did.
to be less tolerant of unpopular speech,
That's a tricky phrase. If the speech is unpopular because of groupthink, we should not be less tolerant of it. If it is unpopular because it is ill-formed, we should be less tolerant of it. Noise lacking signal should be attenuated in order for substantive dialog to rise to the fore. That is the express purpose of the moderation system.
above all to use down-mods as a substitute for well-written rebuttals
Well-written rebuttals are the right response to reasoned discourse by free people. Shill posts are not reasoned discourse by free people, they are for-profit attempts to manipulate public perception and behavior and to affect public policy. Detection of shills is tricky, but attenuating shills is objectively pro-social.
The best way to combat actual shills is to know in your mind and understand in your heart why they are wrong, because hearts and minds are what they want to capture.
That is the best way to defend yourself against them, but it is a completely ineffective way to combat them. Things that happen entirely inside your head have no effect on the outside world. If the objective is to achieve inner peace, then your advice is spot-on. If the objective is to prevent shills from distorting our society, then we must combat them.
That knowing and understanding is the product of informing yourself and does not depend on anything someone else does.
It is not enough to simply defend yourself. Their intent is to have an effect on public perception, behavior, and policy. While being informed is a sound foundation for engaging them in the court of public opinion successfully, informedness is not -- in itself -- sufficient to protect our society from them. Protecting our society depends rather heavily on things other people do. Preventing shills from having their intended effect on those people is a pro-social pursuit.
Consider also that if he actually is that much of a corporate whore, his inability to respect himself in any real way is far worse than thousands of down-mods.
That is only true in the sense of how it affects a shill inside his head. The purpose of shilling is not to affect the shill's mind, it is to manipulate society. Likewise, the purpose of combating shilling is not to make the shill feel bad, it is to protect our economy. If there were a way to defend society against the shill while simultaneously giving him a big warm hug and a pat on the back, I'd do it.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
"I'd love to buy it, but X digital distribution service isn't available in Y country."
The fact that you automatically default to 'piracy' just goes to show how unreasonable the entire discussion has gotten. I bring up the fact that a dead person was sued and all of the sudden I'm getting accused of being a 'pirate'. You're exactly the reason why the entire copyright law needs to be completely gutted and rebuilt.
As someone already commented on here earlier, "We'll keep sharing, and the labels will learn their place." This is quite simply a statement of reality, because the record labels are in the business of making money. It just so happens they do so by locking musicians into contractual deals where they promise to "promote" their music in return for a cut of the profits made selling people rights to obtain copies of the artists' recordings to listen to per the licensing/usage terms granted.
They can scream about it being illegal and punishable by law all the want, but it will never change the technological realities of things. These days, musicians no longer need the record labels as much as the record labels need them. The same technology that allows end-users to easily duplicate and redistribute the content on their own lets musicians record and redistribute (and market!) their content too, without help of a big company.
Following the money leads to a steady stream of revenue bleeding away from the record labels. Their best move to prove their worth these days lies in throwing down lawsuit after lawsuit to convince artists they're still "adding value" by forcing people to "pay up" when they're caught duplicating their artists' works without getting permission first.
But as we should all know by now? Those who don't innovate litigate. It's a sure sign of an industry in decline.
Yes, we all hate the **AA, but remember that nobody held up these artists at gunpoint and forced them to sign
No, but the government *did* hold the rest of the country at gunpoint and continues to steal (as in "taking from us and making unavailable for our use") what rightfully should have gone into the public domain with the stroke of a pen. That's *my* problem with the way things are.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
I'm on vacation on a place far away from the RIAA and MPAA tentacles. Walking back from the beach today I walked into a store where I could get any DVD I wanted, in a little plastic wrap with a color photocopy of the original DVD, for the equivalent of about $1.17, any CD I wanted for $1.75 Who needs napster, limewire, etc?
Why should you get someone else's work for free..
for one, in the past i was allowed to record it from the radio. the same goes for all things televised. the advancements in copying ease/quality have no bearing in the argument. for example, i subscribe to 95% of what comcast offers via cable tv. until they offer me a fool-proof way (i.e. let me make full use of the box's firewire port and remove all flags) to do what i was allowed to do in the past, they can get bent. tv on dvd was a complete afterthought and just because they found a bonus revenue stream doesn't mean they get to change the game. in addition to that, what difference does it make if i capture the video and edit out the commercials or someone else does? if we both have subscriptions, the answer would logically be none.
another example of their retardation is what they charge for stuff that broadcast freely over the air. why can't they give me a download with [one-time] ads built-in for free? why does amazon want to charge me $10 to 'own' a movie that costs way more than the used (and plenty of times, new) physical copy? in fact, that is how pricing should be done. this artificial scarcity-based price-fixing is incredulous. then we have the whole loss of first sale rights and lending to friends issues. they really need to shit or get off the pot. you can either treat it all as physical with all that entails (resale, non-time-based lending, actual theft) or offer the product for a fraction of the price as all those pro-consumer things go out the window. do you really think that once the industries are wholly internet delivered that consumers won't get even more of a reaming? can they offer any guarantees that old stuff can be owned for as little as $1/movie, $5/hd movie, $.50/cd?
Many had no pity for fascists hanged by their jackboots in a public place.
All that takes time, and some of us have, like, jobs and lives and other interests outside dicking around with shitty downloads.
Also, don't wanna listen to the same 1%.
What do you think moderation is, other than sitting there and judging people according to your personal standards?
Or you could simply not listen to music produced by labels who are part of the RIAA.
I see that Skitt's Law (or Bell's First Law of USENET, if you prefer, as they cover similar ground- Bell more parsimoniously than Skitt) still holds. Hilarious!
I means you're giving money to the enemy :-)
(at grossly inflated rates, as well)
expandfairuse.org
"Except, they can find those MP3s on your computer at a border patrol stop (and yes, they really are searching computers for pirated content at border crossings now) and arrest you for pirated content on your computer. You have no way of proving you got the songs legitimately. iTunes is not the solution to the problem."
Yes there is for some cases. If they're really doing that, then one of my many little projects is starting to have value. I call it various things, such as "WhiteListing" and preparing for "Digital Audits". It basically means that as far as possible, to have proven source acquisition paths for every file on your computer. Skipping the edge cases like malware and drive-by-wifi-ers, if it's on your computer, you put it there. So for every song you could have a matching PDF of the purchase, or the copy of the CC license that lets you have it.
It's REALLY hard to do! It's basically exhausting. Look at what we think "web 2.0" is = "sharing"? That's why I have snarked that Web 3.0 will be various flavors of Walled Gardens and draconian control. A really ugly use case is indie music. A cash greedy tyrranical bureaucrat will say "I don't care where it came from, if you don't have one of the seven authorized certificates for it, it counts against you". I have a ton of stuff that came from Music.Download.com back when it was freely offered for download. Oops - that site doesn't exist anymore, and I'll never see those bands again. Same rough idea with Youtube Remixes. Who the heck is someone like "DJ DeadCat" and how do I find her to get copyright clearance??
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Depends. On one hand, you have a bunch of out-of-touch-with-the-world sociopaths who have forced us unwittingly into a state of surveillance and fear, probably without even initially intending to.
:)
On the other hand, you have whatever you're calling the other lot.
Support the EFF and Creative Commons. The war is coming, and they're supporting you...
When deciding if two things are the same, you can't look at one word and then say they are the same, you need to look at both definitions and compare those:
Statutory damages:
Statutory damages are a damage award in civil law, in which the amount awarded is stipulated within the statute rather than being calculated based on the degree of harm to the plaintiff
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statutory_damages
Fine:
"A fine is money paid usually to superior authority, usually governmental authority, as a punishment for a crime or other offence. The amount of a fine can be determined case by case, but it is often announced in advance."
They aren't the same, anyone who tells you they are is ignorant.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I believe the key word is "without giving it back to the community." And in this case, it's exactly analogous. The "price" you pay for GPL software is your agreement to encumber your modifications with the GPL if you make any. When users fail to do that, the Free Software community quickly raises an angry mob, and generally wins. Yet without the copyright law they purportedly hate, they could not force changes to be dedicated back to the community. Let's be intellectually honest here.
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
Banks get fined in the hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars (if at all) for robbing billions from entire countries, but what happens to this woman is somehow constitutional.
how is babby formed?
Well-written rebuttals are the right response to reasoned discourse by free people. Shill posts are not reasoned discourse by free people, they are for-profit attempts to manipulate public perception and behavior and to affect public policy. Detection of shills is tricky, but attenuating shills is objectively pro-social.
I suppose that's the crux of the matter. I believe in the power of reason. I believe that next to reason, nothing that shills and other dishonest marketers can do is ever going to have the appearance of merit or any persuasive power at all. I never felt like I had to use the shills' own tactics against them, resisting their dishonesty with suspicion and derision.
The marketers themselves are aware of this. That's why they seldom or never use reason. They tend to appeal to the emotions. What they absolutely do not want to do is to calmly discuss the facts of the matter in an objective manner. Because they don't want to do this, that's how I respond to them. It so happens this is how I prefer to respond to nearly anyone; it's just that dishonest people with ulterior motives are the ones who are made uncomfortable by it.
It is not enough to simply defend yourself. Their intent is to have an effect on public perception, behavior, and policy.
We are talking about adult people. It is a shame that so many adults choose to be uninformed and soft-minded and do not pursue reason and logic as worthy skills to acquire. They made that choice. They would rather worry about pop music and football and whatever the evening news tells them to be afraid of. So be it. I have the freedom of deciding not to join them. Yet, as long as so many people are this way, there will always be fertile ground for shills, scammers, lying politicians, and all sorts of deceitful people.
There is little point in trying to eliminate individual rats while you continue to leave rotting food laying around everywhere. The scope of this problem is huge. It is not easily fixed. It took a long time to become the way that it is and it will not be resolved overnight. The very best you can hope for is damage control, and not yourself being part of the problem.
While being informed is a sound foundation for engaging them in the court of public opinion successfully, informedness is not -- in itself -- sufficient to protect our society from them. Protecting our society depends rather heavily on things other people do. Preventing shills from having their intended effect on those people is a pro-social pursuit.
Only for people who have to be told what to believe, what to think, and how to feel about that information. In that case, you imagine yourself a better master than the ones currently pulling most of the strings. Perhaps you would be. Perhaps I would be. Perhaps neither of us would do a good job. But so long as there are so many effective mental puppets with so many mental and emotional strings, the deceitful people who wish to exploit them are always going to outnumber people like you and I.
I really believe that you mean well. I also sincerely believe you are merely hacking at the branches because the root of the problem is so big, so menacing, and so ugly that you'd prefer to deny it. I think the focus needs to be not exposing shills point-counterpoint style, though such damage control does have a minor role in a complete approach. The focus needs to be to promote the strength and virtue that comes from thinking for oneself, from recognizing when you are ignorant about something and remedying that if the subject matters enough to form an opinion about, and to eschew this naivete that makes people such malleable fools to every asshat who comes along. Until then, you have an enormous game of whack-a-mole that tends to favor the adversary.
That is only true in the sense of how it affects a shill inside his head. The purpose of shilling is not to affect
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
"regardless of my personal convictions, it looks like torrenting songs is a big crime with big consequences."
No, it isn't. In the vast majority of cases, it isn't a crime at all, not even a misdemeanor. It is a civil violation. But it can still have harsh consequences.
Of course, the statutory damages are far too high to provide anything like justice; the amount should be based on actual damages.
"It basically means that as far as possible, to have proven source acquisition paths for every file on your computer."
This is really beside the point, though. Even if it is a civil matter, the burden to show at least "a preponderance of evidence" is supposed to be on the plaintiff (or complainant, if you prefer). Having to prove your innocence is not exactly a traditional American concept.
I believe that next to reason, nothing that shills and other dishonest marketers can do is ever going to have the appearance of merit or any persuasive power at all.
Yet, as long as so many people are this way, there will always be fertile ground for shills, scammers, lying politicians, and all sorts of deceitful people.
Those two statements cannot both be true.
I never felt like I had to use the shills' own tactics against them, resisting their dishonesty with suspicion and derision.
You should be suspicious of dishonest people. It is a very important survival trait.
I have not used derision anywhere in this thread.
What they absolutely do not want to do is to calmly discuss the facts of the matter in an objective manner.
Actually, sucking opponents into drawn-out discussions, like this one, is one of the standard practices of shilling.
There is little point in trying to eliminate individual rats while you continue to leave rotting food laying around everywhere. The scope of this problem is huge. It is not easily fixed. It took a long time to become the way that it is and it will not be resolved overnight. The very best you can hope for is damage control
"It's hard" is not a good reason to give up on a just cause.
and not yourself being part of the problem
Telling people to lie down and take it is being part of the problem. Fighting the problem is not.
In that case, you imagine yourself a better master than the ones currently pulling most of the strings.
I am not pulling strings. I am advocating for the exposure of paid shills in the discussion.
I really believe that you mean well.
An amusing attempt to manipulate the reader to perceive you as being in a morally superior position.
I also sincerely believe you are merely hacking at the branches because the root of the problem is so big, so menacing, and so ugly that you'd prefer to deny it.
Deny it? What are you referring to?
I think the focus needs to be not exposing shills point-counterpoint style,
Again you are contradicting yourself:
What they absolutely do not want to do is to calmly discuss the facts of the matter in an objective manner.
I suspect the contradiction comes from using a set of poorly thought-out talking points.
Until then, you have an enormous game of whack-a-mole that tends to favor the adversary.
May tend to, but it is not working out so well in this thread.
The reason for telling you that is to highlight something which is easily overlooked: there is in fact a sort of built-in justice to things. It just tends to take its sweet time before having its full effect in cumulative form.
The shill getting a hypothetical karmic ass-kicking sometime in the future doesn't stop the people who hired him from distorting our society in the short run. The distortion of our society is the threat, not the shill and his conscience.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
And comments like this are why I'm willing to slog through the crap. I hope it hits +5 before the end of the day. I used up my mod points yesterday, or I'd have hit the button myself.
By and large, Slashdot does not suffer from groupthink, precisely because there actually are real reasons, like these, for the way Slashdot thinks. Sometimes that's no longer obvious, because the reasons are known by the majority and it's simply assumed that "everyone" now knows. Statements of the fundamentals, like this one, are very helpful. So helpful I wish Slashdot had a Hall of Fame.
It is not analogous. With proprietary software, you pay but you do not get to distribute whether you modify or not. With the GPL, you can distribute for whatever fee you want without having to give back anything at all. You simply pass on whatever you received from upstream and charge whatever you want. It is only if you share something different than what you received from upstream that it gets complicated, but that is very rarely allowed in proprietary licenses anyway.
The GPL is just a temporary measure to give Free Software a chance to survive until copyright on software is abolished. Once that happens, people can try to make Free Software proprietary all they want without any legal problems.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
See the definition of financial gain in copyright law, 17 USC 101. Trading one copyrighted work for another is financial gain.
Hear hear! I only wish that I had thought of this comment myself. Thank you.
I,m sorry, I'm not anti-ms anti-apple pro-google pro-Linux etc.
We're anti-Google now - did you not get the memo?
Those two statements cannot both be true.
In a world where everyone respected, appreciated, and valued reason, indeed they would not be. We do not live in such a world.
You should be suspicious of dishonest people. It is a very important survival trait.
When I know that someone is using the tactics of deceit, there is no reason to be suspicious. Suspicion is how one deals with unknowns and uncertainties. When I know someone is lying to me, there is nothing to be suspicious about.
Telling people to lie down and take it is being part of the problem. Fighting the problem is not.
We simply have two different methods of fighting the problem. You believe that rationality and critical thought is something you can give to another person. I believe it's something they need to acquire for themselves. No one taught me those things. In fact, I had many contrary influences, especially in the public school system. Yet I could see what was wrong with them and decided I didn't want to follow their path.
The closest you can come to giving it to another person is to model it and demonstrate that it is superior to being easily misled. That in itself is not a task to be taken lightly. The difference between myself and the shills is that I understand one thing: telling another person that there is a correct way to think is a grave responsibility. I really better have my shit together before I do such a thing, or else I'll do more harm than good.
I'd much rather see a population of people who not only don't need me to do that, but would never accept any such attempt.
"It's hard" is not a good reason to give up on a just cause.
No, it is not, which is why I never claimed that is. In fact it's a reason to redouble your efforts. If you don't understand what you are up against, how do you intend to counteract it?
The real purpose of realizing the scope of the problem is to avoid disappointment when you don't immediately seem to achieve results. It doesn't mean you are doing wrong. It means you are trying to do something truly significant.
Telling people to lie down and take it is being part of the problem. Fighting the problem is not.
You know, in Mahatma Gandhi's time, there were people who wanted to violently fight the British. They felt that Gandhi's actions were not enough, etc. Yet he ended up being extremely effective with his passive resistance.
Going toe-to-toe is one way to deal with an adversary. Sometimes that is effective. Sometimes you'll never run out of adversaries and have to go a level deeper and understand why your adversary finds so much fertile ground in which to entrench themselves.
There is no way you could ever fully comprehend the shill/marketing/dishonesty/lack-of-critical-thought problem without also looking at the public school system, how it came to be, the stated goals of those who created it, the media, their agenda, and the various elites who run all of the above. In the face of that, arguing with some low-level marketer who mindlessly obeys orders is pretty small fry. Yes, it does matter, but there are far larger fish to fry.
May tend to, but it is not working out so well in this thread.
It's a shame that you insist on identifying me as your enemy merely because I believe other methods would be more effective in the long term, though they lack the initially-satisfying short-term gains you seem to want. Perhaps you could peruse my posting history before coming to such a conclusion?
What I disagree with you about concerns strategy. That is, the means. I do not disagree with you regarding ends. I would very much love a world in which people think for themselves and are far too wise to fall for such things as shills, spammers, marketers, politicians, and con artists. I simply believe you are foc
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
You know, in Mahatma Gandhi's time, there were people who wanted to violently fight the British. They felt that Gandhi's actions were not enough, etc. Yet he ended up being extremely effective with his passive resistance.
From Wikipedia:
In 1906, the British declared war against the Zulu kingdom in Natal, Gandhi encouraged the British to recruit Indians. He argued that Indians should support the war efforts in order to legitimise their claims to full citizenship. The British accepted Gandhi's offer to let a detachment of 20 Indians volunteer as a stretcher-bearer corps to treat wounded British soldiers. This corps was commanded by Gandhi and operated for less than two months. The experience taught him it was hopeless to directly challenge the overwhelming military power of the British army -- he decided it could only be resisted in non-violent fashion by the pure of heart.
Gandhi chose nonviolence because it was the best means in context, not because it is the best strategy in all contexts. In information warfare, I have more powerful weapons than most. On the side that I am on, I also have the advantage of being objectively right. When you have the better weapons, direct assault is an effective strategy.
But, clearly you have strongly held opinions about the way you see the world. It's all good, I know lots of sharp people who take that view of things. It is a vastly superior philosophy to mine for achieving inner peace, and has shown some success in influencing policy on occasion. As far as I see it, though, we're in a shooting war that they started, and I've got big guns. There's a lot to be said for setting yourself on fire to oppose a war, and I wish you nothing but success. I'll stick to taking them head on. The best strategy is all of them.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
My opinion is that when people are tempted to call other people shills, astroturfers, etc. on a discussion forum, they should just shut up, frankly. The risks of implying someone is a shill when they're not one far outweigh the benefits we get from the "shill police".
In the past, I also dared to disagree with the hive mind on a discussion forum regarding Microsoft, and was called an astroturfer. Of course I didn't take it lying down, and it was in fact a spirited debate. The point is, though, it was frustrating and distracted from the topic at hand unnecessarily. It was a waste of time.
How should one "distinguish" themselves from a shill in their posts? Should we put a special tagline in the signature: "I am not a shill, nor do I play one on TV."
Simply closing the door on a foot doesn't mean it's Tuesday, either - keep that in mind.
If she is truly out of appeals, it's time to start a donation site. I'd chip in $10 or so, as I'm sure thousands of others would. It'd be fun to keep a running count of the total donated in the unit of lost CD sales for the RIAA--show them that not only will their overly punitive tactics fail to stop people from filesharing, but they will continue to erode any goodwill the RIAA had in the first place.
Hell, have the FSF or someone run it and make it a charity for anyone who is being forced into bankruptcy by the big five--a respectable organization could easily handle the vetting process. Maybe the RIAA will pay attention when the lost sale counter hits 20,000 discs.
Your brain is not a computer.
"exactly analogous"... bullshit. In this case, there was no mention of modifying the GPL'd software prior to selling it. You tacked that on. And in the music sharing case, there were no sales - it was freely distributed. So that should be "take the linux (sic) or some other open source code and give it to people for free", which is also perfectly acceptable.
In addition, if you want to go with that angle (modified GPL software being resold), the analogy on the music side would be to copy someone else's music track, tweak it (maybe add an extra bass line), and resell it to others without compensating the original author. That would be far more offensive than letting someone download an mp3 from you.
If you're actually a lawyer, and that's what you call "intellectually honest", please stop assuming all lawyer jokes are guidelines for how to live.
The GPL is just a temporary measure to give Free Software a chance to survive until copyright on software is abolished. Once that happens, people can try to make Free Software proprietary all they want without any legal problems.
RMS is on record stating that the GPL "freedom" of requiring source code should be enshrined in law if copyright was to go away.
Doesn't your entire reply does pretty much nothing but reinforce my contempt? The promise of gratification in a short span of time is the relm of entertainment, not communication. It is by that very function that we get as much noise, as you say. We get competition for our attention and no actual valuable information. Yes, one must know his audiance, but not at the price of sacrificing the message. Otherwise, what's the point of communicating in the first place?
Yeah, his sig is certainly unfortunate.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
You're misunderstanding the basic premise. It doesn't matter what you subjectively believe is "more offensive" than something else. Copyright law gives the creator of a work significant control over how that work is used. In the case of the music industry, they want to use that control to make lots of money. In the case of RMS, he wants to use that control to make software more free. You're entitled to your opinion on which is the worthier cause, but both rely on the right of control granted by copyright law. RMS's rantings about the "four freedoms" that he thinks everybody should have doesn't change the fact. Enforcing the "four freedoms" would necessarily require a strong copyright law. He just wants to replace a copyright regime he doesn't like with one that he does like.
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
The GPL is just a temporary measure to give Free Software a chance to survive until copyright on software is abolished. Once that happens, people can try to make Free Software proprietary all they want without any legal problems.
Abolishing software copyrights would not preserve the "four freedoms." RMS wants a copyright law that favors his values. Which is fine. He's entitled to his opinion and so are you. But don't pretend that it's not still about control.
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
"It's REALLY hard to do! It's basically exhausting."
So true. Something I posted in 2001:
"License management tools: good, bad, or ugly?"
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/gnu.misc.discuss/30tDY9VE92Y
"My question is: should software tools, protocols, and standards play a role in easing this required "due diligence" license management work (at least as far as copyright alone is concerned)?"
Also, where I hypothesized millions of US citizens arrested over copyright, same as now for marijuana: http://www.pdfernhout.net/microslaw.html
I'm thinking more and more that it is just not possible for anyone to really prove they have a legal right to have proprietary content on some specific device when you look really hard at it. Bills of sale might be forged, to begin with, so what does showing one prove? And if you not going to jail depends on some third party verifying something over and over, good luck. And many proprietary licenses are violated often if you have too many copies (including on backup media), so you really can never 100% prove you have right to the software on a device because there might be copies elsewhere, and how do you prove you don't have extra copies somewhere? A very problematical situation if someone really pushes things...
Also, border searches now occur a hundred miles or so inside the actual US border, so most US Americans (who are mostly bi-coastal) can in theory be searched at any time this way by warrant-less border-related searches.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_search_exception
Since, as above, people can't really prove they have legal access to anything they paid for, that makes almost everyone in the USA effectively a felon who can be arrested tomorrow by the border police if someone with some power wants to push the point. So, using only freely-licensed information might just become the safest option, even if that might also not be good enough (how do you known a statement about something being under a free license is really valid?). We'll see how all this "artificial scarcity" plays out...
http://www.artificialscarcity.com/
This book has a section on why goods with low incremental costs for distribution should be free according to the authors:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spirit_Level:_Why_More_Equal_Societies_Almost_Always_Do_Better
A "basic income" could fund creators rather than copyright monopolies...
http://www.basicincome.org/bien/
http://www.livableincome.org/amillionairegli.htm
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Of course, the statutory damages are far too high to provide anything like justice; the amount should be based on actual damages.
Agreed
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Haven't seen you around in a while. You probably have been, but I haven't seen you much.
Nice reply, with a lot of work in it.
Unfortunately you have laid out most of the remainder of the premise, leaving me for one to just hope that someday some watershed event occurs that flips the whole thing around. Even the IRS doesn't usually play too far off the known track. Sure the tax code is a nightmare, but if you follow it right, the IRS stays happy.
These bubbling enforcement mentalities are seriously threatening to become guilty until proven innocent. Someone posted as a reply to me one level up "that's not traditionally American". Unfortunately, it might become the New America if we don't watch out, and get a couple big pieces of luck.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
She deserves to pay. The RIAA, however, does not deserve to collect.
Lying in court was an affront to the jurisdiction of the court, not to the RIAA.
Good job dancing around issues.
The law you refer to has more severe penalties for violations where one makes a copy of a copyrighted work, modifies it, and then proceeds to sell it as their own as opposed to making a copy (downloading) for personal use only (no redistribution). That is what I referred to when I stated "more offensive". It wasn't my personal moral judgement of the matter, though I do agree that one is worse than the other. And as such, the original premise is still not "exactly analogous", and is off by a long shot.
Not sure what RMS has to do with this. He's a person, not the law, nor the GPL, nor was he mentioned by the GP's, and he has no say over the multitudes that are choosing to use the GPL.
Adding personal attacks on an unrelated issue does not change the fact that the basic premise of "why not take the linux or some other open source code and sell it without giving back to the community?" is still perfectly legit, accepted, and encouraged.