If you read the AT&T writeup on what to do with annoying calls here http://contact.bellsouth.com/acc/ you will see that every branch of this decision tree ends with "you should change your phone number", "you should notify FCC or authorities" or "it may be annoying, but it is probably completely legal and we can do any thing about it".
This connotes that the decision was made by AT&T to basically tell it's customers, "it's your problem, not ours".
Exactly. Comcast is doing this without disclosing it. It is selling a product and not disclosing it's limitations to the buyer, while still claiming it is 'unlimited'. As a Comcast customer (no other viable choice), I feel that they can throttle all they want, but MUST tell me exactly what is limited (BT, FTP?, Netflix?, iTunes?) so that I can make an informed decision if I want to keep this service. Right now I can only speculate what is limited.
Who knows, maybe they are selectively limiting bandwidth to particular sites, thus making them look bad. Maybe it's other on demand movie sites, which would be a REALLY shifty competitive practice, as they cant seem to offer a decent on demand movie product themselves.
Bottom line, they must disclose the particulars of their filtering/shaping to their customers.
Wow, now that I've seen the abstracts it makes me think that this is all that Ms. Rosenthal of The New Your Times read of these studies before she wrote this article.
I want to second the comment to which I replied. The reporter indiscriminately uses the term 'biofuel' thus lumping biodiesel into these studies, which seem to only be about ethanol. Don't forget that the best way to get biodiesel would still involve algae grown using municipal waste streams for fertilizer. These won't necessarily need to displace arable cropland.
Very misleading explanation of the studies. And I didn't see any references to the studies in the article.
What should be the basic objective of Copyright? And what should the government use it's money to enforce.
1 Protect your work from being appropriated as someone else's work? Check.
2 Keep others from profiting off of your work without sending you a royalty? Check.
3 Make sure that legit purchasers of your works can't give them away to others for free - indefinitely? Um . . .
I'm fine with 1 and 2, but I really don't think it's worth our country's taxes to use them to stop people from sharing. 3 was never on the radar until p2p. It's not like it's misrepresenting or actually making money off of giving away a copy. Think of it as a sale for $0. Which the royalty cut should be $0. It's not being stolen, it's just not being earned.
The only lost money, is the large amounts of tax money spent to enforce 3, and keeping this bad business model alive. And mostly for the sake of middle-men (not for the consumer or the creator of such content).
My point? don't protect middle-men (or women).
So by your stupid syllogism, either we should clean up rap music, and I guess the entire population of disaffected youth and corrupt businesses behind it. Or we should have more of this kind of talk in our news and op/ed.
God forbid the jackass host of the radio show gets fired!
This isn't a first amendment problem, getting called basically a traitor for speaking out against an incompetent administration is a first amendment problem. People attributing PC watchdogs to the first amendment are dumbing the first amendment down. A LOT! This is someone getting fire from his job for being a jackass in a broadcast, and is more than old enough to know better. Sure he's been a jackass in the past, and other people are jackasses too. But why should that exonerate him.
Besides, from what I heard the decision to fire him was ultimately down to many other employees at MSNBC and CBS that appealed to management that they didn't want to work at a place that catered to a jackass. So basically it was a him, or us type of thing.
BTW - I don't pay attention to Imus or college basketball, and I don't really care about Imus or college basketball.
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If you read the AT&T writeup on what to do with annoying calls here http://contact.bellsouth.com/acc/ you will see that every branch of this decision tree ends with "you should change your phone number", "you should notify FCC or authorities" or "it may be annoying, but it is probably completely legal and we can do any thing about it". This connotes that the decision was made by AT&T to basically tell it's customers, "it's your problem, not ours".
Exactly. Comcast is doing this without disclosing it. It is selling a product and not disclosing it's limitations to the buyer, while still claiming it is 'unlimited'. As a Comcast customer (no other viable choice), I feel that they can throttle all they want, but MUST tell me exactly what is limited (BT, FTP?, Netflix?, iTunes?) so that I can make an informed decision if I want to keep this service. Right now I can only speculate what is limited.
Who knows, maybe they are selectively limiting bandwidth to particular sites, thus making them look bad. Maybe it's other on demand movie sites, which would be a REALLY shifty competitive practice, as they cant seem to offer a decent on demand movie product themselves.
Bottom line, they must disclose the particulars of their filtering/shaping to their customers.
Wow, now that I've seen the abstracts it makes me think that this is all that Ms. Rosenthal of The New Your Times read of these studies before she wrote this article.
I want to second the comment to which I replied. The reporter indiscriminately uses the term 'biofuel' thus lumping biodiesel into these studies, which seem to only be about ethanol. Don't forget that the best way to get biodiesel would still involve algae grown using municipal waste streams for fertilizer. These won't necessarily need to displace arable cropland. Very misleading explanation of the studies. And I didn't see any references to the studies in the article.
What should be the basic objective of Copyright? And what should the government use it's money to enforce. 1 Protect your work from being appropriated as someone else's work? Check. 2 Keep others from profiting off of your work without sending you a royalty? Check. 3 Make sure that legit purchasers of your works can't give them away to others for free - indefinitely? Um . . . I'm fine with 1 and 2, but I really don't think it's worth our country's taxes to use them to stop people from sharing. 3 was never on the radar until p2p. It's not like it's misrepresenting or actually making money off of giving away a copy. Think of it as a sale for $0. Which the royalty cut should be $0. It's not being stolen, it's just not being earned. The only lost money, is the large amounts of tax money spent to enforce 3, and keeping this bad business model alive. And mostly for the sake of middle-men (not for the consumer or the creator of such content). My point? don't protect middle-men (or women).
So by your stupid syllogism, either we should clean up rap music, and I guess the entire population of disaffected youth and corrupt businesses behind it. Or we should have more of this kind of talk in our news and op/ed. God forbid the jackass host of the radio show gets fired! This isn't a first amendment problem, getting called basically a traitor for speaking out against an incompetent administration is a first amendment problem. People attributing PC watchdogs to the first amendment are dumbing the first amendment down. A LOT! This is someone getting fire from his job for being a jackass in a broadcast, and is more than old enough to know better. Sure he's been a jackass in the past, and other people are jackasses too. But why should that exonerate him. Besides, from what I heard the decision to fire him was ultimately down to many other employees at MSNBC and CBS that appealed to management that they didn't want to work at a place that catered to a jackass. So basically it was a him, or us type of thing. BTW - I don't pay attention to Imus or college basketball, and I don't really care about Imus or college basketball.
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