If the babysitter doesn't shoot up in front of the kids, who cares? By the same token, it's nobody's business what I do for fun, least of all my boss'. If the babysitter does drugs and has such a huge lack of judgment that he/she would put videos of it up on the net, I'd consider that grounds for firing. Not so much because of the drugs, but because of the fact that he/she shows such horrible judgment.
a) publicly companies can't have anykind of idelogoue because it would distance them from potential customers b) but they can still demand it from their employees and even refuse to work with employees they disagree with their ideology And you still haven't offered any kind of explanation of how your desired system could possibly work without causing the kinds of problems he notes. I was hoping to see some sort of idea at least...
What has always bothered my about that is we need lawyers just to make sense of our laws. How do I, as a soldier, know if some action is illegal? I don't know enough about the training that soldiers receive to determine whether they should know a legal order from an illegal one. In this case though, we're not even talking about something as complex as a soldier in the field having to make a life-or-death decision about whether to obey an order or not. We're talking about telecom companies with big legal departments that can advise them of whether something is legal or not. If it was a legal request, it should have come with a warrant, or at least with a citation of the relevant laws that allow them to tap before obtaining a warrant, and the warrant should have been forthcoming within a couple of days.
That is not really a request. It is a demand (albeit a polite demand) from someone who has the power and inclination to hurt you if you refuse. Whether you're a soldier or a civilian, illegal orders are still illegal. You are not supposed to obey them, and you can and should be held accountable if you do.
But your arrogance, and willingness to ascribe the basest of motives and lack of ability to all who oppose you reveals you to be the very kind of authoritarian you purport to hate. You don't want freedom for individuals, you want everyone to do what you say without question. May the mods shower you with +1 Insightfuls.
Not everyone is going to agree with everyone else, but if there is going to be any progress there can't be two parties playing hard line politics. Maybe not, but it would be nice if at least one party would uphold the Constitution. Isn't that kind of the bare minimum that elected representatives are supposed to do?
I didn't like the way that enemies scaled in Oblivion, making me feel like I was really on a pointless levelling treadmill. I really felt a sense of growing more powerful with Mass Effect. Oblivion's story never really grabbed me, the Mass Effect story was a lot more interesting and well-told, for my money. After playing for a couple of days, I truly despised Oblivion's level-scaling. We were not alone in that, as that was one of the first things that mods were created to fix. Well, that and the horrible xboxy interface. Mass Effect definitely does a better job of storytelling than Oblivion.
But the thing I hated most about Oblivion was the impossibly wide scope of the world. It took too long to get anywhere initially, and it was too easy to get side-tracked. Seriously, in hour two of Oblivion I was being given quests on the complete opposite side of the game world, in the complete opposite direction from the main storyline. Why?? How does that add to the game?? The world isn't very big in the game. In fact, that's been one of the big complaints that a lot of people have had, and there are several mods in the works that expand the size quite a bit, the equivalent of adding new countries to the map. Given that you can fast-travel to any major city and any place that you've already been, I don't think it ever takes me more than a few minutes to get anywhere. Maybe a bit longer if I'm being stealthy about it.
Without it, people like me play the game for a couple hours, get overwhelmed with too many choices and not enough tools to track them, and then leave and never come back. I guess this is just a personal preference thing, as many gamers don't like to be lead from one area to the next and spoon-fed quests along the way. In fact many of the mods for Oblivion remove the map markers that guide you to the next objective and make you rely on your journal notes to figure out where you're supposed to go. I found it quite easy to follow the quests in Oblivion. You just select a quest in your journal and it tells you what to do and puts a marker on your map showing you exactly where you need to go. Seems simple to me. Maybe even a little too simple.
Personally, the mod I'm looking forward to is called Mass Effect 2. If I were giving notes to Bioware, I'd say convince Microsoft to let you cache to disk on those systems that have a hard drive, make the cover system work like the one in RB6: Vegas, overhaul the inventory system, but otherwise just open up another 3rd of the galaxy for me to explore and fill it with new content. Yeah, I really can't believe they didn't let the game use the hard drive if it is present. That is the most retarded decision ever. I'm thinking that Mass Effect 2 might be the game that ME1 was supposed to be. Maybe once they've gotten through most of the technical details and got a lot of the game-world resources created, they can focus on filling in all the stuff that was left out and fix all the crap that they should've fixed to begin with like the interface. I would love to see it modded on the PC though. That could turn into something really cool.
I never said it was. My point was that the effect on the market of creating your own MP3s has changed because a lot more vendors are selling MP3s. Because the effect on the market has changed, which is one of the four factors that are relevant for judging fair use, it's legitimate to question whether such an act remains fair use. The courts have already ruled that copyright covers the work, not the specific format of the work, which is why it is legal to space-shift and convert things from one format to another for personal use. The fact that works can be sold in more than one format doesn't matter.
I'm not arguing that it isn't fair use, you asked why it's their business and I said why. No, you said that there is a law that makes it their business when someone copies something that they own the copyright to, but that's really not true. It's only their business if that copying is not covered by fair use, which such things as ripping and space-shifting clearly are.
I would have to disagree...uncovering some part of the game universe via the codex, going on varied side quests, and just simply discovering more of the main plotline kept it interesting for me from the start right up until the credits began to roll. Except that all the sidequests are basically the same thing. So are all the guns and outfits. The enemies are generally morons. The MAKO vehicle is a pain. If it wasn't for the graphics, music and dialog, the game wouldn't be worth playing. It's just really lacking in the gameplay department.
Mass Effect introduced a new dialog system to the new standard for action-RPG's that let the game unfold like a movie. Unfortunately that wasn't enough to save the game from getting boring and repetitive very quickly. It's pretty to look at, but the gameplay can't even match Oblivion, and even Oblivion needed a major overhaul to actually have any staying power. Too bad we can't mod Mass Effect, it has some very good potential.
What you said had no relation to what I said. Look, I'm not talking about what you think is right. I'm talking about how fair use is judged. I haven't heard of any case that considers CD versions of an album to be a different market than MP3 versions of an album. Have you?
No, the CD and the MP3 are both derivative works of the master recording. They are not the same thing. In the most technical sense, you're right. However, the RIAA would have to be pretty dumb to make that case as it could destroy the market for CDs if people find that they're no longer allowed to rip them. Then MP3s would be the only thing worth buying.
It is their business because the government passed a law saying that it is their business when somebody copies things they hold the copyright to. Reading through this Recording Industry vs. Diamond Multimedia (paragraph 32 specifically), it would seem that space-shifting has been deemed by the courts to be a perfectly legal, noncommercial use of a work. I'm sure that there is dispute over it, but that's what the courts have said, and upheld except in cases like Napster where distribution was occuring.
I like your style of not only completely missing the point, but actually getting it backwards. You also might want to look into the word "and" and its logical implications. Sounds like he got it exactly right. The statement was:
Once Defendant converted Plaintiffs' recording into the compressed.mp3 format and they are in his shared folder , they are no longer the authorized copies distributed by Plaintiffs. They are combining the act of ripping the CD tracks to MP3s with putting them in the shared folder and declaring that that makes them unauthorized. This is bullshit because it doesn't actually answer the judges question, but rather re-frames it in a way that tries to make it seem like they are giving an answer, but they are adding assumptions to the question. They are saying that the files are unauthorized due to where they were residing on the defendant's hard drive, rather than because they were ripped from CD.
The judge asked them if the copies on the computer were unauthorized copies. They said yes. He wasn't asking whether what was done with the copies was unauthorized. He was asking whether the making of the copies was unauthorized. (The reason he was asking that was that the Hotaling case has been distinguished on the ground that the copies allegedly being distributed were admittedly illegal copies. UNLIKE the copies in this case, which were all authorized copies.). While the RIAA is undoubtedly trying not to give a straight answer, the judge should parse this out and ask them specifically which part they are claiming was unauthorized. They combined the act of ripping from the CD with putting the files into the shared folder in their answer, and do not specify which part is unauthorized. Am I authorized to rip the files if they don't go into my shared folder? That's what the judge should make them answer.
Of course in this case, they know that he had the files in his shared folder and that they were available to others. They don't seem to know if they were actually shared with anyone aside from their investigators, so they don't know how many copies might have been distributed. But apparently they don't need to know that due to a precedent set in another case. At least that's what I got from reading through those last few pages. IANAL though, so I could be misunderstanding it.
They seem to be saying that putting rips in folder a is legal but putting them in folder b is not. Pointing a loaded gun at someone is not murder. It's not copyright infringement unless they can prove they were shared. Actually what they are saying is that by putting them in his Kazaa shared folder, he was offering them up for distribution, and according to precedent set in another case, this is equivalent to actual distribution. Blame the court that set the precedent I guess, and hope it gets appealed and overturned.
You could argue that the massive rise in services that sell authorised copies in MP3 format means that ripping, which used to have virtually no effect on the market, now has a substantial effect on the market, merely because a substantial part of the market is now comprised of selling MP3s. Only if you consider forcing users to purchase the same works again in a different format, even though it is trivial for them to convert them themselves, to be a legitimate and legal stance for the industry to take. Look, they can sell me a work in CD format, or they can sell me a work in MP3 format. Either way I have purchased the work and the artist has been compensated (probably laughably so, but that's the industry's fault). How is it any business of theirs whether I burn those MP3s to a CD to listen to in my car, or transfer them to my iPod to take to the gym? If they want to make me purchase a separate copy of a work for every place I want to listen to it, then they're even more insane than I thought.
First statement (emphasis mine):
Once Defendant converted Plaintiffs' recording into the compressed.mp3 format and they are in his shared folder, they are no longer the authorized copies distributed by Plaintiffs. Second statement:
Moreover, Defendant had no authorization to distribute Plaintiffs' copyrighted recordings from his KaZaA shared folder. Now it seems that both statements include the issue of sharing the files, so it could be assumed that that is what they are taking issue with rather than the ripping of the tracks themselves. They do throw a lot of shady crap into their claims too though.
Indeed, at the time Plaintiffs' investigators detected Defendant's infringement in this case, there were "2,282,954 users online, sharing 292,532,420 files." How that has any real bearing on the case is a mystery to me. Seems like they just wanted to throw out some big numbers to it seem that they are suffering hugely because of the defendant's actions. I would think that a more accurate interpretation of those numbers would be that the files shared by the defendant were more of a needle in a haystack than anything else.
If I buy a book and put it on a shelf in my home, and the shelf is labeled "shared", it that copy of the book now unauthorized? I mean, everyone in my house can read it. He put it in his Kazaa shared folder which makes it accessible to everyone that uses Kazaa. How is your example even remotely similar?
Basing the award upon the damage is not the same as making it the same as the damage. Look up "punitive damages" for more information. The only problem with that theory is that they never showed what the actual damages were. Their claims are nothing more than a wild-ass guess. That the jury bought it just shows that her lawyer sucked compared to the RIAA lawyers. Not terribly surprising really.
I have a netflix subscription, and it hasn't stopped me from going to the theater. What it has done is stop me from going to blockbuster (or jumping on thepiratebay). Seconded.
That single song - worth 99 cents on iTunes - may have found its way to 2,000 other PCs. It's a real shame then they didn't prove that it found its way anywhere at all. We should just assume that huge damage was caused even though there's no evidence of it? Apparently the government believes we should. Well, except for our President of course. He thinks sentences are too tough, at least when they apply to his friends.
Its fairly common for juries to award an estimate of possible damages when actual losses are disputed. In this case the jury obviously thought there was some damage done to the copyright owners. You speak as if the jury actually had a choice. With all the instructions they are usually given, they often have little if any choice between letting the person off completely or throwing the Library of Congress at them. I don't know what the judge's instructions to them were, or why, but I think that you're assuming too much. Then there's the fact that the RIAA wasn't able to prove any damage at all, only the possibility that there could have been damage. In light of that, it would seem that the courts should show a bit of skepticism regarding the very large amounts that the plaintiffs are after.
I played the first title on the PS2. The controls were great, I could circle strafe and everything.
I tried Invisible War on the Xbox. The look stick was backward from the PS2 layout, and I couldn't even move well enough to get out of my bedroom. Never tried it again. Actually, DXIW was one of the first major tragedies brought on by the attempt to develop console games while simultaneously porting to the PC. You think the interface was bad on the console? You should've tried the PC, it's like they didn't even attempt to make it work there. That along with the tiny levels and several other bad design decisions were responsible for the dumbing-down of the game and the beginning of the consolitis that we started seeing all over the place.
It is possible that what this Discovery group did was illegal. Sticking a different narrative on a set of pictures is not illegal. Now, Publishing the new work and saying that the pictures were the creation of the new author would be wrong. It seems quite likely that the use of the video along with the removal of original credits and the replacement of the narrative would be considered a derivative work, and a violation of the original creators' copyright.
So... is Firefox secure, or does it still have the "I'm going to ask you to do something stupid in 10 seconds" countdown when you click on an install link for an XPI file? Nope! Now it has the "I'm going to ask you to do something stupid in 3 seconds" countdown! Much faster!
Every single officer* who joins the Navy wants to be a pilot. In the past, many smart people with less-than-perfect vision joined the Navy and many were sent to submarines. Now, all the smart ones get surgery and become pilots. It almost makes me cry to remember the type of people who now make "nuclear officers". Interesting theory. Surprisingly enough though, that's almost what happened to me. I was in AF JROTC and wanted to be a pilot. Couldn't be one because my eyesight kinda sucked. Scored pretty high on the ASVAB though, so the navy was all over me for years even after I graduated. They wanted me to be on a sub. I really didn't want to be on a sub... or a ship for that matter. Eventually they got the point and left me alone.
Slashdot Mirror
a) publicly companies can't have anykind of idelogoue because it would distance them from potential customers
b) but they can still demand it from their employees and even refuse to work with employees they disagree with their ideology And you still haven't offered any kind of explanation of how your desired system could possibly work without causing the kinds of problems he notes. I was hoping to see some sort of idea at least...
Of course in this case, they know that he had the files in his shared folder and that they were available to others. They don't seem to know if they were actually shared with anyone aside from their investigators, so they don't know how many copies might have been distributed. But apparently they don't need to know that due to a precedent set in another case. At least that's what I got from reading through those last few pages. IANAL though, so I could be misunderstanding it.
I tried Invisible War on the Xbox. The look stick was backward from the PS2 layout, and I couldn't even move well enough to get out of my bedroom. Never tried it again. Actually, DXIW was one of the first major tragedies brought on by the attempt to develop console games while simultaneously porting to the PC. You think the interface was bad on the console? You should've tried the PC, it's like they didn't even attempt to make it work there. That along with the tiny levels and several other bad design decisions were responsible for the dumbing-down of the game and the beginning of the consolitis that we started seeing all over the place.