... without proper attribution. The original author was Mike Masnick, to give credit where it is due. Interestingly, the link in the Techdirt story which pointed to the original AP story was changed in the Slashdot submission - following that link points back to the original version of itself. I suppose that's a form of indirect attribution, but still sloppy. And the reader has to click twice to get to the original news story. A tiny bit of editorial review would have been helpful.
You and I disagree on what information is considered important (not that I think a footprint should be dignified with the term "information"). The knowledge of how to get to the moon and back in the first place - *that* is information worth preserving, and would be more useful than a footprint in the dust.
I'm not worried. Until they figure out how to get around my ability to not purchase their product, they can try anything they want. My money will not leave my wallet until I find the terms of the purchase acceptable. Otherwise I can buy another game from a better publisher, buy a book and read it, take a walk, go kayaking etc. There are plenty of alternatives to buying a game. Even the "must play" games. Bioshock? Never bought it, never played it, never downloaded. Don't miss it.
I've also been in groups where you are crucified for uttering something that isn't completely accurate. This environment simply leads to a large amount of CYA, because once a person commits to the decision, he then MUST follow through, even if later he realizes it wasn't the best choice, because the environment he's working in is completely unforgiving. Basically if he admits there was a better option, it costs him his job. It's best to not have that type of fear, because no matter how hard you are on people, they will still make mistakes, even the brilliant ones.
Word.
One the big ephiphanies they pushed people to have in graduate school was exactly this. The incoming students invariably thought they had to know everything, or at least to appear so. The first big milestone in their development was to get them (us, actually) to realize that it was entirely ok to say "I don't know" or "I don't understand". In fact it was expected and considered much more acceptable than to be caught trying to bluff (or worse, B.S.) one's way through a topic. This approach was very effective because rather than having people afraid to admit they didn't know something, it gave them the opportunity to actually learn things with greater efficiency and to greater depth. A wonderful lesson to learn.
The worst price? FREE. Why? Because psychologically when someone sees something that is FREE, they assume that it has no value. Have a yard sale? Don't mark anything FREE, otherwise people will look at it and assume it's junk.
You're correct, but the reason you give is perhaps too simplistic. Free or not, it's pretty easy to recognize whether an object is truly junk, so I doubt that's the real reason people find "free" unappealing. It seems to be part of human nature with regard to our sense of "fairness" that a mutually acceptable exchange is regarded a better outcome than a one-sided exchange where one party has all the advantage. An actual exchange also avoids incurring the sense of obligation that comes with the recieving of a gift. And don't discount the appeal of "getting a bargain", which people also enjoy quite a lot.
I think "it's free so it must be junk" is a minor player in the list of reasons for finding free unappealing.
(As an aside, I suspect that the anonymity that comes with online filesharing is a big part of the appeal, since it allows people to avoid incurring obligation. Contrast that with recieving a free album or movie from a smiling salesman at a store, a known member of your community or a family member. Too much free stuff and the sense of obligation starts to build.)
No it's not. It was an anecdotal example about how humans percieve value based on actual experience and relevant to the key point of the original subject ("Expectation of Value"). It just happened to be about a car.
Don't kid yourselves: if this movie tanks, then Trek is dead forever. So you better pray this does VERY well and makes 100's of millions so Paramount doesn't declare it dead forever.
Personally, I don't give a crap whether Paramount declares it dead or alive. They had 40 years to play with the concept and blew goats for more years than not. If people are looking for a real reason to justify shorter periods of "intellectual property" protection this is it. Rather than following the blind assumption that the "rights holders" somehow have a superior vision and a greater ability to execute on that vision, the playing field should at some point be open to those who care more about the material rather than those who merely hope to turn a buck from those nerdy fans.
I'd love to see what the Star Trek: Phase II (http://www.startreknewvoyages.com/) could accomplish if they weren't crippled by the need to remain 'non-commercial' as a form of 'respect for the rightsholders'. They should be able to raise capital from investors, present the work in venues and forms which might bring a profit rather than just offer it for free on the internet, and heck, even have a budget that could pay for professional acting talent rather than relying on talented volunteers. I bet that they could produce work that would rival or surpass that produced by the "rights holders" without the compromises that come from either not understanding the material or the desire to jazz things up to make it more "accessible".
In a world with sane intellectual property laws, Paramounts theoretical failure would herald the beginning of opportunities for others to interpret rather than a guarantee of being "dead forever".
But if people understand that stealing is wrong, then the presence of the sign doesn't excuse the behavior. As my mother used to say, if your friends tell you to jump of a cliff, would you do it?
Putting a sign up that says "Free money!!!" and then jailing people for taking it - that's wrong. Hmm. Maybe that's the essence of why seeding torrents with marked files is wrong. It's not "steal these files", it's "hey! free music!".
it's dangerous to let one's hatred of their philosophy and tactics cloud one's thinking.
But I can't see why everyone else can't just kick back, relax, and hate the RIAA as much as it deserves to be hated.
Occupational hazard (trained scientist). Kicking back and hating indiscriminately goes against the grain. Hate if you must, but hate the right thing. I can't hate the desire to protect one's interests. I can hate the tactics used to achieve this protection, particularly when other's rights are violated in the process.
What basis do you have for suggesting that their motivation for flooding the internet with their own mp3's in slightly corrupted format is "to better detect... violations"?
I'm projecting myself into the situation, so no real basis. However, I can understand the motivation based on how I might act when something that I view as rightfully mine is threatened. Whether we agree or not, the people/groups who own the 'rights' to the content are acting out of a sense of ownership and the protection thereof. I have no problem with people protecting what is theirs - my problem is how far they go and how many rights of others they violate in order to achieve that protection.
I can believe my neighbor is stealing my lawn equipment, for example, and mark it (etching a serial number) so I can prove it's mine when it's found in the neighbors house. But I can't go into his house and search for my stuff because I think he might have taken something. I certainly can't loan him something that's marked and then accuse him of stealing it just because it's in his possession. Maybe the latter is how you're viewing the "flooding the internet". Willfully granting someone possession of something then accusing them of stealing it is certainly wrong.
The **AA (or those they represent) probably view putting a marked file on a torrent more like leaving the mower in the yard rather than locking it in the shed. Taking it is still wrong even if it's easy. Maybe you're thinking of it more as taking it to the lot where the mower thieves hang out and hoping someone takes it.
What I'm trying to say is that I view things like DRM that reach into my personal space and attempt to control it as wrong, but I can't quite find as much fault with producing marked files for people to take then going after people because they actually took the bait.
Ah. Thank you. "Stooping low" was more subtle than I thought. (No, I'm not naive enough to be surprised. Since I don't conduct myself in similar fashion, sometimes I forget how skilled vile people can be.)
It's not the furnishing of "marked" files that's necessarily wrong. If I understand correctly, the "lowness" is using (questionably) legitimate data to generate inaccurate, speculative and unjustifiable claims in order to paint the accused in the worst possible light, regardless of the truth. That's pretty low.
IMO, Harry Frankfurter's essays ("On Bullshit" and "On Truth") should be mandatory reading for anyone working in the legal system or reporting on what's happening there.
First: Justifiably poor wording on my part - "acquiring". Add "and/or reproducing and/or distributing" to the original post.
Second: "And MediaSentry provided it knowing exactly what would happen to it, which means that they either actively induced copyright infringement"
I don't quite buy that. Let's try another analogy:
An organization contracts to use a non-secured place like a hotel conference room to hold private meetings, lunch provided. The rooms aren't secured by armed guards or somesuch thing, but the conference rooms are clearly marked with signs in multiple languages reading something like "This room is reserved for the use of X from time a to time b on date c. The lunches on the table are the property of X and are not for public consumption. Please don't take these lunches." When X comes to have their meeting, they find that 1/2 the lunches are gone, so someone is taking them. They put more lunches out the next day, but "mark" them in some way (laced with a laxative or an invisible, harmless dye that is visible under UV light). They monitor the bathrooms for people who run there in the afternoon (laxative) or set up a UV bulb at the hotel exit (harmless dye) to see who might be marked, then accuse those folks of taking the lunches. Would you say they "actively induced lunch theft"? Or did they recognize that theft was taking place and merely found a way to detect it?
I have no love for the **AA, but it's dangerous to let one's hatred of their philosophy and tactics cloud one's thinking. If they believe people are illegally aquiring/reproducing/distributing their content in violation of the law, then producing 'marked' versions of their *own* content to better detect those violations seems justified, even if their ultimate goal (fleecing their customers and their artists for every dime they can get) is considered unethical.
Disclaimer: I fully support NYCL's efforts to bring some balance to the tug-of-war between content producers who want maximal control of how people can acquire and use said content and the content recipients who want to be more than just a goose that lays golden eggs for the benefit of the former. Consider this post a devil's advocate response.
How exactly is seeding the internet with slightly corrupted mp3 files wrong, if (according to current laws) acquiring content without paying for it is considered illegal and those files are not available through "legal" channels? This particular example doesn't seem to be that different from marking money in a vault as a means of catching bank robbers.
I suppose if the police arrested everyone in possession of a marked bill this would be wrong (given that changing hands is the very essence of the utility of money), but otherwise this seems reasonable. One could argue entrapment, I suppose.
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you would have provided a better example of stooping low given time.
... If you cannot convince your boss to do otherwise...
And how does one do that without gathering information? Assume the lotus position, levitate above the floor and extract information from the Universal Mind?
Maybe I'm old-school, but I always made sure I did my research before trying to convince someone that a technical argument had merit, rather than just hoping that anecdotal evidence based on personal experience was enough.
Whether you personally are tired of these posts or not, I applaud people who exercise due diligence when faced with a problem. One could question whether Slashdot is the best place to seek answers, but there is no evidence that a poster is relying exclusively on Slashdot for information. A good researcher casts a wide net, and Slashdot is a reasonable source to include.
I do agree with you on one point. *After* the proper research is done, if the argument is rejected by the boss, even in the face of sound evidence, then seeking work elsewhere is excellent advice.
Slashdot Mirror
... without proper attribution. The original author was Mike Masnick, to give credit where it is due. Interestingly, the link in the Techdirt story which pointed to the original AP story was changed in the Slashdot submission - following that link points back to the original version of itself. I suppose that's a form of indirect attribution, but still sloppy. And the reader has to click twice to get to the original news story. A tiny bit of editorial review would have been helpful.
You and I disagree on what information is considered important (not that I think a footprint should be dignified with the term "information"). The knowledge of how to get to the moon and back in the first place - *that* is information worth preserving, and would be more useful than a footprint in the dust.
I'm not worried. Until they figure out how to get around my ability to not purchase their product, they can try anything they want. My money will not leave my wallet until I find the terms of the purchase acceptable. Otherwise I can buy another game from a better publisher, buy a book and read it, take a walk, go kayaking etc. There are plenty of alternatives to buying a game. Even the "must play" games. Bioshock? Never bought it, never played it, never downloaded. Don't miss it.
In that case the future of gaming will be that I won't buy it unless the price is acceptable for a non-resellable one time download.
By the way all world religions offer unsubstantiated and unverifiable answers to these questions, but are by no means the only answers one can give.
There. Fixed that for you.
I've also been in groups where you are crucified for uttering something that isn't completely accurate. This environment simply leads to a large amount of CYA, because once a person commits to the decision, he then MUST follow through, even if later he realizes it wasn't the best choice, because the environment he's working in is completely unforgiving. Basically if he admits there was a better option, it costs him his job. It's best to not have that type of fear, because no matter how hard you are on people, they will still make mistakes, even the brilliant ones.
Word.
One the big ephiphanies they pushed people to have in graduate school was exactly this. The incoming students invariably thought they had to know everything, or at least to appear so. The first big milestone in their development was to get them (us, actually) to realize that it was entirely ok to say "I don't know" or "I don't understand". In fact it was expected and considered much more acceptable than to be caught trying to bluff (or worse, B.S.) one's way through a topic. This approach was very effective because rather than having people afraid to admit they didn't know something, it gave them the opportunity to actually learn things with greater efficiency and to greater depth. A wonderful lesson to learn.
Yup. Ignorance is only ignorance if it is dispellable. Stupidity is forever.
In a better world, we would not need to make those choices, since anyone willing to take the job would do the best for all concerned.
For want of modpoints, the kingdom was lost.
Brilliant, brilliant. Mod this up Insightful, please.
Factor in the tendency of human beings to make non-rational choices and it makes a lot more sense.
The worst price? FREE. Why? Because psychologically when someone sees something that is FREE, they assume that it has no value. Have a yard sale? Don't mark anything FREE, otherwise people will look at it and assume it's junk.
You're correct, but the reason you give is perhaps too simplistic. Free or not, it's pretty easy to recognize whether an object is truly junk, so I doubt that's the real reason people find "free" unappealing. It seems to be part of human nature with regard to our sense of "fairness" that a mutually acceptable exchange is regarded a better outcome than a one-sided exchange where one party has all the advantage. An actual exchange also avoids incurring the sense of obligation that comes with the recieving of a gift. And don't discount the appeal of "getting a bargain", which people also enjoy quite a lot.
I think "it's free so it must be junk" is a minor player in the list of reasons for finding free unappealing.
(As an aside, I suspect that the anonymity that comes with online filesharing is a big part of the appeal, since it allows people to avoid incurring obligation. Contrast that with recieving a free album or movie from a smiling salesman at a store, a known member of your community or a family member. Too much free stuff and the sense of obligation starts to build.)
another bad car analogy
No it's not. It was an anecdotal example about how humans percieve value based on actual experience and relevant to the key point of the original subject ("Expectation of Value"). It just happened to be about a car.
Don't kid yourselves: if this movie tanks, then Trek is dead forever. So you better pray this does VERY well and makes 100's of millions so Paramount doesn't declare it dead forever.
Personally, I don't give a crap whether Paramount declares it dead or alive. They had 40 years to play with the concept and blew goats for more years than not. If people are looking for a real reason to justify shorter periods of "intellectual property" protection this is it. Rather than following the blind assumption that the "rights holders" somehow have a superior vision and a greater ability to execute on that vision, the playing field should at some point be open to those who care more about the material rather than those who merely hope to turn a buck from those nerdy fans.
I'd love to see what the Star Trek: Phase II (http://www.startreknewvoyages.com/) could accomplish if they weren't crippled by the need to remain 'non-commercial' as a form of 'respect for the rightsholders'. They should be able to raise capital from investors, present the work in venues and forms which might bring a profit rather than just offer it for free on the internet, and heck, even have a budget that could pay for professional acting talent rather than relying on talented volunteers. I bet that they could produce work that would rival or surpass that produced by the "rights holders" without the compromises that come from either not understanding the material or the desire to jazz things up to make it more "accessible".
In a world with sane intellectual property laws, Paramounts theoretical failure would herald the beginning of opportunities for others to interpret rather than a guarantee of being "dead forever".
You are my new hero. Well said.
Star Wars deserves to be insulted. *glare*
I got it, Ray. Sometimes it's fun to play it straight when someone is joking sarcastically. My daughter *hates* when I do that. :-)
I got it, Ray. Sometimes it's fun to play it straight when someone is joking sarcastically. My daughter *hates* when I do that. :-)
But if people understand that stealing is wrong, then the presence of the sign doesn't excuse the behavior. As my mother used to say, if your friends tell you to jump of a cliff, would you do it?
Putting a sign up that says "Free money!!!" and then jailing people for taking it - that's wrong. Hmm. Maybe that's the essence of why seeding torrents with marked files is wrong. It's not "steal these files", it's "hey! free music!".
I think I'm getting Ray's point.
I have no love for the **AA, but
I can't help but smile each time I see that
Smiling right back at you.
it's dangerous to let one's hatred of their philosophy and tactics cloud one's thinking.
But I can't see why everyone else can't just kick back, relax, and hate the RIAA as much as it deserves to be hated.
Occupational hazard (trained scientist). Kicking back and hating indiscriminately goes against the grain. Hate if you must, but hate the right thing. I can't hate the desire to protect one's interests. I can hate the tactics used to achieve this protection, particularly when other's rights are violated in the process.
What basis do you have for suggesting that their motivation for flooding the internet with their own mp3's in slightly corrupted format is "to better detect ... violations"?
I'm projecting myself into the situation, so no real basis. However, I can understand the motivation based on how I might act when something that I view as rightfully mine is threatened. Whether we agree or not, the people/groups who own the 'rights' to the content are acting out of a sense of ownership and the protection thereof. I have no problem with people protecting what is theirs - my problem is how far they go and how many rights of others they violate in order to achieve that protection.
I can believe my neighbor is stealing my lawn equipment, for example, and mark it (etching a serial number) so I can prove it's mine when it's found in the neighbors house. But I can't go into his house and search for my stuff because I think he might have taken something. I certainly can't loan him something that's marked and then accuse him of stealing it just because it's in his possession. Maybe the latter is how you're viewing the "flooding the internet". Willfully granting someone possession of something then accusing them of stealing it is certainly wrong.
The **AA (or those they represent) probably view putting a marked file on a torrent more like leaving the mower in the yard rather than locking it in the shed. Taking it is still wrong even if it's easy. Maybe you're thinking of it more as taking it to the lot where the mower thieves hang out and hoping someone takes it.
What I'm trying to say is that I view things like DRM that reach into my personal space and attempt to control it as wrong, but I can't quite find as much fault with producing marked files for people to take then going after people because they actually took the bait.
Gaaah! That should have read "Harry Frankfurt's" (without the "er"). It's close to dinner time, so please forgive the hunger induced slip.
Ah. Thank you. "Stooping low" was more subtle than I thought. (No, I'm not naive enough to be surprised. Since I don't conduct myself in similar fashion, sometimes I forget how skilled vile people can be.)
It's not the furnishing of "marked" files that's necessarily wrong. If I understand correctly, the "lowness" is using (questionably) legitimate data to generate inaccurate, speculative and unjustifiable claims in order to paint the accused in the worst possible light, regardless of the truth. That's pretty low.
IMO, Harry Frankfurter's essays ("On Bullshit" and "On Truth") should be mandatory reading for anyone working in the legal system or reporting on what's happening there.
First: Justifiably poor wording on my part - "acquiring". Add "and/or reproducing and/or distributing" to the original post.
Second: "And MediaSentry provided it knowing exactly what would happen to it, which means that they either actively induced copyright infringement"
I don't quite buy that. Let's try another analogy:
An organization contracts to use a non-secured place like a hotel conference room to hold private meetings, lunch provided. The rooms aren't secured by armed guards or somesuch thing, but the conference rooms are clearly marked with signs in multiple languages reading something like "This room is reserved for the use of X from time a to time b on date c. The lunches on the table are the property of X and are not for public consumption. Please don't take these lunches." When X comes to have their meeting, they find that 1/2 the lunches are gone, so someone is taking them. They put more lunches out the next day, but "mark" them in some way (laced with a laxative or an invisible, harmless dye that is visible under UV light). They monitor the bathrooms for people who run there in the afternoon (laxative) or set up a UV bulb at the hotel exit (harmless dye) to see who might be marked, then accuse those folks of taking the lunches. Would you say they "actively induced lunch theft"? Or did they recognize that theft was taking place and merely found a way to detect it?
I have no love for the **AA, but it's dangerous to let one's hatred of their philosophy and tactics cloud one's thinking. If they believe people are illegally aquiring/reproducing/distributing their content in violation of the law, then producing 'marked' versions of their *own* content to better detect those violations seems justified, even if their ultimate goal (fleecing their customers and their artists for every dime they can get) is considered unethical.
Disclaimer: I fully support NYCL's efforts to bring some balance to the tug-of-war between content producers who want maximal control of how people can acquire and use said content and the content recipients who want to be more than just a goose that lays golden eggs for the benefit of the former. Consider this post a devil's advocate response.
How exactly is seeding the internet with slightly corrupted mp3 files wrong, if (according to current laws) acquiring content without paying for it is considered illegal and those files are not available through "legal" channels? This particular example doesn't seem to be that different from marking money in a vault as a means of catching bank robbers.
I suppose if the police arrested everyone in possession of a marked bill this would be wrong (given that changing hands is the very essence of the utility of money), but otherwise this seems reasonable. One could argue entrapment, I suppose.
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you would have provided a better example of stooping low given time.
I'm just overjoyed that someone on the internet used "loose" correctly.
... If you cannot convince your boss to do otherwise ...
And how does one do that without gathering information? Assume the lotus position, levitate above the floor and extract information from the Universal Mind?
Maybe I'm old-school, but I always made sure I did my research before trying to convince someone that a technical argument had merit, rather than just hoping that anecdotal evidence based on personal experience was enough.
Whether you personally are tired of these posts or not, I applaud people who exercise due diligence when faced with a problem. One could question whether Slashdot is the best place to seek answers, but there is no evidence that a poster is relying exclusively on Slashdot for information. A good researcher casts a wide net, and Slashdot is a reasonable source to include.
I do agree with you on one point. *After* the proper research is done, if the argument is rejected by the boss, even in the face of sound evidence, then seeking work elsewhere is excellent advice.