I am not a lawyer. But please listen.
I do believe that, if you have lost most varieties of original CDs, you can keep and use your back-ups. That's what they're for.
The only CD back-ups you have to destroy if you lose the originals are those of CDs with Sony rootkits in them. It is that rootkit's EULA you quoted a few posts back.
I think it can be argued that all CDs with Sony rootkits should be destroyed, back-ups and all.
This has already begun. Russia has already changed its laws (though I don't know if the changes are in effect yet), and under the new laws Allofmp3's current business plan will be illegal. Visa has already withdrawn service from Allofmp3. Allofmp3 may be shifting to an ad-supported model, and even had free DRM'd trax on their site at some point.
I hope this is closer to real reality.
But Allofmp3 uses dollars on the English-language page.
Also, while Allofmp3 may be in Russia, the American downloaders are not: they are sitting in front of computers in America.
Of course, the RIAA is not suing the American downloaders (and I tremble to think of what we'll say when they do), but an "uploader" in a country that does not believe in extraditing people out, regardless of guilt. [sigh]
Sony had better not be enforcing those licenses. Those licenses belonged to the CDs with rootkits on them!
As far as I know, no other record label has attempted to install rootkits on CDs. Some RIAA labels have issued CDs with other DRM software, but we don't have copies of their EULAs, and so we don't know if theirs read the same.
Sony Music and its ancestor Columbia Records have been among the worst RIAA labels in the last three decades, and not just because of rootkits. When the NY Attorney General was going after payola, again, Sony was believed to be the biggest contributer.
Sony&Columbia also pioneered the technique of the disposable artist, though I know most RIAA labels do it now. They sign up a young or inexperienced artist, often one that is not talented enough to do live performances unaided. They market the artist so that the artist gets one hot hit album. But after no more than three albums, and often fewer, they simply stop promoting that artist. Even if the artist has actually developed fans, those fans usually don't know when the next album has come out, and so few people buy it. The failure is used as an excuse to not promote future albums, if there are any.
The RIAA in general may be bad, but I do believe some divisions of it are worse than others.
Disclaimers:
I am not a lawyer.
I do study the RIAA, and believe it plausible that all labels wish copyright law was written like Sony's EULAs. But my interest in their ways of thinking came about naturally and from outside.
I do not approve of the rootkit or its EULA or many other things the RIAA does. The RIAA would disapprove of some things I do with their work.
The parent to your post included a link to a car-bombing in a Madrid airport. The Spanish think that Basques trying to gain independence from Spain did it.
I do not believe that most of those Basques are Muslim. Aren't they more the Catholic type?
I read the BBC article you linked.
Abdullah al-Muhajir (aka Jose Padilla) already did his time for all those other crimes you bring up. If America is punishing him for them again, it is going over the line.
Now, you could easily be right. Padilla/al-Muhajir could have done everything that the officials say he did. (You do remember that the officials are the fellas who charged him, or kept him locked up without formal charges, whichever is more accurate.) But why did they take five years to charge him for something, and keep him locked up for all that time? That's longer than usual by several years.
I know, I know, it's about national security. You did make it clear that it's legal. But it's still kinda puzzling.
BTW, is it legal to read the Al-Qaeda handbook these days?
No. Not those settlers, not on purpose--it was their children, I think, and inescapable contagious diseases. Besides, it's clear that, given the continued existence of, say, the Iroquois, those settlers didn't kill all the Indians.
As for stealing the country, that was almost inevitable; the alternative for the settlers was to go back to the UK. To make things worse, at least some Indians didn't believe that land could be owned. The settlers did believe land could be owned, and so they claimed ownership and eventually drove all the Indians out.
I think copyleft was invented to prevent similar things from happening to intellectual property that might otherwise be willed to "the public domain"...
First, stricter doesn't always mean zero, and corps. tend to take any environmental loopholes they can get away with.
Second, the lower half of the Hudson is as much ocean as river. I hear that for half the length of the Hudson, it gets ocean tides. It's harder to wash the pollutants out when they get washed back in by the tides half the time.
That just means that Feynmann dictated the book. It doesn't mean he isn't responsible for what's in it.
Ralph Leighton edited the book. Obviously, that is critical in this case, but it's not the same as authoring the book.
First, Heather Mills McCartney is not a Beatle. She is only married to a Beatle, and that only for a few months longer.
John Lennon and George Harrison definitely don't need more money.
It doesn't matter if Paul McCartney or Ringo Starr need more money. Anyone who is actively boycotting the "MAFIAA" will have to boycott them altogether, p2p downloads and internet radio included. This will hurt, since I believe Paul McCartney is one of the best artists in the known universe.
Pete Best is off the RIAA radar, though, or so I think...
"Those who are lazy or stupid will go with a big label in hope of instant fame and pay almost all the money to the label."
You forgot the ignorant.
Also, have you considered how hard it is for someone who is already on a RIAA label to get off it? Think of George Michael trying to leave Sony or Prince trying to leave Warner Bros. Most RIAA artists who want to stop recording on an RIAA label stop recording altogether while they try to get free. And since many tour venues (say, the ones that use ClearChannel to sell tix) want only artists in the RIAA...[sigh]
I agree that it is smarter to be an indie. But you don't have to blast all the RIAA artists to get your point across.
True, America has not had CEOs of online betting sites extradited--it's just grabbed them when they flew into here.
But America did, back in 2004 or so, have a few chief bankers at a bank called NatWest extradited because they had dealings with Enron. The bankers had never set foot in America before. What they are accused of is illegal in the UK, but America had them extradited under a terrorist-extradition act before the UK got the chance to try them. This angered UK citizens.
To add insult to injury, no American bankers that I'm aware of have been put on criminal trial for dealing with Enron...
You could back up the purchased iTunes onto CD now, as insurance. For the moment, that burns off all that pesky DRM. Of course, it also burns off the metadata, so you'll have to type the metadata back in when you put that music into your music manager of choice. And you will likely lose (even more) quality in the recording--it'll get recompressed. Assuming the results of that CD back-up turn out listenable, however, it's a small sacrifice to keep those songs playable.
Wikipedia says that Malfunctioning Eddie was inspired by someone called Crazy Eddie.
Crazy Eddie has its own article. http://en.wikipedia.com/wiki/Crazy_Eddie (Yes, this article is about a corporation.)
Judging from what Crazy Eddie's article says, we had better hope that Allofmp3 is not overly similar to it. It's bad enough that buying from Allofmp3 is illegal in America; it would be worse if they proved to be (almost) as corrupt as the RIAA...
That non-scientist friend of Feynmann's that wrote those two books must be a ghostwriter. Those books are sold under Feynmann's own name, and "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynmann" is told in Feynmann's voice.
I don't believe that Allofmp3 has an American division. It's just got a Russian division with an English-language website that takes American money.
That's why this lawsuit is an exceptionally bad idea: because Allofmp3 is Russian, there is no way the RIAA will get anything from them this way.
Thank you. I'll be happy to abandon the idea of CDs and other fixed intellectual property being licensed. The copyright laws are enough, except when they're too much.
I guess you figured out that I am not a lawyer...
BTW, I put you on my friends list because of your posts in this thread. Thanks again.
Thank you for the correction. Everyone speaks in terms of licenses, and so I was thinking in terms of them. Good to know that it's solid law the RIAA is exploiting to its own ends.
Unfortunately, it's a lot harder to revoke a law than a license...
"I mean, is music so crucial to your quality of life that your life is worth wasting in arguments for or against music downloads, when they are moral, when they are not and when we have obscure edge cases that are neither."
For some of us--yes!
I have found a formalized music license: http://www.magnatune.com/artists/license/license_t emplate.html
You might find Sections 6.4 and 9.8 interesting.
This is a license from Magnatune, which is not on the RIAA radar. One can only imagine what the license on an RIAA CD would look like if the record labels actually bothered to make it clear by writing it down.
Disclaimers:
I am not a lawyer. If you are a lawyer, I apologize. If someone else reading this is a lawyer, please correct me.
I am not an RIAA astroturfer. My interest in how record labels think came about naturally.
I do not approve of everything the RIAA does. The RIAA would not approve of everything I do to their work.
The works of Mozart and Brahms are public domain, so it wouldn't matter what they thought. But there are no recordings of their original performances, since recording media for music had not yet been invented. All recordings of Mozart and Brahms are "cover versions"; many of those are copyrighted.
I suspect that many older classical pieces can be found in both RIAA and non-RIAA versions.
We're waiting for the permafrost to finish melting in those reserves. We can't get away with drilling there quietly until the caribou have gone extinct for other reasons.
We could start drilling in the Gulf of Mexico some more. We've found more oil there. The only problem is that hurricanes might keep wrecking the drills.
Slashdot Mirror
I am not a lawyer. But please listen.
I do believe that, if you have lost most varieties of original CDs, you can keep and use your back-ups. That's what they're for.
The only CD back-ups you have to destroy if you lose the originals are those of CDs with Sony rootkits in them. It is that rootkit's EULA you quoted a few posts back.
I think it can be argued that all CDs with Sony rootkits should be destroyed, back-ups and all.
This has already begun. Russia has already changed its laws (though I don't know if the changes are in effect yet), and under the new laws Allofmp3's current business plan will be illegal. Visa has already withdrawn service from Allofmp3. Allofmp3 may be shifting to an ad-supported model, and even had free DRM'd trax on their site at some point.
I hope this is closer to real reality.
Now we've got all this room
We've even got the moon
And I hear that the USSR will be open soon
As vacation land for
Lawyers in love
--Jackson Browne
But Allofmp3 uses dollars on the English-language page.
Also, while Allofmp3 may be in Russia, the American downloaders are not: they are sitting in front of computers in America.
Of course, the RIAA is not suing the American downloaders (and I tremble to think of what we'll say when they do), but an "uploader" in a country that does not believe in extraditing people out, regardless of guilt. [sigh]
Sony had better not be enforcing those licenses. Those licenses belonged to the CDs with rootkits on them!
As far as I know, no other record label has attempted to install rootkits on CDs. Some RIAA labels have issued CDs with other DRM software, but we don't have copies of their EULAs, and so we don't know if theirs read the same.
Sony Music and its ancestor Columbia Records have been among the worst RIAA labels in the last three decades, and not just because of rootkits. When the NY Attorney General was going after payola, again, Sony was believed to be the biggest contributer.
Sony&Columbia also pioneered the technique of the disposable artist, though I know most RIAA labels do it now. They sign up a young or inexperienced artist, often one that is not talented enough to do live performances unaided. They market the artist so that the artist gets one hot hit album. But after no more than three albums, and often fewer, they simply stop promoting that artist. Even if the artist has actually developed fans, those fans usually don't know when the next album has come out, and so few people buy it. The failure is used as an excuse to not promote future albums, if there are any.
The RIAA in general may be bad, but I do believe some divisions of it are worse than others.
Disclaimers:
I am not a lawyer.
I do study the RIAA, and believe it plausible that all labels wish copyright law was written like Sony's EULAs. But my interest in their ways of thinking came about naturally and from outside.
I do not approve of the rootkit or its EULA or many other things the RIAA does. The RIAA would disapprove of some things I do with their work.
The parent to your post included a link to a car-bombing in a Madrid airport. The Spanish think that Basques trying to gain independence from Spain did it.
I do not believe that most of those Basques are Muslim. Aren't they more the Catholic type?
I read the BBC article you linked.
Abdullah al-Muhajir (aka Jose Padilla) already did his time for all those other crimes you bring up. If America is punishing him for them again, it is going over the line.
Now, you could easily be right. Padilla/al-Muhajir could have done everything that the officials say he did. (You do remember that the officials are the fellas who charged him, or kept him locked up without formal charges, whichever is more accurate.) But why did they take five years to charge him for something, and keep him locked up for all that time? That's longer than usual by several years.
I know, I know, it's about national security. You did make it clear that it's legal. But it's still kinda puzzling.
BTW, is it legal to read the Al-Qaeda handbook these days?
No. Not those settlers, not on purpose--it was their children, I think, and inescapable contagious diseases. Besides, it's clear that, given the continued existence of, say, the Iroquois, those settlers didn't kill all the Indians.
As for stealing the country, that was almost inevitable; the alternative for the settlers was to go back to the UK. To make things worse, at least some Indians didn't believe that land could be owned. The settlers did believe land could be owned, and so they claimed ownership and eventually drove all the Indians out.
I think copyleft was invented to prevent similar things from happening to intellectual property that might otherwise be willed to "the public domain"...
First, stricter doesn't always mean zero, and corps. tend to take any environmental loopholes they can get away with.
Second, the lower half of the Hudson is as much ocean as river. I hear that for half the length of the Hudson, it gets ocean tides. It's harder to wash the pollutants out when they get washed back in by the tides half the time.
That just means that Feynmann dictated the book. It doesn't mean he isn't responsible for what's in it.
Ralph Leighton edited the book. Obviously, that is critical in this case, but it's not the same as authoring the book.
First, Heather Mills McCartney is not a Beatle. She is only married to a Beatle, and that only for a few months longer.
John Lennon and George Harrison definitely don't need more money.
It doesn't matter if Paul McCartney or Ringo Starr need more money. Anyone who is actively boycotting the "MAFIAA" will have to boycott them altogether, p2p downloads and internet radio included. This will hurt, since I believe Paul McCartney is one of the best artists in the known universe.
Pete Best is off the RIAA radar, though, or so I think...
"Those who are lazy or stupid will go with a big label in hope of instant fame and pay almost all the money to the label."
You forgot the ignorant.
Also, have you considered how hard it is for someone who is already on a RIAA label to get off it? Think of George Michael trying to leave Sony or Prince trying to leave Warner Bros. Most RIAA artists who want to stop recording on an RIAA label stop recording altogether while they try to get free. And since many tour venues (say, the ones that use ClearChannel to sell tix) want only artists in the RIAA...[sigh]
I agree that it is smarter to be an indie. But you don't have to blast all the RIAA artists to get your point across.
True, America has not had CEOs of online betting sites extradited--it's just grabbed them when they flew into here.
But America did, back in 2004 or so, have a few chief bankers at a bank called NatWest extradited because they had dealings with Enron. The bankers had never set foot in America before. What they are accused of is illegal in the UK, but America had them extradited under a terrorist-extradition act before the UK got the chance to try them. This angered UK citizens.
To add insult to injury, no American bankers that I'm aware of have been put on criminal trial for dealing with Enron...
You could back up the purchased iTunes onto CD now, as insurance. For the moment, that burns off all that pesky DRM. Of course, it also burns off the metadata, so you'll have to type the metadata back in when you put that music into your music manager of choice. And you will likely lose (even more) quality in the recording--it'll get recompressed. Assuming the results of that CD back-up turn out listenable, however, it's a small sacrifice to keep those songs playable.
Wikipedia says that Malfunctioning Eddie was inspired by someone called Crazy Eddie.
Crazy Eddie has its own article. http://en.wikipedia.com/wiki/Crazy_Eddie (Yes, this article is about a corporation.)
Judging from what Crazy Eddie's article says, we had better hope that Allofmp3 is not overly similar to it. It's bad enough that buying from Allofmp3 is illegal in America; it would be worse if they proved to be (almost) as corrupt as the RIAA...
You are suggesting that country and bluegrass are of African origin?
That non-scientist friend of Feynmann's that wrote those two books must be a ghostwriter. Those books are sold under Feynmann's own name, and "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynmann" is told in Feynmann's voice.
I don't believe that Allofmp3 has an American division. It's just got a Russian division with an English-language website that takes American money.
That's why this lawsuit is an exceptionally bad idea: because Allofmp3 is Russian, there is no way the RIAA will get anything from them this way.
Thank you. I'll be happy to abandon the idea of CDs and other fixed intellectual property being licensed. The copyright laws are enough, except when they're too much.
I guess you figured out that I am not a lawyer...
BTW, I put you on my friends list because of your posts in this thread. Thanks again.
Thank you for the correction. Everyone speaks in terms of licenses, and so I was thinking in terms of them. Good to know that it's solid law the RIAA is exploiting to its own ends.
Unfortunately, it's a lot harder to revoke a law than a license...
"I mean, is music so crucial to your quality of life that your life is worth wasting in arguments for or against music downloads, when they are moral, when they are not and when we have obscure edge cases that are neither."
For some of us--yes!
No good. The RIAA thinks it already owns most of that database. [sigh]
I have found a formalized music license:t emplate.html
http://www.magnatune.com/artists/license/license_
You might find Sections 6.4 and 9.8 interesting.
This is a license from Magnatune, which is not on the RIAA radar. One can only imagine what the license on an RIAA CD would look like if the record labels actually bothered to make it clear by writing it down.
Disclaimers:
I am not a lawyer. If you are a lawyer, I apologize. If someone else reading this is a lawyer, please correct me.
I am not an RIAA astroturfer. My interest in how record labels think came about naturally.
I do not approve of everything the RIAA does. The RIAA would not approve of everything I do to their work.
The works of Mozart and Brahms are public domain, so it wouldn't matter what they thought. But there are no recordings of their original performances, since recording media for music had not yet been invented. All recordings of Mozart and Brahms are "cover versions"; many of those are copyrighted.
I suspect that many older classical pieces can be found in both RIAA and non-RIAA versions.
We're waiting for the permafrost to finish melting in those reserves. We can't get away with drilling there quietly until the caribou have gone extinct for other reasons.
We could start drilling in the Gulf of Mexico some more. We've found more oil there. The only problem is that hurricanes might keep wrecking the drills.