...if you don't mind going with an expensive (as in microbrew) solution, it sounds like you're asking for the Kintana Demand Manager product (they were just bought by Mercury Interactive).
Some of the demand on IT is routine but high volume, such as service requests, software defects, new employee provisioning, and project issues. Other demand is more complex and strategic, such as requests for new applications to support business initiatives. Mercury Demand Management (formerly Kintana Demand Manager) supports your complete management lifecycle for both types of demand. With Mercury Interactive, you prioritize with visibility, enabling your business users and IT to collaborate efficiently at every step, cutting costs and accelerating resolution.
When you use Mercury Demand Management, you no longer need multiple point tools for service requests, software defects, project issues, and strategic initiatives. And unlike traditional help desk applications, Mercury Demand Management provides you with a start-to-finish solution that also automates resource scheduling, demand fulfillment, and service level measurement. Finally, Mercury Interactive's consolidated view of IT demand ensures your most important business priorities are supported.
- Consolidate all demand on IT
- Manage complete IT demand lifecycle
- Manage status, service levels, and trends
Disclaimer: I have no relationship with Kintana or Mercury--unfortunately. I interviewed for a job there, but they...uh...decided that my peerless skills were better applied elsewhere...
...worry about the stability of the team you currently have. Any friction or personality conflicts will be exascerbated by both success and failure, potentially tearing apart your core group before you really reach growth phase.
Make sure you have clear roles (who really is in charge?), ramifications for non-performance, and -- I can't stress this enough -- written agreements on company ownership and compensation, vetted by an attorney and signed by all parties.
If your core group includes personal friends, these issues get even tougher because of the emotional baggage and existing interpersonal dynamics.
Beyond those points, my advice towards successful growth would be to think in terms of roles and responsibilities. Fill the roles with people that can perform the jobs the best. Management by concensus does not work in a fast-moving industry.
The product was and is an inherently "networked" client/server product. It consists of a client piece that is used to browse and create text, hypertext, and hypermedia documents, and collections of such that are woven into "applications" and "solutions".
These documents, applications and solutions are hosed on a server analogous to today's "Web application servers". (emphasis mine)
Yeah, so are the users, especially if they're still using Notes!
Hear hear. I hope that, lost in the noise of "it sucked" comments, there are more people who rightfully respond with, "no, you just didn't get it."
Were some of the scenes over-long? Yes, the Smith scene and the dancing could have been cut in half. However, it's very disappointing that people focus on these problems and conclude that the movie was a waste of time.
I don't believe critics who say there was no plot development are thinking through the issues presented in Reloaded. Think of it as a blurry picture that comes more into focus: while the subjects haven't moved much, the additional detail can provide much more insight into the situation -- and what might happen next.
Raising the concept of backdoors, keys, and renegade programs illuminates so much of the background, and implies so many repurcussions (some of which the parent mentions), I'm surprised more geeks didn't enjoy the movie for that concept alone.
Suddenly, there's no "one" AI that's controlling the Matrix. And, significantly, the Matrix isn't a single-function program (to keep humanity enslaved). It's more of an operating environment, in which separate AIs with their own (sometimes conflicting, often independent) desires exist. This completely changes the fundamental concept of the Matrix and, if you think about it, exposes many of the Architect's words as half-truths at best, lies at worst.
As the parent says, think in terms of control. If you were writing a program with the kind of importance and autonomy as the Matrix, would you let a "known bug" run around and possibly bring the system (and civilization) down, particularly when most of the "bug's" choices need to be made outside of your control (ie., the "real world")? I think not -- you would put your program in a carefully constructed sandbox, maybe two.
This, again, changes the fundamental assumptions we were given in movie 1. "Reality" isn't reality. It's simply another construct. If not, why would Neo have power "outside" of the matrix? Why would a Smith clone be able to control a human? (Think of the look of surprise on Smith's face when his clone gets sucked into the phone line.) Is the Council Leader the prior "One" (per parent), or a more subtle AI, working to manipulate Neo into making the correct choice? ("Correct" from the AI's perspective, anyway).
Or, think about it this way. The AI knows that certain types of brain (the conspiracy-theorist, the paranoid, the hacker) will always question the Matrix. Rather than lose these "crops", why not create an alternate Matrix, one which feeds their paranoia? By letting them think they've dropped out of the Matrix and are fighting against it, they would happily live their lives thinking they're free--while still under control.
Meanwhile, we're introduced to new allies, new villains, and a clear view that human political maneuvering continues to play a big role in daily life. Seeing Zion, with Neo being the quiet savior while Morpheus acts as the bombastic orator with the cult of personality, made even the dance scene tolerable for me. How these opposing forces work out in the next movie will be very interesting.
That film, Revolutions, is named with the typical ambiguity of the Wachkowskis. One matrix inside another...where does it end? Will there be a revolution, or only another revolution? What is the real real world like? As my friend said, if Revolutions ends and the camera zooms out to show it's all a kid playing a video game ("Now available! Play on Xbox, PS2, GC or PC!"), we're going to hunt down the brothers W and lay down some serious hurt.
Thanks for the response, and for answering a question I didn't ask: How Armadillo's plans change if someone else claims the X-Prize first.
It's good to know that you'll continue the work, whether because it's an interesting hard problem, or because you believe in the importance of accessible, inexpensive space flight. Both are certainly compelling reasons.
According to their latest update, they just ran out of peroxide during the latest testing. While peroxide limits have certainly held them back somewhat, it doesn't sound like "significantly" is completely accurate. They have continued to make engineering strides (and bug fixes) while conserving fuel.
With respect to hybrid rockets, they have looked into them. At the end of the April 12 update, they state,
We are probably going to be at least two months without 90% peroxide. In that time, we will continue fabrication work on the full size vehicle, and we are going to do more tests with alternate propellant engines. Changing to a bipropellant will complicate our task quite a bit, but if we do work through it, it gives us more performance headroom and drastically cuts down the cost of flights. (Look at the silver lining, damnit...)
Needless to say, you can also reference John's earlier reply in this thread, above.
While I realize that a paint job can cover many ills, it does appear that Rutan is significantly farther along in constructing his X-Prize vehicle than Carmack.
Perhaps one of the issues is that Armadillo publishes their status (and myriad problems) openly (see the latest update for example). No one knows what issues Scaled Composites has had as they worked in secret, but it's easy to feel like Rutan's running a professional company while Carmack is leading a group of (brilliant, talented) hobbyists.
I'd be interested in hearing Armadillo/Carmack's perspective on the competitive landscape, now that this new player has made an announcement.
Besides R&D costs and the market's focus on short term results, Google needs to remain private to retain its very employee-focused culture. See this long list of benefits for employees. Very impressive, but not costs that Wall Street analysts would have much patience for.
In a strong market, employees will see more potential upside to their stock, and will be willing to trade a great culture for riches. But today, Googlers are happy with a job, ecstatic with the free meals, and are willing to bank on the currency being valuable (maybe even worth more) later.
A trailer that gives away neither plot nor ending, but still makes you want to see the movie.
Shouldn't this be how all trailers are made?
Sigh. Instead, I'm sure it's only the first one of many. By the time we're a week away from release we'll be able to reconstruct the entire movie by splicing and re-editing the trailers.
Note that I'm not saying this *should* be done, only that it probably *will* be done.
I couldn't agree more, the potential for abuse is massive. That's exactly the consequence I'm saying we need to consider, and why I pointed it out.
Interestingly, the nice thing about the "$1 levy" idea is that you specifically *don't* need to identify who is doing the download, because everything is paid for in advance. The only reason to track downloads at all is to figure out what percent of the total levy goes to each artist.
My cynical side tells me that the temptation to do user-level tracking (and accruing the associated benefits) will be too great for the administrators to resist and will be done anyway, rendering moot the "no spyware" arguments of some other posters.
Regarding your other comments, I don't believe it's legal to download an MP3 even if you bought the CD. It's legal to rip it, but not download it. Why? Because the person that posted it isn't licensed to redistribute it. He may be the one breaking the law, but the law is still broken, rendering the transaction illegal.
Consequently, yes -- to use your words, "copyrighted material that is downloaded is done so illegally."
Finally, your other point. Yes, people have the right to spy on you if they're afraid you'll do something wrong. That's why surveillance cameras are installed in grocery stores. The *government* needs to go through due process, but private businesses (as this would be) would just need to notify you.
But the question is: how does the collected money get back to the artists? There are two ways:
1. Use the BMI or ASCAP system that already exists to pay artists for music rebroadcast.
Of course, this has problems of its own (see ASCAP & BMI -- Protectors of Artists or Shadowy Thieves?). This is unlikely, because the sampling method used to dole out royalties is even less valid for the Internet than it is for rebroadcast and live performances. Additionally, it's unnecessary because they could just...
2. Track actual downloads from the Internet.
Think about it -- to accurately divide a >$2B pie will take a very thorough analysis to get all parties comfortable. It's easy to legislate: either all download sites or sharing systems aggregate their download data in a central database or they will be considered illegally supporting piracy. IMHO this will very shortly be a part of the proposal.
Note that this could use unique IDs, assuring that your actual music listening habits won't be tracked, etc. But do you really believe this will happen, when there's yet another advertising vector to exploit? Think about the metadata that could be gained from this data...the licensing opportunities...the marketing...the potential for privacy intrusion....
Who would control this big usage database in the sky? Who would you trust?
I read on a couple of boards that there may be installation glitches with the 100MB download.
After running the.EXE file (DKDEMO.EXE?) to install, you may get an error that says "Insert next disk." Installation then aborts.
If this occurs, rename the file to DKDEMO.ZIP, extract the files to a temp directory using WinZip (or whatever), then run SETUP.EXE from the temp directory.
For the click resistant, here are some interesting comments to come out of the interview:
Daily Radar: Can you expand a bit on the story for us?
Tom Maddox: Without tipping off the whole deal, The X-Files twist is that it's a virtual game with real violence. It's a gaming environment that would be impossible to do now -- but it would be so cool if you could -- a combination of VR, paintball and FPS games.
DR: So they're not getting sucked into a computer a la Tron.
TM: No, no, nothing like that.
[snip]
There's a lot of violence and some very sexy stuff, but it's really about violence and its connection to sex, and it's about males and females in their relation to these games and the testosterone-driven culture of gaming. We don't have a message; if we had a message, we would have sent it Western Union.
DR: A lot of times, when Hollywood attempts to portray the video game world, they don't really get it right, but it sounds like you guys are familiar with what's going on in the world of current gaming.
TM: Yeah, I think so. While I'm not a gamer myself, my son, who is a SysAdmin at BeOS, has been a gamer since he was young, so I see an awful lot of it, and I know what the games are like. Undoubtedly, the gaming people and some of the computer people will have some squawks over what's possible and what's not and what's fair, but the truth is that it's all got to be shaped into a TV episode. Just like creating a game, the code's got to be written, and you need an interface that works. The same thing applies here. You have an outline, you have a script and all these ideas you want to do, but, ultimately, it has to become TV.
DR: So you're not a serious gamer yourself?
TM: No, but I have played games. Neither Bill nor I are serious gamers; we're too old. You know, we went through our adolescence before all this happened. The closest thing to (video games) in our youth was pinball, which I could play endlessly. I understand the thrill of gaming, however; I completely get it, and Bill does too.
DR: [asks question about reaction]
TM: Gamers are very sensitive at this point, due to being slandered in the press for the last year or two, so I can't predict how they'll react to this episode. We're trying to use this whole thing, not to exploit it, not to point fingers, but to make drama.
No more quotes, since I'm probably pushing the bounds of fair use. But again, a decent interview that at least lets you know what the writers were attempting to do in this crappy episode.
However the record companies maintain they have the right to say who is and who is not allowed to make copies.
Not to be flamebait, but don't they? Isn't that what current copyright law is explicitly for?
What the record companies are really pissed off about, however, is the fact that MP3.com is destroying the market that they wanted to enter-- the sale of their back catalog of music over the Internet.
I wonder if this is true. We could project a ton of reasons for the lawsuit, but it's too easy to start sounding like an X-Files episode without any backup data. It is, however, really easy (and amusing) to imagine record company execs really pissed off that so many good ideas are being exploited--and they're not the ones doing it.
A public library doesn't make a profit off of their vast database. Additionally, a library doesn't copy the music.
IANAL, but I'm assuming that even buying the CDs wouldn't be enough. In fact, I wish I could modify my original post to change the word "buy" to "license".
I'm not necessarily agreeing with this, mind you. It's just their argument, but "retransmission for profit" does seem to overstep the bounds "fair use" recording. An interesting twist -- my.mp3.com could be considered "fair use" for a consumer, but not for MP3.com the company.
Back to the library analogy. I wonder how the RIAA would feel about a library buying CDs, then making copies to lend out (so they could lend 10 copies of Pavarotti, though they bought only 1). The library wouldn't be making a profit, but I think the RIAA would still sue (and win) because the use of the copies exceeds "fair use".
I can't believe that no one has mentioned this: the RIAA lawsuit has nothing to do with the Beam-It technology, its security, or MP3 encoding. Nothing.
To provide the music stream, MP3.com has to have ripped versions of every CD. They claim that they've got a database of 40,000 CDs available to be "beamed".
The RIAA claims that MP3.com didn't BUY these 40,000 CDs; that they made unauthorized copies to create their database.
But the RIAA is accusing MP3.com of creating an unauthorized digital music catalog of up to 45,000 CDs, claiming many of the copyrighted works are the property of its members.
"Simply put, it is not legal to compile a vast database of our members' sound recordings with no permission and no license," Hilary Rosen, CEO of the RIAA, stated in the letter. "Obviously, you are not free to take protected works simply because you want them."
[snip]
But legal experts say that by creating a catalog of digital music without an explicit license, MP3.com has overstepped copyright laws.
"I don't know what MP3.com is thinking," said Lon Sobel, editor of the Entertaiment Law Reporter and a former Loyola University Law School professor. "Under the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992, consumers get the right to make copies of material for their own non-commercial uses. It does not give others the right to do it on consumers' behalf."
The lawsuit against MP3.com has nothing to do with MP3 technology. It has to do with MP3.com, the company, taking music they don't own and haven't licensed to offer new services to make money for themselves.
While all these discussions are fascinating and relevant to many outstanding legal issues, they somewhat miss the point of this particular lawsuit.
Did anyone else notice the difference in contribution between Trey Parker and Matt Stone? I wonder if this reflects on their relative talent or just dedication.
Trey Parker Director Writer (1st billing) Voices: Stan Marsh Eric Cartman Mr. Garrison Mr. Hat Officer Barbrady Various others Producer (4th billing) Original Music (1st billing) Lyricist
Matt Stone Writer (2nd billing) Voices: Kyle Broslofski (and that's all!) Producer (9th, or last, billing)
A law that has been universally (except by the sponsors, of course) derided as anti-consumer and potentially dangerous to the industry gets passed unanimously?
I honestly believe that there are a lot of people who assume that "someone else" will be the person that makes the call/writes the letter/publically takes a stand. Everyone looks at eachother, no one does anything, and the law passes.
Don't let this happen! If you need to know more, there's a very accessible and interesting series of articles on the topic by Ed Foster at InfoWorld -- look at the GripeLine column (just ignore Metcalfe, K?)
Slashdot Mirror
From the website: Disclaimer: I have no relationship with Kintana or Mercury--unfortunately. I interviewed for a job there, but they...uh...decided that my peerless skills were better applied elsewhere...
...worry about the stability of the team you currently have. Any friction or personality conflicts will be exascerbated by both success and failure, potentially tearing apart your core group before you really reach growth phase.
Make sure you have clear roles (who really is in charge?), ramifications for non-performance, and -- I can't stress this enough -- written agreements on company ownership and compensation, vetted by an attorney and signed by all parties.
If your core group includes personal friends, these issues get even tougher because of the emotional baggage and existing interpersonal dynamics.
Beyond those points, my advice towards successful growth would be to think in terms of roles and responsibilities. Fill the roles with people that can perform the jobs the best. Management by concensus does not work in a fast-moving industry.
Oops. I didn't see the very public prior art before publishing the parent.
Perhaps there's still time to patent the joke though?
Wow, great minds think alike!
Yeah, so are the users, especially if they're still using Notes!
Hear hear. I hope that, lost in the noise of "it sucked" comments, there are more people who rightfully respond with, "no, you just didn't get it."
Were some of the scenes over-long? Yes, the Smith scene and the dancing could have been cut in half. However, it's very disappointing that people focus on these problems and conclude that the movie was a waste of time.
I don't believe critics who say there was no plot development are thinking through the issues presented in Reloaded. Think of it as a blurry picture that comes more into focus: while the subjects haven't moved much, the additional detail can provide much more insight into the situation -- and what might happen next.
Raising the concept of backdoors, keys, and renegade programs illuminates so much of the background, and implies so many repurcussions (some of which the parent mentions), I'm surprised more geeks didn't enjoy the movie for that concept alone.
Suddenly, there's no "one" AI that's controlling the Matrix. And, significantly, the Matrix isn't a single-function program (to keep humanity enslaved). It's more of an operating environment, in which separate AIs with their own (sometimes conflicting, often independent) desires exist. This completely changes the fundamental concept of the Matrix and, if you think about it, exposes many of the Architect's words as half-truths at best, lies at worst.
As the parent says, think in terms of control. If you were writing a program with the kind of importance and autonomy as the Matrix, would you let a "known bug" run around and possibly bring the system (and civilization) down, particularly when most of the "bug's" choices need to be made outside of your control (ie., the "real world")? I think not -- you would put your program in a carefully constructed sandbox, maybe two.
This, again, changes the fundamental assumptions we were given in movie 1. "Reality" isn't reality. It's simply another construct. If not, why would Neo have power "outside" of the matrix? Why would a Smith clone be able to control a human? (Think of the look of surprise on Smith's face when his clone gets sucked into the phone line.) Is the Council Leader the prior "One" (per parent), or a more subtle AI, working to manipulate Neo into making the correct choice? ("Correct" from the AI's perspective, anyway).
Or, think about it this way. The AI knows that certain types of brain (the conspiracy-theorist, the paranoid, the hacker) will always question the Matrix. Rather than lose these "crops", why not create an alternate Matrix, one which feeds their paranoia? By letting them think they've dropped out of the Matrix and are fighting against it, they would happily live their lives thinking they're free--while still under control.
Meanwhile, we're introduced to new allies, new villains, and a clear view that human political maneuvering continues to play a big role in daily life. Seeing Zion, with Neo being the quiet savior while Morpheus acts as the bombastic orator with the cult of personality, made even the dance scene tolerable for me. How these opposing forces work out in the next movie will be very interesting.
That film, Revolutions, is named with the typical ambiguity of the Wachkowskis. One matrix inside another...where does it end? Will there be a revolution, or only another revolution? What is the real real world like? As my friend said, if Revolutions ends and the camera zooms out to show it's all a kid playing a video game ("Now available! Play on Xbox, PS2, GC or PC!"), we're going to hunt down the brothers W and lay down some serious hurt.
No plot? Heh. Watch it again.
Thanks for the response, and for answering a question I didn't ask: How Armadillo's plans change if someone else claims the X-Prize first.
It's good to know that you'll continue the work, whether because it's an interesting hard problem, or because you believe in the importance of accessible, inexpensive space flight. Both are certainly compelling reasons.
With respect to hybrid rockets, they have looked into them. At the end of the April 12 update, they state,
Needless to say, you can also reference John's earlier reply in this thread, above.
While I realize that a paint job can cover many ills, it does appear that Rutan is significantly farther along in constructing his X-Prize vehicle than Carmack.
Comparing pictures, you see:
Armadillo Aerospace Launch Vehicle
vs.
Scaled Composites aircraft and drop ship
Perhaps one of the issues is that Armadillo publishes their status (and myriad problems) openly (see the latest update for example). No one knows what issues Scaled Composites has had as they worked in secret, but it's easy to feel like Rutan's running a professional company while Carmack is leading a group of (brilliant, talented) hobbyists.
I'd be interested in hearing Armadillo/Carmack's perspective on the competitive landscape, now that this new player has made an announcement.
Besides R&D costs and the market's focus on short term results, Google needs to remain private to retain its very employee-focused culture. See this long list of benefits for employees. Very impressive, but not costs that Wall Street analysts would have much patience for.
In a strong market, employees will see more potential upside to their stock, and will be willing to trade a great culture for riches. But today, Googlers are happy with a job, ecstatic with the free meals, and are willing to bank on the currency being valuable (maybe even worth more) later.
A trailer that gives away neither plot nor ending, but still makes you want to see the movie.
Shouldn't this be how all trailers are made?
Sigh. Instead, I'm sure it's only the first one of many. By the time we're a week away from release we'll be able to reconstruct the entire movie by splicing and re-editing the trailers.
Note that I'm not saying this *should* be done, only that it probably *will* be done.
I couldn't agree more, the potential for abuse is massive. That's exactly the consequence I'm saying we need to consider, and why I pointed it out.
Interestingly, the nice thing about the "$1 levy" idea is that you specifically *don't* need to identify who is doing the download, because everything is paid for in advance. The only reason to track downloads at all is to figure out what percent of the total levy goes to each artist.
My cynical side tells me that the temptation to do user-level tracking (and accruing the associated benefits) will be too great for the administrators to resist and will be done anyway, rendering moot the "no spyware" arguments of some other posters.
Regarding your other comments, I don't believe it's legal to download an MP3 even if you bought the CD. It's legal to rip it, but not download it. Why? Because the person that posted it isn't licensed to redistribute it. He may be the one breaking the law, but the law is still broken, rendering the transaction illegal.
Consequently, yes -- to use your words, "copyrighted material that is downloaded is done so illegally."
Finally, your other point. Yes, people have the right to spy on you if they're afraid you'll do something wrong. That's why surveillance cameras are installed in grocery stores. The *government* needs to go through due process, but private businesses (as this would be) would just need to notify you.
This may be a great idea, but there are definite consequences.
The proposal is similar to what's being done with the blank audio cassette levy in the US (see Title 17, section 1004) and the Canadian CD-R Levy (see this random link I found on Google).
But the question is: how does the collected money get back to the artists? There are two ways:
1. Use the BMI or ASCAP system that already exists to pay artists for music rebroadcast.
Of course, this has problems of its own (see ASCAP & BMI -- Protectors of Artists or Shadowy Thieves?). This is unlikely, because the sampling method used to dole out royalties is even less valid for the Internet than it is for rebroadcast and live performances. Additionally, it's unnecessary because they could just...
2. Track actual downloads from the Internet.
Think about it -- to accurately divide a >$2B pie will take a very thorough analysis to get all parties comfortable. It's easy to legislate: either all download sites or sharing systems aggregate their download data in a central database or they will be considered illegally supporting piracy. IMHO this will very shortly be a part of the proposal.
Note that this could use unique IDs, assuring that your actual music listening habits won't be tracked, etc. But do you really believe this will happen, when there's yet another advertising vector to exploit? Think about the metadata that could be gained from this data...the licensing opportunities...the marketing...the potential for privacy intrusion....
Who would control this big usage database in the sky? Who would you trust?
Looks like the typical April 1 fake news story to me.
Back in the day, before flavor was engineered to survive a 3 year shelf life, MREs were fondly referred to as "Meals Rejected by Ethiopians."
Anyone know other trivia?
My first computer? A Timex Sinclair ZX-81. I think it had 2.4KB of RAM.
;-)
Forget the hard drive cache -- my keyboard buffer is larger than that!
------
I read on a couple of boards that there may be installation glitches with the 100MB download.
.EXE file (DKDEMO.EXE?) to install, you may get an error that says "Insert next disk." Installation then aborts.
After running the
If this occurs, rename the file to DKDEMO.ZIP, extract the files to a temp directory using WinZip (or whatever), then run SETUP.EXE from the temp directory.
Hope this helps...
------
The DMCA was never intended for companies like Napster.
is like saying
The First Amendment was never intended for organizations like the KKK.
Few would agree with this kind of legal blindness.
------
No more quotes, since I'm probably pushing the bounds of fair use. But again, a decent interview that at least lets you know what the writers were attempting to do in this crappy episode.
------
I haven't seen this posted yet, so sorry if it's redundant.
Daily Radar has an interview with Tom Maddox, who co-wrote the FPS episode with William Gibson.
It's a good interview. Interesting to read his perspective on what he wrote.------
However the record companies maintain they have the right to say who is and who is not allowed to make copies.
Not to be flamebait, but don't they? Isn't that what current copyright law is explicitly for?
What the record companies are really pissed off about, however, is the fact that MP3.com is destroying the market that they wanted to enter-- the sale of their back catalog of music over the Internet.
I wonder if this is true. We could project a ton of reasons for the lawsuit, but it's too easy to start sounding like an X-Files episode without any backup data. It is, however, really easy (and amusing) to imagine record company execs really pissed off that so many good ideas are being exploited--and they're not the ones doing it.
------
A public library doesn't make a profit off of their vast database. Additionally, a library doesn't copy the music.
IANAL, but I'm assuming that even buying the CDs wouldn't be enough. In fact, I wish I could modify my original post to change the word "buy" to "license".
I'm not necessarily agreeing with this, mind you. It's just their argument, but "retransmission for profit" does seem to overstep the bounds "fair use" recording. An interesting twist -- my.mp3.com could be considered "fair use" for a consumer, but not for MP3.com the company.
Back to the library analogy. I wonder how the RIAA would feel about a library buying CDs, then making copies to lend out (so they could lend 10 copies of Pavarotti, though they bought only 1). The library wouldn't be making a profit, but I think the RIAA would still sue (and win) because the use of the copies exceeds "fair use".
------
I can't believe that no one has mentioned this: the RIAA lawsuit has nothing to do with the Beam-It technology, its security, or MP3 encoding. Nothing.
To provide the music stream, MP3.com has to have ripped versions of every CD. They claim that they've got a database of 40,000 CDs available to be "beamed".
The RIAA claims that MP3.com didn't BUY these 40,000 CDs; that they made unauthorized copies to create their database.
Here is the relevant information from this CNN story:
This RIAA statement reiterates:
While all these discussions are fascinating and relevant to many outstanding legal issues, they somewhat miss the point of this particular lawsuit.
------
For comparison's sake, here is how IMDB's South Park credits page breaks it out:
Trey Parker
Director
Writer (1st billing)
Voices:
Stan Marsh
Eric Cartman
Mr. Garrison
Mr. Hat
Officer Barbrady
Various others
Producer (4th billing)
Original Music (1st billing)
Lyricist
Matt Stone
Writer (2nd billing)
Voices:
Kyle Broslofski (and that's all!)
Producer (9th, or last, billing)
That's a heck of a difference.
------
A law that has been universally (except by the sponsors, of course) derided as anti-consumer and potentially dangerous to the industry gets passed unanimously?
I honestly believe that there are a lot of people who assume that "someone else" will be the person that makes the call/writes the letter/publically takes a stand. Everyone looks at eachother, no one does anything, and the law passes.
Don't let this happen! If you need to know more, there's a very accessible and interesting series of articles on the topic by Ed Foster at InfoWorld -- look at the GripeLine column (just ignore Metcalfe, K?)
Seriously. Make a call. Make a difference.
------