.. they remove anything connecting the video usage log to users. That includes name, mailing address, email, and even IP address.
I work in the health insurance/medical industry, and we're generally expected to do this if we need to provide information to third parties for analysis. (They -heavily- regulate it, and the removal of personal member information is only the tip of the iceberg as far as these regulations go.)
If Viacom insists on keeping personal user information in the data set, then I honestly think they're up to no good, regardless of what constraints the judge may put on the usage of the information.
Even if they do go along with an anonymous data set, I really think Viacom is better off dropping the suit altogether, since the long term effect this is going to have on their PR will be disastrous. (Right now, I think even Hitler would get a higher approval rating among Youtube users than Viacom would. Many Youtubers want to see Viacom's proverbial heart ripped out of its chest.)
Of course they can. But it's not illegal to sell someone milk, even if they are lactose intolerant. It's the person's responsibility to know they can't handle milk. I can just hear you asking, "But wait! Kids don't realize that their allergens are bad for them. We currently handle selling video games EXACTLY how we handle selling milk: Making the kids PARENTS responsible for preventing them from getting their hands on things that their parents think are bad for them.
Therein lies the problem - there are a lot of 'not responsible' parents out there.
I play Grand Theft Auto IV online via X-Box Live, and a lot of the people playing sound WAY too young to be playing it.
Ironically enough, it's often the high-pitched ones that sound like they're barely out of grade school that are the biggest troublemakers. Some of them cuss more foully than the adults do! (It's not to say the adults won't shoot you dead, but they're typically more polite about it.)
If a parent thinks their kid is mature enough to handle a game like this, then I'm okay with them buying it on their behalf. But I'll level with you - I don't think many parents know their kids half as well as they think they do, and some don't even make the effort to 'know' them at all.
In grammar school, we had a Radio Shack TRS-80 computer system. It was a central computer linked to a bunch of dumb terminals. One day, the principal was naive enough to type in the system password right in front of me.
I wouldn't be too sure on the skills part of it; most school networks are ridiculously easy to break into. School districts can't afford to hire good IT guys, so they pretty much get the bottom of the barrel; I remember that I once got access to all the teachers' files completely by accident. Fortunately (for the school district, at least) I was a rather good kid and showed them how I did it.
Touche..
In grammar school, we had a Radio Shack TRS-80 computer system. It was a central computer linked to a bunch of dumb terminals. One day, the principal was naive enough to type in the system password right in front of me.
Sadly, I was smart enough to know how to get into the filing system, but still had no idea what the word PURGE meant yet.
(So, you can imagine the end result wasn't that pretty.) I ended up deleting a bunch of essay files, and to make matters worse, I taught another half-dozen students how to do this.
Now, I would have EASILY passed a truth-detector test, since I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. I didn't get into trouble because of that plausible deniability.
----
With that said, I still hope they give this kid a chance to redeem himself. That's a long time in jail -- assuming he actually were to serve that full sentence, he'd be in his mid-50s before he got released. That might as well be your entire life.
I say it only to illustrate that point. Truely,there is a breaking point that even stable people will revolt at. My fear is - if people do use this sort of strategy in dealing with the RIAA, while it definitely WOULD get noticed, it may create 'sympathy for the devil', so to speak.
We don't want to make them look like victims here.
Gallon of gasoline: around $4.00 Bag of packing peanuts:$10.00 Plastic bucket to mix in:$2.50 Bic Lighter:$1.00 Baseball bat at thrift store:$1.00 Ride to executive offices of **AA near you $?.00 O.K lets dance *ssh*les! Somebody else already said it in this thread -- while I don't advocate arson and/or violence, there are a lot of unstable people out there.
RIAA is going to cross the path of the wrong person one of these days.
I've listened to several of these indie bands, even gotten a lot of their stuff from waffles, but all in all it just doesn't seem up to par with most of the other music i enjoy (stones, zep, floyd, etc). The production values don't seem to be as good, and in general just not my style. Yeah - there are independent acts with bad production values.
However - to play devil's advocate, there are plenty of RIAA-affiliated acts that sound like their album was produced inside of a septic tank. The loudness war has really taken its toll on the quality of modern recordings. (In order to compete with each other for attention, they often compress the heck out of the audio, robbing it of its dynamics.)
Furthermore, there are a lot of acts [either independent or on non-RIAA labels] that are talented and do have strong production values. Some genres are better represented than others, obviously.
I'm a big fan of metal and progressive rock, and I haven't had any problem finding bands not on RIAA-affiliated labels to listen to. (The Inside Out and Magna Carta labels are very good.)
For electronica, there's Jamendo (www.jamendo.com). Not only is the electronica here as good as what you'd find on large record labels, a lot of it is better, IMHO. (It's not as dumbed down for the masses.)
too bad almost all non-riaa music is shit That's just it - it's NOT.
If you think it is, you're just not looking in the right places.
I used to do a progressive metal radio show in college primarily with music that independent bands sent to me. I found the bands through the internet. Some of them had webpages - a few responded to posts I made to Usenet.
I did this about fifteen years ago, before music could be easily downloaded in electronic formats. With THAT at your disposal, doing college radio with independent music is even easier. A DJ could probably assemble whole playlists from the content posted on Jamendo alone.
I'm sure in the future they will modify their labels to require the return of promo materials. If that were the case, then I think the college radio stations should obediently comply. Return all UMG promotional discs with a giant RETURN TO SENDER, and don't give their acts exposure at all.
Considering that these are the bastards that are suing college students left and right, I think college radio stations should be doing that anyway. That might send the RIAA-affiliated labels a strong message, if all college radio stations removed RIAA music from their playlists.
Obviously, if you want to prevent that one wire from being cut, you go after the bastard holding the scissors.
The problem is most people either indifferent to the whole issue, or are playing too nicely with the major music labels that are responsible for this crap.
We need to resort to their tactics. Let's kick them in the groin! They'd do no less to us.
(As far as whether the above comment is intended literally or figuratively, I haven't decided yet. While the former is appealing, it's admittedly a lot of groins to kick, and my foot would probably get tired after a while.)
It can't be a black dwarf under current theories, at least those that you (and I) are aware of.
IANAA*, but theoretically, could something have potentially contributed to its early demise? Maybe some other heavenly body was sucking the life out of it..
To me, this suggests that the RIAA and MPAA are okay with using 'not legal' tactics -- so is it safe to say that we're allowed to use DOS attacks against them?
Surely by using them, they advocate that it's a kosher thing to do. Afterall, the **AA are populated by the model citizens that we should all aspire to be like, right?
"He who has the gold, makes the rules." Right, so the answer to weakening UMG considerably is to take away their gold.
In order to do that, one must ask themselves where UMG gets their gold from, and if there's anything that can be done to cause the goldpile to atrophy.
The business I work would qualify as a middle-sized corporation.
We run into the EXACT same issue you're running into.
The dilemma is if we don't tighten the spam filter enough, we'll get complaints from employees (who are not shy about sending EVERY LAST PIECE OF SPAM THEY GET to us.)
However, if they tighten the filter too much, then important emails that may seem spam-like begin to get blocked, and we get just as much heat for that.
The answer - do your best to block what spam you can, and if you get complaints about some spam slipping through, tell them to delete it. We'll often add that we're working with the spam filter vendor to try and resolve the issue, but it's not that easily resolved.
And no - we don't go through each message looking for spam - it's not practical due to the number of employees we have. We DO give them the power block spam from specific addresses on their own, though. The benefit of this is the email is sent to a junk mail folder they can still access, which is useful should something legitimate end up there.)
The problem is, the RIAA can get sued and convicted into oblivion, but all the RIAA is is a shell corp for the big record companies. The record companies themselves won't have to answer for this, and if RIAA is legally forced under, the record companies will just make another shell corp to cover their asses. This will only truly matter when someone sues the record companies themselves. Right...
SO...
It's up to US to punish the record labels behind the RIAA.
(insert the same tired BOYCOTT THE BASTARDS argument here that I always post in these threads)
It took time but the RIAA and their lawyers are starting to look like the ass cabbage that they really are. It's quite nice to see that/. was represented (in a way) in that slap to the face. Slapping them in the face isn't enough.
First, we need to kick them in the groin (because they really deserve it).
Then we need to cut off the head, remove all limbs, and incinerate each piece, scattering the ashes in multiple locations, so the body can never reform.
With the increase in RIAA litigation against college students, I am shocked we're not seeing college radio stations dropping major label releases from their playlists. I'm surprised we don't see a reduction in support for major record labels by college students. The sad fact is, for every rebellious student who may do this, another ten or so could care less.
We may be like a lone flea sitting on the back of an elephant.
Here we are looking for other fleas nearby, completely oblivious to the elephant, despite its proximity.
There could be plenty of other life out there, but it may be beyond our scope to detect.
It may be too big to us. It could be too small. Perhaps its sense of time is dramatically different. A species with a slow enough circadian rhythm may seem completely still to humans. (Take trees, for instance.) Conversely, one living life too fast relative to us may seem like a momentary flash that comes and goes in a second.
Other life could also be dimensionally out-of-phase with us. Think of two adjacent radio stations on the dial. They may come close enough to periodically interfere with each other (barely), yet the signals are still separate.
Another possibility - this could be a 'test environment' of sorts. Maybe to some other race, we're the single-celled creatures on a petri dish.
So, while I definitely am intrigued by this fellow's 'evolutionary filter' theory, I'm not completely sold on it yet.
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Media Sentry is just a disposable name. Follow the money and sue who owns them.
.. they remove anything connecting the video usage log to users. That includes name, mailing address, email, and even IP address.
I work in the health insurance/medical industry, and we're generally expected to do this if we need to provide information to third parties for analysis. (They -heavily- regulate it, and the removal of personal member information is only the tip of the iceberg as far as these regulations go.)
If Viacom insists on keeping personal user information in the data set, then I honestly think they're up to no good, regardless of what constraints the judge may put on the usage of the information.
Even if they do go along with an anonymous data set, I really think Viacom is better off dropping the suit altogether, since the long term effect this is going to have on their PR will be disastrous. (Right now, I think even Hitler would get a higher approval rating among Youtube users than Viacom would. Many Youtubers want to see Viacom's proverbial heart ripped out of its chest.)
Oh well... It was fun while it worked.
Time to look for another business method...
...or look for a new job.
These RIAA clods may find this particular line useful in the near future:
"Would you like fries with that?"
If I were Google, I'd give Viacom the requested data on floppy disks instead. (5 and 1/4" floppy disks.)
Of course they can. But it's not illegal to sell someone milk, even if they are lactose intolerant. It's the person's responsibility to know they can't handle milk.
I can just hear you asking, "But wait! Kids don't realize that their allergens are bad for them. We currently handle selling video games EXACTLY how we handle selling milk: Making the kids PARENTS responsible for preventing them from getting their hands on things that their parents think are bad for them.
Therein lies the problem - there are a lot of 'not responsible' parents out there.
I play Grand Theft Auto IV online via X-Box Live, and a lot of the people playing sound WAY too young to be playing it.
Ironically enough, it's often the high-pitched ones that sound like they're barely out of grade school that are the biggest troublemakers. Some of them cuss more foully than the adults do! (It's not to say the adults won't shoot you dead, but they're typically more polite about it.)
If a parent thinks their kid is mature enough to handle a game like this, then I'm okay with them buying it on their behalf. But I'll level with you - I don't think many parents know their kids half as well as they think they do, and some don't even make the effort to 'know' them at all.
Oops - I forgot the most important part.
It turns out the password was PASSWORD.
Touche..
In grammar school, we had a Radio Shack TRS-80 computer system. It was a central computer linked to a bunch of dumb terminals. One day, the principal was naive enough to type in the system password right in front of me.
Sadly, I was smart enough to know how to get into the filing system, but still had no idea what the word PURGE meant yet. (So, you can imagine the end result wasn't that pretty.) I ended up deleting a bunch of essay files, and to make matters worse, I taught another half-dozen students how to do this.
Now, I would have EASILY passed a truth-detector test, since I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. I didn't get into trouble because of that plausible deniability.
----
With that said, I still hope they give this kid a chance to redeem himself. That's a long time in jail -- assuming he actually were to serve that full sentence, he'd be in his mid-50s before he got released. That might as well be your entire life.
I don't like it - you can tell while this kid lacks ethics, he has some serious skills.
Rather than forcing him to waste his entire life away in prison, why not try and 'redeem' him instead?
Should something like this ruin his entire life?
At very least, give him an early parole for good behavior, for crying out loud.
Truely,there is a breaking point that even stable people will revolt at. My fear is - if people do use this sort of strategy in dealing with the RIAA, while it definitely WOULD get noticed, it may create 'sympathy for the devil', so to speak.
We don't want to make them look like victims here.
Bag of packing peanuts:$10.00
Plastic bucket to mix in:$2.50
Bic Lighter:$1.00
Baseball bat at thrift store:$1.00
Ride to executive offices of **AA near you $?.00
O.K lets dance *ssh*les! Somebody else already said it in this thread -- while I don't advocate arson and/or violence, there are a lot of unstable people out there.
RIAA is going to cross the path of the wrong person one of these days.
This article reminds me exactly why I'm boycotting the RIAA record labels.
Every time I think I might go back to purchasing their music, they offer me plenty of reasons not to.
However - to play devil's advocate, there are plenty of RIAA-affiliated acts that sound like their album was produced inside of a septic tank. The loudness war has really taken its toll on the quality of modern recordings. (In order to compete with each other for attention, they often compress the heck out of the audio, robbing it of its dynamics.)
Furthermore, there are a lot of acts [either independent or on non-RIAA labels] that are talented and do have strong production values. Some genres are better represented than others, obviously.
I'm a big fan of metal and progressive rock, and I haven't had any problem finding bands not on RIAA-affiliated labels to listen to. (The Inside Out and Magna Carta labels are very good.)
For electronica, there's Jamendo (www.jamendo.com). Not only is the electronica here as good as what you'd find on large record labels, a lot of it is better, IMHO. (It's not as dumbed down for the masses.)
If you think it is, you're just not looking in the right places.
I used to do a progressive metal radio show in college primarily with music that independent bands sent to me. I found the bands through the internet. Some of them had webpages - a few responded to posts I made to Usenet.
I did this about fifteen years ago, before music could be easily downloaded in electronic formats. With THAT at your disposal, doing college radio with independent music is even easier. A DJ could probably assemble whole playlists from the content posted on Jamendo alone.
Considering that these are the bastards that are suing college students left and right, I think college radio stations should be doing that anyway. That might send the RIAA-affiliated labels a strong message, if all college radio stations removed RIAA music from their playlists.
I wouldn't let them throw in the towel.
I'd toss the towel back at them and make them wait for the official ruling.
They shouldn't be allowed to escape the inevitable precedent that would likely be created.
Obviously, if you want to prevent that one wire from being cut, you go after the bastard holding the scissors.
The problem is most people either indifferent to the whole issue, or are playing too nicely with the major music labels that are responsible for this crap.
We need to resort to their tactics. Let's kick them in the groin! They'd do no less to us.
(As far as whether the above comment is intended literally or figuratively, I haven't decided yet. While the former is appealing, it's admittedly a lot of groins to kick, and my foot would probably get tired after a while.)
IANAA*, but theoretically, could something have potentially contributed to its early demise? Maybe some other heavenly body was sucking the life out of it..
(*I am not an astronomer..)
To me, this suggests that the RIAA and MPAA are okay with using 'not legal' tactics -- so is it safe to say that we're allowed to use DOS attacks against them?
Surely by using them, they advocate that it's a kosher thing to do. Afterall, the **AA are populated by the model citizens that we should all aspire to be like, right?
In order to do that, one must ask themselves where UMG gets their gold from, and if there's anything that can be done to cause the goldpile to atrophy.
We all know the answer to that ------->
No album sales = smaller pile of gold.
The business I work would qualify as a middle-sized corporation.
We run into the EXACT same issue you're running into.
The dilemma is if we don't tighten the spam filter enough, we'll get complaints from employees (who are not shy about sending EVERY LAST PIECE OF SPAM THEY GET to us.)
However, if they tighten the filter too much, then important emails that may seem spam-like begin to get blocked, and we get just as much heat for that.
The answer - do your best to block what spam you can, and if you get complaints about some spam slipping through, tell them to delete it. We'll often add that we're working with the spam filter vendor to try and resolve the issue, but it's not that easily resolved.
And no - we don't go through each message looking for spam - it's not practical due to the number of employees we have. We DO give them the power block spam from specific addresses on their own, though. The benefit of this is the email is sent to a junk mail folder they can still access, which is useful should something legitimate end up there.)
As the old saying goes, I may not like what a person says, but I'll defend to death their right to say it.
SO...
It's up to US to punish the record labels behind the RIAA.
(insert the same tired BOYCOTT THE BASTARDS argument here that I always post in these threads)
It's been a problem over the last few months.
I work an IT job, and we get employees bringing this up all the time with us. (I think they fear they've been hacked.)
First, we need to kick them in the groin (because they really deserve it).
Then we need to cut off the head, remove all limbs, and incinerate each piece, scattering the ashes in multiple locations, so the body can never reform.
With the increase in RIAA litigation against college students, I am shocked we're not seeing college radio stations dropping major label releases from their playlists. I'm surprised we don't see a reduction in support for major record labels by college students. The sad fact is, for every rebellious student who may do this, another ten or so could care less.
We may be like a lone flea sitting on the back of an elephant.
Here we are looking for other fleas nearby, completely oblivious to the elephant, despite its proximity.
There could be plenty of other life out there, but it may be beyond our scope to detect.
It may be too big to us. It could be too small. Perhaps its sense of time is dramatically different. A species with a slow enough circadian rhythm may seem completely still to humans. (Take trees, for instance.) Conversely, one living life too fast relative to us may seem like a momentary flash that comes and goes in a second.
Other life could also be dimensionally out-of-phase with us. Think of two adjacent radio stations on the dial. They may come close enough to periodically interfere with each other (barely), yet the signals are still separate.
Another possibility - this could be a 'test environment' of sorts. Maybe to some other race, we're the single-celled creatures on a petri dish.
So, while I definitely am intrigued by this fellow's 'evolutionary filter' theory, I'm not completely sold on it yet.