There are generally very nice fiber optic cables routed over the same towers and poles used to carry electric power, used to carry information to/from the utility companies to their sites and equipment. CitiLECs have been using them for years to distribute broadband access to end users.
Hey, maybe you can tell me - why is it that people on slashdot have taken to labelling anyone whose opinion they disagree with an "astroturfer"? Why is it so hard to accept that some people simply do not believe what you believe, and that they're not just saying what their employer is paying them to say?
Check the paragon_au (730772) post on this thread, we have an alleged downloader who allegedly never buys CDs who also repeatedly says that copyright "theft" is bad. You take this seriously as grass-roots opinion from a real member of the P2P user community? If you do, you're pretty gullible.
Astroturfing has become so popular on public forums and lots of other places that there's a word specifically coined to describe it. A PR firm or department at an organization that can access public opinion by posting on public forums that doesn't is run by tards. What could be easier for a PR firm than to have an employee register on/. or K5 or any other place where there are people with opinions and. . . inject the opinion of the client as phony "grass-roots" public opinion? Look up astroturf on Google for current examples of how this practice is being used by PR firms and corporate PR departments. Of course, the PR firm guy does have to know enough of the "in-group" jargon to look like he belongs there. So the next stage... perhaps some lucky slashdotters have already been offered money to post a company or organization's party line.
I've wondered where the posts endorsing Microsoft security have been coming from. I wouldn't even object to the practice if the people on payroll put their sponsor names at the bottom of each post.
If you're pissed because you aren't on the gravy train yourself despite your defense of astroturfing (suggesting that it's imaginary counts), Google is your friend. Find the PR firm for the RIAA and see if you can get them to hire you. You're doing a slightly better job than the other guy is doing, and your low slashdot ID should even give you some credibility.
I do not have the right to distribute copyrighted material without the copyright holder's consent.
Make an analog tape of a few tracks off an album off FM. Send me the tape. Guess what, you're legal and I'm legal and we're both completely within our rights. Look up the Audio Home Recording Act for further information. Make the same tracks available on Kazaa, you're A PIRATE!!!.
Preventing me from doing so id not an "assault on my rights", as it's not a right I've ever had.
You have that right now if you distribute via cassette. As I said, look up the law yourself. You do NOT have the right to do this digitally, because the law explicitly treats digital recording differently.
Now, trying to shut down P2P networks entirely would be an assualt on (one of) my rights, but that's not what's happening.
Only because the *AA hasn't managed it yet. But if you really don't think they're trying, you are either in denial or already on payroll. I suggest you look at the history of Internet Radio as well. Or check out Doctorow's article on closing the analog hole about what the *AA organizations are trying to do to consumer technology in general with the support of Congress.
Just to cut out independent competition for the purpose of preserving an obsolete business model a few years longer. In what way is that a legitimate public policy goal?
Of course it's legitimate, from their point of view - they're trying to preserve their profits, that's the entire reason they exist. This is what happens when you let companies get too powerful - they will enevitably act in their own best interests, regardless of what would be in the public's best interests. If the companies are small/weak, that's fine. If they're big/powerful, there's more chance they'll be successful, to the detriment of everyone else.
Spammers feel the same way about their "product". Does this mean their existence should be tolerated?
Sure there is some music that isn't played on the radio but you have a few LEGAL options, 1. If they are indie that CAN allow people to download versions for free, if they dont want to then they dont have to. Just because they decide that they'd prefer not to give someone a digital copy of their music doesnt mean you should be allowed to commit copyright theft. 2. Alot of stores will allow you to listen to the CD before you buy it. 3. You could just not commit copyright theft and never hear it.
Music a person doesn't hear is music that person isn't going to buy.
You say that you've been downloading MP3s for year and as a result, never buy albums. You're whining about people committing "copyright theft", a crime that only exists in the imagination of the *AA publicity people. WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?
You're trying way too hard to be a RIAA poster child. Either it's cool to rip and never buy, in which case you don't give a shit about copyright infringement, or you care and are trying to get us to stop. You can't have it both ways and have any chance of finding more than a few people stupid enough to believe you. So IMHO, you're an astroturfer and not very good at it.
Lets see what other bullshit did you make up, oh the reason people buy CD's is because it better quality than SOME rips.
Yes that plays a part, but here is a huge difference between radio and CD's (and mp3's) on the radio you can not listen to the music you want anytime you want, anywhere you want. With a CD (or MP3) you can.
So you rip the MP3 after buying. Unless your bosses manage to make the CD unplayable via DRM on a CD drive.
Now why on earth would someone make BAD quality rips to listen to in MP3 format? Wouldnt they just rip it at a high enough quality that they cannot tell the difference? Wait maybe they DO!
And all the rips on Kazaa are 256K and higher quality. Yeah, right. If you can make a 128K rip that's indistinguishable from the CD-audio, you should be working at a major label preparing CD-tracks for uploading to radio stations for on-the-air use and commercials. It probably would pay you better than astroturfing.
Downloading illegal music drives sales, well lets see how many songs have I downloaded since napster was released, easy a couple thousand.
Now how many CD's have brought because of what I've heard from the MP3... hmm 0. I already (illegally) own the music, I'm not going to go and get another copy. The same goes for pretty much everyone I know who downloads music illegally.
We know its illegal, but really, we don't care. I still support artist in other ways, but it doesnt justify commiting copyright theft. I can admit to it, I think you need to as well.
Which PR firm are you working for and how's the pay in astroturfing these days? You say that you know it's illegal and you don't care. You claim to be committing copyright infringment and say that it doesn't justify committing "copyright theft". Never post before your first cup of coffee. Or in your case, your third. And never get loaded before you post.
What else, "The most downloaded album on Kazaa was the last Eminem CD, 'pre-released'" erm.. source?
For anybody else, I'd dig the info out of my files. For you, I suggest simply dropping an e-mail to your employer or client and ask them.
"tracked by places like Big Champagne. To find out what bands are most popular in" Didn't you just say that people don't download what they want to own (buy), but instead to find out what different bands and songs are like?
If this is true, tracking how many people download xyz does not help at all.
Sure people do download to test the waters, I do it often my friend says XYZ is good, I download it, and like it. But guess what I, and thousands others do? We dont rush out to the store, we type the name of the band in KaZaA search and download the rest of their music.
Nicely said! I'm reminded (again) of Jack Valenti's warning, "I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone."
The reason that the MPAA is using the RIAA as an attack dog is that they're next. The price of the technology needed to make a feature movie is dropping fast, to the point where the next aspiring Spielberg or Lucas at the UCLA film school might decide to find some angel investors and make his first commercial release direct to DVD and promote it over the Internet... rip his own movie to DivX and put it on the Net, chancing that people will like it, find the URL which is VERY PROMINENT in the film, and buy the DVD.
He (or she) makes a modest amount of money, and his next stop is a couple of A-List actors... cutting them in to big percentages instead of big bucks up front and is talking to movie theater chains himself about distribution.
If filmmakers don't need the Hollywood machine to make a living, where are the studios going to find good directors in future?
This is for the people repeating the RIAA whines about piracy = theft.
Looks like you've let the *AA slide YET ANOTHER ONE past you. People are taking the RIAA "stolen goods" crap at face value. Perhaps the astroturfers I've seen around here have managed to spread some disinformation.
128K MP3s are FM broadcast quality (by definition) promos. The business model has one big difference from FM. The users are storing music promos at their own expense and serving up copies using their own bandwidth.
The only differences between taping MP3 promo tracks being played back over a wireless analog channel, like an FM radio and downloading identical MP3 promo tracks off the Net is that one is illegal and the other isn't. Does listening to 128K MP3-quality tracks displace sales? Why would the labels be paying to have them broadcast if they did?
Either works for promoting records. The digital version is illegal because the *AA organizations paid off a bunch of politicians to make it illegal. As for morality, some people think getting law in exchange for campaign contributions is immoral.
Sales aren't displaced by MP3 downloading, they're driven. That's why indie musicians release their own stuff for download on MP3. Not because of generosity, but because they want people to buy their CDs and higher-than-broadcast quality digital tracks at iTunes.
The most downloaded album on Kazaa was the last Eminem CD, "pre-released". People were waiting to buy it so they could get a higher quality music experience than they could get off broadcast quality CDs.
Records are sold when people hear enough of what's on it to decide they want a high-quality copy for their own listening. Nobody hears it? Nobody buys it. People hear it, whether on FM, P2P, or via FM radio, people might buy it. What's so hard to understand about that?
Why is the digital version illegal? Record companies want exclusive access to media channels suitable for broadcasting promotional reduced-quality audio tracks to the general public. So they paid a bunch of politicians to make it that way. Just because it's legal doesn't necessarily make it right.
The only damage done to legit artists by MP3 is that fewer people buy CDs by mistake anymore. People who like a specific band are likely to check out the new album by buying it. If they've heard all the tracks, they aren't going to buy if they find the one good song is the one on the radio and the rest is filler. What's wrong with that? Record labels do not have the holy right to profit at our expense by selling us crap we wouldn't buy if we knew what was on those shiny discs in advance.
That's why the MP3 downloads from networks like Kazaa are being tracked by places like Big Champagne. To find out what bands are most popular in a kind of real-time readout simply impossible via traditional radio end user polling methods used to find out what music end users are. Arbitron's every few days or month. MP3 downloads are realtime.
If THE RECORD INDUSTRY didn't think P2P downloads caused CD sales, why are they using Big Champagne tracking info to run marketing campaigns? If low-quality promo downloads automatically killed the market for the CDs they're taken from, all they could find out from the tracking info is who will not be buying their records. If an album were getting millions of downloads, it would be time to pull the plug on marketing and write off the investment because everyone who wanted to hear it's got it on the hard drive and in their MP3 player. Funny that it isn't happening that way, isn't it?
Or maybe you guys are reacting instead of thinking to RIAA disinformation and conflating a law (AHRA) created via political campaign contribution with morality.
If you gave public policy issues the kind of concentrated thought you give your software when a program blows up in your face, you might be able to make sense of a lot more of what is going on around you.
In short, the relative security of 802.11[bg] is a red herring. They don't give a crap about that, and they won't change their mind if the security in their standard gets busted tomorrow.
They will if they find Taiwan has a complete set of their (hopefully contingency) invasion plans and order of battle because somebody at their Ministry of Defense decided it was a good idea to put up an unofficial access point to their LAN somewhere that a wardriver coincidentally on the Taiwan government payroll could pick up on it.
Anybody here think this is impossible?
While they have certain recourses that a US corporation doesn't, i.e. they can shoot the responsible idiot, fixing the problem is still going to cost them a shitload of money.
My guess is that you're right about the motivation, but I'm sure that China has at least as many PHMs as we do of the sort that would have no clue as to why bad security is A Bad Idea. The problem is separation of decision-making authority from the technical understanding required for an intelligent decision, but organizations generally don't get this until it bites them on the ass, and they frequently don't get it even after this. Otherwise no corporation or government would have been bitten a second time by a Windows virus/trojan/worm.
Other examples, of course, would be leaking corporate proprietary secrets to the highest bidder, from foriegn manufacturers or their own.
There was a reason we practically unanimously dumped kermit for Zmodem as soon as Zmodem became available. By and large, it was that Zmodem sucked less, even on a bad connection, and the ability to change window sizes up and down allows taking advantage of good connection conditions should they ever exist.
What's good about kermit under the circumstances that can be expected on an connect to/from orbit?
That's just an excuse so lots of us can waste our time trying to prove that it isn't making them lose money. That's a losing battle; they can show congress any made up power point crap they want and it will seem believeable enough.
No, the RIAA is trying to control the terms of the debate. If everybody lets the RIAA get away with the words "theft" and "piracy", people agree that "theft" is wrong, and the discussion will naturally turn to "what should be done about the theives", i.e. the RIAA got to make its points at the expense of everybody else in the country except FM radio stations.
This war has to be won at the public opinion level, and if they try to take the moral high ground, we need the ammo to blow them off it.
If we want to make the point that the RIAA are liars, we must be clear as to exactly what it is they are lying about.
You can't assume that even slashdotters or musicians who have been following the issue know this. We need talking points for op-ed letters to the press and the media, so we have to know what we're talking about.
The real reason is they fear losing control over the distribution of media and control over artists and fans alike. P2P forces them to realize that their partnerships, contracts and lawyers aren't and never were neccessary and that no one -least of all artists - needs any of them.
Right, but Internet Radio and other streaming media make the point better. Content sampling media that at best, sounds like AM is not anything which will displace a CD sale if the listener even likes the content.
Since people are vigorously arguing about copyright infringement and theft instead of what it means to have a law-enforcement official from an agency known for it's . . . unusual practices, I thought I'd throw some actual content into the discussion, as unwelcome as RIAA shills might find it.
128K MP3s as uploaded to P2P networks are substantially identical to the 128K MP3s which provide the content you hear on analog FM radio. In fact, using a tuner card, you can even record them back to 128K MP3s and store them on your hard drive, just as you can record them to analog cassette tape and trade them to your friends.
The difference between listening via download or FM radio?
There is no proof that 128K MP3s are more effective or less effective in promoting the sale of CDs whether broadcast over the radio or downloaded from the Internet. The same set of ears decides based on them whether or not to buy the CD or not. The latest Eminem album was "pre-released" unofficially over P2P a month before official release at record stores. Because of this, customers who wanted to hear it at better than 128K MP3 quality were ready to buy as soon as the CDs hit retail and it immediately hit #1.
What did Eminem lose from the "theft" of his music? Nobody associated with the RIAA or any record label has explained this to us, and I've heard no complaints from Eminem about this.
In fairness, Madonna's latest got pre-released and it tanked. However, Madonna has yet to explain why she thinks it wouldn't have gone into the dumper in the absence of pre-release via the Net.
One difference? FM radio stations are paid by RIAA labels to carry music promotional content, while via P2P, listeners host the music on servers at their own expense and transfer the music at their own bandwidth expense.
Another difference? Getting digital content via FM radio is legal. Getting the identical content via the Internet isn't.
Why?
The *AA companies bought off a shitload of politicians openly through campaign contributions to make the law that way.
Why would the *AA companies want to cut one promo distribution channel that the listeners pay for instead of them?
Effectively, only the RIAA companies have access to FM as a music promotional channel. The indie musicians and labels are priced out of the market. The indie musicians and labels can afford to distribute promotional tracks via P2P. That's why the RIAA has done its best to destroy P2P and Internet Radio in the hands of individuals and small organizations.
I don't mind protecting the legitimate rights of artists to profit from their work in the least. However, I have no interest in interfering with the ability of indie artists to promote their work via the Internet, and less than no interest in wasting taxpayer money to prop up the obsolete and dying business model of the RIAA and soon, the MPAA member companies.
What about PIRACY!!!?
128K MP3s are promotional giveaways of no intrinsic value. The product is the physical CD, and that's what people pay for.. Counterfeit CDs of anything you can find in a record stores are available in Asia, pressed at Asian CD manufacturing facilities and sold openly all over Asia and in some cases, even in the USA. If the *AA really wanted to stop PIRACY!!!, they'd be pressuring US politicians to stop the manufacture of counterfeit CDs in Asia. There are many kinds of pressure the US government could be putting on Asian governments to stop this. Why isn't this happening? Ask Hilary Rosen yourself.
If you want to call P2P and Internet Radio theft, be my guest, but please smash your FM radio over your head first.
If you were on a jury, would YOU vote to convict somebody of [insert anything] against a major spammer?
If a jury has Internet users on it, I doubt a prosecutor could get a conviction no matter how compelling the evidence.
A few high-profile case where somebody kills a spammer and the jury lets the killer (I can't say murder in this case, it doesn't fit) walk will send a message to spammers.
The only approvals I know legally required for manufacture/sale of a commercial audio product in the US are the FCC (it doesn't interfere with RF receivers)and UL approvals (it won't burn the house down) as someone else posted here.
You can find out how to get those approvals on the respective websites.
What happens when all the knowhow has left the company, and the outsourced workers says "screw the americans", quits, and starts their own company instead?
It's a lot easier when you can take all the ex-customer's business information along as well.
I don't feel like looking it up, but one outsourcing CEO said that he expected problems with outsources becoming competitors, but the problem was 5 years away and not of current interest to him.
He'll have cashed out and his successor and whoever the stockholders are going to be by then holding the bag.
Eventually everyone except the VPs, marketers, and salespeople will go.
What makes you think it'll stop there? If a US-based Fortune 500 company becomes a hollow shell with all its sales, service, and manufacturing going overseas and only orders coming from an administration increasingly clueless about what the end users and major customers want because nobody within several time zones has to deal with them, sooner or later, the outsourcers are going to wonder what the hell value US corporate management adds to their company products.
Whether this means unfriendly takeover ("We'll buy your stockholders out at 5 cents on the dollar and give you a golden parachute") or the top management at the outsourcers taking data farm hard drives by the truckload to the new facility conveniently placed by coincidence right down the block and locking up the old building with large signs saying "Report to this address!" depends on circumstances.
What happens to the people who made the decisions? They'll have cashed out and retired by then, or maybe left the US to find a place they can take through the cycle again.
Who gets hammered? US based employees, stockholders, and the most hapless CEOs... the least lucky of which will get to turn off the lights as he walks out the door.
Who won't notice? By and large, the service will be just as miserable under Indian management as under American.
What happens if the US management tries suing? If you want to sue Indian business peoples in India who know who to pay off and how much, go ahead, I want to watch. Or all the former outsourcers have to do is go limp and refer anyone who has problems to the former US managers... if it's a bank or a major service provider, the end users will do whatever they have to do to get their services back...
The ROKSO list of top 200 spammers is readily available at spamhaus. Anyone on it can be considered guilty. Information on how to find them is readily available from the list entries.
And is there anyone around here who will return any vote other than "innocent" if he/she is a jury member in a trial of someone who did physical harm or damaged the property of a major spammer because he is a major spammer?
Quick summary: just about all the conditions you cited got violated in a real-world election. Florida's general election in 2000 which provided the deciding votes to elect Bush II President. Did you think hanging / pregnant chads were imaginary?
There was fairly obvious reason to force the elimination of lever-actuated mechanical voting machines.
If you want a simple technology that's hard to break without leaving obvious traces, try ink on paper, either by manual count or optical scan.
If you'd only posted under your real name, I could assure you that if you were running for a local office, in a few hours alone with the voting machines at a warehouse, I could render your election completely impossible. Given the content of your post, this is probably a good idea.
All it takes is a simple file. If the edges of the pin are rounded a bit, the probability of a clean punch will drop dramatically. A careful examination of the "voting machine" will turn up other possibilities. Find some information on the internals and if you have any mechanical aptitude, you'll find some.
Any system is probably breakable given time, lots of clever, determined, and/or connected people will be working on the problem. That in itself is reason enough to shitcan the mechanical systems.
I can assure you that if a horde of the dead showed up at my polling place to exercise their franchise, we would have run screaming out the doors, making certification of votes from that precinct impossible.
Seriously, the answer is careful cleaning of voting lists before the election. That's why you have to keep voting to stay registered, if you miss x general elections in a row, you get dumped off the rolls. Secondary checks... if you get 100% or better turnout at a precinct, something is wrong.
Before automatic purging of the rolls, there have been historic examples of 130% turnouts. Read Dirty Politics by Bruce Felknor for that story.
Leaving out the obvious fact that if your qualifications had the remotest resemblance to those of the people who say paper trails are necessary, we'd all know who you were, it may well be that the punched card voting systems have been instrumental in voting fraud and should have been scrapped generations ago.
Careful examination of the punch card devices show obvious opportunities for fraud. What if somebody decided to alter the pins that correspond to disfavored candidates to make a clean punch unlikely?
Open Source alone is an inadequate solution. What if the software run on the voting machines or tabulation systems is not what we all signed off on?
Many, many ways have been found by clever, determined, or connected people to commit electoral fraud in the past. Only vigilance will prevent the new technologies from being used for fraud in the future.
An independent paper trail gives us something to be vigilant with.
'Of course, you can always try charging a reasonable price and trusting people to be honest.
If the employers of the readers of Electronic Design news had stood up to the Hollywood cartel lobbysts to begin with, we wouldn't have DRM schemes to talk about.
What they did instead was stand like deer in the headlights hypnotized by vague promises of infinite future profits based on release by Hollywood of all its content some time after hell freezes over,
Yes, they had a choice.
Compared either by net caps or income, the consumer electronics industry is so much bigger than the Hollywood content cartel that they could exceed the campaign contributions of Hollywood by 10 to 1 out of petty cash. They chose to kiss the butts of major label and studio CEOs instead and are hoping that we're stupid enough to buy the brain-damaged DRM crap which will be the only things they can legally sell us in compliance with the alphabet soup of legislation they have bought and intend to buy from our Congressional "representatives".
Well, I won't be buying the crap and I hope you won't, either. These guys took a risk with their future profits and incidentally, our freedom by doing it Hollywood's way. Well, we're losing our freedom and "fair use" is only one of the things we're going to be losing. I don't see any reason to care about their profits.
I think the current tendency to split the consumer electronics industry into 2 tiers, what the Japanese sell Americans and what they sell each others will be drastically exaggerated. It'll be "crap stuff for those ignorant Americans" and "cool stuff for everyone else in the world"... though the foriegners stupid enough to buy into the laws written by the Hollywood cartel via WIPO will also get the crap stuff made for Americans.
If the consumer electronics industry doesn't do this, the real cool hardware stuff that can be made to work with available media will be black-marketed into the US and cooperating EU nations. Of course, possession might be good for a vacation behind bars.
Bottom line for us hardware types who want to invent and build and be able to get to market cool new consumer products without begging our masters in Hollywood for permission?
Start shopping for a free country.
And if the major electronic companies most affected had only had backbones, this need never have happened.
Slashdot Mirror
There are generally very nice fiber optic cables routed over the same towers and poles used to carry electric power, used to carry information to/from the utility companies to their sites and equipment. CitiLECs have been using them for years to distribute broadband access to end users.
Emergency / disaster organizations use the Net, too.
Go out and make some of your own."
Scoop Nisker
Hey, maybe you can tell me - why is it that people on slashdot have taken to labelling anyone whose opinion they disagree with an "astroturfer"? Why is it so hard to accept that some people simply do not believe what you believe, and that they're not just saying what their employer is paying them to say?
Check the paragon_au (730772) post on this thread, we have an alleged downloader who allegedly never buys CDs who also repeatedly says that copyright "theft" is bad. You take this seriously as grass-roots opinion from a real member of the P2P user community? If you do, you're pretty gullible.
Astroturfing has become so popular on public forums and lots of other places that there's a word specifically coined to describe it. A PR firm or department at an organization that can access public opinion by posting on public forums that doesn't is run by tards. What could be easier for a PR firm than to have an employee register on /. or K5 or any other place where there are people with opinions and. . . inject the opinion of the client as phony "grass-roots" public opinion? Look up astroturf on Google for current examples of how this practice is being used by PR firms and corporate PR departments. Of course, the PR firm guy does have to know enough of the "in-group" jargon to look like he belongs there. So the next stage... perhaps some lucky slashdotters have already been offered money to post a company or organization's party line.
I've wondered where the posts endorsing Microsoft security have been coming from. I wouldn't even object to the practice if the people on payroll put their sponsor names at the bottom of each post.
If you're pissed because you aren't on the gravy train yourself despite your defense of astroturfing (suggesting that it's imaginary counts), Google is your friend. Find the PR firm for the RIAA and see if you can get them to hire you. You're doing a slightly better job than the other guy is doing, and your low slashdot ID should even give you some credibility.
I do not have the right to distribute copyrighted material without the copyright holder's consent.
Make an analog tape of a few tracks off an album off FM. Send me the tape. Guess what, you're legal and I'm legal and we're both completely within our rights. Look up the Audio Home Recording Act for further information. Make the same tracks available on Kazaa, you're A PIRATE!!!.
Preventing me from doing so id not an "assault on my rights", as it's not a right I've ever had.
You have that right now if you distribute via cassette. As I said, look up the law yourself. You do NOT have the right to do this digitally, because the law explicitly treats digital recording differently.
Now, trying to shut down P2P networks entirely would be an assualt on (one of) my rights, but that's not what's happening.
Only because the *AA hasn't managed it yet. But if you really don't think they're trying, you are either in denial or already on payroll. I suggest you look at the history of Internet Radio as well. Or check out Doctorow's article on closing the analog hole about what the *AA organizations are trying to do to consumer technology in general with the support of Congress.
Just to cut out independent competition for the purpose of preserving an obsolete business model a few years longer. In what way is that a legitimate public policy goal?
Of course it's legitimate, from their point of view - they're trying to preserve their profits, that's the entire reason they exist. This is what happens when you let companies get too powerful - they will enevitably act in their own best interests, regardless of what would be in the public's best interests. If the companies are small/weak, that's fine. If they're big/powerful, there's more chance they'll be successful, to the detriment of everyone else.
Spammers feel the same way about their "product". Does this mean their existence should be tolerated?
Music a person doesn't hear is music that person isn't going to buy.
You say that you've been downloading MP3s for year and as a result, never buy albums. You're whining about people committing "copyright theft", a crime that only exists in the imagination of the *AA publicity people. WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?
You're trying way too hard to be a RIAA poster child. Either it's cool to rip and never buy, in which case you don't give a shit about copyright infringement, or you care and are trying to get us to stop. You can't have it both ways and have any chance of finding more than a few people stupid enough to believe you. So IMHO, you're an astroturfer and not very good at it.
Lets see what other bullshit did you make up, oh the reason people buy CD's is because it better quality than SOME rips.
Yes that plays a part, but here is a huge difference between radio and CD's (and mp3's) on the radio you can not listen to the music you want anytime you want, anywhere you want. With a CD (or MP3) you can.
So you rip the MP3 after buying. Unless your bosses manage to make the CD unplayable via DRM on a CD drive.
Now why on earth would someone make BAD quality rips to listen to in MP3 format? Wouldnt they just rip it at a high enough quality that they cannot tell the difference? Wait maybe they DO!
And all the rips on Kazaa are 256K and higher quality. Yeah, right. If you can make a 128K rip that's indistinguishable from the CD-audio, you should be working at a major label preparing CD-tracks for uploading to radio stations for on-the-air use and commercials. It probably would pay you better than astroturfing.
Downloading illegal music drives sales, well lets see how many songs have I downloaded since napster was released, easy a couple thousand. Now how many CD's have brought because of what I've heard from the MP3... hmm 0. I already (illegally) own the music, I'm not going to go and get another copy. The same goes for pretty much everyone I know who downloads music illegally.
We know its illegal, but really, we don't care. I still support artist in other ways, but it doesnt justify commiting copyright theft. I can admit to it, I think you need to as well.
Which PR firm are you working for and how's the pay in astroturfing these days? You say that you know it's illegal and you don't care. You claim to be committing copyright infringment and say that it doesn't justify committing "copyright theft". Never post before your first cup of coffee. Or in your case, your third. And never get loaded before you post.
What else, "The most downloaded album on Kazaa was the last Eminem CD, 'pre-released'" erm.. source?
For anybody else, I'd dig the info out of my files. For you, I suggest simply dropping an e-mail to your employer or client and ask them.
"tracked by places like Big Champagne. To find out what bands are most popular in" Didn't you just say that people don't download what they want to own (buy), but instead to find out what different bands and songs are like? If this is true, tracking how many people download xyz does not help at all.
Sure people do download to test the waters, I do it often my friend says XYZ is good, I download it, and like it. But guess what I, and thousands others do? We dont rush out to the store, we type the name of the band in KaZaA search and download the rest of their music.
Certainly, there are
The reason that the MPAA is using the RIAA as an attack dog is that they're next. The price of the technology needed to make a feature movie is dropping fast, to the point where the next aspiring Spielberg or Lucas at the UCLA film school might decide to find some angel investors and make his first commercial release direct to DVD and promote it over the Internet... rip his own movie to DivX and put it on the Net, chancing that people will like it, find the URL which is VERY PROMINENT in the film, and buy the DVD.
He (or she) makes a modest amount of money, and his next stop is a couple of A-List actors... cutting them in to big percentages instead of big bucks up front and is talking to movie theater chains himself about distribution.
If filmmakers don't need the Hollywood machine to make a living, where are the studios going to find good directors in future?
Looks like you've let the *AA slide YET ANOTHER ONE past you. People are taking the RIAA "stolen goods" crap at face value. Perhaps the astroturfers I've seen around here have managed to spread some disinformation.
128K MP3s are FM broadcast quality (by definition) promos. The business model has one big difference from FM. The users are storing music promos at their own expense and serving up copies using their own bandwidth.
The only differences between taping MP3 promo tracks being played back over a wireless analog channel, like an FM radio and downloading identical MP3 promo tracks off the Net is that one is illegal and the other isn't. Does listening to 128K MP3-quality tracks displace sales? Why would the labels be paying to have them broadcast if they did?
Either works for promoting records. The digital version is illegal because the *AA organizations paid off a bunch of politicians to make it illegal. As for morality, some people think getting law in exchange for campaign contributions is immoral.
Sales aren't displaced by MP3 downloading, they're driven. That's why indie musicians release their own stuff for download on MP3. Not because of generosity, but because they want people to buy their CDs and higher-than-broadcast quality digital tracks at iTunes.
The most downloaded album on Kazaa was the last Eminem CD, "pre-released". People were waiting to buy it so they could get a higher quality music experience than they could get off broadcast quality CDs.
Records are sold when people hear enough of what's on it to decide they want a high-quality copy for their own listening. Nobody hears it? Nobody buys it. People hear it, whether on FM, P2P, or via FM radio, people might buy it. What's so hard to understand about that?
Why is the digital version illegal? Record companies want exclusive access to media channels suitable for broadcasting promotional reduced-quality audio tracks to the general public. So they paid a bunch of politicians to make it that way. Just because it's legal doesn't necessarily make it right.
The only damage done to legit artists by MP3 is that fewer people buy CDs by mistake anymore. People who like a specific band are likely to check out the new album by buying it. If they've heard all the tracks, they aren't going to buy if they find the one good song is the one on the radio and the rest is filler. What's wrong with that? Record labels do not have the holy right to profit at our expense by selling us crap we wouldn't buy if we knew what was on those shiny discs in advance.
That's why the MP3 downloads from networks like Kazaa are being tracked by places like Big Champagne. To find out what bands are most popular in a kind of real-time readout simply impossible via traditional radio end user polling methods used to find out what music end users are. Arbitron's every few days or month. MP3 downloads are realtime.
If THE RECORD INDUSTRY didn't think P2P downloads caused CD sales, why are they using Big Champagne tracking info to run marketing campaigns? If low-quality promo downloads automatically killed the market for the CDs they're taken from, all they could find out from the tracking info is who will not be buying their records. If an album were getting millions of downloads, it would be time to pull the plug on marketing and write off the investment because everyone who wanted to hear it's got it on the hard drive and in their MP3 player. Funny that it isn't happening that way, isn't it?
Or maybe you guys are reacting instead of thinking to RIAA disinformation and conflating a law (AHRA) created via political campaign contribution with morality.
If you gave public policy issues the kind of concentrated thought you give your software when a program blows up in your face, you might be able to make sense of a lot more of what is going on around you.
While correlation isn't ca
They will if they find Taiwan has a complete set of their (hopefully contingency) invasion plans and order of battle because somebody at their Ministry of Defense decided it was a good idea to put up an unofficial access point to their LAN somewhere that a wardriver coincidentally on the Taiwan government payroll could pick up on it.
Anybody here think this is impossible?
While they have certain recourses that a US corporation doesn't, i.e. they can shoot the responsible idiot, fixing the problem is still going to cost them a shitload of money.
My guess is that you're right about the motivation, but I'm sure that China has at least as many PHMs as we do of the sort that would have no clue as to why bad security is A Bad Idea. The problem is separation of decision-making authority from the technical understanding required for an intelligent decision, but organizations generally don't get this until it bites them on the ass, and they frequently don't get it even after this. Otherwise no corporation or government would have been bitten a second time by a Windows virus/trojan/worm.
Other examples, of course, would be leaking corporate proprietary secrets to the highest bidder, from foriegn manufacturers or their own.
And you aren't eligible to participate in this unless your company has more than $1M in assets or similarly restrictive criteria>
What's good about kermit under the circumstances that can be expected on an connect to/from orbit?
No, the RIAA is trying to control the terms of the debate. If everybody lets the RIAA get away with the words "theft" and "piracy", people agree that "theft" is wrong, and the discussion will naturally turn to "what should be done about the theives", i.e. the RIAA got to make its points at the expense of everybody else in the country except FM radio stations.
This war has to be won at the public opinion level, and if they try to take the moral high ground, we need the ammo to blow them off it.
If we want to make the point that the RIAA are liars, we must be clear as to exactly what it is they are lying about.
You can't assume that even slashdotters or musicians who have been following the issue know this. We need talking points for op-ed letters to the press and the media, so we have to know what we're talking about.
The real reason is they fear losing control over the distribution of media and control over artists and fans alike. P2P forces them to realize that their partnerships, contracts and lawyers aren't and never were neccessary and that no one -least of all artists - needs any of them.
Right, but Internet Radio and other streaming media make the point better. Content sampling media that at best, sounds like AM is not anything which will displace a CD sale if the listener even likes the content.
128K MP3s as uploaded to P2P networks are substantially identical to the 128K MP3s which provide the content you hear on analog FM radio. In fact, using a tuner card, you can even record them back to 128K MP3s and store them on your hard drive, just as you can record them to analog cassette tape and trade them to your friends.
The difference between listening via download or FM radio?
There is no proof that 128K MP3s are more effective or less effective in promoting the sale of CDs whether broadcast over the radio or downloaded from the Internet. The same set of ears decides based on them whether or not to buy the CD or not. The latest Eminem album was "pre-released" unofficially over P2P a month before official release at record stores. Because of this, customers who wanted to hear it at better than 128K MP3 quality were ready to buy as soon as the CDs hit retail and it immediately hit #1.
What did Eminem lose from the "theft" of his music? Nobody associated with the RIAA or any record label has explained this to us, and I've heard no complaints from Eminem about this.
In fairness, Madonna's latest got pre-released and it tanked. However, Madonna has yet to explain why she thinks it wouldn't have gone into the dumper in the absence of pre-release via the Net.
One difference? FM radio stations are paid by RIAA labels to carry music promotional content, while via P2P, listeners host the music on servers at their own expense and transfer the music at their own bandwidth expense.
Another difference? Getting digital content via FM radio is legal. Getting the identical content via the Internet isn't.
Why?
The *AA companies bought off a shitload of politicians openly through campaign contributions to make the law that way.
Why would the *AA companies want to cut one promo distribution channel that the listeners pay for instead of them?
Effectively, only the RIAA companies have access to FM as a music promotional channel. The indie musicians and labels are priced out of the market. The indie musicians and labels can afford to distribute promotional tracks via P2P. That's why the RIAA has done its best to destroy P2P and Internet Radio in the hands of individuals and small organizations.
I don't mind protecting the legitimate rights of artists to profit from their work in the least. However, I have no interest in interfering with the ability of indie artists to promote their work via the Internet, and less than no interest in wasting taxpayer money to prop up the obsolete and dying business model of the RIAA and soon, the MPAA member companies.
What about PIRACY!!!?
128K MP3s are promotional giveaways of no intrinsic value. The product is the physical CD, and that's what people pay for.. Counterfeit CDs of anything you can find in a record stores are available in Asia, pressed at Asian CD manufacturing facilities and sold openly all over Asia and in some cases, even in the USA. If the *AA really wanted to stop PIRACY!!!, they'd be pressuring US politicians to stop the manufacture of counterfeit CDs in Asia. There are many kinds of pressure the US government could be putting on Asian governments to stop this. Why isn't this happening? Ask Hilary Rosen yourself.
If you want to call P2P and Internet Radio theft, be my guest, but please smash your FM radio over your head first.
If a jury has Internet users on it, I doubt a prosecutor could get a conviction no matter how compelling the evidence.
A few high-profile case where somebody kills a spammer and the jury lets the killer (I can't say murder in this case, it doesn't fit) walk will send a message to spammers.
You can find out how to get those approvals on the respective websites.
If you mean something else, what would that be?
It's a lot easier when you can take all the ex-customer's business information along as well.
I don't feel like looking it up, but one outsourcing CEO said that he expected problems with outsources becoming competitors, but the problem was 5 years away and not of current interest to him.
He'll have cashed out and his successor and whoever the stockholders are going to be by then holding the bag.
What makes you think it'll stop there? If a US-based Fortune 500 company becomes a hollow shell with all its sales, service, and manufacturing going overseas and only orders coming from an administration increasingly clueless about what the end users and major customers want because nobody within several time zones has to deal with them, sooner or later, the outsourcers are going to wonder what the hell value US corporate management adds to their company products.
Whether this means unfriendly takeover ("We'll buy your stockholders out at 5 cents on the dollar and give you a golden parachute") or the top management at the outsourcers taking data farm hard drives by the truckload to the new facility conveniently placed by coincidence right down the block and locking up the old building with large signs saying "Report to this address!" depends on circumstances.
What happens to the people who made the decisions? They'll have cashed out and retired by then, or maybe left the US to find a place they can take through the cycle again.
Who gets hammered? US based employees, stockholders, and the most hapless CEOs... the least lucky of which will get to turn off the lights as he walks out the door.
Who won't notice? By and large, the service will be just as miserable under Indian management as under American.
What happens if the US management tries suing? If you want to sue Indian business peoples in India who know who to pay off and how much, go ahead, I want to watch. Or all the former outsourcers have to do is go limp and refer anyone who has problems to the former US managers... if it's a bank or a major service provider, the end users will do whatever they have to do to get their services back...
And is there anyone around here who will return any vote other than "innocent" if he/she is a jury member in a trial of someone who did physical harm or damaged the property of a major spammer because he is a major spammer?
I would have modded you up if I'd had mod points.
There was fairly obvious reason to force the elimination of lever-actuated mechanical voting machines.
If you want a simple technology that's hard to break without leaving obvious traces, try ink on paper, either by manual count or optical scan.
You can figure out for yourself what I do if C: gets hosed. Hint: getting back to pre-disaster condition is just time-consuming.
I will say that getting back to pre-disaster condition from backup tape a few years back was an. . . adventure.
Nachi worm infected Diebold ATMs
All it takes is a simple file. If the edges of the pin are rounded a bit, the probability of a clean punch will drop dramatically. A careful examination of the "voting machine" will turn up other possibilities. Find some information on the internals and if you have any mechanical aptitude, you'll find some.
Any system is probably breakable given time, lots of clever, determined, and/or connected people will be working on the problem. That in itself is reason enough to shitcan the mechanical systems.
Seriously, the answer is careful cleaning of voting lists before the election. That's why you have to keep voting to stay registered, if you miss x general elections in a row, you get dumped off the rolls. Secondary checks... if you get 100% or better turnout at a precinct, something is wrong.
Before automatic purging of the rolls, there have been historic examples of 130% turnouts. Read Dirty Politics by Bruce Felknor for that story.
Careful examination of the punch card devices show obvious opportunities for fraud. What if somebody decided to alter the pins that correspond to disfavored candidates to make a clean punch unlikely?
Open Source alone is an inadequate solution. What if the software run on the voting machines or tabulation systems is not what we all signed off on?
Many, many ways have been found by clever, determined, or connected people to commit electoral fraud in the past. Only vigilance will prevent the new technologies from being used for fraud in the future.
An independent paper trail gives us something to be vigilant with.
If the employers of the readers of Electronic Design news had stood up to the Hollywood cartel lobbysts to begin with, we wouldn't have DRM schemes to talk about.
What they did instead was stand like deer in the headlights hypnotized by vague promises of infinite future profits based on release by Hollywood of all its content some time after hell freezes over,
Yes, they had a choice.
Compared either by net caps or income, the consumer electronics industry is so much bigger than the Hollywood content cartel that they could exceed the campaign contributions of Hollywood by 10 to 1 out of petty cash. They chose to kiss the butts of major label and studio CEOs instead and are hoping that we're stupid enough to buy the brain-damaged DRM crap which will be the only things they can legally sell us in compliance with the alphabet soup of legislation they have bought and intend to buy from our Congressional "representatives".
Well, I won't be buying the crap and I hope you won't, either. These guys took a risk with their future profits and incidentally, our freedom by doing it Hollywood's way. Well, we're losing our freedom and "fair use" is only one of the things we're going to be losing. I don't see any reason to care about their profits.
Even US R&D is likely to be affected, possibly so much so that corporations will have to move it out of the USA.
I think the current tendency to split the consumer electronics industry into 2 tiers, what the Japanese sell Americans and what they sell each others will be drastically exaggerated. It'll be "crap stuff for those ignorant Americans" and "cool stuff for everyone else in the world"... though the foriegners stupid enough to buy into the laws written by the Hollywood cartel via WIPO will also get the crap stuff made for Americans.
If the consumer electronics industry doesn't do this, the real cool hardware stuff that can be made to work with available media will be black-marketed into the US and cooperating EU nations. Of course, possession might be good for a vacation behind bars.
Bottom line for us hardware types who want to invent and build and be able to get to market cool new consumer products without begging our masters in Hollywood for permission?
Start shopping for a free country.
And if the major electronic companies most affected had only had backbones, this need never have happened.