Imagine hyperexplosives + Windows CE controlling the warheads.
If anything goes wrong with this, this appears even more destructive to the users than to the targets, and this looks to me like something that makes an ordinary atomic bomb look like a monument of stability.
Imagine being next to an ammo depot full of these things and having one of these warheards go off.
Boycott the RIAA and get everyone you know on board the boycott. Cut the fuckers off at the bank accounts and they'll cease to bother us, and their 0wn3d politicians will look for new masters.
They've declared war on the entire high tech community, whether we share files or not. Fuck 'em... or more to the point, let's fuck them up.
If you must have your Britney fix, buy from used record stores.
However, to make the point that the RIAA label declining sales is due to their own behavior and the crap they are putting out, better buy from independent artists. That's one place to find some, check my sig for another.
If it isn't played on FM and not available in record stores, it's probably from non-RIAA label sources, to make sure, check any artist you're thinking of buying at RIAA Radar.
If RIAA label sales drop by 5% and indie label and musician sales double, it's all over for the labels... the excuses about PIRACY!!! will no longer play with. . . the people in the multinationals major label CEOs report to.
If being on a RIAA label is shown to be a negative as far as making money goes... the rush for the exits will start and the RIAA won't be able to afford lobbyist teams anymore.
Leaving the MPAA out there all by itself, given that the RIAA won't be around to play bad cop anymore. That's the next war.
Though from the point of view of the Religious Right and the rest of the Bushmen, Arnie might be the best way to get that lesson across.
They started hammering him right after he announced. Those pictures of Arnold with a joint and the rumors about the gay porn did not come from the Democrats... if they had, Fox News wouldn't have run them.
You need to remember, the state's answer to the energy scam was to raise consumer rates to pay the bloated expenses over the next decade or two
At the time, only your friends at Enron knew that it was a scam.
Davis's problem was making sure his constituents had assured electric power. You know, that stuff that runs through wires that nobody can do business without?
The people like you who are whining about high taxes now are the people who would be screaming like buggered pigs if you were sitting in front of a computer idled by YET ANOTHER rolling blackout.
I personally feel that those people should have no claim to any sort of compensation for injury, death, etc. They are not legal workers, they are not legal immigrants, thus they have no rights here whatsoever (as far as I am concerned).
So you want cheap labor that employers have no legal responsibility towards.
I hope you get replaced by an immigrant who gets paid more than you do now because her competence is superior.
What really behooves me about all this is that up until recently, I counted myself among the advocates of the European way of dealing with IP, and pointed to the flow of software/hardware innovation out of the US as an example of that 'superiority'. Now it appears that through harmonizing their laws with ours (or even being more restrictive, it seems), they will lose the advantage myself and many others have been touting.
If this crap goes through, those of us who want to stay in technology in the long run will have to move to India or China or elsewhere in the Third World, and the cutting edge of technology in the former world leaders like the US and the EU will be importado and black-market only.
Technological leadership on both sides of the Atlantic is getting ceded to India, China, and other countries... in exchange for a few million dollars of political campaign contributions given to US politicians.
Whether our political leaders have figured it out or not, long-term military leadership means long-term technological leadership.
Our political leaders have been bought by the Hollywood entertainment cartel.
The EU citizens are disarmed, the rationale being to protect them from "bad guys".
They've rationalized this for generations on the basis that they live in democratic countries whose governments would never threaten their civil liberties.
To be more precise, they've bet the future of their democracies on this and unknowingly, bet their economic future on this as well.
The future of technology is going to come from places whose technologies don't have to be approved by the Hollywood entertainment cartel.
This is one of the reasons why I do not believe that the US will be able to sustain the technology lead required to be "the lone superpower". If the governments of the EU want to follow America down the drain, we can all watch our new technologies come from India and China and other places industrializing out of Third World status.
Someday, maybe I'll have time to find out how they were persuaded to buy into the wrong end of a sucker bet.
I'm seeing a lot of complaints from Europeans here saying they're basically stuck with the European government.
I've also heard them boasting of their democracies.
I think it's time for the people around here from the EU to tell us. . . well, do you or don't you have a democracy? And if you do, why aren't you working on pressuring it to represent you?
Exclusively licensing a single tire vendor to be Ford's "official" tiremaker wouldn't exactly be difficult.
Hmmm... IIRC, some of the EU countries told some of the printer vendors that third party vendors must be allowed to make printer cartridges for their printers. Wonder how many national consumer protection laws will be nullfied by this proposed law?
Yeah, I thought so. Now it isn't so funny, is it? So step up and show us how it is done. Show us how to fight these types of laws.
They have one advantage we don't. Public campaign financing. Our corporations in general are not paying off their politicians and bureaucrats.
If they are, some public spirited Europeans should find out who and get that info and evidence to the news media.
So all they really need to do is organize into a constituency big enough to persuade the politicians to pay attention, and get people who understand politics on board.
Does this threaten the development of new technology in EU?
Does this threaten jobs?
Does this directly benefit anybody other than the cartel providers?
The question the politicians and bureaucrats need to be asked are:
WHERE IS THE PROFIT FOR EUROPEANS IN THIS?.
If there is no profit, why are we supposed to pay for this?
They do not need millions of Euros to get the ball rolling. All they need to do is... political organization. The Europeans are allegedly good at this.
Earth to US... Earth to US... it's from you the cancer is spreading. They managed to push through the DMCA in the USA, so now they get even bolder in the EU. And next round they'll push for DMCA II in the US being even worse than the current one. RIAA and MPAA are the ones pushing the most for IP totalitarism, did you ever catch what the last A means?
Americans can indeed be blamed for the DMCA. The geek community could have put together a political action committee capable of raising money to buy enough politicians to make the DMCA political suicide. Unfortunately, nobody with the cash required to get one off the ground (est: $1M USD to set up infrastructure) was willing.
American politicians are basically 0wn3d.
The *AA organizations are not buying EU politicians that I ever heard of. If they are, I'm sure there are EU newspapers who'd be happy to tell the public that American corporate interests are buying the EU and national governments.
Given public campaign financing, it shouldn't take horrendous amount of money to put together pressure groups capable of making themselves heard both at the national and the EU level, you only need people willing to take the time to do the organizing and some in-person lobbying.
A letter from civil rights organizations isn't enough. You guys need to turn up numbers. Target key people and make sure they get thousands of letters. Get people to write and talk to their MPs and EU Parliament representatives.
These laws will protect USA corporate interests at the expense of EU technological development. Your nations will be able to build new technologies the US won't be able to if these laws go into the toilet they oozed out of, that means a stronger technological base and more jobs and money floating around.
BTW, this is probably a better argument than civil liberties with respect to attacking this kind of law. Politicians care about businesses making money, that they can extract taxes from them.
Whining about the evil American political system does NOT get you off the hook for doing what you can to protect your own freedom.
If you knew anything about basic RF, you wouldn't have posted the above.
So you think it's impossible to play with a nominal 4' transponder range a bit?
Try:
boosting the power a bit... your limit here is that you don't want to fry the RFID chips. Best experiment with a signal generator or a variable gain power amplifier and be prepared to burn out a few in experimenting.
directional antennas with gain
If someone has any reliable information that a privacy threat from RFID exists, I'd happily review it
That's very nice of you. If you showed evidence of basic competence of any area relevant to possible security / privacy or threats from RFIDs, I might be interested in your opinion.
Being a "geek", even a "pencilneck" (1 geek point for the reference), whatever the hell you mean by this, does not automatically make you competent at threat analysis or evaluating the sociological or political impacts of a given technology.
I can see it now, after the trial is over, and SCO is decimated, IBM's chief attorney:
"0wn3d!!"
As a Bush supporter, I assume you'll go into deep mourning as you realize that the SCO stock you own doesn't even have value as collectibles.
But at least you'll have the satisfaction of knowing that you did your duty to the corporate state, and if you've got any money left, you need only go to the list of Bush's campaign contributors to find out how to lose the rest of it to Bush friends [aka scammers] in the great tradition of WorldCom, Enron, and SCO.
Do we have anybody around here who's likely to be on the inside giving sentencing recommendations assuming the SCO suits don't get out of the US in time to escape criminal proceedings? (extortion and fraud occur to me as possible charges, but I'm sure there are many others... there's blood in the water)
I suggest that instead of sending the SCO directors and officers to the usual "country club" prison, that they get sent instead to the ordinary run of Federal prisons (Leavenworth still open) where they'll get to socially interact with lots of people with names like "Bubba".
The survivors will spread the word that abuse of the legal system doesn't pay.
was a little disappointed in the article. Although they provided some nice data on power supplies, they left it to Slashdot posters to explain why I would care about a quality power supply (other than general "stability problems"). For example, how does A/C ripple affect system performance and stability?
On a more or less hard core tech forum, they expect you to know this going in.
But it wouldn't have hurt to have included a paragraph on why it matters. It's quite possible to be in their target audience and not have a electronics hardware background.
Send a letter to the editor telling him what you told us.
but has anyone considered that these less developed nations who are pushing for new regulations to be imposed want to see developed nations crippled and therefore the wealth they have redistributed to the rest of the world?
No.
Where does a developing nation get its wealth? From trade. Weakening the developed countries means they have less money that can be used to buy whatever it is developing countries have to sell, and a side effect is weakening the currencies of developed countries so the manufactured goods and high-level services they can't make for themselves become even more expensive for them.
To use my favorite Ferrengi question, "Where is the profit?"
How hard would it be to make real war on domestic counterfeit CD makers and sellers?
A national advertising campaign with a 1-800 number for people to turn in CD counterfeiters and the signs of a counterfeit CD,a $100 reward for anybody who turns in a counterfeit CD seller and a $5,000 reward for anyone who turns in a bulk manufacturer... and the FBI cleans up the mess. This is a felony rap, no new laws are needed, and I have absolutely no problem with people turning in ripoff artists. Spammers trying to sell MS Office for $30 to me find their spam forwarded to piracy@microsoft.com... and I'm no friend of MS.
There are ways the US government can put far more pressure on foriegn countries that tolerate counterfeiting than they have been. Why haven't the 0wn3d politicians of the *AA pushed for enforcement against these countries instead of attacking its own best customers?
Counterfeiting reduces profits.
Independent artist access to P2P and Internet Radio channels and CD pressing means that anyone with the talent who puts in the energy has a chance to make a pretty decent living off music without the help of the *AA companies, and the same will be true of moviemaking in a few years. Soon, the people capable of making entertainment content the major content vendors will want to promote will be either turning down label and movie deals or extracting fair contracts from them.
P2P and Internet Radio threatens their business model.
I'm not going to address the continuing whines from the people who are still parroting RIAA propaganda even after a reputable news service has exploded the RIAA cover stories. Anyone who still repeats them is:
a RIAA shill
an idiot
both
and who cares what scumbuckets think?
I'm sure all of you have figured out that 128K MP3s are promotional giveaways, whether played with reduced quality on Internet Radio or distributed via FM radio or P2P network. Those of you who say otherwise are invited to show us where there is a market for them... perhaps somewhere on the planet Sardozz, because there is no commercial market for them on Earth. Nobody buys broadcast quality because this is given away free-as-in-beer over the radio... in the hope that people will buy the real products. Why do people buy CDs if they can download? 128K is good enough for casual listening, but if you like something to want to listen over and over, people know there's something missing in the sound and the fix is go buy the CD.
Distribution of music an end user can legally tape via FM radio is no threat to the music industry because FM radio content is effectively controlled by it via payola.
Distribution of promotional music tracks via Internet Radio and P2P does threaten the *AA monopoly of access because just anybody can get a track onto both, and if it's good enough, people will buy the actual CD or better-than-broadcast quality tracks. If they buy from an independent artist, this is money they could have spent with a major label, and good sales for independents gives the kind of artists the RIAA labels want means that they have to compete in the free market for people capable of making marketable content.
If artists who make music now and movies soon believe they can make more money without Hollywood than with it, we'll be buying content outside the Hollywood system, the content distributors will find they don't need Hollywood, either, and a lot of Hollywood CEOs will be on the sidewalk banging drums for pennies.
After reading your post, I realized that you have absolutely no interest in any sort of rational discussion. You have presented no facts to support your position, because you have none. All you can do is drool a bunch of unsupported accusations onto a Webpage, and if I want to read that sort of crap, I can get it directy from the your "sources" at the RIAA or MPAA.
Your wishing that I was a Kazaa user in order to support your peculiar beliefs means no more than my wishing you were a Linux user in order to prove that Linux is so easy to sue that tards and PR people can "get it".
Even my speculation is well supported by *AA organizational behavior and common knowledge of business models of the record and motion picture industries. Yours is supported by hot air.
The only question that your post gives me is "are you a liar, a fool, or both?", and frankly, I'm not all that interested in why you'd spend that much time and effort trashing your personal credibility.
Only in the fantasies of RIAA publicists, which you've bought hook, line, and sinker.
That's all. All this discussion of copyright reform and the "artists" is a non-issue. What it is really about is "we want everything for free."
I personally don't download via P2P, I'm running dialup which makes it sort of pointless. I promote an independent artist. One of the problems I've had is finding people willing to host her files for fear of getting sued simply on the basis of making any MP3 available for upload.
In the real world, that's 1/2 the *AA goal. The other half is making the public afraid or guilty about downloading from any source other than *AA approved distribution. The intended result? Making the Internet useless as a tool for independent artists to distribute promotional content or products to the general public.
In theory, an independent musician can make albums in a bedroom studio using currently available PC software and can put out promo content via P2P and Internet Radio and have just as much chance of getting decisions to buy the real product, which is a CD or better than broadcast quality digital track sold somewhere like iTunes. In the real world, it's a lot harder than that, promotional budgets and good studio engineers count. People have succeeded with this model anyway. Since this interferes with a label being able to say "Accept our contract or you can't make a living in music", they want P2P and Internet Radio they can't control go away.
Video production technology is advancing so quickly that within 5 years, it is likely that one will be able to do the production for movies that can be shown at movie theaters and sold directly to the public in DVD form in a bedroom studio. What happens to the MPAA business model at this point if the next half-dozen Steven Spielbergs prove they can make a good living in movies without Hollywood's help?
People really think that if copyrights were repealed completely, that somehow the marketplace wouldn't change at all: that $200 million movies would still be made, people would devote 3-5 years to writing a book, and animators would spend tens of thousands of man-hours on television and home video.
Hey, d00d, do you want to set up a "straw man" argument or be one?
While I wouldn't be all that surprised if the movie industry could make a pretty good living even in the absence of copyright, given that they are selling quality content at a price the public considers reasonable, the mass support for ending copyright only exists in the imaginations of the *AA organization publicists and their lunatic fringe supporters, and the real support for ending copyright exists among a lunatic fringe probably just as small as the one that exists among people who aren't on the *AA payroll that fanatically support its claims.
How about a real discussion of copyright reform instead of half-assed "nyah nyah nyahs" at the MPAA?
Why, do they offend your bosses?
Sorry, your "straw man" argument about ending copyright was too much fun to torch to support using it to start a real discussion of anything,and while a look at your slashdot posts doesn't support the idea that your only interest in slashdot is supporting the *AA for fun and profit, you look pretty inflammable yourself.
Real copyright reform? How about starting with mandatory licensing along the lines of the broadcast model for distribution of reduced-quality material? For audio, the "bright line" is the 128K MP3 already in use by the broadcast industry itself, I'm sure a reasonable equivalent could be decided on for video content.
I could live with a few cents tacked onto the cost of digital media to be put into a fund paid through Performers Rights Societies to the actual creators of the songs or movies, or for downloading from commercial redistributors of this material.
can you explain exactly how actors, directors, cinematographers, writers, or even key grips get paid when you pirate a movie and don't pay a dime for it?
With the exception of the few who are "important" enough to get cut in on a percentage of the net, these are union people who get paid by the hour and get paid rather well while work lasts. Their payment does not depend on whether or not the movie sells or is pirated.
You are saying that no more movies are going to be made if somebody downloads a low-quality copy of the next Matrix movie? What are you smoking?
The RIAA argument you're trying to make also requires you to demonstrate that significant losses in sales are occurring due to broadband downloads of movies.
EVIDENCE PLEASE, other than studies paid for by the MPAA to PR firms.
Your argument also, carried to its illogical conclusion says we have a moral obligation to buy even movies we don't like or these poor, starving industry employees will be out of work. Do they have the obligation to buy software from companies that employ us whether they like it, want it, or need it?
Or how about computer people just like us, who work on the special effects, or just install and support the computers for the people involved with a movie?
You either expect to make enough from your share of the profit to afford to take the risk of their not being any or are getting the certainty of a pretty good paycheck. Either way, you are not my problem, any more than any failed dot.com I wasn't personally involved with is.
there were any people other than actors in that commercial? Professional training in saying the most absurd things is part of what an actor learns.
The other point is that one can come up with much more appealing poster children if one can shop out of a casting catalog than if one is stuck with dull, drab reality.
This can be used as an excuse to unplug off-campus P2P network access, and perhaps even Internet Radio at the port level as part of the deal, since "students would be getting all the music they could possibly want" in the deal.
What are the chances that independent artists will have access to getting into these jukeboxes, even if they're willing to donate content?
Needless to say, I'm hoping this project fails utterly, I'm working with an indie artist.
Of course, given the timeframe and the rate of change with respect to RIAA attacks on end users, the jukeboxes may be dead before arrival... the RIAA boycott should have hit the labels long before this can become a reality... and a nominal 5% of sales loss directly attributable to the boycott means that the multinationals that own them will already have run for the exits.
Slashdot Mirror
If anything goes wrong with this, this appears even more destructive to the users than to the targets, and this looks to me like something that makes an ordinary atomic bomb look like a monument of stability.
Imagine being next to an ammo depot full of these things and having one of these warheards go off.
They've declared war on the entire high tech community, whether we share files or not. Fuck 'em... or more to the point, let's fuck them up.
If you must have your Britney fix, buy from used record stores.
However, to make the point that the RIAA label declining sales is due to their own behavior and the crap they are putting out, better buy from independent artists. That's one place to find some, check my sig for another.
If it isn't played on FM and not available in record stores, it's probably from non-RIAA label sources, to make sure, check any artist you're thinking of buying at RIAA Radar.
If RIAA label sales drop by 5% and indie label and musician sales double, it's all over for the labels... the excuses about PIRACY!!! will no longer play with. . . the people in the multinationals major label CEOs report to.
If being on a RIAA label is shown to be a negative as far as making money goes... the rush for the exits will start and the RIAA won't be able to afford lobbyist teams anymore.
Leaving the MPAA out there all by itself, given that the RIAA won't be around to play bad cop anymore. That's the next war.
Though from the point of view of the Religious Right and the rest of the Bushmen, Arnie might be the best way to get that lesson across.
They started hammering him right after he announced. Those pictures of Arnold with a joint and the rumors about the gay porn did not come from the Democrats... if they had, Fox News wouldn't have run them.
At the time, only your friends at Enron knew that it was a scam.
Davis's problem was making sure his constituents had assured electric power. You know, that stuff that runs through wires that nobody can do business without?
The people like you who are whining about high taxes now are the people who would be screaming like buggered pigs if you were sitting in front of a computer idled by YET ANOTHER rolling blackout.
So you want cheap labor that employers have no legal responsibility towards.
I hope you get replaced by an immigrant who gets paid more than you do now because her competence is superior.
If this crap goes through, those of us who want to stay in technology in the long run will have to move to India or China or elsewhere in the Third World, and the cutting edge of technology in the former world leaders like the US and the EU will be importado and black-market only.
Technological leadership on both sides of the Atlantic is getting ceded to India, China, and other countries... in exchange for a few million dollars of political campaign contributions given to US politicians.
Whether our political leaders have figured it out or not, long-term military leadership means long-term technological leadership.
Our political leaders have been bought by the Hollywood entertainment cartel.
What's the excuse of EU political 'leadership'?
They've rationalized this for generations on the basis that they live in democratic countries whose governments would never threaten their civil liberties.
To be more precise, they've bet the future of their democracies on this and unknowingly, bet their economic future on this as well.
The future of technology is going to come from places whose technologies don't have to be approved by the Hollywood entertainment cartel.
This is one of the reasons why I do not believe that the US will be able to sustain the technology lead required to be "the lone superpower". If the governments of the EU want to follow America down the drain, we can all watch our new technologies come from India and China and other places industrializing out of Third World status.
Someday, maybe I'll have time to find out how they were persuaded to buy into the wrong end of a sucker bet.
I'm seeing a lot of complaints from Europeans here saying they're basically stuck with the European government.
I've also heard them boasting of their democracies.
I think it's time for the people around here from the EU to tell us. . . well, do you or don't you have a democracy? And if you do, why aren't you working on pressuring it to represent you?
Exclusively licensing a single tire vendor to be Ford's "official" tiremaker wouldn't exactly be difficult.
Hmmm... IIRC, some of the EU countries told some of the printer vendors that third party vendors must be allowed to make printer cartridges for their printers. Wonder how many national consumer protection laws will be nullfied by this proposed law?
They have one advantage we don't. Public campaign financing. Our corporations in general are not paying off their politicians and bureaucrats.
If they are, some public spirited Europeans should find out who and get that info and evidence to the news media.
So all they really need to do is organize into a constituency big enough to persuade the politicians to pay attention, and get people who understand politics on board.
The question the politicians and bureaucrats need to be asked are:
They do not need millions of Euros to get the ball rolling. All they need to do is... political organization. The Europeans are allegedly good at this.
Americans can indeed be blamed for the DMCA. The geek community could have put together a political action committee capable of raising money to buy enough politicians to make the DMCA political suicide. Unfortunately, nobody with the cash required to get one off the ground (est: $1M USD to set up infrastructure) was willing.
American politicians are basically 0wn3d.
The *AA organizations are not buying EU politicians that I ever heard of. If they are, I'm sure there are EU newspapers who'd be happy to tell the public that American corporate interests are buying the EU and national governments.
Given public campaign financing, it shouldn't take horrendous amount of money to put together pressure groups capable of making themselves heard both at the national and the EU level, you only need people willing to take the time to do the organizing and some in-person lobbying.
A letter from civil rights organizations isn't enough. You guys need to turn up numbers. Target key people and make sure they get thousands of letters. Get people to write and talk to their MPs and EU Parliament representatives.
These laws will protect USA corporate interests at the expense of EU technological development. Your nations will be able to build new technologies the US won't be able to if these laws go into the toilet they oozed out of, that means a stronger technological base and more jobs and money floating around.
BTW, this is probably a better argument than civil liberties with respect to attacking this kind of law. Politicians care about businesses making money, that they can extract taxes from them.
Whining about the evil American political system does NOT get you off the hook for doing what you can to protect your own freedom.
So you think it's impossible to play with a nominal 4' transponder range a bit?
Try:
If someone has any reliable information that a privacy threat from RFID exists, I'd happily review it
That's very nice of you. If you showed evidence of basic competence of any area relevant to possible security / privacy or threats from RFIDs, I might be interested in your opinion.
Being a "geek", even a "pencilneck" (1 geek point for the reference), whatever the hell you mean by this, does not automatically make you competent at threat analysis or evaluating the sociological or political impacts of a given technology.
RFIDs are generally READ-ONLY devices, mask programmed at the factory. You won't be getting programmers at eBay or anyplace else for these.
"0wn3d!!"
As a Bush supporter, I assume you'll go into deep mourning as you realize that the SCO stock you own doesn't even have value as collectibles.
But at least you'll have the satisfaction of knowing that you did your duty to the corporate state, and if you've got any money left, you need only go to the list of Bush's campaign contributors to find out how to lose the rest of it to Bush friends [aka scammers] in the great tradition of WorldCom, Enron, and SCO.
I suggest that instead of sending the SCO directors and officers to the usual "country club" prison, that they get sent instead to the ordinary run of Federal prisons (Leavenworth still open) where they'll get to socially interact with lots of people with names like "Bubba".
The survivors will spread the word that abuse of the legal system doesn't pay.
"Hmmm... who likes me so much that they'd go to that much trouble to give me a sex toy?"
On a more or less hard core tech forum, they expect you to know this going in.
But it wouldn't have hurt to have included a paragraph on why it matters. It's quite possible to be in their target audience and not have a electronics hardware background.
Send a letter to the editor telling him what you told us.
Not surprising, most of us don't consider Rush Limbaugh and Monsanto and White House spokesdroids as "Men of Science".
No.
Where does a developing nation get its wealth? From trade. Weakening the developed countries means they have less money that can be used to buy whatever it is developing countries have to sell, and a side effect is weakening the currencies of developed countries so the manufactured goods and high-level services they can't make for themselves become even more expensive for them.
To use my favorite Ferrengi question, "Where is the profit?"
A national advertising campaign with a 1-800 number for people to turn in CD counterfeiters and the signs of a counterfeit CD ,a $100 reward for anybody who turns in a counterfeit CD seller and a $5,000 reward for anyone who turns in a bulk manufacturer... and the FBI cleans up the mess. This is a felony rap, no new laws are needed, and I have absolutely no problem with people turning in ripoff artists. Spammers trying to sell MS Office for $30 to me find their spam forwarded to piracy@microsoft.com ... and I'm no friend of MS.
There are ways the US government can put far more pressure on foriegn countries that tolerate counterfeiting than they have been. Why haven't the 0wn3d politicians of the *AA pushed for enforcement against these countries instead of attacking its own best customers?
Counterfeiting reduces profits.
Independent artist access to P2P and Internet Radio channels and CD pressing means that anyone with the talent who puts in the energy has a chance to make a pretty decent living off music without the help of the *AA companies, and the same will be true of moviemaking in a few years. Soon, the people capable of making entertainment content the major content vendors will want to promote will be either turning down label and movie deals or extracting fair contracts from them.
P2P and Internet Radio threatens their business model.
I'm not going to address the continuing whines from the people who are still parroting RIAA propaganda even after a reputable news service has exploded the RIAA cover stories. Anyone who still repeats them is:
- a RIAA shill
- an idiot
- both
and who cares what scumbuckets think?I'm sure all of you have figured out that 128K MP3s are promotional giveaways, whether played with reduced quality on Internet Radio or distributed via FM radio or P2P network. Those of you who say otherwise are invited to show us where there is a market for them... perhaps somewhere on the planet Sardozz, because there is no commercial market for them on Earth. Nobody buys broadcast quality because this is given away free-as-in-beer over the radio... in the hope that people will buy the real products. Why do people buy CDs if they can download? 128K is good enough for casual listening, but if you like something to want to listen over and over, people know there's something missing in the sound and the fix is go buy the CD.
Distribution of music an end user can legally tape via FM radio is no threat to the music industry because FM radio content is effectively controlled by it via payola.
Distribution of promotional music tracks via Internet Radio and P2P does threaten the *AA monopoly of access because just anybody can get a track onto both, and if it's good enough, people will buy the actual CD or better-than-broadcast quality tracks. If they buy from an independent artist, this is money they could have spent with a major label, and good sales for independents gives the kind of artists the RIAA labels want means that they have to compete in the free market for people capable of making marketable content.
If artists who make music now and movies soon believe they can make more money without Hollywood than with it, we'll be buying content outside the Hollywood system, the content distributors will find they don't need Hollywood, either, and a lot of Hollywood CEOs will be on the sidewalk banging drums for pennies.
Your wishing that I was a Kazaa user in order to support your peculiar beliefs means no more than my wishing you were a Linux user in order to prove that Linux is so easy to sue that tards and PR people can "get it".
Even my speculation is well supported by *AA organizational behavior and common knowledge of business models of the record and motion picture industries. Yours is supported by hot air.
The only question that your post gives me is "are you a liar, a fool, or both?", and frankly, I'm not all that interested in why you'd spend that much time and effort trashing your personal credibility.
Only in the fantasies of RIAA publicists, which you've bought hook, line, and sinker.
That's all. All this discussion of copyright reform and the "artists" is a non-issue. What it is really about is "we want everything for free."
I personally don't download via P2P, I'm running dialup which makes it sort of pointless. I promote an independent artist. One of the problems I've had is finding people willing to host her files for fear of getting sued simply on the basis of making any MP3 available for upload.
In the real world, that's 1/2 the *AA goal. The other half is making the public afraid or guilty about downloading from any source other than *AA approved distribution. The intended result? Making the Internet useless as a tool for independent artists to distribute promotional content or products to the general public.
In theory, an independent musician can make albums in a bedroom studio using currently available PC software and can put out promo content via P2P and Internet Radio and have just as much chance of getting decisions to buy the real product, which is a CD or better than broadcast quality digital track sold somewhere like iTunes. In the real world, it's a lot harder than that, promotional budgets and good studio engineers count. People have succeeded with this model anyway. Since this interferes with a label being able to say "Accept our contract or you can't make a living in music", they want P2P and Internet Radio they can't control go away.
Video production technology is advancing so quickly that within 5 years, it is likely that one will be able to do the production for movies that can be shown at movie theaters and sold directly to the public in DVD form in a bedroom studio. What happens to the MPAA business model at this point if the next half-dozen Steven Spielbergs prove they can make a good living in movies without Hollywood's help?
People really think that if copyrights were repealed completely, that somehow the marketplace wouldn't change at all: that $200 million movies would still be made, people would devote 3-5 years to writing a book, and animators would spend tens of thousands of man-hours on television and home video.
Hey, d00d, do you want to set up a "straw man" argument or be one?
While I wouldn't be all that surprised if the movie industry could make a pretty good living even in the absence of copyright, given that they are selling quality content at a price the public considers reasonable, the mass support for ending copyright only exists in the imaginations of the *AA organization publicists and their lunatic fringe supporters, and the real support for ending copyright exists among a lunatic fringe probably just as small as the one that exists among people who aren't on the *AA payroll that fanatically support its claims.
How about a real discussion of copyright reform instead of half-assed "nyah nyah nyahs" at the MPAA?
Why, do they offend your bosses?
Sorry, your "straw man" argument about ending copyright was too much fun to torch to support using it to start a real discussion of anything,and while a look at your slashdot posts doesn't support the idea that your only interest in slashdot is supporting the *AA for fun and profit, you look pretty inflammable yourself.
Real copyright reform? How about starting with mandatory licensing along the lines of the broadcast model for distribution of reduced-quality material? For audio, the "bright line" is the 128K MP3 already in use by the broadcast industry itself, I'm sure a reasonable equivalent could be decided on for video content.
I could live with a few cents tacked onto the cost of digital media to be put into a fund paid through Performers Rights Societies to the actual creators of the songs or movies, or for downloading from commercial redistributors of this material.
With the exception of the few who are "important" enough to get cut in on a percentage of the net, these are union people who get paid by the hour and get paid rather well while work lasts. Their payment does not depend on whether or not the movie sells or is pirated.
You are saying that no more movies are going to be made if somebody downloads a low-quality copy of the next Matrix movie? What are you smoking?
The RIAA argument you're trying to make also requires you to demonstrate that significant losses in sales are occurring due to broadband downloads of movies.
EVIDENCE PLEASE, other than studies paid for by the MPAA to PR firms.
Your argument also, carried to its illogical conclusion says we have a moral obligation to buy even movies we don't like or these poor, starving industry employees will be out of work. Do they have the obligation to buy software from companies that employ us whether they like it, want it, or need it?
Or how about computer people just like us, who work on the special effects, or just install and support the computers for the people involved with a movie?
You either expect to make enough from your share of the profit to afford to take the risk of their not being any or are getting the certainty of a pretty good paycheck. Either way, you are not my problem, any more than any failed dot.com I wasn't personally involved with is.
The other point is that one can come up with much more appealing poster children if one can shop out of a casting catalog than if one is stuck with dull, drab reality.
Perhaps it was the questions about ACT political positions?
What are the chances that independent artists will have access to getting into these jukeboxes, even if they're willing to donate content?
Needless to say, I'm hoping this project fails utterly, I'm working with an indie artist.
Of course, given the timeframe and the rate of change with respect to RIAA attacks on end users, the jukeboxes may be dead before arrival... the RIAA boycott should have hit the labels long before this can become a reality... and a nominal 5% of sales loss directly attributable to the boycott means that the multinationals that own them will already have run for the exits.