Slashdot has a first-mover advantage, probably created because it gained a critical mass geek audience at the time when there were fewer sites to distract them. Like Microsoft software, it's very difficult to dethrone a network effects king once it's established. Slashdot's an excellent example of this.
Incidentally, in my post you quoted, I was trying to say that the interesting stuff existed despite the mistakes, not because of them. Hope that clears up any confusion.
Well, it is Thanksgiving weekend. Most people are out doing stuff with their physical world friends.
Some of the ads are actually useful. My business partner's going to get a gift from ThinkGeek (better not say what it is here since he might be watching!) And it looks like I'll be using ServerBeach for my next venture. So I wouldn't give up on ads, and as you say I like supporting Slashdot.
As for your substantiative criticisms, are we really bleeding users? I certainly haven't noticed any lack of comments. In fact, it might not be so bad if we did. It sure was nice when I could actually read every comment on the articles that interested me. Now I'm lucky if I can finish the first page of ten!
Digg is so different from Slashdot in my experience that I don't see them as competitors. I visited there, didn't see what the fuss was about, and came back here.
That being said, to me it's always been about the comments, and the rich experience they bring us here. For example, I've wanted to learn about on-demand water heaters for some time, and all someone had to do was post an article about some bogus new on-demand technology, and whammo! I found out pretty much everything a person could conceivably want to know about them.
The moderation system is clever, and really works, and that seems to be the main value added that Slashdot's founders have created. Other than that, it's been being in the right place at the right time and having the right idea.
As long as there's a good and active user community here, I'm still loyal to it. The founders aren't the most literate bunch in the world, and they make all kinds of silly mistakes, but this place seems to work and generate interesting stuff, and for that I'm happy.
People still speak English and if you can scrape up US$1,500 a month, you're almost rich. $4,000 a month will rent you a house in a top subdivision with all the maids, security guards and dancing girls you would ever want.
Of course you have to get that money from a business or pension based elsewhere. Income opportunities there are almost non-existant, with a typical skilled worker wage in the $5 a day range. Business opportunities are there for the creative, but most people who come in with the idea of earning money there fail quickly due to a combination of intense competition and not understanding the culture.
You posted a valid comment and I would have modded it back up if I'd had points.
I've had the same thought myself - the rootkit in CDs definitely makes CDs less valuable than iTMS download for those of us who like listening to music on our computers.
Even though Sony backed down this time, I'm sure their next effort will be almost as obnoxious, so it makes me no longer trust the CD medium.
A more relevent example to most people might be the original IBM PC, which was produced in exactly the same way.
IBM set up a separate facility in Boca Raton, Florida and gave them almost complete independence; they came up with the PC in record time.
The speed of development was partially thanks to their operating system agreement with Microsoft and so the Dark Lord of Ubersoft gained power at the same time.
Sadly, the head of IBM's autonomous PC division died in a plane crash and the division was folded into the greater IBM. Bye bye innovation:-(.
Okay, just for fun, I took your advice and am now using Camino.
Not for long, sadly. The control keystrokes do not work within the editing window, so I guess they're using the FireFox widgets, not Apple's.
It does use a few of Apple's - the <select> element works in an Apple-style way, as do the preview and submit buttons, but the text box appears to be FireFox's.
Wikipedia does this, and it drives me batty since I normally use the keyboard shortcuts built into MacOS X for editing text fields (as I mentioned elsewhere in this thread, they're my old emacs keystroke friends).
Please don't do this to me. Leave my keyboard alone when I'm in a textbox, or I'll really, really hate your application.
I suppose we're eternal enemies because I'm an emacs user, but I'm in basically the same state as you.
Fortunately, my pal Steve Jobs listened to me(*), and as a result you'll see popular emacs shortcut control keys in all Cocoa text boxes, including the one in Safari I'm using right now.
I can use Control-N, P, F, B, etc. Pity I can't use Control-S, but you can't win 'em all.
Of course I'll never use FireFox or Opera more than casually since they use their own Windows-style widgets and as a result the Cocoa keyboard commands don't work:-(.
So if you could switch to the Mac and switch to emacs, you could get the best of both worlds - the pretty GUI and your favourite keyboard commands.
D
(*) This is my gently ironic sense of humor popping in. No, I don't know him, but it was truly a great thing he did to help out a very tiny minority of his users. All Hail Steve!
Well, let's see. If being in a certain place, like Los Angeles, improves my happiness, then I'd better be rich, because the good parts of LA are horrendously expensive.
If I want to live near the ocean, or get a great view of the ocean from my window, as I do, then I'd better be rich.
And of course if I want a charming and lovely wife, well, they tend to be attracted to people with money.
So money can't buy happiness directly but it can help, and it's nice to hear the purr of the Mercedes engine even before you achieve your goals.
I guess it all depends on what your goals are. I took a peek at your web site, and I'm sure you know the only way to get affordable housing in Washington DC is to raise a few zillion dollars and build it yourself. Thus, a motivation to get rich.
Didn't the original Xbox and PS2 cost in the $200-250 range? I seem to remember something like $250 and then a rapid descent to $199 and then to $99.
So it seems brain-dead to charge $399 for a console unless you're just going to hardcore customers and leaving everyone else out in the cold.
With the PS3 allegedly at $300 I see a lot of reasons to sit back and wait.
Well, other than the fact that you have to give your kid SOME kind of snazzy Christmas gift and the Xbox is available. In that way, it seems like MS has really outmanuvered Sony.
But still... this thing's pricey. Color me a big-time skeptic.
I'm not the original poster, but I earned a low six figure income for quite a while and can tell you about its relationship to happiness.
(1) It's much nicer to have money than not to. I'd rather shop at Gelson's or Whole Foods than Ralphs any day. It's just plain fun to go to nice places and be able to afford nice things.
(2) During this time, I worked for someone who was not very nice. Doing so can severely damage your life and happiness level, no matter how much money you earn. At the same time, working for someone who's not nice is a lot better when you have lots of money and can enjoy yourself outside of work than it would have been if I'd been paid little.
(3) For most of this period, I was unable to find a girlfriend. Again, that's a worse problem than not having money. But at the same time, it's far better to have money and no girlfriend than it is to NOT have money and still have no girl.
(4) I no longer work for the mean guy. I work for some nice people now. But I do it in Pittsburgh, PA, an area I detest. I don't like the cold, I don't like the poor quality services and lack of interesting singles compared to LA, and so on. I'm still not happy, but for reasons unrelated to money or my boss.
So overall, I would say that I am far happier when I have money than when I don't. And I've been in both places, believe me.
In order to be happy, it is necessary to have a balance. You have to like where you live (as I did in LA), like your work (as I do now) and have a companion of the sex you desire. If there is no balance you will not be happy even if you're making US$1m a year.
But on the whole I would say you'd be happier than people who don't. The money lets you have a life away from your problems, and gives you at least a somewhat better shot at the girl.
I just finished reading the comments on this article and I wasn't planning to add one. So I closed my browser window and was greeted with the cheery flickering of a "refinance your mortgage" popup ad.
Then I closed the Refinance Your Mortgage popup ad and it was magically replaced by a "NHL Lightning versus Flyers" popup ad.
So I guess they're not quite as dead as this article tells us.
I'm a Mac user, so this wasn't spyware.
I don't use a popup blocker because I want the sites we visit to be able to gain legitimate revenue. That being said, I have never actually clicked on a popup ad because, well, they just don't hit my interest. I knew the X10 cameras were junk long before I saw the first ad for them.
(I've bought home automation equipment from X10, but despite, not because of, their ad campaigns.)
I don't know if I'd call them safe, because this lawsuit will cost big bucks to defend, but I think the consequences of Amazon backing down would be severe both to their reputation and the overall cause of free speech on the net.
With that kind of record, I don't even need to read the reviews to know the book is bad. And yet there they are. I read the first 30 of them and not one of them defended the guy. One said his writing was not that bad, but that the arguments were poor. In my book, if the arguments are poor, that's bad writing.
Unfortunately I think most recording contracts are exclusive, which means Steve would have to get them out of their existing contract.
What will be interesting is to see if acts approach Jobs upon the expiration of their contracts. Getting the $ 0.65 per song record company share, or maybe $ 0.50 per song to pay for the cost of negotiating all those contracts, might be more than a typical musician makes off a recording contract. After all, if he gets $0.50 or so per complete CD, he would have to sell a very small percentage of the number of songs or albums he would sell with the albatross of a standard recording contact.
So it might not be such a bad idea, especially since bands can now record in their basements, perhaps using Apple's PowerMac G5s and Logic Pro software. Heck, he could even advance them a few gadgets from his hardware/software divisions if they asked nicely...
If I were Slashdot, I wouldn't have published the story at all.
I'm going to guess that it got submitted 50,000,000 times and so they felt they had to. Besides, it's already being discussed in other comments.
I'd might as well wander back on topic by saying that $ 0.99 is a successful price point because, frankly, I start to ignore expenditures less than a dollar. So I really don't think they'd gain much by making some songs $ 0.50. They'd probably be leaving money on the table for most customers.
As a result, I don't feel abandoning the fixed price model is worth it because I fear some songs would go all the way to $3. That would reduce pressure on the now-hapless mobile phone operators, which the record labels probably want to do. As the Wall Street Journal said a few days ago, nobody wants to pay $2.50-$3 per song and so the cellphone-based services are in trouble.
If iTunes music goes over $1 I'll probably buy CDs again instead of iTunes. On the other hand, if the labels do what Sony's done, that option might not be open. Maybe that's what the record labels want to do: Force us to buy incredibly overpriced digital downloads by putting unacceptable DRM on ordinary CDs.
Sounds like just what a record company guy would do, no? If so, I'll heave a heavy sigh and change to unsigned bands that are easy enough to find on the web.
Their customers WILL abandon them if they act this nasty. I would have thought iTunes, which is DRM but on fair terms, would have taught them that being genuinely fair to customers and putting out an efficiently designed and administrated product is a good path to profit.
It's a story if you have someone say that he "knows" Mr Jobs will do something, or - better yet - if Mr Jobs actually says he's doing something.
But if a record company executive says it, and he has a vested interest in having it happen, and perhaps almost a desperate need for it to happen, well, I don't think his word or judgement is necessarily good.
Record company executives have, from what I've noticed, little reputation for integrity. Until I hear this from Mr Jobs' mouth, or a slick press release and video from Apple about its inevitability, I'm not going to believe it.
Sony did the distribution and therefore I believe the case would be against both, not only against First4Internet.
If I write a book that violates copyright, both me (the author) and my publisher have liability. I sign an agreement with the publisher to idemnify them against the liability, but in a case this vast I won't have the money to pay and so the publisher will wind up taking the brunt of the damages.
But DVD Jon is the wronged party in this particular suit, and I don't think there's any way he can avoid getting rich, unless he decides he doesn't want to sign the NDA that goes with these things.
I know I would, since I know the facts are out and nothing additional I could do would make any difference to anyone.
DVD Jon is in a quite remarkable position because no jury would ever acquit Sony for doing what they did. They've seen virii and spyware on their own computers and they'd send Sony to the slammer if they could. So from Sony's viewpoint, this can't go to trial. They MUST settle it out of court before they get so humiliated they can't show their face in public again.
Sony's not going to pay two million CDs times $30,000 in damages; that would wreck the company and I don't think anyone's going to do that, just as the RIAA had no realistic chance of getting hundreds of thousands of dollars from file sharers.
But DVD Jon's financial worries are officially over. He can buy that house in Newport Beach(*) or Malibu he's always wanted. And he won't have to work another day in his life, although I'm sure he will anyway, because he's that kinda guy.
On the other hand, he won't be judgement proof anymore, so he'd better be careful. And yes, he could get the EFF lawyers. I'm sure they would be happy to work for him on contingency. It wouldn't be so bad for some of them to get rich too.
One sticking point is that the settlement that officially makes him rich will probably prevent him from talking about it. That kind of order is routine in this sort of case.
Since you can host a blog for free in about a million places, I really don't see this as much of an infringement on anyone's right to speak. It's irksome for geeks, who want to play with their own software on their own computers, but the guy or girl on the street just wants to have her blog or web page, and she can, no fuss, no muss, no problem.
She's a lot better off doing that, too, because the software requires maintenance that most people don't want to learn about or bother with.
We should understand that what we want is, alas, not what the world as a whole wants or can use.
Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot has a first-mover advantage, probably created because it gained a critical mass geek audience at the time when there were fewer sites to distract them. Like Microsoft software, it's very difficult to dethrone a network effects king once it's established. Slashdot's an excellent example of this.
Incidentally, in my post you quoted, I was trying to say that the interesting stuff existed despite the mistakes, not because of them. Hope that clears up any confusion.
D
Thanks for your comment regarding serverbeach.
:-).
Since I'm only interested in Port 80 and whatever port SSH uses for my venture, I think that's OK. I'm pretty sure they can't block either
Did you have any other problems with them?
Many thanks.
D
Well, it is Thanksgiving weekend. Most people are out doing stuff with their physical world friends.
Some of the ads are actually useful. My business partner's going to get a gift from ThinkGeek (better not say what it is here since he might be watching!) And it looks like I'll be using ServerBeach for my next venture. So I wouldn't give up on ads, and as you say I like supporting Slashdot.
As for your substantiative criticisms, are we really bleeding users? I certainly haven't noticed any lack of comments. In fact, it might not be so bad if we did. It sure was nice when I could actually read every comment on the articles that interested me. Now I'm lucky if I can finish the first page of ten!
Digg is so different from Slashdot in my experience that I don't see them as competitors. I visited there, didn't see what the fuss was about, and came back here.
That being said, to me it's always been about the comments, and the rich experience they bring us here. For example, I've wanted to learn about on-demand water heaters for some time, and all someone had to do was post an article about some bogus new on-demand technology, and whammo! I found out pretty much everything a person could conceivably want to know about them.
The moderation system is clever, and really works, and that seems to be the main value added that Slashdot's founders have created. Other than that, it's been being in the right place at the right time and having the right idea.
As long as there's a good and active user community here, I'm still loyal to it. The founders aren't the most literate bunch in the world, and they make all kinds of silly mistakes, but this place seems to work and generate interesting stuff, and for that I'm happy.
D
People still speak English and if you can scrape up US$1,500 a month, you're almost rich. $4,000 a month will rent you a house in a top subdivision with all the maids, security guards and dancing girls you would ever want.
Of course you have to get that money from a business or pension based elsewhere. Income opportunities there are almost non-existant, with a typical skilled worker wage in the $5 a day range. Business opportunities are there for the creative, but most people who come in with the idea of earning money there fail quickly due to a combination of intense competition and not understanding the culture.
See:
http://www.livingincebu.com/ (their discussion forums are particularly good)
http://www.livinginthephilippines.com/
for more detailed information.
D
You posted a valid comment and I would have modded it back up if I'd had points.
I've had the same thought myself - the rootkit in CDs definitely makes CDs less valuable than iTMS download for those of us who like listening to music on our computers.
Even though Sony backed down this time, I'm sure their next effort will be almost as obnoxious, so it makes me no longer trust the CD medium.
D
A more relevent example to most people might be the original IBM PC, which was produced in exactly the same way.
:-(.
IBM set up a separate facility in Boca Raton, Florida and gave them almost complete independence; they came up with the PC in record time.
The speed of development was partially thanks to their operating system agreement with Microsoft and so the Dark Lord of Ubersoft gained power at the same time.
Sadly, the head of IBM's autonomous PC division died in a plane crash and the division was folded into the greater IBM. Bye bye innovation
Can't have everything, I guess.
D
Okay, just for fun, I took your advice and am now using Camino.
:-(.
Not for long, sadly. The control keystrokes do not work within the editing window, so I guess they're using the FireFox widgets, not Apple's.
It does use a few of Apple's - the <select> element works in an Apple-style way, as do the preview and submit buttons, but the text box appears to be FireFox's.
Pity
D
Wikipedia does this, and it drives me batty since I normally use the keyboard shortcuts built into MacOS X for editing text fields (as I mentioned elsewhere in this thread, they're my old emacs keystroke friends).
Please don't do this to me. Leave my keyboard alone when I'm in a textbox, or I'll really, really hate your application.
D
I suppose we're eternal enemies because I'm an emacs user, but I'm in basically the same state as you.
:-(.
Fortunately, my pal Steve Jobs listened to me(*), and as a result you'll see popular emacs shortcut control keys in all Cocoa text boxes, including the one in Safari I'm using right now.
I can use Control-N, P, F, B, etc. Pity I can't use Control-S, but you can't win 'em all.
Of course I'll never use FireFox or Opera more than casually since they use their own Windows-style widgets and as a result the Cocoa keyboard commands don't work
So if you could switch to the Mac and switch to emacs, you could get the best of both worlds - the pretty GUI and your favourite keyboard commands.
D
(*) This is my gently ironic sense of humor popping in. No, I don't know him, but it was truly a great thing he did to help out a very tiny minority of his users. All Hail Steve!
Well, let's see. If being in a certain place, like Los Angeles, improves my happiness, then I'd better be rich, because the good parts of LA are horrendously expensive.
If I want to live near the ocean, or get a great view of the ocean from my window, as I do, then I'd better be rich.
And of course if I want a charming and lovely wife, well, they tend to be attracted to people with money.
So money can't buy happiness directly but it can help, and it's nice to hear the purr of the Mercedes engine even before you achieve your goals.
I guess it all depends on what your goals are. I took a peek at your web site, and I'm sure you know the only way to get affordable housing in Washington DC is to raise a few zillion dollars and build it yourself. Thus, a motivation to get rich.
D
Didn't the original Xbox and PS2 cost in the $200-250 range? I seem to remember something like $250 and then a rapid descent to $199 and then to $99.
... this thing's pricey. Color me a big-time skeptic.
So it seems brain-dead to charge $399 for a console unless you're just going to hardcore customers and leaving everyone else out in the cold.
With the PS3 allegedly at $300 I see a lot of reasons to sit back and wait.
Well, other than the fact that you have to give your kid SOME kind of snazzy Christmas gift and the Xbox is available. In that way, it seems like MS has really outmanuvered Sony.
But still
D
Sorry, that wouldn't have stopped the EFF's suit, or even the Texas AG's.
Ken Lay's case is pending trial, so no, his friendship with Bush doesn't count for much.
Why do people think Bush is (1) stupid; (2) evil; and (3) has all sorts of magical powers?
Geez.
He's just a guy, you know?
D
I'm not the original poster, but I earned a low six figure income for quite a while and can tell you about its relationship to happiness.
(1) It's much nicer to have money than not to. I'd rather shop at Gelson's or Whole Foods than Ralphs any day. It's just plain fun to go to nice places and be able to afford nice things.
(2) During this time, I worked for someone who was not very nice. Doing so can severely damage your life and happiness level, no matter how much money you earn. At the same time, working for someone who's not nice is a lot better when you have lots of money and can enjoy yourself outside of work than it would have been if I'd been paid little.
(3) For most of this period, I was unable to find a girlfriend. Again, that's a worse problem than not having money. But at the same time, it's far better to have money and no girlfriend than it is to NOT have money and still have no girl.
(4) I no longer work for the mean guy. I work for some nice people now. But I do it in Pittsburgh, PA, an area I detest. I don't like the cold, I don't like the poor quality services and lack of interesting singles compared to LA, and so on. I'm still not happy, but for reasons unrelated to money or my boss.
So overall, I would say that I am far happier when I have money than when I don't. And I've been in both places, believe me.
In order to be happy, it is necessary to have a balance. You have to like where you live (as I did in LA), like your work (as I do now) and have a companion of the sex you desire. If there is no balance you will not be happy even if you're making US$1m a year.
But on the whole I would say you'd be happier than people who don't. The money lets you have a life away from your problems, and gives you at least a somewhat better shot at the girl.
Hope that helps.
I just finished reading the comments on this article and I wasn't planning to add one. So I closed my browser window and was greeted with the cheery flickering of a "refinance your mortgage" popup ad.
Then I closed the Refinance Your Mortgage popup ad and it was magically replaced by a "NHL Lightning versus Flyers" popup ad.
So I guess they're not quite as dead as this article tells us.
I'm a Mac user, so this wasn't spyware.
I don't use a popup blocker because I want the sites we visit to be able to gain legitimate revenue. That being said, I have never actually clicked on a popup ad because, well, they just don't hit my interest. I knew the X10 cameras were junk long before I saw the first ad for them.
(I've bought home automation equipment from X10, but despite, not because of, their ad campaigns.)
D
I don't know if I'd call them safe, because this lawsuit will cost big bucks to defend, but I think the consequences of Amazon backing down would be severe both to their reputation and the overall cause of free speech on the net.
In a trial related to the content of this book, the judge has threatened to disbar Thompson. In response Thompson has withdrawn from the case.
With that kind of record, I don't even need to read the reviews to know the book is bad. And yet there they are. I read the first 30 of them and not one of them defended the guy. One said his writing was not that bad, but that the arguments were poor. In my book, if the arguments are poor, that's bad writing.
D
Just to give the US-centric among us some perspective, how much does a music CD cost in Australia?
D
Unfortunately I think most recording contracts are exclusive, which means Steve would have to get them out of their existing contract.
...
What will be interesting is to see if acts approach Jobs upon the expiration of their contracts. Getting the $ 0.65 per song record company share, or maybe $ 0.50 per song to pay for the cost of negotiating all those contracts, might be more than a typical musician makes off a recording contract. After all, if he gets $0.50 or so per complete CD, he would have to sell a very small percentage of the number of songs or albums he would sell with the albatross of a standard recording contact.
So it might not be such a bad idea, especially since bands can now record in their basements, perhaps using Apple's PowerMac G5s and Logic Pro software. Heck, he could even advance them a few gadgets from his hardware/software divisions if they asked nicely
D
If I were Slashdot, I wouldn't have published the story at all.
I'm going to guess that it got submitted 50,000,000 times and so they felt they had to. Besides, it's already being discussed in other comments.
I'd might as well wander back on topic by saying that $ 0.99 is a successful price point because, frankly, I start to ignore expenditures less than a dollar. So I really don't think they'd gain much by making some songs $ 0.50. They'd probably be leaving money on the table for most customers.
As a result, I don't feel abandoning the fixed price model is worth it because I fear some songs would go all the way to $3. That would reduce pressure on the now-hapless mobile phone operators, which the record labels probably want to do. As the Wall Street Journal said a few days ago, nobody wants to pay $2.50-$3 per song and so the cellphone-based services are in trouble.
If iTunes music goes over $1 I'll probably buy CDs again instead of iTunes. On the other hand, if the labels do what Sony's done, that option might not be open. Maybe that's what the record labels want to do: Force us to buy incredibly overpriced digital downloads by putting unacceptable DRM on ordinary CDs.
Sounds like just what a record company guy would do, no? If so, I'll heave a heavy sigh and change to unsigned bands that are easy enough to find on the web.
Their customers WILL abandon them if they act this nasty. I would have thought iTunes, which is DRM but on fair terms, would have taught them that being genuinely fair to customers and putting out an efficiently designed and administrated product is a good path to profit.
Apparently they are too greedy to realize this.
D
I think you mean nested mode here. In flat mode I don't think it would be feasible to read all replies.
Threaded systems, where you have to click individual messages to read them, drive me nuts because of server lag. I'd rather just see the whole thing.
Nested mode's great for that.
D
"Believes"?
It's a story if you have someone say that he "knows" Mr Jobs will do something, or - better yet - if Mr Jobs actually says he's doing something.
But if a record company executive says it, and he has a vested interest in having it happen, and perhaps almost a desperate need for it to happen, well, I don't think his word or judgement is necessarily good.
Record company executives have, from what I've noticed, little reputation for integrity. Until I hear this from Mr Jobs' mouth, or a slick press release and video from Apple about its inevitability, I'm not going to believe it.
D
I think this is propaganda to try and push Steve in that direction.
It's a silly story since it has no actual facts, just innuendo. And it's from someone who really, really wants what he says to be true.
It has zero credibility with me. Steve might change but I certainly hope he won't.
D
Sony did the distribution and therefore I believe the case would be against both, not only against First4Internet.
If I write a book that violates copyright, both me (the author) and my publisher have liability. I sign an agreement with the publisher to idemnify them against the liability, but in a case this vast I won't have the money to pay and so the publisher will wind up taking the brunt of the damages.
D
Absolutely.
But DVD Jon is the wronged party in this particular suit, and I don't think there's any way he can avoid getting rich, unless he decides he doesn't want to sign the NDA that goes with these things.
I know I would, since I know the facts are out and nothing additional I could do would make any difference to anyone.
D
DVD Jon is in a quite remarkable position because no jury would ever acquit Sony for doing what they did. They've seen virii and spyware on their own computers and they'd send Sony to the slammer if they could. So from Sony's viewpoint, this can't go to trial. They MUST settle it out of court before they get so humiliated they can't show their face in public again.
Sony's not going to pay two million CDs times $30,000 in damages; that would wreck the company and I don't think anyone's going to do that, just as the RIAA had no realistic chance of getting hundreds of thousands of dollars from file sharers.
But DVD Jon's financial worries are officially over. He can buy that house in Newport Beach(*) or Malibu he's always wanted. And he won't have to work another day in his life, although I'm sure he will anyway, because he's that kinda guy.
On the other hand, he won't be judgement proof anymore, so he'd better be careful. And yes, he could get the EFF lawyers. I'm sure they would be happy to work for him on contingency. It wouldn't be so bad for some of them to get rich too.
One sticking point is that the settlement that officially makes him rich will probably prevent him from talking about it. That kind of order is routine in this sort of case.
D
(*) About $3.5 million for prime waterfront.
Since you can host a blog for free in about a million places, I really don't see this as much of an infringement on anyone's right to speak. It's irksome for geeks, who want to play with their own software on their own computers, but the guy or girl on the street just wants to have her blog or web page, and she can, no fuss, no muss, no problem.
She's a lot better off doing that, too, because the software requires maintenance that most people don't want to learn about or bother with.
We should understand that what we want is, alas, not what the world as a whole wants or can use.
D