You can throw all the pointed comments and neato-sounding buzzwords and catchy phrases you want about correlations and statistics and this n that to try and prove that it's not piracy or it's not theft but you're really just making excuses and really no better than what you're complaining against.
So I hope this works out but it doesn't matter anyway because I prefer a lossless copy and unlike the pirates or the **AA, I'm not a thief. Warning: Explicit Words
Or maybe we could embrace reality and declare everyone naturally copies, and that is GOOD. And musicians can pretend they became musicians by not copying through study and practice, and pretend the songs they create don't COPY either. If musicians and music distribution don't need excuses, why should consumers need excuses either? Blame Disney for glorifying Pirates of the caRIAbbeAn. Oh so *now* the media wants to push a moralistic wholesome family values message?!
If DRM-free music doesn't sell, then Universal is going to say "Look, we addressed the number one complaint of music 'pirates'", and piracy is just as bad as always. Clearly the pirates are just interested in getting something for nothing". And you know what? They'll be RIGHT. And so too will musicians and music distribution companies continue to pirate ideas they didn't create, getting something for merely their STUDY + COPY effort to become musicians. And yup, they'll be RIGHT too, musicians will only be musicians to the extent they pirate the ideas of others, no matter how arbitrarily anyone pretends x copying is legal, Y copying is illegal (ooohhh, s~c~a~r~y). I doubt drummers today were the first to bang sticks to form rhythm.
And now this glorification of piracy moment brought to you by our RIAA sponsors:
"Been Caught Downloading"
I've been caught downloading; once when I was 5... I enjoy downloading. It's just as simple as that. Well, it's just a simple fact. When I want something, I don't want to pay for it.
I'm confused. How exactly does copyright law prevent people from building upon previously existing ideas?
Every manifestation of ideas in the form of writing, music, products, has copied ideas of others. "New" material is only created by copying elements of "old" material. Any limitation or restriction on copying only hinders scientific and artistic advancement. This is by definition so; the implementation of ideas is more scarce than it otherwise would be with no restrictions on copying. There is not a single RIAA song that is not copying the ideas of others.
As most sensible people will tell you, ideals without moderation is usually detrimental to society. We have a compromise between copyright holders and the public, with a limited copyright term, and limited powers for the copyright holders (fair use). If it were an unlimited prohibition of any sort of copying, in any part no matter how small, then it would be very detrimental to society. Just like an unmoderated adherence to the information wants to be free ideology would be similarly disastrous for our culture.
This is not so. Copyrights and Patents exist *solely* to promote the advancement of the sciences and arts. That is the sole constitutional justification for IP. All I've said is it's a simple proof that copyrights and patents always, without exception, hinder the advancement of the sciences and arts.
If copying were restricted or prohibited, people like Leonardo da Vinci wouldn't have been able to further invent. When children go to school, they go to school to LEARN. They learn by COPYING the ideas which are being passed to them. Knowledge only spreads through COPYING. There is no other way knowledge can advance except by copying. And restriction or prohibition on copyright can only slow the rate at which knowledge advances. If people were afraid of being copied, they wouldn't have ever talked or invented a shared commonly understood language. And people talked before IP, in spite of IP, and will still talk when IP doesn't apply. And just as they talk, they will invent and create without IP.
To comply or be forced to submit to restrictions on copying means one and only one result: less knowledge exists than would otherwise be the case without restrictions on copying.
These are not "ideals", but simple results of unbiased economic analysis fact. Free trade is not an "ideal". Free trade always and only occurs because that which is received in exchange is valued more than that which is given away in exchange. It's a voluntary transaction which only occurs because both parties are better off, wealthier, profit, from the trade. If that wasn't the case, nobody would voluntarily trade for anything.
"Ideals without moderation", like no taxation without representation? Would no rape without representation be satisfactory to you also? People are always either/or voluntarily cooperating or they are violently abusing. There's no in between "moderation". To suggest there is, is an abuse of truth. Violence is violence, even if it occurs less frequently.
There's lots of songs that are a mouse click away from being downloaded and dissected by ears and minds. Copying doesn't deny any physical property use to anyone. It creates new where before there was none. It's breaths life into dead voids, literally. But restrictions on copying of ideas imposes deafness, blindness, and stupidity onto others. An engineer, a human being with educational capacities to deconstruct and reconstruct, is prohibited from so doing by IP. He must sit there, and play dumb, because of a IP law.
And all those musical songs have already copied each other on many many many different levels. The musicians were just oblivious as to how they were copying. But they only learned to play music by copying. Any restrictions on musicians copying would only be restrictions on their capacity as musicians, no matter what degree or level at which the restrictions occur. Clearly, restrictions on copying then, only result
The RIAA are fine with technology. It's not like they're calling for the end of the internet. I'm sure that they'd even be fine with P2P if it could be guaranteed that nothing of theirs would be shared. It also should be stated that abolishing copyrights, or forcing copyright law to be unenforceable is NOT progress, rather the opposite. We really don't need a cultural dark ages to move forward as a society. That's a myth. The truth is the exact opposite. Culture only is culture because the elements of that culture are SHARED, COPIED. The era of Copyrights and Patents IS the cultural dark ages you speak of. You are just blinded by it's imaginary IP walls. Prohibitions on copying only inhibit artistic and scientific advancement. No new ideas are created in a vacuum; they build upon previously existing ideas. Copyright law unconstitutionally hinders the advancement of the arts. It's a simple economic proof. The other anecdotal and statistical evidence is also piling in to show the inefficient results of forcing people to pretend to be deaf, blind, and dumb to what exists around them. Already because of P2P filesharing, more people then ever have been exposed to more ideas and inspirations than ever before.
There is absolutely nothing which has or ever will receive a grant of copyright or patent that has not itself copied in some way the ideas of others. Every claim of IP is a hypocritical claim that says I the one with the IP should be allowed to copy but you the consumer should not be allowed to copy. You only learn by copying. Information spreads only by copying. Understanding occurs only through copying. If you don't want to be copied then go dig ditches for a living. But note, you'll still be copying and be copied.
I actually agree with this. Perhaps my idealism is fading as I hit the wrong side of 30, but I don't understand why anyone would feel they have the right to wholesale steal music. Why don't you ask that question of the artists and the music distribution industry? They didn't invent the lyrics. They didn't invent the notes, the chords, the progressions, the styles, the instruments, the genres. They just COPIED it and didn't think twice to even give a fuck about it either. Anyone who respects a musician's "claim" of copyright forecefully preventing you from wholesale immitation is just an ignorant sucker, imho. Nobody makes music that is not copying someone else's ideas. Nobody *learns* anything without... wait for it... COPYING!
If you want to make money playing music, charge for performances in real tangible private property places. Don't use violence to restrict the freedom of others. Don't use violence to hinder artistic advancement. Digital cds and songs are free advertisements to come see the musicians play live. Why should anyone pay hypocrits? Especially when they are violent extortionist hypocrits.
There's only a music industry, there's only music, because people COPY.
Not to mention glorification of promiscuity, drugs, and theft that the industry promotes and sells doesn't exactly give them an upstanding pearch of morality from which to preach. Metallica can pretend they are some bad dudes, but they cry like little girls if someone "copies" them? Who's "bad" now, huh?
Only the government can create a monopolistic phone company, by restricting spectrum, by regulations, patents, etc.
Ads are less attentively watched than ever. Perhaps most people already immediately associate "bad deal" rather than "good deal" with ads that appear when and where they do.
This is just marketing desperation as more people than ever take more active measures to block them out. The people that accept "free" products for advertisement spam last shorter and shorter as well. How many even kids would get duped again and again into giving away personal info and wasting time for their "XBOX 360 WINNER" flashing banner ad? Even those ads have negatively effected other ads.
Let me be the contrarian and say "it's over" for marketing and advertising agencies. It's just a matter of time until corporations learn that those advertising and marketing measures are *hurting* corporate brands rather than helping them, in a big majority of cases. It's a slow process because marketing and advertising teams will FUD their employers to prolong their paychecks. Google is already starting to compete against future competition by not holding personal identifying information for as long. Not only are companies throwing money away paying marketers, but they are harming their brand value in the process.
It's simple supply and demand. The explosion of spam has rendered each ad, even the best, most quality informing ad, less valuable. It's fine if google wants to surround searches with the highest paid ads. I'm sure most people already probably default think those are the worst deals you could possibly get.
Using "big name" music in ads is a turnoff now too. When Supermarkets realize you are less likely to go back because some stupid television screen advertisement is playing in the checkout lane, they'll get rid of those televisions too. Same for the mall food courts televisions. It's a massive cultural tuning out of spam on many many levels.
Don't forget, the internet pretty much made travel agents extinct, as people started getting competitive quotes for airfare and hotels on-line. Movie theaters don't seem to be doing too well selling commercials for longer periods of time before movies start.
Not to mention, people that accept ad-supported phones are probably not anywhere near the highly desired demographic targets.
Advertising must be regarded as "content" that is competing against other "non-advertising" content. That's why people change channels, switch stations, walk on the other side of the street. When your message makes people want to avoid you, that's not good for business. If you could watch regular peoples' reactions to ads the same way they watch their reactions to political debate candidates talking, a lot of people are in for a rude spam-awakening.
Well I think the next big corporate expense cutting victims will be their spamming "marketing departments". I think you will see cable channels facing market pressure (declining viewers) because of how bad their advertising is. Unavoidable ad spam lowers the value of DVDs. Seems like a lot of fat that is negatively impacting their bottom lines even more than just the numerical expenses.
Just remember all the waste and spam, and inefficient quality and pricing of travel agencies compared to now. People spend more time on internet message boards with the free content of others now then they used to watching tv or going to the movies. People have greater better quality access to reviews of products and services than ever before. There's more scrutiny than ever before, and pretend shape your image to an unknowing public is less effective than ever before.
Take a look at annoying automated computerized phone systems that transfer you around. That's marketing and tech support trying to pull the wool over management eyes. Take a look at blogs of complaints. That's invaluable *free* feedback, which 6 figure marketing salaries can't compete with. You have mmorpg game companies with paid employees that now r
The pull up Calculator on my desktop is not a screen keyboard which is pulled up to the same place when opened? One has numbers, the other has letters, they all have symbols. *And* I can move it around too if I want.
Patents do reward novelty. False. No patent is, ever has, or ever will be granted for anything that has not at least partially copied the ideas of someone else. Thus, novelty is being *stolen*, not rewarded, by those being granted monopoly use for ideas that were impossible without previously existing ideas.
As a society, we decided hundreds of years ago that there are different kinds of intellectual property, and we would like to protect them, in exchange for some public good. And now our economic knowledge is more advanced, and we've proved that patents and copyright only hinder artistic and technological advancement, and result in lower quality products for higher prices, without exception. As patents and copyrights clearly retard the advancement of technology and art, they are unconstitutional, as the only justification for IP was that it promote the advancement of science and the arts, which it doesn't.
Try making a formula, that you are comfortable applying to all ideas that describes "obvious". Unless you are someone who is against all Intellectual Property, you will find that difficult. Not even necessary, you can just list all the thousands of previously existing ideas which were necessary for every newly patented idea. But true, it's much easier, and much more beneficial to just wholesale delete the whole IP scheme through a constitutional amendment. That would a cause a massive increase in the rate of technological and artistic advancement.
Lets say I have a new Idea for the manufacture of Microchips. It is incremental, but very useful. Now I don't have the several hundred million dollars it takes to build a chip manufacturing facility. Are you going to say that because I don't have the money to implement my idea, Intel should be able to come and use it, without licensing it? And the hell are you even applying for patents for Microchips if you are not at all involved in the Microchip industry, except to block progress, and troll? And how Intel come and use your idea unless you gave it away? Obviously, you are not using it. You are just preventing those in the industry from naturally independently discovering and putting to use the same idea. And if your idea was so good, you could've applied for a job at Intel as an engineer, got financing form banks and Wall Street to raise the couple hundred million for your own company, etc. But all you did was resort to political violence which wastes time and resources on completely unproductive activity.
It seems to me more lawyers graduate these days then doctors, engineers, or MBAs, and lawyer salaries have been growing higher and higher in the 6 figure range. Someone needs to add up all the total dollars "earned" by the legal profession per year (and all the related services which they consume). That's a huge chunk of GDP "economic effort" which is just about 100% unproductive waste of scarce time and resources. And it's leading to a litigious parasitic implosion of society, which further drags economic, scientific, and artistic progress. Most of the legal profession is exactly as unproductive as the mafia. All they do is sit on their asses and scheme about "legal" robbery, until it's time to use the guns, or time to use those with the guns. Doesn't matter if it's IP or the "war on drugs" or tax and estates, it's almost 100% wholly wasted unproductive effort which makes society net poorer than it otherwise would be. And we're no longer talking about a few GDP percentage points either. What is it? 15% 20%? 25%? Whatever it is, from the tax code, to drug law, to IP, it's a *massive* waste. When you add it up, the legal profession commits highway robbery on the same scale as governments. Is it a coincidence that 90% plus of the politicians are lawyers?
Are you guys so simple minded that proclaim direct confrontation as a fruitful action? I consider you geeks (like myself) are wise enough to understand that no public confrontation with strong behind the curtains action is the best means towards the real long term change. I disagree. I think direct confrontation is already a past tense fruitful action which is only continuing. I think if you were to look back at these moments 200 hundred years from now, you would think the whole shebang from Napster, P2P, the PirateBay etc. was nothing less than an ongoing Boston Tea Party 2.0 which de facto factually dumped tons of copyrighted tea content into the public domain sea. It's an undeniable fact of fruitful confrontation action. Just look at the number of downloads. Just looks at the industry sales declines.
The milk has spilled, the cat is out of the bag, the genie is out of the bottle, and they ain't going back in, espcially when it's super eazy for a rogue connection at any point to dump everything which is "content" again and again, cheaper and faster. It's just a matter of time until the "law" catches up to the economic science which shows that copyright and patents only stifle innovation and result in higher monopoly prices for inferior products. And it's also an undeniable fact absolutely every single person and absolutely every single product copies, "pirates".
The only violent confrontation which exists, is the artificial phoney claims of copyright and patent. And as violence is less economically efficient than free trade cooperation, society is inevitably being "pulled" toward an evolutionary extinction of bogus "intellectual property". Even the US will be forced to abandon IP, or they will cede technological innovation and economic leadership to the likes of a more free market China or others (either way both consumers and producers will continue to benefit more from a competitive free information market), who need not waste precious scarce resources and time in duplicative wasted or prohibited efforts, or frivolous wholly non-productive legal shenanigans.
Why piracy? There is another way to show you do not agree with their pricing without breaking the law. Just do not buy their products and do not use the pirated version either.
You do not like brand X doing business in ways you dislike? Do not use those products. Do not like the *AA? Don't listen to their music. Do not like the sportsbrand having sweatshops? Don't wear their clothes. Don't like the pricing of software? Don't use it. But Microsoft breaks the same "law" they ostensibly espouse. They "pirate", they "copy", the ideas and methods of others, and without paying jack squat for doing it either. The *AA musicians, and all musicians, "pirate", "copy" too! I'd also estimate 99% of the dialogue of Hollywood movies has been blatantly "pirated" from common languages which were not created by Hollywood, yet they dare claim a hypocritical copyright?
How much inspirational wealth did JKR "pirate" about wizards and magic! Take a look at the Harry Potter book sales numbers for a rough estimate of the grand larceny JKR has "pirated" from the culture by ignorantly declaring or lying that it is original copyrighted material. Confiscate her wealth and throw her in the dungeon until she recants her false evil claims of copyright. And Disney is out there too profiting from selling the glorification of Pirates of the Caribbean. Well, if Microsoft and Disney are going to call copying "pirating", then here, have some of which you worship. Tastes good, don't it?
Of course, people are better off by definition of going through whatever it is they go through to procure a copy of whatever it is they procur a copy of. Just as Vista is better than it would be (/lob) if it didn't copy. Those products are better because those products copy, and people are better off because they copy those products.
You are 100% right! MS does it in China and here in the US prices go up. MS has to recoup the money lost selling their software at a major discount in China, so jack it up even higher in the US to make up for the losses. Sorry, you are 100% wrong. *If* selling software at a major discount in China really resulted in any loss, then clearly, by definition, Microsoft would be better off *not* selling at a discount in China. But because they by definition act to sell for whatever price they act to sell at, they only act to sell because that increases their profit. If it didn't increase their profit, they wouldn't sell.
This eminates from the economic discovery of the reason trade occurs. Trade only occurs because that which is received is valued more than that which is given away in exchange. This always has been and always will be true. Any data analysis which says otherwise has a fundamental error miscalculation or lacks a data input of the totalilty of things involved in the transaction, i.e. giving away a free sample increases profit, and is not an expense loss, because the "free" sample is being traded away for a present value possibility of future business which is worth more than not giving away the free sample.
This is true. Absolutely every single person benefits more from COPYING than doing, creating, inventing, discovering all the things which are invented, discovered, and created on their own. No single person can create more than they freely receive. Ever. Bill Gates has benefited many many times over than the billions he made from selling copyrighted and patented software from all the ideas he was able to COPY or all the things he was able to trade for which were COPIED.
And all those illgotten through monopoly violence billions he received are much less than all the net societal world economy wealth which has been destroyed from being created through violent copyright and patent. He could give absolutely every single penny he ever earned at Microsoft to charity and it would still not come close to making up for the technological are artisitic stagnation which has resulted precisely from just his own copyrights and patents. He wants to fund research for curing diseases? Those cures might've already cheaply existed long ago if patents weren't stifling innovation, and inflating prices for inferior products.
Not that the thieving pricks on slashdot need any excuse to steal. its become standard practice for you retards. Actually, COPYING, is standard practice for absolutely every person and every product made. Anyone who thinks otherwise is simply obtuse.
One can pick up a copy of Vista, or the new Simpsons Movie, or just about anything for a little over a dollar in China. Since IP is not enforced or respected there, the sales price is not based on the development cost of the product, but on the cost of the actual materials sold. And neither does Microsoft pay the full development costs of Vista. They freely borrow, COPY, "pirate", tens of thousands of ideas they never created, discovered, or invented themselves. That's why they are writing computer code, and not banging sticks and rocks together to make fire. This is called technological progress. Sure, we could each spend 5,000 man hours manually typing in every word in a language dictionary, but that would be a waste of time. And you don't see even Microsoft communicating in anything but languages they hope and believe are commonly understood. They even have the gall to trademark the name Windows, which existed long before Bill Gates was even born.
The first people to take the first steps of writing code were by definition better off doing that then doing anything else they could've been doing at that time, whether it was sleeping, partying, or digging ditches. That's why they chose to do what they did. They were profiting every second of the way. Similarly Leonard da'Vinci was profiting every second of the way with all the desings he conjured, whether or not he was able to get financial backing to implement those ideas or not.
This is exactly how an absence of patent and copyright protection is supposed to work. This is classic competition. The pharmaceutical industry sells its goods cheaper overseas too. Then they complain when those same drugs are reimported back for a cheaper price. When the same product is sold for different prices to different people or in different places, all it does is open up arbitrage profit opportunities for speculators to buy at the lower price and undercut the higher price, until the prices are the same. That's how the free market is supposed to work. That's how the free market fights discrimination, naturally. Only violence can prevent the free market adjustments from occurring.
And it's clearly profitable for Microsoft to sell Vista at this lower price, or else they wouldn't be selling it at that lower price. They would by definition be better off keeping their product to themselves. But because they freely lower the price and willing choose to sell at that lower price, they are by definition increasing their profit by selling Vista at that lower price. The copyrights and the patents have merely slowed innovation and raised the price of an inferior product.
"Piracy", COPYING, is legitimate free market competition. Vista itself too only exists *because* it too COPIED the innumerable ideas of others. If Microsoft was really against the COPYING of Vista, Microsoft would never have even made, or been allowed to make, Vista in the first place. Any complaints of "piracy" are pure hypocricy, in absolutely every single case whatsoever.
No offense, but you and everyone who modded you up are ignorant of basic economics. It's unfortunate that the market price of big-name concert tickets has gotten so high, but there's not much that artists (or anyone) can do about it: concert seats are a limited resource. Artists can charge market value for those seats, ensuring that anyone who wants to pay can get one, or they can lower prices and create an artificial shortage because there would be far more people wanting to buy seats than there are seats available, which seems to be what you're advocating. The supply of tickets for big-name acts was artificially limited by artists themselves relying on copyright royalties rather than working a regular gig year round. The big-names were getting money from record sales. Now, if they want to make the same amount of money they used to do, they can do three or ten times as many live shows as they used to, rather than lounge around for most of the year living the good life. And they can do shows in smaller more intimate venues too.
Of course, knock off, Brand X, cover band competition has been restricted as well. There's no way tickets would sell for $150 if supply wasn't massively limited. Are you talking two to three shows per major city every two to three years? If Elton John was playing as often as Tony and Tina's Bif Fat Italian Wedding, ticket prices would be much less.
Surprise, surprise! Copyright restricts not only the available competing supply, but restricts the incentive to increase the supply by those creating the supply. That's 180 degrees contrary to the alleged economic artistic incentives copyright allegedly was supposed to bring. And that's exactly what occurs, artists become fat and lazy, living off the royalties of work done years ago (even deluding themselves that fat and lazy is art itself), rather than continuing to work in live performances or continue making new material, especially when you are typically talking about 3-4 quality songs packages with filler fluff material.
But sure, concert ticket sales is how artists should earn their money, not by artificially restricting the freedom of others to copy whilst those same artists hypocritically copy other artists themselves. If they have to get out there and earn, through voluntary mp3 purchases, patronage, or concert ticket sales, the incentive to increase quality and increase supply (of good live music) comes back into play.
Send a simple demand letter to obvious infringers*, you know who you are, asking for the removal of the material and $25.00 to this new organization.
The difference would be this, the new organization can only get $5.00 of the $25.00 as a fee, the remainder would be disbursed to the copyright owner. Same threats of lawsuits, just a more reasonable outcome.
This would do several things :
Reimburse artists The thing is the artists would be mailing those letters to themselves, as there is no single piece of music anywhere on the internet, or anywhere else, that has not copied some previous or other musician's work somehow someway. You only learn and study to become a musician by COPYING. There's absolutely no other way. And if they were to request "removal of the material" they would be requesting the death absence of music. Nope, they can beg. They can court voluntary donations. If that doesn't pay the bills, they can play music in their leisure time after they get off their day job shift.
Artists in that era incorporated a wide range of sounds and styles into their work to create a discography that is often remarkable and most likely impossible to duplicate today. In other words, artists COPIED. To even be a musician, you must COPY. Sorry, I just had to point that out, again. With a ginormous increase in the availability of musical sources and ideas, thanks to the internet, the artists you hail had but a drop in the bucket of comparative inspirational ideas.
You are oblivious that you are standing right in the middle of the Boston Tea Party 2.0, and this time we are dumping all the tea content into the public domain sea. Even back during the American Revolution in the 1770s, protests we're largely organized through print communication. Too many people don't yet realize what a Berlin Wall downfall moment the internet really is. People are becoming better educated to the political corruption in far less time than decades of traditional mainstream broadcast media has done. That's what a massive world-wide competitive arena of ideas will do. The public will eventually snap after taking too much for too long.
Google makes its money entirely based on ads it sells. Many other sites now rely on Google AdWords themselves. (You see these "ads by Google" everywhere, from personal blogs to sites like the New York Times and CNN.) Honestly, what would happen to the net if Google's - only Google's - ad revenue collapsed? It would affect not only Google, but literally countless sites across the net. The big sites would survive at first, because they've got cash reserves and are often profitable. But they'd have to repurpose people to go out selling ad units that were previously provided to them, and they'd be doing it in a down market with a glut of supply. Smaller sites would lose their primary revenue source. Google itself would lose its only real revenue source. That's an excellent point. Should definitely keep in mind, that advertisements have been massively devalued. Do you look at any ads? Or have your trained your eyes and ears, and implemented filtering systems, to shut out and ignore all that "commerce"? What happened to Ebay can happen to Google too. The competition is potentially infinite on the web. It's cheap to build a new on-line market place. It's cheap to create a new search engine that ignores ad based gaming of results.
Main stream advertisers are desperate. They are not much above spammers these days. The bombardment in advertising supply has made the return on each advertising dollar probably lower than it's ever been. The ads are insidious trojans and worms. Almost everyone regards even television advertisements as garbage. Marketers are up there with realestate agents in a classic pump and dump wall street scheme.
And yeah, almost the whole internet is still advertising financed business models. Like I said in another post, Federal Reserve intervention prevented the 90s tech bubble from completely popping, and of course the bubble is still out there. What would happen if market capitalization values of big solid companies like Microsoft, Google, and Ebay dropped 50%? Big panic. Microsoft ain't selling Vista. Sony ain't selling PS3. Google's selling spam. Ebay's selling absurd fees to to niche professional sellers.
A real bubble exploding in my view is just a massive transfer of money from one market (or segment) to another. Am I wrong if so what is the reality of the situation? You're wrong. Value is always subjective, and can just vanish from changing subjective valuations. This is true of absolutely everything which has subjective value, money included. So even with no buying and selling trade, what is valued at 1 trillion today, can be valued at 500 billion tomorrow, just from a change in subjective valuation. Subjective valuation are constantly in a changing state of flux.
The tech bubble never fully burst either, it moved into the housing market, it's world-wide and it's the ginormous mother of all bubbles. The Federal Reserve has been jump pumping money into the economy, and slashed interest rates to almost to 0%. If you were to look at M3 (total money), before the Fed stopped publishing that number in the last couple of years, you were seeing total money supply double within less than a decade. This thing is like a bump in a carpet, you step on it, and it moves somewhere else.
There's been no housing market panic yet. Just total denial. You'll see panic when people start seeing valuations drop by 10% then 25% and 50% in some areas. Standard box $700k homes and $900k condos, lol. For at least a year, people have been deluding themselves that people need a place to live, and people who want to sell have been sitting, waiting for some magical stabilization. When people realize they're paying 2M mortgages for 400k homes, they sell or declare bankruptcy too. Ain't no bailout that can stop it either, unless you think giving every home owner a multiple K credit is feasible, lol.
This is all caused by government interference in the market, which by definition creates poverty in absolutely every instance, no matter how good the intentions. If you can xerox every dollar bill out there every seven years, yeah we have a problem Houston. And the Federal Reserve emergency policy is to drop fiat monopoly money dollars from helicopters. The US government plays the exact same game 3rd world dictators play. Iran justifies misery by blaming US foreign policy. The US justifies misery by dividing the public into class haters of each other, getting people to blame corporations, "the rich", immigration, free trade, etc.
If money is doubling every 7 years, and interest rates have been about 5%, money is the biggest hot potatoE (ty Can Quayle) since the Muffin Man attempted to destroy NYC in Ghostbusters. It's all subjective valuation, money included. May as well make cow turds the official currency now, and that applies world wide.
But most people are morons, and still don't understand the cause of the Great Depression. The cause was massive scale protectionism. Free trade only voluntarily occurs because that which is received is valued more than that which is given away in exchange. You use violence to prohibit trade economy wide, and massive wealth is instantaneously lost. Yes, kicking out all the illegal immigrants would cause a recession. But of course paying out the the entitlement socialist benefits to those illegal immigrants would cause a recession too.
The bills can't be paid. The way out is the same way out that always occurs. Massive devaluation of debt and obligations through mega pumping of the money supply.
I think only a fool would revise patent law in such favor of the public's putative "right to know" (which, following Heinlein again, I would classify with the public's right to a free lunch) that it outraged inventors. That's just a recipe for discouraging invention, a fatal error for any society to make. That's a myth that's being chipped away. And it's easily disprovable. All the great inventions have occurred *only* because those inventors copied the ideas of others, built upon the ideas of others, in order to advance. This is true for Leonardo da'Vinci, Thomas Edison, and Albert Einstein. A.) They STUDIED. This means they COPIED! You go to school to LEARN. By learning you are COPYING. Name any invention you want. All of them will have used ideas they didn't invent themselves. By restricting copying, the only effect is to slow down the process of innovation, since innovation only occurs by copying and building upon previously existing ideas. Q.E.D.
And granting IP is literally a fatal error, as cures for disease are not found that would have been found sooner, and people are sicker and dead precisely because of IP.
Do you see people freely voluntarily posting thoughts and ideas on this thread discouraging invention? Hell no, the rate of discovery and comprehension is accelerated compared to any official academic journal you might peruse on the topic of IP. Academia is literally being schooled by sites like/.
The only "damage" patent protection ultimately does to an industry is it forces consumers to pay more for a product, sometimes lots more. Incorrect. Violence is used to prevent people from using known knowledge. This literally makes people deaf, blind, and dumb to what exists. Engineers must "play stupid", like a math is hard barbie doll, and not reverse-engineer, not search for improved efficiencies on stuff they didn't "invent". Consumers must pay more for a product, but that product itself is far inferior quality than what would exist in a competitive free market without IP monopoly protectionism.
Reforming patent protection so that it killed off IP gamesmanship and (for example) drug R&D in the US would be the prototypical throwing out of the baby with the bathwater mistake. Drug R&D only occurs because drug scientists COPY procedures and methods of scientific testing, along with a whole host of other ideas they didn't invent or discover themselves. It is precisely *because* drug R&D scientists COPY that they can advance science and discover new stuff. And in a winner take all patent grant, the losers investments are 100% waste. All the energy and resources spent on lobbying and enforcement are 100% waste. More expensive, inferior quality medicines means literally more sicker and more dead people. And lack of patents never prevented university researchers from researching in the past. Nor would it prevent rich people who want to live forever from sponsoring fountain of youth research.
I haven't read this case specifically, but most of the suits deal with people sharing music, not downloading. So even given the realistic cost of $1/song, they could claim that you shared that song in part or full with 750 people over a bit torrent. The $1/song argument does not apply to distribution. Perfect. Then all Defendant needs Exhibit are records deatiling music station fees per song per listener for a fair market value. Say Radio Station X pays Music Company S $100 per song played per 500,000 listeners. That then translates to $0.0002 per *proved* download. Now if Music Company S actually PAYOLAS Radio Station X to play their song, then Defendant should countersue (4.PROFIT!!!) Music Company S for recovery of distribution payment owed. We can also enter as Exhibits licences to play music for bars and other venues which play music. I am not a lawyer, but I play one on this thread! (IANALBIPOOTT)
Of course people who share music on BT will claim that they're not causing economic harm -- that would be impossible to prove; and thus we have statutory damages. Not impossible to prove. Also extremely easy to prove that the music itself has copied other idea sources, in absolutely every case. Perhaps cultural-chemical dna anyalysis would do wonders to expose the IP fraud. Thus, the first is proved by the second. If the music itself didn't copy, the music itself wouldn't exist, which is irrefutable proof of a net materially poorer society caused by restricting copying.
If I were a lawyer defending against the RIAA, I would always request jury trials and line up the witnesses to testify, or cross examine the plaintiffs, how the material in question has copied other ideas. Every copyrighted work will by definition be in violation of another/multiple copyrighted works. Check out lyrics sites which will show the words about "love" and "girl" in different songs. If the glove does not fit, you must aquit.
Nobody can make music without freely borrowing musical tools and musical ideas which were not created or invented by the artist. All the great artists tried to rip off, through study and copy, as many techniques and methods of other artists as they could figure out to improve their craft, even those who then went on to create even newer advances. Doesn't matter whether it was Da'Vinci, or Thomas Edison, or Einstein. They all copied!
By definition it will be impossible for multiple elements of every copyrighted work to not contain multiple public domain pieces. A little offensive redirection with grannys, kids, and Sgts sitting at the defense table should increase the odds of swaying a few jurors. Or hell, just play another song not in the suit that sounds similar to the song in the suit as an Exhibit. And make sure to humorously mock the copyright "violations" which occur right there in the courtroom as everyone hears the songs in question.
Always force the RIAA to exhibit the evidence of their downloaded copy of the accused copy by having it played and heard in the courtroom as evidence. Or if they don't have that, dismissal. Then also submit as records, depose and put to work the RIAA attorneys, for a complete list of all public radio and other performances of the songs in question. Copying the radio and television for personal use is not a copyright violation. Content companies sell content recorders. If it's Sony content (or even if it's not), Standard Exhibit C is an old sony cassette walkman with an fm tuner and record button. Put all music industry recording devices on display. Get some more ancient tech exhibits to mix in with mp3 players.
That must be why they cannot get people who only download and don't keep stuff in a shared folder for upload. There's no copyright notice on P2P files. And even if there were, how would anyone know they were legitimate or not? Anone can put little (C) and (TM) wherever they want. How can anybody know the material is copyrighted before downloading it? How can anyone but the first to put the content on the web be guilty of copyright infringement? At worst, the defendants should merely have to delete any copyrighted work that may exist on their hard drives after receiving due and proper cease and desist notice, unless they were knowingly distributing the content for a profit. Gather some evidence of "spoof" mp3s with similar or same titles as those in suit.
And quit calling me Shirley. You can say that again. More proof of cultural "piracy" by Hollywood. It's so easy to flip the assault around and go on a massive offensive against IP that sends their lawyers back to the hospital. A hospital, what is it? A big building with patients. But that's not important right now.
Slashdot Mirror
So I hope this works out but it doesn't matter anyway because I prefer a lossless copy and unlike the pirates or the **AA, I'm not a thief. Warning: Explicit Words
Or maybe we could embrace reality and declare everyone naturally copies, and that is GOOD. And musicians can pretend they became musicians by not copying through study and practice, and pretend the songs they create don't COPY either. If musicians and music distribution don't need excuses, why should consumers need excuses either? Blame Disney for glorifying Pirates of the caRIAbbeAn. Oh so *now* the media wants to push a moralistic wholesome family values message?!
And now this glorification of piracy moment brought to you by our RIAA sponsors:
"Been Caught Downloading"
I've been caught downloading;
once when I was 5...
I enjoy downloading.
It's just as simple as that.
Well, it's just a simple fact.
When I want something,
I don't want to pay for it.
I'm confused. How exactly does copyright law prevent people from building upon previously existing ideas?
Every manifestation of ideas in the form of writing, music, products, has copied ideas of others. "New" material is only created by copying elements of "old" material. Any limitation or restriction on copying only hinders scientific and artistic advancement. This is by definition so; the implementation of ideas is more scarce than it otherwise would be with no restrictions on copying. There is not a single RIAA song that is not copying the ideas of others.
As most sensible people will tell you, ideals without moderation is usually detrimental to society. We have a compromise between copyright holders and the public, with a limited copyright term, and limited powers for the copyright holders (fair use). If it were an unlimited prohibition of any sort of copying, in any part no matter how small, then it would be very detrimental to society. Just like an unmoderated adherence to the information wants to be free ideology would be similarly disastrous for our culture.
This is not so. Copyrights and Patents exist *solely* to promote the advancement of the sciences and arts. That is the sole constitutional justification for IP. All I've said is it's a simple proof that copyrights and patents always, without exception, hinder the advancement of the sciences and arts.
If copying were restricted or prohibited, people like Leonardo da Vinci wouldn't have been able to further invent. When children go to school, they go to school to LEARN. They learn by COPYING the ideas which are being passed to them. Knowledge only spreads through COPYING. There is no other way knowledge can advance except by copying. And restriction or prohibition on copyright can only slow the rate at which knowledge advances. If people were afraid of being copied, they wouldn't have ever talked or invented a shared commonly understood language. And people talked before IP, in spite of IP, and will still talk when IP doesn't apply. And just as they talk, they will invent and create without IP.
To comply or be forced to submit to restrictions on copying means one and only one result: less knowledge exists than would otherwise be the case without restrictions on copying.
These are not "ideals", but simple results of unbiased economic analysis fact. Free trade is not an "ideal". Free trade always and only occurs because that which is received in exchange is valued more than that which is given away in exchange. It's a voluntary transaction which only occurs because both parties are better off, wealthier, profit, from the trade. If that wasn't the case, nobody would voluntarily trade for anything.
"Ideals without moderation", like no taxation without representation? Would no rape without representation be satisfactory to you also? People are always either/or voluntarily cooperating or they are violently abusing. There's no in between "moderation". To suggest there is, is an abuse of truth. Violence is violence, even if it occurs less frequently.
There's lots of songs that are a mouse click away from being downloaded and dissected by ears and minds. Copying doesn't deny any physical property use to anyone. It creates new where before there was none. It's breaths life into dead voids, literally. But restrictions on copying of ideas imposes deafness, blindness, and stupidity onto others. An engineer, a human being with educational capacities to deconstruct and reconstruct, is prohibited from so doing by IP. He must sit there, and play dumb, because of a IP law.
And all those musical songs have already copied each other on many many many different levels. The musicians were just oblivious as to how they were copying. But they only learned to play music by copying. Any restrictions on musicians copying would only be restrictions on their capacity as musicians, no matter what degree or level at which the restrictions occur. Clearly, restrictions on copying then, only result
There is absolutely nothing which has or ever will receive a grant of copyright or patent that has not itself copied in some way the ideas of others. Every claim of IP is a hypocritical claim that says I the one with the IP should be allowed to copy but you the consumer should not be allowed to copy. You only learn by copying. Information spreads only by copying. Understanding occurs only through copying. If you don't want to be copied then go dig ditches for a living. But note, you'll still be copying and be copied.
If you want to make money playing music, charge for performances in real tangible private property places. Don't use violence to restrict the freedom of others. Don't use violence to hinder artistic advancement. Digital cds and songs are free advertisements to come see the musicians play live. Why should anyone pay hypocrits? Especially when they are violent extortionist hypocrits.
There's only a music industry, there's only music, because people COPY.
Not to mention glorification of promiscuity, drugs, and theft that the industry promotes and sells doesn't exactly give them an upstanding pearch of morality from which to preach. Metallica can pretend they are some bad dudes, but they cry like little girls if someone "copies" them? Who's "bad" now, huh?
Only the government can create a monopolistic phone company, by restricting spectrum, by regulations, patents, etc.
Ads are less attentively watched than ever. Perhaps most people already immediately associate "bad deal" rather than "good deal" with ads that appear when and where they do.
This is just marketing desperation as more people than ever take more active measures to block them out. The people that accept "free" products for advertisement spam last shorter and shorter as well. How many even kids would get duped again and again into giving away personal info and wasting time for their "XBOX 360 WINNER" flashing banner ad? Even those ads have negatively effected other ads.
Let me be the contrarian and say "it's over" for marketing and advertising agencies. It's just a matter of time until corporations learn that those advertising and marketing measures are *hurting* corporate brands rather than helping them, in a big majority of cases. It's a slow process because marketing and advertising teams will FUD their employers to prolong their paychecks. Google is already starting to compete against future competition by not holding personal identifying information for as long. Not only are companies throwing money away paying marketers, but they are harming their brand value in the process.
It's simple supply and demand. The explosion of spam has rendered each ad, even the best, most quality informing ad, less valuable. It's fine if google wants to surround searches with the highest paid ads. I'm sure most people already probably default think those are the worst deals you could possibly get.
Using "big name" music in ads is a turnoff now too. When Supermarkets realize you are less likely to go back because some stupid television screen advertisement is playing in the checkout lane, they'll get rid of those televisions too. Same for the mall food courts televisions. It's a massive cultural tuning out of spam on many many levels.
Don't forget, the internet pretty much made travel agents extinct, as people started getting competitive quotes for airfare and hotels on-line. Movie theaters don't seem to be doing too well selling commercials for longer periods of time before movies start.
Not to mention, people that accept ad-supported phones are probably not anywhere near the highly desired demographic targets.
Advertising must be regarded as "content" that is competing against other "non-advertising" content. That's why people change channels, switch stations, walk on the other side of the street. When your message makes people want to avoid you, that's not good for business. If you could watch regular peoples' reactions to ads the same way they watch their reactions to political debate candidates talking, a lot of people are in for a rude spam-awakening.
Well I think the next big corporate expense cutting victims will be their spamming "marketing departments". I think you will see cable channels facing market pressure (declining viewers) because of how bad their advertising is. Unavoidable ad spam lowers the value of DVDs. Seems like a lot of fat that is negatively impacting their bottom lines even more than just the numerical expenses.
Just remember all the waste and spam, and inefficient quality and pricing of travel agencies compared to now. People spend more time on internet message boards with the free content of others now then they used to watching tv or going to the movies. People have greater better quality access to reviews of products and services than ever before. There's more scrutiny than ever before, and pretend shape your image to an unknowing public is less effective than ever before.
Take a look at annoying automated computerized phone systems that transfer you around. That's marketing and tech support trying to pull the wool over management eyes. Take a look at blogs of complaints. That's invaluable *free* feedback, which 6 figure marketing salaries can't compete with. You have mmorpg game companies with paid employees that now r
Desktop Calculator
The pull up Calculator on my desktop is not a screen keyboard which is pulled up to the same place when opened? One has numbers, the other has letters, they all have symbols. *And* I can move it around too if I want.
It seems to me more lawyers graduate these days then doctors, engineers, or MBAs, and lawyer salaries have been growing higher and higher in the 6 figure range. Someone needs to add up all the total dollars "earned" by the legal profession per year (and all the related services which they consume). That's a huge chunk of GDP "economic effort" which is just about 100% unproductive waste of scarce time and resources. And it's leading to a litigious parasitic implosion of society, which further drags economic, scientific, and artistic progress. Most of the legal profession is exactly as unproductive as the mafia. All they do is sit on their asses and scheme about "legal" robbery, until it's time to use the guns, or time to use those with the guns. Doesn't matter if it's IP or the "war on drugs" or tax and estates, it's almost 100% wholly wasted unproductive effort which makes society net poorer than it otherwise would be. And we're no longer talking about a few GDP percentage points either. What is it? 15% 20%? 25%? Whatever it is, from the tax code, to drug law, to IP, it's a *massive* waste. When you add it up, the legal profession commits highway robbery on the same scale as governments. Is it a coincidence that 90% plus of the politicians are lawyers?
I consider you geeks (like myself) are wise enough to understand that no public confrontation with strong behind the curtains action is the best means towards the real long term change. I disagree. I think direct confrontation is already a past tense fruitful action which is only continuing. I think if you were to look back at these moments 200 hundred years from now, you would think the whole shebang from Napster, P2P, the PirateBay etc. was nothing less than an ongoing Boston Tea Party 2.0 which de facto factually dumped tons of copyrighted tea content into the public domain sea. It's an undeniable fact of fruitful confrontation action. Just look at the number of downloads. Just looks at the industry sales declines.
The milk has spilled, the cat is out of the bag, the genie is out of the bottle, and they ain't going back in, espcially when it's super eazy for a rogue connection at any point to dump everything which is "content" again and again, cheaper and faster. It's just a matter of time until the "law" catches up to the economic science which shows that copyright and patents only stifle innovation and result in higher monopoly prices for inferior products. And it's also an undeniable fact absolutely every single person and absolutely every single product copies, "pirates".
The only violent confrontation which exists, is the artificial phoney claims of copyright and patent. And as violence is less economically efficient than free trade cooperation, society is inevitably being "pulled" toward an evolutionary extinction of bogus "intellectual property". Even the US will be forced to abandon IP, or they will cede technological innovation and economic leadership to the likes of a more free market China or others (either way both consumers and producers will continue to benefit more from a competitive free information market), who need not waste precious scarce resources and time in duplicative wasted or prohibited efforts, or frivolous wholly non-productive legal shenanigans.
You do not like brand X doing business in ways you dislike? Do not use those products. Do not like the *AA? Don't listen to their music. Do not like the sportsbrand having sweatshops? Don't wear their clothes. Don't like the pricing of software? Don't use it. But Microsoft breaks the same "law" they ostensibly espouse. They "pirate", they "copy", the ideas and methods of others, and without paying jack squat for doing it either. The *AA musicians, and all musicians, "pirate", "copy" too! I'd also estimate 99% of the dialogue of Hollywood movies has been blatantly "pirated" from common languages which were not created by Hollywood, yet they dare claim a hypocritical copyright?
How much inspirational wealth did JKR "pirate" about wizards and magic! Take a look at the Harry Potter book sales numbers for a rough estimate of the grand larceny JKR has "pirated" from the culture by ignorantly declaring or lying that it is original copyrighted material. Confiscate her wealth and throw her in the dungeon until she recants her false evil claims of copyright. And Disney is out there too profiting from selling the glorification of Pirates of the Caribbean. Well, if Microsoft and Disney are going to call copying "pirating", then here, have some of which you worship. Tastes good, don't it?
Of course, people are better off by definition of going through whatever it is they go through to procure a copy of whatever it is they procur a copy of. Just as Vista is better than it would be (/lob) if it didn't copy. Those products are better because those products copy, and people are better off because they copy those products.
This eminates from the economic discovery of the reason trade occurs. Trade only occurs because that which is received is valued more than that which is given away in exchange. This always has been and always will be true. Any data analysis which says otherwise has a fundamental error miscalculation or lacks a data input of the totalilty of things involved in the transaction, i.e. giving away a free sample increases profit, and is not an expense loss, because the "free" sample is being traded away for a present value possibility of future business which is worth more than not giving away the free sample.
This is true. Absolutely every single person benefits more from COPYING than doing, creating, inventing, discovering all the things which are invented, discovered, and created on their own. No single person can create more than they freely receive. Ever. Bill Gates has benefited many many times over than the billions he made from selling copyrighted and patented software from all the ideas he was able to COPY or all the things he was able to trade for which were COPIED.
And all those illgotten through monopoly violence billions he received are much less than all the net societal world economy wealth which has been destroyed from being created through violent copyright and patent. He could give absolutely every single penny he ever earned at Microsoft to charity and it would still not come close to making up for the technological are artisitic stagnation which has resulted precisely from just his own copyrights and patents. He wants to fund research for curing diseases? Those cures might've already cheaply existed long ago if patents weren't stifling innovation, and inflating prices for inferior products.
The first people to take the first steps of writing code were by definition better off doing that then doing anything else they could've been doing at that time, whether it was sleeping, partying, or digging ditches. That's why they chose to do what they did. They were profiting every second of the way. Similarly Leonard da'Vinci was profiting every second of the way with all the desings he conjured, whether or not he was able to get financial backing to implement those ideas or not.
This is exactly how an absence of patent and copyright protection is supposed to work. This is classic competition. The pharmaceutical industry sells its goods cheaper overseas too. Then they complain when those same drugs are reimported back for a cheaper price. When the same product is sold for different prices to different people or in different places, all it does is open up arbitrage profit opportunities for speculators to buy at the lower price and undercut the higher price, until the prices are the same. That's how the free market is supposed to work. That's how the free market fights discrimination, naturally. Only violence can prevent the free market adjustments from occurring.
And it's clearly profitable for Microsoft to sell Vista at this lower price, or else they wouldn't be selling it at that lower price. They would by definition be better off keeping their product to themselves. But because they freely lower the price and willing choose to sell at that lower price, they are by definition increasing their profit by selling Vista at that lower price. The copyrights and the patents have merely slowed innovation and raised the price of an inferior product.
"Piracy", COPYING, is legitimate free market competition. Vista itself too only exists *because* it too COPIED the innumerable ideas of others. If Microsoft was really against the COPYING of Vista, Microsoft would never have even made, or been allowed to make, Vista in the first place. Any complaints of "piracy" are pure hypocricy, in absolutely every single case whatsoever.
Of course, knock off, Brand X, cover band competition has been restricted as well. There's no way tickets would sell for $150 if supply wasn't massively limited. Are you talking two to three shows per major city every two to three years? If Elton John was playing as often as Tony and Tina's Bif Fat Italian Wedding, ticket prices would be much less.
Surprise, surprise! Copyright restricts not only the available competing supply, but restricts the incentive to increase the supply by those creating the supply. That's 180 degrees contrary to the alleged economic artistic incentives copyright allegedly was supposed to bring. And that's exactly what occurs, artists become fat and lazy, living off the royalties of work done years ago (even deluding themselves that fat and lazy is art itself), rather than continuing to work in live performances or continue making new material, especially when you are typically talking about 3-4 quality songs packages with filler fluff material.
But sure, concert ticket sales is how artists should earn their money, not by artificially restricting the freedom of others to copy whilst those same artists hypocritically copy other artists themselves. If they have to get out there and earn, through voluntary mp3 purchases, patronage, or concert ticket sales, the incentive to increase quality and increase supply (of good live music) comes back into play.
know who you are, asking for the removal of the material
and $25.00 to this new organization.
The difference would be this, the new organization can
only get $5.00 of the $25.00 as a fee, the remainder
would be disbursed to the copyright owner. Same threats
of lawsuits, just a more reasonable outcome.
This would do several things :
Reimburse artists The thing is the artists would be mailing those letters to themselves, as there is no single piece of music anywhere on the internet, or anywhere else, that has not copied some previous or other musician's work somehow someway. You only learn and study to become a musician by COPYING. There's absolutely no other way. And if they were to request "removal of the material" they would be requesting the death absence of music. Nope, they can beg. They can court voluntary donations. If that doesn't pay the bills, they can play music in their leisure time after they get off their day job shift.
You are oblivious that you are standing right in the middle of the Boston Tea Party 2.0, and this time we are dumping all the tea content into the public domain sea. Even back during the American Revolution in the 1770s, protests we're largely organized through print communication. Too many people don't yet realize what a Berlin Wall downfall moment the internet really is. People are becoming better educated to the political corruption in far less time than decades of traditional mainstream broadcast media has done. That's what a massive world-wide competitive arena of ideas will do. The public will eventually snap after taking too much for too long.
Seems to me the Boston Tea Party 2.0 has already started.
Main stream advertisers are desperate. They are not much above spammers these days. The bombardment in advertising supply has made the return on each advertising dollar probably lower than it's ever been. The ads are insidious trojans and worms. Almost everyone regards even television advertisements as garbage. Marketers are up there with realestate agents in a classic pump and dump wall street scheme.
And yeah, almost the whole internet is still advertising financed business models. Like I said in another post, Federal Reserve intervention prevented the 90s tech bubble from completely popping, and of course the bubble is still out there. What would happen if market capitalization values of big solid companies like Microsoft, Google, and Ebay dropped 50%? Big panic. Microsoft ain't selling Vista. Sony ain't selling PS3. Google's selling spam. Ebay's selling absurd fees to to niche professional sellers.
The tech bubble never fully burst either, it moved into the housing market, it's world-wide and it's the ginormous mother of all bubbles. The Federal Reserve has been jump pumping money into the economy, and slashed interest rates to almost to 0%. If you were to look at M3 (total money), before the Fed stopped publishing that number in the last couple of years, you were seeing total money supply double within less than a decade. This thing is like a bump in a carpet, you step on it, and it moves somewhere else.
There's been no housing market panic yet. Just total denial. You'll see panic when people start seeing valuations drop by 10% then 25% and 50% in some areas. Standard box $700k homes and $900k condos, lol. For at least a year, people have been deluding themselves that people need a place to live, and people who want to sell have been sitting, waiting for some magical stabilization. When people realize they're paying 2M mortgages for 400k homes, they sell or declare bankruptcy too. Ain't no bailout that can stop it either, unless you think giving every home owner a multiple K credit is feasible, lol.
This is all caused by government interference in the market, which by definition creates poverty in absolutely every instance, no matter how good the intentions. If you can xerox every dollar bill out there every seven years, yeah we have a problem Houston. And the Federal Reserve emergency policy is to drop fiat monopoly money dollars from helicopters. The US government plays the exact same game 3rd world dictators play. Iran justifies misery by blaming US foreign policy. The US justifies misery by dividing the public into class haters of each other, getting people to blame corporations, "the rich", immigration, free trade, etc.
If money is doubling every 7 years, and interest rates have been about 5%, money is the biggest hot potatoE (ty Can Quayle) since the Muffin Man attempted to destroy NYC in Ghostbusters. It's all subjective valuation, money included. May as well make cow turds the official currency now, and that applies world wide.
But most people are morons, and still don't understand the cause of the Great Depression. The cause was massive scale protectionism. Free trade only voluntarily occurs because that which is received is valued more than that which is given away in exchange. You use violence to prohibit trade economy wide, and massive wealth is instantaneously lost. Yes, kicking out all the illegal immigrants would cause a recession. But of course paying out the the entitlement socialist benefits to those illegal immigrants would cause a recession too.
The bills can't be paid. The way out is the same way out that always occurs. Massive devaluation of debt and obligations through mega pumping of the money supply.
And granting IP is literally a fatal error, as cures for disease are not found that would have been found sooner, and people are sicker and dead precisely because of IP.
Do you see people freely voluntarily posting thoughts and ideas on this thread discouraging invention? Hell no, the rate of discovery and comprehension is accelerated compared to any official academic journal you might peruse on the topic of IP. Academia is literally being schooled by sites like
If I were a lawyer defending against the RIAA, I would always request jury trials and line up the witnesses to testify, or cross examine the plaintiffs, how the material in question has copied other ideas. Every copyrighted work will by definition be in violation of another/multiple copyrighted works. Check out lyrics sites which will show the words about "love" and "girl" in different songs. If the glove does not fit, you must aquit.
Nobody can make music without freely borrowing musical tools and musical ideas which were not created or invented by the artist. All the great artists tried to rip off, through study and copy, as many techniques and methods of other artists as they could figure out to improve their craft, even those who then went on to create even newer advances. Doesn't matter whether it was Da'Vinci, or Thomas Edison, or Einstein. They all copied!
By definition it will be impossible for multiple elements of every copyrighted work to not contain multiple public domain pieces. A little offensive redirection with grannys, kids, and Sgts sitting at the defense table should increase the odds of swaying a few jurors. Or hell, just play another song not in the suit that sounds similar to the song in the suit as an Exhibit. And make sure to humorously mock the copyright "violations" which occur right there in the courtroom as everyone hears the songs in question.
Always force the RIAA to exhibit the evidence of their downloaded copy of the accused copy by having it played and heard in the courtroom as evidence. Or if they don't have that, dismissal. Then also submit as records, depose and put to work the RIAA attorneys, for a complete list of all public radio and other performances of the songs in question. Copying the radio and television for personal use is not a copyright violation. Content companies sell content recorders. If it's Sony content (or even if it's not), Standard Exhibit C is an old sony cassette walkman with an fm tuner and record button. Put all music industry recording devices on display. Get some more ancient tech exhibits to mix in with mp3 players.
That must be why they cannot get people who only download and don't keep stuff in a shared folder for upload. There's no copyright notice on P2P files. And even if there were, how would anyone know they were legitimate or not? Anone can put little (C) and (TM) wherever they want. How can anybody know the material is copyrighted before downloading it? How can anyone but the first to put the content on the web be guilty of copyright infringement? At worst, the defendants should merely have to delete any copyrighted work that may exist on their hard drives after receiving due and proper cease and desist notice, unless they were knowingly distributing the content for a profit. Gather some evidence of "spoof" mp3s with similar or same titles as those in suit. And quit calling me Shirley. You can say that again. More proof of cultural "piracy" by Hollywood. It's so easy to flip the assault around and go on a massive offensive against IP that sends their lawyers back to the hospital. A hospital, what is it? A big building with patients. But that's not important right now.