>They are attacking the corporation facilitating mass copyright violation.
Napster is providing a file transmission service. It is a protocol and index very similar to how the WWW and yahoo and lycos relate to one another. If some dumb kid were to install a web server on her computer, put commercial mp3 files in the doc root, then have lycos and hotbot spider the server, should Metallica file lawsuits against lycos, hotbot, and the maker of the web server software? No * 1000.
Multiple legal precedents have been set establishing that the provider is not responsible for filtering the content passed through its system. If alerted to illegal conduct, however, the provider must take steps to prevent the perpetrator from continued misuse of the service (i.e. close the account). This does not mean the service provider must provide some method of preventing the misuse from occurring. Napster qualifies as a service provider in this situation. Its responsibility in the piracy issue is identical to that of AOL, Time Warner, and the telcos. The reality is that the lawyers found it easier to convince Metallica to file a wrongheaded lawsuit against Napster than convincing Lars he could beat AOL in court.
Continuing this perspective, I do agree that Lars has a right to protect his copyrighted material, just as most other defenders of Napster believe. The method of protecting his 'art' is to file lawsuits against the individuals providing the files for download. This is not difficult to do and once a few hundred or thousand people were taken to court over it, I think the problem would evaporate quickly. As you can tell, however, it's not such a popular notion for a rock band to take its fans to court, so we end up with the wrong person on the electric chair--- Napster.
Obviously FTP, Hotline, and other file transmission protocols are going to be analogous to Napster.
The goal of my proposed strategy, however, was to have our known enemies battle each other until both were utterly destroyed. This would be akin to the scene in Galaxy Quest where they use the transporter to beam up the rock monster into the ship to beat up the bad guys inside that one compartment. I guess the difference would be that the bad guys can't really kill a rock monster, so in this analogy, Microsoft is the rock monster and the RIAA just gets really smashed-up and Microsoft continues being a rock monster (or if the DOJ wins its case, three rock monsters).
Man, Galaxy Quest was so great. I think I'm going to finish this silly post now so I can order the DVD from buy.com.
Great observation about the downturn beginning prior to the release of Napster.
I'm not sure how effective your 'hearty-laugh' tactics will be in this whole RIAA v. the internet crusade. Now I don't know how often you converse with these record execs you mentioned, but here's what I suggest:
The next time they're bragging about how rich their lawyers got from filing wrongheaded lawsuits against software startups (like Napster), demonstrate to them how the 'Network Neighborhood' tool on Windows is being used by cable modem users to share illicit mp3s over the internet. Let their lawyers chew on Microsoft's lawyers for a while.
Then come back after eight years and 'laugh heartily' at the pile of sawdust known as the RIAA Legal Counsel.
Seth
It wasn't an elitist stance...
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Ok. So your point would be that this site does not cater to a specific demograph. You would probably suggest that advertisers are getting the same type of targeting on Slashdot that they do with their banners on yahoo.com.
When someone publishes a site with a very targeted audience (like Slashdot -- news for nerds) it's understood that the audience shares common traits. By publishing content that works off of these familiarities, sites like Slashdot attract a different audience than say cnn.com. In my above post, I was identifying F 451 as one of those traits. For Timothy to post some guy's homework assignment on the book was akin to standing before an NRA convention and recommending that all attendees get a subscription to Guns-n-Ammo magazine.
Overall, though, I think Timothy is a little trigger-happy when selecting articles to post.
Seth
tell timothy it's quality, not quantity
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Please alert Timothy that this site's main value is that it helps busy people home in on quality net content that is relevant to their techno-geek interests. Posting this guy's class report on F 451 is not only preaching to the choir, but it's absolutely redundant and off-topic. It should be a given that anyone visiting this site has read F 451. If they haven't covered the prerequisites for browsing SlashDot, then they should find everything over their head and quietly click on the back button until they return to
the Wired article that linked them here.
OTOH, every page view counts to a commercial enterprise... Maybe it's better to retain the mainstream visitors by writing on that level. Follow the style guide used by newspapers and anytime the word 'internet' is used in an article on SlashDot, follow it up with 'the network that connects computers around the world'.
Please refrain from posting stuff that a tenth-grader turned in for a class.
The dispute is over how the company sold the rights to the syndication of the show. Instead of handling it via a normal bidding war open to all stations everywhere, they simply gave it to all the FOX affiliates for a set price in every FOX market. This resulted in Rupert Murdoch cutting his own tv stations a cherry of a deal while screwing over the actors' whose contracts featured strong compensation via the syndication revenue.
I am betting that Mulder will win the lawsuit and get a huge amount of money to coast on for the rest of his life, regardless of how his future movie career unfolds.
If it plays PSX games, then it'll be able to play the
Namco museum titles, the first disc of which contains pac man. This is a bit interesting as the Namco Museum games are run under emulation on the PSX. So to play these titles on the DreamCast will represent two layers of emulation. I'm sure it'll work fine, but it's a little funny to see time marked by layers of emulation... something like rings in the trunk of a tree.
Concerning this hotmail exploit, there is the same security risk on the Mac as with Wintendo. Key here is that you're not using Hotmail, but Microsoft's other e-mail product. With Lookout express on the Mac, you're safe from all the VBS ILOVEYOU-styled trojans.
This is an embedded javascript exploit, just like some of the earlier exploits (not VBS as described above by CT). Hotmail is filtering out javascript within the bodies of e-mail, but not attached html files. They could remedy this by either filtering attached html files (not so easy to do) or by offloading the attachments to be read from a seperate server outside the *.hotmail.com domain (my recommendation).
Here's an awesome story about another risk of using web-based e-mail. It describes how your IP address could be identified if the sender attaches an IMG tag to the e-mail and then watches the web server log for when you read the mail and your browser requests the image from her server. Clever.
A popular mulituser package still used today on the Mac platform is AtEase . It's made and supported by Apple. Ironically, Apple
publishes tips on how to circumvent the 'security' At Ease intends to provide.
I am eager to see the multiuser stuff built into Mac OS X natively, however...
Ok. Unlike the previous lawyer-defeating
effort to increase the signal-to-noise ratio (DeCSS)for lawyers attempting to track the exchange of illicit software, I think this would be a good idea. The main problem with posting fake copies of DeCSS to web sites all over the world was that it then served the purpose of the lawyers by making it more difficult for people to find actual copies of DeCSS on the net.
In this case, I think we could effectively make the NetPD search-bot results inflated beyond credibility. This could be accomplished by inserting a massive number of fake Metallica files into our Napster directories and then leaving it running over the weekend. If it turns out that the list of 335k 'users' was really a list of files available from a smaller set of users, then we push their next tally into the millions, which would make their next press conference that much less believable.
This story isn't about people producing fake AMD chips. This is about people overclocking slower AMD chips and selling them as newer, faster AMD chips.
What it does say about AMD, however, is that someone perceives AMD as an easier target for this sort of fraud than Intel. Perhaps the CPU IDs of Intel chips would really be useful for the purpose Intel claimed rather than tracking down virus writers, etc.
In this case, Apple is not leaning on OEMs saying if they make an agreement with Adobe to sell Premier then they'll have to pay more for the Mac OS license. There are no Mac OEMs. That whole trial had little to do with Microsoft giving IE away for free. It had everything to do with Microsoft leveraging its monopoly to strongarm its partners into making it difficult for Netscape to sell its products.
Beyond that, iMovie does not compete with Premier, Final Cut Pro, or Avid. This is an entry-level product that will likely result in increased sales of those other products due to the number of consumers introduced to digital video editing.
Unfortunately, I think it all comes down to whether or not the company enjoys the portrayal of their own tradmark and if they see a value in its artistic use. If the Catholic Church had enough foresight to have trademarked the cross, then they would have likely sued Andres Serrano for his
Piss Christ piece. Since the Campbell's Soup company probably enjoyed their association with Andy Warhol, they were less likely to call their law school graduate dogs of war on the Factory.
The painfully common thread running through so many SlashDot stories seems to be that he with the most lawyers wins, regardless of right and wrong. Metallica v. Napster, RIAA v. mp3.com, California v. OJ Simpson...
SmartMedia cards are a descent solution for portable mp3 players because they support a small size player, which is important for portability. Also, they enable the portable players to contain no moving parts, thereby using less battery power and increasing the longevity of the device. The key drawback to them is their limited storage capacity and expense.
In the car stereo environment, however, portability is not a factor, so larger media (cdr and hard drives) are very feasible. CDR media is wildly cheap, and their storage capacity is quite sufficient for mp3 collections. Products like the AIWA player are nice because combine the rogue technology of mp3 with mainstream technology like AM/FM and redbook audio cd format.
Anyone serious about their MP3 collection has a cdrom recorder. The price point for
these devices has dropped into the $200 range, which makes it a pretty ubiquitous consumer product. Consider that a ten-disk cd changer (total cost including head unit is in excess of $350) will give the user immediate access to 10 disks each containing maybe 14 tracks. This amounts to 140 total tracks. Depending on the compression used, a standard CDR will store about 170 tracks.
The Empeg car stereo system is a really interesting 'hack', but not a very realistic consumer product. Besides the price point and availability issues, the system doesn't have any security features. That gigantic LCD display is going to be a criminal-magnet, and even if they were to implement some sort of password scheme, how's that going to help me replace my broken window and missing $900 linux mp3 player? I am betting the AIWA player contains the same removeable face feature that has become standard on most systems these days.
Seth
key word here is 'e-commerce'
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>
96% of the top 50 e-commerce sites
These places do need guaranteed data integrity. They're handling transactions relating to money and orders, not just inserting what some kid thinks about star trek into a threaded discussion forum.
Though most ad copy is either FUD or hyperbole, I think this pitch is pretty sound.
This is a classic case of an arms merchant hyping a threat so he can sell a defense against it.
Metallica has been conned by its lawyers into thinking it would be saving its royalties by fighting Napster. The lawyers have obviously taken advantage of the technically ill-informed band by charging it to file this lawsuit.
Does the band recognize that even if the goal of 'putting Napster out of business' is accomplished, it will have exactly NO effect on the exchange of illicit mp3's over the internet as there are plenty of other un-sue-able technologies (ftp clients, GNUtella, freenet, etc)to take its place?
Someone told Metallica the dragon could be slain by chopping off its tail. After buying the sword to do so, they recognized the winged beast has six heads and is three stories tall!
This law made it a criminal offense to have images that appeared to depict children in illicit sexual acts while the subjects are actually of legal age. It was overturned just before that guy from Infoseek went to trial over having solicited a woman posing as a 13 year old to come have sex with him in Santa Monica. Half of the evidence against him (the child porn he had e-mailed said woman) was thrown out of court because of the overturning of the afformentioned law. It would have to be PROVEN that the people in the pictures were underage after the law was overturned.
Also, since this law was overturned, it was disputed that he should even get in trouble for soliciting the woman because she wasn't really 13 and it was all play-acting.
He ended up plea-bargaining, I think.
If this law were still in effect, I am pretty certain that American Beauty would have been a difficult movie to release in the US.
I'd extend my support for metallica up to and including
Master of Puppets. The songs Damage Inc., Battery, and Sanitarium don't even fit in at all with the stuff on any album after MOP. 'Justice' was their first weak album. It was all 14 minute long songs where they appeared as lost in melody as those three students were who made the documentary about the Blair Witch. Unfortunately, once the witch mesmerized metallica, it didn't command them to kill each other, but instead has instructed them to subject their fans to cruddy albums.
How did this happen? I suppose with age and success, the band lost touch with the inspiration that originally drove it to create those original landmark albums. There certainly isn't a case for saying there wasn't more that could be done in hard metal. Look at upstarts like Sepultura or dare I say glam crossovers (from glam to heavy) Pantera. They certainly picked up the fumble from Metallica and took metal much further down the field. For the music listeners who focused their attention on the new ball carriers, they've enjoyed spectacular new music. For those distracted by the gimped-up metallica laying on the field releasing turd after turd, they've enjoyed a steady diet of turds.
>I now see why people post as Anonymous Cowards.. Because they're too cowardous to put their name to what they say... I really think we need to get rid of the AC status.
Anonymous speech is a key component of free speech. In an environment hostile to contradictory viewpoints that may, in fact, be valid, sometimes the only way these views may be expressed is anonymously. Judging from the wisdom of the rest of your remarks, I'm betting that if you think about this last one a little bit longer, you'll realize the importance of this.
Slashdot Mirror
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Please refrain from posting stuff that a tenth-grader turned in for a class.
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Concerning this hotmail exploit, there is the same security risk on the Mac as with Wintendo. Key here is that you're not using Hotmail, but Microsoft's other e-mail product. With Lookout express on the Mac, you're safe from all the VBS ILOVEYOU-styled trojans.
Seth
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I'd like to ask this question to some obvious authorities on the subject:
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Anonymous speech is a key component of free speech. In an environment hostile to contradictory viewpoints that may, in fact, be valid, sometimes the only way these views may be expressed is anonymously. Judging from the wisdom of the rest of your remarks, I'm betting that if you think about this last one a little bit longer, you'll realize the importance of this.
Seth