They are probably thinking 'hey, there are loads of multi-millionaires who drive a Prius because of 'the environment', I bet we could gouge the hell out of them if we built them something a bit more aspirational that they can still feel pompously self-righteous about driving.'
Tesla can't just jump straight into the mass market, they need niche cars like this one to build up working capital and iron out the bugs.
No, this has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the DMCA. The DMCA is an American law that covers unlicenced music, this dispute isn't happening in America, and it's not about unlicenced music.
This story is about what's happening in Britain, and it's a dispute over how much Google want to pay for the blanket licence that the PRS sell them to use music. Google have *not* taken the music down, they have specifically chosen to block *only* 'premium music videos in the UK that have been supplied or claimed by record labels', because they know that's where they can hit the artists hardest and make Joe Public think that it's all a money grabbing plot by the evil RIAA.
No, I'm right. From the same page you quoted, I've highlighted the important words in bold:
The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 means that if you use copyright music in public, you must first obtain the permission from every writer or composer whose music you or hirers of your venue intend to play. A Music Licence from PRS for Music grants you the legal permission to play just about any copyright music which is written and published by our members and those of our affiliated societies worldwide.
The PRS don't make a big thing of the fact that you don't need a licence if you are not using their music, but that's the way it works.
You seem to think YouTube would still be worth $1.65 billion if it had absolutely no music whatsoever on it. Google can't leave without deleting the vast majority of youtube's content, totally ruining the site and taking not just a $1.65 billion financial hit but also taking a share of the PR damage from destroying a site that a lot of people enjoy. Is that *really* a feasible 'way out' for them?
The only movie I saw in the last 12 months was Watchmen. Sure, Spider-man 6 might make a bigger profit, but if you concentrate only on getting the biggest possible slice of the Spider-man 6 demographic, you'll never get any money from people like me, and the industry as a whole will be poorer.
The music business already fell into this trap, churning out countless spice-girl clones in the hope of hitting the jackpot and ignoring the fact that even if they can find a girl-group that outsells the spice girls, there are a lot of potential customers who just don't like that genre.
If the big studios stop making $100m blockbuster R-rated movies, then a smart film company should start leveraging CGI to make $5-$10m ones to tap into that market.
You'd be right if that was the way the conversation went, but PRS!=Authors... it's actually more like this:
Google: We know there's an industry wide flat rate of X for this sort of licencing, and we know we agreed to pay it, but since the public hate the RIAA and can't tell the difference between the PRS and the RIAA, we think you'll fold if we offer you less than X PRS: Sorry, but if we cut our rate to you, we'd have to cut our rate to everyone else in order to be fair. Google: We don't make X on ad revenue though PRS: How is that our fault? Google: err... Authors: Hey, we don't really like the PRS either, but because we don't want to enter into individual negotiations with every drunkard who wants to sing kareoke, so we put up with a flat-rate system, because it's the only workable solution. PRS and Google: Who asked you to be in this conversation?
You've misunderstood the nature of the PRS agreement, it's already in place, and it covers all public performances of music. The University of Twente will have paid the Netherlands equivalent of the PRS (which is BUMA/STEMRA) for a licence to perform music publically. The only reason the authors of the songs performed at the festival don't get paid is that they haven't claimed their share of the licence money from BUMA/STEMRA.
You've misunderstood if you think you can 'boycott these people', the PRS agreement covers ALL music.
It's a general licence that covers public performance of music at a flat rate that applies equally to everyone. It's Google who are threatening to 'take their ball home' unless they get a special 'we're too huge for you to dare argue with' discount that nobody else gets.
This isn't about evil record companies wanting unjustified payments, it's about YouTube's decision to opt-in to the PRS licence, then realising they are making a loss on the deal and looking for a way out.
People have been saying for years that YouTube don't really have a proper business model, and that their $1million a day bandwidth costs probably doesn't get covered by advertising revenue.
Why should the authors of songs be the ones who bail Google out of their bad decision to bay $1.65 billion for a loss-making idea?
Google are trying to cut their losses by not paying people the rate that they agreed to when they chose to use the PRS's agreement with authors to licence music, and are counting on general public's hatred of the RIAA and their copyright extension to blind them to the facts of the case.
The size of the fine is set by the judge, but here's what the plaintiff asked the judge for (taken from the last paragraph of the pdf.)
"In this case, the Court should award Defendant Lanzoni all of her costs and expenses in defending this lawsuit. In addition, this Court should make a finding that the use of an IP address to identify the defendant in a peer-to-peer copyright infringement case is not sufficiently reliable for the Plaintiffs to rely upon..."
Maybe I'm just not that good at reading legalese, but if that means 'I don't want $big$money$ from the RIAA, I want the court to rule that from now on nobody can be sued based on their IP address' then I'm very impressed with the defendant's decision to place the greater good over their own financial gain.
It's news because it's not just a little bit cheaper than any other car, it's much, much cheaper than any other comparable family car. At less than half the price of any of it's competitors, it's definitely newsworthy.
I want to tether when there's WiFi is available. My Mac Pro doesn't have a wifi card, so using my iPhone as a USB wifi adapter would save me buying one.
It's up again now, but it's agonisingly slow, I've not even got to the 'log in' page to see if the software is up, let alone been able to start a download.
This only came up in the Q&A afterwards, but tethering is a new feature supported by OS 3.0, but Apple are not making a big thing of it yet because it's going to need to be negotiated with the phone carriers before it can be rolled out.
The first thing to do is to read the contract that the customers signed up to and see what your boss actually sold them. Next, you compare what your boss wants (and what he's already doing by contending at 70:1) to what he's contractually allowed to do.
If the contract says he's ok to contend at 70:1, cap and throttle etc. then do what he says, but point out that his monopoly will only be temporary the moment anyone else serves that market properly, the business will die.
If the contract gives any sort of 'not being total gits' guarantees then you tell him IN WRITING what he can and cannot legally do under the contracts, how you recommend he complies with his obligations (if he's not already doing so), and that you will be perfectly happy to implement whatever he wants, provided he either gets the customers to sign new contracts or gives you a written notice that he's aware that what he's asking you to do is in breach of contract, and that he is prepared to indemnify you personally against all claims made against you. For added credit, provide alternative schemes with costings. If he signs that, then he's an idiot. Put the shaping in, quit and then start up a competitor that doesn't suck. If he says 'hmm, thanks for pointing that out, I don't want the customers suing us either' and goes away to rethink his plans then the problem is solved.
I'm from the UK, I make music, and I'm launching my first album soon, so this is important stuff for me.
My business model will be: legal torrenting to gain exposure, iTunes sales as an option for those who will either pay for the convenience or want to throw me a tip, a donate button for much the same reasons, and if I think I've generated the fan base to support it, a limited run deluxe physical CD package for people (like me) who like to own a physical product.
What the UK Government is proposing starts off by saying in the first paragraph that they want to "create an environment in which the creation of digital content is rewarded and innovation is encouraged", but then they immediately do a 180 degree flip and recommend creating a semi-governmental RIAA sock-puppet that has a legal right to kick people off P2P without trial, which neatly kills off my business model at the first step.
The reality is that this has nothing to do with fairness or encouraging innovation, it's all about trying to shore up the failing RIAA business model. I will make formal comments to this effect, but I the whole tone of the report suggests they've already had their minds made up by the RIAA lobby, as indicated by their unquestioning parroting of the 'all piracy is bad' RIAA line instead of looking at the benefits to the consumer of trying before they buy, and of exposing consumers to artists they would never have encountered without exploring P2P torrent sites.
I'm starting to wonder if this isn't in some way connected to Apple's counter-intuitive decision to block TomTom from selling their software for the iPhone.
TomTom announced fairly shortly after the 3G iPhone with built-in GPS appeared that they had a working port of their navigation software, but despite the obvious demand for the App, and the profits to be made from Apple's cut if it was on the App store, Apple have a very surprising clause in their development agreement that prohibits 'turn by turn navigation' apps.
If Apple are ready to bundle their own brand navigation software into iPhone OS 3.0 (rumoured to be announced next week), it might drive TomTom into the arms of Microsoft... however if TomTom are siding with Apple and the inevitable approved navigation software *is* that port of TomTom, then this whole kerfuffle might well be a warning shot over their bows by Microsoft.
The defendant is under oath in a British court, I know because I was once (wrongly) accused of a crime here and relied on that very fact.
When I got to the important facts the prosecution tried to shut me up and I got the court's permission to carry on (against the magistrate's initial ruling) by pointing out that I'd be breaking the 'Solemn Oath I'd sworn on the Holy Bible with our Lord Almighty as Witness' tell the whole truth if I was stopped from doing exactly that. The magistrate allowed me to carry on on religious grounds. I carried on pointing out the holes in the case and cleared my name, thankful that I was never asked if I actually believed in any of that god stuff.
Slashdot Mirror
They are probably thinking 'hey, there are loads of multi-millionaires who drive a Prius because of 'the environment', I bet we could gouge the hell out of them if we built them something a bit more aspirational that they can still feel pompously self-righteous about driving.'
Tesla can't just jump straight into the mass market, they need niche cars like this one to build up working capital and iron out the bugs.
No, this has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the DMCA. The DMCA is an American law that covers unlicenced music, this dispute isn't happening in America, and it's not about unlicenced music.
This story is about what's happening in Britain, and it's a dispute over how much Google want to pay for the blanket licence that the PRS sell them to use music. Google have *not* taken the music down, they have specifically chosen to block *only* 'premium music videos in the UK that have been supplied or claimed by record labels', because they know that's where they can hit the artists hardest and make Joe Public think that it's all a money grabbing plot by the evil RIAA.
Sorry, but I'm not missing a once in a lifetime opportunity do legitimately do this on slashdot...
They stopped playing the fucking songs
Did they?
No, I'm right. From the same page you quoted, I've highlighted the important words in bold:
The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 means that if you use copyright music in public, you must first obtain the permission from every writer or composer whose music you or hirers of your venue intend to play. A Music Licence from PRS for Music grants you the legal permission to play just about any copyright music which is written and published by our members and those of our affiliated societies worldwide.
The PRS don't make a big thing of the fact that you don't need a licence if you are not using their music, but that's the way it works.
You seem to think YouTube would still be worth $1.65 billion if it had absolutely no music whatsoever on it. Google can't leave without deleting the vast majority of youtube's content, totally ruining the site and taking not just a $1.65 billion financial hit but also taking a share of the PR damage from destroying a site that a lot of people enjoy. Is that *really* a feasible 'way out' for them?
The only movie I saw in the last 12 months was Watchmen. Sure, Spider-man 6 might make a bigger profit, but if you concentrate only on getting the biggest possible slice of the Spider-man 6 demographic, you'll never get any money from people like me, and the industry as a whole will be poorer.
The music business already fell into this trap, churning out countless spice-girl clones in the hope of hitting the jackpot and ignoring the fact that even if they can find a girl-group that outsells the spice girls, there are a lot of potential customers who just don't like that genre.
If the big studios stop making $100m blockbuster R-rated movies, then a smart film company should start leveraging CGI to make $5-$10m ones to tap into that market.
You'd be right if that was the way the conversation went, but PRS!=Authors... it's actually more like this:
Google: We know there's an industry wide flat rate of X for this sort of licencing, and we know we agreed to pay it, but since the public hate the RIAA and can't tell the difference between the PRS and the RIAA, we think you'll fold if we offer you less than X
PRS: Sorry, but if we cut our rate to you, we'd have to cut our rate to everyone else in order to be fair.
Google: We don't make X on ad revenue though
PRS: How is that our fault?
Google: err...
Authors: Hey, we don't really like the PRS either, but because we don't want to enter into individual negotiations with every drunkard who wants to sing kareoke, so we put up with a flat-rate system, because it's the only workable solution.
PRS and Google: Who asked you to be in this conversation?
That's not true, if the pub doesn't play any PRS licenced music, then they don't have to have a PRS licence.
The problem is that not many landlords understand that, or are willing to trust bands never to play any cover versions.
You've misunderstood the nature of the PRS agreement, it's already in place, and it covers all public performances of music. The University of Twente will have paid the Netherlands equivalent of the PRS (which is BUMA/STEMRA) for a licence to perform music publically. The only reason the authors of the songs performed at the festival don't get paid is that they haven't claimed their share of the licence money from BUMA/STEMRA.
You've misunderstood if you think you can 'boycott these people', the PRS agreement covers ALL music.
It's a general licence that covers public performance of music at a flat rate that applies equally to everyone. It's Google who are threatening to 'take their ball home' unless they get a special 'we're too huge for you to dare argue with' discount that nobody else gets.
This isn't about evil record companies wanting unjustified payments, it's about YouTube's decision to opt-in to the PRS licence, then realising they are making a loss on the deal and looking for a way out.
People have been saying for years that YouTube don't really have a proper business model, and that their $1million a day bandwidth costs probably doesn't get covered by advertising revenue.
Why should the authors of songs be the ones who bail Google out of their bad decision to bay $1.65 billion for a loss-making idea?
Google are trying to cut their losses by not paying people the rate that they agreed to when they chose to use the PRS's agreement with authors to licence music, and are counting on general public's hatred of the RIAA and their copyright extension to blind them to the facts of the case.
The size of the fine is set by the judge, but here's what the plaintiff asked the judge for (taken from the last paragraph of the pdf.)
"In this case, the Court should award Defendant Lanzoni all of her costs and expenses in defending this lawsuit. In addition, this Court should make a finding that the use of an IP address to identify the defendant in a peer-to-peer copyright infringement case is not sufficiently reliable for the Plaintiffs to rely upon..."
Maybe I'm just not that good at reading legalese, but if that means 'I don't want $big$money$ from the RIAA, I want the court to rule that from now on nobody can be sued based on their IP address' then I'm very impressed with the defendant's decision to place the greater good over their own financial gain.
It's news because it's not just a little bit cheaper than any other car, it's much, much cheaper than any other comparable family car. At less than half the price of any of it's competitors, it's definitely newsworthy.
I want to tether when there's WiFi is available. My Mac Pro doesn't have a wifi card, so using my iPhone as a USB wifi adapter would save me buying one.
It's up again now, but it's agonisingly slow, I've not even got to the 'log in' page to see if the software is up, let alone been able to start a download.
This only came up in the Q&A afterwards, but tethering is a new feature supported by OS 3.0, but Apple are not making a big thing of it yet because it's going to need to be negotiated with the phone carriers before it can be rolled out.
Filtering is best done server side. For me the to-do list is:
Flash
Java
Printing
Record video from the camera
Well, now that the phone has cut & paste, it should be trivial to write such a third party app if it is needed.
The first thing to do is to read the contract that the customers signed up to and see what your boss actually sold them. Next, you compare what your boss wants (and what he's already doing by contending at 70:1) to what he's contractually allowed to do.
If the contract says he's ok to contend at 70:1, cap and throttle etc. then do what he says, but point out that his monopoly will only be temporary the moment anyone else serves that market properly, the business will die.
If the contract gives any sort of 'not being total gits' guarantees then you tell him IN WRITING what he can and cannot legally do under the contracts, how you recommend he complies with his obligations (if he's not already doing so), and that you will be perfectly happy to implement whatever he wants, provided he either gets the customers to sign new contracts or gives you a written notice that he's aware that what he's asking you to do is in breach of contract, and that he is prepared to indemnify you personally against all claims made against you. For added credit, provide alternative schemes with costings. If he signs that, then he's an idiot. Put the shaping in, quit and then start up a competitor that doesn't suck. If he says 'hmm, thanks for pointing that out, I don't want the customers suing us either' and goes away to rethink his plans then the problem is solved.
I'm from the UK, I make music, and I'm launching my first album soon, so this is important stuff for me.
My business model will be: legal torrenting to gain exposure, iTunes sales as an option for those who will either pay for the convenience or want to throw me a tip, a donate button for much the same reasons, and if I think I've generated the fan base to support it, a limited run deluxe physical CD package for people (like me) who like to own a physical product.
What the UK Government is proposing starts off by saying in the first paragraph that they want to "create an environment in which the creation of digital content is rewarded and innovation is encouraged", but then they immediately do a 180 degree flip and recommend creating a semi-governmental RIAA sock-puppet that has a legal right to kick people off P2P without trial, which neatly kills off my business model at the first step.
The reality is that this has nothing to do with fairness or encouraging innovation, it's all about trying to shore up the failing RIAA business model. I will make formal comments to this effect, but I the whole tone of the report suggests they've already had their minds made up by the RIAA lobby, as indicated by their unquestioning parroting of the 'all piracy is bad' RIAA line instead of looking at the benefits to the consumer of trying before they buy, and of exposing consumers to artists they would never have encountered without exploring P2P torrent sites.
It already happens, there are plenty of mp3 sharing blogs that post links to files stored on Rapidshare.de, megaupload.com and other similar sites.
I'm starting to wonder if this isn't in some way connected to Apple's counter-intuitive decision to block TomTom from selling their software for the iPhone.
TomTom announced fairly shortly after the 3G iPhone with built-in GPS appeared that they had a working port of their navigation software, but despite the obvious demand for the App, and the profits to be made from Apple's cut if it was on the App store, Apple have a very surprising clause in their development agreement that prohibits 'turn by turn navigation' apps.
If Apple are ready to bundle their own brand navigation software into iPhone OS 3.0 (rumoured to be announced next week), it might drive TomTom into the arms of Microsoft... however if TomTom are siding with Apple and the inevitable approved navigation software *is* that port of TomTom, then this whole kerfuffle might well be a warning shot over their bows by Microsoft.
The defendant is under oath in a British court, I know because I was once (wrongly) accused of a crime here and relied on that very fact.
When I got to the important facts the prosecution tried to shut me up and I got the court's permission to carry on (against the magistrate's initial ruling) by pointing out that I'd be breaking the 'Solemn Oath I'd sworn on the Holy Bible with our Lord Almighty as Witness' tell the whole truth if I was stopped from doing exactly that. The magistrate allowed me to carry on on religious grounds. I carried on pointing out the holes in the case and cleared my name, thankful that I was never asked if I actually believed in any of that god stuff.
Considering the bozos that TPB's tracker selects as my peers, I think there might be some poetic justice in that.
Grr, curse this auto correcting! Of course I meant "locked" not "lived" in the parent post.