Apalogies in advance for some of the rhetoric, but I am so tired of RIAA apalogist posts, and your post is the lucky winner...
You're also screwing the bands whose cds you are not paying for. How nice to show your support.
First, let me say that I do not make illegal copies of music - I own all of the mp3s I possess either through authorized downloads (e.g. mp3.com), or in CD, tape, or vinyl format. It is entirely possible that the post to which you reply was posted by someone similar (many more people than the anti-mp3 propoganda would suggest do in fact only have legitimate mp3s).
And yes, I have used napster to download songs I own on vinyl or tape, but don't wish to go through the hassle of digitizing into mp3 format myself. If the new, draconian copyright laws (Sony Bono Act, DMCA) make this an illegal act, I suppose I'll borrow a friend's turntable and convert the music myself.
I can guarantee you, however, that I am actively screwing the RIAA affiliated bands, as I am no longer listening to their music on the radio or buying any new CD's from them. I am not, however, pirating their music either. I have simply removed them, and all their new material, from my life altogether. Though I am only one person, this is costing them significant revinues (I used to buy allot of CDs - a bad habit exceeded only by my laserdisk and DVD habit, also now broken).
Finally, though the legality is certainly in question, I would find it socially and ethicaly preferable if the original poster would send a few dollars to the band directly for the CD whos contents he or she downloaded in mp3 format, than to purchase the CD legally and put money on the pockets of a cartel which pays artists pennies and seeks to crush or forcibly coopt any new distribution paradigm that comes along and threatens their illegal monopoly.
The only difference between the Mafia and its relationship to the Chicago city government in the 1930s and the RIAA (and MPAA) and Washington is that bribery has in the interim been formally legalized in the form of soft-money and campaign contributions.
Don't expect to see any significant difference in the quality of government, the fairness of legislation being passed, or the appropriateness of law enforcement actions taken. The government has whored itself to the media cartels, and stands over the rest of us with a big, thick broomhandle in hand.
I suppose in parting I should thank the RIAA and MPAA for going through so much trouble and expense to drive me away as a customer. My boycott of their products has already saved me thousands of dollars this year alone, which was very nice of them, as I can now afford to feed my aviation habit instead.
I would be pretty disturbed if someone had death-camp memorabilia, I'd rather those be in museums, but there are a few legitimate reasons to have them, so why d*ck with them?
There's a great bar in Chicago on North Avenue called "The Exit" that has all kinds of death camp memorabilia (gas masks, etc.) hanging above the bar. It is a punk/fetish dive, and while I'm pretty sure all of the "paraphanalia" actually came from an Army Surplus Store (and not a Nazi death camp) the motif is pretty clear.
Does this offend people. Almost certainly. That is part of the idea (and part of the place's charm, as an aging punk dive). They also serve a disgusting mix of Jaegermeister and Schnapps called a "Dead Nazi."
Censorship is never the answer - if the paraphanalia is being used for hate speach, you merely drive such speach underground and outlaw legitimate uses, including such effective countermeasures as mockery and paradoy. Remember Castle Wolfenstein? Banned in Germany because of the swastika flags in the background, despite the fact that the hero (you) was running around shooting Nazis, rather the opposite of singing "Deutschland Ueber Alles" I would say. Clearly even the best intended and most justifiable forms of censorship run amok, given enough time and the diversity of human experience and expression.
The answer, instead of censorship, is to meet hate speach where it occurs head on, with intelligent counter-arguments, mockery, social stigmatization, and all of the other tools we as human beings have to encourage and even pressure people to change their offensive behavior without trampling on their civil rights.
Yes, I know Oxford is in the UK. I was speaking of American universities because that is where I attended school, and the same myth ("universities are bastions of free speach") is repeated here ad nauseum. I was expressing strong opinions which I know apply to American Universities and, it is reasonable to assume, probably applies to academic institutions in much of the world, including the UK. I probably should have inserted this little disclaimer in the original post...
Many of us make the erroneous assumption that universities, especially in America, are a bastion (some say "the last bastion") of democracy, freedom of expression, free speach, and so on.
If this is true, then we are all sunk from the beginning. Universities like to market themselves as institutions of free expression, but the truth is that they have never been bastions of freedom at all.
Recall the purges in Germany that presaged the holocaust. Universities did not speak up or object when Jewish professors, students, and administrators were run out, nor did their collegues individually.
Universities did not object, and indeed in many cases supported, police actions against student movements protesting the war in Vietnam. In almost every case where universities claim credit for having supported free speach or controversial points of view, it has been the students or faculty who have spoken out, often despite administrative disapproval. Universities are happy to claim credit in retrospect for laudable actions of their staff or student bodies, but as anyone who has ever been involved in a protest knows, at the time those very so-called heros are generally being threatened with expulsion or worse.
Do not be fooled by marketing. As the actions of numerous American universities, including Oxford, show, they are anything but bastions of freedom. They are large, burocratic institutions run by civil servants who are far more interested in the political infighting of their respective departments, and arranging their careers in a politically expedient manner, than they are in going out on a limb to protect some student or professor's right to free expression, especially if it means going up against some well paid New York Lawfirm financed by one of the largest industries in this country (the entertainment industry, in this case).
In short, if you are serious about fighting the erosion of your freedoms, do not look toward American Universities (which are profit driven entities after all). Look instead toward the ACLU and the EFF.
The only Napster users Metallica targeted were those who were distributing copyrighted Metallica songs. This is illegal, the last time I checked.
I know I'm picking a nit here, but, strictly speaking, when I offer a file for download, be it via FTP, http, or some other protocol (e.g. napster), I am not distributing anything.
Users have to proactively come to me and take the aforementioned data. I am not shipping it to their machines, they are taking it from mine, by their own actions.
Now, if I spammed a newsgroup, or sent out a bulk emailing, of Metallica music in, say, mp3 format, then I would be guilty of distribution. No doubt the courts will redefine distribution to include having something in a location others might be able to copy it from, just as they absurdly redefined the notion of a "person" to include corporate entities, and no doubt they can enforce such legal and linguistic absurdities with the use of force, but even with the collective gun of the RIAA and its lackey, the US Government, in my face, I will be no less correct in saying "you are full of shit, I didn't distribute a thing." Alas, being right won't stop the bullet from splattering one's greymatter all over the wall, so the victory, if such it is, is only moral, at best.
"...was just a freight train heading your way." (in the form of a technological and social change your sorry dinasaur ass couldn't be bothered to adapt to).
I thought I was the only one so consiquent in my disgust. I used to have a couple of Metallica CDs... not any more. They made pretty cool frisbies before shattering against the brick wall of my building, adjascent to the dumpsters.
The one (count them, one) metallica mp3 I had (with the SF symphony, singing the exact same song I already had recorded on my VCR) has been deleted, with prejudice. In this respect, Metallica may have achieved its goal. However, the money this has netted them (exactly $0) doesn't even beigin to offset the money they've lost in future CD sales (including older Metallica stuff I used to have on my "to acquire" list).
Oh, and I reused the videotape to record an episode of "Sliders." I am now, most happilly, metallica-free, and am surfing mp3.com and elsewhere for my music needs.
The RIAA and their lackeys could have held on a few years longer, if they weren't actively pushing their erstwhile fans and customers toward vastly more palitable alternatives such as mp3.com. Through their actions they have considerably shortened their window of oppurtinity to adapt and survive the coming changes, a situation which is entirely their loss (and the consumers' gain).
Good riddence to Metallica and all those of their ilk.
Microsoft is making two contradictory, mutually exclusive claims:
1. That their mutilations of the Kerberos protocol are a "trade secret"
This is easilly rebutted, as they posted it to the internet with absolutely no security other than a "click-wrap" license which is not legally binding, not even in UCITA states where that legislation doesn't take effect until October. Furthermore, as others have noted, nothing prevents this software from being downloaded by persons too young, or in jurisdictions where the license is invalid, who can then post it anonymously to/. (and indeed may well have done so).
2. That this is a violation of copyright.
Fair use clearly allows posting of the releavant portions of a copyrighted product, and in the case of technical review and critical discussion, even the entire document. Furthermore, Microsoft's attempt to claim "trade secret" has probably undermined any claim to copyright privelege. Then there is the entire "you can copyright a program but not a specification" argument, which may or may not hold up, but is in any event a gray area of the law.
These questions punch to the heart of this issue, and are entirely on-point and relevant. It is amusing to see all the Microsoft-paid astroturfers out in force (as usual, with any Microsoft related discussion of import on this site), seeking to confound the issue and guide the discussion away from the facts at hand. Very amusing, indeed.
repartition the hard driving, giving all your space to linux. The installation will take care of the rest, and all of your Windows woes will be gone for good.
Which is exactly how you will feel, when you're finally rid of the beast.:-)
Well, it may not be legal per se, but according to Guliani its at least OK, if you're a New York City cop with a broomstick or 40 bullets and a gun, and your victim is an unarmed black male.
The original post was itself hypocritical, as the same racism exists in Europe (cf people killed in fires in Germany when skinheads burned housing for asylum seekers, Europe's appallingly weak response to Milosevic in Bosnia, etc.). But ironically the post was right on the mark in pointing out the presence of very same hypocricy it (inadvertantly) epitomizes here in the US.
"The only reason the US is perceived as being so terribly racist is because the US is the *only* country on Earth that seems to actually care!"
To which you correctly replied:
Oh bull!
The United States is not the only country to care about racism, as anyone who has spent any time abroad in places like Germany or France can attest to. There may well be places (perhaps Japan?) where racism is not a concern, or is only a minor concern, but be that as it may, the United States doesn't even come close to having a monopoly on concern with respect to racism and bigotry.
But you then went completely off the mark when you went on to say:
It's political correctness, not caring. IMHO, if the US didn't make such a big deal out of racism and ethnic hatered, it would go away more quickly.
The vast majority of people in the United States do care about racism and bigotry, and do want it to go away. So-called political correctness is an expression and a symptom of that concern. It is often an inane, silly, and sometimes plain ugly expression, but that doesn't make the underlying concerns any less real.
As to the notion that, if we "didn't make such a big deal out of racism and thnic hatred, it would go away more quickly" history does not support your assertion.
Indeed, some 500 years of history on the North American continent alone, including all 224 years of the existence of the United States of America, clearly contradict your assertion.
Progress on diminishing racial and ethnic bigotry and hatred was virtually nil in the 19th century, with the one exception of the banning of slavery (which the US was one of the last countries on the planet to do, and was arguably just a catalyst and otherwise a small side-issue of the civil war, the main fight being about state vs. federal authority and the limits thereof). The issue of racial and ethnic equality before the law, and racial and ethnic bigotry as a whole, was largely ignored until the civil rights movement put the issue on the table in the 1960's. Since then progress has been much more rapid and, while there is still much room for improvement, no one could reasonably argue that "by ignoring the issue" progress in racial relations would have been any quicker.
Quite the contrary, as the last 35 years of change vs. the 465 years previous attest to. Indeed, the only way to achieve change and overcome culteral intertia is through activism and pro-active measures, of which the civil rights movement was an excellent example.
Normally I'm a law abiding citizen, but this law and what the industry is trying to do with it makes me so mad, that for the first time in my life I feel obliged to 'civil disobedience'. Today I feel guilty when I buy a DVD and/or CD (money is not the problem, I have enough of it) and only feel right if I make illegal copies.
I feel the same way, and I imagine many of the better informed people (here and elsewhere) do. Alas, I hate to say it, but I am skeptical that any good will come of such civil disobediance.
Why?
Because, to be effective, civil disobedience must reach a certain critical mass and become widespread enough to make a noticable impact. Alas, nearly all of my friends who privately agree with my stance on boycotting DVDs and the Entertainment Industry still cannot live a day without their bread and circuses, and routinely sell their rights to free expression down the river for another daily dose of "Friends" and the "X-Files."
The Media Moguls know this. They understand their history and know that the most important, and powerful, institutions of the latter centuries of the Roman Empire were Bread and Circuses, initially in the form of the Games(tm) and later in the form of the Catholic Church(tm). They assume, quite correctly I'm afraid, that consumers' craving to be entertained will outweigh their outrage of being stripped of their rights. So far, Disney, Time-Warner, and friends appear to be winning this wager.
(I almost never flame based on moderation, but this simply cannot slide.)
I may not entirely agree with the post I am responding to, and I certainly prefer php over cold fusion (though I've only used either for limited work), but to moderate this down as OFFTOPIC is absurd.
The poster's comments, whether or not you agree with them, were certainly on topic and apropos.
I hope I have the opportunity to nail your sorry ass in meta-moderation, and that any future moderation priveleges are denied you.
Isn't Verizon guilty of the same squating they falsely accuse others of? If Verizon can use the anti-squating rules to unjustly seize insulting names from others, can't you or I use the same rules to seize VERIZON-STINKS.COM from Verizon?
Seems to me a class action lawsuit is here in the making -- get twenty satarists together and go after 'em!
Potential revinue is not the same as money in the bank. If I have a business, or hobby, which denies your business some of its potential revinue, either by competing with your service or making it obsolete, that is not theft.
It may make you angry, and given the abysmal state of current legislation even entitle you to artificial remedies through legal thuggary, but I have in no way taken a single possession away from you, and whatever else I may have done I have not committed any act of theft or piracy.
You are entitled to possession of that which is already yours. You do not have a God given right to whatever potential earnings your (hypothetically) outdated business model implied, until my (hypothetically) better solution came along. In fact, you have no inherent right to potential earnings regardless of how sound your business model may be.
Current copy-privelege legislation has created a form of corporate welfare and government enforced monopoly at the expense of the consumer and the culture (how many of our "cultural" icons - e.g. Micky Mouse - remain private property? Imagine if the same were true of Santa Clause, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny.)
Again, I reiterate. Just because the law says something is so doesn't make it right, ethical, or even defensible. It just means that the notion, however misguided, is backed by the Guns of Government, pointing at you.
I have seen a number of posts referring to this service, and other acts of unauthorized copying, as "theft" (of cable service, or material, or whatever) and "piracy." Enough already.
While this service may violate some of the more draconian priveleged copy restriction legislation of the last couple of years, and might even be a violation of traditional priveleged copy restrictions, it is not theft.
Nothing is being stolen. If the commercials are left intact, then even the revinue stream of the original broadcasters and advertisers is enhanced, not diminished. Even if the opposite were true, it would still not be theft. A violation of law which allows for priveleged restrictions on copying information, yes, but not theft by any reasonable definition of the word.
To those who keep using such inaccurate terminology as "piracy" and "cable theft", let me reiterate: this is not theft. Piracy is an act of violent robbery on the high seas, involving armed robbery, rape, and murder. Theft and robbery both involve the taking away of property from someone, either by force or by stealth. Making a copy, legal or otherwise, involves none of these actions! The original is left intact, the original possessor is not denied the product which the various media moguls would have us believe was "pirated" away or "stolen."
What these folks are doing is foolish, yes, particularly in today's witch-hunt atmosphere. Their service is probably a violation of so-called "copyright" (what any society not communicating in newspeak would more accurately term priveleged copy restriction). However, this reflects more so on the appalling state of legislation granting priveleged copy restrictions and the overall state of so-called intellectual property law than it does on the ethics of those offering the service or lauding its existence.
It is bad enough entities such as the MPAA, the RIAA, the SPA, and others use their media muscle to inundate us with their propoganda and rhetoric day in and day out. If there is anything the DeCSS and MP3 struggles have taught us, it is that the least those of us who are a little informed could do is refrain from echoing their refrain, by refusing to use the perjerative terminology these propoganda moguls insist in foisting upon us.
Illegal != Unethical. just ask any black man in America last century, any Jew in 1930's Germany, any Mormon in Missouri prior to 1980, or any Muslim in Serbia today.
Unauthorized Copying != Theft Unauthorized Copying != Piracy Unauthorized Copying = Crime (Currently) Being Jewish = Crime (Germany, 1930s) Being Mormon = Crime (Missouri, until 1980s)
Finally, for those who miss the obvious: Law != Truth Law != Justice Law != Morality
In short, think for yourselves. And please refrain from echoing official party line rhetoric ("piracy", "theft") until and unless you (a) really mean it and (b) can defend that stance with a well reasoned argument.
One of the most common reasons to dual boot Linux is to run Windows to play games.
True. However, he's referring to hardcore gamers, who are more likely to be using dedicated gaming consoles (i.e. Sony Playstation, Nintendo, etc.) than either Windows or Linux.
There isn't a single game that runs better anywhere except on Windows. Get real! Windows runs games better. Period.
This is a load of absolute crap. Games written for Windows run better under Windows. Big surprise. Games written for Linux run better under Linux. The same is true of most games written for any particular platform: they will generally run best on their target platform.
As for what software and hardware combination runs games the best, neither Linux, nor Windows, nor Macintosh, nor any other generalized platform does it as well or as cheaply as dedicated gaming consoles. Not even your beloved Windows.
[...] the migration of VC from PVC is essentially zero. It is bad to manufacture though.
So, let me get this straight. Greenpeace hates PVC because its bad to manufacture, so they tell everyone its poisonous to wear.
Greenpeace hates leather because it comes from dead cattle.
Greenpeace (presumably) hates rubber, because its a petroleum product.
Damn! You've just about eliminated everything my dominatrix wears. Whats a guy with a kinky fetish or two to do in a brave new green world where we can't eat meat or wear PVC?
Of course, the whole idea of International Standards that can't be used by anyone is patently (heh) ridiculous. How to deal with this, I have no idea, short of creating a new codec that rivals MPEG-4, which is no easy task. Perhaps we can find a way to make our voice heard to the various lawyers deciding licensing, but I'd rate that as a rather low chance of success.
If truly open standards are to persist much into the next century, it is critical that patented methodologies be explicitly excluded from consideration at the get-go. Furthermore, methodologies which become patented down the road (for which there is no prior art - e.g. there is a patent application pending which no one is aware of) would be immediately disqualified or marked as "tainted" and replaced with an unencumbered equivelent.
To achieve this we need to dump the ISO as a standards body. This wouldn't be as difficult or traumatic as one might think - they are not know for creating great technical standards (remember the virtually unimplimentable, horribly ineffecient, and none too soon defunct OSI "seven layers"?).
I would submit that we should use and expand the auspices of the Internet Engineering Task Force, with a specific addendum to the charter prohibiting proprietary and patent-encumbered technologies from being considered, much less defined into, any open standard whatsoever.
More to the immediate point, we do need to develope our own standards and codecs (see OggVorbis and the nascient Open Video Disc mailing list for examples.
We need to take back our standards on both the implementation (defacto) front and the institutional (IETF vs. ISO) front.
"Responding to a court order" != "exercising editorial control", which was the issue on point in those two cases.
This is very true. However, a threatening letter from Microsoft Legal Thugs does not equal a court order either. For this reason, it is critical that slashdot not remove any posts until and unless so ordered by a court of law! Contrary to Microsoft's opinion of itself, it is not a court of law. Such power still resides, for the moment, in the Judicial, not the Corporate, branch of government.
Your reasoning about intellectual property is wrong in the sense that without the state, or to be more precise, without the law there is no such thing as property period.
I think you misunderstood the original comment. In the post to which you reply the poster said that without the state there would be no such thing as intellectual property. In a completely lawless society you could still guard your plot of land, your chache of food (or weapons) and thus maintain it as your property. No such possiblity exists within the realm of ideas or thought, nor should it.
I agree with some of what you say, but must express both disdain and lack of empathy with respect to your ability, grudging or otherwise, to admire those policy makers at MS and elsewhere who pervert the law and the democratic institutions of our country in order to establish their own little feifdoms. These people are mounting an active assault on nearly all of our basic rights, and doing so quite successfully. In so doing they are tearing at the basic fiber and social contract which holds our society and our democratic institutions together. This threatens all of us, whether or not we have a particular interest in the subject at hand (Microsoft's unwarrent attempt to silence criticism on slashdot).
I would go further and offer another point with respect intellectual property priveleges: Just as communism could not flurish in a world of scarcity, so to will capitalism fail in a world of natural abundance (which is a perfect description of both the intellectual and digital worlds). I suspect that ongoing attempts to extend the capitalist paradigm beyond its functional parameters and create synthetic scarcity at the point of a gun in areas such as ideas and digital information will result in laws and public policy which will make communist Russia appear liberal in comparison. It is an ugly future, and we are sprinting in its direction with nary a critical thought.
To feel anything other than the greatest contempt and antithapy for those who actively orchastrate such trends in this direction is IMHO both appalling and indefensible.
Losing key staff is no longer the exclusive realm of corporations. I sort of surprises me to see this argument brought up in the context of open software!:-)
Absolutely! What is more, losing "key staff" in an open-source project is generally much less devistating than it is in a closed-source context, as open-source by its very nature tends to distribute expertise on a given project much more widely.
For example, early in the Linux Years (pre 1.0) the guy (I forget his name) who did allot of the early networking work abandoned Linux to its own devices, largely due to being flamed for not having written the perfect, most elegant implimentation in his first iteration. Another took over that aspect, the kernel lived on, development moved forward, and Linux is now a raging success. The loss of a very key developer caused hardly a hiccup in development (though an auful lot of discussion, flamage, and doomsday saying).
kNFS was abandoned for almost a year, which caused myself and others a number of headaches in dealing with Linux NFS (and is probably the reason why Linux NFS lags behind the BSDs and commercial UNIXen in performance). That having been said, it was picked up, is being actively developed, with NFS V 3 support in the 2.4-pre kernels. This is probably the best "worst case" or at least "very bad case" example of an open source project being abandoned one can find, at least in the Linux area of endeavor.
Abandonment of a project can lead to some delay (as with NFS), but as often as not the delay is minimal (gimp, Linux networking) as another active developer takes over. I would submit that delays in closed-source commercial applications are much more common and typically much more lengthy.
Finally, with open source the project will always be picked up and continued by someone, as long as there is any interest. Contrast this to many closed-source products which are orphaned, leaving developers and users in a serious bind which they can do nothing about, other than remapping their entire engineering or corporate strategy to a complety new, competing product, at great cost in time and money. In the worst case open-source scenerio, such a customer would have to finance and perform ongoing development and maintenance themselves, which would often be a less expensive solution than the alternatives. Having said that, I do not know of a single open-source project where anyone was compelled to do this. I do know of a number of orphaned, closed-source products which left consumers in a terrible bind, from bitter, personal experience.
Our solution, which has to date saved us tens of thousands of dollars and hundreds of developer hours in cost, was to move to an open source platform (Linux and FreeBSD) and require open source libraries to be used wherever possible, limiting our exposure to orphanage of closed-source products.
The Free Software/Open Source paradigm has had a powerful impact on the computing industry, from the development of the internet and the world wide web, to the emergence of Linux and FreeBSD.
Recently you published an open license for publishers, extending some of the concepts of the GPL to another area of endeavor: book publication.
At openflick.org there is an effort I and other ware working on to extend this concept into the areas of music and video production, and I imagine there are numerous other projects which are similarly trying to create an "open commons" of material for their particular areas of interest as well.
Do you see the concepts embodied in the free software movement and the GPL being extended successfully into other areas of endeavor, and if so, what practical suggestions do you have for people trying to achieve this? What kinds of mistakes and pitfalls do you see, based on your experiences with creating the GPL? When looking for help in charting such new territory, what resources would you suggest one turn to for help?
Their Australian division has hired a whole bunch of good linux people (Paul Mackerras, Andrew Tridgell, etc.) who are developing a lot of important packages (samba, rsync, ppp, linuxppc for PowerMac). I would not like to see that effort broken up.
This is a situation in which a company such as VA Linux, RedHat, or TurboLinux could step in and do some real good, should LinuxCare stumble or fall. Perhaps Andrew Tridgell, Paul Mackerras, and the others could be hired by one of them, creating in part their "Austrialian Office" but more importantly able to keep food on the table while continuing to develope samba, etc.
Whatever happens, I'm sure none of them would remain unemployed for very long, before someone (hopefully not Microsoft) would snap them up.
Slashdot Mirror
Apalogies in advance for some of the rhetoric, but I am so tired of RIAA apalogist posts, and your post is the lucky winner...
You're also screwing the bands whose cds you are not paying for. How nice to show your support.
First, let me say that I do not make illegal copies of music - I own all of the mp3s I possess either through authorized downloads (e.g. mp3.com), or in CD, tape, or vinyl format. It is entirely possible that the post to which you reply was posted by someone similar (many more people than the anti-mp3 propoganda would suggest do in fact only have legitimate mp3s).
And yes, I have used napster to download songs I own on vinyl or tape, but don't wish to go through the hassle of digitizing into mp3 format myself. If the new, draconian copyright laws (Sony Bono Act, DMCA) make this an illegal act, I suppose I'll borrow a friend's turntable and convert the music myself.
I can guarantee you, however, that I am actively screwing the RIAA affiliated bands, as I am no longer listening to their music on the radio or buying any new CD's from them. I am not, however, pirating their music either. I have simply removed them, and all their new material, from my life altogether. Though I am only one person, this is costing them significant revinues (I used to buy allot of CDs - a bad habit exceeded only by my laserdisk and DVD habit, also now broken).
Finally, though the legality is certainly in question, I would find it socially and ethicaly preferable if the original poster would send a few dollars to the band directly for the CD whos contents he or she downloaded in mp3 format, than to purchase the CD legally and put money on the pockets of a cartel which pays artists pennies and seeks to crush or forcibly coopt any new distribution paradigm that comes along and threatens their illegal monopoly.
The only difference between the Mafia and its relationship to the Chicago city government in the 1930s and the RIAA (and MPAA) and Washington is that bribery has in the interim been formally legalized in the form of soft-money and campaign contributions.
Don't expect to see any significant difference in the quality of government, the fairness of legislation being passed, or the appropriateness of law enforcement actions taken. The government has whored itself to the media cartels, and stands over the rest of us with a big, thick broomhandle in hand.
I suppose in parting I should thank the RIAA and MPAA for going through so much trouble and expense to drive me away as a customer. My boycott of their products has already saved me thousands of dollars this year alone, which was very nice of them, as I can now afford to feed my aviation habit instead.
I would be pretty disturbed if someone had death-camp memorabilia, I'd rather those be in museums, but there are a few legitimate reasons to have them, so why d*ck with them?
There's a great bar in Chicago on North Avenue called "The Exit" that has all kinds of death camp memorabilia (gas masks, etc.) hanging above the bar. It is a punk/fetish dive, and while I'm pretty sure all of the "paraphanalia" actually came from an Army Surplus Store (and not a Nazi death camp) the motif is pretty clear.
Does this offend people. Almost certainly. That is part of the idea (and part of the place's charm, as an aging punk dive). They also serve a disgusting mix of Jaegermeister and Schnapps called a "Dead Nazi."
Censorship is never the answer - if the paraphanalia is being used for hate speach, you merely drive such speach underground and outlaw legitimate uses, including such effective countermeasures as mockery and paradoy. Remember Castle Wolfenstein? Banned in Germany because of the swastika flags in the background, despite the fact that the hero (you) was running around shooting Nazis, rather the opposite of singing "Deutschland Ueber Alles" I would say. Clearly even the best intended and most justifiable forms of censorship run amok, given enough time and the diversity of human experience and expression.
The answer, instead of censorship, is to meet hate speach where it occurs head on, with intelligent counter-arguments, mockery, social stigmatization, and all of the other tools we as human beings have to encourage and even pressure people to change their offensive behavior without trampling on their civil rights.
sigh
Yes, I know Oxford is in the UK. I was speaking of American universities because that is where I attended school, and the same myth ("universities are bastions of free speach") is repeated here ad nauseum. I was expressing strong opinions which I know apply to American Universities and, it is reasonable to assume, probably applies to academic institutions in much of the world, including the UK. I probably should have inserted this little disclaimer in the original post...
Many of us make the erroneous assumption that universities, especially in America, are a bastion (some say "the last bastion") of democracy, freedom of expression, free speach, and so on.
If this is true, then we are all sunk from the beginning. Universities like to market themselves as institutions of free expression, but the truth is that they have never been bastions of freedom at all.
Recall the purges in Germany that presaged the holocaust. Universities did not speak up or object when Jewish professors, students, and administrators were run out, nor did their collegues individually.
Universities did not object, and indeed in many cases supported, police actions against student movements protesting the war in Vietnam. In almost every case where universities claim credit for having supported free speach or controversial points of view, it has been the students or faculty who have spoken out, often despite administrative disapproval. Universities are happy to claim credit in retrospect for laudable actions of their staff or student bodies, but as anyone who has ever been involved in a protest knows, at the time those very so-called heros are generally being threatened with expulsion or worse.
Do not be fooled by marketing. As the actions of numerous American universities, including Oxford, show, they are anything but bastions of freedom. They are large, burocratic institutions run by civil servants who are far more interested in the political infighting of their respective departments, and arranging their careers in a politically expedient manner, than they are in going out on a limb to protect some student or professor's right to free expression, especially if it means going up against some well paid New York Lawfirm financed by one of the largest industries in this country (the entertainment industry, in this case).
In short, if you are serious about fighting the erosion of your freedoms, do not look toward American Universities (which are profit driven entities after all). Look instead toward the ACLU and the EFF.
The only Napster users Metallica targeted were those who were distributing copyrighted Metallica songs. This is illegal, the last time I checked.
I know I'm picking a nit here, but, strictly speaking, when I offer a file for download, be it via FTP, http, or some other protocol (e.g. napster), I am not distributing anything.
Users have to proactively come to me and take the aforementioned data. I am not shipping it to their machines, they are taking it from mine, by their own actions.
Now, if I spammed a newsgroup, or sent out a bulk emailing, of Metallica music in, say, mp3 format, then I would be guilty of distribution. No doubt the courts will redefine distribution to include having something in a location others might be able to copy it from, just as they absurdly redefined the notion of a "person" to include corporate entities, and no doubt they can enforce such legal and linguistic absurdities with the use of force, but even with the collective gun of the RIAA and its lackey, the US Government, in my face, I will be no less correct in saying "you are full of shit, I didn't distribute a thing." Alas, being right won't stop the bullet from splattering one's greymatter all over the wall, so the victory, if such it is, is only moral, at best.
"...was just a freight train heading your way." (in the form of a technological and social change your sorry dinasaur ass couldn't be bothered to adapt to).
... not any more. They made pretty cool frisbies before shattering against the brick wall of my building, adjascent to the dumpsters.
I thought I was the only one so consiquent in my disgust. I used to have a couple of Metallica CDs
The one (count them, one) metallica mp3 I had (with the SF symphony, singing the exact same song
I already had recorded on my VCR) has been deleted, with prejudice. In this respect, Metallica may have achieved its goal. However, the money this has netted them (exactly $0) doesn't even beigin to offset the money they've lost in future CD sales (including older Metallica stuff I used to have on my "to acquire" list).
Oh, and I reused the videotape to record an episode of "Sliders." I am now, most happilly, metallica-free, and am surfing mp3.com and elsewhere for my music needs.
The RIAA and their lackeys could have held on a few years longer, if they weren't actively pushing their erstwhile fans and customers toward vastly more palitable alternatives such as mp3.com. Through their actions they have considerably shortened their window of oppurtinity to adapt and survive the coming changes, a situation which is entirely their loss (and the consumers' gain).
Good riddence to Metallica and all those of their ilk.
Microsoft is making two contradictory, mutually exclusive claims:
/. (and indeed may well have done so).
1. That their mutilations of the Kerberos protocol are a "trade secret"
This is easilly rebutted, as they posted it to the internet with absolutely no security other than a "click-wrap" license which is not legally binding, not even in UCITA states where that legislation doesn't take effect until October. Furthermore, as others have noted, nothing prevents this software from being downloaded by persons too young, or in jurisdictions where the license is invalid, who can then post it anonymously to
2. That this is a violation of copyright.
Fair use clearly allows posting of the releavant portions of a copyrighted product, and in the case of technical review and critical discussion, even the entire document. Furthermore, Microsoft's attempt to claim "trade secret" has probably undermined any claim to copyright privelege. Then there is the entire "you can copyright a program but not a specification" argument, which may or may not hold up, but is in any event a gray area of the law.
These questions punch to the heart of this issue, and are entirely on-point and relevant. It is amusing to see all the Microsoft-paid astroturfers out in force (as usual, with any Microsoft related discussion of import on this site), seeking to confound the issue and guide the discussion away from the facts at hand. Very amusing, indeed.
...can be found right here.
:-)
repartition the hard driving, giving all your space to linux. The installation will take care of the rest, and all of your Windows woes will be gone for good.
Which is exactly how you will feel, when you're finally rid of the beast.
Well, it may not be legal per se, but according to Guliani its at least OK, if you're a New York City cop with a broomstick or 40 bullets and a gun, and your victim is an unarmed black male.
The original post was itself hypocritical, as the same racism exists in Europe (cf people killed in fires in Germany when skinheads burned housing for asylum seekers, Europe's appallingly weak response to Milosevic in Bosnia, etc.). But ironically the post was right on the mark in pointing out the presence of very same hypocricy it (inadvertantly) epitomizes here in the US.
"The only reason the US is perceived as being so terribly racist is because the US is the *only* country on Earth that seems to actually care!"
To which you correctly replied:
Oh bull!
The United States is not the only country to care about racism, as anyone who has spent any time abroad in places like Germany or France can attest to. There may well be places (perhaps Japan?) where racism is not a concern, or is only a minor concern, but be that as it may, the United States doesn't even come close to having a monopoly on concern with respect to racism and bigotry.
But you then went completely off the mark when you went on to say:
It's political correctness, not caring. IMHO, if the US didn't make such a big deal out of racism and ethnic hatered, it would go away more quickly.
The vast majority of people in the United States do care about racism and bigotry, and do want it to go away. So-called political correctness is an expression and a symptom of that concern. It is often an inane, silly, and sometimes plain ugly expression, but that doesn't make the underlying concerns any less real.
As to the notion that, if we "didn't make such a big deal out of racism and thnic hatred, it would go away more quickly" history does not support your assertion.
Indeed, some 500 years of history on the North American continent alone, including all 224 years of the existence of the United States of America, clearly contradict your assertion.
Progress on diminishing racial and ethnic bigotry and hatred was virtually nil in the 19th century, with the one exception of the banning of slavery (which the US was one of the last countries on the planet to do, and was arguably just a catalyst and otherwise a small side-issue of the civil war, the main fight being about state vs. federal authority and the limits thereof). The issue of racial and ethnic equality before the law, and racial and ethnic bigotry as a whole, was largely ignored until the civil rights movement put the issue on the table in the 1960's. Since then progress has been much more rapid and, while there is still much room for improvement, no one could reasonably argue that "by ignoring the issue" progress in racial relations would have been any quicker.
Quite the contrary, as the last 35 years of change vs. the 465 years previous attest to. Indeed, the only way to achieve change and overcome culteral intertia is through activism and pro-active measures, of which the civil rights movement was an excellent example.
Normally I'm a law abiding citizen, but this law and what the industry is trying to do with it makes me so mad, that for the first time in my life I feel obliged to 'civil disobedience'. Today I feel guilty when I buy a DVD and/or CD (money is not the problem, I have enough of it) and only feel right if I make illegal copies.
I feel the same way, and I imagine many of the better informed people (here and elsewhere) do. Alas, I hate to say it, but I am skeptical that any good will come of such civil disobediance.
Why?
Because, to be effective, civil disobedience must reach a certain critical mass and become widespread enough to make a noticable impact. Alas, nearly all of my friends who privately agree with my stance on boycotting DVDs and the Entertainment Industry still cannot live a day without their bread and circuses, and routinely sell their rights to free expression down the river for another daily dose of "Friends" and the "X-Files."
The Media Moguls know this. They understand their history and know that the most important, and powerful, institutions of the latter centuries of the Roman Empire were Bread and Circuses, initially in the form of the Games(tm) and later in the form of the Catholic Church(tm). They assume, quite correctly I'm afraid, that consumers' craving to be entertained will outweigh their outrage of being stripped of their rights. So far, Disney, Time-Warner, and friends appear to be winning this wager.
(I almost never flame based on moderation, but this simply cannot slide.)
I may not entirely agree with the post I am responding to, and I certainly prefer php over cold fusion (though I've only used either for limited work), but to moderate this down as OFFTOPIC is absurd.
The poster's comments, whether or not you agree with them, were certainly on topic and apropos.
I hope I have the opportunity to nail your sorry ass in meta-moderation, and that any future moderation priveleges are denied you.
The GPL is not, I repeat, is not, and End User License Agreement.
The latter requires agreement, as it extends the restrictions normally implied by copyright to such areas as how the product is used.
The former merely places license restrictions on distribution, which copyright clearly implies, and requires no agreement by the end user.
A copyright license is not even close to being an EULA, all MS Fud and propoganda to the contrary.
Isn't Verizon guilty of the same squating they falsely accuse others of? If Verizon can use the anti-squating rules to unjustly seize insulting names from others, can't you or I use the same rules to seize VERIZON-STINKS.COM from Verizon?
Seems to me a class action lawsuit is here in the making -- get twenty satarists together and go after 'em!
Please keep your definitions clear.
Potential revinue is not the same as money in the bank. If I have a business, or hobby, which denies your business some of its potential revinue, either by competing with your service or making it obsolete, that is not theft.
It may make you angry, and given the abysmal state of current legislation even entitle you to artificial remedies through legal thuggary, but I have in no way taken a single possession away from you, and whatever else I may have done I have not committed any act of theft or piracy.
You are entitled to possession of that which is already yours. You do not have a God given right to whatever potential earnings your (hypothetically) outdated business model implied, until my (hypothetically) better solution came along. In fact, you have no inherent right to potential earnings regardless of how sound your business model may be.
Current copy-privelege legislation has created a form of corporate welfare and government enforced monopoly at the expense of the consumer and the culture (how many of our "cultural" icons - e.g. Micky Mouse - remain private property? Imagine if the same were true of Santa Clause, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny.)
Again, I reiterate. Just because the law says something is so doesn't make it right, ethical, or even defensible. It just means that the notion, however misguided, is backed by the Guns of Government, pointing at you.
I have seen a number of posts referring to this service, and other acts of unauthorized copying, as "theft" (of cable service, or material, or whatever) and "piracy." Enough already.
While this service may violate some of the more draconian priveleged copy restriction legislation of the last couple of years, and might even be a violation of traditional priveleged copy restrictions, it is not theft.
Nothing is being stolen. If the commercials are left intact, then even the revinue stream of the original broadcasters and advertisers is enhanced, not diminished. Even if the opposite were true, it would still not be theft. A violation of law which allows for priveleged restrictions on copying information, yes, but not theft by any reasonable definition of the word.
To those who keep using such inaccurate terminology as "piracy" and "cable theft", let me reiterate: this is not theft. Piracy is an act of violent robbery on the high seas, involving armed robbery, rape, and murder. Theft and robbery both involve the taking away of property from someone, either by force or by stealth. Making a copy, legal or otherwise, involves none of these actions! The original is left intact, the original possessor is not denied the product which the various media moguls would have us believe was "pirated" away or "stolen."
What these folks are doing is foolish, yes, particularly in today's witch-hunt atmosphere. Their service is probably a violation of so-called "copyright" (what any society not communicating in newspeak would more accurately term priveleged copy restriction). However, this reflects more so on the appalling state of legislation granting priveleged copy restrictions and the overall state of so-called intellectual property law than it does on the ethics of those offering the service or lauding its existence.
It is bad enough entities such as the MPAA, the RIAA, the SPA, and others use their media muscle to inundate us with their propoganda and rhetoric day in and day out. If there is anything the DeCSS and MP3 struggles have taught us, it is that the least those of us who are a little informed could do is refrain from echoing their refrain, by refusing to use the perjerative terminology these propoganda moguls insist in foisting upon us.
Illegal != Unethical. just ask any black man in America last century, any Jew in 1930's Germany, any Mormon in Missouri prior to 1980, or any Muslim in Serbia today.
Unauthorized Copying != Theft
Unauthorized Copying != Piracy
Unauthorized Copying = Crime (Currently)
Being Jewish = Crime (Germany, 1930s)
Being Mormon = Crime (Missouri, until 1980s)
Finally, for those who miss the obvious:
Law != Truth
Law != Justice
Law != Morality
In short, think for yourselves. And please refrain from echoing official party line rhetoric ("piracy", "theft") until and unless you (a) really mean it and (b) can defend that stance with a well reasoned argument.
One of the most common reasons to dual boot Linux is to run Windows to play games.
True. However, he's referring to hardcore gamers, who are more likely to be using dedicated gaming consoles (i.e. Sony Playstation, Nintendo, etc.) than either Windows or Linux.
There isn't a single game that runs better anywhere except on Windows. Get real! Windows runs games better. Period.
This is a load of absolute crap. Games written for Windows run better under Windows. Big surprise. Games written for Linux run better under Linux. The same is true of most games written for any particular platform: they will generally run best on their target platform.
As for what software and hardware combination runs games the best, neither Linux, nor Windows, nor Macintosh, nor any other generalized platform does it as well or as cheaply as dedicated gaming consoles. Not even your beloved Windows.
[...] the migration of VC from PVC is essentially zero. It is bad to manufacture though.
So, let me get this straight. Greenpeace hates PVC because its bad to manufacture, so they tell everyone its poisonous to wear.
Greenpeace hates leather because it comes from dead cattle.
Greenpeace (presumably) hates rubber, because its a petroleum product.
Damn! You've just about eliminated everything my dominatrix wears. Whats a guy with a kinky fetish or two to do in a brave new green world where we can't eat meat or wear PVC?
Of course, the whole idea of International Standards that can't be used by anyone is patently (heh) ridiculous. How to deal with this, I have no idea, short of creating a new codec that rivals MPEG-4, which is no easy task. Perhaps we can find a way to make our voice heard to the various lawyers deciding licensing, but I'd rate that as a rather low chance of success.
If truly open standards are to persist much into the next century, it is critical that patented methodologies be explicitly excluded from consideration at the get-go. Furthermore, methodologies which become patented down the road (for which there is no prior art - e.g. there is a patent application pending which no one is aware of) would be immediately disqualified or marked as "tainted" and replaced with an unencumbered equivelent.
To achieve this we need to dump the ISO as a standards body. This wouldn't be as difficult or traumatic as one might think - they are not know for creating great technical standards (remember the virtually unimplimentable, horribly ineffecient, and none too soon defunct OSI "seven layers"?).
I would submit that we should use and expand the auspices of the Internet Engineering Task Force, with a specific addendum to the charter prohibiting proprietary and patent-encumbered technologies from being considered, much less defined into, any open standard whatsoever.
More to the immediate point, we do need to develope our own standards and codecs (see OggVorbis and the nascient Open Video Disc mailing list for examples.
We need to take back our standards on both the implementation (defacto) front and the institutional (IETF vs. ISO) front.
No.
But the flaimbait preceeding your caustic remark was. There is a difference, obvious to nearly every causual observer.
Are you, perhaps, wearing Microsoft Glasses(tm)?
"Responding to a court order" != "exercising editorial control", which was the issue on point in those two cases.
This is very true. However, a threatening letter from Microsoft Legal Thugs does not equal a court order either. For this reason, it is critical that slashdot not remove any posts until and unless so ordered by a court of law! Contrary to Microsoft's opinion of itself, it is not a court of law. Such power still resides, for the moment, in the Judicial, not the Corporate, branch of government.
Your reasoning about intellectual property is wrong in the sense that without the state, or to be more precise, without the law there is no such thing as property period.
I think you misunderstood the original comment. In the post to which you reply the poster said that without the state there would be no such thing as intellectual property. In a completely lawless society you could still guard your plot of land, your chache of food (or weapons) and thus maintain it as your property. No such possiblity exists within the realm of ideas or thought, nor should it.
I agree with some of what you say, but must express both disdain and lack of empathy with respect to your ability, grudging or otherwise, to admire those policy makers at MS and elsewhere who pervert the law and the democratic institutions of our country in order to establish their own little feifdoms. These people are mounting an active assault on nearly all of our basic rights, and doing so quite successfully. In so doing they are tearing at the basic fiber and social contract which holds our society and our democratic institutions together. This threatens all of us, whether or not we have a particular interest in the subject at hand (Microsoft's unwarrent attempt to silence criticism on slashdot).
I would go further and offer another point with respect intellectual property priveleges: Just as communism could not flurish in a world of scarcity, so to will capitalism fail in a world of natural abundance (which is a perfect description of both the intellectual and digital worlds). I suspect that ongoing attempts to extend the capitalist paradigm beyond its functional parameters and create synthetic scarcity at the point of a gun in areas such as ideas and digital information will result in laws and public policy which will make communist Russia appear liberal in comparison. It is an ugly future, and we are sprinting in its direction with nary a critical thought.
To feel anything other than the greatest contempt and antithapy for those who actively orchastrate such trends in this direction is IMHO both appalling and indefensible.
Losing key staff is no longer the exclusive realm of corporations. I sort of surprises me to see this argument brought up in the context of open software! :-)
Absolutely! What is more, losing "key staff" in an open-source project is generally much less devistating than it is in a closed-source context, as open-source by its very nature tends to distribute expertise on a given project much more widely.
For example, early in the Linux Years (pre 1.0) the guy (I forget his name) who did allot of the early networking work abandoned Linux to its own devices, largely due to being flamed for not having written the perfect, most elegant implimentation in his first iteration. Another took over that aspect, the kernel lived on, development moved forward, and Linux is now a raging success. The loss of a very key developer caused hardly a hiccup in development (though an auful lot of discussion, flamage, and doomsday saying).
kNFS was abandoned for almost a year, which caused myself and others a number of headaches in dealing with Linux NFS (and is probably the reason why Linux NFS lags behind the BSDs and commercial UNIXen in performance). That having been said, it was picked up, is being actively developed, with NFS V 3 support in the 2.4-pre kernels. This is probably the best "worst case" or at least "very bad case" example of an open source project being abandoned one can find, at least in the Linux area of endeavor.
Abandonment of a project can lead to some delay (as with NFS), but as often as not the delay is minimal (gimp, Linux networking) as another active developer takes over. I would submit that delays in closed-source commercial applications are much more common and typically much more lengthy.
Finally, with open source the project will always be picked up and continued by someone, as long as there is any interest. Contrast this to many closed-source products which are orphaned, leaving developers and users in a serious bind which they can do nothing about, other than remapping their entire engineering or corporate strategy to a complety new, competing product, at great cost in time and money. In the worst case open-source scenerio, such a customer would have to finance and perform ongoing development and maintenance themselves, which would often be a less expensive solution than the alternatives. Having said that, I do not know of a single open-source project where anyone was compelled to do this. I do know of a number of orphaned, closed-source products which left consumers in a terrible bind, from bitter, personal experience.
Our solution, which has to date saved us tens of thousands of dollars and hundreds of developer hours in cost, was to move to an open source platform (Linux and FreeBSD) and require open source libraries to be used wherever possible, limiting our exposure to orphanage of closed-source products.
The Free Software/Open Source paradigm has had a powerful impact on the computing industry, from the development of the internet and the world wide web, to the emergence of Linux and FreeBSD.
Recently you published an open license for publishers, extending some of the concepts of the GPL to another area of endeavor: book publication.
At openflick.org there is an effort I and other ware working on to extend this concept into the areas of music and video production, and I imagine there are numerous other projects which are similarly trying to create an "open commons" of material for their particular areas of interest as well.
Do you see the concepts embodied in the free software movement and the GPL being extended successfully into other areas of endeavor, and if so, what practical suggestions do you have for people trying to achieve this? What kinds of mistakes and pitfalls do you see, based on your experiences with creating the GPL? When looking for help in charting such new territory, what resources would you suggest one turn to for help?
Their Australian division has hired a whole bunch of good linux people (Paul Mackerras, Andrew Tridgell, etc.) who are developing a lot of important packages (samba, rsync, ppp, linuxppc for PowerMac). I would not like to see that effort broken up.
This is a situation in which a company such as VA Linux, RedHat, or TurboLinux could step in and do some real good, should LinuxCare stumble or fall. Perhaps Andrew Tridgell, Paul Mackerras, and the others could be hired by one of them, creating in part their "Austrialian Office" but more importantly able to keep food on the table while continuing to develope samba, etc.
Whatever happens, I'm sure none of them would remain unemployed for very long, before someone (hopefully not Microsoft) would snap them up.