JS does not need to use that history -1... I HAVE A BACK BUTTON!
Sure, but those webmasteurs who like to use JavaScript for this have probably already put in an insta-redirect to break the back button. It's all part of user-hostile webdesign.
There exists, among some in the/. community, and adversion to actually clicking links and reading articles. [snip]And considering the appeals that will continue, not even Elmsoft gained anything.
Careful not to give yourself a wedgie as you hoist yourself upon your own petard. From the article:
"A not guilty verdict in a criminal case comes without the ability to appeal, unlike the civil copyright cases targeting Napster and other companies that have bounced through federal court in recent years."
I'm not sure if anyone else feels this way, but I would say in the next 3-5 years, maybe a bit sooner, maybe a bit later, there is going to be a showdown of sorts between the media industry (music and video) and the public masses.
It's a little facile to claim an apocalyptic battle is emerging when history tells us that it's more likely that everybody will settle for something that doesn't meet anybody's needs. What we are seeing now is just the crisis of lowering standards. The cable company wants everything they've been getting and more, and the viewer doesn't want any of the interruptions and hassles of broadcast TV. Enjoy it while you can, because the viewer will wind up accepting some garbage from advertising and the broadcasters and content suppliers will settle for inserting ads inbetween your previously-recorded shows or something. Nobody's imaginative or principled enough for anything but "settling for less" to happen.
People actually considered Yahoo to be a search engine? Where I'm coming from, it was AltaVista to Google, and yes, I was always hoping someone would make a better search engine. I still hope that better search engines are developed and I doubt that it will always be Google who is the best.
Both types of spam are annoying, but the "fraudulent" type is much more so because of its immoral content (and anyone who thinks that sending pornographic images to children isn't immoral should quietly remove themselves from the gene pool) and also because of the theft of services (bandwidth, hard drive space, etc.) from the relays and proxies that they abuse.
Well gee, Mr. Einstein. With the knowledge of the kinds of content common on the Internet, what business do you think children have being on the Internet at all? To accelerate any asocial tendencies? To prepare them for a future of porn and Everquest, you might as well give up on any filtering and/or complaining. Not that I like nasty spam, but really, reality is reality.
This will either hurt them by losing too many customers, or make their network better for all involved.
Well, the problem is that there are more than two options. One other scenario is that the ISP does not lose customers, their network stays the same, and it becomes the p2p community that loses though the tragedy of the commons. Already (on a t1, to counter your "ADSL" reply elsewhere) I can't get at 99% of the things that I'm searching for because there are always 60 people in the queue and seemingly most of the source nodes do not leave their machines on 24/7. So there are tons of leeches who don't even share anything, which now that I think about it is a fourth alternative in this scenario: the users give the record and movie industries what they want by assuming the role of pure consumers who don't share. Oh sure, there are 6 or 7 people pulling from me at any time of the day, but look at my backlog of ~100 songs that have been sitting their for a week. I cut people off who aren't sharing anything.
The purpose of those records is to be used by a DJ on a dancefloor. By themselves they are just ingredients. To listen to a track like "No Way Back" by itself at home is tantamount to making a nice warm plate of salt and expecting it to be a meal.:) A DJ certainly doesn't need synths and a 909 to create a context for "No Way Back" that will move people differently than if they'd heard it by itself, on a turntable, at home.
there a quite a few Internet radio stations that don't broadcast RIAA music.
what i'm interested in is what RIAA could due to make this impossible, because this is something that will weaken RIAA in the long run.
They will accuse a radio station of playing RIAA music. Since a civil suit has a presumption of guilt, the station is therefore forced to prove they aren't playing any RIAA music. How? By incurring the overhead of what is required of Official RIAA-licensees: tracklists. While not a bad idea as a preemptive defense move, perhaps a better idea is to have all submissions accompanied by an affadavit of independence. Also, maybe the DJs (if any) will also sign something attesting to their commitment not to play RIAA music. Perhaps those will be good-faith enough for the courts to bounce back to the RIAA to supply proof of infringement.
When an independent puts up a web site on some obscure corner of the internet, hardly anyone ever sees it and no one notices when it dies shortly there after.
You speak as if there is no middle ground, or that you are merely relaying the rules of the universe for us rabble. Thanks but no thanks.
As someone who calls themselves "FreeLinux", perhaps you can spare a moment of introspection to find a case where a product of creative efforts has succeeded in the absence of traditional marketing. Yes, the definition of "success" as proposed and reified by the major labels involves significant marketing effort and expense; do you have a point? Are you trying to narrow the discourse to terms under which people already suffer? If you read the commentary in one of the articles about how the RIAA's ulterior motive is to keep the barrier of entry into entertainment commerce high, there is an attempt to "fork the record industry", which the RIAA (and associated legislators) is succeeding at heading off. I don't think this is a good development in the continuing history of freedom.
But all of that is catty banter. Your main point seems to be that people cannot do themselves what the record industry does for them, perhaps because they don't have enough money for mass-marketing campaigns, but what about the fans? Many, many, many people I know do not rely on radio, billboards, movies, or television to find out about new music. They go to their friends, they go to concerts and watch opening bands, they subscribe to music mailing lists of all varieties, they read print and web media published by other fans. "But how will become a rockstar millionaire?" you ask? Nobody does now, so why should that responsibility be foisted upon RIAA-independent distribution and RIAA-independent broadcast phenomenons? History tells us that only a minor percentage of the people who release music under RIAA-affiliate contracts even make dollar one (tax write-off), and a minor percentage of those make enough to live on (sharecroppers for as long as they can take it), and a minor percentage of THOSE make enough to think that they're rich until they (or their accountant or manager) squanders it away (flash-in-the-pan). So that leaves the RIAA to hold the carrot out for those artists and performers who stupidly believe that they will be the ones to become Independently Wealthy. How many of those succeed per year?
That said, "the mainstream" is a numbers-oriented marketing concept used to describe a product which will be purchased by a large audience. The larger the presumed population, the more mainstream the product (keep in mind that American culture supports and encourages people to define themselves by their consumer habits, thus you have mainstream people. But since everybody is different when you get right down to it, a mainstream person is just someone who likes a lot of popular things). "The mainstream" is not a goal of everybody, and probably is not even a goal of all of the bands who are forced to participate in the charade of appearing to Want It All. A large segment of performers just want to be able to make a living and have their work heard by an appreciative audience. However, for a record company to support such modest aspirations is counterproductive to their bottom line. One huge hit has a much larger profit margin than many small ones, and the mainstream is expected to fall in line with this business model under the threat that the cool minor bands will wither away and die if the industry doesn't get its hits (and concomittantly all of the sales).
This, of course, will not happen. Bands will find a way to be heard locally, they will be recorded by some other people, and they will sell some records somehow. But they will be able to insert themselves in the commerce system of art on their own terms. Not that it isn't hard work, but at least you know where the dollars are and you're doing it on your own terms. The online broadcasting component of this strategy is what the RIAA hopes to affect. They can't afford for radio (advertising) broadcast (payola) to become irrelevant. They've got a near-complete lock on radio right now and they'd sure like to extend that online by making it prohibitively expensive for independent operators to do their thing.
I'm sorry, I hate perpetual copyrights as much as you do, but I completely disagree that they are the problem. Imagine a world without copyrights.
You're indulging in extremes where there is plenty of middle ground (as Congress has mapped out in its periodic lengthening of the copyright term). The topic of Eldred vs. Ashcroft is not concerned with abolishing copyright, it's taking the Sonny Bono/Disney Act (CTEA) to task for defining Congress' power over copyright extensions as being effectively unlimited where the Constitution specifically states that Congress' powers are to be, in fact, limited.
You go on an on about evil and bootlegs and then recant your thesis with a statement on your preference for copyright terms. There is no dilemma as you state it here, except in Constitutional terms. Try to stay on topic, this isn't Usenet.
How very silly (but...that's a beautiful high horse you got there).
I know it's hard, but it's okay to be a "normal" person and say "is readable without installing Microsoft Word?". Run for office or apply for a grant if you must, but coming off as a random grandpa may be better than demanding extra formats.
I don't agree. According to the article the dip should be much lower, so I see another explanation: the RIAA knows that online swapping is helping them. It is talking out of both sides of its face so that it can retain control of the distribution channels.
Here's a situation where a lot of people have nothing better to do-- as opposed to pop up ads where I'm trying to do something else but the ads interrupt me.
So there's this new law of the universe that says that looking at advertising is better than doing nothing. Frankly I'm just fine standing somewhere without being sold to, and I don't think that the default use of public space (how many subways are privately funded?) is best dedicated to commerce. Call me a communist, but I don't think that people on the subway "have nothing better to do".
Really people. The RIAA was set up by the big record labels for exactly this purpose: to take the heat. As long as the agency footing the stinky policies is "the RIAA" and not "Sony" "EMI" or whomever, the labels branding stays intact and the corporations get to retain the illusion of keeping politics out of commerce and culture.
The RIAA is comprised of a group of labels who are behind all of this. They are the ones who should feel the heat. It's the RIAA's job to be a scapegoat. Don't let them.
These are things that need do'n, if you would like to take on one of these list items please email me at swabby@c0re.net and I can give you some more insight on the problem and advice.
I listened to an interview with Richard Clarke this morning on NPR. He basically said that he *knows* that this is outlawed by the DMCA (and other laws against hacking) and suggested that computer professionals try to break only to their own systems, so as to avoid legal wrath.
Except that HP is threatening the DMCA against the group who (notified and) publicized the Tru64 vulnerability. AFAIK, this vulnerability was found by their examination of their own systems.
It's called "sense of entitlement". That which is granted as a privilege is eventually assumed to be a right. The only "rights" anybody has are those that are codified by the laws *invented by people*. There are many societies that exist without many of the protections afforded by U.S. laws without dissolving into anarchy. Heck, up until around the end of the 19th century in the U.S. a parent could kill their child without any legal repercussions. Is the logic that the right to live was granted only to adults? Doesn't seem very natural or god-granted to me.
There is no cosmic retribution for people who violate copyright, trademark, or patent laws, just the legal ramifications of threatening someone's business model. Napster won't cause the world to fall apart or for people to stop creating. People were creating long before there was a such thing as copyright and will continue to do so regardless of the legal and commercial landscape.
Re:A link to the article would have been nice...
on
.NET for Apache
·
· Score: 1
You're forgetting who you're talking about here. Microsoft is not going to let Open Source go by without trying to apply the three E's to it, too. The question is how long it will be before it happens (Apache just may be principled enough to squeeze it out of them), and how much will they release? Not that anything existing will be exposed, but what product could they build open source into? HMM?
Think of it as their throwing OSS a bone. Apache is more closely-tied with FreeBSD and its business-friendly license, while Microsoft's open-source opponents predictably forget what is not included in this combination: the GPL. Don't forget Covalent in all this, either. They're a company who has built themselves on the BSD License.
Embrace: Open Source Extend: The number of acceptible Open Source licenses (or players) Extinguish: The demand for anticapitalist licenses
I guess another question would be what quantity of OSS would MS have to release before antiMicrosoft Slashdot turned away from them?
Re:Wondering why NPR might do this?
on
Blogspace vs. NPR
·
· Score: 2
I get my implication from the context. What context are you reading in those three sentences? "Any material" seems to be self-explanatory. If you've got some other evidence to back up your assertion, then by all means put forthwith. Or by "context" do you really mean "speculation"?
Please, they got exactly what they were asking for.
They may have garnered a little publicity steam if they hadn't abused the goodwill of their userbase. Good riddance, what comes around goes around, and all that. Good thing they're sitting pretty on their profits from licensing out those slots in the installer, they can laugh at the RIAA all the way to the bank.
We out on the streets will go on with our lives, their death means nothing to anybody and is in no way consequential except to the RIAA's dying discourse.
I suspect it's going to be a bit of a pain in the ass to convince Audiogalaxy to allow me to share my band's music over their service. How can I satisfy them that I'm truly the copyright holder? If it's easy enough to make it painless, what's to keep others from attempting to get their favourite artist's music unprotected using the same technique?
As an independent artist, you're obviously illegitimate and not worthy of any exposure at all. Undoubtedly the only way around this little dilemma is to assign your copyrights to an RIAA affiliate for every means of distribution that they control.
Good explanation of the line which is plotted in this situation. Sure, people who aren't criminals don't have anything to worry about...yet. Perhaps the original poster can help us in speculating what would happen in the case that nobody was a criminal anymore. Do you think the FBI would just shut down? "Our work is done here, folks! You're welcome."
No.
There is a bioscientific concept of "The Red Queen Syndrome" which has been adopted by the cybernetics people and says that as a system evolves far enough to solve its problems, more problems are revealed. In this context, as fewer and fewer people broke the law, more laws would be undoubtedly be deemed necessary. What would US Congress do in a situation of low crime? Your City Council? Making spying on ones constituents easier is not even a slippery slope, it's an increase in the degree of slipperiness.
That's fine to advocate your dog using an alternative browser, but nothing's going to gain steam until people like YOU do this kind of advocacy in your company. The reason that many webapps are IE only is because people like YOU and the others at your company aren't making it an issue. Mom and dog are going to use whatever browser is at hand when trying to connect to their bank and 401k, and unless that browser is IE my Mom is going to get shut out. Companies like YOURS are building the fences that keep site IE-only apps because my dog isn't using Opera.
Well gosh, isn't that tidy? You won't be making standardized sites because my Mom still uses IE, and my Mom still uses IE because all the webshops are making IE-only sites. I don't know if this is news to you, but people like you have a lot more influence on these issues than my dog does. When was the last time you asked your manager how long it will be until your timecard app will work with Mozilla?
Is there really anything that IE does that can't be done a different way which is more compatible? Sure Microsoft can make this stuff seem easier, it's part of maintaining mindshare and you sound like you sold your share quite easily. Ever heard of the phrase "tyranny of the majority"? It's what happens when everybody jumps on the bandwagon.
Slashdot Mirror
JS does not need to use that history -1... I HAVE A BACK BUTTON!
Sure, but those webmasteurs who like to use JavaScript for this have probably already put in an insta-redirect to break the back button. It's all part of user-hostile webdesign.
-e
Careful not to give yourself a wedgie as you hoist yourself upon your own petard. From the article:
It's a little facile to claim an apocalyptic battle is emerging when history tells us that it's more likely that everybody will settle for something that doesn't meet anybody's needs. What we are seeing now is just the crisis of lowering standards. The cable company wants everything they've been getting and more, and the viewer doesn't want any of the interruptions and hassles of broadcast TV. Enjoy it while you can, because the viewer will wind up accepting some garbage from advertising and the broadcasters and content suppliers will settle for inserting ads inbetween your previously-recorded shows or something. Nobody's imaginative or principled enough for anything but "settling for less" to happen.
People actually considered Yahoo to be a search engine? Where I'm coming from, it was AltaVista to Google, and yes, I was always hoping someone would make a better search engine. I still hope that better search engines are developed and I doubt that it will always be Google who is the best.
Both types of spam are annoying, but the "fraudulent" type is much more so because of its immoral content (and anyone who thinks that sending pornographic images to children isn't immoral should quietly remove themselves from the gene pool) and also because of the theft of services (bandwidth, hard drive space, etc.) from the relays and proxies that they abuse.
Well gee, Mr. Einstein. With the knowledge of the kinds of content common on the Internet, what business do you think children have being on the Internet at all? To accelerate any asocial tendencies? To prepare them for a future of porn and Everquest, you might as well give up on any filtering and/or complaining. Not that I like nasty spam, but really, reality is reality.
This will either hurt them by losing too many customers, or make their network better for all involved.
Well, the problem is that there are more than two options. One other scenario is that the ISP does not lose customers, their network stays the same, and it becomes the p2p community that loses though the tragedy of the commons. Already (on a t1, to counter your "ADSL" reply elsewhere) I can't get at 99% of the things that I'm searching for because there are always 60 people in the queue and seemingly most of the source nodes do not leave their machines on 24/7. So there are tons of leeches who don't even share anything, which now that I think about it is a fourth alternative in this scenario: the users give the record and movie industries what they want by assuming the role of pure consumers who don't share. Oh sure, there are 6 or 7 people pulling from me at any time of the day, but look at my backlog of ~100 songs that have been sitting their for a week. I cut people off who aren't sharing anything.
The purpose of those records is to be used by a DJ on a dancefloor. By themselves they are just ingredients. To listen to a track like "No Way Back" by itself at home is tantamount to making a nice warm plate of salt and expecting it to be a meal. :) A DJ certainly doesn't need synths and a 909 to create a context for "No Way Back" that will move people differently than if they'd heard it by itself, on a turntable, at home.
They will accuse a radio station of playing RIAA music. Since a civil suit has a presumption of guilt, the station is therefore forced to prove they aren't playing any RIAA music. How? By incurring the overhead of what is required of Official RIAA-licensees: tracklists. While not a bad idea as a preemptive defense move, perhaps a better idea is to have all submissions accompanied by an affadavit of independence. Also, maybe the DJs (if any) will also sign something attesting to their commitment not to play RIAA music. Perhaps those will be good-faith enough for the courts to bounce back to the RIAA to supply proof of infringement.
You speak as if there is no middle ground, or that you are merely relaying the rules of the universe for us rabble. Thanks but no thanks.
As someone who calls themselves "FreeLinux", perhaps you can spare a moment of introspection to find a case where a product of creative efforts has succeeded in the absence of traditional marketing. Yes, the definition of "success" as proposed and reified by the major labels involves significant marketing effort and expense; do you have a point? Are you trying to narrow the discourse to terms under which people already suffer? If you read the commentary in one of the articles about how the RIAA's ulterior motive is to keep the barrier of entry into entertainment commerce high, there is an attempt to "fork the record industry", which the RIAA (and associated legislators) is succeeding at heading off. I don't think this is a good development in the continuing history of freedom.
But all of that is catty banter. Your main point seems to be that people cannot do themselves what the record industry does for them, perhaps because they don't have enough money for mass-marketing campaigns, but what about the fans? Many, many, many people I know do not rely on radio, billboards, movies, or television to find out about new music. They go to their friends, they go to concerts and watch opening bands, they subscribe to music mailing lists of all varieties, they read print and web media published by other fans. "But how will become a rockstar millionaire?" you ask? Nobody does now, so why should that responsibility be foisted upon RIAA-independent distribution and RIAA-independent broadcast phenomenons? History tells us that only a minor percentage of the people who release music under RIAA-affiliate contracts even make dollar one (tax write-off), and a minor percentage of those make enough to live on (sharecroppers for as long as they can take it), and a minor percentage of THOSE make enough to think that they're rich until they (or their accountant or manager) squanders it away (flash-in-the-pan). So that leaves the RIAA to hold the carrot out for those artists and performers who stupidly believe that they will be the ones to become Independently Wealthy. How many of those succeed per year?
That said, "the mainstream" is a numbers-oriented marketing concept used to describe a product which will be purchased by a large audience. The larger the presumed population, the more mainstream the product (keep in mind that American culture supports and encourages people to define themselves by their consumer habits, thus you have mainstream people. But since everybody is different when you get right down to it, a mainstream person is just someone who likes a lot of popular things). "The mainstream" is not a goal of everybody, and probably is not even a goal of all of the bands who are forced to participate in the charade of appearing to Want It All. A large segment of performers just want to be able to make a living and have their work heard by an appreciative audience. However, for a record company to support such modest aspirations is counterproductive to their bottom line. One huge hit has a much larger profit margin than many small ones, and the mainstream is expected to fall in line with this business model under the threat that the cool minor bands will wither away and die if the industry doesn't get its hits (and concomittantly all of the sales).
This, of course, will not happen. Bands will find a way to be heard locally, they will be recorded by some other people, and they will sell some records somehow. But they will be able to insert themselves in the commerce system of art on their own terms. Not that it isn't hard work, but at least you know where the dollars are and you're doing it on your own terms. The online broadcasting component of this strategy is what the RIAA hopes to affect. They can't afford for radio (advertising) broadcast (payola) to become irrelevant. They've got a near-complete lock on radio right now and they'd sure like to extend that online by making it prohibitively expensive for independent operators to do their thing.
I'm sorry, I hate perpetual copyrights as much as you do, but I completely disagree that they are the problem. Imagine a world without copyrights.
You're indulging in extremes where there is plenty of middle ground (as Congress has mapped out in its periodic lengthening of the copyright term). The topic of Eldred vs. Ashcroft is not concerned with abolishing copyright, it's taking the Sonny Bono/Disney Act (CTEA) to task for defining Congress' power over copyright extensions as being effectively unlimited where the Constitution specifically states that Congress' powers are to be, in fact, limited.
You go on an on about evil and bootlegs and then recant your thesis with a statement on your preference for copyright terms. There is no dilemma as you state it here, except in Constitutional terms. Try to stay on topic, this isn't Usenet.
Hah, you actually stop for them?! Maybe you stop everytime you're asked to prove you didn't steal anything?
How very silly (but...that's a beautiful high horse you got there).
I know it's hard, but it's okay to be a "normal" person and say "is readable without installing Microsoft Word?". Run for office or apply for a grant if you must, but coming off as a random grandpa may be better than demanding extra formats.
I don't agree. According to the article the dip should be much lower, so I see another explanation: the RIAA knows that online swapping is helping them. It is talking out of both sides of its face so that it can retain control of the distribution channels.
Here's a situation where a lot of people have nothing better to do-- as opposed to pop up ads where I'm trying to do something else but the ads interrupt me.
So there's this new law of the universe that says that looking at advertising is better than doing nothing. Frankly I'm just fine standing somewhere without being sold to, and I don't think that the default use of public space (how many subways are privately funded?) is best dedicated to commerce. Call me a communist, but I don't think that people on the subway "have nothing better to do".
Houston would like to make it perfectly clear that the company comes in peace.
How poor a memory does a cancer have?
Really people. The RIAA was set up by the big record labels for exactly this purpose: to take the heat. As long as the agency footing the stinky policies is "the RIAA" and not "Sony" "EMI" or whomever, the labels branding stays intact and the corporations get to retain the illusion of keeping politics out of commerce and culture.
The RIAA is comprised of a group of labels who are behind all of this. They are the ones who should feel the heat. It's the RIAA's job to be a scapegoat. Don't let them.
From the todo.txt in the source dist:
These are things that need do'n, if you would like to take on one of these list items please email me at swabby@c0re.net and I can give you some more insight on the problem and advice.
I listened to an interview with Richard Clarke this morning on NPR. He basically said that he *knows* that this is outlawed by the DMCA (and other laws against hacking) and suggested that computer professionals try to break only to their own systems, so as to avoid legal wrath.
Except that HP is threatening the DMCA against the group who (notified and) publicized the Tru64 vulnerability. AFAIK, this vulnerability was found by their examination of their own systems.
It's called "sense of entitlement". That which is granted as a privilege is eventually assumed to be a right. The only "rights" anybody has are those that are codified by the laws *invented by people*. There are many societies that exist without many of the protections afforded by U.S. laws without dissolving into anarchy. Heck, up until around the end of the 19th century in the U.S. a parent could kill their child without any legal repercussions. Is the logic that the right to live was granted only to adults? Doesn't seem very natural or god-granted to me.
There is no cosmic retribution for people who violate copyright, trademark, or patent laws, just the legal ramifications of threatening someone's business model. Napster won't cause the world to fall apart or for people to stop creating. People were creating long before there was a such thing as copyright and will continue to do so regardless of the legal and commercial landscape.
You're forgetting who you're talking about here. Microsoft is not going to let Open Source go by without trying to apply the three E's to it, too. The question is how long it will be before it happens (Apache just may be principled enough to squeeze it out of them), and how much will they release? Not that anything existing will be exposed, but what product could they build open source into? HMM?
Think of it as their throwing OSS a bone. Apache is more closely-tied with FreeBSD and its business-friendly license, while Microsoft's open-source opponents predictably forget what is not included in this combination: the GPL. Don't forget Covalent in all this, either. They're a company who has built themselves on the BSD License.
Embrace: Open Source
Extend: The number of acceptible Open Source licenses (or players)
Extinguish: The demand for anticapitalist licenses
I guess another question would be what quantity of OSS would MS have to release before antiMicrosoft Slashdot turned away from them?
I get my implication from the context.
What context are you reading in those three sentences? "Any material" seems to be self-explanatory. If you've got some other evidence to back up your assertion, then by all means put forthwith. Or by "context" do you really mean "speculation"?
Underrated? "Unfortunate"?
Please, they got exactly what they were asking for.
They may have garnered a little publicity steam if they hadn't abused the goodwill of their userbase. Good riddance, what comes around goes around, and all that. Good thing they're sitting pretty on their profits from licensing out those slots in the installer, they can laugh at the RIAA all the way to the bank.
We out on the streets will go on with our lives, their death means nothing to anybody and is in no way consequential except to the RIAA's dying discourse.
I suspect it's going to be a bit of a pain in the ass to convince Audiogalaxy to allow me to share my band's music over their service. How can I satisfy them that I'm truly the copyright holder? If it's easy enough to make it painless, what's to keep others from attempting to get their favourite artist's music unprotected using the same technique?
As an independent artist, you're obviously illegitimate and not worthy of any exposure at all. Undoubtedly the only way around this little dilemma is to assign your copyrights to an RIAA affiliate for every means of distribution that they control.
Good explanation of the line which is plotted in this situation. Sure, people who aren't criminals don't have anything to worry about...yet. Perhaps the original poster can help us in speculating what would happen in the case that nobody was a criminal anymore. Do you think the FBI would just shut down? "Our work is done here, folks! You're welcome."
No.
There is a bioscientific concept of "The Red Queen Syndrome" which has been adopted by the cybernetics people and says that as a system evolves far enough to solve its problems, more problems are revealed. In this context, as fewer and fewer people broke the law, more laws would be undoubtedly be deemed necessary. What would US Congress do in a situation of low crime? Your City Council? Making spying on ones constituents easier is not even a slippery slope, it's an increase in the degree of slipperiness.
That's fine to advocate your dog using an alternative browser, but nothing's going to gain steam until people like YOU do this kind of advocacy in your company. The reason that many webapps are IE only is because people like YOU and the others at your company aren't making it an issue. Mom and dog are going to use whatever browser is at hand when trying to connect to their bank and 401k, and unless that browser is IE my Mom is going to get shut out. Companies like YOURS are building the fences that keep site IE-only apps because my dog isn't using Opera.
Well gosh, isn't that tidy? You won't be making standardized sites because my Mom still uses IE, and my Mom still uses IE because all the webshops are making IE-only sites. I don't know if this is news to you, but people like you have a lot more influence on these issues than my dog does. When was the last time you asked your manager how long it will be until your timecard app will work with Mozilla?
Is there really anything that IE does that can't be done a different way which is more compatible? Sure Microsoft can make this stuff seem easier, it's part of maintaining mindshare and you sound like you sold your share quite easily. Ever heard of the phrase "tyranny of the majority"? It's what happens when everybody jumps on the bandwagon.