It's bad PR, yes, but when you're the only game in town, you can get away with it. It's ingenious in the fact that they know it will take years to resolve the issues at hand (are Jane/John Doe suits legal, is $3000 in damages per song "reasonable," if they don't verify the validity of the shared files, is it infringement, is sharing actual infringement, etc). By the time there is enough case law on the books to answer those questions, they'll have changed tactics.
The system isn't set up so that some bully can take advantage; that's one of the key issues with this sort of litigation - the RIAA is abusing the legal process to the point of quasi-legal extortion, all the while lobbying Congress for changes to the laws that will only protect RIAA (and MPAA) interests.
They're not stupid - it's quite ingenious. They play the odds that people will settle and had it not been for something so egregious as the Anderson case, she'd be just another statistic. Being realistic, what has she won? The ability to pay legal bills for being wrongly sued, and will hopefully have the opportunity to have her day in court. That is how the system is designed. Now if you want to argue right versus wrong with regard to the RIAA's tactics, that's a different story.
No one wants to admit there is an inherent flaw in their design no less expend the resources on fixing it if they don't have to. It's the Ford Pinto anology - we'd rather pay out the lawsuits for the deaths as opposed to what it would cost to correct the problem. If a handful of people hack their cards, they're willing to lose that revenue as opposed to fixing the problem. Making it public forces their hand and a third party doing it should help push them to fix it. If they find their own flaw, corporate greed kicks in - why fix it if only they know about it??
I don't understand how you can say that - if the universe is in a constant (albeit slow) state of change, and buying the theory that the universe is endless, I don't see how there couldn't be life in some form (not necessarily as we know it) in existence elsewhere. Scientific theroy isn't icon-clad - it stays a valid theory until something comes along that invalidates it. While probably unlikely that you're going to find the remnants of some ancient form of life on Mars, water is an essential building block for the existence of life (again, as we currently know it).
What if the orbit of Mars was similar to that of earth at one time, and Mars was exposed to a similar set of circumstances that brought the process of life to earth (going from the scientific approach, not the opposing biblical version)? Would not the discovery mean something then?
Better yet, what if the discovery of water there invalidates some long-standing scientific theory? Could it not then force some new way of thinking?
Nevertheless, it was disclosed by the ISP - at what point do you stop holding consumers responsible for not bothering to read and hold companies liable for burying the details? 5,000 words is going to be 9-10 pages.
I couldn't agree more. I spend days fixing user-caused problems because they believe they have the right to do whatever they want. They have to have admin rights - a nightmare for me - in order for some thrid party proprietary software to run. When they garbage that machine up and whine in their sales meeting that they can't do their job because they're too busy infecting their machine with garbage porn files, it fall to me to fix it. I call bull.
My job is not to continually bail out the user and recover their data; it is to keep things running as best as possible on a non-existent budget, keeping failing servers running and making sure I've got enough test vmware setups as my fallback - that way the whole company can still operate, even if management won't spend money.
Software vendors tell me "there's no fix" for a problem, users think that every program is compatible with their OS and other software, and expect ME to make it all work. You lost your data during reinstallation #9? Gee, I don't know if those network drives are throwing you off, but it acts as a repository for your data - either on the general network or your personal folder. Seeing as I have 200 users to support in two states, I'm not sympathetic to end users "getting the job done" when it causes me headache. Seeing as how my primary responsibility isn't to correct user stupidity 24x7, I would suggest that if they have a better way, they approach me with it. If I don't agreee, they are free to go to management. If I think it is sound and management doesn't agree, then I tell them to pester management for it and show them why it's valid. If it still gets shot down, then that's unfortunate, I sympathize, but letting users circumvent the system, software, and process is equally a disaster.
True enough. I had purchased an upconvert after getting a plasma TV and the picture was still terrible; the HD-DVD player made an excellent upconvert for regular DVDs to that TV and I couldn't be happier. No, it doesn't boot as fast, but I'll put up with that in turn for an excellent picture on the TV at a fraction of the cost (2nd gen Toshiba HD-DVD players boot faster than the first gen).
Funny, I have Vista on a tablet pc and I'm forced to open up a window to equalize the sucking. Audio playback is poor and crackles at regular intervals; drivers don't work properly, battery life with power settings set to max the battery only yield about an hour on a 2 month old extended battery, it's incapable of identifying wireless networks with the correct name, have to back-door the vpn to get it to stay connected - the list is long. I don't have those issues with the XP tablet (or anything else XP), but have a consistent stream of problems with the Vista machines. My feverent hope is Vita goes the same route as Windows ME.
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It's bad PR, yes, but when you're the only game in town, you can get away with it. It's ingenious in the fact that they know it will take years to resolve the issues at hand (are Jane/John Doe suits legal, is $3000 in damages per song "reasonable," if they don't verify the validity of the shared files, is it infringement, is sharing actual infringement, etc). By the time there is enough case law on the books to answer those questions, they'll have changed tactics.
The system isn't set up so that some bully can take advantage; that's one of the key issues with this sort of litigation - the RIAA is abusing the legal process to the point of quasi-legal extortion, all the while lobbying Congress for changes to the laws that will only protect RIAA (and MPAA) interests. They're not stupid - it's quite ingenious. They play the odds that people will settle and had it not been for something so egregious as the Anderson case, she'd be just another statistic. Being realistic, what has she won? The ability to pay legal bills for being wrongly sued, and will hopefully have the opportunity to have her day in court. That is how the system is designed. Now if you want to argue right versus wrong with regard to the RIAA's tactics, that's a different story.
No one wants to admit there is an inherent flaw in their design no less expend the resources on fixing it if they don't have to. It's the Ford Pinto anology - we'd rather pay out the lawsuits for the deaths as opposed to what it would cost to correct the problem. If a handful of people hack their cards, they're willing to lose that revenue as opposed to fixing the problem. Making it public forces their hand and a third party doing it should help push them to fix it. If they find their own flaw, corporate greed kicks in - why fix it if only they know about it??
How about "Fair & Balanced malware"....
Twice.
Wow. Certainly on the ball. Any company that charges users for iphone touch software upgrades - twice - certainly gets my vote.
You had it easy. Back in my day, trolls had to use bridges.
Oh c'mon!! how could you mod that as "Troll"? That was damn funny!
I don't understand how you can say that - if the universe is in a constant (albeit slow) state of change, and buying the theory that the universe is endless, I don't see how there couldn't be life in some form (not necessarily as we know it) in existence elsewhere. Scientific theroy isn't icon-clad - it stays a valid theory until something comes along that invalidates it. While probably unlikely that you're going to find the remnants of some ancient form of life on Mars, water is an essential building block for the existence of life (again, as we currently know it). What if the orbit of Mars was similar to that of earth at one time, and Mars was exposed to a similar set of circumstances that brought the process of life to earth (going from the scientific approach, not the opposing biblical version)? Would not the discovery mean something then? Better yet, what if the discovery of water there invalidates some long-standing scientific theory? Could it not then force some new way of thinking?
Sadly, it makes you someone who watches wwwwaaayyyy to much Fox TV.
Nevertheless, it was disclosed by the ISP - at what point do you stop holding consumers responsible for not bothering to read and hold companies liable for burying the details? 5,000 words is going to be 9-10 pages.
I couldn't agree more. I spend days fixing user-caused problems because they believe they have the right to do whatever they want. They have to have admin rights - a nightmare for me - in order for some thrid party proprietary software to run. When they garbage that machine up and whine in their sales meeting that they can't do their job because they're too busy infecting their machine with garbage porn files, it fall to me to fix it. I call bull. My job is not to continually bail out the user and recover their data; it is to keep things running as best as possible on a non-existent budget, keeping failing servers running and making sure I've got enough test vmware setups as my fallback - that way the whole company can still operate, even if management won't spend money. Software vendors tell me "there's no fix" for a problem, users think that every program is compatible with their OS and other software, and expect ME to make it all work. You lost your data during reinstallation #9? Gee, I don't know if those network drives are throwing you off, but it acts as a repository for your data - either on the general network or your personal folder. Seeing as I have 200 users to support in two states, I'm not sympathetic to end users "getting the job done" when it causes me headache. Seeing as how my primary responsibility isn't to correct user stupidity 24x7, I would suggest that if they have a better way, they approach me with it. If I don't agreee, they are free to go to management. If I think it is sound and management doesn't agree, then I tell them to pester management for it and show them why it's valid. If it still gets shot down, then that's unfortunate, I sympathize, but letting users circumvent the system, software, and process is equally a disaster.
True enough. I had purchased an upconvert after getting a plasma TV and the picture was still terrible; the HD-DVD player made an excellent upconvert for regular DVDs to that TV and I couldn't be happier. No, it doesn't boot as fast, but I'll put up with that in turn for an excellent picture on the TV at a fraction of the cost (2nd gen Toshiba HD-DVD players boot faster than the first gen).
Funny, I have Vista on a tablet pc and I'm forced to open up a window to equalize the sucking. Audio playback is poor and crackles at regular intervals; drivers don't work properly, battery life with power settings set to max the battery only yield about an hour on a 2 month old extended battery, it's incapable of identifying wireless networks with the correct name, have to back-door the vpn to get it to stay connected - the list is long. I don't have those issues with the XP tablet (or anything else XP), but have a consistent stream of problems with the Vista machines. My feverent hope is Vita goes the same route as Windows ME.