The MP3's are only traded after the band gets popular. In the majority of cases, the effect would range from minimal to non-existant.
In fact, I'd argue that because people are exposed to the music for free, there's a great chance someone will like it and buy it.
Imagine the effect if the RIAA put low quality (128kb) MP3's of new bands on the P2P network with a brief commercial at the end that says "Buy the new album from the band today at a record store near you".
If they did it today, it would be so novel, that the band would skyrocket to #1 and they'd make their money back times 100.
But I guess the corporate culture at these record companies doesn't reward risk taking.
If you have a business where you essentially own System V; where in fact, the only thing you have of value is System V, and you release Unix-like code under GPL, it seems to me you'd better understand what you're releasing!
What I mean is that the GPL in this case had the possibility of unique harm to SCO (a 1st year legal student could see that), and yet they (a) encouraged their own employees to work on a GPL project (b) released a version of the GPL OS themselves.
It seems a bit disingenuous to say "I am an operating system company, but I didn't know what I was releasing".
They're either stupid or lying. In either case, it appears to be that they lost their unique ability to distribute the moment they distributed Linux.
How can an Operating System company claim ignorance of the copyright within an operating system they sold? Its inexplicable. It goes beyond the boundary of veracity. Or, like I said earlier, they're a bunch of yahoo's that have no idea of what they're doing.
"mostly audiophile gear is a jerk-off session of wannabee music expert wealthy bast^H^H^H^H guys who can afford to spend large anounts of money on equipment"
And this differs from computer hardware discussions how?
How do you think Tom's Hardware looks to most people?
What I meant was a vinyl LP can sound fantastic, but you can't copy it perfectly. Any copy of an LP is by definition inferior because it has to go through a complex string of converting mechanical motion to analog audio.
They only tested up to 128kb in that link. Nobody who cares about their music does less than 192kb.
My point wasn't really about MP3 versus WMA at 128KB I maintain they're both bad at that bit rate, and that's my point. The music offered is at too low a quality to interest me, even if it was in a completely unemcumbered format.
In my opinion, by offering these at low bit rates, they're (the record companies) offering the equivalent of the old vinyl LP... something that has a fair amount of audio loss associated with it, so that even if the DRM is illegally removed, they don't care because you don't have a high-quality copy of the original.
But since they've priced this at 2/3's the price of the CD, I guess you'd expect you're getting less quality.
And if you're the kind of people who don't really care much about sonic quality, this is no worse than a juke box, I suppose.
These are 128kb WMA files. Hardly CD Quality; in fact if you put these on a scale where on one end is FM radio and the other is CD Audio, these are probably closer to FM radio than CD.
I mean, what's up with these low bit rates? Do people really think this stuff sounds good?
http://regionalweb.texoma.net/cr/VEEKbrief.html
on
Open Source Law
·
· Score: 1
http://regionalweb.texoma.net/cr/VEEKbrief.html#Ot her
Taken from Ohio's Amicus briefs (I hope I have that right).
Here's an interesting quote
on
Open Source Law
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
"The Primary Purpose of Copyright Law is not to Provide a Benefit to Authors, But to Provide the Public With Access to Authors' Works."
I've never heard anyone claim there is a morality to copyright. Its my understanding that copyright is a business proposition to encourage artists to produce more stuff, not a indication of ownership.
Ideas can't be owned; they can simply be monopolized to a certain extent by government fiat. But that hardly constitutes a moral imperative.
Let me put it another way.
As a consumer, I can listen to the radio. I can tape songs off the radio. I can take that tape and burn it to a CD. That's apparently okay. But if I add "Internet" in that chain of events, then its not okay, even though the end result is the same.
Most of the mainstream press, HW and SW companies buys into the not-proven theory that strong copy protection and content protection is necessary to encourage content vendors to release their "stuff" into the PC world.
I think the theory is well-known enough that its not worth re-hashing. But I have to point out that a cornerstone of this view is that the content creator gets to control exactly how content is used. If they don't want you to copy it to your MP3 player, then you can't.
Let me take the opposite view: as long as copy protection is in place, particularly copy control, innovation in hardware is going to be limited, because its no use building hardware that can quickly copy hours of content to some new storage if its illegal to build such a device.
If music/video/books/other entertainment was available without control, hardware sales would skyrocket because consumers would have a new capability they would actually want and use.
Instead, we're getting the same HW for the past 10 years with little in the way of new capability, just faster stuff, and marginally improved MS OS.
HW & SW companies have neutered their product and limited innovation and now they're paying the price.
"They've essentially validated the need for the DMCA. "
This is a non-sequiteur.
If I buy a piece of hardware, its not my responsibility to validate that vendor's business model, particularly since you haven't signed an agreement with the vendor agreeing to support that business model.
"Microsoft sells XBOX at a loss"
Maybe. Maybe not. I frankly don't care. They are competitive in selling price with other game consoles; it isn't my job to make sure their cost of manufacture is in line with the price of sale.
So I get my XBOX home, I hack it, or a friend hacks it. But it now functions in a way that Microsoft doesn't like.
Maybe. Maybe not. I frankly don't care. I bought it, its mine. I can use it to play games, I can use it as a skeet target, I can use it to prop open the basement door. Hell, I might even use Linux on it. If Microsoft will let me smash it with a hammer, if they'll let me use it to prop up my book shelf, but they won't let me use it to use Linux, I'd say MS is being pretty particular on how they want *MY* equipment to be used.
Just because Microsoft wants you to do something, why are you obligated to do it that way? I don't see the logical connection between the two. If Microsoft is willing to give me some benefit for restricting my use of the XBOX, they probably should have made me agree to it before I bought it.
I'm thinking of video editing where you need to change the exposure. That takes serious processor power.
Just cutting and pasting video, you're right. But when you get more processor power, there are a lot more things you can do (special effects, blending, convert to and from various formats).
My point isn't really about video editing as such; the point is that we aren't "done" in the CPU department.
Yes. To do any sorts of useful video editing, you need fast machines; in fact, I'd argue that 3ghz is the minimum you need.
Computer speed has historically been turned into new, useful applications; applications that can't even be considered until computers are fast enough.
Consider MP3; it could have been implemented 20 years before it became big; the theory of lossy compression was understood by researchers, but it wasn't terribly practical until faster computers appeared.
And this is on down the line... think about as I mentioned before... video editing, real-time video effects in games, speech recognition, pattern recognition; each needs more and faster processor power.
I'll grant you, if you want to do email and browse the web, then you're in luck: a 450mhz PII will suit you nicely, and a wonderful machine can be purchased for under $200 for that purpose. But that's pretty myopic; people want faster computers not to read email faster, but because they want to run new applications that are only possible with faster computers.
So I'd argue there is a significant problem if the world's CPU and chipmakers will only produce "trusted" versions of their product.
I bought an X Box for my 8 year old son 18 months ago.
I didn't agree to any EULA when I bought it. He opened it for Xmas and started playing games.
Honestly, I never heard of any EULA. How can I be bound by something I never agreed to? Did my Son agree to a EULA? I don't think so, it never asked him "Do you agree, blah blah blah". And even if it did, how could a court hold an 8 year old to a contract that (a) He didn't understand (b) More importantly, he's not an adult.
I don't believe I'm bound to any EULA. In fact, looking at the box right now, there's no EULA on the outside. So what EULA do you mean? There is none as far as I can see.
"if a regulation like this one would exist, you could have the right to get you side of the story on the same site too."
How would you possibly enforce this? Perhaps NY TImes would have a "response section", but smaller web sites.
Maybe the laws says they'd have to publish your response, but what if they didn't? You'd have to take them to court again.
So how does passing another law help here? I just don't see it as anything other than a misguided attempt at thwarting free speech by mandating *fair* speech.
When you buy SCO Unix (ha!) or AIX, or MS Windows, or anything, how do you know, as a customer, that its unemcumbered by patents?
As a developer, when you write a bubble sort, how do you know someone hasn't patented the idea?
As a company, given the vague nature of software patents ("A method to do ecommerce using a single button on a web page..."), and also given that developers don't necessary explicitly say what methods they're using. So a search is not reasonably possible.
Finally, even if you buy into the idea of software patents, how would you know if MS had infringed? Unless you have access to the source code, you have no idea. And last I check, MS doesn't readily hand out source code to make sure they're not violating any software patents.
In points out the fallacy of software patents, it highlights the stupidity of granting them, and it shows why all software patents are unenforceable, *except* against open source software.
Software patents must be eliminated: they serve no purpose except as litigation tools for large companies.
"It would drastically increase the weight of the plane to make the passenger cabin (and any part of the plane accessable from the cabin) into a jail. "
You don't really need to make it into a jail; you just need to make it strong enough so that an attempt to breech security will likely result in a serious failure to the aircraft. "Yes, I blew off the security door, unfortunately the front of the plane fell off as well. Oh well"
"There are more places than just the cockpit you don't want hijackers going."
Yes, but the idea isn't to prevent any possible attack, just attacks that have a chance of controlling the airplane.
The BBC World Service, Deutsche Welles and a host of other national services give a good world opinion on the state of affairs, which seems to contrast with local news during periods of heightened global tension.
Its also fun to listen to the angry broadcasts of small angry countries like Cuba and NK, although the hey-dey for this kind of rhetoric was the cold war.
Now whether or not a PC is the most effective way to listen to shortwave is debatable, but the value of shortwave is not. For $250-300 you can get an excellent portable shortwave radio that will entertain you far longer than the latest hot video card.
"A person should be free to encrypt data, but not a company? "
I think the objection is not that companies encrypt data as part of DRM, its that the law prohibits you from decrypting without authorization from the owner with DRM.
Protection, it seems, that is not available to individuals using encryption.
Slashdot Mirror
The MP3's are only traded after the band gets popular. In the majority of cases, the effect would range from minimal to non-existant.
In fact, I'd argue that because people are exposed to the music for free, there's a great chance someone will like it and buy it.
Imagine the effect if the RIAA put low quality (128kb) MP3's of new bands on the P2P network with a brief commercial at the end that says "Buy the new album from the band today at a record store near you".
If they did it today, it would be so novel, that the band would skyrocket to #1 and they'd make their money back times 100.
But I guess the corporate culture at these record companies doesn't reward risk taking.
Too bad.
If you have a business where you essentially own System V; where in fact, the only thing you have of value is System V, and you release Unix-like code under GPL, it seems to me you'd better understand what you're releasing!
What I mean is that the GPL in this case had the possibility of unique harm to SCO (a 1st year legal student could see that), and yet they (a) encouraged their own employees to work on a GPL project (b) released a version of the GPL OS themselves.
It seems a bit disingenuous to say "I am an operating system company, but I didn't know what I was releasing".
They're either stupid or lying. In either case, it appears to be that they lost their unique ability to distribute the moment they distributed Linux.
How can an Operating System company claim ignorance of the copyright within an operating system they sold? Its inexplicable. It goes beyond the boundary of veracity. Or, like I said earlier, they're a bunch of yahoo's that have no idea of what they're doing.
"mostly audiophile gear is a jerk-off session of wannabee music expert wealthy bast^H^H^H^H guys who can afford to spend large anounts of money on equipment"
And this differs from computer hardware discussions how?
How do you think Tom's Hardware looks to most people?
The trouble is, the RIAA doesn't define what is illegal; what they can do is allege an infringement and ask it to be tried before court.
That's the way its done in a system of laws, anyway.
And anyway, is copyright enforcement more important than presumed innocence? Personally, I don't think that is even a close contest.
The trouble with an analogy is its never exact.
What I meant was a vinyl LP can sound fantastic, but you can't copy it perfectly. Any copy of an LP is by definition inferior because it has to go through a complex string of converting mechanical motion to analog audio.
They only tested up to 128kb in that link. Nobody who cares about their music does less than 192kb.
My point wasn't really about MP3 versus WMA at 128KB I maintain they're both bad at that bit rate, and that's my point. The music offered is at too low a quality to interest me, even if it was in a completely unemcumbered format.
In my opinion, by offering these at low bit rates, they're (the record companies) offering the equivalent of the old vinyl LP... something that has a fair amount of audio loss associated with it, so that even if the DRM is illegally removed, they don't care because you don't have a high-quality copy of the original.
But since they've priced this at 2/3's the price of the CD, I guess you'd expect you're getting less quality.
And if you're the kind of people who don't really care much about sonic quality, this is no worse than a juke box, I suppose.
These are 128kb WMA files. Hardly CD Quality; in fact if you put these on a scale where on one end is FM radio and the other is CD Audio, these are probably closer to FM radio than CD.
I mean, what's up with these low bit rates? Do people really think this stuff sounds good?
http://regionalweb.texoma.net/cr/VEEKbrief.html#Ot her
Taken from Ohio's Amicus briefs (I hope I have that right).
"The Primary Purpose of Copyright Law is not to Provide a Benefit to Authors, But to Provide the Public With Access to Authors' Works."
Fascinating, isn't it?
I've never heard anyone claim there is a morality to copyright. Its my understanding that copyright is a business proposition to encourage artists to produce more stuff, not a indication of ownership.
Ideas can't be owned; they can simply be monopolized to a certain extent by government fiat. But that hardly constitutes a moral imperative.
Let me put it another way.
As a consumer, I can listen to the radio. I can tape songs off the radio. I can take that tape and burn it to a CD. That's apparently okay. But if I add "Internet" in that chain of events, then its not okay, even though the end result is the same.
My experience with BSD/OS has been extraordinarily good.
I set up a pair of mail servers based on BSD/OS back in '98 on a pair of PII-300's for a major corporation.
Mail volume increased by at least an order of magnitude, and still the machines never crashed.
They were only replaced a few months ago, when the volume of spam simply overwhelmed the perl scripts I wrote to filter mail.
I hope BSDI finds a niche.
Most of the mainstream press, HW and SW companies buys into the not-proven theory that strong copy protection and content protection is necessary to encourage content vendors to release their "stuff" into the PC world.
I think the theory is well-known enough that its not worth re-hashing. But I have to point out that a cornerstone of this view is that the content creator gets to control exactly how content is used. If they don't want you to copy it to your MP3 player, then you can't.
Let me take the opposite view: as long as copy protection is in place, particularly copy control, innovation in hardware is going to be limited, because its no use building hardware that can quickly copy hours of content to some new storage if its illegal to build such a device.
If music/video/books/other entertainment was available without control, hardware sales would skyrocket because consumers would have a new capability they would actually want and use.
Instead, we're getting the same HW for the past 10 years with little in the way of new capability, just faster stuff, and marginally improved MS OS.
HW & SW companies have neutered their product and limited innovation and now they're paying the price.
"They've essentially validated the need for the DMCA. "
This is a non-sequiteur.
If I buy a piece of hardware, its not my responsibility to validate that vendor's business model, particularly since you haven't signed an agreement with the vendor agreeing to support that business model.
"Microsoft sells XBOX at a loss"
Maybe. Maybe not. I frankly don't care. They are competitive in selling price with other game consoles; it isn't my job to make sure their cost of manufacture is in line with the price of sale.
So I get my XBOX home, I hack it, or a friend hacks it. But it now functions in a way that Microsoft doesn't like.
Maybe. Maybe not. I frankly don't care. I bought it, its mine. I can use it to play games, I can use it as a skeet target, I can use it to prop open the basement door. Hell, I might even use Linux on it. If Microsoft will let me smash it with a hammer, if they'll let me use it to prop up my book shelf, but they won't let me use it to use Linux, I'd say MS is being pretty particular on how they want *MY* equipment to be used.
Just because Microsoft wants you to do something, why are you obligated to do it that way? I don't see the logical connection between the two. If Microsoft is willing to give me some benefit for restricting my use of the XBOX, they probably should have made me agree to it before I bought it.
I'm thinking of video editing where you need to change the exposure. That takes serious processor power.
Just cutting and pasting video, you're right. But when you get more processor power, there are a lot more things you can do (special effects, blending, convert to and from various formats).
My point isn't really about video editing as such; the point is that we aren't "done" in the CPU department.
"I mean, do we REALLY need 3GHz machines? "
Yes. To do any sorts of useful video editing, you need fast machines; in fact, I'd argue that 3ghz is the minimum you need.
Computer speed has historically been turned into new, useful applications; applications that can't even be considered until computers are fast enough.
Consider MP3; it could have been implemented 20 years before it became big; the theory of lossy compression was understood by researchers, but it wasn't terribly practical until faster computers appeared.
And this is on down the line... think about as I mentioned before... video editing, real-time video effects in games, speech recognition, pattern recognition; each needs more and faster processor power.
I'll grant you, if you want to do email and browse the web, then you're in luck: a 450mhz PII will suit you nicely, and a wonderful machine can be purchased for under $200 for that purpose. But that's pretty myopic; people want faster computers not to read email faster, but because they want to run new applications that are only possible with faster computers.
So I'd argue there is a significant problem if the world's CPU and chipmakers will only produce "trusted" versions of their product.
I bought an X Box for my 8 year old son 18 months ago.
I didn't agree to any EULA when I bought it. He opened it for Xmas and started playing games.
Honestly, I never heard of any EULA. How can I be bound by something I never agreed to? Did my Son agree to a EULA? I don't think so, it never asked him "Do you agree, blah blah blah". And even if it did, how could a court hold an 8 year old to a contract that (a) He didn't understand (b) More importantly, he's not an adult.
I don't believe I'm bound to any EULA. In fact, looking at the box right now, there's no EULA on the outside. So what EULA do you mean? There is none as far as I can see.
" You don't want to provide for your kids after you die? "
What does that have to do with furthing arts and sciences?
"This encourages people to do this, adding to the culture and technological prowess of our nation."
So having longer copyright terms encourages artists like Elvis to produce more music?
Perhaps we should limit copyrights to 17 years? Maybe 17 years is enough?
"if a regulation like this one would exist, you could have the right to get you side of the story on the same site too."
How would you possibly enforce this? Perhaps NY TImes would have a "response section", but smaller web sites.
Maybe the laws says they'd have to publish your response, but what if they didn't? You'd have to take them to court again.
So how does passing another law help here? I just don't see it as anything other than a misguided attempt at thwarting free speech by mandating *fair* speech.
When you buy SCO Unix (ha!) or AIX, or MS Windows, or anything, how do you know, as a customer, that its unemcumbered by patents?
As a developer, when you write a bubble sort, how do you know someone hasn't patented the idea?
As a company, given the vague nature of software patents ("A method to do ecommerce using a single button on a web page..."), and also given that developers don't necessary explicitly say what methods they're using. So a search is not reasonably possible.
Finally, even if you buy into the idea of software patents, how would you know if MS had infringed? Unless you have access to the source code, you have no idea. And last I check, MS doesn't readily hand out source code to make sure they're not violating any software patents.
In points out the fallacy of software patents, it highlights the stupidity of granting them, and it shows why all software patents are unenforceable, *except* against open source software.
Software patents must be eliminated: they serve no purpose except as litigation tools for large companies.
The quality of the MP3's is no where close to FM radio.
It sounds like, well, like shortwave.
"It would drastically increase the weight of the plane to make the passenger cabin (and any part of the plane accessable from the cabin) into a jail. "
You don't really need to make it into a jail; you just need to make it strong enough so that an attempt to breech security will likely result in a serious failure to the aircraft. "Yes, I blew off the security door, unfortunately the front of the plane fell off as well. Oh well"
"There are more places than just the cockpit you don't want hijackers going."
Yes, but the idea isn't to prevent any possible attack, just attacks that have a chance of controlling the airplane.
Primarily because its inexpensive and effective.
The BBC World Service, Deutsche Welles and a host of other national services give a good world opinion on the state of affairs, which seems to contrast with local news during periods of heightened global tension.
Its also fun to listen to the angry broadcasts of small angry countries like Cuba and NK, although the hey-dey for this kind of rhetoric was the cold war.
Now whether or not a PC is the most effective way to listen to shortwave is debatable, but the value of shortwave is not. For $250-300 you can get an excellent portable shortwave radio that will entertain you far longer than the latest hot video card.
"A person should be free to encrypt data, but not a company? "
I think the objection is not that companies encrypt data as part of DRM, its that the law prohibits you from decrypting without authorization from the owner with DRM.
Protection, it seems, that is not available to individuals using encryption.