No unamplified instrument, except maybe a pipe organ or the cannon in the 1812 Overture, have more than 16 bits of dynamic range.
Maybe not a single instrument, but in a whole composition it's pretty easy to go over 16 accurate bits of dynamic range, since the LSBs are fairly inaccurate, which is especially noticable when the overall volume of the signal is low.
I ripped the blueray and made a little program to play small parts of the movie 2 times, 1 using TrueHD and one using Compressed Dolby Digital (640kbps), randomly switching which soundtrack it played first.
640Kbps AC-3 does strain a bit on "busy" soundtracks, so it's not surprising that you noticed a difference.
I've done a similar comparison with lossles vs. 1.5Mbps DTS, and the results are much less definitive. I couldn't tell which was which enough extra times to say it wasn't just random luck.
Somewhat unrelated, I also will sometimes re-encode DTS-HD Master Audio using a lower core bitrate to see if I can get the overall file size smaller. Basically, the audio on the disc uses 1.5Mbps as the core so that you get the best quality if you can't decode the lossless. But, if you are decoding the lossless, a smaller core doesn't change the quality, but can save you quite a bit of disk space.
And while my midrange hearing may not be the greatest I'm picky as hell when it comes to low end and that is usually the first thing that goes when you compress but standard 44.1k?
Low frequency sounds are the easiest to sample accurately, as even a 22Khz sampling rate would have no problem with audio up to 2KHz (which arguably starts to hit "midrange"). For most midrange down to low bass, even 44KHz is way overkill. It's not until you hit sounds at 10KHz and above that you begin to have issues with a 44KHz sampling rate.
The closest I can get to describing it is this and sorry if you aren't a musician but they'll know of which I speak...you know how you have that great old tube amp for the guitar and it has that nice warm fat feel to it? Notice how the same amp when modeled digitally doesn't doesn't quite have the warmth?
The reason for this is that it's hard to capture distortion accurately.
That "warm sound" is a result of the inacurracies of the tube amp. You may like it better (and that's just fine), but it is does not accurately reproduce the original signal. For me, it's really no different than the current "loudness war" where re-mastered releases are much louder. Many of today's listeners like that sound beter, but it isn't accurate.
Making merchants deal with 50 different tax codes is onerous.
I dare say that's exactly the point. Why do you think brick-and-mortars are so happy about it?
Because they're stupid?
Amazon is supporting this bill because of their new "same-day delivery" that is being rolled out. It requires them to have a presence in every state, so they'd have to collect sales tax anyway. This bill would put all other online stores at the same disadvantage of having to collect taxes, but without the advantage of actually having a point of presence in every state.
If this bill passes, it will give Amazon another reason to accelerate the roll out, and eliminate the one advantage that B&M stores currently have.
And that same marketing help you to get information about competing products
All you need to learn about "competing products" is simple spec sheets. I wouldn't buy something like a car using just that data, but it would allow me to narrow my focus to the ones that fit my needs. But, I would buy a hard drive or a bag of potato chips that way. In both these cases, other user reviews would be enough to let me know if the relatively small cost was worth the "risk" of the item not being acceptable.
This is one of the largest problems with advertising, where small ticket items (candy bars, soda, etc.) shouldn't be advertised at all after they have been established for a while. At that point, the cost of entry is so low and enough user reviews exist that the marginal buyers cost a fortune compared to the expected profit. I can somewhat understand big ticket items having more advertising, but it's still far too much per marginal user. Just like politics, where people might never vote outside their party, there is a percentage of people who will never purchase certain brands of big-ticket items, and no advertising will change that. Likewise, some people will never buy anything but one brand. You mostly see this with cars, but appliances and tools are other areas where this sort of brand loyalty/hatred arise.
As to needing to power-cycle the unit, maybe there's a newer firmware that my unit was loaded with, but I have never had this issue myself. I actually run all my consoles through a component AV switch that goes into the PVR and into a single component input on the TV, so I can record any console by changing the switch. The unit is on all the time (just not recording) and if it crapped out regularly, I would lose my signal while playing normally.
I, too, pass all my component video through the Hauppauge, and it will pass through video with no issue, but if I start to record using the included Windows software, the recording skips and stutters, or won't lock on at all.
This is because although the pass-through requires the unit to be powered on, there is no processing done on it, and the recording is taken from a split of this feed.
I second the Hauppauge HD PVR as pretty awesome as a PVR.
I also own a Hauppauge and use it to capture off my DirecTV DVR, but there are issues that need to be addressed.
If you use optical digital audio input, then it better be 100% perfect with no glitches. If not, there will also be video glitches. Analog audio does not have this problem, but can only support 2 channels.
The Hauppauge is not a "set it and forget it" device, at least not with the software that is included. The hardware needs to be power-cycled at least once a week because it stops responding. Perhaps MythTV or some other software would do a better job, but I suspect that anything Windows based will have the same issues as it is likely the drivers that are at fault.
ZFS is copy-on-write, ie. it is not a journaled filesystem. It is transaction-based and atomic; it does not traverse an inconsistent state because it does not overwrite the data during a write.
What happens when the disk is full?
In other filesystems, I can change the contents of a sector on a full disk, but I can't do anything that requires allocating more space. It would appear that this is not possible with ZFS. Note that it's not possible to solve this problem by saying "the write takes place to a disk that can never be full" (such as the cache disk you mentioned before).
Likewise, how does it update file system metadata and actual file data in an atomic manner? Unless those are stored on the same sector, then even gathering them up into a single multiple-sector write operation is not atomic, as the first sector can be written, and then failure happens.
Although there are many ways to make the chance of inconsistent data be extremely rare, even if hardware tells the truth and doesn't return from a write request until it is really written, there is no way to completely eliminate it. All you can do is layer the error detection/correction methods, use sound algorithms, and hope that nothing ever happens that you didn't forsee.
I hate disagreeing with someone who appears to agree with my overall conclusion, but you're making their problem out to be harder than it really is.
I was mostly responding to your "not that it can't be done" bit.
I definitely agree that nothing like this is going to be done (ever, likely), but it's what would have to be done to prove infringement in a lawsuit where the defendant had a moderately competent lawyer.
Still, if I do get enough "alerts" that I can actually raise a challenge (unlikely, but maybe they'll make that many mistakes), the first thing I do at the hearing is ask to see the actual bits that my IP uploaded to them, and since it would be the 5th "strike", I'd want to see the bits from all of them. Then, I'd want to open those bits with Windows Media Player and see if they play anything recognizable. These don't seem like unreasonable requests to me for this sort of a "hearing". I wouldn't go full on with all the things I said in my previous post, though, since I suspect at this point the abitrators would have just said that none of this matters, as it is assumed that the accusation is correct. At that point, I would point out that there is then no way for me to prove anything if all my evidence assumed to be lies while the MarkMonitor evidence is assumed to be accurate.
Haha, fair enough. I suppose my rejoinder would be that with RAID-Z my data on the array is never in an inconsistent state while writing, so I don't have to worry about obtaining a battery-backed cache or a UPS and then ensuring the batteries are still good after a few years.
At some point, the data on any writable disk is inconsistent, even with a journal system. It may not be irrecoverably inconsistent, but data can be lost, simply because data that hasn't been written to disk yet can't be if power is lost. This is where battery-backed cache can help, as the OS thinks it has been written, but it hasn't yet.
Also note that I misspoke, because the Adaptec 5805Z that I have uses a capacitor, not a battery. This, along with the flash, essentially means that it's a zero-maintenance system for far longer than the useful life of the card. The flash only gets written when power is removed and has 800% over-provisioning, so there's not much worry about write-endurance.
As for a UPS, it's worth it just to avoid other hardware issues that can happen when bad power hits the computer. The CyberPower UPS I use has a three-year warranty that includes the batteries failing to hold a charge. The batteries are about 25% (at wholesale) of the cost of the UPS, so they wouldn't want to pay out on too many of those.
if you don't agree with copyright law, then we don't have much more to talk about here do we?
Copyright law has been written by the same companies that couldn't come up with a business model that worked as times changed. This is the whole issue. In addition, much of newest parts of copyright law benefit only large companies. For example, an individual copyright holder doesn't gain much from the "non-circumvention" laws.
If other companies had refused to adjust to changing times and instead bribed elected officials to continue their outdated business models, we'd still have to have a person waving a red flag walking in front of every automobile, just so that the people who made horse carriages would still be able to sell their products.
I might have some sympathy for the big media companies if they were more than a drop in the bucket of our nation's economy, but at less than 1% for all entertainment (not just them), they could completely disappear and it wouldn't be noticed. Meanwhile, the laws they have had enacted have cost the US millions in wasted work (Google has probably spent as much on trying to keep the entertainment industry happy as the entertainment industry makes).
Anyway, my point is that RAID-5 isn't the level of data integrity assurance it once was, even ignoring the RAID-5 write hole risk that is inherent to the RAID-5 and RAID-6 concept.
With battery-backed cache, you don't really need to worry about this. With battery-backed cache that dumps to flash (what I use), you really don't need to worry about this.
if you are selling widgets, and i keep breaking into your garage every night and stealing them
As soon as you bring up the straw man where the equivalent has the copyright holder deprived of the use of the original work, you get ignored by everyone.
Come up with a real world example (like you making copies of my widget in your garage and handing them out for free), and then show why it isn't a problem with my business model that I can't compete with your free copies, and then we can talk.
Similarly, we have no reason to suspect Six Strikes' detection and identification tech is accurate. It might be, it's just that nothing leads us to that conclusion except faith. And it's not that it can't be done (within certain limitations); it's that we have past records (anyone remember the RIAA lawsuits?) of it being done by totally incompetent people, who went to work for the "MAFIAA" because that was the only job they could get.
We have evidence that the same company using the same methodology makes a lot of mistakes (the laser printers, the takedown notice of the game mods as NBC programs, etc.), so I'd say that lack of accuracy is a given.
Likewise, although I can think of a way that might work, I don't think that it can be done economically, especially with "six strikes", which should delay lawsuits at least a bit. To really prove that somebody uploaded, you'd need to have them upload to you enough data to prove that you really infringed. At a minimum, it would have to be more than what would generally be considered fair use, so that might be 1-2 minutes of a TV show, and more of a song than you can get from places like Amazon as a "sample". This would be the rock bottom minimum, though, as you don't want a defense of "fair use" to be viable in most cases.
Then, you'd have to keep that data segregated from all other data uploaded to you. So, you can't just keep the copy of the file you got from the torrent and pointers into it that show what was supposedly uploaded by each different IP. You need actual copies of the data. You could de-duplicate, but at the file system
level, it has to look like it's different files, so things like symlinks won't cut it. And, you shouldn't keep the same part of the file for every uploader, or else that could also be questioned by any decent attorney.
The tricky part is you have to keep all this data until you have finished all legal actions for which that data is evidence. Which means that even if you either conclude a lawsuit or never choose to file, you can't get rid of the data from that torrent until you are done with all legal actions for that torrent. Which basically means you have to keep all the data forever.
Keeping just 2% of every torrent for each uploader would mean you might have 10 copies of every torrent that is material on which you hold copyright (assuming 500 uploaders, which isn't a bad assumption based on the John Doe copyright lawsuits we have seen). Without deduplication, that's a lot more data storage than these copyright holders want to pay for.
Downloading is reproduction: the downloader fixes the work into a new copy on his end (usually a hard drive). Uploading is treated as distribution (although technically it doesn't quite fit): the uploader distributes the work to the downloader, who as mentioned, fixes it into a copy.
In copyright infringement, there is almost always a single act that is the actual infringement. Although there may be judge's rulings that say what you claim, any decent analysis of process would show that the downloading itself cannot be infringing, any more than recording a song from the radio or buying a bootleg DVD is infringing.
For example, if a radio station played a song they had no right to play (thus commiting copyright infringement in the form of "public performance"), the holder of copyright on that song cannot successfully sue anyone who recorded the song from the radio broadcast. In the same way, the person selling bootleg DVDs might not even be guilty of infringement, if they did not know the DVDs were not legitimate, but the person buying the disc is never guilty of infringement, even if they know the disc is a bootleg.
The problem is that most judges don't understand the mechanics of digital data transmission, so they don't understand that creating a copy in RAM or on my disc is never infringement, even though an "extra" copy now exists. Infringement only occurs when the source of that copy doesn't hold enough rights on the material to be allowed to create the copy that ends up in my RAM or on my disc. In that case, they are then guilty of infringement. Otherwise, any website would have an open and shut case against every one of their visitors for infringement.
So what we have here is "guilty until paid innocent" with a system that allows anybody to declare you guilty and you have to break out your wallet to even be heard at all.
Although your sentiment is accurate, and there's going to be lots of mistakes, the reality is that only companies that sign up MarkMonitor can result in an "alert" through this system.
In many ways, this is worse, because it means if you are not large but do have copyrights you want to enforce, you won't be able to use this system to do it. Instead, you'll have do like everyone else and file lawsuits.
with file sharing, there isn't 1 or 2, or even 100 people to go after. there are hundreds of thousands. they can't afford to sue all those people. in most cases they won't even break even on the legal fees.
That's not our problem. If their business model isn't working out, they need to come up with one that does.
Sell me movies on plastic discs (so that they can't be taken away from my by DRM) for $10 or less and I'll buy pretty much every movie I'm likely to ever want to watch. I know, because I have. Try to get $30 for that same disc, and I just walk away and don't buy it. Other people will find a torrent and download it.
For other people who don't care about ownership, give them a one-stop shop with every single movie available for streaming at $15/month, and they'd never infringe copyright. Note that I'm not describing Netflix, as their catalog doesn't include every movie that is available.
And, yes, we all know that the owner of an IP address is the actual user who is responsible for the copyright infringement. But it is usually very very good evidence.
"Innocent until proven guilty" refers to criminal charges. These are civil cases; the plaintiffs have a lower standard/burden of proof.
Actually, civil cases have the exact same concept of "innocent until proven guilty". Before any evidence is presented, it is assumed that neither party wronged the other party in any way.
The only difference is that instead of "beyond a reasonable doubt", you only need a "preponderance of evidence" to prove "guilt".
On the other hand, people start complaining when private businesses do start taking action to enforce their copyrights.
No, people start complaining when private businesses coerce or bribe other private businesses to enforce their copyrights. There is a well-defined method—a civil lawsuit—for getting restitution from someone who infringes on your copyright.
To use the required car analogy, this is like making your car unable to start until you acknowledge an "alert" that was created when some other private party (who is known to make many incorrect reports) reported to the company that sold you the car that you violated a traffic law. And, if you get enough alerts, then your car won't go faster than 20mph. If you would like to appeal this so that you can get to work on time, you need to pay a fee.
It's a scam. My phone's data usage is higher than that.
I don't think it's a scam at all. I barely go over 1GB/month with my phone (since I'm not a "check Facebook every 2 minutes" kind of user), so the 10GB plan would be great. I've got a grandfathered unlimited plan, and the only reason I don't switch to something with a limit is that they are more expensive. If some company offered a 2-4GB/month plan that was substantially lower than my current plan (as this wired plan is compared to other wired plans), I'd jump on it in a heartbeat.
For my home, though, an economy plan is useless, as I move 2TB/month, and I'm only running about 25% utilization of my full available speed.
My ARM-based Nexus One plays NetFlix just fine, and the various Apple devices (iPads, iPods, etc) doesn't have issues either; and I'd be willing to be that many DVD players, BD-DVD players, HD-DVD players, etc. all use ARM chips.
And all of these have special extra hardware to decode video and audio, while I can play a Blu-Ray movie at 1920x1080 on my desktop machine using nothing but the CPU for decoding.
My core 2 Duo from 2006 is now the processor for my 20 TB RAID5 NAS, and it's doing great.
In general, file serving doesn't require much CPU power, but there are exceptions.
For example, add in some sort of encryption (either of the file system or on the network connections for data transfer), and see what happens. Or, try to support more than a couple of users (which is likely all your NAS does). Or, try to feed a few 10Gbps network cards with iSCSI traffic (which I do at home).
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No unamplified instrument, except maybe a pipe organ or the cannon in the 1812 Overture, have more than 16 bits of dynamic range.
Maybe not a single instrument, but in a whole composition it's pretty easy to go over 16 accurate bits of dynamic range, since the LSBs are fairly inaccurate, which is especially noticable when the overall volume of the signal is low.
I ripped the blueray and made a little program to play small parts of the movie 2 times, 1 using TrueHD and one using Compressed Dolby Digital (640kbps), randomly switching which soundtrack it played first.
640Kbps AC-3 does strain a bit on "busy" soundtracks, so it's not surprising that you noticed a difference.
I've done a similar comparison with lossles vs. 1.5Mbps DTS, and the results are much less definitive. I couldn't tell which was which enough extra times to say it wasn't just random luck.
Somewhat unrelated, I also will sometimes re-encode DTS-HD Master Audio using a lower core bitrate to see if I can get the overall file size smaller. Basically, the audio on the disc uses 1.5Mbps as the core so that you get the best quality if you can't decode the lossless. But, if you are decoding the lossless, a smaller core doesn't change the quality, but can save you quite a bit of disk space.
And while my midrange hearing may not be the greatest I'm picky as hell when it comes to low end and that is usually the first thing that goes when you compress but standard 44.1k?
Low frequency sounds are the easiest to sample accurately, as even a 22Khz sampling rate would have no problem with audio up to 2KHz (which arguably starts to hit "midrange"). For most midrange down to low bass, even 44KHz is way overkill. It's not until you hit sounds at 10KHz and above that you begin to have issues with a 44KHz sampling rate.
The closest I can get to describing it is this and sorry if you aren't a musician but they'll know of which I speak...you know how you have that great old tube amp for the guitar and it has that nice warm fat feel to it? Notice how the same amp when modeled digitally doesn't doesn't quite have the warmth?
The reason for this is that it's hard to capture distortion accurately.
That "warm sound" is a result of the inacurracies of the tube amp. You may like it better (and that's just fine), but it is does not accurately reproduce the original signal. For me, it's really no different than the current "loudness war" where re-mastered releases are much louder. Many of today's listeners like that sound beter, but it isn't accurate.
Making merchants deal with 50 different tax codes is onerous.
I dare say that's exactly the point. Why do you think brick-and-mortars are so happy about it?
Because they're stupid?
Amazon is supporting this bill because of their new "same-day delivery" that is being rolled out. It requires them to have a presence in every state, so they'd have to collect sales tax anyway. This bill would put all other online stores at the same disadvantage of having to collect taxes, but without the advantage of actually having a point of presence in every state.
If this bill passes, it will give Amazon another reason to accelerate the roll out, and eliminate the one advantage that B&M stores currently have.
And that same marketing help you to get information about competing products
All you need to learn about "competing products" is simple spec sheets. I wouldn't buy something like a car using just that data, but it would allow me to narrow my focus to the ones that fit my needs. But, I would buy a hard drive or a bag of potato chips that way. In both these cases, other user reviews would be enough to let me know if the relatively small cost was worth the "risk" of the item not being acceptable.
This is one of the largest problems with advertising, where small ticket items (candy bars, soda, etc.) shouldn't be advertised at all after they have been established for a while. At that point, the cost of entry is so low and enough user reviews exist that the marginal buyers cost a fortune compared to the expected profit. I can somewhat understand big ticket items having more advertising, but it's still far too much per marginal user. Just like politics, where people might never vote outside their party, there is a percentage of people who will never purchase certain brands of big-ticket items, and no advertising will change that. Likewise, some people will never buy anything but one brand. You mostly see this with cars, but appliances and tools are other areas where this sort of brand loyalty/hatred arise.
As to needing to power-cycle the unit, maybe there's a newer firmware that my unit was loaded with, but I have never had this issue myself. I actually run all my consoles through a component AV switch that goes into the PVR and into a single component input on the TV, so I can record any console by changing the switch. The unit is on all the time (just not recording) and if it crapped out regularly, I would lose my signal while playing normally.
I, too, pass all my component video through the Hauppauge, and it will pass through video with no issue, but if I start to record using the included Windows software, the recording skips and stutters, or won't lock on at all.
This is because although the pass-through requires the unit to be powered on, there is no processing done on it, and the recording is taken from a split of this feed.
I second the Hauppauge HD PVR as pretty awesome as a PVR.
I also own a Hauppauge and use it to capture off my DirecTV DVR, but there are issues that need to be addressed.
If you use optical digital audio input, then it better be 100% perfect with no glitches. If not, there will also be video glitches. Analog audio does not have this problem, but can only support 2 channels.
The Hauppauge is not a "set it and forget it" device, at least not with the software that is included. The hardware needs to be power-cycled at least once a week because it stops responding. Perhaps MythTV or some other software would do a better job, but I suspect that anything Windows based will have the same issues as it is likely the drivers that are at fault.
ZFS is copy-on-write, ie. it is not a journaled filesystem. It is transaction-based and atomic; it does not traverse an inconsistent state because it does not overwrite the data during a write.
What happens when the disk is full?
In other filesystems, I can change the contents of a sector on a full disk, but I can't do anything that requires allocating more space. It would appear that this is not possible with ZFS. Note that it's not possible to solve this problem by saying "the write takes place to a disk that can never be full" (such as the cache disk you mentioned before).
Likewise, how does it update file system metadata and actual file data in an atomic manner? Unless those are stored on the same sector, then even gathering them up into a single multiple-sector write operation is not atomic, as the first sector can be written, and then failure happens.
Although there are many ways to make the chance of inconsistent data be extremely rare, even if hardware tells the truth and doesn't return from a write request until it is really written, there is no way to completely eliminate it. All you can do is layer the error detection/correction methods, use sound algorithms, and hope that nothing ever happens that you didn't forsee.
I hate disagreeing with someone who appears to agree with my overall conclusion, but you're making their problem out to be harder than it really is.
I was mostly responding to your "not that it can't be done" bit.
I definitely agree that nothing like this is going to be done (ever, likely), but it's what would have to be done to prove infringement in a lawsuit where the defendant had a moderately competent lawyer.
Still, if I do get enough "alerts" that I can actually raise a challenge (unlikely, but maybe they'll make that many mistakes), the first thing I do at the hearing is ask to see the actual bits that my IP uploaded to them, and since it would be the 5th "strike", I'd want to see the bits from all of them. Then, I'd want to open those bits with Windows Media Player and see if they play anything recognizable. These don't seem like unreasonable requests to me for this sort of a "hearing". I wouldn't go full on with all the things I said in my previous post, though, since I suspect at this point the abitrators would have just said that none of this matters, as it is assumed that the accusation is correct. At that point, I would point out that there is then no way for me to prove anything if all my evidence assumed to be lies while the MarkMonitor evidence is assumed to be accurate.
Haha, fair enough. I suppose my rejoinder would be that with RAID-Z my data on the array is never in an inconsistent state while writing, so I don't have to worry about obtaining a battery-backed cache or a UPS and then ensuring the batteries are still good after a few years.
At some point, the data on any writable disk is inconsistent, even with a journal system. It may not be irrecoverably inconsistent, but data can be lost, simply because data that hasn't been written to disk yet can't be if power is lost. This is where battery-backed cache can help, as the OS thinks it has been written, but it hasn't yet.
Also note that I misspoke, because the Adaptec 5805Z that I have uses a capacitor, not a battery. This, along with the flash, essentially means that it's a zero-maintenance system for far longer than the useful life of the card. The flash only gets written when power is removed and has 800% over-provisioning, so there's not much worry about write-endurance.
As for a UPS, it's worth it just to avoid other hardware issues that can happen when bad power hits the computer. The CyberPower UPS I use has a three-year warranty that includes the batteries failing to hold a charge. The batteries are about 25% (at wholesale) of the cost of the UPS, so they wouldn't want to pay out on too many of those.
if you don't agree with copyright law, then we don't have much more to talk about here do we?
Copyright law has been written by the same companies that couldn't come up with a business model that worked as times changed. This is the whole issue. In addition, much of newest parts of copyright law benefit only large companies. For example, an individual copyright holder doesn't gain much from the "non-circumvention" laws.
If other companies had refused to adjust to changing times and instead bribed elected officials to continue their outdated business models, we'd still have to have a person waving a red flag walking in front of every automobile, just so that the people who made horse carriages would still be able to sell their products.
I might have some sympathy for the big media companies if they were more than a drop in the bucket of our nation's economy, but at less than 1% for all entertainment (not just them), they could completely disappear and it wouldn't be noticed. Meanwhile, the laws they have had enacted have cost the US millions in wasted work (Google has probably spent as much on trying to keep the entertainment industry happy as the entertainment industry makes).
Anyway, my point is that RAID-5 isn't the level of data integrity assurance it once was, even ignoring the RAID-5 write hole risk that is inherent to the RAID-5 and RAID-6 concept.
With battery-backed cache, you don't really need to worry about this. With battery-backed cache that dumps to flash (what I use), you really don't need to worry about this.
if you are selling widgets, and i keep breaking into your garage every night and stealing them
As soon as you bring up the straw man where the equivalent has the copyright holder deprived of the use of the original work, you get ignored by everyone.
Come up with a real world example (like you making copies of my widget in your garage and handing them out for free), and then show why it isn't a problem with my business model that I can't compete with your free copies, and then we can talk.
Similarly, we have no reason to suspect Six Strikes' detection and identification tech is accurate. It might be, it's just that nothing leads us to that conclusion except faith. And it's not that it can't be done (within certain limitations); it's that we have past records (anyone remember the RIAA lawsuits?) of it being done by totally incompetent people, who went to work for the "MAFIAA" because that was the only job they could get.
We have evidence that the same company using the same methodology makes a lot of mistakes (the laser printers, the takedown notice of the game mods as NBC programs, etc.), so I'd say that lack of accuracy is a given.
Likewise, although I can think of a way that might work, I don't think that it can be done economically, especially with "six strikes", which should delay lawsuits at least a bit. To really prove that somebody uploaded, you'd need to have them upload to you enough data to prove that you really infringed. At a minimum, it would have to be more than what would generally be considered fair use, so that might be 1-2 minutes of a TV show, and more of a song than you can get from places like Amazon as a "sample". This would be the rock bottom minimum, though, as you don't want a defense of "fair use" to be viable in most cases.
Then, you'd have to keep that data segregated from all other data uploaded to you. So, you can't just keep the copy of the file you got from the torrent and pointers into it that show what was supposedly uploaded by each different IP. You need actual copies of the data. You could de-duplicate, but at the file system level, it has to look like it's different files, so things like symlinks won't cut it. And, you shouldn't keep the same part of the file for every uploader, or else that could also be questioned by any decent attorney.
The tricky part is you have to keep all this data until you have finished all legal actions for which that data is evidence. Which means that even if you either conclude a lawsuit or never choose to file, you can't get rid of the data from that torrent until you are done with all legal actions for that torrent. Which basically means you have to keep all the data forever.
Keeping just 2% of every torrent for each uploader would mean you might have 10 copies of every torrent that is material on which you hold copyright (assuming 500 uploaders, which isn't a bad assumption based on the John Doe copyright lawsuits we have seen). Without deduplication, that's a lot more data storage than these copyright holders want to pay for.
Downloading is reproduction: the downloader fixes the work into a new copy on his end (usually a hard drive). Uploading is treated as distribution (although technically it doesn't quite fit): the uploader distributes the work to the downloader, who as mentioned, fixes it into a copy.
In copyright infringement, there is almost always a single act that is the actual infringement. Although there may be judge's rulings that say what you claim, any decent analysis of process would show that the downloading itself cannot be infringing, any more than recording a song from the radio or buying a bootleg DVD is infringing.
For example, if a radio station played a song they had no right to play (thus commiting copyright infringement in the form of "public performance"), the holder of copyright on that song cannot successfully sue anyone who recorded the song from the radio broadcast. In the same way, the person selling bootleg DVDs might not even be guilty of infringement, if they did not know the DVDs were not legitimate, but the person buying the disc is never guilty of infringement, even if they know the disc is a bootleg.
The problem is that most judges don't understand the mechanics of digital data transmission, so they don't understand that creating a copy in RAM or on my disc is never infringement, even though an "extra" copy now exists. Infringement only occurs when the source of that copy doesn't hold enough rights on the material to be allowed to create the copy that ends up in my RAM or on my disc. In that case, they are then guilty of infringement. Otherwise, any website would have an open and shut case against every one of their visitors for infringement.
So what we have here is "guilty until paid innocent" with a system that allows anybody to declare you guilty and you have to break out your wallet to even be heard at all.
Although your sentiment is accurate, and there's going to be lots of mistakes, the reality is that only companies that sign up MarkMonitor can result in an "alert" through this system.
In many ways, this is worse, because it means if you are not large but do have copyrights you want to enforce, you won't be able to use this system to do it. Instead, you'll have do like everyone else and file lawsuits.
with file sharing, there isn't 1 or 2, or even 100 people to go after. there are hundreds of thousands. they can't afford to sue all those people. in most cases they won't even break even on the legal fees.
That's not our problem. If their business model isn't working out, they need to come up with one that does.
Sell me movies on plastic discs (so that they can't be taken away from my by DRM) for $10 or less and I'll buy pretty much every movie I'm likely to ever want to watch. I know, because I have. Try to get $30 for that same disc, and I just walk away and don't buy it. Other people will find a torrent and download it.
For other people who don't care about ownership, give them a one-stop shop with every single movie available for streaming at $15/month, and they'd never infringe copyright. Note that I'm not describing Netflix, as their catalog doesn't include every movie that is available.
And, yes, we all know that the owner of an IP address is the actual user who is responsible for the copyright infringement. But it is usually very very good evidence.
Yes, that's why those despicable laser printers got accused of copyright infringement.
"Innocent until proven guilty" refers to criminal charges. These are civil cases; the plaintiffs have a lower standard/burden of proof.
Actually, civil cases have the exact same concept of "innocent until proven guilty". Before any evidence is presented, it is assumed that neither party wronged the other party in any way.
The only difference is that instead of "beyond a reasonable doubt", you only need a "preponderance of evidence" to prove "guilt".
On the other hand, people start complaining when private businesses do start taking action to enforce their copyrights.
No, people start complaining when private businesses coerce or bribe other private businesses to enforce their copyrights. There is a well-defined method—a civil lawsuit—for getting restitution from someone who infringes on your copyright.
To use the required car analogy, this is like making your car unable to start until you acknowledge an "alert" that was created when some other private party (who is known to make many incorrect reports) reported to the company that sold you the car that you violated a traffic law. And, if you get enough alerts, then your car won't go faster than 20mph. If you would like to appeal this so that you can get to work on time, you need to pay a fee.
It's a scam. My phone's data usage is higher than that.
I don't think it's a scam at all. I barely go over 1GB/month with my phone (since I'm not a "check Facebook every 2 minutes" kind of user), so the 10GB plan would be great. I've got a grandfathered unlimited plan, and the only reason I don't switch to something with a limit is that they are more expensive. If some company offered a 2-4GB/month plan that was substantially lower than my current plan (as this wired plan is compared to other wired plans), I'd jump on it in a heartbeat.
For my home, though, an economy plan is useless, as I move 2TB/month, and I'm only running about 25% utilization of my full available speed.
My ARM-based Nexus One plays NetFlix just fine, and the various Apple devices (iPads, iPods, etc) doesn't have issues either; and I'd be willing to be that many DVD players, BD-DVD players, HD-DVD players, etc. all use ARM chips.
And all of these have special extra hardware to decode video and audio, while I can play a Blu-Ray movie at 1920x1080 on my desktop machine using nothing but the CPU for decoding.
My core 2 Duo from 2006 is now the processor for my 20 TB RAID5 NAS, and it's doing great.
In general, file serving doesn't require much CPU power, but there are exceptions.
For example, add in some sort of encryption (either of the file system or on the network connections for data transfer), and see what happens. Or, try to support more than a couple of users (which is likely all your NAS does). Or, try to feed a few 10Gbps network cards with iSCSI traffic (which I do at home).
"They used their smartphones to adjust the timing of the crime" could translate to "they did not have other watches"
And that they used their smartphones as phones to communicate the changes. Oh, the humanity.