NO TV can repair a tape recorded on a normal VCR with macrovsion.
I don't think that was the idea.
I think its a clever TV that has Video in AND out. The TV could conceivable also have been designed with a built in Macrovision blocking mechanism, or some system that has the same effect.
Mattel has discovered that although they have the copyright to the code, they cannot stop other people from using or distributing it.
They could still sue, but this would cost more than they would make, and would not solve the problem. Their accountants will probably stop this from happening.
The other problem is that there is a possibility that they will lose, or even funnier, have the judge rule that the software is legal, and that since the terms of the agreement were bogus, all rights to the software revert back to the original copyrighters.
They could try to argue for the licence to be ruled invalid. This also has the problem that ALL software licences could be ruled invalid. This would weaken the licence on their own software.
I get the feeling (or hope) that Mattel may make a lot of noise, but will probably just give up.
There are lots of reasons The legitimate ones first Make backups of your DVD's Play a film on your parent's TV if you only have 1 14" TV connected to your DVD player Make a video or internet based DVD review magazine
Now the less legitimate ones: "Because we can" - i.e. to annoy the MPAA Piracy.
Personally, I don't think that most of the people who try this have any interest in any of these, apart from "because we can".
As a summary of the law, thats quite accurate, but there is a long list of "reasonable use" exceptions. These essentially allow people to copy for personal use (e.g. make a tape from a CD for use in a car, or make a compilation tape). This has (allegedly) been tested in court.
However, there are limited legitimate reasons for wanting to copy a DVD to VHS. Not many people have a TV that can't handle Macrovision, and very few people to back up their DVD's to tape. Some people do, but not many.
Thats true. However, this attitude doesn't excuse unfairness, and it doesn't mean that we should accept unfairness or be unfair to others.
Or as the Hippy side of me would like to put it - Like hey, man. This will just lead to a spiral of hate and then we'll all just end up destroying each other. We've got to break this circle.
You're probably right. It hurts a bit though that I could spot a security bug, and tell them about it, whereas they wouldn't be obliged to supply me with the information that I just gave them. (Okay, so I wouldn't need it, but it still seems unfair to me)
Like for example that Metric is different from US Imperial when measuring things ?
Of course not. All Lego uses the same units. This is called the Blob. Most bricks are 2 blobs wide and 4 blobs long. The only exception to this rule is with Duplo.
Growing up is overrated. Lego is fun. If you can have fun with Lego as an adult then do so. Don't give in to what society says you should be like. Rebel! And remember - If you've got a job you can afford a lot more Lego!
A friend of mine told me that anyone is allowed to go into a University lecture and listen. Of course this
a) Could be wrong, and b) Might only apply to UK Universities,
But considering some of the older American institutions are older than the US, I would have thought that the same rules would apply as the English Universities.
Didn't the US government split Bell into lots of smaller companies? How well did this work? Could the same be done for Telco? (And British Telecom too, as well as a lot of other national privatised monopolies)
Most of these were being spent on defending America. It doesn't seem too excessive to be expected to pay for your own defence.
Lack of representation in the British parliament.
Most of Britain didn't have representation in the British parliament. There were whole cities with no MP.
Obviously there was a valid reason for the revolution, otherwise the colonists wouldn't have bothered, but I think the taxation and representation were among the less important factors.
Although England is also a much smaller area than the US. I think most European countries have a digital network.
The point is that each country has their own network. Small networks can be upgraded much more quickly than large ones, and they were all upgraded at the same time. The other important point is that Europe has a greater population density which means that more people can be connected with less network infrastructure.
Currently all the songs on my hard disk I also have on legal purchased Compact Disc, bought in a High Street Store.
If you're going to Troll, do it properly. Make sure that your arguments are going to stand up to at least a few volleys before you have to start making things up.
If I could replicate unlimited diamonds, at fraction of the normal price, then I get the feeling that the diamond corporations would do anything to stop me.
Or possibly the diamond corporations would just shut up shop and concede that it was a good deal while it lasted.
Thats not the point. I'm not saying that this makes piracy right. The point is that piracy isn't automatically costing someone else money. Stealing a diamond is. Therefore piracy is not the same as theft.
Analogies are designed to clear up situations. They are also the perfect way to obfuscate.
....record the show, and give it away to anyone who wants it. The only catch is that no one may take money for them.
This is a nice idea, and very fan friendly. The difference is that this is generally self limiting. People will only trade with their friends, so it either stops, or even if there is an indirect link betweeen every Phish fan in the world, it would take a long time to propogate.
MP3 on the other hand is of higher quality, and is distributed to anyone with a copy of Napster. This means that a single copy could get to every Phish fan in a much shorter time. This could seriously damage record sales (I assume they still make money here).
Just because you couldn't find a CD it's alright to pirate it off of the net?
Yes! Has it done any harm? I was looking for it for about 5 years. When I finally found it, some time after pirating it, I did buy it. And all the other songs on the album that I wan't interested in.
The really stinky thing is that ameteur artists also have to pay this tax, even if they wouldn't have considered pirating music, yet the chances of the money going back to them is virtually non-existent.
Well, I agree to an extent. I feel your opinions are a little bit too strong. What a lot of people seem to think is that open source should be inflicted on others rather than making it the choice of the origional creator. Making piracy worthy of jail would probably be an over reaction.
Most of the artist's work being pirated is by the succesful artists. A lot of people pirate because they can't find obscure record labels anywhere. This doesn't really excuse piracy, but it does make the "struggling" artist argument lose a bit of weight. And I can't feel any sympathy for the corporations who promote the artists. I don't want to pay for others to advertise to me. The person being promoted should pay for this. (I hope I'm not missing your point here)
Its a fallacy to suggest every song I pirate is taking money from the music industry. I have been forced to download mp3's because I couldn't find the CD's anywhere. The record company didn't lose money because I couldn't have given them the money if I wanted to. Also, just because I'm willing to accept something for free doesn't mean that I would go out and pay money for it if it wasn't free.
You also have to remember the added benefits of MP3. Namely that they are much more flexible, allowing you to select your own compilations rather than having to settle on what the record company deems worthy, and you can put a lot more of them onto a single CD.
Slashdot Mirror
I couldn't find even THAT agreement anywhere.
I'm disappointed by this though. I would have liked to have asked Mattel for the source code to the software.
NO TV can repair a tape recorded on a normal VCR with macrovsion.
I don't think that was the idea.
I think its a clever TV that has Video in AND out. The TV could conceivable also have been designed with a built in Macrovision blocking mechanism, or some system that has the same effect.
More to the point, ol' sorehands.com seem to have a good track record against Mattel. And since they're still retaliating, there's not a lot to lose.
Lets see....
Mattel has discovered that although they have the copyright to the code, they cannot stop other people from using or distributing it.
They could still sue, but this would cost more than they would make, and would not solve the problem. Their accountants will probably stop this from happening.
The other problem is that there is a possibility that they will lose, or even funnier, have the judge rule that the software is legal, and that since the terms of the agreement were bogus, all rights to the software revert back to the original copyrighters.
They could try to argue for the licence to be ruled invalid. This also has the problem that ALL software licences could be ruled invalid. This would weaken the licence on their own software.
I get the feeling (or hope) that Mattel may make a lot of noise, but will probably just give up.
There are lots of reasons
The legitimate ones first
Make backups of your DVD's
Play a film on your parent's TV if you only have 1 14" TV connected to your DVD player
Make a video or internet based DVD review magazine
Now the less legitimate ones:
"Because we can" - i.e. to annoy the MPAA
Piracy.
Personally, I don't think that most of the people who try this have any interest in any of these, apart from "because we can".
As a summary of the law, thats quite accurate, but there is a long list of "reasonable use" exceptions. These essentially allow people to copy for personal use (e.g. make a tape from a CD for use in a car, or make a compilation tape). This has (allegedly) been tested in court.
However, there are limited legitimate reasons for wanting to copy a DVD to VHS. Not many people have a TV that can't handle Macrovision, and very few people to back up their DVD's to tape. Some people do, but not many.
Thats true. However, this attitude doesn't excuse unfairness, and it doesn't mean that we should accept unfairness or be unfair to others.
Or as the Hippy side of me would like to put it - Like hey, man. This will just lead to a spiral of hate and then we'll all just end up destroying each other. We've got to break this circle.
Very few people are going to upgrade their browser simply for a minor security issue. Its too much effort for the perceived benefit.
So this means that any new bugs that are discovered and fixed immediately can still be exploited on the majority of machines.
You're probably right. It hurts a bit though that I could spot a security bug, and tell them about it, whereas they wouldn't be obliged to supply me with the information that I just gave them. (Okay, so I wouldn't need it, but it still seems unfair to me)
Well, the equation probably looks more like
ease of use = more users = more sales. Having more potential contributors is just a side effect.
Like for example that Metric is different from US Imperial when measuring things ?
Of course not. All Lego uses the same units. This is called the Blob. Most bricks are 2 blobs wide and 4 blobs long. The only exception to this rule is with Duplo.
Growing up is overrated. Lego is fun. If you can have fun with Lego as an adult then do so. Don't give in to what society says you should be like. Rebel! And remember - If you've got a job you can afford a lot more Lego!
A friend of mine told me that anyone is allowed to go into a University lecture and listen. Of course this
a) Could be wrong, and
b) Might only apply to UK Universities,
But considering some of the older American institutions are older than the US, I would have thought that the same rules would apply as the English Universities.
Didn't the US government split Bell into lots of smaller companies? How well did this work? Could the same be done for Telco? (And British Telecom too, as well as a lot of other national privatised monopolies)
It would have made more sense for them to use a .org domain instead.
Oppressive taxes (stamp taxes, etc)
Most of these were being spent on defending America. It doesn't seem too excessive to be expected to pay for your own defence.
Lack of representation in the British parliament.
Most of Britain didn't have representation in the British parliament. There were whole cities with no MP.
Obviously there was a valid reason for the revolution, otherwise the colonists wouldn't have bothered, but I think the taxation and representation were among the less important factors.
England also has a totally digital system.
Although England is also a much smaller area than the US. I think most European countries have a digital network.
The point is that each country has their own network. Small networks can be upgraded much more quickly than large ones, and they were all upgraded at the same time. The other important point is that Europe has a greater population density which means that more people can be connected with less network infrastructure.
Stop making groundless accusations.
Currently all the songs on my hard disk I also have on legal purchased Compact Disc, bought in a High Street Store.
If you're going to Troll, do it properly. Make sure that your arguments are going to stand up to at least a few volleys before you have to start making things up.
If I could replicate unlimited diamonds, at fraction of the normal price, then I get the feeling that the diamond corporations would do anything to stop me.
Or possibly the diamond corporations would just shut up shop and concede that it was a good deal while it lasted.
Thats not the point. I'm not saying that this makes piracy right. The point is that piracy isn't automatically costing someone else money. Stealing a diamond is. Therefore piracy is not the same as theft.
Analogies are designed to clear up situations. They are also the perfect way to obfuscate.
Now be a ggod boy and listen to whatever happens to be #1 in the official charts this week. Geez, have you no herd mentality at all?
....record the show, and give it away to anyone who wants it. The only catch is that no one may take money for them.
This is a nice idea, and very fan friendly. The difference is that this is generally self limiting. People will only trade with their friends, so it either stops, or even if there is an indirect link betweeen every Phish fan in the world, it would take a long time to propogate.
MP3 on the other hand is of higher quality, and is distributed to anyone with a copy of Napster. This means that a single copy could get to every Phish fan in a much shorter time. This could seriously damage record sales (I assume they still make money here).
Just because you couldn't find a CD it's alright to pirate it off of the net?
Yes! Has it done any harm? I was looking for it for about 5 years. When I finally found it, some time after pirating it, I did buy it. And all the other songs on the album that I wan't interested in.
The really stinky thing is that ameteur artists also have to pay this tax, even if they wouldn't have considered pirating music, yet the chances of the money going back to them is virtually non-existent.
Well, I agree to an extent. I feel your opinions are a little bit too strong. What a lot of people seem to think is that open source should be inflicted on others rather than making it the choice of the origional creator. Making piracy worthy of jail would probably be an over reaction.
Most of the artist's work being pirated is by the succesful artists. A lot of people pirate because they can't find obscure record labels anywhere. This doesn't really excuse piracy, but it does make the "struggling" artist argument lose a bit of weight. And I can't feel any sympathy for the corporations who promote the artists. I don't want to pay for others to advertise to me. The person being promoted should pay for this. (I hope I'm not missing your point here)
Its a fallacy to suggest every song I pirate is taking money from the music industry. I have been forced to download mp3's because I couldn't find the CD's anywhere. The record company didn't lose money because I couldn't have given them the money if I wanted to. Also, just because I'm willing to accept something for free doesn't mean that I would go out and pay money for it if it wasn't free.
You also have to remember the added benefits of MP3. Namely that they are much more flexible, allowing you to select your own compilations rather than having to settle on what the record company deems worthy, and you can put a lot more of them onto a single CD.