The issues of the auto industry, they're irrelevant (do you really read my entire comments in their entirety?)
I did, which is why I mentioned the auto industry.. you were following on from a previous posters metaphor involving GM. I guess it's only off topic if you're not the one posting?
God fucking damn, if you're not fucking retarded then you're one hell of a successful troll.
Wow, how rude. I'm thinking all the time you supposedly spent reading about economics could have been more productively used to learn some subtlety, at the least.
Do I need to point out the obvious? If you don't buy their car and make a copy instead then they're damaged in that they're not getting a sale. I'm familiar with the way you morons think so in your feeble mind it won't register as anything obvious, so scale things up if you're even capable of it and think, think of how many car sales if EVERYBODY duplicated their cars. Then how many cars would they sell? 0? 1? Do you see now how they would be damaged, or are you too much of a cretin to see how that works out? Or are you going to argue that they should have seen this coming and moved on to something different, which is just as retarded? You can't destroy an industry and act like it's fair game. I wish you to live in a world where duplicating everything is possible and legal, and see how you like never getting any new computers or telephones because everyone just copies what's already out there and won't pay a dime and ruined all these industries. See how that works out.
I rather doubt that most tech companies are as blind as you are to the possibilities so I'd be happy to take my chances.
No it's okay, if I keep trolling you libertardians there must be a good reason. I think the reason is that I get a kick out of seeing you suckers struggle with your pathetic and nearly non-existent grasp of how the economy and to a larger extent how reality works. No wonder no one listens to your laughable opinions but yourselves.
Wow. What was that supposed to achieve? Actually, don't answer that.. I'm not inclined to read any more of your wanton abuse, not least of all because you're so bad at it.
The key difference between copying and stealing is perhaps best described by the harm principle. Stealing has the potential to directly harm someone, copying cannot directly harm someone.
To steal something is to willingly effect a deprivation on the owner. To copy something has no such baggage, you can copy something and they are deprived of nothing. You cannot even accuse them of stealing the potential income, as that is making a judgement on their intention.. which makes me think of quantum physics for some reason.
A great many people had a long hard think about it, and copyrights were established centuries ago for this kind of situation. The only difference is that back then, it was books which could be printed by anyone with a printing press, but good stories were hard to come by.
My first thought was to request the source of this representation of history. My second was to wonder why you think they are better able to run our lives after their deaths than we are today. However accurate your depiction of the history of copyright, if you cannot argue the same points today then you either lack the understanding they had and are unqualified to argue their points or the points are not valid any more (if they ever were).
The only difference now is the cost of reproduction is now approximately zero, but still below the value of the good in question, and so, the question is basically the same, and so is the answer incidentally. The zero cost of reproduction is the strawman here.
You have neglected to explain what the question and answer were, I could guess but you'd only accuse me of building a 'strawman'. Incidentally, your use of the term seems incorrect.. to build a strawman is to misrepresent someone's argument for the purpose of making it seem like you have broken their real argument. Perhaps you meant a 'red herring'?
Insults? I thought you were just throwing wildly inaccurate statements into the mix, like calling me a troll for using a simile to show why I think your argument is poor. I find that ironic.
As you apparently couldn't understand my use of a simile I'll spell it out for you; The oil industry have a history of being far more evil bastards than anyone thinks the RIAA are. Using them as an example of why we should have the choice whether to pay people if they cannot set the price is, I would wager, counter-productive.
As well as that, oil is a limited resource governed by the effects of scarcity. If someone mined some oil and it was possible to copy that oil at no expense to the person who mined it then I certainly wouldn't be paying them for every bit of oil that got copied. If you would, then that's your call and I have no problem with that.
That's completely off topic. You're extrapolating on the situation of the analogy used to make a point that has little connection with the subject the analogy was used for. But sure, why not.
What was off topic?
So you have that car duplicator thing, and you don't want to pay the license I talked about to GM for duplicating their cars, am I right? So what's the incentive for GM to innovate anything if they're not gonna get any money for it? It pains me to even have to explain it (seriously, more people should read about Adam Smith, it's getting old always explaining why corporations do the things they do), but GM doesn't care about eco-friendly cars, or safer cars, it only cares about money. So where's the incentive if you don't pay GM something for their new cars? (Also, what's wrong with my license idea? Please address that).
The incentive is that their old business model doesn't work and they need a new one, they can always move to a different industry if they don't want to design cars. You still haven't explained why people won't pay them to design new cars if they want new car designs. If there is a market for it then people will pay for it, if there isn't then they won't. Not paying for something is only a problem if you made an exchange, if you copied their car design you have not made an exchange and therefore they are not damaged by your lack of patronage. If you told them you were going to pay them for a design and then didn't then that would be a problem as they have exchanged their time and effort for your promise of payment.
lol.. what? Are you trying to say that car makers should be publicly funded either through charity, or be entirely nationalised, paid for by tax payers money and told what to do by the government? Let me guess, would you use 5-year plans like communists do?
I'm saying that where people don't find a business model there is still money if there is a demand. If you insist on a business example then just look at building architects. The burden for funding is between those who want to invest in car designs and those who want to make money out of car designs. I am certainly NOT saying they should be funded in any particular way, you appear to be the only one saying that.
Seriously, it's getting painful to listen to people's suggestions that wouldn't begin to hold together if someone was mad enough to even try these.
Nobody is forcing you to look at the screen, are they? If it helps you feel better, I won't cry if you stop posting.
I think the person who said they shouldn't get paid for their studio work meant they shouldn't be guaranteed an income based on their studio work. That is, if people listen to it at no cost to the artist and don't want to support them then they shouldn't have to. By calling them dense I, at least, presumed that you didn't agree with that and that you were pro copyright.. as you did not describe a third way of doing things.
If they're not able to offer you something you actually need just send them a cheque, or even better.. get them to put a donate button on their website.
Good question. If you wanted things to be "fair", then by doing the replication, the only things you're sparing GM are the entire manufacturing costs. So if you wanted to be "fair", you'd pay GM the price of the car minus its manufacturing costs, so that it would get the same money to pay for its designers and whatever else that is paid for when you buy a car, minus the manufacturing.
The manufacturing costs are the only things to spare, they already designed the car so those costs have already been met (even if they had to take out a loan to do it). What I think you mean is that they would be denied a return on their investment, the question is should someone who never signed a contract with GM be obliged to provide a return on their investment.
If you didn't pay anything to GM because you think it's all in the manufacturing, GM wouldn't have any incentive to make any car if they're only going to sell one, and neither would any other car manufacturer, so you'd successfully kill the auto industry, and be doomed to replicate cars that were made before the replication craze started, which means that even in 200 years people would drive 20th and 21st century cars.
Leaving aside how you attribute the death of the auto industry to peoples intent rather than natural progression, why would we need the auto industry in its previous form at that point? There will still be plenty of incentive for new designs.. for example more eco-friendly cars and safer cars. When you run out of incentives there's no point in doing any more work, the question is not whether they will get paid, it is how. If you can't think how people would get the money considering we've done things from providing countrywide support networks funded by charity to putting a man on the moon funded by political desire then perhaps you should exercise your imagination more.
Holy crap, you're using a comparison with the oil industry to strengthen your argument for copyright? That's kinda like saying murder is OK because we have wars.
I think you are perhaps mistaking libertarianism as an economic theory, it is a social or political philosophy. Copyright is not an economic issue it is a social issue that effects the economy. I have never read anything by Adam Smith but looking on wikipedia he appears to be a free market advocate. You should in fact consider that a market subject to copyright is at most a mixed market rather than a free market because state intervention is required. In a free market the value of information is always zero but the value of access to that information can be set by supply and demand. In a free market people would not need to pay for music but they would need to pay for new music, which would be subject to supply and demand.
Considering I pay for music too, that isn't much of a revelation. I never said everyone who paid for music was being forced to but you cannot deny the coercion in threatening people who don't pay with legal action.
'Armchair Pirates' (lol) don't force anyone to give anything for free. They redistribute for free what they already have access to, if I was an artist I would say they would be doing me a favour by distributing my work for me. If you mean forcing people to give away for free by undermining copyright.. how is not asking for money worse than forcing people to give you money?
Basically you decide arbitrarily that studio recorded music should be free, and therefore as a sort of feedback loop that makes it inherently unworthy of any money. You can't just say "this should be free, make it free" for something that's not free and that the market validated as something you can ask money for.
Firstly, information is already free. The law might want to change the way reality works but you're not going to win an argument by saying 'it's true because it's written down', even religions have gotten over that notion. What copyright puts a price on is your liberty, not the information it purports to protect. Even taxes have to benefit those who pay them in some way, copyright does nothing of the sort.
Oh, Market Validated. Now I see how I've been wrong.. because people have been paying for it they should be forced to pay for it! Uh, wait, lets think about what market means for a start. Markets are about exchange of goods. If I get given a copy of a song by someone then that is an exchange between me and them not me and the artist. If there are infinite goods available for exchange for free then the market value is zero. That doesn't stop you charging for it but people who buy it aren't paying the market value of the song.
Most Slashdotters are libertarians, but when it comes to stuff you want for free you all turn to commies.
Damn, now I know why you got modded troll.. although flamebait would have been more accurate. Maybe you should look up what libertarian and communism mean and realise that libertarian ideals are kinda the anti-hero of copyright. I'm not even sure how you think communism is relevant to anything in this thread at all.
His point is if no one is giving you money for making albums then there isn't a market for the albums. Forcing people to give you money for the privilege of using what they already have access to isn't an economic business model, it is money for menaces.
That would come off better if you didn't put the guy down when your actual point is the system is flawed. Arguing his policies are shit and the only reason he got elected was that he duped people with charisma implies that there was a better candidate for them to choose from. For many people this wasn't the case, most of the decent 3rd party candidates had distinctly different policies to Obama. For your put-down to be justified there would need to be a candidate with similar policies to Obama with more integrity, or capability to see them through.
You missed the point, for whatever reason they do not care that the NSA is reading their email. This can be because they do not use email or because they do not use it for anything personal. Even if they do use email for personal things you have to then get over the fact that they know the NSA isn't going to turn up on their doorstep because they are so very American and their sex life isn't going to be mistaken for a terrorist plot.
The fact is most systems that don't make the majority will work in favour of the 'average Joe' and they just don't care about things that don't effect them. Privacy isn't a big consideration for a lot of people because they only care if their partner knows all their dirty secrets, they don't give a damn if the government knows. Here in the UK we get a lot of rhetoric about the ends justifying the means, politicians on record as saying pretty much anything goes if it foils one terrorist plot or saves one child. The average person may not have the same inherent distrust of authority that seems so healthy to most privacy advocates, or a very selective one. They can believe a politician would be caught with their hand in the proverbial cookie jar (see expenses scandal) but not that they would lie about matters of life and death.
There are ways to combat this sort of thinking, unfortunately I only know how to effect most of them on an individual level. Probably the most effective device at an individual level for a disagreement about privacy or safety is to find an example of something in that persons life which runs contrary to their advocacy. For example, if someone is concerned about saving lives you can point out to them they could save more lives by banning cars or banning alcohol or if you are countering some poor use of statistics, that the government could save lives by putting children into childcare based on who their parents are rather than what they do. Point out that they are being unreasonable to expect you to give up rights that have no inherent detrimental effect on anyone else if they do not make an equivalent effort.
Note to self, check out Magnatune. I had dismissed it as something like Last.fm or Pandora but someone has mentioned it here as a possible source of FLAC encoded music (although probably not for artists I already listen to).
You're right, they should have modded him flamebait instead..
But seriously, what is wrong with wanting a decent product? Is there a reason they cannot provide it? If they'd spend half the budget they did on anti-piracy propaganda on a study of what the pirates want they might even stand a chance. Until then we can pay them as much positive notice as they pay us, considering they are the ones who want our money.
No, I haven't had a chance to read most of the comments on this thread yet. However, did you read my comment before replying? I did not even suggest that you were anti file-sharing.. I used the phrase once in an example that did not presume to involve you.
"Oh I won't use it till it can run on NetBSD"
"Oh I won't use it till it gives me 740kb/s Ogg files"
Again, you are trying to attribute a distinct motivation to a vast group of people who apparently have little in common other than not being offered a decent product.
I don't justify copyright infringement with any of those issues, free choice was around before copyright I am quite happy to ignore copyright until someone manages to justify it for me. That said, I'll be damned if I'm going to go routinely out of my way to support artists by throwing away my money to distributors who can't provide a service I want. I'd rather click a donate button on the artist's site.
The rest of slashdot is busy making up goals to be met by any service before they will stop pirating, crazy goals, mostly unobtainable goals, just so they can justify their piracy to themselves.
The rest of Slashdot would like a word with you, the word is cluebat.
Perhaps after you have stopped attributing what you worry may be your own failings to others you can jump down off that high horse and appreciate that what you're saying has diddley squat to do with the issue at hand. Do you really think that the vast majority of people who buy music do so out of the goodness of their hearts? I mean, attributing peoples motivations to their use of money says a lot about your own priorities and not a lot about their own. If I may abuse generalisation in a manner you seem so good at, a lot of anti file-sharing people I hear would rather people boycotted an artists music than didn't pay for it. I'd be pretty pissed if I sold some poetry and someone started telling people they shouldn't read them because they could not afford to buy a copy or disagreed with where the money was going.
As an aside, I tend to spend money on music which is in a format I want (pretty much just Nine Inch Nails at this point) or by indie artists whose entire back catalogues I already probably have downloaded in FLAC format but have no hope of going to see a show for. This way the money I am spending is supporting a product I want to see more of (FLAC) and artists who will actually see most of the money from iTunes or whatever where there aren't any alternatives. What I wouldn't do is tell everyone that they should do the same thing I am doing, because I am at least marginally less arrogant than you.
This is the same company that cries it's customers are using too much bandwidth at the same time as announcing a new faster service. Given the apparent blindness to what their broadband customers want broadband wise I'd be surprised if they manage to offer a music service that keeps mp3 users happy let alone those who want something better. The more companies spend all their effort crying about how their business is hurting because of their customers, the less able they are to offer a service those customers might be satisfied with. It's not an issue limited to the big companies though, apart from Nine Inch Nails (who were hard to miss even had I not already been a fan) I haven't come across any commercial service offering FLAC since allofmp3 died.
May the IFPI and all they represent reap what they sow for what they did to allofmp3. Those guys had more sense about a good product in one pinkie than Virgin Media have in the entire company.
I think it is safe to presume that you do know that the 'political left' is a very vague categorisation of a number of distinct political ideologies and are just trolling. For example, anarchism is considered by your cited source to be politically left and would be one of the opposites of tyranny.
Slashdot Mirror
The issues of the auto industry, they're irrelevant (do you really read my entire comments in their entirety?)
I did, which is why I mentioned the auto industry.. you were following on from a previous posters metaphor involving GM. I guess it's only off topic if you're not the one posting?
God fucking damn, if you're not fucking retarded then you're one hell of a successful troll.
Wow, how rude. I'm thinking all the time you supposedly spent reading about economics could have been more productively used to learn some subtlety, at the least.
Do I need to point out the obvious? If you don't buy their car and make a copy instead then they're damaged in that they're not getting a sale. I'm familiar with the way you morons think so in your feeble mind it won't register as anything obvious, so scale things up if you're even capable of it and think, think of how many car sales if EVERYBODY duplicated their cars. Then how many cars would they sell? 0? 1? Do you see now how they would be damaged, or are you too much of a cretin to see how that works out? Or are you going to argue that they should have seen this coming and moved on to something different, which is just as retarded? You can't destroy an industry and act like it's fair game. I wish you to live in a world where duplicating everything is possible and legal, and see how you like never getting any new computers or telephones because everyone just copies what's already out there and won't pay a dime and ruined all these industries. See how that works out.
I rather doubt that most tech companies are as blind as you are to the possibilities so I'd be happy to take my chances.
No it's okay, if I keep trolling you libertardians there must be a good reason. I think the reason is that I get a kick out of seeing you suckers struggle with your pathetic and nearly non-existent grasp of how the economy and to a larger extent how reality works. No wonder no one listens to your laughable opinions but yourselves.
Wow. What was that supposed to achieve? Actually, don't answer that.. I'm not inclined to read any more of your wanton abuse, not least of all because you're so bad at it.
The key difference between copying and stealing is perhaps best described by the harm principle. Stealing has the potential to directly harm someone, copying cannot directly harm someone.
To steal something is to willingly effect a deprivation on the owner. To copy something has no such baggage, you can copy something and they are deprived of nothing. You cannot even accuse them of stealing the potential income, as that is making a judgement on their intention.. which makes me think of quantum physics for some reason.
A great many people had a long hard think about it, and copyrights were established centuries ago for this kind of situation. The only difference is that back then, it was books which could be printed by anyone with a printing press, but good stories were hard to come by.
My first thought was to request the source of this representation of history. My second was to wonder why you think they are better able to run our lives after their deaths than we are today. However accurate your depiction of the history of copyright, if you cannot argue the same points today then you either lack the understanding they had and are unqualified to argue their points or the points are not valid any more (if they ever were).
The only difference now is the cost of reproduction is now approximately zero, but still below the value of the good in question, and so, the question is basically the same, and so is the answer incidentally. The zero cost of reproduction is the strawman here.
You have neglected to explain what the question and answer were, I could guess but you'd only accuse me of building a 'strawman'. Incidentally, your use of the term seems incorrect.. to build a strawman is to misrepresent someone's argument for the purpose of making it seem like you have broken their real argument. Perhaps you meant a 'red herring'?
Mod parent up. Important points, well put.
*cough* I meant shouldn't have the choice in that middle paragraph. I also shouldn't post while I'm in a hurry.
Insults? I thought you were just throwing wildly inaccurate statements into the mix, like calling me a troll for using a simile to show why I think your argument is poor. I find that ironic.
As you apparently couldn't understand my use of a simile I'll spell it out for you; The oil industry have a history of being far more evil bastards than anyone thinks the RIAA are. Using them as an example of why we should have the choice whether to pay people if they cannot set the price is, I would wager, counter-productive.
As well as that, oil is a limited resource governed by the effects of scarcity. If someone mined some oil and it was possible to copy that oil at no expense to the person who mined it then I certainly wouldn't be paying them for every bit of oil that got copied. If you would, then that's your call and I have no problem with that.
That's completely off topic. You're extrapolating on the situation of the analogy used to make a point that has little connection with the subject the analogy was used for. But sure, why not.
What was off topic?
So you have that car duplicator thing, and you don't want to pay the license I talked about to GM for duplicating their cars, am I right? So what's the incentive for GM to innovate anything if they're not gonna get any money for it? It pains me to even have to explain it (seriously, more people should read about Adam Smith, it's getting old always explaining why corporations do the things they do), but GM doesn't care about eco-friendly cars, or safer cars, it only cares about money. So where's the incentive if you don't pay GM something for their new cars? (Also, what's wrong with my license idea? Please address that).
The incentive is that their old business model doesn't work and they need a new one, they can always move to a different industry if they don't want to design cars. You still haven't explained why people won't pay them to design new cars if they want new car designs. If there is a market for it then people will pay for it, if there isn't then they won't. Not paying for something is only a problem if you made an exchange, if you copied their car design you have not made an exchange and therefore they are not damaged by your lack of patronage. If you told them you were going to pay them for a design and then didn't then that would be a problem as they have exchanged their time and effort for your promise of payment.
lol.. what? Are you trying to say that car makers should be publicly funded either through charity, or be entirely nationalised, paid for by tax payers money and told what to do by the government? Let me guess, would you use 5-year plans like communists do?
I'm saying that where people don't find a business model there is still money if there is a demand. If you insist on a business example then just look at building architects. The burden for funding is between those who want to invest in car designs and those who want to make money out of car designs. I am certainly NOT saying they should be funded in any particular way, you appear to be the only one saying that.
Seriously, it's getting painful to listen to people's suggestions that wouldn't begin to hold together if someone was mad enough to even try these.
Nobody is forcing you to look at the screen, are they? If it helps you feel better, I won't cry if you stop posting.
Mod parent +1 ironic?
I think the person who said they shouldn't get paid for their studio work meant they shouldn't be guaranteed an income based on their studio work. That is, if people listen to it at no cost to the artist and don't want to support them then they shouldn't have to. By calling them dense I, at least, presumed that you didn't agree with that and that you were pro copyright.. as you did not describe a third way of doing things.
If they're not able to offer you something you actually need just send them a cheque, or even better.. get them to put a donate button on their website.
Good question. If you wanted things to be "fair", then by doing the replication, the only things you're sparing GM are the entire manufacturing costs. So if you wanted to be "fair", you'd pay GM the price of the car minus its manufacturing costs, so that it would get the same money to pay for its designers and whatever else that is paid for when you buy a car, minus the manufacturing.
The manufacturing costs are the only things to spare, they already designed the car so those costs have already been met (even if they had to take out a loan to do it). What I think you mean is that they would be denied a return on their investment, the question is should someone who never signed a contract with GM be obliged to provide a return on their investment.
If you didn't pay anything to GM because you think it's all in the manufacturing, GM wouldn't have any incentive to make any car if they're only going to sell one, and neither would any other car manufacturer, so you'd successfully kill the auto industry, and be doomed to replicate cars that were made before the replication craze started, which means that even in 200 years people would drive 20th and 21st century cars.
Leaving aside how you attribute the death of the auto industry to peoples intent rather than natural progression, why would we need the auto industry in its previous form at that point? There will still be plenty of incentive for new designs.. for example more eco-friendly cars and safer cars. When you run out of incentives there's no point in doing any more work, the question is not whether they will get paid, it is how. If you can't think how people would get the money considering we've done things from providing countrywide support networks funded by charity to putting a man on the moon funded by political desire then perhaps you should exercise your imagination more.
Holy crap, you're using a comparison with the oil industry to strengthen your argument for copyright? That's kinda like saying murder is OK because we have wars.
I think you are perhaps mistaking libertarianism as an economic theory, it is a social or political philosophy. Copyright is not an economic issue it is a social issue that effects the economy. I have never read anything by Adam Smith but looking on wikipedia he appears to be a free market advocate. You should in fact consider that a market subject to copyright is at most a mixed market rather than a free market because state intervention is required. In a free market the value of information is always zero but the value of access to that information can be set by supply and demand. In a free market people would not need to pay for music but they would need to pay for new music, which would be subject to supply and demand.
Considering I pay for music too, that isn't much of a revelation. I never said everyone who paid for music was being forced to but you cannot deny the coercion in threatening people who don't pay with legal action.
'Armchair Pirates' (lol) don't force anyone to give anything for free. They redistribute for free what they already have access to, if I was an artist I would say they would be doing me a favour by distributing my work for me. If you mean forcing people to give away for free by undermining copyright.. how is not asking for money worse than forcing people to give you money?
Basically you decide arbitrarily that studio recorded music should be free, and therefore as a sort of feedback loop that makes it inherently unworthy of any money. You can't just say "this should be free, make it free" for something that's not free and that the market validated as something you can ask money for.
Firstly, information is already free. The law might want to change the way reality works but you're not going to win an argument by saying 'it's true because it's written down', even religions have gotten over that notion. What copyright puts a price on is your liberty, not the information it purports to protect. Even taxes have to benefit those who pay them in some way, copyright does nothing of the sort.
Oh, Market Validated. Now I see how I've been wrong.. because people have been paying for it they should be forced to pay for it! Uh, wait, lets think about what market means for a start. Markets are about exchange of goods. If I get given a copy of a song by someone then that is an exchange between me and them not me and the artist. If there are infinite goods available for exchange for free then the market value is zero. That doesn't stop you charging for it but people who buy it aren't paying the market value of the song.
Most Slashdotters are libertarians, but when it comes to stuff you want for free you all turn to commies.
Damn, now I know why you got modded troll.. although flamebait would have been more accurate. Maybe you should look up what libertarian and communism mean and realise that libertarian ideals are kinda the anti-hero of copyright. I'm not even sure how you think communism is relevant to anything in this thread at all.
His point is if no one is giving you money for making albums then there isn't a market for the albums. Forcing people to give you money for the privilege of using what they already have access to isn't an economic business model, it is money for menaces.
That would come off better if you didn't put the guy down when your actual point is the system is flawed. Arguing his policies are shit and the only reason he got elected was that he duped people with charisma implies that there was a better candidate for them to choose from. For many people this wasn't the case, most of the decent 3rd party candidates had distinctly different policies to Obama. For your put-down to be justified there would need to be a candidate with similar policies to Obama with more integrity, or capability to see them through.
You missed the point, for whatever reason they do not care that the NSA is reading their email. This can be because they do not use email or because they do not use it for anything personal. Even if they do use email for personal things you have to then get over the fact that they know the NSA isn't going to turn up on their doorstep because they are so very American and their sex life isn't going to be mistaken for a terrorist plot.
The fact is most systems that don't make the majority will work in favour of the 'average Joe' and they just don't care about things that don't effect them. Privacy isn't a big consideration for a lot of people because they only care if their partner knows all their dirty secrets, they don't give a damn if the government knows. Here in the UK we get a lot of rhetoric about the ends justifying the means, politicians on record as saying pretty much anything goes if it foils one terrorist plot or saves one child. The average person may not have the same inherent distrust of authority that seems so healthy to most privacy advocates, or a very selective one. They can believe a politician would be caught with their hand in the proverbial cookie jar (see expenses scandal) but not that they would lie about matters of life and death.
There are ways to combat this sort of thinking, unfortunately I only know how to effect most of them on an individual level. Probably the most effective device at an individual level for a disagreement about privacy or safety is to find an example of something in that persons life which runs contrary to their advocacy. For example, if someone is concerned about saving lives you can point out to them they could save more lives by banning cars or banning alcohol or if you are countering some poor use of statistics, that the government could save lives by putting children into childcare based on who their parents are rather than what they do. Point out that they are being unreasonable to expect you to give up rights that have no inherent detrimental effect on anyone else if they do not make an equivalent effort.
Mp3Sparks is a slightly different service but I had not realised they were still running, thanks!
Note to self, check out Magnatune. I had dismissed it as something like Last.fm or Pandora but someone has mentioned it here as a possible source of FLAC encoded music (although probably not for artists I already listen to).
You're right, they should have modded him flamebait instead..
But seriously, what is wrong with wanting a decent product? Is there a reason they cannot provide it? If they'd spend half the budget they did on anti-piracy propaganda on a study of what the pirates want they might even stand a chance. Until then we can pay them as much positive notice as they pay us, considering they are the ones who want our money.
No, I haven't had a chance to read most of the comments on this thread yet. However, did you read my comment before replying? I did not even suggest that you were anti file-sharing.. I used the phrase once in an example that did not presume to involve you.
"Oh I won't use it till it can run on NetBSD"
"Oh I won't use it till it gives me 740kb/s Ogg files"
Again, you are trying to attribute a distinct motivation to a vast group of people who apparently have little in common other than not being offered a decent product.
I don't justify copyright infringement with any of those issues, free choice was around before copyright I am quite happy to ignore copyright until someone manages to justify it for me. That said, I'll be damned if I'm going to go routinely out of my way to support artists by throwing away my money to distributors who can't provide a service I want. I'd rather click a donate button on the artist's site.
The rest of slashdot is busy making up goals to be met by any service before they will stop pirating, crazy goals, mostly unobtainable goals, just so they can justify their piracy to themselves.
The rest of Slashdot would like a word with you, the word is cluebat.
Perhaps after you have stopped attributing what you worry may be your own failings to others you can jump down off that high horse and appreciate that what you're saying has diddley squat to do with the issue at hand. Do you really think that the vast majority of people who buy music do so out of the goodness of their hearts? I mean, attributing peoples motivations to their use of money says a lot about your own priorities and not a lot about their own. If I may abuse generalisation in a manner you seem so good at, a lot of anti file-sharing people I hear would rather people boycotted an artists music than didn't pay for it. I'd be pretty pissed if I sold some poetry and someone started telling people they shouldn't read them because they could not afford to buy a copy or disagreed with where the money was going.
As an aside, I tend to spend money on music which is in a format I want (pretty much just Nine Inch Nails at this point) or by indie artists whose entire back catalogues I already probably have downloaded in FLAC format but have no hope of going to see a show for. This way the money I am spending is supporting a product I want to see more of (FLAC) and artists who will actually see most of the money from iTunes or whatever where there aren't any alternatives. What I wouldn't do is tell everyone that they should do the same thing I am doing, because I am at least marginally less arrogant than you.
This is the same company that cries it's customers are using too much bandwidth at the same time as announcing a new faster service. Given the apparent blindness to what their broadband customers want broadband wise I'd be surprised if they manage to offer a music service that keeps mp3 users happy let alone those who want something better. The more companies spend all their effort crying about how their business is hurting because of their customers, the less able they are to offer a service those customers might be satisfied with. It's not an issue limited to the big companies though, apart from Nine Inch Nails (who were hard to miss even had I not already been a fan) I haven't come across any commercial service offering FLAC since allofmp3 died.
May the IFPI and all they represent reap what they sow for what they did to allofmp3. Those guys had more sense about a good product in one pinkie than Virgin Media have in the entire company.
Woosh. The unsaid words in my post were 'the prevalence of'. Context is everything unless you presume everyone is an idiot.
I think it is safe to presume that you do know that the 'political left' is a very vague categorisation of a number of distinct political ideologies and are just trolling. For example, anarchism is considered by your cited source to be politically left and would be one of the opposites of tyranny.