Yeah I know - I'm being pessimistic, but I've seen what happens to new technologies. DAT (digital audio tape) was killed in the 80s because even though it had legitimate purposes, the courts decided it would mainly be used to steal music, so it was blocked from entering the U.S. for retail sale. Only the professionals had access to DAT machines.
I expect P2P to suffer the same fate as DAT did -
- "Yes these programs like Utorrent have legitimate purposes, but 99% of the traffic is illegal content, so I've decided it's okay for the Megacorp ISP to block these peer-to-peer packets." - Signed, Judge Clueless
>>>Cable companies want to prop up their outdated business model (television content) by blocking video content over the internet
Sorry to break the news, but it's already too late. Comcast, Time-Warner, and Cox have negotiated with the cable channels to put all video content behind a subscriber wall. So if you want to watch Eureka at scifi.com, you can't because it will be locked. Want to watch Mokn on usa.com or Kyle XY on abcfamily.com? Nope. Again you'll be blocked.
CC, TW, and Cox claim they pay for these programs, therefore they should be able to limit streamed cable programs to only their customers, and that's what will take effect this Fall 2009.
So the only video content that will still be available for free are the broadcast nets (NBC, FOX, CW, etc) and the older reruns like Bewitched or Munsters or M*A*S*H on hulu.com
I don't know. I miss the DJ that used to come-on at 6 p.m. and take personal requests until about 10. He was goofy, but never boring.
Now the radio sounds about as interesting as my iPod, except the music isn't as good. I think going with an all-music/no DJ format is a mistake that will drive people away from radio.
LaTex? Isn't that the stuff my wife wears to bed? But seriously, I'm not really following this conversation. I just use a word processor to type stuff and then print it. Sometimes I don't even bother with that, since a quick scrawl in NotePad is sufficient. I, being a typical computer user, don't really care about the exotics of type-setting or desktop publishing or whatever.
That said I'm going to take a trip down memory lane:
#1 RUNscript - a word processor I literally typed out of a magazine into my Commodore 64 (kilobyte) computer. Yes kids we used to type our own programs! Time-consuming but educational. It served me well for turning-in my book reports, since the teachers didn't mind if the typefaces were pixelated, so long as it was neat and readable.
#2 GEOSwrite - turned my Commodore into something akin to a Macintosh with different fonts and sizes. Not bad for a machine that only cost 1/10th as much and had 1/8th as much RAM.
#3 WordPerfect Commodore Amiga and WordPerfect Mac - This was my favorite word processor, since it was easy-to-use and yet powerful thanks to macros. I used it continuously for almost ten years until I finally sold my soul to Microsoft (wipes away tears). - Laserprinter - My school bought its first laserprinter circa 1993. This is worthy of mention because the laserprinter was revolutionary, allowing people to eliminate the pixeled output from dot-matrix impact printers or deskjets, and replace it with pages that looked as professional as a textbook. It cost $2 a page! but dropped quickly.
#4 Microsoft Word 97 - Ugh. WordPerfect always felt "intuitive" to me and easy to use, but I've never got the hang of MS Word. I still have problems making a simple table of contents, much to my boss's annoyance - "What do you mean you just TYPED the table of contents?" "It was easier." "Wrong; you do this and this and..." (one hour later of using obscure menus and settings) "See how easy that was?" "Not really; it took you an hour. I did the same thing in five minutes."
#5 OpenOffice - I've been experimenting and after Word97 is no longer acceptable for submission to my boss, OpenOffice will probably be my next destination, not because it's great but because free is cheaper than giving Mickeysoft 200 dollars. I've come full-circle from a "free" type-in word processor to a "free" downloadable one.
>>>I buy car insurance and have never used it either, except I don't consider it getting nothing in return.
I don't have any car insurance (except the legal minimum). If an appliance like a computer or car dies, it's typically cheaper to just junk it (or sell it for parts) and buy a new one. Insurance is the more-expensive option: ~$1500 a year times 20 years accident free == $30,000 wasted if I had gone that route.
A replacement car costs a mere $14,000 new, or $3000 used.
I prefer my method of dealing with broken appliances since it's cheaper than insurance.
Soooo.... in addition to the $2000 I just spent on my Mac, I have to go out and buy a third-party multi-button mouse to replace the idiotic one-button mouse Apple gave me.
DJs getting laid-off all over the place (my town has no DJs between 6 pm and 6 am). Music programmed by a computer set to automatic. More-and-more people using iPods to create their own music playlists... virtual stations in a pocket.
I don't blame "The Shack" for wanting to distance itself from radio.
>>>In this thread already some guy was saying how Apple offered to replace his aging machine with a brand new one for no cost. >>>
I'm not impressed. Apple is OBLIGATED by the Extended Warranty contract to repair or replace the broken computer. Yes they did upgrade him to a new machine, but I suspect that's because the old machine is dicontinued so they gave him what was available, and giving new was cheaper than paying technician labor to fix the old. i.e. It was just a business decision.
If they didn't repair or replace this customer's machine, then they'd get sued for breach-of-contract.
>>> EWP's are offered by companies because in the big picture, they're insanely profitable.
That's for sure. My first new car includes a ~$1000 extended warranty, but I never used it. Yes the car did have some initial problems with the ignition wiring, and later with a broken wheel hub recall, but both of those were covered under the standard FREE warranty.
I basically threw-away one thousand dollars for nothing in return. Pure profit. AppleCare is no different. If I had bought it for my G4 Mac, it would have been pure profit for them since the G4 never broke down.
Riiight. Until you try to use a right-button context option like "back" or "forward" or "copy" or "zoom image" while browsing around the web. On a PC it's ridiculously easy with a simple one-handed click, but on my Mac I have to pick-up my keyboard from the floor, hold down the apple key, and then click the mouse.
User-friendly? No not really. Apple should have quit selling one-button mice with their Macs around 2000, and started including two-button minimum.
There's a difference between buying a product and liking the company. For example I might buy Comcast Cable or Comcast Internet, but it's not by choice. It's because they are the only one who makes that product in my area. I suspect the grandparent was making the point that he doesn't like Apple, but they just happened to have a monopoly on the touch-sensitive media player market at that time.
Back to the article-
"They're putting a life sentence on myself, my daughter and Ellie's mum, not to say anything to anyone. If we inadvertently did say anything, no matter what, they would take litigation against us. I thought that was absolutely appalling. We didn't ask for compensation, we just asked for our money back," he added.
There's more than one way to get back your money. In this situation I'd file a dispute on the original charge through my credit card company.
If that didn't work, then I'd buy a new iPod from Apple, wait about two months, and then return the exploded iPod to apple for a refund. Apple would probably refuse, so I'd end-up filing a credit card chargeback.
Eventually I would win, and no I would not sign some confidentiality agreement. My mouth belongs to me - I will maintain my right to speak freely.
Well yeah it's the same EEE philosophy they've followed over th last twenty years. Why abandon the philosophy when it works do brilliantly for them?
- EMBRACE the concept of open standards (previous phase).
- EXTEND these standards with Microsoft proprietary formats (the current ongoing phase).
- EXTINGUISH future competitors by claiming they violate these proprietary formats and may not use them, which means customers must buy Microsoft software to gain full functionality. Thus a once-open standards model becomes a closed MS-proprietary format. Again.
Interesting that the pro-RIAA people are the ones so 'offended' by my 'inconsiderate' commentary on defendant's lawyers' work.
All this does NYLC is demonstrate more unprofessionalism.
BTW I'm not pro-RIAA. Although I support the idea of copy licenses, I think they should expire seven*2 years after submission. And I don't think people should be fined $150,000/song just because they recorded a song off the radio.
I bet it's fun being white and "concerned" where you can spend your parents money on being another corrupt Congress-asshole. Whoopdi shit. You really think if you actually had a chance of winning (maybe if you spent more time campaigning and less time bullshitting on slashdot) as a pause between being on daddy's yacht and getting drunk with the alma mater, do you really think YOU would make a difference.
You would be another bought and paid for politician or quickly become ineffectual and all of daddy's money that paid for your congress seat will be removed in the next election. All the real power comes from the senior congress assholes who hold positions on various committees. So you have to either play ball or leave the Washington Millionaire's club. Don't worry, your trust fund will still be there.
Are you done?
Okay then.
My parents don't have any money. My dad was a blue-collar worker and certainly doesn't have a yacht, and no I'm not lounging on it.
>>>NewYorkCountryLawyer can't be everywhere at once, seeing as how he is already defending other cases.
Okay then. Well if NYCL loses one of these cases, is that Harvard lawschool professor allowed to come here to slashdot, post a front-page article, and call NYLC "incompetent" and "apparently they don't teach competence in SUNY lawschool". Would that be allowed?
I suspect not. In fact I bet NYCL would be the first to cry foul, even though he did it to the professor first.
>>>I pointed out that the Reason Foundation is a biased organization, on the same level as the John Birch Society.
Actually your precise words were "The Reason Foundation promotes supply side economic princples and unrestrained free markets, which have never been shown to work. You might as well quote the John Birch Society."
That certainly qualifies as "an attack on the character or motives of a person" or organization (which of course consists of people). It's an ad hominem argument which is a logical fallacy and therefore invalid. It proves nothing.
Citing a Reason study is just as valid as citing a MoveOn.org study, or a New York Times study, or any other study. If you think the Reason study is not accurate, then look at the study and show me where it's wrong. Or quote a different study that reaches a different dollars/hour conclusion. THOSE would be logical, valid arguments.
Don't resort to logical fallacies like ad hominem arguments.
>>>Want to buy a car? Arbitration and liability waiver.
Yes and virtually all of those have been declared void in court. For example a lot of these arbitration contracts claim the customer MUST go through arbitration and abide by the arbiter's ruling. They also say the customer may not challenge the result in court. Time-and-time again the courts have nullified these contracts, and stated that the customer may sue a company at any time, without being bound to arbitration, per U.S. law.
But companies keep making us sign these contracts, because they know deception is effective, and most customers falsely-believe they are bound by this waiver. But it isn't true. Consumer rights can not be signed-away.
The same applies with the company called college. A professor has a little more flexibility, but he still can not force someone to sign-away their Federally-protected rights. For example suppose the professor never appeared in class, but instead set-up a TV to watch Cartoon Network, per the first-day's syllabus. You mean to tell me the university is protected from being sued by the ~30 students that paid tuition, but were never taught? Hardly.
You're a customer. You retain all your consumer rights per U.S. law.
No it isn't bunkum that the U.S. Courts declared various sections of Paypal's contract "void" since the contract violated federal laws. Similarly a professor that demands a student give-up his rights is also in violation of these laws. For example the professor can not say in his syllabus, "You lose all right to sue me for sexual harassment."
Yeah I know I used an extreme example, but so did you with your anti-gun argument. The point is that there are some rights/privileges than can Not be given-away via contract, because the U.S. laws supercede the contract. One of those rights is copyright. A business like Walmart can not force a customer to give-up his stories as a condition of service. Neither can XYZ College.
Another right is to not have terms added to a contract AFTER the money has already been paid by the customer. That's a breach by the business. For example Walmart can't suddenly tell me, after I bought some Levis jeans, that I am only allowed to wear them on weekend. Neither can a professor arbitarily add terms after payment has been submitted.
Such things must be revealed *before* the money changes hands.
I have no idea why this was modded "troll". I made a legitimate point about a company taking a writer's story for itself. We already have precedent, where internet forums claim all rights over submitted messages.
I forgot to comment on the article. (1) The graph shows the records were killed, not by CDs, but by cassettes. Having lived in that time period I always suspected that was true, because cassettes were far-more convenient to carry-around, were not vulnerable to scratching, and had a quality almost as good as CD thanks to the chrome storage used, plus Dolby B encoding.
(2) This article claims the *inflation adjusted* earnings are dropping. This ignores two things: (a) One reason earnings dropped is because the price dropped from $2 per digital song in the early 2000s to $1 a song (or less) in 2009. This was a *voluntary* pricedrop and if companies think they are going bankrupt, then the could just return the price to where it was before.
(2)(b) Yes people are abandoning CDs but they are offsetting that loss by the huge growth in downloads. According to a recent BBC article, digital sales is now a blockbuster industry.
(3) I like CDs. I'd better start buying them-up before they disappear completely. I prefer lossless music, not the lossy crap sold online.
(4) The industry's not going to die, anymore than the radio industry died when TV was introduced. It will evolve and change, but it won't die. The New York Times is just spewing FUD to help-out their artistic buddies in justifying the MAFIAA's extortion tactics.
>>>And for the record, fuck yes I am anti-business. Corporations are, from my personal experience, a completely malignant form of social and economic organisation. >>>
Yes true, very very true. But a government-run monopoly (like medicare) is far far worse. At least with corporations the consumer can exert power via the "vote" called the dollar. Consumers can literally Kill a corporation by withholding their dollars (see Circuit City). Some may blame CC's demise on the economy, but I blame it on maltreatment of customers and finally the people got fed-up. They stopped buying CC's shit and CC went out of business.
So a corporation has to keep the population happy, and listen to the people's desires, and therefore as close to a pure democracy as we're likely to see. But government? Not so much. Politicians are essentially lifetime employees - they need not fear us peons. And of course being a monopoly, the government offers no other choices. (Can I choose somebody other than the U.S. to deliver my mail? Nope.)
Yes corporations are malignant.
But government is downright evil. "...a troublesome servant and a deadly master." - George Washington.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah I know - I'm being pessimistic, but I've seen what happens to new technologies. DAT (digital audio tape) was killed in the 80s because even though it had legitimate purposes, the courts decided it would mainly be used to steal music, so it was blocked from entering the U.S. for retail sale. Only the professionals had access to DAT machines.
I expect P2P to suffer the same fate as DAT did -
- "Yes these programs like Utorrent have legitimate purposes, but 99% of the traffic is illegal content, so I've decided it's okay for the Megacorp ISP to block these peer-to-peer packets." - Signed, Judge Clueless
>>>Cable companies want to prop up their outdated business model (television content) by blocking video content over the internet
Sorry to break the news, but it's already too late. Comcast, Time-Warner, and Cox have negotiated with the cable channels to put all video content behind a subscriber wall. So if you want to watch Eureka at scifi.com, you can't because it will be locked. Want to watch Mokn on usa.com or Kyle XY on abcfamily.com? Nope. Again you'll be blocked.
CC, TW, and Cox claim they pay for these programs, therefore they should be able to limit streamed cable programs to only their customers, and that's what will take effect this Fall 2009.
So the only video content that will still be available for free are the broadcast nets (NBC, FOX, CW, etc) and the older reruns like Bewitched or Munsters or M*A*S*H on hulu.com
I don't know. I miss the DJ that used to come-on at 6 p.m. and take personal requests until about 10. He was goofy, but never boring.
Now the radio sounds about as interesting as my iPod, except the music isn't as good. I think going with an all-music/no DJ format is a mistake that will drive people away from radio.
LaTex? Isn't that the stuff my wife wears to bed? But seriously, I'm not really following this conversation. I just use a word processor to type stuff and then print it. Sometimes I don't even bother with that, since a quick scrawl in NotePad is sufficient. I, being a typical computer user, don't really care about the exotics of type-setting or desktop publishing or whatever.
That said I'm going to take a trip down memory lane:
#1 RUNscript - a word processor I literally typed out of a magazine into my Commodore 64 (kilobyte) computer. Yes kids we used to type our own programs! Time-consuming but educational. It served me well for turning-in my book reports, since the teachers didn't mind if the typefaces were pixelated, so long as it was neat and readable.
#2 GEOSwrite - turned my Commodore into something akin to a Macintosh with different fonts and sizes. Not bad for a machine that only cost 1/10th as much and had 1/8th as much RAM.
#3 WordPerfect Commodore Amiga and WordPerfect Mac - This was my favorite word processor, since it was easy-to-use and yet powerful thanks to macros. I used it continuously for almost ten years until I finally sold my soul to Microsoft (wipes away tears). - Laserprinter - My school bought its first laserprinter circa 1993. This is worthy of mention because the laserprinter was revolutionary, allowing people to eliminate the pixeled output from dot-matrix impact printers or deskjets, and replace it with pages that looked as professional as a textbook. It cost $2 a page! but dropped quickly.
#4 Microsoft Word 97 - Ugh. WordPerfect always felt "intuitive" to me and easy to use, but I've never got the hang of MS Word. I still have problems making a simple table of contents, much to my boss's annoyance - "What do you mean you just TYPED the table of contents?" "It was easier." "Wrong; you do this and this and..." (one hour later of using obscure menus and settings) "See how easy that was?" "Not really; it took you an hour. I did the same thing in five minutes."
#5 OpenOffice - I've been experimenting and after Word97 is no longer acceptable for submission to my boss, OpenOffice will probably be my next destination, not because it's great but because free is cheaper than giving Mickeysoft 200 dollars. I've come full-circle from a "free" type-in word processor to a "free" downloadable one.
The End. Wake up. Lecture over. (wink)
>>>I buy car insurance and have never used it either, except I don't consider it getting nothing in return.
I don't have any car insurance (except the legal minimum). If an appliance like a computer or car dies, it's typically cheaper to just junk it (or sell it for parts) and buy a new one. Insurance is the more-expensive option: ~$1500 a year times 20 years accident free == $30,000 wasted if I had gone that route.
A replacement car costs a mere $14,000 new, or $3000 used.
I prefer my method of dealing with broken appliances since it's cheaper than insurance.
Soooo.... in addition to the $2000 I just spent on my Mac, I have to go out and buy a third-party multi-button mouse to replace the idiotic one-button mouse Apple gave me.
Yeah, that's real user-friendly.
Not.
Yeah because visiting the minimall that has JCPenney and Woolworth's is just sooooo much better.
DJs getting laid-off all over the place (my town has no DJs between 6 pm and 6 am). Music programmed by a computer set to automatic. More-and-more people using iPods to create their own music playlists... virtual stations in a pocket.
I don't blame "The Shack" for wanting to distance itself from radio.
>>>In this thread already some guy was saying how Apple offered to replace his aging machine with a brand new one for no cost.
>>>
I'm not impressed. Apple is OBLIGATED by the Extended Warranty contract to repair or replace the broken computer. Yes they did upgrade him to a new machine, but I suspect that's because the old machine is dicontinued so they gave him what was available, and giving new was cheaper than paying technician labor to fix the old. i.e. It was just a business decision.
If they didn't repair or replace this customer's machine, then they'd get sued for breach-of-contract.
>>> EWP's are offered by companies because in the big picture, they're insanely profitable.
That's for sure. My first new car includes a ~$1000 extended warranty, but I never used it. Yes the car did have some initial problems with the ignition wiring, and later with a broken wheel hub recall, but both of those were covered under the standard FREE warranty.
I basically threw-away one thousand dollars for nothing in return. Pure profit. AppleCare is no different. If I had bought it for my G4 Mac, it would have been pure profit for them since the G4 never broke down.
>>>They consistently make user friendly UI's
Riiight. Until you try to use a right-button context option like "back" or "forward" or "copy" or "zoom image" while browsing around the web. On a PC it's ridiculously easy with a simple one-handed click, but on my Mac I have to pick-up my keyboard from the floor, hold down the apple key, and then click the mouse.
User-friendly? No not really. Apple should have quit selling one-button mice with their Macs around 2000, and started including two-button minimum.
There's a difference between buying a product and liking the company. For example I might buy Comcast Cable or Comcast Internet, but it's not by choice. It's because they are the only one who makes that product in my area. I suspect the grandparent was making the point that he doesn't like Apple, but they just happened to have a monopoly on the touch-sensitive media player market at that time.
Back to the article-
"They're putting a life sentence on myself, my daughter and Ellie's mum, not to say anything to anyone. If we inadvertently did say anything, no matter what, they would take litigation against us. I thought that was absolutely appalling. We didn't ask for compensation, we just asked for our money back," he added.
There's more than one way to get back your money. In this situation I'd file a dispute on the original charge through my credit card company.
If that didn't work, then I'd buy a new iPod from Apple, wait about two months, and then return the exploded iPod to apple for a refund. Apple would probably refuse, so I'd end-up filing a credit card chargeback.
Eventually I would win, and no I would not sign some confidentiality agreement. My mouth belongs to me - I will maintain my right to speak freely.
Can I trade-in my 72 downloads for a female virgin? Actually I'll just settle for any female around age 20 and less than 140 pounds.
Aside-
I don't understand the male obsession with virgins. They're messy.
Well yeah it's the same EEE philosophy they've followed over th last twenty years. Why abandon the philosophy when it works do brilliantly for them?
- EMBRACE the concept of open standards (previous phase).
- EXTEND these standards with Microsoft proprietary formats (the current ongoing phase).
- EXTINGUISH future competitors by claiming they violate these proprietary formats and may not use them, which means customers must buy Microsoft software to gain full functionality. Thus a once-open standards model becomes a closed MS-proprietary format. Again.
Interesting that the pro-RIAA people are the ones so 'offended' by my 'inconsiderate' commentary on defendant's lawyers' work.
All this does NYLC is demonstrate more unprofessionalism.
BTW I'm not pro-RIAA. Although I support the idea of copy licenses, I think they should expire seven*2 years after submission. And I don't think people should be fined $150,000/song just because they recorded a song off the radio.
>>>NYCL's commentary regarding the incompetency of Tenenbaum's counsel is inconsiderate, unnecessary, and unproductive.
Precisely.
Anon. Coward wrote:
I bet it's fun being white and "concerned" where you can spend your parents money on being another corrupt Congress-asshole. Whoopdi shit. You really think if you actually had a chance of winning (maybe if you spent more time campaigning and less time bullshitting on slashdot) as a pause between being on daddy's yacht and getting drunk with the alma mater, do you really think YOU would make a difference.
You would be another bought and paid for politician or quickly become ineffectual and all of daddy's money that paid for your congress seat will be removed in the next election. All the real power comes from the senior congress assholes who hold positions on various committees. So you have to either play ball or leave the Washington Millionaire's club. Don't worry, your trust fund will still be there.
Are you done?
Okay then.
My parents don't have any money. My dad was a blue-collar worker and certainly doesn't have a yacht, and no I'm not lounging on it.
PRICK.
Yes you are.
>>>NewYorkCountryLawyer can't be everywhere at once, seeing as how he is already defending other cases.
Okay then. Well if NYCL loses one of these cases, is that Harvard lawschool professor allowed to come here to slashdot, post a front-page article, and call NYLC "incompetent" and "apparently they don't teach competence in SUNY lawschool". Would that be allowed?
I suspect not. In fact I bet NYCL would be the first to cry foul, even though he did it to the professor first.
>>>I pointed out that the Reason Foundation is a biased organization, on the same level as the John Birch Society.
Actually your precise words were "The Reason Foundation promotes supply side economic princples and unrestrained free markets, which have never been shown to work. You might as well quote the John Birch Society."
That certainly qualifies as "an attack on the character or motives of a person" or organization (which of course consists of people). It's an ad hominem argument which is a logical fallacy and therefore invalid. It proves nothing.
Citing a Reason study is just as valid as citing a MoveOn.org study, or a New York Times study, or any other study. If you think the Reason study is not accurate, then look at the study and show me where it's wrong. Or quote a different study that reaches a different dollars/hour conclusion. THOSE would be logical, valid arguments.
Don't resort to logical fallacies like ad hominem arguments.
>>>Without unemployment subsidy you'd be living on the street
False.
See my most-recent post about my $220,000 savings and that I did Not need welfare assistance.
>>>Want to buy a car? Arbitration and liability waiver.
Yes and virtually all of those have been declared void in court. For example a lot of these arbitration contracts claim the customer MUST go through arbitration and abide by the arbiter's ruling. They also say the customer may not challenge the result in court. Time-and-time again the courts have nullified these contracts, and stated that the customer may sue a company at any time, without being bound to arbitration, per U.S. law.
But companies keep making us sign these contracts, because they know deception is effective, and most customers falsely-believe they are bound by this waiver. But it isn't true. Consumer rights can not be signed-away.
The same applies with the company called college. A professor has a little more flexibility, but he still can not force someone to sign-away their Federally-protected rights. For example suppose the professor never appeared in class, but instead set-up a TV to watch Cartoon Network, per the first-day's syllabus. You mean to tell me the university is protected from being sued by the ~30 students that paid tuition, but were never taught? Hardly.
You're a customer. You retain all your consumer rights per U.S. law.
>>>Sounds like bunkum to me.
No it isn't bunkum that the U.S. Courts declared various sections of Paypal's contract "void" since the contract violated federal laws. Similarly a professor that demands a student give-up his rights is also in violation of these laws. For example the professor can not say in his syllabus, "You lose all right to sue me for sexual harassment."
Yeah I know I used an extreme example, but so did you with your anti-gun argument. The point is that there are some rights/privileges than can Not be given-away via contract, because the U.S. laws supercede the contract. One of those rights is copyright. A business like Walmart can not force a customer to give-up his stories as a condition of service. Neither can XYZ College.
Another right is to not have terms added to a contract AFTER the money has already been paid by the customer. That's a breach by the business. For example Walmart can't suddenly tell me, after I bought some Levis jeans, that I am only allowed to wear them on weekend. Neither can a professor arbitarily add terms after payment has been submitted.
Such things must be revealed *before* the money changes hands.
I have no idea why this was modded "troll". I made a legitimate point about a company taking a writer's story for itself. We already have precedent, where internet forums claim all rights over submitted messages.
P.S.
I forgot to comment on the article. (1) The graph shows the records were killed, not by CDs, but by cassettes. Having lived in that time period I always suspected that was true, because cassettes were far-more convenient to carry-around, were not vulnerable to scratching, and had a quality almost as good as CD thanks to the chrome storage used, plus Dolby B encoding.
(2) This article claims the *inflation adjusted* earnings are dropping. This ignores two things: (a) One reason earnings dropped is because the price dropped from $2 per digital song in the early 2000s to $1 a song (or less) in 2009. This was a *voluntary* pricedrop and if companies think they are going bankrupt, then the could just return the price to where it was before.
(2)(b) Yes people are abandoning CDs but they are offsetting that loss by the huge growth in downloads. According to a recent BBC article, digital sales is now a blockbuster industry.
(3) I like CDs. I'd better start buying them-up before they disappear completely. I prefer lossless music, not the lossy crap sold online.
(4) The industry's not going to die, anymore than the radio industry died when TV was introduced. It will evolve and change, but it won't die. The New York Times is just spewing FUD to help-out their artistic buddies in justifying the MAFIAA's extortion tactics.
>>>And for the record, fuck yes I am anti-business. Corporations are, from my personal experience, a completely malignant form of social and economic organisation.
>>>
Yes true, very very true. But a government-run monopoly (like medicare) is far far worse. At least with corporations the consumer can exert power via the "vote" called the dollar. Consumers can literally Kill a corporation by withholding their dollars (see Circuit City). Some may blame CC's demise on the economy, but I blame it on maltreatment of customers and finally the people got fed-up. They stopped buying CC's shit and CC went out of business.
So a corporation has to keep the population happy, and listen to the people's desires, and therefore as close to a pure democracy as we're likely to see. But government? Not so much. Politicians are essentially lifetime employees - they need not fear us peons. And of course being a monopoly, the government offers no other choices. (Can I choose somebody other than the U.S. to deliver my mail? Nope.)
Yes corporations are malignant.
But government is downright evil. "...a troublesome servant and a deadly master." - George Washington.