It's all handled in software too. Calling Roger Wilco or PalTalk "phone services" stretches the definition to the snapping point. For strict peer to peer I could write software myself so regulating the software is pointless to even try. I know tons of teenagers who could do it as well. It isn't rocket science. It isn't even computer science.
And then what do you call an email with an.ogg file attached?
Regulationg computer to computer voice transmission over IP makes no more logical, or legal, sense than regulating two tin cans and a piece of string.
I own my tin can. Granny owns hers. If granny lives across the country we lease rights to the string already. If she lives across the hall we even own the bloody string.
I'm working ( no matter what it looks like). I've got a coffepot just a few meters away. The moggie is comfortably curled up on my desk next to my keyboard. She likes it when I'm working, something about watching other people do it I think.
Ry Cooder & V.M. Bhatt is playing at a soothing level. Highly recommended.
Sandlewood incense is burning on one side of the room, vanilla cavendish on this side.
I wish I had a bit of Sake or Cognac (and it's Sunday. Blasted blue laws), but otherwise life is good. I'll sleep tomorrow.
You're right. I'm too "cheap" to pay a dollar a song to download.
I've got two copies of John Hartford's "Aereo Plain" here. That's right, I've purchased it. Twice. It appears I'm not simply cheap. There must be more to it.
There are 16 songs on the album. I payed ten bucks for the vinyl. Ya know, that stuff that's quite a bit more expensive to manufacture and distribute than CDs? For that ten bucks I got a large, "officially licensed" physical object. With cover art, liner notes and because it's an actual object I've been able to enhance it's value, both monetarily and to myself as a keepsake, by having the entire band autograph the disc itself. I can help preserve the disc by taping it (or making a digital file of it) and playing that, as a right guarunteed me by law.
I also have the CD. Rather smaller, so the cover art is less impressive. In at least one respect I'm thus getting less for my money, but they've at least made up for it with moderately extended liner notes and really nifty painted disc.The disc itself is actually pressed, not burned. I could have the entire band autograph this as well if John hadn't just died a while ago.
This too I can preserve as a master and make a digital file of to listen to if I wish. Legally. Play that file on any computer or portable player I wish to as well.
$14.99 at Amazon. I've now spent twentyfive bucks on this album. I'm not cheap.
A buck a song would be sixteen bucks ( and remember this was originally an LP. Some CDs have more songs than that) for which I would get. . . some crappy rip of a propriatary file format that restricts what I can even do with it and where I can play it. Maybe I can't even burn it. If I can it's a CD-R, not a pressing.
Didn't we just have a story on the shitty lifespan of burned discs?
I'm not cheap, but yeah, I'm too "cheap" to pay a buck a song for a DRMed crappy download.
About a quarter a song seems right. Five bucks an album.
Oddly enough, since I'm not "cheap," if I really like it I'll end up wanting to buy a professionally pressed and packaged CD (a REAL CD) for ten bucks later on.
Make an "album." Give two cuts away on your website under an open license as a demo. Kind of like a brouchure. Encourage people to pass them around as much as they'd like, however they'd like.
You're not putting them into the public domain. You retain your authorship rights. Just allow free distribution for noncommercial use.
If they like them people will find your website no matter how they came by the cuts. Google is a wonder and a mystery.
Sell 'em the rest of the album at five bucks a pop. This way you avoid the whole micropayment nonsense and it's worth dealing with your own merchant account (assuming you can get one for web sales, of course).
If your stuff is any good it will drive people to you just as surely as airplay drives people into the record stores; and since you're giving stuff away for free and not charging extortionate rates for a download file people will be less inclined to "cheat" the good guy.
Then don't sweat the people who cheat. They aren't your customers anyway. A dime you'll never see in the first place isn't a dime lost. Isn't that part of what we're trying to convince the RIAA of in the first place?
A penny saved is a penny earned. Unless you're being penny wise and pound foolish.
Oddly enough I have the opposite problem. The stereotype of Americans is NYC dwellers ala Seinfeld.
Some of us live out in the woods and skin woodchucks we find on the road to make things out of them.
I myself live in a small but technologically advanced New York State city (the original home of GE), but if I drive only a relatively few miles in the right direction I'm in territory that makes The New Red Green Show ( roughly the Canadian equivilent of your old The Paul Hogan Show) look like a documentary.
There's really no accounting for the perceptions people have for people from someplace else. Everyplace has its own diversity.
Oddly enough this tactic was tried many, many years ago here in America and declared illegal.
You can have your car serviced anywhere you like, or do it yourself, and it doesn't void your guaruntee.
This is not to say it won't effect your guaruntee. If you put full race cams and a cheap turbo on your car and blow the engine up that isn't due to faulty design or manufacturing. Buy a new engine.
But if you have your oil changed at Jiffy-Lube and a con rod fractures that's a defect and they can't get out of it by saying they didn't service the car.
This doesn't mean that there aren't unscrupulous dealers who will claim otherwise, but that's why they're unscrupulous.
That's what makes this particular rule somewhat puzzling. It flies in the face of decades of case law and centuries of American legal and cultural tradition.
Most puzzling about it is the way it overreaches the actual issue at law.
Ah well. That's why God invented Appellate Courts I suppose.
How in the name of high holy FUCK is this a troll?
By being pure and unadulterated social and political satire. It's the nature of the beast. If you agree with it it's funny and brilliantly insightful.
If you disagree with it it's a troll.
Swift, Dickens, Twain, Orwell. Wonderfull trolls all. I've never been able to understand why Dickens wasn't lynched in the streets for Great Expectations. If you've only seen it on film you only know it with all the satire stripped out of it. Read it. It's hysterical.
If you're not his target.
I've been reading a lot of Stephen Leacock lately and that came out very much in his style. It's a bit flip on the surface. Not everyone's taste I suppose.
Of course it's possible they simply didn't get it. Ya never know.
I took drastic measures and went back and added an explanation and that has been modded up. Go figure.
Now I'm faced with a quandry. Only people who read at -1 will ever see the original post, but even people who only read posts that have been modded up will see my followup just hanging there in mid narrative refering to nothing.
I don't care about the karma, I don't need it and it's "wasted" on me, but I feel like I've written a whodunit and the standards board was offended by the body, loved the last chapter, so they tore the last chapter off and replaced it on the library shelf flying solo.
Oh, I wouldn't mind voting for the odd agenda, philosophy or ideal. I would simply like those agendas, philophies and ideals to have vague coorespondence with my own.
In nearly thirty years of voting I've never seen anyone on any ballot that I have felt comfortable voting for, let alone feel they were "my" representative.
I like representative government. I like the fact that politicians are charged with equal representation of all the people in their political jurisdiction, not just me. It keeps me from running roughshod over them, and should keep them from running roughshod over me.
But then I'm a philosopher and idealist I guess.
Politicians aren't, no matter what they say. In their own minds they are only winners or losers and everything they do is explained by this.
Find me a man today who will honestly say, "I'd rather be right than President" and I might be inclined to feel comfortable voting for him, even if I was a mite uncomfortable with his "agenda."
While not entirely serious (duh!) this is a reasonable facsimile of the sort of spam you can expect to get under laws of this kind. This is one of the reasons it's a bad law. It won't stop spam, just create more "charities," as well as making existing charities adopt some rather strange bed fellows.
The same goes for a do not call lists that exempt charities. Instead of getting calls from MCI you'll start getting calls from United Way selling cheap long distance phone service, "for the children."
And no way under law to stop them.
You don't have to believe me. Just pass these laws and wait a year or so. You'll see. It's the way businesses work; and never forget that charities are businesses.
I'll accept your analogy, for the sake of argument, and run with it.
The problem with enforcing gun control laws is similar to the problem with enforcing spam laws.
Anyone can make crude offensive firearms quickly and cheaply in their own basement.
Anyone can make crude and offensive spam quickly and cheaply in their own basement.
The advantage the spammers have over the gun makers is that the spammer can make spam in somebody else's basement will still sitting snuggly in their own.
To enforce a law first you have to be able identify violators. Then you have to be able to arrest them, inside your own jurisdiction.
The big spammers protect themselves and are immune from any law. Thus antispam laws are only going to end up getting used against minor players, kids sending out "flyers" for their ball game and such. A granny thinking she can make a few extra bucks by peddling her hand crocheted doilies with some email.
They'll throw the book at them too.
Tackling the spam problem by making laws is just as silly as it would be to try to outlaw a common weed.
The problem is inherent in the system. Fix the system, no more problem.
As a current songwriter who programs I know of know solution. George Harrison never found one either and was afraid to write for a number of years.
The very first program I ever wrote intending some sort of commercial release was a "Learn to Read Music" program. I dealt with the issue by restricting myself to public domain works such The Well-Tempered Clavier. Nowadays my programs are only used by myself and a few students.
If you are going to create original works for your games there is simply no a priori way to avoid suits.
It might come as no surprise that the lawyers like it that way.
. . . because they were in a dispute with the painter's guild. Steinway painted their pianos. The painter's guild claimed this as a violation of their guild rights.
Steinway said, "Fuck this shit" (Well, the German equivilent actually), and came to America. In the process making America the center of a cultural technology that had previously been a European monopoly.
America is making such inovative freedom illegal. It will reap the consecquences, just as did Europe.
The DMCA was written entirely to protect existing vested interests. When you do so you automatically restrict (even if that wasn't your intent) development of other interests that spur economic growth.
The end result is stagnation with all power and wealth gradually making its way into a few hands.
Well, I'm not sure I see what the problem here is. It's pretty easy to explain.
The RIAA has formed a shell company under their control to infiltrate and infect the music file sharing networks. They have outsourced it into the the extralegal hands of Hamas. They will be using this network to gather data on p2p users, spread malicious code to make people afraid of using p2p networks and generally raising mayhem.
There. I've explained it. Does that mean I can trust them now?
"The senator refused to deny allegations that he has had sex with a donkey."
This is also a well know method in mainstream accusations to accuse without being accussable of making accusations.
The maker of the statement knows that the public will interpret any denial with suspicion that the nonaccusation is true, (otherwise why would he deny it so vehemently?)and any refusal to deny it with suspicion that the nonaccusation is true (otherwise why doesn't he just deny it?).
On the other hand Samuel Clemens made a damned fine living at it. You should read some of his letters to the editor and responses to various critics.
Try his criticism of James Fennimore Cooper. Although the target was dead his fans were legion and rabid.
Sometimes a flippant and well crafted sacastic reply is just what the situation calls for. My own experience is that the brighter the responder the more likely is sarcasm in a rebuttal.
Unless you live in a world of gray flannel suits walking stiffly and acting "professional."
Slashdot Mirror
Even George Carlin has always looked up to Richard Pryor as the master.
."Ummmmmmmmmmm, maybe, I don't know," but the idea is starting to grow on me.
Although, all things considered it be better if George plays The Master. I'll leave it to your tasteless imgination as what role Richard could play.
Other than that minor caveat I'm with you.
I have to admit my first reaction to Izzard as The Doctor was . .
I generally take that as a sign it's a good idea.
KFG
Smart sensors watch YOU!
No, wait. That can't be right. Let me try again.
In Soviet Russia smart sensors didn't EXIST!
No, that doesn't quite seem right either.
Wait, wait, let me try again. I'll get it sooner or later.
KFG
He likes his women flat and grey, with just a hint of generic text. . .like his coffee.
KFG
Impossible to track. A packet is a packet.
.ogg file attached?
It's all handled in software too. Calling Roger Wilco or PalTalk "phone services" stretches the definition to the snapping point. For strict peer to peer I could write software myself so regulating the software is pointless to even try. I know tons of teenagers who could do it as well. It isn't rocket science. It isn't even computer science.
And then what do you call an email with an
Regulationg computer to computer voice transmission over IP makes no more logical, or legal, sense than regulating two tin cans and a piece of string.
I own my tin can. Granny owns hers. If granny lives across the country we lease rights to the string already. If she lives across the hall we even own the bloody string.
KFG
I'm working ( no matter what it looks like). I've got a coffepot just a few meters away. The moggie is comfortably curled up on my desk next to my keyboard. She likes it when I'm working, something about watching other people do it I think.
Ry Cooder & V.M. Bhatt is playing at a soothing level. Highly recommended.
Sandlewood incense is burning on one side of the room, vanilla cavendish on this side.
I wish I had a bit of Sake or Cognac (and it's Sunday. Blasted blue laws), but otherwise life is good. I'll sleep tomorrow.
Or the next day. Whatever.
KFG
You're right. I'm too "cheap" to pay a dollar a song to download.
I've got two copies of John Hartford's "Aereo Plain" here. That's right, I've purchased it. Twice. It appears I'm not simply cheap. There must be more to it.
There are 16 songs on the album. I payed ten bucks for the vinyl. Ya know, that stuff that's quite a bit more expensive to manufacture and distribute than CDs? For that ten bucks I got a large, "officially licensed" physical object. With cover art, liner notes and because it's an actual object I've been able to enhance it's value, both monetarily and to myself as a keepsake, by having the entire band autograph the disc itself. I can help preserve the disc by taping it (or making a digital file of it) and playing that, as a right guarunteed me by law.
I also have the CD. Rather smaller, so the cover art is less impressive. In at least one respect I'm thus getting less for my money, but they've at least made up for it with moderately extended liner notes and really nifty painted disc.The disc itself is actually pressed, not burned. I could have the entire band autograph this as well if John hadn't just died a while ago.
This too I can preserve as a master and make a digital file of to listen to if I wish. Legally. Play that file on any computer or portable player I wish to as well.
$14.99 at Amazon. I've now spent twentyfive bucks on this album. I'm not cheap.
A buck a song would be sixteen bucks ( and remember this was originally an LP. Some CDs have more songs than that) for which I would get. . . some crappy rip of a propriatary file format that restricts what I can even do with it and where I can play it. Maybe I can't even burn it. If I can it's a CD-R, not a pressing.
Didn't we just have a story on the shitty lifespan of burned discs?
I'm not cheap, but yeah, I'm too "cheap" to pay a buck a song for a DRMed crappy download.
About a quarter a song seems right. Five bucks an album.
Oddly enough, since I'm not "cheap," if I really like it I'll end up wanting to buy a professionally pressed and packaged CD (a REAL CD) for ten bucks later on.
Go figure.
KFG
Make an "album." Give two cuts away on your website under an open license as a demo. Kind of like a brouchure. Encourage people to pass them around as much as they'd like, however they'd like.
You're not putting them into the public domain. You retain your authorship rights. Just allow free distribution for noncommercial use.
If they like them people will find your website no matter how they came by the cuts. Google is a wonder and a mystery.
Sell 'em the rest of the album at five bucks a pop. This way you avoid the whole micropayment nonsense and it's worth dealing with your own merchant account (assuming you can get one for web sales, of course).
If your stuff is any good it will drive people to you just as surely as airplay drives people into the record stores; and since you're giving stuff away for free and not charging extortionate rates for a download file people will be less inclined to "cheat" the good guy.
Then don't sweat the people who cheat. They aren't your customers anyway. A dime you'll never see in the first place isn't a dime lost. Isn't that part of what we're trying to convince the RIAA of in the first place?
A penny saved is a penny earned. Unless you're being penny wise and pound foolish.
KFG
Oddly enough I have the opposite problem. The stereotype of Americans is NYC dwellers ala Seinfeld.
Some of us live out in the woods and skin woodchucks we find on the road to make things out of them.
I myself live in a small but technologically advanced New York State city (the original home of GE), but if I drive only a relatively few miles in the right direction I'm in territory that makes The New Red Green Show ( roughly the Canadian equivilent of your old The Paul Hogan Show) look like a documentary.
There's really no accounting for the perceptions people have for people from someplace else. Everyplace has its own diversity.
KFG
And that act, like many consumer protection laws, is merely the legislative codification of case law that predates it by decades.
KFG
Oddly enough this tactic was tried many, many years ago here in America and declared illegal.
You can have your car serviced anywhere you like, or do it yourself, and it doesn't void your guaruntee.
This is not to say it won't effect your guaruntee. If you put full race cams and a cheap turbo on your car and blow the engine up that isn't due to faulty design or manufacturing. Buy a new engine.
But if you have your oil changed at Jiffy-Lube and a con rod fractures that's a defect and they can't get out of it by saying they didn't service the car.
This doesn't mean that there aren't unscrupulous dealers who will claim otherwise, but that's why they're unscrupulous.
That's what makes this particular rule somewhat puzzling. It flies in the face of decades of case law and centuries of American legal and cultural tradition.
Most puzzling about it is the way it overreaches the actual issue at law.
Ah well. That's why God invented Appellate Courts I suppose.
KFG
How in the name of high holy FUCK is this a troll?
By being pure and unadulterated social and political satire. It's the nature of the beast. If you agree with it it's funny and brilliantly insightful.
If you disagree with it it's a troll.
Swift, Dickens, Twain, Orwell. Wonderfull trolls all. I've never been able to understand why Dickens wasn't lynched in the streets for Great Expectations. If you've only seen it on film you only know it with all the satire stripped out of it. Read it. It's hysterical.
If you're not his target.
I've been reading a lot of Stephen Leacock lately and that came out very much in his style. It's a bit flip on the surface. Not everyone's taste I suppose.
Of course it's possible they simply didn't get it. Ya never know.
I took drastic measures and went back and added an explanation and that has been modded up. Go figure.
Now I'm faced with a quandry. Only people who read at -1 will ever see the original post, but even people who only read posts that have been modded up will see my followup just hanging there in mid narrative refering to nothing.
I don't care about the karma, I don't need it and it's "wasted" on me, but I feel like I've written a whodunit and the standards board was offended by the body, loved the last chapter, so they tore the last chapter off and replaced it on the library shelf flying solo.
Spam
By KFG
Chapter 13
"The butler did it!"
Fin
Ah well. Say la Vee
KFG
Oh, I wouldn't mind voting for the odd agenda, philosophy or ideal. I would simply like those agendas, philophies and ideals to have vague coorespondence with my own.
In nearly thirty years of voting I've never seen anyone on any ballot that I have felt comfortable voting for, let alone feel they were "my" representative.
I like representative government. I like the fact that politicians are charged with equal representation of all the people in their political jurisdiction, not just me. It keeps me from running roughshod over them, and should keep them from running roughshod over me.
But then I'm a philosopher and idealist I guess.
Politicians aren't, no matter what they say. In their own minds they are only winners or losers and everything they do is explained by this.
Find me a man today who will honestly say, "I'd rather be right than President" and I might be inclined to feel comfortable voting for him, even if I was a mite uncomfortable with his "agenda."
At least I'd know where he stood as a man.
KFG
Well then go download some betas and see if you're good enough to squeeze $2.56 out of him.
KFG
Weeeeeeell, no actually.
It isn't a troll.
While not entirely serious (duh!) this is a reasonable facsimile of the sort of spam you can expect to get under laws of this kind. This is one of the reasons it's a bad law. It won't stop spam, just create more "charities," as well as making existing charities adopt some rather strange bed fellows.
The same goes for a do not call lists that exempt charities. Instead of getting calls from MCI you'll start getting calls from United Way selling cheap long distance phone service, "for the children."
And no way under law to stop them.
You don't have to believe me. Just pass these laws and wait a year or so. You'll see. It's the way businesses work; and never forget that charities are businesses.
They sure as hell never do.
KFG
We are a legitimate charitible orginization raising money to feed the starving children in Nigeria.
Please buy one our penis enlargers. Thank you she will.
With every purchase you will receive a free picture of a young, nubile and !!!NUDE!!!NUDE!!!NUDE!!! hot young teen whom you have helped feed.
Would you like to meet her? Our online dating service is !!!HOT!!!HOT!!!HOT!!! and only $4.95/min.
We offer cheap Viagra as well, if you think you need the help.
The poor child will be eternally greatful for your kindness.
Remember !!!THIS ISN'T SPAM!!!
We are a charity.
For the Children.
To unsubscribe send everything you have to our bank account in the Cayman Islands. Then go get more.
KFG
Yeah, I know, I know. It's true that every time I jab myself with this pointy stick it hurts and I bleed, but I'm "coming back smarter" this time.
I've invented Fleshtone Band-Aids.
KFG
I'll accept your analogy, for the sake of argument, and run with it.
The problem with enforcing gun control laws is similar to the problem with enforcing spam laws.
Anyone can make crude offensive firearms quickly and cheaply in their own basement.
Anyone can make crude and offensive spam quickly and cheaply in their own basement.
The advantage the spammers have over the gun makers is that the spammer can make spam in somebody else's basement will still sitting snuggly in their own.
To enforce a law first you have to be able identify violators. Then you have to be able to arrest them, inside your own jurisdiction.
The big spammers protect themselves and are immune from any law. Thus antispam laws are only going to end up getting used against minor players, kids sending out "flyers" for their ball game and such. A granny thinking she can make a few extra bucks by peddling her hand crocheted doilies with some email.
They'll throw the book at them too.
Tackling the spam problem by making laws is just as silly as it would be to try to outlaw a common weed.
The problem is inherent in the system. Fix the system, no more problem.
KFG
Not bad. You've only gotten two so far though, and one of them isn't even a keeper. I'd change lure, spot or maybe even both if I were you.
I would point out, that the great man is not forgotten:
http://www.larry.denenberg.com/Knuth-3-16/
KFG
Well I certainly don't trust them any farther than I could throw even a rather small donkey. :)
KFG
Ah, well, I never said they weren't assholes. :)
KFG
As a current songwriter who programs I know of know solution. George Harrison never found one either and was afraid to write for a number of years.
The very first program I ever wrote intending some sort of commercial release was a "Learn to Read Music" program. I dealt with the issue by restricting myself to public domain works such The Well-Tempered Clavier. Nowadays my programs are only used by myself and a few students.
If you are going to create original works for your games there is simply no a priori way to avoid suits.
It might come as no surprise that the lawyers like it that way.
KFG
. . . because they were in a dispute with the painter's guild. Steinway painted their pianos. The painter's guild claimed this as a violation of their guild rights.
Steinway said, "Fuck this shit" (Well, the German equivilent actually), and came to America. In the process making America the center of a cultural technology that had previously been a European monopoly.
America is making such inovative freedom illegal. It will reap the consecquences, just as did Europe.
The DMCA was written entirely to protect existing vested interests. When you do so you automatically restrict (even if that wasn't your intent) development of other interests that spur economic growth.
The end result is stagnation with all power and wealth gradually making its way into a few hands.
Welcome to the economic algae pond, Brother.
KFG
Well, I'm not sure I see what the problem here is. It's pretty easy to explain.
The RIAA has formed a shell company under their control to infiltrate and infect the music file sharing networks. They have outsourced it into the the extralegal hands of Hamas. They will be using this network to gather data on p2p users, spread malicious code to make people afraid of using p2p networks and generally raising mayhem.
There. I've explained it. Does that mean I can trust them now?
KFG
"The senator refused to deny allegations that he has had sex with a donkey."
This is also a well know method in mainstream accusations to accuse without being accussable of making accusations.
The maker of the statement knows that the public will interpret any denial with suspicion that the nonaccusation is true, (otherwise why would he deny it so vehemently?)and any refusal to deny it with suspicion that the nonaccusation is true (otherwise why doesn't he just deny it?).
KFG
On the other hand Samuel Clemens made a damned fine living at it. You should read some of his letters to the editor and responses to various critics.
Try his criticism of James Fennimore Cooper. Although the target was dead his fans were legion and rabid.
Sometimes a flippant and well crafted sacastic reply is just what the situation calls for. My own experience is that the brighter the responder the more likely is sarcasm in a rebuttal.
Unless you live in a world of gray flannel suits walking stiffly and acting "professional."
KFG