Sure it decrypts the content, but isn't it for the purpose of interoperability? We already know that an HD-DVD + Vista + Windows Media Player + LCD TV connected via DVI is a losing proposition, but decrypting the video first makes everything interoperable.
<5 minutes go by>
OK, I read this article which discusses the reverse engineering part of the DMCA, and it seems like it might not apply because the software does not otherwise check to make sure that the user is authorized to do the thing in the first place, i.e., the user could be trying to decrypt an already copied HD-DVD that has been burned onto an HD-DVDR (do those exist for us plebeians yet?).
According to a source in the article, the courts have been screwing up rulings by "improperly conflating infringement with circumvention", which is what a lot of people I know have been saying for quite a while. Just because some assholes will use it to pirate movies doesn't mean that a whole crapload of people who just want to watch HD-DVD movies from their computer to a nice HD TV won't see substantial benefit from using the software as well, and that should be upheld.
Imagine if the ruling came down that the internet allowed piracy and ought to be banned. That's obviously a bit of another can of worms, but the idea stands. Just because someone can use something to infringe doesn't mean that the thing out to be disposed of and its use prohibited, as there are reasonable uses for it too.
Well, being able to afford software and bring able to afford a computer is not an either/or situation. You have to have the computer to run the software. So if someone can only afford to spend money on the computer, but not on the software, it's not like they made the wrong choice about which one to buy. I mean, what if the computer was a gift or a prize from a contest or something. What then?
I'm not saying that piracy is the right thing to do compared to the ideals as defined by the state, but saying that someone who only has enough monsy for the computer but no software, or the computer and some of the software that they need (that's a pesky word, eh) isn't really being fair.
Look, any time that the media companies can scare people into thinking that they're doing something illegal, then they will do it, up to, and probably including illegal acts themselves. They are not interested in following the letter of the law, or any kind of reason. All they want to do is scare people back into the pre-ordained channels that they have set up, e.g., Best Buy and Fye in the mall.
There's a third possibility to your case, there. If there are records that the ISP isn't currently gathering and retaining, but the government says that they have to, where do you suppose that data will be kept? Will the ISP just not do it? Will the ISP come up with some diabolical new way to store variable length text data in an SQL integer column? No, they'll create some new databases, and start keeping that data in there, i.e., genesis. You had to be able to take a couple of logical steps to get from the one to the other.
A record of something isn't a notation of a piece of information in this sense. It's the actual information itself. So record retention could include the genesis of new databases with whatever information the AG requires.
Mostly what scares me about that text is that it only specifies the minimum information that will be required, but no maximum. I can envision some crackpot scheme where the ISP has to include your home address and telephone number in each of those records as well, just to make law enforcement's job easier. I don't know if any of you have noticed, but it seems like most of the recently passed laws that have shredded our privacy have been enacted to make law enforcement processes easier, and it's not hard to imagine how this could go overboard.
Remember: The government isn't in business to guard and maintain your rights. The government is in business to stay in business.
No, the best would be if a bunch of companies went in to business doing content labeling, and then if parents give a fuck, they can subscribe to one or more of those lists. It's fine if some fucked in the head fundamentalists want to roll their own solution with abortion sites and rap lyrics on the ban list, because there will be a ton (or, at least a few) alternatives that will be more appropriate. Or they might not be more appropriate, depending on the circumstances.
One of the problems with the one size fits all government solution is that if you let some crazy person weasel themselves into the position to decide what goes on what list, the you end up with situations where that person says, "well, nudity is the same as sex, so all naked people pictures go on the 'sex' list", which is obviously fucked. If that's the only set of lists, then parents (or whoever) who actually care about the distinction are faced with some sort of all or nothing approach. And then, if the government decides to force you to abide by those lists (imagine if a law is passed where it's criminal for parents to refuse to subscribe to the governments list), then your hands are tied.
The point is:
The government sucks at everything that it tries to do. Free markets are where the action is. If some company wants to try this out and market their services to parents and schools, fine. But I don't care about the content that I see. I'm a big boy, and I'm not going to get a warped head or go on a killing spree because I saw a couple of boobies on the interweb.
Shit, were they the same ones? I mean, there are a million of us here on Slashdot (Well, it's at least 983,109). Ever think that maybe the two groups don't overlap? It's not as if you're having a conversation with "the internet". There's a lot of people out there putting these words on your screen.
The hoax happened when someone unrelated to the agency got mad about the middle finger part of the sign and decided to call it in as a bomb. The guys who posted the devices can't help it if someone calls to the police with misinformation, but news agencies were more than happy to smear that label on the two fellows anyway. Which is weird, considering that what the 24 hour news agencies have the most of is time. They have craploads of time to explore all the nuances of the story, but this big distinction seems to have slipped through the cracks. Odd, that.
Besides that, who said he wanted it so badly? I mean, see sign that says, "Win a trip into space!". Say to self, "Well, that'd be pretty cool." Enter contest. Win.
Nowhere in there implies that he's just dying to go to space.
I didn't like Red Steel that much. The FPS style using the remote is good, but I thought that the swordfighting was kind of silly. The voice acting was pretty awful as well, lots of French accents trying to sound like a Japanese guy speaking English, which is very strange. Also, even taking into account that the graphics horsepower in the system isn't that high, it looks pretty bad. Players and objects are aliased all to hell and back.
I can totally recommend Elebits, though. That game is fun as all get-out.
Your takes pay for streets and sidewalks. Now you fly out to a city; you immediately get stopped because you need to pay for the roads and streets even if you are not native to that city. Now you are told you have to walk slower because your friend that you came to visit didn't pay extra for your trip. Ok, it isn't perfect but I hope you get the idea.
OK, now imagine that every city is like this, with private "toll" roads and sidewalks everywhere. Consider that now you don't have to pay som much in taxes for rural road maintenance that you don't ever get to use and feel the benefits of. Imagine that since everywhere is like this, your locality is part of one of several private road alliances that lets you trade or rent your access to someone else while you're not going to be there. Imagine that someone in another city where you're going to visit does the same thing and rents you access in their city while out of town. Now imagine that the transactions are handled automatically by the private road alliance that you're a part of, and that the various alliances have interconnection agreements that make everything as easy as calling or internetting.
Y'know, there actually are some people who believe that free markets and economic forces are fine replacements for the state. Obviously, it's a completely different way of thinking about things, but honestly, libertarians exist out there, and they're not just corporate shills. A lot of people have invested a lot of thought in how to effectively get rid of state violence (i.e., collecting taxes by rule of law) and maintain a functioning society.
Well, the vision of the perfectly possible DRM solution to me seems like you'd have to get total control of the user's computer (or whatever method the user has for getting content on the playback device), which may not really be possible, given that computers are general purpose devices and not some sort of docking station exclusively devoted to shuffling digital media around. I guess Apple could force people to buy their own music transfer device that you plug the iPod and an internet connection into, but I don't really expect that idea to have wings, considering that their player is already overpriced, in my opinion.
I think that the comment in question is actually quite stupid, and not because it's false or off the mark or anything. It's just that in a discussion about a gigantic cartel, a company with what amounts to a stranglehold on the digital music distribution market, and consumers that just wants an easy way to get music and put it where they want, a comment about how DRM works in some sort of farcical ideal situation is so amazingly far out of context that its inclusion in the conversation just doesn't make any sense whatsoever. I mean, what he basically said is, 'it's not our fault that you don't like the DRM we put on there, the other guy is causing all the problems', which is ludicrous. It's like saying that it's the consumers' fault that there isn't a convenient and economical way to get the music they want on the device they want it on, when the cartel controls the production and execution of the work, and the other company makes sure that the music only works on one player. They're both complicit in the plan to control the heck out of the pipeline, from end to end. Meanwhile, both of them are acting like it's the consumers that have the problem when they decide to find another way to get what they want.
I agree with you that it's tough to imagine a force of compulsion strong enough to make device manufacturers just fall in line with one DRM standard. I would say that it's a paragon of a free market that would prevent that from happening in that some dudes that only want to sell music that's so encumbered by restrictions will eventually get the pants beaten off of them by other sellers that are willing to make it easy for users to do what they want with their music.
It's weird to see lots of people switching to buying music from indie labels and getting away from the big 5 and their assorted little faux indie labels. These days I perceive a big rift between people who care what's going on with DRM and big labels and those who don't. I kind of agree with the Downhill Battle people in that, honestly, there's a ton of excellent music out there that's available in DRM free form, and it's just not necessary to participate in this FairPlay or PlaysForSure or Zune music store DRM-fest. The force of the realization that there are honest and worthwhile alternatives out there to get entertaining music seems so attractive that I think people switch off of the big 5 style interaction with music and never go back.
Sure there are some who don't care about the situation and will continue to jump through hoops and overpay for music, and pay for the same thing multiple times. But honestly, I don't give a wet slap about them, and I'm not concerned about their effect on the industry. If the sheer number of people in that group and their spending power haven't convinced the little indie labels that I like to switch to DRM wrapped music by now, then they're just not going to ever in the future.
Unless you count that senate bill that would mandate DRM. But fuck that.
I think he's complaining that DX10 shouldn't require Vista and that it's just a Microsoft trick to make DX10 look awesome to convince more people to buy a new OS that they don't actually need.
Considering that he's got a long history of doing incredible graphics on relatively garbage hardware, e.g., real scrolling, platformer style on a PC that just couldn't do it using conventional means, using ray tracing to render a 3d looking scene in 2d, I'd think that pushing out gorgeous graphics on the Wii would be a nice challenge for him. Then again, why tackle that problem for the third (fourth, fifth?) time. It gets old hat after a while.
1. Who said anything about you deciding what's reasonable on your own? 2. You making a knockoff and claiming that it's the real thing is defferent from someone making a derivative work and distributing as a derivative work. 3. If your product is blatantly inferior, but people confuse it for the real thing because you tricked them, then it's not good publicity.
If I were the devil, you would not be my lawyer.
Last I checked, the right to use a song licensed by the Harry Fox Agency was $.08 per distributed copy per song licensed. I don't know if that's an open offer to anyone for any use, but assuming these guys are using 20 tracks on their mix cd, that's $1.60 per disc, which is plenty of margin to make a little money and get your stuff out there....
Ok, I just looked it up. The new rate is $.091 for up to 5 minutes, and $.0175 per minute or fraction over 5, which means that 20 tracks now cost $1.82 per disc, assuming that they're all less than 5 minutes. That's only for up to 2500 units, though. Presumably, the rates are different once per client high volume negotiations are finished, but I have no idea if the cost would go up or down from there.
Anyway, the point is: sure these guys may have been violating copyright, but the precedent is still there for licensing things, and even licensing after the fact. 81000 cds sounds like a lot, but we have no idea what's on the 81000 cds, whether a ton of them were blank cdr spindles, whether they counted cds and jewel cases or sleeves seperately, or anything else. All we really know is that some cops with big guns and small dicks rolled a couple of DJs, and now they're in jail, charged under RICO.
No, they will not get what they deserve. What they deserve is the opportunity to license the tracks that they've used for a reasonable amount with respect to the money that they've made. What they'll get is jail time. Another thing they'll get is a huge fine, which is probably payable to the government of the United States. What they might get is a civil lawsuit from the RIAA, which might result in normal sized compensatory damages, and ridiculous punitive damages.
Honestly, this is what you get in return when you give fallible, stupid people a monopoly on power in our society.
Am I to assume that by, "you folks", you mean the other million or so slashdot users plus however many anonymous cowards are around? Because I think that it's tough to get unanimity amongst any 1 million people. I think we all can agree on that.
But as another poster noted, T-Mobile charges $20 for unlimited data and text messaging, and with a $40 voice plan, the cost of service for the two year period there is a quarter less than with Cingular. Also, when the parent said $2520, that included the cost of the phone, so the $500 or $600 phone is actually a little more than one fifth of the number that he quoted.
I've got unlimited data, sms, and mms with sprint, and a ton of minutes (for me), and my bill, after taxes and all is $65 vs. $90 for Cingular. I would say that the parent's claim that going exclusively with Cingular is going to end up costing customers in the long run is a valid one. Further, money is money, and just because you're willing to pay $1920 over 2 years for service does not mean that spending $500 or $600 on the phone is any less painful. (I'm going to pay about $2000 in electricity bills for the next two years, but that doesn't mean that I want to buy a $600 dollar thermostat for the A/C just because it has a prettier laser light show than the one I've got now.)
Slashdot Mirror
<5 minutes go by>
OK, I read this article which discusses the reverse engineering part of the DMCA, and it seems like it might not apply because the software does not otherwise check to make sure that the user is authorized to do the thing in the first place, i.e., the user could be trying to decrypt an already copied HD-DVD that has been burned onto an HD-DVDR (do those exist for us plebeians yet?).
According to a source in the article, the courts have been screwing up rulings by "improperly conflating infringement with circumvention", which is what a lot of people I know have been saying for quite a while. Just because some assholes will use it to pirate movies doesn't mean that a whole crapload of people who just want to watch HD-DVD movies from their computer to a nice HD TV won't see substantial benefit from using the software as well, and that should be upheld.
Imagine if the ruling came down that the internet allowed piracy and ought to be banned. That's obviously a bit of another can of worms, but the idea stands. Just because someone can use something to infringe doesn't mean that the thing out to be disposed of and its use prohibited, as there are reasonable uses for it too.
Well, being able to afford software and bring able to afford a computer is not an either/or situation. You have to have the computer to run the software. So if someone can only afford to spend money on the computer, but not on the software, it's not like they made the wrong choice about which one to buy. I mean, what if the computer was a gift or a prize from a contest or something. What then?
I'm not saying that piracy is the right thing to do compared to the ideals as defined by the state, but saying that someone who only has enough monsy for the computer but no software, or the computer and some of the software that they need (that's a pesky word, eh) isn't really being fair.
Look, any time that the media companies can scare people into thinking that they're doing something illegal, then they will do it, up to, and probably including illegal acts themselves. They are not interested in following the letter of the law, or any kind of reason. All they want to do is scare people back into the pre-ordained channels that they have set up, e.g., Best Buy and Fye in the mall.
There's a third possibility to your case, there. If there are records that the ISP isn't currently gathering and retaining, but the government says that they have to, where do you suppose that data will be kept? Will the ISP just not do it? Will the ISP come up with some diabolical new way to store variable length text data in an SQL integer column? No, they'll create some new databases, and start keeping that data in there, i.e., genesis. You had to be able to take a couple of logical steps to get from the one to the other.
Your definitions aren't broad/accurate enough.
A record of something isn't a notation of a piece of information in this sense. It's the actual information itself. So record retention could include the genesis of new databases with whatever information the AG requires.
Mostly what scares me about that text is that it only specifies the minimum information that will be required, but no maximum. I can envision some crackpot scheme where the ISP has to include your home address and telephone number in each of those records as well, just to make law enforcement's job easier. I don't know if any of you have noticed, but it seems like most of the recently passed laws that have shredded our privacy have been enacted to make law enforcement processes easier, and it's not hard to imagine how this could go overboard.
Remember: The government isn't in business to guard and maintain your rights. The government is in business to stay in business.
Or just move there in the first place. That might solve a whole host of other problems, too.
No, the best would be if a bunch of companies went in to business doing content labeling, and then if parents give a fuck, they can subscribe to one or more of those lists. It's fine if some fucked in the head fundamentalists want to roll their own solution with abortion sites and rap lyrics on the ban list, because there will be a ton (or, at least a few) alternatives that will be more appropriate. Or they might not be more appropriate, depending on the circumstances.
One of the problems with the one size fits all government solution is that if you let some crazy person weasel themselves into the position to decide what goes on what list, the you end up with situations where that person says, "well, nudity is the same as sex, so all naked people pictures go on the 'sex' list", which is obviously fucked. If that's the only set of lists, then parents (or whoever) who actually care about the distinction are faced with some sort of all or nothing approach. And then, if the government decides to force you to abide by those lists (imagine if a law is passed where it's criminal for parents to refuse to subscribe to the governments list), then your hands are tied.
The point is:
The government sucks at everything that it tries to do. Free markets are where the action is. If some company wants to try this out and market their services to parents and schools, fine. But I don't care about the content that I see. I'm a big boy, and I'm not going to get a warped head or go on a killing spree because I saw a couple of boobies on the interweb.
Shit, were they the same ones? I mean, there are a million of us here on Slashdot (Well, it's at least 983,109). Ever think that maybe the two groups don't overlap? It's not as if you're having a conversation with "the internet". There's a lot of people out there putting these words on your screen.
The hoax happened when someone unrelated to the agency got mad about the middle finger part of the sign and decided to call it in as a bomb. The guys who posted the devices can't help it if someone calls to the police with misinformation, but news agencies were more than happy to smear that label on the two fellows anyway. Which is weird, considering that what the 24 hour news agencies have the most of is time. They have craploads of time to explore all the nuances of the story, but this big distinction seems to have slipped through the cracks. Odd, that.
College tuition is not a tax. It is entirely voluntary, barring some crazy contractual agreement.
Besides that, who said he wanted it so badly? I mean, see sign that says, "Win a trip into space!". Say to self, "Well, that'd be pretty cool." Enter contest. Win.
Nowhere in there implies that he's just dying to go to space.
Is it? How'd you find out?
Try watching a college basketball game. You can pick the hot chicks out of the crowd.
But it would be the shit if your Mii was actually the character in some platformer or something.
I didn't like Red Steel that much. The FPS style using the remote is good, but I thought that the swordfighting was kind of silly. The voice acting was pretty awful as well, lots of French accents trying to sound like a Japanese guy speaking English, which is very strange. Also, even taking into account that the graphics horsepower in the system isn't that high, it looks pretty bad. Players and objects are aliased all to hell and back.
I can totally recommend Elebits, though. That game is fun as all get-out.
OK, now imagine that every city is like this, with private "toll" roads and sidewalks everywhere. Consider that now you don't have to pay som much in taxes for rural road maintenance that you don't ever get to use and feel the benefits of. Imagine that since everywhere is like this, your locality is part of one of several private road alliances that lets you trade or rent your access to someone else while you're not going to be there. Imagine that someone in another city where you're going to visit does the same thing and rents you access in their city while out of town. Now imagine that the transactions are handled automatically by the private road alliance that you're a part of, and that the various alliances have interconnection agreements that make everything as easy as calling or internetting.
Y'know, there actually are some people who believe that free markets and economic forces are fine replacements for the state. Obviously, it's a completely different way of thinking about things, but honestly, libertarians exist out there, and they're not just corporate shills. A lot of people have invested a lot of thought in how to effectively get rid of state violence (i.e., collecting taxes by rule of law) and maintain a functioning society.
Well, the vision of the perfectly possible DRM solution to me seems like you'd have to get total control of the user's computer (or whatever method the user has for getting content on the playback device), which may not really be possible, given that computers are general purpose devices and not some sort of docking station exclusively devoted to shuffling digital media around. I guess Apple could force people to buy their own music transfer device that you plug the iPod and an internet connection into, but I don't really expect that idea to have wings, considering that their player is already overpriced, in my opinion.
I think that the comment in question is actually quite stupid, and not because it's false or off the mark or anything. It's just that in a discussion about a gigantic cartel, a company with what amounts to a stranglehold on the digital music distribution market, and consumers that just wants an easy way to get music and put it where they want, a comment about how DRM works in some sort of farcical ideal situation is so amazingly far out of context that its inclusion in the conversation just doesn't make any sense whatsoever. I mean, what he basically said is, 'it's not our fault that you don't like the DRM we put on there, the other guy is causing all the problems', which is ludicrous. It's like saying that it's the consumers' fault that there isn't a convenient and economical way to get the music they want on the device they want it on, when the cartel controls the production and execution of the work, and the other company makes sure that the music only works on one player. They're both complicit in the plan to control the heck out of the pipeline, from end to end. Meanwhile, both of them are acting like it's the consumers that have the problem when they decide to find another way to get what they want.
I agree with you that it's tough to imagine a force of compulsion strong enough to make device manufacturers just fall in line with one DRM standard. I would say that it's a paragon of a free market that would prevent that from happening in that some dudes that only want to sell music that's so encumbered by restrictions will eventually get the pants beaten off of them by other sellers that are willing to make it easy for users to do what they want with their music.
It's weird to see lots of people switching to buying music from indie labels and getting away from the big 5 and their assorted little faux indie labels. These days I perceive a big rift between people who care what's going on with DRM and big labels and those who don't. I kind of agree with the Downhill Battle people in that, honestly, there's a ton of excellent music out there that's available in DRM free form, and it's just not necessary to participate in this FairPlay or PlaysForSure or Zune music store DRM-fest. The force of the realization that there are honest and worthwhile alternatives out there to get entertaining music seems so attractive that I think people switch off of the big 5 style interaction with music and never go back.
Sure there are some who don't care about the situation and will continue to jump through hoops and overpay for music, and pay for the same thing multiple times. But honestly, I don't give a wet slap about them, and I'm not concerned about their effect on the industry. If the sheer number of people in that group and their spending power haven't convinced the little indie labels that I like to switch to DRM wrapped music by now, then they're just not going to ever in the future.
Unless you count that senate bill that would mandate DRM. But fuck that.
I think he's complaining that DX10 shouldn't require Vista and that it's just a Microsoft trick to make DX10 look awesome to convince more people to buy a new OS that they don't actually need.
I mean, that jives with what he's saying, right?
Considering that he's got a long history of doing incredible graphics on relatively garbage hardware, e.g., real scrolling, platformer style on a PC that just couldn't do it using conventional means, using ray tracing to render a 3d looking scene in 2d, I'd think that pushing out gorgeous graphics on the Wii would be a nice challenge for him. Then again, why tackle that problem for the third (fourth, fifth?) time. It gets old hat after a while.
Ok, three glaring issues with your reply.
...
1. Who said anything about you deciding what's reasonable on your own?
2. You making a knockoff and claiming that it's the real thing is defferent from someone making a derivative work and distributing as a derivative work.
3. If your product is blatantly inferior, but people confuse it for the real thing because you tricked them, then it's not good publicity.
If I were the devil, you would not be my lawyer.
Last I checked, the right to use a song licensed by the Harry Fox Agency was $.08 per distributed copy per song licensed. I don't know if that's an open offer to anyone for any use, but assuming these guys are using 20 tracks on their mix cd, that's $1.60 per disc, which is plenty of margin to make a little money and get your stuff out there.
Ok, I just looked it up. The new rate is $.091 for up to 5 minutes, and $.0175 per minute or fraction over 5, which means that 20 tracks now cost $1.82 per disc, assuming that they're all less than 5 minutes. That's only for up to 2500 units, though. Presumably, the rates are different once per client high volume negotiations are finished, but I have no idea if the cost would go up or down from there.
Anyway, the point is: sure these guys may have been violating copyright, but the precedent is still there for licensing things, and even licensing after the fact. 81000 cds sounds like a lot, but we have no idea what's on the 81000 cds, whether a ton of them were blank cdr spindles, whether they counted cds and jewel cases or sleeves seperately, or anything else. All we really know is that some cops with big guns and small dicks rolled a couple of DJs, and now they're in jail, charged under RICO.
No, they will not get what they deserve. What they deserve is the opportunity to license the tracks that they've used for a reasonable amount with respect to the money that they've made. What they'll get is jail time. Another thing they'll get is a huge fine, which is probably payable to the government of the United States. What they might get is a civil lawsuit from the RIAA, which might result in normal sized compensatory damages, and ridiculous punitive damages.
Honestly, this is what you get in return when you give fallible, stupid people a monopoly on power in our society.
Thanks for giving us a link so that we can educate ourselves on the subject.
On the other hand... yeah, man, it felt good to abuse someone on an internet message board, didn't it? You can tell me.
Am I to assume that by, "you folks", you mean the other million or so slashdot users plus however many anonymous cowards are around? Because I think that it's tough to get unanimity amongst any 1 million people. I think we all can agree on that.
I think if Sony were a person, some kind soul would have put the bastard out of his misery already.
But as another poster noted, T-Mobile charges $20 for unlimited data and text messaging, and with a $40 voice plan, the cost of service for the two year period there is a quarter less than with Cingular. Also, when the parent said $2520, that included the cost of the phone, so the $500 or $600 phone is actually a little more than one fifth of the number that he quoted.
I've got unlimited data, sms, and mms with sprint, and a ton of minutes (for me), and my bill, after taxes and all is $65 vs. $90 for Cingular. I would say that the parent's claim that going exclusively with Cingular is going to end up costing customers in the long run is a valid one. Further, money is money, and just because you're willing to pay $1920 over 2 years for service does not mean that spending $500 or $600 on the phone is any less painful. (I'm going to pay about $2000 in electricity bills for the next two years, but that doesn't mean that I want to buy a $600 dollar thermostat for the A/C just because it has a prettier laser light show than the one I've got now.)