Didn't congress just send a letter telling the FCC to fuck off on this stuff? Telling the FCC to do their job in light of that doesn't seem quite fair. Or was the letter talking about something different related to net neutrality?
An order of magnitude doesn't strike me as within a reasonable distance of something.
What do I honestly see as fair? Straight up, no bullshit, flat fines? Yeah, $500 per "intellectual property" infringed. I would be okay with that. It wouldn't seem completely ludicrous, but it would still be enough to make a point. I'm also okay with your indexed fine, though agree that'd likely be up for abuse in some manner.
Man, where do you burger flip? At my last minimum wage job, we got about $500 bi-weekly, after taxes, and a judgement like this would absolutely have ruined any one of my co-workers, since they had no opportunity to save with wages like that.
I'm not a legal genius, I've never claimed to be, so I don't have a solution. But it seems to me that if you put someone innocent in that situation, they still need to pay the fee, since it's cheaper than the legal fees. If someone innocent is taking the "fine, I'm guilty" way out, to avoid even worse repercussions, that's extortion.
While I personally enjoy going to the theatre, that's not a terrible idea. I think theatres could probably still do well if DVDs were released simultaneously with theatrical releases. It'd probably make things like commentary more awkward, but there'd be ways around it.
Forgot to add this to my other reply, I'm assuming an internet set-up owned by the distributors, so that they'd not need to deal with other people biting in to the profits.
Except that a 40% discount for retailers off sticker price is industry standard in a lot of areas (I know, from working in the book publishing industry, chains such as Chapters and Amazon wanted at least 40%, and kept trying to push for more, to boot), so 25% is 15% less than that. If it's not 40% on movies, then modify it to reflect what it actually is.
No, a class action suit is meant to be tried jointly, with a decision against being binding on all. Every single one of these cases needs to be tried separately, because the circumstances are not all the same. A judgement against one would not be against all. This is blatantly *not* a class action lawsuit. They're only trying to treat it as one to make it economically viable.
Not really. In every group, you're going to have people who are only going to be interested in something because it's free. So there's no way in Hades that this equates to 5,000 lost sales. Then you have people who have people who will wait until it's cheap to buy/rent. That reduces the potentially lost sales more.
The only group that would be equivalent to your example are the ones who go "well, I was GONNA buy it, but damn, I can get it for FREE?!" Because you see, a shoplifter actually removes a physical product from the sales environment, thus costing a sales opportunity whether the thief would have purchased it or not. After all, if a store only has 20 copies of a movie, it can only make 20 sales, so a theft of one of those copies directly translates to a lost sale. If you're downloading, you're not preventing anyone else from purchasing a copy.
Well, no, it doesn't, but still, if a person was to download {O$3sc2xg43220SSdv.torrent, it'd be hard to prove intent, which is usually the thing that triggers the massive damages, no? So the idea still holds some merit in mitigation.
Punish the infringers, yes, but the punishment should fit the actual crime. In the Far Cry case, they're asking for $1,500 from each infringer to settle out of court. That's with no hearings, nothing. Just "pay us $1,500 and we'll drop it." That's extortion, since it'd cost well over that to fight it.
So, we have a case where they're charging people with infringement, without having compelling evidence (simply obtaining an IP doesn't even come close), and setting the bar far in excess of actual damages, but well below what would be incurred defending oneself.
And yes, I said the Far Cry case, but it's being handled the exact same way as this one, since it's by the same law firm.
By any legal standard, none of these cases can be tried jointly, and so should have required separate filings. However, they only filed one claim, but against 5,000. That's not how the justice system is supposed to work, but because of a loophole, they might get away with it. Time Warner is actually fighting on those grounds, mostly because they're claiming they don't have the manpower to look up all the requests they've been hit with over this.
Here's my alternative: Offer me a service that will allow me to download the movie, at a good rate of speed, at a resolution of my choice, and include all the extras that would be on the DVD release, and make it available the same day the DVD releases, and in my country. No staggered release bullshit, no "in the US first, then elsewhere."
Make it tiered pricing based on resolution, and then maybe things like basic and special editions that include or exclude the special features. Sort of like how it's done in brick and mortar stores, with DVD vs. Blu-Ray and special editions. Also make the pricing realistic. It should not be the same price as going out and buying a physical disk at a store, due to not needing the distribution channels. I figure about a 25% discount over stores should cover it, and induce people to try it out, and encourage impulse buys.
It also mentions statutory damages, and this is supposed to be the same law firm behind the Far Cry lawsuit, which is asking for $1,500 to settle now, $2,500 to settle at the end of summer, or they'll go for up to the $150,000 cap at trial.
I thought there was fairly solid evidence that someone named Jesus was in fact born in Nazareth at about the right time, who became a Rabbi, but there's just nothing to support him actually being anything like the Jesus of the Christian Bible.
So I suppose it would call in to question your value of "existing." Is a basis enough, or do we need an exact match?
Heh, not seen the clip in question, but I can certainly appreciate the humour in the premise. I swear, Glen Beck turning out to be some massive joke on the populous would be probably the best joke of all time.
I don't recall Catholicism putting out a kill order on anyone in the past 50 years or so, nor breaking in to government buildings to destroy records. And we're talking the main branch of the religion for that, not fringe groups.
Well, I'm afraid I have to tell you, you're not a power user, if you don't need the power that is now available. 2005's power user, maybe. But if you want to do video editing (and I mean final cut/premiere, not reencoding your dvd rips), play the latest games etc, then you do need that hardware. That software is designed to run on that hardware. And if you manage your own machine, whether it's for gaming of photoshop or whatever, you're going to care that this thing gives you bang for your buck. for what it's worth, this new chip isn't the fastest available. It isn't even close. It's the best value high-end chip, with a view to become even better value if you're open to overclocking it.
Thank you! I mean, hell. I like to think I'm a power user (I'm really not, but I like to think it), and I've talked to people who *are* power users, and every single one of them is always wishing their machine was a little bit faster, had a little bit more space, something. They're never satisfied with their machines, they're simply limited either by resources or technology. Hell, the book designer I know just got a dual quad-core machine with a crap-ton of RAM, and he still has to wait ages on certain processes.
(Oddly, I'm running a Q6600 too, and thinking of upgrading soon.)
It's flamebait because it's a completely unwarranted conclusion. You've got it pumped up to +4 right now, somehow, but the flamebait was a better moderation idea. Seriously, how is h.264 "finished" just because someone's willing to add it to their decoder spec? Nothing in that post was insightful, informative, or interesting (objectively speaking. It was pure opinion, which may be subjectively interesting). The only thing it did was try to start a fight over what's better, h.264 or this. That's the very definition of flamebait.
In Edmonton, LRT stations are unmanned. Riding on the LRT without buying a $3 ticket "should" be punishable by a $3 fine. But because there are so few people patrolling the subway for freeloaders, the actual penalty is far greater. (The higher fine also helps to recoup costs from the other freeloaders who do not pay.)
Ugh, fucking tell me about it. I dropped my damn transfer, and got checked. I even offered to hand over another ticket, but no, that wasn't fucking good enough. I didn't have a valid transfer *right then* so I got a $90 fine. Which, at the time, was MORE than a monthly bus pass. I pointed that out to the guy, saying that if I couldn't afford a monthly pass before, I sure as hell couldn't now. He ever so kindly gave me 90 days to pay the fine. It was all I could do to keep from tearing him a new one, since by the time I found out the amount of the fine, he already had my ID. I'd thought it was going to be something, you know, reasonable.
I resent that generalization; I've never touched the stuff. I would say more that pot smokers have a tendency towards gaming, rather than gamers towards pot.
Well, theoretically, if you could control your dream, you'd be able to hold on to it longer, so while the effects may or may not be diminished by the altered state of awareness, you'd get greater benefit from the extended period.
And as for a correlation between playing video games and having nightmares, probably not. The more I've played video games, the *fewer* nightmares I've had. So, I'd say it's more likely that just like most things in psychology, the effects depend on the exact individual.
I participated in that study! I volunteered for an interview/question period. I was even co-interviewed with Jane by a reporter. That was about... must have been about 3 years ago, since it was after my first year at MacEwan, but before my placement. It's kind of mindblowing to me that she's now publishing results and moving to a new level with the study.
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Didn't congress just send a letter telling the FCC to fuck off on this stuff? Telling the FCC to do their job in light of that doesn't seem quite fair. Or was the letter talking about something different related to net neutrality?
An order of magnitude doesn't strike me as within a reasonable distance of something.
What do I honestly see as fair? Straight up, no bullshit, flat fines? Yeah, $500 per "intellectual property" infringed. I would be okay with that. It wouldn't seem completely ludicrous, but it would still be enough to make a point. I'm also okay with your indexed fine, though agree that'd likely be up for abuse in some manner.
Man, where do you burger flip? At my last minimum wage job, we got about $500 bi-weekly, after taxes, and a judgement like this would absolutely have ruined any one of my co-workers, since they had no opportunity to save with wages like that.
I'm not a legal genius, I've never claimed to be, so I don't have a solution. But it seems to me that if you put someone innocent in that situation, they still need to pay the fee, since it's cheaper than the legal fees. If someone innocent is taking the "fine, I'm guilty" way out, to avoid even worse repercussions, that's extortion.
OR STATUTORY. It's right in the bit you quoted. Smooth.
While I personally enjoy going to the theatre, that's not a terrible idea. I think theatres could probably still do well if DVDs were released simultaneously with theatrical releases. It'd probably make things like commentary more awkward, but there'd be ways around it.
Forgot to add this to my other reply, I'm assuming an internet set-up owned by the distributors, so that they'd not need to deal with other people biting in to the profits.
Except that a 40% discount for retailers off sticker price is industry standard in a lot of areas (I know, from working in the book publishing industry, chains such as Chapters and Amazon wanted at least 40%, and kept trying to push for more, to boot), so 25% is 15% less than that. If it's not 40% on movies, then modify it to reflect what it actually is.
No, a class action suit is meant to be tried jointly, with a decision against being binding on all. Every single one of these cases needs to be tried separately, because the circumstances are not all the same. A judgement against one would not be against all. This is blatantly *not* a class action lawsuit. They're only trying to treat it as one to make it economically viable.
Not really. In every group, you're going to have people who are only going to be interested in something because it's free. So there's no way in Hades that this equates to 5,000 lost sales. Then you have people who have people who will wait until it's cheap to buy/rent. That reduces the potentially lost sales more.
The only group that would be equivalent to your example are the ones who go "well, I was GONNA buy it, but damn, I can get it for FREE?!" Because you see, a shoplifter actually removes a physical product from the sales environment, thus costing a sales opportunity whether the thief would have purchased it or not. After all, if a store only has 20 copies of a movie, it can only make 20 sales, so a theft of one of those copies directly translates to a lost sale. If you're downloading, you're not preventing anyone else from purchasing a copy.
Well, no, it doesn't, but still, if a person was to download {O$3sc2xg43220SSdv.torrent, it'd be hard to prove intent, which is usually the thing that triggers the massive damages, no? So the idea still holds some merit in mitigation.
Punish the infringers, yes, but the punishment should fit the actual crime. In the Far Cry case, they're asking for $1,500 from each infringer to settle out of court. That's with no hearings, nothing. Just "pay us $1,500 and we'll drop it." That's extortion, since it'd cost well over that to fight it.
So, we have a case where they're charging people with infringement, without having compelling evidence (simply obtaining an IP doesn't even come close), and setting the bar far in excess of actual damages, but well below what would be incurred defending oneself.
And yes, I said the Far Cry case, but it's being handled the exact same way as this one, since it's by the same law firm.
By any legal standard, none of these cases can be tried jointly, and so should have required separate filings. However, they only filed one claim, but against 5,000. That's not how the justice system is supposed to work, but because of a loophole, they might get away with it. Time Warner is actually fighting on those grounds, mostly because they're claiming they don't have the manpower to look up all the requests they've been hit with over this.
Here's my alternative: Offer me a service that will allow me to download the movie, at a good rate of speed, at a resolution of my choice, and include all the extras that would be on the DVD release, and make it available the same day the DVD releases, and in my country. No staggered release bullshit, no "in the US first, then elsewhere."
Make it tiered pricing based on resolution, and then maybe things like basic and special editions that include or exclude the special features. Sort of like how it's done in brick and mortar stores, with DVD vs. Blu-Ray and special editions. Also make the pricing realistic. It should not be the same price as going out and buying a physical disk at a store, due to not needing the distribution channels. I figure about a 25% discount over stores should cover it, and induce people to try it out, and encourage impulse buys.
It also mentions statutory damages, and this is supposed to be the same law firm behind the Far Cry lawsuit, which is asking for $1,500 to settle now, $2,500 to settle at the end of summer, or they'll go for up to the $150,000 cap at trial.
I thought there was fairly solid evidence that someone named Jesus was in fact born in Nazareth at about the right time, who became a Rabbi, but there's just nothing to support him actually being anything like the Jesus of the Christian Bible.
So I suppose it would call in to question your value of "existing." Is a basis enough, or do we need an exact match?
Heh, not seen the clip in question, but I can certainly appreciate the humour in the premise. I swear, Glen Beck turning out to be some massive joke on the populous would be probably the best joke of all time.
So by that example...Heaven exists, but God doesn't.
And according to Belinda Carlisle, Heaven is a place on Earth. Hmm... That might actually work.
I don't recall Catholicism putting out a kill order on anyone in the past 50 years or so, nor breaking in to government buildings to destroy records. And we're talking the main branch of the religion for that, not fringe groups.
Well, I'm afraid I have to tell you, you're not a power user, if you don't need the power that is now available. 2005's power user, maybe. But if you want to do video editing (and I mean final cut/premiere, not reencoding your dvd rips), play the latest games etc, then you do need that hardware. That software is designed to run on that hardware. And if you manage your own machine, whether it's for gaming of photoshop or whatever, you're going to care that this thing gives you bang for your buck. for what it's worth, this new chip isn't the fastest available. It isn't even close. It's the best value high-end chip, with a view to become even better value if you're open to overclocking it.
Thank you! I mean, hell. I like to think I'm a power user (I'm really not, but I like to think it), and I've talked to people who *are* power users, and every single one of them is always wishing their machine was a little bit faster, had a little bit more space, something. They're never satisfied with their machines, they're simply limited either by resources or technology. Hell, the book designer I know just got a dual quad-core machine with a crap-ton of RAM, and he still has to wait ages on certain processes.
(Oddly, I'm running a Q6600 too, and thinking of upgrading soon.)
It's flamebait because it's a completely unwarranted conclusion. You've got it pumped up to +4 right now, somehow, but the flamebait was a better moderation idea. Seriously, how is h.264 "finished" just because someone's willing to add it to their decoder spec? Nothing in that post was insightful, informative, or interesting (objectively speaking. It was pure opinion, which may be subjectively interesting). The only thing it did was try to start a fight over what's better, h.264 or this. That's the very definition of flamebait.
In Edmonton, LRT stations are unmanned. Riding on the LRT without buying a $3 ticket "should" be punishable by a $3 fine. But because there are so few people patrolling the subway for freeloaders, the actual penalty is far greater. (The higher fine also helps to recoup costs from the other freeloaders who do not pay.)
Ugh, fucking tell me about it. I dropped my damn transfer, and got checked. I even offered to hand over another ticket, but no, that wasn't fucking good enough. I didn't have a valid transfer *right then* so I got a $90 fine. Which, at the time, was MORE than a monthly bus pass. I pointed that out to the guy, saying that if I couldn't afford a monthly pass before, I sure as hell couldn't now. He ever so kindly gave me 90 days to pay the fine. It was all I could do to keep from tearing him a new one, since by the time I found out the amount of the fine, he already had my ID. I'd thought it was going to be something, you know, reasonable.
I resent that generalization; I've never touched the stuff. I would say more that pot smokers have a tendency towards gaming, rather than gamers towards pot.
Well, theoretically, if you could control your dream, you'd be able to hold on to it longer, so while the effects may or may not be diminished by the altered state of awareness, you'd get greater benefit from the extended period.
And as for a correlation between playing video games and having nightmares, probably not. The more I've played video games, the *fewer* nightmares I've had. So, I'd say it's more likely that just like most things in psychology, the effects depend on the exact individual.
I participated in that study! I volunteered for an interview/question period. I was even co-interviewed with Jane by a reporter. That was about... must have been about 3 years ago, since it was after my first year at MacEwan, but before my placement. It's kind of mindblowing to me that she's now publishing results and moving to a new level with the study.