Thus, we have a "perfect" pay-per-view technology that nobody can circumvent by any means.
Nope. The only way you can have un-copyable information is to wire it directly into a person's brain -- and even then, you could probably get a copy of it if you're willing to undergo a second operation to install a black-market neural-signal interceptor.
If you can listen to it, you can record it. Worst case, just set a microphone next to the speakers. Second worst case, tap the speaker wire. If it's a computer-based player, the "plaintext" digital data has to be sent to a sound card at some point, so you can intercept the signals in the soundcard itself, or from the bus. If it's Linux-based (for example) then the unencrypted data probably passes through a kernel device driver, before being sent to a sound card. You could intercept the data in the kernel. If you're using Linux+esd, then you could intercept the sound data in userspace, with a modified esd.
The possibilities are virtually limitless.
The same applies to video data. Worst case, put a video camera in front of the CRT. Second worst case, intercept the analog signals being sent to the CRT. Etc., etc., ad nauseum.
would people opt out of paying their taxes for the same reason. They'd all start filing the 1040EZ saying they made $15K, while the rest of their income is hidden by anonymous digital cash transactions.
Perhaps the government would have to go to a sales tax
They are ethically obligated to do this anyway. Regardless of the questionable legality of an income tax, it's morally repulsive. I should not have to report my income to Big Brother. They have no business knowing what I'm doing, or how much I'm paid for it, as long as I'm not hurting anyone.
What portion of Napster users have modems? I dare you to try to download a whole CD's worth of MP3 files over a modem using Napster. Go ahead, try it. Let me know how much hair you tear out during this process.
Until we all get broadband access, Napster is and will remain primarily a sampling service. (What happens after that is a different universe.)
Last time I checked, "Napster Bad" was a Flash animation, not Shockwave. This is vitally important, because there is a Flash plugin for Linux Netscape, but there is currently no Shockwave plugin.
Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace
on
At The Crossroads
·
· Score: 2
I think it's mandatory to post the following. I haven't seen it in a quick overview of the comments, so it's either below my threshold or I'm the first to post it this time.
A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace
Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.
We have no elected government, nor are we likely to have one, so I address you with no greater authority than that with which liberty itself always speaks. I declare the global social space we are building to be naturally independent of the tyrannies you seek to impose on us. You have no moral right to rule us nor do you possess any methods of enforcement we have true reason to fear.
Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. You have neither solicited nor received ours. We did not invite you. You do not know us, nor do you know our world. Cyberspace does not lie within your borders. Do not think that you can build it, as though it were a public construction project. You cannot. It is an act of nature and it grows itself through our collective actions.
You have not engaged in our great and gathering conversation, nor did you create the wealth of our marketplaces. You do not know our culture, our ethics, or the unwritten codes that already provide our society more order than could be obtained by any of your impositions.
You claim there are problems among us that you need to solve. You use this claim as an excuse to invade our precincts. Many of these problems don't exist. Where there are real conflicts, where there are wrongs, we will identify them and address them by our means. We are forming our own Social Contract. This governance will arise according to the conditions of our world, not yours. Our world is different.
Cyberspace consists of transactions, relationships, and thought itself, arrayed like a standing wave in the web of our communications. Ours is a world that is both everywhere and nowhere, but it is not where bodies live.
We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth.
We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity.
Your legal concepts of property, expression, identity, movement, and context do not apply to us. They are based on matter, There is no matter here.
Our identities have no bodies, so, unlike you, we cannot obtain order by physical coercion. We believe that from ethics, enlightened self-interest, and the commonweal, our governance will emerge. Our identities may be distributed across many of your jurisdictions. The only law that all our constituent cultures would generally recognize is the Golden Rule. We hope we will be able to build our particular solutions on that basis. But we cannot accept the solutions you are attempting to impose.
In the United States, you have today created a law, the Telecommunica- tions Reform Act, which repudiates your own Constitution and insults the dreams of Jefferson, Washington, Mill, Madison, DeToqueville, and Brandeis. These dreams must now be born anew in us.
Your increasingly obsolete information industries would perpetuate themselves by proposing laws, in America and elsewhere, that claim to own speech itself throughout the world. These laws would declare ideas to be another industrial product, no more noble than pig iron. In our world, whatever the human mind may create can be reproduced and distributed infinitely at no cost. The global conveyance of thought no longer requires your factories to accomplish.
These increasingly hostile and colonial measures place us in the same position as those previous lovers of freedom and self-determination who had to reject the authorities of distant, uninformed powers. We must declare our virtual selves immune to your sovereignty, even as we continue to consent to your rule over our bodies. We will spread ourselves across the Planet so that no one can arrest our thoughts.
We will create a civilization of the Mind in Cyberspace. May it be more humane and fair than the world your governments have made before.
Davos, Switzerland February 8, 1996
John Perry Barlow, Cognitive Dissident Co-Founder, Electronic Frontier Foundation
The next time you want to 'justify' piracy...just think of someone coming into your home and taking your belongings....cause that, though not exactly, is what it is--theft.
Copyright infringement is not theft. These are two separate and very different crimes.
The laws that govern physical objects do not apply to information, and vice versa.
If you moderate a comment, then go back to that thread and post as AC, your moderation is undone. I guess the server still knows who you are in this case, regardless of what others may have said.
Copy the link location of the "Reply to This" link and paste it into lynx (or any other browser that doesn't have your slashdot cookie). Without your cookie, lynx (or whatever) will post as a real Anonymous Coward.
(If you only have one web browser, well... get another one.;-) )
Microsoft didn't ask Slashdot to remove comments which were critical of the company. They asked Slashdot to remove articles which violated Microsoft's legitimate copyright.
Some of the comments which Microsoft wants/. to remove are not part of Microsoft's copyrighted material. They simply give advice on how one can circumvent an EULA.
Unfortunately, the DMCA makes the dissemination of such advice legal.
I'd like everyone reading this to stop for a few seconds and ponder this. If you write a howto which helps people obtain documentation you could be prosecuted under the DMCA.
A bit scary? I think so....
Re:Text of email sent to members
on
An MP3 Update
·
· Score: 1
Actually people have to realise its not your music, its the muscians music.
First of all, your whole argument is based on the premise that "intellectual property" has some meaning. Under the current legal system, it does... but some of us hope to alter or eradicate that definition.
Second, most musicians who have signed record contracts do not own their music. The record companies do. Musicians aren't even allowed to give away copies of the music they wrote if the want to! (Quite a few have tried -- the record companies made them stop.)
Yes, and I've paid for CDs of free software, too. And you're right -- there is a grey area between product and service. In fact, there are a few cases which I think qualify as both (e.g., if you "buy" a commercial software product and sign up for a support contract...).
But if it wasn't for the content, you wouldn't be supporting your wife's cable habit. I think a strong argument could be made that the main reason that anyone pays for cable is the content.
That sidesteps my point. I'm not buying the cable content. Most especially, I'm not allowed to record a show from cable onto video tape and then sell copies of that video tape -- because I don't own the content.
But this is just linguistic semantics. The difference between product and service isn't so very important in the long run. What matters is who creates the content, how we can get it, what we can do with it, and who gets paid.
But if every CD ever made was available for instant access over the net (wired and wireless) I would sign up today (this is what I was referring to as a "pay per listen" service. I was envisioning a monthly access fee.).
I'd be very cautious. If such a service existed, it would have a monopoly on the content (unless the content is "freed" in the free software/speech sense, so that multiple providers can offer the same content). And I don't think I need to elaborate on the dangers of a monopoly.
But yeah, I'd probably sign up too!:-)
No adds. No DJs
A noble goal -- and with a monthly fee, not completely unattainable -- but somehow I don't think it will happen. Or if it does happen at first, I don't think it will last. I'd predict the first ads within 2 years after the start of the program, and once they start, there's no turning back. We might be able to avoid the DJs though.
The only radio I listen to is in the car
Same here. But I drive 10 hours a week (1 hour to work, 1 hour back home, 5 days a week) so I have to endure quite a bit of radio. The evenings aren't so bad (relatively speaking). The morning DJs are the ones that make me despair for the human race.
In The Diamond Age MCs do for atoms what computer and communication technology does for bits. Why own anything when you can get a copy instantly.
Yes -- there is a dramatically reduced notion of physical property in the book (real estate, and anything sufficiently unique); but intellectual property is still strongly protected. That's a fascinating premise (though I agree, Snow Crash was a better book overall). But I think our society is heading the other direction -- a weakening of intellectual property. IP laws are very, very strict right now; a backlash is occurring (Napster is part of it), and IP will be less rigid pretty soon (if it survives at all).
You've never purchased software by downloading it?
Actually, no, I don't think I have. But I don't buy very much software -- almost all the software I use is free software. (And no, this doesn't mean warez. I used to do the warez thing when I was a lot younger, but I don't any more.)
As for paying for intangable goods, do you have cable tv? Ever used pay per view? Ever go to a concert? Ever go to the movies?
But I'm not buying the music or other content in these cases. I'm paying for a service. In the case of cable TV (I have it; or rather it's in my wife's name and I pay the bills;-) ), I'm paying for the service of having audio/video content streamed into my house over a wire. I'm not paying for the actual content. No, I've never used Pay Per View, but that's even more obviously a service instead of an intangible good. Yes, I've gone to concerts -- I'm not paying the musicians for a copy of their song; instead, I'm paying them for the service of performing in my presence. Movies are also a service -- I'm paying for the privilege of seeing a film before it's available on video cassette, on a larger screen and with a better sound system than I have at home. When I go to see a movie, I'm clearly not purchasing a copy of the film!
Where do you draw the line? Is/. a service or a product? Is it something different?
Slashdot is clearly not a product -- I haven't paid any money or exchanged anything of value for it. I'd say it's a service.
The basic distinction is whether, at the end of the transaction, anything has changed ownership. If I buy a video cassette at K-Mart, then I own that copy of the movie that's on it. If I rent the same video cassette from Blockbuster, and then return it, then I don't own the copy of the movie that was on the video cassette -- I just paid for the privilege of watching it for a limited time. So the video cassette from K-Mart is a product, and the one from Blockbuster is a service.
Would you pay for a 'pay per listen' service is it charged a fixed monthly fee, ala cable tv or internet access, and allowed unlimited listening to CD quality music anywhere anytime, but didn't allow copying? I might based on the price and the selection.
If it were truly "pay per listen", no, I wouldn't. I don't want anyone tracking my listening habits that closely. That gives me the creeps.
If what you're talking about is a digital music subscription service that works just like cable TV (several dozen channels of music, you listen to whatever you want whenever you want), then yes, I'd consider it -- depending on the terms and conditions, and the price and quality, etc. But the selection would have to be huge because the drawbacks (someone else is controlling which content gets played, and they'll probably have commercials and those horrible fucking disc jockeys (make them die!!)) are obvious. It's what we're trying to get away from. Go turn on commercial FM radio some time and listen to how awful it has become. Or better yet, don't -- it really is bad.
If you're talking about a huge Napster-like repository of music hosted by the record companies, from which we can hear any song we want on demand, for a flat monthly/yearly/whatever fee -- then this is better, but suffers from the privacy concerns I expressed above. In my own cynical mind, I already envision this thing spewing commercials at me in between songs, or with continuous flashing, animated banner ads. Or probably both. And with no anonymity, they'd be sure to psycho-analyze me based on my listening habits, cross-reference with their good ol' buddies over at double-click, and develop a personalized propaganda program just for me. And did I mention, they'd have my credit card number?
(And they'd probably mix DJ voices right into the song streams, like radio does. That could be automated pretty easily, I think. Will we never be free of the laughing stupidity of those idiots?)
So, how do we get professional music in the future without becoming mind-slaves to the machine? Every way I think about it, it ends up just like radio did, but worse.
(Have you read Stephenson's The Diamond Age? (You must have; I think it's required reading for all slashdot users....) Every manufactured item in that society is built by nanotechnology. Unless you pay an arm and a leg for a custom version of something, it's got commercials on it. The main character was promoted because he developed chopsticks that had commercials on them (in Mandarin Chinese, which is written vertically). The side-effect of this is that most of the people walk around like zombies, completely immersed in an endless sea of advertisements and propaganda, no longer capable of independent thought.)
Sorry for the paranoia. Something to think about, though. Maybe I'll at least give you a good laugh....
Furthermore, it seems that a great number of people don't entirely (or at all) understand that they are acting as a server themselves.
That's an interesting point. I think the correct response to this is the classic "Ignorance of the law is no excuse."
Holding Napster responsible for these people's ignorance/abuse certainly isn't fair.
Of course, none of these arguments apply to people like me who serve files on Napster with full knowledge of the technology involved.
As for the legal ramifications of offering files for download -- well, I guess we'll find out when the cases reach the courts.
Re:yes, rights are important
on
Pay Lars
·
· Score: 1
Yes, I agree that the steady state of human society is not anarchy, but some sort of government-based society. Anarchy is too inefficient; nobody can get any work done when they have to spend half their time fighting for their lives.
Your philosophical arguments notwithstanding, this does not mean that the government controls us, or defines our rights. (I got angry when you said that the government gives us our rights, and I wrote in haste. I apologize for this.) A fascist government is inherently unstable; the people will revolt when the government squeezes too hard, for too long.
The intellectual property laws we're being squeezed by right now are being tightened. Copyrights are basically infinitely long now. Laws like the DMCA erode our freedoms a step at a time.
It can't last. If the governments keep squeezing us like this, there will be violence.
I really don't want that to happen. But unless some of the people with money open their ears and listen to us I really don't see any way to avoid a very messy conflict.
I think paylars.com is brilliant. I'm not going to pay Lars any money (I don't have any illegal Metallica MP3s anyway), but I might pay some other artists if I could.
I fully agree that artists need to earn compensation for their works. I'd be happy to participate in their enrichment -- but not at the expense of my own freedom to share with my friends.
To reiterate: intellectual property is no longer a good idea. The whole concept needs to be replaced. I firmly believe that this will happen in my lifetime, assuming I live at least a normal human lifespan. And the Internet will be the focus of the conflict.
If we're lucky, we can do it without any bloodshed. But if events continue as they have for the last few years, it doesn't look like we're going to be so lucky.
PizzaPoweredColdFusion-QuadTransmetta-TotalbodyDol byElectrostatic-Panoramic2meter3D- TFT-LCD-FreeWireless-DistributedNeural-Tradesecret -TeledildonicExoskeletal-TempestCloaked- AntiCorporateCaffinated-LifeExtendedRemixMP3-EASY- to-HACK-InternetAppliance that Runs LINUX for ONLY $29.95
<slashdot>"Would those be good in a Beowulf cluster??"</slashdot>
And if my computer is in my bedroom and I don't have any little girls in there either am I doing anything wrong?
To which the law's response (as quoted herein) is:
First, the materials produced are a permanent record of the children's participation and the harm to the child is exacerbated by their circulation. [...]
In other words, the whole reason possession of child pornography is illegal, is because a child had to be harmed to create it.
But what if child pornography is created without children? Or indeed, without any human beings at all? Would computer-generated child pornography -- artificial children rendered entirely by CPU farms, with no human actors at all, or with only adult actors -- be illegal?
How can you reconcile these statements (from the recent chat):
We want to start a debate and get people to understand what the issues are, and try with other people to figure out what the best solutions are. Paying the artists through the internet, setting up police monitors to see who's trading. some kind of monitoring or policing of the internet is what people are talking about possible solutions, not police.
Were not the government or the f**king cops.
Both these statements are attributed to Lars in the chat transcript. But they sure don't sound like they both came from the same person.
Have you forgotten that each of those 335,435 napster users just wanted to hear your music?
The 300k users named in the suit are those who offered the Metallica songs, not those who requested Metallica songs. They're the users who wanted other people to hear Metallica's music.
Apart from that, I fully agree with your position. Metallica is alienating their best fans.
How do you manage to send the artist $5? I've often thought that doing this would be the best way for music to be distributed in the future, and that I would love to do exactly that. So... how do you find out the address or whatever of the artist to send the $5 to?
I'd like to know this, too. As regular slashdot readers know, there's paylars.com to send money to Metallica, but how do I send money to someone else, other than by buying a CD, for which the artists receives almost none of the money?
If someone were to set up a generalized site that does what paylars.com does, but for every artist out there I'd be ecstatic (and I'd have a lot less money in my bank account).
Which members of the band where actually doing the typing if any, or was another person answering for the band?
Oh, dear. You really believed Metallica would be sitting in front a computer keyboard and reading the words and typing?
All celebrity chats work like the Metallica one. Why do you think you had to submit the questions in advance?
At the Tori & Alanis chat (during the 5-and-1/2 weeks tour co-sponsored by mp3.com) it was even worse. The whole room was moderated -- participants couldn't even speak to each other, let alone to the moderators! (I didn't participate in the Metallica chat, but based on comments I've seen it seems that the participants could talk to each other. That's an improvement, at least.)
I'm sad to see your illusions shattered like this. Next time, you'll know.
Slashdot Mirror
I've actually suggested collaboritve filtering / recommendations to MP3.com in the past,
So have I.
and the silence has been deafening.
Same here. :-(
Thus, we have a "perfect" pay-per-view technology that nobody can circumvent by any means.
Nope. The only way you can have un-copyable information is to wire it directly into a person's brain -- and even then, you could probably get a copy of it if you're willing to undergo a second operation to install a black-market neural-signal interceptor.
If you can listen to it, you can record it. Worst case, just set a microphone next to the speakers. Second worst case, tap the speaker wire. If it's a computer-based player, the "plaintext" digital data has to be sent to a sound card at some point, so you can intercept the signals in the soundcard itself, or from the bus. If it's Linux-based (for example) then the unencrypted data probably passes through a kernel device driver, before being sent to a sound card. You could intercept the data in the kernel. If you're using Linux+esd, then you could intercept the sound data in userspace, with a modified esd.
The possibilities are virtually limitless.
The same applies to video data. Worst case, put a video camera in front of the CRT. Second worst case, intercept the analog signals being sent to the CRT. Etc., etc., ad nauseum.
would people opt out of paying their taxes for the same reason. They'd all start filing the 1040EZ saying they made $15K, while the rest of their income is hidden by anonymous digital cash transactions.
Interesting. But, have you read www.paynoincometax.com yet?
Perhaps the government would have to go to a sales tax
They are ethically obligated to do this anyway. Regardless of the questionable legality of an income tax, it's morally repulsive. I should not have to report my income to Big Brother. They have no business knowing what I'm doing, or how much I'm paid for it, as long as I'm not hurting anyone.
What portion of Napster users have modems? I dare you to try to download a whole CD's worth of MP3 files over a modem using Napster. Go ahead, try it. Let me know how much hair you tear out during this process.
Until we all get broadband access, Napster is and will remain primarily a sampling service. (What happens after that is a different universe.)
Last time I checked, "Napster Bad" was a Flash animation, not Shockwave. This is vitally important, because there is a Flash plugin for Linux Netscape, but there is currently no Shockwave plugin.
I think it's mandatory to post the following. I haven't seen it in a quick overview of the comments, so it's either below my threshold or I'm the first to post it this time.
A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace
Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.
We have no elected government, nor are we likely to have one, so I address you with no greater authority than that with which liberty itself always speaks. I declare the global social space we are building to be naturally independent of the
tyrannies you seek to impose on us. You have no moral right to rule us nor do you possess any methods of enforcement we have true reason to fear.
Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. You have neither solicited nor received ours. We did not invite you. You do not know us, nor do you know our world. Cyberspace does not lie within your borders. Do not think that you can build it, as though it were a public construction project. You cannot. It is an act of nature and it
grows itself through our collective actions.
You have not engaged in our great and gathering conversation, nor did you create the wealth of our marketplaces. You do not know our culture, our ethics, or the unwritten codes that already provide our society more order than could be
obtained by any of your impositions.
You claim there are problems among us that you need to solve. You use this claim as an excuse to invade our precincts. Many of these problems don't exist. Where there are real conflicts, where there are wrongs, we will identify them and
address them by our means. We are forming our own Social Contract. This governance will arise according to the conditions of our world, not yours. Our world is different.
Cyberspace consists of transactions, relationships, and thought itself, arrayed like a standing wave in the web of our
communications. Ours is a world that is both everywhere and nowhere, but it is not where bodies live.
We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth.
We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity.
Your legal concepts of property, expression, identity, movement, and context do not apply to us. They are based on matter, There is no matter here.
Our identities have no bodies, so, unlike you, we cannot obtain order by physical coercion. We believe that from ethics, enlightened self-interest, and the commonweal, our governance will emerge. Our identities may be distributed across many of your jurisdictions. The only law that all our constituent cultures would generally recognize is the Golden Rule. We hope we will be able to build our particular solutions on that basis. But we cannot accept the solutions you are
attempting to impose.
In the United States, you have today created a law, the Telecommunica- tions Reform Act, which repudiates your own Constitution and insults the dreams of Jefferson, Washington, Mill, Madison, DeToqueville, and Brandeis. These dreams
must now be born anew in us.
Your increasingly obsolete information industries would perpetuate themselves by proposing laws, in America and elsewhere, that claim to own speech itself throughout the world. These laws would declare ideas to be another industrial
product, no more noble than pig iron. In our world, whatever the human mind may create can be reproduced and distributed infinitely at no cost. The global conveyance of thought no longer requires your factories to accomplish.
These increasingly hostile and colonial measures place us in the same position as those previous lovers of freedom and self-determination who had to reject the authorities of distant, uninformed powers. We must declare our virtual selves
immune to your sovereignty, even as we continue to consent to your rule over our bodies. We will spread ourselves across the Planet so that no one can arrest our thoughts.
We will create a civilization of the Mind in Cyberspace. May it be more humane and fair than the world your governments have made before.
Davos, Switzerland February 8, 1996
John Perry Barlow, Cognitive Dissident Co-Founder, Electronic Frontier Foundation
The next time you want to 'justify' piracy...just think of someone coming into your home and taking your belongings....cause that, though not exactly, is what it is--theft.
Copyright infringement is not theft. These are two separate and very different crimes.
The laws that govern physical objects do not apply to information, and vice versa.
I mean, what can Mozilla do that IE doesn't do already?
Run on Linux, for one.
If you moderate a comment, then go back to that thread and post as AC, your moderation is undone. I guess the server still knows who you are in this case, regardless of what others may have said.
Copy the link location of the "Reply to This" link and paste it into lynx (or any other browser that doesn't have your slashdot cookie). Without your cookie, lynx (or whatever) will post as a real Anonymous Coward.
(If you only have one web browser, well... get another one. ;-) )
Microsoft didn't ask Slashdot to remove comments which were critical of the company. They asked Slashdot to remove articles which violated Microsoft's legitimate copyright.
Some of the comments which Microsoft wants /. to remove are not part of Microsoft's copyrighted material. They simply give advice on how one can circumvent an EULA.
Unfortunately, the DMCA makes the dissemination of such advice legal.
I'd like everyone reading this to stop for a few seconds and ponder this. If you write a howto which helps people obtain documentation you could be prosecuted under the DMCA.
A bit scary? I think so....
Actually people have to realise its not your music, its the muscians music.
First of all, your whole argument is based on the premise that "intellectual property" has some meaning. Under the current legal system, it does... but some of us hope to alter or eradicate that definition.
Second, most musicians who have signed record contracts do not own their music. The record companies do. Musicians aren't even allowed to give away copies of the music they wrote if the want to! (Quite a few have tried -- the record companies made them stop.)
Ars Technica has a review of MP3 encoders -- they compare Bladeenc, LAME, Xing and Fraunhofer.
For those too lazy to read it, Fraunhofer comes out the winner, followed closely by LAME. Bladeenc and Xing get ripped apart (no pun intended).
I am assuming that you download free software.
Yes, and I've paid for CDs of free software, too. And you're right -- there is a grey area between product and service. In fact, there are a few cases which I think qualify as both (e.g., if you "buy" a commercial software product and sign up for a support contract...).
But if it wasn't for the content, you wouldn't be supporting your wife's cable habit. I think a strong argument could be made that the main reason that anyone pays for cable is the content.
That sidesteps my point. I'm not buying the cable content. Most especially, I'm not allowed to record a show from cable onto video tape and then sell copies of that video tape -- because I don't own the content.
But this is just linguistic semantics. The difference between product and service isn't so very important in the long run. What matters is who creates the content, how we can get it, what we can do with it, and who gets paid.
But if every CD ever made was available for instant access over the net (wired and wireless) I would sign up today (this is what I was referring to as a "pay per listen" service. I was envisioning a monthly access fee.).
I'd be very cautious. If such a service existed, it would have a monopoly on the content (unless the content is "freed" in the free software/speech sense, so that multiple providers can offer the same content). And I don't think I need to elaborate on the dangers of a monopoly.
But yeah, I'd probably sign up too! :-)
No adds. No DJs
A noble goal -- and with a monthly fee, not completely unattainable -- but somehow I don't think it will happen. Or if it does happen at first, I don't think it will last. I'd predict the first ads within 2 years after the start of the program, and once they start, there's no turning back. We might be able to avoid the DJs though.
The only radio I listen to is in the car
Same here. But I drive 10 hours a week (1 hour to work, 1 hour back home, 5 days a week) so I have to endure quite a bit of radio. The evenings aren't so bad (relatively speaking). The morning DJs are the ones that make me despair for the human race.
In The Diamond Age MCs do for atoms what computer and communication technology does for bits. Why own anything when you can get a copy instantly.
Yes -- there is a dramatically reduced notion of physical property in the book (real estate, and anything sufficiently unique); but intellectual property is still strongly protected. That's a fascinating premise (though I agree, Snow Crash was a better book overall). But I think our society is heading the other direction -- a weakening of intellectual property. IP laws are very, very strict right now; a backlash is occurring (Napster is part of it), and IP will be less rigid pretty soon (if it survives at all).
We definitely live in interesting times....
You've never purchased software by downloading it?
Actually, no, I don't think I have. But I don't buy very much software -- almost all the software I use is free software. (And no, this doesn't mean warez. I used to do the warez thing when I was a lot younger, but I don't any more.)
As for paying for intangable goods, do you have cable tv? Ever used pay per view? Ever go to a concert? Ever go to the movies?
But I'm not buying the music or other content in these cases. I'm paying for a service. In the case of cable TV (I have it; or rather it's in my wife's name and I pay the bills ;-) ), I'm paying for the service of having audio/video content streamed into my house over a wire. I'm not paying for the actual content. No, I've never used Pay Per View, but that's even more obviously a service instead of an intangible good. Yes, I've gone to concerts -- I'm not paying the musicians for a copy of their song; instead, I'm paying them for the service of performing in my presence. Movies are also a service -- I'm paying for the privilege of seeing a film before it's available on video cassette, on a larger screen and with a better sound system than I have at home. When I go to see a movie, I'm clearly not purchasing a copy of the film!
Where do you draw the line? Is /. a service or a product? Is it something different?
Slashdot is clearly not a product -- I haven't paid any money or exchanged anything of value for it. I'd say it's a service.
The basic distinction is whether, at the end of the transaction, anything has changed ownership. If I buy a video cassette at K-Mart, then I own that copy of the movie that's on it. If I rent the same video cassette from Blockbuster, and then return it, then I don't own the copy of the movie that was on the video cassette -- I just paid for the privilege of watching it for a limited time. So the video cassette from K-Mart is a product, and the one from Blockbuster is a service.
Would you pay for a 'pay per listen' service is it charged a fixed monthly fee, ala cable tv or internet access, and allowed unlimited listening to CD quality music anywhere anytime, but didn't allow copying? I might based on the price and the selection.
If it were truly "pay per listen", no, I wouldn't. I don't want anyone tracking my listening habits that closely. That gives me the creeps.
If what you're talking about is a digital music subscription service that works just like cable TV (several dozen channels of music, you listen to whatever you want whenever you want), then yes, I'd consider it -- depending on the terms and conditions, and the price and quality, etc. But the selection would have to be huge because the drawbacks (someone else is controlling which content gets played, and they'll probably have commercials and those horrible fucking disc jockeys (make them die!!)) are obvious. It's what we're trying to get away from. Go turn on commercial FM radio some time and listen to how awful it has become. Or better yet, don't -- it really is bad.
If you're talking about a huge Napster-like repository of music hosted by the record companies, from which we can hear any song we want on demand, for a flat monthly/yearly/whatever fee -- then this is better, but suffers from the privacy concerns I expressed above. In my own cynical mind, I already envision this thing spewing commercials at me in between songs, or with continuous flashing, animated banner ads. Or probably both. And with no anonymity, they'd be sure to psycho-analyze me based on my listening habits, cross-reference with their good ol' buddies over at double-click, and develop a personalized propaganda program just for me. And did I mention, they'd have my credit card number?
(And they'd probably mix DJ voices right into the song streams, like radio does. That could be automated pretty easily, I think. Will we never be free of the laughing stupidity of those idiots?)
So, how do we get professional music in the future without becoming mind-slaves to the machine? Every way I think about it, it ends up just like radio did, but worse.
(Have you read Stephenson's The Diamond Age? (You must have; I think it's required reading for all slashdot users....) Every manufactured item in that society is built by nanotechnology. Unless you pay an arm and a leg for a custom version of something, it's got commercials on it. The main character was promoted because he developed chopsticks that had commercials on them (in Mandarin Chinese, which is written vertically). The side-effect of this is that most of the people walk around like zombies, completely immersed in an endless sea of advertisements and propaganda, no longer capable of independent thought.)
Sorry for the paranoia. Something to think about, though. Maybe I'll at least give you a good laugh....
Furthermore, it seems that a great number of people don't entirely (or at all) understand that they are acting as a server themselves.
That's an interesting point. I think the correct response to this is the classic "Ignorance of the law is no excuse."
Holding Napster responsible for these people's ignorance/abuse certainly isn't fair.
Of course, none of these arguments apply to people like me who serve files on Napster with full knowledge of the technology involved.
As for the legal ramifications of offering files for download -- well, I guess we'll find out when the cases reach the courts.
Yes, I agree that the steady state of human society is not anarchy, but some sort of government-based society. Anarchy is too inefficient; nobody can get any work done when they have to spend half their time fighting for their lives.
Your philosophical arguments notwithstanding, this does not mean that the government controls us, or defines our rights. (I got angry when you said that the government gives us our rights, and I wrote in haste. I apologize for this.) A fascist government is inherently unstable; the people will revolt when the government squeezes too hard, for too long.
The intellectual property laws we're being squeezed by right now are being tightened. Copyrights are basically infinitely long now. Laws like the DMCA erode our freedoms a step at a time.
It can't last. If the governments keep squeezing us like this, there will be violence.
I really don't want that to happen. But unless some of the people with money open their ears and listen to us I really don't see any way to avoid a very messy conflict.
I think paylars.com is brilliant. I'm not going to pay Lars any money (I don't have any illegal Metallica MP3s anyway), but I might pay some other artists if I could.
I fully agree that artists need to earn compensation for their works. I'd be happy to participate in their enrichment -- but not at the expense of my own freedom to share with my friends.
To reiterate: intellectual property is no longer a good idea. The whole concept needs to be replaced. I firmly believe that this will happen in my lifetime, assuming I live at least a normal human lifespan. And the Internet will be the focus of the conflict.
If we're lucky, we can do it without any bloodshed. But if events continue as they have for the last few years, it doesn't look like we're going to be so lucky.
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<slashdot>"Would those be good in a Beowulf cluster??"</slashdot>
I have no moderator points, but I'd really like to see this question asked. (See parent.)
An A.C. wrote:
To which the law's response (as quoted herein) is:
In other words, the whole reason possession of child pornography is illegal, is because a child had to be harmed to create it.
But what if child pornography is created without children? Or indeed, without any human beings at all? Would computer-generated child pornography -- artificial children rendered entirely by CPU farms, with no human actors at all, or with only adult actors -- be illegal?
If so, why?
Napster shares all Mp3s on a machine
Is the Windows client really so brain-damaged? I've never seen it.... All of the Unix clients I've seen either
How can you reconcile these statements (from the recent chat):
Both these statements are attributed to Lars in the chat transcript. But they sure don't sound like they both came from the same person.
So, do you want to play cop, or not?
(I belive someone has allready figured out how Napster works, but Napster put the kybosh on it, so this is a stong possiblity)
It's called opennap.
Have you forgotten that each of those 335,435 napster users just wanted to hear your music?
The 300k users named in the suit are those who offered the Metallica songs, not those who requested Metallica songs. They're the users who wanted other people to hear Metallica's music.
Apart from that, I fully agree with your position. Metallica is alienating their best fans.
This signature has one error in it.
Hmm. Clever. :-)
How do you manage to send the artist $5? I've often thought that doing this would be the best way for music to be distributed in the future, and that I would love to do exactly that. So... how do you find out the address or whatever of the artist to send the $5 to?
I'd like to know this, too. As regular slashdot readers know, there's paylars.com to send money to Metallica, but how do I send money to someone else, other than by buying a CD, for which the artists receives almost none of the money?
If someone were to set up a generalized site that does what paylars.com does, but for every artist out there I'd be ecstatic (and I'd have a lot less money in my bank account).
Which members of the band where actually doing the typing if any, or was another person answering for the band?
Oh, dear. You really believed Metallica would be sitting in front a computer keyboard and reading the words and typing?
All celebrity chats work like the Metallica one. Why do you think you had to submit the questions in advance?
At the Tori & Alanis chat (during the 5-and-1/2 weeks tour co-sponsored by mp3.com) it was even worse. The whole room was moderated -- participants couldn't even speak to each other, let alone to the moderators! (I didn't participate in the Metallica chat, but based on comments I've seen it seems that the participants could talk to each other. That's an improvement, at least.)
I'm sad to see your illusions shattered like this. Next time, you'll know.