I think you're cutting hairs with a big pair of shears, Genom, but I see your point about Napster and ICQ being similar types of software. The phase "Internet Service Provider" is too @$#@ vague. What is this mythical "Internet Service" these providers provide?;) People refer to AOL, Prodigy, etc. as ISPs, not Netscape or Microsoft or ICQ etc.
<P><I>Neither Napster, nor ICQ do any sort of censoring on what files may or may not be transferred.</I>
<P>I disagree. Napster *does* censor the types of files you sent (namely, you can only send MP3s.) Not only that, Napster catalogs users libraries when they *log into* their servers. So Napster has a list of MP3s people have. Napster can claim it is being hands-off on what people sent back and forth all it wants, it does aid said transfers.
<P>ICQ doesn't do this. Neither does the Post Office, for that matter. The DMCA (I'm assuming here, I'm not a lawyer) was meant to protect ISPs from libel, because they don't have the resources to scan all their user's hard drives and monitor what they're doing online. Napster *does scan* peoples hard drives (for MP3s that are uploadable). I guess the question is how "hands-on" can a third-party service provider be to pirating and still be considered "hands-off" and thus not libel for the pirating.
<P>(An aside, what prevents me from encoding a binary into text, like BinHex or Stuffit etc.), putting a MP3 wrapper on it, and sticking it into my library for upload? Just a thought.)
I guess my point was I don't think a company that develops an application that interacts with the internet is the same thing as a company that provides servers that users can connect to and do things like read email, surf the web, read news, etc. If that's not the cass, the 99% of the software companies, like Netscape, Microsoft, Links2Go.com *plug, plug*, are ISPs too.
I don't buy it.
I think the Internet Service in ISP refers to providing connectivity to the Internet. Maybe they should be Internet Connectivity Service Providers (ICSP)? Good point, though, the name is vague.
>They want to perpetuate utterly unenforcable >things like "Copyright" by trying to eliminate >peoples ability to copy without authorization.
Whoa bucky, slow down there. Are you saying Copyrights are unenforcable, or that you'd like them to be unenforcable? Copyrights have been around for books, music, software, etc. for a while now.
Are you saying authors/artists/programmers have no right to protect their work from other people who would rip it off to make a quick buck?
You mean I can dialup into Napster servers, read my mail, fire up a browser, and post to slashdot? *Oh*, you mean the file exchange/chat client software is the service? Does that make ICQ a service provider? How about AOL IM? Hey, I can post messages on slashdot. Are they a service provider too?
Opinionated persons between the ages of 1 and 100 are pouring online. They're at the heart of the rapidly growing movement of bullshitters onto the Net. Political correctness aside, men, women, sheep, and bullshitters are not alike, at least not online. They may have equal skills, but they choose to do very different things. Along with Slashdot, Open Source, Linux, Napster, JenniCam, the Hampster Dance, and Mahir, bullshitters may trigger another political, media and social transformation in cyberspace.
There are few reliable numbers on Net use by bullshitter, but I'm going to just guess and say that the majority of Web users -- possibly as high as 99% -- are now bullshiters. And younger bullshiters, especially those between 13 and 30 who are 3l33t, are the fastest growing single demographic online.
"Five years ago, there were not that many bullshitters on the Internet," Jon Katz, who wants to be a columnist when he grows up and a regular contributor to Slashdot.org, told #phuzzybunnies on IRC recently. "Today, we're on there and using it for everyday things, like flaming on about Micro$oft and surfing for porn."
"$ BiLlZ gAtEz SuX mY DiCk" Katz added repeatly for the next 10 minutes.
Contrary to any lingering stereotypes, they aren't the least bit wary either of groping technology or anything else that crosses their paths...
This paragraph of the article seems to me somewhat like the software industry's claims of damages resulting from piracy. Given that certain people would never have purchased a product due to various factors, simply downloading a pirated version doesn't really cost them any money.
Let's not forget those who *would have* bought the product, but don't have to because they have a free, pirated version.
I understand that ads generate revenue and that ticketmaster would be upset by people bypassing ads. However, the "offending" deep linking still takes the user to a page containing a banner, and ticketmaster will still receive a service charge, so what are they complaining about? Perhaps they never would have made that sale had the user not gone through the site doing the deep linking. Just a thought...
I'm sure Ticketmaster wants people to travel through *their* pages with *their* banner ads to get more impressions. Of course, these deep linking lawsuits are nothing but lousy alternatives to hiring a savy web head to design these sites correctly so people can't deep link.
Maybe this is an attempt to keep persons from using university pages for profit? After all, isn't research done at universities non-profit in general. Thus, maybe they want to keep pages from the university non-profit as well?
Is the big old mean DMCA limiting the distributing of MP3's by poor starving independent musicans that are looking to use the Internet to gain popularity? Or are devious computer users using MP3's to swap millions of copies of pirated music, deprivating poor starving artists (and agents and studio executives) from their cut of the profits?
Is the big old mean MPAA preventing DeCSS from being distributed to keep Linux users from being able to play DVDs on their computers, or are the evil 3L1T3 Linux Hackers trying to pirate DVDs, deprivating poor starving producers (and studio executives) from their cut of the profits?
It's all about framing the issue, folks.
Funny how the entertainment industry is hiding behind copyright laws as much as entertainment lovers are hiding behind the First Admendment. Seems to me neither side is knowledging the rights of the other, and, unfortunately, in the end, I bet the industry wins.
Dr. Johnson and Mr. Ambrose both had it wrong. "Free Speech" *and* "Copyright Law" are the first resort of scoundrels.
I think the fact CmdrTaco wasted the 10,000th story on self-congraduatory back-slapping speaks VOLUMES about the *cough* quality of the stories posted lately around/.
I'm just suprised Jon Katz wasn't the one who posted the story.;)
Congradulations,/. May your next 10,000 *not* have anything to do with grits.
The sorry fact of the matter is that private funding for academic research rarely comes pro bono; usually some sort of tat-for-tit is involved where investors get first crack at looking at the results, at least.
What I find disturbing is the trend in biology where biotech companies are treating DNA more and more as a media for storing information rather than complex molecules. (I.E. copyrighting, patienting, and otherwise threating DNA as IP.) I'm wondering if this is unprecidented...
I'm also wondering if this is a problem of an engineering/science overlap. A company that builds a new kind of bridge can patient the bridge's design, but not the physics that make the structure work. I'm wondering if the patienting of DNA is analogous to patienting bridges (as far as the companies involved are concerned), or if this is stretch.
Maybe they've seen how much space/. devotes to all things Linux? Maybe/. should replace its tagline: "News for Linux Geeks. Stuff that matters (to Linux Geeks)."?
VA could point to/. and call it a Linux discussion site.
See your still seeing this wrong. Napster does not charge anything for the service at the present time. You can't just sue somebody because you don't like what they are doing.
I wish that were the case. In fact, most people sue others over what the others are doing.;)
You might be right, and a judge might just throw out the case. But that's for a judge to decide; I still think the lawsuit has some merits and deserves to be brought.
This lawsuit is supposely about protecting copyrights (and keeping people buying CDs, but that's another thread.) Napster is providing, free of charge, a way for users to distrubute pirated music. I think the music industry has a right to sue Napster, since Napster doesn't seem to want to take responsiblity for what their users do on their servers. Napster *owns* the servers, and, thus, should responsible for how they run their servers. I think there's a grey area as to how much responsiblity Napster actually has, but, again, that's for the courts to decide.
Well it is free now, like I said. No Banners, no sponsership, no nothing. And as soon as that changes, you'll see mirror servers coming up, and different clients, so you can connect to which ever server you like. We'll have a WWMW = World Wide MP3 Web. *grin*
I don't believe that either, individuals are to blame. ISP's should not be held responsible, the users access should be revoked.
If Napster bans users for trading pirated music, then I stand corrected that they "see no evil, hear no evil." Even then, this is like an ISP allowing spammers to get accounts, and only banning them after the ISP receives complaints. Pretty passive policy, if you ask me.
I don't think there is anything wrong with it because where do you draw the line? Any Audio Media type is capable of being copied and transfered, MP3 just makes it more convient. If they abolish MP3s, who's to say people won't come out with a better version of a compression program and just use WAV?
As I said, I have my own MP3s. I didn't say abolish MP3s, I just didn't like the fact Napster was making money off people passing around MP3s.
Quick buck? Its completely free. I have yet to pay anything.
I serious doubt that Napster is going to continue to provide this service pro bono, unless it's going to get revenue from ad banners or sponsorship. I wouldn't be suprised if they charge for the final release of their software. They are a business, after all.
How are charges Napster is illegal unjustified? Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't the people running Napster have a "see-no-evil, hear-no-evil" attitude about pirate MP3's? (They're just providing a service for users to trade MP3's and can't be held responsible for content, etc.) Granted, Napster themselves aren't the ones pirating music. However, if ISPs can be held responsible for allowing spammers to freely send spam off their mail server, why can't the music industry hold Napster responsible for allowing users to distrubute pirated music as far as they possible can? Even though spam is quite annoying, there's no laws (yet, unfortunately) against it, yet distrubuting pirated music breaks copyright laws. Are you supporting Napster just because you don't mind pirate music, thus you don't mind services that aid in distrubuting pirated music? (Not that I don't have a bunch of MP3s myself. I'm not trying to argue against pirate MP3s; my gripe is against Napster.)
Seems to me Napster is a company that wants to make a quick buck off questionably legal content that users provide (i.e. the MP3's they swap). This bothers me. It's one thing to swap music between friends, its a totally different thing to try to make money off it. Personally, I'd like to see Napster sink on principle. There'll always be ftp or hotline servers to trade MP3's on that are run by people not trying to make money off the servers.
$99K seems a bit more that most people can afford to pop on a computer system. "Supercomputers for everyone?" Highly unlikely. More like supercomputers for businesses running parallel applications.
All this brew-ha-ha over a $50 piece of software? I doubt the rest of the library's budget (or the city's, for that matter) will get this much attention.
*sigh* Guess I should stockpile my amazing Ramdi (Flimi-Flami) Pokemon doll collection in case more lawsuits are filed. They could become collector items.:)
Granted, this lawsuit gives off a very bad smell, but how else is eBay is going to keep surfers on their site and surf pass their ad banners? They've taken the time to set up a site to manage *thousands* of auctions at a time, and then some third party comes along, writes a simple search engine, and tries to get surfers to switch to their site to look at *their* ad banners.
If eBay thinks hits on their ad banners are *that* important, they should put more ads on the auctions' pages and deal. What do you all think?
Granted, this lawsuit gives off a very bad smell, but how else is eBay is going to keep surfers on their site and surf pass their ad banners? They've taken the time to set up a site to manage *thousands* of auctions at a time, and then some third party comes along, writes a simple search engine, and tries to get surfers to switch to their site to look at *their* banners.
If eBay thinks hits on their banners are *that* important, they should put more on the pages that describe individual auctions' and deal. What do you all think?
Software should obtain it's value *through* widespread distrubution, not by artificially controlling scarcity. (All IMHO, of course)
It sounds like you have a great deal of faith in the idea of shareware. (Which does work to a certain extent, granted.)
I would beg to differ, though. How long would movie studios last if they took donations at the theaters instead of selling tickets? Or how many books would be written if authors had to rely on readers to send him or her checks after reading their novel. Remember, novelists sometimes invest years on their work, with only advances from the publisher to live on. Is it fair to deny them the ability to charge a price they deem fair for the book, after investing all that time and effort? Isn't that what capitalism is all about?
You need a better analogy to prove your case, because the analogy can also be applied to "prove" that giving away is theft, which is nonsense.
Fair enough. Most software come with a license allowing the user to use said software. Giving away software is legal as long as the old copies are erased and the license is transferred. So users are actually paying for the license to use the software. (Although many licenses also limit the number of copies one can have of a piece of software.) So at worst, just having copies of the software without a license makes you a bootlegger and using those copies make you a freeloader. For an analogy, if I had a book, I can give you my copy of the book freely, but I can't run off a photocopy of the whole book and then give to you. That's a copyright infringement, but I actually haven't physical stolen anything. I guess it's a question of whether or not you believe copyright infringement is the thief of intellectual property.
Slashdot Mirror
George Lee
I think you're cutting hairs with a big pair of shears, Genom, but I see your point about Napster and ICQ being similar types of software. ;) People refer to AOL, Prodigy, etc. as ISPs, not Netscape or Microsoft or ICQ etc.
The phase "Internet Service Provider" is too @$#@ vague. What is this mythical "Internet Service" these providers provide?
<P><I>Neither Napster, nor ICQ do any sort of censoring on what files may or may not be transferred.</I>
<P>I disagree. Napster *does* censor the types of files you sent (namely, you can only send MP3s.) Not only that, Napster catalogs users libraries when they *log into* their servers. So Napster has a list of MP3s people have. Napster can claim it is being hands-off on what people sent back and forth all it wants, it does aid said transfers.
<P>ICQ doesn't do this. Neither does the Post Office, for that matter. The DMCA (I'm assuming here, I'm not a lawyer) was meant to protect ISPs from libel, because they don't have the resources to scan all their user's hard drives and monitor what they're doing online. Napster *does scan* peoples hard drives (for MP3s that are uploadable). I guess the question is how "hands-on" can a third-party service provider be to pirating and still be considered "hands-off" and thus not libel for the pirating.
<P>(An aside, what prevents me from encoding a binary into text, like BinHex or Stuffit etc.), putting a MP3 wrapper on it, and sticking it into my library for upload? Just a thought.)
George Lee
I don't buy it.
I think the Internet Service in ISP refers to providing connectivity to the Internet. Maybe they should be Internet Connectivity Service Providers (ICSP)? Good point, though, the name is vague.
George Lee
Whenever he mentions "Geek Profiling", finish
the glass.
Whenever he mentions "Linux Geek Profiling by Post-Open Source Microsoft", finish the glass,
the six-pack, the keg, and/or the empties.
George Lee
>things like "Copyright" by trying to eliminate
>peoples ability to copy without authorization.
Whoa bucky, slow down there. Are you saying Copyrights are unenforcable, or that you'd like them to be unenforcable? Copyrights have been around for books, music, software, etc. for a while now.
Are you saying authors/artists/programmers have no right to protect their work from other people who would rip it off to make a quick buck?
George Lee
*Oh*, you mean the file exchange/chat client software is the service? Does that make ICQ a service provider? How about AOL IM? Hey, I can post messages on slashdot. Are they a service provider too?
Internet software company != ISP necessarily.
George Lee
Opinionated persons between the ages of 1 and 100 are pouring online. They're at the heart of the rapidly growing movement of bullshitters onto the Net. Political correctness aside, men, women, sheep, and bullshitters are not alike, at least not online. They may have equal skills, but they choose to do very different things. Along with Slashdot, Open Source, Linux, Napster, JenniCam, the Hampster Dance, and Mahir, bullshitters may trigger another political, media and social transformation in cyberspace.
There are few reliable numbers on Net use by bullshitter, but I'm going to just guess and say that the majority of Web users -- possibly as high as 99% -- are now bullshiters. And younger bullshiters, especially those between 13 and 30 who are 3l33t, are the fastest growing single demographic online.
"Five years ago, there were not that many bullshitters on the Internet," Jon Katz, who wants to be a columnist when he grows up and a regular contributor to Slashdot.org, told #phuzzybunnies on IRC recently. "Today, we're on there and using it for everyday things, like flaming on about Micro$oft and surfing for porn."
"$ BiLlZ gAtEz SuX mY DiCk" Katz added repeatly for the next 10 minutes.
Contrary to any lingering stereotypes, they aren't the least bit wary either of groping technology or anything else that crosses their paths...
George Lee
This paragraph of the article seems to me somewhat like the software industry's claims of damages resulting from piracy. Given that certain people would never have purchased a product due to various factors, simply downloading a pirated version doesn't really cost them any money.
Let's not forget those who *would have* bought the product, but don't have to because they have a free, pirated version.
I understand that ads generate revenue and that ticketmaster would be upset by people bypassing ads. However, the "offending" deep linking still takes the user to a page containing a banner, and ticketmaster will still receive a service charge, so what are they complaining about? Perhaps they never would have made that sale had the user not gone through the site doing the deep linking. Just a thought...
I'm sure Ticketmaster wants people to travel through *their* pages with *their* banner ads to get more impressions. Of course, these deep linking lawsuits are nothing but lousy alternatives to hiring a savy web head to design these sites correctly so people can't deep link.
George Lee
using university pages for profit? After all,
isn't research done at universities non-profit
in general. Thus, maybe they want to keep
pages from the university non-profit as well?
George Lee
many winner's careers tank afterwards.
George Lee
Is the big old mean DMCA limiting the distributing of MP3's by poor starving independent musicans that are looking to use the Internet to gain popularity? Or are devious computer users using MP3's to swap millions of copies of pirated music, deprivating poor starving artists (and agents and studio executives) from their cut of the profits?
Is the big old mean MPAA preventing DeCSS from being distributed to keep Linux users from being able to play DVDs on their computers, or are the evil 3L1T3 Linux Hackers trying to pirate DVDs, deprivating poor starving producers (and studio executives) from their cut of the profits?
It's all about framing the issue, folks.
Funny how the entertainment industry is hiding behind copyright laws as much as entertainment lovers are hiding behind the First Admendment. Seems to me neither side is knowledging the rights of the other, and, unfortunately, in the end, I bet the industry wins.
Dr. Johnson and Mr. Ambrose both had it wrong. "Free Speech" *and* "Copyright Law" are the first resort of scoundrels.
George Lee
I'm just suprised Jon Katz wasn't the one who posted the story.
Congradulations,
George Lee
What I find disturbing is the trend in biology where biotech companies are treating DNA more and more as a media for storing information rather than complex molecules. (I.E. copyrighting, patienting, and otherwise threating DNA as IP.) I'm wondering if this is unprecidented...
I'm also wondering if this is a problem of an engineering/science overlap. A company that builds a new kind of bridge can patient the bridge's design, but not the physics that make the structure work. I'm wondering if the patienting of DNA is analogous to patienting bridges (as far as the companies involved are concerned), or if this is stretch.
George Lee
George Lee
VA could point to
BTW, shouldn't
George Lee
I wish that were the case. In fact, most people sue others over what the others are doing.
You might be right, and a judge might just throw out the case. But that's for a judge to decide; I still think the lawsuit has some merits and deserves to be brought.
This lawsuit is supposely about protecting copyrights (and keeping people buying CDs, but that's another thread.) Napster is providing, free of charge, a way for users to distrubute pirated music. I think the music industry has a right to sue Napster, since Napster doesn't seem to want to take responsiblity for what their users do on their servers. Napster *owns* the servers, and, thus, should responsible for how they run their servers. I think there's a grey area as to how much responsiblity Napster actually has, but, again, that's for the courts to decide.
Well it is free now, like I said. No Banners, no sponsership, no nothing. And as soon as that changes, you'll see mirror servers coming up, and different clients, so you can connect to which ever server you like. We'll have a WWMW = World Wide MP3 Web. *grin*
:) Maybe that would be Napster's undoing.
George Lee
If Napster bans users for trading pirated music, then I stand corrected that they "see no evil, hear no evil." Even then, this is like an ISP allowing spammers to get accounts, and only banning them after the ISP receives complaints. Pretty passive policy, if you ask me.
I don't think there is anything wrong with it because where do you draw the line? Any Audio Media type is capable of being copied and transfered, MP3 just makes it more convient. If they abolish MP3s, who's to say people won't come out with a better version of a compression program and just use WAV?
As I said, I have my own MP3s. I didn't say abolish MP3s, I just didn't like the fact Napster was making money off people passing around MP3s.
Quick buck? Its completely free. I have yet to pay anything.
I serious doubt that Napster is going to continue to provide this service pro bono, unless it's going to get revenue from ad banners or sponsorship. I wouldn't be suprised if they charge for the final release of their software. They are a business, after all.
George Lee
Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't the people running Napster have a "see-no-evil, hear-no-evil" attitude about pirate MP3's? (They're just providing a service for users to trade MP3's and can't be held responsible for content, etc.) Granted, Napster themselves aren't the ones pirating music. However, if ISPs can be held responsible for allowing spammers to freely send spam off their mail server, why can't the music industry hold Napster responsible for allowing users to distrubute pirated music as far as they possible can? Even though spam is quite annoying, there's no laws (yet, unfortunately) against it, yet distrubuting pirated music breaks copyright laws. Are you supporting Napster just because you don't mind pirate music, thus you don't mind services that aid in distrubuting pirated music? (Not that I don't have a bunch of MP3s myself. I'm not trying to argue against pirate MP3s; my gripe is against Napster.)
Seems to me Napster is a company that wants to make a quick buck off questionably legal content that users provide (i.e. the MP3's they swap). This bothers me. It's one thing to swap music between friends, its a totally different thing to try to make money off it. Personally, I'd like to see Napster sink on principle. There'll always be ftp or hotline servers to trade MP3's on that are run by people not trying to make money off the servers.
George Lee
to pop on a computer system. "Supercomputers
for everyone?" Highly unlikely. More
like supercomputers for businesses running
parallel applications.
George Lee
I doubt the rest of the library's budget (or
the city's, for that matter) will get this
much attention.
George Lee
Ramdi (Flimi-Flami) Pokemon doll collection in
case more lawsuits are filed. They could become
collector items.
George Lee
Granted, this lawsuit gives off a very bad smell, but how else is eBay is going to keep surfers on their site and surf pass their ad banners? They've taken the time to set up a site to manage *thousands* of auctions at a time, and then some third party comes along, writes a simple search engine, and tries to get surfers to switch to their site to look at *their* ad banners.
If eBay thinks hits on their ad banners are *that* important, they should put more ads on the auctions' pages and deal. What do you all think?
George Lee
Granted, this lawsuit gives off a very bad smell, but how else is eBay is going to keep surfers on their site and surf pass their ad banners? They've taken the time to set up a site to manage *thousands* of auctions at a time, and then some third party comes along, writes a simple search engine, and tries to get surfers to switch to their site to look at *their* banners.
If eBay thinks hits on their banners are *that* important, they should put more on the pages that describe individual auctions' and deal. What do you all think?
George Lee
Software should obtain it's value *through* widespread distrubution, not by artificially controlling scarcity. (All IMHO, of course)
It sounds like you have a great deal of faith in the idea of shareware. (Which does work to a certain extent, granted.)
I would beg to differ, though. How long would movie studios last if they took donations at the theaters instead of selling tickets? Or how many books would be written if authors had to rely on readers to send him or her checks after reading their novel. Remember, novelists sometimes invest years on their work, with only advances from the publisher to live on. Is it fair to deny them the ability to charge a price they deem fair for the book, after investing all that time and effort? Isn't that what capitalism is all about?
George Lee
You need a better analogy to prove your case, because the analogy can also be applied to "prove" that giving away is theft, which is nonsense.
Fair enough. Most software come with a license allowing the user to use said software. Giving away software is legal as long as the old copies are erased and the license is transferred. So users are actually paying for the license to use the software. (Although many licenses also limit the number of copies one can have of a piece of software.) So at worst, just having copies of the software without a license makes you a bootlegger and using those copies make you a freeloader. For an analogy, if I had a book, I can give you my copy of the book freely, but I can't run off a photocopy of the whole book and then give to you. That's a copyright infringement, but I actually haven't physical stolen anything. I guess it's a question of whether or not you believe copyright infringement is the thief of intellectual property.
George Lee