The best part about the BSA's site, is the fact that when you click on "Our Privacy Policy" from their registration page, you get a page not found error. That sure makes me feel good about THEIR ethics, while they claim to be a moral authority themselves.
Exactly - capitalism is based on growth - and not just constant growth, but increasing growth. Gotta produce more, gotta consume more, gotta keep using more energy & minerals to make more junk to get higher sales numbers to keep the stock price high.
Also, think of the real estate possibilities of space - once the population gets so big we've each only got one square yard of land area, don't you think living on other planets will start seeming more attractive than sleeping in your slide away coffin-bed and being crushed in the crowds anyy time you descend to street level?
At the very least, the article submission process ought to run a search for the title words.
If you search Slashdot for "Combating Cheating In Online Games" the second article that comes up (below this one) is the earlier post of this article in July.
The submission process should present a short list of matching headlines to the submitter for a quick scan before hitting submit.
>>They must love me!
Thanks for writing to us about Napster.
Since Napster put my name on its site with a direct e-mail connection, you can imagine that I have received thousands of e-mails. Most were urgent pleas for Napster, most were from music lovers and some of them were even polite!
We've read your e-mails, and put together a short Q&A that addresses the most commonly asked questions. I've printed it below. We've also revised the Q&A on our website (http://www.riaa.com/napster.cfm) to address the issues you've raised, and I encourage you to read it.
But first, I want to address some of the common themes in this response to you.
1. The record companies and artists who have repeatedly asked Napster and other sites offering similar services, want a simple thing that I am sure you want for your work - respect. Napster has a new artist program where artists give permission to have their works shared. Shouldn't all artists have the same courtesy from Napster?
2. Music is as important to all of us as it is to you. Those of us who work with creative artists are especially grateful that we have a deep understanding of how hard artists work to achieve music that in their minds is good enough to offer to you. That work takes time and money.
3. The price of music today is the best entertainment value for the dollar. Numerous studies have shown that the price of music has not even kept pace with inflation and has stayed more level than other entertainment products. As the various media outlets for music increase, the cost of marketing and promotion go up, not down. The price of the physical piece of plastic is the least relevant part of the costs of music. The marketing and promotion that broadens the audience for an artist's music is the most expensive part. For a record company (big or small), 85% of all recordings fail to even make back their costs. It is the small number of successful records that fund the development of new music. Therefore, when someone takes the "hits" new artists are getting hurt as well.
4. For those who have written that Napster has been a source of education about new music, I say thanks for being open to new music. There are numerous music sites on-line that promote new bands that don't also encourage stealing from those that are already popular. Go to MTV.com, getmusic.com, sonymusic.com. warnerbros.com. listen.com, launch.com, emusic.com, mp3.com, hollywoodandvine.com, artistdirect.com?.the list goes on.
5. A number of people have suggested that we "just don't get it". People say if Napster is shut down, numerous other places are ready to takes its place. Believe me, we do "get it" and we do understand both the technology and the interest people have in getting music on-line. Litigating our way through the Internet is not our preferred or intended method. We hope that once the service offered by Napster is confirmed to be against the law, that there will be little interest by most people in continuing to test their fate. While some may think that a Gnutella program or one of the many other kinds of open source programs offers anonymity to users, they don't. While I don't have any illusions that all free music distribution will suddenly stop, I do believe that most people want to be honest and care about their favorite artists.
6. Finally and most importantly, in my view, the legitimate on-line music business is developing quickly. Artists and record companies know that you want music on-line and you want it soon, easy to use and at a good price. That is the challenge of the music community. It is a good challenge and I believe it will be met. But it will be met with a fundamental difference from the way Napster operates. A legitimate music business will recognize that music is the lifeblood and career for artists and songwriters and producers and musicians and many others. That work must be respected and rewarded by those enjoying the fruits of their labor.
Thanks again for sharing your views.
Sincerely,
Hilary Rosen
President and CEO
Recording Industry Association of America
What is the RIAA action against Napster all about?
RIAA, on behalf of its members, sued Napster because it launched a service that enables and facilitates piracy of music on an unprecedented scale.
The overwhelming majority of the MP3 files offered on Napster are infringing -- and the district court found that Napster knows this and even encourages it. Napster is thus enabling and encouraging the illegal copying and distribution of copyrighted music. Just because Napster itself may not house the infringing recordings does not mean Napster is not guilty of copyright infringement. Copyright law has long recognized that someone who materially contributes to infringing activity, with knowledge of that activity, is liable for copyright infringement as if that person did the copying him or herself.
Is this a lawsuit to stop the use of MP3 technology?
No. The suit is against Napster, the company, and not MP3 technology. Any company that offers to help distribute illegally obtained music is a problem -- whether that music is transmitted on tape, CD, or on the Internet in whatever form.
RIAA only has a problem with the illegal uses of the format to distribute copyrighted recordings without the permission of the artist or record company. To the extent that artists choose to use MP3 technology to distribute their work - music that they own the rights to - that's great; in fact, it's a potent example of the ways in which the Internet can connect creators and fans and produce new opportunities for the distribution of music.
Napster's copyright protection page clearly says it revokes the ability of users to access Napster if they violate copyright law. Isn't that enough?
A few words cannot undo the harm caused by hundreds of thousands of Napster users unlawfully downloading millions of infringing music files. In any event, Napster's actions speak louder than its words. Napster is actively encouraging and facilitating the illegal copying and distribution of copyrighted music.
While Napster now claims that it's all about creating a community for the new and unknown artist, the district court found that it was just an afterthought to try to help them in the litigation. Before this litigation, Napster was more forthright about its true purpose. On its web site, Napster touted itself as the "world's largest MP3 music library" that "ensures the availability of every song online." Leaving little doubt about its disregard for the unknown artist, Napster boasted that "Napster virtually guarantees you'll find the music you want, when you want it... and you can forget about wading through page after page of unknown artists."
Napster is unfair to the artists and musicians who have invested their time, effort and money to create music.
Isn't this just like the motion picture association's battle against VCRs in the 1980s?
Not at all. A VCR can be used lawfully (time-shifting, rentals, home movies) and never infringe on a copyright. The overwhelming use of Napster, by contrast, is for infringing purposes. Indeed, the district court found that Napster did not have any non-infringing uses that were commercially significant. The magnitude of the activity is also very different. An individual making a copy of a TV program (which she was invited to watch for free) so that she can watch it later cannot be equated with an individual re-distributing a copy of a CD to millions of anonymous strangers who were not invited by the copyright owner to get it for free.
Finally, the record industry is embracing Internet technology and actively working to take advantage of the new technologies for the delivery of music online. But it's very hard for an artist or label to sell their music online when the same songs are available from Napster for free.
Don't technologies like Gnutella and Freenet pose the greatest risk for the recording industry? Why worry about Napster?
Record companies have lived with piracy forever, so new technologies for piracy on the Internet is nothing new. Certainly, there will be challenging issues to address, and perhaps technical measures will be helpful. But, the mere fact that there are other piracy challenges on the Internet is not a reason to do nothing about commercial operations like Napster, which seek to build multi-billion dollar businesses on copyrighted works they neither own nor license.
Record companies recognize that the ultimate response to technologies like Gnutella and Freenet is a legitimate alternative that consumers will prefer. It's up to the industry to offer consumers such convenient access to music, with such ease of operation and great sound quality, that consumers will choose to use legitimate sites. They're also likely to prefer dealing with legitimate sites so as to avoid the security and privacy risks of dealing with anonymous strangers on the "Undernet."
What do artists think of Napster's system?
Artists have been voicing their opinions in increasing numbers. Many appreciate the promotional opportunity the Internet presents, but have passionate feelings about being able to decide where and how their music is distributed and to receive some compensation for its use. Here are just a few examples of what artists are saying.
"Many artists have spent their lives honing their craft and now some anonymous person in a little dark room with a computer somewhere is able to collate that lifetime's work and pass it around the world for free. It's just not on. Stealing is stealing regardless of what name you choose to call it."
-- Matt Johnson of The The
"It pisses me off and I resent it. I spent $15,000 on my Web site. I paid a publicist for a year and a half out of my own pocket. And now some kid's going to tell me my catalog should be free? They're just entrepreneurs setting themselves up to make a ton of money off other people's work. Where's the compensation for the artists? I know people using Napster are chuckling about kicking big, bad record labels. But as evil as the record companies may be, at least they're paying for your recording budget, and at least they're promoting you, and paying for tour support. We can make a new model - yeah right. It's laughable. Those people have no idea how the music business works. Because unless you're Alanis Morissette or Dave Matthews, you're not making money on the road. It's all I can do to break even on tour. And the only reason to tour is to promote the sale of my CD."
-- Jonatha Brook, Salon, March 25, 2000
"Artists, like anyone else, should be paid for their work."
-- Lou Reed
"I don't have a big giant record deal or a movie deal. I don't make money on the road; I lose money on the road. A Newsweek article said, 'It's the kids versus the suits.' Well, it's not really that - it's kids versus the damn musicians, the people you supposedly like, whose music you listen to."
-- Aimee Mann, Yahoo! Internet Life, August 2000
"Napster presents huge problems for the artists. It raises the questions - which is positive - of where and how artists are compensated. But I don't agree with the model they've set up. The artists should be the person who's ultimately in a position to decide when, where, and how something should be shared with whomever they choose to share it with."
-- Alanis Morissette, Yahoo! Internet Life, August 2000
Once I purchase a CD or movie, doesn't the "fair use" doctrine and "personal use" allow me to use my CD as I see fit?
The "fair use doctrine" of copyright law is complicated and its application varies depending on the specific facts and circumstances. In general, the doctrine can allow someone to reproduce, distribute, adapt, display and/or perform a copyrighted work depending upon the nature of the use (commercial purposes, non-profit, educational), the length of the excerpt, how distinctive the original work is, and how the use will impact the market for the original work.
You don't have to be a copyright lawyer to know that it is not "fair" to allow an individual to make copies of copyrighted music available to millions of anonymous strangers. That's the equivalent of publishing, and few people would argue that you can publish someone else's copyrighted work without his or her permission. In fact, courts have routinely held that wholesale copying and distribution of the entirety of creative works is not a fair use. The district court in this case came to the same conclusion.
Regarding "personal use," there is a big difference between a consumer making a copy for his or her own personal use, and that same consumer making the file available on Napster where it can be freely downloaded by millions of people. Not even the staunchest proponents of consumer rights have suggested that the latter is fair or lawful.
How is downloading files from Napster different from recording from the radio or making mix tapes for friends?
Taping a song from the radio for your personal use is nothing like file trading. Unlike radio, file trading allows you to search for specific songs and access them at will. Also, the quality of downloads is much better. You are able to get a copy of the whole song, without a DJ talking over it or another song being mixed in. Downloads are digital and as such don't lose sound quality in the transfer, as you do with analog tape. Most important, the harm that can be caused by file trading over the Internet is orders of magnitude greater than the impact of off-air taping.
File trading is also nothing like trading mix tapes. The more appropriate analogy is if you give your mix tape to millions of anonymous strangers. That's not legal, and it's certainly not innocent.
Aren't record companies at fault for the proliferation of file trading because they've been so slow in offering music on the Internet?
The Internet is revolutionizing entertainment - and the recording industry embraces it. Our reason for existence is to find, develop, and promote talented musicians. We build careers and make a contribution to our ever-evolving culture.
In order to accomplish this, we must market and distribute our catalogs in ways that are legal and that result in the creators being fairly compensated. It takes an enormous amount of effort to determine how to offer music to consumers online in a way that meets their needs and grows the business. Method of delivery, format, rights clearances, relationships with retailers, and price structure are but a few of the many issues to be worked out, as is negotiating for digital distribution rights where necessary with artists, songwriters, publishers, and their representative organizations in the US and abroad.
Some examples of how record companies are going digital are:
- Many record labels have been licensing personalized webcasting services, and many more are on the way;
- Three of the five major labels (EMI, Sony and Universal) have already begun offering digital downloads via the Internet. The other major labels and several independent labels (e.g., Zomba and TVT) have likewise announced plans to begin digital downloads of music and are slated to begin operations in the near future;
- Warner, BMG, EMI, Beggar's Banquet, and other labels have already licensed MP3.com, MusicBank, and other services to offer consumers the ability to store their music wherever they are and whenever they want;
- Sony, Universal and EMI have announced that they will soon be offering a subscription service to consumers for the first time.
If music wasn't so expensive, wouldn't there be less incentive to want to file-share?
First, this is not file sharing. This is unauthorized, illegal file duplication - on a massive scale. Sharing is when one person gives up something for another - a half a piece of pie, for example, or the use of a car. With Napster, nobody is giving up anything because everybody gets to keep a copy. And that's just plain wrong.
Second, the price of music is not just the cost of the plastic on which it's recorded, any more than the price of a movie is based on the cost of the film. The price of a CD includes the cost of paying all the people who helped create it. Those people include songwriters, artists, background musicians, studio engineers, talent scouts, marketers and retailers, among many others. It also carries with it the enormous costs of marketing and promotion that are required to call attention to the album in our oversaturated entertainment market.
In any event, dissatisfaction with the price is not a justification for stealing. Would you steal a book on the grounds that its price is too high? Or break into a theater because the tickets cost too much?
>>Hell yeah!
Also there was a story, I think by Asimov, about a mining ship crashed on an alien planet where all the crew had died, but the robots survived and tried to carry out their simple orders, which included setting up a factory to build more robots and mining materials. A (barely) plauseable chain of events leads the robots to gain the characteristics of life.
WALL-MART must be destroyed! Shoplift there whenever possible - they've put huge numbers of small stores out of business with their anti-competitive practices (ie. cutting prices & losing money when they enter a town, till their local competition is dead, then jacking them back up)
Okay, this is what I thought would be cool after reading the "Natural Language CLI" story a couple days ago - each person's machine would have a bunch of rules like "remove is a verb which means rm when referring to files" "delete is a synonym for remove" etc, and a simple system for adding rules. As you add rules to your system, your system contact other systems out there and sees if your rules have anything in common with other peoples'. If it finds a system which is customized like yours, it can import a bunch of rules (or you can set it to import only rules it finds on X number of other systems).
Just a thought - anybody see any use for this? -Eje
and SETI@home tosses most of their data. Yep, a friend of mine worked for them and left in disgust - he sez it's basically a big PR operation, the crunched numbers are mostly disregarded.
I'm running d.net on all the machines I have access to now.
Just got a Dell 8450 in the lab - 8 xeons! Hmmmm... lots-an-lots-a-stats!
They made a pizza place change its name! I mean, Olympic just refers to something having to do with Olympus, and pizza places seem to always have greek shit on the walls, so olympic pizza is a fine name for a pizza place. This is just so wrong!
Hey, why do pizza places have greek shit on the walls anyway? Isn't pizza sposed to be italian or something?
Slashdot Mirror
He was still logged in to his troll account and posting a troll?
The best part about the BSA's site, is the fact that when you click on "Our Privacy Policy" from their registration page, you get a page not found error. That sure makes me feel good about THEIR ethics, while they claim to be a moral authority themselves.
Also, think of the real estate possibilities of space - once the population gets so big we've each only got one square yard of land area, don't you think living on other planets will start seeming more attractive than sleeping in your slide away coffin-bed and being crushed in the crowds anyy time you descend to street level?
hells yeah - I'm off to smoke a doobie on the roof of the engineering building right now
stupid firstposters
Cut it the first time and it's DOUBLE-LOOPED. Cut it the second time and it's two interlocking loops.
... Veritas is planning to support linux sometime soon, too...
Patricia is Linus & Tove's first daughter.
Check them out:
At the very least, the article submission process ought to run a search for the title words.
If you search Slashdot for "Combating Cheating In Online Games" the second article that comes up (below this one) is the earlier post of this article in July.
The submission process should present a short list of matching headlines to the submitter for a quick scan before hitting submit.
'cause he was building a search and destroy nanobot to target e. coli bacteria!
ooh! a
tag and a whole bunch of s
u r SOOO 1337!
Vote for Ralph Nader!
'Nuff said.
>>They must love me! Thanks for writing to us about Napster. Since Napster put my name on its site with a direct e-mail connection, you can imagine that I have received thousands of e-mails. Most were urgent pleas for Napster, most were from music lovers and some of them were even polite! We've read your e-mails, and put together a short Q&A that addresses the most commonly asked questions. I've printed it below. We've also revised the Q&A on our website (http://www.riaa.com/napster.cfm) to address the issues you've raised, and I encourage you to read it. But first, I want to address some of the common themes in this response to you. 1. The record companies and artists who have repeatedly asked Napster and other sites offering similar services, want a simple thing that I am sure you want for your work - respect. Napster has a new artist program where artists give permission to have their works shared. Shouldn't all artists have the same courtesy from Napster? 2. Music is as important to all of us as it is to you. Those of us who work with creative artists are especially grateful that we have a deep understanding of how hard artists work to achieve music that in their minds is good enough to offer to you. That work takes time and money. 3. The price of music today is the best entertainment value for the dollar. Numerous studies have shown that the price of music has not even kept pace with inflation and has stayed more level than other entertainment products. As the various media outlets for music increase, the cost of marketing and promotion go up, not down. The price of the physical piece of plastic is the least relevant part of the costs of music. The marketing and promotion that broadens the audience for an artist's music is the most expensive part. For a record company (big or small), 85% of all recordings fail to even make back their costs. It is the small number of successful records that fund the development of new music. Therefore, when someone takes the "hits" new artists are getting hurt as well. 4. For those who have written that Napster has been a source of education about new music, I say thanks for being open to new music. There are numerous music sites on-line that promote new bands that don't also encourage stealing from those that are already popular. Go to MTV.com, getmusic.com, sonymusic.com. warnerbros.com. listen.com, launch.com, emusic.com, mp3.com, hollywoodandvine.com, artistdirect.com?.the list goes on. 5. A number of people have suggested that we "just don't get it". People say if Napster is shut down, numerous other places are ready to takes its place. Believe me, we do "get it" and we do understand both the technology and the interest people have in getting music on-line. Litigating our way through the Internet is not our preferred or intended method. We hope that once the service offered by Napster is confirmed to be against the law, that there will be little interest by most people in continuing to test their fate. While some may think that a Gnutella program or one of the many other kinds of open source programs offers anonymity to users, they don't. While I don't have any illusions that all free music distribution will suddenly stop, I do believe that most people want to be honest and care about their favorite artists. 6. Finally and most importantly, in my view, the legitimate on-line music business is developing quickly. Artists and record companies know that you want music on-line and you want it soon, easy to use and at a good price. That is the challenge of the music community. It is a good challenge and I believe it will be met. But it will be met with a fundamental difference from the way Napster operates. A legitimate music business will recognize that music is the lifeblood and career for artists and songwriters and producers and musicians and many others. That work must be respected and rewarded by those enjoying the fruits of their labor. Thanks again for sharing your views. Sincerely, Hilary Rosen President and CEO Recording Industry Association of America What is the RIAA action against Napster all about? RIAA, on behalf of its members, sued Napster because it launched a service that enables and facilitates piracy of music on an unprecedented scale. The overwhelming majority of the MP3 files offered on Napster are infringing -- and the district court found that Napster knows this and even encourages it. Napster is thus enabling and encouraging the illegal copying and distribution of copyrighted music. Just because Napster itself may not house the infringing recordings does not mean Napster is not guilty of copyright infringement. Copyright law has long recognized that someone who materially contributes to infringing activity, with knowledge of that activity, is liable for copyright infringement as if that person did the copying him or herself. Is this a lawsuit to stop the use of MP3 technology? No. The suit is against Napster, the company, and not MP3 technology. Any company that offers to help distribute illegally obtained music is a problem -- whether that music is transmitted on tape, CD, or on the Internet in whatever form. RIAA only has a problem with the illegal uses of the format to distribute copyrighted recordings without the permission of the artist or record company. To the extent that artists choose to use MP3 technology to distribute their work - music that they own the rights to - that's great; in fact, it's a potent example of the ways in which the Internet can connect creators and fans and produce new opportunities for the distribution of music. Napster's copyright protection page clearly says it revokes the ability of users to access Napster if they violate copyright law. Isn't that enough? A few words cannot undo the harm caused by hundreds of thousands of Napster users unlawfully downloading millions of infringing music files. In any event, Napster's actions speak louder than its words. Napster is actively encouraging and facilitating the illegal copying and distribution of copyrighted music. While Napster now claims that it's all about creating a community for the new and unknown artist, the district court found that it was just an afterthought to try to help them in the litigation. Before this litigation, Napster was more forthright about its true purpose. On its web site, Napster touted itself as the "world's largest MP3 music library" that "ensures the availability of every song online." Leaving little doubt about its disregard for the unknown artist, Napster boasted that "Napster virtually guarantees you'll find the music you want, when you want it ... and you can forget about wading through page after page of unknown artists."
Napster is unfair to the artists and musicians who have invested their time, effort and money to create music.
Isn't this just like the motion picture association's battle against VCRs in the 1980s?
Not at all. A VCR can be used lawfully (time-shifting, rentals, home movies) and never infringe on a copyright. The overwhelming use of Napster, by contrast, is for infringing purposes. Indeed, the district court found that Napster did not have any non-infringing uses that were commercially significant. The magnitude of the activity is also very different. An individual making a copy of a TV program (which she was invited to watch for free) so that she can watch it later cannot be equated with an individual re-distributing a copy of a CD to millions of anonymous strangers who were not invited by the copyright owner to get it for free.
Finally, the record industry is embracing Internet technology and actively working to take advantage of the new technologies for the delivery of music online. But it's very hard for an artist or label to sell their music online when the same songs are available from Napster for free.
Don't technologies like Gnutella and Freenet pose the greatest risk for the recording industry? Why worry about Napster?
Record companies have lived with piracy forever, so new technologies for piracy on the Internet is nothing new. Certainly, there will be challenging issues to address, and perhaps technical measures will be helpful. But, the mere fact that there are other piracy challenges on the Internet is not a reason to do nothing about commercial operations like Napster, which seek to build multi-billion dollar businesses on copyrighted works they neither own nor license.
Record companies recognize that the ultimate response to technologies like Gnutella and Freenet is a legitimate alternative that consumers will prefer. It's up to the industry to offer consumers such convenient access to music, with such ease of operation and great sound quality, that consumers will choose to use legitimate sites. They're also likely to prefer dealing with legitimate sites so as to avoid the security and privacy risks of dealing with anonymous strangers on the "Undernet."
What do artists think of Napster's system?
Artists have been voicing their opinions in increasing numbers. Many appreciate the promotional opportunity the Internet presents, but have passionate feelings about being able to decide where and how their music is distributed and to receive some compensation for its use. Here are just a few examples of what artists are saying.
"Many artists have spent their lives honing their craft and now some anonymous person in a little dark room with a computer somewhere is able to collate that lifetime's work and pass it around the world for free. It's just not on. Stealing is stealing regardless of what name you choose to call it."
-- Matt Johnson of The The
"It pisses me off and I resent it. I spent $15,000 on my Web site. I paid a publicist for a year and a half out of my own pocket. And now some kid's going to tell me my catalog should be free? They're just entrepreneurs setting themselves up to make a ton of money off other people's work. Where's the compensation for the artists? I know people using Napster are chuckling about kicking big, bad record labels. But as evil as the record companies may be, at least they're paying for your recording budget, and at least they're promoting you, and paying for tour support. We can make a new model - yeah right. It's laughable. Those people have no idea how the music business works. Because unless you're Alanis Morissette or Dave Matthews, you're not making money on the road. It's all I can do to break even on tour. And the only reason to tour is to promote the sale of my CD."
-- Jonatha Brook, Salon, March 25, 2000
"Artists, like anyone else, should be paid for their work."
-- Lou Reed
"I don't have a big giant record deal or a movie deal. I don't make money on the road; I lose money on the road. A Newsweek article said, 'It's the kids versus the suits.' Well, it's not really that - it's kids versus the damn musicians, the people you supposedly like, whose music you listen to."
-- Aimee Mann, Yahoo! Internet Life, August 2000
"Napster presents huge problems for the artists. It raises the questions - which is positive - of where and how artists are compensated. But I don't agree with the model they've set up. The artists should be the person who's ultimately in a position to decide when, where, and how something should be shared with whomever they choose to share it with."
-- Alanis Morissette, Yahoo! Internet Life, August 2000
Once I purchase a CD or movie, doesn't the "fair use" doctrine and "personal use" allow me to use my CD as I see fit?
The "fair use doctrine" of copyright law is complicated and its application varies depending on the specific facts and circumstances. In general, the doctrine can allow someone to reproduce, distribute, adapt, display and/or perform a copyrighted work depending upon the nature of the use (commercial purposes, non-profit, educational), the length of the excerpt, how distinctive the original work is, and how the use will impact the market for the original work.
You don't have to be a copyright lawyer to know that it is not "fair" to allow an individual to make copies of copyrighted music available to millions of anonymous strangers. That's the equivalent of publishing, and few people would argue that you can publish someone else's copyrighted work without his or her permission. In fact, courts have routinely held that wholesale copying and distribution of the entirety of creative works is not a fair use. The district court in this case came to the same conclusion.
Regarding "personal use," there is a big difference between a consumer making a copy for his or her own personal use, and that same consumer making the file available on Napster where it can be freely downloaded by millions of people. Not even the staunchest proponents of consumer rights have suggested that the latter is fair or lawful.
How is downloading files from Napster different from recording from the radio or making mix tapes for friends?
Taping a song from the radio for your personal use is nothing like file trading. Unlike radio, file trading allows you to search for specific songs and access them at will. Also, the quality of downloads is much better. You are able to get a copy of the whole song, without a DJ talking over it or another song being mixed in. Downloads are digital and as such don't lose sound quality in the transfer, as you do with analog tape. Most important, the harm that can be caused by file trading over the Internet is orders of magnitude greater than the impact of off-air taping.
File trading is also nothing like trading mix tapes. The more appropriate analogy is if you give your mix tape to millions of anonymous strangers. That's not legal, and it's certainly not innocent.
Aren't record companies at fault for the proliferation of file trading because they've been so slow in offering music on the Internet?
The Internet is revolutionizing entertainment - and the recording industry embraces it. Our reason for existence is to find, develop, and promote talented musicians. We build careers and make a contribution to our ever-evolving culture.
In order to accomplish this, we must market and distribute our catalogs in ways that are legal and that result in the creators being fairly compensated. It takes an enormous amount of effort to determine how to offer music to consumers online in a way that meets their needs and grows the business. Method of delivery, format, rights clearances, relationships with retailers, and price structure are but a few of the many issues to be worked out, as is negotiating for digital distribution rights where necessary with artists, songwriters, publishers, and their representative organizations in the US and abroad.
Some examples of how record companies are going digital are:
- Many record labels have been licensing personalized webcasting services, and many more are on the way;
- Three of the five major labels (EMI, Sony and Universal) have already begun offering digital downloads via the Internet. The other major labels and several independent labels (e.g., Zomba and TVT) have likewise announced plans to begin digital downloads of music and are slated to begin operations in the near future;
- Warner, BMG, EMI, Beggar's Banquet, and other labels have already licensed MP3.com, MusicBank, and other services to offer consumers the ability to store their music wherever they are and whenever they want;
- Sony, Universal and EMI have announced that they will soon be offering a subscription service to consumers for the first time.
If music wasn't so expensive, wouldn't there be less incentive to want to file-share?
First, this is not file sharing. This is unauthorized, illegal file duplication - on a massive scale. Sharing is when one person gives up something for another - a half a piece of pie, for example, or the use of a car. With Napster, nobody is giving up anything because everybody gets to keep a copy. And that's just plain wrong.
Second, the price of music is not just the cost of the plastic on which it's recorded, any more than the price of a movie is based on the cost of the film. The price of a CD includes the cost of paying all the people who helped create it. Those people include songwriters, artists, background musicians, studio engineers, talent scouts, marketers and retailers, among many others. It also carries with it the enormous costs of marketing and promotion that are required to call attention to the album in our oversaturated entertainment market.
In any event, dissatisfaction with the price is not a justification for stealing. Would you steal a book on the grounds that its price is too high? Or break into a theater because the tickets cost too much?
>>Hell yeah!
Also there was a story, I think by Asimov, about a mining ship crashed on an alien planet where all the crew had died, but the robots survived and tried to carry out their simple orders, which included setting up a factory to build more robots and mining materials. A (barely) plauseable chain of events leads the robots to gain the characteristics of life.
WALL-MART must be destroyed! Shoplift there whenever possible - they've put huge numbers of small stores out of business with their anti-competitive practices (ie. cutting prices & losing money when they enter a town, till their local competition is dead, then jacking them back up)
Awwww... Is poor widdwe AC jeawous?
;^}
multiply by 10, silly! You use fiber for gigabit ethernet, and cat5 for 10/100 stuff.
Okay, this is what I thought would be cool after reading the "Natural Language CLI" story a couple days ago - each person's machine would have a bunch of rules like "remove is a verb which means rm when referring to files" "delete is a synonym for remove" etc, and a simple system for adding rules. As you add rules to your system, your system contact other systems out there and sees if your rules have anything in common with other peoples'. If it finds a system which is customized like yours, it can import a bunch of rules (or you can set it to import only rules it finds on X number of other systems).
Just a thought - anybody see any use for this? -Eje
c'mon, motherfucker, yank that stick outyer ass!
and SETI@home tosses most of their data. Yep, a friend of mine worked for them and left in disgust - he sez it's basically a big PR operation, the crunched numbers are mostly disregarded.
I'm running d.net on all the machines I have access to now.
Just got a Dell 8450 in the lab - 8 xeons! Hmmmm... lots-an-lots-a-stats!
erm, the article you linked to said radioblackouts...
They made a pizza place change its name! I mean, Olympic just refers to something having to do with Olympus, and pizza places seem to always have greek shit on the walls, so olympic pizza is a fine name for a pizza place. This is just so wrong!
Hey, why do pizza places have greek shit on the walls anyway? Isn't pizza sposed to be italian or something?
Where didja get this post generator? And how much input does it need?