Re:CNN's cluelessness/MY cluelessness...
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Cashless Society
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· Score: 4, Informative
I'm the writer of the parent post, which is currently rated highly but is nevertheless quite wrong in its description of the implementation of the procedure. Others have corrected my misunderstanding, which, if I'm not still mistaken, goes something like this:
Step 1) $100 are downloaded from John Smith's bank account to user card #U12345.
Step 2) Smith approaches Adult Store merchant with $80 worth of embarrassingly large and bumpy sex toys.
Step 3) User Card #U12345 securely transfers $80 to Merchant Card. This transaction takes place off of a network.
Step 4) Smith walks away with sex toys in black plastic bag. Bag later breaks on the bus, contents come spilling out.
Step 5) Merchant subseqently uploads large sum of money (including Smith's $80) to bank. Bank is unaware of original sources of money.
It's the fact that Step 3 takes place without authorization from a central network which makes this anonymous and potentially superior to a regular debit card transaction.
Please "securely transfer" my mod points from the parent post to this one. Thanx!
I'm wondering about other form factors now. Would it be more practical to have a user "card" in the form of one of those keychain thingies? Or perhaps a bracelet with a tiny dongle that plugs into the merchant's reader. Further, the user ought to be able to require mandatory PIN usage on his/her card. It won't help if the card is lost, but at least no-one else could profit from your misfortune. Put your name and phone number on the card and it might actually be returned to you. Finally, what's to stop this anonymous transaction from being the basis of a money laundering scheme? And if there is nothing preventing it, what are the odds that this would be allowable in the US?
Because the basic Moneo card is anonymous, there are no privacy or identity theft concerns.
Regardless of whether the "basic" card is anonymous, it's still clearly possible to track the card's use, and by extension, its user, who has to be identified to obtain the money to begin with.
Step 1) $100 were downloaded from John Smith's bank account to card #12345
Step 2) Card #12345 was just used to purchase $80 worth of pr0n.
Step 3) Bank sends John Smith a bunch of porn-related junk mail.
The retailer might not be able to ascertain John Smith's identity, but the bank most likely could, if it were part of the network.
And the government certainly could. Not familiar with France, but in US translate "could" as "would."
I hope someone can contradict me here. In particular, I'm wondering if there's a way to anonymize Step 1, such that: 1a) $100 is transferred from John Smith's account to a special secure escrow network which is holding money from many pending transfers. 1b) ATM 385 is given authorization to loads up a card with $100. 1c) ATM 385 loads #12345 with $100 drawn from the escrow network. 1d) After transaction is complete, all bank knows is that $100 is gone from John Smith's account and given to ATM 385. All ATM 385 remembers is that it loaded $100 onto card #12345. It doesn't remember the account it was originally taken from. Does this make sense?
I don't see how this is an improvement over 20 years ago.
The board would disappear while the machine was thinking...and sometimes the machine would give itself extra pieces...or it might forget the moves, but still, ZX-80 kicked ass!
To elaborate, BSA can afford to be magnanimous because the main revenue stream of its members comes from the business sector, hence the name. I think its fair to say that probably 90% of people who have Photoshop for their personal home use didn't pay for it. Which Adobe accepts as a loss leader for its true business, gouging corporate accounts. (Of course, the home user winds up paying for that anyway, since the business purchease gets deducted in part as a expense, and the other part is paid for through higher prices on the retail end.)
In contrast, RIAA members see a large proportion of their sales come from home users. If they lose the home market, they are essentially out of business. At least until they start playing Nellyville on Muzak.
Muzak -- Creating experiences with audio architecture.
Al-Qaeda is known for its audacity and boldness in killing Americans and Israelis, and this is clearly terrorism.
Unfortunately the parent post is currently marked (-1, Offtopic) when it clearly is on topic, just rather ambitiously stupid.
However, in this case I'd say it's also prophetic, because we know there are a lot of stupid people in the world. And conspiracy theorists will have a field day with this event. It will undoubtedly permanently enter the memestream of extremist wackos of all stripes. I predict the next iteration will be something like: "The US deliberately blew up its own shuttle with the Israeli aboard to give the government more reason to strike against the Arabs -- just like at nine-eleven! That's why they keep telling us not to touch the debris -- they don't want us to discover the truth!!"
The question I have is: Is there any way to preemptively counteract these sort of insane hypotheses?
Although this doesn't address the security flaw issue, one thing that MS could do about evil Gator-style popups is to offer an option like: "Never install Active X controls from ABC Corp."
Yes, this could be partially circumvented by a company constantly changing its name (which, I'm ashamed to admit, reminds me of Star Trek's "modulating" phaser frequency attack pattern) but that could be counteracted if you could prevent all Active X downloads except those by companies registered with, e.g. A AAAA Reliable X Control Clearinghouse.
I can't exactly dispute what you're saying, yet I'll do so anyway.
I think it's misleading to characterize copyright as a "short term" barrier to entry, since even the previous Anerican 28/56 year term (to say nothing of the Berne Convention) allowed abnormal profits to persist far in excess of what a monopolist would typically enjoy with other mechanisms for maintaining market share. So I believe that it's a natural "right" for a monopolist to exploit true structural barriers to entry, but the arbitrariness and artificiality of a lengthy copyright regime needs justification of the sort mentioned by praksys in his reply to my previous post.
However, IANAE (obviously), so I'm not wedded to my point of view, and await correction if indicated.
Disappointed in The Economist
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Copyright Rumblings
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· Score: 4, Insightful
I'm a bit disappointed in the old guard Economist for failing to make the strongest economic argument for revamping the copyright laws.
Copyrights are like tariffs. They distort the true value of goods and thereby make trade inefficient. The end result is that they decrease the amount of wealth in the world. Reducing copyright terms is like lowering tariffs. Even though some industries and segments of society will be injured, in the short term by such an action, overall, it results in greater wealth for the nation and for its trading partners.
That's speaking in terms that the businessmen who read The Economist can understand. They can relate to the benefit of lower prices for textiles and hardware, so they ought to be similarly receptive to lower prices for textbooks and software.
Your comment is like the cliche from those people who are fond of saying: "Don't like income taxes/the death penalty/the war on XXXXX? Why don't you move to another country!"
Not at all. Write, complain, boycott, whine -- you have just as much right to leave "negative feedback" about eBay as they allow their users to do about each other. Just like any other company they've got problems that should be addressed. For instance, I think they should make it easier to "search for all negative feedback" on a user instead of having to manually scroll through hundreds of messages.
My problem is with people taking them to court over their policies regarding feedback when 1) said policies are clearly stated, and 2) it's very easy to avoid any negative feedback -- don't use eBay.
So even though I agree that what happened in your case was stupid on their part, and I believe they should've removed the negative rating, I would hope any class action lawsuit to force them to change their feedback policy would fail, To the extent that their businesses practices don't actually violate the law, I think they should be allowed to stand or fall on their merits. If enough people get fed up with the rating system, then they will eventually migrate to Amazon or Yahoo.
"Start your own auction site" was a facetious comment and for that I apologize.
Dude, I can appreciate super-kawaii MATSUURA Aya as much as the next slavering fanboy, but you want to explain how, artistically, her music is any bit superior to the worst RIAA Britney dreck?
I agree there's no question that Microsoft's overall strategy is to use DRM to lock people into its proprietary solutions (and to lock out Linux), and therefore it needs to minimize government involvement so that there is no mandate to allow competing OSes to plug into the WindowsMedia regime, if I might be allowed to express myself in a run-on sentence inspired by a lack of sleep.
However, regardless of their overarching aims, for now they are pursuing a tactic which is beneficial to those who respect consumer rights. So I hope this particular fight goes well for Microsoft and the entire alliance. We can only hope that this battle is well-publicized and helps to wake people up to the assault on our rights.
Actually, as a group they're fighting just one specific RIAA-endorsed bill, Senator Hollings' proposed CBDTPA. The article brings out that at least one member of the alliance actually favors some sort of government involvement to ensure that the fair use rights US citizens now take for granted will be codified into law.
According to the article, the music industry is failing because of theft of copyrighted material.
The theft of copyrighted material would mean going down to the vault and swiping the master tapes. I don't think that's what you mean. On the other hand, you can steal the actual physical media, e.g. shoplifting a CD. I don't think that's what you mean either. What do you mean? If you mean violating copyright, then just say so instead of resorting to loaded terms like "theft" and "piracy"
Instead consumers are purchasing their music for $0, without allowing the producers any say in the price.
Consumers aren't purchasing their music for $0. If the entire drop in revenue is based only on Kazaa et al., then approximately 15% less music is being sold than if there were no file sharing services. That means 85% of music is still being sold at full price. Or you could say, on average, music is being sold at 85% of its value. It's really more complicated than that, of course. For one thing, people are downloading a lot more music than what could account for lost purchases. AFAIK, no figures exist, but my WAG is that at most 5% of music downlaoded is cannibalizing from saies. The other 95% is stuff that people wouldn't pay for at all at its current price, stuff you download on a whim. Guess what? The actual value of that stuff is a lot closer to $0 than it is to the $15.99 cost for the dusty CD with the one Mister Mister song on it that you actually like. The industry needs to figure out a way to convert the "whimloads" into either a low cost revenue stream, e.g. a decent subscription service, or into a loss leader for the expensive stuff, the way a restaurant gives you "free" bread before your $24.95 main course arrives.
Yet people think this is a legitimate way for consumers to force down the price of music
If you see a 12 ounce bottle of Evian for $1.40, are you trying to "force" down the price by skipping it in favor of filling up an old bottle with tap water? More likely, you just decided that you don't want to pay that price for such little value, without thinking about the microeconomic effects of your purchase. However, if enough people do what you do, then Evian might think about lowering the price of its water. Eventually, Evian would have to do so, or go out of business.* Not your concern. And what if you subsequently pick up a gallon of Poland Spring on sale for $0.89? Maybe you really aren't averse to buying something you can basically get for free. You just don't want to feel like you're being totally ripped off.
*(In RIAA-land, Evian would get to force all Tap Water Service Providers (TWSPs) to bill their customers for illegally filling up their Evian bottles with tap water, even if the customers only use drinking glasses or their bare lips.)
See, if such a system existed and was commonly used, why would an artist need to go through the RIAA members to get onto that system. New promotion companies would form, without the need to build an expensive CD pressing plant, to enter new artists onto the system and collect their royalties.
Consider what actual function of the RIAA is. Check out their membership list, if it hasn't been hacked. Dp you really think all those companies own "expensive CD pressiong plants"? The RIAA is a trade association. Its purpose is to promote the interests of the record industry as a whole, not print CDs or promote individual artists. Perhaps you're conflating "RIAA" with "the major labels"? And it's true, in that case, the major labels might find themselves losing sales, but that seems to be happening anyway. Moreover, if some company which engaged in promotion only could be more profitable without pressing CDs, then why wouldn't Sony, BMG et al. simply create a subsidiary that did the same thing, and transfer over their B-list roster? The reason the major labels are so dominant is not merely because they control the distribution chain, but because they have the budgets to do the most marketing, they can give the largest advances to the most promising artists, they can get their records played on the radio. Now I'd say particularly with the latter, you may have a point. The majors have been dying to kill off internet radio because they don't want lesser-label artists to have a means for equal listening exposure.
Let me explain to you. In the back of their minds, most Slashdot readers ("Slashbots") know that they simply don't want to pay for anything which they can get illegally for free. Most people are exactly the same way. KaZaA et al allows them to get music for free, so they use it
Okay, now let me explain to you why you are wrong. KaZaA et al. don't allow you to get music for free. Time is money, and it takes time to search for songs, download them, listen to them to make sure you have a good quality mp3, and burn them onto CD. Hence, you pay for your music one way or another, regardless. I predict that most Slashdot users would gladly pay for a way to conveniently get the music they want which is competitive with the cost of their time. The problem is that the music many people want is either not legally available at all (demos, discontinued releases) or available at a prohibitive price (CDs with one good song on them, imports,)
To be sure, other trends have moved society steadily toward file-sharing. More and more people don't even bother to burn their mp3s -- they simply listen to them directly from their PCs, which have become home media hubs. This change of habit effectively makes buying CDs more expensive because now you must take the time to rip the tracks instead of just getting them off of KaZaA (and remember, time is money.) And copy-protected CDs, which make it impossible to rip the tracks you want into your home media hubs, only drive people further into the hands of file-sharing services.
Notice that the MPAA doesn't have a fraction of the same problems (yet), because the time (money) it takes to successfully download and burn a bootleg movie is better spent by simply coughing up the 20 bucks for the DVD. This may change as DVD players start to be able to read MPEG4 files.
Ultimately, the last, best plan for the RIAA will be to come up with some kind of co-branded version of KaZaA, which allows people to trade their music collections freely, but charges them for the transfer. Royalties would be automatically allocated, and the whole file-trading industry could be made legal overnight. In fact, transfers would be encouraged because they would generate more royalties, and consumers would also receive targeted advertising encouraging them to buy music DVDs, posters, concert tickets and the like.
However, it would be correct to state that companies could then say anything with impunity, after all, even you and I with the full protection of the first amendment can still be sued for defamatory, slanderous, negligent, fraudulent or other tortuous speech of one kind or another.
Drat. I keep doing this. Obviously the above should read "However, it would be incorrect to state that companies could then say anything with impunity. After all, even you and I with the full protection of the first amendment can still be sued for defamatory, slanderous, negligent, fraudulent or other tortuous speech of one kind or another."
Well that's the point of this case, to determine just where exactly the line is to be drawn.
That's partially true, but this case goes further than that. Those on the side of the defense are arguing that there should be no line at all. They are claiming there should be no special category of "commercial speech," that speech by a company should have the same protection as speech by any individual. However, it would be correct to state that companies could then say anything with impunity, after all, even you and I with the full protection of the first amendment can still be sued for defamatory, slanderous, negligent, fraudulent or other tortuous speech of one kind or another.
The issue is whether or not a special category of less-protected "commercial" speech should exist. Clarence Thomas, in his concurring opinion to 517 U,S, 484 (1996), plainly says that, "I do not see a philosophical or historical basis for asserting that 'commercial' speech is of 'lower value' than 'noncommercial' speech. Indeed, some historical materials suggest to the contrary. " See also this article by Jonathan W. Emord which argues in favor of abolishing the distinction. (The seminal article espousing this position seems to be A. Kozinski and S. Banner, "Who's Afraid of Com mercial Speech?", but I can't find it online.)
IANAL, but it seems to me that a distinction ought to be made between a Nike rep. expressing his opinion, truthful or not, at, say, an interview or a press conference, and Nike taking out an ad in the New York Times and lying about their business practices. It seems to me that the former should be protected under the first amendment as what the linked article calls a "political" statement, but the latter, a paid advertisement, is clearly commercial speech and that it is proper to expect it to meet higher scrutiny.
Apropos of deceptive advertising, does anybody know if those Bloussant pills really work? And if not, how the heck do they get away with saying their product is effective?
Sony and Nintendo doesn't sell their consoles at loss. But price dumping should be illegal also in console market
If you're referring to the Xbox in the latter statement, keep in mind that pretty much any new entrant into a market is going to have to sell its products at substantially reduced profits or a loss in order to compete with established manufacturers who've had time to iron the kinks out of their production lines.
In an age when it is orders of magnitude easier to copy, what should the rights holders do to protect their work? Think positive! Frankly, I don't know
The rights holders should come out with compelling product which is worth buying. Evian makes a profit! Selling plain old water! How'd that happen? So studios can certainly come up with ways to sell their movies. E.g. consumer friendly (sell-thru) pricing on DVDs has been a huge success.
Two more myths cleared up:
1) The studios are bluffing when they say they'll withhold product unless a Digital Restrictions Regime is put into place. Are they just going to stop showing movies on cable? I don't think so.
2) Music companies are still tremendously profitable, and aren't seriously threatened by.mp3. Sure, sales have declined a bit, but notice that in the same timeframe, DVD and videogame sales have gone way up. Could it be that people just have more choices about what to spend their leisure dollars on? In any event, the RIAA still has a very big piece of a very big pie, and should stop complaining. I feel more sorry for Mom-and-Pop video stores being put out of business by Circuit City's huge DVD section. But things change. Nobody's line of work is guaranteed to stay profitable forever. Except morticians, of course.
And the internet was just a fad like CB radio. Right.
This technology, like the Internet-connected PC, has the potential to change our lives in yet to be determined ways, some of which are good, some of which are bad, many of which, in my opinion, go beyond the realm of "who cares?" When Berners-Lee was inventing the Web, did he forsee the intrusion of pop-up ads, the need for firewalls, and the ubiquity of porn? Today the thousand dollar home encyclopedia is extinct because of computers. I don't know if anybody saw that happening besides Microsoft. Certainly it took Britannica years to figure out they couldn't charge a huge premium for their services any more.
So what I propose to you is that having web connected cameras everywhere carried around by everyone is going to lead to societal changes that we cannot completely predict. Even today I know people who simply hate to have their photos taken. What will happen to those people when everyone has a camera pointing in their faces? Will they become shut-ins? What about employers? Will they do an image search of prospective hires to see if there are any pictures out there of the prospect in a drug den or a whorehouse? Will all sorts of currently face-to-face meetings take place over videophone?Will the government require a picture record submitted into a central registry of all cash transactions over a certain amount? Who knows? "The Jetsons" seemed to come up with all sorts of funny/amusing uses of picturephoes which won't seem so funny or amusing when happening in real life.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm the writer of the parent post, which is currently rated highly but is nevertheless quite wrong in its description of the implementation of the procedure. Others have corrected my misunderstanding, which, if I'm not still mistaken, goes something like this:
Step 1) $100 are downloaded from John Smith's bank account to user card #U12345.
Step 2) Smith approaches Adult Store merchant with $80 worth of embarrassingly large and bumpy sex toys.
Step 3) User Card #U12345 securely transfers $80 to Merchant Card. This transaction takes place off of a network.
Step 4) Smith walks away with sex toys in black plastic bag. Bag later breaks on the bus, contents come spilling out.
Step 5) Merchant subseqently uploads large sum of money (including Smith's $80) to bank. Bank is unaware of original sources of money.
It's the fact that Step 3 takes place without authorization from a central network which makes this anonymous and potentially superior to a regular debit card transaction.
Please "securely transfer" my mod points from the parent post to this one. Thanx!
I'm wondering about other form factors now. Would it be more practical to have a user "card" in the form of one of those keychain thingies? Or perhaps a bracelet with a tiny dongle that plugs into the merchant's reader. Further, the user ought to be able to require mandatory PIN usage on his/her card. It won't help if the card is lost, but at least no-one else could profit from your misfortune. Put your name and phone number on the card and it might actually be returned to you. Finally, what's to stop this anonymous transaction from being the basis of a money laundering scheme? And if there is nothing preventing it, what are the odds that this would be allowable in the US?
From the article:
Because the basic Moneo card is anonymous, there are no privacy or identity theft concerns.
Regardless of whether the "basic" card is anonymous, it's still clearly possible to track the card's use, and by extension, its user, who has to be identified to obtain the money to begin with.
Step 1) $100 were downloaded from John Smith's bank account to card #12345
Step 2) Card #12345 was just used to purchase $80 worth of pr0n.
Step 3) Bank sends John Smith a bunch of porn-related junk mail.
The retailer might not be able to ascertain John Smith's identity, but the bank most likely could, if it were part of the network.
And the government certainly could. Not familiar with France, but in US translate "could" as "would."
I hope someone can contradict me here. In particular, I'm wondering if there's a way to anonymize Step 1, such that: 1a) $100 is transferred from John Smith's account to a special secure escrow network which is holding money from many pending transfers. 1b) ATM 385 is given authorization to loads up a card with $100. 1c) ATM 385 loads #12345 with $100 drawn from the escrow network. 1d) After transaction is complete, all bank knows is that $100 is gone from John Smith's account and given to ATM 385. All ATM 385 remembers is that it loaded $100 onto card #12345. It doesn't remember the account it was originally taken from. Does this make sense?
I don't see how this is an improvement over 20 years ago.
The board would disappear while the machine was thinking...and sometimes the machine would give itself extra pieces...or it might forget the moves, but still, ZX-80 kicked ass!
To elaborate, BSA can afford to be magnanimous because the main revenue stream of its members comes from the business sector, hence the name. I think its fair to say that probably 90% of people who have Photoshop for their personal home use didn't pay for it. Which Adobe accepts as a loss leader for its true business, gouging corporate accounts. (Of course, the home user winds up paying for that anyway, since the business purchease gets deducted in part as a expense, and the other part is paid for through higher prices on the retail end.)
In contrast, RIAA members see a large proportion of their sales come from home users. If they lose the home market, they are essentially out of business. At least until they start playing Nellyville on Muzak.
Muzak -- Creating experiences with audio architecture.
Al-Qaeda is known for its audacity and boldness in killing Americans and Israelis, and this is clearly terrorism.
Unfortunately the parent post is currently marked (-1, Offtopic) when it clearly is on topic, just rather ambitiously stupid.
However, in this case I'd say it's also prophetic, because we know there are a lot of stupid people in the world. And conspiracy theorists will have a field day with this event. It will undoubtedly permanently enter the memestream of extremist wackos of all stripes. I predict the next iteration will be something like: "The US deliberately blew up its own shuttle with the Israeli aboard to give the government more reason to strike against the Arabs -- just like at nine-eleven! That's why they keep telling us not to touch the debris -- they don't want us to discover the truth!!"
The question I have is: Is there any way to preemptively counteract these sort of insane hypotheses?
What's MS supposed to do?
Although this doesn't address the security flaw issue, one thing that MS could do about evil Gator-style popups is to offer an option like: "Never install Active X controls from ABC Corp."
Yes, this could be partially circumvented by a company constantly changing its name (which, I'm ashamed to admit, reminds me of Star Trek's "modulating" phaser frequency attack pattern) but that could be counteracted if you could prevent all Active X downloads except those by companies registered with, e.g. A AAAA Reliable X Control Clearinghouse.
I can't exactly dispute what you're saying, yet I'll do so anyway.
I think it's misleading to characterize copyright as a "short term" barrier to entry, since even the previous Anerican 28/56 year term (to say nothing of the Berne Convention) allowed abnormal profits to persist far in excess of what a monopolist would typically enjoy with other mechanisms for maintaining market share. So I believe that it's a natural "right" for a monopolist to exploit true structural barriers to entry, but the arbitrariness and artificiality of a lengthy copyright regime needs justification of the sort mentioned by praksys in his reply to my previous post.
However, IANAE (obviously), so I'm not wedded to my point of view, and await correction if indicated.
I'm a bit disappointed in the old guard Economist for failing to make the strongest economic argument for revamping the copyright laws.
Copyrights are like tariffs. They distort the true value of goods and thereby make trade inefficient. The end result is that they decrease the amount of wealth in the world. Reducing copyright terms is like lowering tariffs. Even though some industries and segments of society will be injured, in the short term by such an action, overall, it results in greater wealth for the nation and for its trading partners.
That's speaking in terms that the businessmen who read The Economist can understand. They can relate to the benefit of lower prices for textiles and hardware, so they ought to be similarly receptive to lower prices for textbooks and software.
Your comment is like the cliche from those people who are fond of saying: "Don't like income taxes/the death penalty/the war on XXXXX? Why don't you move to another country!"
Not at all. Write, complain, boycott, whine -- you have just as much right to leave "negative feedback" about eBay as they allow their users to do about each other. Just like any other company they've got problems that should be addressed. For instance, I think they should make it easier to "search for all negative feedback" on a user instead of having to manually scroll through hundreds of messages.
My problem is with people taking them to court over their policies regarding feedback when 1) said policies are clearly stated, and 2) it's very easy to avoid any negative feedback -- don't use eBay.
So even though I agree that what happened in your case was stupid on their part, and I believe they should've removed the negative rating, I would hope any class action lawsuit to force them to change their feedback policy would fail, To the extent that their businesses practices don't actually violate the law, I think they should be allowed to stand or fall on their merits. If enough people get fed up with the rating system, then they will eventually migrate to Amazon or Yahoo.
"Start your own auction site" was a facetious comment and for that I apologize.
The part of your story I don't understand is that if you're so unhappy with the way eBay does business, then why do business with eBay?
Feel free to use another auction house or to start your own. It's not like eBay's a monopoly.
What will have far more effect is when a similar case becomes a class action lawsuit
That would be like people filing a class action lawsuit because they're pissed at the long lines at Red Lobster.
Dude, I can appreciate super-kawaii MATSUURA Aya as much as the next slavering fanboy, but you want to explain how, artistically, her music is any bit superior to the worst RIAA Britney dreck?
I agree there's no question that Microsoft's overall strategy is to use DRM to lock people into its proprietary solutions (and to lock out Linux), and therefore it needs to minimize government involvement so that there is no mandate to allow competing OSes to plug into the WindowsMedia regime, if I might be allowed to express myself in a run-on sentence inspired by a lack of sleep.
However, regardless of their overarching aims, for now they are pursuing a tactic which is beneficial to those who respect consumer rights. So I hope this particular fight goes well for Microsoft and the entire alliance. We can only hope that this battle is well-publicized and helps to wake people up to the assault on our rights.
The alliance is fighting government involvement
Actually, as a group they're fighting just one specific RIAA-endorsed bill, Senator Hollings' proposed CBDTPA. The article brings out that at least one member of the alliance actually favors some sort of government involvement to ensure that the fair use rights US citizens now take for granted will be codified into law.
Troll, maybe? But anyway...
According to the article, the music industry is failing because of theft of copyrighted material.
The theft of copyrighted material would mean going down to the vault and swiping the master tapes. I don't think that's what you mean. On the other hand, you can steal the actual physical media, e.g. shoplifting a CD. I don't think that's what you mean either. What do you mean? If you mean violating copyright, then just say so instead of resorting to loaded terms like "theft" and "piracy"
Instead consumers are purchasing their music for $0, without allowing the producers any say in the price.
Consumers aren't purchasing their music for $0. If the entire drop in revenue is based only on Kazaa et al., then approximately 15% less music is being sold than if there were no file sharing services. That means 85% of music is still being sold at full price. Or you could say, on average, music is being sold at 85% of its value. It's really more complicated than that, of course. For one thing, people are downloading a lot more music than what could account for lost purchases. AFAIK, no figures exist, but my WAG is that at most 5% of music downlaoded is cannibalizing from saies. The other 95% is stuff that people wouldn't pay for at all at its current price, stuff you download on a whim. Guess what? The actual value of that stuff is a lot closer to $0 than it is to the $15.99 cost for the dusty CD with the one Mister Mister song on it that you actually like. The industry needs to figure out a way to convert the "whimloads" into either a low cost revenue stream, e.g. a decent subscription service, or into a loss leader for the expensive stuff, the way a restaurant gives you "free" bread before your $24.95 main course arrives.
Yet people think this is a legitimate way for consumers to force down the price of music
If you see a 12 ounce bottle of Evian for $1.40, are you trying to "force" down the price by skipping it in favor of filling up an old bottle with tap water? More likely, you just decided that you don't want to pay that price for such little value, without thinking about the microeconomic effects of your purchase. However, if enough people do what you do, then Evian might think about lowering the price of its water. Eventually, Evian would have to do so, or go out of business.* Not your concern. And what if you subsequently pick up a gallon of Poland Spring on sale for $0.89? Maybe you really aren't averse to buying something you can basically get for free. You just don't want to feel like you're being totally ripped off.
*(In RIAA-land, Evian would get to force all Tap Water Service Providers (TWSPs) to bill their customers for illegally filling up their Evian bottles with tap water, even if the customers only use drinking glasses or their bare lips.)
See, if such a system existed and was commonly used, why would an artist need to go through the RIAA members to get onto that system. New promotion companies would form, without the need to build an expensive CD pressing plant, to enter new artists onto the system and collect their royalties.
Consider what actual function of the RIAA is. Check out their membership list, if it hasn't been hacked. Dp you really think all those companies own "expensive CD pressiong plants"? The RIAA is a trade association. Its purpose is to promote the interests of the record industry as a whole, not print CDs or promote individual artists. Perhaps you're conflating "RIAA" with "the major labels"? And it's true, in that case, the major labels might find themselves losing sales, but that seems to be happening anyway. Moreover, if some company which engaged in promotion only could be more profitable without pressing CDs, then why wouldn't Sony, BMG et al. simply create a subsidiary that did the same thing, and transfer over their B-list roster? The reason the major labels are so dominant is not merely because they control the distribution chain, but because they have the budgets to do the most marketing, they can give the largest advances to the most promising artists, they can get their records played on the radio. Now I'd say particularly with the latter, you may have a point. The majors have been dying to kill off internet radio because they don't want lesser-label artists to have a means for equal listening exposure.
Let me explain to you. In the back of their minds, most Slashdot readers ("Slashbots") know that they simply don't want to pay for anything which they can get illegally for free. Most people are exactly the same way. KaZaA et al allows them to get music for free, so they use it
Okay, now let me explain to you why you are wrong. KaZaA et al. don't allow you to get music for free. Time is money, and it takes time to search for songs, download them, listen to them to make sure you have a good quality mp3, and burn them onto CD. Hence, you pay for your music one way or another, regardless. I predict that most Slashdot users would gladly pay for a way to conveniently get the music they want which is competitive with the cost of their time. The problem is that the music many people want is either not legally available at all (demos, discontinued releases) or available at a prohibitive price (CDs with one good song on them, imports,)
To be sure, other trends have moved society steadily toward file-sharing. More and more people don't even bother to burn their mp3s -- they simply listen to them directly from their PCs, which have become home media hubs. This change of habit effectively makes buying CDs more expensive because now you must take the time to rip the tracks instead of just getting them off of KaZaA (and remember, time is money.) And copy-protected CDs, which make it impossible to rip the tracks you want into your home media hubs, only drive people further into the hands of file-sharing services.
Notice that the MPAA doesn't have a fraction of the same problems (yet), because the time (money) it takes to successfully download and burn a bootleg movie is better spent by simply coughing up the 20 bucks for the DVD. This may change as DVD players start to be able to read MPEG4 files.
Ultimately, the last, best plan for the RIAA will be to come up with some kind of co-branded version of KaZaA, which allows people to trade their music collections freely, but charges them for the transfer. Royalties would be automatically allocated, and the whole file-trading industry could be made legal overnight. In fact, transfers would be encouraged because they would generate more royalties, and consumers would also receive targeted advertising encouraging them to buy music DVDs, posters, concert tickets and the like.
However, it would be correct to state that companies could then say anything with impunity, after all, even you and I with the full protection of the first amendment can still be sued for defamatory, slanderous, negligent, fraudulent or other tortuous speech of one kind or another.
Drat. I keep doing this. Obviously the above should read "However, it would be incorrect to state that companies could then say anything with impunity. After all, even you and I with the full protection of the first amendment can still be sued for defamatory, slanderous, negligent, fraudulent or other tortuous speech of one kind or another."
Well that's the point of this case, to determine just where exactly the line is to be drawn.
That's partially true, but this case goes further than that. Those on the side of the defense are arguing that there should be no line at all. They are claiming there should be no special category of "commercial speech," that speech by a company should have the same protection as speech by any individual. However, it would be correct to state that companies could then say anything with impunity, after all, even you and I with the full protection of the first amendment can still be sued for defamatory, slanderous, negligent, fraudulent or other tortuous speech of one kind or another.
The issue is whether or not a special category of less-protected "commercial" speech should exist. Clarence Thomas, in his concurring opinion to 517 U,S, 484 (1996), plainly says that, "I do not see a philosophical or historical basis for asserting that 'commercial' speech is of 'lower value' than 'noncommercial' speech. Indeed, some historical materials suggest to the contrary. " See also this article by Jonathan W. Emord which argues in favor of abolishing the distinction. (The seminal article espousing this position seems to be A. Kozinski and S. Banner, "Who's Afraid of Com mercial Speech?", but I can't find it online.)
IANAL, but it seems to me that a distinction ought to be made between a Nike rep. expressing his opinion, truthful or not, at, say, an interview or a press conference, and Nike taking out an ad in the New York Times and lying about their business practices. It seems to me that the former should be protected under the first amendment as what the linked article calls a "political" statement, but the latter, a paid advertisement, is clearly commercial speech and that it is proper to expect it to meet higher scrutiny.
Apropos of deceptive advertising, does anybody know if those Bloussant pills really work? And if not, how the heck do they get away with saying their product is effective?
Yes. It's their product and they are not a monopoly
That's wrong. They are (trying to assert) a monopoly in the Lexmark Printer Cartridge market. And that's the problem.
Sony and Nintendo doesn't sell their consoles at loss. But price dumping should be illegal also in console market
If you're referring to the Xbox in the latter statement, keep in mind that pretty much any new entrant into a market is going to have to sell its products at substantially reduced profits or a loss in order to compete with established manufacturers who've had time to iron the kinks out of their production lines.
IANAL, but it seems to me the principal problem isn't breach of contract, but theft of services.
Bah, who cares...I just don't care...I still don't care !
Come on, Forged. Stop beating around the bush. Tell us how you really feel!
In an age when it is orders of magnitude easier to copy, what should the rights holders do to protect their work? Think positive! Frankly, I don't know
.mp3. Sure, sales have declined a bit, but notice that in the same timeframe, DVD and videogame sales have gone way up. Could it be that people just have more choices about what to spend their leisure dollars on? In any event, the RIAA still has a very big piece of a very big pie, and should stop complaining. I feel more sorry for Mom-and-Pop video stores being put out of business by Circuit City's huge DVD section. But things change. Nobody's line of work is guaranteed to stay profitable forever. Except morticians, of course.
The rights holders should come out with compelling product which is worth buying. Evian makes a profit! Selling plain old water! How'd that happen? So studios can certainly come up with ways to sell their movies. E.g. consumer friendly (sell-thru) pricing on DVDs has been a huge success.
Two more myths cleared up:
1) The studios are bluffing when they say they'll withhold product unless a Digital Restrictions Regime is put into place. Are they just going to stop showing movies on cable? I don't think so.
2) Music companies are still tremendously profitable, and aren't seriously threatened by
And the internet was just a fad like CB radio. Right.
This technology, like the Internet-connected PC, has the potential to change our lives in yet to be determined ways, some of which are good, some of which are bad, many of which, in my opinion, go beyond the realm of "who cares?" When Berners-Lee was inventing the Web, did he forsee the intrusion of pop-up ads, the need for firewalls, and the ubiquity of porn?
Today the thousand dollar home encyclopedia is extinct because of computers. I don't know if anybody saw that happening besides Microsoft. Certainly it took Britannica years to figure out they couldn't charge a huge premium for their services any more.
So what I propose to you is that having web connected cameras everywhere carried around by everyone is going to lead to societal changes that we cannot completely predict. Even today I know people who simply hate to have their photos taken. What will happen to those people when everyone has a camera pointing in their faces? Will they become shut-ins? What about employers? Will they do an image search of prospective hires to see if there are any pictures out there of the prospect in a drug den or a whorehouse? Will all sorts of currently face-to-face meetings take place over videophone?Will the government require a picture record submitted into a central registry of all cash transactions over a certain amount? Who knows? "The Jetsons" seemed to come up with all sorts of funny/amusing uses of picturephoes which won't seem so funny or amusing when happening in real life.