The comment is true as far as it goes, but you assume that obscene promotional costs are necessary. How many millions do they spend forcing Britney, Mariah, whoever, down our throats on billboards, TV, video, radio, magazines, etc.? It's a way of stacking the deck in favor of the few artists they have already chosen to "make it big." Under this situation, the average reasonably successful band like the one in Albini's tale is actually subsidizing the advertising and promotion for whichever no-talent bimbo who happens to be blowing the boss this week. I'm not saying get rid of advertising totally but I am suggesting that if record companies want to recoup their investments in bands that don't make it, there are better ways to cut costs than screwing all the bands they sign.
It means the police can get a warrant, search your house when you're not there, leave everything like they found it, and not tell you that they've searched your house. They could repeat as necessary - eventually maybe they will find something. Or perhaps they'll leave something and then "find" it the next time...
I live in L.A. now. I have seen the ubiquitous Calvin stickers, and not once have I seen one with Calvin pissing on "America." I have seen the other two, and I think they are pretty funny actually, and I do not at all interpret them to say "I hate America." And I have seen Mexican and American flags together in this recent bout of flag-waving; in fact I see a lot of Mexicans waving American flags in general these days, and not as many Mexican flags.
If I want to mutilate my barbies and put pictures of them on display in my front window, or perhaps on my virtual front window (my website for those who need the picture.) Mattell could, under the DMCA, claim I was violating my copyright, unless I claim it was art, but I'm not an artisit, so let's not go there.
why the hell would you put mutilated Barbies on your website other than as an artistic statement? Crappy art is still art, whether nor not you're an artist. And, just for the record, you can put mutilated Barbies on your website, at least according to one court decision.
Canada is in North America. Besides, she lives in L.A. And the poster is talking about variation in English usage; the term "American" in this context could easily refer to Morisette's use of a word.
Not that any of this has f*ck-all to do with the DMCA....
We need to learn from the example of Israel, and how they have dealt with their enemies in the face of constant threats
Yeah, right, because Israel's been doing such a bang-up job of preventing terrorism through their methods. Israel taught those terrorists a lesson back in 1967 and they've had no significant terrorist incidents since then.
It amazes me that the people who warn us not to cave in to terrorists are the same ones urging massive retaliation to teach them a lesson or to make sure they fear us enough to stop committing terrorist acts. Get this through your heads, folks. Massive retaliation is caving in to terrorists. It is exactly what they want us to do; read this article, or this one, or this one, or this one, or this one for five very different pieces of the same puzzle. The bottom line is that massive retaliation is exactly what bin Laden wants and what terrorists want in general, since it makes them stronger. The empirical evidence is clear: Israeli policy has demonstrably led to increased terrorism. The theoretical evidence is clear: terrorists and their teachers, like the Brazilian writer cited in the first of the links above, themselves have stated quite clearly that they want massive retaliation because it will expose their enemies and unite their friends. The growing anti-American sentiment in the Islamic world, even amongst communities not directly targeted in the attacks on Afghanistan is evidence that the terrorists' plan is working. We are handing them what they want on a silver platter. And for those who are calling for a policy that will make the US "hugely feared" in the middle east, peep this: Islamic terrorists will never fear the US more than they fear Allah. Their leaders might, for a time, and most of the people in the region might, for a time, but if even.01% of the Muslim world still believes that Allah will reward them for killing Americans, that's 150,000 terrorists on the loose.
Finding and destroying the people responsible for the attacks on 9/11 is common sense, and that goal has my full support as an American and as a human being. But surely the greatest and most powerful nation in human history can find a way to crush a relatively tiny cult of ignorant thugs without driving half the world into their arms and to their defense.
Even with support from the USSR, the US was winning the war at the time of withdrawal. The withdrawal occurred because of the stunning PR incompetence of the US government.
I'm sick and tired of hearing this kind of thing. This is rewriting history. The US public didn't lose the Vietnam War; the Vietcong won. It's that simple. The antiwar movement was blamed after the fact, but the truth is the movement had little support in the mainstream and the media was solidly pro-war until the Tet Offensive; relatively late in the war. By that point the US government knew that we were losing the war and intentionally covered it up, and lied about it, and had continued to commit US troops to escalating the conflict even while their intelligence showed we were losing. All of this is documented in the Pentagon Papers. A good book summarizing the way the peace movement and the media have "taken the rap" for losing the Vietnam War is Bruce Cumings book on the media coverage of the Gulf War.
The thing with organizations like the RIAA and the MPAA is they don't know when to quit. They need to learn a new way to make money that works with the modern world, or just go away all together.
They have learned a new way to make money in the modern world: lawsuits.
Don't forget American copyright law was originally based on the British. The first "ownership of copy" law was in 1557 under Queen "Bloody" Mary... It was not about protecting creators at all; it was a means of protection for a monopoly held on publishing by the Stationers' Company. Under the law that company was the only one allowed to publish anything. In return for the monopoly, the company agreed to suppress works considered seditious or heretical. IIRC it had nothing at all to do with protecting authors.
Interestingly, the first US Supreme Court copyright case was also essentially an attempt by a thief to secure a monopoly - thankfully rebuked by the Court at the time - the guy was the Court's reporter and he was trying to claim that he owned the rights to Supreme Court opinions! Nice try; gotta love the audacity though....
I recall a screenshot a year or so ago of someone running BeOS which was running sheepshaver-MacOS which was running virtual PC-Win95 which was running an Amiga emulator which was running...... Daleks.
Not one of these links is to a celebration in the US. I am not surprised there were celebrations in the middle east; my original question regards rumors about celebrations in cities in the US (including Brooklyn!) I have heard rumors from a bunch of different places, including Florida, NY, Chicago, Atlanta. The reports sound similar; along with speculation that the media is covering them up in order to keep order, that the police have protected Palestinians from Americans who want to beat the crap out of them.... The following URLs claim the reports from florida are false. I haven't found any evidence either way on the other. It all sounds plausible but at the same time something smells fishy about it.
there have been many muslims reported to have been dancing in the streets
Can you provide evidence or a link to a single news report on this? I have heard these rumors as well, that Palestinians were dancing in celebration as close to ground zero as Brooklyn. I find it very hard to believe that the media doesn't cover such celebrations, that none of the participants have been attacked or beaten, or that people are that stupid to begin with. The reports have a uniformity to them (even though I've heard of such celebrations in Atlanta and Florida as well as NY and now Boston) that they seem suspiciously like disinformation. Which leads to the next question; whose interest is served by such rumors?
It's naive but not isolationist - the problem is that the US is involved militarily all over the world. I imagine much of the world would be pleased if the US government showed the same apathy as you do in your post. I heard a radical Islamic Egyptian speak once about his beliefs and about American military power. He said quite simply and plainly that he didn't hate America or Americans but that he just wished this country would leave his people alone.
Perhaps you forget the gulf war, it wasn't that long ago; many Americans rejoiced publicly at the spectacle of American warplanes dropping load after load of explosives on Iraq. While there may have been attempts to avoid unnecessary civilian casualties, only a fool could have thought that the US wasn't killing innocent people in the bombing. Many innocents died in the war against Iraq; probably 10x more than will have died in the WTC once all the bodies are counted. Americans rejoiced and flew flags and yellow ribbons and many openly expressed a lack of concern for civilian casualties. US leaders encouraged the celebrations, attacking protestors as misguided (and anti-American at worst), and blaming Saddam Hussein for civilian casualties. I imagine seeing these celebrations on television was demoralizing and humiliating for Iraqis whose friends and relatives were dying.
I'm not supporting anybody celebrating the death of innocents, and this tragedy is horrible beyond dimension. But don't be naive. Americans are just as likely to engage in bloodthirsty displays of naked power as anyone else.
Not to mention that Bin Laden used to be on the payroll of the CIA. We created this monster, and he is the ultimate chicken coming home to roost. Assuming it was him (which does look likely at this particular moment).
Also I wonder if those considering nuclear retaliation really understand the effects such retaliation would have? A nuclear war in Afghanistan would make chernobyl look like a barbecue. Do you remember Chernobyl?
Sadly I have to agree. I do web development in MacOS 9.x. I've tried to switch to linux (slackware 4 then 7 as well as various flavors of ppclinux) but can't find anything that will replace my preferred development environment - which is at this point an unholy combination of BBEdit, Interarchy, Photoshop, and pagemill 3 (I don't think the latter exists anymore from adobe but I run a really old version in order to edit tables in a wysiwyg environment). In linux the best suggestions I got to replace BBEdit were emacs and nedit. Nedit had cool syntax hilighting but was nowhere near bbedit in terms of html editing functionality. Emacs is awesome for those who have been using it for years - I have seen people fly with it. People claim that anything BBEdit can do, emacs can do better, and that emacs can be programmed to mimic BBEdit's features (or the features of any text editor). I especially love the idea of being able to use my text editor as a lynxish web browser in the middle of writing code -- hell of a lot better than constantly switching to mozilla and back. But I haven't been using it for years, I don't know dick about lisp, and while I was able to figure out how to do some nifty things with it, I couldn't reproduce the kind of functionality I had with bbedit for web developing. While I think in the long run emacs might be a stronger tool, the learning curve is prohibitive. I'm stuck waiting for OS X to be usable (it's too slow for me even on a titanium g4) if I want to do web development in a unix environment.
By the way I was able to reproduce photoshop functionality much more using gimp when I tried developing under linux. But I suspect that is because I don't do a lot of graphics work and I don't use either tool to its full capability.
I think web design is one area linux could seek to offer advantages, but not until it's able to offer designers advanced and relatively intuitive tools we will probably stick with whatever we're using. I don't see myself as the "average" user, but I'm neither a programmer nor a hacker and while I don't mind typing./configure make once in a while, I have neither the time nor the inclination to learn new command and keystroke set (as well as a whole new way of explaining each) for every minor task I need to accomplish.
Lisp programmers could probably develop a set of emacs extensions that make it as easy to use and friendly as bbedit as an html editor. Perhaps nedit could turn out as something like that. (perhaps it already has - I have not played with it for a few months). I am willing to bet that there are a fair number of HTML coders and web designers using proprietary bloatware who would much prefer for intellectual reasons to be using open source tools if they were available.
By the way, I did not mean to imply that I consider BBEdit "proprietary bloatware" - quite the contrary. It's not free as in speech or beer but it is well worth the cost, and the support offered by its developers is amazing. In my opinion, they could open source the program and easily charge exactly what they charge now for support alone and not lose a penny (and probably gain many more paying customers). But I digress....
Are you seriously suggesting that monitoring judges' web surfing will prevent judicial activism? In any case, as another poster notes, the judiciary does have the Constitutional power to order the other branches to take steps to comply with current Constitutional interpretation, which some interpret as the judiciary "creating law out of whole cloth." I believe such power is legitimate and reasonable given the power of judicial review accepted since Marbury v. Madison. I also think it is interesting that when conservative critics argue about judicial activism, they only bring up those cases that they disagree with (e.g. school busing) but not the cases in which judicial activism has yielded conservative results (e.g. Bush v. Gore).
Someone whose sig points to vhemt is bitching about a clause in the license that tells spammers to fuck off? It's not like bero-rh expects to collect the $100G (I can just see a court ordering that - yeah right). It's a statement, dude, kinda like vhemt....
What's happened is that a client of an ISP has forced the ISP to win in court before cutting off service.
And that only proves that the US legal system still works for those willing to pay for it. This is news? Believe me, ISPs will continue to deny services to individuals or small businesses on mere accusation whenever they find it more convenient than sorting through evidence. I really doubt this will set any kind of precedent or do dick for anyone trying to host decss or anything controversial. If an ISP is scared they will be sued for your content they will toad you whether or not there is any evidence you are hosting illegal content. Yes there are a small few ISPs who will make it a point to act differently but the overwhelming majority will (and perhaps, at least from their owners' perspectives, should) cover their asses by 86ing any users who might get them SLAPP-ed by Mattel or whoever.
Slashdot Mirror
The comment is true as far as it goes, but you assume that obscene promotional costs are necessary. How many millions do they spend forcing Britney, Mariah, whoever, down our throats on billboards, TV, video, radio, magazines, etc.? It's a way of stacking the deck in favor of the few artists they have already chosen to "make it big." Under this situation, the average reasonably successful band like the one in Albini's tale is actually subsidizing the advertising and promotion for whichever no-talent bimbo who happens to be blowing the boss this week. I'm not saying get rid of advertising totally but I am suggesting that if record companies want to recoup their investments in bands that don't make it, there are better ways to cut costs than screwing all the bands they sign.
just became "circumvention devices"
Does that mean we can turn in Microsoft's paperclip?
It means the police can get a warrant, search your house when you're not there, leave everything like they found it, and not tell you that they've searched your house. They could repeat as necessary - eventually maybe they will find something. Or perhaps they'll leave something and then "find" it the next time...
I live in L.A. now. I have seen the ubiquitous Calvin stickers, and not once have I seen one with Calvin pissing on "America." I have seen the other two, and I think they are pretty funny actually, and I do not at all interpret them to say "I hate America." And I have seen Mexican and American flags together in this recent bout of flag-waving; in fact I see a lot of Mexicans waving American flags in general these days, and not as many Mexican flags.
why the hell would you put mutilated Barbies on your website other than as an artistic statement? Crappy art is still art, whether nor not you're an artist. And, just for the record, you can put mutilated Barbies on your website, at least according to one court decision.
Not that any of this has f*ck-all to do with the DMCA....
Hi! How are you?
I send you these spores in order to have your advice
See you later. Thanks
Yeah, right, because Israel's been doing such a bang-up job of preventing terrorism through their methods. Israel taught those terrorists a lesson back in 1967 and they've had no significant terrorist incidents since then.
It amazes me that the people who warn us not to cave in to terrorists are the same ones urging massive retaliation to teach them a lesson or to make sure they fear us enough to stop committing terrorist acts. Get this through your heads, folks. Massive retaliation is caving in to terrorists. It is exactly what they want us to do; read this article, or this one, or this one, or this one, or this one for five very different pieces of the same puzzle. The bottom line is that massive retaliation is exactly what bin Laden wants and what terrorists want in general, since it makes them stronger. The empirical evidence is clear: Israeli policy has demonstrably led to increased terrorism. The theoretical evidence is clear: terrorists and their teachers, like the Brazilian writer cited in the first of the links above, themselves have stated quite clearly that they want massive retaliation because it will expose their enemies and unite their friends. The growing anti-American sentiment in the Islamic world, even amongst communities not directly targeted in the attacks on Afghanistan is evidence that the terrorists' plan is working. We are handing them what they want on a silver platter. And for those who are calling for a policy that will make the US "hugely feared" in the middle east, peep this: Islamic terrorists will never fear the US more than they fear Allah. Their leaders might, for a time, and most of the people in the region might, for a time, but if even .01% of the Muslim world still believes that Allah will reward them for killing Americans, that's 150,000 terrorists on the loose.
Finding and destroying the people responsible for the attacks on 9/11 is common sense, and that goal has my full support as an American and as a human being. But surely the greatest and most powerful nation in human history can find a way to crush a relatively tiny cult of ignorant thugs without driving half the world into their arms and to their defense.
Yellow linux dogs! Scrumptious, especially when smothered in chili....
The real threat to this great nation are morons who urge sacrificing its greatest and most enduring principles for phony assurances of protection.
I'm sick and tired of hearing this kind of thing. This is rewriting history. The US public didn't lose the Vietnam War; the Vietcong won. It's that simple. The antiwar movement was blamed after the fact, but the truth is the movement had little support in the mainstream and the media was solidly pro-war until the Tet Offensive; relatively late in the war. By that point the US government knew that we were losing the war and intentionally covered it up, and lied about it, and had continued to commit US troops to escalating the conflict even while their intelligence showed we were losing. All of this is documented in the Pentagon Papers. A good book summarizing the way the peace movement and the media have "taken the rap" for losing the Vietnam War is Bruce Cumings book on the media coverage of the Gulf War.
They have learned a new way to make money in the modern world: lawsuits.
Interestingly, the first US Supreme Court copyright case was also essentially an attempt by a thief to secure a monopoly - thankfully rebuked by the Court at the time - the guy was the Court's reporter and he was trying to claim that he owned the rights to Supreme Court opinions! Nice try; gotta love the audacity though....
Mmmmm, Daleks.
I thought Apple lost the lawsuit because MS successfully argued that Apple had stolen the UI from Xerox long before MS could steal it from Apple.
Can you provide evidence or a link to a single news report on this? I have heard these rumors as well, that Palestinians were dancing in celebration as close to ground zero as Brooklyn. I find it very hard to believe that the media doesn't cover such celebrations, that none of the participants have been attacked or beaten, or that people are that stupid to begin with. The reports have a uniformity to them (even though I've heard of such celebrations in Atlanta and Florida as well as NY and now Boston) that they seem suspiciously like disinformation. Which leads to the next question; whose interest is served by such rumors?
News addiction obviously.
It's naive but not isolationist - the problem is that the US is involved militarily all over the world. I imagine much of the world would be pleased if the US government showed the same apathy as you do in your post. I heard a radical Islamic Egyptian speak once about his beliefs and about American military power. He said quite simply and plainly that he didn't hate America or Americans but that he just wished this country would leave his people alone.
I'm not supporting anybody celebrating the death of innocents, and this tragedy is horrible beyond dimension. But don't be naive. Americans are just as likely to engage in bloodthirsty displays of naked power as anyone else.
Also I wonder if those considering nuclear retaliation really understand the effects such retaliation would have? A nuclear war in Afghanistan would make chernobyl look like a barbecue. Do you remember Chernobyl?
By the way I was able to reproduce photoshop functionality much more using gimp when I tried developing under linux. But I suspect that is because I don't do a lot of graphics work and I don't use either tool to its full capability.
I think web design is one area linux could seek to offer advantages, but not until it's able to offer designers advanced and relatively intuitive tools we will probably stick with whatever we're using. I don't see myself as the "average" user, but I'm neither a programmer nor a hacker and while I don't mind typing ./configure make once in a while, I have neither the time nor the inclination to learn new command and keystroke set (as well as a whole new way of explaining each) for every minor task I need to accomplish.
Lisp programmers could probably develop a set of emacs extensions that make it as easy to use and friendly as bbedit as an html editor. Perhaps nedit could turn out as something like that. (perhaps it already has - I have not played with it for a few months). I am willing to bet that there are a fair number of HTML coders and web designers using proprietary bloatware who would much prefer for intellectual reasons to be using open source tools if they were available.
By the way, I did not mean to imply that I consider BBEdit "proprietary bloatware" - quite the contrary. It's not free as in speech or beer but it is well worth the cost, and the support offered by its developers is amazing. In my opinion, they could open source the program and easily charge exactly what they charge now for support alone and not lose a penny (and probably gain many more paying customers). But I digress....
Are you seriously suggesting that monitoring judges' web surfing will prevent judicial activism? In any case, as another poster notes, the judiciary does have the Constitutional power to order the other branches to take steps to comply with current Constitutional interpretation, which some interpret as the judiciary "creating law out of whole cloth." I believe such power is legitimate and reasonable given the power of judicial review accepted since Marbury v. Madison. I also think it is interesting that when conservative critics argue about judicial activism, they only bring up those cases that they disagree with (e.g. school busing) but not the cases in which judicial activism has yielded conservative results (e.g. Bush v. Gore).
Someone whose sig points to vhemt is bitching about a clause in the license that tells spammers to fuck off? It's not like bero-rh expects to collect the $100G (I can just see a court ordering that - yeah right). It's a statement, dude, kinda like vhemt....
And that only proves that the US legal system still works for those willing to pay for it. This is news? Believe me, ISPs will continue to deny services to individuals or small businesses on mere accusation whenever they find it more convenient than sorting through evidence. I really doubt this will set any kind of precedent or do dick for anyone trying to host decss or anything controversial. If an ISP is scared they will be sued for your content they will toad you whether or not there is any evidence you are hosting illegal content. Yes there are a small few ISPs who will make it a point to act differently but the overwhelming majority will (and perhaps, at least from their owners' perspectives, should) cover their asses by 86ing any users who might get them SLAPP-ed by Mattel or whoever.