If XM is bowing to political pressure from Congress & the executive agencies that would regulate them - namely the FTC and the FCC - then is a 1st amendment issue, and the radio hosts have a good case.
Several Senators connected the issue of content to the merger during hearings on the merger. This is simply unAmerican. The message was clear: we'll let you merge maybe, but you have to make a comittment to "self-police" your content. Other Congress people have threatened to pass laws that would put the FCC in an oversight role over the satellite business as wel as cable unless they do some type of self-police purging.
This is of course difficult to prove, but otherwise, it makes no sense. XM doesn't have a large base of advertisers, and the people who advertise with them do it directly. In many cases old school radio ads are sold as packages that are resold and resold and so the company being advertised isn't sure to whom or on what venues the ads are running. With XM it's not like this - people advertising on the show in question KNOW they are advertising on the show in question.
It is entirely possible and I believe probable that the radio hosts have suffered a chilling effect by XM's pre-emptive censoring to avoid angering the government, even the though the speech in question is clearly protected.
Also, one thing many people on juries don't know and citizens aren't informed of:
No matter what a judge tells you, JURY NULLIFICATION IS LEGAL AND ACCEPTABLE. You can vote NOT GUILTY for any reason, no matter the cause, end of story.
It is never illegal for you to vote not guilty, it is never "wrong" for you to vote not guilty. If you ever get to a jury regarding file sharing, and you believe the current state of the law is unacceptable, you can vote NOT GUILTY regardless of how narrowly the judge defines the "issues at hand".
The prosecutor and judge will try to steer you to look only at narrow issues of fact and law. The truth is that juries have unreviewable and unreversable authority to acquit for any reason. (U.S. v. Dougherty, D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, 1972).
Why should I be forced to pay extra for a hard drive that will last 5 years if I just need something that will last 18 months?
There is an opportunity (hidden) cost to everything; and spending the money to overbuild something for the job has almost as much or more opportunity cost.
Example: you can build a bridge that lasts 5 years, 15 years, 25 years, or even 100 years. Yes, 100 years. It is feasible. So why not build every bridge to last 100 years?
The answer is because if you build the bridge for 100 years but traffic patterns change after 10 years you've wasted the money. And in 50 years when flying cars are in use (har) you'll be really sorry you wasted all that money on the bridge to nowhere.
So -- moral of the story is that strong consumer protection laws have a specific use, but it isn't always the best possible outcome to employ them heavily.
No, not really - it is quite important.
There is clear cognition that it is "wrong" in some sense - illegal, unethical, or otherwise, to infringe on copyrights.
There is also a clear decision making process to do it regardless of knowing this.
They did both. The RIAA went after the services, one-by-one, and now they're going after the infringers, one-by-one. And what happens? Just what we predicted would... for every service they destroy, a new one pops up; for every technological countermeasure they introduce, a counter-counter measure is born; for every person who settles, a ninety year-old, paraplegic mother of two autistic children is swept up in the net and retains council thus making the operation cost more than is obtained. Upshot... until the market gets music their way, on their terms, these mouldering yet still walking dinosaurs will continue to be thrashed in the pages of Slashdot and any other online location frequented by forward looking people.
That's all true, and fine and fair. I just hope that the forward looking people aren't shocked (1) at the long term implications of this, and (2) when the dinosaurs don't go quitely, but rather, go kicking and screaming.
People do not think it's okay to infringe copyright. That's just a joke!
Everyone knows it's not okay to download music you didn't pay for, without permission, from p2p or some website.
The truth is that no one thinks they are going to get caught. People still believe internet activity done late at night in their dorm room or living room is anonymous.
If it were true that the disregard for copyright was based on the broken social contract, fine.
But that's not the reason. Except for the elite techno geeks who follow-it, no one knows shit about copyright, except that it's for someone else.
This is excuse making for the masses, to portray them as a victim of a corporate scam. These people who are settling know they got busted doing something they were not supposed to be doing. They all probably knew the alternatives were there.
Busted social contract or not, they knew. And they ignored at their peril not because of a social contract gone bad but because it was easy and they thought know one was looking.
I am all for copyright reform. Our IP regime is killing America's competitiveness. But the truth remains that the current problems are just as large reflection of the overall decline in ethics as any social dissastisfaction.
Knowing copyright infringement is simply a digital and easy form of disrespecting someone who has done something useful for the country. It's really just a common and declasse form of laziness. Like litering or spitting in public.
That's where they are NOW. What do you think a record company is if not a means for the elite and wealthy to select which artists get promoted?
That's just plain falsehood, on many levels.
1. First, regardless of who your publisher is, this is ultimately a democratic process. People select what they wish to consume, and then pay for it through some mechanism. The wealthy are not paying artists to create music to give away to the public.
2. Second, regardless of who your publisher is, this is ultimately a large process. No matter how you measure it there are more people engaged today in the pursuit of the creative arts than ever before. The basis for most of this is the fact that you can make living doing things that are creative. Which has not always been the case.
3. Third, taking into the RIAA, and the slime ball heavy handed tactics, in the end, they represent the wishes of artists. Period. They are a membership organization. They serve the artists. When you slam the RIAA for suing someone, you are slamming a person who has created some that people deem artistically worthwhile to some degree. The RIAA is the face of the artists that pay them for representation.
4. Is the RIAA corrupt? Absolutely. Are they less corrupt than the former systems that promoted the arts? Absolutely without a doubt.
There are very, very few artists who are able to make any money touring etc. without signing over their CD sales to a record company.
That's not true. There are very few artists who will be *wealthy*. This isn't about making people wealthy. This is about promotion of the creative arts. That's the point of copyright. The RIAA is in business for money, which also so happens to promote the arts. But they are not the only ones in town. For every RIAA label artist there are many more who are touring, performing, writing, and living a life of the creative arts. Are they wealthy? No. Are they glamourous? No. Are they doing good for the country, for the people, and for themselves? Yes. And for every person creating music, there are many more creativing all sorts of other things. Stained glass. Software. Written words. Blogs. All of it.
Finally, you write:
It's just a bad deal for the consumer who ends up paying for albums that they could get for free without affecting the artists revenues at all.
Your claims are non-sensical. How in your view will an artist make money not signing with the RIAA and giving away CDs? Through touring? If that's the case, why does anyone sign with labels that make up the RIAA? Why don't they all just not do CDs (give the music away) and only tour?
The problem here is you equate Copyright = RIAA. And that's just false. The RIAA is small. Very small. It's just one part of the overall copyright picture. There is a whole range of copyright options that range from "none at all" to "being the RIAA".
At end of the day, though, it comes down to this. You and everyone else here knows that if I violated copyright by taking a GPL'd project, closed it, forked it, and sold it as a commerical product that I would not be hurting the original authors at all. They have zero monetary damages. Likewise, if I take a GPL'd project, closed it, and redistribute it under another name for free I am still hurting the original authors and violating copyright. And we all know what a ruckus that would cause. Why? Because the authors elected to choose the GPL as a license, and I came along and disrespected that. There is no lost dollars, but still, it's an insult and it's wrong. The authors wishes deserve to be respected. Likewise for music. Even if you disagree with copyright under the RIAA regime know that the people making music under the RIAA agree with the RIAA (except in a few rare and public cases). When you buy an album or iTunes track from these labels they support the RIAA. And the artists wishes deserve to be respected.
Because they are doing something to promote the creative arts. And that's a goal in itself that our founders recognized as worthwhile. Make your own decision, but I side with them on this one.
There are two phases to booting Windows. The first gets you to a login prompt (if so equipped, say, for a machine joined to a domain).
That is a really pretty damn fast considering Windows overall. This is because starting with Windows XP much of the boot process was made to be multi-threaded, meaining the boot process isn't waiting for hardware to init, slow starting services to complete, etc. You can get a login prompt on a typical Windows XP box fast.
With Vista, they actually did something useful that make sense. Tons of crap is set to load "on login", and that's what causes your thrashing and all that stuff. One is that they properly allowed Windows Explorer (the shell) to threaded startup tasks across multiple cores or CPUs. Previously it wouldn't properly spawn startup threads correctly. But beyond that they have allowed you to mark services that start more intelligently - "delayed auto-start". This type of service basically starts when your system has calmed down. Marking more and more services into this category makes the time to get a usable desktop very minimal. It's a great idea. Do you really need Google to start indexing your files the first opportunity it gets? Nope. And that's why it works good.
(http://download.microsoft.com/download/9/c/5/9c5b 2167-8017-4bae-9fde-d599bac8184a/Vista_Services.do c#_Toc142993760) has more.
Frankly its one of the only worthwhile chnages that they maded in Vista.
Perhaps if they stopped abusing society by having such long copyright terms, we would be willing to respect their rights on their 1 year old music once more.
I suspect you know that this bullshit. The truth is that the length of copyright is not at issue here. This was not work that was 30 years old we are talking about. People who won't respect the wishes of artists from this year or last aren't doing so out of principle, which hey, I could at least respect to some degree. If these people were acting out of civil disobedience, well, hey, at least I could respect that. That's a respectable calling -- to be an activist/protestor against laws or policies you feel are repressive.
But that is *not* the question. This is just a case of wanting to get something for free. And getting nailed for it.
Finally, in the end, we get the government we deserve. Quite frankly it's not like this just happened. Copyright and IP laws have taken years to fall to this level of disrepair. If we can't elect people with a clue abotu the damage that restrictive IP is doing to our culture, our future generations, and our current levels of economic uncompetitiveness than we deserve the fate that is coming.
1. They knew it was against the law; but it is the law that is in question
2. There is a good chance of that. Would your opinion change if they were downloading Mozart?
3. Again, it is the laws themselves that are in question. If downloading a file is effectively free, then why should they pay for it?
4. If the laws were unchanged since the 1800s, it would be high time for a change. Copyright laws were written to prevent unauthorized commercial copying. Technology has made it possible for individuals to copy works for non-commercial purposes. The law should keep pace with technology.
1. Fair enough. But if you violate a questionable law, don't be surprised when you get hauled (unliterally) to account.
2. Depends vastly. It was a modern performance or arrangement, performed recently, no. My opinion would not be changed. If, for example, it was a reproduction of an antinue performance, than yes, my opinion would be vastly different. If I play a Mozart piece and record it as my own arrangement than I should have control over my versions distribution. I would be an artistic leach, but still, it would my peroggative.
3. The main is reason is because your action is anti-American in the most true sense. The purpose of copyright is to promote the creative arts. That is in our national interest. Making it so that the creative artists are unable to make decisions about the use of their own work creates a disincentive to pursue the creative arts, which is damaging to the country long-term.
4. Your point #4 is factually incorrect. The purpose of copyright being built-into the constitution is that the promotion of the creative arts is in the national interest. Copyright promotes the creative arts. The technology to make non-commerical copies has been around for a lot longer than you think. Regardless, however, the entire purpose of copyright is to allow people pursuing the creative arts to maintain a lifestyle that allows them to continue this pursuit. Elimination of the ability to charge for "non-commerical" copies, or to depend on the good-will of customers puts artists back into the caste they used to be in - able to subsist only via the graces of the the elite and wealthy.
You know something you are almost convicing, however, the most likely scenario is:
1. The people involved knew not to do it.
2. The stuff copied was recent release Top 40 type material that has no connection our common culture or public commons.
3. There are legal alternatives that cost a trivial amount of money to access.
4. Even if copyright was unchanged since the 1800's the activities involved would have still be infringing.
I detest the RIAA, but really, let's take it down a notch here. Out of everything the RIAA is involved with this is the least objectionable. When Napster was the rage the cry was "don't punish us that are following the law and shut dow nthe service, just go after the infringers". Well, that's what is going on here.
Pretty much anyway you cut it that involves having a copyright these people are screwed.
The major problem with what Congress is proposing is that there is not yet allegation of criminal wrongdoing by anyone at the WH or in the Executive Branch.
If this was a criminal matter the subpoenas (if issued, they haven't been yet) would be followed and Congress could compel them so.
Since there is no crime involved here -- even if everything alledged is true there is no proported crime -- the subpoenas are without teeth.
White House staff - specifically not elected or appointed officals - should as a matter of principle not have to answer to Congress. Otherwise, it is trivially easy to see how the subpoena process could be abused. Imagine if the GOP Congress could have simply sent a subpoena to anyone in the WH during the Clinton years. It's the ultimate political tool. Keep grinding them down until they make a large mistake, and then you own them. Actual officals - department heads, named offices, etc answer to Congress and ultimately to the people. But the President's (yes, even the asshat Bush) Men are literally supposed to be His Men.
So for the time being, until a criminal probe is opened regarding someone at the WH, I believe that no President should be compelled to make his non-offical staff available to Congress.
The problem from Dell's point of view is touched by the author.
If you go configure the cheapest possible PC you can at Dell's website, you can do it damn cheap y just about any measure.
But they try like heck to upsell you to something, anything, with a decent profit margin. Two of the biggest profit makers, in no special order are printers and cameras. At-home photography is a cash cow. HP isn't anything practically but an *ink* and paper company. Selling you a $500 PC with a $100 printer and $100 camera is a great sale to Dell because that $200 of add-on's is a whole different margin category than the PC. Plus it leads to years of sales opportunitis for ink, batteries, paper, etc.
So, when you say you had to research which printers worked well and which ones did not that should clue you into a big worry. Actually getting software that is the right mix of features/ease of use for a simple needs user is also a major concern. Selling a product which limits upsell potential for high-profit products is a really bad business decision.
I have no problem with Linux whatsoever, but hopefully Dell will think carefully about succumbing to the pressure from a highly selected, highly elite techno-saavy crowd who is probably not representative of the entire set of Dell customers. Selling Linux pre-loaded needs to be done carefully, with carefully crafted expectations. Nothing but nothing can damage the long term prospects of Linux than putting it unsuccessfully into the hands of the mass market. Literally nothing can undo the perception of a product as a cheap "knock off" of something else. It is the kiss of death for a generation or more to a good brand name.
Finally, though there isn't what I would call a great track record with MS, oddly enough, there is a certain stability to Windows in terms of release schedule. Even compared to other commerical OS'es, Windows moves at a glacial development pace. And when a new release happens it's a gigantic bang complete with lots of hype but also some carefully planning. Honestly, with Linux, it is entirely possible that a major or even minor release could have very large implications and Dell could be left holding the bag with it's customers. This could happen with MS, but Dell is a large enough customer that frankly pressure can be applied directly up the chain. A reasonable ancedote goes back a few years to when I used GNUCash everyday. It was nice. I was working off a desktop install that I had compiled mostly from scratch. It seems like suddenly the GNUCash people recommended not compiling yourself, and all the make scripts fell apart in my environment. They posted a message on the site about using a binary packages as the new norm, and here are all the ones we support. I ended up fixing the scripts myself, but that's not the point. Things are better now and I still use it everyday. But look at their <a href="http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/FAQ#Q:_What_hap pened_to_my_Profit_and_Loss_report_when_I_upgraded _to_2.0.3F">FAQ</a> page. Compare to the closest version of that page from MS <a href="http://support.microsoft.com/ph/11403">here< /a>. This is a product that costs, essentially, $19 - $60 bucks, depending on the version. This type of difference in overall "polish" gets more and more pronounced all the time. And if it's that bad for Windows v. Linux, imagine how bad it is for OSX vs. Linux.
Points:
1. Well my main goal was to get the serial numbers from the laptop, for the investigators. The people involved were incredibly rude, and wouldn't give them to me without a reason. It really wasn't harrasment. After someone asked me why I needed them the endless loops began.
2. Why do I need my insurance companies permission to do anything?
3a. My wiring was in code. I bought the house (relatively) recently, and the wiring was modern, up to date, properly grounded and maintained.
3b. If you saw the scene your skepticism may be abated somewhat. But unless you are a fire expert I think your conclusions are uninformed. The government fire people don't need to prove anything in a court of law unless it goes to a criminal court. The insurance people are taking their time with it. They are doing everything you suggest.
Hello.
This is was my house. I am the "dan" in question. Drop me an email and I'll confirm for you the best I can.
Not that it really actually matters. This is exactly why I didn't submit to Slashdot.. the only reason I wrote it in the first place was to point out Dell couldn't route me to the correct department after several several tries.
It's an odd co-incidence, but actually, I've been a Slashdot reader for, well, a really long time. Probably 6 or more years, and posting for 3 or more most likely.
But still your point holds (in general).
Hello.
This was my house, I am the dan from the article. I contacted Dell because a fire investigator told me it would be a good idea. Also, the case was referred to the Consumer Product Safety comission. I was asked to contact Dell to get the serial numbers and batch numbers or whatever that is from Dell. Since the laptop was ruined it wasn't easy to extract all the fine points of what battery, cord, revision, etc it was.
No entertainment involved.
Your iPOD in aggregate with all it's bretheren has allowed DRM to be imposed across about 90% of the digital music landscape. Your device is laden with it, and your small part of Apple's marketshare enables Apple to keep DRM as an industry standard.
The missing element here is 'cover your ass'.
SOX puts the onus on companies to be fanatically on the safe side. And it puts the onus of CEOs and executive management to personally approve and verify and vouch for the exact accuracy of various filings.
It looks like Apple included this chipset not sure if it would be upgradeable. It was an early time of a draft standard. Is the executive management of a major company going to risk an accounting error based on the minuatae of whether or not firmware is software or hardware?
There is a lot more than just farm country in the areas you describe.
And a lot more high tech people than you can imagine.
I live in Maine and I was the 40th person on the east coast to get high-speed internet via cable.
Those were the days.
Well....I am not going to shill for IBM, because really, I've worked with the hairy mess that is WebSphere, and it's like everything from IBM - a lifestyle choice. You don't just recommend it like you would Zope or FoR.
But in the end you buy software in this class for a few key reasons:
1. Ability to interface directly with many platforms. (see #2)
2. The ability to write software that runs on many platforms. And I don't mean Linux or Windows when I say platforms, I mean like mainframe, mini, datacenter, server, etc.
3. The ability to write really big systems.
When I mean really big, I am saying, you know like supporting an e-commerce website with 80,000 http request per second. They are rare, but they are out there. Although the core of the product is IBM HTTP Server, which is a fork of Apache, the key is in the tuning.
Here is the test I recommend when people ask me about it: can you run a query against your live database to determine orders/transactions placed today?
If you can, than don't worry about Websphere or middleware at all. You are fine. Your site or app is still "small" (not a perjorative).
If you can't, than it means you probably have a big system. And maybe you need middleware.
and most importantly they've been convicted of having abused their monopoly power. This is really just not the case. To begin with "convicted" is a term used in the criminal sense. The anti-trust trial was not a criminal affair, it was a civil case. What actually happened was the trial judge was repeatedly, completely, and totally overruled again and again by the appealate court. If you believe that the government won the MS anti-trust case you are living in a fantasy world.
After Judge Jackson's two-part finding was submitted, Microsoft appealed, and the finding that determined MS to have violated anti-tying statues was overruled. MS was still found to be a monopoly, but the government would have to retry the part about them being illegally anticompetitive and violating the anti-tying laws Sherman setup.
Instead of going back to trial the case was settled and Microsoft entered into a consent agreement. This is not a "conviction".
Regardless, MS's position as a "monopoly" will be expire in November 2007. At that time anyone claiming MS to be a monopoly will have to go back to trial to prove it.
The likelihood is that given Apple's market share, the Open Source movement, and the fact that every claim that MS made was proven to be true after the fact (namely, that third party browsers could and would flourish despites having IE in the operating system. Of course this is proved true by the explosive growth of Firefox, despite the fact the government argued the only way to spur innovation in the web browser market was to split up Microsoft. Since MS did not get split it logically concluded that the government's claim was materially false).
You are exactly right - that is the *exact* calculation that is performed.
I've run the numbers myself, both estimates before the fact and 1-year, and 2-year follow-ups.
It's just simple. Everytime I looked at the numbers it was clearly a 8-to-1 or better ratio. That's 8 lost pirated users for ever lost paying customer.
In this case - I was a consultant on the project - when you consider that users on illegally copied versions of the software generated support requests at a much higher rate than legit users (I know - pirated users calling up and demanding support. These are't people with one extra copy installed; these are people who have never paid, not once, not ever), and also generate the most noise on the support message boards and forums, it was a no-brainer to continue.
An unintended side-effect was that it cut off the "low-hanging fruit" infringers - the ones who bought one license but installed it on any number of machines. These people were in effect cheating the competition who paid appropriately for the software.
Software is a really hard business in general. Especially when you are making a product that is very niche and very vertically integrated. This particular package had a target market of approximately 5,000-6,000 users nationwide, and required quarterly maintenance to keep within regulation and tolerances. Even if every potential user used this package (this company held about 60% of hte share) and licensed things squarely it was a tough business. When you only have about 3000 customers, having a thousand or so who are using the software illictly are a major drain. For this particular company and product keeping the perceived value of the software high in the long run makes great business sense.
Bottom line is that I am sure MS ran the numbers. Losing some share for cutting down on some measure of casual and business infringement was probably well worth it.
Slashdot Mirror
Bingo.
If XM is bowing to political pressure from Congress & the executive agencies that would regulate them - namely the FTC and the FCC - then is a 1st amendment issue, and the radio hosts have a good case.
Several Senators connected the issue of content to the merger during hearings on the merger. This is simply unAmerican. The message was clear: we'll let you merge maybe, but you have to make a comittment to "self-police" your content. Other Congress people have threatened to pass laws that would put the FCC in an oversight role over the satellite business as wel as cable unless they do some type of self-police purging.
This is of course difficult to prove, but otherwise, it makes no sense. XM doesn't have a large base of advertisers, and the people who advertise with them do it directly. In many cases old school radio ads are sold as packages that are resold and resold and so the company being advertised isn't sure to whom or on what venues the ads are running. With XM it's not like this - people advertising on the show in question KNOW they are advertising on the show in question.
It is entirely possible and I believe probable that the radio hosts have suffered a chilling effect by XM's pre-emptive censoring to avoid angering the government, even the though the speech in question is clearly protected.
Also, one thing many people on juries don't know and citizens aren't informed of:
No matter what a judge tells you, JURY NULLIFICATION IS LEGAL AND ACCEPTABLE. You can vote NOT GUILTY for any reason, no matter the cause, end of story.
It is never illegal for you to vote not guilty, it is never "wrong" for you to vote not guilty. If you ever get to a jury regarding file sharing, and you believe the current state of the law is unacceptable, you can vote NOT GUILTY regardless of how narrowly the judge defines the "issues at hand".
The prosecutor and judge will try to steer you to look only at narrow issues of fact and law. The truth is that juries have unreviewable and unreversable authority to acquit for any reason. (U.S. v. Dougherty, D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, 1972).
JURY NULLIFICATION IS ALWAYS 'OKAY'.
It's a mixed bad, really.
Why should I be forced to pay extra for a hard drive that will last 5 years if I just need something that will last 18 months?
There is an opportunity (hidden) cost to everything; and spending the money to overbuild something for the job has almost as much or more opportunity cost.
Example: you can build a bridge that lasts 5 years, 15 years, 25 years, or even 100 years. Yes, 100 years. It is feasible. So why not build every bridge to last 100 years?
The answer is because if you build the bridge for 100 years but traffic patterns change after 10 years you've wasted the money. And in 50 years when flying cars are in use (har) you'll be really sorry you wasted all that money on the bridge to nowhere.
So -- moral of the story is that strong consumer protection laws have a specific use, but it isn't always the best possible outcome to employ them heavily.
No, not really - it is quite important. There is clear cognition that it is "wrong" in some sense - illegal, unethical, or otherwise, to infringe on copyrights. There is also a clear decision making process to do it regardless of knowing this.
They did both. The RIAA went after the services, one-by-one, and now they're going after the infringers, one-by-one. And what happens? Just what we predicted would... for every service they destroy, a new one pops up; for every technological countermeasure they introduce, a counter-counter measure is born; for every person who settles, a ninety year-old, paraplegic mother of two autistic children is swept up in the net and retains council thus making the operation cost more than is obtained. Upshot... until the market gets music their way, on their terms, these mouldering yet still walking dinosaurs will continue to be thrashed in the pages of Slashdot and any other online location frequented by forward looking people.
That's all true, and fine and fair. I just hope that the forward looking people aren't shocked (1) at the long term implications of this, and (2) when the dinosaurs don't go quitely, but rather, go kicking and screaming.
People do not think it's okay to infringe copyright. That's just a joke! Everyone knows it's not okay to download music you didn't pay for, without permission, from p2p or some website. The truth is that no one thinks they are going to get caught. People still believe internet activity done late at night in their dorm room or living room is anonymous.
This is all excuse making.
If it were true that the disregard for copyright was based on the broken social contract, fine.
But that's not the reason. Except for the elite techno geeks who follow-it, no one knows shit about copyright, except that it's for someone else.
This is excuse making for the masses, to portray them as a victim of a corporate scam. These people who are settling know they got busted doing something they were not supposed to be doing. They all probably knew the alternatives were there. Busted social contract or not, they knew. And they ignored at their peril not because of a social contract gone bad but because it was easy and they thought know one was looking. I am all for copyright reform. Our IP regime is killing America's competitiveness. But the truth remains that the current problems are just as large reflection of the overall decline in ethics as any social dissastisfaction. Knowing copyright infringement is simply a digital and easy form of disrespecting someone who has done something useful for the country. It's really just a common and declasse form of laziness. Like litering or spitting in public.
That's where they are NOW. What do you think a record company is if not a means for the elite and wealthy to select which artists get promoted? That's just plain falsehood, on many levels. 1. First, regardless of who your publisher is, this is ultimately a democratic process. People select what they wish to consume, and then pay for it through some mechanism. The wealthy are not paying artists to create music to give away to the public. 2. Second, regardless of who your publisher is, this is ultimately a large process. No matter how you measure it there are more people engaged today in the pursuit of the creative arts than ever before. The basis for most of this is the fact that you can make living doing things that are creative. Which has not always been the case. 3. Third, taking into the RIAA, and the slime ball heavy handed tactics, in the end, they represent the wishes of artists. Period. They are a membership organization. They serve the artists. When you slam the RIAA for suing someone, you are slamming a person who has created some that people deem artistically worthwhile to some degree. The RIAA is the face of the artists that pay them for representation. 4. Is the RIAA corrupt? Absolutely. Are they less corrupt than the former systems that promoted the arts? Absolutely without a doubt. There are very, very few artists who are able to make any money touring etc. without signing over their CD sales to a record company. That's not true. There are very few artists who will be *wealthy*. This isn't about making people wealthy. This is about promotion of the creative arts. That's the point of copyright. The RIAA is in business for money, which also so happens to promote the arts. But they are not the only ones in town. For every RIAA label artist there are many more who are touring, performing, writing, and living a life of the creative arts. Are they wealthy? No. Are they glamourous? No. Are they doing good for the country, for the people, and for themselves? Yes. And for every person creating music, there are many more creativing all sorts of other things. Stained glass. Software. Written words. Blogs. All of it.
Finally, you write:
It's just a bad deal for the consumer who ends up paying for albums that they could get for free without affecting the artists revenues at all.
Your claims are non-sensical. How in your view will an artist make money not signing with the RIAA and giving away CDs? Through touring? If that's the case, why does anyone sign with labels that make up the RIAA? Why don't they all just not do CDs (give the music away) and only tour?
The problem here is you equate Copyright = RIAA. And that's just false. The RIAA is small. Very small. It's just one part of the overall copyright picture. There is a whole range of copyright options that range from "none at all" to "being the RIAA". At end of the day, though, it comes down to this. You and everyone else here knows that if I violated copyright by taking a GPL'd project, closed it, forked it, and sold it as a commerical product that I would not be hurting the original authors at all. They have zero monetary damages. Likewise, if I take a GPL'd project, closed it, and redistribute it under another name for free I am still hurting the original authors and violating copyright. And we all know what a ruckus that would cause. Why? Because the authors elected to choose the GPL as a license, and I came along and disrespected that. There is no lost dollars, but still, it's an insult and it's wrong. The authors wishes deserve to be respected. Likewise for music. Even if you disagree with copyright under the RIAA regime know that the people making music under the RIAA agree with the RIAA (except in a few rare and public cases). When you buy an album or iTunes track from these labels they support the RIAA. And the artists wishes deserve to be respected. Because they are doing something to promote the creative arts. And that's a goal in itself that our founders recognized as worthwhile. Make your own decision, but I side with them on this one.
There are two phases to booting Windows. The first gets you to a login prompt (if so equipped, say, for a machine joined to a domain).
b 2167-8017-4bae-9fde-d599bac8184a/Vista_Services.do c#_Toc142993760) has more.
That is a really pretty damn fast considering Windows overall. This is because starting with Windows XP much of the boot process was made to be multi-threaded, meaining the boot process isn't waiting for hardware to init, slow starting services to complete, etc. You can get a login prompt on a typical Windows XP box fast.
With Vista, they actually did something useful that make sense. Tons of crap is set to load "on login", and that's what causes your thrashing and all that stuff. One is that they properly allowed Windows Explorer (the shell) to threaded startup tasks across multiple cores or CPUs. Previously it wouldn't properly spawn startup threads correctly. But beyond that they have allowed you to mark services that start more intelligently - "delayed auto-start". This type of service basically starts when your system has calmed down. Marking more and more services into this category makes the time to get a usable desktop very minimal. It's a great idea. Do you really need Google to start indexing your files the first opportunity it gets? Nope. And that's why it works good.
(http://download.microsoft.com/download/9/c/5/9c5
Frankly its one of the only worthwhile chnages that they maded in Vista.
Perhaps if they stopped abusing society by having such long copyright terms, we would be willing to respect their rights on their 1 year old music once more. I suspect you know that this bullshit. The truth is that the length of copyright is not at issue here. This was not work that was 30 years old we are talking about. People who won't respect the wishes of artists from this year or last aren't doing so out of principle, which hey, I could at least respect to some degree. If these people were acting out of civil disobedience, well, hey, at least I could respect that. That's a respectable calling -- to be an activist/protestor against laws or policies you feel are repressive. But that is *not* the question. This is just a case of wanting to get something for free. And getting nailed for it. Finally, in the end, we get the government we deserve. Quite frankly it's not like this just happened. Copyright and IP laws have taken years to fall to this level of disrepair. If we can't elect people with a clue abotu the damage that restrictive IP is doing to our culture, our future generations, and our current levels of economic uncompetitiveness than we deserve the fate that is coming.
From the AC, good points:
1. They knew it was against the law; but it is the law that is in question
2. There is a good chance of that. Would your opinion change if they were downloading Mozart?
3. Again, it is the laws themselves that are in question. If downloading a file is effectively free, then why should they pay for it?
4. If the laws were unchanged since the 1800s, it would be high time for a change. Copyright laws were written to prevent unauthorized commercial copying. Technology has made it possible for individuals to copy works for non-commercial purposes. The law should keep pace with technology.
1. Fair enough. But if you violate a questionable law, don't be surprised when you get hauled (unliterally) to account.
2. Depends vastly. It was a modern performance or arrangement, performed recently, no. My opinion would not be changed. If, for example, it was a reproduction of an antinue performance, than yes, my opinion would be vastly different. If I play a Mozart piece and record it as my own arrangement than I should have control over my versions distribution. I would be an artistic leach, but still, it would my peroggative.
3. The main is reason is because your action is anti-American in the most true sense. The purpose of copyright is to promote the creative arts. That is in our national interest. Making it so that the creative artists are unable to make decisions about the use of their own work creates a disincentive to pursue the creative arts, which is damaging to the country long-term.
4. Your point #4 is factually incorrect. The purpose of copyright being built-into the constitution is that the promotion of the creative arts is in the national interest. Copyright promotes the creative arts. The technology to make non-commerical copies has been around for a lot longer than you think. Regardless, however, the entire purpose of copyright is to allow people pursuing the creative arts to maintain a lifestyle that allows them to continue this pursuit. Elimination of the ability to charge for "non-commerical" copies, or to depend on the good-will of customers puts artists back into the caste they used to be in - able to subsist only via the graces of the the elite and wealthy.
You know something you are almost convicing, however, the most likely scenario is:
1. The people involved knew not to do it.
2. The stuff copied was recent release Top 40 type material that has no connection our common culture or public commons.
3. There are legal alternatives that cost a trivial amount of money to access.
4. Even if copyright was unchanged since the 1800's the activities involved would have still be infringing.
I detest the RIAA, but really, let's take it down a notch here. Out of everything the RIAA is involved with this is the least objectionable. When Napster was the rage the cry was "don't punish us that are following the law and shut dow nthe service, just go after the infringers". Well, that's what is going on here. Pretty much anyway you cut it that involves having a copyright these people are screwed.
The major problem with what Congress is proposing is that there is not yet allegation of criminal wrongdoing by anyone at the WH or in the Executive Branch.
If this was a criminal matter the subpoenas (if issued, they haven't been yet) would be followed and Congress could compel them so.
Since there is no crime involved here -- even if everything alledged is true there is no proported crime -- the subpoenas are without teeth.
White House staff - specifically not elected or appointed officals - should as a matter of principle not have to answer to Congress. Otherwise, it is trivially easy to see how the subpoena process could be abused. Imagine if the GOP Congress could have simply sent a subpoena to anyone in the WH during the Clinton years. It's the ultimate political tool. Keep grinding them down until they make a large mistake, and then you own them. Actual officals - department heads, named offices, etc answer to Congress and ultimately to the people. But the President's (yes, even the asshat Bush) Men are literally supposed to be His Men.
So for the time being, until a criminal probe is opened regarding someone at the WH, I believe that no President should be compelled to make his non-offical staff available to Congress.
The problem from Dell's point of view is touched by the author.
p pened_to_my_Profit_and_Loss_report_when_I_upgraded _to_2.0.3F">FAQ</a> page. Compare to the closest version of that page from MS <a href="http://support.microsoft.com/ph/11403">here< /a>. This is a product that costs, essentially, $19 - $60 bucks, depending on the version. This type of difference in overall "polish" gets more and more pronounced all the time. And if it's that bad for Windows v. Linux, imagine how bad it is for OSX vs. Linux.
If you go configure the cheapest possible PC you can at Dell's website, you can do it damn cheap y just about any measure.
But they try like heck to upsell you to something, anything, with a decent profit margin. Two of the biggest profit makers, in no special order are printers and cameras. At-home photography is a cash cow. HP isn't anything practically but an *ink* and paper company. Selling you a $500 PC with a $100 printer and $100 camera is a great sale to Dell because that $200 of add-on's is a whole different margin category than the PC. Plus it leads to years of sales opportunitis for ink, batteries, paper, etc.
So, when you say you had to research which printers worked well and which ones did not that should clue you into a big worry. Actually getting software that is the right mix of features/ease of use for a simple needs user is also a major concern. Selling a product which limits upsell potential for high-profit products is a really bad business decision.
I have no problem with Linux whatsoever, but hopefully Dell will think carefully about succumbing to the pressure from a highly selected, highly elite techno-saavy crowd who is probably not representative of the entire set of Dell customers. Selling Linux pre-loaded needs to be done carefully, with carefully crafted expectations. Nothing but nothing can damage the long term prospects of Linux than putting it unsuccessfully into the hands of the mass market. Literally nothing can undo the perception of a product as a cheap "knock off" of something else. It is the kiss of death for a generation or more to a good brand name.
Finally, though there isn't what I would call a great track record with MS, oddly enough, there is a certain stability to Windows in terms of release schedule. Even compared to other commerical OS'es, Windows moves at a glacial development pace. And when a new release happens it's a gigantic bang complete with lots of hype but also some carefully planning. Honestly, with Linux, it is entirely possible that a major or even minor release could have very large implications and Dell could be left holding the bag with it's customers. This could happen with MS, but Dell is a large enough customer that frankly pressure can be applied directly up the chain. A reasonable ancedote goes back a few years to when I used GNUCash everyday. It was nice. I was working off a desktop install that I had compiled mostly from scratch. It seems like suddenly the GNUCash people recommended not compiling yourself, and all the make scripts fell apart in my environment. They posted a message on the site about using a binary packages as the new norm, and here are all the ones we support. I ended up fixing the scripts myself, but that's not the point. Things are better now and I still use it everyday. But look at their <a href="http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/FAQ#Q:_What_ha
Points: 1. Well my main goal was to get the serial numbers from the laptop, for the investigators. The people involved were incredibly rude, and wouldn't give them to me without a reason. It really wasn't harrasment. After someone asked me why I needed them the endless loops began. 2. Why do I need my insurance companies permission to do anything? 3a. My wiring was in code. I bought the house (relatively) recently, and the wiring was modern, up to date, properly grounded and maintained. 3b. If you saw the scene your skepticism may be abated somewhat. But unless you are a fire expert I think your conclusions are uninformed. The government fire people don't need to prove anything in a court of law unless it goes to a criminal court. The insurance people are taking their time with it. They are doing everything you suggest.
Hello. This is was my house. I am the "dan" in question. Drop me an email and I'll confirm for you the best I can. Not that it really actually matters. This is exactly why I didn't submit to Slashdot.. the only reason I wrote it in the first place was to point out Dell couldn't route me to the correct department after several several tries.
It's an odd co-incidence, but actually, I've been a Slashdot reader for, well, a really long time. Probably 6 or more years, and posting for 3 or more most likely. But still your point holds (in general).
Well, what is important to understand here is my intent in notifying Consumerist.
I read that website because it is primarily a website relating to bad experiences with large companies.
My bad experience wasn't related to the fire all that much, but rather, just trying to get to the right department within Dell.
That was the goal of writing to them in the first place. I didn't send this to Slashdot, for example, because overall it's not "news for nerds".
Hello. This was my house, I am the dan from the article. I contacted Dell because a fire investigator told me it would be a good idea. Also, the case was referred to the Consumer Product Safety comission. I was asked to contact Dell to get the serial numbers and batch numbers or whatever that is from Dell. Since the laptop was ruined it wasn't easy to extract all the fine points of what battery, cord, revision, etc it was. No entertainment involved.
Wishful thinking my friend.
Your iPOD in aggregate with all it's bretheren has allowed DRM to be imposed across about 90% of the digital music landscape. Your device is laden with it, and your small part of Apple's marketshare enables Apple to keep DRM as an industry standard.
The missing element here is 'cover your ass'. SOX puts the onus on companies to be fanatically on the safe side. And it puts the onus of CEOs and executive management to personally approve and verify and vouch for the exact accuracy of various filings. It looks like Apple included this chipset not sure if it would be upgradeable. It was an early time of a draft standard. Is the executive management of a major company going to risk an accounting error based on the minuatae of whether or not firmware is software or hardware?
There is a lot more than just farm country in the areas you describe. And a lot more high tech people than you can imagine. I live in Maine and I was the 40th person on the east coast to get high-speed internet via cable. Those were the days.
Well.. ..I am not going to shill for IBM, because really, I've worked with the hairy mess that is WebSphere, and it's like everything from IBM - a lifestyle choice. You don't just recommend it like you would Zope or FoR.
But in the end you buy software in this class for a few key reasons:
1. Ability to interface directly with many platforms. (see #2)
2. The ability to write software that runs on many platforms. And I don't mean Linux or Windows when I say platforms, I mean like mainframe, mini, datacenter, server, etc.
3. The ability to write really big systems.
When I mean really big, I am saying, you know like supporting an e-commerce website with 80,000 http request per second. They are rare, but they are out there. Although the core of the product is IBM HTTP Server, which is a fork of Apache, the key is in the tuning.
Here is the test I recommend when people ask me about it: can you run a query against your live database to determine orders/transactions placed today?
If you can, than don't worry about Websphere or middleware at all. You are fine. Your site or app is still "small" (not a perjorative).
If you can't, than it means you probably have a big system. And maybe you need middleware.
Uhh, you need a serious history lesson.
and most importantly they've been convicted of having abused their monopoly power.
This is really just not the case. To begin with "convicted" is a term used in the criminal sense. The anti-trust trial was not a criminal affair, it was a civil case. What actually happened was the trial judge was repeatedly, completely, and totally overruled again and again by the appealate court. If you believe that the government won the MS anti-trust case you are living in a fantasy world.
After Judge Jackson's two-part finding was submitted, Microsoft appealed, and the finding that determined MS to have violated anti-tying statues was overruled. MS was still found to be a monopoly, but the government would have to retry the part about them being illegally anticompetitive and violating the anti-tying laws Sherman setup.
Instead of going back to trial the case was settled and Microsoft entered into a consent agreement. This is not a "conviction".
Regardless, MS's position as a "monopoly" will be expire in November 2007. At that time anyone claiming MS to be a monopoly will have to go back to trial to prove it.
The likelihood is that given Apple's market share, the Open Source movement, and the fact that every claim that MS made was proven to be true after the fact (namely, that third party browsers could and would flourish despites having IE in the operating system. Of course this is proved true by the explosive growth of Firefox, despite the fact the government argued the only way to spur innovation in the web browser market was to split up Microsoft. Since MS did not get split it logically concluded that the government's claim was materially false).
You are exactly right - that is the *exact* calculation that is performed.
I've run the numbers myself, both estimates before the fact and 1-year, and 2-year follow-ups.
It's just simple. Everytime I looked at the numbers it was clearly a 8-to-1 or better ratio. That's 8 lost pirated users for ever lost paying customer.
In this case - I was a consultant on the project - when you consider that users on illegally copied versions of the software generated support requests at a much higher rate than legit users (I know - pirated users calling up and demanding support. These are't people with one extra copy installed; these are people who have never paid, not once, not ever), and also generate the most noise on the support message boards and forums, it was a no-brainer to continue.
An unintended side-effect was that it cut off the "low-hanging fruit" infringers - the ones who bought one license but installed it on any number of machines. These people were in effect cheating the competition who paid appropriately for the software.
Software is a really hard business in general. Especially when you are making a product that is very niche and very vertically integrated. This particular package had a target market of approximately 5,000-6,000 users nationwide, and required quarterly maintenance to keep within regulation and tolerances. Even if every potential user used this package (this company held about 60% of hte share) and licensed things squarely it was a tough business. When you only have about 3000 customers, having a thousand or so who are using the software illictly are a major drain. For this particular company and product keeping the perceived value of the software high in the long run makes great business sense.
Bottom line is that I am sure MS ran the numbers. Losing some share for cutting down on some measure of casual and business infringement was probably well worth it.