> It's not "legal" or right if the owner of the > song isn't being compensated for it.
No, thanks to this ruling, it's legal.
It's arguably unethical, you're right. But if you want to argue ethics, you then have to compare it to the ethics - not the legality - of the traditional methods of buying music. And because of the industry's treatment of artists, that isn't necessary ethical either.
I'm not going to be downloading from Allofmp3.com anytime soon, because I agree with you in principle, but this case will hopefully have the effect of forcing the ethics of music distribution overall to be considered, the legal/illegal paper stool having been kicked out.
I bet the creators of the contest have the money in an interest account, or maybe they've already spent it.
All it takes is for two "professional-level" webcomics (PvP, Dilbert, etc..) which almost always update daily, to join and the contest will run forever with no need to ever pay out.
> Free software means fewer product sales for > software companies, which kills profits, which > in turn is passed on to YOU, again, the lackey > who will now work 80 hours a week for 35K a > year in IT.
Unless you work for Adobe, Microsoft, or one of the major software companies, free software is saving your company money.
In most cases where free software has a hold, the market would be a "monopoly by solution" if not for the free option.
> Do you really, honestly believe that they had > no idea that their permission, which let them > undercut every single legit big-name music > store on the planet, might not have been 100% > legitimate?
When they knew that their country had unusual laws as a result of being ex-communist?
Why shouldn't they take every advantage they can get? That's business, isn't it?
I think more the problem is that playing Go actually requires you to look ahead.
What's the aim of the game? To take more territory than the opponent. So, what makes an area "territory"? Basically, if an opponent's stone would inevitably be captured eventually if played there, that area is your territory.
So as a beginner it's terribly frustrating. You don't know which areas are your enemy's territory, so you waste moves playing into them. Even if the other player warns you, which most good players will do, to be really good you need to know when a given area is NOT the enemy's territory now, but will become it if they place one more stone there - and THAT'S damn hard to spot and I've yet to met a teacher who could point it out.
Worse yet, you can't count your own territory, because even if you learn the standard territory counting rules, they don't apply to you because as a novice you might screw up and fail to capture the enemy's stones before they trash your territory even though, by all rights, you should have been able to. Aaaarrgh!
Although I don't think that the "Chess vs. Go" argument is useful, I do agree with the first poster on the basic point - Go is a very steep uphill struggle when you're starting, and doesn't obviously offer any extra entertainment over any other board game, so unless you want to play competitively you're liable to drop out.
> With very few exceptions, having the exact > form of words available to be copied is very > little use beyond being able to read the text.
However, the "derivative work" part of copyright can be applied to the meaning as well as the text. (If you write a paraphrase, it's a derivative work.)
> Making copyright automatic does this because > it discourages mere duplication of existing > works, without restricting creation of new > works.
No: it restricts creation of new works because sooner or later any new work will need to be a derivative of something.
Actually, there is. It's the same one that says you have to let people into the house to read the gas and electricity meters. I can't remember the name of the Act now, but it's there.
TV detectors don't exist, and they may never have existed.
Originally, they simply required retailers to tell them whenever they sold someone a TV, and they'd then get added to the list of people who'd need to pay licenses.
Nowadays, they just assume everyone has a TV, keep a list of houses that don't have TV licenses and occasionally send someone to nip round and check there's no TV there.
And yes, as long as you aren't recieving terrestrial broadcasts you don't need a TV license.
And this is also the guy who argued that levelling treadmills are beneficial to MMORPGs because any other method of distributing player power would lead to 10% of the players having 90% of the power.
Thing is, a look at World of Warcraft proves that wrong. You don't have to get rid of the leveling. You just have to get rid of the treadmill.
> They don't get the clue that once you GPL > things, *ANYONE* can do what ever they want > with it -- with the idea that you have to give > back. Even when folks follow their rules, > their egos are too fragile for this.
No, when you GPL things, *ANYONE* can do what the GPL says they can do and not other things.
Yes, I've heard complaints about forks, but the complaint usually isn't that the other person is stealing "their" project, but rather that the result will be two kinda-OK projects because the work was split, instead of one really good project.
> You are right. I've never asked for credit in > my PD product. In fact, generally, these are > released anonymously to ensure that I don't > have to worry.
Well, that's good of you, but not everyone is prepared to spend their time to do something that will gain them no benefit at all. Ok, it gains them coding experience, but you can't back that experience up. On the other hand, if you get paid or credited, you can say to your next prospective employer, "See! I wrote the code that X company is using for Y."
> they want to equalize everything and anything > that has someone getting ahead of them means > that its 'unfair'.
Well, gee, if using the GPL is the result of a "warped sense of fairness" then what on earth about those strange companies that sell software for money with closed source libraries? They must be really warped to think that people owe them money just because they use their software. Oh, wait.
> There was nothing unfair about it. They made > money. They took the time to develop this into > something big. If I was so f'n worried about > it, I wouldn't have put it out there in the > first place.
Well, yes, exactly. So if you want to make your library PD, that's fine. What the GPL is doing is allowing people who perhaps are "f'n worried about it" to put out their libraries. If it didn't exist, they wouldn't put them out, or wouldn't work so hard on them.
> I gotta say, the computer world has changed > quite a bit in the last 10 years. The whole > GPL thing has made the little guy a whiney > bitch instead of someone that wants to enjoy > what he's doing.
Not at all. If you enjoy what you're doing you're welcome to write libraries for free and have them used without credit, or be told that the credit you got is worthless because "they only used it because it was free".
> I tend to believe its a bunch of whiny smelly > nerds that are pissed off the pretty people > got a fairer shake at life.
What on earth could they have to do with the GPL? The companies that cherry-pick PD libraries aren't exactly "pretty people".
> But that's not what's happening. If I use a > GPLed library in an application, unmodified, > then in what way am I denying people access to > the code of that library by not GPLing the > rest of the application?
The idea is perfectly simple. You've gotten the benefit of other people's work (ie, the library) without paying money for it, so now you're asked to open up some of your own work (your program) in return.
If you write a JPEG library and give it to me for free, would it be fair for me to write a JPEG utility using it and sell it, given that basically all I wrote was a UI?
> When people elect people that elect people, you > democracy is of course the correct term, to be > more specific, you call it a representative > democracy.
Nope.
A true democracy is when the people vote to make decisions directly (and is pretty much impossible outside of the ancient societies where it was formed).
A representative democracy is when the people vote to elect particular people to vote to make decisions. It is representative because at least the set of people elected will represent somehow the wishes of the majority.
This is a case where the people vote to elect particular people to elect particular people to vote to make decisions. It is not representative because there is no guarantee that the first level set of people will continue to act representatively when voting for the second level.
It's not quite a question of unfairness, but more a question of the dangers involved in rewards being this large.
For example, if you can get a $2 million "ataboy" for achieving a particular goal, but you know there's only one being given out this year, then chances are you're going to spend at least sometime harpooning your co-workers to make sure they don't get it. And even better, you can do stuff that - if discovered after the reward is given out - would get you fired, because if you get the reward you're set for life and don't care about being fired anymore.
> Your logic makes as much sense as claiming > that a bullet can't kill someone, because some > soldiers have been known to shoot an enemy > even though he already shot him just seconds > ago.
No, that doesn't make sense. Yes, a bullet can kill someone; but yes, it's also possible for someone to get shot and not die. However, if the first bullet doesn't kill the enemy, it's of no benefit to the army to shoot him again; he doesn't become super-dead or anything like that. Furthermore, the enemy doesn't want to be shot.
The analogy breaks down on those final two points. Yes, an earlier version may satisfy a consumer's desire for the media, or it may not. However, if the customer winds up consuming two copies, that's good for the industry (because they get twice the money, or, if the first copy was a fansub, they get money where they otherwise would not have done so) and typically the consumer *does* want to buy the media (and yes, some of them even want to support the production companies)
This occurs particularly with 'geek media'. Why else would Star Wars geeks collect the entire set of Star Wars VHS versions? And anime are definately geek media.
Again, it's perfectly possible to make a profit out of media which most people have already seen. Ask Lucas. And if you doubt their wisdom, look at the size of your company (or most anime companies) compared to Lucas.
> Nope. That's actually an easy argument: The > company WILL someday soon sell its DVDs in the > USA, so distributing fansubs earlier will cut > into their future sales.
Yup. That's why NO film company has ever released a DVD of a film that's already been out on VHS. It wouldn't sell, would it?
That's why LucasArts only ever released one single, perfect VHS version of Star Wars. After all, who'd pay for the same thing again?
That's why in the UK, where one of the most common cable channels is UKTV Gold which shows nothing but repeats of classic Britcomedies, the BBC don't sell DVDs or VHSs of Red Dwarf or Fawlty Towers since anyone who wants them will already have taped them, right? (Note: Both series have been released, twice on each format..)
> One point that doesn't seem to have been > brought up: since digisubbing has become > popular, fansubs are no longer restricted to > the English-speaking world. They are also > available to Japanese fans, often at DVD > quality. Even though it isn't the fansubbers' > intention, they are making new anime available > for free in Japan, as well as elsewhere.
Ummm... it was available for free in Japan anyway, via being watched on TV.
Re:fansubbing has long outlived it's usefullness
on
Fansubbers Under Fire
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
> fan subbing is pointless now, most groups fan > sub the most popular shows, which are often > licensed internationally before they air (or > was funded by an American anime company)
Bear in mind, though, that many of these shows only get popular after being fansubbed.
Also, popular shows may not be licensed because of other issues. For example, Naruto. Madly popular, and if it was any other show it'd have been licensed already.. but who seriously is going to want to license a show with 100+ episodes where a single plot point can take up 10 of them? It's based on the soap opera model and who the heck wants to put them on DVD?
Given that the standard US DVD is 4 episodes, nobody'd pay for one of them. (And if you say "they would if it wasn't for fansubs", no they wouldn't: at best they'd buy one, feel ripped off after watching Naruto standing on a bridge talking to Zabuza for an entire DVD, and never buy another one.)
> Giving things away for free can be justified > as part of a long-term profitmaking strategy > (witness Internet Explorer among other > examples). But the problem for content > developers is that when perfect copies of > content can be made, even ONE copy of a song > or a movie could become copied again and again > until it spreads worldwide. If your company > sells content for a living, this is not an > abstract question - this is about life or > death for your company.
Um, no it isn't.
Let's look at some British comedies as an example. Let's look at Fawlty Towers. It's only 12 episodes long - tiny compared to most Anime series (36 episodes).
It has been released on VHS once and then DVD [i]three[/i] times, is repeated occasionally on terrestrial channels and is regularly repeated on UKTV Gold.
How about Only Fools and Horses? That's been out on VHS at least [i]twice[/i] and DVD once more, in spite again of it being regularly repeated every Christmas and on every night on cable channels.
And, of course, how many VHS and DVD releases of [i]Star Wars[/i] have there been?
There's only one rational explanation for this: people are indeed happy to pay money for new versions of media they've already seen. And if we accept that, it seems perfectly logical to assert that they're [i]more[/i] likely to do it if they got the first viewing for free (less total spend for same result), not less.
How is watching a fansub and then deciding to buying a DVD any different to seeing the anime on TV and taping it, and then later buying the studio's DVD, other than the geography/race issue?
If it wasn't for fansubs, the US anime market would never have existed.
Because fansubs were what started it. Most of the early Anime companies were actually fansub groups who decided to go legit. And almost every Anime otaku I know has upgraded their fansubs to legitimate versions when the release has come out.
So, big whoop. Their series won't be heard about until much later, most Anime fans will wait to see the DVDs at a convention or something before shelling out hard cash, some otaku will get hacked off and boycott the commercial releases just because of the suit, and firms who haven't done such things will get all the club and convention airtime TMF are missing out on. It's hard to think how they could have shot themselves in the foot much more comprehensively, other than maybe suing Anime societies for running unauthorised screenings to multiple people.
I also wonder if 'selective enforcement' claims could start bouncing around given that the same distributors turn a blind eye to the creation of derivative works within Japan, such as doujin manga featuring characters identical to those in released series.
Slashdot Mirror
> It's not "legal" or right if the owner of the
> song isn't being compensated for it.
No, thanks to this ruling, it's legal.
It's arguably unethical, you're right. But if you want to argue ethics, you then have to compare it to the ethics - not the legality - of the traditional methods of buying music. And because of the industry's treatment of artists, that isn't necessary ethical either.
I'm not going to be downloading from Allofmp3.com anytime soon, because I agree with you in principle, but this case will hopefully have the effect of forcing the ethics of music distribution overall to be considered, the legal/illegal paper stool having been kicked out.
No, it's ridiculous.
I bet the creators of the contest have the money in an interest account, or maybe they've already spent it.
All it takes is for two "professional-level" webcomics (PvP, Dilbert, etc..) which almost always update daily, to join and the contest will run forever with no need to ever pay out.
> In the UK, women are known to get lower wages
> for precisely the same jobs. 23% lower, in
> fact.
Yes, that's absolutely right. That's why there are no employed men in the UK: every employer can get the same work done by a woman for 23% less.
> Free software means fewer product sales for
> software companies, which kills profits, which
> in turn is passed on to YOU, again, the lackey
> who will now work 80 hours a week for 35K a
> year in IT.
Unless you work for Adobe, Microsoft, or one of the major software companies, free software is saving your company money.
In most cases where free software has a hold, the market would be a "monopoly by solution" if not for the free option.
> Do you really, honestly believe that they had
> no idea that their permission, which let them
> undercut every single legit big-name music
> store on the planet, might not have been 100%
> legitimate?
When they knew that their country had unusual laws as a result of being ex-communist?
Why shouldn't they take every advantage they can get? That's business, isn't it?
I think more the problem is that playing Go actually requires you to look ahead.
What's the aim of the game? To take more territory than the opponent. So, what makes an area "territory"? Basically, if an opponent's stone would inevitably be captured eventually if played there, that area is your territory.
So as a beginner it's terribly frustrating. You don't know which areas are your enemy's territory, so you waste moves playing into them. Even if the other player warns you, which most good players will do, to be really good you need to know when a given area is NOT the enemy's territory now, but will become it if they place one more stone there - and THAT'S damn hard to spot and I've yet to met a teacher who could point it out.
Worse yet, you can't count your own territory, because even if you learn the standard territory counting rules, they don't apply to you because as a novice you might screw up and fail to capture the enemy's stones before they trash your territory even though, by all rights, you should have been able to. Aaaarrgh!
Although I don't think that the "Chess vs. Go" argument is useful, I do agree with the first poster on the basic point - Go is a very steep uphill struggle when you're starting, and doesn't obviously offer any extra entertainment over any other board game, so unless you want to play competitively you're liable to drop out.
> With very few exceptions, having the exact
> form of words available to be copied is very
> little use beyond being able to read the text.
However, the "derivative work" part of copyright can be applied to the meaning as well as the text. (If you write a paraphrase, it's a derivative work.)
> Making copyright automatic does this because
> it discourages mere duplication of existing
> works, without restricting creation of new
> works.
No: it restricts creation of new works because sooner or later any new work will need to be a derivative of something.
Actually, there is. It's the same one that says you have to let people into the house to read the gas and electricity meters. I can't remember the name of the Act now, but it's there.
TV detectors don't exist, and they may never have existed.
Originally, they simply required retailers to tell them whenever they sold someone a TV, and they'd then get added to the list of people who'd need to pay licenses.
Nowadays, they just assume everyone has a TV, keep a list of houses that don't have TV licenses and occasionally send someone to nip round and check there's no TV there.
And yes, as long as you aren't recieving terrestrial broadcasts you don't need a TV license.
Yes.
And this is also the guy who argued that levelling treadmills are beneficial to MMORPGs because any other method of distributing player power would lead to 10% of the players having 90% of the power.
Thing is, a look at World of Warcraft proves that wrong. You don't have to get rid of the leveling. You just have to get rid of the treadmill.
> I'm sure someone, *somewhere* has done a 3D
> spreadsheet that sold about 50 copies then
> went bust.
Lotus Improv?
> They don't get the clue that once you GPL
> things, *ANYONE* can do what ever they want
> with it -- with the idea that you have to give
> back. Even when folks follow their rules,
> their egos are too fragile for this.
No, when you GPL things, *ANYONE* can do what the GPL says they can do and not other things.
Yes, I've heard complaints about forks, but the complaint usually isn't that the other person is stealing "their" project, but rather that the result will be two kinda-OK projects because the work was split, instead of one really good project.
> You are right. I've never asked for credit in
> my PD product. In fact, generally, these are
> released anonymously to ensure that I don't
> have to worry.
Well, that's good of you, but not everyone is prepared to spend their time to do something that will gain them no benefit at all. Ok, it gains them coding experience, but you can't back that experience up. On the other hand, if you get paid or credited, you can say to your next prospective employer, "See! I wrote the code that X company is using for Y."
> they want to equalize everything and anything
> that has someone getting ahead of them means
> that its 'unfair'.
Well, gee, if using the GPL is the result of a "warped sense of fairness" then what on earth about those strange companies that sell software for money with closed source libraries? They must be really warped to think that people owe them money just because they use their software. Oh, wait.
> There was nothing unfair about it. They made
> money. They took the time to develop this into
> something big. If I was so f'n worried about
> it, I wouldn't have put it out there in the
> first place.
Well, yes, exactly. So if you want to make your library PD, that's fine. What the GPL is doing is allowing people who perhaps are "f'n worried about it" to put out their libraries. If it didn't exist, they wouldn't put them out, or wouldn't work so hard on them.
> I gotta say, the computer world has changed
> quite a bit in the last 10 years. The whole
> GPL thing has made the little guy a whiney
> bitch instead of someone that wants to enjoy
> what he's doing.
Not at all. If you enjoy what you're doing you're welcome to write libraries for free and have them used without credit, or be told that the credit you got is worthless because "they only used it because it was free".
> I tend to believe its a bunch of whiny smelly
> nerds that are pissed off the pretty people
> got a fairer shake at life.
What on earth could they have to do with the GPL? The companies that cherry-pick PD libraries aren't exactly "pretty people".
The system is "passface" by Real User.
Unfortunately, my research group carried out some tests on it and found that it's incredibly easy to shoulder-surf.
> But that's not what's happening. If I use a
> GPLed library in an application, unmodified,
> then in what way am I denying people access to
> the code of that library by not GPLing the
> rest of the application?
The idea is perfectly simple. You've gotten the benefit of other people's work (ie, the library) without paying money for it, so now you're asked to open up some of your own work (your program) in return.
If you write a JPEG library and give it to me for free, would it be fair for me to write a JPEG utility using it and sell it, given that basically all I wrote was a UI?
If the library is under the GPL and you link to it, then yes, your code must be covered.
If the library is under the *LGPL* - which most open source libraries are - then no, your code needn't be.
> When people elect people that elect people, you
> democracy is of course the correct term, to be
> more specific, you call it a representative
> democracy.
Nope.
A true democracy is when the people vote to make decisions directly (and is pretty much impossible outside of the ancient societies where it was formed).
A representative democracy is when the people vote to elect particular people to vote to make decisions. It is representative because at least the set of people elected will represent somehow the wishes of the majority.
This is a case where the people vote to elect particular people to elect particular people to vote to make decisions. It is not representative because there is no guarantee that the first level set of people will continue to act representatively when voting for the second level.
Yes and no.
It's not quite a question of unfairness, but more a question of the dangers involved in rewards being this large.
For example, if you can get a $2 million "ataboy" for achieving a particular goal, but you know there's only one being given out this year, then chances are you're going to spend at least sometime harpooning your co-workers to make sure they don't get it. And even better, you can do stuff that - if discovered after the reward is given out - would get you fired, because if you get the reward you're set for life and don't care about being fired anymore.
> Your logic makes as much sense as claiming
> that a bullet can't kill someone, because some
> soldiers have been known to shoot an enemy
> even though he already shot him just seconds
> ago.
No, that doesn't make sense. Yes, a bullet can kill someone; but yes, it's also possible for someone to get shot and not die. However, if the first bullet doesn't kill the enemy, it's of no benefit to the army to shoot him again; he doesn't become super-dead or anything like that. Furthermore, the enemy doesn't want to be shot.
The analogy breaks down on those final two points. Yes, an earlier version may satisfy a consumer's desire for the media, or it may not. However, if the customer winds up consuming two copies, that's good for the industry (because they get twice the money, or, if the first copy was a fansub, they get money where they otherwise would not have done so) and typically the consumer *does* want to buy the media (and yes, some of them even want to support the production companies)
This occurs particularly with 'geek media'. Why else would Star Wars geeks collect the entire set of Star Wars VHS versions? And anime are definately geek media.
Again, it's perfectly possible to make a profit out of media which most people have already seen. Ask Lucas. And if you doubt their wisdom, look at the size of your company (or most anime companies) compared to Lucas.
> Nope. That's actually an easy argument: The
> company WILL someday soon sell its DVDs in the
> USA, so distributing fansubs earlier will cut
> into their future sales.
Yup. That's why NO film company has ever released a DVD of a film that's already been out on VHS. It wouldn't sell, would it?
That's why LucasArts only ever released one single, perfect VHS version of Star Wars. After all, who'd pay for the same thing again?
That's why in the UK, where one of the most common cable channels is UKTV Gold which shows nothing but repeats of classic Britcomedies, the BBC don't sell DVDs or VHSs of Red Dwarf or Fawlty Towers since anyone who wants them will already have taped them, right? (Note: Both series have been released, twice on each format..)
> One point that doesn't seem to have been
> brought up: since digisubbing has become
> popular, fansubs are no longer restricted to
> the English-speaking world. They are also
> available to Japanese fans, often at DVD
> quality. Even though it isn't the fansubbers'
> intention, they are making new anime available
> for free in Japan, as well as elsewhere.
Ummm... it was available for free in Japan anyway, via being watched on TV.
> fan subbing is pointless now, most groups fan
> sub the most popular shows, which are often
> licensed internationally before they air (or
> was funded by an American anime company)
Bear in mind, though, that many of these shows only get popular after being fansubbed.
Also, popular shows may not be licensed because of other issues. For example, Naruto. Madly popular, and if it was any other show it'd have been licensed already.. but who seriously is going to want to license a show with 100+ episodes where a single plot point can take up 10 of them? It's based on the soap opera model and who the heck wants to put them on DVD?
Given that the standard US DVD is 4 episodes, nobody'd pay for one of them. (And if you say "they would if it wasn't for fansubs", no they wouldn't: at best they'd buy one, feel ripped off after watching Naruto standing on a bridge talking to Zabuza for an entire DVD, and never buy another one.)
> Giving things away for free can be justified
> as part of a long-term profitmaking strategy
> (witness Internet Explorer among other
> examples). But the problem for content
> developers is that when perfect copies of
> content can be made, even ONE copy of a song
> or a movie could become copied again and again
> until it spreads worldwide. If your company
> sells content for a living, this is not an
> abstract question - this is about life or
> death for your company.
Um, no it isn't.
Let's look at some British comedies as an example. Let's look at Fawlty Towers. It's only 12 episodes long - tiny compared to most Anime series (36 episodes).
It has been released on VHS once and then DVD [i]three[/i] times, is repeated occasionally on terrestrial channels and is regularly repeated on UKTV Gold.
How about Only Fools and Horses? That's been out on VHS at least [i]twice[/i] and DVD once more, in spite again of it being regularly repeated every Christmas and on every night on cable channels.
And, of course, how many VHS and DVD releases of [i]Star Wars[/i] have there been?
There's only one rational explanation for this: people are indeed happy to pay money for new versions of media they've already seen. And if we accept that, it seems perfectly logical to assert that they're [i]more[/i] likely to do it if they got the first viewing for free (less total spend for same result), not less.
How is watching a fansub and then deciding to buying a DVD any different to seeing the anime on TV and taping it, and then later buying the studio's DVD, other than the geography/race issue?
> there is absolutely no legal way to watch a
> dvd from japan here in the states.
So don't. Get it on laserdisc. Japan's big on them.
The critical point you're missing here is that:
If it wasn't for fansubs, the US anime market would never have existed.
Because fansubs were what started it. Most of the early Anime companies were actually fansub groups who decided to go legit. And almost every Anime otaku I know has upgraded their fansubs to legitimate versions when the release has come out.
So, big whoop. Their series won't be heard about until much later, most Anime fans will wait to see the DVDs at a convention or something before shelling out hard cash, some otaku will get hacked off and boycott the commercial releases just because of the suit, and firms who haven't done such things will get all the club and convention airtime TMF are missing out on. It's hard to think how they could have shot themselves in the foot much more comprehensively, other than maybe suing Anime societies for running unauthorised screenings to multiple people.
I also wonder if 'selective enforcement' claims could start bouncing around given that the same distributors turn a blind eye to the creation of derivative works within Japan, such as doujin manga featuring characters identical to those in released series.