You know, I could threaten to sue you for absolutely anything at any time. I could even sue you for wrongful death. But if my claim has no merit, the judge is just going to throw it out of court. He might even slap me with a fine for filing a nuisance suit.
We can't refuse to pass laws just because someone might abuse them. We have laws against rape, and they are the source of many false accusations, but it would be ridiculous to legalize rape on this basis. We simply have to make sure that there are fitting penalties for people who make false accusations.
So I'm wondering about all those/. readers who complained about how terrible patents are because they allowed BT to make this claim... doesn't the fact that BT lost the suit prove that the law isn't as broken as you thought?
Same with the case with HP and the DMCA. The fact that HP can file the lawsuit doesn't prove that the law is broken; it's only broken if they would have won.
I thought trolling was when you posted inflammatory statements that you don't believe in an effort to provoke knee-jerk responses. Also, I thought trollers didn't reply to a thread they started, since the intention is to waste others' time and not their own. I'm not doing either of those. What you deride as rationalizing is what I call "examining and judging".
Rationalizing is when you use logic to support a pre-ordained belief. Psychologists have learned that the way the human mind works is that we make an unconscious decision and later justify it with logic. The tougher the decision, the more convinced we are that we arrived at it by logic. Self-deception is an essential part of human reasoning.
Rationalization [m-w.com] 2b: to attribute (one's actions) to rational and creditable motives without analysis of true and especially unconscious motives [rationalized his dislike of his brother]. You could make the argument that blind acceptance of the law is preferable to everyone making up their own minds as to which laws to follow.
I never said that, and I disagree with that statement. Sometimes, laws need to be changed, and the only way they will be changed is if people refuse to obey them. But the respectable way to change a law is to make yourself a test case. Do like Scopes and teach evolution; do like Bruce Perens almost did and stage a public demonstration; do like Martin Luther King and refuse to ride the bus. In doing so, you hope to change the views of society (or at least the courts) without presuming that you are omnipotent. You can choose to not follow whichever laws you like, but you cannot expect society not to punish you for breaking them. Otherwise, you have just granted sociopaths license to commit murder. My views of copyright law are based on the idea that it's a social contract, the people provide a temporary monopoly on the duplication of a work *for the purpose of making the author money*, and the author makes the work publicly available in trade. Society grants a right above and beyond "human rights", and expects certain things in return.
Many/. readers seem to hold the "original" definition of copyright from the constitution (and its 7 year lifespan) to be sacred. Aside from the fact that I am not an American so I don't care what the US constitution says and the fact that it was written 300 years ago and it could have hardly anticipated modern circumstances, what is so special about 7 years? Why can't authors have 50 years in which to profit from their creations? (Fair use laws were written less than 30 years ago and they failed to anticipate modern technology.)
BTW, I also don't believe that there is such a thing as "basic human rights". As far as I can determine, all rights are artificial and are bestowed upon us by society. Also, keep in mind that copyright still exists, even if you don't make a work available to the public. I feel that as long as I follow the spirit of copyright law, to not deprive authors of sales of their works unfairly, that I'm justified in downloading them for sample purposes. I could call a friend and get him to play his copy over the phone, or try to find it on a website, or drive to a store to listen, but in the end, if I buy the song if I like it, what's the difference?
I am all for discretion, but I feel that on/. it's too often all take and no give. The law has built in loopholes for discretion. If you perform an act that is technically illegal but mostly accepted by society, you are unlikely to get more than a slap on the wrist. Many all-encompasing laws are on the books in order to deter people from finding loopholes, but in practice there is a lot of discretion in law enforcement. I believe that grey areas are vitally important to the legal system and I am categorically opposed to any kind of slippery-slope argument.
A lot of/. readers think in very black-and-white terms. For example, I'm in a discussion right now with a guy who has some very odd (yet precise) views on what exactly constitutes theft. I feel that as long as I follow the spirit of copyright law, to not deprive authors of sales of their works unfairly, that I'm justified in downloading them for sample purposes. I could call a friend and get him to play his copy over the phone, or try to find it on a website, or drive to a store to listen, but in the end, if I buy the song if I like it, what's the difference?
That's fine. No one is going to get upset if you copy a song here and there. But you have no right to demand a worldwide system to make it easy for you. Even if they may tacitly approve of small-scale file swapping, the labels have to be against large-scale piracy. As I mentioned above, that's the way the grey area works. You ignore minor offenses that are technically illegal, but they remain technically illegal so that the courts can exercise their discretion when someone tries to use a loophole to abuse the system. Furthermore, as to the "right to record a copy if I'd watched it on TV", this is a right. The home recording act supports it. You are allowed to record television programs, but not to trade in them.
You're allowed to record stuff off tv, but not to store it in perpetuity. TV broadcasting was designed to give you the ability to watch a show once, providing you also watched the commercials or paid a monthly fee. The home recording act gave you the right to time-shift that experience. The studios argued that this feature would breach by allowing people to skip commercials and pirate their shows, which it did, but not to any great extent (but there were compromises, such as the feature of VCRs that you can't make good copies of recordings of tv shows). However, circumstances have now changed. If the same court case had taken place today, the results may have been very different.
Anyway, I find it funny that you are presenting legal evidence after arguing over the irrelevance of laws except as general guidelines. You say you don't feel guilty because the copyright owner still gets paid. Doesn't it matter how much they get paid? If you make a copy of a movie on TV with the commercials removed, you may be getting a $15 dollar value for an amortized cost of $1. I ask in all seriousness because a lot of people I talk to on/. seem to think that profit is a Boolean variable. (Not that I think you have to watch commercials, I think they provide the shows on the assumption that you will have the choice to watch them, and will usually be lazy. They know people ignore commercials and they still decide they're worth paying for, they must think they have value.)
They make the assumption that an insignificant fraction of the population have TIVOs. As that changes, you will find that more and more commercials will be superimposed over the shows in very intrusive ways. And then/. readers will complain about that (as they already have).
Why is it so difficult for companies to do the right thing, even if it will cultivate a more positive image for them in the long run, at a limited expense?
I always wonder the opposite. Why do/. readers feel they have the perogative to tell companies how to run their business even though it is clear that most/. readers have absolutely no business sense? Is it worthwhile to cultivate a positive image? Absolutely. Is it worthwhile to cultivate a positive image at any cost? Of course not.
Companies can often be quite ruthless in their valuation of goodwill. Take, for example the GM "defective door latch case", which was probably the inspiration for the 1991 film Class Action. GM estimated the cost of a recall at $916 million, but they were sued for only $150 million (plus they spent an undisclosed amount of money on secret repairs and out-of-court settlements).
Still, is a positive image worth $766 million? GM figured no. Besides, announcing the flaw would probably have given them negative publicity in the short term (manufacturer of unsafe cars), not positive publicity (responsible corporate citizen). And today, how many people actually know about this case? Can you honestly say that this case has altered your car buying decision?
I chose an extreme example to illustrate this, but I hope you get the point. If GM feels it is cost effective to kill people rather than recall their $20,000 products, what makes you think it is cost effective for Palm to recall their $200 products just for the sake of their public image? It may be "the right thing to do", but you have no business preaching that it will save them money in the long run.
I'm neutral on the subject of DRM. I think it could be done right or it could be done wrong. However, I am not neutral on the subject of Napster. Napster was clearly created with the express intention of stealing copyrighted music, and for all the hot air about fair use and all the things Napster could be used to share, that's pretty much all it was ever used for. There is a longstanding precedent that people who create new industries which may facilitate criminal acts are responsible for helping to monitor and prevent said acts. Napster didn't do that, and the only thing I can't figure out is why it took so long to shut them down.
I can see why people would be upset about DRM, but too many of them are trying to argue both sides of the coin. On one hand, they are upset that DRM might disable legitimate copying (backups, etc) but at the same time they still want to claim that file sharing should be legal because it is free advertising. On a forum like/. the majority opinions don't have to be consistent. Most people here seem to be anti-copyright, and yet most people are also pro-GPL even though the GPL relies on copyright. Yes, copyright is a practical tradeoff, but both sides need to be pragmatic. The ability to make backups is important, but too many/. examples sound something like "I was listening to Internet radio when all of a sudden this song came on that I needed to include in my scholarly essay. Damn you, DRM."
This round of responses make sense, but my guess was that you were quoting out of the "Responses to/.er's responses to..." book last time.
Don't get me wrong. When I said I know the rebuttals to all the common/. arguments it's only because I've debated this subject before. I am simply repeating rebuttals that I've used before; I'm not merely copying someone else's opinion. But what I was saying is that the public is probably going to spend roughly the same ammount, as most people I know hit their music budget without buying everything they want.
Do you have a music budget? I don't, but then again I have always lived within my means since age 5. Anyway, I completely disagree that people are going to spend X amount of dollars on something no matter what its cost is. If you charge $10 instead of $20 people may buy a second CD, but they might also spend that $10 at the movie or buy clothes or blow it on the stock market. The other disadvantage is that for those people who will buy 2 CDs, you fill up their CD racks twice as quickly. By the time I was 25, I had bought around 300 CDs. Now I hardly buy any; I simply don't need any more music. For the few that I do buy, cost weighs heavily in my decision. There's a few that I wouldn't mind having, but I don't like to get ripped off. I check every now and again to see if they're available for less than $20. I can easily imagine a less star-dominated industry where prices were lower and people listened to more groups, thus spending the same ammount
You may think that pop superstars exist only because of massive promotion, but I think you underestimate the public's need for celebrity. People need to have something in common to talk about or even to comiserate about. It's part of the human experience. Conforming is easy. It would be much easier if I knew people with the same musical tastes as me; it's tough to convince a friend to take a 6 hour roadtrip to see a band they've never heard of. But for all their criticism of Britney and Creed, the/. crowd is celebrity obsessed. Once you take away profit, fame becomes a driving force behind OSS. In a way, Linus Torvalds is every bit as much a manufactured star as Britney. Don't overlook the public's need for celebrity. As to competition, a duopoly or cartel can often be looked at as a monopoly for purposes of assessing its influence of the markets. OPEC is made up of multiple companies and yet they price similarly and are usually seen as a single entity.
While there have been some cartels that conspired to fix prices, many times the consistency in pricing happens automatically via game theory. If each player reaches similar conclusions about the optimimum price point, they will each choose a similar price. They may be able to profit by undercutting the competition, but it only helps them gain market share in the short run. In the long run, all the players suffer reduced profits. In fact, when one of the larger players cuts their prices, they are usually the ones who are accused of "predatory pricing" in an attempt to drive the competition out of business, thereby establishing a monopoly. There are some alternatives, the $.99 CDs you mention, and the odd ones in the middle ranges, but these aren't real alternatives.
The $.99 CDs I see at used stores aren't so much elevator music, but struggling bands who never became successful. The/. crowd wants there to be a free alternative to everything. There is free music out there, but you're not going to find it in stores. Go to MP3.com and you'll find a ton of bands who are peddling their wares for peanuts. I imagine some garage band has even released their songs under the GPL (although I don't know of any). But the fact is, most bands aren't diehard socialists, and given the choice, they would sell their souls for a record contract. I'm sorry, but if you want quality you have to pay extra.
In fact you do have a free alternative: the radio. Radio payola may be corrupt, but what did you expect from an industry that is providing you with a free service on a shoestring budget? Contrast this to the car market you mentioned where last years car is essentially indistinguishable from the new one, where the performance is identical, and you don't suffer social disgrace for driving it. I don't think it's a fair analogy.
There are plenty of people out there who can't afford *any* kind of car. And they do suffer social disgrace. You know what they do? They ride the bus to work, go to night school, and save their money so that some day they will be able to afford a nice car. However, my moral views (artists should be paid) are the primary reason that I dislike the current system. Because they've got a near monopoly on the the industry, artists are forced to sign unreasonable contracts if they want to be professional musicians and they are then, imho, cheated out of the money they deserve.
I agree that the artists are getting ripped off, but think of it from the labels' point of view. If you are right and they can take any yahoo off the street and turn them into a superstar by paying off radio stations and promoting the heck out of them, why does the artist deserve a big cut of the money? I don't think copyright was meant to give someone monopoly control on their ideas, just to ensure payment, so I don't see downloading test music to be bad, if it wouldn't have been bought anyways they aren't being hurt by a real loss.
There are plenty of legal ways of getting test music. The labels realize that giving out free samples is necessary, which is why they pay off the radio stations. If you go to almost any band's website or to one of the big online music stores, you can almost always download some free clips. You can also preview the music in a CD store. I don't think the labels are against test music; they just don't want to support a system that is being used for both test music and piracy. On the other hand, keeping copies of test music that you "wouldn't have bought anyway" is unethical. That's what I call rationalizing piracy. So, I'm in the air over file sharing. I think I'm entitled to my Simpsons episodes because I watched them on TV and could have recorded them; downloading them now seems equivalent.
Except it isn't, any more than copying music off the radio entitles you to that music. Or if you rent a movie from the video store, does that entitle you to a free copy of the movie? There's a reason why renting a movie costs $5, whereas buying it might cost $20. Because they've got a near monopoly on the the industry, artists are forced to sign unreasonable contracts if they want to be professional musicians and they are then, imho, cheated out of the money they deserve.
That's why I think the Internet can be a good marketplace for indie music if we can convince people that file sharing is wrong (doing so with the artist's consent would be okay as long as they are the copyright holder). Think of an artist as an entrepreneur. You can work as a salaried employee of a major label or you can start your own business. You may have to take out a loan to buy studio time, and if you fail there is no safety net. But that's the way the world has always worked. If you want to go for the biggest rewards, you can't take the easy way out. -a
If you make music sharing legal then all bands will suffer. You may buy CDs from band X because you are a diehard fan but most people won't. The fact is, two wrongs don't make a right. You should be buying music from the independent bands instead of pirating the signed ones, not in addition to it.
Well, you make a lot of very good points, but I still have to vehemently agree with the statement: "[The RIAA] should move from strongarm anti-piracy attempts to actually improving their product."
Well I can argue with you if you'd like, but I think you ought to know that you are taking the OP's comments way out of context. Read below for a clarification:
Maybe this drop in sales is not because of music piracy, but because the vast majority of music released (read: shoved down our throats) is total crap. Nobody's buying this shit because we're all tired of Britney Spears, Creed, Eminem, N'Sync, and all these tired, shitty bands they keep trying to milk for all they're worth. [...] If the RIAA wants to stay in business, they should move from strongarm anti-piracy attempts to actually improving their product. I don't want another rap CD where Dr. Dre laid down the beats (he's good, but when he does EVERYTHING, it all starts to sound the same.)
So you see, the OP wasn't even making remotely the same argument you are. I'd like to see the RIAA offer a bigger variety of downloads as well, although I doubt they'd spring for the 50 cent per track price you suggest (keep in mind that not all tracks are created equal). I think the quality of their foresight has already been proven by the whole VCR spectacle... ie the "Boston strangler" is now providing them with more than half their revenue.
I have to say that you're way off base here. The movie industry never made a dime off of VCRs; they make money from the Video Casette Player that is conveniently included with each VCR. As it happens, you can even buy 'VCP' units that don't record. If VCRs had been ruled illegal, I speculate that a lot of people would have still bought VCPs. (After all, people bought CD players back before you could record your own CDs.)
Hah, and you just repeated every stock RIAA rebuttal for every argument.
Ummm... did not! Please post links to where these rebuttals were published by the RIAA or its minions and I will reciprocate by finding you 2 links (on Slashdot) to each of your stock answers. Unfortunately, half of them dodge the issues and the other half are stock right-wing/republican answers. I'm surprised you didn't throw in a link between abortion and Marilyn Manson.
Umm... that's funny about all those guesses you just made because I...
a) am not an American. b) wouldn't be a Republican if I was. c) am pro-choice on the abortion issue. d) am not a big fan of Marilyn Manson, but Iam a fan of Ozzy Osbourne, Iron Maiden, and pretty much every other band that has at some point been accused of Satanism. You chide one of my arguments for supporting "mob rule" then 3 sentences later you support it by saying "this is how capitalism is supposed to work."
Whatever. I applauded your decision to exercise your judgemnt as a consumer by not buying a CD that was overpriced. You didn't state that you proceded to pirate the CD, and I didn't assume that you did. The RIAA is just that, it's a few companies who buy up their competition before it gets too big and then charge exhorbitant prices for something that should be a part of our culture.
I don't support the RIAA. I want consumers to stop pirating music so that bands who decide to work outside of the RIAA system (by selling their music online) can do so with a hope in hell of making a decent living.
(I know.. you're going to argue that a "mob" isn't an "organized group", but that was your word, not mine. The sentiment is sound, however.)
Nope. I'm not trying to be pedantic here. Mob rule is generally a bad thing; think back to the days of public lynchings. As I pointed out in an earlier post, it is the duty of the government to protect the majority from the tyranny of the minority, but also to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority. Democracy \De*moc"ra*cy\, n.; the doctrine that the numerical majority of an organized group can make decisions binding on the whole group.
You can't convert every facet of life into a episode of "Survivor". I once attended a journalism conference at which the lecturer reminded us to be wary of loaded terms. To use his example, while it would be perfectly democratic for Quebec to vote to secede from Canada, it would be equally democratic if Ontario voted to annex Quebec.
Knowing the rebuttals to common/. arguments might be helpful if your rebuttals made sense.
Do they not make sense or do you just disagree with them? Likely the public's eternal demand for music (It's been around longer than most other products) would result in the same ammount of money being spent on music.
Now that's a completely unjustified assumption. Industries work on price points and they adjust those price points to maximize the amount of money they can suck out of you. Every industry has its high volume/low cost players and its low volume/high cost players. The bean counters have analyzed the industry and they have decided that they can make more money by selling X CDs at $20 than Y CDs at $10. Often they try to capture part of the low end market as well (e.g. by offering some CDs at a discount or by selling through record clubs). But they have to set up some kind of barrier (inconvenience, limited selection, etc.) to prevent the low margin business from canabalizing their existing high margin sales. This ability to maximize profits is maintained via industry cartels and economies of scale. Your idea that there is some fixed amount of money to be earned from any given industry is silly. CDs are in the $20 range now simply because there isn't competition.
I think there is competition, although it is limited. This is where the cartels and economies of scale I mentioned above comes in. Let's face it: For the most part, indie music isn't cheaper. Indie music costs more to manufacture and distribute, plus it has a limited audience. That's why the major labels can afford to keep their margins high. On the other hand, in my experience, mainstream new releases vary in price from $13-$20. You may not be able to find any particular CD for cheap, but you will be able to find some CD for cheap. In the local supermarket, I often see CDs for $8. It's not the latest and greatest stuff, but you can get 10 year old CDs from popular bands at a reasonable price. It's a bit like buying a car. You can buy last year's model at a discount, even though there's probably nothing really different about this year's model. Plus if you're really desperate there's always the 99 cent bin. People recognize that monopolies provide lousy products and service for inflated price, that's why there are laws regulating big business. So why do you seem to think the music industry works better as a government protected monopoly?
Hey, I'm all for revamping the system. Forget all that stuff I said above. As I've stated many times, I see the Internet as a vehicle by which the artists can wrest control of their music away from the labels by direct-marketing their albums online instead of working within the RIAA system. I don't think there will be as much money to go around, but at least it will go to the right people. I already know some bands that do this; I found out about them by word of mouth or from hearing them on Internet radio. But it's equally clear to me that this system can't work as long as consumers hold onto the idea that pirating music is okay. While it's not good for a few major retail chains to have a monopoly on distribution, it is perfectly justifiable for the copyright owner to have a monopoly on distributing their own works. Frankly, I don't see how some people can get so hung up on arguing this point.
So in conclusion: It's not as bad now as you think it is. There is competition, but you have to get over the idea that you have to have a specific CD at any cost (where that cost is frequently $0). We need to encourage new bands to sell music on the net instead of signing with a label (and we need to buy/pay to download CDs from the good ones instead of ripping them off via P2P).
In order to improve the quality of life of the citizens, a government should act to improve THE WHOLE ECONOMY... if a law provides a local increase in wealth (say to RIAA and MPAA members) but a decrease in the overall wealth of a country, then that law should not be passed.
As you mentioned, there are social issues as well. One of the important functions of government is to protect the majority from a tyranny of the minority. Another important function is to protect the minority from a tyranny of the majority. In this instance, it is not merely a simple economic tradeoff. If we consider the RIAA to be the minority, we must not allow the public to stomp all over their rights as copyright holders [disclaimer: above comment does not apply to anti-copyright zealots]. That would be mob rule. It can be argued that new (superior) products (internet distribution) are now offering competition to CDs in the area of "distributing music" and that they are being hold-back by the legal manouvers of RIAA.
Okay sure, but the key point remains that the core item in demand (the message, the music) remains constant as the medium changes. And no, in this case the medium is NOT the message:-)
Legitimate Internet distribution (where the copyright holders get a large cut) is fine, but you have to pick a side. You can't argue for legitimate Internet sales, and then attempt to extend that argument to unregulated P2P networks. Mandatory DRM is being sold by the Music and Cinema industries as a response to piracy. If THEY say it's related to piracy, who are we to say it isn't???
DRM is a response to piracy. It is not an argument for or against piracy, which was the issue at hand. The OP said something asinine like "if you can't make a profit selling music in the digitial age then do like the rest of us and get a real job" as if selling music is not a legitimate job. I contested that idea and he tried to bring DRM into it for some reason. I'm personally of two minds about DRM. I think it could be done properly or it could be done poorly.
The results may not be admissible in court but I don't think that's their goal.
Entrapment? Come on... Don't you watch Law & Order? It's only entrapment when performed by a police officer or by someone who could be considered an agent of the police. If it's not entrapment then there's no reason why it shouldn't be admissible in court.
In the past, the same message has been modded to troll several times. FYI, I am neither a libertarian nor a left-wing socialist nor a capitalist. I believe in freedom.
A libertarian is someone who believes in freedom, only excessively so. Hey, I believe in freedom too... just not the same freedoms as you. At least I am brave enough to use my real name. Here's my first law of spineless/. posting: be as God!-Awful anonymous as you can while accusing others of being spineless.
Brave or stupid? 5 years from now you'll love it when an employer/date/reporter digs up some offhand comment you made that you didn't think would be archived/meant to be sarcastic but forgot the;-)/will be taken out of context. I already have a couple of these attached to my name and I don't intend to add any more.
I think you repeated every single commonly-used/. argument. How quaint. Fortunately, since I already know all these arguments, I also know all the rebuttals. It's not government's responsibility to prop them up by becoming their enforcement arm.
What is the government's responsibility anyway? I mean, I'm sure you have your own fantasy about what a government does, but the actual real government does spend quite a lot of its effort propping up industry. And I know you probably think that's only because they're in the pocket of industry, but it might also have something to do with the fact that a healthy economy is more likely to get them re-elected. The telegram industry was a perfectly legitimate industry that employed millions of people. If they were the RIAA, they would lobby to ban the telephone because it is a threat to their bottom line. It makes little sense.
Except you left out a major difference between telegrams and music. The telegram was rendered obsolete by the telephone. Music isn't becoming obsolete; CDs are. That's a huge distinction. Look at their sales records, in the days of Napster (when music piracy was totally rampant) they enjoyed RECORD SALES. Sales have since dropped.
I always love this one. As if the relationship between piracy and music sales is so direct and immediate that you could turn Napster on and sales would immediately skyrocket. By that same logic, Dubya is directly responsible for the economic slump and it has nothing to do with the boom-bust cycle that began in the 90s. The problem lies in the fact that I can't put the new Linkin Park CD into my MP3 collection.
Oh look, a red herring. We weren't discussing DRM. We were discussing piracy specifically. Don't try to confuse the two. Maybe this drop in sales is not because of music piracy, but because the vast majority of music released (read: shoved down our throats) is total crap
You have music shoved down your throat? Poor you. I listen to music mostly at home, at work, and in the car. I guess you spend most of your time in elevators and shopping malls or on hold. If the RIAA wants to stay in business, they should move from strongarm anti-piracy attempts to actually improving their product.
This is the most specious argument of all. Firstly, you are basically justifying mob rule. Secondly, people obviously people want the product or they wouldn't be pirating it. I don't listen to N'Sync but millions of teenaged girls do. Although I'm sure there is some kind of conspiracy out there to suppress the music you like, I will at least acknowledge that some of the bands I like just aren't mainstream enough to have huge followings. As a side note, the prices for CDs are insane. I went CD shopping the other day and was apalled to see that a CD I wanted had a sticker on it for $20.
And you didn't buy the CD. Congratulations, that's the way capitalism is supposed to work. If all you want is music, there's plenty of music out there for $10 or less, even from popular artists. I picked up most of Rush's back catalog for $8 a pop. Heck, if quality isn't your number 1 priority, check out the 99 cent bin at your local used CD store. $20! That's roughly $0.50 a minute for a normal CD! Phone sex lines give better rates than that.
Hey, that's some bargain phone sex. Anyway, how is that a fair comparison? Is it that you listen to the music CDs once and throw them away or do you tape your phone sex calls and listen to them repeatedly?
Oh wait, you didn't repeat *every* single commonly-used/. argument. You forgot the bit about the labels ripping off the artists. Strange... very few people forget that one.
Bull. You know quite well that you'll end up with Funny. You used used that very special karma whoring key phrase. Now this on the otherhand will "most likely be modded down" as flamebait, but don't bother. I'm at the cap.;-)
Actually the message wasn't originally supposed to be funny, but I got someone to punch up the script a bit at the end.
This bears repeating over and over even if I get modded down as a troll:
God! Awful's first law of/. posting: Anyone who starts a post with "this will probably get modded down to troll but..." is probably karma whoring and is about to post some kind of libertarian/left-wing diatribe that they fully expect will be modded up. My god, man, if you want to live on the edge, at least say something like "Bill Gates rulez" or "I masturbate while reading the DMCA". Stop being a spineless bastard who pretends he isn't karma whoring. (This post, on the other hand, will very likely get modded down as a troll.)
Sorry, but I'm not interested in maintaining the RIAAs bottom line. If they can't find a real way to make money in the digital age then they should get another job just like everyone else...
Oh you are the worst kind of elitist. Producing movies, music, video games, and other digital products is a perfectly legitimate industry that employs millions of people. No, they shouldn't collect money from a hidden tax; they shouldn't have to. The intellectuals on/. should stop trying to rationalize the theft of their products. You are worse than people who walk up to bums on the street and tell them to get a job. You preach to people who have a job and you tell them to get a different job just because you feel like it. You know, for all the time that is spent on/. protecting academic freedoms, I would like some academics to go out and get real jobs. Why should my taxes and/or tutition fees pay for some university professor to attend a conference in Germany or to sponsor his research into breaking DVD copy protection?
I think there's a club for people who can't finish reading Infinite Jest. It includes me and another guy I know. We discuss the first 100 pages every now and again. I haven't had so much trouble reading a book since that 5th book in the Foundation trilogy, and that was 15 years ago.
I'd be on easy street if I could get paid to troll like the guy who wrote that article:)
Posting comments which disagree with the prevailing view on Slashdot is only "trolling" if you post them on Slashdot. He posted them on CNet. Someone else submitted the story to Slashdot.
Yeah - and do any of you adults remember how that completely sucked and how we tried desperately to get away from it?
Yeah, I remember that. Invisible pixels in tables because the blockquote style looked so goddamn awful. Background images that wrap and look terrible. The original HTML design truly was an exercise in idealism gone horribly wrong. It is practical for bland academic homepages and such, but for online publishing it is truly rotten.
I haven't used any of the recent versions of Visual Studio so I can't really comment on that. I do most of my programming on Linux and I really miss the browse info feature. Some of my coworkers even do all their Linux development on Windows just to get that feature. The fact is, you're supposed to design your functions in such a way that you don't need to look at more than one at a time. I've never heard of Tony Hoare, but apparently he invented quick sort. Not bad.
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You know, I could threaten to sue you for absolutely anything at any time. I could even sue you for wrongful death. But if my claim has no merit, the judge is just going to throw it out of court. He might even slap me with a fine for filing a nuisance suit.
We can't refuse to pass laws just because someone might abuse them. We have laws against rape, and they are the source of many false accusations, but it would be ridiculous to legalize rape on this basis. We simply have to make sure that there are fitting penalties for people who make false accusations.
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So I'm wondering about all those /. readers who complained about how terrible patents are because they allowed BT to make this claim... doesn't the fact that BT lost the suit prove that the law isn't as broken as you thought?
Same with the case with HP and the DMCA. The fact that HP can file the lawsuit doesn't prove that the law is broken; it's only broken if they would have won.
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Oh now you're just trolling again.
I thought trolling was when you posted inflammatory statements that you don't believe in an effort to provoke knee-jerk responses. Also, I thought trollers didn't reply to a thread they started, since the intention is to waste others' time and not their own. I'm not doing either of those.
What you deride as rationalizing is what I call "examining and judging".
Rationalizing is when you use logic to support a pre-ordained belief. Psychologists have learned that the way the human mind works is that we make an unconscious decision and later justify it with logic. The tougher the decision, the more convinced we are that we arrived at it by logic. Self-deception is an essential part of human reasoning.
Rationalization [m-w.com] 2b: to attribute (one's actions) to rational and creditable motives without analysis of true and especially unconscious motives [rationalized his dislike of his brother].
You could make the argument that blind acceptance of the law is preferable to everyone making up their own minds as to which laws to follow.
I never said that, and I disagree with that statement. Sometimes, laws need to be changed, and the only way they will be changed is if people refuse to obey them. But the respectable way to change a law is to make yourself a test case. Do like Scopes and teach evolution; do like Bruce Perens almost did and stage a public demonstration; do like Martin Luther King and refuse to ride the bus. In doing so, you hope to change the views of society (or at least the courts) without presuming that you are omnipotent. You can choose to not follow whichever laws you like, but you cannot expect society not to punish you for breaking them. Otherwise, you have just granted sociopaths license to commit murder.
My views of copyright law are based on the idea that it's a social contract, the people provide a temporary monopoly on the duplication of a work *for the purpose of making the author money*, and the author makes the work publicly available in trade. Society grants a right above and beyond "human rights", and expects certain things in return.
Many
BTW, I also don't believe that there is such a thing as "basic human rights". As far as I can determine, all rights are artificial and are bestowed upon us by society. Also, keep in mind that copyright still exists, even if you don't make a work available to the public.
I feel that as long as I follow the spirit of copyright law, to not deprive authors of sales of their works unfairly, that I'm justified in downloading them for sample purposes. I could call a friend and get him to play his copy over the phone, or try to find it on a website, or drive to a store to listen, but in the end, if I buy the song if I like it, what's the difference?
I am all for discretion, but I feel that on
A lot of
I feel that as long as I follow the spirit of copyright law, to not deprive authors of sales of their works unfairly, that I'm justified in downloading them for sample purposes. I could call a friend and get him to play his copy over the phone, or try to find it on a website, or drive to a store to listen, but in the end, if I buy the song if I like it, what's the difference?
That's fine. No one is going to get upset if you copy a song here and there. But you have no right to demand a worldwide system to make it easy for you. Even if they may tacitly approve of small-scale file swapping, the labels have to be against large-scale piracy. As I mentioned above, that's the way the grey area works. You ignore minor offenses that are technically illegal, but they remain technically illegal so that the courts can exercise their discretion when someone tries to use a loophole to abuse the system.
Furthermore, as to the "right to record a copy if I'd watched it on TV", this is a right. The home recording act supports it. You are allowed to record television programs, but not to trade in them.
You're allowed to record stuff off tv, but not to store it in perpetuity. TV broadcasting was designed to give you the ability to watch a show once, providing you also watched the commercials or paid a monthly fee. The home recording act gave you the right to time-shift that experience. The studios argued that this feature would breach by allowing people to skip commercials and pirate their shows, which it did, but not to any great extent (but there were compromises, such as the feature of VCRs that you can't make good copies of recordings of tv shows). However, circumstances have now changed. If the same court case had taken place today, the results may have been very different.
Anyway, I find it funny that you are presenting legal evidence after arguing over the irrelevance of laws except as general guidelines. You say you don't feel guilty because the copyright owner still gets paid. Doesn't it matter how much they get paid? If you make a copy of a movie on TV with the commercials removed, you may be getting a $15 dollar value for an amortized cost of $1. I ask in all seriousness because a lot of people I talk to on
(Not that I think you have to watch commercials, I think they provide the shows on the assumption that you will have the choice to watch them, and will usually be lazy. They know people ignore commercials and they still decide they're worth paying for, they must think they have value.)
They make the assumption that an insignificant fraction of the population have TIVOs. As that changes, you will find that more and more commercials will be superimposed over the shows in very intrusive ways. And then
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Why is it so difficult for companies to do the right thing, even if it will cultivate a more positive image for them in the long run, at a limited expense?
I always wonder the opposite. Why do
Companies can often be quite ruthless in their valuation of goodwill. Take, for example the GM "defective door latch case", which was probably the inspiration for the 1991 film Class Action. GM estimated the cost of a recall at $916 million, but they were sued for only $150 million (plus they spent an undisclosed amount of money on secret repairs and out-of-court settlements).
Still, is a positive image worth $766 million? GM figured no. Besides, announcing the flaw would probably have given them negative publicity in the short term (manufacturer of unsafe cars), not positive publicity (responsible corporate citizen). And today, how many people actually know about this case? Can you honestly say that this case has altered your car buying decision?
I chose an extreme example to illustrate this, but I hope you get the point. If GM feels it is cost effective to kill people rather than recall their $20,000 products, what makes you think it is cost effective for Palm to recall their $200 products just for the sake of their public image? It may be "the right thing to do", but you have no business preaching that it will save them money in the long run.
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I'm neutral on the subject of DRM. I think it could be done right or it could be done wrong. However, I am not neutral on the subject of Napster. Napster was clearly created with the express intention of stealing copyrighted music, and for all the hot air about fair use and all the things Napster could be used to share, that's pretty much all it was ever used for. There is a longstanding precedent that people who create new industries which may facilitate criminal acts are responsible for helping to monitor and prevent said acts. Napster didn't do that, and the only thing I can't figure out is why it took so long to shut them down.
/. the majority opinions don't have to be consistent. Most people here seem to be anti-copyright, and yet most people are also pro-GPL even though the GPL relies on copyright. Yes, copyright is a practical tradeoff, but both sides need to be pragmatic. The ability to make backups is important, but too many /. examples sound something like "I was listening to Internet radio when all of a sudden this song came on that I needed to include in my scholarly essay. Damn you, DRM."
I can see why people would be upset about DRM, but too many of them are trying to argue both sides of the coin. On one hand, they are upset that DRM might disable legitimate copying (backups, etc) but at the same time they still want to claim that file sharing should be legal because it is free advertising. On a forum like
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This round of responses make sense, but my guess was that you were quoting out of the "Responses to
Don't get me wrong. When I said I know the rebuttals to all the common
But what I was saying is that the public is probably going to spend roughly the same ammount, as most people I know hit their music budget without buying everything they want.
Do you have a music budget? I don't, but then again I have always lived within my means since age 5. Anyway, I completely disagree that people are going to spend X amount of dollars on something no matter what its cost is. If you charge $10 instead of $20 people may buy a second CD, but they might also spend that $10 at the movie or buy clothes or blow it on the stock market. The other disadvantage is that for those people who will buy 2 CDs, you fill up their CD racks twice as quickly. By the time I was 25, I had bought around 300 CDs. Now I hardly buy any; I simply don't need any more music. For the few that I do buy, cost weighs heavily in my decision. There's a few that I wouldn't mind having, but I don't like to get ripped off. I check every now and again to see if they're available for less than $20.
I can easily imagine a less star-dominated industry where prices were lower and people listened to more groups, thus spending the same ammount
You may think that pop superstars exist only because of massive promotion, but I think you underestimate the public's need for celebrity. People need to have something in common to talk about or even to comiserate about. It's part of the human experience. Conforming is easy. It would be much easier if I knew people with the same musical tastes as me; it's tough to convince a friend to take a 6 hour roadtrip to see a band they've never heard of. But for all their criticism of Britney and Creed, the
As to competition, a duopoly or cartel can often be looked at as a monopoly for purposes of assessing its influence of the markets. OPEC is made up of multiple companies and yet they price similarly and are usually seen as a single entity.
While there have been some cartels that conspired to fix prices, many times the consistency in pricing happens automatically via game theory. If each player reaches similar conclusions about the optimimum price point, they will each choose a similar price. They may be able to profit by undercutting the competition, but it only helps them gain market share in the short run. In the long run, all the players suffer reduced profits. In fact, when one of the larger players cuts their prices, they are usually the ones who are accused of "predatory pricing" in an attempt to drive the competition out of business, thereby establishing a monopoly.
There are some alternatives, the $.99 CDs you mention, and the odd ones in the middle ranges, but these aren't real alternatives.
The $.99 CDs I see at used stores aren't so much elevator music, but struggling bands who never became successful. The
In fact you do have a free alternative: the radio. Radio payola may be corrupt, but what did you expect from an industry that is providing you with a free service on a shoestring budget?
Contrast this to the car market you mentioned where last years car is essentially indistinguishable from the new one, where the performance is identical, and you don't suffer social disgrace for driving it. I don't think it's a fair analogy.
There are plenty of people out there who can't afford *any* kind of car. And they do suffer social disgrace. You know what they do? They ride the bus to work, go to night school, and save their money so that some day they will be able to afford a nice car.
However, my moral views (artists should be paid) are the primary reason that I dislike the current system. Because they've got a near monopoly on the the industry, artists are forced to sign unreasonable contracts if they want to be professional musicians and they are then, imho, cheated out of the money they deserve.
I agree that the artists are getting ripped off, but think of it from the labels' point of view. If you are right and they can take any yahoo off the street and turn them into a superstar by paying off radio stations and promoting the heck out of them, why does the artist deserve a big cut of the money?
I don't think copyright was meant to give someone monopoly control on their ideas, just to ensure payment, so I don't see downloading test music to be bad, if it wouldn't have been bought anyways they aren't being hurt by a real loss.
There are plenty of legal ways of getting test music. The labels realize that giving out free samples is necessary, which is why they pay off the radio stations. If you go to almost any band's website or to one of the big online music stores, you can almost always download some free clips. You can also preview the music in a CD store. I don't think the labels are against test music; they just don't want to support a system that is being used for both test music and piracy. On the other hand, keeping copies of test music that you "wouldn't have bought anyway" is unethical. That's what I call rationalizing piracy.
So, I'm in the air over file sharing. I think I'm entitled to my Simpsons episodes because I watched them on TV and could have recorded them; downloading them now seems equivalent.
Except it isn't, any more than copying music off the radio entitles you to that music. Or if you rent a movie from the video store, does that entitle you to a free copy of the movie? There's a reason why renting a movie costs $5, whereas buying it might cost $20.
Because they've got a near monopoly on the the industry, artists are forced to sign unreasonable contracts if they want to be professional musicians and they are then, imho, cheated out of the money they deserve.
That's why I think the Internet can be a good marketplace for indie music if we can convince people that file sharing is wrong (doing so with the artist's consent would be okay as long as they are the copyright holder). Think of an artist as an entrepreneur. You can work as a salaried employee of a major label or you can start your own business. You may have to take out a loan to buy studio time, and if you fail there is no safety net. But that's the way the world has always worked. If you want to go for the biggest rewards, you can't take the easy way out.
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If you make music sharing legal then all bands will suffer. You may buy CDs from band X because you are a diehard fan but most people won't. The fact is, two wrongs don't make a right. You should be buying music from the independent bands instead of pirating the signed ones, not in addition to it.
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Well, you make a lot of very good points, but I still have to vehemently agree with the statement: "[The RIAA] should move from strongarm anti-piracy attempts to actually improving their product."
Well I can argue with you if you'd like, but I think you ought to know that you are taking the OP's comments way out of context. Read below for a clarification:
So you see, the OP wasn't even making remotely the same argument you are. I'd like to see the RIAA offer a bigger variety of downloads as well, although I doubt they'd spring for the 50 cent per track price you suggest (keep in mind that not all tracks are created equal).
I think the quality of their foresight has already been proven by the whole VCR spectacle... ie the "Boston strangler" is now providing them with more than half their revenue.
I have to say that you're way off base here. The movie industry never made a dime off of VCRs; they make money from the Video Casette Player that is conveniently included with each VCR. As it happens, you can even buy 'VCP' units that don't record. If VCRs had been ruled illegal, I speculate that a lot of people would have still bought VCPs. (After all, people bought CD players back before you could record your own CDs.)
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Hah, and you just repeated every stock RIAA rebuttal for every argument.
Ummm... did not! Please post links to where these rebuttals were published by the RIAA or its minions and I will reciprocate by finding you 2 links (on Slashdot) to each of your stock answers.
Unfortunately, half of them dodge the issues and the other half are stock right-wing/republican answers. I'm surprised you didn't throw in a link between abortion and Marilyn Manson.
Umm... that's funny about all those guesses you just made because I...
a) am not an American.
b) wouldn't be a Republican if I was.
c) am pro-choice on the abortion issue.
d) am not a big fan of Marilyn Manson, but Iam a fan of Ozzy Osbourne, Iron Maiden, and pretty much every other band that has at some point been accused of Satanism.
You chide one of my arguments for supporting "mob rule" then 3 sentences later you support it by saying "this is how capitalism is supposed to work."
Whatever. I applauded your decision to exercise your judgemnt as a consumer by not buying a CD that was overpriced. You didn't state that you proceded to pirate the CD, and I didn't assume that you did.
The RIAA is just that, it's a few companies who buy up their competition before it gets too big and then charge exhorbitant prices for something that should be a part of our culture.
I don't support the RIAA. I want consumers to stop pirating music so that bands who decide to work outside of the RIAA system (by selling their music online) can do so with a hope in hell of making a decent living.
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(I know.. you're going to argue that a "mob" isn't an "organized group", but that was your word, not mine. The sentiment is sound, however.)
Nope. I'm not trying to be pedantic here. Mob rule is generally a bad thing; think back to the days of public lynchings. As I pointed out in an earlier post, it is the duty of the government to protect the majority from the tyranny of the minority, but also to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority.
Democracy \De*moc"ra*cy\, n.; the doctrine that the numerical majority of an organized group can make decisions binding on the whole group.
You can't convert every facet of life into a episode of "Survivor". I once attended a journalism conference at which the lecturer reminded us to be wary of loaded terms. To use his example, while it would be perfectly democratic for Quebec to vote to secede from Canada, it would be equally democratic if Ontario voted to annex Quebec.
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Knowing the rebuttals to common
Do they not make sense or do you just disagree with them?
Likely the public's eternal demand for music (It's been around longer than most other products) would result in the same ammount of money being spent on music.
Now that's a completely unjustified assumption. Industries work on price points and they adjust those price points to maximize the amount of money they can suck out of you. Every industry has its high volume/low cost players and its low volume/high cost players. The bean counters have analyzed the industry and they have decided that they can make more money by selling X CDs at $20 than Y CDs at $10. Often they try to capture part of the low end market as well (e.g. by offering some CDs at a discount or by selling through record clubs). But they have to set up some kind of barrier (inconvenience, limited selection, etc.) to prevent the low margin business from canabalizing their existing high margin sales. This ability to maximize profits is maintained via industry cartels and economies of scale. Your idea that there is some fixed amount of money to be earned from any given industry is silly.
CDs are in the $20 range now simply because there isn't competition.
I think there is competition, although it is limited. This is where the cartels and economies of scale I mentioned above comes in. Let's face it: For the most part, indie music isn't cheaper. Indie music costs more to manufacture and distribute, plus it has a limited audience. That's why the major labels can afford to keep their margins high. On the other hand, in my experience, mainstream new releases vary in price from $13-$20. You may not be able to find any particular CD for cheap, but you will be able to find some CD for cheap. In the local supermarket, I often see CDs for $8. It's not the latest and greatest stuff, but you can get 10 year old CDs from popular bands at a reasonable price. It's a bit like buying a car. You can buy last year's model at a discount, even though there's probably nothing really different about this year's model. Plus if you're really desperate there's always the 99 cent bin.
People recognize that monopolies provide lousy products and service for inflated price, that's why there are laws regulating big business. So why do you seem to think the music industry works better as a government protected monopoly?
Hey, I'm all for revamping the system. Forget all that stuff I said above. As I've stated many times, I see the Internet as a vehicle by which the artists can wrest control of their music away from the labels by direct-marketing their albums online instead of working within the RIAA system. I don't think there will be as much money to go around, but at least it will go to the right people. I already know some bands that do this; I found out about them by word of mouth or from hearing them on Internet radio. But it's equally clear to me that this system can't work as long as consumers hold onto the idea that pirating music is okay. While it's not good for a few major retail chains to have a monopoly on distribution, it is perfectly justifiable for the copyright owner to have a monopoly on distributing their own works. Frankly, I don't see how some people can get so hung up on arguing this point.
So in conclusion: It's not as bad now as you think it is. There is competition, but you have to get over the idea that you have to have a specific CD at any cost (where that cost is frequently $0). We need to encourage new bands to sell music on the net instead of signing with a label (and we need to buy/pay to download CDs from the good ones instead of ripping them off via P2P).
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In order to improve the quality of life of the citizens, a government should act to improve THE WHOLE ECONOMY... if a law provides a local increase in wealth (say to RIAA and MPAA members) but a decrease in the overall wealth of a country, then that law should not be passed.
As you mentioned, there are social issues as well. One of the important functions of government is to protect the majority from a tyranny of the minority. Another important function is to protect the minority from a tyranny of the majority. In this instance, it is not merely a simple economic tradeoff. If we consider the RIAA to be the minority, we must not allow the public to stomp all over their rights as copyright holders [disclaimer: above comment does not apply to anti-copyright zealots]. That would be mob rule.
It can be argued that new (superior) products (internet distribution) are now offering competition to CDs in the area of "distributing music" and that they are being hold-back by the legal manouvers of RIAA.
Okay sure, but the key point remains that the core item in demand (the message, the music) remains constant as the medium changes. And no, in this case the medium is NOT the message
Legitimate Internet distribution (where the copyright holders get a large cut) is fine, but you have to pick a side. You can't argue for legitimate Internet sales, and then attempt to extend that argument to unregulated P2P networks.
Mandatory DRM is being sold by the Music and Cinema industries as a response to piracy. If THEY say it's related to piracy, who are we to say it isn't???
DRM is a response to piracy. It is not an argument for or against piracy, which was the issue at hand. The OP said something asinine like "if you can't make a profit selling music in the digitial age then do like the rest of us and get a real job" as if selling music is not a legitimate job. I contested that idea and he tried to bring DRM into it for some reason. I'm personally of two minds about DRM. I think it could be done properly or it could be done poorly.
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The results may not be admissible in court but I don't think that's their goal.
Entrapment? Come on... Don't you watch Law & Order? It's only entrapment when performed by a police officer or by someone who could be considered an agent of the police. If it's not entrapment then there's no reason why it shouldn't be admissible in court.
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In the past, the same message has been modded to troll several times. FYI, I am neither a libertarian nor a left-wing socialist nor a capitalist. I believe in freedom.
A libertarian is someone who believes in freedom, only excessively so. Hey, I believe in freedom too... just not the same freedoms as you.
At least I am brave enough to use my real name. Here's my first law of spineless
Brave or stupid? 5 years from now you'll love it when an employer/date/reporter digs up some offhand comment you made that you didn't think would be archived/meant to be sarcastic but forgot the
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Well, I read all five books in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy and I watched all five movies in the Star Wars trilogy...
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I think you repeated every single commonly-used /. argument. How quaint. Fortunately, since I already know all these arguments, I also know all the rebuttals.
/. argument. You forgot the bit about the labels ripping off the artists. Strange... very few people forget that one.
It's not government's responsibility to prop them up by becoming their enforcement arm.
What is the government's responsibility anyway? I mean, I'm sure you have your own fantasy about what a government does, but the actual real government does spend quite a lot of its effort propping up industry. And I know you probably think that's only because they're in the pocket of industry, but it might also have something to do with the fact that a healthy economy is more likely to get them re-elected.
The telegram industry was a perfectly legitimate industry that employed millions of people. If they were the RIAA, they would lobby to ban the telephone because it is a threat to their bottom line. It makes little sense.
Except you left out a major difference between telegrams and music. The telegram was rendered obsolete by the telephone. Music isn't becoming obsolete; CDs are. That's a huge distinction.
Look at their sales records, in the days of Napster (when music piracy was totally rampant) they enjoyed RECORD SALES. Sales have since dropped.
I always love this one. As if the relationship between piracy and music sales is so direct and immediate that you could turn Napster on and sales would immediately skyrocket. By that same logic, Dubya is directly responsible for the economic slump and it has nothing to do with the boom-bust cycle that began in the 90s.
The problem lies in the fact that I can't put the new Linkin Park CD into my MP3 collection.
Oh look, a red herring. We weren't discussing DRM. We were discussing piracy specifically. Don't try to confuse the two.
Maybe this drop in sales is not because of music piracy, but because the vast majority of music released (read: shoved down our throats) is total crap
You have music shoved down your throat? Poor you. I listen to music mostly at home, at work, and in the car. I guess you spend most of your time in elevators and shopping malls or on hold.
If the RIAA wants to stay in business, they should move from strongarm anti-piracy attempts to actually improving their product.
This is the most specious argument of all. Firstly, you are basically justifying mob rule. Secondly, people obviously people want the product or they wouldn't be pirating it. I don't listen to N'Sync but millions of teenaged girls do. Although I'm sure there is some kind of conspiracy out there to suppress the music you like, I will at least acknowledge that some of the bands I like just aren't mainstream enough to have huge followings.
As a side note, the prices for CDs are insane. I went CD shopping the other day and was apalled to see that a CD I wanted had a sticker on it for $20.
And you didn't buy the CD. Congratulations, that's the way capitalism is supposed to work. If all you want is music, there's plenty of music out there for $10 or less, even from popular artists. I picked up most of Rush's back catalog for $8 a pop. Heck, if quality isn't your number 1 priority, check out the 99 cent bin at your local used CD store.
$20! That's roughly $0.50 a minute for a normal CD! Phone sex lines give better rates than that.
Hey, that's some bargain phone sex. Anyway, how is that a fair comparison? Is it that you listen to the music CDs once and throw them away or do you tape your phone sex calls and listen to them repeatedly?
Oh wait, you didn't repeat *every* single commonly-used
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Bull. You know quite well that you'll end up with Funny. You used used that very special karma whoring key phrase.
Now this on the otherhand will "most likely be modded down" as flamebait, but don't bother. I'm at the cap.
Actually the message wasn't originally supposed to be funny, but I got someone to punch up the script a bit at the end.
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This bears repeating over and over even if I get modded down as a troll:
God! Awful's first law of
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Sorry, but I'm not interested in maintaining the RIAAs bottom line. If they can't find a real way to make money in the digital age then they should get another job just like everyone else...
Oh you are the worst kind of elitist. Producing movies, music, video games, and other digital products is a perfectly legitimate industry that employs millions of people. No, they shouldn't collect money from a hidden tax; they shouldn't have to. The intellectuals on
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I think there's a club for people who can't finish reading Infinite Jest. It includes me and another guy I know. We discuss the first 100 pages every now and again. I haven't had so much trouble reading a book since that 5th book in the Foundation trilogy, and that was 15 years ago.
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I'd be on easy street if I could get paid to troll like the guy who wrote that article
Posting comments which disagree with the prevailing view on Slashdot is only "trolling" if you post them on Slashdot. He posted them on CNet. Someone else submitted the story to Slashdot.
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Spammers lie about people opting in... this is news to you?
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Why do I suspect that they included Outlook's preview pane in their definition of "opened"?
Right... and when the cursor is at the top of the listbox, every new message is previewed momentarily before the spam filter deletes it.
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Yeah - and do any of you adults remember how that completely sucked and how we tried desperately to get away from it?
Yeah, I remember that. Invisible pixels in tables because the blockquote style looked so goddamn awful. Background images that wrap and look terrible. The original HTML design truly was an exercise in idealism gone horribly wrong. It is practical for bland academic homepages and such, but for online publishing it is truly rotten.
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I haven't used any of the recent versions of Visual Studio so I can't really comment on that. I do most of my programming on Linux and I really miss the browse info feature. Some of my coworkers even do all their Linux development on Windows just to get that feature. The fact is, you're supposed to design your functions in such a way that you don't need to look at more than one at a time. I've never heard of Tony Hoare, but apparently he invented quick sort. Not bad.
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