"If I create a hammer with the intent, from day 1, of using it to kill you, does that make that hammer illegal? Of course not!"
And if Napster created a file sharing service with the intent, from day 1, of using it for copyright violations, and they never deployed it, it wouldn't be illegal.
However, if you and Napster both used your respective devices, you'd kick yourself up to a charge of murder one and Napster would kick themselves from common carrier into somewhat participant.
Criminal law, unlike computer code, often examines intent and motivation. That intent can be expressed through the creation of an item.
"Fortunately for you, Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, and a cast of thousands were not prepared to "side with convenience and pragmatism" by using and supporting one of the many, quite capable, proprietary Unix variants that existed a decade ago."
This is why I hate it when people post as Anonymous Cowards. The odds that you'll read this reply are near 0.
Had you been reading Slashdot religiously, you would have noticed that there have been a few recent stories talking about Linus's emphasis on pragmatism, including using a semi-free as in beer (but not as in speech), semi-commercial package for handling kernel patches. This has, obviously, greatly irritated the fanatical Mr. Stallman.
"How much is freedom worth to you? More or less than time?"
That's a bit of a loaded question in this case. As I said before, I don't consider ubiquituous free software (a la the ultimate Stallman dream) to be an essential freedom (as opposed to free speech, especially in the form of political criticism). Also, this isn't necessarily an either/or issue. We can have some free software and some proprietary software. Furthermore, I would consider the scenario where free software was completely blocked (due to, say, run-away digital rights management laws) to be a case worth fighting for.
In this case, it's kind of like being a slave for someone who only takes a small portion of the money you earn and places a few limitations on you (of questionable reasonableness, depending on your politics). In exchange, you're granted what may be a slightly better life than that which you could achieve independently. Depending on how you look at it, I just described proprietary software. Or a job. Or the role of government. Whether these really constitute freedom and slavery are all in the semantic parsing.
Having used both commercial and free software, I know there are times when the latter makes me feel like a slave to its lack of solid financial support. I know when the former makes me feel like a slave to its carefully crafted commercial licensing. There is no ideal answer, which is why I mix and match what works.
I agree that there are parallel's to the Napster case, but I believe
that this case is actually slightly worse (and, depending on your
perspective, on the opposite side of right vs. wrong).
With Napster, they created a service that was intended, from day 1,
for heavy trafficking in copyrighted material. From what I
understand, Napster went as far as to advertise the prevalence of
popular artists on their service. Such knowledge is a key part of
charging them with indirect copyright infringement (either
contributory or vicarious -- I'm not up to date on the details).
With Microsoft, on the other hand, they apparently had a service that
was no different from your standard message board with image
attachments turned on. While there's no mention in the article of the
theme of the board, there's nothing to imply an intent to profit off
the indirect sharing of libelous material. That makes them (arguably)
more innocent.
So even if you disagree with whether or not Napster's intent (or
alleged intent if you disagree on the intent itself) pushes them into
the guilt zone, it seems that Microsoft was standing in a less
ambiguous position when they got nabbed. And that really worries me,
simply because it implies that a court decision has crossed the
invisible line (at least in my own mind) the stands between "Oh well."
and "Uh oh."
"I guess it's a really scary precedent if you're intent on
publishing libelous material online."
Except that Microsoft didn't publish the pictures any more than
Slashdot publishes user comments. They merely automatically
reproduced user-provided content and removed the content once a
complaint was generated.
Furthermore, while the intent behind the site is unclear, I doubt it
was created with the implicit understanding that it would be used to
primarily host libelous material (unlike, say, Napster which
apparently had a wink-wink-nudge-nudge relationship with music
piracy).
"It just takes a lot of effort to configure everything
properly. Eventually the wine project will break through the
proprietary SafeDisc stuff."
Time is money. If the freedoms are gain from free software are
outpaced by the burden of the time and effort spent using it, it's a
victory only to the hardcore, Richard Stallman-esque idealists.
I appreciate what the FSF types have achieved, but I don't consider
100% market saturation by free software to be an essential liberty.
Therefore, I'm willing to side with convenience and pragmatism on this
issue. I just don't see the value in devoting 2 hours to config file
twiddling so I can run Starcraft next year.
"Oh, boo hoo. Live by the sword, die by the sword."
That's all nice and good, except that it's in our best interests (and
by "our", I mean people who disagree with the RIAA monopoly) to agree
with them on this issue. The payola system provides a barrier to
promotion for indie artists. It may be an annoyance to RIAA members
(who can afford to fork over the cash), but it's a near deal breaker
for the smaller fish (who have to rely on the rare non-commercial
radio stations).
I've long espoused the theory that the best solution to the RIAA
stranglehold is to remove the conditions which make it so effective
for monopolistic music companies to suck in artists with awful
contracts. A big part of that is promotion -- an artist needs to be
heard in order to garner a fanbase. The internet has helped the
situation to a degree. Unfortunately, we don't yet have ubiquitous,
flat-rate wireless Internet access hooked up to car-based streaming
mp3 players. So until then, we have to keep a serious eye on the
radio stations, which currently enjoy a government allocated monopoly
on a limited portion of radio bandwidth.
Still, I don't think that curtailing payola (and just like any other
form of bribery or corruption, we'll never fully extinguish it) will
completely fix the problem. But I do see it as a very important first
step. It's visible, it's got clear jurisdiction (due to the
government-granted monopoly), and it can only reduce the RIAA
domination of the billboard. Even if the RIAA members profit off the
deal (from no longer having the expense of payola), I'd still consider
it a win if even a handful of indie artists gained billboard exposure
from the deal.
Re:This probably won't make a difference
on
CDs Want To Be Free
·
· Score: 2
"Since all the artists on the site are unknown, they'll never be
able to reach much of an audience because the radio stations are the
pretty much beholden to the recording industry will never play their
music."
If you read the (much more interesting) interview instead of the Salon
article, you get a better picture of what everyone in the game is
doing:
Artists -- They're all trying to get signed by labels. FightCloud is
a means of moving toward their goals of becoming rich and/or famous,
but it's not how they're finally going to get there.
FightCloud -- They want to be the step between obscurity and signing
with a major record label. They even mention that they'll be a lot
more attractive to artists once one of their current batch gets
signed. Their business seems to be one step up from the guy in his
basement burning CDs of the local garage bands. They're set up in
such a way that failure only means they're own some time and
effort.
So they'll never have the same sized audience as the labels, but since
that's not their goal, they might just be okay.
"Why is there a difference in price between casette and CD? They've
already paid everyone involved in making the master recording, so
that's not it..."
If I were a company involved in a business that involved a large,
fixed cost in order to produce two products, I'd assign a larger
portion of that cost to the higher priced/more desireable product
(while sticking within the constraints of what the market will bear).
It'd be the same if the fixed cost were a $500,000 factory necessary
for producing both cheap and premium widgets as it is for a $500,000
intangible recording/production session cost necessary for producing
both tapes and CDs.
"at least these folks are punching a hole through the perception
that there's something expensive about producing a CD."
That depends on what you mean by "producing a CD". We've established
that the company can cheaply produce physical CDs, but anyone with a
CD burner knows how cheap that is.
As far as producing the contents of the CDs goes, this company doesn't
seem to be involved in that. In the interview, they explain that they
aren't a label (and have no contractual hold over the arists), but
that they're instead a "promotional distribution company". So it
sounds like the reason it's not expensive is because the artists are
covering the music production expenses in exchange for exposure and
royalties. That also means the artists would be carrying the risk,
without the record label acting as something like a cut-throat venture
capitalist.
Furthermore, different levels of music production require different
degrees of expense. A single folk singer with a guitar recording on
borrowed equipment will cost less than a full band in a regular
studio. If most people are just as happy with the less expensive
alternatives, then indie music wins. If not, then the idea of
mainstream music continues.
Anyway, I think they're doing something nifty and I'm all for legal
music distribution methods outside the RIAA's domain, but I don't
think it's the amazing proof of RIAA's over-inflated pricing that
you're making it out to be.
"This issue gets increasingly complex considering the Army is
partially trying to recruit high school students under 18."
It's also interesting that the whole "escapist fantasy" argument loses
its teeth. Even games that're touted as being realistic can generally
argue that they're not intended to be acted out. But in this case,
the government actually wants the players to eventually do the things
they see in the game. Admittedly, it only wants the players to do
these things under very specific circumstances (following orders while
enrolled in the U.S. Military), but that statement is a significantly
weaker defense compared to, say, Rockstar being able to flat-out state
that they don't want you to act out any of the crimes in Grand Theft
Auto 3, period.
"It never ceases to amaze me that the major record companies don't
see *free advertising* when it's in front of their faces. Those folks
who pirate content and don't end up buying that content wouldn't have
purchased it in the first place, so there is no net loss."
It's only free advertising if we accept your statement that the
people who don't buy the content when they can/do pirate it also
wouldn't buy the content if it weren't easily available for piracy.
While I believe your statement may be true in some individual cases, I
don't think it necessarily works as a blanket statement. It's not
hard to imagine someone being interested enough in a given song/artist
that that person would pay for the CD, but that the person loses their
motivation to spend money on something they essentially already have.
So if we accept that piracy cuts into some sales, it goes from free
advertising to forced advertising. There's a cost (in the
economic sense of the word) associated with the copyright violation of
the work. The question becomes one of whether or not that cost is
offset by the sales produced by the advertising. The answer is
unclear. However, whether or not the product should be advertised in
this manner is a decision that the copyright holder should be the one
to make.
"Frankly, I think the point of all the jokes is to show what a
ridiculous piece of legislation the DMCA actually is."
I agree it's ridiculous. I don't have a problem with people pointing
out that it's ridiculous. I do have a problem with every single
discussion that even tangentially touches the subject of copyright
getting hit with a barrage of the exact same joke over and over and
over.
I keep kicking it up, but there's only so high it'll go...
"That rant got you some karma but it wont change \."
Nope, no karma. I'm already capped like quite a few other people.
"In all likelyhood 75% of those people thought they were the first
to post what they said. The other 25% want to get on everyone's nerves
and repeat crap endlessly. You just validated their existence."
I think you're selling people a little short, but there is that.
Still, you're leaving out the moderation factor. If my rant causes
people to think about just how repetitive the official DMCA joke is
getting, maybe they'll be more likely to moderate it as redundant or
trolling.
"giving information on how to use a Sharpie marker to circumvent a
copy protection device probably is illegal."
That's a good point, as it does bear some close resemblance to the
Dmitry case. Unfortunately, that point is getting lost amidst dozens
of people going on about Staples getting sued for distributing
circumvention devices.
I'm not against people raising a legitimate issue. I'm just tired of
people making the same cookie cutter DMCA joke (not even jokes,
since they're all really the same joke).
Call me crazy, but I'm getting tired of all 30 billion variations of
"OMG! A paperclip is an illegal copy protection circumvention device
because I can use it to poke out the eye of the person who makes the
CDs, causing him to go to the hospital when he's supposed to be
putting on the security track."
At this point, I long for the days of trolls posting haikus about a
petrified Natalie Portman slathered in hot grits driving the Slashdot
Cruiser over to a Beowulf cluster. At least those posts tended to get
appopriately modded down as trolls rather than modded up as both
insightful and funny.
The DMCA circumvention device joke has been made. Several times.
Stop mindlessly repeating it like you're Raymond going through the
Who's On First routine. Besides, I hear Amazon.com has a patent on
the business model of mindlessly repeating a joke.
(I apologize for cluttering up the comments with meta-discussion, but
I felt the point needed to be made. Also, since this is just a
repost, most important points have already been made.)
"If over 1,000 boxen are already compromised, I have to wonder
about SARC's statement that this is 'unlikely to spread.'"
Spreading implies that it's continuing to infect more hosts. If it
has already infected all infectable hosts, then it's not able to
infect more hosts. If we assume that the random number generator it's
using is at least decent, then the number of probes on port 1433 point
toward the worm having hit all IP addresses several times (excluding
the few addresses that the worm doesn't target -- it skips over
192.0.0.0/8, for example, despite there being a number of legitimate
IP addresses in the range).
So with very, very few exceptions, I suspect that most people are
either already infected or completely immune, at least as far as the
null password worm goes. The brute force cracking worm might be able
to spread more, given that it has to employ quite a bit more effort to
get into a host.
Small set feature failure
on
Google Experiments
·
· Score: 3, Informative
When I played with this yesterday, I noticed that the "small set"
option has a tendency to turn up no results on certain queries that
return a few replies for the "large set" option.
For example, try entering "Frank Welker", "Don Messick", and "Maurice
LaMarche" (all cartoon voice actors). Under "small set", you get back
nothing but a failure page that implies you need to change the terms
to get results. The failure page doesn't even have the "expand your
search" link that successful small set searches have. But if you use
"large set", you get back 3 additional items (well under the 15 item
set limit of a small set).
"but I was using gcc on a sun box in a production environment,
because sun charged an arm and a leg for a simple c
compiler..."
But you were still running Sun's proprietary kernel (and other tools).
I believe the point of the ideological "GNU system" is an entire
operating system that's completely composed of free software. In
RMS's article, he has an interesting line about the FSF computers
(with regard to why he can't install Bitkeeper on them), "We have
no non-free systems or applications on them now, and our principles
say we must keep it that way."
"You can choose not to install X and still have a useful, working
system."
That's true to a degree, but X and X-based programs are a key part of
what the Linux operating system has become. While it's certainly
possible to run without it (especially considering that I'm using
emacs under lynx running on a virtual console), a non-special purpose,
CD-based Linux distribution that was missing X (and lacked a
substitute) would be woefully incomplete. In general, Linux is
synonymous with the pure kernel (useless without supporting software)
or the larger Linux distribution (which generally takes advantage of
the freedom of free software to bundle quite a few extras).
Furthermore, we could even get away with removing key parts of the OS
and still have a useful, working system. Ls? All we need is 'echo
*'. It lacks information about permissions (which we could discover
using chmod's -v switch, u+r, u-r, and a little patience). It lacks
file dates (which are useful but not necessarily critical). But it
works. And overall, we still have a useful, working system.
As time goes on, what is and isn't part of the operating system is
constantly being redefined. We still have the hardcore, minimum set
of functionality to run programs, but a more practical look (not
unlike Linus's pragmatic views on the free software issue) turns up
the need for a larger set of things that have become "must have"
features: a GUI (ideally one that runs at setup time), enough network
support (TCP/IP, FTP, simple web browser) to download more programs, a
text editor capable of editing system configuration files. They're
too high level to fit the traditional OS definition, but they're also
too critical to be considered on the par with some of the less
important packages that make up a distribution.
It's a shame his reverse authentication idea will never take off. I've actually wished there were something already available along these lines. As it currently stands, email addresses are a dime a dozen, IP addresses can change every few minutes (for dialup and DSL users, at least), and proxies allow a user to avoid even a broad IP range block.
So it would be a great boon to web services if there were a way to somehow have a way of confirming that a person hasn't already signed up for a service. It'd allow many boards to weed-out their troll population while maintaining an open sign-up. On one forum I was on, the problem was so bad that registration was completely closed then later moved to a pay-only model.
The problem is that I can't see any way to do it without compromising the identities of the people. For example, I don't see a problem with Slashdot knowing that 'Erasmus Darwin' is my only Slashdot account, but I don't want to create a system where they could theoretically share records with another entity and use that to determine my identity there. Perhaps the identity token I provide to Slashdot could be some sort of one-way hash of my identity combined with '@slashdot.org', thereby limiting it to a single area.
One downside of this system is that a government-type institution with a search warrant could use my secret identity information to reproduce my Slashdot token and verify my identity. I don't see any way to prevent the identification from somehow serving to find-out who I am. Still, that theoretically pushes the identification process off to a similar level of difficulty to tracing the user's IP (i.e. Slashdot couldn't do it on its own). Thus, if we pretend that no one uses anonymizing web proxies, it's the same level of anonymity.
Also, there'd be a problem of issuing the secret identity keys. Presumably, this would be handled by the companies that already do encryption/security certificates. That means there'd be a cost associated with such keys, which would turn away a number of people. If only a small percentage of people fork over the $XX/year for a personal identity certificate, most sites won't be able to require their use for signup. Furthermore, it'd be difficult for the issuing agency to verify the uniqueness of each request, especially when we consider that this would have an international audience. I also wouldn't be surprised if some of the countries that have whored out their ccTLDs decided to also start selling their equivilent of SSNs to people interested in extra identities.
Finally, there'd be the issue of identity theft. Having a single, computer-based identity key would be a very tempting target for various malicious programs. If I were an evil spammer type and such an identity system were in place, I'd definitely try and steal as many identities as possible for sign up use.
"if Windows is deemed a generic word its ALL OVER for the microsoft
monopoly."
No, it isn't. Microsoft has the benefit of having strong public
recognition of both their product name and their company name.
Furthermore, it wouldn't kill their trademark on the distinctive
Windows flag logo that many people have seen at boot-up for the past 7
years.
I also think that retail stores would be less likely to carry a
Linux-based operating system labelled "RedHat Windows". Why? Because
anyone confused enough to buy "RedHat Windows" only because of the
"Windows" in the name is going to return it the very next day when it
fails to "work" (where "work" equates to running all his/her existing
MS Windows-based programs; wine or other emulation packages aren't
going to be enough to appease a novice end-user who was expecting
actual MS Windows).
Finally, I think breaking up a monopoly via trademark is inherently
lame. The whole point of trademarks are to allow consumers to be able
to differentiate the different products in a given market. I know I'd
feel dirty if Linux had to start tricking people into using it.
Microsoft isn't trying to shutdown the LindowsOS, as the article
headline erroneously states. They're merely trying to stop them from
using the Lindows name. The error seems to be a mistranscription of
the Lindows press release, which refers to Microsoft attempting to
"shut down Lindows.com" (presumably due to the name rather than the
content). Even if Microsoft were to have won, there'd be nothing
preventing the Lindows people from changing the name to
JdsfhkjashdfkjOS.
"I certainly wouldn't buy one if it didn't let me skip the
adverts"
I think the problem is that we've got two different notions of
skipping ads here. The first is to fast-forward through
advertisements. Even though the ads are being played without sound
and the majority of frames are being dropped, they're still briefly
popping up on the screen with a chance to grab your attention
(especially since you're actively watching the screen to know when to
hit play). This is the ad skipping method used by Tivo owners who
haven't enabled the 30 second skip backdoor.
The other ad skipping method is to really skip over the ads
using a 30 second skip button or even automatic commercial
detection/elimination. The user just whacks the skip button until the
TV show is back on screen (or does nothing in the case of the
automated process). Under this situation, even the most well-written
ad has no chance at grabbing your attention. The 30 second skip
button is the method used by ReplayTV owners.
Now it's my guess (based on what little the article says and a little
common sense) that they're using the notion of ad skipping to refer to
the second skip method. I don't believe that they're disabling the
fast-forward button every time a commercial break shows up.
Based on your comment that you don't see why anyone would buy this at
all, I suspect you interpreted the article to mean that they were
prohibiting the first type of ad skipping. I think that isn't the
case here.
Slashdot Mirror
And if Napster created a file sharing service with the intent, from day 1, of using it for copyright violations, and they never deployed it, it wouldn't be illegal.
However, if you and Napster both used your respective devices, you'd kick yourself up to a charge of murder one and Napster would kick themselves from common carrier into somewhat participant.
Criminal law, unlike computer code, often examines intent and motivation. That intent can be expressed through the creation of an item.
This is why I hate it when people post as Anonymous Cowards. The odds that you'll read this reply are near 0.
Had you been reading Slashdot religiously, you would have noticed that there have been a few recent stories talking about Linus's emphasis on pragmatism, including using a semi-free as in beer (but not as in speech), semi-commercial package for handling kernel patches. This has, obviously, greatly irritated the fanatical Mr. Stallman.
That's a bit of a loaded question in this case. As I said before, I don't consider ubiquituous free software (a la the ultimate Stallman dream) to be an essential freedom (as opposed to free speech, especially in the form of political criticism). Also, this isn't necessarily an either/or issue. We can have some free software and some proprietary software. Furthermore, I would consider the scenario where free software was completely blocked (due to, say, run-away digital rights management laws) to be a case worth fighting for.
In this case, it's kind of like being a slave for someone who only takes a small portion of the money you earn and places a few limitations on you (of questionable reasonableness, depending on your politics). In exchange, you're granted what may be a slightly better life than that which you could achieve independently. Depending on how you look at it, I just described proprietary software. Or a job. Or the role of government. Whether these really constitute freedom and slavery are all in the semantic parsing.
Having used both commercial and free software, I know there are times when the latter makes me feel like a slave to its lack of solid financial support. I know when the former makes me feel like a slave to its carefully crafted commercial licensing. There is no ideal answer, which is why I mix and match what works.
I agree that there are parallel's to the Napster case, but I believe that this case is actually slightly worse (and, depending on your perspective, on the opposite side of right vs. wrong).
With Napster, they created a service that was intended, from day 1, for heavy trafficking in copyrighted material. From what I understand, Napster went as far as to advertise the prevalence of popular artists on their service. Such knowledge is a key part of charging them with indirect copyright infringement (either contributory or vicarious -- I'm not up to date on the details).
With Microsoft, on the other hand, they apparently had a service that was no different from your standard message board with image attachments turned on. While there's no mention in the article of the theme of the board, there's nothing to imply an intent to profit off the indirect sharing of libelous material. That makes them (arguably) more innocent.
So even if you disagree with whether or not Napster's intent (or alleged intent if you disagree on the intent itself) pushes them into the guilt zone, it seems that Microsoft was standing in a less ambiguous position when they got nabbed. And that really worries me, simply because it implies that a court decision has crossed the invisible line (at least in my own mind) the stands between "Oh well." and "Uh oh."
Except that Microsoft didn't publish the pictures any more than Slashdot publishes user comments. They merely automatically reproduced user-provided content and removed the content once a complaint was generated.
Furthermore, while the intent behind the site is unclear, I doubt it was created with the implicit understanding that it would be used to primarily host libelous material (unlike, say, Napster which apparently had a wink-wink-nudge-nudge relationship with music piracy).
Time is money. If the freedoms are gain from free software are outpaced by the burden of the time and effort spent using it, it's a victory only to the hardcore, Richard Stallman-esque idealists.
I appreciate what the FSF types have achieved, but I don't consider 100% market saturation by free software to be an essential liberty. Therefore, I'm willing to side with convenience and pragmatism on this issue. I just don't see the value in devoting 2 hours to config file twiddling so I can run Starcraft next year.
That's all nice and good, except that it's in our best interests (and by "our", I mean people who disagree with the RIAA monopoly) to agree with them on this issue. The payola system provides a barrier to promotion for indie artists. It may be an annoyance to RIAA members (who can afford to fork over the cash), but it's a near deal breaker for the smaller fish (who have to rely on the rare non-commercial radio stations).
I've long espoused the theory that the best solution to the RIAA stranglehold is to remove the conditions which make it so effective for monopolistic music companies to suck in artists with awful contracts. A big part of that is promotion -- an artist needs to be heard in order to garner a fanbase. The internet has helped the situation to a degree. Unfortunately, we don't yet have ubiquitous, flat-rate wireless Internet access hooked up to car-based streaming mp3 players. So until then, we have to keep a serious eye on the radio stations, which currently enjoy a government allocated monopoly on a limited portion of radio bandwidth.
Still, I don't think that curtailing payola (and just like any other form of bribery or corruption, we'll never fully extinguish it) will completely fix the problem. But I do see it as a very important first step. It's visible, it's got clear jurisdiction (due to the government-granted monopoly), and it can only reduce the RIAA domination of the billboard. Even if the RIAA members profit off the deal (from no longer having the expense of payola), I'd still consider it a win if even a handful of indie artists gained billboard exposure from the deal.
If you read the (much more interesting) interview instead of the Salon article, you get a better picture of what everyone in the game is doing:
Artists -- They're all trying to get signed by labels. FightCloud is a means of moving toward their goals of becoming rich and/or famous, but it's not how they're finally going to get there.
FightCloud -- They want to be the step between obscurity and signing with a major record label. They even mention that they'll be a lot more attractive to artists once one of their current batch gets signed. Their business seems to be one step up from the guy in his basement burning CDs of the local garage bands. They're set up in such a way that failure only means they're own some time and effort.
So they'll never have the same sized audience as the labels, but since that's not their goal, they might just be okay.
If I were a company involved in a business that involved a large, fixed cost in order to produce two products, I'd assign a larger portion of that cost to the higher priced/more desireable product (while sticking within the constraints of what the market will bear). It'd be the same if the fixed cost were a $500,000 factory necessary for producing both cheap and premium widgets as it is for a $500,000 intangible recording/production session cost necessary for producing both tapes and CDs.
That depends on what you mean by "producing a CD". We've established that the company can cheaply produce physical CDs, but anyone with a CD burner knows how cheap that is.
As far as producing the contents of the CDs goes, this company doesn't seem to be involved in that. In the interview, they explain that they aren't a label (and have no contractual hold over the arists), but that they're instead a "promotional distribution company". So it sounds like the reason it's not expensive is because the artists are covering the music production expenses in exchange for exposure and royalties. That also means the artists would be carrying the risk, without the record label acting as something like a cut-throat venture capitalist.
Furthermore, different levels of music production require different degrees of expense. A single folk singer with a guitar recording on borrowed equipment will cost less than a full band in a regular studio. If most people are just as happy with the less expensive alternatives, then indie music wins. If not, then the idea of mainstream music continues.
Anyway, I think they're doing something nifty and I'm all for legal music distribution methods outside the RIAA's domain, but I don't think it's the amazing proof of RIAA's over-inflated pricing that you're making it out to be.
It's also interesting that the whole "escapist fantasy" argument loses its teeth. Even games that're touted as being realistic can generally argue that they're not intended to be acted out. But in this case, the government actually wants the players to eventually do the things they see in the game. Admittedly, it only wants the players to do these things under very specific circumstances (following orders while enrolled in the U.S. Military), but that statement is a significantly weaker defense compared to, say, Rockstar being able to flat-out state that they don't want you to act out any of the crimes in Grand Theft Auto 3, period.
It's only free advertising if we accept your statement that the people who don't buy the content when they can/do pirate it also wouldn't buy the content if it weren't easily available for piracy. While I believe your statement may be true in some individual cases, I don't think it necessarily works as a blanket statement. It's not hard to imagine someone being interested enough in a given song/artist that that person would pay for the CD, but that the person loses their motivation to spend money on something they essentially already have.
So if we accept that piracy cuts into some sales, it goes from free advertising to forced advertising. There's a cost (in the economic sense of the word) associated with the copyright violation of the work. The question becomes one of whether or not that cost is offset by the sales produced by the advertising. The answer is unclear. However, whether or not the product should be advertised in this manner is a decision that the copyright holder should be the one to make.
At least the Cowboy Neal thing is limited to once per poll. The DMCA joke thing is several times per story.
I agree it's ridiculous. I don't have a problem with people pointing out that it's ridiculous. I do have a problem with every single discussion that even tangentially touches the subject of copyright getting hit with a barrage of the exact same joke over and over and over.
I keep kicking it up, but there's only so high it'll go...
"That rant got you some karma but it wont change \."
Nope, no karma. I'm already capped like quite a few other people.
"In all likelyhood 75% of those people thought they were the first to post what they said. The other 25% want to get on everyone's nerves and repeat crap endlessly. You just validated their existence."
I think you're selling people a little short, but there is that. Still, you're leaving out the moderation factor. If my rant causes people to think about just how repetitive the official DMCA joke is getting, maybe they'll be more likely to moderate it as redundant or trolling.
That's a good point, as it does bear some close resemblance to the Dmitry case. Unfortunately, that point is getting lost amidst dozens of people going on about Staples getting sued for distributing circumvention devices.
I'm not against people raising a legitimate issue. I'm just tired of people making the same cookie cutter DMCA joke (not even jokes, since they're all really the same joke).
At this point, I long for the days of trolls posting haikus about a petrified Natalie Portman slathered in hot grits driving the Slashdot Cruiser over to a Beowulf cluster. At least those posts tended to get appopriately modded down as trolls rather than modded up as both insightful and funny.
The DMCA circumvention device joke has been made. Several times. Stop mindlessly repeating it like you're Raymond going through the Who's On First routine. Besides, I hear Amazon.com has a patent on the business model of mindlessly repeating a joke.
(I apologize for cluttering up the comments with meta-discussion, but I felt the point needed to be made. Also, since this is just a repost, most important points have already been made.)
Spreading implies that it's continuing to infect more hosts. If it has already infected all infectable hosts, then it's not able to infect more hosts. If we assume that the random number generator it's using is at least decent, then the number of probes on port 1433 point toward the worm having hit all IP addresses several times (excluding the few addresses that the worm doesn't target -- it skips over 192.0.0.0/8, for example, despite there being a number of legitimate IP addresses in the range).
So with very, very few exceptions, I suspect that most people are either already infected or completely immune, at least as far as the null password worm goes. The brute force cracking worm might be able to spread more, given that it has to employ quite a bit more effort to get into a host.
For example, try entering "Frank Welker", "Don Messick", and "Maurice LaMarche" (all cartoon voice actors). Under "small set", you get back nothing but a failure page that implies you need to change the terms to get results. The failure page doesn't even have the "expand your search" link that successful small set searches have. But if you use "large set", you get back 3 additional items (well under the 15 item set limit of a small set).
But you were still running Sun's proprietary kernel (and other tools). I believe the point of the ideological "GNU system" is an entire operating system that's completely composed of free software. In RMS's article, he has an interesting line about the FSF computers (with regard to why he can't install Bitkeeper on them), "We have no non-free systems or applications on them now, and our principles say we must keep it that way."
That's true to a degree, but X and X-based programs are a key part of what the Linux operating system has become. While it's certainly possible to run without it (especially considering that I'm using emacs under lynx running on a virtual console), a non-special purpose, CD-based Linux distribution that was missing X (and lacked a substitute) would be woefully incomplete. In general, Linux is synonymous with the pure kernel (useless without supporting software) or the larger Linux distribution (which generally takes advantage of the freedom of free software to bundle quite a few extras).
Furthermore, we could even get away with removing key parts of the OS and still have a useful, working system. Ls? All we need is 'echo *'. It lacks information about permissions (which we could discover using chmod's -v switch, u+r, u-r, and a little patience). It lacks file dates (which are useful but not necessarily critical). But it works. And overall, we still have a useful, working system.
As time goes on, what is and isn't part of the operating system is constantly being redefined. We still have the hardcore, minimum set of functionality to run programs, but a more practical look (not unlike Linus's pragmatic views on the free software issue) turns up the need for a larger set of things that have become "must have" features: a GUI (ideally one that runs at setup time), enough network support (TCP/IP, FTP, simple web browser) to download more programs, a text editor capable of editing system configuration files. They're too high level to fit the traditional OS definition, but they're also too critical to be considered on the par with some of the less important packages that make up a distribution.
So it would be a great boon to web services if there were a way to somehow have a way of confirming that a person hasn't already signed up for a service. It'd allow many boards to weed-out their troll population while maintaining an open sign-up. On one forum I was on, the problem was so bad that registration was completely closed then later moved to a pay-only model.
The problem is that I can't see any way to do it without compromising the identities of the people. For example, I don't see a problem with Slashdot knowing that 'Erasmus Darwin' is my only Slashdot account, but I don't want to create a system where they could theoretically share records with another entity and use that to determine my identity there. Perhaps the identity token I provide to Slashdot could be some sort of one-way hash of my identity combined with '@slashdot.org', thereby limiting it to a single area.
One downside of this system is that a government-type institution with a search warrant could use my secret identity information to reproduce my Slashdot token and verify my identity. I don't see any way to prevent the identification from somehow serving to find-out who I am. Still, that theoretically pushes the identification process off to a similar level of difficulty to tracing the user's IP (i.e. Slashdot couldn't do it on its own). Thus, if we pretend that no one uses anonymizing web proxies, it's the same level of anonymity.
Also, there'd be a problem of issuing the secret identity keys. Presumably, this would be handled by the companies that already do encryption/security certificates. That means there'd be a cost associated with such keys, which would turn away a number of people. If only a small percentage of people fork over the $XX/year for a personal identity certificate, most sites won't be able to require their use for signup. Furthermore, it'd be difficult for the issuing agency to verify the uniqueness of each request, especially when we consider that this would have an international audience. I also wouldn't be surprised if some of the countries that have whored out their ccTLDs decided to also start selling their equivilent of SSNs to people interested in extra identities.
Finally, there'd be the issue of identity theft. Having a single, computer-based identity key would be a very tempting target for various malicious programs. If I were an evil spammer type and such an identity system were in place, I'd definitely try and steal as many identities as possible for sign up use.
No, it isn't. Microsoft has the benefit of having strong public recognition of both their product name and their company name. Furthermore, it wouldn't kill their trademark on the distinctive Windows flag logo that many people have seen at boot-up for the past 7 years.
I also think that retail stores would be less likely to carry a Linux-based operating system labelled "RedHat Windows". Why? Because anyone confused enough to buy "RedHat Windows" only because of the "Windows" in the name is going to return it the very next day when it fails to "work" (where "work" equates to running all his/her existing MS Windows-based programs; wine or other emulation packages aren't going to be enough to appease a novice end-user who was expecting actual MS Windows).
Finally, I think breaking up a monopoly via trademark is inherently lame. The whole point of trademarks are to allow consumers to be able to differentiate the different products in a given market. I know I'd feel dirty if Linux had to start tricking people into using it.
Microsoft isn't trying to shutdown the LindowsOS, as the article headline erroneously states. They're merely trying to stop them from using the Lindows name. The error seems to be a mistranscription of the Lindows press release, which refers to Microsoft attempting to "shut down Lindows.com" (presumably due to the name rather than the content). Even if Microsoft were to have won, there'd be nothing preventing the Lindows people from changing the name to JdsfhkjashdfkjOS.
I think the problem is that we've got two different notions of skipping ads here. The first is to fast-forward through advertisements. Even though the ads are being played without sound and the majority of frames are being dropped, they're still briefly popping up on the screen with a chance to grab your attention (especially since you're actively watching the screen to know when to hit play). This is the ad skipping method used by Tivo owners who haven't enabled the 30 second skip backdoor.
The other ad skipping method is to really skip over the ads using a 30 second skip button or even automatic commercial detection/elimination. The user just whacks the skip button until the TV show is back on screen (or does nothing in the case of the automated process). Under this situation, even the most well-written ad has no chance at grabbing your attention. The 30 second skip button is the method used by ReplayTV owners.
Now it's my guess (based on what little the article says and a little common sense) that they're using the notion of ad skipping to refer to the second skip method. I don't believe that they're disabling the fast-forward button every time a commercial break shows up.
Based on your comment that you don't see why anyone would buy this at all, I suspect you interpreted the article to mean that they were prohibiting the first type of ad skipping. I think that isn't the case here.