"Control-freak managers (like you) who enjoy strangling any
personal freedom or 'fun' in the workplace, are ultimately
counter-productive."
He did say that it was fine to bring in mp3s. He was just
opposed to using P2P software and company bandwidth to grab them.
That's not unreasonable, especially given the P2P-related legal
problems (as shown by the C&D letter) and resource problems (as shown
by the various organizations that've had their bandwidth chewed up by
such services).
"Years ago I used to work at Microsoft, and was free to do whatever
the fuck I wanted as long as I got my work done by the (intentionally
short) deadlines set."
When I interned at Microsoft (Summer of '99?), Steve Ballmer sent out
a company-wide email essentially telling people to stop engaging in
rampant copyright infringement. It seems everyone knew about a few
multi-gig mp3 servers, a few servers with movie/TV rips (including Red
Dwarf and The Young Ones episodes), and http://msradio/ (on-demand,
streaming mp3s -- you could set up your own playlists, see what other
people were listening to, and even have the server pick random songs
based on your preferences).
Re:NAZI's and DMCA
on
Enigma
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
"So are you just dismissing Anarcho-Capitalism"
The problem with that is that everything becomes contract law.
Suddenly, you've offloaded the "protect the IP" burden on to the
already hated licensing agreement.
Pro: This would probably require an upfront, formally signed contract
rather than the "break the seal to indicate acceptance" bullshit.
Con: The contract would have to be worded such that all damages caused
by secondary violators (i.e. people who redistribute the work obtained
from the original violator) is recoverable from the primary violator.
Since the secondary violators haven't signed the contract, there's
nothing to stop them from "legally" redistributing the work.
Con: Weak legal IP protection mechanisms encourage content producers
to use elaborate copy protection systems.
Con: Weak overall IP protection discourages commercial interests from
entering an IP-based venture. While some people would herald the
influx of indie artists working off busking-type systems, there's
really nothing to stop such artists from doing that already.
Pro: Artists will focus more on live performances, using freely
distributed music as a means of advertising.
Con: Other IP ventures don't have the equivilent of concerts. Books
would even lose the hardcopy advantage, since anyone with a printing
press could theoretically start churning out cheaper, professionally
printed copies, provided they can get their hands on the book without
signing the accompanying license agreement.
Re:NAZI's and DMCA
on
Enigma
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
"Control of the flow of information and ownership of information
(and everything else) is a basic principal of any fascist
state."
And complete lack of control/ownership of information (and everything
else) is a basic principal of any anarchistic state.
Any government requires citizens to give up certain freedoms in order
to exist. For example, I am generally prohibited from walking into a
busy shopping mall and firing a gun into the air. The goal is to walk
the careful balance between too many freedoms (allowing people to
randomly shoot people on the street, allowing strangers to wander
through your house at 3 am) and too few freedoms (disallowing
political dissent, making all property owned by the state).
It's unfair to reject the notion of controlling information simply
because it's something that fascists took to the extreme. You're
welcome to argue that the current information control in "free"
countries is too far towards the fascist side, but that requires a
more detailed, relative judgement.
To further make the point, incarceration of law breakers is also a
basic principal of any fascist state. And yet that doesn't make our
jail system inherently wrong.
All that being said, I do believe that the DMCA does go too far at
times. I do not, however, disagree with the underlying motive of
reducing copyright infringement.
"In other words, because the ONLY remaining purpose of the RIAA
members existance is to make people pay artists, the screwing over of
artists MUST be addressed in piracy compensation legislation."
You have a point, but I think you're over-valuing the Internet's
influence and disregarding some of the other contributions of RIAA
members. There's more to distributing and promoting music than just
throwing a copy up on KaZaA. In an ideal world, just making the music
available would be enough, but in an ideal world, we wouldn't be
worrying about this issue, either. Let's also not forget that there
are still people interested in buying CDs out of stores. It takes
work to get a retail item on store shelves. That's any retail item --
even something completely unrelated to intellectual property.
There's also the issue of managing the rights to use the song in other
contexts. Radio broadcast rights (at least until the year 2055, when
we get complete, flat-rate, cheap wireless Internet coverage
and car-based streaming mp3 players), movie rights, and so on
all require contracts and negotiation. While negotiating with each
individual artist for the movies rights might be okay (since it's just
a dozen or so songs), negotiating the radio rights would be a killer.
Next we've got the investment angle. RIAA members are the ones who
front all that money to cover the expenses that Courtney Love
complains about in her oft-cited piece. Yes, they demand an obscene
amount of money back in return, but they are the ones taking the
initial financial risk.
Anyway, how about implementing the copyright holder protection in such
a way as to cover even small-scale copyright holders? If we assume
that Internet distribution is a valid model, then that would allow a
creative artist to continue to act as the copyright holder for his/her
own body of work. That person would (hopefully) receive a fair cut of
the pie based on his/her popularity.
At the same time, I'd want a dual effort to reform the music industry
both at the RIAA member level and the radio level. Cut out price
fixing. Cut out contracts that unfairly leverage a monopolistic
status in order to reduce the creative artist's royalties. Cut out
payola (or at least regulate it), where the RIAA members have to give
money to the radio stations to get air time.
The payola issue would probably be the best starting point. It
greatly cuts down on smaller artists, it's already illegal (I
believe), and radio stations are open to regulation because they've
been granted something of a monopoly by the government (since radio
bandwidth is inherently limited).
"Notice that this says "copyright holder" and not "creative
artists""
You flagged the correct paragraph, but I believe you flagged it for
the wrong reason. The paragraph worries me because it's potentially a
tax on all ISP usage, whether the person is using it to host a small
website, SSH to a Unix box for multiplayer nethacking, play legally
purchased copies of online videogames, or engage in P2P filesharing.
Furthermore, determining who's copyrighted material is being shared
will be iffy at best: If we go off commercial sales then effectively
protected works (such as online videogames require unique CD keys)
would receive a disproportionately higher share of piracy
compensation. If we go off of what's being shared then copyright
holders would have an incentive to pretend to illegally share their
own copyrighted works.
As to why I believe you reason (lack of compensation for creative
artists) isn't relevant: The entire point of laws to protect
intellectual property is to protect the person who holds the rights to
that work. By default, that would be the person who created the work.
However, sometimes the creator is unable to pursue the commercial use
of the work. In this case, the creator can sell his ownership of the
absolute rights of the work to a new party. Once he's done so, he's
no longer a part of the discussion -- it's not the creator's work
anymore.
Now in the case of the recording industry, the artists are "selling"
their works in exchange for receiving royalties based on the future
sales of that work. They probably have other rights relating to the
work that they reserve. This entire arrangement is managed by the
infamous "recording contract". However, if you have a problem with
recording contracts screwing over the creative artists, the place to
address would be some sort of anti-trust or anti-monopoly suit or
legislation, not piracy compensation legislation.
"When a university student launches a program out into the net, and
that program sneaks onto your machine and mucks with your registry and
steals your CPU cycles, it's a "virus.""
That's a nice comparison, but I suspect that you may not have read the
article too closely. From the article:
"During the KaZaA client update, users will be able to opt out of
the Altnet service, the spokesperson says. The company did not say
this previously."
Now we don't know this will turn out to be a full disclosure deal
("Would you like to join the new Altnet service where WE SEND YOU
TARGETED ADS AND USE YOUR SPARE CPU CYCLES TO FIND AN ANTHRAX CURE?")
or just a cryptic message ("Join Altnet service?"). Whether or not
they're doing something questionable all depends on just how exactly
they wind up going about it. And unfortunately, no one seems to have
exact details on what the Altnet launch will look like.
"that rightm then the "stars" of friends would be forced to live on
a measley 100,000 a week."
...and the stars of many of the less popular shows (some of which tend
to have a loyal geek following) will be off collecting unemployment.
If there's an across-the-board drop in ad revenue, it hits everyone.
The super-popular shows have enough leeway to tighten their belts.
The less mainstream shows will probably get kicked in favor of reality
TV garbage.
"Networks' ad revenue is based on how many people watch a show,
which is based on Nielson ratings. It is NOT based on how many people
buy something after they see an ad, because that is pretty hard to
determine."
Yes, but companies pay out based on Nielson ratings because they
believe (presumably with the help of marketing research) that those
ads do cause people to go out and buy things later. If ads decline in
actual effectiveness, that knowledge will eventually get back to
advertisers, who will then value ratings to a much lesser degree.
Hence my emphasis on unsubstantiated claims and my wordy attempt to
explain just why I believe Rep. Boucher should be considered "one of
the smart ones" regardless of one's political views.
I'll admit, however, that I failed to address the lack of
substantiation within the Slashdot article summary. While it's true
that the editor didn't elaborate on the "smart one" comment, it's
worth pointing out the inherently terse nature of an article summary.
Slashdot comments, on the other hand, are generally at liberty to go
further in-depth on a given subject.
Still, I may have failed in my effort to differentiate between the
original article summary's comment (which I will admit is not without
some bias) and the follow-up flamebait comment. Unfortunately, it is
much, much easier to come up with an inflamatory, trollish comment
than it is to provide a clear, detailed refutation of that comment.
(And yes, I recognize that it's generally the best policy to just
ignore trolls. However, I've also seen the biases and failings of
some of the Slashdot moderators and felt a well-written critique would
be the most effective way to prevent it from being inappropriately
moderated up.)
"Which is exactly why this post needs to be modded to flamebait.
It must be nice to live in such a simple world."
Ironically, you seem to be guilty of the exact same behavior. You're
accusing others of automatically labelling anyone who disagrees. At
the same time, you're implying that anyone who negatively moderates
your unsubstantiated claims is automatically being
narrowminded.
Regardless of whether or not you agree with him, Rep. Boucher comes
across as being both extremely well informed and capable of explaining
his position. As further evidence, take a look at the interview
he did with Slashdot awhile back.
And despite your claims, some of us are capable of differentiating
between intelligence and agreement:
Hillary Rosen: Complete idiot; I'm heavily in the pro-copyright camp,
yet I still cringe every time I see a quote from her.
Bill Gates: Brilliant businessman; I'm using Linux right now, I love
it to death, and I hate some of the shady, monopolisitic bullshit
Microsoft has pulled and continues to pull. That doesn't stop me from
recognizing that he's been able to make quite a lot of money, even
factoring in the additional profitability of illegal behavior.
"I'm all for getting rid of the Microsoft tax, but this just smacks
of promoting piracy, frustrating users, and adding fuel to microsoft's
arguments about how bad an idea naked PCs are."
While I see your point, let's not forget that there's a legitimate,
purely Windows-centric solution to the problem that doesn't involve
forking over extra money: existing, non-OEM Windows licenses. If a
user has already purchased a retail copy of Windows, they can install
it on the new machine provided that they completely remove it from
their old one.
Admittedly, I don't know how many non-OEM copies of Windows are
floating around, as it seems most people purchasing a computer would
go for an OEM bundle. Still, they're at least theoretically out
there.
"If you invented a better moustrap and GPL'd the design, then MSFT
wouldn't be able get a patent on it, and thus license for big fees or
lock any other developer or competitor out."
The problem with this analogy is that it assumes no innovation on the
part of the commercial party. Let's say, for example, that someone
creates a GPL'd pump. Now let's say that a company wants to use the
pump as a built-in bilge pump in a boat design. Either they GPL the
entire boat design (which means they have to expand into the boat
servicing industry) or they design their own (potentially
sub-standard) pump.
Now imagine if the pump was under a license similar to that used for
the Berkeley DB. Under that
license, the pump is free for non-commercial use (allowing John
Q. Hacker to make his own pumps in the backyard and such), but
requires a fee for commercial use (forcing the boat maker to pay out
money but also allowing the boat maker to charge for the boat design).
"Michael had better watch out, considering he has nothing to do
with Gateway (or is this the beginning of a new conspiracy
theory?)..."
While Michael Dell may not be involved with this Gateway's content
distribution, it's worth pointing out that Dell seems to be doing
something similar. My sister's Dell laptop came pre-loaded with a
Dell Music Jukebox, which featured a handful of mp3's (including They
Might Be Giant's "Older") and an option to download more songs from
Dell's site.
Overall, it looks like PC manufacturers are starting to leverage their
positions the same way that Microsoft tried to. Remember the Weezer
video on the Windows 95 CD? Remember the channels feature in Windows
98? These efforts seem to be similar in nature, but they're a bit
better designed to fit what users want.
"The kid who wrote DeCSS wasn't exposing himself to a lawsuit
either, since Norway doesn't have a DMCA. But he got sued
anyway."
I honestly have no clue what Norway's legal system is like. However,
DeCSS did (arguably) have a use in violating copyright/copy
protection. Regardless of whether or not DeCSS was generally
legitimate in nature, the MPAA could at least argue that it assisted
in piracy.
In this case, however, there's nothing for them to bring a case with.
As long as Gateway is getting permission from the copyright holders,
they're in the clear. As I said before, it sounds just like what
mp3.com is doing. A quick check at mp3.com's weekly top 40
shows that they're carrying a number of "regular", commercial artists
(Sheryl Crow, Linkin Park, Alanis Morissette, Natalie Imbruglia, Enya,...). And as far as I know, mp3.com hasn't been sued over this
portion of their service.
(Yes, mp3.com was sued in the past over its BeamIT system. The system
did a decent job of confirming that a person owned a given CD, but it
was still streaming songs from albums that mp3.com had not obtained
permission from the copyright holders to "broadcast". Even though
they were acting to minimize piracy, they were still arguably
violating copyright laws. So that issue isn't exactly relevant
here.)
"Finally they will get sued, meaning a whole lot of hassle to only
serve a few users."
I don't see how they're doing anything that exposes them to a lawsuit.
From what I read of the article, they're only distributing music that
they can legally distribute. It sounds like they're essentially a
more commercialized version of mp3.com's regular service (not to be
confused with the lawsuit-ridden BeamIT service).
I suspect many artists will use this system as a way to promote their
work without giving up all of their work. They could create a
few freely distributable singles and allow those to help drive album
sales. It would be similar in nature to one of the big pro-P2P
arguments (exposure to artists/sample before you buy), but it would be
done with the full consent of the copyright holder and it wouldn't
necessarily result in the entire album being available.
"But why are these "non-conventional" things getting blamed?"
I was wondering the same thing. The best reasoning that I could come
up with is that it's the real-world equivalent of steganography. Just
like steganography, it allows you to superficially hide data in such a
way that many people will completely miss it. And just like
steganography, you're in trouble if someone knows what they're looking
for. Fortunately, both this system and steganography can be used as
an additional layer on top of any other practices -- there's nothing
to prevent you from PGP encrypting the hidden data.
Still, there's the classic drawback that steganographically hidden
data implies that you have something to hide. Of course that seems to
be the area where this non-conventional smuggling excels. A security
guard isn't likely to check the contents of an mp3 player for hidden
data. At worst, you'll just be prohibited from bringing the player in
the office.
"But it kinda bugs me that the description includes
"Linux-based". Now, I know Slashdot is Linuxcentric (no, really?), but
still I think that was kinda irrelevant to the review."
It's relevant in a couple ways: The review is intended for an audience
that's interested in the commercial viability of Linux. The
Linux-based nature of Tivos has helped people who have hacked their
machines (in a good way). Also, there's an entire interview in the
article which has a substational discussion of Tivo's involvement with
Linux.
"It's like that story about Best Buy having a customer arrested,
where in the first paragraph it was mentioned that he was an American
Indian."
Actually, he was an Indian American (implying someone whose ancestors
were originally from the country of India), not an American Indian
(implying someone whose ancestors lived in North America before the
arrival of the Mayflower). And it was relevant in that there were
allegations further on in the article that the incident may have been
racially motivated.
"Now, I can just see the moderation: -1, Antilinux."
How about "(-1, Fails to read entire article)" and "(-1, Shamelessly
tries to be a moderation martyr)"?
"But it isn't a protection mechanism. You can still play the games
on your own PC whether or not you connect to the Battle.net
servers."
It is a protection mechanism. It's just that it's a protection
mechanism that only covers one feature (multiplayer support) rather
than the entire product. Since multiplayer support is a desireable
feature of the product and bypassing the protection is difficult, it's
also a fairly effective form of protection.
"They could've gone with Linux but they decided to go the other way
and steal, that'll teach them."
Except that there's no proof of theft, yet. At this point, the only
reason the school district is considered guilty is because that's the
default position until they can prove their innocence through
licenses. Furthermore, even if they're 100% innocent (which is,
admittedly, unlikely), they've got the threat of a 25,000 computer
software audit hanging over their head. That's both expensive and
disruptive to their regular work.
Sure, there's the theoretical option of allowing Microsoft to cover
the auditing, but that results in the school getting stuck with the
bill should a single license problem be discovered. If the result is
25,000 copies of Windows and 24,999 licenses, the school's going to be
receiving a disproportionately hefty fine for such a minor
transgression (that's over a 99.99% compliance rate).
In short, the schools are getting screwed before there's even any
solid evidence of wrongdoing.
"To me, it's hilarious how slashdotters treat spoilers to a popular
science fiction TV show with all the same seriousness as billion
dollar anti-trust cases and corporate/legislated threats freedom of
speech."
I'm reminded of the historic phrase "life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness." If you're dead, nothing really matters. If you're alive
but oppressed, you're being deprived of a fundamental human liberties
that we hold very dear. But if you're alive and free, those things
don't matter too much unless you're actually having some fun -- there
has to be a reason to bother getting up in the morning.
In short, entertainment and recreation are key parts of the human
experience. Just because they're inherently less than serious doesn't
mean they're unimportant.
"When it comes to creativity, adults not liking it is no excuse not
to do something."
It is if you're trying to keep them as part of your audience.
Besides, it's no so much that adults didn't like Jar-Jar, but rather
that many of them hated him with a passion. Since Star Wars has
always been something that's tried to appeal to everyone, Jar-Jar
ruins the film for a number of people.
Besides, it's been shown time and time again (especially by Pixar)
that it's quite possible to create something that appeals to both
children and adults. Lucas even had the "magic of Star Wars"
providing fans with an incentive to overlook small flaws. But
instead, he chose to completely screw things up by sticking a CG
version of Barney in the film.
...and then chrisd left the fuckup there to spoil it for more
people. Given the especially geekish population at Slashdot, it's
not unreasonable to assume that many of the people who were unable to
watch X-Files last night would probably be the same type of dedicated
fans who would tape it and watch it later. Furthermore, several
people on Slashdot own PVRs, which means they're less likely to bother
watching it live.
In short, even if he had posted it at the proper time, chrisd showed
and continues to show a complete lack of awareness for advances in the
realm of television watching technology.
"A trivial change to a piece of open software can make the proprietary version incompatible with the open version."
On the other hand, a GPL'd versions could theoretically play the same game. Just look at how much success gcc and glibc had in hijacking people away from ANSI C with their own (admittedly useful) extensions.
Basicially, putting government-created software under a BSD-style license makes it as if that source were just some inherent, unowned knowledge. Just as I can freely use the concept of "1 + 1 = 2" in both commercial and GPL'd ventures, the government code would also be shared knowledge that anyone could utilize in any fashion.
"No problemo. Just wait until the year 2097. The GPL copyrights on the software will expire, and you'll be able to use it to your heart's content."
Copyright... The notion by which an author is granted a time-limited, exclusive license to his creation in reward for creating it. In the case of government-funded software, we've essentially already rewarded the author by paying their entire development cost, thereby allowing us to skip directly to step 2.
And just for the record, while I may be pro-copyright and pro-commercial software (without being anti-free software), I also believe strongly in sane, limited copyrights. I hate what Disney's done to the copyright system as much as the next guy.
"If the government pays for research and development of GPL'ed software, they are ensuring that the government, US citizens, and US corporations will always be free to use the fruits of that work, even after it has been extended."
But those extensions are parts of other people's work. An inventor can use an expired patent as part of some new, more complex, patentable work. A writer can use a portion of a story with an expired copyright to create a new, copyrighted work. It's my personal belief that government-funded research should go into that same pool.
And remember that commercial usage of a piece of BSD code doesn't remove that code from general usage. Only the new bits (developed the same as any other commercial code) are what the company really has exclusive control of.
Slashdot Mirror
He did say that it was fine to bring in mp3s. He was just opposed to using P2P software and company bandwidth to grab them. That's not unreasonable, especially given the P2P-related legal problems (as shown by the C&D letter) and resource problems (as shown by the various organizations that've had their bandwidth chewed up by such services).
"Years ago I used to work at Microsoft, and was free to do whatever the fuck I wanted as long as I got my work done by the (intentionally short) deadlines set."
When I interned at Microsoft (Summer of '99?), Steve Ballmer sent out a company-wide email essentially telling people to stop engaging in rampant copyright infringement. It seems everyone knew about a few multi-gig mp3 servers, a few servers with movie/TV rips (including Red Dwarf and The Young Ones episodes), and http://msradio/ (on-demand, streaming mp3s -- you could set up your own playlists, see what other people were listening to, and even have the server pick random songs based on your preferences).
The problem with that is that everything becomes contract law. Suddenly, you've offloaded the "protect the IP" burden on to the already hated licensing agreement.
Pro: This would probably require an upfront, formally signed contract rather than the "break the seal to indicate acceptance" bullshit.
Con: The contract would have to be worded such that all damages caused by secondary violators (i.e. people who redistribute the work obtained from the original violator) is recoverable from the primary violator. Since the secondary violators haven't signed the contract, there's nothing to stop them from "legally" redistributing the work.
Con: Weak legal IP protection mechanisms encourage content producers to use elaborate copy protection systems.
Con: Weak overall IP protection discourages commercial interests from entering an IP-based venture. While some people would herald the influx of indie artists working off busking-type systems, there's really nothing to stop such artists from doing that already.
Pro: Artists will focus more on live performances, using freely distributed music as a means of advertising.
Con: Other IP ventures don't have the equivilent of concerts. Books would even lose the hardcopy advantage, since anyone with a printing press could theoretically start churning out cheaper, professionally printed copies, provided they can get their hands on the book without signing the accompanying license agreement.
And complete lack of control/ownership of information (and everything else) is a basic principal of any anarchistic state.
Any government requires citizens to give up certain freedoms in order to exist. For example, I am generally prohibited from walking into a busy shopping mall and firing a gun into the air. The goal is to walk the careful balance between too many freedoms (allowing people to randomly shoot people on the street, allowing strangers to wander through your house at 3 am) and too few freedoms (disallowing political dissent, making all property owned by the state).
It's unfair to reject the notion of controlling information simply because it's something that fascists took to the extreme. You're welcome to argue that the current information control in "free" countries is too far towards the fascist side, but that requires a more detailed, relative judgement.
To further make the point, incarceration of law breakers is also a basic principal of any fascist state. And yet that doesn't make our jail system inherently wrong.
All that being said, I do believe that the DMCA does go too far at times. I do not, however, disagree with the underlying motive of reducing copyright infringement.
You have a point, but I think you're over-valuing the Internet's influence and disregarding some of the other contributions of RIAA members. There's more to distributing and promoting music than just throwing a copy up on KaZaA. In an ideal world, just making the music available would be enough, but in an ideal world, we wouldn't be worrying about this issue, either. Let's also not forget that there are still people interested in buying CDs out of stores. It takes work to get a retail item on store shelves. That's any retail item -- even something completely unrelated to intellectual property.
There's also the issue of managing the rights to use the song in other contexts. Radio broadcast rights (at least until the year 2055, when we get complete, flat-rate, cheap wireless Internet coverage and car-based streaming mp3 players), movie rights, and so on all require contracts and negotiation. While negotiating with each individual artist for the movies rights might be okay (since it's just a dozen or so songs), negotiating the radio rights would be a killer.
Next we've got the investment angle. RIAA members are the ones who front all that money to cover the expenses that Courtney Love complains about in her oft-cited piece. Yes, they demand an obscene amount of money back in return, but they are the ones taking the initial financial risk.
Anyway, how about implementing the copyright holder protection in such a way as to cover even small-scale copyright holders? If we assume that Internet distribution is a valid model, then that would allow a creative artist to continue to act as the copyright holder for his/her own body of work. That person would (hopefully) receive a fair cut of the pie based on his/her popularity.
At the same time, I'd want a dual effort to reform the music industry both at the RIAA member level and the radio level. Cut out price fixing. Cut out contracts that unfairly leverage a monopolistic status in order to reduce the creative artist's royalties. Cut out payola (or at least regulate it), where the RIAA members have to give money to the radio stations to get air time.
The payola issue would probably be the best starting point. It greatly cuts down on smaller artists, it's already illegal (I believe), and radio stations are open to regulation because they've been granted something of a monopoly by the government (since radio bandwidth is inherently limited).
You flagged the correct paragraph, but I believe you flagged it for the wrong reason. The paragraph worries me because it's potentially a tax on all ISP usage, whether the person is using it to host a small website, SSH to a Unix box for multiplayer nethacking, play legally purchased copies of online videogames, or engage in P2P filesharing.
Furthermore, determining who's copyrighted material is being shared will be iffy at best: If we go off commercial sales then effectively protected works (such as online videogames require unique CD keys) would receive a disproportionately higher share of piracy compensation. If we go off of what's being shared then copyright holders would have an incentive to pretend to illegally share their own copyrighted works.
As to why I believe you reason (lack of compensation for creative artists) isn't relevant: The entire point of laws to protect intellectual property is to protect the person who holds the rights to that work. By default, that would be the person who created the work. However, sometimes the creator is unable to pursue the commercial use of the work. In this case, the creator can sell his ownership of the absolute rights of the work to a new party. Once he's done so, he's no longer a part of the discussion -- it's not the creator's work anymore.
Now in the case of the recording industry, the artists are "selling" their works in exchange for receiving royalties based on the future sales of that work. They probably have other rights relating to the work that they reserve. This entire arrangement is managed by the infamous "recording contract". However, if you have a problem with recording contracts screwing over the creative artists, the place to address would be some sort of anti-trust or anti-monopoly suit or legislation, not piracy compensation legislation.
That's a nice comparison, but I suspect that you may not have read the article too closely. From the article:
"During the KaZaA client update, users will be able to opt out of the Altnet service, the spokesperson says. The company did not say this previously."
Now we don't know this will turn out to be a full disclosure deal ("Would you like to join the new Altnet service where WE SEND YOU TARGETED ADS AND USE YOUR SPARE CPU CYCLES TO FIND AN ANTHRAX CURE?") or just a cryptic message ("Join Altnet service?"). Whether or not they're doing something questionable all depends on just how exactly they wind up going about it. And unfortunately, no one seems to have exact details on what the Altnet launch will look like.
Yes, but companies pay out based on Nielson ratings because they believe (presumably with the help of marketing research) that those ads do cause people to go out and buy things later. If ads decline in actual effectiveness, that knowledge will eventually get back to advertisers, who will then value ratings to a much lesser degree.
Hence my emphasis on unsubstantiated claims and my wordy attempt to explain just why I believe Rep. Boucher should be considered "one of the smart ones" regardless of one's political views.
I'll admit, however, that I failed to address the lack of substantiation within the Slashdot article summary. While it's true that the editor didn't elaborate on the "smart one" comment, it's worth pointing out the inherently terse nature of an article summary. Slashdot comments, on the other hand, are generally at liberty to go further in-depth on a given subject.
Still, I may have failed in my effort to differentiate between the original article summary's comment (which I will admit is not without some bias) and the follow-up flamebait comment. Unfortunately, it is much, much easier to come up with an inflamatory, trollish comment than it is to provide a clear, detailed refutation of that comment.
(And yes, I recognize that it's generally the best policy to just ignore trolls. However, I've also seen the biases and failings of some of the Slashdot moderators and felt a well-written critique would be the most effective way to prevent it from being inappropriately moderated up.)
Ironically, you seem to be guilty of the exact same behavior. You're accusing others of automatically labelling anyone who disagrees. At the same time, you're implying that anyone who negatively moderates your unsubstantiated claims is automatically being narrowminded.
Regardless of whether or not you agree with him, Rep. Boucher comes across as being both extremely well informed and capable of explaining his position. As further evidence, take a look at the interview he did with Slashdot awhile back.
And despite your claims, some of us are capable of differentiating between intelligence and agreement:
Hillary Rosen: Complete idiot; I'm heavily in the pro-copyright camp, yet I still cringe every time I see a quote from her.
Bill Gates: Brilliant businessman; I'm using Linux right now, I love it to death, and I hate some of the shady, monopolisitic bullshit Microsoft has pulled and continues to pull. That doesn't stop me from recognizing that he's been able to make quite a lot of money, even factoring in the additional profitability of illegal behavior.
While I see your point, let's not forget that there's a legitimate, purely Windows-centric solution to the problem that doesn't involve forking over extra money: existing, non-OEM Windows licenses. If a user has already purchased a retail copy of Windows, they can install it on the new machine provided that they completely remove it from their old one.
Admittedly, I don't know how many non-OEM copies of Windows are floating around, as it seems most people purchasing a computer would go for an OEM bundle. Still, they're at least theoretically out there.
The problem with this analogy is that it assumes no innovation on the part of the commercial party. Let's say, for example, that someone creates a GPL'd pump. Now let's say that a company wants to use the pump as a built-in bilge pump in a boat design. Either they GPL the entire boat design (which means they have to expand into the boat servicing industry) or they design their own (potentially sub-standard) pump.
Now imagine if the pump was under a license similar to that used for the Berkeley DB. Under that license, the pump is free for non-commercial use (allowing John Q. Hacker to make his own pumps in the backyard and such), but requires a fee for commercial use (forcing the boat maker to pay out money but also allowing the boat maker to charge for the boat design).
While Michael Dell may not be involved with this Gateway's content distribution, it's worth pointing out that Dell seems to be doing something similar. My sister's Dell laptop came pre-loaded with a Dell Music Jukebox, which featured a handful of mp3's (including They Might Be Giant's "Older") and an option to download more songs from Dell's site.
Overall, it looks like PC manufacturers are starting to leverage their positions the same way that Microsoft tried to. Remember the Weezer video on the Windows 95 CD? Remember the channels feature in Windows 98? These efforts seem to be similar in nature, but they're a bit better designed to fit what users want.
I honestly have no clue what Norway's legal system is like. However, DeCSS did (arguably) have a use in violating copyright/copy protection. Regardless of whether or not DeCSS was generally legitimate in nature, the MPAA could at least argue that it assisted in piracy.
In this case, however, there's nothing for them to bring a case with. As long as Gateway is getting permission from the copyright holders, they're in the clear. As I said before, it sounds just like what mp3.com is doing. A quick check at mp3.com's weekly top 40 shows that they're carrying a number of "regular", commercial artists (Sheryl Crow, Linkin Park, Alanis Morissette, Natalie Imbruglia, Enya, ...). And as far as I know, mp3.com hasn't been sued over this
portion of their service.
(Yes, mp3.com was sued in the past over its BeamIT system. The system did a decent job of confirming that a person owned a given CD, but it was still streaming songs from albums that mp3.com had not obtained permission from the copyright holders to "broadcast". Even though they were acting to minimize piracy, they were still arguably violating copyright laws. So that issue isn't exactly relevant here.)
I don't see how they're doing anything that exposes them to a lawsuit. From what I read of the article, they're only distributing music that they can legally distribute. It sounds like they're essentially a more commercialized version of mp3.com's regular service (not to be confused with the lawsuit-ridden BeamIT service).
I suspect many artists will use this system as a way to promote their work without giving up all of their work. They could create a few freely distributable singles and allow those to help drive album sales. It would be similar in nature to one of the big pro-P2P arguments (exposure to artists/sample before you buy), but it would be done with the full consent of the copyright holder and it wouldn't necessarily result in the entire album being available.
I was wondering the same thing. The best reasoning that I could come up with is that it's the real-world equivalent of steganography. Just like steganography, it allows you to superficially hide data in such a way that many people will completely miss it. And just like steganography, you're in trouble if someone knows what they're looking for. Fortunately, both this system and steganography can be used as an additional layer on top of any other practices -- there's nothing to prevent you from PGP encrypting the hidden data.
Still, there's the classic drawback that steganographically hidden data implies that you have something to hide. Of course that seems to be the area where this non-conventional smuggling excels. A security guard isn't likely to check the contents of an mp3 player for hidden data. At worst, you'll just be prohibited from bringing the player in the office.
It's relevant in a couple ways: The review is intended for an audience that's interested in the commercial viability of Linux. The Linux-based nature of Tivos has helped people who have hacked their machines (in a good way). Also, there's an entire interview in the article which has a substational discussion of Tivo's involvement with Linux.
"It's like that story about Best Buy having a customer arrested, where in the first paragraph it was mentioned that he was an American Indian."
Actually, he was an Indian American (implying someone whose ancestors were originally from the country of India), not an American Indian (implying someone whose ancestors lived in North America before the arrival of the Mayflower). And it was relevant in that there were allegations further on in the article that the incident may have been racially motivated.
"Now, I can just see the moderation: -1, Antilinux."
How about "(-1, Fails to read entire article)" and "(-1, Shamelessly tries to be a moderation martyr)"?
It is a protection mechanism. It's just that it's a protection mechanism that only covers one feature (multiplayer support) rather than the entire product. Since multiplayer support is a desireable feature of the product and bypassing the protection is difficult, it's also a fairly effective form of protection.
Sure, there's the theoretical option of allowing Microsoft to cover the auditing, but that results in the school getting stuck with the bill should a single license problem be discovered. If the result is 25,000 copies of Windows and 24,999 licenses, the school's going to be receiving a disproportionately hefty fine for such a minor transgression (that's over a 99.99% compliance rate).
In short, the schools are getting screwed before there's even any solid evidence of wrongdoing.
I'm reminded of the historic phrase "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." If you're dead, nothing really matters. If you're alive but oppressed, you're being deprived of a fundamental human liberties that we hold very dear. But if you're alive and free, those things don't matter too much unless you're actually having some fun -- there has to be a reason to bother getting up in the morning.
In short, entertainment and recreation are key parts of the human experience. Just because they're inherently less than serious doesn't mean they're unimportant.
It is if you're trying to keep them as part of your audience. Besides, it's no so much that adults didn't like Jar-Jar, but rather that many of them hated him with a passion. Since Star Wars has always been something that's tried to appeal to everyone, Jar-Jar ruins the film for a number of people.
Besides, it's been shown time and time again (especially by Pixar) that it's quite possible to create something that appeals to both children and adults. Lucas even had the "magic of Star Wars" providing fans with an incentive to overlook small flaws. But instead, he chose to completely screw things up by sticking a CG version of Barney in the film.
In short, even if he had posted it at the proper time, chrisd showed and continues to show a complete lack of awareness for advances in the realm of television watching technology.
On the other hand, a GPL'd versions could theoretically play the same game. Just look at how much success gcc and glibc had in hijacking people away from ANSI C with their own (admittedly useful) extensions.
Basicially, putting government-created software under a BSD-style license makes it as if that source were just some inherent, unowned knowledge. Just as I can freely use the concept of "1 + 1 = 2" in both commercial and GPL'd ventures, the government code would also be shared knowledge that anyone could utilize in any fashion.
Copyright... The notion by which an author is granted a time-limited, exclusive license to his creation in reward for creating it. In the case of government-funded software, we've essentially already rewarded the author by paying their entire development cost, thereby allowing us to skip directly to step 2.
And just for the record, while I may be pro-copyright and pro-commercial software (without being anti-free software), I also believe strongly in sane, limited copyrights. I hate what Disney's done to the copyright system as much as the next guy.
But those extensions are parts of other people's work. An inventor can use an expired patent as part of some new, more complex, patentable work. A writer can use a portion of a story with an expired copyright to create a new, copyrighted work. It's my personal belief that government-funded research should go into that same pool.
And remember that commercial usage of a piece of BSD code doesn't remove that code from general usage. Only the new bits (developed the same as any other commercial code) are what the company really has exclusive control of.