Remember, this is a man whose abrupt departure in '87 gave heart attacks to the comic page editors (if such things exist) of 1,300 papers... and a man who could command a Sunday-only strip several years ago that, IIRC, took up about 1/3 of a page.
Considering the dismal state of printed-page comics today, I'm not surprised that many would leap at the chance to put a Sure Thing back in, even at that space-cost. Breathed's bargaining from strength and he knows it.
While I quite agree with your point, you answered your own question: such a thing would cost money.
As someone noted above, it's just not the American way to give something away for free. I'm sure a lawsuit brought about to force building owners into UPS-ing their elevators would be tarred with the "loony left" brush faster than you could say Nader.
I'm sorry, was it the socialists/liberals/progressive/etc camp that's post hoc justifying the civilian destruction, duplicitous use of dubious WMD evidence, and international opprobrium in their march to war with Iraq because "Saddam was a bad, bad man"? I must have misunderstood, because that seems a lot like "ends justify the means" to me, and I could have SWORN that Bush/Cheney/Wolfowitz weren't what you so blithely try to slam as "liberal".
According to the DSLReports thread posted/linked above, people who were up to date with their Windows Update or had Windows Auto-Update on still got hit.:-/
I don't see how you could do that whilst retaining the same credit card.
While you make a valid point, I think the simple amount of junk mail I get daily offering me NEW NEW CREDITCARDS AT LOW LOW RATES! makes this a wholly moot point.
Heck, I have a different email address for everything I sign up for online, why not have a different credit card for each merchant?:)
Considering that, IIRC, all you need to get a day pass is to click on a bunch of ads, (Salon also offers paid monthly and yearly subscriptions, thus the necessary distinction between subscription types... cheap-bastard/.ers won't ever PAY for content, and "free" [or even cheap] daily passes are the only hope), I think your analogy just doesn't cut the mustard.
While in the real world, this would be a perfectly reasonable idea, in the minds of the RIAA attack lawyers it becomes something altogether different. As many commentators have already noted, almost everyone who gets a subpoena is going to have to try to settle because the costs of defending oneself is going to be too high. A screenshot of free songs on offer is bullshit evidence, but you still have to expend all the time and resources proving it's bullshit evidence. That's what SLAPPs are all about.
Fair Use trumps exclusive rights. Backup copies and time/spaceshifting have been found to be legitimate examples of Fair Use even though they are not explicitly mentioned in TITLE 17 > CHAPTER 1 > Sec. 107..
But you're right, and that's a valid catch on me.
Ultimately, though, this isn't about the right of the RIAA to sue, it's about the viability of their arguments (does Paragraph 4 of section 107 mean they have to work out how many times each song was downloaded? I think it might), and the tendency to use this SLAPP to threaten those who can't fight back, even though their uses may be legally non-infriniging.
Other fun facts....
" ''Distribute'' means to sell, lease, or assign a product to consumers in the United States, or to sell, lease, or assign a product in the United States for ultimate transfer to consumers in the United States."
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/htm_hl?DB=us co de17&STEMMER=en&WORDS=distribut+&COLOUR=Red&STYLE= s&URL=/uscode/17/1001.html#1001.0_6
Making a folder browsable to a certain program, AFAKS, is neither "selling," "leasing," or "assigning".
Since I have no relationship with an anonymous downloader, I am in no way a "distributor."
And the lunacy of this very valid point is exactly why I do hope (as someone posted below) that they sue "the wrong guy," who decides to pick a fight and stand up for himself.
Who's doing the copying? He who shares, or he who downloads?
Say I rip my CD collection (I have). Every mp3 I have is legit as a backup (this is going under the assumption that fair use still exists -- the argument about THAT can go on later). I go on KaZAa and sit there, looking for those GPL'ed parod songs I've heard so much about. My legitimately created files are open for the taking. An RIAA drone comes along and copies one to his computer.
I'm running Gnome 2.2 on a 233 mHz Pentium II with 128 megs RAM pretty darn well. Loadup-time on Moz. and OO.o are a drag, but once they're there, they multi-task wonderfully along with XMMS, GAIM and misc. consoles.
Now, the 100 mHz Toshiba laptop I have... that's a whole other story. 40 megs of RAM means I can't even run Winamp + anything.
My MAIN machine is a 1.3 GHz P4. Works incrediibly well as a Java dev machine, Tomcat server, game station, Photoshop diddler, etc, often simultaneously.
IE 5.5 for mac is an embarassment. IE 5.0 for mac was a thing of beauty. Compliance, compliance, compliance.
But they killed it, rewrote the core engine. Why? because they didn't want their Mac version to be more in line with CSS-1 and CSS-2 than their Windows version. So don't let them fool you with any hooey about "access to the underlying OS".
I quite agree... nothing in the article even mentioned why this would need to be a secret investigation. The whole thing seemed to be "rah rah rah spam is bad" (which is true, but irrelevant).
"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from any body. Accordingly, it is a fact, as far as I am informed, that England was, until we copied her, the only country on earth which ever, by a general law, gave a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea. In some other countries it is sometimes done, in a great case, and by a special and personal act, but, generally speaking, other nations have thought that these monopolies produce more embarrassment than advantage to society; and it may be observed that the nations which refuse monopolies of invention, are as fruitful as England in new and useful devices."
- Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Isaac McPherson, August 13, 1813
Shouldn't that be $1 yearly? I see how having be a one-time deal would be beneficial for what Eldred et al. were trying to do (specifically, re-publish works whose owners were missing, dead, or otherwise unavailable), but in order to avoid having exactly the same problem 50 years hence, shouldn't they cover all their bases and make it a $1/year requirement?
Haven't signed yet on that basis. The petition, while great in concept, doesn't seem to be executed "professionally" enough to make anyone in Congress care.
Slashdot Mirror
My god, more than $9.50 an hour? That's almost living wage! Quick, call out the Pinkertons and bust these lazy Commies!
H1-B visa? Anyone? Bueller?
Remember, this is a man whose abrupt departure in '87 gave heart attacks to the comic page editors (if such things exist) of 1,300 papers... and a man who could command a Sunday-only strip several years ago that, IIRC, took up about 1/3 of a page.
Considering the dismal state of printed-page comics today, I'm not surprised that many would leap at the chance to put a Sure Thing back in, even at that space-cost. Breathed's bargaining from strength and he knows it.
While I quite agree with your point, you answered your own question: such a thing would cost money.
As someone noted above, it's just not the American way to give something away for free. I'm sure a lawsuit brought about to force building owners into UPS-ing their elevators would be tarred with the "loony left" brush faster than you could say Nader.
I'm sorry, was it the socialists/liberals/progressive/etc camp that's post hoc justifying the civilian destruction, duplicitous use of dubious WMD evidence, and international opprobrium in their march to war with Iraq because "Saddam was a bad, bad man"? I must have misunderstood, because that seems a lot like "ends justify the means" to me, and I could have SWORN that Bush/Cheney/Wolfowitz weren't what you so blithely try to slam as "liberal".
According to the DSLReports thread posted/linked above, people who were up to date with their Windows Update or had Windows Auto-Update on still got hit. :-/
Even better would be if there were little buttons/links/checkboxes next to the listings that allowed you to kill the processes right then and there.
Opening up a whole new console for kill -9 is a hassle.
I don't see how you could do that whilst retaining the same credit card.
:)
While you make a valid point, I think the simple amount of junk mail I get daily offering me NEW NEW CREDITCARDS AT LOW LOW RATES! makes this a wholly moot point.
Heck, I have a different email address for everything I sign up for online, why not have a different credit card for each merchant?
RTFA. He got court costs (~$135) in the decision too.
Considering that, IIRC, all you need to get a day pass is to click on a bunch of ads, (Salon also offers paid monthly and yearly subscriptions, thus the necessary distinction between subscription types... cheap-bastard /.ers won't ever PAY for content, and "free" [or even cheap] daily passes are the only hope), I think your analogy just doesn't cut the mustard.
While in the real world, this would be a perfectly reasonable idea, in the minds of the RIAA attack lawyers it becomes something altogether different. As many commentators have already noted, almost everyone who gets a subpoena is going to have to try to settle because the costs of defending oneself is going to be too high. A screenshot of free songs on offer is bullshit evidence, but you still have to expend all the time and resources proving it's bullshit evidence. That's what SLAPPs are all about.
Fair Use trumps exclusive rights. Backup copies and time/spaceshifting have been found to be legitimate examples of Fair Use even though they are not explicitly mentioned in TITLE 17 > CHAPTER 1 > Sec. 107..
s co de17&STEMMER=en&WORDS=distribut+&COLOUR=Red&STYLE= s&URL=/uscode/17/1001.html#1001.0_6
But you're right, and that's a valid catch on me.
Ultimately, though, this isn't about the right of the RIAA to sue, it's about the viability of their arguments (does Paragraph 4 of section 107 mean they have to work out how many times each song was downloaded? I think it might), and the tendency to use this SLAPP to threaten those who can't fight back, even though their uses may be legally non-infriniging.
Other fun facts....
" ''Distribute'' means to sell, lease, or assign a product to consumers in the United States, or to sell, lease, or assign a product in the United States for ultimate transfer to consumers in the United States."
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/htm_hl?DB=u
Making a folder browsable to a certain program, AFAKS, is neither "selling," "leasing," or "assigning".
Since I have no relationship with an anonymous downloader, I am in no way a "distributor."
(Ah, pedantry)
And the lunacy of this very valid point is exactly why I do hope (as someone posted below) that they sue "the wrong guy," who decides to pick a fight and stand up for himself.
Show me the standing law against file sharing.
This lawsuit is an attempt to MAKE that law, nothing more.
Who's doing the copying? He who shares, or he who downloads?
Say I rip my CD collection (I have). Every mp3 I have is legit as a backup (this is going under the assumption that fair use still exists -- the argument about THAT can go on later). I go on KaZAa and sit there, looking for those GPL'ed parod songs I've heard so much about. My legitimately created files are open for the taking. An RIAA drone comes along and copies one to his computer.
Who has done wrong? Who should be sued?
Costs 50% more, too... from $40 to $60. Eeep!
You're brilliant. Wish they let me mod anymore.
I'm running Gnome 2.2 on a 233 mHz Pentium II with 128 megs RAM pretty darn well. Loadup-time on Moz. and OO.o are a drag, but once they're there, they multi-task wonderfully along with XMMS, GAIM and misc. consoles.
Now, the 100 mHz Toshiba laptop I have... that's a whole other story. 40 megs of RAM means I can't even run Winamp + anything.
My MAIN machine is a 1.3 GHz P4. Works incrediibly well as a Java dev machine, Tomcat server, game station, Photoshop diddler, etc, often simultaneously.
IE 5.5 for mac is an embarassment. IE 5.0 for mac was a thing of beauty. Compliance, compliance, compliance.
But they killed it, rewrote the core engine. Why? because they didn't want their Mac version to be more in line with CSS-1 and CSS-2 than their Windows version. So don't let them fool you with any hooey about "access to the underlying OS".
Yeah, but if anyone resells DSL in violation of TOS, just think of the lawsuit costs.... *eep*
I quite agree... nothing in the article even mentioned why this would need to be a secret investigation. The whole thing seemed to be "rah rah rah spam is bad" (which is true, but irrelevant).
Interesting? Was this mis-modded? Or did the mods take their "gullible pills" today, washed down by a healthy dose of "Haha Jasyon Blair!" juice?
h icalh.shtml
http://www.centralmaine.com/news/stories/030113et
http://www.isfound.org/tiger-team.html
I read the petition. Where in the bit I'm expected to sign does it say anything about a small fee? That's my beef.
"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from any body. Accordingly, it is a fact, as far as I am informed, that England was, until we copied her, the only country on earth which ever, by a general law, gave a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea. In some other countries it is sometimes done, in a great case, and by a special and personal act, but, generally speaking, other nations have thought that these monopolies produce more embarrassment than advantage to society; and it may be observed that the nations which refuse monopolies of invention, are as fruitful as England in new and useful devices."
- Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Isaac McPherson, August 13, 1813
Shouldn't that be $1 yearly? I see how having be a one-time deal would be beneficial for what Eldred et al. were trying to do (specifically, re-publish works whose owners were missing, dead, or otherwise unavailable), but in order to avoid having exactly the same problem 50 years hence, shouldn't they cover all their bases and make it a $1/year requirement?
Haven't signed yet on that basis. The petition, while great in concept, doesn't seem to be executed "professionally" enough to make anyone in Congress care.