I liked that article. I like succinctness. The didn't try to muddy the waters with talk about 'rights of users' and Freedom of Speech. It brought it down to the basics.
Napster is taking advantage of a hole in the market. A hole left open by the recording industry due to their lackluster performance in providing the consumer what the consumer demands. See that is what true capitalism is about. Necessity isn't the mother of invention, Want is. I want to get free cheap music in vast quantities. If enough people want this, suddenly someone capitalizes upon that want and supplies my demand, legally or not.
The article mentioned also doesn't take sides and correctly says 'there are no heroes in this case'. I'm not putting my butt on the line for Napster, but I defend their right try to create a company that fills that hole in the market. Now if they could do it and compensate the artists, that would be terrific.
I'd like to reiterate that right now, the artists are just jumping on the hype wagon the RIAA is pulling. But in actuality, the RIAA members wouldn't pay their artists for the work downloaded from an RIAA sponsored digital distribution system. Okay, I can't say that with certainty, but I know from Courtney Love's article in Salon just how badly labels screw artists. A hundred fold worse than Napster, that is for sure. Napster won't bankrupt an artist.
And the next time RIAA says Napster is ripping the musician off, wonder to yourself how much money the artist would get if there was a RIAApster? Would the music labels give any money to the artist or would they just rake it in for themselves. Remember, the artist doesn't hold the copyright to the recording the label does.
I just want to say I was wrong on my definition of piracy. I checked it out at dictionary.com and it clearly states piracy is when there has been an unauthorized use of copyright or patent.
I was mistaken in believing some material compensation had to be a component to make it a crime. Damn, I've been a pirate for a loooong time.
I'm tired of the good guy/bad guy thing. The world isn't polarized so perfectly. Unfortunately we don't have the makings of a perfect movie here with the ideal victims and the examplary villain.
This really isn't a great ideological battle like the Scopes Monkey Trial. The core issue at hand is can a service be held liable if that service is used for illegal activity?
I don't have a good answer to that. They may not be 100% liable, but if you know illegal activity is occuring and you don't do anything about it, then you have some responsibility for it happening.
Is it illegal to share music? No. But we have to define the difference between sharing and distributing. I'm not a legal expert and I sure in heck don't have all the answers. One day I am against Napster the next I am for it. But what does not help is when either side is painted as the hero or villain. For the love of dove's blood, we aren't talking about life and death, toxic waste in people's backyards kind of stuff. It really isn't even about the big issues of Freedom of Speech and Expression, even though Napster wants to drag it to that level.
So let's take a deep breath, don't have knee jerk reactions, don't use words like thievery because theft means denying someone the use of their property and don't use the word pirate because piracy in modern terms means copying and selling for your own profit. The law in question is Copyright Infringement, and more specifically aiding in copyright infringement.
Napster would sell its user base to the RIAA in a New York second. At no point did they enter this venture with altruistic goals of increasing information access and development of independent artists. That is after the fact rhetoric.
Napster now wants to try to demonstrate that it can 'control' its user base to maybe get a settlement out of the deal. Let's face it, they most likely had been hoping BMG or Warner Bros. would buy them up and make 'em stinking rich.
And when Fanning developed this idea, he probably was just looking for an easy way to exchange MP3's like any good red-blooded college student. And his intelligence allowed him to create Napster.
I too want a third side. Ideally, I want a song sharing system designed with the artist in mind (whether the artist be a musician, programmer, painter, graphic designer, or writer).
Napster is wrong and so is the RIAA/MPAA. These transactions should be between the creator and consumer. The creator gets to choose how much is charged for their goods and the consumer gets freedom of choice.
The distributor is just a middleman easily replaced by whatever mechanism so long as the creator has chosen that mechanism. What has happened is the consumer has said, we want our music via digital download. Now it is up to the creator's to decide how to implement that. Or more realistically, it is time for those of us with a better way to present it to the artists. Not to the distributors whom we'd be competing.
Actually, I still buy CD's. And all the CD's I have I haven't turned into MP3's.
The only time I listen to MP3's is on my RIO on the train commuting to and from work. Okay, during Halloween when my department did a Y2K dress-up theme, I hooked my RIO to some speakers and played a bunch of Y2K music I got from MP3.com. Other than that, I like having a material object for my music. I am too often fiddling with my hard drives and stuff to rely upon my data stored there. And, to cut off those who have an answer for everything, I don't have a CD burner.
Besides, I still buy CD's for friends and relatives. Why? Because not everyone has a computer (as hard as that is to imagine) and not everyone wants to listen to their music on their computer (because some people actually do other stuff besides sit at their computer -- if you can imagine/self-ridicule).
I think you've kind of hit upon something here. A lot of people thought Napster was a great way to get free music. I know I am guilty of downloading MP3's from it not for purposes of sampling it to see if I would buy it, but simply because I wanted to hear that particular song without having to go out and buy it. Would I have downloaded it if I had to pay a dollar? No, it wasn't worth that much to me. It was a spur of the moment kind of thing.
I would hazzard to guess a strong majority didn't even consider the legalities of it, they just did it because it was there. And then suddenly, it gets pointed out that the system is illegal (it isn't piracy, I really wish people would get that straight, but it is copyright infringement, and not against the artist, but against the recording label. Napster wasn't taking money out of the artist's pocket it was taking it out of the recording industury's pocket).
People's reaction to that is to begin justifying their actions. What we are seeing isn't true outrage about the right of peer-to-peer networking, we are seeing the shame and indignation of children who got caught with their hands in the cookie jar.
I wish Slashdot wasn't on the 'side of Napster' but instead would have taken a more enlightened approach of "Yep, Napster enabled illegal actions, but the current music distribution system sucks rancid pork meat." And with that attitude realized Napster would have sold out it's 20 million users in a second to the RIAA if it had a chance.
Labor and energy could then be focused on developing a digital distribution system that appealed to the artist. Cajole Billy Joel, Elton John, Metallica, Backstreet Boys, and whoever else to produce music and distribute it exclusively via a new system where they get money for each download. Truly cut the major labels out of the picture.
Napster wants the assistance of the cyber community. What it wants is to keep its private monopoly. The minute they started making money via distribution of material that was copied without permission of the owner...then it is piracy.
It is interesting that wide spread sharing of the written word on the internet hasn't been adopted. Quite possible it is just because it isn't that interesting or there really is too much already available for free. At least in that case the individual author would own the copyright and not the publishing house.
I am curious how much money the artists would get from an RIAA file sharing system. Let's say in the next week RIAApster makes an appearance and all the major labels open up their vaults of music for people to download.
Heck, let's even say they have developed a super encryption scheme that only allows me to listen to the music that I've downloaded (since we are talking fiction, lets go whole hog).
Now I can download AC/DC's "I've Got Big Balls" and listen to it to my heart's content. I can sample the latest Hanson tunes and rock out to classic Britney Spears. In downloading these songs, I am paying RIAApster afair amount of money they have established for each song. Heck, since this is fantasy, we'll even say I'm paying $3 as has been recommended by the industry.
How much of that $3 would the artist see?
I think it is interesting how the trade group has gottent the artists all hyped up, but really, how much of that money would the artist get. I think the label would consider this free money. Remember, it isn't the artist who owns the copyright of a recording it is the label.
I agree with Katz on the point that the concept of copyright (and patents) have gone too far as if the old style institutions are freaking out over the internet and haphazzardly trying to place some controls on it.
But Napster is an evil all onto itself, and you (the proverbial you) know that the very moment they could have started to squeeze money out of their users, they would have. Napster was the drug dealer that gave away free samples to get you addicted.
Okay, I'm over generalizing. Napster isn't evil at all, it was simply a misguided attempt at making someone rich.
As NPR said, there is a difference between Napster the product and Napster the concept. Napster as a concept is here for good and the RIAA and MPAA and any other industry trade group has, as a Valenti said in a Salon article a small window of opportunity to provide a mechanism to handle the obvious demand before another Napster raises its head. And this time, with preknowledge of where the old Napster failed.
In fact, Gnutella and FreeNet are being touted as litagationproof. While I wouldn't necessarily agree with that, it does go far enough to demonstrate what is going to happen. RIAA and MPAA's short sightedness actually will harm artists in the long run as there won't be any way for an artist to defend their rights when everything is underground.
For my part, I've decided to use Tapster, at Tapster.com. It only has one song, but that just means I don't have to do any searching.
I'm not asking this to be sarcastic, this is truly out of curiousity. How do you get exposure through Napster? How do people know the titles of your songs or name of you band to look for your music?
Paying the artist should not be volutary. If the artist chooses to allow their work to be distributed for free, fine. But if the artist wants compensation for their work, that is cool, they deserve it. If they ask for more than the market will bear, well, they won't earn anything.
The possibility exists we could buy songs at a rate of ten to twelve US cents per minute.
Dear lord, imagine the effect this would have on music. It harkens back to the day when novel writers were paid by the word, so we got Dickens stuffing his work with every extraneous word he could get his hands on. Now a 4 minute Backstreet Boys song gets turned into a 12 minute opus. Speaking of which, at least classical and jazz music would be priced higher than pop stuff. But still...music by the minute? Sounds bad to me.
Adding some clarifications to this concept, the price increases would be based on downloads per period of time (e.g. a day). That way when it reaches a stable rate of download the price wouldn't keep increasing. Also, when demand drops the price could drop, unless the artist steps in and resets the minimum price.
Napster as an application falls way short on what it should be. Yeah, yeah, the disclaimers and user agreements are fine and I believe it is the individual who is ultimately responsible for criminal behavior. I can print books on how to make bombs, I can describe a hundred and one ways to kill someone, but in the end it is the individual who takes the action that is criminal.
With that being said, I want a better solution. Gnutella and FreeNet have their problems, technologically and morally. I still believe, no matter what, that if you want to have a song(story,picture) to listen to(read,look at)over and over, the artist(writer,photographer) who created that song(story,picture) deserves compensation.
This implies to me that any solution developed needs to incorporate the artists. The means the first step is to make sure the artist owns the copyright on the recording not the recording company. Then that artist agrees to distribute their work via a network.
I, the user, buy into the network. I get to put as much money as I want to with a minimum within reason (say $5). Everytime I download a song, my account is deducted a reasonable price, $.75 to $1.50. Even better, the artist sets a base price for each song and let market forces fluctuate the song. For every N downloads a song gets its price increases so it eventually finds its true market value. Unknown artists can set their songs at $0 and allow people to have it for free and see if the market will increase the price.
The money collected from the download is given to the artist. The network makes money to cover its costs much in the same way PayPal gets its money, by doing short term investments with the money people put into their accounts.
As I said, I am snowballing here and I don't know the viability of any of this. I also know MP3.com has done similar things so this isn't truly a new idea but a simplification of existing ideas coupled with a Napster user's desire for instant gratification with little hassle.
I strongly agree. Boycotts only work against limited organizations (like bus companies) when a significant user base refused to use them (like the African-American's in the 50's and 60's). The 20 million users of Napster choosing not to make any music purchases or attend any concerts for one month does very little to disrupt the flow of money.
Napster was a program to pirate music. The sooner everyone can agree on that point the sooner we can actually dig in and get some real solutions. I will not go to bat for a 'company' like Napster. But I will go to bat for the concept of peer-to-peer networking.
What should be done is pull in Lars and Courtney Love, and The The (who are openly violating their labels copyright on their songs via their website) and develop a file-sharing/song selling system that benefits the artist.
I am all for cutting out the record labels and see more money go to the artist. When I buy my cd's of Russian Chanting Monks, I want that money to go to the Monks, not to promote the Britney Spear's Tits Tour.
And shouldn't AOL be held accountable for the files and information it's users transfer?
Maybe they should be. AOL has the ability to control file sharing better than any other entity because their users for the most part stay within their servers.
Besides, why should the individual be responsible for anything s/he does? It is never the individual's fault. The individual can't be expected to know that reprinting a book and giving it to anyone who asks is unfair to the author of the book. That is obviously the fault of the people who made the machinery that allowed that to occur. The individual can't be expected to know that hitting someone with a car can kill them, that is the auto industry's fault./sarcasm
How exactly do you boycott the RIAA anyway? At least in any fashion that makes any sense? Not buy CD's produced by the major labels is one way, I guess. But, okay, the very small group of Napster users who weren't even enough to base a business model off of stop buying CD's. Yeah...that'll really affect the bottom line. The RIAA will just chalk the slump in sales in Gnutella use.
I would agree with this. What if they didn't get the overwhelming number of hits (which probably frightened them) would they have quietly collected money and never produce the item? The mere fact they allowed an order to be placed clearly identifies this as fraud, not a hoax. A hoax in my book would have been a fake news article describing the product and then letting people go nuts trying to find the company that makes it. While I still wouldn't be entertained by it, it would have at least have had less chance of being destructive.
I love to see 20/20 hindsight in action. Where was this analysis in the original/. posting? Shame shouldn't fall on those who believed the hoax, because not everyone is an expert in what PCI cards look like, printed processor codes, and what type of sticker is on each card dating back to '93. Shame goes to those who do know this information and didn't share it toot-sweet to halt the hoax before it suckered in more people. I was lucky enough I was clueless enough to know it was above my head and ignored it. Oh, and by the way, Russian Military technology isn't as outdated as you think. They are the ones who developed SuperCavitation for their torpedoes.
Seeing that/. wasn't the only source burned on this hoax, I can't see how you can take a Holier Than Thou stance. How much fact checking would you expect from a site like this? Many legit technews sources covered this 'story'.
I see your point about robots.txt not being able to be enforced, as in making it technologically impossible. What I do believe you can do with the robots.txt, is demonstrate that you have posted that 'no trespass' sign and gives you a defense to work from.
Instead of a blanket ruling disrupting more than one business plan, the ruling could apply to anyone ignoring the robots.txt is in violation.
Much like a 'no trespassing sign' which also can't be actively enforced, it merely allows those who are about to violate it that legal action can be taken against them.
As it stands now, it looks as though if I want my site metabrowsed because I sell super cheap book in comparison to BN.com I will have to contact each site that is a metabrowser for books and let them know that it is okay to metabrowse my site.
Yuck. That is like asking each and every store you visit if you can come in. A locked door and a closed sign tells me I can't. An open sign and unlocked door tells me it is okay.
I bring this up as a warning to those who think we should all immediately rush out and start locking things down. We might make it worse if we do. I know this statement sounds ridiculous--I'm just saying that maybe we should slow down and think before rushing off to act. Do the research, ask the questions.
I strongly concur with this statement and it doesn't sound ridiculous to me at all. I cannot speak to the 'perturbing an oscillating phenomena' or even any underlying chaos theory. What I can speak to is how my parents, brothers, and sisters would react to the situation.
Once they start hearing about new improved virii filters, improved protection from viral infections, they will stop taking the extra precautions they take now. Their confidence in the system will be increased without just cause. That is when they start downloading any ol' thing, not paying attention to what is being sent to them, and the like. Virii that aren't caught by traps and other protections suddenly run rampant.
There is no panacea. We need to progress slowly, fully aware that we might miss something. I'm a paranoid user and I still got nailed by a Trojan Horse once. It was all my fault because it could have been easily avoided, but I felt confident in my 'virus protocol' to protect me. Too bad I failed to update the software for that month.
Slashdot Mirror
Napster is taking advantage of a hole in the market. A hole left open by the recording industry due to their lackluster performance in providing the consumer what the consumer demands. See that is what true capitalism is about. Necessity isn't the mother of invention, Want is. I want to get free cheap music in vast quantities. If enough people want this, suddenly someone capitalizes upon that want and supplies my demand, legally or not.
The article mentioned also doesn't take sides and correctly says 'there are no heroes in this case'. I'm not putting my butt on the line for Napster, but I defend their right try to create a company that fills that hole in the market. Now if they could do it and compensate the artists, that would be terrific.
I'd like to reiterate that right now, the artists are just jumping on the hype wagon the RIAA is pulling. But in actuality, the RIAA members wouldn't pay their artists for the work downloaded from an RIAA sponsored digital distribution system. Okay, I can't say that with certainty, but I know from Courtney Love's article in Salon just how badly labels screw artists. A hundred fold worse than Napster, that is for sure. Napster won't bankrupt an artist.
And the next time RIAA says Napster is ripping the musician off, wonder to yourself how much money the artist would get if there was a RIAApster? Would the music labels give any money to the artist or would they just rake it in for themselves. Remember, the artist doesn't hold the copyright to the recording the label does.
I was mistaken in believing some material compensation had to be a component to make it a crime. Damn, I've been a pirate for a loooong time.
This really isn't a great ideological battle like the Scopes Monkey Trial. The core issue at hand is can a service be held liable if that service is used for illegal activity?
I don't have a good answer to that. They may not be 100% liable, but if you know illegal activity is occuring and you don't do anything about it, then you have some responsibility for it happening.
Is it illegal to share music? No. But we have to define the difference between sharing and distributing. I'm not a legal expert and I sure in heck don't have all the answers. One day I am against Napster the next I am for it. But what does not help is when either side is painted as the hero or villain. For the love of dove's blood, we aren't talking about life and death, toxic waste in people's backyards kind of stuff. It really isn't even about the big issues of Freedom of Speech and Expression, even though Napster wants to drag it to that level.
So let's take a deep breath, don't have knee jerk reactions, don't use words like thievery because theft means denying someone the use of their property and don't use the word pirate because piracy in modern terms means copying and selling for your own profit. The law in question is Copyright Infringement, and more specifically aiding in copyright infringement.
Napster now wants to try to demonstrate that it can 'control' its user base to maybe get a settlement out of the deal. Let's face it, they most likely had been hoping BMG or Warner Bros. would buy them up and make 'em stinking rich.
And when Fanning developed this idea, he probably was just looking for an easy way to exchange MP3's like any good red-blooded college student. And his intelligence allowed him to create Napster.
Napster is wrong and so is the RIAA/MPAA. These transactions should be between the creator and consumer. The creator gets to choose how much is charged for their goods and the consumer gets freedom of choice.
The distributor is just a middleman easily replaced by whatever mechanism so long as the creator has chosen that mechanism. What has happened is the consumer has said, we want our music via digital download. Now it is up to the creator's to decide how to implement that. Or more realistically, it is time for those of us with a better way to present it to the artists. Not to the distributors whom we'd be competing.
The only time I listen to MP3's is on my RIO on the train commuting to and from work. Okay, during Halloween when my department did a Y2K dress-up theme, I hooked my RIO to some speakers and played a bunch of Y2K music I got from MP3.com. Other than that, I like having a material object for my music. I am too often fiddling with my hard drives and stuff to rely upon my data stored there. And, to cut off those who have an answer for everything, I don't have a CD burner.
Besides, I still buy CD's for friends and relatives. Why? Because not everyone has a computer (as hard as that is to imagine) and not everyone wants to listen to their music on their computer (because some people actually do other stuff besides sit at their computer -- if you can imagine /self-ridicule).
I would hazzard to guess a strong majority didn't even consider the legalities of it, they just did it because it was there. And then suddenly, it gets pointed out that the system is illegal (it isn't piracy, I really wish people would get that straight, but it is copyright infringement, and not against the artist, but against the recording label. Napster wasn't taking money out of the artist's pocket it was taking it out of the recording industury's pocket).
People's reaction to that is to begin justifying their actions. What we are seeing isn't true outrage about the right of peer-to-peer networking, we are seeing the shame and indignation of children who got caught with their hands in the cookie jar.
I wish Slashdot wasn't on the 'side of Napster' but instead would have taken a more enlightened approach of "Yep, Napster enabled illegal actions, but the current music distribution system sucks rancid pork meat." And with that attitude realized Napster would have sold out it's 20 million users in a second to the RIAA if it had a chance.
Labor and energy could then be focused on developing a digital distribution system that appealed to the artist. Cajole Billy Joel, Elton John, Metallica, Backstreet Boys, and whoever else to produce music and distribute it exclusively via a new system where they get money for each download. Truly cut the major labels out of the picture.
Napster wants the assistance of the cyber community. What it wants is to keep its private monopoly. The minute they started making money via distribution of material that was copied without permission of the owner...then it is piracy.
It is interesting that wide spread sharing of the written word on the internet hasn't been adopted. Quite possible it is just because it isn't that interesting or there really is too much already available for free. At least in that case the individual author would own the copyright and not the publishing house.
Heck, let's even say they have developed a super encryption scheme that only allows me to listen to the music that I've downloaded (since we are talking fiction, lets go whole hog).
Now I can download AC/DC's "I've Got Big Balls" and listen to it to my heart's content. I can sample the latest Hanson tunes and rock out to classic Britney Spears. In downloading these songs, I am paying RIAApster afair amount of money they have established for each song. Heck, since this is fantasy, we'll even say I'm paying $3 as has been recommended by the industry.
How much of that $3 would the artist see?
I think it is interesting how the trade group has gottent the artists all hyped up, but really, how much of that money would the artist get. I think the label would consider this free money. Remember, it isn't the artist who owns the copyright of a recording it is the label.
Katz fairly clearly stated creator's deserve compensation for their work.
But Napster is an evil all onto itself, and you (the proverbial you) know that the very moment they could have started to squeeze money out of their users, they would have. Napster was the drug dealer that gave away free samples to get you addicted.
Okay, I'm over generalizing. Napster isn't evil at all, it was simply a misguided attempt at making someone rich.
As NPR said, there is a difference between Napster the product and Napster the concept. Napster as a concept is here for good and the RIAA and MPAA and any other industry trade group has, as a Valenti said in a Salon article a small window of opportunity to provide a mechanism to handle the obvious demand before another Napster raises its head. And this time, with preknowledge of where the old Napster failed.
In fact, Gnutella and FreeNet are being touted as litagationproof. While I wouldn't necessarily agree with that, it does go far enough to demonstrate what is going to happen. RIAA and MPAA's short sightedness actually will harm artists in the long run as there won't be any way for an artist to defend their rights when everything is underground.
For my part, I've decided to use Tapster, at Tapster.com. It only has one song, but that just means I don't have to do any searching.
While I love the idea of independent musicians making it via the internet, I just never saw how Napster could do that efficiently.
Paying the artist should not be volutary. If the artist chooses to allow their work to be distributed for free, fine. But if the artist wants compensation for their work, that is cool, they deserve it. If they ask for more than the market will bear, well, they won't earn anything.
Dear lord, imagine the effect this would have on music. It harkens back to the day when novel writers were paid by the word, so we got Dickens stuffing his work with every extraneous word he could get his hands on. Now a 4 minute Backstreet Boys song gets turned into a 12 minute opus. Speaking of which, at least classical and jazz music would be priced higher than pop stuff. But still...music by the minute? Sounds bad to me.
Adding some clarifications to this concept, the price increases would be based on downloads per period of time (e.g. a day). That way when it reaches a stable rate of download the price wouldn't keep increasing. Also, when demand drops the price could drop, unless the artist steps in and resets the minimum price.
Napster as an application falls way short on what it should be. Yeah, yeah, the disclaimers and user agreements are fine and I believe it is the individual who is ultimately responsible for criminal behavior. I can print books on how to make bombs, I can describe a hundred and one ways to kill someone, but in the end it is the individual who takes the action that is criminal.
With that being said, I want a better solution. Gnutella and FreeNet have their problems, technologically and morally. I still believe, no matter what, that if you want to have a song(story,picture) to listen to(read,look at)over and over, the artist(writer,photographer) who created that song(story,picture) deserves compensation.
This implies to me that any solution developed needs to incorporate the artists. The means the first step is to make sure the artist owns the copyright on the recording not the recording company. Then that artist agrees to distribute their work via a network.
I, the user, buy into the network. I get to put as much money as I want to with a minimum within reason (say $5). Everytime I download a song, my account is deducted a reasonable price, $.75 to $1.50. Even better, the artist sets a base price for each song and let market forces fluctuate the song. For every N downloads a song gets its price increases so it eventually finds its true market value. Unknown artists can set their songs at $0 and allow people to have it for free and see if the market will increase the price.
The money collected from the download is given to the artist. The network makes money to cover its costs much in the same way PayPal gets its money, by doing short term investments with the money people put into their accounts.
As I said, I am snowballing here and I don't know the viability of any of this. I also know MP3.com has done similar things so this isn't truly a new idea but a simplification of existing ideas coupled with a Napster user's desire for instant gratification with little hassle.
Napster was a program to pirate music. The sooner everyone can agree on that point the sooner we can actually dig in and get some real solutions. I will not go to bat for a 'company' like Napster. But I will go to bat for the concept of peer-to-peer networking.
What should be done is pull in Lars and Courtney Love, and The The (who are openly violating their labels copyright on their songs via their website) and develop a file-sharing/song selling system that benefits the artist.
I am all for cutting out the record labels and see more money go to the artist. When I buy my cd's of Russian Chanting Monks, I want that money to go to the Monks, not to promote the Britney Spear's Tits Tour.
Maybe they should be. AOL has the ability to control file sharing better than any other entity because their users for the most part stay within their servers.
Besides, why should the individual be responsible for anything s/he does? It is never the individual's fault. The individual can't be expected to know that reprinting a book and giving it to anyone who asks is unfair to the author of the book. That is obviously the fault of the people who made the machinery that allowed that to occur. The individual can't be expected to know that hitting someone with a car can kill them, that is the auto industry's fault. /sarcasm
How exactly do you boycott the RIAA anyway? At least in any fashion that makes any sense? Not buy CD's produced by the major labels is one way, I guess. But, okay, the very small group of Napster users who weren't even enough to base a business model off of stop buying CD's. Yeah...that'll really affect the bottom line. The RIAA will just chalk the slump in sales in Gnutella use.
Seeing that /. wasn't the only source burned on this hoax, I can't see how you can take a Holier Than Thou stance. How much fact checking would you expect from a site like this? Many legit technews sources covered this 'story'.
Instead of a blanket ruling disrupting more than one business plan, the ruling could apply to anyone ignoring the robots.txt is in violation.
Much like a 'no trespassing sign' which also can't be actively enforced, it merely allows those who are about to violate it that legal action can be taken against them.
As it stands now, it looks as though if I want my site metabrowsed because I sell super cheap book in comparison to BN.com I will have to contact each site that is a metabrowser for books and let them know that it is okay to metabrowse my site.
Yuck. That is like asking each and every store you visit if you can come in. A locked door and a closed sign tells me I can't. An open sign and unlocked door tells me it is okay.
I strongly concur with this statement and it doesn't sound ridiculous to me at all. I cannot speak to the 'perturbing an oscillating phenomena' or even any underlying chaos theory. What I can speak to is how my parents, brothers, and sisters would react to the situation.
Once they start hearing about new improved virii filters, improved protection from viral infections, they will stop taking the extra precautions they take now. Their confidence in the system will be increased without just cause. That is when they start downloading any ol' thing, not paying attention to what is being sent to them, and the like. Virii that aren't caught by traps and other protections suddenly run rampant.
There is no panacea. We need to progress slowly, fully aware that we might miss something. I'm a paranoid user and I still got nailed by a Trojan Horse once. It was all my fault because it could have been easily avoided, but I felt confident in my 'virus protocol' to protect me. Too bad I failed to update the software for that month.