That people who download a song from an album are more likely to buy it than those that didn't download songs from that album? No shit. Those that didn't download weren't interested. At all. If that's the case, your point is worthless. People who are interested enough to download a song are more likely to buy it than those that aren't! Alert the media, we have a real shocker!
That 80% of people that download songs then go out and buy the albums for every song they've downloaded? Hardly. That's a ridiculous figure. People who violate copyright law so flagrantly are nowhere near that honest or scrupulous. Try a little skepticism.
Insane contracts? The only thing insane is how shittily the artists are treated.
It's not the million-dollar videos that they wouldn't be able to afford. It's the studio and producer fees necessary to make the music that they couldn't pay if they got 5 cents per download. You clearly have no idea how expensive it is to run a big company. Don't assume the rest of the world will accept what you like.
500,000 a day is nothing -- 180 million a year. Each of these companies has billions in revenue. How the hell are they even going to pay for artists to record songs with revenues that miniscule? 180 million isn't a lot for a big corporation, let alone split among a dozen.
I don't exactly applaud the actions of record execs, but running a record label is an EXPENSIVE business. Virtually no artist can afford to record a professionally polished album without a record deal, period. Secondly, labels promote the hell out of artists, giving them exposure they couldn't get themselves. Think getting rid of the labels would solve this problem? Wrong.
Instead of labels demanding royalties, you'd have studio owners and freelance producers demanding huge portions of the sales proceeds from the acts that can't afford to pay them cash for making an album. You'd have marketers demanding a huge percentage of sales for getting the bands exposure, and distributors getting a large cut as well. Unless a band had lots of their own money to invest in their success, they'd be right where they are now.
I'm not sure what giving money directly to the artists would do. They'd still have to pay everyone who took a risk on their success.
1)That you pay for your connection is entirely irrelevant. That is a sunk cost and as you do not incur any additional charges for downloading (assuming standard monthly rates), it should play no part in your decision.
2)You don't have to burn it to CD-R. That cost is an additional cost you choose to pay for additional convenience.
3)I do think you're right that paying for a whole album at $2/song is too much. But I'd like to be albe to buy a few singles for that much rather than shell out $18+ for a medicore album, so it seems like a good deal to me. I'd hope for $10/album "bulk" pricing.
You're really dense. You're paying in opportunity cost (what you could have earned during the time spent talking), not money, retard.
And you're paying for that local phone line somehow, whether or not you use it to talk to your friends. Actually, that makes you the idiot -- you're not using a service you already pay for. Not that I think talking to friends would really be something you'd have to worry about consuming lots of time...
Any band can cover any song they want in concert, and I think this holds for CD release as well. Ever notice how most cover songs don't have the lyrics printed in the accompanying liner notes? That's because it's okay to copy a performance of a song by performing it yourself, but it's not okay to copy the printed lyrics. But IANAL, so feel free to correct me if what I've heard is wrong.
I am still a law student, but I took my criminal law final 4 days ago, so I'm pretty up on 4th amendment law (standard don't take this advice disclaimer applies). But with only 1 semester behind me, I know there are vast holes in my knowledge and understanding. However, here is my analysis:
A search is not legally considered a search if someone voluntarily shares the information with the public. For example, the police can get a list of the phone numbers you've dialed and see your bank records or look through your trash without a warrant. As people are voluntarily sharing lists of their mp3s over p2p networks, compiling the very same list for use in a criminal prosecution would absolutely be legal.
Now, the RIAA is on shaky legal ground because of the method they've used to compile the list -- they would certainly be liable for any damage they caused to your machine via this exploit -- but proving actual damages would be very difficult. And, as far as I know, they'd be well within their (legal, not moral) rights to prosecute you if you went after them for hacking your machine. They might not be as stupid as they seem...
I'd like to point out that I did do research before I posted, and Harvard's average SAT is 1495. Check it out here.
Since we have 99% of our DNA in common with mice, it's clear that small differences in genetics go a long way. Intelligence does seem to be inherited to a large extent -- so having smart/successful parents helps you do well on the SAT and in school, and Harvard does tend to produce people that are smart and successful.
It's clear to me that you deliberately misconstrued my use of the word environment in order to make an obnoxious point about Harvard. Of course I meant that high-achieving parents will tend to put more pressure on their children to succeed and will give them every opportunity to do so, not they'd feed them better and create a race of big-brained super-humans.
I hope you would have noted that I have never claimed that everyone who goes to Harvard is brilliant -- just that they tend to be smarter than most -- and I've never claimed that Harvard provides the best undergraduate education. Harvard is a shitty place for a lot of people and its admissions process is far from perfect.
One thing I keep forgetting to add -- I'm not sure how you can make the claim that Harvard's standards doom it to being second-rate when it is the most selective college in the US.
Fine. Whatever. It was a bad choice of words. Caltech and MIT are pretty unique in the US. Whatever the top private colleges in the US say, they do give significant preference to legacies in admissions -- don't bash Harvard just because they're honest about it. Having gone through the admissions process with my friends not too long ago, it's obvious that Harvard is not alone in its practices.
I'd also like to point out that I'm NOT for preferential legacy admissions. I'm just pointing out that your stats are incorrect and overstate the effect of legacy status on admissions, especially at Harvard.
If 1/3 of Harvard's entering class is legacies (your stat) and has an SAT 35% below the average, and Harvard's average SAT is ~1500 (which it is), then the average SAT of a legacy is ~1000. However, this is not mathematically possible. If 1/3 of the class has an average of 1000, then the rest (2/3) of the class would have to average 1750 on their SATs to get there. Since you can only get 1600 points, I submit that you have some more research to do before you jump to conclusions.
Another point: it stands to reason that sons and daughters of alumni would be much more likely to get accepted to Harvard, even without legacy preference. People who go to Harvard are going to tend to be smarter, wealthier, and more intellectual than most [note: I am not saying that Harvard grads are the best at this, or the only ones that are successful or worthwhile or ANYTHING like that]. Their children will share these traits, because of genetics and because of the environment their super-motivated parents provide for them. That they overachieve at a rate that far surpasses the average should not be at all surprising. And I'd hope that the Harvard admissions rate would reflect that.
You're right about a lot, however you overstate the effect of legacy admissions. Most legacies admitted to Harvard are just as qualified as non-legacies. Additionally, Harvard is by no means unique in giving preference to the offspring of alums, so it suffers nothing in relation to its competitors by preferentially admitting legacies. I'm aware that MIT and CalTech don't preference legacies in admission, and I commend them for it. But they're unique in that respect.
Also, one could make the case that, by admitting legacies, Harvard ensures quality education for all, as it keeps the alumni $$$ rolling in.
Also, I don't think Harvard reserves any proportion of the class for legacies; that sounds like an urban legend to me.
Yup, but that doesn't even begin to cover the total cost of the education at a private school -- which can top 60k/year. The rest of the money comes from the Uni's endowment. US state schools are approximately as expensive as the Canadian ones, and they can provide an excellent education (better than most privates, at least).
I go to Harvard, I am paying for it myself with loans and scholarships, and you are absolutely dead wrong about Harvard's purpose.
Harvard is not selling anything. Its mission is to be the world's premier academic institution. Harvard does have a massive endowment that they try to grow every year. However, they use money from the endowment to subsidize everyone's education. Even people whose parents are footing the entire bill still get about a 50% break on the real cost of their education, last time I checked. Tuition isn't what Harvard makes their money from.
The truth is that most people can "hack it" at most colleges. However, that's not what Harvard is looking for. They're looking not just for academic competence, but real creative intelligence, for students that excel both in and outside of the classroom. Of course the admissions committee makes mistakes, but they're only human. If you're denied here, or anywhere that's very selective, it's not because you're not smart enough to do the work. It's because, right or wrong, the admissions committee doesn't think you'll contribute to the university community in a substantial enough manner. Sorry if that sounds arrogant.
It's not true in the US, either. Unis are non-profit organizations. There are a very very few exceptions, but none of the most selective is for-profit. While they all try to grow their endowments every year, they don't disperse any of that money to individuals -- they use the endowment to pay for facilities and other operating costs.
Professors at my school (a prestigious one) make far far more from outside consulting gigs than they do in salary, and they are paid at the top of the range for professors. In the uS, people choose to become academics because they love the life of the mind, not for any financial reasons. Though with comfortable six-figure salaries, none is exactly starving...
Above post COMPLETELY INCORRECT!
on
Kevin Free
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· Score: 1
The quotes prove the opposite of what the poster claims -- Mitnick is actually as free as any of us on 1/20/2003.
Stop being ridiculous. Disregarding the trespass claim, which I'll give you, you didn't address the point of my post: you're trying to induce them to take action against you. Your actions are designed to bring about what you'd be suing them for. That's going to be a problem for you.
I just bought the "In Sides" EP today -- they had 2 copies at my favorite record store -- streetlight in San Francisco. Sometimes hard to find, but if you see it, snap it up.
I doubt you'll have much of a case, as you'll be fraudulently inducing them to take action against you. If you know they'll scan your machine and know what will set off their filters and what the effects of tripping their filters will be, and purposely take action wanting those effects to take place, how can you complain when the action is taken against you? What you're doing is akin to the guy that purposely falls on the ice in front of the supermarket in order to sue.
The trespass upon chattels claim I don't know enough about, but I'd guess it'll be suspect as well. But I'm not a lawyer.
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What exactly did those surveys prove?
That people who download a song from an album are more likely to buy it than those that didn't download songs from that album? No shit. Those that didn't download weren't interested. At all. If that's the case, your point is worthless. People who are interested enough to download a song are more likely to buy it than those that aren't! Alert the media, we have a real shocker!
That 80% of people that download songs then go out and buy the albums for every song they've downloaded? Hardly. That's a ridiculous figure. People who violate copyright law so flagrantly are nowhere near that honest or scrupulous. Try a little skepticism.
Insane contracts? The only thing insane is how shittily the artists are treated.
It's not the million-dollar videos that they wouldn't be able to afford. It's the studio and producer fees necessary to make the music that they couldn't pay if they got 5 cents per download. You clearly have no idea how expensive it is to run a big company. Don't assume the rest of the world will accept what you like.
500,000 a day is nothing -- 180 million a year. Each of these companies has billions in revenue. How the hell are they even going to pay for artists to record songs with revenues that miniscule? 180 million isn't a lot for a big corporation, let alone split among a dozen.
I don't exactly applaud the actions of record execs, but running a record label is an EXPENSIVE business. Virtually no artist can afford to record a professionally polished album without a record deal, period. Secondly, labels promote the hell out of artists, giving them exposure they couldn't get themselves. Think getting rid of the labels would solve this problem? Wrong.
Instead of labels demanding royalties, you'd have studio owners and freelance producers demanding huge portions of the sales proceeds from the acts that can't afford to pay them cash for making an album. You'd have marketers demanding a huge percentage of sales for getting the bands exposure, and distributors getting a large cut as well. Unless a band had lots of their own money to invest in their success, they'd be right where they are now.
I'm not sure what giving money directly to the artists would do. They'd still have to pay everyone who took a risk on their success.
You have some odd economics:
1)That you pay for your connection is entirely irrelevant. That is a sunk cost and as you do not incur any additional charges for downloading (assuming standard monthly rates), it should play no part in your decision.
2)You don't have to burn it to CD-R. That cost is an additional cost you choose to pay for additional convenience.
3)I do think you're right that paying for a whole album at $2/song is too much. But I'd like to be albe to buy a few singles for that much rather than shell out $18+ for a medicore album, so it seems like a good deal to me. I'd hope for $10/album "bulk" pricing.
You're really dense. You're paying in opportunity cost (what you could have earned during the time spent talking), not money, retard.
And you're paying for that local phone line somehow, whether or not you use it to talk to your friends. Actually, that makes you the idiot -- you're not using a service you already pay for. Not that I think talking to friends would really be something you'd have to worry about consuming lots of time...
Any band can cover any song they want in concert, and I think this holds for CD release as well. Ever notice how most cover songs don't have the lyrics printed in the accompanying liner notes? That's because it's okay to copy a performance of a song by performing it yourself, but it's not okay to copy the printed lyrics. But IANAL, so feel free to correct me if what I've heard is wrong.
Great idea, but I think your step 1 might be just a wee bit too difficult for most of us.
I am still a law student, but I took my criminal law final 4 days ago, so I'm pretty up on 4th amendment law (standard don't take this advice disclaimer applies). But with only 1 semester behind me, I know there are vast holes in my knowledge and understanding. However, here is my analysis:
A search is not legally considered a search if someone voluntarily shares the information with the public. For example, the police can get a list of the phone numbers you've dialed and see your bank records or look through your trash without a warrant. As people are voluntarily sharing lists of their mp3s over p2p networks, compiling the very same list for use in a criminal prosecution would absolutely be legal.
Now, the RIAA is on shaky legal ground because of the method they've used to compile the list -- they would certainly be liable for any damage they caused to your machine via this exploit -- but proving actual damages would be very difficult. And, as far as I know, they'd be well within their (legal, not moral) rights to prosecute you if you went after them for hacking your machine. They might not be as stupid as they seem...
Apparently, you were super-bleeding-edge in adopting the term blog. Those colored disks were called pogs by everyone who traded them.
I'd like to point out that I did do research before I posted, and Harvard's average SAT is 1495. Check it out here.
Since we have 99% of our DNA in common with mice, it's clear that small differences in genetics go a long way. Intelligence does seem to be inherited to a large extent -- so having smart/successful parents helps you do well on the SAT and in school, and Harvard does tend to produce people that are smart and successful.
It's clear to me that you deliberately misconstrued my use of the word environment in order to make an obnoxious point about Harvard. Of course I meant that high-achieving parents will tend to put more pressure on their children to succeed and will give them every opportunity to do so, not they'd feed them better and create a race of big-brained super-humans.
I hope you would have noted that I have never claimed that everyone who goes to Harvard is brilliant -- just that they tend to be smarter than most -- and I've never claimed that Harvard provides the best undergraduate education. Harvard is a shitty place for a lot of people and its admissions process is far from perfect.
Exactly right on the environment. Thank you. I think that guy was just deliberately misconstruing my statement to be obnoxious about Harvard.
One thing I keep forgetting to add -- I'm not sure how you can make the claim that Harvard's standards doom it to being second-rate when it is the most selective college in the US.
Fine. Whatever. It was a bad choice of words. Caltech and MIT are pretty unique in the US. Whatever the top private colleges in the US say, they do give significant preference to legacies in admissions -- don't bash Harvard just because they're honest about it. Having gone through the admissions process with my friends not too long ago, it's obvious that Harvard is not alone in its practices.
I'd also like to point out that I'm NOT for preferential legacy admissions. I'm just pointing out that your stats are incorrect and overstate the effect of legacy status on admissions, especially at Harvard.
If 1/3 of Harvard's entering class is legacies (your stat) and has an SAT 35% below the average, and Harvard's average SAT is ~1500 (which it is), then the average SAT of a legacy is ~1000. However, this is not mathematically possible. If 1/3 of the class has an average of 1000, then the rest (2/3) of the class would have to average 1750 on their SATs to get there. Since you can only get 1600 points, I submit that you have some more research to do before you jump to conclusions.
Another point: it stands to reason that sons and daughters of alumni would be much more likely to get accepted to Harvard, even without legacy preference. People who go to Harvard are going to tend to be smarter, wealthier, and more intellectual than most [note: I am not saying that Harvard grads are the best at this, or the only ones that are successful or worthwhile or ANYTHING like that]. Their children will share
these traits, because of genetics and because of the environment their super-motivated parents provide for them. That they overachieve at a rate that far surpasses the average should not be at all surprising. And I'd hope that the Harvard admissions rate would reflect that.
You're right about a lot, however you overstate the effect of legacy admissions. Most legacies admitted to Harvard are just as qualified as non-legacies. Additionally, Harvard is by no means unique in giving preference to the offspring of alums, so it suffers nothing in relation to its competitors by preferentially admitting legacies. I'm aware that MIT and CalTech don't preference legacies in admission, and I commend them for it. But they're unique in that respect.
Also, one could make the case that, by admitting legacies, Harvard ensures quality education for all, as it keeps the alumni $$$ rolling in.
Also, I don't think Harvard reserves any proportion of the class for legacies; that sounds like an urban legend to me.
Yup, but that doesn't even begin to cover the total cost of the education at a private school -- which can top 60k/year. The rest of the money comes from the Uni's endowment. US state schools are approximately as expensive as the Canadian ones, and they can provide an excellent education (better than most privates, at least).
I go to Harvard, I am paying for it myself with loans and scholarships, and you are absolutely dead wrong about Harvard's purpose.
Harvard is not selling anything. Its mission is to be the world's premier academic institution. Harvard does have a massive endowment that they try to grow every year. However, they use money from the endowment to subsidize everyone's education. Even people whose parents are footing the entire bill still get about a 50% break on the real cost of their education, last time I checked. Tuition isn't what Harvard makes their money from.
The truth is that most people can "hack it" at most colleges. However, that's not what Harvard is looking for. They're looking not just for academic competence, but real creative intelligence, for students that excel both in and outside of the classroom. Of course the admissions committee makes mistakes, but they're only human. If you're denied here, or anywhere that's very selective, it's not because you're not smart enough to do the work. It's because, right or wrong, the admissions committee doesn't think you'll contribute to the university community in a substantial enough manner. Sorry if that sounds arrogant.
It's not true in the US, either. Unis are non-profit organizations. There are a very very few exceptions, but none of the most selective is for-profit. While they all try to grow their endowments every year, they don't disperse any of that money to individuals -- they use the endowment to pay for facilities and other operating costs.
Professors at my school (a prestigious one) make far far more from outside consulting gigs than they do in salary, and they are paid at the top of the range for professors. In the uS, people choose to become academics because they love the life of the mind, not for any financial reasons. Though with comfortable six-figure salaries, none is exactly starving...
The quotes prove the opposite of what the poster claims -- Mitnick is actually as free as any of us on 1/20/2003.
Jeez! learn to read!
And how do you decide who's a scumbag (yes, in this case, it's obvious) withouth giving BOTH sides effective representation?
Everyone deserves a voice. That's how we protect all of our rights.
Stop being ridiculous. Disregarding the trespass claim, which I'll give you, you didn't address the point of my post: you're trying to induce them to take action against you. Your actions are designed to bring about what you'd be suing them for. That's going to be a problem for you.
Everyone has heard the theremin -- it's the eerie sound in the back of "Good Vibrations" by the Beach Boys.
I just bought the "In Sides" EP today -- they had 2 copies at my favorite record store -- streetlight in San Francisco. Sometimes hard to find, but if you see it, snap it up.
I doubt you'll have much of a case, as you'll be fraudulently inducing them to take action against you. If you know they'll scan your machine and know what will set off their filters and what the effects of tripping their filters will be, and purposely take action wanting those effects to take place, how can you complain when the action is taken against you? What you're doing is akin to the guy that purposely falls on the ice in front of the supermarket in order to sue.
The trespass upon chattels claim I don't know enough about, but I'd guess it'll be suspect as well. But I'm not a lawyer.
TV is much more brain damaging then any computer game has ever seen
Unless you're a regular TV watcher and never play video games, I'd say your sentence is evidence to the contrary...