See what ports are open and then research them to see what they are and if they need to be closed and if so, how to close them. You don't need to worry about SSH exploits if it's not running.
When a company produces such a massive amount of something, the cost of production goes way down. It may cost you 50 cents to burn and package a CD but a major corporation isn't paying more than a penny or two if that per CD. Production costs for distribution in any format are negligable.
The other advantage of packaging is that it's a big giant ad. When people are walking through the store amist thousands of other products, a well designed box will make them stop and look.
On-line, unless it's on the front page or you're specifically looking for it, it doesn't matter how pretty the box is, you won't see it. The spontanious purchase goes out the window. Most people also don't care to leave their 56K modems churning all week downloading some massive game. Broadband hasn't fully replaced the dial up yet and it's going to be a very long time before it does.
And people are still not all that comfortable buying things on-line. They like to get out and be around people and go to a real physical location and spend their real physical money on a real physical product.
On-line sales can be used in conjunction with store based sales and most companies already do that. I bet that if you e-mailed any company and asked how on-line sales compare to physical store sales, the digital sales would barely register.
I really don't care if Amazon has a game or movie or CD a few cents cheaper. I'd rather go out shopping. Hardware and stuff that nobody else carries are the only things I'll look on-line for.
When you listen to a CD you generally forget it right after you listen to it. You need to keep listening to it to get any real value. It's just sugar.
A movie on the other hand is like a book. You read it and it sticks with you. It's far more filling. I don't need to watch Adaptation a thousand times. You watch it once and you learn something profound. You can then enjoy it again every once in awhile.
"eye for an eye" is just what it says. What illiterate people can't grasp is that it was one of the hundreds of laws giving to the legal system of the OT. The laws were never given for the common man to enforce.
If someone poked your eye out you went to the judge and if the person was found guilty, their eye was ordered out BY THE COURT. Just like we do today.
Just because I can go in any law library and read up on laws and punishments doesn't mean I get to go around enforcing the law and punishing people as stated by the law.
Not this obvious explaination will stop you from spouting your ignorance.
You can shoot people who break into your home. It's called self defense. You have an obligation to protect yourself and your family and if you feel your life is in danger and you have no other choice you have a right to kill.
In most states you just have to make sure they're dead. Otherwise you could be sued for their injuries thanks to our retarded legal system. It also eliminates "he said she said" and as a result makes it very difficult to form a case against you should the family attempt to do so.
"Just because they annoy you, you can't harass them."
If calling up and complaining about what a bunch of idiots they are is "harassment" then I guess I can. It doesn't matter what loose retarded meaning the "poor little victim" gives to "harassment," it's perfectly legal to call up and complain to a business about anything related to their company.
"It's not o.k. to do the same wrong onto people which those people have done onto you."
If it's not illegal it is. Maybe you have a moral problem with feeding people their own medicine but here in the real world, there are times when morality isn't an issue.
Unless you find that complaining about a "service" is morally wrong.
I am. In my quest to find a distro that just works, I've pretty much downloaded all the major ones. And since I have them, I might as well sell them. I havn't figured out the pricing yet but as my registered business license is for selling software, everything is in place.
I could then take a portion of each sale and donate it to the creator of the distro.
Charging a small access fee to download the distro without ads.
Mandrake is about 1.5GB on 3CDs so at $2 a gig, you could charge 3 bucks and break even or even make a small amount if your cost per gig of transfer is less. Or just say $5 and you get access for 30 days to download the distro. If you don't manage to download it before then, it's a very trivial matter to check your access records to verify you're an absurd procrastinator and give you an extension.
Or, how about selling it on CD-R for a small price like $2 per disc plus shipping? It's less than a buck to ship a few CDs anywhere in the US using the USPS.
Or, how about doing all three to satify pretty much everyone.
Adware for those who don't want to pay. A small fee for those willing to pay. And a slightly more expesive fee (production+shipping) for those who don't care to download 1.5GB on a 56K modem and want some media. And then of course the full blown package with all kinds of extras and professionally pressed CDs for a much higher price for those willing to spend the money to support Mandrake.
Open Source people need to take a few marketing classes. There are tons of options that don't involve whoring yourself out to advertisers.
Yes, their SPARE TIME. I do a lot of stuff in my spare time too but you know what? I'd rather make money on the stuff I LIKE to do rather than drudging through some mundane job that I HAVE to do to make a living.
Copyrights have given people more freedom in that they can do what they love full time and make a decent living at it.
Less than a century ago livings were made on creating tangible products. Things have changed. We now live in an information age and it costs a heck of a lot more to live. We can't all make trinkets and survive. Removing the ability to make money on information removes the ability for a massive portion of our culture to have jobs.
I think it's dumb that we have people trying to force everyone to not beable to make a living on an information based job (books, music, etc) just because they or their friend doesn't mind. Some of us happen to have different tastes in what kind of work we like to do and happen to like that copyrights give us a CHOICE as to whether or not to do it in our spare time or full time.
If you don't like the idea of making money from software or music then fine. Don't. No one is forcing you to sell your albums.
A few "we hate the RIAA" articles back someone made the comment that a student was "required" to download music off the net for use with school projects. I've been using MP3.com (you know, the place that the RIAA nearly sued off the face of the internet) for all of my little demo programming projects I release for free for others to learn how to do various things. There's no reason the kid had to use Kazaa and use illegal copies of music. www.recycledrussianbrides.com uses music from MP3.com with ads to the artist's page for those interested.
If you're so against the RIAA, it's quite simple: stop listening to their music. Use Google and the keywords you're looking for are "independent music"
www.launch.com has quite a selection of radio stations to choose from as well. If you don't know where to find alternatives you're quite simply just not looking.
Warez sites attempted to use a bit of legal mumbo jumbo that basically says "by entering this site you agree not to sue." I don't believe that's ever held up in court. Sites that actually carry warez tend to resort to using technical means to cover their asses and not legally questionable agreements. Kazaa is demonstrating it's value in that area.
However that's telling me I can't sue them. The RIAA is (possibly pretending) to have you sign something so THEY won't sue you. Basically it's a legal document to restrain themselves under specific guidlines. Not for you to restain yourself other than by stopping your illegal activity.
It's perfectly reasonable for me to remove my own right to sue. That's my choice. I can deny myself free speech as well and censor everything I say. I can also deny myself a gun or any other number of things.
There's nothing wrong with the concept of what they're doing as far as "right to sue" but how they've worded their agreement and how they're selling their agreement appear to be the hot issue. And that's far more relavent anyway.
It's not against the law to fool people. The RIAA isn't lying. They won't press charges. Ommision of information isn't a crime. In this case they simply don't spell out that other owners of the IP can press charges.
They never claim you're clear from prosecution. Merely free of procescution from the RIAA.
Law enforcment does this type of thing all the time.
It doesn't matter if you don't like it. It's perfectly legal and there's no reason it shouldn't be.
Looks like someone found another straw to tug at. And once again comes up empty handed.
When a GPL is violated Slashdot is all over it. According you, Slashdot should just shut it's pie hole because nothing has been stolen.
What do you call it when a credit card companies database has been accessed and the information taken? Theft. Identity Theft. Information can be stolen.
According to you, put your name on something? f you, I replaced it with my name and there's not a thing you can do about it. You can't own information so you have no right to it.
"What don't you understand about that?"
Yeah, why is this so hard for you to comprehend?
Real money, real resources were put into a product. By stealing that product through a channel they havn't authorized you deprive them of real reimbursment.
All this theft is just going to encourage companies and individuals who make products like books etc to strong arm the public to ensure the real money they invested to create a real product is regained and then some so they can continue to create.
We're not living in medival times when you could get by with not much in the way of income if any.
If you can make products for free and don't mind how people aquire it then good for you. But it should be a CHOICE. It's absurd to expect that people who spend their time and money on a product shouldn't expect to get a return.
"Doing that would be, in part, sanctioning theft by associating with those that commit it."
The RIAA isn't going to the thieves. They're simply gleaming publicly accessible information. It's as idiotic as claiming that reading a book written by a criminal is sactioning their criminal act(s). Law enforcement agencies "associate" with criminals all the time to bring down groups from the inside.
As long as YOU don't commit a crime or aid in the committing of a crime, you can associate with whomever you want.
The RIAA isn't helping anyone steal anything. They're simply taking data while they work to take them down.
I'm sure there's at least a couple more straws that havn't been grasped at yet. Keep looking.
refused to use it for so long you've sufficiently brainwashed yourself into believing you're somehow nobel for stealing other people's works.
I realize Slashdot doesn't like hearing it and I don't care.
Slashdot has thrown a number of tantrums when someone dares to remove a license agreement or to release an Open Source product as their own. But stealing music, that's apparently okay.
It's theft. It's sad that it took the RIAA prosecuting people to wake up the mass market to the facts even after years of telling people it was theft. Mass market didn't want to believe it. Slashdot and others were too stupid to stop lying and playing word games to make it sound legal and now the law has to be put into play to make examples of people.
And now Slashdot is apparently still too stupid to get it through their thick skull.
I fully expect lots more lawsuits. You can't host ROMs. What in the world makes you think you can host illegal MP3s?
It's just dense. The sooner people pull their heads out of their asses and call "sharing" what it is, theft, the sooner these lawsuits go away.
so stupid as to try to rewrite the law everytime I do something wrong. If I do something wrong I'll freely admit it's wrong. The Slashdot community should stop turning itself into a laughing stock and admit that stealing music is wrong.
If the EFF hands out a dime to someone who has stolen music or anything for that matter to reimburse them for the fines incurred for their crime, any credibility they have in the legal community will be gone. Especially considering they're around to protect those who are stolen from and can't afford to fight back.
"B) you are still boycotting the RIAA by buying a movie"
Oh yes, every dollar I don't give to the RIAA is an act of boycotting them. I've been boycotting pretty much every company on the planet then including Slashdot since I havn't given them a dime.
set up a fund for all those "poor bullied kids" who set up warez sites and got hit with legal action by big mean companies.
You participate in the digital black market and you're setting yourself up for trouble.
You can blame idiot sites like Slashdot for perpetuating the myth that stealing music is okay for the 12 year old getting into trouble. If you'd spend less time lying to people and more time educating them on what they're actually getting into, maybe fewer people would be so ignorant about the legal ramifications of participating in the digital black market.
"I didn't know" is completely bogus considering the huge media attention over Napster and MP3.com not too long ago.
I don't care to waste my money paying for the legal fees of people who steal. Would you dole out donations for someone who takes the GPL license off of an open source product and markets it closed source as their own? Whether they offered it for free or not?
Of course not.
Would you pay for the legal fees of someone who sets up a site for downloading newly released games and gets hit with huge fines?
Of course not.
This is just dense. Apprently stealing is legal so long as you don't like the people you steal from.
Fortunatly our court system isn't so stupid. Like it or not the family got off easy considering the maximum punishment on the books.
Kids get arrested all the time and their info is taken.
You can hate it all you like but the DMCA has nothing to do with this. If someone commits a crime their info is up for grabs for those looking to persecute irregardless of age. The age limit laws have NO RELEVANCE in criminal situations. If some kid assults me, I have a right to their information for prosecution. The laws the Slashdrones are vainly trying to apply only apply for collecting personal information for data mining for marketing purposes.
Slashdot is just once again vainly grasping at straws trying to vindicate the criminal and villinize the victim.
Like it or not, the RIAA has done nothing illegal and nothing that any other media company hasn't done. Nintendo et al were gathering information on snot nosed teenages hosting illegal ROMs and other warez LONG before the RIAA showed up and joined the fight against the digital black market.
The personal information that was collected was allowed BY A COURT ORDER. Are you going to claim the court committed a crime by ordering her information released?
The idea of a proposal is to say why you need the money.
If your project is open source then I assume you intend that other people will work on it for you. In which case, how do you intend to divide up the money?
Are you intending to take a chunk as salary? How large of a base team do you have? How much do you intend to give them?
Basically, where is all the money going and how does "Open Source" fit into it?
If you're looking for old public domain stuff, BlackMask is fine. But places like B&N sell the new stuff that Blackmask can't just give away.
The fact is you could spend your whole life reading public domain books.
Some people however, would rather read the new stuff that you can't get for free and are happy to pay for it. Apparently, not enough people fall into that category.
So yes, to some people, B&N dropping e-books DOES matter and Blackmask can't supply them with what they actually want.
You can always go through the digital black market to get what you'd normally have to pay for, for free.
Some people actually have morals, however and would rather not have something or get it in another form, rather than break the law.
"Many everyday Joes and Janes do not have any concept what current copyright law really is"
How long have warez sites existed? Have they EVER been legal?
NO. It doesn't matter if you download it off a site, buy it off the street, or get on P2P. Warez are ILLEGAL. What's the difference between an illegal copy of software and an illegal copy of a song? None.
"they continue to pi$$ off their current, former, and potential customers."
I'm not seeing it. All I see is Slashdot bitching constantly that things that have always been illegal with those perpetrating the crime being punished, are still *shock* illegal.
Warez site owners are constantly getting shut down, fined and or jailed. Just because you put your warez on P2P and happen to "specialize" in songs doesn't make it any less illegal. Just as it always has been.
The only leg the mom has to stand on is the $30 fee. But that doesn't allievate her from the crime of being a supplier in the digital black market. That simply potentially makes Kazaa also liable. How liable they are depends entirely on how they sell their subscription.
Kazaa isn't responsable for the illiteracy of those who pay for their service.
Why do you think GeoCities, Yahoo, and everyone cut down their free space?
I personally got a site shut down that was run by two stupid kids that thought they could hide the location of their illegal files. Hosts act very quickly when you fire off an e-mail with very specific locations of illegal files on some hosted page.
Warez. Before P2P, teens were putting up ROMs and everything else in droves which led to much legal hotwater for the hosts and those running the sites. Now games are too large for the free hosts and P2P has rised to the calling. Now the teenagers are back distributing their warez in the Digital Black Market.
It only looks bad for the RIAA to people have a complete disregard for the law.
It's also ironic that a community that whines about prior art every time a tech patent comes out, can't see the prior art for the Digital Black Market and the actions that the RIAA is taking.
The RIAA isn't doing anything that hasn't been done before by every media company in existance. It's only getting major publicity now because it's happening to the middle class in America.
Just like Columbine. School shootings happen all the time in the inner city and nobody gives a shit. Some white kid shoots up some upper middle class school and we can't stop the tears.
Nobody cares when some kid in a third world country is jailed or fined or slapped with a threat of legal action for distributing warez under the same general laws that this 12 year old was charged under.
The Digital Black Market has existed long before Kazaa came around and every media company on the planet has been pressing charges against people who participate in it.
Stealing (copyright infringment is a form of theft) has been illegal since forever. Book publishers have been cracking down on thieves since the inception of printed material.
Just because Kazaa came around and gave a warm fuzzy name to the Digital Black Market lulling people's minds to shut down resulting in massive amounts of participation in the Digital Black Market, doesn't make the laws wrong.
Kazaa has just brought the phenomenon to the mass market in first world countries. Every media company has been cracking down on all forms of the black market (from street corners, to personal servers, to hosted pages, and now P2P) in 3rd world countries for a very long time.
It sucks she's 12 in which case, her mom should be prosecuted for being an accessory to the crime. There's no excuse for her mom not knowing that downloading the music was illegal.
Just because everyone else is stealing, doesn't make the laws against stealing unjust.
It's funny that Slashdot whines about a 12 year being potentially sued by the RIAA and yet when a 12 year old running a warez site is slapped with a fine or the site is simply removed, nobody says a word.
Kazaa is no different. The only difference is that now since "everyone" is doing it, history is being rewritten to justify it. This is just another example of why society is going to shit and the Slashdot community is becomming more and more of a laughing stock.
Slashdot Mirror
See what ports are open and then research them to see what they are and if they need to be closed and if so, how to close them. You don't need to worry about SSH exploits if it's not running.
Ben
"The cost of distribution is zero"
I see you've met the bandwidth fairy.
When a company produces such a massive amount of something, the cost of production goes way down. It may cost you 50 cents to burn and package a CD but a major corporation isn't paying more than a penny or two if that per CD. Production costs for distribution in any format are negligable.
The other advantage of packaging is that it's a big giant ad. When people are walking through the store amist thousands of other products, a well designed box will make them stop and look.
On-line, unless it's on the front page or you're specifically looking for it, it doesn't matter how pretty the box is, you won't see it. The spontanious purchase goes out the window. Most people also don't care to leave their 56K modems churning all week downloading some massive game. Broadband hasn't fully replaced the dial up yet and it's going to be a very long time before it does.
And people are still not all that comfortable buying things on-line. They like to get out and be around people and go to a real physical location and spend their real physical money on a real physical product.
On-line sales can be used in conjunction with store based sales and most companies already do that. I bet that if you e-mailed any company and asked how on-line sales compare to physical store sales, the digital sales would barely register.
I really don't care if Amazon has a game or movie or CD a few cents cheaper. I'd rather go out shopping. Hardware and stuff that nobody else carries are the only things I'll look on-line for.
Ben
When you listen to a CD you generally forget it right after you listen to it. You need to keep listening to it to get any real value. It's just sugar.
A movie on the other hand is like a book. You read it and it sticks with you. It's far more filling. I don't need to watch Adaptation a thousand times. You watch it once and you learn something profound. You can then enjoy it again every once in awhile.
Ben
Make it blink! Then all those nerds with 1.5GB of memory will forsake all sense and buy 1.5GB MORE memory just so it blinks!
Brilliant!
Ben
"eye for an eye" is just what it says. What illiterate people can't grasp is that it was one of the hundreds of laws giving to the legal system of the OT. The laws were never given for the common man to enforce.
If someone poked your eye out you went to the judge and if the person was found guilty, their eye was ordered out BY THE COURT. Just like we do today.
Just because I can go in any law library and read up on laws and punishments doesn't mean I get to go around enforcing the law and punishing people as stated by the law.
Not this obvious explaination will stop you from spouting your ignorance.
Ben
You can shoot people who break into your home. It's called self defense. You have an obligation to protect yourself and your family and if you feel your life is in danger and you have no other choice you have a right to kill.
In most states you just have to make sure they're dead. Otherwise you could be sued for their injuries thanks to our retarded legal system. It also eliminates "he said she said" and as a result makes it very difficult to form a case against you should the family attempt to do so.
"Just because they annoy you, you can't harass them."
If calling up and complaining about what a bunch of idiots they are is "harassment" then I guess I can. It doesn't matter what loose retarded meaning the "poor little victim" gives to "harassment," it's perfectly legal to call up and complain to a business about anything related to their company.
"It's not o.k. to do the same wrong onto people which those people have done onto you."
If it's not illegal it is. Maybe you have a moral problem with feeding people their own medicine but here in the real world, there are times when morality isn't an issue.
Unless you find that complaining about a "service" is morally wrong.
Ben
I am. In my quest to find a distro that just works, I've pretty much downloaded all the major ones. And since I have them, I might as well sell them. I havn't figured out the pricing yet but as my registered business license is for selling software, everything is in place.
I could then take a portion of each sale and donate it to the creator of the distro.
Ben
Charging a small access fee to download the distro without ads.
Mandrake is about 1.5GB on 3CDs so at $2 a gig, you could charge 3 bucks and break even or even make a small amount if your cost per gig of transfer is less. Or just say $5 and you get access for 30 days to download the distro. If you don't manage to download it before then, it's a very trivial matter to check your access records to verify you're an absurd procrastinator and give you an extension.
Or, how about selling it on CD-R for a small price like $2 per disc plus shipping? It's less than a buck to ship a few CDs anywhere in the US using the USPS.
Or, how about doing all three to satify pretty much everyone.
Adware for those who don't want to pay. A small fee for those willing to pay. And a slightly more expesive fee (production+shipping) for those who don't care to download 1.5GB on a 56K modem and want some media. And then of course the full blown package with all kinds of extras and professionally pressed CDs for a much higher price for those willing to spend the money to support Mandrake.
Open Source people need to take a few marketing classes. There are tons of options that don't involve whoring yourself out to advertisers.
Ben
Yes, their SPARE TIME. I do a lot of stuff in my spare time too but you know what? I'd rather make money on the stuff I LIKE to do rather than drudging through some mundane job that I HAVE to do to make a living.
Copyrights have given people more freedom in that they can do what they love full time and make a decent living at it.
Less than a century ago livings were made on creating tangible products. Things have changed. We now live in an information age and it costs a heck of a lot more to live. We can't all make trinkets and survive. Removing the ability to make money on information removes the ability for a massive portion of our culture to have jobs.
I think it's dumb that we have people trying to force everyone to not beable to make a living on an information based job (books, music, etc) just because they or their friend doesn't mind. Some of us happen to have different tastes in what kind of work we like to do and happen to like that copyrights give us a CHOICE as to whether or not to do it in our spare time or full time.
If you don't like the idea of making money from software or music then fine. Don't. No one is forcing you to sell your albums.
Ben
A few "we hate the RIAA" articles back someone made the comment that a student was "required" to download music off the net for use with school projects. I've been using MP3.com (you know, the place that the RIAA nearly sued off the face of the internet) for all of my little demo programming projects I release for free for others to learn how to do various things. There's no reason the kid had to use Kazaa and use illegal copies of music. www.recycledrussianbrides.com uses music from MP3.com with ads to the artist's page for those interested.
If you're so against the RIAA, it's quite simple: stop listening to their music. Use Google and the keywords you're looking for are "independent music"
www.launch.com has quite a selection of radio stations to choose from as well. If you don't know where to find alternatives you're quite simply just not looking.
Ben
Warez sites attempted to use a bit of legal mumbo jumbo that basically says "by entering this site you agree not to sue." I don't believe that's ever held up in court. Sites that actually carry warez tend to resort to using technical means to cover their asses and not legally questionable agreements. Kazaa is demonstrating it's value in that area.
However that's telling me I can't sue them. The RIAA is (possibly pretending) to have you sign something so THEY won't sue you. Basically it's a legal document to restrain themselves under specific guidlines. Not for you to restain yourself other than by stopping your illegal activity.
It's perfectly reasonable for me to remove my own right to sue. That's my choice. I can deny myself free speech as well and censor everything I say. I can also deny myself a gun or any other number of things.
There's nothing wrong with the concept of what they're doing as far as "right to sue" but how they've worded their agreement and how they're selling their agreement appear to be the hot issue. And that's far more relavent anyway.
Ben
It's not against the law to fool people. The RIAA isn't lying. They won't press charges. Ommision of information isn't a crime. In this case they simply don't spell out that other owners of the IP can press charges.
They never claim you're clear from prosecution. Merely free of procescution from the RIAA.
Law enforcment does this type of thing all the time.
It doesn't matter if you don't like it. It's perfectly legal and there's no reason it shouldn't be.
Looks like someone found another straw to tug at. And once again comes up empty handed.
Ben
When a GPL is violated Slashdot is all over it. According you, Slashdot should just shut it's pie hole because nothing has been stolen.
What do you call it when a credit card companies database has been accessed and the information taken? Theft. Identity Theft. Information can be stolen.
According to you, put your name on something? f you, I replaced it with my name and there's not a thing you can do about it. You can't own information so you have no right to it.
"What don't you understand about that?"
Yeah, why is this so hard for you to comprehend?
Real money, real resources were put into a product. By stealing that product through a channel they havn't authorized you deprive them of real reimbursment.
All this theft is just going to encourage companies and individuals who make products like books etc to strong arm the public to ensure the real money they invested to create a real product is regained and then some so they can continue to create.
We're not living in medival times when you could get by with not much in the way of income if any.
If you can make products for free and don't mind how people aquire it then good for you. But it should be a CHOICE. It's absurd to expect that people who spend their time and money on a product shouldn't expect to get a return.
Ben
"Doing that would be, in part, sanctioning theft by associating with those that commit it."
The RIAA isn't going to the thieves. They're simply gleaming publicly accessible information. It's as idiotic as claiming that reading a book written by a criminal is sactioning their criminal act(s). Law enforcement agencies "associate" with criminals all the time to bring down groups from the inside.
As long as YOU don't commit a crime or aid in the committing of a crime, you can associate with whomever you want.
The RIAA isn't helping anyone steal anything. They're simply taking data while they work to take them down.
I'm sure there's at least a couple more straws that havn't been grasped at yet. Keep looking.
Ben
refused to use it for so long you've sufficiently brainwashed yourself into believing you're somehow nobel for stealing other people's works.
I realize Slashdot doesn't like hearing it and I don't care.
Slashdot has thrown a number of tantrums when someone dares to remove a license agreement or to release an Open Source product as their own. But stealing music, that's apparently okay.
It's theft. It's sad that it took the RIAA prosecuting people to wake up the mass market to the facts even after years of telling people it was theft. Mass market didn't want to believe it. Slashdot and others were too stupid to stop lying and playing word games to make it sound legal and now the law has to be put into play to make examples of people.
And now Slashdot is apparently still too stupid to get it through their thick skull.
I fully expect lots more lawsuits. You can't host ROMs. What in the world makes you think you can host illegal MP3s?
It's just dense. The sooner people pull their heads out of their asses and call "sharing" what it is, theft, the sooner these lawsuits go away.
Ben
so stupid as to try to rewrite the law everytime I do something wrong. If I do something wrong I'll freely admit it's wrong. The Slashdot community should stop turning itself into a laughing stock and admit that stealing music is wrong.
If the EFF hands out a dime to someone who has stolen music or anything for that matter to reimburse them for the fines incurred for their crime, any credibility they have in the legal community will be gone. Especially considering they're around to protect those who are stolen from and can't afford to fight back.
"B) you are still boycotting the RIAA by buying a movie"
Oh yes, every dollar I don't give to the RIAA is an act of boycotting them. I've been boycotting pretty much every company on the planet then including Slashdot since I havn't given them a dime.
Ben
I shook my head at the morally bankrupt Slashdot crowd that wants to continue lying to people telling them that stealing music should be legal.
And I kept my money and I'm going to use it to buy a CD or a movie.
Ben
set up a fund for all those "poor bullied kids" who set up warez sites and got hit with legal action by big mean companies.
You participate in the digital black market and you're setting yourself up for trouble.
You can blame idiot sites like Slashdot for perpetuating the myth that stealing music is okay for the 12 year old getting into trouble. If you'd spend less time lying to people and more time educating them on what they're actually getting into, maybe fewer people would be so ignorant about the legal ramifications of participating in the digital black market.
"I didn't know" is completely bogus considering the huge media attention over Napster and MP3.com not too long ago.
I don't care to waste my money paying for the legal fees of people who steal. Would you dole out donations for someone who takes the GPL license off of an open source product and markets it closed source as their own? Whether they offered it for free or not?
Of course not.
Would you pay for the legal fees of someone who sets up a site for downloading newly released games and gets hit with huge fines?
Of course not.
This is just dense. Apprently stealing is legal so long as you don't like the people you steal from.
Fortunatly our court system isn't so stupid. Like it or not the family got off easy considering the maximum punishment on the books.
Ben
Kids get arrested all the time and their info is taken.
You can hate it all you like but the DMCA has nothing to do with this. If someone commits a crime their info is up for grabs for those looking to persecute irregardless of age. The age limit laws have NO RELEVANCE in criminal situations. If some kid assults me, I have a right to their information for prosecution. The laws the Slashdrones are vainly trying to apply only apply for collecting personal information for data mining for marketing purposes.
Slashdot is just once again vainly grasping at straws trying to vindicate the criminal and villinize the victim.
Like it or not, the RIAA has done nothing illegal and nothing that any other media company hasn't done. Nintendo et al were gathering information on snot nosed teenages hosting illegal ROMs and other warez LONG before the RIAA showed up and joined the fight against the digital black market.
Ben
The personal information that was collected was allowed BY A COURT ORDER. Are you going to claim the court committed a crime by ordering her information released?
Ben
The idea of a proposal is to say why you need the money.
If your project is open source then I assume you intend that other people will work on it for you. In which case, how do you intend to divide up the money?
Are you intending to take a chunk as salary? How large of a base team do you have? How much do you intend to give them?
Basically, where is all the money going and how does "Open Source" fit into it?
Ben
If you're looking for old public domain stuff, BlackMask is fine. But places like B&N sell the new stuff that Blackmask can't just give away.
The fact is you could spend your whole life reading public domain books.
Some people however, would rather read the new stuff that you can't get for free and are happy to pay for it. Apparently, not enough people fall into that category.
So yes, to some people, B&N dropping e-books DOES matter and Blackmask can't supply them with what they actually want.
You can always go through the digital black market to get what you'd normally have to pay for, for free.
Some people actually have morals, however and would rather not have something or get it in another form, rather than break the law.
Ben
"Many everyday Joes and Janes do not have any concept what current copyright law really is"
How long have warez sites existed? Have they EVER been legal?
NO. It doesn't matter if you download it off a site, buy it off the street, or get on P2P. Warez are ILLEGAL. What's the difference between an illegal copy of software and an illegal copy of a song? None.
"they continue to pi$$ off their current, former, and potential customers."
I'm not seeing it. All I see is Slashdot bitching constantly that things that have always been illegal with those perpetrating the crime being punished, are still *shock* illegal.
Warez site owners are constantly getting shut down, fined and or jailed. Just because you put your warez on P2P and happen to "specialize" in songs doesn't make it any less illegal. Just as it always has been.
The only leg the mom has to stand on is the $30 fee. But that doesn't allievate her from the crime of being a supplier in the digital black market. That simply potentially makes Kazaa also liable. How liable they are depends entirely on how they sell their subscription.
Kazaa isn't responsable for the illiteracy of those who pay for their service.
Ben
Why do you think GeoCities, Yahoo, and everyone cut down their free space?
I personally got a site shut down that was run by two stupid kids that thought they could hide the location of their illegal files. Hosts act very quickly when you fire off an e-mail with very specific locations of illegal files on some hosted page.
Warez. Before P2P, teens were putting up ROMs and everything else in droves which led to much legal hotwater for the hosts and those running the sites. Now games are too large for the free hosts and P2P has rised to the calling. Now the teenagers are back distributing their warez in the Digital Black Market.
It only looks bad for the RIAA to people have a complete disregard for the law.
It's also ironic that a community that whines about prior art every time a tech patent comes out, can't see the prior art for the Digital Black Market and the actions that the RIAA is taking.
The RIAA isn't doing anything that hasn't been done before by every media company in existance. It's only getting major publicity now because it's happening to the middle class in America.
Just like Columbine. School shootings happen all the time in the inner city and nobody gives a shit. Some white kid shoots up some upper middle class school and we can't stop the tears.
Nobody cares when some kid in a third world country is jailed or fined or slapped with a threat of legal action for distributing warez under the same general laws that this 12 year old was charged under.
Ben
The Digital Black Market has existed long before Kazaa came around and every media company on the planet has been pressing charges against people who participate in it.
Stealing (copyright infringment is a form of theft) has been illegal since forever. Book publishers have been cracking down on thieves since the inception of printed material.
Just because Kazaa came around and gave a warm fuzzy name to the Digital Black Market lulling people's minds to shut down resulting in massive amounts of participation in the Digital Black Market, doesn't make the laws wrong.
Kazaa has just brought the phenomenon to the mass market in first world countries. Every media company has been cracking down on all forms of the black market (from street corners, to personal servers, to hosted pages, and now P2P) in 3rd world countries for a very long time.
It sucks she's 12 in which case, her mom should be prosecuted for being an accessory to the crime. There's no excuse for her mom not knowing that downloading the music was illegal.
Just because everyone else is stealing, doesn't make the laws against stealing unjust.
It's funny that Slashdot whines about a 12 year being potentially sued by the RIAA and yet when a 12 year old running a warez site is slapped with a fine or the site is simply removed, nobody says a word.
Kazaa is no different. The only difference is that now since "everyone" is doing it, history is being rewritten to justify it. This is just another example of why society is going to shit and the Slashdot community is becomming more and more of a laughing stock.
Ben