Let's see, you pay 99 cents for the song and now you're going to resell it. Unless it's no longer available why would I pay you more than 99 cents for the song or pay you at all when I can just as easily get it from a trusted source: Apple.
And why would you charge less than 99 cents for it? It's a dollar. Most people aren't so scroogish about their money that they will try to get a dollar back. And most on-line money transfer places don't make it economical to sell something for a buck. The fees are too high. With PayPal you'd only end up with 66 cents on that dollar. And it's quite a hassle to mail you a dollar in which case I'm paying an additional 37 cents at least.
Apple got it right. The technical restrictions and the low cost make it a waste of effort to try to resell to regain the cost of the product, much less make a profit. They quite literally made it impossible to be undersold.
If songs ever stop being offered by Apple then one may have a business opportunity. But that would require buying numerous licenses of each song to make it worth it and require some foresight into what's going "out of print" that people will still want years from now in order to avoid wasting money on songs you'll never be able to sell once the market swings your way to check out what you have.
Instead of fighting Apple in this worthless pursuit of pennies, you'd be better off forming an allience with indie bands and set up a business being the first time sellers of their music. There's a huge market for that.
every company that "dares" to shut down bootleggers that sell their illegal goods on the streets as well?
Kazaa is one icarnation of the digital black market. I think it's disgusting how Slashdot rallies around people who steal (copyright infringment is a form of theft) other people's creations and then distribute them over the black market as though it's some nobel thing.
Yes, right. I expect you all to urge the EFF to pay the legal fees for all those people selling bootleg DVDs and everything else on street corners as well.
Wake UP! Complaining that they're trying to stop LEGAL trading is one thing. But they're not doing that. If you make your own music and distribute it, the RIAA isn't going to bat an eye. They're rightfully cracking down on the digital black market just as they and every other company has been cracking down on the nondigital black market that's prevelant over in the east and available everywhere else as well.
Nintendo has been busting people for decades for distributing illegal ROMs and cartridges in all forms. Sites that distribute ROMs get shut down almost as fast as they pop up. Sony and every other digital content creator has been doing the same thing.
Putting up illegal MP3s on Kazaa is exactly no different than hosting them on a web-site except it's slightly less difficult to be tracked and prosecuted for your crime.
If they can fool the stupid into giving themselves up for prosecution, good for them. If you're dumb enough to commit a crime and then dumb enough to fall for a ploy and end up getting arrested, too bad. The sympathy line is back that away. Cops have been doing this sort of thing for years.
"You've won a prize!"
Criminal shows up.
"JAIL TIME! YAY!"
The EFF is perfectly fine giving people money to ensure those who are accused due process, a fair trial and just punishment if they are convicted but it should in no way shape or form reimburse the conviced for their losses incured for participating in the black market.
If little Johnny gets grounded, spanked, a slap on the wrist, no dinner, whatever for punching his little brother in the shoulder, little Johnny is going think a little harder before giving his little brother a black eye.
Your list is very telling about the sad state of modern parenting when "punishment" doesn't show up on it. Society has deemed the line between punishment and child abuse too blurred and has decided that punishing kids is now a criminal offense.
"that parents would actually be responsible for their childs actions"
Sorry but we've evolved into a better race that doesn't follow such archaic ideas. We want to give children rights. We want to make clothes for them that even young adults would blush at. We want to do everything in our power to avoid punishing our children at home. We want to treat them like adults. And since they're adults, the parents are now no longer responsible for them.
And now shock and amazment, we treat them like adults and they go out and act like adults. Sometime committing crimes that previously only adults would commit.
And then they show up in court and discover to their delight that even the courts are too afraid to actually punish them.
And what have they learned from all of this? Nothing. And another generation goes one step farther down the shithole.
How about just not to point guns at people? If the kids are so dense you have to tell them not to shoot at cars then they're probably too dense to know they shouldn't shoot at trucks or semies or mini-vans or SUVs, etc either without you specifically telling them each type of vehicle.
They should just throw the kids in jail for a very long time and be done with it.
They're obviously incapable of functioning in society. And the parents are obviously incapable of raising the kids otherwise.
And the parents who are suing the video game makers would be better off spending their time getting the court systems to stop feeling sorry for kids they'd like us all to believe "made a mistake."
A mistake is breaking a lamp. It is not a "mistake" to take innocent lives in such a malicious manner. They've crossed the sympathy line about 3 miles ago with this one.
The parents should simply be content with those kids locked away indefinitly.
"Simply obtaining information is not covered under your definition,"
That's called stealing.
Think. Or do us all a favor and pack up your computer and mail it back to HP.
"You didn't tell me I couldn't come in through the unlocked window and photocopy files in your file-cabinet so it's not illegal! No physical property was taken!"
With P2P you really don't know what you're getting. You may think you're downloading The Lion King but you may end up with Debbie Does Dallas.
On the web, sites are required by law to warn users before they can enter an adult site. Those that don't comply can be thrown in jail and/or fined.
P2P has NO SUCH MECHANISM to warn users about what they may actually be getting. Since the sharers have NO MEANS AVAILABLE to warn users what they're sharing then it's reasonable that the app itself must.
I don't see the problem with this.
Kazaa has become an abondanded street filled with hookers and the black market. If you don't want the law to clean up your street then you better do it yourself.
It'd be rediculously trivial to have a.zaa file format that uses a form of compression along with a header with a checksum, description, etc to ensure that the file it claims it has, really is that file.
If you want to share a file, you pack in into a.zaa file and submit it for community approval before it's checksum is added to a global database as "trusted."
Users can then block certain headers and untrusted files.
No. Then I guess I have no reason to file charges then huh, moron.
Think. Use your brain. We complain about how complicated lawyer speak is to understand for common people and you're a prestine reason why. People have forgotten how to think for themselves and need to be told how to think down to every little detail. And even then it's a battle to get them to comprehend.
"without requiring any specific agreement from them before use"
This is just another example of why our world is going to shit. Too many retarded people that think I have to make you sign something before you can't damage something I own.
Didn't sign an agreement that you can't egg my house on holloween? Guess you can then huh? What are you, stupid?
Our society has become so braindead that unless you tell someone specifically not to do some specific act, they assume they can regardless of the fact general laws exist.
Property laws exist that say you can't damage other people's property. Why? Because common decency has gone out the windows thanks to an abundance of retards that have engulfed our society.
"Therefore you wish him punished as a tresspasser?"
Listen, idiot. You don't need to sign an agreement that you won't damage my property before you're not allowed to.
Unf-in believable. Do the Slashdot community a favor. Pack up your computer and send it back to HP where you got it from.
There is no confusion. It's only confusing to people who can't get past the "it's on the internet" part.
Property Laws can easily be applied to cases like these.
You have no more right to dick around on my lawn without my permission as you do to dick around with my server. You've entered physical property and used my physical lines which cost me physical money to get there.
I don't care if you physically stomp on my garden or fly your radio control airplane through it to damage it. It's the same thing.
People like you would probably demand a "damage caused by remote" law on the books for such an occassion.
We should just forget about crimes that are going on in our country and focus solely on those that *might* be perpetrated by the evil desert rat in the hat.
"Dear concerned Citizen, We know we live in a country with laws but we're too busy to enforce them. Good luck. The FBI"
E-bay is a nice place for the exposure if you can't get it anywhere else and don't mind the fees, but what's stopping him from firing up a site and taking bids via e-mail? He's certainly got plenty of attention.
Considering a 99 million dollar bid was placed it'd also be handy to list all the bids placed allowing people to bid in between in case higher bids fall through. It was also aliviate false inflation.
No point in putting in a fake high bid if anyone can bid lower.
It would then also be possible to contact the losing bidders at the end and ask them to donate their bid to the EFF or whatever even though they won't get a crappy song for it.
Using e-bay doesn't test the legality of anything relevant. It simply tests E-Bay's TOS. Selling it himself would test the legality of selling the iTune.
Kazaa is being used as an on-line black market and companies are now going after the "sellers." Giving away illegal copies on the black market is illegal in itself. Selling illegal copies just carries additional fines.
Bitching that the RIAA is going after people who share their music on-line is as rediculous as bitching about companies that shut down the people who sit on street corners and sell bootleg DVDs or whatever.
Just because it's "on the internet" doesn't make it any less than the same.
Now, shutting down Kazaa because there are people who participate in the black market using it, is another thing. That's as silly as closing down every business on main street because somebody has an illegal business on the same street.
They aren't going after people for what they download. They're going after people for what they're sharing.
Technically it's illegal to even make copies for your friends but the RIAA (or anybody for that matter) can't feasibly do anything about it. But when you share your CDs (whether you own a legal copy or not is irrelavent) for millions of your closest "friends" then no duh you're looking to get in trouble.
It's idiotic that people think they can put CDs on the black market for the whole world to see what they're doing and then expect that their ISP is going to act as some kind of security guard to prevent them from being arrested.
Putting copyrighted materials on Kazaa is no different than firing up a burner and setting up at a street corner selling or even giving away copies except that your production costs are practically $0 with Zazaa.
You have no legal grounds to aquire anything you own from an illegal source. It doesn't matter if you own the CD. If you buy (or are given something) from the black market you've just committed a crime. Unless a company gives you a Lifetime Warrenty you haze ZERO expectations that what you bought is going to last forever. And if it becomes unusable then you have no legal recourse but to buy another if you didn't have some form of backup that you made yourself from your legal copy that you originally purchased.
I only have XP because I get it free from the Uni. MS is going to have to come out with something pretty spectacular to get me to move from 2K.
Millenium was more of a downgrade from 98. I got it since it was only $50 and completed my upgrade path so I could continue to avoid paying for full versions.
XP is basically the same way for 2K users. It's not a very valuable upgrade. But for those who have 98 and aren't comfortable with an OS like 2000, it's an excellent upgrade option.
So let's see. If companies allowed people to copy, distribute and modify freely, how many people are going to buy from the company and how many are going to fire up Kazaa and pick up a free "modified" version? What then motivates companies to hire people (creating PAYING jobs) to produce software if they can't expect a return on it?
We've got one story about robots putting people out of work and another with people claiming we should put people who do jobs robots can't do (like programming) out of business.
at my University, they've started to do that. If your machine is spitting out garbage they kill your connection and call (e-mail) whoever is responsible for maintaing the system and notify them that they need to get the problem fixed before their IP will become active again.
We havn't done it in our lab (there are multiple on campus) yet as there's no impending doom if we don't, but we're looking to secure our work area with a router that blocks all ports and then use 192.168.0.* IPs behind it. Which allows us to fresh install Windows or whatever and not have to worry about getting infected before we can get them up to date.
It'd be trivial for a University to setup such an area and if a user is trouble, kill their connection and call them and tell them to bring down their system to the secured lab to be patched and fixed.
My home network which has every flavor of Windows running was completely unaffected by the Blaster worm simply because I run a router intelligently.
In the latest releases his name and location are now out. He named the file using his on-line handle. He pointed the virus to his personal page. And he added a backdoor. Basically he was an idiot. The FBI found him in chat rooms talking about his little virus hack and tracked down where he was living from his domain registration info.
The "testing" was probably people on chat rooms reading as he used his backdoor and reported what he was able to do. He released it on the 14th and on the 19th he was pinpointed. 10 days later they released his info as he was officially in court for his first hearing.
And he admitted to all of it. The question is no longer his guilt, but simply what punishment he should recieve. As he's 18, he's an adult and with 7000 infected computers to his credit he's pretty much screwed.
And I don't think Angelina Jolie will be waiting for him to get out.
I have the cheapo service from AT&T with no voice mail and if I don't recognize the number, I don't pickup, check it with whitepages.com and if I can't determine who it is, I don't call back.
Telemarketers usually call from out of state so if you don't know who it is and it's not your areacode, just hang up on them.
As people call you who you do know, add them to your phone book to use as a white list.
As soon as something hits MY property. I choose whether I want it or not. No one has a right to enter your property. It's a privilage you grant them that you're free to revoke at any time for any reason.
The spammer only has a right to send spam from their computer on their connection as far as the ISP allows them to use their property for such a purpose. He doesn't have a right to utilize my connection and my resources to get to me or through me to someone else.
If you're my neighbor you can drive all over your own lawn all you want but you have no right to drive on my lawn to get to my front door and you certainly have no right to drive through my lawn to get to my neighbor on the other side.
This whole spam issue should be handled with existing property laws.
I personally don't care if SPEWS or whoever else is shut down. ISPs should be generating and maintaining their own blacklists. Or forming and maintaining a common list between trusted ISPs to prevent abuse and make it easier for customers to request additions or removals.
I have my own blacklist for my mailserver which is added to on an "as needed" basis. If I'm not getting tons of spam from Asia I don't very well need a thousand IPs to clug through looking for matches everytime an e-mail comes through.
The idiocy of spammers. SPEWS has been knocked off line because of lawsuits and DDoSes against their servers. Apparently spammers (and companies that feel they've been blacklisted wrongly) feel they have some kind of right to utilize other people's resources. Um. Excuse me, assholes?
The blacklist is the same thing as a restraining order. The people on the list have been deemed "trespassers." Last I checked I'm perfectly free to "blacklist" people from my property for any reason I deem appropriate. I could put up a sign "Beanie Hats Not Allowed on Property" and if some beanie wearing person walked onto my property I can call the cops to have them removed and they have zero legal recourse. If I don't want salesmen comming to my door I am perfectly able to LEGALLY block them from talking to guests at my house. I don't want to hear about how you like to suck on a horse and I don't care if a guest would like to hear it (I certainly hope I'm better at choosing my friends) THEY HAVE NO LEGAL RIGHT TO OVERRIDE MY RIGHT TO PREVENT SUCH A PERSON FROM COMMING ONTO MY PROPERTY. If they really want to hear the person tell their story about sucking on a horse they can use their OWN PROPERTY. And I have NO LEGAL OBLIGATION to get ANY information from the salesman or the guest so that they can talk later. I don't even have a legal obligation to let the guest know the salesman even came to the door.
If I'm having a party to which you were invited and your friend comes by and I don't like your friend, I can send your friend away without letting you know they even stopped by. Even if I charge you a cover to help pay for the beer. You paying me money in no way grants you ANY right to tell me who is and isn't allowed on my property.
If you beat your wife and she gets a restraining order you DO NOT HAVE A FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHT TO TALK TO HER. It's the same with a blacklist. If I blacklist you, you have NO FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHT TO TALK TO ME. I told you NO and I mean NO.
The First Amendment DOES NOT aliviate MY RIGHT to block whomever I want from using MY PROPERTY. If I allow a person to utilize my property they are subject to MY RULES. I am under NO OBLIGATION to do a per user blacklist. I DEEM who is allowed to use MY PROPERTY and if a person who is allowed to use MY PROPERTY doesn't like who I prevent from using MY PROPERTY, they can leave.
Spammers and other idiots need to get it through their thick retarded skulls that ISPs and other servers are PRIVATE PROPERTY. YOU DO NOT HAVE A RIGHT TO UTILIZE PRIVATE PROPERTY. It is a PRIVILAGE that the owner grants to you at their discretion. Apparently some people are too stupid to comprehend the fact that this whole blacklist thing falls under the laws of private ownership. Being "on the internet" makes it no less property. It costs me money for transfering your crap. It costs me money to store you crap. I have NO LEGAL OBLIGATION TO USE MY PRIVATE RESOURCES FOR YOUR CRAP.
End of discussion. There's no First Amendment about it.
you're biased. Nobody exists on the planet who isn't biased unless they have no opinion of anything.
"bias" is just a buzzword to excuse your brain from the conversation.
As for being censored, that's not an internet phenomenon. Every form of media has been, will be or is being censored somewhere in the world.
Don't like it? Revolt, circumvent or move. Welcome to the human race where assholes exist that would like to label people as being and then censor people for being "biased" (e.g. presenting information) in a way they doen't happen to like.
Percentages go from 0 to 100 which of course looks insignificant. But when you consider the actual number of 500,000 - 2 million miles it's quite obvious why it's a big deal.
2 million miles makes a HUGE difference in what you can and can't see.
Kazaa isn't responsible for the actions of those who use the service but SPEWS is?
It's a "bad idea" is a valid argument but claiming any kind of legal basis to take them down is ludicrous. Nobody is forcing anybody to use their lists.
Personally, I don't care to have my server wasting time using their massive list. I block on an "as it comes" basis. I'm also moving to a better mail server which allows better filtering to use on top of the blacklist.
My property, my resources. No one has any expectation of the PRIVILAGE to use those resources. On my list? Find another way to contact your customers or friends or whatever.
Slashdot Mirror
Let's see, you pay 99 cents for the song and now you're going to resell it. Unless it's no longer available why would I pay you more than 99 cents for the song or pay you at all when I can just as easily get it from a trusted source: Apple.
And why would you charge less than 99 cents for it? It's a dollar. Most people aren't so scroogish about their money that they will try to get a dollar back. And most on-line money transfer places don't make it economical to sell something for a buck. The fees are too high. With PayPal you'd only end up with 66 cents on that dollar. And it's quite a hassle to mail you a dollar in which case I'm paying an additional 37 cents at least.
Apple got it right. The technical restrictions and the low cost make it a waste of effort to try to resell to regain the cost of the product, much less make a profit. They quite literally made it impossible to be undersold.
If songs ever stop being offered by Apple then one may have a business opportunity. But that would require buying numerous licenses of each song to make it worth it and require some foresight into what's going "out of print" that people will still want years from now in order to avoid wasting money on songs you'll never be able to sell once the market swings your way to check out what you have.
Instead of fighting Apple in this worthless pursuit of pennies, you'd be better off forming an allience with indie bands and set up a business being the first time sellers of their music. There's a huge market for that.
Ben
every company that "dares" to shut down bootleggers that sell their illegal goods on the streets as well?
Kazaa is one icarnation of the digital black market. I think it's disgusting how Slashdot rallies around people who steal (copyright infringment is a form of theft) other people's creations and then distribute them over the black market as though it's some nobel thing.
Yes, right. I expect you all to urge the EFF to pay the legal fees for all those people selling bootleg DVDs and everything else on street corners as well.
Wake UP! Complaining that they're trying to stop LEGAL trading is one thing. But they're not doing that. If you make your own music and distribute it, the RIAA isn't going to bat an eye. They're rightfully cracking down on the digital black market just as they and every other company has been cracking down on the nondigital black market that's prevelant over in the east and available everywhere else as well.
Nintendo has been busting people for decades for distributing illegal ROMs and cartridges in all forms. Sites that distribute ROMs get shut down almost as fast as they pop up. Sony and every other digital content creator has been doing the same thing.
Putting up illegal MP3s on Kazaa is exactly no different than hosting them on a web-site except it's slightly less difficult to be tracked and prosecuted for your crime.
If they can fool the stupid into giving themselves up for prosecution, good for them. If you're dumb enough to commit a crime and then dumb enough to fall for a ploy and end up getting arrested, too bad. The sympathy line is back that away. Cops have been doing this sort of thing for years.
"You've won a prize!"
Criminal shows up.
"JAIL TIME! YAY!"
The EFF is perfectly fine giving people money to ensure those who are accused due process, a fair trial and just punishment if they are convicted but it should in no way shape or form reimburse the conviced for their losses incured for participating in the black market.
Ben
4. Punishing them when they misbehave
If little Johnny gets grounded, spanked, a slap on the wrist, no dinner, whatever for punching his little brother in the shoulder, little Johnny is going think a little harder before giving his little brother a black eye.
Your list is very telling about the sad state of modern parenting when "punishment" doesn't show up on it. Society has deemed the line between punishment and child abuse too blurred and has decided that punishing kids is now a criminal offense.
"that parents would actually be responsible for their childs actions"
Sorry but we've evolved into a better race that doesn't follow such archaic ideas. We want to give children rights. We want to make clothes for them that even young adults would blush at. We want to do everything in our power to avoid punishing our children at home. We want to treat them like adults. And since they're adults, the parents are now no longer responsible for them.
And now shock and amazment, we treat them like adults and they go out and act like adults. Sometime committing crimes that previously only adults would commit.
And then they show up in court and discover to their delight that even the courts are too afraid to actually punish them.
And what have they learned from all of this? Nothing. And another generation goes one step farther down the shithole.
Ben
"or for not teaching them to not shoot at cars"
How about just not to point guns at people? If the kids are so dense you have to tell them not to shoot at cars then they're probably too dense to know they shouldn't shoot at trucks or semies or mini-vans or SUVs, etc either without you specifically telling them each type of vehicle.
They should just throw the kids in jail for a very long time and be done with it.
They're obviously incapable of functioning in society. And the parents are obviously incapable of raising the kids otherwise.
And the parents who are suing the video game makers would be better off spending their time getting the court systems to stop feeling sorry for kids they'd like us all to believe "made a mistake."
A mistake is breaking a lamp. It is not a "mistake" to take innocent lives in such a malicious manner. They've crossed the sympathy line about 3 miles ago with this one.
The parents should simply be content with those kids locked away indefinitly.
Ben
"Simply obtaining information is not covered under your definition,"
That's called stealing.
Think. Or do us all a favor and pack up your computer and mail it back to HP.
"You didn't tell me I couldn't come in through the unlocked window and photocopy files in your file-cabinet so it's not illegal! No physical property was taken!"
What are you stupid? Yes.
Ben
With P2P you really don't know what you're getting. You may think you're downloading The Lion King but you may end up with Debbie Does Dallas.
.zaa file format that uses a form of compression along with a header with a checksum, description, etc to ensure that the file it claims it has, really is that file.
.zaa file and submit it for community approval before it's checksum is added to a global database as "trusted."
On the web, sites are required by law to warn users before they can enter an adult site. Those that don't comply can be thrown in jail and/or fined.
P2P has NO SUCH MECHANISM to warn users about what they may actually be getting. Since the sharers have NO MEANS AVAILABLE to warn users what they're sharing then it's reasonable that the app itself must.
I don't see the problem with this.
Kazaa has become an abondanded street filled with hookers and the black market. If you don't want the law to clean up your street then you better do it yourself.
It'd be rediculously trivial to have a
If you want to share a file, you pack in into a
Users can then block certain headers and untrusted files.
Ben
"File charges against me."
Did you cause any damage?
No. Then I guess I have no reason to file charges then huh, moron.
Think. Use your brain. We complain about how complicated lawyer speak is to understand for common people and you're a prestine reason why. People have forgotten how to think for themselves and need to be told how to think down to every little detail. And even then it's a battle to get them to comprehend.
Ben
"without requiring any specific agreement from them before use"
This is just another example of why our world is going to shit. Too many retarded people that think I have to make you sign something before you can't damage something I own.
Didn't sign an agreement that you can't egg my house on holloween? Guess you can then huh? What are you, stupid?
Our society has become so braindead that unless you tell someone specifically not to do some specific act, they assume they can regardless of the fact general laws exist.
Property laws exist that say you can't damage other people's property. Why? Because common decency has gone out the windows thanks to an abundance of retards that have engulfed our society.
"Therefore you wish him punished as a tresspasser?"
Listen, idiot. You don't need to sign an agreement that you won't damage my property before you're not allowed to.
Unf-in believable. Do the Slashdot community a favor. Pack up your computer and send it back to HP where you got it from.
Ben
My server, my property.
There is no confusion. It's only confusing to people who can't get past the "it's on the internet" part.
Property Laws can easily be applied to cases like these.
You have no more right to dick around on my lawn without my permission as you do to dick around with my server. You've entered physical property and used my physical lines which cost me physical money to get there.
I don't care if you physically stomp on my garden or fly your radio control airplane through it to damage it. It's the same thing.
People like you would probably demand a "damage caused by remote" law on the books for such an occassion.
Current laws suffice.
Ben
We should just forget about crimes that are going on in our country and focus solely on those that *might* be perpetrated by the evil desert rat in the hat.
"Dear concerned Citizen, We know we live in a country with laws but we're too busy to enforce them. Good luck. The FBI"
Gimme a break.
Ben
E-bay is a nice place for the exposure if you can't get it anywhere else and don't mind the fees, but what's stopping him from firing up a site and taking bids via e-mail? He's certainly got plenty of attention.
Considering a 99 million dollar bid was placed it'd also be handy to list all the bids placed allowing people to bid in between in case higher bids fall through. It was also aliviate false inflation.
No point in putting in a fake high bid if anyone can bid lower.
It would then also be possible to contact the losing bidders at the end and ask them to donate their bid to the EFF or whatever even though they won't get a crappy song for it.
Using e-bay doesn't test the legality of anything relevant. It simply tests E-Bay's TOS. Selling it himself would test the legality of selling the iTune.
Ben
Why should the public care?
Kazaa is being used as an on-line black market and companies are now going after the "sellers." Giving away illegal copies on the black market is illegal in itself. Selling illegal copies just carries additional fines.
Bitching that the RIAA is going after people who share their music on-line is as rediculous as bitching about companies that shut down the people who sit on street corners and sell bootleg DVDs or whatever.
Just because it's "on the internet" doesn't make it any less than the same.
Now, shutting down Kazaa because there are people who participate in the black market using it, is another thing. That's as silly as closing down every business on main street because somebody
has an illegal business on the same street.
Ben
They aren't going after people for what they download. They're going after people for what they're sharing.
Technically it's illegal to even make copies for your friends but the RIAA (or anybody for that matter) can't feasibly do anything about it. But when you share your CDs (whether you own a legal copy or not is irrelavent) for millions of your closest "friends" then no duh you're looking to get in trouble.
It's idiotic that people think they can put CDs on the black market for the whole world to see what they're doing and then expect that their ISP is going to act as some kind of security guard to prevent them from being arrested.
Putting copyrighted materials on Kazaa is no different than firing up a burner and setting up at a street corner selling or even giving away copies except that your production costs are practically $0 with Zazaa.
You have no legal grounds to aquire anything you own from an illegal source. It doesn't matter if you own the CD. If you buy (or are given something) from the black market you've just committed a crime. Unless a company gives you a Lifetime Warrenty you haze ZERO expectations that what you bought is going to last forever. And if it becomes unusable then you have no legal recourse but to buy another if you didn't have some form of backup that you made yourself from your legal copy that you originally purchased.
Ben
I only have XP because I get it free from the Uni.
MS is going to have to come out with something pretty spectacular to get me to move from 2K.
Millenium was more of a downgrade from 98. I got it since it was only $50 and completed my upgrade path so I could continue to avoid paying for full versions.
XP is basically the same way for 2K users. It's not a very valuable upgrade. But for those who have 98 and aren't comfortable with an OS like 2000, it's an excellent upgrade option.
Ben
So let's see. If companies allowed people to copy, distribute and modify freely, how many people are going to buy from the company and how many are going to fire up Kazaa and pick up a free "modified" version? What then motivates companies to hire people (creating PAYING jobs) to produce software if they can't expect a return on it?
We've got one story about robots putting people out of work and another with people claiming we should put people who do jobs robots can't do (like programming) out of business.
"All software should be free! lalala."
Give me a break.
Ben
at my University, they've started to do that. If your machine is spitting out garbage they kill your connection and call (e-mail) whoever is responsible for maintaing the system and notify them that they need to get the problem fixed before their IP will become active again.
We havn't done it in our lab (there are multiple on campus) yet as there's no impending doom if we don't, but we're looking to secure our work area with a router that blocks all ports and then use 192.168.0.* IPs behind it. Which allows us to fresh install Windows or whatever and not have to worry about getting infected before we can get them up to date.
It'd be trivial for a University to setup such an area and if a user is trouble, kill their connection and call them and tell them to bring down their system to the secured lab to be patched and fixed.
My home network which has every flavor of Windows running was completely unaffected by the Blaster worm simply because I run a router intelligently.
It's really not that hard to not get infected.
Ben
In the latest releases his name and location are now out. He named the file using his on-line handle. He pointed the virus to his personal page. And he added a backdoor. Basically he was an idiot. The FBI found him in chat rooms talking about his little virus hack and tracked down where he was living from his domain registration info.
The "testing" was probably people on chat rooms reading as he used his backdoor and reported what he was able to do. He released it on the 14th and on the 19th he was pinpointed. 10 days later they released his info as he was officially in court for his first hearing.
And he admitted to all of it. The question is no longer his guilt, but simply what punishment he should recieve. As he's 18, he's an adult and with 7000 infected computers to his credit he's pretty much screwed.
And I don't think Angelina Jolie will be waiting for him to get out.
Ben
I have the cheapo service from AT&T with no voice mail and if I don't recognize the number, I don't pickup, check it with whitepages.com and if I can't determine who it is, I don't call back.
Telemarketers usually call from out of state so if you don't know who it is and it's not your areacode, just hang up on them.
As people call you who you do know, add them to your phone book to use as a white list.
Ben
As soon as something hits MY property. I choose whether I want it or not. No one has a right to enter your property. It's a privilage you grant them that you're free to revoke at any time for any reason.
The spammer only has a right to send spam from their computer on their connection as far as the ISP allows them to use their property for such a purpose. He doesn't have a right to utilize my connection and my resources to get to me or through me to someone else.
If you're my neighbor you can drive all over your own lawn all you want but you have no right to drive on my lawn to get to my front door and you certainly have no right to drive through my lawn to get to my neighbor on the other side.
This whole spam issue should be handled with existing property laws.
I personally don't care if SPEWS or whoever else is shut down. ISPs should be generating and maintaining their own blacklists. Or forming and maintaining a common list between trusted ISPs to prevent abuse and make it easier for customers to request additions or removals.
I have my own blacklist for my mailserver which is added to on an "as needed" basis. If I'm not getting tons of spam from Asia I don't very well need a thousand IPs to clug through looking for matches everytime an e-mail comes through.
Ben
From a rant posted at my site:
The idiocy of spammers. SPEWS has been knocked off line because of lawsuits and DDoSes against their servers. Apparently spammers (and companies that feel they've been blacklisted wrongly) feel they have some kind of right to utilize other people's resources. Um. Excuse me, assholes?
The blacklist is the same thing as a restraining order. The people on the list have been deemed "trespassers." Last I checked I'm perfectly free to "blacklist" people from my property for any reason I deem appropriate. I could put up a sign "Beanie Hats Not Allowed on Property" and if some beanie wearing person walked onto my property I can call the cops to have them removed and they have zero legal recourse. If I don't want salesmen comming to my door I am perfectly able to LEGALLY block them from talking to guests at my house. I don't want to hear about how you like to suck on a horse and I don't care if a guest would like to hear it (I certainly hope I'm better at choosing my friends) THEY HAVE NO LEGAL RIGHT TO OVERRIDE MY RIGHT TO PREVENT SUCH A PERSON FROM COMMING ONTO MY PROPERTY. If they really want to hear the person tell their story about sucking on a horse they can use their OWN PROPERTY. And I have NO LEGAL OBLIGATION to get ANY information from the salesman or the guest so that they can talk later. I don't even have a legal obligation to let the guest know the salesman even came to the door.
If I'm having a party to which you were invited and your friend comes by and I don't like your friend, I can send your friend away without letting you know they even stopped by. Even if I charge you a cover to help pay for the beer. You paying me money in no way grants you ANY right to tell me who is and isn't allowed on my property.
If you beat your wife and she gets a restraining order you DO NOT HAVE A FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHT TO TALK TO HER. It's the same with a blacklist. If I blacklist you, you have NO FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHT TO TALK TO ME. I told you NO and I mean NO.
The First Amendment DOES NOT aliviate MY RIGHT to block whomever I want from using MY PROPERTY. If I allow a person to utilize my property they are subject to MY RULES. I am under NO OBLIGATION to do a per user blacklist. I DEEM who is allowed to use MY PROPERTY and if a person who is allowed to use MY PROPERTY doesn't like who I prevent from using MY PROPERTY, they can leave.
Spammers and other idiots need to get it through their thick retarded skulls that ISPs and other servers are PRIVATE PROPERTY. YOU DO NOT HAVE A RIGHT TO UTILIZE PRIVATE PROPERTY. It is a PRIVILAGE that the owner grants to you at their discretion. Apparently some people are too stupid to comprehend the fact that this whole blacklist thing falls under the laws of private ownership. Being "on the internet" makes it no less property. It costs me money for transfering your crap. It costs me money to store you crap. I have NO LEGAL OBLIGATION TO USE MY PRIVATE RESOURCES FOR YOUR CRAP.
End of discussion. There's no First Amendment about it.
Ben
you're biased. Nobody exists on the planet who isn't biased unless they have no opinion of anything.
"bias" is just a buzzword to excuse your brain from the conversation.
As for being censored, that's not an internet phenomenon. Every form of media has been, will be or is being censored somewhere in the world.
Don't like it? Revolt, circumvent or move. Welcome to the human race where assholes exist that would like to label people as being and then censor people for being "biased" (e.g. presenting information) in a way they doen't happen to like.
Ben
until it starts eating the tourists.
Ben
Percentages go from 0 to 100 which of course looks insignificant. But when you consider the actual number of 500,000 - 2 million miles it's quite obvious why it's a big deal.
2 million miles makes a HUGE difference in what you can and can't see.
Ben
It looks like they were in Arizona or some other desert region.
I bet the color correction was some evil NASA plan to fool us again.
It is really kinda bizzare to look at it with the rusty sky which is foreign and then with the blue sky which is quite familiar.
Ben
Kazaa isn't responsible for the actions of those who use the service but SPEWS is?
It's a "bad idea" is a valid argument but claiming any kind of legal basis to take them down is ludicrous. Nobody is forcing anybody to use their lists.
Personally, I don't care to have my server wasting time using their massive list. I block on an "as it comes" basis. I'm also moving to a better mail server which allows better filtering to use on top of the blacklist.
My property, my resources. No one has any expectation of the PRIVILAGE to use those resources. On my list? Find another way to contact your customers or friends or whatever.
Ben