It seems to me that Harlan's pissed mostly because he's only now realising that he should have pro-actively shut the door and put a meter on it before the horse bolted.
Oh, he realized it a while ago. And I believe he sincerely tried the "meter" model. The award-winning story "Repent, Harlequin!..." was available as an e-book for quite a while from Mind's Eye Fiction, before moving over to Fictionwise (and at a very reasonable price, I might add).
Problem is, this is now the most-frequently pirated Ellison story found on alt.binaries.e-books. No wonder he thinks of netizens as primarily thieves.
"Fair use" means you can use your CD in any CD-player anywhere you like, and you're free to sell it on second-hand. Same applies to books. You do NOT get a free license to copy it, EVER. No court has ever said this - it's completely in violation of copyright law. And if your original copy wears out, you have to buy a new one. Software licensing usually makes an exception to this, allowing you to make a backup for recovery purposes. Copyright on books and music has no such exception
Wrong (at least with regard to music CD's, that is). According to the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992, you're allowed to copy, but are supposed to adhere to SCMS standards.
He settled with the copyright infringer and now wants to sue the ISP's?????
RemarQ/Critical Path isn't an (only) ISP, it's a pay-subscription Usenet provider. It used to be free, but I imagine that their move to a pay-only service will Really help Mr. Ellison's case (no hiding behind fair use when you're making a profit by hosting infringing materials).
All that being said, I find it somewhat ironic that Harlan Ellison is including authors who have died broke as co-complainants. Memories may be short, but he went on a serious rant when I called him out on a very similar subject back in 1996 (I was the "CJ" in the IABC chat who asked him to either publish or return the stories of deceased contributors to The Last Dangerous Visions.
BZZZT. Thanks for playing. An easy counter-example, even keeping with the horror novelist theme of the parent, is Douglas Clegg. He has released two books for free. One was published electronically first, then in paper form. The other book reversed the order.
The fact that he hasn't starved to death yet is encouraging. The page for the ebook Purity incluses the following quote: "tips are appreciated -- in the form of going to your local bookstore and asking for Douglas Clegg novels." I would imagine that the fan base expansion created by these two freebies is generating increased sales of his other work, or he wouldn't have kept this up for over a year.
(IANA publisher shill. I subscribed to Naomi, but didn't much care for it.)
Moderators asleep at the wheel here. This is the most insightful thing I've read in weeks. I've found the best music in the last 16 months from mp3.com, certainly NOT Napster.
If you *are* a whippersnapper, and want to understand Usenet, the Green Card reference above and the origin of the term "Spam" as applied to the internet, your Google search should probably use the correct spelling: Canter and Siegel.
Now this might have been a really great thing. Even Intel and Microsoft were behind it big time, until they got the word from Apple about the high licensing fees. This prompted Intel to drop support and pay out big bucks for their own R&D, and for MS to just drop out entirely. Yet again, another good idea down the arrogance shooter.
Microsoft balked at a fee of 25 cents per device!? Even the originally-proposed $1 ssems reasonable. Somebody needs a fact-checker.
>I think it's in screwing the customers out of money with marketign gimmiks & tricks...
Their priorities appear to be where they always are--being the first out of the chute with the "next big thing". Sure, they've had their share of flops, but where would we be without marketing gimmicks and tricks like the floppy drive, the 3.5" floppy, the GUI, the Laser Printer, etc? Jobs' "vision thing" has produced some serious misses, but Consumer DVD authoring might just take off as big as translucent plastic.
I can't believe I'm posting my third followup to the same story, but the link for the free Acrobat Reader "Access" plug-in (full Acrobat not required, but sadly it's Windows only) is http://access.adobe.com/. The HTML-ized MIT paper (it ain't pretty) is 127 Kb.
There's also a web-based form here for those who may not use Micros~1 products. I just submitted this URL to it, but I'm still waiting on a response. I guess it takes their server a while to process a 9 MB file...
You want ports? Z-code is the original "write once, play anywhere" model.
Just take a peek here for interpreters on your platform of choice, and
here for free official releases of the first three Zork games (see above for Hitchhiker's Guide links).
MP3.com pays artists. Labels pay artists. Napster doesn't.
Read Napster's brief. It says that the RIAA is abusing their copyrights by preventing on-line distribution of music. Napster's interpretation of copyright law is that this lets them do what they've done. IANAL, but it sure looks to me like this is their strongest argument. When a $15 CD returns pennies in royalties to the Artist, there's something seriously wrong with the business model.
Another HUGE plus for mp3.com: the Artists get a full 50% of the payment. Go read Roger McGuinn's statements at the Senate hearing about how he never got royalty checks from Columbia/RIAA, but is now seeing substantial income from mp3.com.
To me, this is the crux of Napster's case: they should demonstrate that the RIAA, by refusing to embrace on-line distribution, is denying the Artists the legitimate opportunity to earn income from their work.
(Yes,I have purchased from both mp3.com and Emusic.com, as well as managed to "back-up" ~75% of my vinyl collection from Napster)
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Problem is, this is now the most-frequently pirated Ellison story found on alt.binaries.e-books. No wonder he thinks of netizens as primarily thieves.
RemarQ/Critical Path isn't an (only) ISP, it's a pay-subscription Usenet provider. It used to be free, but I imagine that their move to a pay-only service will Really help Mr. Ellison's case (no hiding behind fair use when you're making a profit by hosting infringing materials).
All that being said, I find it somewhat ironic that Harlan Ellison is including authors who have died broke as co-complainants. Memories may be short, but he went on a serious rant when I called him out on a very similar subject back in 1996 (I was the "CJ" in the IABC chat who asked him to either publish or return the stories of deceased contributors to The Last Dangerous Visions.
BZZZT. Thanks for playing. An easy counter-example, even keeping with the horror novelist theme of the parent, is Douglas Clegg. He has released two books for free. One was published electronically first, then in paper form. The other book reversed the order.
The fact that he hasn't starved to death yet is encouraging. The page for the ebook Purity incluses the following quote: "tips are appreciated -- in the form of going to your local bookstore and asking for Douglas Clegg novels." I would imagine that the fan base expansion created by these two freebies is generating increased sales of his other work, or he wouldn't have kept this up for over a year.
(IANA publisher shill. I subscribed to Naomi, but didn't much care for it.)
Moderators asleep at the wheel here. This is the most insightful thing I've read in weeks. I've found the best music in the last 16 months from mp3.com, certainly NOT Napster.
If you *are* a whippersnapper, and want to understand Usenet, the Green Card reference above and the origin of the term "Spam" as applied to the internet, your Google search should probably use the correct spelling: Canter and Siegel.
Three years ago, the only acronym in use was LEP for light-emitting polymer. That one has almost completely vanished
Shouldn't this be in the faq? I asked it myself a couple of weeks ago, but got no response...
There's also a web-based form here for those who may not use Micros~1 products. I just submitted this URL to it, but I'm still waiting on a response. I guess it takes their server a while to process a 9 MB file...
Just take a peek here for interpreters on your platform of choice, and here for free official releases of the first three Zork games (see above for Hitchhiker's Guide links).
http://ifarchive.org/if-archive/infocom/info/info
http://ifarchive.org/if-archive/infocom/info/info
(maybe a
But if that one goes away, it also has these alternates:
- Germany:
ftp.gmd.de (ftp)
- USA:
wuarchive.wustl.edu (http)
- USA:
ftp.nodomainname.net (http)
- Finland:
ftp.funet.fi (ftp)
- Australia:
mirror.aarnet.edu.au (http)
(ftp)
Hope this helps!Read Napster's brief. It says that the RIAA is abusing their copyrights by preventing on-line distribution of music. Napster's interpretation of copyright law is that this lets them do what they've done. IANAL, but it sure looks to me like this is their strongest argument. When a $15 CD returns pennies in royalties to the Artist, there's something seriously wrong with the business model.
To me, this is the crux of Napster's case: they should demonstrate that the RIAA, by refusing to embrace on-line distribution, is denying the Artists the legitimate opportunity to earn income from their work.
(Yes,I have purchased from both mp3.com and Emusic.com, as well as managed to "back-up" ~75% of my vinyl collection from Napster)