It seems to me that what IIS did was the equivalent, at least as far as public performance is concerned, of setting up a semi-private jukebox. What are the laws regarding jukeboxes? Do they have to be set up by the record companies, or do the owners of establishments that have them set them up themselves, and pay the copyright holders accordingly? Who gets your quarter when you pick your songs?
Would anyone more educated than I on this matter like to comment?
I'm a resident of the state of Hawaii, and I vote and go to school in Seattle. Seattle has Maria Cantwell, whom I don't particularly dislike, but where IP is concerned, I wouldn't trust her if she paid me to.
I figure, okay, so much for Washington. How about Hawaii. My senator, Dan Inouye, has lots and lots of pull, right? Well, according to the Wired article, he's a sponsor, so he's not going to change, either. Generally, whichever way Inouye decides to go, the other Hawaii senator, Dan Akaka, will go as well. So who do we write to?
Although I agree with what you're saying in this case (i.e. individuals should always have more legislative power than corporations), there are instances where, IMO, corporations really are the best to decide.
In many areas, such as business tax laws, existing laws don't so much prevent unfair business practices, but merely punish corporations for being in business entirely. Individuals generally won't be aware of these problems, because they do not affect them. Businesses, however, encounter them all the time, and a corporate-sponsored bill is really the only way to go.
Trying to make bits uncopyable is like trying to make water not wet
Sony managed to do just that with the Playstation, by putting the region encoding in the wobble groove on the CD. That's why you need a mod chip to play bootlegs, instead of just being able to patch them.
When an ad behaves enough like a virus to fool McAfee, I'd say it crosses the line between aggressive and offensive. And most conventional marketers will tell you that you don't sell products by offending the customer.
I get ads which want to install software on my computer without asking, ads which persist long after I've stopped reading their attached content. All these do is make people cynical towards ads, and I don't think I'm alone in reflexively looking away from the screen the moment these ads come into view. It's a bad habit in some cases; after all, they're paying for the content I'm reading.
But the morality becomes difficult when the majority of the time, these ads are for things which are illegal, immoral, or otherwise contrary to my belief systems. Personally, I *like* the ads on Slashdot. They are generally relevant, can be helpful, and are sometimes even entertaining. But I can't help but feel that most of the advertisers out there are poisoning the market by putting up sleazy ads.
The problem with what you propose is that it assumes that the only ones willing to pay for mod points are the ones who should have them. I tend to think that the exact opposite is true.
"Those who desire power the most often deserve it least." It's an old cliche, but it's only stuck around because it holds true so often. Slashdot attempts to work as a meritocracy, and even if it isn't entirely successful, that doesn't mean the ideal should be abandoned. The ability to buy mod points just invites abuse, and the ones who would suffer are the casual readers, wanting to read a good cross-section of opinions at their threshold.
Several years ago, I learned about a context-based search engine that my friend's dad was developing for corporate intranet use. You can find it here, and I think the site describes it far better than I could.
When I spoke with him, they were wooing some fairly high-profile clients, but I can't rightly say I know where they are right now.
To refresh your memory from history class, in 1925, science teacher John Scopes was tried in the state of Tennessee for teaching human evolution. He was found guilty, but the decision was appealed to the supreme court, and the law was overturned. What many may not realize was that the entire thing was a setup. Scopes had been asked beforehand if he was willing to be arrested for teaching evolution, in order for the law to be tested. In fact, the state of Tennessee had been informed when and where Scopes would be teaching evolution.
How this applies today is that the DMCA, like Tennessee's Anti-Evolution Statute in 1925, has not yet been tried in front of the Supreme Court. If people keep settling out of court on these, the law will never be overturned. Really, our best shot is to set some guy up. Someone who doesn't have a lot to lose.
Have someone blatantly violate the DMCA in a petty way that violates the DMCA without violating other laws, and publicize the hell out of it. Then, when charges are filed, you take it all the way up to the supreme court. The case of Sony vs. Channel Technology would have been a great one, except that they're in England, and the law doesn't work quite the same over there; Sony won on a summary judgment. No trial and no appeal.
A virus only works if it contains a program that can be executed by another program with serious potential to screw things up. You never hear about anyone getting a virus from Napster, and that's because none of the media players are capable of interpreting a media file in such a way that it could maliciously affect the way a system runs.
Theoretically, our magical network would only be used for transmitting raw, nonexecutable data, such as text, music and video. I'm assuming that the devices wouldn't support things like Word macros and ActiveX extentions over the network, so the spread of a traditional virus would be inconceivable.
The only real issue would be spoofing, sort of mindshare virii, as mentioned in the article. I.e. your device downloads something truly awful (like William Shatner's "Lucy in the Sky"), thinking it's your favorite song, and it gets passed along by other fans of that particular artist.
> 4) Microsoft programmers are inept. Microsoft attracts greedy and underqualified programmers with the lure of stock options. Good programmers either work for themselves or for a company that puts pride in their work.
As nice as it would be if all the best programmers were in it for the love, it's not strictly true. Some of the best programmers I've known work for or have worked for Microsoft. It has nothing to do with skill, and everything to do with cynicism.
I like to say that I'm in it for the love, but I really don't consider myself a particularly good programmer. Not that skill and romanticism are mutually exclusive or anything. Case in point, the FSF...
Re:Ahhh Shut The Hell Up Already
on
Sony vs Modchips
·
· Score: 0
From what I understand, modding a Gamecube is as simple as soldering a single jumper wire. Nintendo has always had a "who cares" approach to modding. Their biggest weapon is the warranty. That and the fact that no matter what you solder in that thing, there's no way you're getting it to read bootlegs.
The PSX anti-piracy mod chips work quite differently from Messiah. For the PSX, the region/copy protection was done by a string of characters that was sent at boot that said "SCEA." The PSX mod chips worked by hijacking that signal and sending "SCEA" into the bitstream. Then somebody had the bright idea to simply transmit the first three bytes from the disc and only change the last one. That way, if someone tries to play a bootleg game, the machine reads "xxxA" and fails to boot. But if a Japanese or European game is put in, the machine reads "SCEA" and the game boots.
Unfortunately, the PS2 doesn't work that way. There is no simple "SCEA" code that determines a disc's region of origin. There is no line that you can just take over and say, "hey, I'm legal." Both the Origa and Messiah chips require you to solder at least 10 wires directly to the BIOS, and the purpose is to change the BIOS's actual functionality. I don't know the details, since it's Channeltech's most coveted secret, but this means that any extra checking must be done by the chip itself, and that is most certainly non-trivial.
Re:Not about Region coding or 'personal backups'
on
Sony vs Modchips
·
· Score: 1, Interesting
Actually, you are wrong. Very wrong. One of the key selling points of the Messiah was that it could play DVDRs. Unfortunately, Gazza took all the promotional material off the web site, so you can't see this in action.
But believe me, I have seen a video that he put up and linked from messiah-world, showing all the advertised media, including DVD-R's, running. And now, backing up becomes feasible. Of course, I have yet to meet a person who actually backs up their games, but I find the import originals to be the main reason to buy such a chip.
Now, according to Gazza, it is very difficult (read: nearly impossible) for a mod chip to distinguish between a legit disc and a burned disc. If one could do that, they'd be halfway to burning bootable discs, and half the modders out there wouldn't be buying chips anymore. Because of the inability to distinguish between genuine and pirated media, playing bootlegs becomes a prerequisite for playing legitimate imports.
The Dreamcast's failure is a bit more complicated than you make it out to be. The real problem with the Dreamcast was a schism between tremendous failure in the Japanese market and a solid success in the US market.
When the DC first came out in the US, it was *the* thing to have in college dorm rooms. Every kid wanted one, and every college student wanted one. The launch games were some of the best ever, with Soul Calibur topping the charts for that year. And then, somewhere, despite commercial succes, the games just stopped.
What happened was the Japanese market drying up. In great contrast to the American release, the Japanese launch was a disaster. There were only a few games available, and they weren't particularly good. The system required peripherals that were expensive and underproduced, and as a whole everyone was quite content with sticking with their Playstations.
Contrary to popular belief, with a few recent exceptions, Japanese game developers don't develop with the American market in mind. The general consensus has been that if a game won't do well in Japan, you shouldn't ship it. Japanese developers saw the Dreamcast as the Big Loser, and chose to develop for Sony's machines instead, sealing the Dreamcast's fate. Few games were made, many long-running projects were cancelled, and from what it looked like over here, the Dreamcast died at right at the height of its success.
When a game system comes out, two things determine its success: developer lists and marketing. If either of these fall through, things like installed userbase and system specs mean nothing.
While I didn't feel particularly moved by any of President Bush's comments, I found myself soothed by Secretary of State Colin Powell's performance at the press conference. The man was asked somewhat random questions, and extemporaneously came up with speech-level answers. This is the kind of manner that makes British public figures seem more intelligent, even when they say the same things.
I do not feel entirely safe with George W. Bush as our nation's chief elected official, but Colin Powell's presence makes me sleep a little easier. It's a damn shame he decided not to run for the 2000 nomination; I would have voted for him over Gore in a heartbeat. And it's too bad also that he would never run against GW in the 2004 primaries.
Alright, here I am, typing on a Dvorak layout, and after a little under a year, I'm at least as fast as I was on QWERTY (which I had been using for at least 10 years). Regardless of my raw typing speed, however, I also notice that I have to shift my finger position a lot less on Dvorak.
Here's an example.
"The"
Now I'm not sure if it's the most common word in the English language, but it's at least up there in the top five. To type "the" in QWERTY, you must stretch your left index finger diagonally right, then stretch your right index finger to the left, and then stretch your left middle finger up and to the left a little bit. Three finger stretches in as many letters on what is arguably the most common word in the English language.
Now contrast this with how it would be done in Dvorak. The 't' is pressed with your right middle finger, the 'h' is pressed with your right index finger, and the 'e' is pressed with your left middle finger, all in the home row. Not only do your fingers not have to extend at all, but they make a nice little drumming motion with the right hand.
As for the whole "switching hands" thing, I believe it's the other way around. The Dvorak keyboard is laid out in such a way that all the vowels are all on the left hand home row and the most common consonants are in the right hand home row. This pretty much guarantees that unless you're typing Welsh, you will change hands at least once during every single word.
And if you still aren't convinced, sit a seasoned Dvorak typist and a QWERTY typist down together, and watch them type. You'll probably notice that the QWERTY typist moves around the keyboard like he's playing a Rachmaninoff concerto, while the Dvorak typist will remain relatively static. Speeds may vary, but Dvorak's a lot less likely to give you RSI.
I've found that learning another key layout is a lot like learning another language, except that the transition time to full fluency is much shorter. While at first you may find (to your horror) that you can't type QWERTY anymore, it is possible to learn to use both fluently and naturally.
For me, it used to be that I required at least two hours to switch back and forth between layouts. But after a lot of practice, it now takes me about one minute to switch between the two. Of course, if you have to use a QWERTY during the week or two that you're learning Dvorak, it might take a little longer to learn...
It seems like the main focus of this plan is to turn your computer into a glorified terminal. How is this different from the terminals that were connected to time-sharing systems in the '60s and '70s? Why were people so excited to buy the Apple II when they could have simply had all of their processing handled remotely by big computers?
The fact is that Americans, and most geeks to a degree, like to own things. It's why DIVX failed, it's why people take exception to the Microsoft End-User License Agreement, and it's why people buy VHS tapes of movies they will probably only watch a few times, when they could've just rented them from Blockbuster.
We like to at least have the illusion that if anything goes wrong, the box is right here, and we can fix it (even if we really can't). Why else would people still feel the need to own cars in cities with good public transportation systems?
ASP essentially violates the principle of the personal computer. Now, the processing is being done somewhere else, a place that you can't possibly reach. Most importantly, you're computing, using YOUR computer that YOU paid lots of money for, on somebody ELSE's terms.
If you don't like the services that the provider offers, and you aren't in the majority, then your software preferences will have to adapt to everyone else's. Suppose I have a piece of software that I really like. It's my absolute favorite piece of software, and unfortunately, there are only 200 other folks out there who use it. Now, under the current distribution model, the software publisher simply stops selling that software.
No sweat, I've still got my copy. I can use it as much as I want. Under the ASP model, however, it's not that simple. The provider can no longer afford to keep that service available. It's eating valuable space that could be used instead for the Next Big Thing(tm). So it cancels the service, and I don't get to use my favorite piece of software anymore.
People don't want that. Maybe they don't know exactly why they don't want it, but the thought of centralization sends chills down their spines. Unless someone can find a killer app for ASP (and I haven't seen one yet), I expect it to go the way of Netcast.
I believe the question is not whether music piracy is legal or not, but rather whether it is legal to make a product or service that facilitates piracy.
Now, if it is illegal to run such an operation, then perhaps Sony or Panasonic could be sued for selling SVHS decks. They facilitate the piracy of VHS tapes and laserdiscs. To be honest, any producer of a recordable medium could be held legally responsible for piracy if that were the case.
The only ones who should, by old-fashioned logic, be held responsible for piracy are the pirates themselves.
Just think if the stores that sold you your video equipment were legally responsible for what you did with it. How would you like to have to undergo a background check just so you could buy a camcorder? For the same reason this is unreasonable, it is also unreasonable to hold Napster accountable for the actions of its users.
Doing so would be analogous to holding Microsoft responsible for its IPX networking software (still the preferred method of piracy on college campuses), or the US Postal Service for contraband trafficking.
Slashdot Mirror
It seems to me that what IIS did was the equivalent, at least as far as public performance is concerned, of setting up a semi-private jukebox. What are the laws regarding jukeboxes? Do they have to be set up by the record companies, or do the owners of establishments that have them set them up themselves, and pay the copyright holders accordingly? Who gets your quarter when you pick your songs?
Would anyone more educated than I on this matter like to comment?
I'm a resident of the state of Hawaii, and I vote and go to school in Seattle. Seattle has Maria Cantwell, whom I don't particularly dislike, but where IP is concerned, I wouldn't trust her if she paid me to.
I figure, okay, so much for Washington. How about Hawaii. My senator, Dan Inouye, has lots and lots of pull, right? Well, according to the Wired article, he's a sponsor, so he's not going to change, either. Generally, whichever way Inouye decides to go, the other Hawaii senator, Dan Akaka, will go as well. So who do we write to?
Although I agree with what you're saying in this case (i.e. individuals should always have more legislative power than corporations), there are instances where, IMO, corporations really are the best to decide.
In many areas, such as business tax laws, existing laws don't so much prevent unfair business practices, but merely punish corporations for being in business entirely. Individuals generally won't be aware of these problems, because they do not affect them. Businesses, however, encounter them all the time, and a corporate-sponsored bill is really the only way to go.
Neither, since government web sites are postfixed with .gov, not .com.
Sony managed to do just that with the Playstation, by putting the region encoding in the wobble groove on the CD. That's why you need a mod chip to play bootlegs, instead of just being able to patch them.
When an ad behaves enough like a virus to fool McAfee, I'd say it crosses the line between aggressive and offensive. And most conventional marketers will tell you that you don't sell products by offending the customer.
I get ads which want to install software on my computer without asking, ads which persist long after I've stopped reading their attached content. All these do is make people cynical towards ads, and I don't think I'm alone in reflexively looking away from the screen the moment these ads come into view. It's a bad habit in some cases; after all, they're paying for the content I'm reading.
But the morality becomes difficult when the majority of the time, these ads are for things which are illegal, immoral, or otherwise contrary to my belief systems. Personally, I *like* the ads on Slashdot. They are generally relevant, can be helpful, and are sometimes even entertaining. But I can't help but feel that most of the advertisers out there are poisoning the market by putting up sleazy ads.
The problem with what you propose is that it assumes that the only ones willing to pay for mod points are the ones who should have them. I tend to think that the exact opposite is true.
"Those who desire power the most often deserve it least." It's an old cliche, but it's only stuck around because it holds true so often. Slashdot attempts to work as a meritocracy, and even if it isn't entirely successful, that doesn't mean the ideal should be abandoned. The ability to buy mod points just invites abuse, and the ones who would suffer are the casual readers, wanting to read a good cross-section of opinions at their threshold.
When I spoke with him, they were wooing some fairly high-profile clients, but I can't rightly say I know where they are right now.
To refresh your memory from history class, in 1925, science teacher John Scopes was tried in the state of Tennessee for teaching human evolution. He was found guilty, but the decision was appealed to the supreme court, and the law was overturned. What many may not realize was that the entire thing was a setup. Scopes had been asked beforehand if he was willing to be arrested for teaching evolution, in order for the law to be tested. In fact, the state of Tennessee had been informed when and where Scopes would be teaching evolution.
How this applies today is that the DMCA, like Tennessee's Anti-Evolution Statute in 1925, has not yet been tried in front of the Supreme Court. If people keep settling out of court on these, the law will never be overturned. Really, our best shot is to set some guy up. Someone who doesn't have a lot to lose.
Have someone blatantly violate the DMCA in a petty way that violates the DMCA without violating other laws, and publicize the hell out of it. Then, when charges are filed, you take it all the way up to the supreme court. The case of Sony vs. Channel Technology would have been a great one, except that they're in England, and the law doesn't work quite the same over there; Sony won on a summary judgment. No trial and no appeal.
Surely another opportunity will present itself?
Oh yeah? Well my EULA can lick your EULA any day of the week!
A virus only works if it contains a program that can be executed by another program with serious potential to screw things up. You never hear about anyone getting a virus from Napster, and that's because none of the media players are capable of interpreting a media file in such a way that it could maliciously affect the way a system runs.
Theoretically, our magical network would only be used for transmitting raw, nonexecutable data, such as text, music and video. I'm assuming that the devices wouldn't support things like Word macros and ActiveX extentions over the network, so the spread of a traditional virus would be inconceivable.
The only real issue would be spoofing, sort of mindshare virii, as mentioned in the article. I.e. your device downloads something truly awful (like William Shatner's "Lucy in the Sky"), thinking it's your favorite song, and it gets passed along by other fans of that particular artist.
> 4) Microsoft programmers are inept. Microsoft attracts greedy and underqualified programmers with the lure of stock options. Good programmers either work for themselves or for a company that puts pride in their work.
As nice as it would be if all the best programmers were in it for the love, it's not strictly true. Some of the best programmers I've known work for or have worked for Microsoft. It has nothing to do with skill, and everything to do with cynicism.
I like to say that I'm in it for the love, but I really don't consider myself a particularly good programmer. Not that skill and romanticism are mutually exclusive or anything. Case in point, the FSF...
From what I understand, modding a Gamecube is as simple as soldering a single jumper wire. Nintendo has always had a "who cares" approach to modding. Their biggest weapon is the warranty. That and the fact that no matter what you solder in that thing, there's no way you're getting it to read bootlegs.
The PSX anti-piracy mod chips work quite differently from Messiah. For the PSX, the region/copy protection was done by a string of characters that was sent at boot that said "SCEA." The PSX mod chips worked by hijacking that signal and sending "SCEA" into the bitstream. Then somebody had the bright idea to simply transmit the first three bytes from the disc and only change the last one. That way, if someone tries to play a bootleg game, the machine reads "xxxA" and fails to boot. But if a Japanese or European game is put in, the machine reads "SCEA" and the game boots.
Unfortunately, the PS2 doesn't work that way. There is no simple "SCEA" code that determines a disc's region of origin. There is no line that you can just take over and say, "hey, I'm legal." Both the Origa and Messiah chips require you to solder at least 10 wires directly to the BIOS, and the purpose is to change the BIOS's actual functionality. I don't know the details, since it's Channeltech's most coveted secret, but this means that any extra checking must be done by the chip itself, and that is most certainly non-trivial.
Actually, you are wrong. Very wrong. One of the key selling points of the Messiah was that it could play DVDRs. Unfortunately, Gazza took all the promotional material off the web site, so you can't see this in action.
But believe me, I have seen a video that he put up and linked from messiah-world, showing all the advertised media, including DVD-R's, running. And now, backing up becomes feasible. Of course, I have yet to meet a person who actually backs up their games, but I find the import originals to be the main reason to buy such a chip.
Now, according to Gazza, it is very difficult (read: nearly impossible) for a mod chip to distinguish between a legit disc and a burned disc. If one could do that, they'd be halfway to burning bootable discs, and half the modders out there wouldn't be buying chips anymore. Because of the inability to distinguish between genuine and pirated media, playing bootlegs becomes a prerequisite for playing legitimate imports.
The Dreamcast's failure is a bit more complicated than you make it out to be. The real problem with the Dreamcast was a schism between tremendous failure in the Japanese market and a solid success in the US market.
When the DC first came out in the US, it was *the* thing to have in college dorm rooms. Every kid wanted one, and every college student wanted one. The launch games were some of the best ever, with Soul Calibur topping the charts for that year. And then, somewhere, despite commercial succes, the games just stopped.
What happened was the Japanese market drying up. In great contrast to the American release, the Japanese launch was a disaster. There were only a few games available, and they weren't particularly good. The system required peripherals that were expensive and underproduced, and as a whole everyone was quite content with sticking with their Playstations.
Contrary to popular belief, with a few recent exceptions, Japanese game developers don't develop with the American market in mind. The general consensus has been that if a game won't do well in Japan, you shouldn't ship it. Japanese developers saw the Dreamcast as the Big Loser, and chose to develop for Sony's machines instead, sealing the Dreamcast's fate. Few games were made, many long-running projects were cancelled, and from what it looked like over here, the Dreamcast died at right at the height of its success.
When a game system comes out, two things determine its success: developer lists and marketing. If either of these fall through, things like installed userbase and system specs mean nothing.
I just searched every reputable news site I could thing of for details of Stephen King's death. There was not a single mention.
What is it with Stephen King that makes people so quick to pronounce him dead? I find this to be in terribly poor taste.
While I didn't feel particularly moved by any of President Bush's comments, I found myself soothed by Secretary of State Colin Powell's performance at the press conference. The man was asked somewhat random questions, and extemporaneously came up with speech-level answers. This is the kind of manner that makes British public figures seem more intelligent, even when they say the same things.
I do not feel entirely safe with George W. Bush as our nation's chief elected official, but Colin Powell's presence makes me sleep a little easier. It's a damn shame he decided not to run for the 2000 nomination; I would have voted for him over Gore in a heartbeat. And it's too bad also that he would never run against GW in the 2004 primaries.
Here's an example.
"The"
Now I'm not sure if it's the most common word in the English language, but it's at least up there in the top five. To type "the" in QWERTY, you must stretch your left index finger diagonally right, then stretch your right index finger to the left, and then stretch your left middle finger up and to the left a little bit. Three finger stretches in as many letters on what is arguably the most common word in the English language.
Now contrast this with how it would be done in Dvorak. The 't' is pressed with your right middle finger, the 'h' is pressed with your right index finger, and the 'e' is pressed with your left middle finger, all in the home row. Not only do your fingers not have to extend at all, but they make a nice little drumming motion with the right hand.
As for the whole "switching hands" thing, I believe it's the other way around. The Dvorak keyboard is laid out in such a way that all the vowels are all on the left hand home row and the most common consonants are in the right hand home row. This pretty much guarantees that unless you're typing Welsh, you will change hands at least once during every single word.
And if you still aren't convinced, sit a seasoned Dvorak typist and a QWERTY typist down together, and watch them type. You'll probably notice that the QWERTY typist moves around the keyboard like he's playing a Rachmaninoff concerto, while the Dvorak typist will remain relatively static. Speeds may vary, but Dvorak's a lot less likely to give you RSI.
I've found that learning another key layout is a lot like learning another language, except that the transition time to full fluency is much shorter. While at first you may find (to your horror) that you can't type QWERTY anymore, it is possible to learn to use both fluently and naturally.
For me, it used to be that I required at least two hours to switch back and forth between layouts. But after a lot of practice, it now takes me about one minute to switch between the two. Of course, if you have to use a QWERTY during the week or two that you're learning Dvorak, it might take a little longer to learn...
It seems like the main focus of this plan is to turn your computer into a glorified terminal. How is this different from the terminals that were connected to time-sharing systems in the '60s and '70s? Why were people so excited to buy the Apple II when they could have simply had all of their processing handled remotely by big computers?
The fact is that Americans, and most geeks to a degree, like to own things. It's why DIVX failed, it's why people take exception to the Microsoft End-User License Agreement, and it's why people buy VHS tapes of movies they will probably only watch a few times, when they could've just rented them from Blockbuster.
We like to at least have the illusion that if anything goes wrong, the box is right here, and we can fix it (even if we really can't). Why else would people still feel the need to own cars in cities with good public transportation systems?
ASP essentially violates the principle of the personal computer. Now, the processing is being done somewhere else, a place that you can't possibly reach. Most importantly, you're computing, using YOUR computer that YOU paid lots of money for, on somebody ELSE's terms.
If you don't like the services that the provider offers, and you aren't in the majority, then your software preferences will have to adapt to everyone else's. Suppose I have a piece of software that I really like. It's my absolute favorite piece of software, and unfortunately, there are only 200 other folks out there who use it. Now, under the current distribution model, the software publisher simply stops selling that software.
No sweat, I've still got my copy. I can use it as much as I want. Under the ASP model, however, it's not that simple. The provider can no longer afford to keep that service available. It's eating valuable space that could be used instead for the Next Big Thing(tm). So it cancels the service, and I don't get to use my favorite piece of software anymore.
People don't want that. Maybe they don't know exactly why they don't want it, but the thought of centralization sends chills down their spines. Unless someone can find a killer app for ASP (and I haven't seen one yet), I expect it to go the way of Netcast.
I believe the question is not whether music piracy is legal or not, but rather whether it is legal to make a product or service that facilitates piracy.
Now, if it is illegal to run such an operation, then perhaps Sony or Panasonic could be sued for selling SVHS decks. They facilitate the piracy of VHS tapes and laserdiscs. To be honest, any producer of a recordable medium could be held legally responsible for piracy if that were the case.
The only ones who should, by old-fashioned logic, be held responsible for piracy are the pirates themselves.
Just think if the stores that sold you your video equipment were legally responsible for what you did with it. How would you like to have to undergo a background check just so you could buy a camcorder? For the same reason this is unreasonable, it is also unreasonable to hold Napster accountable for the actions of its users.
Doing so would be analogous to holding Microsoft responsible for its IPX networking software (still the preferred method of piracy on college campuses), or the US Postal Service for contraband trafficking.