I clicked on the link and watched it, with the completely stock Firefox 3 included in Ubuntu Hardy. It viewed just fine. I had wondered what video format they would use, since I don't have a Flash plugin (GNASH really isn't there yet). But the viewing experience was completely seamless and crap-free, much better than the experiences I've had watching Youtube.
sell tickets to perform the works of Shakespeare that they didn't write, and collect 100% of the profits. Or for that matter, how dare McDonalds collect all that money when it didn't invent the hamburger?
The point the other posters are making is that under the original US copyright law written by the Framers, 14 year old computer games abandoned by the authors would be in the public domain just like Shakespeare's plays, and that the Framers got it right in keep the length of copyright relatively short. The game authors got their recompense through 14 years of government-enforced monopoly, and that's enough.
Considering that photography and audio recording are not allowed in many court rooms, I'd say there is a difference between making information publicly available ("speedy and public trial") in the sense of opening the process to anyone willing to drag their ass to the actual courtroom and watch the proceedings, and spewing it out in electronic form to every PC in the world. Yes there is often a transcript, but that doesn't capture anything like the nuances of the live event, and the judge often orders things stricken from it. Also, the most sensitive courtroom procedures, such as jury deliberations, are completely secret.
Consider also the policies of most web forums, Wikipedia, etc. that posting someone's phone number constitutes harassment, even though the phone number is in the phone book. The people who institute those policies are not idiots, they simply understand there is a difference between theoretical equivalence and being the same thing in practice.
and why did the judge go along with it? They claim they want to see what percentage of users are looking at unauthorized uploads of copyrighted videos. But they could/should/would do that with a statistical sample, not a full dump of the entire log. Like if you wanted to check out an allegation that 50 million Americans have portraits of Osama bin Laden sewn into their underwear, you would not inspect the underwear of every single American. You'd look at a few thousand selected at random and figure out the percentage. Even when the FBI wanted a look at Google search patterns, they only wanted a few million searches, not the billions that Google has stashed. And Google resisted that.
I don't know what Viacom wants with this data, but it's not what they say they want, and it has to be evil. Barfff on them, and boo to Google and the judge for handing it over so easily. Google should appeal this up the wazoo, and most importantly STOP KEEPING SUCH LOGS.
Yes, that is true, the Apollo 11 astronauts were also kept in quarantine for several days after coming back. They may have also done that for Apollo 12. They got rid of the quarantine for the later missions.
the IA/OCA scanners. The Atiz Booksnap units cost around $1000 not including a pair of consumer digicams ($200-ish each depending on your choice of model). I've been wanting to homebrew something like it for a while but it's probably less hassle to just buy the ready made device. Of course their software is windoze-only but I wouldn't use it.
And the slashdot post I think miscasts Connes's remark. It's not like Connes quit reading the proof because it so full of crap that Connes got disgusted. Proofs are chains of reasoning that don't hold together if there is a single link that's flawed. So as soon as Connes found an error that he didn't see how to fix, there wasn't any point to continuing, everything that relied on the erroneous step simply couldn't be supported. Like if I tell you my plan for making a 1000 mpg car, and it turns out to depend fundamentally on steel being lighter than air. This dependence might be subtle enough that neither of us realized it at first, so I'm not necessarily a crackpot for coming up with such a plan. But as soon as the problem is noticed, the rest of the details become irrelevant.
The proof was a legitimate effort by a non-crackpot, but the ideas in it were well known to specialists in the field and were generally understood to not be powerful enough to crack the problem. So the errors were found fairly quickly. Scott Aaronson's post Ten Signs that a claimed mathematical breakthrough is wrong item #10 may be helpful in understanding what happened.
Your post raises the question of what happens if someone thinks I is negative.
Just because someone isn't breaking laws doesn't mean you necessarily think their presence in society is useful. In that case the obvious desired outcome is to round up the guilty and innocent alike from the "useless" part of the population, which means anyone from the wrong ethnic or religious group, political dissenters, people who voted for the wrong party, computer geeks who ask too many questions, etc. So, I think trying to resolve this type of question by cost/benefit analysis is a big mistake. While you and I hopefully think of rounding up the innocent as a cost, someone else may see it as a benefit.
In the USA, jurors determine guilt by a "reasonable doubt" standard which explicitly makes some mistakes in both directions, but erring more on the side of acquitting the guilty rather than convicting the innocent.
There is just too much unencrypted web traffic on the net, and too much snooping and now man-in-the-middle attacks. SSL/TLS fixes that (unless Phorm subverts a certificate authority, which would REALLY be playing with fire). So now there's finally more incentive to start using it. Authentication and privacy in one now-fairly-simple operation. SSL isn't nearly widely enough used because years ago it was hard to set up and cpu-expensive. But the heavy computation is just during the session negotiation, and CPU's are fast enough now that it's just not significant (about 1 millisecond server-side on today's Core 2 processors vs a good fraction of a second in the early web era, to set up the key for the whole browsing session).
to at least have some specs and see that it can use Nokia batteries, which are relatively easy to find. However the part about hacking to use AA cells is useless, unless the phone is physically engineered to hold AA cells. The idea of a portable phone is that it is self contained, powered by batteries inside the handset, not through some external kludge connected by wires that's likely to be confiscated at customs if you ever try to get on a plane with it. Using an external pack is possible with most phones, but is not remotely (no pun intended) satisfactory.
Per http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Neo1973_Battery the Neo battery is 57x38x7 mm or 15162 mm**3. It's 1200 mAH at 3.7 volts which is 4400 mWH. An AA cell is 14x50mm which is 7693 mm**3, so two of them is 15386 mm**3 which is just about the same as the Neo battery. The good ones are 2700 mAH at 1.2v, so two of them is 6480 mWH which beats the Neo battery by a wide margin. It is true that the NiMH cells weigh a little more and their shape might require making the phone a bit thicker, but I can live with that. Using 3 or 4 AAA cells (10x44mm, 1000 mAH) would have a slight penalty in energy density but would keep the phone almost as thin.
NiMH weigh more than li ion but the charge density (energy per unit volume) is about the same. They can provide plenty of power which is why they are used in cordless tools, R/C models, etc. They are not easily available in thin, flat shapes, so a phone using AA or AAA cells will probably be bigger than a phone using a rectangular li pack. If you need one of those tiny phones that looks like a cigarette lighter, you need lithium. But there are a heck of a lot of pocket pagers, flashlights, etc. using AA's and people have no trouble carrying those. AA's are fine if you're willing to deal with a slightly larger phone than the ultra tiny ones, and the relief from hassles is enormous.
The batteries are proprietary in the sense that they're unique to the device, you can't buy them at 7-11, etc. A phone is supposed to be a self-contained device and so external adapters that connect AA battery packs to the phone through cables and crap like that are a total non-starter. If you prefer the term "commodity" to "non-proprietary" then fine, big whoop. What I care about is the difference between $2 batteries that fit all my devices (digicam, audio recorder, mp3 player, GPS, etc.) and $40 batteries that only fit one device. What we are dealing with now is the razor blade ploy of the 21st century.
I mean, if I want a hackable communications device, that's what computers and wifi are for. With phones I just want reliable POTS service, a voice phone with no computer crap, that powers up when I turn it on. And that's the hassle, all cell phones including this OpenMoko thing seem to use proprietary batteries that need special chargers. If you go to any airport there's ALWAYS folks huddled around power outlets trying to charge their phones. The batteries are an expensive pain in the ass to replace, you need to tote more junk around to keep them charged, etc.
I've been looking all over for a phone that uses ordinary commodity NiMH AA or AAA cells, that I can buy anywhere anytime cheaply, and that use the same chargers as all the rest of my portable crap. Making such a phone has to be a LOT easier than running Linux on the phone or anything like that. It used to be common. But it doesn't exist any more.
That band has the most confusing website I've ever seen (no wonder you linked to the fan site and not the band's site). Do they release uncopyrighted music? Where can I find some downloads? Thanks.
Whoever said NiMH would have 40% the capacity of lithium ion, do the math, that is way wrong. NiMH has very close to the same capacity as lithium ion for the same volume, though it does weigh more.
And for those saying use genuine IBM batteries: the cost of those is just ridiculous, like over $100 for a battery. That might be lost in the noise if you buy it with your latest $2000 high-end laptop, but this was apparently a Thinkpad 600, an old but (before the explosion) still serviceable machine with a 233 mhz Pentium MMX processor and PC100 memory (max capacity 256 meg, I think). You can buy them on Craigslist in the $150 range. Do you really want to pay $100+ to replace the battery? 3rd party batteries in the $50 range are a lot closer to tolerable.
Lithium ion batteries are just a bloody scam. I've been trying as hard as I can to stop using them in everything. I replaced by digital camera with an AA-powered model (Canon A530) that I put NiMH cells in. I got a Sandisk M260 portable audio player (powered by an AAA cell) instead of any player with internal lithium. I've been looking all over the place--unsuccessfully--for a cellular phone that I can run on AA or AAA cells. Yeah I know about the "emergency rechargers" that let you transfer some juice from an AA cell to the phone's lithium pack, but I don't want that, I want to throw away the lithium and run the phone on AA power all the time.
It's time to make laptops with standardized NiMH batteries that are interoperable between different brands of machines, instead of all these proprietary expensive packs. For lower powered devices like digicams, it's best to stick with AA's and AAA's for everything.
typewriters and copying machines all had to be registered with the government, so they could trace the origin of any printed material. There were many incidents of underground publishing called "samizdat" that got around the registration system at great risk. Mikhail Bulgakov's novel "The Master and Margherita" was initially circulated as samizdat and Bulgakov later won the Nobel Prize in Literature. That could only happen because it was very hard to tell where any particular copy came from.
The US will not make the same mistake the USSR did. If another Bulgakov surfaces in Dubya's America, this printer-ID technology will rat him out before that freedom-hating Nobel Prize Committee has a chance to work its evil. Why does the EFF hate America?
See for example Magnatune, which has tons of good classical recordings including some from world renowned performers, all under Creative Commons licenses. Granted they are mostly solo and small chamber performances, rather than full scale orchestral works. However, there are certainly professional classical performers willing and able to release stuff under CC.
Note also that the BBC downloads are just a 7-day license and you're not allowed to share the files after downloading. It's not much better than a one-time radio broadcast that you can tape off the air.
As Lessig points out, during the era when there was such a thing as copyright renewal (originally after 14 years, eventually after 28 years), only 10-15% of copyrights were ever renewed.
There has to have been a better way, or maybe a better time, to have pursued that case. We're much worse off under the Eldred ruling than if sleeping dogs had been left to lie.
The traditional contours of copyright have been warped in a much worse way than the opt-in/opt-out division. Until the 20th century, the only way to infringe copyright was by unauthorized publication of a copyrighted work. Making a private, personal copy of something only became an infringement under the 1909 copyright act revision. If we went back to the traditional contours, all the MPAA bullshit lawsuits would have to go away at once.
However, there is no way that Kahle could seriously litigate the above. He instead goes after opt-in/opt-out, but will get nowhere, because the same media conglomerates who stopped Eldred will stop this. They do not want a public domain to exist. They opposed the Eldred bill which tried to get abandoned works back for the public domain, by requiring a copyright renewal with a fee of one dollar after 56 years! Lessig explains:
The opposition to the Eldred Act reveals how extreme the other
side is. The most powerful and sexy and well loved of lobbies really has
as its aim not the protection of "property" but the rejection of a tradition.Their aim is not simply to protect what is theirs. Their aim is to assure that all there is is what is theirs.
It is not hard to understand why the warriors take this view. It is not
hard to see why it would benefit them if the competition of the public
domain tied to the Internet could somehow be quashed. Just as RCA
feared the competition of FM, they fear the competition of a public
domain connected to a public that now has the means to create with it
and to share its own creation.
...
There is a history of just such a property system that is well known
in the Anglo-American tradition. It is called "feudalism." Under feudalism, not only was property held by a relatively small number of individuals and entities. And not only were the rights that ran with that property powerful and extensive. But the feudal system had a strong
interest in assuring that property holders within that system not
weaken feudalism by liberating people or property within their control
to the free market. Feudalism depended upon maximum control and
concentration. It fought any freedom that might interfere with that
control.
As Peter Drahos and John Braithwaite relate, this is precisely the
choice we are now making about intellectual property. We will have
an information society. That much is certain. Our only choice now is
whether that information society will be free or feudal. The trend is toward the feudal.
The Kahle lawsuit is an interesting intellectual exercise, but we need to treat this as a war, not a parlor game. We need better tactics to raise real political awareness, rather than filing these silly lawsuits without having the awareness wide enough.
Copyright is not the recognition of a natural proprety right since there is no such natural right. The Supreme Court has been quite clear about that:
That congress, in passing the act of 1790, did not legislate in reference to existing rights, appears clear, from the provision that the author, &c. "shall have the sole right and liberty of printing," &c. Now if this exclusive right existed at common law, and congress were about to adopt legislative provisions for its protection, would they have used this language? Could they have deemed it necessary to vest a right already vested. Such a presumption is refuted by the words above quoted, and their force is not lessened by any other part of the act.
Congress, then, by this act, instead of sanctioning an existing right, as contended for, created it. This seems to be the clear import of the law, connected with the circumstances under which it was enacted....
This right, as has been shown, does not exist at common law--it originated, if at all, under the acts of congress.
--Wheaton v. Peters,
8 Pet. 591 (1834)
You may have a property right in an unpublished manuscript that you wrote, but you relinquish that right when you choose to publish it. Copyright is simply an economic reward instituted by the government to give you a incentive to publish. Nobody forced you to publish, so if you don't want to relinquish your rights, keep the manuscript to yourself. Congress is allowed to grant copyright for one purpose only, "to promote progress in science and the useful arts". Giving it for any other reason (such as bogus recognition of a nonexistent natural right) is unconstitutional.
Could someone please mod the parent down since it's simply incorrect, uninformed or deliberately wrong propagandistic bullshit.
The term they used was financial gain, which in normal english means doing something for money or something convertable to money, as a business activity. In fact they used that definition to end-run common sense.
It's like, the drug laws provide stiffer penalties for drug dealers than for drug users. Drug dealing is providing other people with drugs for financial gain. Now some War On Drugs extremist defines dealing as anything at all, including access to other drugs. Say you and I like to smoke pot now and then, and you've scored some good Columbian while I have a small stash of Thai, and we decide we're going to meet up after school and get high, and we smoke both kinds of pot in order to compare the effects. I'd say we're drug users and we've engaged in drug sharing, but it's insane to say that we're dealers.
As for whether file sharing should be anonymous and legal, I don't have a problem with that, it happened for quite a while during the Napster era and the CD industry did just fine. And even if it's impossible for the CD industry and filesharing to coexist peacefully (an unproven proposition), that just means that one of those entities has to change its behavior, and I don't see an a priori reason that it has to be the filesharerers who change. It's quite reasonable to decide that freedom of communication is more important than than the CD industry, and that the CD industry, like Western Union, is just a business model that worked for a while but became unviable with the creation of the internet, and the various highly talented people who invest in it or work in it are capable of finding other opportunities and that's what they need to do.
It sounds like these guys were prosecuted under the No Electronic Theft act. That defines swapping files for other files as financial gain:
SEC. 2. CRIMINAL INFRINGEMENT OF COPYRIGHTS.
(a) Definition of Financial Gain.--Section 101 of title 17, United
States Code, is amended by inserting after the undesignated paragraph
relating to the term ``display'', the following new paragraph:
``The term `financial gain' includes receipt, or expectation
of receipt, of anything of value, including the receipt of other
copyrighted works.''.
Slashdot Mirror
I clicked on the link and watched it, with the completely stock Firefox 3 included in Ubuntu Hardy. It viewed just fine. I had wondered what video format they would use, since I don't have a Flash plugin (GNASH really isn't there yet). But the viewing experience was completely seamless and crap-free, much better than the experiences I've had watching Youtube.
and his name sounds Muslim. I wonder what they threatened him with, to get him to plead.
The point the other posters are making is that under the original US copyright law written by the Framers, 14 year old computer games abandoned by the authors would be in the public domain just like Shakespeare's plays, and that the Framers got it right in keep the length of copyright relatively short. The game authors got their recompense through 14 years of government-enforced monopoly, and that's enough.
oh, wait. :(
Consider also the policies of most web forums, Wikipedia, etc. that posting someone's phone number constitutes harassment, even though the phone number is in the phone book. The people who institute those policies are not idiots, they simply understand there is a difference between theoretical equivalence and being the same thing in practice.
I don't know what Viacom wants with this data, but it's not what they say they want, and it has to be evil. Barfff on them, and boo to Google and the judge for handing it over so easily. Google should appeal this up the wazoo, and most importantly STOP KEEPING SUCH LOGS.
Yes, that is true, the Apollo 11 astronauts were also kept in quarantine for several days after coming back. They may have also done that for Apollo 12. They got rid of the quarantine for the later missions.
the IA/OCA scanners. The Atiz Booksnap units cost around $1000 not including a pair of consumer digicams ($200-ish each depending on your choice of model). I've been wanting to homebrew something like it for a while but it's probably less hassle to just buy the ready made device. Of course their software is windoze-only but I wouldn't use it.
The proof was a legitimate effort by a non-crackpot, but the ideas in it were well known to specialists in the field and were generally understood to not be powerful enough to crack the problem. So the errors were found fairly quickly. Scott Aaronson's post Ten Signs that a claimed mathematical breakthrough is wrong item #10 may be helpful in understanding what happened.
Just because someone isn't breaking laws doesn't mean you necessarily think their presence in society is useful. In that case the obvious desired outcome is to round up the guilty and innocent alike from the "useless" part of the population, which means anyone from the wrong ethnic or religious group, political dissenters, people who voted for the wrong party, computer geeks who ask too many questions, etc. So, I think trying to resolve this type of question by cost/benefit analysis is a big mistake. While you and I hopefully think of rounding up the innocent as a cost, someone else may see it as a benefit.
In the USA, jurors determine guilt by a "reasonable doubt" standard which explicitly makes some mistakes in both directions, but erring more on the side of acquitting the guilty rather than convicting the innocent.
There is just too much unencrypted web traffic on the net, and too much snooping and now man-in-the-middle attacks. SSL/TLS fixes that (unless Phorm subverts a certificate authority, which would REALLY be playing with fire). So now there's finally more incentive to start using it. Authentication and privacy in one now-fairly-simple operation. SSL isn't nearly widely enough used because years ago it was hard to set up and cpu-expensive. But the heavy computation is just during the session negotiation, and CPU's are fast enough now that it's just not significant (about 1 millisecond server-side on today's Core 2 processors vs a good fraction of a second in the early web era, to set up the key for the whole browsing session).
to at least have some specs and see that it can use Nokia batteries, which are relatively easy to find. However the part about hacking to use AA cells is useless, unless the phone is physically engineered to hold AA cells. The idea of a portable phone is that it is self contained, powered by batteries inside the handset, not through some external kludge connected by wires that's likely to be confiscated at customs if you ever try to get on a plane with it. Using an external pack is possible with most phones, but is not remotely (no pun intended) satisfactory.
Per http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Neo1973_Battery the Neo battery is 57x38x7 mm or 15162 mm**3. It's 1200 mAH at 3.7 volts which is 4400 mWH. An AA cell is 14x50mm which is 7693 mm**3, so two of them is 15386 mm**3 which is just about the same as the Neo battery. The good ones are 2700 mAH at 1.2v, so two of them is 6480 mWH which beats the Neo battery by a wide margin. It is true that the NiMH cells weigh a little more and their shape might require making the phone a bit thicker, but I can live with that. Using 3 or 4 AAA cells (10x44mm, 1000 mAH) would have a slight penalty in energy density but would keep the phone almost as thin.
NiMH weigh more than li ion but the charge density (energy per unit volume) is about the same. They can provide plenty of power which is why they are used in cordless tools, R/C models, etc. They are not easily available in thin, flat shapes, so a phone using AA or AAA cells will probably be bigger than a phone using a rectangular li pack. If you need one of those tiny phones that looks like a cigarette lighter, you need lithium. But there are a heck of a lot of pocket pagers, flashlights, etc. using AA's and people have no trouble carrying those. AA's are fine if you're willing to deal with a slightly larger phone than the ultra tiny ones, and the relief from hassles is enormous.
The batteries are proprietary in the sense that they're unique to the device, you can't buy them at 7-11, etc. A phone is supposed to be a self-contained device and so external adapters that connect AA battery packs to the phone through cables and crap like that are a total non-starter. If you prefer the term "commodity" to "non-proprietary" then fine, big whoop. What I care about is the difference between $2 batteries that fit all my devices (digicam, audio recorder, mp3 player, GPS, etc.) and $40 batteries that only fit one device. What we are dealing with now is the razor blade ploy of the 21st century.
I mean, if I want a hackable communications device, that's what computers and wifi are for. With phones I just want reliable POTS service, a voice phone with no computer crap, that powers up when I turn it on. And that's the hassle, all cell phones including this OpenMoko thing seem to use proprietary batteries that need special chargers. If you go to any airport there's ALWAYS folks huddled around power outlets trying to charge their phones. The batteries are an expensive pain in the ass to replace, you need to tote more junk around to keep them charged, etc.
I've been looking all over for a phone that uses ordinary commodity NiMH AA or AAA cells, that I can buy anywhere anytime cheaply, and that use the same chargers as all the rest of my portable crap. Making such a phone has to be a LOT easier than running Linux on the phone or anything like that. It used to be common. But it doesn't exist any more.
Help, pleeeease???
That band has the most confusing website I've ever seen (no wonder you linked to the fan site and not the band's site). Do they release uncopyrighted music? Where can I find some downloads? Thanks.
And for those saying use genuine IBM batteries: the cost of those is just ridiculous, like over $100 for a battery. That might be lost in the noise if you buy it with your latest $2000 high-end laptop, but this was apparently a Thinkpad 600, an old but (before the explosion) still serviceable machine with a 233 mhz Pentium MMX processor and PC100 memory (max capacity 256 meg, I think). You can buy them on Craigslist in the $150 range. Do you really want to pay $100+ to replace the battery? 3rd party batteries in the $50 range are a lot closer to tolerable.
Lithium ion batteries are just a bloody scam. I've been trying as hard as I can to stop using them in everything. I replaced by digital camera with an AA-powered model (Canon A530) that I put NiMH cells in. I got a Sandisk M260 portable audio player (powered by an AAA cell) instead of any player with internal lithium. I've been looking all over the place--unsuccessfully--for a cellular phone that I can run on AA or AAA cells. Yeah I know about the "emergency rechargers" that let you transfer some juice from an AA cell to the phone's lithium pack, but I don't want that, I want to throw away the lithium and run the phone on AA power all the time.
It's time to make laptops with standardized NiMH batteries that are interoperable between different brands of machines, instead of all these proprietary expensive packs. For lower powered devices like digicams, it's best to stick with AA's and AAA's for everything.
The US will not make the same mistake the USSR did. If another Bulgakov surfaces in Dubya's America, this printer-ID technology will rat him out before that freedom-hating Nobel Prize Committee has a chance to work its evil. Why does the EFF hate America?
See for example Magnatune, which has tons of good classical recordings including some from world renowned performers, all under Creative Commons licenses. Granted they are mostly solo and small chamber performances, rather than full scale orchestral works. However, there are certainly professional classical performers willing and able to release stuff under CC. Note also that the BBC downloads are just a 7-day license and you're not allowed to share the files after downloading. It's not much better than a one-time radio broadcast that you can tape off the air.
As Lessig points out, during the era when there was such a thing as copyright renewal (originally after 14 years, eventually after 28 years), only 10-15% of copyrights were ever renewed.
The traditional contours of copyright have been warped in a much worse way than the opt-in/opt-out division. Until the 20th century, the only way to infringe copyright was by unauthorized publication of a copyrighted work. Making a private, personal copy of something only became an infringement under the 1909 copyright act revision. If we went back to the traditional contours, all the MPAA bullshit lawsuits would have to go away at once.
However, there is no way that Kahle could seriously litigate the above. He instead goes after opt-in/opt-out, but will get nowhere, because the same media conglomerates who stopped Eldred will stop this. They do not want a public domain to exist. They opposed the Eldred bill which tried to get abandoned works back for the public domain, by requiring a copyright renewal with a fee of one dollar after 56 years! Lessig explains:
The Kahle lawsuit is an interesting intellectual exercise, but we need to treat this as a war, not a parlor game. We need better tactics to raise real political awareness, rather than filing these silly lawsuits without having the awareness wide enough.Could someone please mod the parent down since it's simply incorrect, uninformed or deliberately wrong propagandistic bullshit.
It's like, the drug laws provide stiffer penalties for drug dealers than for drug users. Drug dealing is providing other people with drugs for financial gain. Now some War On Drugs extremist defines dealing as anything at all, including access to other drugs. Say you and I like to smoke pot now and then, and you've scored some good Columbian while I have a small stash of Thai, and we decide we're going to meet up after school and get high, and we smoke both kinds of pot in order to compare the effects. I'd say we're drug users and we've engaged in drug sharing, but it's insane to say that we're dealers.
As for whether file sharing should be anonymous and legal, I don't have a problem with that, it happened for quite a while during the Napster era and the CD industry did just fine. And even if it's impossible for the CD industry and filesharing to coexist peacefully (an unproven proposition), that just means that one of those entities has to change its behavior, and I don't see an a priori reason that it has to be the filesharerers who change. It's quite reasonable to decide that freedom of communication is more important than than the CD industry, and that the CD industry, like Western Union, is just a business model that worked for a while but became unviable with the creation of the internet, and the various highly talented people who invest in it or work in it are capable of finding other opportunities and that's what they need to do.