Re:Will anyone admit that DRM isn't bad?
on
DRM and Democracy
·
· Score: 1
Certain forms of DRM are not bad.
Take electronically sealed documents as an example. DRM is critical to the use of such documents in the real world. Right now, I don't digitally sign my work (required by law in my state, as in practically all) because of the requirements on the document once sealed. I'm sure it can be done, but it would take either (money) or (research time), neither of which I'm willing to devote in enough quantity, ro that will justify the expense.
Still, with DRM, I will someday be able to digitally sign a document and get rid of most of my filing cabinets and drawing racks, leaving the paper copies for those in the field. DRM is a good thing sometimes.
I'm paying for mine, sort of. I back up my family photos and my work data (both relaitvely small datasets, i.e. less than 10GB each) to my Site5 webhosting account (no affiliation, good service so far). It's just a hosting account, but I paid a couple extra bucks and got a higher storage allowable (higher service level actually, but I'm never going to use 100GB of transfer a month). Now I have 27GB of online storage, remotely located from my "site" and professionally maintained. They, supposedly, have some sort of history versioning that saves all old changes to a logfile so you can go back and get your old/deleted/changed file versions for files stored on their servers. I haven't tried it, but I suppose the unscrupulous could upload and delete their files to form a very large archive history. I'm not sure what they have in place to prevent such abuses.
I still make DVD backups locally, but it's one solution if you don't have too much data to deal with.
I got the impression (via the summary - I never read the articles, of course) that this was internal to the HD, and therefore would be driver independent.
Me? I've got 2GB of RAM, so it won't speed up hibernation for me. Still, getting another half hour or more out of my laptop would be nice.
Yeah, but annual uptime? That's two and a half months. I'm not aware of any sysadmin that could keep their job if they had a server that was down for 2.5 months in a year. I don't know many (any) businesses large enough / technically oriented enough to need a linux server that could survive in the marketplace if they had a critical part of their infrastructure offline for 2.5 months. The numbers don't make sense. There's no hardware failure so bad that (a) it would take 2.5 months to get a part or (b) finding the part was no longer made, would prevent you from buying a whole new machine for less than an hour of lost productivity in even a small company. Heck, you could call RedHat and have them fly a technician across the country this afternoon for a week's productivity in just the executive suite of most medium companies.
Then again, if it's just the bridge to the web, the productivity jump of losing access for a week each month might well suggest that linux has a positive effect on the bottom line.;-)
I have a (very good) 51" HD set, and the difference between an internally upscaled 480p DVD that is well-mastered and a high-bitrate DirecTV or OTA HD feed is very small for most material. HD makes a difference in field sports (ex: football, all types), but in most media it tends to get lost at "mortal" sizes. Now, if we're talking a 100"+ FP setup, heck yes HD makes a difference, but most people don't have those (yet).
Reading the copyright offices summary, and the EFF summary, it seems that this legislation may be written with a wink and a nod. By making the compulory license cover the caching, they've sort of codified that the caching is not fair use. A seemingly niggling point. Except that it opens the doors to interpreting the inverse of the law as "those works which do not have a compulsory license (and may have formerly been considered "fair use") are now licensible when cached. This law appears to be written to cover the distribution chain, not the consumption end of the process. By remaining tacit on the consumption end, the presumption may be that licensing is necessary by the enduser for copies made for convenience (CD->MP3->(portable,computer,automotive)).
That's what the hubbub seems to be, though I'll admit I'm still a bit fuzzy about it. Everybody seems to be jumping up and down and waving their arms and yelling so loudly I can't get enough rational discussion to craft an intellegent letter to my representives. Though, to be honest, I can actually trust my rep to do the right thing - I'm in Rick Boucher's (D-Va) district, and he "gets it." Still, I'm happy to write to the other congresspeople from my state, but I need some real meaning before I do do.
Not exactly, but from barely skimming the summary (it's good chunk by itself), it appears to set up (almost) statutory licensing by an agency (like ASCAP) which would allow the resale of (practically) all works wihtout having to negotiate with all the individual players. AllOfMP3 pays a broadcast fee to (mumble mumble russian agency mumble) to distribute the works. The cost may not be the same, but it sounds like if I want to openup AllMyFavoriteRips.com and sell digital recorded works, I could contract diretly with a single agent and put up whatever I like, and then pay my fees to the agent which would distribute the work. No having to negotiate with Sony or Apple Corps or anybody else directly.
I'm sure somebody is getting screwed with this legislation, and I doubt it's the members of the RIAA, so there must be something dirty underneath, but I don't see it in the summary. Anybody see the devil in these words?
Yeah, 'cause it works so well in the EU. No thanks, I'm not sure I could easily stomach a 20% VAT on top of my state's 5-12% sales taxes (and, of course, they'd have to up those if they lost the income revenue).
Now, if you want to talk about a replacement of the system with a gross receipts tax with no exceptions, I'm all ears. Well, one exception. Every holder of a personal TIN would get an exemption of the first 2087xFederal_Minimum_Wage from their gross receipts. Yes, it would cause an inflation bump due to the layers of middlemen, but it would also tend to benefit those who sell directly to consumers (small, local organic farmers, for example). It would tend to curb day trading (3% of gross receipts on your "sell" stock transactions; options and futures, too). It would hurt homeowners/buyers/sellers with the loss of deduction (awwwwww) and the 3% due at every closing. Then again, the states are already taking 1.5% typically, and your agent is going to pocket 6%, so what's another 3, right?
That, and I think any DRM media should be disallowed from being included within 30 feet of non-DRM music in physical stores, and they must be segragated in online stores. For example, a search for "music" must me mutually exclusive with "DRM music", so that there is no question as to which it is you're buying. I don't expect to see this in my lifetime.
The closest I've come to living in Russia was petitioning (with one other friend and unsucessfully) to get a Russian language class taught in my high school back in the 80s. I have no doubt that your are as corrupt as we are, just in your own way.
Sorry, I didn't finish making my point before I hit "submit".
The point is that the RIAA could compete on price and offer a "legal" service at or near their current margins. $8.78 for a FLAC rip vs $9.99 (less physical production and shipping costs, plus b/w) for a clearly legal download from a US distributer? Sure, there will be a few skinflints that will go with the Russian site for $1 less, but wouldn't yoy buy direct for that money? I would.
That's the problem though. They (the RIAA approved outlets) are only offering reduced-quality, DRM encumbered files, at a higher price with digital distribution! There's a big whiskey-tango-foxtrot right there.
Even at the lower bitrates, I fail to see how they would lose money at, say $0.50 to $1 more than the 320kb rate. If the site is causing them so much lost revenue, why not get some of that business back? I suspect that most people who are already paying for dowmloads don't care where they get them from, as long as the price is right. Is it better to get $0.00 per download or $0.05 per download? It's not as if they're in a position where they would have to sell below cost.
As for why people would use this - here's my reason: ease of use, guarantee of quality. I'm willing to pay a couple of dollars to get an album, encoded and tagged properly, in 320kb format. If I want it lossless, I'll buy the CD and rip it (or see if it comes up on nntp). It's about the convenience. If the RIAA want's to let WalMart sell FLAC tracks for $0.30-$0.50 each, or MP3 tracks for a quarter, I'm there. I'm not asking them to be cheaper, I'm only asking for comparable services at a competitive price.
(I can't imagine how mad the RIAA must be for me recording stuff of XM - you know, they should shut down XM radio, those damned pirates, broadcasting copyrighted workls and only paying a blanket licensing fee!)
In that way, Russia is far behind the US. Here in the states, business has purchased legilation so that their activites are no longer criminal. Don't worry, you'll catch up soon enough.
Let's take a look at a sample album (randomly picked - I'm not a DC fan):
Dixie Chicks: Taking The Long Way #tracks: 14 Cost to purchase in crappy/lossy 192kb MP3 or AAC: $1.87 Cost to purchase in good lossy 320kB MP3 or AAC: $3.12 Cost to purchase lossless (flac, in this case): $8.78
Cost to purchase from Amazon, (lossless), with case, disc, and liner notes: $9.98
The difference between lossless at AllofMP3 and buying a physical disc is very small. It's not much of a bargain, quite honestly, to get the product from AllofMP3. It would make sense that to get a digital copy of the album from a US supplier would be less expensive than the physical article. Except, for some reason, it isn't. Somehow, the degraded quality copies cost more than the physical version here in the US (I'm assuming that iTunes is still 99c/track, or $13.86 for the whole album). They should be noticably less expense. That's what we were told when CDs were more expensive than cassette tapes: the CD, although less expensive to produce, provides a higher quality sound and therefore commands a premium price.
Once again, the RIAA seems to be paranoid that they might lose a stranglehold on the distribution system (i.e.: would have to compete).
I'm not saying that AllofMP3 are totally innocent here - they are just as guilty of exploiting the system as, say, the oil companies are of exploiting the increase in demand for oil, or small business owners buying a $50,000 Ford King Ranch pickup truck and writing it off on their taxes.
"The site features a wide selection of Russian music, but is written in English with prices listed in United States dollars"
Goddamnit, how can we, as Americans, allow such a site to exist?!? Russian sites must be written in a native (or, at the most, european) language, and they'd better show prices in rubles. Well, I guess, euros would be okay as well, as long as they don't directly link to a currency conversions site.
I'd like to call, once and for all, for all sites not located within the US (or, um, England) to stop putting up sites in English.
So, what your saying is that it's more economical to destroy a legal undertaking which is connected to a large group of independant unlawful operations than it is to take action against the unlawful operations themselves.
I tell you, I wish we had the NRA on our side in this one. They've really mastered the art in this category.
Assuming that the site in question is not in the US, or subject to US laws, why would is this true:
posting decryption keys to specific files like: "This is the decryption key for the X-Men 3 DVD". That would obviously be illegal,
It's not illegal everywhere to post a decryption key. It's perfectly legal, in the US, for me to use such a decryption key on a disc which I own (actually, I've ripped about 100 of the 300 discs I own, using a program to get the encryption key). If this were a much stronger encryption that I couldn't break myself, I could still procure a key and use it legally.
The "technicalities" you mention are part of the law, and there are actually times when the technicalities are the major part of the law (called "loopholes") and are placed intentionally for the benefit of those who pay to have the laws created. The problem with laws is that you can't put intent into black and white. Otherwise, there would be no need for specifics in Copyright law. It could simply be stated that copyright is for the advancement of the arts and sciences - those things which detract from the creation of art and science are illegal, and all other activities which do not are legal. That's not sufficient, though, so we create terms of copyright, and allowable uses which spell out what is and isn't lawful, and the rest is up for interpretation.
Their whole defense seems to be "There's no secondary liability for copyright infringement in Swedish law, suckers! You can't touch us, na-na-nanana"
Well, I suppose you could get a group of 18 year olds and take them over to England and have them order up a drink at the local pub, then make a video of them holding their drinks, saying "The drinking age is only 18 in England, suckers! You can't touch us, na-na-nanana". Childish, to be sure, but fully legal nonetheless.
Oh, that will be a great in 2009 when stations will be required* to give up their analog spectrum an move entirely to digital. Are you sure this isn't using a portion of the the digital b/w? (I have no idea, but this would certainly be bonehead move if your $200 box turned into a doorstop in 3 years)
And maybe world peace...but since I'm an intellectual, I know deep down that it would hurt the economy to have a slowdown in the defense sector, so in reality that world peace thing is just in case I grow a couple of boobs, lose 20 years, 60 pounds, and decide to enter the Miss America pagent.
I'm sure stonger borders in somewhere on my list, I just think it may be on another page...somewhere in the 200s I suspect.
That was a good laugh! Now, you may be in the EU where there might be fewer loopholes, but here in the states personal information (that's not medical in nature) is always for sale, though the "marketing partner" loophole. You see, as long as the business who is selling your information has some (barely identifiable) financial relationship to the buyer of said information, they are "marketing partners" and sharing the information is just fine and dandy. It's in the fine print of most "privacy" agreements I've seen lately.
Oh, and every verifiable email address with eyeballs at the other end has value, small though it may be for a single address. These happen to have more, as they are at this site for a specific, relatively narrowly defined purpose. Demographics on an address always increases the value.
Actually, I did see it. I didn't ask whether they were getting paid, but how much (I know it's hard to read the title and the thread back to back). Let's face it, I want them to get the absolute most out of this as they can. To me, tht should mean somewhere on the order of 70-85% of what it would cost for MovieLink to try and do it themselves. Movielink gets a small discount by farming out the service, and PBS gets justly compensated for it's value.
Realize that this is coming from someone who finds some of the PBS programming to be good, and believe it fills a niche (though the proliferation of cable/sat channels is picking up on some PBS style content). If you hate PBS, well, you may prefer they fail, in which case you wouldn't care how much MovieLink is paying, as long as it's a token fee.
$4 for new releases? Do you mean "new" as in theatrical release or "new" as in just released on home video a few weeks ago. Yeah, that's what I thought. No thanks.
Or at least, as a taxpayer I should be getting a kickback. They are, of course, using both bandwidth and power that should be going to the PBS broadcasts. I know, the power is used anyway, but do you get to ride on a bus for free 'cause they were going to be driving around anyway? Of course not.
Yes, I read TFA the last time it was posted, and I clicked over to make sure it was the same (type) of service - I didn't see a "dollars back intot he public coffer" section on the front page.
So, if you're required to give up personal information, such as your email address (which is known to be of value to online marketers) in return for access to a website which has "value" in the form of discussions on a topic which is of interest to some people (there are lots of pay-for-content sites), aren't each side giving up something of value? That sounds like a contract.
Slashdot Mirror
Certain forms of DRM are not bad.
Take electronically sealed documents as an example. DRM is critical to the use of such documents in the real world. Right now, I don't digitally sign my work (required by law in my state, as in practically all) because of the requirements on the document once sealed. I'm sure it can be done, but it would take either (money) or (research time), neither of which I'm willing to devote in enough quantity, ro that will justify the expense.
Still, with DRM, I will someday be able to digitally sign a document and get rid of most of my filing cabinets and drawing racks, leaving the paper copies for those in the field. DRM is a good thing sometimes.
I'm paying for mine, sort of. I back up my family photos and my work data (both relaitvely small datasets, i.e. less than 10GB each) to my Site5 webhosting account (no affiliation, good service so far). It's just a hosting account, but I paid a couple extra bucks and got a higher storage allowable (higher service level actually, but I'm never going to use 100GB of transfer a month). Now I have 27GB of online storage, remotely located from my "site" and professionally maintained. They, supposedly, have some sort of history versioning that saves all old changes to a logfile so you can go back and get your old/deleted/changed file versions for files stored on their servers. I haven't tried it, but I suppose the unscrupulous could upload and delete their files to form a very large archive history. I'm not sure what they have in place to prevent such abuses.
I still make DVD backups locally, but it's one solution if you don't have too much data to deal with.
I got the impression (via the summary - I never read the articles, of course) that this was internal to the HD, and therefore would be driver independent.
Me? I've got 2GB of RAM, so it won't speed up hibernation for me. Still, getting another half hour or more out of my laptop would be nice.
Yeah, but annual uptime? That's two and a half months. I'm not aware of any sysadmin that could keep their job if they had a server that was down for 2.5 months in a year. I don't know many (any) businesses large enough / technically oriented enough to need a linux server that could survive in the marketplace if they had a critical part of their infrastructure offline for 2.5 months. The numbers don't make sense. There's no hardware failure so bad that (a) it would take 2.5 months to get a part or (b) finding the part was no longer made, would prevent you from buying a whole new machine for less than an hour of lost productivity in even a small company. Heck, you could call RedHat and have them fly a technician across the country this afternoon for a week's productivity in just the executive suite of most medium companies.
;-)
Then again, if it's just the bridge to the web, the productivity jump of losing access for a week each month might well suggest that linux has a positive effect on the bottom line.
I have a (very good) 51" HD set, and the difference between an internally upscaled 480p DVD that is well-mastered and a high-bitrate DirecTV or OTA HD feed is very small for most material. HD makes a difference in field sports (ex: football, all types), but in most media it tends to get lost at "mortal" sizes. Now, if we're talking a 100"+ FP setup, heck yes HD makes a difference, but most people don't have those (yet).
Reading the copyright offices summary, and the EFF summary, it seems that this legislation may be written with a wink and a nod. By making the compulory license cover the caching, they've sort of codified that the caching is not fair use. A seemingly niggling point. Except that it opens the doors to interpreting the inverse of the law as "those works which do not have a compulsory license (and may have formerly been considered "fair use") are now licensible when cached. This law appears to be written to cover the distribution chain, not the consumption end of the process. By remaining tacit on the consumption end, the presumption may be that licensing is necessary by the enduser for copies made for convenience (CD->MP3->(portable,computer,automotive)).
That's what the hubbub seems to be, though I'll admit I'm still a bit fuzzy about it. Everybody seems to be jumping up and down and waving their arms and yelling so loudly I can't get enough rational discussion to craft an intellegent letter to my representives. Though, to be honest, I can actually trust my rep to do the right thing - I'm in Rick Boucher's (D-Va) district, and he "gets it." Still, I'm happy to write to the other congresspeople from my state, but I need some real meaning before I do do.
Not exactly, but from barely skimming the summary (it's good chunk by itself), it appears to set up (almost) statutory licensing by an agency (like ASCAP) which would allow the resale of (practically) all works wihtout having to negotiate with all the individual players. AllOfMP3 pays a broadcast fee to (mumble mumble russian agency mumble) to distribute the works. The cost may not be the same, but it sounds like if I want to openup AllMyFavoriteRips.com and sell digital recorded works, I could contract diretly with a single agent and put up whatever I like, and then pay my fees to the agent which would distribute the work. No having to negotiate with Sony or Apple Corps or anybody else directly.
I'm sure somebody is getting screwed with this legislation, and I doubt it's the members of the RIAA, so there must be something dirty underneath, but I don't see it in the summary. Anybody see the devil in these words?
Yeah, 'cause it works so well in the EU. No thanks, I'm not sure I could easily stomach a 20% VAT on top of my state's 5-12% sales taxes (and, of course, they'd have to up those if they lost the income revenue).
Now, if you want to talk about a replacement of the system with a gross receipts tax with no exceptions, I'm all ears. Well, one exception. Every holder of a personal TIN would get an exemption of the first 2087xFederal_Minimum_Wage from their gross receipts. Yes, it would cause an inflation bump due to the layers of middlemen, but it would also tend to benefit those who sell directly to consumers (small, local organic farmers, for example). It would tend to curb day trading (3% of gross receipts on your "sell" stock transactions; options and futures, too). It would hurt homeowners/buyers/sellers with the loss of deduction (awwwwww) and the 3% due at every closing. Then again, the states are already taking 1.5% typically, and your agent is going to pocket 6%, so what's another 3, right?
That, and I think any DRM media should be disallowed from being included within 30 feet of non-DRM music in physical stores, and they must be segragated in online stores. For example, a search for "music" must me mutually exclusive with "DRM music", so that there is no question as to which it is you're buying. I don't expect to see this in my lifetime.
Of course not, but if they did, I don't think that the US authorities could have the pub raided and their kegs confiscated.
The closest I've come to living in Russia was petitioning (with one other friend and unsucessfully) to get a Russian language class taught in my high school back in the 80s. I have no doubt that your are as corrupt as we are, just in your own way.
Sorry, I didn't finish making my point before I hit "submit".
The point is that the RIAA could compete on price and offer a "legal" service at or near their current margins. $8.78 for a FLAC rip vs $9.99 (less physical production and shipping costs, plus b/w) for a clearly legal download from a US distributer? Sure, there will be a few skinflints that will go with the Russian site for $1 less, but wouldn't yoy buy direct for that money? I would.
That's the problem though. They (the RIAA approved outlets) are only offering reduced-quality, DRM encumbered files, at a higher price with digital distribution! There's a big whiskey-tango-foxtrot right there.
Even at the lower bitrates, I fail to see how they would lose money at, say $0.50 to $1 more than the 320kb rate. If the site is causing them so much lost revenue, why not get some of that business back? I suspect that most people who are already paying for dowmloads don't care where they get them from, as long as the price is right. Is it better to get $0.00 per download or $0.05 per download? It's not as if they're in a position where they would have to sell below cost.
As for why people would use this - here's my reason: ease of use, guarantee of quality. I'm willing to pay a couple of dollars to get an album, encoded and tagged properly, in 320kb format. If I want it lossless, I'll buy the CD and rip it (or see if it comes up on nntp). It's about the convenience. If the RIAA want's to let WalMart sell FLAC tracks for $0.30-$0.50 each, or MP3 tracks for a quarter, I'm there. I'm not asking them to be cheaper, I'm only asking for comparable services at a competitive price.
(I can't imagine how mad the RIAA must be for me recording stuff of XM - you know, they should shut down XM radio, those damned pirates, broadcasting copyrighted workls and only paying a blanket licensing fee!)
In that way, Russia is far behind the US. Here in the states, business has purchased legilation so that their activites are no longer criminal. Don't worry, you'll catch up soon enough.
Let's take a look at a sample album (randomly picked - I'm not a DC fan):
Dixie Chicks: Taking The Long Way
#tracks: 14
Cost to purchase in crappy/lossy 192kb MP3 or AAC: $1.87
Cost to purchase in good lossy 320kB MP3 or AAC: $3.12
Cost to purchase lossless (flac, in this case): $8.78
Cost to purchase from Amazon, (lossless), with case, disc, and liner notes: $9.98
The difference between lossless at AllofMP3 and buying a physical disc is very small. It's not much of a bargain, quite honestly, to get the product from AllofMP3. It would make sense that to get a digital copy of the album from a US supplier would be less expensive than the physical article. Except, for some reason, it isn't. Somehow, the degraded quality copies cost more than the physical version here in the US (I'm assuming that iTunes is still 99c/track, or $13.86 for the whole album). They should be noticably less expense. That's what we were told when CDs were more expensive than cassette tapes: the CD, although less expensive to produce, provides a higher quality sound and therefore commands a premium price.
Once again, the RIAA seems to be paranoid that they might lose a stranglehold on the distribution system (i.e.: would have to compete).
I'm not saying that AllofMP3 are totally innocent here - they are just as guilty of exploiting the system as, say, the oil companies are of exploiting the increase in demand for oil, or small business owners buying a $50,000 Ford King Ranch pickup truck and writing it off on their taxes.
"The site features a wide selection of Russian music, but is written in English with prices listed in United States dollars"
Goddamnit, how can we, as Americans, allow such a site to exist?!? Russian sites must be written in a native (or, at the most, european) language, and they'd better show prices in rubles. Well, I guess, euros would be okay as well, as long as they don't directly link to a currency conversions site.
I'd like to call, once and for all, for all sites not located within the US (or, um, England) to stop putting up sites in English.
So, what your saying is that it's more economical to destroy a legal undertaking which is connected to a large group of independant unlawful operations than it is to take action against the unlawful operations themselves.
I tell you, I wish we had the NRA on our side in this one. They've really mastered the art in this category.
Okay, I'll bite.
Assuming that the site in question is not in the US, or subject to US laws, why would is this true:
posting decryption keys to specific files like: "This is the decryption key for the X-Men 3 DVD". That would obviously be illegal,
It's not illegal everywhere to post a decryption key. It's perfectly legal, in the US, for me to use such a decryption key on a disc which I own (actually, I've ripped about 100 of the 300 discs I own, using a program to get the encryption key). If this were a much stronger encryption that I couldn't break myself, I could still procure a key and use it legally.
The "technicalities" you mention are part of the law, and there are actually times when the technicalities are the major part of the law (called "loopholes") and are placed intentionally for the benefit of those who pay to have the laws created. The problem with laws is that you can't put intent into black and white. Otherwise, there would be no need for specifics in Copyright law. It could simply be stated that copyright is for the advancement of the arts and sciences - those things which detract from the creation of art and science are illegal, and all other activities which do not are legal. That's not sufficient, though, so we create terms of copyright, and allowable uses which spell out what is and isn't lawful, and the rest is up for interpretation.
Their whole defense seems to be "There's no secondary liability for copyright infringement in Swedish law, suckers! You can't touch us, na-na-nanana"
Well, I suppose you could get a group of 18 year olds and take them over to England and have them order up a drink at the local pub, then make a video of them holding their drinks, saying "The drinking age is only 18 in England, suckers! You can't touch us, na-na-nanana". Childish, to be sure, but fully legal nonetheless.
Look, let's not start mixing cream cheese with a story about Mike Hunt's website. That's just nasty.
Oh, that will be a great in 2009 when stations will be required* to give up their analog spectrum an move entirely to digital. Are you sure this isn't using a portion of the the digital b/w? (I have no idea, but this would certainly be bonehead move if your $200 box turned into a doorstop in 3 years)
*required, just like they were in 2003 and 2006.
I want free beer.
And my daughter would like a pony, too.
And maybe world peace...but since I'm an intellectual, I know deep down that it would hurt the economy to have a slowdown in the defense sector, so in reality that world peace thing is just in case I grow a couple of boobs, lose 20 years, 60 pounds, and decide to enter the Miss America pagent.
I'm sure stonger borders in somewhere on my list, I just think it may be on another page...somewhere in the 200s I suspect.
selling it without explicit permission is illegal
That was a good laugh! Now, you may be in the EU where there might be fewer loopholes, but here in the states personal information (that's not medical in nature) is always for sale, though the "marketing partner" loophole. You see, as long as the business who is selling your information has some (barely identifiable) financial relationship to the buyer of said information, they are "marketing partners" and sharing the information is just fine and dandy. It's in the fine print of most "privacy" agreements I've seen lately.
Oh, and every verifiable email address with eyeballs at the other end has value, small though it may be for a single address. These happen to have more, as they are at this site for a specific, relatively narrowly defined purpose. Demographics on an address always increases the value.
Actually, I did see it. I didn't ask whether they were getting paid, but how much (I know it's hard to read the title and the thread back to back). Let's face it, I want them to get the absolute most out of this as they can. To me, tht should mean somewhere on the order of 70-85% of what it would cost for MovieLink to try and do it themselves. Movielink gets a small discount by farming out the service, and PBS gets justly compensated for it's value.
Realize that this is coming from someone who finds some of the PBS programming to be good, and believe it fills a niche (though the proliferation of cable/sat channels is picking up on some PBS style content). If you hate PBS, well, you may prefer they fail, in which case you wouldn't care how much MovieLink is paying, as long as it's a token fee.
$4 for new releases? Do you mean "new" as in theatrical release or "new" as in just released on home video a few weeks ago. Yeah, that's what I thought. No thanks.
Or at least, as a taxpayer I should be getting a kickback. They are, of course, using both bandwidth and power that should be going to the PBS broadcasts. I know, the power is used anyway, but do you get to ride on a bus for free 'cause they were going to be driving around anyway? Of course not.
Yes, I read TFA the last time it was posted, and I clicked over to make sure it was the same (type) of service - I didn't see a "dollars back intot he public coffer" section on the front page.
So, if you're required to give up personal information, such as your email address (which is known to be of value to online marketers) in return for access to a website which has "value" in the form of discussions on a topic which is of interest to some people (there are lots of pay-for-content sites), aren't each side giving up something of value? That sounds like a contract.