so its critical that I be able to play the originals on various devices.
Now, if I am a hardware designer making a nifty new device, and include an AAC decoder chip/algorithm in it (no doubt meaning I'd have to pay someone some royalty), does that mean it can automatically decode and play Apple DRM-content, assumming I've given my device the key?
Is it even possible to "get" one of the authentication keys that AMS uses, so that I could use it with some standalone ACC decoder setup?
Another thing that puzzles me a bit is that they say you can download it to an unlimited number of iPods. What exactly does this mean? Do the iPods still have to be specified as 'owned' by me (with my name and email, which presumably would then show up in the iPods about box [wherever that is])? I know it's hard to transfer individual songs between your iPod and a friend's, or between your iPod and a friend's computer, but it's not impossible (last time I checked). Suppose I did manage to get a ACC file off the iPod and onto another computer. Would it play?
Jim
IUB CS
Hmm, I wonder if this will include non-English/US music? I'd expect some Latin/Spanish music, but can I get Indian music? Can I get Quebec pop? Can I get Japanese?
Nice summary. Would get a Interesting mod if I had mod points.. It isn't particularly insightful, but is better than some of the other comments here.
Raise you hand if you too think that Slashdot needs a new moderation and commenting system (preferably one based on research into how "informtion percolation systems" can work).. A good start would be to allow commenting on a particular subject point, and to allow comments to follow each otehr, so that any one particular comment would (hopefully) have a trail of bread crumbs behind it giving a coherant line of insight, and have some way to cut out all the redundent information that gets entered into the system. Might be good for a masters' thesis in Information Science or something..
Dragon Naturally Speaking beta for the Newton OS 2.1
Anyway, the beta only works with digits, ZIP codes, and a few other limited things. I can't even get it to work (I have the DragonHack2 package, though I haven't tried using the line-in or splicing in my own microphone.
Beta? Bah! Give me the source code, the format for the dictionaries, and the full Dragon API to interface it with NewtonScript as well as C++ (including the ability to try to recognize just straight phonemes). As well as a way to do the recognition straight out of the sound channel, instead of using the current kludge (I think, the code in ViewFrame is a bit hard to understand) of using a VBO to transfer frames from NS to the recognizer code in C++ (wasting time switching environments, and stressing the VM system with the VBO). Surely using large dictionaries wouldn't be a problem with a custom written FAT extension to Paul's ATA driver? But no, would the pin-striped suits at Dragon hear of it (no pun intended). Never!
Never *mind* that it's a porduct that will never make them any money that the Newton's dead. Never *mind* that the codebase used is probably 3 generations behind the current codebase (the current one is probably too processor-hungry for the Newton and would make the VM system absolutely choke on itself..) Hell, the codebase that DragonDemo uses is probably on par (if not below) that used by Sphinx, the open-source project. Sphinx would be a bitch to port, especialy with the state of C++ programming on the Newton being what it is, and I've been told it might be to slow even so..
What are the Lagrange L4 and L5 points? The only one I've ever heard of was L2 (I think) where the Triana camera was going to have been put. I known I know, I'll find it it 5 minutes on Yahoo, but I'll post the question here anyway, for general public erudition (if it ever gets read..)
Seriously people, when will we get MS onboard to fight this? We may not like MS, but if Bill G could be convinced that this should be fought (and not just to give MS the patent), I'm sure that PanIP would be monetarily pummelled into dust very very quickly.. Add to MS's money pot that of Amazon, Buy, Yahoo, Ebay, etc ad infinitum.
The result is up to a hundred browser windows open at once - but I know that I'm not the only person who browses like this
I do this. I've never opened up a hundred before, but.. I remember doing this in Windows once (it was what was there.. and it was a school machine that had Fortress on it - even worse) and the really horrible thing about windows (explorer) is that if one page causes explorer to crash, they ALL crash..
I've thought since then that the reasonable thing to do with multiple browser windows would be to open each one as a protected process, with some kind of code-linking to shared web-browser code, instead of each one being "inside" the same parent web-browser process. (or if M$ would just make a $@%# OS that just works..) I don't know enough about OS-design to know if this kind of process management is feasible though.
Specifically, if you subscribe to this journal, how much time will you spend sifting through articles of stuff you already knew about from perl.com, perl.org, or Perl Monks?
Turn it around: if you DON'T subscribe to TPJ, how much time will you spend sifting through stuff on perl.com, perl.org, or Perl Monks that you already know?
I must admit as a disclaimer that I'm not really a Perl programmer (familiar with a small bit of the syntax, that's all), nor am I a particularl maven at sifting through enormous volumes of online information.. I glance over the slashdot comment forum about once a MONTH.. and waste about a hour each time I do.. but then the S/N on the/.CF is quite low indeed ("Damnitt, where's the genius NLP person when you need them most!")
An interesting little tidbit I read somewhere was that while there is a (legal) quota of CD burning allowed for a PressPlay subscription, you can purchase additional tracks for a buck a piece. The article (I forget where) mentioned that no one has been mentioning this, mainly because if people knew it, the bottom would fall out of the *record shop* owners bussiness (not just the RIAA). It also mentioned the BMG expects to have their entire catalog available online by next year.
Whether this is true or not, I have no idea. Whether $1 per track plus a $15 subscription fee is fair is a matter of opinion (I think not: 75 cents per track plus a $5 subscription is more to my liking). No it's not Napster, because PressPlay still doesn't have *everything* out there (no service ever will until they get their heads out of the sand and see that they're not competing *against* each other, but against Kazaa et al. - not to mention some possible changes to antitrust laws happen) Not that I'm siding with PressPlay. But the fact that no one is really talking about the fact that you are not in fact restricted to a finite number of "unrestricted" downloads (for a price of course) is interteresting..
Somebody takes out the Hanson building?
on
Upcoming Cyberwars
·
· Score: 1
I don't remember exactly what it was called, but my Networking professor was talking about the interent backbones and how a large number of them went through - I think - the Hanson building in Chicago. Someone take out that.. What happens? I need to dig up and read that old Slashdot story about what if 90% of the Inet servers go down.
I know that a few recording artists who have sued their record companies over contract disputes (Michelle Shocked for one sued under the 'serivtude for 7+ years theory'- I went to see her band *only* because she had won a lawsuit.) The Dixie Chicks also sued their company, claiming non-payment of royalties, but settled out of court for $20 mil (sellouts, I say, better to let it go to jury)
My question is, in those rare instances where an artist does sue and win (or at least not settle - forcing it before a judge or jury), are their contracts placed into public evidence that isn't later sealed by the court? To me, the situations we read (meaning armchair pundits on Slashdot - not people in the business) are rather circumstatial. We have all Courtney Love's manifesto, Albinni's piece, Don Henley's writing, et al, and have the general (and I believe mostly correct) idea that the record companies' practices are "really evil". But I'm a skeptical, scientific-minded guy, and until I *see* a record contract in the open, where I can see how much is going to the artist, how much to the manager, how much to the song-writers, how much to distrution, details of the tax-benefits of advances for the companies who grant them, etc - I'm less likely to believe it.
Moreover, I don't think the great unwashed (John Q. Public) is going to believe it at all until we can provide some hard numbers. Courtney Love does provide numbers, but as others have pointed out, her argument is not watertight. And she has an axe to grind. Emotional speeches and eloquent arguments are one thing to get the message out (I've written about this before here), but until people are shown cold, hard numbers, I'm afraid they'll just think it's another "anti-capialist, liberal, pinko plot."
but it can't be much different than the royalty you pay on Audio CD-Rs
I might not have a problem with that. IF, and this is a rather big if, it's designed in such a way that it is subject to market pressures (no monopolies), and if there is some way to be SURE that the money actually gets back to the artists. The problem with the Audio-CD Tax/CHS tax is that there is little if any evidence that it actually gets back to the "little guys" (artists in the case of music - I don't know who in terms of VHS). With Audio-CDR and VHS, it's technically impossible to get it to go back all the way to the individual creators, because you have no idea who/what they are. But if there were some kind of file-sharing tax, then it could be ascertained to whom the money should actually go to.
Of course, this opens up a very large can of worms with regard to how it's done. If it's going to be a file-sharing tax, then that basically means that Verizon gets into competition with PressPlay, MusicNet et al. A centralized source for all the files is the easiest way to do this (from a tracking license tracking POV) but is less than optimal for bandwidth considerations (10 redundant stores is better than 1). Video is even more of a problem than audio because it's bigger (as of yet, barring any really nify new compression algorithms..)
because it probably realizes that the best and most effective way to solve this problem is through normal market dynamic
Yeah, except the current "market dynamics" are pushing the great unwashed (wrongly) toward what they perceive to be an alternative: MP3 downloads. And that's pushing the recording industry to buying Congresscritters.
As for the FTC not regulating because it's a diversion, I read a piece in BusinessWeek today about the possibility of Nestlé chocolate company buying Hershey's. Chocolate is a diversion too (don't give me this crap about chocolate is addictive - so is coffee!) and the deal would have to pass antitrust approval (The deal would give Nestle/Hershey 55 percent of the market behind M&M/Mars. Nestle currently has 11 percent.) Of course, Nestle probably makes other things besides chocolate, but I don't know what..
Is this gross earnings, or net earnings? Because if it's net earnings, the actual gross might have been higher still if they had to pay back to the music industry anything (if they're royalties [sic] didn't cover it..)
Ah, I see they are net figures. what's left after expenses, fees and label deduction. Wonder if Metallica would be kind enough to let us know what they're guestimations for those expenses are.. If Metallica want's to position themselves as "champions of the artist" like they seemed to do when they opposed Napster, they should actually tell people what the industry is doing to screw the average artist (which they are not since they apparently own their own copyrights).
I've thought for a while that it will be really interesting what happens when the RIAA and such start to try to go after the real pirates.. in China who burn CDs in plants and sell them on the street for $2. Now that China is a member of the WTO, the RIAA and such could probably do that more easily. (I've heard that the Chinese government is already cracking down - and it doesn't work - they just start up again a week later) RIAA gets WTO to send in jackbooted thugs.. China has tanks..
OK, so you say you want only information and no hyperbole or buzzwords. I'll buy that, but I'll bet that few people would listen. When you get down to it, just about any argument at all that is aimed at getting the attention of a large segment of the population is about buzzwords today. That should include the arguments of the anti-RIAA people as well.
It's all fine if the Future of Music Coalition, and whatnot (including us on Slashdot) talk privately on their mailing lists and websites about the evils of how the RIAA is screwing artists, and if the RAC (Recording Artists Coalition) tries to sue the RIAA for union protection. In fact it's good. But the fact is that not many people will hear about it. We're all preaching to the choir here.
On one hand, there are the artists who are getting screwed by contract practices. On the other are consumers who are being denied fair use, computer and device manufacturers whose products are being threatened, and ISPs whose are being subpoenaed. The RAC, disaffected consumers, and the like have a good argument on their side, but they lack a large warchest of cash (on the scale that the RIAA and Big-5 have). The device manufacturers and ISPs on the other hand have the money. What I believe must happen is for these two parts of the debate to merge, which I don't see happening yet.
Once they do, the next step will be to get the message out. The only truly effective way of doing this I see is through television advertising, exactly as you are seeing anti-smoking ads by groups such as TheTruth.com and the PSA they have been airing since the tobacco settlement. (The other possibility is massive newpaper letter-writing campaigns, which will only be partially effective, IMO) Only then will a large enough group of people start to be informed and agitated about what the record companies are really doing, and will enough people start to realize what "DRM" really means.
On the CNI (Coalition for Networked Information) copyright list recently, there has been some talk of referring to "copymonopoly" instead of "copyright". The reason given is that it has more emotional impact and is more likely to get people's attention. Also thrown around has been the slogan, "DRM is theft."
Talking (or shouting) in ivory towers, complaining about the undue influence of money in the process, and complaining that the RIAA is using unfair emotional arguments to appeal to the great unwashed is okay, but we aren't going to reach that great unwashed unless we learn to harness those same emotional arguments. Call it fighting fire with fire if you will, but sometimes you have to burn a fire-ring to contain a raging inferno.
I assume that their lawyers, and those of the other producers of MP3 players, have a defense prepared
They should if they're not stupid. Do you happen to know anyone on Apple legal? I asked a question a while ago on MacSlash about the SSSCA and whether Apple was going to come out with a public statement. I have no idea. I'm not completely sure whether it would be a good idea for Apple to do this from a PR point-of-view (I think it would either be very good, or very bad - especially because it's Apple and Apple is a company of PR extremes..)
One thing I was just thinking was that as the rhetoric of the **AA's get more and more ridiculous - going from simply threatening MP3 hosting sites (clearly copyright violation IMO) to attacking space-shifting (upheld in Rio case law) to the utter nonsense of "plugging the analog hole" - the more and more persuasive and rationale the other side becomes - the other side being EFF, ACLU (are they in on this yet?), Apple, Diamond Rio, drive manufacturers, DVD manufacturers (who would want their consumers to be able to watch DVDs from the US and Europe if they want to) The question is: what will it take to get these companies to stand up as a united front and fight this. Of course, maybe they already are (or planning) and I just don't know about it.
I'd have had a hard time demonstrating that I had suffered any monetary damage
Couldn't you argue that your suffered a lost opportunity cost? If you had not published freely on the internet and sold them instead, you would be the run getting rich off them, instead of this unscrupulous company. Add to that the fact that they did this to other people. Is the rant page still around?
From GPL-FAQ:But if you want to use parts of other GPL-covered programs by other authors in your code, you cannot authorize the exception for them. You have to get the approval of the copyright holders of those programs
But doesn't this mean that if I use a GPL library, which in turn uses another GPL library (or 2!) which in turn.. To secure proper permission becomes a nightmareishly complex breadth-first recursive search.. (to put in in geek-parlance)
I've always sort of thought the GPL would be better if the "recusive permission" only went one level deep. But that would effectively destroy what the GPL aims to do, because anyone who wanted to close the source would only have to get permission for the most recent authorship-level.. (Though I don't like this part of the GPL, for reasons a bit outlines below)
Another thing I've NEVER understood about the GPL is section 3b: Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution
Wouldn't it make more sense to say valid after three years? I see this as a reasonable (or perhaps not so reasonable, but that's details) compromise between free software advocates and advocates of a traditional closed-source software economy: you get to actually sell your program (or try to) for three years, after which the code must be released, which prevents abandonware from cropping up. This is identical to the intent of the U.S. copyright system - to promote innovation. One person here once wrote a very interesting proposal to Judge Pennfield Jackson about making a "source registry" that would work like this. I cannot believe that the FSF did not see this and try to build it into the license. It seems to me that the FSF is more ideological than pragmatic on some things.
This could become a very new quality of unsecured machines from a security point on the 'net: Users that don't want to install patches because they don't want Microsoft to own their machines
No, it probably won't be biga threat that "users that don't want to install patches because they don't want Microsoft to own their machines" simply because most users don't ever look at the EULA's. That's part of the insidious thing about EULAs - people click through them without thinking (they have to to install) and never think about it. If MS ever wants to enforce them, the users are screwed.
True, a small percentage of users will care, and might not get upgrades. But not many I would bet. Meanwhile, when I try to tell my mother about what's going on with the DMCA, DRM, shrink-wrap-licensed books, etc, etc, she just tells me she's not going to worry about it because it's clearly unenforceable. To which I retort, "Do you really want a legal and justice system based on the premise that, "well, yes, the laws make no sense, but they're unenforceable, so don't worrry.." (when the G-Men come banging on my door for selling my copy of MS Word..)
I think this is what we should be working for too. The thing is, I see it as a "almost" cache-22 situation: the artists who are ready to do this are newer players like Radiohead, or are unknowns who don't get screwed by the current system. The people who are big-name already (my music world is rather limited; I'm thinking Whitney Huston [a bit old], the big country people, Britney Spears [yuck!]) are either too wedded to the system to change, ignorant of what's really going on [find that hard to believe], or one of the very few artists who actually do get paid handsomely by the industry.
I remember several months ago when I read that Whitney Huston was signing a $50-million contact with some studio, and I thought, "Why doesn't she just tell them to screw themselves, and set up an internet site?" She probably has more money than God(dess), and has enough fans that even if only 1/2 of them paid the 50 cents per song that's a reasonable cost, she'd still make out like a bandit. Of course, one reason is that not just anyone can dangle a $50 million carrot in front of people..
Slashdot Mirror
Now, if I am a hardware designer making a nifty new device, and include an AAC decoder chip/algorithm in it (no doubt meaning I'd have to pay someone some royalty), does that mean it can automatically decode and play Apple DRM-content, assumming I've given my device the key?
Is it even possible to "get" one of the authentication keys that AMS uses, so that I could use it with some standalone ACC decoder setup?
Another thing that puzzles me a bit is that they say you can download it to an unlimited number of iPods. What exactly does this mean? Do the iPods still have to be specified as 'owned' by me (with my name and email, which presumably would then show up in the iPods about box [wherever that is])? I know it's hard to transfer individual songs between your iPod and a friend's, or between your iPod and a friend's computer, but it's not impossible (last time I checked). Suppose I did manage to get a ACC file off the iPod and onto another computer. Would it play? Jim IUB CS
Hmm, I wonder if this will include non-English/US music? I'd expect some Latin/Spanish music, but can I get Indian music? Can I get Quebec pop? Can I get Japanese?
Jim
Raise you hand if you too think that Slashdot needs a new moderation and commenting system (preferably one based on research into how "informtion percolation systems" can work).. A good start would be to allow commenting on a particular subject point, and to allow comments to follow each otehr, so that any one particular comment would (hopefully) have a trail of bread crumbs behind it giving a coherant line of insight, and have some way to cut out all the redundent information that gets entered into the system. Might be good for a masters' thesis in Information Science or something..
They represent everything that's wrong with the computer industry today. Engineering decisions being made by non-engineers.
But it sounds to me like the decision of "To use MS SQL or not to" relavent to the article is no an engineering one either, but a legal one.
Dragon Naturally Speaking beta for the Newton OS 2.1
Anyway, the beta only works with digits, ZIP codes, and a few other limited things. I can't even get it to work (I have the DragonHack2 package, though I haven't tried using the line-in or splicing in my own microphone.
Beta? Bah! Give me the source code, the format for the dictionaries, and the full Dragon API to interface it with NewtonScript as well as C++ (including the ability to try to recognize just straight phonemes). As well as a way to do the recognition straight out of the sound channel, instead of using the current kludge (I think, the code in ViewFrame is a bit hard to understand) of using a VBO to transfer frames from NS to the recognizer code in C++ (wasting time switching environments, and stressing the VM system with the VBO). Surely using large dictionaries wouldn't be a problem with a custom written FAT extension to Paul's ATA driver? But no, would the pin-striped suits at Dragon hear of it (no pun intended). Never!
Never *mind* that it's a porduct that will never make them any money that the Newton's dead. Never *mind* that the codebase used is probably 3 generations behind the current codebase (the current one is probably too processor-hungry for the Newton and would make the VM system absolutely choke on itself..) Hell, the codebase that DragonDemo uses is probably on par (if not below) that used by Sphinx, the open-source project. Sphinx would be a bitch to port, especialy with the state of C++ programming on the Newton being what it is, and I've been told it might be to slow even so..
What are the Lagrange L4 and L5 points? The only one I've ever heard of was L2 (I think) where the Triana camera was going to have been put. I known I know, I'll find it it 5 minutes on Yahoo, but I'll post the question here anyway, for general public erudition (if it ever gets read..)
Jim
Seriously people, when will we get MS onboard to fight this? We may not like MS, but if Bill G could be convinced that this should be fought (and not just to give MS the patent), I'm sure that PanIP would be monetarily pummelled into dust very very quickly.. Add to MS's money pot that of Amazon, Buy, Yahoo, Ebay, etc ad infinitum.
The result is up to a hundred browser windows open at once - but I know that I'm not the only person who browses like this
I do this. I've never opened up a hundred before, but.. I remember doing this in Windows once (it was what was there.. and it was a school machine that had Fortress on it - even worse) and the really horrible thing about windows (explorer) is that if one page causes explorer to crash, they ALL crash..
I've thought since then that the reasonable thing to do with multiple browser windows would be to open each one as a protected process, with some kind of code-linking to shared web-browser code, instead of each one being "inside" the same parent web-browser process. (or if M$ would just make a $@%# OS that just works..) I don't know enough about OS-design to know if this kind of process management is feasible though.
Specifically, if you subscribe to this journal, how much time will you spend sifting through articles of stuff you already knew about from perl.com, perl.org, or Perl Monks?
/.CF is quite low indeed ("Damnitt, where's the genius NLP person when you need them most!")
Turn it around: if you DON'T subscribe to TPJ, how much time will you spend sifting through stuff on perl.com, perl.org, or Perl Monks that you already know?
I must admit as a disclaimer that I'm not really a Perl programmer (familiar with a small bit of the syntax, that's all), nor am I a particularl maven at sifting through enormous volumes of online information.. I glance over the slashdot comment forum about once a MONTH.. and waste about a hour each time I do.. but then the S/N on the
An interesting little tidbit I read somewhere was that while there is a (legal) quota of CD burning allowed for a PressPlay subscription, you can purchase additional tracks for a buck a piece. The article (I forget where) mentioned that no one has been mentioning this, mainly because if people knew it, the bottom would fall out of the *record shop* owners bussiness (not just the RIAA). It also mentioned the BMG expects to have their entire catalog available online by next year.
Whether this is true or not, I have no idea. Whether $1 per track plus a $15 subscription fee is fair is a matter of opinion (I think not: 75 cents per track plus a $5 subscription is more to my liking). No it's not Napster, because PressPlay still doesn't have *everything* out there (no service ever will until they get their heads out of the sand and see that they're not competing *against* each other, but against Kazaa et al. - not to mention some possible changes to antitrust laws happen) Not that I'm siding with PressPlay. But the fact that no one is really talking about the fact that you are not in fact restricted to a finite number of "unrestricted" downloads (for a price of course) is interteresting..
I don't remember exactly what it was called, but my Networking professor was talking about the interent backbones and how a large number of them went through - I think - the Hanson building in Chicago. Someone take out that.. What happens? I need to dig up and read that old Slashdot story about what if 90% of the Inet servers go down.
Has anyone written a Napster-inspired version of American Pie? Surely someone must have.. Ah yes, here it is Napster Pie..
I know that a few recording artists who have sued their record companies over contract disputes (Michelle Shocked for one sued under the 'serivtude for 7+ years theory'- I went to see her band *only* because she had won a lawsuit.) The Dixie Chicks also sued their company, claiming non-payment of royalties, but settled out of court for $20 mil (sellouts, I say, better to let it go to jury)
My question is, in those rare instances where an artist does sue and win (or at least not settle - forcing it before a judge or jury), are their contracts placed into public evidence that isn't later sealed by the court? To me, the situations we read (meaning armchair pundits on Slashdot - not people in the business) are rather circumstatial. We have all Courtney Love's manifesto, Albinni's piece, Don Henley's writing, et al, and have the general (and I believe mostly correct) idea that the record companies' practices are "really evil". But I'm a skeptical, scientific-minded guy, and until I *see* a record contract in the open, where I can see how much is going to the artist, how much to the manager, how much to the song-writers, how much to distrution, details of the tax-benefits of advances for the companies who grant them, etc - I'm less likely to believe it.
Moreover, I don't think the great unwashed (John Q. Public) is going to believe it at all until we can provide some hard numbers. Courtney Love does provide numbers, but as others have pointed out, her argument is not watertight. And she has an axe to grind. Emotional speeches and eloquent arguments are one thing to get the message out (I've written about this before here), but until people are shown cold, hard numbers, I'm afraid they'll just think it's another "anti-capialist, liberal, pinko plot."
So, show me the contracts!
Verizon is teaming with other telecoms and groups like the EFF to fight the 300 pound gorilla.
;-)
Only 300 pounds? I'd have weighed in the RIAA at much more than that..
but it can't be much different than the royalty you pay on Audio CD-Rs
I might not have a problem with that. IF, and this is a rather big if, it's designed in such a way that it is subject to market pressures (no monopolies), and if there is some way to be SURE that the money actually gets back to the artists. The problem with the Audio-CD Tax/CHS tax is that there is little if any evidence that it actually gets back to the "little guys" (artists in the case of music - I don't know who in terms of VHS). With Audio-CDR and VHS, it's technically impossible to get it to go back all the way to the individual creators, because you have no idea who/what they are. But if there were some kind of file-sharing tax, then it could be ascertained to whom the money should actually go to.
Of course, this opens up a very large can of worms with regard to how it's done. If it's going to be a file-sharing tax, then that basically means that Verizon gets into competition with PressPlay, MusicNet et al. A centralized source for all the files is the easiest way to do this (from a tracking license tracking POV) but is less than optimal for bandwidth considerations (10 redundant stores is better than 1). Video is even more of a problem than audio because it's bigger (as of yet, barring any really nify new compression algorithms..)
because it probably realizes that the best and most effective way to solve this problem is through normal market dynamic
Yeah, except the current "market dynamics" are pushing the great unwashed (wrongly) toward what they perceive to be an alternative: MP3 downloads. And that's pushing the recording industry to buying Congresscritters.
As for the FTC not regulating because it's a diversion, I read a piece in BusinessWeek today about the possibility of Nestlé chocolate company buying Hershey's. Chocolate is a diversion too (don't give me this crap about chocolate is addictive - so is coffee!) and the deal would have to pass antitrust approval (The deal would give Nestle/Hershey 55 percent of the market behind M&M/Mars. Nestle currently has 11 percent.) Of course, Nestle probably makes other things besides chocolate, but I don't know what..
Much of this money may have been made by touring
Is this gross earnings, or net earnings? Because if it's net earnings, the actual gross might have been higher still if they had to pay back to the music industry anything (if they're royalties [sic] didn't cover it..)
Ah, I see they are net figures. what's left after expenses, fees and label deduction. Wonder if Metallica would be kind enough to let us know what they're guestimations for those expenses are.. If Metallica want's to position themselves as "champions of the artist" like they seemed to do when they opposed Napster, they should actually tell people what the industry is doing to screw the average artist (which they are not since they apparently own their own copyrights).
"He sprinkles in the fairy dust.. It makes more band-width!" (TM Ameritech commerical. Quoted as fair use)
I've thought for a while that it will be really interesting what happens when the RIAA and such start to try to go after the real pirates.. in China who burn CDs in plants and sell them on the street for $2. Now that China is a member of the WTO, the RIAA and such could probably do that more easily. (I've heard that the Chinese government is already cracking down - and it doesn't work - they just start up again a week later) RIAA gets WTO to send in jackbooted thugs.. China has tanks..
OK, so you say you want only information and no hyperbole or buzzwords. I'll buy that, but I'll bet that few people would listen. When you get down to it, just about any argument at all that is aimed at getting the attention of a large segment of the population is about buzzwords today. That should include the arguments of the anti-RIAA people as well.
It's all fine if the Future of Music Coalition, and whatnot (including us on Slashdot) talk privately on their mailing lists and websites about the evils of how the RIAA is screwing artists, and if the RAC (Recording Artists Coalition) tries to sue the RIAA for union protection. In fact it's good. But the fact is that not many people will hear about it. We're all preaching to the choir here.
On one hand, there are the artists who are getting screwed by contract practices. On the other are consumers who are being denied fair use, computer and device manufacturers whose products are being threatened, and ISPs whose are being subpoenaed. The RAC, disaffected consumers, and the like have a good argument on their side, but they lack a large warchest of cash (on the scale that the RIAA and Big-5 have). The device manufacturers and ISPs on the other hand have the money. What I believe must happen is for these two parts of the debate to merge, which I don't see happening yet.
Once they do, the next step will be to get the message out. The only truly effective way of doing this I see is through television advertising, exactly as you are seeing anti-smoking ads by groups such as TheTruth.com and the PSA they have been airing since the tobacco settlement. (The other possibility is massive newpaper letter-writing campaigns, which will only be partially effective, IMO) Only then will a large enough group of people start to be informed and agitated about what the record companies are really doing, and will enough people start to realize what "DRM" really means.
On the CNI (Coalition for Networked Information) copyright list recently, there has been some talk of referring to "copymonopoly" instead of "copyright". The reason given is that it has more emotional impact and is more likely to get people's attention. Also thrown around has been the slogan, "DRM is theft."
Talking (or shouting) in ivory towers, complaining about the undue influence of money in the process, and complaining that the RIAA is using unfair emotional arguments to appeal to the great unwashed is okay, but we aren't going to reach that great unwashed unless we learn to harness those same emotional arguments. Call it fighting fire with fire if you will, but sometimes you have to burn a fire-ring to contain a raging inferno.
I assume that their lawyers, and those of the other producers of MP3 players, have a defense prepared
They should if they're not stupid. Do you happen to know anyone on Apple legal? I asked a question a while ago on MacSlash about the SSSCA and whether Apple was going to come out with a public statement. I have no idea. I'm not completely sure whether it would be a good idea for Apple to do this from a PR point-of-view (I think it would either be very good, or very bad - especially because it's Apple and Apple is a company of PR extremes..)
One thing I was just thinking was that as the rhetoric of the **AA's get more and more ridiculous - going from simply threatening MP3 hosting sites (clearly copyright violation IMO) to attacking space-shifting (upheld in Rio case law) to the utter nonsense of "plugging the analog hole" - the more and more persuasive and rationale the other side becomes - the other side being EFF, ACLU (are they in on this yet?), Apple, Diamond Rio, drive manufacturers, DVD manufacturers (who would want their consumers to be able to watch DVDs from the US and Europe if they want to) The question is: what will it take to get these companies to stand up as a united front and fight this. Of course, maybe they already are (or planning) and I just don't know about it.
I'd have had a hard time demonstrating that I had suffered any monetary damage
Couldn't you argue that your suffered a lost opportunity cost? If you had not published freely on the internet and sold them instead, you would be the run getting rich off them, instead of this unscrupulous company. Add to that the fact that they did this to other people. Is the rant page still around?
From GPL-FAQ:But if you want to use parts of other GPL-covered programs by other authors in your code, you cannot authorize the exception for them. You have to get the approval of the copyright holders of those programs
But doesn't this mean that if I use a GPL library, which in turn uses another GPL library (or 2!) which in turn.. To secure proper permission becomes a nightmareishly complex breadth-first recursive search.. (to put in in geek-parlance)
I've always sort of thought the GPL would be better if the "recusive permission" only went one level deep. But that would effectively destroy what the GPL aims to do, because anyone who wanted to close the source would only have to get permission for the most recent authorship-level.. (Though I don't like this part of the GPL, for reasons a bit outlines below)
Another thing I've NEVER understood about the GPL is section 3b: Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution
Wouldn't it make more sense to say valid after three years? I see this as a reasonable (or perhaps not so reasonable, but that's details) compromise between free software advocates and advocates of a traditional closed-source software economy: you get to actually sell your program (or try to) for three years, after which the code must be released, which prevents abandonware from cropping up. This is identical to the intent of the U.S. copyright system - to promote innovation. One person here once wrote a very interesting proposal to Judge Pennfield Jackson about making a "source registry" that would work like this. I cannot believe that the FSF did not see this and try to build it into the license. It seems to me that the FSF is more ideological than pragmatic on some things.
This could become a very new quality of unsecured machines from a security point on the 'net: Users that don't want to install patches because they don't want Microsoft to own their machines
No, it probably won't be biga threat that "users that don't want to install patches because they don't want Microsoft to own their machines" simply because most users don't ever look at the EULA's. That's part of the insidious thing about EULAs - people click through them without thinking (they have to to install) and never think about it. If MS ever wants to enforce them, the users are screwed.
True, a small percentage of users will care, and might not get upgrades. But not many I would bet. Meanwhile, when I try to tell my mother about what's going on with the DMCA, DRM, shrink-wrap-licensed books, etc, etc, she just tells me she's not going to worry about it because it's clearly unenforceable. To which I retort, "Do you really want a legal and justice system based on the premise that, "well, yes, the laws make no sense, but they're unenforceable, so don't worrry.." (when the G-Men come banging on my door for selling my copy of MS Word..)
I think this is what we should be working for too. The thing is, I see it as a "almost" cache-22 situation: the artists who are ready to do this are newer players like Radiohead, or are unknowns who don't get screwed by the current system. The people who are big-name already (my music world is rather limited; I'm thinking Whitney Huston [a bit old], the big country people, Britney Spears [yuck!]) are either too wedded to the system to change, ignorant of what's really going on [find that hard to believe], or one of the very few artists who actually do get paid handsomely by the industry.
I remember several months ago when I read that Whitney Huston was signing a $50-million contact with some studio, and I thought, "Why doesn't she just tell them to screw themselves, and set up an internet site?" She probably has more money than God(dess), and has enough fans that even if only 1/2 of them paid the 50 cents per song that's a reasonable cost, she'd still make out like a bandit. Of course, one reason is that not just anyone can dangle a $50 million carrot in front of people..