like giving up. the inevitable irrelevance of copyright law will may bust all art back to non-profits and patrons where it always belonged. big profits in art are an even newer development than copyright law itself and may be a passing fancy of pre-network capitalism. tzadik is already doing it that way, and my donation for the radiohead record could have been tax deductible. sure, fewer major blockbuster motion pictures, but things do change over time. relax, and root for the RIAA's demise.
since when is slashdot full of folks who support the DMCA? i've been gone for awhile but the fact this thread even exists here shocks me. i hope you all get fines for jaywalking.
the concern with this topic is not this one case so much as the legitimacy of copyright statutes in the networked age. the idea of intellectual property and copyright is relatively new and obviously at odds with the internet. all the internet does is copy things and at worst copyright could lead to de facto criminalization of all citizens.
the absurdity of the penalty and whether this punishment/enforcement model is effective or sustainable is a much more pertinent topic than if she broke the law and if she deserved the penalty.
even the changes to copyright laws over the past few years are fairly terrifying unless you are already wealthy due to holding copyrights on work you did not personally create.
This is a poor argument. If you were making this from a manufacturer/producer point of view you would have a reasonable, if vague point. However, from a retailer perspective the cost is *not* the manufacturing cost, but rather the licencing fee, which could possibly be $00.491 and thus higher than the set price.
But, even if this arguement was sound, it is still beside the point:
One way to make sure nobody makes money is to start a price war. The price pressure in digital music is absurd considering nobody is making any money yet. Starting a price war prior to even being profitable is crazy. The inevitable economic outcome is that prices fall to where the few remaining producers can sell their product at a price equal to marginal cost and, quite literally, nobody makes any money. Maybe one or two can stay alive and meet payroll, but no big bucks. This lunacy extends to people expecting it for free thanks to Pepsi and other promotions. I half expect music products to be relegated to consumer incentives passed out with dish detergent rather than purchased as an independent product.
Real's strategy is particularly suicidal (at first blush with little information) because Apple, the incumbent, *doesn't* have to make money. They add value to to their entire product line, hardware, software, and particularly the operating system by owning digital music market share.
Starting a price war with a competitor who doesn't need to make money on the product to survive and has other incentive to stay in the game is a bet against the competitor's unknown tolerance of loss against their inestimable value of other benefits the competitor percieves they gain from the market share. It is impossible to have decent information on this, especially given Apple's legendary secrecy.
I'm sure Real is convinced they are on equal footing and will reap the same rewards by adding value to their entire product line, but their product line is less versatile, less useful, less profitable, and more narrow. It is hard for me to believe 2 things: 1) that Real has as much to gain $$ by acquiring the market share they are willing to pay dearly for, and 2) that Real has the resources to outlast Apple.
On the other hand, only companies like Real and Apple will have long term interest in this market, since nobody who actually wants to make money in a stand alone music play will stay in the game. Perhaps Real just wants to flush out all competitors who aren't convinced the digital music market share will give them indirect benefits which outweigh their cash losses and leave only a few survivors of which Real expects to be one. However, i bet all competitors, probably even Apple, are overestimating the true value here, only time will tell.
Smells like an albatross to me, or perhaps a golden fleece.
at least the author understands her obsession for popular music reviews is unhealthy. i must applaud the methods and approach used...but the goal makes me uneasy.
i think the concept of this analysis is only useful to monitor the homoginization of creativity. perhaps remotely notable for product marketing purposes, if tied to sales data. the idea suggests an elevated status for critics while cheapening both artists and the most victimized segments of music consumers.
sure, one can have a statistical analysis of what makes certain critics write approvingly. but the question is what is that worth? i think less than nothing. net negative for culture, but perhaps an advance for the ruin of beautiful experiments.
I know we are all used to a relatively low access fee, and psychologically its difficult to accept a price hike, but really we have been enjoying an artificially low price due to firece competition and a general lack of knowldege around a newly emerging market. If 1% of your users are consuming 28% of your capacity, they should be charged more. This trend will continue and the new pricing is the only way to stay in business. Capacity issues aside, such pricing may be necessary simply to differentiate higher priced business services from residential access. The prices were poorly set from the beginning.
Even people who never come close to the cap will be outraged, but it should translate into lower prices for them in the long run. If ISP's charged by the byte for low bandwith users access would be so cheap that everyone would sign up. Really,/. users generally use lots of bandwidth, and most folks just check their email a couple of times a day and do some casual surfing.
We should have been paying more all along, be thankful you were in early enough to enjoy the golden age.
I'm not a troll, just an bandwidth hog with an MBA, which many of you will consider even worse...
If you have a PC connected to bandwidth and your stereo, you can make a playlist of say 250 songs very quickly and stream them unlimited for the monthly fee.
Rhapsody: 250 songs + no portability + minimal searching time = $9.95
Apple: 250 songs + limited portability + longer search, buying, and filing time = $247.50
If portable mp3's are worth $247.50 to you and you have free time to spend choosing and buying one record at a time, Apple is for you.
The $0.79 fee is only for when you want to burn a CD, and its of high enough quality you can re-rip it as data.
The services compete nicely with each other with different product features which each appeal to a different set of users....but the whole issue with Mac only having 4% of the market gives Rhapsody an incredible competitive advantage.
This is not RealOne player. Its completely different. I was quite skeptical but found Rhapsody very compelling even though i have more mp3's than i can even use stored locally. Its like having a library card to 300,000 songs with detailed editorial content. I found gobs of obscure records i wanted to listen to rather quickly.
I pre-ordered a month ago at amazon and my order inquiry promises delivery estimate: March 7 - March 13. The status HAS changed from a release date of Feb. 25 to the delivery estimate. My guess is they are processing the first batch of pre-orders, but are already sold out of the first shipment.
I heard the 'remote management' option was a huge vunerability over a year ago. I'm no expert, but I doubt any security consious folks would have remote management enabled, and it is not clear if the boxes are vulerable with this feature turned off.
Yes, crappy. There also seems to be no assessment of the hardware used. IMHO, given the current state of consumer acceptance of various playback devices, the results are useless. Some people have great headphones, some poor, machines can have 24bit audio output, or some schmuck who is listening thru the 2" speaker on the side of his PC. I've heard people insist.aif files are poor quality simply because of their playback hardware. MP3's never sounded as poor as people think, they had lame speakers.
Personally, I find the differences in bit rates and codecs obvious only when heard thru a good pair of speakers at a high volume so that distortion exposes the missing bits. As an audio engineer, I would always bet that even a professional could not tell a 256kbps MP3 from a MiniDisc playback at reasonable, personal (not loudspeakers or PA's) gain and EQ levels, and if they can differentiate it from CD playback it is only due to the compression that makes them sound like MiniDisc.
These programs {KaZaA, etc.) are blocked because the owners feel that they promote activities which are immoral and wrong. Yes, that _is_ the primary reason.
Regarding AOL/TW (not your employer) I strongly disagree. Their primary reason for any action as a firm is to make money. AOL/TW is a well diversified media conglomerate, and arguably the company with the most to lose from the inevitable devaluation of copyrighted works resulting from data transfer. They are doing this to make you buy CD's, go to movies, and watch television commercials, not because they are committed to some moral highground. Any company that allocates resources to moral battles goes out of business rapidly, AOL/TW's actions are motivated by survival and nothing else... and I would not be suprised if Vivendi/Universal was paying for some fraction of this blocking project.
This strategy is clearly doomed. First, we have the fact that Gateway has NO knowledge of the entertainment industry or media distribution, and arguably little knowledge about making decent hardware.
Second, we have FuckedCompany. With all the casualties in the online music space, Gateway better have one hell of a secret weapon. Great customer service and brick-and-mortar stores full of low-tech heads-of-households looking to invest in a computer will not help them sell records.
Gateway is a crumbling company. A look at recent news shows that they are clearly in a state of panic. Last I remember reading was that they were closing European operations and trying to get into IT consulting. I repeat: state of panic.
In the wisest of possible strategies, this music ploy is just a publicity stunt to earn credibility with "all those crazy kids." In their more probable strategy, it is simply bad management making a poor investment outside of their core competencies.
On a positive note, any money they throw at this project will be applied to a full frontal attack of the entertainment media establishment (xxAA's), which in a moral sense may be an ideal use of funds. In an economic sense, it is a waste of precious resources.
Maybe it was the same guy, but i read about this experiment years ago. I think it happened in St. Louis, by accident. It was mentioned in a book by Jonothan Kozol, "Savage Inequalities". The point the author stressed is that they kept asking Yahoo about Disney. Creepy. But children with no exposure to technology figured out how to use a computer, even if they were just looking for disney info.....it was only their beginning.
1) i think smarterchild and activebuddy are the same company
2) smarterchild is an incredible application and one of the best things on the net. i use it every day. it is my dictionary, thesaurus, newsbot, movie finder, weather, translator. Its wonderful. This saves lots of surfing. we shoudl only start complaining when they start charging us for it.
3) Bots only talk to you when you talk to them. This is the best kind of marketing. its actually, honestly opt-in....unlike those porn adverts spammed thru ICQ.
Once i had to get a permit to shoot in times square. There was lots of waiting and a contract was signed. Without seeing the standard contract which the city of New York makes entertainment shoots sign, we simply cannot even guess as to the legality of altering the background. We can be sure, however, that after this suit "non-alterability of scenery" will be a standard stipulation in NYC shoot permits.
I hadn't checked for 8 months. I tried a few times earlier today and couldn't get in. Although I retract my claims, I *did* check loc.gov several times last year, on different days, searching for names and call numbers, to no avail. Perhaps I'm just stupid. Sorry for wasting everyone's time.
Re:Please Disprove This Conspiracy Theory
on
Disinformation.com
·
· Score: 1
Who the fuck cares?
Orwell did. Ministry of Information. Remember?
Re:Please Disprove This Conspiracy Theory
on
Disinformation.com
·
· Score: 1
LOL! Listen, all you did is find another used copy, just like i did. You failed. My question is, why was an ISBN and LC call number deleted from the public database at the Library of Congress?
20 year old doctoral thesis which have never been read still maintain LC call numbers. The book in question was issued a LC Call Number E183.8.N5C63 and ISBN # 0-87113-169-2. Last time I went to loc.gov to look for it, it was not there.I think the absence of the title from the Library of Congress is highly suspicious.
This is not my paranoia, this is the single most believable conspiratorial evidence I ever saw after working at Disinfo for almost 2 years. I've seen all the crazy and stupid stuff, I have waded thru the crackpots, and I'm pointing out information which may have been erased by the Federal government. I do not want this to be true, and I am not enough of an expert to declare that I have uncovered the truth. Unfortunately, obviously you are not either:)
Please try again.
Please Disprove This Conspiracy Theory
on
Disinformation.com
·
· Score: 1
When working for Disinformation last year, I conceptualized and had manufactured "THE CIA TRAFFICS DRUGS" t-shirts which are still sold at the Disinfo store. On the back of the shirt is a bibliography. When I was constructing this bibliography, I gathered ISBN and LC (library of congress) call numbers for all of the titles.
Here is the spooky part:
There was one title (Cockburn, Leslie. Out of Control: The Story of the Reagan Administration's Secret War in Nicaragua, the Illegal Arms Pipeline, and the Contra Drug Connection. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1987) cited here, which I could find very little proof of ever existing. All the retail sites provided no records. The Library of Congress gave me no results. Other than the link I placed above, it is very difficult to prove this book was ever printed.
The only proof I could find was at eBay of all places. I have a hard copy of the book, which I bought for $3.95. The book does indeed have an ISBN number and Library of Congress call number.
Is there any possible reason for the lack of records regarding the publication of this book other than cover-up, censorship, book-banning, and historical whitewashing?
There is no real comparison between Disinfo and Google, that is obvious. However, while Disinfo is no substitute for Google, Google, is no substitute for Disinfo.
I must hold the position that I have found many interesting (and hilarious) sites thru Disinfo pages which I probably would not have found thru Google.
I'm sorry you are so angry that nobody recognizes Google as the web's killer app. Oh wait. We did. Right.
In all fairness, please understand that the copy on the site was a bit better back when internet content plays were able to pay employees. Sure, the search engine hasn't really worked since 1998, but hey, nobody is perfect.
That is what I do. I just have a stack of my favorite unripped cd's next to a G4 and feed them in whenever I walk by. I actually have to slow down.
Why be in such a hurry to rip everything right now? If you wait a few months before you need the extra GB's you could save lots of money....
There was an article on this in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, Dead Tree Version. They mention "slashdot.com" in the article actually.
Anyway, they say that the new CD's won't play on Macintosh, but are designed for Windoze. It's More evidence that WMP and WinXP are designed to bring DRM restrictions to the desktop, and most individuals either don't know or don't care how bad this is.
Slashdot Mirror
like giving up. the inevitable irrelevance of copyright law will may bust all art back to non-profits and patrons where it always belonged. big profits in art are an even newer development than copyright law itself and may be a passing fancy of pre-network capitalism. tzadik is already doing it that way, and my donation for the radiohead record could have been tax deductible. sure, fewer major blockbuster motion pictures, but things do change over time. relax, and root for the RIAA's demise.
since when is slashdot full of folks who support the DMCA? i've been gone for awhile but the fact this thread even exists here shocks me. i hope you all get fines for jaywalking.
the concern with this topic is not this one case so much as the legitimacy of copyright statutes in the networked age. the idea of intellectual property and copyright is relatively new and obviously at odds with the internet. all the internet does is copy things and at worst copyright could lead to de facto criminalization of all citizens.
the absurdity of the penalty and whether this punishment/enforcement model is effective or sustainable is a much more pertinent topic than if she broke the law and if she deserved the penalty.
even the changes to copyright laws over the past few years are fairly terrifying unless you are already wealthy due to holding copyrights on work you did not personally create.
this was interesting, and i think it is accurate: http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/10/04/the-inevitable-march-of-recorded-music-towards-free/
This is a poor argument. If you were making this from a manufacturer/producer point of view you would have a reasonable, if vague point. However, from a retailer perspective the cost is *not* the manufacturing cost, but rather the licencing fee, which could possibly be $00.491 and thus higher than the set price.
But, even if this arguement was sound, it is still beside the point:
One way to make sure nobody makes money is to start a price war. The price pressure in digital music is absurd considering nobody is making any money yet. Starting a price war prior to even being profitable is crazy. The inevitable economic outcome is that prices fall to where the few remaining producers can sell their product at a price equal to marginal cost and, quite literally, nobody makes any money. Maybe one or two can stay alive and meet payroll, but no big bucks. This lunacy extends to people expecting it for free thanks to Pepsi and other promotions. I half expect music products to be relegated to consumer incentives passed out with dish detergent rather than purchased as an independent product.
Real's strategy is particularly suicidal (at first blush with little information) because Apple, the incumbent, *doesn't* have to make money. They add value to to their entire product line, hardware, software, and particularly the operating system by owning digital music market share.
Starting a price war with a competitor who doesn't need to make money on the product to survive and has other incentive to stay in the game is a bet against the competitor's unknown tolerance of loss against their inestimable value of other benefits the competitor percieves they gain from the market share. It is impossible to have decent information on this, especially given Apple's legendary secrecy.
I'm sure Real is convinced they are on equal footing and will reap the same rewards by adding value to their entire product line, but their product line is less versatile, less useful, less profitable, and more narrow. It is hard for me to believe 2 things: 1) that Real has as much to gain $$ by acquiring the market share they are willing to pay dearly for, and 2) that Real has the resources to outlast Apple.
On the other hand, only companies like Real and Apple will have long term interest in this market, since nobody who actually wants to make money in a stand alone music play will stay in the game. Perhaps Real just wants to flush out all competitors who aren't convinced the digital music market share will give them indirect benefits which outweigh their cash losses and leave only a few survivors of which Real expects to be one. However, i bet all competitors, probably even Apple, are overestimating the true value here, only time will tell.
Smells like an albatross to me, or perhaps a golden fleece.
at least the author understands her obsession for popular music reviews is unhealthy. i must applaud the methods and approach used...but the goal makes me uneasy.
i think the concept of this analysis is only useful to monitor the homoginization of creativity. perhaps remotely notable for product marketing purposes, if tied to sales data. the idea suggests an elevated status for critics while cheapening both artists and the most victimized segments of music consumers.
sure, one can have a statistical analysis of what makes certain critics write approvingly. but the question is what is that worth? i think less than nothing. net negative for culture, but perhaps an advance for the ruin of beautiful experiments.
orwell's songwriting machine is born.
Even people who never come close to the cap will be outraged, but it should translate into lower prices for them in the long run. If ISP's charged by the byte for low bandwith users access would be so cheap that everyone would sign up. Really, /. users generally use lots of bandwidth, and most folks just check their email a couple of times a day and do some casual surfing.
We should have been paying more all along, be thankful you were in early enough to enjoy the golden age.
I'm not a troll, just an bandwidth hog with an MBA, which many of you will consider even worse...
If you have a PC connected to bandwidth and your stereo, you can make a playlist of say 250 songs very quickly and stream them unlimited for the monthly fee.
Rhapsody: 250 songs + no portability + minimal searching time = $9.95
Apple: 250 songs + limited portability + longer search, buying, and filing time = $247.50
Thus, limited portability - searching costs = 247.50.
If portable mp3's are worth $247.50 to you and you have free time to spend choosing and buying one record at a time, Apple is for you.
The $0.79 fee is only for when you want to burn a CD, and its of high enough quality you can re-rip it as data.
The services compete nicely with each other with different product features which each appeal to a different set of users....but the whole issue with Mac only having 4% of the market gives Rhapsody an incredible competitive advantage.
This is not RealOne player. Its completely different. I was quite skeptical but found Rhapsody very compelling even though i have more mp3's than i can even use stored locally. Its like having a library card to 300,000 songs with detailed editorial content. I found gobs of obscure records i wanted to listen to rather quickly.
Rhapsody was actually aquired along with listen.com last month by real. Its been around the whole time.
I pre-ordered a month ago at amazon and my order inquiry promises delivery estimate: March 7 - March 13. The status HAS changed from a release date of Feb. 25 to the delivery estimate. My guess is they are processing the first batch of pre-orders, but are already sold out of the first shipment.
Or am I missing something?
Personally, I find the differences in bit rates and codecs obvious only when heard thru a good pair of speakers at a high volume so that distortion exposes the missing bits. As an audio engineer, I would always bet that even a professional could not tell a 256kbps MP3 from a MiniDisc playback at reasonable, personal (not loudspeakers or PA's) gain and EQ levels, and if they can differentiate it from CD playback it is only due to the compression that makes them sound like MiniDisc.
Regarding AOL/TW (not your employer) I strongly disagree. Their primary reason for any action as a firm is to make money. AOL/TW is a well diversified media conglomerate, and arguably the company with the most to lose from the inevitable devaluation of copyrighted works resulting from data transfer. They are doing this to make you buy CD's, go to movies, and watch television commercials, not because they are committed to some moral highground. Any company that allocates resources to moral battles goes out of business rapidly, AOL/TW's actions are motivated by survival and nothing else... and I would not be suprised if Vivendi/Universal was paying for some fraction of this blocking project.
Second, we have FuckedCompany. With all the casualties in the online music space, Gateway better have one hell of a secret weapon. Great customer service and brick-and-mortar stores full of low-tech heads-of-households looking to invest in a computer will not help them sell records.
Gateway is a crumbling company. A look at recent news shows that they are clearly in a state of panic. Last I remember reading was that they were closing European operations and trying to get into IT consulting. I repeat: state of panic.
In the wisest of possible strategies, this music ploy is just a publicity stunt to earn credibility with "all those crazy kids." In their more probable strategy, it is simply bad management making a poor investment outside of their core competencies.
On a positive note, any money they throw at this project will be applied to a full frontal attack of the entertainment media establishment (xxAA's), which in a moral sense may be an ideal use of funds. In an economic sense, it is a waste of precious resources.
Maybe it was the same guy, but i read about this experiment years ago. I think it happened in St. Louis, by accident. It was mentioned in a book by Jonothan Kozol, "Savage Inequalities". The point the author stressed is that they kept asking Yahoo about Disney. Creepy. But children with no exposure to technology figured out how to use a computer, even if they were just looking for disney info.....it was only their beginning.
1) i think smarterchild and activebuddy are the same company
2) smarterchild is an incredible application and one of the best things on the net. i use it every day. it is my dictionary, thesaurus, newsbot, movie finder, weather, translator. Its wonderful. This saves lots of surfing. we shoudl only start complaining when they start charging us for it.
3) Bots only talk to you when you talk to them. This is the best kind of marketing. its actually, honestly opt-in....unlike those porn adverts spammed thru ICQ.
Once i had to get a permit to shoot in times square. There was lots of waiting and a contract was signed. Without seeing the standard contract which the city of New York makes entertainment shoots sign, we simply cannot even guess as to the legality of altering the background. We can be sure, however, that after this suit "non-alterability of scenery" will be a standard stipulation in NYC shoot permits.
I hadn't checked for 8 months. I tried a few times earlier today and couldn't get in. Although I retract my claims, I *did* check loc.gov several times last year, on different days, searching for names and call numbers, to no avail. Perhaps I'm just stupid. Sorry for wasting everyone's time.
Orwell did. Ministry of Information. Remember?
20 year old doctoral thesis which have never been read still maintain LC call numbers. The book in question was issued a LC Call Number E183.8.N5C63 and ISBN # 0-87113-169-2. Last time I went to loc.gov to look for it, it was not there.I think the absence of the title from the Library of Congress is highly suspicious.
This is not my paranoia, this is the single most believable conspiratorial evidence I ever saw after working at Disinfo for almost 2 years. I've seen all the crazy and stupid stuff, I have waded thru the crackpots, and I'm pointing out information which may have been erased by the Federal government. I do not want this to be true, and I am not enough of an expert to declare that I have uncovered the truth. Unfortunately, obviously you are not either :)
Please try again.
Here is the spooky part:
There was one title (Cockburn, Leslie. Out of Control: The Story of the Reagan Administration's Secret War in Nicaragua, the Illegal Arms Pipeline, and the Contra Drug Connection. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1987) cited here, which I could find very little proof of ever existing. All the retail sites provided no records. The Library of Congress gave me no results. Other than the link I placed above, it is very difficult to prove this book was ever printed.
The only proof I could find was at eBay of all places. I have a hard copy of the book, which I bought for $3.95. The book does indeed have an ISBN number and Library of Congress call number.
Is there any possible reason for the lack of records regarding the publication of this book other than cover-up, censorship, book-banning, and historical whitewashing?
Please disprove this conspiracy theory.
I must hold the position that I have found many interesting (and hilarious) sites thru Disinfo pages which I probably would not have found thru Google.
I'm sorry you are so angry that nobody recognizes Google as the web's killer app. Oh wait. We did. Right.
In all fairness, please understand that the copy on the site was a bit better back when internet content plays were able to pay employees. Sure, the search engine hasn't really worked since 1998, but hey, nobody is perfect.
That is what I do. I just have a stack of my favorite unripped cd's next to a G4 and feed them in whenever I walk by. I actually have to slow down.
Why be in such a hurry to rip everything right now? If you wait a few months before you need the extra GB's you could save lots of money....
and FTP too. In just a couple of clicks.
There was an article on this in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, Dead Tree Version. They mention "slashdot.com" in the article actually.
Anyway, they say that the new CD's won't play on Macintosh, but are designed for Windoze. It's More evidence that WMP and WinXP are designed to bring DRM restrictions to the desktop, and most individuals either don't know or don't care how bad this is.