What about the DeCSS song so popular a couple of years ago? Why doesn't he just hire a big band and a few backup singers and explain the technique as a broadway musical production?
It seems to me that the MPAA and RIAA are essentially saying: "Why don't we just put the whole internet under martial law until we can sort out all of this DRM business?"
Why don't they get their acts together and start utilizing the amazing distribution methods made available by the internet and digital media, instead of slandering and scandalizing them? It would save us all a lot of time and money.
I'd like to see some massive band like NSYNC or Madonna release one or two songs from their next album as Free Music. Let anyone share, listen, redistribute, etc. What a great way to promote an album!
I challenge the RIAA to try it. Just see if it works. If it bombs, then you've only lost two songs and you never have to do it again. If it works then you can stop investing in DRM technology and make lots of money. And everyone will be happy.
The concerns expressed here are much the same as those expressed by musicians hesitant about GPLing their recordings. The feeling that the creator needs to maintain ownership is a pervasive one, hard to let go of.
It is better for good ideas to be free. The problem is deciding when exactly to set them free. That's up to you to decide.
Re:Ogg at Emusic.com
on
Ogg Vorbis 1.0
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
The point was raised in yesterday's discussion that in order to stop piracy, the content industry simply needed to offer a better alternative. Emusic.com was one such alternative suggested. Rather than attempt to hobble piracy with DRM technology, they would be directly competing with pirates. With their financial resources they can easily make their services quick and convenient. Adding ogg would just make it that much better. Media files would not only sound better, but they would also be smaller on average. And Emusic won't have to pay anyone for the priviledge of using them.
Ogg at Emusic.com
on
Ogg Vorbis 1.0
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Yesterday's roundtable disaster on the subject of DRM raised a few good points about pay-per-download services like Emusic.com. Users are free to do whatever they like with medis files they have legally download.
The problem is that Emusic uses mp3. If they would offer songs in ogg vorbis they would be greatly increasing the quality of their product, giving listeners less reason to pirate and more reason to do legit consumer purchasing. I might even consider joining their service myself.
That was a poor choice of wording on my part. (Which goes to show why careful rereading and revision is a necessary step in expressing opinion...)
I agree with you heartily. Free as in free speech is what we want. What I was trying to say is that many of the arguments used in the free as in free speech essays and articles is extremist and off-putting to the uninitiated.
The idea itself is the baby. We can't throw the baby out with the bath, but we could make our water a little less murky.
I have mixed feelings about this. I've been writing a Free Music Manifesto lately (a rough draft of which can be found at my website linked above). The earlier drafts were inspired by Stallman's GNU Manifesto. While rereading and revising my manifesto over and over again I began to see how ineffective the radical language was. I want this document to appeal to artists and listeners. By using the traditional free as in free speech extremist views I would only be appealing to people who probably already advocate Free Music, and I would be alienating my intended audience, most of whom are not informed in the free software movement.
Moderation is the course to productive change. Extremism can get the issues in the limelight, but extremists are rarely able to compromise enough to make negotiations productive.
This doesn't have to be another Revolutionary War. We may feel like we have taxation without representation, but that's not true. We have advocates in the tech industry, and even sympathy from within the content industry itself. We need to build upon what we have, not bite the hand that feeds us.
"Rather than seek special treatment from the courts, we encourage the broadcasters to work with the labels and artists as our industries transition into new businesses"
Maybe the RIAA could work with us instead of trying to force everyone to bow to their authority. If they squeeze webcasters to death and put fair use in a straight jacket then they are forcing us to find our music elsewhere, like Open Audio projects.
Agreed. The first computer I ever owned ran an early version of Red Hat Linux - sort of half installed by my brother. I was totally lost. I didn't want to mess with getting the right values in my XF86Config file. I wanted to check my email! I had no idea what I was doing. In the end I installed Windows 95 because it would do the dirty work for me.
After learning the ropes a bit, I came back to Linux and loved it. But there really needs to be a Linux that's as easy to set up as an MS OS.
While looking through my Hotmail inbox a couple of weeks ago I found a message sent to me from my own Yahoo! account about enlarging my (certain male body parts). Now, I didn't send that to myself. Shouldn't that sort of thing be illegal or something? Could they send trash email to someone else using my Yahoo! account?
I'm from Utah, but I spent the last two years in England. British Telecommunications (BT) charges local phone calls at a certain rate per minute, depending on your plan and the time of day, etc. Most English people I knew were fed up with it, and I (being American and used to flat rate phone bills) was nearly beside myself a few times after a particularly high bill would arrive. I would think, "Why can't we just simplify things and pay the same price every month?" The high bill would always come exactly when you were a little short of cash.
The general movement in Britain is towards a flat rate system. Where private phone companies have been allowed to set up business in certain counties, they invariably adopt a flat rate system. A friend of mine who came from Kingston-Upon-Hull, East Yorkshire told me that the most popular phone comany in his county charges a flat rate.
The arguement for ISP's to charge an hourly (or bitly) rate makes sense when you first hear it, but when you think about it you realize that it's really not what people want. It was really a bother to get my silly BT phone bill every month and study my previous month's phone usage until it made sense to me. It was something I didn't want to have to think about.
Is that what the internet is about? No! It's about convenience. It's about getting information and media as quickly and effortlessly as possible. Throughout the history of man, advancements in technology and application have been motivated by a desire to simplify life - not to give you another thing to worry about.
This is really starting to sound like Farenheit 451 or something. The next step is to make it illegal for a guy like me to sit around his house and play copyrighted music on his guitar. Imagine a van full of guys wearing suits and sunglasses pulling into your driveway, breaking down the front door, crashing into your room, ripping the guitar out of your hands, and dragging you off to prison.
After time it will become illegal to _think_ of copyrighted music without paying a fee. Imagine getting fined for having your favourite song stuck in your head!
I can imagine a Pooh-Bear of the future inside of his magneto bubble, covered with mud, singing, "I'm just a little black space cloud hovering over the honey tree. .."
When I got home today I tried to tell my mom about 3-D printers and how cool they were and what the implications of the technology are. She didn't believe me! So I got online and looked up the article to show her. When she saw that it was indeed on the web, and on Slashdot none the less, she finally belived. GO SLASHDOT!
The only problem with throwing up your arms and saying "Well, those kids are gonna infringe copyright laws, anyway, so...lets go ahead and allow them the facilities to do it," is that you're not addressing the moral issue. That's just like handing out condoms in high schools. It doesn't make the problem any better.
Isn't there a place in cyberspace for good, old-fashioned honesty?
I can imagine one morning in the not-too distant (but still not foreseeable) future, waking up in my nano-bed to the sounds of my nano-disc playing in my nano-alarm clock. So I take a nano-shower, eat some nano-toast, and catch the 7:00 nano-bus just in time to get to the nano-university for my class in macrotechnology.
Slashdot Mirror
What about the DeCSS song so popular a couple of years ago? Why doesn't he just hire a big band and a few backup singers and explain the technique as a broadway musical production?
Why don't they get their acts together and start utilizing the amazing distribution methods made available by the internet and digital media, instead of slandering and scandalizing them? It would save us all a lot of time and money.
I'd like to see some massive band like NSYNC or Madonna release one or two songs from their next album as Free Music. Let anyone share, listen, redistribute, etc. What a great way to promote an album!
I challenge the RIAA to try it. Just see if it works. If it bombs, then you've only lost two songs and you never have to do it again. If it works then you can stop investing in DRM technology and make lots of money. And everyone will be happy.
The concerns expressed here are much the same as those expressed by musicians hesitant about GPLing their recordings. The feeling that the creator needs to maintain ownership is a pervasive one, hard to let go of.
It is better for good ideas to be free. The problem is deciding when exactly to set them free. That's up to you to decide.
The point was raised in yesterday's discussion that in order to stop piracy, the content industry simply needed to offer a better alternative. Emusic.com was one such alternative suggested. Rather than attempt to hobble piracy with DRM technology, they would be directly competing with pirates. With their financial resources they can easily make their services quick and convenient. Adding ogg would just make it that much better. Media files would not only sound better, but they would also be smaller on average. And Emusic won't have to pay anyone for the priviledge of using them.
The problem is that Emusic uses mp3. If they would offer songs in ogg vorbis they would be greatly increasing the quality of their product, giving listeners less reason to pirate and more reason to do legit consumer purchasing. I might even consider joining their service myself.
I agree with you heartily. Free as in free speech is what we want. What I was trying to say is that many of the arguments used in the free as in free speech essays and articles is extremist and off-putting to the uninitiated.
The idea itself is the baby. We can't throw the baby out with the bath, but we could make our water a little less murky.
Moderation is the course to productive change. Extremism can get the issues in the limelight, but extremists are rarely able to compromise enough to make negotiations productive.
This doesn't have to be another Revolutionary War. We may feel like we have taxation without representation, but that's not true. We have advocates in the tech industry, and even sympathy from within the content industry itself. We need to build upon what we have, not bite the hand that feeds us.
Maybe the RIAA could work with us instead of trying to force everyone to bow to their authority. If they squeeze webcasters to death and put fair use in a straight jacket then they are forcing us to find our music elsewhere, like Open Audio projects.
After learning the ropes a bit, I came back to Linux and loved it. But there really needs to be a Linux that's as easy to set up as an MS OS.
While looking through my Hotmail inbox a couple of weeks ago I found a message sent to me from my own Yahoo! account about enlarging my (certain male body parts). Now, I didn't send that to myself. Shouldn't that sort of thing be illegal or something? Could they send trash email to someone else using my Yahoo! account?
I'm from Utah, but I spent the last two years in England. British Telecommunications (BT) charges local phone calls at a certain rate per minute, depending on your plan and the time of day, etc. Most English people I knew were fed up with it, and I (being American and used to flat rate phone bills) was nearly beside myself a few times after a particularly high bill would arrive. I would think, "Why can't we just simplify things and pay the same price every month?" The high bill would always come exactly when you were a little short of cash.
The general movement in Britain is towards a flat rate system. Where private phone companies have been allowed to set up business in certain counties, they invariably adopt a flat rate system. A friend of mine who came from Kingston-Upon-Hull, East Yorkshire told me that the most popular phone comany in his county charges a flat rate.
The arguement for ISP's to charge an hourly (or bitly) rate makes sense when you first hear it, but when you think about it you realize that it's really not what people want. It was really a bother to get my silly BT phone bill every month and study my previous month's phone usage until it made sense to me. It was something I didn't want to have to think about.
Is that what the internet is about? No! It's about convenience. It's about getting information and media as quickly and effortlessly as possible. Throughout the history of man, advancements in technology and application have been motivated by a desire to simplify life - not to give you another thing to worry about.
This is really starting to sound like Farenheit 451 or something. The next step is to make it illegal for a guy like me to sit around his house and play copyrighted music on his guitar. Imagine a van full of guys wearing suits and sunglasses pulling into your driveway, breaking down the front door, crashing into your room, ripping the guitar out of your hands, and dragging you off to prison.
After time it will become illegal to _think_ of copyrighted music without paying a fee. Imagine getting fined for having your favourite song stuck in your head!
I can imagine a Pooh-Bear of the future inside of his magneto bubble, covered with mud, singing, "I'm just a little black space cloud hovering over the honey tree. . ."
When I got home today I tried to tell my mom about 3-D printers and how cool they were and what the implications of the technology are. She didn't believe me! So I got online and looked up the article to show her. When she saw that it was indeed on the web, and on Slashdot none the less, she finally belived. GO SLASHDOT!
The only problem with throwing up your arms and saying "Well, those kids are gonna infringe copyright laws, anyway, so...lets go ahead and allow them the facilities to do it," is that you're not addressing the moral issue. That's just like handing out condoms in high schools. It doesn't make the problem any better. Isn't there a place in cyberspace for good, old-fashioned honesty?
I can imagine one morning in the not-too distant (but still not foreseeable) future, waking up in my nano-bed to the sounds of my nano-disc playing in my nano-alarm clock. So I take a nano-shower, eat some nano-toast, and catch the 7:00 nano-bus just in time to get to the nano-university for my class in macrotechnology.