And the whois record would point to a puppet corporation with no obvious ties to riaa/mpaa/filter corporations. Any corp setting up a service for entrapment would obviously cover their tracks (unless the upper management are MBA wearing retards).
And for the truely paranoid conspiracy theorist - how long until the riaa starts an off-shore tunnel/p2p-service to monitor stateside filesharers and then use that info to prosecute stateside.
"Ok, US citizen Mr.Doe, we have the number and titles of illegal content you downloaded, illegal content you provided to others, times & dates & IP addresses used, profiles used, money you paid for the service and your credit card numbers....How will you be paying that $50 million?"
These questions are what your lawyer would call his 'defense strategy'. A lot can go wrong trying to extract the relevsnt log entries for your supposed activities. You lawyer has to use those questions to push FUD into a judge and/or jury.
Ignoring the legality of recording off-the-air for personal and/or distributation, you still have a quality issue.
When I stopped recording off-the-air (for personal cassettes) was when the DJs would jabber on over the content. Nothing worse than to get a recording of that hot new song with some mommas boy DJ yammering on about how hot the song is until 1 millisecond before the lead singer starts. Arghh! I have stopped listening to radio due to idiot DJs and 15 minute commercial breaks. Put on 3 songs then maybe a 2-minute commercial break is reasonable; 1 song and 7-minutes of crap, 2 songs then 10-minutes of crap is bullsh*t!
I recently checked into recording off my digital cable. Advertised as having no commercial breaks (true), surround sound (true-AC3), and CD or better quality (false). The so-called CD quality was missing one key ingredient - bass. I think there was some low-end cut-off at 500-hz or something. Utterly obnoxiuos. I guess they (riaa/cable-moguls) realized people might try to steal tunes so they sabotaged the songs. So much for that idea...
Hope you have better luck with your sat source recordings.
might as well ban - home/business graphics printers digital & non-digital photography home/small-business photo development/services/products digital & non-digital motion picture development/services/products by non-corporate entities any non-parent/non-guardian 'seeing' and/or 'viewing' any child[ren] any non-parent/non-guardian interacting with any child[ren]
Yeah, the U.S. could use more law-makers that can take any knee-jerk reaction and make a run for the end-zone with it. Never mind enforcing existing laws, make new one and don't enforce them either....
What we have here is a simple case of having so many laws that our [semi-]elected officials do not know what laws already exist and how to call for enforcement of those existing laws.
As with this case - several 'law-makers' cannot be bothered to discover the many laws regarding child pornography (banning the manufacture, possesion & distribution). So they incorrectly believe that writing more laws will be the answer. Naturally, the lobbying by certain corporate interests to encourage the writing of new laws that are not in the public interest by law-makers that do not have a bit of common sense and do not have the technical knowledge of a ten year old child is extremely troubling.
We need a letter writing campaign to stop this bill. Any takers? I would write a letter but my writing style is too abrupt ("hey sh*tforbrains!" is not a good way to get your point across). Come on, somebody write a sample letter... Somebody?...
So when are we going to see RICO lawsuits against the RIAA? The RIAA is a much bigger & badder target then DirecTV. However, in todays political climate of letting corporations walk all over us 'people' I doubt anything will come of this.
What is it with justices today that they are completely ignorant regarding the US constitution and its bill of rights? Here we have a judge that believes that first amendment speech right should take a backseat to corporate trade practices. In Alabama there is a chief justice that cannot separate his private religious beliefs from a constitutional requirement of non-endorsement of religion by the government. Then there is John Ashcroft, US attorney general, who believes that he can (and worse, should) remove sacred sections from our constitution.
I wonder if anybody has done any testing to see if adding a paper or plastic label on the disc makes any difference. If the disc is in frequent use a label should help protect a cheap disc from surface abrasions to the write/reflective layer.
As for disc rot between layers - maybe a layer of epoxy or silicon sealer (caulk?) on both hubs might be of some help.
I really can't care if these devices are used on (not in) food packaging and/or consumer goods as long as they can be identified and removed after purchase and do not contaminate the food.
The problem I would have is with the 'blanket immunity' clause. You cannot just remove the consumers right to sue (for whatever cause) without asking first. If such a law were to be created it would have to stand the test of a general vote. A representative vote would be invalid, as representatives generally don't have a clue about the concerns of the citizenry. I highly doubt that a general vote would be able to be used as a certain percentage of the voting population would have to vote either way on the issue to get a useful result (if 10% of the voting population actually voted on the issue it would still be non-binding due to such a low ratio).
This brings to mind the law that was to be passed in California (I think) concerning customer database break-ins. If a customer database is hacked/stolen/copied/whatever then who needs to be notified...the obvious answer is everyone that is listed in that database. Then law enforcement. The people in the database need to be contacted so they can change account information. This bill was not presented to the people and was killed by special interest groups (industry lobbyists). If I lived in that state and my account information was stolen from a database and I was not contacted immediately I would sue the state government for millions on the dollar of any credit fraud committed with my stolen account information. They failed to ask and they are the one responsible for the id/credit fraud. \end rant...\
Third, yeah, 12 bucks worth of vouchers sounds sucky... but how many of these class members used Windows for four years and now expect a full refund? Cut me a break! Talk about unjust enrichment!?! Really, what kind of individual recovery do you expect for software that is worth half the cost of what MS charges for it? Enough vouchers to buy a new G5!?!
Considering what MS has put me through this week (and since 98/XP has been out) I think they owe me a few billion dollars. NTFS has been crapping out and causing files to be corrupt. Today brought three restores of boot drive due to the problem taking out critical EXEs and DLLs. A REAL OS would protect those files and not allow modifications to the files and/or the NTFS control areas. MS owes millions to anyone who has used their OSes and has had to power-cycle or press the reset button!
Oh, yes, I have tried several distros of linux. Very nice, but most are still a long way from being considered 'release' candidates. The gui's are a mess, video/audio drivers are a pain to install (download, compile, install, oops - reinstall linux, download, compile, rebuild kernel, cut off balls and mail to following list of 500 freelance developers to get newbie-level assistance, curse loudly & frequently, get drunk and reinstall XP, start getting corrupt system files, loop)...
Ok, let just say that file sharing is a crime (and ignore the multiple and varied arguements that could be used against). If you are found guilty of file sharing all info points to you being fined +$750 per file shared. Does anybody else find this extremely excessive? Hell, I find $10 per file shared excessive (as long as we are discussing music). What does this crowd think a fine for music file sharing should be?
Good ideas, but one thing is missing - how do you catch a persons attention when you only have maybe a two second (max five) window? If I had a tivo (matter of time/money until I get one) the only things that would stop me from bypassing would be something on the order of full frontal nudity, hardcore porn, or maybe an old-time emergency broadcast signal (might fool me once or twice). Other than that - click!
I have mixed feelings about this news. One hand it proves that smart ('technophiles') with tivos will bypass commercials given a chance, on the other hand the advertisers will develop new ways of annoying watchers. For example - advertisers could use more product placement (usually doesn't bother me unless it is blatant - "I like X; you should buy X; please buy X"), more 'banner' ads (ads placed in lower part of screen - see TNN as example of over-the-top usage of ads of this nature) this should only be used if content is widescreen and letterboxed but you know the fcc could never write a rule like that, and lawsuits to get ad-skip and/or fast-forward/cue buttons removed (those buttons should be a requirement for time-shifting devices).
For me, dvds provide more bang for the buck. I can edit out objectionable material (ads and warnings) and write out to an RW. Watch then erase and go again...
So, the RIAA sues you because they think you have illegal songs on your computer. Do you have the funds to support a legal defense? True, your defense would have a pretty easy time saying "I know what they look like, yer honor, but that isn't what they are", but how much is a good lawyer going to bill you for baiting the RIAA?
CDRs are dirt cheap, friends are dirt chreap labor, if you can get local media involved you have marketing and exposure, if you get arrested for copyright violation you become a martyr for the cause.
Yeah, good idea. But wouldn't rate a tiny blip on the RIAA radar. To really f*ck with the RIAA you would do something like this: Buy a copy of the five/ten most popular albums to come out that week. Make ten/twenty copies of each album. Get a group of friends together and hit the intersections about a block away from major malls and/or stores. Spread out through the lanes and give out (free!) any album that a driver/passenger requests. To make sure you really get noticed - get arrested for it and/or let the local liberal media do a story on your group.
Anyone else see a new business model here? Go to some country not in bed with the RIAA/MPAA and setup Kazaa/P2P servers and allow subscribers to ftp files for share...
The RIAA seemingly refuses to do what it needs to do to weaken the flow of work through p2p 'sharing'. They go after whoever manages to catch their attention, and they just grumble about the other millions that slip by.
What should the RIAA do? Quietly acknowledge that they are powerless against p2p 'sharing', that new laws are not needed, but that they will continue lawsuits against large p2p 'sharing' users. At the same time - sabotage the p2p networks by setting up a couple hundred servers in the US (and abroad) with their library spread through-out. Each song on their servers would be specially modified after the first thirty- to sixty-seconds by application of special filters to render the remaining content to noise. Servers would log IP addresses of downloaders and other servers would investigate quantity & type of files being 'shared' by the downloader for possible later legal actions. - introduce legal downloads using non-DRM format (mp3, ogg, etc). Downloads would be priced according to quality of encoding (ie $.25 for "92", $.50 for "128", $.75 for "192", $1 for "256"). Download would be bound by license, with ample 'fair-use' rights, and some FUD against 'sharing' (ie download has been watermarked, we will prosecute if you 'share', etc). After maybe 3 months if the service is popular then the price starts dropping by $.10 every 6-9 months.
These are examples of what I would do if I were in charge of the RIAA. If anybody at the RIAA is reading - please feel free to use these ideas.
I've been with NetFlix since '99 (I believe). I can usually get new titles just as they are released. This week was 'Tears of the Sun' and last week was 'Die Another Day'. Received them both on the Tuesday they released. I have had no problems with the NetFlix queue system.
When I tried Walmart dvd rentals a few months back the selection seemed about the same as NetFlix, but the quantity wasn't there. Just about every title I wanted to rent was a 'long wait', whereas on NetFlix very few titles have any wait whatsoever.
Walmart needs to get a greater quantity of titles before they steal significant market from NetFlix. I would also like to see Walmart enable returns/check-ins at stores (stores could bulk-main discs back to distribution sites).
Great combination. The Sony DRU500 burns to all DVD media (except -RAM), and the Panasonic S35 reads all media (incl. -RAM).
Only irritating drawback is the ripping speed of the Sony (2.1 max on pre-recorded media). If you do alot of ripping get a DVD-ROM unit for ripping, leave the Sony to burn, and the S35 to play on your home theatre.
Should be ok for rental companies - no mussing around with returns. Rent it, watch it, dump it. Nobody'll care except for ecology nuts, and by the number of SUVs on the road nobody cares about ecology anyway.
Might be interesting if the big studios get into this, then get some big retailers into selling them, then the DVD burner market will really heat up. Those of us with burners can make some side $$$ by copying shows onto non-expirable DVD-Rs and selling them out in front of those big retailers selling the expirable DVDs.
I grab headers for several groups daily, and have subscriptions to two pay servers (my former ISPs news server was a 386 with a 10GB drive). Actually, its time for a leech session just about now...
Best attributes - its anonymous (RI-/MP-AA still hasn't figured it out), leeching is acceptable, reader software is available (and easily cracked - or so I am told), you can usually find something that interests you, make several IDs for yourself and then invade groups and argue amongst yourselves, troll, laugh at the freaks in the 'recovery' groups...
Worst attributes - damn ISP server logs (there goes being anonymous), sharing is a royal pain (even with good software), spam, waiting for your request to be filled, waiting for something interesting to be posted, spam, having to weed out the child-porn after downloading from an adult-porn group (or so I am told), spam, virus, spam, trojan, spam, registry hack (followed by two days of crash/reg-corruption recovery), spam, backdoor, trolls, did I mention spam?...
Er, come to think of it where did I put that copy of Kazaa Lite...?
Uh - when exactly has the US mistreated prisoners of war - at least in any recent conflict?
As relates to double-standards? Oh, lets see... How about when Iraqi TV showed footage of US POWs? Our government cried foul-play rather loudly, while at the same time allowing the media to show footage of Iraqi POWs and dead Iraqi soldiers. Our government gave the rather pathetic excuse that the relatives of those Iraqi POWs and dead soldiers will never see the footage and/or pictures. Eventually the relatives and the POWs themselves will see the footage and/or photos.
If you're talking about camp X-Ray - those aren't prisoners of war.
Actually, they may well be POWs. When you are dealing with a country as poor as Afganistan, having every soldier well dressed with insignia and ID would be very difficult and costly. Also, the country was being attacked/invaded by a much larger, better trained and equipped force. Guerilla warfare would be a key defence strategy. So proper military dress would not be worn (so as to blend into the civilian population). At any rate, what is happening at camp X-Ray (Gitmo) in not justice, and does not follow any UN Convention on human rights.
It seems a little strange to have international conventions on how war should be fought.
Actually, I don't think there are any rules on how war should be fought. There are rules on how prisoners and civilians should be treated during and after wars.
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And the whois record would point to a puppet corporation with no obvious ties to riaa/mpaa/filter corporations. Any corp setting up a service for entrapment would obviously cover their tracks (unless the upper management are MBA wearing retards).
And for the truely paranoid conspiracy theorist - how long until the riaa starts an off-shore tunnel/p2p-service to monitor stateside filesharers and then use that info to prosecute stateside.
"Ok, US citizen Mr.Doe, we have the number and titles of illegal content you downloaded, illegal content you provided to others, times & dates & IP addresses used, profiles used, money you paid for the service and your credit card numbers....How will you be paying that $50 million?"
These questions are what your lawyer would call his 'defense strategy'. A lot can go wrong trying to extract the relevsnt log entries for your supposed activities. You lawyer has to use those questions to push FUD into a judge and/or jury.
Ignoring the legality of recording off-the-air for personal and/or distributation, you still have a quality issue.
When I stopped recording off-the-air (for personal cassettes) was when the DJs would jabber on over the content. Nothing worse than to get a recording of that hot new song with some mommas boy DJ yammering on about how hot the song is until 1 millisecond before the lead singer starts. Arghh! I have stopped listening to radio due to idiot DJs and 15 minute commercial breaks. Put on 3 songs then maybe a 2-minute commercial break is reasonable; 1 song and 7-minutes of crap, 2 songs then 10-minutes of crap is bullsh*t!
I recently checked into recording off my digital cable. Advertised as having no commercial breaks (true), surround sound (true-AC3), and CD or better quality (false). The so-called CD quality was missing one key ingredient - bass. I think there was some low-end cut-off at 500-hz or something. Utterly obnoxiuos. I guess they (riaa/cable-moguls) realized people might try to steal tunes so they sabotaged the songs. So much for that idea...
Hope you have better luck with your sat source recordings.
might as well ban -
home/business graphics printers
digital & non-digital photography
home/small-business photo development/services/products
digital & non-digital motion picture development/services/products by non-corporate entities
any non-parent/non-guardian 'seeing' and/or 'viewing' any child[ren]
any non-parent/non-guardian interacting with any child[ren]
Yeah, the U.S. could use more law-makers that can take any knee-jerk reaction and make a run for the end-zone with it. Never mind enforcing existing laws, make new one and don't enforce them either....
What we have here is a simple case of having so many laws that our [semi-]elected officials do not know what laws already exist and how to call for enforcement of those existing laws.
As with this case - several 'law-makers' cannot be bothered to discover the many laws regarding child pornography (banning the manufacture, possesion & distribution). So they incorrectly believe that writing more laws will be the answer. Naturally, the lobbying by certain corporate interests to encourage the writing of new laws that are not in the public interest by law-makers that do not have a bit of common sense and do not have the technical knowledge of a ten year old child is extremely troubling.
We need a letter writing campaign to stop this bill. Any takers? I would write a letter but my writing style is too abrupt ("hey sh*tforbrains!" is not a good way to get your point across). Come on, somebody write a sample letter... Somebody?...
So when are we going to see RICO lawsuits against the RIAA? The RIAA is a much bigger & badder target then DirecTV. However, in todays political climate of letting corporations walk all over us 'people' I doubt anything will come of this.
What is it with justices today that they are completely ignorant regarding the US constitution and its bill of rights? Here we have a judge that believes that first amendment speech right should take a backseat to corporate trade practices. In Alabama there is a chief justice that cannot separate his private religious beliefs from a constitutional requirement of non-endorsement of religion by the government. Then there is John Ashcroft, US attorney general, who believes that he can (and worse, should) remove sacred sections from our constitution.
I wonder if anybody has done any testing to see if adding a paper or plastic label on the disc makes any difference. If the disc is in frequent use a label should help protect a cheap disc from surface abrasions to the write/reflective layer.
As for disc rot between layers - maybe a layer of epoxy or silicon sealer (caulk?) on both hubs might be of some help.
I really can't care if these devices are used on (not in) food packaging and/or consumer goods as long as they can be identified and removed after purchase and do not contaminate the food.
The problem I would have is with the 'blanket immunity' clause. You cannot just remove the consumers right to sue (for whatever cause) without asking first. If such a law were to be created it would have to stand the test of a general vote. A representative vote would be invalid, as representatives generally don't have a clue about the concerns of the citizenry. I highly doubt that a general vote would be able to be used as a certain percentage of the voting population would have to vote either way on the issue to get a useful result (if 10% of the voting population actually voted on the issue it would still be non-binding due to such a low ratio).
This brings to mind the law that was to be passed in California (I think) concerning customer database break-ins. If a customer database is hacked/stolen/copied/whatever then who needs to be notified...the obvious answer is everyone that is listed in that database. Then law enforcement. The people in the database need to be contacted so they can change account information. This bill was not presented to the people and was killed by special interest groups (industry lobbyists). If I lived in that state and my account information was stolen from a database and I was not contacted immediately I would sue the state government for millions on the dollar of any credit fraud committed with my stolen account information. They failed to ask and they are the one responsible for the id/credit fraud.
\end rant...\
Oh, yes, I have tried several distros of linux. Very nice, but most are still a long way from being considered 'release' candidates. The gui's are a mess, video/audio drivers are a pain to install (download, compile, install, oops - reinstall linux, download, compile, rebuild kernel, cut off balls and mail to following list of 500 freelance developers to get newbie-level assistance, curse loudly & frequently, get drunk and reinstall XP, start getting corrupt system files, loop)...
Argh, I'm 36 and getting to old for this shit...
Ok, let just say that file sharing is a crime (and ignore the multiple and varied arguements that could be used against). If you are found guilty of file sharing all info points to you being fined +$750 per file shared. Does anybody else find this extremely excessive? Hell, I find $10 per file shared excessive (as long as we are discussing music). What does this crowd think a fine for music file sharing should be?
Good ideas, but one thing is missing - how do you catch a persons attention when you only have maybe a two second (max five) window? If I had a tivo (matter of time/money until I get one) the only things that would stop me from bypassing would be something on the order of full frontal nudity, hardcore porn, or maybe an old-time emergency broadcast signal (might fool me once or twice). Other than that - click!
I have mixed feelings about this news. One hand it proves that smart ('technophiles') with tivos will bypass commercials given a chance, on the other hand the advertisers will develop new ways of annoying watchers. For example - advertisers could use more product placement (usually doesn't bother me unless it is blatant - "I like X; you should buy X; please buy X"), more 'banner' ads (ads placed in lower part of screen - see TNN as example of over-the-top usage of ads of this nature) this should only be used if content is widescreen and letterboxed but you know the fcc could never write a rule like that, and lawsuits to get ad-skip and/or fast-forward/cue buttons removed (those buttons should be a requirement for time-shifting devices).
For me, dvds provide more bang for the buck. I can edit out objectionable material (ads and warnings) and write out to an RW. Watch then erase and go again...
So, the RIAA sues you because they think you have illegal songs on your computer. Do you have the funds to support a legal defense? True, your defense would have a pretty easy time saying "I know what they look like, yer honor, but that isn't what they are", but how much is a good lawyer going to bill you for baiting the RIAA?
CDRs are dirt cheap, friends are dirt chreap labor, if you can get local media involved you have marketing and exposure, if you get arrested for copyright violation you become a martyr for the cause.
No pain, no gain...
Yeah, good idea. But wouldn't rate a tiny blip on the RIAA radar. To really f*ck with the RIAA you would do something like this: Buy a copy of the five/ten most popular albums to come out that week. Make ten/twenty copies of each album. Get a group of friends together and hit the intersections about a block away from major malls and/or stores. Spread out through the lanes and give out (free!) any album that a driver/passenger requests. To make sure you really get noticed - get arrested for it and/or let the local liberal media do a story on your group.
Yeah, f*ck the RIAA - just use your head first.
Anyone else see a new business model here? Go to some country not in bed with the RIAA/MPAA and setup Kazaa/P2P servers and allow subscribers to ftp files for share...
I smell money to be made here...
The RIAA seemingly refuses to do what it needs to do to weaken the flow of work through p2p 'sharing'. They go after whoever manages to catch their attention, and they just grumble about the other millions that slip by.
What should the RIAA do? Quietly acknowledge that they are powerless against p2p 'sharing', that new laws are not needed, but that they will continue lawsuits against large p2p 'sharing' users. At the same time
- sabotage the p2p networks by setting up a couple hundred servers in the US (and abroad) with their library spread through-out. Each song on their servers would be specially modified after the first thirty- to sixty-seconds by application of special filters to render the remaining content to noise. Servers would log IP addresses of downloaders and other servers would investigate quantity & type of files being 'shared' by the downloader for possible later legal actions.
- introduce legal downloads using non-DRM format (mp3, ogg, etc). Downloads would be priced according to quality of encoding (ie $.25 for "92", $.50 for "128", $.75 for "192", $1 for "256"). Download would be bound by license, with ample 'fair-use' rights, and some FUD against 'sharing' (ie download has been watermarked, we will prosecute if you 'share', etc). After maybe 3 months if the service is popular then the price starts dropping by $.10 every 6-9 months.
These are examples of what I would do if I were in charge of the RIAA. If anybody at the RIAA is reading - please feel free to use these ideas.
I've been with NetFlix since '99 (I believe). I can usually get new titles just as they are released. This week was 'Tears of the Sun' and last week was 'Die Another Day'. Received them both on the Tuesday they released. I have had no problems with the NetFlix queue system.
When I tried Walmart dvd rentals a few months back the selection seemed about the same as NetFlix, but the quantity wasn't there. Just about every title I wanted to rent was a 'long wait', whereas on NetFlix very few titles have any wait whatsoever.
Walmart needs to get a greater quantity of titles before they steal significant market from NetFlix. I would also like to see Walmart enable returns/check-ins at stores (stores could bulk-main discs back to distribution sites).
Great combination. The Sony DRU500 burns to all DVD media (except -RAM), and the Panasonic S35 reads all media (incl. -RAM).
Only irritating drawback is the ripping speed of the Sony (2.1 max on pre-recorded media). If you do alot of ripping get a DVD-ROM unit for ripping, leave the Sony to burn, and the S35 to play on your home theatre.
Should be ok for rental companies - no mussing around with returns. Rent it, watch it, dump it. Nobody'll care except for ecology nuts, and by the number of SUVs on the road nobody cares about ecology anyway.
Might be interesting if the big studios get into this, then get some big retailers into selling them, then the DVD burner market will really heat up. Those of us with burners can make some side $$$ by copying shows onto non-expirable DVD-Rs and selling them out in front of those big retailers selling the expirable DVDs.
I grab headers for several groups daily, and have subscriptions to two pay servers (my former ISPs news server was a 386 with a 10GB drive). Actually, its time for a leech session just about now...
Best attributes - its anonymous (RI-/MP-AA still hasn't figured it out), leeching is acceptable, reader software is available (and easily cracked - or so I am told), you can usually find something that interests you, make several IDs for yourself and then invade groups and argue amongst yourselves, troll, laugh at the freaks in the 'recovery' groups...
Worst attributes - damn ISP server logs (there goes being anonymous), sharing is a royal pain (even with good software), spam, waiting for your request to be filled, waiting for something interesting to be posted, spam, having to weed out the child-porn after downloading from an adult-porn group (or so I am told), spam, virus, spam, trojan, spam, registry hack (followed by two days of crash/reg-corruption recovery), spam, backdoor, trolls, did I mention spam?...
Er, come to think of it where did I put that copy of Kazaa Lite...?
Actually, they may well be POWs. When you are dealing with a country as poor as Afganistan, having every soldier well dressed with insignia and ID would be very difficult and costly. Also, the country was being attacked/invaded by a much larger, better trained and equipped force. Guerilla warfare would be a key defence strategy. So proper military dress would not be worn (so as to blend into the civilian population). At any rate, what is happening at camp X-Ray (Gitmo) in not justice, and does not follow any UN Convention on human rights.
Actually, I don't think there are any rules on how war should be fought. There are rules on how prisoners and civilians should be treated during and after wars.