RIAA sued Napster for running a service which they knew was being abused (i.e. people are pirating shit all over the place) and refusing to report people that were breaking federal copyright law and ripping the record companies off.
RIAA is suing college kids that are distributing thousands of mp3's illegally and breaking federal copyright law and by doing so ripping record companies off.
So, really, I don't see how the time is nigh for civil disobedience when, really, all that is going on here is that RIAA is suing people that are ripping them off, or knowingly aiding and abetting those that are ripping them off.
According to the Constitution, Copyright exists "to promote the sciences and useful arts". If 80% of recorded music is simply unavailable for purchase, then argueably the current situation is 'not promoting' a fairly substantial amount of art. If indie music can't get air time because of the 'payola' system, then the current situation is not promoting the arts.
Is it ethical for large corporations to pervert a law that was intended to promote the arts, effectively doing the exact opposite in the name of 'profit'?
How are you going to promote the sciences and useful arts without money? If you can't make a living doing what you're doing, you do something else. If these artists don't get paid, they won't make music for a living. It's not really perverting the spirit of the Constitution at all -- they are trying to make money to keep it going.
And before you say "people would make music even if they didn't make money", yes, I know that, but not as much as they do now -- and certainly it would be much harder to wade through all the crap and get to the good stuff without record labels. If this were not true, people would not be pirating good, commercial music through P2P networks every second of every day.
The constitution does not read "In order to promote corporate profit and monopoly control.. "
Corporate profit == more money to promote the arts and useful sciences. Did you notice we're in a capitalist society? Without corporate profit, there is no personal profit. Without either, the society we have would not exist.
The law needs to be changed. The DMCA and perpetual copyrights promote corporate profits only, they don't promote the arts. That 80% of older music that the pigopoly won't release should already be public domain!
I agree RE: the copyright extensions.
So quit bitching about it on Slashdot -- take it to court instead of being a petty criminal and pirating mp3's. Let's not be lazy now.
There's a really funny set of laws that say what is and isn't okay. A space alien from an advanced race would be thoroughly confused, because the humans themselves can't explain the rationale for what is and isn't "allowed".
Yes, we can:
If you possess a copy, you pay a licensing fee for that copy, based on what you are doing with it (personal vs. broadcast usage.)
but this price is artificially inflated by a monopolistic organization
OK, so a lawsuit should be the thing to do, in the traditions of Microsoft, Bell Telephone, et al. That would be the right thing to do, as opposed to petty thievery (or "copyright infringery", if such a word exists, which I'm sure it doesn't.:-)
people in the south pre-civil war saw it as perfectly normal and essential to their way of life
While I doubt most people see mp3 trading as essential, they CERTAINLY see it as perfectly normal, with utter disregard to the rights of the copyright holder.
Society progresses through the realization of past mistakes, and no, the enslavement of Africans was a matter of societal ethics.
So millions of people participating in what amounts to a giant scam isn't a question of societal ethics? Then what the hell is??
Following your line of reasoning I should go to the gas station and decide not to pay for it because the price is too high.
No, it doesn't work that way.
If you don't like the price, you don't pay it, but you're not entitled to take something just because you disagree with the price. The price being charged is not your decision to make, it is the decision of the person providing the good or service, end of story.
Is it ethical for a small group of companies (remember this is the RIAA member companies; the artists no longer own their own work) to lie about profits and losses, maintain a stranglehold over distribution, maintain artificially high prices, lobby to perpetually extend copyright, and keep 80% of art unavailable (depriving both the artists from potential revenue, and the buying public from legally purchasable content?)
Is it ethical for people to take things that are not being given freely and not reimburse those that provide it?
There's two sides to the coin... and right now, there are laws that govern the side I'm talking about...
When the imposed societal morals catch up with the times, maybe then everyone will share the same views on mp3 sharing, but right now, this falls under personal morals, not the umbrella of the ethics of society.
So enslaving black people in the pre-Civil War era would fall under personal morals?
MABYE THE RIAA SHOULD FOCUS ON MAKING A PRODUCT PEOPLE ARE WILLING TO PAY FOR?? if someone wouldnt buy a cd anyway how the FUCK does it hurt the artist if they download teh cd?
Because the artist makes royalties off of the sale of the CD.
And if you're not willing to pay for it, fine, but that doesn't entitle you to steal. Go find music that is being given away for free and listen to that -- there is PLENTY of good, free music available on mp3.com and elsewhere. I mean, shit, go out to a bar sometime and get a CD some local band is giving away for free, you will find LOTS of good music that way.
One involes killing people, the other doesn't. Most reasonable people are against killing humans. But then you've got Saddam, Al Qaida, etc, who obviously see things differently and WOULD say that it is fine.
OK, but depriving people of income isn't immoral? Try convincing the world of that one, genius!
Um.. HUH? Why do i, or anybody else, need to explain and provide reasons why you are wrong? Your NOT wrong. You just have your own opinions and moral beliefs, and we are entitled to ours.
So you're saying it's OK for someone to stuff Jews in a gas chamber if they want to? Because well shit, if one is of the opinion that Jews ought to be exterminated, they're entitled to that belief -- and if someone's entitled to a belief, who the hell are you to stop them from following it?
Alot of older people don't like music by Eminem because of the language and the messages in his songs. Alot of the younger generation don't give a shit, and are fine with it. Alot of people find words like bitch, motherfucker, slut, and who knows what offensive. Others do not. Others just think its plain funny:)
OK, but how does bad language deprive someone of the income to which they are entitled?
Recording off of the radio requires comparitively greater effort than does pirating mp3's. While pirating, you can do a quick search and find what you are looking for on demand, whereas you need to "hunt and trap" what you are trying to find on the radio.
By pirating an mp3, you are getting CD-quality -- what you would be paying for in the store. By recording off of the radio, you are getting a lower-fidelity signal (noise and compressed sound), definitely an inferior product to that which you would be purchasing.
You can't easily take tapes of radio broadcasts and distribute them to the entire world via some p2p system, without first digitizing it (assuming you didn't digitize it on your initial radio recording) and editing the particular song/broadcast into a single file, and cutting all the commercials out. (And I would question the legality of that.) When putting your mp3's/computer on a p2p system, you are not sharing your tape with a friend or two, you are inviting the entire world to rip off the record companies along with you.
I don't know about the legality of recording off of the radio or not, but it is obviously much less harmful given my points above.
Hey now, don't push your stupid backwards fundie morals on me. Whats right for you isn't always right for me, ever think about it?
Ah, yes, the personal ethics system -- your morals are yours, mine are mine. So you're telling me it's OK to stuff Jews in a gas chamber?
"Ah, but that's different!"
What I did in my previous post was put forward a logical argument. Your (lack of) an argument, however, just plain sucks. You can't just say I'm wrong because you don't like paying for things.
You need to use reason to explain why I'm wrong. You think that depriving people of income is forwards? Please, please explain yourself!
I think longer cables for your mouse, keyboard, monitor, and speakers would be better -- then you could get the entire noisy machine, fans and all, out of your room and into the attic.
Whatever happened to releasing a product when it's ready?
It's a good idea to give a product to the public to test; the geeks get their new toy early, and will use it and abuse it in new and creative ways that the engineers wouldn't have dreamed up.
It is impossible to know, with 100% accuracy, in which situations a new piece of hardware or software will fail. Extensive testing, no matter how careful, still will not catch all of the problems. So, they test and tune, and release it when they believe it is ready.
Subsequent usage of the product always yields problems -- which is why we get things like recall notices, software patches, etc.
Many (not all, but many) companies really do try their hardest to release a good product. Good products mean a good image, more profits, and not having to deal with irate customers.
Time spent fixing a broken product is time taken away from working on a new product -- companies want to minimize the former and maximize the latter.
Read reviews. Lots of them. Go to the store yourself and look at some models.
Step 2: Take the test.
Find one you like. Buy it, try it. If it doesn't work the way you want, exchange it for the same model. If that one doesn't work, it's a piece of crap; exchange it for something different, or return it and pay the restocking fee.
Simply stated, if a client is paying cheaply (well, as close as that gets in consulting), they deserve the minimum information and just get what they ask for.
If a client pays well or tips well or has been a long time repeat client, they deserve that extra time taken to show which judgement would be best and why.
That's just plain irresponsible.
You are a consultant because they are going to you for advice, in addition to implementation -- if you were there solely for implementation, your title would be "Gofer" or some such.
In other words, it doesn't matter how much they are paying you, you signed on for the gig, and if they want to implement something that you feel is a bad idea, it's your responsibility -- per your job description -- to advise against it.
Slashdot Mirror
RIAA sued Napster for running a service which they knew was being abused (i.e. people are pirating shit all over the place) and refusing to report people that were breaking federal copyright law and ripping the record companies off.
RIAA is suing college kids that are distributing thousands of mp3's illegally and breaking federal copyright law and by doing so ripping record companies off.
So, really, I don't see how the time is nigh for civil disobedience when, really, all that is going on here is that RIAA is suing people that are ripping them off, or knowingly aiding and abetting those that are ripping them off.
According to the Constitution, Copyright exists "to promote the sciences and useful arts". If 80% of recorded music is simply unavailable for purchase, then argueably the current situation is 'not promoting' a fairly substantial amount of art. If indie music can't get air time because of the 'payola' system, then the current situation is not promoting the arts.
Is it ethical for large corporations to pervert a law that was intended to promote the arts, effectively doing the exact opposite in the name of 'profit'?
How are you going to promote the sciences and useful arts without money? If you can't make a living doing what you're doing, you do something else. If these artists don't get paid, they won't make music for a living. It's not really perverting the spirit of the Constitution at all -- they are trying to make money to keep it going.
And before you say "people would make music even if they didn't make money", yes, I know that, but not as much as they do now -- and certainly it would be much harder to wade through all the crap and get to the good stuff without record labels. If this were not true, people would not be pirating good, commercial music through P2P networks every second of every day.
The constitution does not read "In order to promote corporate profit and monopoly control.. "
Corporate profit == more money to promote the arts and useful sciences. Did you notice we're in a capitalist society? Without corporate profit, there is no personal profit. Without either, the society we have would not exist.
The law needs to be changed. The DMCA and perpetual copyrights promote corporate profits only, they don't promote the arts. That 80% of older music that the pigopoly won't release should already be public domain!
I agree RE: the copyright extensions.
So quit bitching about it on Slashdot -- take it to court instead of being a petty criminal and pirating mp3's. Let's not be lazy now.
There's a really funny set of laws that say what is and isn't okay. A space alien from an advanced race would be thoroughly confused, because the humans themselves can't explain the rationale for what is and isn't "allowed".
Yes, we can:
If you possess a copy, you pay a licensing fee for that copy, based on what you are doing with it (personal vs. broadcast usage.)
Exactly how is that a confusing concept??
If a law is unjust, you fight it -- IN COURT FIRST.
Boston Tea Party came after things were done through British courts, brush up on your history.
Not really. It's closer to taking the gasoline.
Because the gas station's sign is not what makes the profit, it is the sale of the gasoline.
but this price is artificially inflated by a monopolistic organization
:-)
OK, so a lawsuit should be the thing to do, in the traditions of Microsoft, Bell Telephone, et al. That would be the right thing to do, as opposed to petty thievery (or "copyright infringery", if such a word exists, which I'm sure it doesn't.
How is it absurd?
people in the south pre-civil war saw it as perfectly normal and essential to their way of life
While I doubt most people see mp3 trading as essential, they CERTAINLY see it as perfectly normal, with utter disregard to the rights of the copyright holder.
Society progresses through the realization of past mistakes, and no, the enslavement of Africans was a matter of societal ethics.
So millions of people participating in what amounts to a giant scam isn't a question of societal ethics? Then what the hell is??
Following your line of reasoning I should go to the gas station and decide not to pay for it because the price is too high.
No, it doesn't work that way.
If you don't like the price, you don't pay it, but you're not entitled to take something just because you disagree with the price. The price being charged is not your decision to make, it is the decision of the person providing the good or service, end of story.
Is it ethical for a small group of companies (remember this is the RIAA member companies; the artists no longer own their own work) to lie about profits and losses, maintain a stranglehold over distribution, maintain artificially high prices, lobby to perpetually extend copyright, and keep 80% of art unavailable (depriving both the artists from potential revenue, and the buying public from legally purchasable content?)
Is it ethical for people to take things that are not being given freely and not reimburse those that provide it?
There's two sides to the coin... and right now, there are laws that govern the side I'm talking about...
When the imposed societal morals catch up with the times, maybe then everyone will share the same views on mp3 sharing, but right now, this falls under personal morals, not the umbrella of the ethics of society.
So enslaving black people in the pre-Civil War era would fall under personal morals?
MABYE THE RIAA SHOULD FOCUS ON MAKING A PRODUCT PEOPLE ARE WILLING TO PAY FOR?? if someone wouldnt buy a cd anyway how the FUCK does it hurt the artist if they download teh cd?
Because the artist makes royalties off of the sale of the CD.
And if you're not willing to pay for it, fine, but that doesn't entitle you to steal. Go find music that is being given away for free and listen to that -- there is PLENTY of good, free music available on mp3.com and elsewhere. I mean, shit, go out to a bar sometime and get a CD some local band is giving away for free, you will find LOTS of good music that way.
Yes. Yes it is different.
:)
One involes killing people, the other doesn't. Most reasonable people are against killing humans. But then you've got Saddam, Al Qaida, etc, who obviously see things differently and WOULD say that it is fine.
OK, but depriving people of income isn't immoral? Try convincing the world of that one, genius!
Um.. HUH? Why do i, or anybody else, need to explain and provide reasons why you are wrong? Your NOT wrong. You just have your own opinions and moral beliefs, and we are entitled to ours.
So you're saying it's OK for someone to stuff Jews in a gas chamber if they want to? Because well shit, if one is of the opinion that Jews ought to be exterminated, they're entitled to that belief -- and if someone's entitled to a belief, who the hell are you to stop them from following it?
Alot of older people don't like music by Eminem because of the language and the messages in his songs. Alot of the younger generation don't give a shit, and are fine with it. Alot of people find words like bitch, motherfucker, slut, and who knows what offensive. Others do not. Others just think its plain funny
OK, but how does bad language deprive someone of the income to which they are entitled?
There are differences between the two:
Recording off of the radio requires comparitively greater effort than does pirating mp3's. While pirating, you can do a quick search and find what you are looking for on demand, whereas you need to "hunt and trap" what you are trying to find on the radio.
By pirating an mp3, you are getting CD-quality -- what you would be paying for in the store. By recording off of the radio, you are getting a lower-fidelity signal (noise and compressed sound), definitely an inferior product to that which you would be purchasing.
You can't easily take tapes of radio broadcasts and distribute them to the entire world via some p2p system, without first digitizing it (assuming you didn't digitize it on your initial radio recording) and editing the particular song/broadcast into a single file, and cutting all the commercials out. (And I would question the legality of that.) When putting your mp3's/computer on a p2p system, you are not sharing your tape with a friend or two, you are inviting the entire world to rip off the record companies along with you.
I don't know about the legality of recording off of the radio or not, but it is obviously much less harmful given my points above.
Hey now, don't push your stupid backwards fundie morals on me. Whats right for you isn't always right for me, ever think about it?
Ah, yes, the personal ethics system -- your morals are yours, mine are mine. So you're telling me it's OK to stuff Jews in a gas chamber?
"Ah, but that's different!"
What I did in my previous post was put forward a logical argument. Your (lack of) an argument, however, just plain sucks. You can't just say I'm wrong because you don't like paying for things.
You need to use reason to explain why I'm wrong. You think that depriving people of income is forwards? Please, please explain yourself!
If the copyright holders decided to give away songs freely as ads for CDs, then that's fine.
But what everybody keeps forgetting is that the choice is THEIR prerogative -- NOT yours, NOT anybody else's.
There's plenty of good free music at mp3.com and other legitimate sources.
Taking copyrighted mp3's off of Kazaa, Morpheus, or whatever is unethical -- yes, unethical:
If you don't like the price they charge, you have no obligation to purchase -- but you have an obligation to not deprive people of their income.
Quiet is nice from time to time, but the machine noise does not bother me.
Problem for me is I have my computer in my bedroom... during the day it's fine, but sometimes it feels like I'm trying to sleep in a plane's engine!
I think longer cables for your mouse, keyboard, monitor, and speakers would be better -- then you could get the entire noisy machine, fans and all, out of your room and into the attic.
Whatever happened to releasing a product when it's ready?
It's a good idea to give a product to the public to test; the geeks get their new toy early, and will use it and abuse it in new and creative ways that the engineers wouldn't have dreamed up.
It is impossible to know, with 100% accuracy, in which situations a new piece of hardware or software will fail. Extensive testing, no matter how careful, still will not catch all of the problems. So, they test and tune, and release it when they believe it is ready.
Subsequent usage of the product always yields problems -- which is why we get things like recall notices, software patches, etc.
Many (not all, but many) companies really do try their hardest to release a good product. Good products mean a good image, more profits, and not having to deal with irate customers.
Time spent fixing a broken product is time taken away from working on a new product -- companies want to minimize the former and maximize the latter.
Every now and then I see one on the road, and there's always a couple for sale on eBay.
My Fiero has a recall notice for engine fires, too, I should look into that...
Enough with the anime -- why don't you just start pushing methamphetamines on us nerds instead? You'd make a lot more money that way.
Step 1: Do your homework.
Read reviews. Lots of them. Go to the store yourself and look at some models.
Step 2: Take the test.
Find one you like. Buy it, try it. If it doesn't work the way you want, exchange it for the same model. If that one doesn't work, it's a piece of crap; exchange it for something different, or return it and pay the restocking fee.
I've got lots of RAM in my HARD DRIVE, baby! Oh yeah! ...OK, it's out of my system. :-)
Oh joy, another anti-MS flame. You are so hip.
I thought Halliburton had a lucrative contract to do this too?
Simply stated, if a client is paying cheaply (well, as close as that gets in consulting), they deserve the minimum information and just get what they ask for.
If a client pays well or tips well or has been a long time repeat client, they deserve that extra time taken to show which judgement would be best and why.
That's just plain irresponsible.
You are a consultant because they are going to you for advice, in addition to implementation -- if you were there solely for implementation, your title would be "Gofer" or some such.
In other words, it doesn't matter how much they are paying you, you signed on for the gig, and if they want to implement something that you feel is a bad idea, it's your responsibility -- per your job description -- to advise against it.