The RIAA also listens to the downloaded music files from these users in order to confirm that they are, indeed, illegal copies of sound recordings whose copyrights are owned by RIAA members.
Are the people who make these judgements qualified to do so? Can they distinguish a cover band from the original in all cases? What degree of certainty do they have that what they've heard is indeed a copyrighted work, where the RIAA member company holds the copyright? Do they listen to the entire song, or just a section? Do they listen to it more than once to confirm their suspicion? Do other people confirm it? Do they do any kind of statistical / musical analysis to confirm that the song is indeed a perfect match?
The RIAA member companies lose significant revenues...
Do they really? What fraction of songs acquired via P2P would otherwise have been purchased had the P2P option not been available? How does that compare to the increased revenue from people who sample via P2P and then decide to purchase?
Point 8 says "The major record companies have generally not authorized their copyrighted sound recordings to be copied in unsecured formats by means of P2P networks. Thus, the vast majority of content that is copied and distributed on P2P networks is unauthorized by the copyright owner -- that is, the distribution violates the copyright laws."
For sentence B to be a logical result of sentence A, the following must also be true:
the vast majority of P2P traffic must be sound recordings
the vast majority of sound recordings distributed on P2P networks must be sound recordings for which a major record company holds the copyright
the vast majority of sound recordings distributed via P2P networks must be in an unsecured format
the vast majority of sound recordings distributed via P2P networks must be unauthorized for distribution this way by their copyright holders
I doubt even the first point is true. My guess is that movies take the majority of the bandwidth, and music recordings are less.
Every sensible government official by now has learned that "I do not recall" is the only statement you should ever make under oath--why Libby thought he should say _anything_ other than that is completely beyond me.
Maybe because it's a lie, and if that isn't enough, because it's a crime?
Paying for gold in WoW is essentially the same as using steroids in professional sports. It's against the rules, and against the spirit of fair competition. It's as simple as that.
The Hanlin e-book reader by Tanjin Jinke Electronics Co. Ltd. is a Linux based PDA-looking reader that claims to use ePaper. I don't know if that's eInk's technology or a knock-off, but otherwise things sound good, it doesn't seem to be a DRM-encumbered device at all, and supports a lot of different technologies. The V8 is supposedly out this month and the V2 is out in May.
There's one feature I want (aside from reading of TXT, PDF, and other common formats without being crushed by DRM). I'd love it if the reader could be an alarm clock. Think of it. No glow from LEDs, much higher contrast than LCDs so it can be read with ambient light, even in the middle of the night. That alone is a great start but it's also a no noise, low-power, battery powered device so it works even when the power fails. Finally, both the Sony one and the Hanlin device claim to be MP3 players so if they include an external speaker they could wake you up to music.
Maybe it's just me, but I like the idea of being able to read my eBook before I go to bed, lay down the reader on a bedside table, having it wake me up a good 8 hours later, and being able to easily see the time in any light conditions.
I think the funniest thing about preparing for the X-Box 360 is preparing for the shortage. There have been reports that Microsoft is *requiring* retailers to run out of them on the first day.
Rather than preparing for the expected number of customers, retailers are expected to intentionally have to turn people away, just so Microsoft can get good buzz.
Preventing children from dying is great. On the other hand, it could be very short-sighted. If the death rate suddenly drops without an equivalent decrease in the birth rate, the result could be an even greater disaster.
Hrm, so was Rita actually a hurricane, or was it a huge alien ship trying to talk to whales? I seem to recall a whole lot of dolphins going missing during that whole event... maybe they didn't mention the whales?
I don't know about MP3s or Photos, I don't really see the need for those, but the Palm doesn't do what I really would want either. I have a laptop, and I use it for most things, but sometimes it's too big and awkward for what I'd want, and that's when I'd want something else. For me to justify the money and extra baggage that a portable would require it would need to do much more.
Essential features: access to important snippets of information with minor inconvenience.
Show / Edit / Add contact information
Show / Edit / Add appointments
Show / Edit / Add notes
Important features: perform functions allowing them to take the place of other electronic gear, not just add to the bat-belt.
Be a mobile phone
Be a mobile instant messenger
Allowing my big laptop to get online when not near a WiFi hotspot (a GPRS modem or something)
Provide access to the oracle of Google
Useful features: stuff I'd like, but wouldn't pay much extra for.
Store / retrieve maps (maybe even do GPS)
Play music, show pictures or play video
Play games (not solitaire but gran turismo)
Be a simple, medium-quality camera
If the device can do some of the things in the optional list, that would be great. The most important ones would be to provide access to the Internet, or to act as a cellular phone. A phone could also do some of the PDA things, but in my experience they may be OK at displaying things like contact information and calendars, but they're awful at allowing you to update, add, and change things.
So far, I've found a few things that are pretty good. The Danger "hiptop" can do a lot of these things, but the one thing it's really missing is the ability to act as a modem-like device to get your laptop online. The blackberries are also good, but not all of them do instant messenging, and are weaker in the "multimedia" sort of area. Then there are things like the Treo, but I've heard it has major stability issues.
Does anybody know if a device that's small enough that you can hold it in one hand and store it in a pocket, but can act as a good mobile phone, modem, and web client?
No, it wouldn't. UHF RFID tags (the ones that work at up to about 10m) are simple, cheap devices. The protocols governing how they're read are anti-collision searches. The whole point is that you can read a whole lot of them at once, like a whole pallet of them coming off a truck into a warehouse. If you have several thousand of them, it might cause problems, but they'd have to be the right protocol to tie up the search algorithm. If the tags they're looking for are EPC class 1, and you've scattered class 0 tags everywhere it would easily(*) spot your class 1 tag.
(*) easily meaning, if you had it exposed, nowhere near your body, far from any metal, water, etc. The fact is, RFID tags are hard to read under ideal circumstances. 10m is about the limit for a lone tag in air. If you put the RFID tag on a nametag and put that nametag on a person, you'd have to read that tiny signal as it's distorted by a huge bag of salt water right next to it, something very hard to do.
The thing is, if you wanted to get rid of the tag, you could just take it off. These things are not hard to spot. Sure, the chip itself is really small, a little bigger than a grain of sand. On the other hand, to have any read range at all, this chip has to be attached to a pretty big antenna. Most are at least 10cm long, or 8cm x 8cm square. The smallest one I've seen is about 5cm x 1cm. If it's sewn into the lining of a jacket, or buried in the foam of a cushion you might not see it, but aside from those cases it's pretty unlikely you'd have trouble finding the tag. Think of them like those anti-theft tags they put on CDs and clothing. How hard are they to spot?
Strangely enough, they *are* giving it away for free. When I was in Atlanta a few weeks ago I went to the area outside the football stadium where they were going to play the Eagles. There was a whole "tailgating" event going on, and dressed in roman-era outfits, models were giving out DVD copies of the first episode of the series.
Obviously, what they don't want is for people to get *every* epsidode via the Internet where they won't make any money. If the choice is between this and ridiculous lawsuits that claim thousands in damages, I think this is far less evil. A much better solution would be for them to put up their own seeds that are hard to distinguish from the real thing, but that contained all kinds of ads. Make some money off the Internet-available version, and convince people to pay to get HBO to avoid the ads.
Whoa, dude. You can smoke an animal? I thought it was only plants. I bow to your mighty, mighty smoking ways! What kind of a high do you get off an albatross anyhow?
I did it in that order too. At first, I couldn't stop looking at the blockiness of the display. After a short time, I completely forgot the graphics, I was too into the game.
You might have to force yourself to play the first few hours of Torment, but I'd bet that after that you'll be too hooked to care about the age.
He'll probably notice the slowdown, or his ISP will, and this will provide a huge incentive to get his machine fixed. If your box is hacked and the *worst* thing that happens to you is that you get DDOSed, you should consider yourself extremely lucky, and should be happy you were warned that something was amiss, even if the result was pretty painful.
i todally agree with you. when your posting
on slashdot your not writing a assay for you're
schol, your writing to other geks stupid gramer natzis with there "semicolins" and "punkuashon", there probly wacking off wile they corect you, in fact I bet... no, I wont go their. anyhow noone should get there panties in a not becuz somon cant spel, its allabout the contint of the messig.
An analogy would be releasing a copyrighted book on the internet and claiming nobody got hurt becaue the original autor still has a copy. That, however, ignores that his sales went down so you have harmed him by depriving him of income. You can't possibly hope to convince people that software piracy does not hurt anybody.
Did the author's sales really go down? Can you prove it? If that's true, why are some authors
offering up their books for free on the Internet in the hopes of increasing sales?
The author of the software had the software before, and had it afterwards. He/she was deprived of nothing except an opportunity, and even that is debatable. It could easily result in increased sales and increased publicity.
Mens Rei actually means "guilty mind", and it really measures the degree to which you intended to hurt someone. If you hurt someone "negligently", i.e. you didn't mean to hurt anybody, but someone was hurt by your actions, then that's the weakest form of "Mens Rei" recognized under the law. If you did something in order to hurt a particular person/entity, then that's the strongest form recognized.
If you copy an MP3 and thereby infringe on the IP rights to the songs owned by Britney Spears' record company with the intention of hurting their bottom line, that would be purposeful infringement. If you copy the MP3 because you want to listen to the song, but are absolutely convinced that it will do nothing to hurt their bottom line, then that's either reckless or negligent. The whole "Mens Rei" thing is a distraction though. The real issue should be whether a given level of copyright infringment hurts or helps the copyright holder, and whether or not that IP should exist in the first place.
Clause 8: To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
How is the "Progress of Science and Useful Arts" promoted by Britney Spears songs? Should a sound recording even be protected? It's neither a writing nor a discovery.
Songs would exist without copyright. Look at how much stuff is available under "Creative Commons" licenses! Look how much music (and other creative work) was made before these things were copyrighted. Maybe it's true that a certain level of IP protection is useful to the general public, but what is that level?
As for the author being harmed by unauthorized copies of their work being shared without their permission, that isn't the issue. What if there was a law that said "All black people must work for white people without pay". Black people refusing to do that would cost white people... but does that mean that the black people are wrong to refuse, or that the law was wrong?
Hmm, how is it worded? How does a passer-by (or a police officer) know that the person walking by is both responsible and a citizen? And just how responsible does this citizen have to be? Does he/she just have to handle his/her firearm in a responsible way, or does he/she also have to pay his/her bills on time and never swim on a full stomach?
Slashdot Mirror
Point 15.
Are the people who make these judgements qualified to do so? Can they distinguish a cover band from the original in all cases? What degree of certainty do they have that what they've heard is indeed a copyrighted work, where the RIAA member company holds the copyright? Do they listen to the entire song, or just a section? Do they listen to it more than once to confirm their suspicion? Do other people confirm it? Do they do any kind of statistical / musical analysis to confirm that the song is indeed a perfect match?
Point 9:
Do they really? What fraction of songs acquired via P2P would otherwise have been purchased had the P2P option not been available? How does that compare to the increased revenue from people who sample via P2P and then decide to purchase?
Point 8 says "The major record companies have generally not authorized their copyrighted sound recordings to be copied in unsecured formats by means of P2P networks. Thus, the vast majority of content that is copied and distributed on P2P networks is unauthorized by the copyright owner -- that is, the distribution violates the copyright laws."
For sentence B to be a logical result of sentence A, the following must also be true:
I doubt even the first point is true. My guess is that movies take the majority of the bandwidth, and music recordings are less.
Paying for gold in WoW is essentially the same as using steroids in professional sports. It's against the rules, and against the spirit of fair competition. It's as simple as that.
The Hanlin e-book reader by Tanjin Jinke Electronics Co. Ltd. is a Linux based PDA-looking reader that claims to use ePaper. I don't know if that's eInk's technology or a knock-off, but otherwise things sound good, it doesn't seem to be a DRM-encumbered device at all, and supports a lot of different technologies. The V8 is supposedly out this month and the V2 is out in May.
There's one feature I want (aside from reading of TXT, PDF, and other common formats without being crushed by DRM). I'd love it if the reader could be an alarm clock. Think of it. No glow from LEDs, much higher contrast than LCDs so it can be read with ambient light, even in the middle of the night. That alone is a great start but it's also a no noise, low-power, battery powered device so it works even when the power fails. Finally, both the Sony one and the Hanlin device claim to be MP3 players so if they include an external speaker they could wake you up to music.
Maybe it's just me, but I like the idea of being able to read my eBook before I go to bed, lay down the reader on a bedside table, having it wake me up a good 8 hours later, and being able to easily see the time in any light conditions.
I think the funniest thing about preparing for the X-Box 360 is preparing for the shortage. There have been reports that Microsoft is *requiring* retailers to run out of them on the first day.
Rather than preparing for the expected number of customers, retailers are expected to intentionally have to turn people away, just so Microsoft can get good buzz.
If you hear stories of shortages, remember why!
Preventing children from dying is great. On the other hand, it could be very short-sighted. If the death rate suddenly drops without an equivalent decrease in the birth rate, the result could be an even greater disaster.
Hrm, so was Rita actually a hurricane, or was it a huge alien ship trying to talk to whales? I seem to recall a whole lot of dolphins going missing during that whole event... maybe they didn't mention the whales?
I don't know about MP3s or Photos, I don't really see the need for those, but the Palm doesn't do what I really would want either. I have a laptop, and I use it for most things, but sometimes it's too big and awkward for what I'd want, and that's when I'd want something else. For me to justify the money and extra baggage that a portable would require it would need to do much more.
Essential features: access to important snippets of information with minor inconvenience.
Important features: perform functions allowing them to take the place of other electronic gear, not just add to the bat-belt.
Useful features: stuff I'd like, but wouldn't pay much extra for.
If the device can do some of the things in the optional list, that would be great. The most important ones would be to provide access to the Internet, or to act as a cellular phone. A phone could also do some of the PDA things, but in my experience they may be OK at displaying things like contact information and calendars, but they're awful at allowing you to update, add, and change things.
So far, I've found a few things that are pretty good. The Danger "hiptop" can do a lot of these things, but the one thing it's really missing is the ability to act as a modem-like device to get your laptop online. The blackberries are also good, but not all of them do instant messenging, and are weaker in the "multimedia" sort of area. Then there are things like the Treo, but I've heard it has major stability issues.
Does anybody know if a device that's small enough that you can hold it in one hand and store it in a pocket, but can act as a good mobile phone, modem, and web client?
No, it wouldn't. UHF RFID tags (the ones that work at up to about 10m) are simple, cheap devices. The protocols governing how they're read are anti-collision searches. The whole point is that you can read a whole lot of them at once, like a whole pallet of them coming off a truck into a warehouse. If you have several thousand of them, it might cause problems, but they'd have to be the right protocol to tie up the search algorithm. If the tags they're looking for are EPC class 1, and you've scattered class 0 tags everywhere it would easily(*) spot your class 1 tag.
(*) easily meaning, if you had it exposed, nowhere near your body, far from any metal, water, etc. The fact is, RFID tags are hard to read under ideal circumstances. 10m is about the limit for a lone tag in air. If you put the RFID tag on a nametag and put that nametag on a person, you'd have to read that tiny signal as it's distorted by a huge bag of salt water right next to it, something very hard to do.
The thing is, if you wanted to get rid of the tag, you could just take it off. These things are not hard to spot. Sure, the chip itself is really small, a little bigger than a grain of sand. On the other hand, to have any read range at all, this chip has to be attached to a pretty big antenna. Most are at least 10cm long, or 8cm x 8cm square. The smallest one I've seen is about 5cm x 1cm. If it's sewn into the lining of a jacket, or buried in the foam of a cushion you might not see it, but aside from those cases it's pretty unlikely you'd have trouble finding the tag. Think of them like those anti-theft tags they put on CDs and clothing. How hard are they to spot?
That is all.
Strangely enough, they *are* giving it away for free. When I was in Atlanta a few weeks ago I went to the area outside the football stadium where they were going to play the Eagles. There was a whole "tailgating" event going on, and dressed in roman-era outfits, models were giving out DVD copies of the first episode of the series.
Obviously, what they don't want is for people to get *every* epsidode via the Internet where they won't make any money. If the choice is between this and ridiculous lawsuits that claim thousands in damages, I think this is far less evil. A much better solution would be for them to put up their own seeds that are hard to distinguish from the real thing, but that contained all kinds of ads. Make some money off the Internet-available version, and convince people to pay to get HBO to avoid the ads.
What do I know though, I'm no high-paid TV exec.
The last 50 years? Erm, there's also "Commies suxx0rs", as well as "Capitalists suxx0rs", and "Iraq suxx0rs"...
Whoa, dude. You can smoke an animal? I thought it was only plants. I bow to your mighty, mighty smoking ways! What kind of a high do you get off an albatross anyhow?
That's cuz there's no such thing as a "defensive weapon", only weapons.
I did it in that order too. At first, I couldn't stop looking at the blockiness of the display. After a short time, I completely forgot the graphics, I was too into the game.
You might have to force yourself to play the first few hours of Torment, but I'd bet that after that you'll be too hooked to care about the age.
He'll probably notice the slowdown, or his ISP will, and this will provide a huge incentive to get his machine fixed. If your box is hacked and the *worst* thing that happens to you is that you get DDOSed, you should consider yourself extremely lucky, and should be happy you were warned that something was amiss, even if the result was pretty painful.
You have a 5-minute commute, and you drive? That's just sick.
Cuz a truck bomb can do a wee bit more than shatter windows.
i todally agree with you. when your posting on slashdot your not writing a assay for you're schol, your writing to other geks stupid gramer natzis with there "semicolins" and "punkuashon", there probly wacking off wile they corect you, in fact I bet... no, I wont go their. anyhow noone should get there panties in a not becuz somon cant spel, its allabout the contint of the messig.
Slaves cost money, freeing them is wrong.
It's that simple, isn't it?
Oh wait, the *law* could be wrong?! Who knew?!?
Did the author's sales really go down? Can you prove it? If that's true, why are some authors offering up their books for free on the Internet in the hopes of increasing sales?
The author of the software had the software before, and had it afterwards. He/she was deprived of nothing except an opportunity, and even that is debatable. It could easily result in increased sales and increased publicity.
Mens Rei actually means "guilty mind", and it really measures the degree to which you intended to hurt someone. If you hurt someone "negligently", i.e. you didn't mean to hurt anybody, but someone was hurt by your actions, then that's the weakest form of "Mens Rei" recognized under the law. If you did something in order to hurt a particular person/entity, then that's the strongest form recognized.
If you copy an MP3 and thereby infringe on the IP rights to the songs owned by Britney Spears' record company with the intention of hurting their bottom line, that would be purposeful infringement. If you copy the MP3 because you want to listen to the song, but are absolutely convinced that it will do nothing to hurt their bottom line, then that's either reckless or negligent. The whole "Mens Rei" thing is a distraction though. The real issue should be whether a given level of copyright infringment hurts or helps the copyright holder, and whether or not that IP should exist in the first place.
How is the "Progress of Science and Useful Arts" promoted by Britney Spears songs? Should a sound recording even be protected? It's neither a writing nor a discovery.
Songs would exist without copyright. Look at how much stuff is available under "Creative Commons" licenses! Look how much music (and other creative work) was made before these things were copyrighted. Maybe it's true that a certain level of IP protection is useful to the general public, but what is that level?
As for the author being harmed by unauthorized copies of their work being shared without their permission, that isn't the issue. What if there was a law that said "All black people must work for white people without pay". Black people refusing to do that would cost white people... but does that mean that the black people are wrong to refuse, or that the law was wrong?
Hmm, how is it worded? How does a passer-by (or a police officer) know that the person walking by is both responsible and a citizen? And just how responsible does this citizen have to be? Does he/she just have to handle his/her firearm in a responsible way, or does he/she also have to pay his/her bills on time and never swim on a full stomach?