That branding your customers as CRIMINALS and treating them as such is poor PR, and only ENCOURAGES what they call "crimes"?
Unfortunately, I suspect soon ALL commercial CD burning programs will have DRM. And when that happens, it may be used as a wedge to kill off OSS/GPL'ed OS's and software, which will most certainly remain on the side of the user.
Ah, the price of fame. Hollywood took one of our staplers - thanks,
by the way - and used it in one of their films. Trouble is, they painted it red, a color we didn't offer. Ever since, we've been getting calls from customers demanding to order "that red stapler".
Okay, okay, you win. We took our industry-leading 747 Desk Stapler and gave it a deep, establishment-defying, I'll- flunt-my-individuality-if-I-choose-to red finish. Without sacrificing one staple's worth of solid 747 reliability.
The only concession we've made, in fact, is to offer the Red 747 exclusively over the Internet, at least for now. And that's a matter of public safety -
they're in limited supply, and we'd hate to cause riots in the street."
This is crank "science" by the same bunch of idiots who said that we were going into an ice age back in the 70's, and who put in children's readers in the early 80's (I remember this in school) that you wouldn't be able to go outside in the 1990's without an oxygen mask.
This trash is funded by the WWF. No wonder they wanted to divorce themselves from the wrestlers (now WWE), their science is just as fake.
Most clients let you sample a file as it's downloading. Just listen to them as you are downloading them.
Also, some way needs to be incorporated into Gnutella to allow blackholing of IP's (at least personally on your client) that do this. Overpeer HAS to have a large network pipe somewhere (with a fixed IP) to be doing this from...
If there were some way to checksum MP3's, that could also be a way around it.
"The point of lifetime appointment is so that they don't have to worry about their decisions costing them their jobs due to political pressure; it's supposed to help them be impartial."
It doesnt. All it does is lock in their PARTIALITY in for life.
Kaplan is a prime example. A lowly district judge, the lowest IN the Federal food chain, he came from a lawfirm that defended media companies (like TW). So, you can say that the IP lobby funded him then. He was also a Clinton appointee, which also suggests bias towards the media establishment (and the DMCA).
Contrary to popular belief, FEW of these guys actually serve for life, because few of them get to move up and on, without sound political connections. So, Kaplan, as a lowly district judge, needs to either:
1. Get himself some political buddies to get promoted (which could put him under the influence of a Senator Hollings, or some other pro-IP lobby politico)
2. Get himself positioned (by doing favors) to cash out and go to work FOR a corporation.
Option #2 is becoming more and more common, especially as our society and the corps become more litigious. Judges are picked from among the LAWYERS. Corps are most likely to USE lawyers, especially against consumer interest. Ergo, the judiciary, particulalry the newer judges (like Kaplan) are more likely to be PRO CORP...
Very sad that an obviously biased judge (once worked in a law firm that represented Time Warner, one of the plantiffs) is allowed to hand down a horribly flawed ruling that stands because the clique of lifetime appointed, unaccountable Federal judges close ranks...
It is even sadder that it matters WHO you are, not the merits of your case... The RIAA and the courts wanted nothing of Professor Felten, of Princeton, but have no trouble squashing the "eevilll" hackers of 2600, despite the fact that the DeCSS case was far stronger.
Our government is owned by the highest bidder. The DeCSS case proves it. Sooner or later we will either be completely corporatized, or else line some of these buggers up against the wall. One or the other outcome is inevitable.
Re:Metallica proved this foolish/encryption?
on
RIAA to Sue You Now
·
· Score: 1
"Hey, if it's encrypted, wouldn't decryption of the material be a violation of the DMCA? Yeah, I own the copyright to any packet generated by my computer. Any measures taken to discover the contents of the packet are a violation of my protections under the DMCA. I wonder if that would work."
Nah. The RIAA/MPAA didn't spend millions buying that law just to let any mere PESANT use it!;)
it's a very nice idea though. It's great as a "thought experiment" showing just how absurd the DMCA's broad protection is.
Re:Metallica proved this foolish/encryption?
on
RIAA to Sue You Now
·
· Score: 1
"On a more technical note, I'd really like to know how you could encrypt the IP addresses. The NIC and routers still need to know where to send the packets. On W2K just run Netstat and it'll tell you who you're connected to."
Is there any reason why anything but your Gnutella client need know your IP address? Why can't the client generate (at random) some sort of unique number that is used on the P2P network to route packets?
I know I'm a bit ignorant here, so please pardon the question.
On the basis that the RIAA has been found guilty by the FTC of price fixing, AGAIN... It would at the very least make things a little less black and white...
And might sway a jury.
Remember, in the USA, jurors have the right of "jury nullification", to judge that the criminal is the LAW in question, not the accused...
Metallica proved this foolish/encryption?
on
RIAA to Sue You Now
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
That suing your customers is NOT good marketing...
Anyone care to speculate how hard it'd be to graft some sort of encryption into Gnutella? Stuff that deliberately obfuscates IP addresses, etc, at least enough to make it hard to identify users?
BTW, wouldn't breaking such encryption be a DMCA violation?
We've now reached the endgame... When the whole music industry comits mass suicide like Metallica did when filing suit against 300,000 of it's own fans.
I've been waiting for this to happen, as this will push things to a final resolution.
BTW, Why can I buy a movie that has been out for 3-4 months for $15-16 on DVD, with extra features, etc, but a 20 year old album costs more than that? I can buy DVD's of older movies for around $10. Yet, DVD sales boom. The best anti-piracy protection is reasonable prices. So long as the RIAA engages in illegal, anti-competitive practices (the FTC found them guilty of CD price fixing again), I say they deserve whatever happens to them.
It's a Mexican standoff... Pirates will pirate from P2P networks, the RIAA won't obey the law.
If it can be heard, it can be ripped. If it can be ripped, it can be traded. No amount of lawyering can change this, and indeed, the music industry will only become an even greater villian to the average Joe by the attempt.
Sell CD's for $10. Watch the sales rise. Quit wasting $millions bribing stations to play songs they will play anyway. Watch profits rise...
"Not know what Microsoft will exhibit(Office XP for Linux?), I would guess that they view this as an attempt to get a feel for the crowds and a list of the attendees."
So as to market them heavily, particularly the less clueful (and more easily succeptable to "shiny things" upper managers) in the companies.
In that sense, it makes some sense...
Or maybe this is a BSA booth in disguise, they are showing up to take names for audits, "You don't have a license for that copy of Red Hat, HA!"
I've seen MS ads in most Linux magazines I've bought. Mostly touting their "enterprise" products, and even offering to GIVE away a copy. Remember, the first dose of herin is often free;)
They are there for intimidation purposes, pure and simple, the same reason why they advertise in the mags. "We are Microsoft, we are everywhere, you are not to HAVE your own space without us" is the attitude.
The best thing to do would be for people there to ignore them and move on, just as I do when I encounter one of their ads in a Linux mag. I don't blame the magazine for taking their money.
My bet would be they will be touting.NET and maybe their "We have the way out" foolishness is what they will be doing on the surface. But the real purpose is intimidation.
"I must question their naming question however, we all know what a disaster the actual chemical Freon was. Here's to hoping, Cheers!""
If the submitter had cared to investigate the facts, not the "enviro-nut" rhetoric behind Freon, he'd know that the only "disaster" was that the PATENT on R12 Freon was about to expire. Hence, Freon was to enter the PUBLIC DOMAIN. The company with the R12 patent "happened" to have a newly patented "Freon substitute" that they marketed as "environmentally friendly".
MSNBC has failed as a news channel
on
Is Linux Dead?
·
· Score: 0
Which is the conclusion you come to when you see their ratings... Almost no one is watching when compared to CNN or Fox News...
It's MS NBC. An obvious connection there. And bias. Obvious FUD meant to mesmerize the clueless.
If you want to say that Linux has failed as a DESKTOP OS, fine. But as a server OS? hardly.
A certain amount of "piracy" is CRUCIAL to keeping IP monopolies honest, and to keep prices reasonable.
When the day comes when there is NO WAY AT ALL to copy and distribute something (ie, unbreakable copy protection), the price of IP will have no brakes on it at all.
I'm not saying that it's right to "pirate" music/movies/software, etc, but that when the government grants what is, for all intents and purposes, a monopoly on IP to the IP rights holder (and the trend is to diminish if not completely eliminate any "fair use" rights), "piracy" becomes the only mechanism by which competition is introduced, and any pressure to NOT raise prices comes.
Do you think the RIAA really CARES if CD sales would fall by 50% if they jacked the price up to $60 a CD? No, they don't. Because they will find a point somewhere where they are saved money by being able to produce LESS, versus how many they can sell.
Indeed, the RIAA/MPAA would realistically rather have you IN a "pay to hear/view" situation than sell consumers copies of their stuff.
The upshot of all this is that "piracy" is the ONLY source of incentive for these guys to NOT jack up prices. Which is why they are so fanatical about eliminating it as a threat.
Of course, the best copy protection is reasonable prices. $20 for a CD, especially when I've not heard ALL the tracks is not reasonable. P2P is one way to do that before I do buy a CD.
There is also the fact that I'm perfectly willing to pay $30-40 a month for a fast, Napster like service. But they won't sell that to me at ANY price, which means that there is no way to obtain/swap MP3's legitimately.
"The whole point of the Web, at least orginally, was transparency between individual pages and files, not boxing people into the specific index and user interface provided by content owners.
IMHO if you don't allow deep linking the Web ceases to exist as a useful tool and becomes just something akin to interactive television, a tool"
Simple solution... If NPR wants to prevent linking, which EVERY.GOV seems to allow (and NPR is tax exempt and taxpayer funded), TAKE IT DOWN.
Hey, firing the webmaster and cancelling the hosting contract will cost the taxpayers a little less, won't it?
If you want MY MONEY as a taxpayer, to fund your satellite automated radio stations, then you at least should offer me as much FAIR USE of your website as the Constitution allows...
"NPR gets hit with a brick named reality, and they'll reconsider their policy, what a laugher. If you don't want your stuff being linked to DO NOT PUT IT ON THE NET, on a public web server. errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?"
This is about as silly as having a policy that their listeners can't tell anyone about what they heard on their huge, tax exempt, corporate satellite automated radio network, right?
"I won't even point to the obvious bias you hold as shown by your homepage link. (need to remove home and put in www btw to update it =)"
My homepage has been down for some time, as I've had to make room for the increasing traffic of the WCMIFM.COM discussion board. I will change that, I forgot to do that here.
"There's a place for commercial radio, but there's a place for publicly funded radio as well. I'd be sad if that were taken away."
WRONG!!!! There is NO PLACE IN A FREE SOCIETY FOR GOVERNMENT PRODUCED BROADCATING. All such content is ALWAYS pro government. Objectively look at NPR/PBS, and ask this question:
"Is their point of view consistently in favor of things that increase government funding, power, and influence"
And it is. Why? Self interest. Government employees are pro government expansion just as private employees are pro expansion of their company. Self interest.
I see no need for government broadcasting when there are so many private companies willing to do it at no cost to the taxpayer and even PAY taxes for the priviledge. Not that I am at ALL in favor of our current deregulated scheme that has produced such radio abortions as Clear Channel...
"During my time browsing, i have noticed that many sites out there have a "no deep linking" policy, including hobby sites and private sites. TBH i agree with them, as most deep linking does not give the owning site credit for what is shown, especially if the link is to something that should be in frames. If you want to link to something, provide a shallow link and tell the user where it is, then they can see for themselves the site that actually owns the article otr whatever."
My website, www.wcmifm.com, which is the largest discussion site for radio in my region has no such policy. Link all you want. We discuss things there (such as Clear Channel's destruction of local radio) that I WANT disseminated. Why would I want to put restrictions on redistributing what I WANT to be spread?
NPR has a corporate mentality. But they are publically funded and tax exempt. They can be corporate all they want about their IP of they remove the latter.
"NPR claims to be reconsidering its link policy, and in the meantime, it's posted more specious rationalization. Brutally, brutally stupid.
A link is NEVER infringement, it's simply a pointer to a piece of information already publicly available. If they don't want their information referenced, don't put it online, it's just that simple."
I agree. If they don't want people READING IT, which is what a link allows someone to do, why post it?
I mean, what IS the Internet but a large collection of hyperlinks to content?
I say, shut down NPR's website limit what they say to their increasingly irrelevant, satellite automated radio stations.
Linking to a story is the BEST form of fair use. You are not reprinting parts of it, you are letting a reader read the WHOLE ORIGINAL on their site, so that they may read it and contrast it with what you think it means.
Your point is the whole argument... If they don't want it linked, DONT PUT IT ON THE NET.
"If they don't to be linked, well, don't link them. Don't link them at all. Throw them out of any search engine/web guides/etc. After some months they'll see the effects of their linking policy. And change it...or sell their servers."
I agree. As an enemy of NPR (and any kind of government funded broadcasting) I never link a NPR story except as a critique on my own website (www.wvradio.net). Which is and SHOULD be protected speech. Especially when you consider that I will be sent to PRISON if I were to withold the taxes that I pay that go to them.
I've always thought that linking a story, particularly in critique is a FAVOR to the author... For one thing, I'm not just quoting in ways that support MY argument, I'm giving the reader the chance to read the original and see if he comes to the same conclusion I did...
"'d say that NPR is committing patent infringement every time they use a hyperlink! [slashdot.org]
This all sounds pretty stupid to me, agreed... but who listens to NPR anyway?"
Outside the very large markets, not many. I've seen the raw Arbitron numbers for my area, and NPR, despite being on THREEE 50,000 watt radio stations gets fewer listeners than one of the religious AM daytimers...
If you hate Clear Channel, for it's practice of using out of market voicetracking and satellite automation, you have to hate NPR, the SINGLE LARGEST satellite automation network in radio.
Slashdot Mirror
That branding your customers as CRIMINALS and treating them as such is poor PR, and only ENCOURAGES what they call "crimes"?
Unfortunately, I suspect soon ALL commercial CD burning programs will have DRM. And when that happens, it may be used as a wedge to kill off OSS/GPL'ed OS's and software, which will most certainly remain on the side of the user.
http://216.239.51.100/search?q=cache:DQJxCdKIbukC: www.swingline.com/b2c/whatsnew/NewProducts.jsp+red +swingline&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
Here is the text:
"Swingline The Red Stapler
Ah, the price of fame. Hollywood took one of our staplers - thanks,
by the way - and used it in one of their films. Trouble is, they painted it red, a color we didn't offer. Ever since, we've been getting calls from customers demanding to order "that red stapler".
Okay, okay, you win. We took our industry-leading 747 Desk Stapler and gave it a deep, establishment-defying, I'll- flunt-my-individuality-if-I-choose-to red finish. Without sacrificing one staple's worth of solid 747 reliability.
The only concession we've made, in fact, is to offer the Red 747 exclusively over the Internet, at least for now. And that's a matter of public safety -
they're in limited supply, and we'd hate to cause riots in the street."
This is crank "science" by the same bunch of idiots who said that we were going into an ice age back in the 70's, and who put in children's readers in the early 80's (I remember this in school) that you wouldn't be able to go outside in the 1990's without an oxygen mask.
This trash is funded by the WWF. No wonder they wanted to divorce themselves from the wrestlers (now WWE), their science is just as fake.
Most clients let you sample a file as it's downloading. Just listen to them as you are downloading them.
Also, some way needs to be incorporated into Gnutella to allow blackholing of IP's (at least personally on your client) that do this. Overpeer HAS to have a large network pipe somewhere (with a fixed IP) to be doing this from...
If there were some way to checksum MP3's, that could also be a way around it.
"The point of lifetime appointment is so that they don't have to worry about their decisions costing them their jobs due to political pressure; it's supposed to help them be impartial."
It doesnt. All it does is lock in their PARTIALITY in for life.
Kaplan is a prime example. A lowly district judge, the lowest IN the Federal food chain, he came from a lawfirm that defended media companies (like TW). So, you can say that the IP lobby funded him then. He was also a Clinton appointee, which also suggests bias towards the media establishment (and the DMCA).
Contrary to popular belief, FEW of these guys actually serve for life, because few of them get to move up and on, without sound political connections. So, Kaplan, as a lowly district judge, needs to either:
1. Get himself some political buddies to get promoted (which could put him under the influence of a Senator Hollings, or some other pro-IP lobby politico)
2. Get himself positioned (by doing favors) to cash out and go to work FOR a corporation.
Option #2 is becoming more and more common, especially as our society and the corps become more litigious. Judges are picked from among the LAWYERS. Corps are most likely to USE lawyers, especially against consumer interest. Ergo, the judiciary, particulalry the newer judges (like Kaplan) are more likely to be PRO CORP...
Very sad that an obviously biased judge (once worked in a law firm that represented Time Warner, one of the plantiffs) is allowed to hand down a horribly flawed ruling that stands because the clique of lifetime appointed, unaccountable Federal judges close ranks...
It is even sadder that it matters WHO you are, not the merits of your case... The RIAA and the courts wanted nothing of Professor Felten, of Princeton, but have no trouble squashing the "eevilll" hackers of 2600, despite the fact that the DeCSS case was far stronger.
Our government is owned by the highest bidder. The DeCSS case proves it. Sooner or later we will either be completely corporatized, or else line some of these buggers up against the wall. One or the other outcome is inevitable.
"Hey, if it's encrypted, wouldn't decryption of the material be a violation of the DMCA? Yeah, I own the copyright to any packet generated by my computer. Any measures taken to discover the contents of the packet are a violation of my protections under the DMCA. I wonder if that would work."
;)
Nah. The RIAA/MPAA didn't spend millions buying that law just to let any mere PESANT use it!
it's a very nice idea though. It's great as a "thought experiment" showing just how absurd the DMCA's broad protection is.
"On a more technical note, I'd really like to know how you could encrypt the IP addresses. The NIC and routers still need to know where to send the packets. On W2K just run Netstat and it'll tell you who you're connected to."
Is there any reason why anything but your Gnutella client need know your IP address? Why can't the client generate (at random) some sort of unique number that is used on the P2P network to route packets?
I know I'm a bit ignorant here, so please pardon the question.
On the basis that the RIAA has been found guilty by the FTC of price fixing, AGAIN... It would at the very least make things a little less black and white...
And might sway a jury.
Remember, in the USA, jurors have the right of "jury nullification", to judge that the criminal is the LAW in question, not the accused...
That suing your customers is NOT good marketing...
Anyone care to speculate how hard it'd be to graft some sort of encryption into Gnutella? Stuff that deliberately obfuscates IP addresses, etc, at least enough to make it hard to identify users?
BTW, wouldn't breaking such encryption be a DMCA violation?
We've now reached the endgame... When the whole music industry comits mass suicide like Metallica did when filing suit against 300,000 of it's own fans.
I've been waiting for this to happen, as this will push things to a final resolution.
BTW, Why can I buy a movie that has been out for 3-4 months for $15-16 on DVD, with extra features, etc, but a 20 year old album costs more than that? I can buy DVD's of older movies for around $10.
Yet, DVD sales boom. The best anti-piracy protection is reasonable prices. So long as the RIAA engages in illegal, anti-competitive practices (the FTC found them guilty of CD price fixing again), I say they deserve whatever happens to them.
It's a Mexican standoff... Pirates will pirate from P2P networks, the RIAA won't obey the law.
If it can be heard, it can be ripped. If it can be ripped, it can be traded. No amount of lawyering can change this, and indeed, the music industry will only become an even greater villian to the average Joe by the attempt.
Sell CD's for $10. Watch the sales rise. Quit wasting $millions bribing stations to play songs they will play anyway. Watch profits rise...
"Not know what Microsoft will exhibit(Office XP for Linux?), I would guess that they view this as an attempt to get a feel for the crowds and a list of the attendees."
So as to market them heavily, particularly the less clueful (and more easily succeptable to "shiny things" upper managers) in the companies.
In that sense, it makes some sense...
Or maybe this is a BSA booth in disguise, they are showing up to take names for audits, "You don't have a license for that copy of Red Hat, HA!"
I've seen MS ads in most Linux magazines I've bought. Mostly touting their "enterprise" products, and even offering to GIVE away a copy. Remember, the first dose of herin is often free ;)
.NET and maybe their "We have the way out" foolishness is what they will be doing on the surface. But the real purpose is intimidation.
They are there for intimidation purposes, pure and simple, the same reason why they advertise in the mags. "We are Microsoft, we are everywhere, you are not to HAVE your own space without us" is the attitude.
The best thing to do would be for people there to ignore them and move on, just as I do when I encounter one of their ads in a Linux mag. I don't blame the magazine for taking their money.
My bet would be they will be touting
"I must question their naming question however, we all know what a disaster the actual chemical Freon was. Here's to hoping, Cheers!""
If the submitter had cared to investigate the facts, not the "enviro-nut" rhetoric behind Freon, he'd know that the only "disaster" was that the PATENT on R12 Freon was about to expire. Hence, Freon was to enter the PUBLIC DOMAIN. The company with the R12 patent "happened" to have a newly patented "Freon substitute" that they marketed as "environmentally friendly".
Which is the conclusion you come to when you see their ratings... Almost no one is watching when compared to CNN or Fox News...
It's MS NBC. An obvious connection there. And bias. Obvious FUD meant to mesmerize the clueless.
If you want to say that Linux has failed as a DESKTOP OS, fine. But as a server OS? hardly.
A certain amount of "piracy" is CRUCIAL to keeping IP monopolies honest, and to keep prices reasonable.
When the day comes when there is NO WAY AT ALL to copy and distribute something (ie, unbreakable copy protection), the price of IP will have no brakes on it at all.
I'm not saying that it's right to "pirate" music/movies/software, etc, but that when the government grants what is, for all intents and purposes, a monopoly on IP to the IP rights holder (and the trend is to diminish if not completely eliminate any "fair use" rights), "piracy" becomes the only mechanism by which competition is introduced, and any pressure to NOT raise prices comes.
Do you think the RIAA really CARES if CD sales would fall by 50% if they jacked the price up to $60 a CD? No, they don't. Because they will find a point somewhere where they are saved money by being able to produce LESS, versus how many they can sell.
Indeed, the RIAA/MPAA would realistically rather have you IN a "pay to hear/view" situation than sell consumers copies of their stuff.
The upshot of all this is that "piracy" is the ONLY source of incentive for these guys to NOT jack up prices. Which is why they are so fanatical about eliminating it as a threat.
Of course, the best copy protection is reasonable prices. $20 for a CD, especially when I've not heard ALL the tracks is not reasonable. P2P is one way to do that before I do buy a CD.
There is also the fact that I'm perfectly willing to pay $30-40 a month for a fast, Napster like service. But they won't sell that to me at ANY price, which means that there is no way to obtain/swap MP3's legitimately.
"you're a pretty small-minded dumb fuck, aren't you?"
VICTORY! Anyone who replies to a point and attacks the poster not the point has admitted defeat.
My IQ is over 130. Not the greatest, but that hardly makes me a "dumb fuck". What are the call letters of the NPR station you work for?
"NPR isn't particularily tax-supported. It receives minimal competitive grant funding ($0.000001058/US taxpayer). See this discussion board"
It receives tax funds. It receives TAX EXEMPTION, which means that any money taken from underwriters, beggathons, etc is ALSO tax free.
Which is also tax funding. Every dollar they don't pay in income taxes is a dollar paid by someone else FOR them.
"The whole point of the Web, at least orginally, was transparency between individual pages and files, not boxing people into the specific index and user interface provided by content owners.
.GOV seems to allow (and NPR is tax exempt and taxpayer funded), TAKE IT DOWN.
IMHO if you don't allow deep linking the Web ceases to exist as a useful tool and becomes just something akin to interactive television, a tool"
Simple solution... If NPR wants to prevent linking, which EVERY
Hey, firing the webmaster and cancelling the hosting contract will cost the taxpayers a little less, won't it?
If you want MY MONEY as a taxpayer, to fund your satellite automated radio stations, then you at least should offer me as much FAIR USE of your website as the Constitution allows...
"NPR gets hit with a brick named reality, and they'll reconsider their policy, what a laugher.
If you don't want your stuff being linked to DO NOT PUT IT ON THE NET, on a public web server.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?"
This is about as silly as having a policy that their listeners can't tell anyone about what they heard on their huge, tax exempt, corporate satellite automated radio network, right?
"I won't even point to the obvious bias you hold as shown by your homepage link. (need to remove home and put in www btw to update it =)"
My homepage has been down for some time, as I've had to make room for the increasing traffic of the WCMIFM.COM discussion board. I will change that, I forgot to do that here.
"There's a place for commercial radio, but there's a place for publicly funded radio as well. I'd be sad if that were taken away."
WRONG!!!! There is NO PLACE IN A FREE SOCIETY FOR GOVERNMENT PRODUCED BROADCATING. All such content is ALWAYS pro government. Objectively look at NPR/PBS, and ask this question:
"Is their point of view consistently in favor of things that increase government funding, power, and influence"
And it is. Why? Self interest. Government employees are pro government expansion just as private employees are pro expansion of their company. Self interest.
I see no need for government broadcasting when there are so many private companies willing to do it at no cost to the taxpayer and even PAY taxes for the priviledge. Not that I am at ALL in favor of our current deregulated scheme that has produced such radio abortions as Clear Channel...
"During my time browsing, i have noticed that many sites out there have a "no deep linking" policy, including hobby sites and private sites. TBH i agree with them, as most deep linking does not give the owning site credit for what is shown, especially if the link is to something that should be in frames. If you want to link to something, provide a shallow link and tell the user where it is, then they can see for themselves the site that actually owns the article otr whatever."
My website, www.wcmifm.com, which is the largest discussion site for radio in my region has no such policy. Link all you want. We discuss things there (such as Clear Channel's destruction of local radio) that I WANT disseminated. Why would I want to put restrictions on redistributing what I WANT to be spread?
NPR has a corporate mentality. But they are publically funded and tax exempt. They can be corporate all they want about their IP of they remove the latter.
"NPR claims to be reconsidering its link policy, and in the meantime, it's posted more specious rationalization. Brutally, brutally stupid.
A link is NEVER infringement, it's simply a pointer to a piece of information already publicly available. If they don't want their information referenced, don't put it online, it's just that simple."
I agree. If they don't want people READING IT, which is what a link allows someone to do, why post it?
I mean, what IS the Internet but a large collection of hyperlinks to content?
I say, shut down NPR's website limit what they say to their increasingly irrelevant, satellite automated radio stations.
Linking to a story is the BEST form of fair use. You are not reprinting parts of it, you are letting a reader read the WHOLE ORIGINAL on their site, so that they may read it and contrast it with what you think it means.
Your point is the whole argument... If they don't want it linked, DONT PUT IT ON THE NET.
"If they don't to be linked, well, don't link them.
Don't link them at all.
Throw them out of any search engine/web guides/etc.
After some months they'll see the effects of their linking policy.
And change it...or sell their servers."
I agree. As an enemy of NPR (and any kind of government funded broadcasting) I never link a NPR story except as a critique on my own website (www.wvradio.net). Which is and SHOULD be protected speech. Especially when you consider that I will be sent to PRISON if I were to withold the taxes that I pay that go to them.
I've always thought that linking a story, particularly in critique is a FAVOR to the author... For one thing, I'm not just quoting in ways that support MY argument, I'm giving the reader the chance to read the original and see if he comes to the same conclusion I did...
"'d say that NPR is committing patent infringement every time they use a hyperlink! [slashdot.org]
This all sounds pretty stupid to me, agreed... but who listens to NPR anyway?"
Outside the very large markets, not many. I've seen the raw Arbitron numbers for my area, and NPR, despite being on THREEE 50,000 watt radio stations gets fewer listeners than one of the religious AM daytimers...
If you hate Clear Channel, for it's practice of using out of market voicetracking and satellite automation, you have to hate NPR, the SINGLE LARGEST satellite automation network in radio.