The thing about this that baffles me... Well, maybe it's different in Australia, but if you want something to be an Official religion, here in the 'States you just need to file some papers, basically. I would imagine that the reason they won't recognize these responses is that there is no legally recognized "Church of Jedi." Honestly, shouldn't someone start one? Clear this question up for once and for all?
Balls. Religion can hardly be hardly defined as the belief in a specific deity, or even in the concept of a deity at all. And whether the belief is ludicrous or not has no bearing on whether it is a meaningful question: the fact that statistically significant numbers of people identify themselves as adherents to specific recognized belief systems makes it a meaningful question for a census to ask.
For example, I don't personally believe that race is a particularly meaningful concept from a scientific perspective. I believe it is little more than tribalistic or nationalistic behavior being exploited for political reasons. But I see why it should appear on a census, because many people identify themselves as members of a particular race.
(I'd also like to know exactly what it means to "respect" someone when you think what they believe is ludicrous: although many atheists and agnostics believe differently from me, and I do not agree with their beliefs, I understand that the realm of the metaphysical is one where we seek to answer questions that do not necessarily yield to a logical or scientific explanation, and consequently one will encounter a lot of diversity and not much verifiable certainty. I've thought seriously about what they believe, and I feel I have some understanding about where they're coming from. So I would certainly not say that I find what they believe ludicrous. You, on the other hand, say you are a respectful person, but the best I can figure is that you simply choose not to address people's religious beliefs directly with the at all, because to you they are simply delusions without any possibility of a real or reliable basis. That isn't respect, it's condescension. If you choose to reject what I believe as ludicrous without knowing anything about it, I don't really have any use for your respect.)
Thanks, I needed a laugh this morning - and that quote about sums up thee wacky wirld of slash-dot. Yes, the sky IS going to fall, chicken little. Despite the fact that the eventuality cannot be extracted from the language of the bill in question, and that the contingency you fear would flat out gut the first amendment, yes, it is so: the music industry is going to make everything but super audio cd and windows media player illegal and home tapers and analog hoarders will be interred in concentration camps.
When will I learn? I scoffed at Y2K and now I have to scoot around in my Mad-Max war wagon stealing food from the concrete bunker set. Now that, my friend, is indeed "serious shit."
Meantime, while I keep my head firmly lodged in the comfortable sand of rationality, why dontcha review my post one more time and observe my basic advice: quit voting for your basic corporate-sponsored politicians, and quit supporting your basic corporate produced music. I'm already doing these things. Are you?
Listen: I am pro independent producers, anti-publishing industry, anti-DRM technology, and anti-copyright extension. But the kind of untruths this poster is spewing do not help the situation. This is the gist of the bill in question:
"Anti-counterfeiting Amendments of 2002 - Amends the Federal criminal code to prohibit trafficking in an "illicit authentication feature." Defines that term to mean an authentication feature that: (1) without the authorization of the respective copyright owner, has been tampered with or altered so as to facilitate the reproduction or distribution of a phono-record, a copy of a computer program, a copy of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, or documentation or packaging, in violation of the rights of the copyright owner; (2) is genuine, but has been distributed, or is intended for distribution, without the authorization of the respective copyright owner; or (3) appears to be genuine but is not."
That is a piece of crap legislation but it does NOT prevent anyone from independently producing information in any format they desire and and distributing it by any method they wish. Noone has even attempted to suggest that this could be prevented because it would be such a clear and undeniable violation of the First Amendment. Okay, Some will say yeah, but they'll use this to make non-protected formats illegal. Not according to the language of that bill: They still can't make Ogg, say, illegal: just tools designed to strip DRM-processed files to open formats, or distributing copyrighted files that have been stripped of their DRM information.
And this is the other side of the coin. Just as any artist has the right to release their information any way they want (due to free speech and their copyrights on original works), the publishing giants have the right to release their garbage in any screwed up format they want - and the idea that the constitution in any way shape or form gives you some "fair use" right to do anything you want with that information may be the way it "should" be but it ain't the way it IS. If you read the fair use provisions in copyright law (I wonder how many/.ers have actually done this...) the literal provisions are very few and minor. Back-up copies or reversioning are not specifically protected, for instance - common mistruths spread on/. True, court precedents have established the right of individuals to carry out some of these activities under the banner of fair use. But this is a different issue. Like it or not, the DMCA spells out in unambiguous and specific terms (unlike copyright law's fair use provisions, at least as they address personal copying) that it is illegal to contravene DRM. That make's the bill in question doubly redundant, since it merely rehashes what is already illegal under DMCA, and aims in the end to prevent unauthorized distribution of copyrighted materials, which was illegal in the first place.
By all means, fight the power, yeah yeah yeah - watch how you vote, write a letter to your reps. You might even consider unclenching that "omigod if I don't vote for corporate-sponsored candidate X the horror of candidate Y, that ultraliberal tax-n-spend gun-hating tree-hugging/super-conservative religious right corporate-pandering gun-crazy wacko (choose one) in office" knee jerk reaction. You might even ask yourself how likely it is that their are only two possible approaches to solving the world's problems - and that the "side" you have picked of the two options you've been given is the one right, true, correct side, and all them other dips is just crazy stupid deluded fools with no sense. You might wonder what would happen if a whole lot of us started voting for people who don't get their political positions by constantly begging corporations and wealthy individuals for support.
But remember their is another (not mutually exclusive) alternative, which is simply to not support the publishing industry's products and to instead seek out artists that do not artificially impair the versatility of their product or encumber it with information and costly extra production steps that have no other purpose than to remind you that they think of you as a thief first, a customer second.
jesus, I'm glad I got at least a couple of intelligent replies to my only partially tongue-in-cheek comment. I'm thinkin' hard about what you say, asking myself: could a better way exist side by side with the not-very-good publishing company/royalty system, by consent between artists not encumbered with publishing industry contracts and webcasters not addicted to tainted intellectual property?
I dunno, I always figured the real main problem is that there's very little gain for anyone to revive some cretin from the past, probably at enormous expense and difficulty. The assumption that society will sustain enough continuity to preserve you, and will think you're worth enough to revive you, seems highly suspect to me.
I already read it which is why I'm perplexed. Did you? By my reading it's real simple: Some copyright holders apply to receive the benefits of these types of royalties. If you play ANY of their stuff, you have to get licensed to do so, and your minimum annual fee is $500. If you do not play ANY of their stuff, you do NOT have to be licensed to transmit non-affected materials, that is stuff you own, stuff you have been given private permission to transmit by the copyright owner, stuff in the public domain. If you don't need a license, you don't need to pony up 500 bucks to anyone. This is all just more hysterical bullshit and I defy anyone to demonstrate otherwise.
driving hobbyists and people with virtually no costs off the net-waves
Surprise surprise, asshole, violating others' intellectual property rights without their permission is not a "hobby." And the reasons these stations had "virtually no costs" is because they weren't paying anything to the people who owned the product they were distributing. "The numbers I've worked out?" I don't need to do the kind of bullshit back of the envelope equations that are floating all over this discussion to know what's common knowledge - these stations aren't making any money. Not making money = no business model.
Yeah, I already sat that - and it isn't proof. I still see no evidence that says this fee applies to anyone who is not transmitting materials owned by people/organizations that are collecting these royalties. I don't believe for a minute that the government is claiming the ability to make me cough up $500 for streaming my own music. Y'all wanna yap and yap and yap at me for pointing out the obvious, but you don't have a hell of a lot of a command of the facts.
...if you're a webcaster, if you don't play a single bit of music, under the new "agreement", you still owe the RIAA $500. If you play nothing but independent labels not affiliated with the RIAA or foreign labels (also not covered)? Still owe them $500.
If that's true it's insane but I'm having a real hard time believing it's true. Yer gonna have to prove it to me. Link?
My favorite line from the article... "The discovery means faster-than-light travel, which is prohibited by the law of relativity, may one day be possible."
Yeah, big freakin' deal if light's only going 75 mph by then.
Yeah, we all need to march on our centers of government and demand that they subsidize all businesses that "rule," whether or not they have a business model or any rational method of generating income.
Listen, I'm no fan of the RIAA or the trends in intellectual property law madness, but the people who own the rights to copyrighted material have a right to be compensated for the use of that material. And spare me the guff about information wanting to be free or how it can't be illegal to violate copyright because you don't physically steal anything or prevent the original owner from using the product. There's no law of physics that says cars can only go fifty-five, nevertheless we have speed limits.
Advice to the MonkeyRadios of this world: get a business model. Get one not based on being allowed to freely distribute someone else's property. And to you listeners who think it "rules," figure out if you want advertisements or subscription charges, or if you'd rather just listen to your CD collectiona and whine. 'Cause guess what - your news flash for the day is that this shit ain't free.
Answering my own question... According to them, anyway... From blockbuster.com or whatever
"About Us: Web FAQ Wed, Apr 24, 2002
Does BLOCKBUSTER edit the movies in the store? No, Blockbuster does not edit the content of its films. We offer all movies for sale or rental in the exact condition we receive them from the movie studios."
Apparently some of these damn "artists" have some sort of bug up the yang about their copyrighted works being altered without their consent.
This is actually a pretty tricky issue. I can't just take a copyrighted work, alter it wihtout permission, and resell it. That's illegal. BUT... I want someone to seriously come and tell me that I can't rip a page out of a book I've bought. Altering a tape someone brings and asks for is one thing... ALtering it in advance, anticipating their desire is another... but are they legally the same? I mean, the real-time filters are obviously legal: noone can force a particular frame around what you view. Saying tis is illegal would make picture-in-picture illegal. But I think there is a legal case that a business cannot market a preedited version of copyrighted content without the consent of the copyright holder.
One more question: doesn't Blockbuster routinely edit movies it rents for content? I've heard this a million times but I've never seen absolute confirmation of it. If so I'm surprised it's not mentioned in the article...
Re:This is *why* we need laws!
on
Meet the Spammers
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
I don't know why people think laws against spammers would be ineffective
Absolutely agreed. I believe 90% of the unwanted spam we all hate so much could be stopped with a short list of simple guidelines.
1) If you apply an e-mail to an officially sanctioned opt-out list, it is illegal and subject to fines to e-mail an unsolicited e-mail to that address.
2) Make it illegal to send solicitations for age-restricted products (pornography, cigarettes, gambling, katmandu temple kiff...) to minors. Don't give me a free speech spiel. Go try and put up a billboard for hot rape sex porn. And for the people that bust this one: don't bother with the fines. Send 'em to jail.
3) Make it illegal for any business to solicit without providing as part of the solicitation a valid contact for feedback, or to misrepresent their identity by using false addresses/spoofed headers, or to provide an opt-out/emoval link that feeds into anything other than a sanctioned opt-out list.
4) Finally, and here's your free speech, make it illegal for ISPs to dump any spammer that complies with these laws, but also illegal to knowingly serve any spammer that does not.
There's not much point in moaning about these spammers being nasty clueless jerks. Listen: several THOUSAND members of the Municipal Credit Union, ordinary people from all walks of life, stole about $15 MILLION (!) from ATMs. They knew it was wrong. They knew they were taking advantage of the tragedy of the attacks on the WTC towers. At least some of them must have known they at least stood a chance of being caught. But they did it anyway. Because they could. People are greedy and always ready to make a special moral exception for their own crummy behavior.
BUT...
Because there are rational theft and fraud laws in place, something can be done about it... Like throwing the most egregious offenders in jail, and forcing the rest to pay back what they stole. With a little common sense legislation we can do the same to spammers.
All it would do is be more invasive into our lives..
Hmm, I'll play the devils advocate and say, more invasive how? I mean, I know - it's just very futuristic, scary, distopian kind of imagery, the retinal scanner and all...
On the other hand, at the point I accept that our society demands positive identification in order to be allowed to take a flight, is the MODE of identification that significant? If the FBI has my retinal scan on permanent file, what difference does it make? At the point in which I am being compelled to stick my eye up to the retinal scanner against my will (that is, a situation where I do not recognize that anyone has a right to positively identify me), chances are my civil liberties are already pretty well in the toilet.
Take it with a grain of salt, seeing as how in reality I'm the kind of person who refuses to acknowledge the bank's right to take my thumbprint under any circumstances. Still, I'll say this: It would be a hell of a lot easier for the Feds to slip something into an ID card format that would allow them to silently and invisibly read your personal information right out of your wallet, than for them to invent some way to scan your retina in passing without your knowing about it. At least when the men in black stuff my head up against the scanner bracket after a couple of nightstick punches to the kidney, I'll know exactly what they're doing. I don't have a clue what's on that magnetic strip on my state of MN drivers license.
How about this: if we all agree that the term "piracy" is just hyperbolic industry/government propaganda, and you agree that the term "sharing" is pushing it a bit semantically in the context you describe. You defined an appropriate context for "piracy" (large scale unlicensed duplication for commercial gain); allright, well what you describe (uploading 20K songs to Gnutella) ain't "sharing." Sharing is what happens when I loan a book I own to my brother or make my friend a mix tape. When ten thousand people make a digitally pristine duplicate of a copyright protected album and no money exchanges hands, it isn't piracy and it isn't sharing. I don't know what it is.
One last thing: "Fair Use" is very poorly defined thing. You reflect one of the most common misconceptions about it: the idea that it is in any way codified in law that the violation of the copyright agreement (which is what the massive online distribution of copyrighted material unquestionably is) is somehow even close to being legal simply because it is noncommercial. It makes NO difference legally that you do it for free.
Yeah but can you really deny that the situation with CDRs is more conducive to unlicensed duplication?
On the other hand, the problem here is that the evidence is practically all anecdotal. Ferinstance: the other day I'm taking the bus home and here is a high school-age girl listening to her hip-hop and there is nothing, nothing but CDRs in her CD case. She doesn't have a single commercial CD with her. What does this mean? Absolutely nothing. Maybe she got it all off the internet and nobody got a penny. Maybe she got it all from her friends. Maybe she owns every piece of music - she's just a conscientious girl who backs up all her CDs and uses the dupes to save wear on the originals, keep the cover art pristine. Who knows? Even she couldn't tell you how many CDs she would buy if she did not have access to CDRs.
What is the meaning of slumping music industry profits? Hard to say. I mean, if you get nothing else out of current events like Enron, get the fact that Wall Street is full of twisty trade. If you've been fiscally irresponsible, why not blame the customer?
It's damn difficult to even say how many CDRs are being used for recording music (legitimate or not) because in many situations its impossible to tell whether the blanks that are bought are being used for music or data, regardless of how they're labeled.
Still, I think there is something to bne said for the sudden, mysterious increase in piracy concerns from the music industry. Here's another crazy and unsupported theory to try on for size: The industry doesn't so much give a rats ass about the CD burning, what they're REALLY scared about is the creation of a distribution network so much more efficient then what the economies of scale that normally favor a publisher dissapear along with the need for a conventional "music industry" per se. What this is really about is them trying to get the government to say it's okay for them to act as monopolists in online distribution because otherwise they can't manage their digital rights.
All I can say is this is just the slippery slope. They start out getting their hands held, and the next thing you know they're pregnant. When will you people learn that an abstinence based sex education program that promotes ZERO PHYSICAL CONTACT before marriage is the only valid response to the creeping moral decline in this country?!
I think you hit this one on the head. The fact is if we stand on the small print and to the letter on copyright violations with regards to the internet, the internet becomes worse than useless. I mean, technically I'm violating the hell out of copyright right now - I've no doubt there are hundreds if not thousands of cache files of copyrighted materials my browser has stored for convenience of recall. So instead of getting all huffy, we accept all the purely systematic copying, and for the usefulness of things like Google we accept that if we want to avoid "robotic" scrutiny we have the option to opt out - and every legitimate agency will obey these means.
With the exception of the theoretical threats of access to medical records and those ominous government "systems to find out anything about you at anytime" (what does that mean?) I don't see that the things you list carries a reasonable expectation of privacy. Actions carried out in the public sphere have public consequences and are publically visible. Moreover, a large percentage of this scrutiny can be prevented, if it means that much: the credit information providers can be contacted and instructed not to release your credit information except if you initiate the transaction, and you can go through the tedious opt-out procedures with financial insitutions. Cash still works for private transactions and nobody has a gun to my head making me use an "E-Z Save" card at the grocery store.
The posting says:
[this] article raises interesting concerns about what implications the systems have on privacy.
Call me crazy, but if there is not a ceiling or a wall between me and a line of site to the outside world, I do not expect that what I'm doing is private, nor do I feel a reasonable expectation for it to be so. Outside is outside, public is public. For the majority of Americans the limiting factor on their privacy is not Society or its institutions, nor Government and its agents: it is how attentive they choose to be to their own privacy. If you sign on the dotted line without reading the small print you've got little cause to complain when your new credit card company sells your information to a telemarketer.
Yeah... I was frankly astonished to read that it cost an astounding 5 cents a pop for Warner Bros to put this on their disks. I've been saying for a couple years now that it's flat idiotic to install a value-reducer on any product when it adds to the production cost, but I assumed that the cost was a fraction of a cent at best...
WB may be finally twigging to the fact that the majority of "pirates" fall into two categories... people who are not going to be stopped by consumer level protection schemes (i.e. pros and those for whom copying is a matter of principle and/or pride), and people like me who engage in light and essentially convenience driven copying, but would not copy something they would otherwise buy. If I want it in my permanent collection I want a new, commercial copy with all the goodies, packaging etc. intact. On more than one one occasion I've taken a bootleg of something that I knew I'd buy later but hadn't found or gotten around to... But I can't say I've ever been in the position of saying, ooh, I can't copy this (I ain't got none of yer fancy intervention tools in my home), I guess I'll have to go buy it. At 5 cents a disk I bet the number of sales lost starts to look very very puny. The rather specious math of the recording industry to equate every copy made with a lost sale is fine when lobbying for a blank media tax or whining at an awards show, but lets face it - it would be very bad business indeed to take that math seriously when considering the relative value versus production cost increases of installing protection.
My very favorite part is Macrovision's response, tho... Who the hell do they think they are? We shall dictate how you choose to produce your product... They could have quietly made it madatory to put the Macrovision logo on any product with Macrovision on it, which was essentially the only refinement of their locensing scheme... "You must apply our product to 100% of your product OR ELSE!" "Or else what?" Or else... errr... you have to LABEL them!" I think Macrovision may find that 100% mentality goes both ways. Easier all around to go with 100%... 100% Macrovision free, that is.
Slashdot Mirror
The thing about this that baffles me... Well, maybe it's different in Australia, but if you want something to be an Official religion, here in the 'States you just need to file some papers, basically. I would imagine that the reason they won't recognize these responses is that there is no legally recognized "Church of Jedi." Honestly, shouldn't someone start one? Clear this question up for once and for all?
For example, I don't personally believe that race is a particularly meaningful concept from a scientific perspective. I believe it is little more than tribalistic or nationalistic behavior being exploited for political reasons. But I see why it should appear on a census, because many people identify themselves as members of a particular race.
(I'd also like to know exactly what it means to "respect" someone when you think what they believe is ludicrous: although many atheists and agnostics believe differently from me, and I do not agree with their beliefs, I understand that the realm of the metaphysical is one where we seek to answer questions that do not necessarily yield to a logical or scientific explanation, and consequently one will encounter a lot of diversity and not much verifiable certainty. I've thought seriously about what they believe, and I feel I have some understanding about where they're coming from. So I would certainly not say that I find what they believe ludicrous. You, on the other hand, say you are a respectful person, but the best I can figure is that you simply choose not to address people's religious beliefs directly with the at all, because to you they are simply delusions without any possibility of a real or reliable basis. That isn't respect, it's condescension. If you choose to reject what I believe as ludicrous without knowing anything about it, I don't really have any use for your respect.)
Thanks, I needed a laugh this morning - and that quote about sums up thee wacky wirld of slash-dot. Yes, the sky IS going to fall, chicken little. Despite the fact that the eventuality cannot be extracted from the language of the bill in question, and that the contingency you fear would flat out gut the first amendment, yes, it is so: the music industry is going to make everything but super audio cd and windows media player illegal and home tapers and analog hoarders will be interred in concentration camps.
When will I learn? I scoffed at Y2K and now I have to scoot around in my Mad-Max war wagon stealing food from the concrete bunker set. Now that, my friend, is indeed "serious shit."
Meantime, while I keep my head firmly lodged in the comfortable sand of rationality, why dontcha review my post one more time and observe my basic advice: quit voting for your basic corporate-sponsored politicians, and quit supporting your basic corporate produced music. I'm already doing these things. Are you?
"Anti-counterfeiting Amendments of 2002 - Amends the Federal criminal code to prohibit trafficking in an "illicit authentication feature." Defines that term to mean an authentication feature that: (1) without the authorization of the respective copyright owner, has been tampered with or altered so as to facilitate the reproduction or distribution of a phono-record, a copy of a computer program, a copy of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, or documentation or packaging, in violation of the rights of the copyright owner; (2) is genuine, but has been distributed, or is intended for distribution, without the authorization of the respective copyright owner; or (3) appears to be genuine but is not."
That is a piece of crap legislation but it does NOT prevent anyone from independently producing information in any format they desire and and distributing it by any method they wish. Noone has even attempted to suggest that this could be prevented because it would be such a clear and undeniable violation of the First Amendment. Okay, Some will say yeah, but they'll use this to make non-protected formats illegal. Not according to the language of that bill: They still can't make Ogg, say, illegal: just tools designed to strip DRM-processed files to open formats, or distributing copyrighted files that have been stripped of their DRM information.
And this is the other side of the coin. Just as any artist has the right to release their information any way they want (due to free speech and their copyrights on original works), the publishing giants have the right to release their garbage in any screwed up format they want - and the idea that the constitution in any way shape or form gives you some "fair use" right to do anything you want with that information may be the way it "should" be but it ain't the way it IS. If you read the fair use provisions in copyright law (I wonder how many
By all means, fight the power, yeah yeah yeah - watch how you vote, write a letter to your reps. You might even consider unclenching that "omigod if I don't vote for corporate-sponsored candidate X the horror of candidate Y, that ultraliberal tax-n-spend gun-hating tree-hugging/super-conservative religious right corporate-pandering gun-crazy wacko (choose one) in office" knee jerk reaction. You might even ask yourself how likely it is that their are only two possible approaches to solving the world's problems - and that the "side" you have picked of the two options you've been given is the one right, true, correct side, and all them other dips is just crazy stupid deluded fools with no sense. You might wonder what would happen if a whole lot of us started voting for people who don't get their political positions by constantly begging corporations and wealthy individuals for support.
But remember their is another (not mutually exclusive) alternative, which is simply to not support the publishing industry's products and to instead seek out artists that do not artificially impair the versatility of their product or encumber it with information and costly extra production steps that have no other purpose than to remind you that they think of you as a thief first, a customer second.
Think about it.
jesus, I'm glad I got at least a couple of intelligent replies to my only partially tongue-in-cheek comment. I'm thinkin' hard about what you say, asking myself: could a better way exist side by side with the not-very-good publishing company/royalty system, by consent between artists not encumbered with publishing industry contracts and webcasters not addicted to tainted intellectual property?
I dunno, I always figured the real main problem is that there's very little gain for anyone to revive some cretin from the past, probably at enormous expense and difficulty. The assumption that society will sustain enough continuity to preserve you, and will think you're worth enough to revive you, seems highly suspect to me.
I already read it which is why I'm perplexed. Did you? By my reading it's real simple: Some copyright holders apply to receive the benefits of these types of royalties. If you play ANY of their stuff, you have to get licensed to do so, and your minimum annual fee is $500. If you do not play ANY of their stuff, you do NOT have to be licensed to transmit non-affected materials, that is stuff you own, stuff you have been given private permission to transmit by the copyright owner, stuff in the public domain. If you don't need a license, you don't need to pony up 500 bucks to anyone. This is all just more hysterical bullshit and I defy anyone to demonstrate otherwise.
Surprise surprise, asshole, violating others' intellectual property rights without their permission is not a "hobby." And the reasons these stations had "virtually no costs" is because they weren't paying anything to the people who owned the product they were distributing. "The numbers I've worked out?" I don't need to do the kind of bullshit back of the envelope equations that are floating all over this discussion to know what's common knowledge - these stations aren't making any money. Not making money = no business model.
Yeah, I already sat that - and it isn't proof. I still see no evidence that says this fee applies to anyone who is not transmitting materials owned by people/organizations that are collecting these royalties. I don't believe for a minute that the government is claiming the ability to make me cough up $500 for streaming my own music. Y'all wanna yap and yap and yap at me for pointing out the obvious, but you don't have a hell of a lot of a command of the facts.
If that's true it's insane but I'm having a real hard time believing it's true. Yer gonna have to prove it to me. Link?
Yeah, big freakin' deal if light's only going 75 mph by then.
Listen, I'm no fan of the RIAA or the trends in intellectual property law madness, but the people who own the rights to copyrighted material have a right to be compensated for the use of that material. And spare me the guff about information wanting to be free or how it can't be illegal to violate copyright because you don't physically steal anything or prevent the original owner from using the product. There's no law of physics that says cars can only go fifty-five, nevertheless we have speed limits.
Advice to the MonkeyRadios of this world: get a business model. Get one not based on being allowed to freely distribute someone else's property. And to you listeners who think it "rules," figure out if you want advertisements or subscription charges, or if you'd rather just listen to your CD collectiona and whine. 'Cause guess what - your news flash for the day is that this shit ain't free.
"About Us: Web FAQ
Wed, Apr 24, 2002
Does BLOCKBUSTER edit the movies in the store?
No, Blockbuster does not edit the content of its films. We offer all movies for sale or rental in the exact condition we receive them from the movie studios."
This is actually a pretty tricky issue. I can't just take a copyrighted work, alter it wihtout permission, and resell it. That's illegal. BUT... I want someone to seriously come and tell me that I can't rip a page out of a book I've bought. Altering a tape someone brings and asks for is one thing... ALtering it in advance, anticipating their desire is another... but are they legally the same? I mean, the real-time filters are obviously legal: noone can force a particular frame around what you view. Saying tis is illegal would make picture-in-picture illegal. But I think there is a legal case that a business cannot market a preedited version of copyrighted content without the consent of the copyright holder.
One more question: doesn't Blockbuster routinely edit movies it rents for content? I've heard this a million times but I've never seen absolute confirmation of it. If so I'm surprised it's not mentioned in the article...
Absolutely agreed. I believe 90% of the unwanted spam we all hate so much could be stopped with a short list of simple guidelines.
1) If you apply an e-mail to an officially sanctioned opt-out list, it is illegal and subject to fines to e-mail an unsolicited e-mail to that address.
2) Make it illegal to send solicitations for age-restricted products (pornography, cigarettes, gambling, katmandu temple kiff...) to minors. Don't give me a free speech spiel. Go try and put up a billboard for hot rape sex porn. And for the people that bust this one: don't bother with the fines. Send 'em to jail.
3) Make it illegal for any business to solicit without providing as part of the solicitation a valid contact for feedback, or to misrepresent their identity by using false addresses/spoofed headers, or to provide an opt-out/emoval link that feeds into anything other than a sanctioned opt-out list.
4) Finally, and here's your free speech, make it illegal for ISPs to dump any spammer that complies with these laws, but also illegal to knowingly serve any spammer that does not.
There's not much point in moaning about these spammers being nasty clueless jerks. Listen: several THOUSAND members of the Municipal Credit Union, ordinary people from all walks of life, stole about $15 MILLION (!) from ATMs. They knew it was wrong. They knew they were taking advantage of the tragedy of the attacks on the WTC towers. At least some of them must have known they at least stood a chance of being caught. But they did it anyway. Because they could. People are greedy and always ready to make a special moral exception for their own crummy behavior.
BUT...
Because there are rational theft and fraud laws in place, something can be done about it... Like throwing the most egregious offenders in jail, and forcing the rest to pay back what they stole. With a little common sense legislation we can do the same to spammers.
Yeah, like CEOs need hackers to humilate them these days...
Personally I think they're the ones offering the reward. I mean, really - who else?
Hmm, I'll play the devils advocate and say, more invasive how? I mean, I know - it's just very futuristic, scary, distopian kind of imagery, the retinal scanner and all...
On the other hand, at the point I accept that our society demands positive identification in order to be allowed to take a flight, is the MODE of identification that significant? If the FBI has my retinal scan on permanent file, what difference does it make? At the point in which I am being compelled to stick my eye up to the retinal scanner against my will (that is, a situation where I do not recognize that anyone has a right to positively identify me), chances are my civil liberties are already pretty well in the toilet.
Take it with a grain of salt, seeing as how in reality I'm the kind of person who refuses to acknowledge the bank's right to take my thumbprint under any circumstances. Still, I'll say this: It would be a hell of a lot easier for the Feds to slip something into an ID card format that would allow them to silently and invisibly read your personal information right out of your wallet, than for them to invent some way to scan your retina in passing without your knowing about it. At least when the men in black stuff my head up against the scanner bracket after a couple of nightstick punches to the kidney, I'll know exactly what they're doing. I don't have a clue what's on that magnetic strip on my state of MN drivers license.
One last thing: "Fair Use" is very poorly defined thing. You reflect one of the most common misconceptions about it: the idea that it is in any way codified in law that the violation of the copyright agreement (which is what the massive online distribution of copyrighted material unquestionably is) is somehow even close to being legal simply because it is noncommercial. It makes NO difference legally that you do it for free.
On the other hand, the problem here is that the evidence is practically all anecdotal. Ferinstance: the other day I'm taking the bus home and here is a high school-age girl listening to her hip-hop and there is nothing, nothing but CDRs in her CD case. She doesn't have a single commercial CD with her. What does this mean? Absolutely nothing. Maybe she got it all off the internet and nobody got a penny. Maybe she got it all from her friends. Maybe she owns every piece of music - she's just a conscientious girl who backs up all her CDs and uses the dupes to save wear on the originals, keep the cover art pristine. Who knows? Even she couldn't tell you how many CDs she would buy if she did not have access to CDRs.
What is the meaning of slumping music industry profits? Hard to say. I mean, if you get nothing else out of current events like Enron, get the fact that Wall Street is full of twisty trade. If you've been fiscally irresponsible, why not blame the customer?
It's damn difficult to even say how many CDRs are being used for recording music (legitimate or not) because in many situations its impossible to tell whether the blanks that are bought are being used for music or data, regardless of how they're labeled.
Still, I think there is something to bne said for the sudden, mysterious increase in piracy concerns from the music industry. Here's another crazy and unsupported theory to try on for size: The industry doesn't so much give a rats ass about the CD burning, what they're REALLY scared about is the creation of a distribution network so much more efficient then what the economies of scale that normally favor a publisher dissapear along with the need for a conventional "music industry" per se. What this is really about is them trying to get the government to say it's okay for them to act as monopolists in online distribution because otherwise they can't manage their digital rights.
All I can say is this is just the slippery slope. They start out getting their hands held, and the next thing you know they're pregnant. When will you people learn that an abstinence based sex education program that promotes ZERO PHYSICAL CONTACT before marriage is the only valid response to the creeping moral decline in this country?!
I think you hit this one on the head. The fact is if we stand on the small print and to the letter on copyright violations with regards to the internet, the internet becomes worse than useless. I mean, technically I'm violating the hell out of copyright right now - I've no doubt there are hundreds if not thousands of cache files of copyrighted materials my browser has stored for convenience of recall. So instead of getting all huffy, we accept all the purely systematic copying, and for the usefulness of things like Google we accept that if we want to avoid "robotic" scrutiny we have the option to opt out - and every legitimate agency will obey these means.
The posting says:
[this] article raises interesting concerns about what implications the systems have on privacy.
Call me crazy, but if there is not a ceiling or a wall between me and a line of site to the outside world, I do not expect that what I'm doing is private, nor do I feel a reasonable expectation for it to be so. Outside is outside, public is public. For the majority of Americans the limiting factor on their privacy is not Society or its institutions, nor Government and its agents: it is how attentive they choose to be to their own privacy. If you sign on the dotted line without reading the small print you've got little cause to complain when your new credit card company sells your information to a telemarketer.
WB may be finally twigging to the fact that the majority of "pirates" fall into two categories... people who are not going to be stopped by consumer level protection schemes (i.e. pros and those for whom copying is a matter of principle and/or pride), and people like me who engage in light and essentially convenience driven copying, but would not copy something they would otherwise buy. If I want it in my permanent collection I want a new, commercial copy with all the goodies, packaging etc. intact. On more than one one occasion I've taken a bootleg of something that I knew I'd buy later but hadn't found or gotten around to... But I can't say I've ever been in the position of saying, ooh, I can't copy this (I ain't got none of yer fancy intervention tools in my home), I guess I'll have to go buy it. At 5 cents a disk I bet the number of sales lost starts to look very very puny. The rather specious math of the recording industry to equate every copy made with a lost sale is fine when lobbying for a blank media tax or whining at an awards show, but lets face it - it would be very bad business indeed to take that math seriously when considering the relative value versus production cost increases of installing protection.
My very favorite part is Macrovision's response, tho... Who the hell do they think they are? We shall dictate how you choose to produce your product... They could have quietly made it madatory to put the Macrovision logo on any product with Macrovision on it, which was essentially the only refinement of their locensing scheme... "You must apply our product to 100% of your product OR ELSE!" "Or else what?" Or else... errr... you have to LABEL them!" I think Macrovision may find that 100% mentality goes both ways. Easier all around to go with 100%... 100% Macrovision free, that is.
Well, if you read the article you'll find...
"Part three The Matrix Revolutions is also in production and will be released in December 2000"
Damnit! They haven't even released the second one and I already missed the third!
Anyway, look at how long we all waited for Star Wars Episode 1... A year or two extra for the Matrix sequels is nothin'.