No, Microsoft got in trouble for leveraging its monopolistic level of control of the operating system market to destroy competitors in other markets. The browser integration was designed specifically to make it impossible to get Windows without IE, and thus reduce incentive to get Netscape, by putting the Windows GUI, user shell and IE into one big congealed lump.
In a technical sense, though, it makes sense to integrate browser components with other parts of a system. For example, a HTML control could be made into a general GUI object, and used from things such as help browsers; graphic file decoders, a JavaScript engine and such may also be modularised as that. Which doesn't necessarily mean putting a web-navigation toolbar on every window in the system or having directories shown by default as "web pages".
As for non-GUI-dependent applications, they can be useful. (I read all my mail with mutt in an xterm.) Though as far as console-based browsers go, they're unlikely to advance far beyond where Lynx is today.
Sounds like a Germanic diminutive to me; which is rather appropriate, given the large continental European market share Linux has. Also, it makes it sound slightly more exotic.
As long as you have better connections than whoever wants to take you down. To do business in Russia, especially on the borderline, you have to be in tight with the Russian Mafia.
And then there are all the bored computer geniuses writing doomsday viruses; I don't know about you, but I'd be wary of downloading any executable content from Russia or thereabouts.
US courts have held that US laws apply anywhere in the world where Americans or American interests are affected. Enforcing US laws, however, is a question of logistics; they can't afford to kidnap^H^H^H^H^H^Hextrajudicially extradite everyone who sells pot to an American tourist or copies a MP3, though in a few high-profile cases they can make an effort. Witness what happened to Noriega, for example.
If it was, say, General Electric or Sun or someone with a guaranteed, concrete revenue stream, they'd be guaranteed to stay around. mp3.com, however, doesn't have the ability to pay $800m+ of damages and ensure profitability.
Don't waste your money on MPPP; chances are it's finished.
Um. because MP3 is the only format not dependent (by design) on closed-source players?
It sounds better than RealAudio, and the other high-quality formats (LiquidAudio, SDMI, &c) will not support Linux (because of economies of scale and the inability to ensure that decoded audio is not intercepted).
According to this article, the judge has no leeway in determining the minimum damages; the absolute minimum figure is said to be $800 million.
Unless this is overturned, or mp3.com settles with the RIAA (unlikely; the RIAA wants them annihilated and their tarred corpse hung up in a gibbet as a warning to others), mp3.com is kaput.
If you haven't done so already, it's probably too late. Chances are MPPP stock is worth about as much as confederate dollars right now.
Re:after actually thinking about this for a little
on
MP3.com Loses In Court
·
· Score: 2
Riffage (which, as it happens, is run by BMG, one of the Big Four labels) is likely to come out a winner from the exodus. And isn't the IUMA still around?
Chances are, if mp3.com goes out of business, someone may buy the independent business. Or the RIAA may allow them leniency, as long as they replace MP3s with a proprietary, encrypted format (we can see it now: downloads coming encapsulated in a serialised Windows player EXE).
According to the WIRED article, the judge's hands are tied when setting the fine, and the lowest fine he could impose is $600 million; which is still enough to destroy mp3.com.
If my.mp3.com was a separate corporate entity, then they could be sacrificed and the parent could survive. This is not the case. mp3.com is liable for the punitive damages (the RIAA's ambit claim is $6bn, and the actual sum is likely to be in 9 digits), which are likely to break its back.
Hopefully when mp3.com goes into liquidation, someone who supports the open mp3 format will buy up the independent-artist side of things and keep it going. Hmmm; perhaps Andover would be interested in expanding its line of business?
MP3.com is nothing more than a smart domain squatter with a couple of obvious ideas.
It's also an example, which could have a profound chilling effect. After mp3.com has been crucified in public (which has begun; its stock is freefalling into oblivion), others will be very careful not to risk being sued.
Under the DMCA, tools or systems dealing in unencrypted MP3s may (given enough well-paid lawyers) be construed to be a circumvention mechanism around SDMI. As such, once SDMI is out and endorsed by the RIAA, chances are that even using mp3 may be dangerous to a company's stock price.
Riffage is owned by BMG, one of the Big 4 record companies. Sure, its terms and conditions are amenable now, but once mp3.com is no more and they have no competition, you can bet they'll tighten up.
For one, don't expect non-proprietary formats such as MP3 to stay around above ground if mp3.com goes to the wall.
The lawsuit has to do with them streaming copyrighted CDs (using the Beam-It feature) without a license.
As for mp3.com itself not being illegal, those are shifting sands. Under the DMCA and the WIPO provisions, the unencrypted MP3 format and tools for supporting it may be deemed a "circumvention device", and thus illegal, if it can be shown that there exist copyright-enforcing alternatives. And SDMI is on the way.
MP3 files as we know them will be criminalised in a few years maximum.
Assuming this judgment is upheld, the RIAA could claim billions of dollars in punitive damages, effectively bankrupting mp3.com, or leaving it open to a takeover. A settlement would have to be on the RIAA's terms, which could include provisions going beyond the ruling, and demands that mp3.com phase out the insecure MP3 format and embrace a proprietary, SDMI-enabled format. Either way, it looks bad.
On the other hand, FTP wasn't designed specifically for allowing anonymous exchanges of music files from decentralised sites, in a way that makes prosecuting copyright violation difficult. Napster was.
As a band promotion tool, Napster makes little sense. Say you have a band and want to get the word out. Which do you do:
(a) Set up a web site with bios, photos, a mailing list and some MP3s
(b) Put your material up on mp3.com or some similar site
(c) Put a bunch of mp3 files, with no information or contact details other than filenames and ID3 tags, on a file server and hook it up to a centralised search engine so that surfers can download them
Clearly (c) doesn't facilitate selling CDs, promoting upcoming shows or forging any sort of relationship with the audience, but merely serving out the files. Which makes it a lousy solution for promoting a band, but a great one for swapping large amounts of pirated music with strangers.
Don't get me wrong; I'm no fan of the recording industry, I personally think MP3 is great, and I believe that the big labels deserve to be taken down a few notches. However, in this case, Napster have a little bit too much chutzpah.
Was Cindy Margolis on the Internet, and known there, before Kibo? I don't think so. Somehow, I can't imagine her taking part in USENET life using rn on a shared UNIX machine in 1991 or so...
Once upon a time, a startup named Dimension X was working on a Java extension known as Liquid Reality. This was a part-native system that could do fast 3D graphics from Java. There was a beta release (including a Linux version). Then Microsoft bought them up, killed the project and moved the programmers into their DirectX/ActiveX/Windows-only projects.
First photogenic cyberstar, maybe; or first pretty girl you can look at as you read her diary. There have been other virtual celebrities before Jenni, and even before the Web (such as Kibo, for example), though they were mostly textual and didn't get quite that amount of media attention.
Slashdot Mirror
No, Microsoft got in trouble for leveraging its monopolistic level of control of the operating system market to destroy competitors in other markets. The browser integration was designed specifically to make it impossible to get Windows without IE, and thus reduce incentive to get Netscape, by putting the Windows GUI, user shell and IE into one big congealed lump.
In a technical sense, though, it makes sense to integrate browser components with other parts of a system. For example, a HTML control could be made into a general GUI object, and used from things such as help browsers; graphic file decoders, a JavaScript engine and such may also be modularised as that. Which doesn't necessarily mean putting a web-navigation toolbar on every window in the system or having directories shown by default as "web pages".
As for non-GUI-dependent applications, they can be useful. (I read all my mail with mutt in an xterm.) Though as far as console-based browsers go, they're unlikely to advance far beyond where Lynx is today.
Sounds like a Germanic diminutive to me; which is rather appropriate, given the large continental European market share Linux has. Also, it makes it sound slightly more exotic.
As long as you have better connections than whoever wants to take you down. To do business in Russia, especially on the borderline, you have to be in tight with the Russian Mafia.
And then there are all the bored computer geniuses writing doomsday viruses; I don't know about you, but I'd be wary of downloading any executable content from Russia or thereabouts.
US courts have held that US laws apply anywhere in the world where Americans or American interests are affected. Enforcing US laws, however, is a question of logistics; they can't afford to kidnap^H^H^H^H^H^Hextrajudicially extradite everyone who sells pot to an American tourist or copies a MP3, though in a few high-profile cases they can make an effort. Witness what happened to Noriega, for example.
If it was, say, General Electric or Sun or someone with a guaranteed, concrete revenue stream, they'd be guaranteed to stay around. mp3.com, however, doesn't have the ability to pay $800m+ of damages and ensure profitability.
Don't waste your money on MPPP; chances are it's finished.
Um. because MP3 is the only format not dependent (by design) on closed-source players?
It sounds better than RealAudio, and the other high-quality formats (LiquidAudio, SDMI, &c) will not support Linux (because of economies of scale and the inability to ensure that decoded audio is not intercepted).
According to this article, the judge has no leeway in determining the minimum damages; the absolute minimum figure is said to be $800 million.
Unless this is overturned, or mp3.com settles with the RIAA (unlikely; the RIAA wants them annihilated and their tarred corpse hung up in a gibbet as a warning to others), mp3.com is kaput.
If you haven't done so already, it's probably too late. Chances are MPPP stock is worth about as much as confederate dollars right now.
Riffage (which, as it happens, is run by BMG, one of the Big Four labels) is likely to come out a winner from the exodus. And isn't the IUMA still around?
Chances are, if mp3.com goes out of business, someone may buy the independent business. Or the RIAA may allow them leniency, as long as they replace MP3s with a proprietary, encrypted format (we can see it now: downloads coming encapsulated in a serialised Windows player EXE).
A great idea... it may change the RIAA's mind just like the DVD boycott made the MPAA abolish zoning and legalise DeCSS.
...FALCO!
According to the WIRED article, the judge's hands are tied when setting the fine, and the lowest fine he could impose is $600 million; which is still enough to destroy mp3.com.
If my.mp3.com was a separate corporate entity, then they could be sacrificed and the parent could survive. This is not the case. mp3.com is liable for the punitive damages (the RIAA's ambit claim is $6bn, and the actual sum is likely to be in 9 digits), which are likely to break its back.
Hopefully when mp3.com goes into liquidation, someone who supports the open mp3 format will buy up the independent-artist side of things and keep it going. Hmmm; perhaps Andover would be interested in expanding its line of business?
MP3.com is nothing more than a smart domain
squatter with a couple of obvious ideas.
It's also an example, which could have a profound chilling effect. After mp3.com has been crucified in public (which has begun; its stock is freefalling into oblivion), others will be very careful not to risk being sued.
Under the DMCA, tools or systems dealing in unencrypted MP3s may (given enough well-paid lawyers) be construed to be a circumvention mechanism around SDMI. As such, once SDMI is out and endorsed by the RIAA, chances are that even using mp3 may be dangerous to a company's stock price.
Riffage is owned by BMG, one of the Big 4 record companies. Sure, its terms and conditions are amenable now, but once mp3.com is no more and they have no competition, you can bet they'll tighten up.
For one, don't expect non-proprietary formats such as MP3 to stay around above ground if mp3.com goes to the wall.
The RIAA are alleged to have manipulated mp3.com's stock price by selling it short, in order to destroy it.
If there is any truth in this, you can bet that they will push very hard for a death sentence.
But they are the same company, which means that if the $6bn punitive damages figure is upheld, we can probably say goodbye to mp3.com altogether.
Oh well, there are still rivals, like BMG's riffage.com.
When will big business realize one very key point of our world: YOU CAN'T UN-INVENT SOMETHING!
But you can criminalise it, which is what is slowly but surely happening.
The lawsuit has to do with them streaming copyrighted CDs (using the Beam-It feature) without a license.
As for mp3.com itself not being illegal, those are shifting sands. Under the DMCA and the WIPO provisions, the unencrypted MP3 format and tools for supporting it may be deemed a "circumvention device", and thus illegal, if it can be shown that there exist copyright-enforcing alternatives. And SDMI is on the way.
MP3 files as we know them will be criminalised in a few years maximum.
Assuming this judgment is upheld, the RIAA could claim billions of dollars in punitive damages, effectively bankrupting mp3.com, or leaving it open to a takeover. A settlement would have to be on the RIAA's terms, which could include provisions going beyond the ruling, and demands that mp3.com phase out the insecure MP3 format and embrace a proprietary, SDMI-enabled format. Either way, it looks bad.
On the other hand, FTP wasn't designed specifically for allowing anonymous exchanges of music files from decentralised sites, in a way that makes prosecuting copyright violation difficult. Napster was.
As a band promotion tool, Napster makes little sense. Say you have a band and want to get the word out. Which do you do:
(a) Set up a web site with bios, photos, a mailing list and some MP3s
(b) Put your material up on mp3.com or some similar site
(c) Put a bunch of mp3 files, with no information or contact details other than filenames and ID3 tags, on a file server and hook it up to a centralised search engine so that surfers can download them
Clearly (c) doesn't facilitate selling CDs, promoting upcoming shows or forging any sort of relationship with the audience, but merely serving out the files. Which makes it a lousy solution for promoting a band, but a great one for swapping large amounts of pirated music with strangers.
Don't get me wrong; I'm no fan of the recording industry, I personally think MP3 is great, and I believe that the big labels deserve to be taken down a few notches. However, in this case, Napster have a little bit too much chutzpah.
Was Cindy Margolis on the Internet, and known there, before Kibo? I don't think so. Somehow, I can't imagine her taking part in USENET life using rn on a shared UNIX machine in 1991 or so...
Once upon a time, a startup named Dimension X was working on a Java extension known as Liquid Reality. This was a part-native system that could do fast 3D graphics from Java. There was a beta release (including a Linux version). Then Microsoft bought them up, killed the project and moved the programmers into their DirectX/ActiveX/Windows-only projects.
Jenni's "infamous BDSM pages"? The mind boggles...
First photogenic cyberstar, maybe; or first pretty girl you can look at as you read her diary. There have been other virtual celebrities before Jenni, and even before the Web (such as Kibo, for example), though they were mostly textual and didn't get quite that amount of media attention.