>The RIAA can successfully sue almost every single Internet-user in the US, should they be really guilty or not.
The settlements they've made so far don't even cover their legal and investigative fees. Hell, they probably don't cover the fees of the PR flaks that feed the stories to the meedja.
As we've already seen, it is possible to defend these cases. You just have to defend yourself, rather than caving in like a spineless weasel with a guilty conscience. Remember the Mac using grandmother? Contrast with Suzy Schoolgirl and her "I'm an honor student, but I was too dumb to understand copyright" whine.
Pop quiz: why do you think so many people are settling? Are they all innocent? Are most of them innocent? Are any of them innocent?
How about we stay well away from slippery slope arguments, and deal with the situation as it is. Millions of people breach copy rights every day. A few hundred of them are being sued. So far, one case appears to be suspect.
That'll help to provide reasonable doubt! No... no, wait... these are civil cases, not criminal. There's no burden of proof, no assumption of innocence, no "reasonable doubt" defence.
All that the RIAA has to do is to show that the balance of probability is that the person on the other side of the courtroom is who the RIAA say they are and did what the RIAA say they did. Now, really, how probable is it that Kazaa users (which is who they are targetting) are likely to be the target of a malicious prank that's only been claimed (anonymously, and not yet independently verified) to be theoretically possible on Gnutella?
Sorry for the nasty little wake up call, but civil cases aren't like Twelve Angry Men. If you're relying on this as a defence, I'd suggest changing your story to "a wizard did it", because that's a more probable explanation.
No such language. Try en-us, en-gb, en-ca. Some of the most frustrating meetings of my career have involved trying to convince the terminally clueless of this. Let's not spread the misery.
You know, I'm noticing a certain correlation between Slashdot UID and the ability to comprehent the bleedin' obvious. I've just duped this sentiment, and I'm at a loss to understand how otherwise rational, logical people just don't seem to understand that their opinions - if they're not in a Neilsen household - simply don't matter.
Then who knows or cares what you're watching or not watching?
Your opinion does not matter. My opinion does not matter. Phone-ins don't work. Write-ins don't work. Nothing works except manipulating the Neilsen ratings
But remember, when the FBI come calling for our details, Taco and Cowboy Neil promise to go down fighting, just like Butch and Sundance. Hmm, which one's the Butch and which one's the Bitch?
How many spent more money on CDs this month than they spent last month?
Because it's that issue, and nothing to do with file sharing or any other indirectly related matter that's the RIAA's problem.
All the misery that they're causing, all of the PR gaffs that they keep making, it all counts for nothing unless people start spending more.
So, let's hear it, RIAA. You've built up an industry that controls the channels of distribution so well that you can apparently tell how many unlicensed CDs are being sold (or so you keep telling us when you lobby Congress to set you up as the Fourth Branch). I'm sure that you must have the figures that show how much your sales have increased since you started bitchslapping your own customers.
Who's complaining? I'm just pointing out that apparently I'm better at predicting the future than the entire Slashdot Collective. I find that funny, but only in the sense that you could turn the story of Cassandra into a sitcom.
I just hope that all of these journalists remember that when they were granted their Journalist Superpowers, they all swore the Journalist's Holy Oath to get assraped in federal prison in preference to compromising their principles and choosing to remain employable and so keep paying their mortgage and their kids' orthodentistry bills.
No... wait... that's in Bizarro World. On Planet Earth, journalists are just working joes, working long hours scraping a living selling the stories that the paying public (which by and large doesn't include Slashdot readers) want to read.
Before anyone gets confused over this, remember that the Slashdot editing team are technically journalists. If the FBI ever come a-knocking around here, you can bet the farm that each and every one of them will be pissing their pants in their eagerness to hand over the goods. In best Slashdot editor tradition, they'll probably even dupe the submission.
On this specific issue, which law did Congress pass that abridges the freedom of the press? That would be the Espionage Act of 1917, the Sedition Act of 1918 and the Alien Registration Act of 1940. The PATRIOT act is amateur hour stuff by comparison; it places no restrictions on journalists' freedom to publish whatever they like, and that's all that the first amendment requires.
I've always found the argument that a free press requires anonymity to be highly spurious. If you're getting your stories from unverifiable sources, then you may as well get your bullshit from your tax funded officials rather than from a freelance reporter who's selling you what you want to hear.
That when I said this would happen, and that Lindows would just lap up the extra free publicity from yet another Slashdot front page story, I got modded down as a troll.
Trolling's just another word for telling people what they don't want to hear, apparently.
The "lifting body" (top left, Farscape module) is a misnomer. The "wings" on that don't provide lift, they just keep it falling the right way up. The lift is indeed provided by a parafoil.
Big furry deal. None of those that switched would have contributed one line of code, so what's the loss?
Sooner or later, running linux is going to be a no-brainer. But it will happen when it happens. What's the big rush? Linux (and all other OS projects) aren't going anywhere. Microsoft can't market them out of existence, SCO can't sue them into submission.
All we're seeing here is a temporary rally, as Microsoft discounts their crack. Traditionally, the first one is free, but they're in the unenviable position of having to give freebies to retain and attract their bitches back. When you consider that they have tens of thousands of engineers working in their crack labs, it should be clear that they can't sustain that.
But why should he be regenerated as yet another pasty white guy? How about Don Warrington or Art Malik? I was going to suggest Sanjeev Bhaskar, but then I remembered that he can't actually act worth a damn.
>Go back and read what Courtney wrote, rather than what was summarised.
"That's $45,000 to live on for a year until the record gets released."
"Two million dollars in royalties minus $2 million in recoupable expenses equals... zero!"
"The system's set up so almost nobody gets paid."
Pop quiz, genius. You've spent your $45K net from the million dollars advance, the label asks for their million bucks back (note: the whole million, not your $170K net profit), and you say "Gee, I've spent it, I didn't realise that it was recoupable." Now, does the label say:
Well, that's certainly our fault for not making your contract clearer, or insisting that you get a competent accountant. Tell you what, let's forget that million dollars!
No problem, we'll just tack it on to your next contract. Hoo ha ha. Bitch.
Actually, they probably don't say that last bit out loud. Or perhaps they do, it depends if you managed to retain any rights to the work beyond royalties that they'll never pay you.
So your net income from your entire contract with that label is $45K plus whatever cash from your advertising contract with Pokey Pola Cola you manage to bury before the label lawyers mugged for their recoupables.
As we're quoting conclusions rather than selective extracts, let's end with Courtney's actual conclusion:
"I live on tips. Giving music away for free is what artists have been doing naturally all their lives."
Slashdot Mirror
>The RIAA can successfully sue almost every single Internet-user in the US, should they be really guilty or not.
The settlements they've made so far don't even cover their legal and investigative fees. Hell, they probably don't cover the fees of the PR flaks that feed the stories to the meedja.
As we've already seen, it is possible to defend these cases. You just have to defend yourself, rather than caving in like a spineless weasel with a guilty conscience. Remember the Mac using grandmother? Contrast with Suzy Schoolgirl and her "I'm an honor student, but I was too dumb to understand copyright" whine.
Pop quiz: why do you think so many people are settling? Are they all innocent? Are most of them innocent? Are any of them innocent?
How about we stay well away from slippery slope arguments, and deal with the situation as it is. Millions of people breach copy rights every day. A few hundred of them are being sued. So far, one case appears to be suspect.
Hardly 1984, is it?
That'll help to provide reasonable doubt! No... no, wait... these are civil cases, not criminal. There's no burden of proof, no assumption of innocence, no "reasonable doubt" defence.
All that the RIAA has to do is to show that the balance of probability is that the person on the other side of the courtroom is who the RIAA say they are and did what the RIAA say they did. Now, really, how probable is it that Kazaa users (which is who they are targetting) are likely to be the target of a malicious prank that's only been claimed (anonymously, and not yet independently verified) to be theoretically possible on Gnutella?
Sorry for the nasty little wake up call, but civil cases aren't like Twelve Angry Men . If you're relying on this as a defence, I'd suggest changing your story to "a wizard did it", because that's a more probable explanation.
No such language. Try en-us, en-gb, en-ca. Some of the most frustrating meetings of my career have involved trying to convince the terminally clueless of this. Let's not spread the misery.
I was going to try and work out what your point was, but then I remembered that I wouldn't piss on an anonymous coward if he were on fire.
>Even incumbent politicans risk getting the boot if they rub special interest groups (especially those with deep pockets) the wrong way.
The evidence suggests otherwise
You know, I'm noticing a certain correlation between Slashdot UID and the ability to comprehent the bleedin' obvious. I've just duped this sentiment, and I'm at a loss to understand how otherwise rational, logical people just don't seem to understand that their opinions - if they're not in a Neilsen household - simply don't matter.
And are you in a Neilsen household?
Then who knows or cares what you're watching or not watching?
Your opinion does not matter. My opinion does not matter. Phone-ins don't work. Write-ins don't work. Nothing works except manipulating the Neilsen ratings
I learned to speak Sanskrit and I can divide by zero.
But remember, when the FBI come calling for our details, Taco and Cowboy Neil promise to go down fighting, just like Butch and Sundance. Hmm, which one's the Butch and which one's the Bitch?
How many spent more money on CDs this month than they spent last month?
Because it's that issue, and nothing to do with file sharing or any other indirectly related matter that's the RIAA's problem.
All the misery that they're causing, all of the PR gaffs that they keep making, it all counts for nothing unless people start spending more.
So, let's hear it, RIAA. You've built up an industry that controls the channels of distribution so well that you can apparently tell how many unlicensed CDs are being sold (or so you keep telling us when you lobby Congress to set you up as the Fourth Branch). I'm sure that you must have the figures that show how much your sales have increased since you started bitchslapping your own customers.
Let's see those figures.
Who's complaining? I'm just pointing out that apparently I'm better at predicting the future than the entire Slashdot Collective. I find that funny, but only in the sense that you could turn the story of Cassandra into a sitcom.
I just hope that all of these journalists remember that when they were granted their Journalist Superpowers, they all swore the Journalist's Holy Oath to get assraped in federal prison in preference to compromising their principles and choosing to remain employable and so keep paying their mortgage and their kids' orthodentistry bills.
No... wait... that's in Bizarro World. On Planet Earth, journalists are just working joes, working long hours scraping a living selling the stories that the paying public (which by and large doesn't include Slashdot readers) want to read.
Before anyone gets confused over this, remember that the Slashdot editing team are technically journalists. If the FBI ever come a-knocking around here, you can bet the farm that each and every one of them will be pissing their pants in their eagerness to hand over the goods. In best Slashdot editor tradition, they'll probably even dupe the submission.
On this specific issue, which law did Congress pass that abridges the freedom of the press? That would be the Espionage Act of 1917, the Sedition Act of 1918 and the Alien Registration Act of 1940. The PATRIOT act is amateur hour stuff by comparison; it places no restrictions on journalists' freedom to publish whatever they like, and that's all that the first amendment requires.
I've always found the argument that a free press requires anonymity to be highly spurious. If you're getting your stories from unverifiable sources, then you may as well get your bullshit from your tax funded officials rather than from a freelance reporter who's selling you what you want to hear.
That when I said this would happen, and that Lindows would just lap up the extra free publicity from yet another Slashdot front page story, I got modded down as a troll.
Trolling's just another word for telling people what they don't want to hear, apparently.
The "lifting body" (top left, Farscape module) is a misnomer. The "wings" on that don't provide lift, they just keep it falling the right way up. The lift is indeed provided by a parafoil.
Big furry deal. None of those that switched would have contributed one line of code, so what's the loss?
Sooner or later, running linux is going to be a no-brainer. But it will happen when it happens. What's the big rush? Linux (and all other OS projects) aren't going anywhere. Microsoft can't market them out of existence, SCO can't sue them into submission.
All we're seeing here is a temporary rally, as Microsoft discounts their crack. Traditionally, the first one is free, but they're in the unenviable position of having to give freebies to retain and attract their bitches back. When you consider that they have tens of thousands of engineers working in their crack labs, it should be clear that they can't sustain that.
> Linux desperately NEEDS more people looking at it from a marketing perspective,
Why? What's the quantifiable benefit to me and thee of Mom and Pop Inc choosing a linux server rather than Win2003?
I think you may be confusing the benefits of having more linux developers and having more linux users.
But why should he be regenerated as yet another pasty white guy? How about Don Warrington or Art Malik? I was going to suggest Sanjeev Bhaskar, but then I remembered that he can't actually act worth a damn.
Well, here's a couple from left field to ponder. Art Malik, Don Warrington. Clearly the Doctor has to be RADA, but why should he be white?
Oh, hang on, Tony Head.
All good, or how about Jack Davenport?
Ooh, ooh, Jack Davenport
So, you're saying that anybody in a position to have their opinions taken seriously has to keep those opinions to themselves?
What's the point in being an expert if you can't use your expertise?
But say, why does NASA need so many new $10,000 hammers and toilet seats?
Rogerborg is dead. Long live Rogerborg.
>Go back and read what Courtney wrote, rather than what was summarised.
Pop quiz, genius. You've spent your $45K net from the million dollars advance, the label asks for their million bucks back (note: the whole million, not your $170K net profit), and you say "Gee, I've spent it, I didn't realise that it was recoupable." Now, does the label say:
Actually, they probably don't say that last bit out loud. Or perhaps they do, it depends if you managed to retain any rights to the work beyond royalties that they'll never pay you.
So your net income from your entire contract with that label is $45K plus whatever cash from your advertising contract with Pokey Pola Cola you manage to bury before the label lawyers mugged for their recoupables.
As we're quoting conclusions rather than selective extracts, let's end with Courtney's actual conclusion:
"I live on tips. Giving music away for free is what artists have been doing naturally all their lives."