Apparently you missed the bit earlier in the discussion where the original poster said that Microsoft should be prevented from doing this because they are a convicted monopoly.
So yes, we're talking courts and law and stuff - not just people posturing on a bulletin board.
Next time, consider reading the whole thread before replying.
Show me the Microsoft solution that'll let you do all that, or the Microsoft technology that gives you even the slightest chance of coding your own tool to do it.
I already did. As I said, use your MediaCenter PC, and watch your recorded video on your Creative Labs Nomad Media Player wherever you want to. Or rebroadcast it to whereever you want.
Also true. However, in the past, when Microsoft enters into a new area, it often isn't long before it starts doing those certain things that are crimes in that market, and it often isn't long before they start leveraging their monopoly to try to create a new monopoly, which as you observe just happens to be one of those certain things. They of course haven't done this yet, I mean how could they they just entered the market today, so the grandparent post was wrong if they were trying to say what Microsoft did today is illegal. But, Microsoft does do those certain illegal things very, very often. So often that it is totally reasonable to expect they will do them again. So often that it is reasonable to expect their legal expansion into this market today is just a first step that will certainly lead to illegal expansions
I don't know what backwards banana republic you're from, but in this country the idea is that you try people for the crimes they've done, not for the crimes you think they might do.
Gee whiz, TV from Microsoft. There goes any semblance of fair use rights, and hell, probably the ability to watch any given show without rebooting the TV three times.
This is insightful?
Please, go ahead, show me the Linux solution that allows you to take all of your TV shows from your MediaCenter PC and watch it on your Creative Labs Nomad Media player wherever you want to. Or rebroadcast it to anywhere you want.
You probably forgot to deselect the "Add copy protection" checkbox on your Windows Media Player Rip settings, didn't you?
So the proformance is better, but at the cost of "loading" times each time you make a requst for a different channel, station, website, etc.
Done right, you won't notice a difference between what you have now with digital cable, and this new system. The only additional delay will be that for the request to change the channel - and that may end up being masked by the fact that you already have to wait for the I frame to arrive before you can switch to a new channel with existing digital receivers.
Those are possible solutions. Here's another one. Use strncpy() and don't forget you need +1 char for the trailing zero
In other words, put the onus on maintenance / sloppy programmers to remember to nul-terminate their strings instead of fixing the API. Hmmm... sounds like a bad idea to me.
A non null terminated string can cause a crash. True. But an unterminated copy can cause overruns and run malicious code, which is worse. I still fail to see how strncpy() could *ever* be worse than strcpy().
You're the only person on this thread who even brought up that comparison. I'm suggesting that you use something else instead - personally, being a Win32 developer, I'll use StrSafe.h. You can feel free to roll your own implementation - but I'm not going to use strcpy OR strncpy unless I know that I can't overflow the buffer (which is rarely worth the risk).
Because not all buffer overruns are caused by misuse of the string library.
Show me where I said that
You're the one who keeps bringing up string library functions in the context of Microsoft's buffer overruns. You certainly seem fixated on that cause.
Nearly? Then this does still happen every so often? So it's safe to say that MS is still having issues with these kinds of overruns?
No, it's not. It's safe to say that some people are still having issues with these kinds of overruns though.
And the correct solution would be? Or do you simply enjoy bitching about things?
Use STL's string library, or do what MS did and use functions with better semantics for handling error cases.
Also, show me exactly how strncpy() causes more problems than strcpy(). It's not perfect, but it couldn't possibly be worse than an unbounded copy
strncpy() can create strings which are not nul terminated. It also is inefficient, as it fills the rest of the space with nul padding.
Eg. char temp[5]; strncpy(temp, "12345", 5);
This will create a string in temp which is not nul terminated. Your app will die. This is "correct" behavior as the strncpy api is designed.
For bonus points you can explain to the class why MS keeps having buffer overrun exploits, especially since they uber-fixed their library and all.
Because not all buffer overruns are caused by misuse of the string library. In fact - given that it gets so much bad press - I'd say that nearly none of them are caused by that these days. It's that simple.
The original poster was not lying, the original poster simply doesn't waste his limited time on Earth reading MS blogs. All the original poster was trying to illustrate is that there are still buffer overrun exploits that keep happening, and wanted to illustrate that fact simply without writing a thesis.
By claiming that they didn't know how to use strncpy instead of strcpy, which actually causes more problems than it solves.
So you not only proved yourself ignorant of what they are doing, but you proved that you yourself don't know the right solution to the problem either.
Who says it's not a grand altruistic venture? You? Thousands of people working for free to provide software for billions isn't altruistic enough for you?
If it was altruistic, it would be licensed under BSD, not GPL.
mouse wheel - Page up and page down keys, placed on a mouse. That's what that was. Was it done before? I don't know, but I someone somewhere must have had a 5 button mouse and assigned 2 buttons to pageup and pagedown. They popularized it though.
"Someone else must have done it first, because I says so."
Way to make a convincing argument.
For the record, you're wrong. Because I say so. So Nerr.
Carpal Tunnel syndrome is now widely thought to be a "brain" problem...
You're making the assumption that most cases are actually carpal tunnel syndrome, and not a misdiagnosis.
Simple test: if you have carpal tunnel pain, wet a hand towel with warm water. Push it into the armpit on the affected arm. Push your arms to your sides, using the pressure to hold the towel in place.
If it's carpal tunnel, this won't affect the pain. In most cases, however, this alleviates pressure and inflammation on the nerve which runs through your armpit (it's not well protected and is very prone to being pinched, especially if you have any soft tissue swellings.
Then, surely her offspring will be born with this 'injured back' trait causing them to walk upright as well. Thus letting them survive where the other members of her species die off, proving that evolution is fact.
Might I direct you to the bottom of your spine, and the fused bones that make up the coxic, as a good example that this theory might actually in fact be correct.
But the suggestion was that copying Windows files - EVEN IF WINDOWS IS OWNED BY THE COPIER - was illegal.
You're the only person in this debate who has been suggesting that.
The ONLY case where copying the Windows files is legal is IF Windows is owned by the copier, AND their copy of Windows is not being used at the same time as the copied files are.
The case I'm talking about - distributing some files from a Windows distro for use in another system - IS illegal, whether you want it to be or not. That site is acting as a distributor of someone else's copyrighted material - which makes them violating the copyright on that material. EULAs don't even come into this.
What I have noticed, and what a hell of a lot of people have noticed, is that some people have a superiority complex when it comes to audio quality. They are the kind of people who claim to hear the difference with high quality cabling even though its only hooked up to $5 computer speakers. They are the kind of people who buy nothing but Bose.
You sound like one of these people right now. Sure, if you want to spend that kind of money because you are a perfectionist and want the highest possible quality for the music you produce, that's fair enough, but you can't argue that it is a requirement to produce a good album that can sell.
For the most part it's a requirement. Name your favorite albums which were recorded in places like that.
For the record, two of my favorite albums have this problem - bad audio engineering, recorded in a bad environment. If I could get the original master tracks, I could get it cleaned up and release it for my friend and hopefully he'd be able to quit his day job and compose music for a living - which would be a much better use of his talent than writing documentation. But as they're all combined audio with no way of splitting it out, you can only do the most rudimentary of cleanups - and that won't sell.
Which is a shame, because the music kicks ass. You could play it on an MP3 player in your car and it would sound fine. Not so much on a boombox.
PS: you know, most people in bands actually have people to play the instruments already. Including session musicians as a cost is pretty ridiculous in the context of the argument.
And a friend of mine who right now is putting an album together on a shoe string because she doesn't make huge bank doesn't have people to play the instruments already. I'm not idly pulling these figures out of my ass.
KVM boxes solve some of the problem, but sometimes finding a keyboard and a monitor to lug around to these machines is most of the problem. Is there a portable solution that might solve both of these problems? Wouldn't it be nice to carry around a specialized laptop that could act as both a portable display and input device? Does something like this currently exist?
Yeah... Microsoft released them around the time the first TabletPC's came out. They're called "Mira" devices.
Wifi, ARM CPU, running Windows CE. Act as a terminal client, and allow you to use them as a remote mouse and keyboard for any system.
As I pointed out in another/. story, Bart's PE, the bootable Windows XP CD, uses the individual owner's XP components in its build (ie, they don't distribute, they tell you to copy the stuff into a directory before you build it - which is certainly covered under fair use - although the EULA might prohibit it - as if anybody gives a shit about the EULA.
Which is ENTIRELY different to taking a bunch of files from a Windows distribution and redistributing them on a website.
This is wrong. There will always be people who define "professional manner" as being the most expensive option available, but that's a pretty stupid definition. Today's consumer technology provides much more than was necessary even a couple of decades ago. Sure, if you move the goalposts, it costs that much to record, but if you are just trying to sell your music, it doesn't.
So tell me what consumer equipment you'll use, and how you'll record an album. My costs include session musicians ($50/song), studio time ($300/day), and audio engineering time ($120/hr). Pretty basic for something that doesn't sound like it was recorded in someone's basement (ie. that will sound like *shit*).
But hey, if you're not discerning, then that probably explains why you're happy with 28kbps MP3s.
Ohhhhh, you are reffering to the NEW LAWS that were LITERALLY written by lawyers employed by the publishing industry! Malignant laws expanding copyright like a cancer. Laws to imprison an innocent and non-infringing person for doing math. Laws to exterminate the public domain. Laws to extent copyright to eternity. Laws that say that some a large fraction of the country should currently be in prision for felony infringment for "commercial advantage or private financial gain", an insane legal construction and rediculous result straight out of the twilight zone. And most specifically: laws to expand copyright where it was never intended to go, where it was never intended to function, where we both agree it is currently failing to function, to the non-commercial activities of ordinary school kids and grandparents. Ahhhh. Gotchya.
No, the people are breaking the original copyright law, before all of those changes you claim were made.
Oh, and as for the rest of your argument... distribution isn't the sole cost center. If you address marketing, advertising, studio and production costs, then you'll have a stronger argument. Right now you're only addressing a tiny piece of the puzzle.
I am still unable to find any references via Google that this is either illegal or has been prevented by Microsoft in any case other than the recent Lindows case.
Cite the relevant law and/or Microsoft statements.
The Berne Copyright Convention of 1864 should just about cover it.
The role of record companies is supposedly to provide the capital needed to record music and manufacture CDs.
Recent advances in technology have obsoleted them. Musicians no longer need a great deal of money to record or supply their music.
Last time I checked, it cost at least $12,000 to record an album in any kind of professional manner (ie. using an audio engineer to get the mix just right, using a real studio so you don't sound like you were recording it in your basement on a reel-to-reel tape deck). It costs a hell of a lot more to market that music.
You have just used the worst analogy for the situation. I'm sorry, but that's just horrible. If you look at murder, that is a criminal issue. Civil issues are a completely different beast. Also, since the government is a reflection of the people, I truly doubt a large majority would decide killing people at will is a good idea.
Copyright violation has been a criminal issue since December 1997.
It is a crime to perform the willful reproduction or distribution (during a 180-day period), through electronic or other means, one or more copies of a copyrighted work with an aggregate retail value of more than $1,000.
This means that even if there is no profit motive and no receipt of anything of value, even other software or copyrighted material, someone can be criminally prosecuted if the total retail value of the reproduction or distribution exceeds $1000. (This applies even if someone merely sends several copies of pirated software to friends online)
Third, the NET extended the statute of limitations on criminal copyright infringement from three to five years and increases the penalties and fines for criminal copyright infringement, generally.
The content is very much owned by the people who possess it. I suggest you look at legal rulings up until the lobbyists have struck back. The content and the media were not separated. You could make legal copies for yourself all you wanted and sell the original. You did not have full ownership, but you did OWN what was on there to a very large point. The restrictions were not meant to affect your ownership, just your ability to transfer ownership.
You could make legal copies for yourself, and you could sell the original provided that you deleted the copies you made when you sell the original. You did not get carte blanche to copy it and give it to your friends - that remained illegal. The restrictions have NEVER had any effect on your ability to transfer ownership, as long as you transfer everything related to the thing you have copied, and destroy your copies. This is called the First Sale Doctrine; you have the right to resell the media you bought.
To say I don't understand how copyright works is rather amusing to me though. It's one of my favorite topics to read about since I have a large portion of my life dealing with it.
Yet for some reason, you were under the impression that copyright infringement was only a civil and not a criminal act. That's a little... incongruent with your claim, yes?
Your perception of things is flawed in the fact that you believe what the RIAA and MPAA are saying is the way things are no matter what. If you stop reading press releases or following their FUD you'd understand the topic a lot more thoroughly. It's a commonly held misconception with what copyright is currently.
My perception of copyright is not based on RIAA or MPAA propoganda, no matter what you might believe. It's based on a large amount of reading of the Berne copyright convention, and a lot of research I did into the subject on the matter in the early 90s when I was a freelance journalist and needed to protect my work from unscrupulous publishers.
Given that my own personal interpretation of the law matches that of the MPAA and the RIAA, that leads me to believe that - funnily enough - your interpretation of the law just might be wrong.
I have no problem with someone making infinite copies and distributing something for free. Why? Because I believe the government can design a new system that would reward copyright owners for those sales in a way to make up for the potential loss of revenue that would slow down the arts. There currently is money granted by state governments to fund the arts. I'm very sure that people would be happy to pay a different fee or a moving fee or a voluntary fee to a program that would pay artists. There are so many methods and interesting ideas on allowing the system
Simply letting P2P be legal is a solution. The only problem is that we need to convince the idiots in congress to ingore the RIAA's sreaming bloody murder as they wither and die. You do not pass laws to artificially keep an unneeded buggy-whip industry alive.
But it's not an "unneeded buggy-whip industry". The reason horse & carts went out of style was not because people started going out and cutting all of the tendons in the horses legs. In the case of the RIAA, people are going out and committing crimes. This does not mean that the industry is wrong - it means that the people are either uneducated, or plain don't care that they're breaking the law.
Slashdot Mirror
This is not a court. It is a discussion board.
Apparently you missed the bit earlier in the discussion where the original poster said that Microsoft should be prevented from doing this because they are a convicted monopoly.
So yes, we're talking courts and law and stuff - not just people posturing on a bulletin board.
Next time, consider reading the whole thread before replying.
Show me the Microsoft solution that'll let you do all that, or the Microsoft technology that gives you even the slightest chance of coding your own tool to do it.
I already did. As I said, use your MediaCenter PC, and watch your recorded video on your Creative Labs Nomad Media Player wherever you want to. Or rebroadcast it to whereever you want.
Here - read this link - Microsoft's Media Center top 10 features list - and stop complaining about things you're obviously ignorant about.
Also true. However, in the past, when Microsoft enters into a new area, it often isn't long before it starts doing those certain things that are crimes in that market, and it often isn't long before they start leveraging their monopoly to try to create a new monopoly, which as you observe just happens to be one of those certain things. They of course haven't done this yet, I mean how could they they just entered the market today, so the grandparent post was wrong if they were trying to say what Microsoft did today is illegal. But, Microsoft does do those certain illegal things very, very often. So often that it is totally reasonable to expect they will do them again. So often that it is reasonable to expect their legal expansion into this market today is just a first step that will certainly lead to illegal expansions
I don't know what backwards banana republic you're from, but in this country the idea is that you try people for the crimes they've done, not for the crimes you think they might do.
Gee whiz, TV from Microsoft. There goes any semblance of fair use rights, and hell, probably the ability to watch any given show without rebooting the TV three times.
This is insightful?
Please, go ahead, show me the Linux solution that allows you to take all of your TV shows from your MediaCenter PC and watch it on your Creative Labs Nomad Media player wherever you want to. Or rebroadcast it to anywhere you want.
You probably forgot to deselect the "Add copy protection" checkbox on your Windows Media Player Rip settings, didn't you?
So the proformance is better, but at the cost of "loading" times each time you make a requst for a different channel, station, website, etc.
Done right, you won't notice a difference between what you have now with digital cable, and this new system. The only additional delay will be that for the request to change the channel - and that may end up being masked by the fact that you already have to wait for the I frame to arrive before you can switch to a new channel with existing digital receivers.
In other words, put the onus on maintenance / sloppy programmers to remember to nul-terminate their strings instead of fixing the API. Hmmm... sounds like a bad idea to me.
A non null terminated string can cause a crash. True. But an unterminated copy can cause overruns and run malicious code, which is worse. I still fail to see how strncpy() could *ever* be worse than strcpy().
You're the only person on this thread who even brought up that comparison. I'm suggesting that you use something else instead - personally, being a Win32 developer, I'll use StrSafe.h. You can feel free to roll your own implementation - but I'm not going to use strcpy OR strncpy unless I know that I can't overflow the buffer (which is rarely worth the risk).
Because not all buffer overruns are caused by misuse of the string library.
You're the one who keeps bringing up string library functions in the context of Microsoft's buffer overruns. You certainly seem fixated on that cause.
Nearly? Then this does still happen every so often? So it's safe to say that MS is still having issues with these kinds of overruns?
No, it's not. It's safe to say that some people are still having issues with these kinds of overruns though.
And the correct solution would be? Or do you simply enjoy bitching about things?
Use STL's string library, or do what MS did and use functions with better semantics for handling error cases.
Also, show me exactly how strncpy() causes more problems than strcpy(). It's not perfect, but it couldn't possibly be worse than an unbounded copy
strncpy() can create strings which are not nul terminated. It also is inefficient, as it fills the rest of the space with nul padding.
Eg.
char temp[5];
strncpy(temp, "12345", 5);
This will create a string in temp which is not nul terminated. Your app will die. This is "correct" behavior as the strncpy api is designed.
For bonus points you can explain to the class why MS keeps having buffer overrun exploits, especially since they uber-fixed their library and all.
Because not all buffer overruns are caused by misuse of the string library. In fact - given that it gets so much bad press - I'd say that nearly none of them are caused by that these days. It's that simple.
The original poster was not lying, the original poster simply doesn't waste his limited time on Earth reading MS blogs. All the original poster was trying to illustrate is that there are still buffer overrun exploits that keep happening, and wanted to illustrate that fact simply without writing a thesis.
By claiming that they didn't know how to use strncpy instead of strcpy, which actually causes more problems than it solves.
So you not only proved yourself ignorant of what they are doing, but you proved that you yourself don't know the right solution to the problem either.
Nice job.
If they're only replacing strcpy with strncpy, they're not actually fixing the problem.
They didn't. The original poster was lying.
Instead, they completely rewrote the C library functions in much safer versions, sidestepping that problem entirely.
MS is well aware of the problems with strncpy. Read their blogs some time.
the Microsoft StrSafe library
Who says it's not a grand altruistic venture? You? Thousands of people working for free to provide software for billions isn't altruistic enough for you?
If it was altruistic, it would be licensed under BSD, not GPL.
End of story.
"Make a man a fire, and you warm him for a night. Set a man on fire, and you warm him for a lifetime." -- Author unknown
Actually, Author is Terry Pratchett on that one.
mouse wheel - Page up and page down keys, placed on a mouse. That's what that was. Was it done before? I don't know, but I someone somewhere must have had a 5 button mouse and assigned 2 buttons to pageup and pagedown. They popularized it though.
"Someone else must have done it first, because I says so."
Way to make a convincing argument.
For the record, you're wrong. Because I say so. So Nerr.
Carpal Tunnel syndrome is now widely thought to be a "brain" problem...
You're making the assumption that most cases are actually carpal tunnel syndrome, and not a misdiagnosis.
Simple test:
if you have carpal tunnel pain, wet a hand towel with warm water. Push it into the armpit on the affected arm. Push your arms to your sides, using the pressure to hold the towel in place.
If it's carpal tunnel, this won't affect the pain. In most cases, however, this alleviates pressure and inflammation on the nerve which runs through your armpit (it's not well protected and is very prone to being pinched, especially if you have any soft tissue swellings.
Then, surely her offspring will be born with this 'injured back' trait causing them to walk upright as well. Thus letting them survive where the other members of her species die off, proving that evolution is fact.
Might I direct you to the bottom of your spine, and the fused bones that make up the coxic, as a good example that this theory might actually in fact be correct.
But the suggestion was that copying Windows files - EVEN IF WINDOWS IS OWNED BY THE COPIER - was illegal.
You're the only person in this debate who has been suggesting that.
The ONLY case where copying the Windows files is legal is IF Windows is owned by the copier, AND their copy of Windows is not being used at the same time as the copied files are.
The case I'm talking about - distributing some files from a Windows distro for use in another system - IS illegal, whether you want it to be or not. That site is acting as a distributor of someone else's copyrighted material - which makes them violating the copyright on that material. EULAs don't even come into this.
What I have noticed, and what a hell of a lot of people have noticed, is that some people have a superiority complex when it comes to audio quality. They are the kind of people who claim to hear the difference with high quality cabling even though its only hooked up to $5 computer speakers. They are the kind of people who buy nothing but Bose.
You sound like one of these people right now. Sure, if you want to spend that kind of money because you are a perfectionist and want the highest possible quality for the music you produce, that's fair enough, but you can't argue that it is a requirement to produce a good album that can sell.
For the most part it's a requirement. Name your favorite albums which were recorded in places like that.
For the record, two of my favorite albums have this problem - bad audio engineering, recorded in a bad environment. If I could get the original master tracks, I could get it cleaned up and release it for my friend and hopefully he'd be able to quit his day job and compose music for a living - which would be a much better use of his talent than writing documentation. But as they're all combined audio with no way of splitting it out, you can only do the most rudimentary of cleanups - and that won't sell.
Which is a shame, because the music kicks ass. You could play it on an MP3 player in your car and it would sound fine. Not so much on a boombox.
PS: you know, most people in bands actually have people to play the instruments already. Including session musicians as a cost is pretty ridiculous in the context of the argument.
And a friend of mine who right now is putting an album together on a shoe string because she doesn't make huge bank doesn't have people to play the instruments already. I'm not idly pulling these figures out of my ass.
KVM boxes solve some of the problem, but sometimes finding a keyboard and a monitor to lug around to these machines is most of the problem. Is there a portable solution that might solve both of these problems? Wouldn't it be nice to carry around a specialized laptop that could act as both a portable display and input device? Does something like this currently exist?
Yeah... Microsoft released them around the time the first TabletPC's came out. They're called "Mira" devices.
Wifi, ARM CPU, running Windows CE. Act as a terminal client, and allow you to use them as a remote mouse and keyboard for any system.
As I pointed out in another /. story, Bart's PE, the bootable Windows XP CD, uses the individual owner's XP components in its build (ie, they don't distribute, they tell you to copy the stuff into a directory before you build it - which is certainly covered under fair use - although the EULA might prohibit it - as if anybody gives a shit about the EULA.
Which is ENTIRELY different to taking a bunch of files from a Windows distribution and redistributing them on a website.
This is wrong. There will always be people who define "professional manner" as being the most expensive option available, but that's a pretty stupid definition. Today's consumer technology provides much more than was necessary even a couple of decades ago. Sure, if you move the goalposts, it costs that much to record, but if you are just trying to sell your music, it doesn't.
So tell me what consumer equipment you'll use, and how you'll record an album. My costs include session musicians ($50/song), studio time ($300/day), and audio engineering time ($120/hr). Pretty basic for something that doesn't sound like it was recorded in someone's basement (ie. that will sound like *shit*).
But hey, if you're not discerning, then that probably explains why you're happy with 28kbps MP3s.
Ohhhhh, you are reffering to the NEW LAWS that were LITERALLY written by lawyers employed by the publishing industry! Malignant laws expanding copyright like a cancer. Laws to imprison an innocent and non-infringing person for doing math. Laws to exterminate the public domain. Laws to extent copyright to eternity. Laws that say that some a large fraction of the country should currently be in prision for felony infringment for "commercial advantage or private financial gain", an insane legal construction and rediculous result straight out of the twilight zone. And most specifically: laws to expand copyright where it was never intended to go, where it was never intended to function, where we both agree it is currently failing to function, to the non-commercial activities of ordinary school kids and grandparents. Ahhhh. Gotchya.
No, the people are breaking the original copyright law, before all of those changes you claim were made.
Oh, and as for the rest of your argument... distribution isn't the sole cost center. If you address marketing, advertising, studio and production costs, then you'll have a stronger argument. Right now you're only addressing a tiny piece of the puzzle.
Really?
Yes. The people redistributing the files are not the authorized copyright holders, ergo it's in violation of copyright law going years back.
And Microsoft doesn't care (except in the case of Lindows, which was really about the name anyway)? Explain why
Perhaps they haven't been told.
It's bullshit, that's why. It's valid only to trolls who want to prove that OSS is somehow "communist" - as Bill puts it...
Don't just claim it's bullshit - explain why it's legal to do this. Because according to the law, it's not.
I am still unable to find any references via Google that this is either illegal or has been prevented by Microsoft in any case other than the recent Lindows case.
Cite the relevant law and/or Microsoft statements.
The Berne Copyright Convention of 1864 should just about cover it.
The role of record companies is supposedly to provide the capital needed to record music and manufacture CDs.
Recent advances in technology have obsoleted them. Musicians no longer need a great deal of money to record or supply their music.
Last time I checked, it cost at least $12,000 to record an album in any kind of professional manner (ie. using an audio engineer to get the mix just right, using a real studio so you don't sound like you were recording it in your basement on a reel-to-reel tape deck). It costs a hell of a lot more to market that music.
Copyright violation has been a criminal issue since December 1997.
The content is very much owned by the people who possess it. I suggest you look at legal rulings up until the lobbyists have struck back. The content and the media were not separated. You could make legal copies for yourself all you wanted and sell the original. You did not have full ownership, but you did OWN what was on there to a very large point. The restrictions were not meant to affect your ownership, just your ability to transfer ownership.
You could make legal copies for yourself, and you could sell the original provided that you deleted the copies you made when you sell the original. You did not get carte blanche to copy it and give it to your friends - that remained illegal. The restrictions have NEVER had any effect on your ability to transfer ownership, as long as you transfer everything related to the thing you have copied, and destroy your copies. This is called the First Sale Doctrine; you have the right to resell the media you bought.
To say I don't understand how copyright works is rather amusing to me though. It's one of my favorite topics to read about since I have a large portion of my life dealing with it.
Yet for some reason, you were under the impression that copyright infringement was only a civil and not a criminal act. That's a little... incongruent with your claim, yes?
Your perception of things is flawed in the fact that you believe what the RIAA and MPAA are saying is the way things are no matter what. If you stop reading press releases or following their FUD you'd understand the topic a lot more thoroughly. It's a commonly held misconception with what copyright is currently.
My perception of copyright is not based on RIAA or MPAA propoganda, no matter what you might believe. It's based on a large amount of reading of the Berne copyright convention, and a lot of research I did into the subject on the matter in the early 90s when I was a freelance journalist and needed to protect my work from unscrupulous publishers.
Given that my own personal interpretation of the law matches that of the MPAA and the RIAA, that leads me to believe that - funnily enough - your interpretation of the law just might be wrong.
I have no problem with someone making infinite copies and distributing something for free. Why? Because I believe the government can design a new system that would reward copyright owners for those sales in a way to make up for the potential loss of revenue that would slow down the arts. There currently is money granted by state governments to fund the arts. I'm very sure that people would be happy to pay a different fee or a moving fee or a voluntary fee to a program that would pay artists. There are so many methods and interesting ideas on allowing the system
Simply letting P2P be legal is a solution. The only problem is that we need to convince the idiots in congress to ingore the RIAA's sreaming bloody murder as they wither and die. You do not pass laws to artificially keep an unneeded buggy-whip industry alive.
But it's not an "unneeded buggy-whip industry". The reason horse & carts went out of style was not because people started going out and cutting all of the tendons in the horses legs. In the case of the RIAA, people are going out and committing crimes. This does not mean that the industry is wrong - it means that the people are either uneducated, or plain don't care that they're breaking the law.