Re:Should I send this to my congressmen?
on
SSSCA Hearing
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· Score: 3, Insightful
My letter to Kay Bailey Hutchinson (Texas):
Dear Senator Hutchinson,
I will keep this short as I know you are a busy woman and have limited time. I need to know where you stand on Sen. Fritz Hollings' proposed Security Systems Standards and Certification Act (SSSCA).
This is a very important legislation to me, and I feel that voting for it could very well send our economy into another recession as we sell out the trillion dollar tech industry (which everyone seems to think is the future of our economy) to the billion dollar entertainment industry.
I'll put it in a sound bite for you: "Today I was watching CNN and everyone was concerned that an energy company named Enron had been responsible for legislation pertaining to the energy industry. What you have here is the copyright industry writing the very laws that pertain to the copyright industry. It was bad in the case of Enron, and it's no better here."
I will tell you that if this law does pass, and you do vote for it, I will make it a point to vote against you in the next election -- regardless of who is running against you, and I will make every attempt to convince friends and family to do the same.
Sincerely, K. Jack McCauley [contact info removed]
Re:The only way to send a message to politicians
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SSSCA Hearing
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· Score: 2
Maybe this is what the tech community needs to wake them up and actually go out to the voting polls. I already vote, but I promise you, if I did not, this law would compel me to get out and vote. I'd vote for a brain-dead hamster before I let Hollings get my vote.
The RIAA and MPAA already see none of my current salary. If this crazy, insane law gets passed, I'll spend the next eighteen months or so saving as much as I can and buying as much non-crippled hardware as I can and then moving somewhere like Antigua, where I can be fairly happy (already have friends there), where they don't believe in copyright, and grab Direct TV's signal without paying for it.
Re:Will this PREVENT sharing by artists who WISH T
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SSSCA Hearing
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· Score: 2
I got into a debate with someone about the SSSCA on another board, and this came up.
It does sound like a conspiracy theory, but listen to it this way: "If you want your music to be heard on the latest generation of equipment, you just have to sign with us." It makes a certain, twisted sense, but I think it's just an unintended, but welcome side effect.
Though, I think it will cause a lot of talent to either go outside the country or stagnate.
Re:Bought and Paid For
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SSSCA Hearing
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· Score: 2
It's almost tragically funny, I just heard on CNN that it didn't make sense that an energy company like Enron was actively making energy policy, but here we have copyright companys trying to actively make copyright policy. And, no one seems to understand why this is bad.
Here's my deal, and how music sharing could help now and in the future. First, let me say that I hate paying for intellectual property, and I pirate -- a lot. However, I also purchase a lot. If you come to my house, you'll find several hundred CDs, almost that many DVDs, a literal ton of VHS tapes, some laserdiscs, some cassettes, and shelf upon shelf of books.
The reason I buy is because many times the store bought copy is better. Reading a book on the computer screen hurts my head, and printing it out (expensive) isn't as good as having a properly bound book in my hands. DVDs typically have nice menus, or extras, or the quality is better than I can download. Even when I can download an exact copy, it still goes on a CD-R, and never looks as good as the store bought version. Besides, having my CD collection displayed alongside my DVD collection says something about me and my tastes, much as the art on my walls does. I enjoy people digging through my collection and saying "wow, I didn't know you had/enjoyed/listened to this."
At one time, when I was in college, pirating was easy. I had the free time to search newsgroups and lurk on IRC and make friends with the people who ran in pirated media. I did not have money, so it made sense at the time -- though I still purchased media when I could. However, as I've gotten older, I have less time but more money. I no longer have those friends that traffic in illicit goods, because I'm no longer "known". I don't find out the new sites or the hot servers, and I don't find it's worth the time and effort to go find them -- I'll go buy LOTR for $20 instead.
And, I did buy more music with Napster, even though I was pirating more music than ever before. A 128kbps mp3 is certainly good enough for 90% of my listening, but there are times when I want that extra quality, and I will pay for it. There's some music I like to hear a couple of times, but I'm never going to actually buy -- at any price. And, it does allow me to look at artists that I'm curious about -- but have never heard before. When I was in college, I used to spend hours at the used CD store just listening to music I hadn't heard. When I was in high school, I lamented the fact that I was buying ten cassettes only to find that only four of them were any good -- and I didn't have the money to spend. I remember not buying many CDs (some of which I later found out were excellent) because I just didn't know if I would enjoy them. There was no "try before you buy", just "buy and get screwed". I bought more with Napster just because I was exposed to more. I was able to expand into genres (such as jazz) that I'd been interested in for years, but was having trouble finding an "introduction".
I'm 28 now. I file share. I pirate. But I spend a ton of money on intellictual property. I pirate because I could spend my entire income and still not be able to see all the movies I want to see, listen to all the music I want to hear, read all the books I want to read, or play all the games I want to play. File sharing gives me a solution to that problem, but it will never be a replacement.
Maybe you should check out the Discus 40 or 20 at http://www.discgear.com/ Sounds exactly like what you're looking for. I use it to store CDs in my car, and they are wonderful, compact units.
People will pay for something that's better, even if the alternative is free. I'd even hesitate to say that a lot of people will pay for something that's easy to use but not nessessarily better (Windows) than something that's free (Linux).
The vast majority will not pay for Napster. Which is a shame, because the artists will go on being cheated, and the RIAA will say "people won't pay money for downloaded music -- especially when a free alternative exists." This is not nessessarily true.
I would have paid a fee for what Napster was back in it's heyday. I still think it was better in it's prime than Morpheus is today. But, I digress. Napster could have been better than it ever was. Imagine if it was the same old Napster, with the same old trading files. But, for a nominal fee, you could download anything you wanted, from any label, at any bitrate, in.mp3 or ogg vorbis -- directly from Napster. Imagine that. No dropped connections. No partial files. No crappy recording done with a Radio Shack boom box and a fischer price microphone. No mislabeled files. No file that you cannot find at all. Hell yes, I'd pay good money for that.
I refuse to pay money for encrypted, propriatary format files, no matter how good they may be. I refuse to pay money for partial files, incomplete downloads, questionable quality files that I can't do as I wish with.
Why is it so hard for some people to grasp that burning nonrenewable resources like petroleum is like driving through the desert in a car with half a tank of gas and NO gas stations ahead. Wouldn't it be wise to start thinking about alternatives?
You've got a very good point. However, the prudent thing to do would not be pulling the car over right fscking now because the fuel in the tank is going to run out eventually. Sometimes the enviromentalists forget this.
You might as well say the gauge is busted rather than giving us the benefit of the doubt -- we don't know if we're on a full tank or a half tank.
Now, the other thing to consider is that there might be a shop up the road that can retrofit our gasoline burning car to run on something else completely. The problem is, we don't know the road ahead, we don't know how much is in the tank, and stopping the car or slowing it down could actually do more harm than good.
Actually, believe it or not, the brain should be able to sort this kind of thing out. I'm not saying immediately, but give it some time, particularly if the person had sight at some point previously in their life.
There have already been studies done with people that wore lenses that inverted their vision. They were forced to wear these lenses for weeks at a time. After about a week, their vision righted itself -- they saw perfectly normal. Of course, when they removed the spectacles, they had to readjust again.
Provided all the information is intact, I don't doubt that the brain could unscramble it. I would imagine when we were newborns we couldn't see too well either -- we just don't remember it.
Sure, DVD-Audio and SACD are better, but would I pay a premium for it? Likely not. I'm an audiophile as well as a geek, but even I question if mp3 isn't good enough for 90% of my listening. The answer? Yes, it is.
Can I tell the difference between a well-coded MP3, an audio CD, and a DVD-Audio disk? Sure, in a back-to-back comparison. In a double-blind, single test case? No. I get no better than I would by simply guessing. I promise you, Joe Sixpack isn't going to be able to tell at all -- and that's partially what's moving the sales of mp3 players. It's a more convienent format than CD-ROM, and it sounds "good enough".
They are going to have a hard time getting DVD-Audio and SACD any kind of real market penetration. Remember Minidisk? It even allowed you the ability to make compilations (horrors!) and copy, well before a CD-R was a common-place invention. The general public didn't pick up on it, because there was no compelling reason to replace the massive CD collection they'd built up over the years. The problem the record companies have is that they have built almost the perfect physical distribution system for music. I don't really care about extras on my CDs, they are cool, but I watch them once, maybe twice, say "hey, how neat", and I never look at it again. Even the Sarah McLachlan enhanced CD I have with videos and everything gets treated like every other audio CD I have. I wouldn't have paid extra for the video. CDs are fairly indestructable, have great quality, don't degrade over time or extended use, playable almost everywhere, small enough, portable enough, and now, easily copyable. I have a hard time thinking of how to improve on CDs, short of putting them in a permanent caddy, but then that increases the size, and now there's added cost and moving parts. MP3 is the first thing that's really challenged CDs, and that's because they are MORE portable than a CD, they sound "good enough", and there's no real chance of monetary investment loss. It's a perfect medium for the consumer, and look how popular it's become without any kind of advertising, strong industry support, etc. The record companies will have a hard time now selling any digital music in copy-protected format, because people are getting used to listening to their music where ever they want, having an extra expendable copy for the car, having it on the PC at work in MP3, and on their Rio for jogging. Notice their crackdown on file-sharing sites... CD sales are down. DVD sales are up, so I don't think it's the economy, people are just shifting their entertainment dollars to a seemingly less hostile industry.
Honestly, I don't understand the strong-arm tactics employed here. In a free economy, you don't stay in business by being overtly hostile to your best customers. Perhaps the problem is that CDs aren't in a free economy, and haven't been in 60 years, and the RIAA has gotten used to telling customers what they will like and what they will do. Most consumer items I can think of are either greatly improved from their counterparts fifteen years ago or significantly cheaper -- sometimes both. Why are CDs exactly the same and more expensive?
Never use FedEX to ship jewelry unless it is an emergency and must be there overnight. They won't insure it. Granted, they only have 24 hours to lose it, but if you're shipping $10,000 worth of wedding rings (like I did), it's a real tense 24 hours. Luckily, my homeowner's insurance would have covered it if anything had happened -- but I didn't know it at the time.
But that's just me. I would think that UPS would settle out of court pretty rapidly. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to hear them contact you now that this has landed on the front page of Slashdot -- not like geeks don't buy a lot of stuff on line and have it shipped all over the country.
I would think a lawsuit like this is exactly the kind of thing UPS's corporate lawyers would hate to face. Take them to civil court, where the burden of proof is less, and make sure to get a jury trial. Think about it, if you're sitting on a jury and see pictures like these, who are you going to side with? Some multi-billion dollar company that's probably messed up some of your packages, or the poor guy that got his computer stuff deliberately smashed up?
You act like this is hard. I haven't bought a CD in over year, but in the past, I averaged over 60 purchases a year. I figure that's about $1200/year right back into my own pocket, or about $100/month. Better yet, it's money NOT going to the RIAA.
Is it hard? Yeah, at first. It's real hard knowing you're not going to be buying the latest CD by your favorite artist, and you won't be the first on your street to have it - but really, what is it worth? I still listen to music, I still listen to all my old CDs, and my vast collection of MP3s, which I might add, grows larger every day. I'm not buying the CD, so I'm downloading mp3s wherever I can find them. If I enjoy the music enough, I'll start looking for it at the local used CD store. If I find it, I'll buy it, if not, I'll do without. If I can't find the CD in a reasonable amount of time, I'll send a couple of dollars to the artist or delete the mp3s completely.
It's just a different way of looking at things. Speaking of, if the MPAA keeps insisting on following the "progress" of the RIAA, they'll be next on my shitlist. All I need is one more arrogant action or a decent distribution system for movies.
A bigger problem is that they want to control, control, control.
They want to force you to keep buying the same album. First it was oooh, look, vinyl! Then it was, if you buy a 8-track, you can play it in your car! The 8-tracks broke too much, so here's a cassette. Cassettes wear out, here's a CD. Unfortunately, CD was almost the perfect medium. They've not been able to get people to switch over to DAT or MiniDisk or DVD-Audio. And, barring some fundamental switch in technology, they won't be able to.
Enter electronic music. People want to download digital bits of music to their portable players -- but the RIAA hasn't figured out a way to get them to pay for it. Preferably, pay for it for each player, and pay for it each time it's played.
But, they aren't looking at what people want and are willing to pay. I'd pay $5 for a CD, and I'd think it was fair for something that costs less to make than a cassette that costs an exhorbitantly high $8-10. As it is, I buy no CDs. I'd buy a track online in mp3 format for about $0.25. I'd buy just about everything I want if they were about $0.05. Again, I think this is a fair price for something that costs very little to distribute. I won't pay $1.00 for a track that is in a propriatary, protected format, and I won't pay $0.25 or even $0.05 for a song I can only listen to once or twice.
I'm extremely distressed at the back catalogs I can't buy -- even if I want to, and the music they won't sell me at any price, and don't want me to get, like b-sides on CD Singles released only in Germany. I'm even more distressed by the insane profits the music industry makes, and the way they keep trying to squeeze yet more profit out of the consumers.
No, but the funny thing is, if this is passed, many of their favorite tools will disappear.
Let's examine the bill for a minute.
The bill would bar the sale of any "interactive digital device" that did not have the anti-piracy technology built in.
If you notice, they mean any hardware or software capable of storing, retrieving, processing, performing, transmitting, receiving or copying information in digital form. This pretty much means every piece of software you or I write. Even a very simple program that takes any form of input at least temporarily stores, processes and copies information in a digital form. So, if you write a program, even something very simple like an ftp client, you've got to put this special copy protection in there -- not copy protection against your software, but copy protection against copying other stuff. What do you want to bet this stuff isn't going to be free? What do you want to bet it's not going to be easy to obtain either, because if you hold the keys and the locks, cracking becomes a very trivial matter.
Basically, this kills all free software, all small software shops, all independent developers, all students of computer science -- bascially brings the tech sector to a hault, except for a few very large and very rich companies.
We won't have to worry about stopping them from using Open Source, they won't be able to use it at all -- especially if the new computers won't allow you to run any software that doesn't have the SSSCA stuff in it.
This is a bad, bad law, and will force components to carry the copying protection where it's absolutely not nessessary -- like in the OBD (emissions) computer in your car, as it stores, processes and transmits digital data. Somehow, I don't think anyone's going to be putting their MP3s or Divx's there.
When we come up with scenarios and movies like this, everyone assumes we are being absurd, alarmist, or irrational.
Somehow, we've not only got to create these things, but we have to make Joe Sixpack understand that what we're saying is not hyperbole. Sadly, if we don't act quick, the media providers will do it for us -- only it will be too late.
And I wonder why I still buy music from them..
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RIAA to DoS Pirates?
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· Score: 2
I've never seen an industry or major manufacturer so damn hostile to the people that puts money in it's pocket, not even General Motors (they just don't care about the customer -- they don't try to bugger him) or Microsoft (evil, but not overtly hostile to people that use their product).
Some days I wonder why I still buy music from them -- oh wait, I don't. Haven't ever purchased a GM automobile or recently purchased any MS software either. Don't plan on purchasing any of the above any time soon unless I see a fundamental change of business.
Note to the RIAA, if you are listening: I don't want to pay $20 for a CD, especially when only a dollar or two at best goes back to the artist. I don't appreciate not being able to purchase certain items from your back catalog, even in a medium that costs you no money. I really don't like this new "War on Pirates" thing you're pursuing. I'm not a pirate, but you just might make me one.
and have far reaching consequences. It may indeed, be exactly what we are looking for.
Many here on Slashdot have wondered why the RIAA and the collective labels aren't considered a racketeering organization, considering they have consistently engaged in racketeering like behavior. This may very well be the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. I am not a lawyer, but if it's true that you lose your rights to copyright if you engage in racketeering behavior may have some serious ramifications -- especially since they've been lobbying to keep it pretty much in their control forever.
I wonder if this means that the songs have to go back to the artist or if they immediately slip into the public domain. I also wonder if they will pursue other legal action in light of this behavior. At the very least, it should be the first thing in a long time that should make the RIAA reconsider it's actions, as well as the MPAA and other organizations with a vested control in copyright.
Give 'em just enough rope to hang themselves, it's never been truer.
is that Congress will sell out the entire technology sector and presumeably everyone and anything else to protect the profits of one sector -- the entertainment sector.
I don't know about special countdown timers, because it's been about eight years since I was a DJ.
However, most of our songs were listed in this format:
0:12/3:45/0:45 [name of song] F
This meant the song had 12 seconds of lead-in time before the singer started singing, 3 minutes and 45 seconds of actual runtime, and 45 seconds of trailing music where the artist didn't sing at all -- the leading and trailing music could be cut off entirely or talked over, your descretion. Also, sometimes there was a notation, like "start at:35", meaning that the first 35 seconds were stuff the radio station didn't want played, like the low sound effects and music at the beginning of Sarah McLachlan's Possession. The "F" just meant that the song faded out, if it ended cold (meaning it just stops, no fade, see "Hazy Shade of Winter"), it was labeled "C".
Yes, that's true, but stations have no problem dropping songs to make sure all the commericals get played. I never heard a DJ get hammered for talking too much, unless it became rediculous -- like five or ten minutes without doing PSAs or announcements or voice commericals.
In fact, in every hour's playlist (you didn't think the DJ picks the songs, did you? They are all picked by computer) there are always a few very old songs ('C' and 'D' songs) that if there's enough time, they'll be played -- if not, they get dropped.
Lyrics.ch was a great resource before the HFA ruined it about three years ago.
During it's heyday (late 1998, IIRC), it was my only site for music resources and lyrics. I'd download the mp3, and printout the lyrics for digesting at my leisure. If I really enjoyed hte music, I'd buy it. I find music infintely more enjoyable when I can understand what's being said and can interpret the music.
Then, the Harry Fox Agency decided that lyrics.ch was making money off it's copyright, and that was bad, bad, bad. Never mind that lyrics.ch only made enough money to keep the site open, and never mind that the people downloading these lyrics were primarily doing so for their own fair use.
The ideal thing to do, would have been to say "hey, this thing works, rather well in fact, and people like it." Make sure you're tracking the songs people look at, and charge lyrics.ch for the royalties -- if money became a big problem, make it a subscribtion site. But, no, HFA had to kill it outright. They were so worried that someone would print out their valuable lyrics (even if the royalty was paid) that they crippled the site entirely. First, they took it down for almost a year, which is an eternity in internet time, allowing many people to forget about it and many others to find alternate sources (like google). When it came up, you couldn't print the lyrics, and you couldn't copy and paste them to print them. Add to that, the lyrics scrolled at a rate inconsistent with the beat of the song and was uncontrollable. Utterly useless. So, people stopped coming around. Now, HFA says there isn't enough demand to keep it open. No shit dumbass, I wonder why.
So, HFA could have done it right, gotten itself richer and enriched artists in the process. Instead it insisted on being draconian with it's IP and now artists as well as the HFA are suffering because people haven't stopped looking for lyrics, they just look for them in places other than lyrics.ch -- places where they can actually use the lyrics they download.
I used to be a DJ, so I can answer this question. First, let me say that radio today is really a monopoly, or at least a racketeering system -- only about two or three very large companies own most of the big radio stations in the nation.
When I started, I was instructed to talk over the beginning of the song. The reason for this was that most people don't recognise the beginning of the song (maybe because all the DJ's talk over it?) so listeners might change the station looking for something else, and you're not really wrecking the song, because you don't have two voices competing for attention (crosstalk is very hard to understand). It also kept us from playing background music while we talked (if you notice, almost no DJ just talks without something going on the background -- supposedly it makes the patter more interesting to the ADHD listeners). We all hated the background beats, which were universally lame, so we talked over the song instead. Keep in mind, it was considered really amazing if you could consistently "nail" your patter so it stopped just as the singer starting singing. The problem with is is, sometimes you slip and talk over the beginning of the song -- which was very, very bad. I really don't think that this was some lame form of copy protection, it was just trying to keep listeners.
Which, of course, is the reason they don't tell you what song is playing. Perversely, you usually aren't allowed to "back announce" any songs on the radio. This is because you are supposed to focus on what you are going to be playing, not what you've already played. The logic is, if you talk about upcoming songs, people stick around to hear those songs, if you talk about the ones previously played, they go looking elsewhere because the song they wanted to hear was just played. You also aren't allowed to cut in in the middle of a block of music to announce songs, because people want to hear music, not you talking. On top of that, you're supposed to call attention to the lastest hit (called an 'A' or 'B' song), so you only announce it, and not the songs that follow. Using the logic above, only the first song gets announced, and you never know what's played after it. Of course, you can always call the DJ -- but they never answer the phone, because listeners who call in represent a very small minority and aren't important. As a DJ I was allowed to do whatever I wanted with callers, ignore them, abuse them, ask for nudie pictures, you name it.
I've been doing this for over a year now. I finally got fed up with the gestapo tactics and racketeering of the RIAA, so I stopped putting money in their pockets. Unfortunately, that means that I have to suffer a bit, and the artists also don't get any money from me, and if anyone asks me for a CD as a present, I can't buy it for them.
I wish I could say it's working... but I'm not ready to give up yet, though this month will be hard with both Tori Amos and garbage releasing new CDs.
Slashdot Mirror
Dear Senator Hutchinson,
I will keep this short as I know you are a busy woman and have limited time. I need to know where you stand on Sen. Fritz Hollings' proposed Security Systems Standards and Certification Act (SSSCA).
This is a very important legislation to me, and I feel that voting for it could very well send our economy into another recession as we sell out the trillion dollar tech industry (which everyone seems to think is the future of our economy) to the billion dollar entertainment industry.
I'll put it in a sound bite for you: "Today I was watching CNN and everyone was concerned that an energy company named Enron had been responsible for legislation pertaining to the energy industry. What you have here is the copyright industry writing the very laws that pertain to the copyright industry. It was bad in the case of Enron, and it's no better here."
I will tell you that if this law does pass, and you do vote for it, I will make it a point to vote against you in the next election -- regardless of who is running against you, and I will make every attempt to convince friends and family to do the same.
Sincerely,
K. Jack McCauley
[contact info removed]
Maybe this is what the tech community needs to wake them up and actually go out to the voting polls. I already vote, but I promise you, if I did not, this law would compel me to get out and vote. I'd vote for a brain-dead hamster before I let Hollings get my vote.
The RIAA and MPAA already see none of my current salary. If this crazy, insane law gets passed, I'll spend the next eighteen months or so saving as much as I can and buying as much non-crippled hardware as I can and then moving somewhere like Antigua, where I can be fairly happy (already have friends there), where they don't believe in copyright, and grab Direct TV's signal without paying for it.
It does sound like a conspiracy theory, but listen to it this way: "If you want your music to be heard on the latest generation of equipment, you just have to sign with us." It makes a certain, twisted sense, but I think it's just an unintended, but welcome side effect.
Though, I think it will cause a lot of talent to either go outside the country or stagnate.
It's almost tragically funny, I just heard on CNN that it didn't make sense that an energy company like Enron was actively making energy policy, but here we have copyright companys trying to actively make copyright policy. And, no one seems to understand why this is bad.
Here's my deal, and how music sharing could help now and in the future. First, let me say that I hate paying for intellectual property, and I pirate -- a lot. However, I also purchase a lot. If you come to my house, you'll find several hundred CDs, almost that many DVDs, a literal ton of VHS tapes, some laserdiscs, some cassettes, and shelf upon shelf of books.
The reason I buy is because many times the store bought copy is better. Reading a book on the computer screen hurts my head, and printing it out (expensive) isn't as good as having a properly bound book in my hands. DVDs typically have nice menus, or extras, or the quality is better than I can download. Even when I can download an exact copy, it still goes on a CD-R, and never looks as good as the store bought version. Besides, having my CD collection displayed alongside my DVD collection says something about me and my tastes, much as the art on my walls does. I enjoy people digging through my collection and saying "wow, I didn't know you had/enjoyed/listened to this."
At one time, when I was in college, pirating was easy. I had the free time to search newsgroups and lurk on IRC and make friends with the people who ran in pirated media. I did not have money, so it made sense at the time -- though I still purchased media when I could. However, as I've gotten older, I have less time but more money. I no longer have those friends that traffic in illicit goods, because I'm no longer "known". I don't find out the new sites or the hot servers, and I don't find it's worth the time and effort to go find them -- I'll go buy LOTR for $20 instead.
And, I did buy more music with Napster, even though I was pirating more music than ever before. A 128kbps mp3 is certainly good enough for 90% of my listening, but there are times when I want that extra quality, and I will pay for it. There's some music I like to hear a couple of times, but I'm never going to actually buy -- at any price. And, it does allow me to look at artists that I'm curious about -- but have never heard before. When I was in college, I used to spend hours at the used CD store just listening to music I hadn't heard. When I was in high school, I lamented the fact that I was buying ten cassettes only to find that only four of them were any good -- and I didn't have the money to spend. I remember not buying many CDs (some of which I later found out were excellent) because I just didn't know if I would enjoy them. There was no "try before you buy", just "buy and get screwed". I bought more with Napster just because I was exposed to more. I was able to expand into genres (such as jazz) that I'd been interested in for years, but was having trouble finding an "introduction".
I'm 28 now. I file share. I pirate. But I spend a ton of money on intellictual property. I pirate because I could spend my entire income and still not be able to see all the movies I want to see, listen to all the music I want to hear, read all the books I want to read, or play all the games I want to play. File sharing gives me a solution to that problem, but it will never be a replacement.
Maybe you should check out the Discus 40 or 20 at http://www.discgear.com/ Sounds exactly like what you're looking for. I use it to store CDs in my car, and they are wonderful, compact units.
The vast majority will not pay for Napster. Which is a shame, because the artists will go on being cheated, and the RIAA will say "people won't pay money for downloaded music -- especially when a free alternative exists." This is not nessessarily true.
I would have paid a fee for what Napster was back in it's heyday. I still think it was better in it's prime than Morpheus is today. But, I digress. Napster could have been better than it ever was. Imagine if it was the same old Napster, with the same old trading files. But, for a nominal fee, you could download anything you wanted, from any label, at any bitrate, in
I refuse to pay money for encrypted, propriatary format files, no matter how good they may be. I refuse to pay money for partial files, incomplete downloads, questionable quality files that I can't do as I wish with.
Why can't they get it? I have no idea.
You've got a very good point. However, the prudent thing to do would not be pulling the car over right fscking now because the fuel in the tank is going to run out eventually. Sometimes the enviromentalists forget this.
You might as well say the gauge is busted rather than giving us the benefit of the doubt -- we don't know if we're on a full tank or a half tank.
Now, the other thing to consider is that there might be a shop up the road that can retrofit our gasoline burning car to run on something else completely. The problem is, we don't know the road ahead, we don't know how much is in the tank, and stopping the car or slowing it down could actually do more harm than good.
There have already been studies done with people that wore lenses that inverted their vision. They were forced to wear these lenses for weeks at a time. After about a week, their vision righted itself -- they saw perfectly normal. Of course, when they removed the spectacles, they had to readjust again.
Provided all the information is intact, I don't doubt that the brain could unscramble it. I would imagine when we were newborns we couldn't see too well either -- we just don't remember it.
Can I tell the difference between a well-coded MP3, an audio CD, and a DVD-Audio disk? Sure, in a back-to-back comparison. In a double-blind, single test case? No. I get no better than I would by simply guessing. I promise you, Joe Sixpack isn't going to be able to tell at all -- and that's partially what's moving the sales of mp3 players. It's a more convienent format than CD-ROM, and it sounds "good enough".
They are going to have a hard time getting DVD-Audio and SACD any kind of real market penetration. Remember Minidisk? It even allowed you the ability to make compilations (horrors!) and copy, well before a CD-R was a common-place invention. The general public didn't pick up on it, because there was no compelling reason to replace the massive CD collection they'd built up over the years. The problem the record companies have is that they have built almost the perfect physical distribution system for music. I don't really care about extras on my CDs, they are cool, but I watch them once, maybe twice, say "hey, how neat", and I never look at it again. Even the Sarah McLachlan enhanced CD I have with videos and everything gets treated like every other audio CD I have. I wouldn't have paid extra for the video. CDs are fairly indestructable, have great quality, don't degrade over time or extended use, playable almost everywhere, small enough, portable enough, and now, easily copyable. I have a hard time thinking of how to improve on CDs, short of putting them in a permanent caddy, but then that increases the size, and now there's added cost and moving parts. MP3 is the first thing that's really challenged CDs, and that's because they are MORE portable than a CD, they sound "good enough", and there's no real chance of monetary investment loss. It's a perfect medium for the consumer, and look how popular it's become without any kind of advertising, strong industry support, etc. The record companies will have a hard time now selling any digital music in copy-protected format, because people are getting used to listening to their music where ever they want, having an extra expendable copy for the car, having it on the PC at work in MP3, and on their Rio for jogging. Notice their crackdown on file-sharing sites... CD sales are down. DVD sales are up, so I don't think it's the economy, people are just shifting their entertainment dollars to a seemingly less hostile industry.
Honestly, I don't understand the strong-arm tactics employed here. In a free economy, you don't stay in business by being overtly hostile to your best customers. Perhaps the problem is that CDs aren't in a free economy, and haven't been in 60 years, and the RIAA has gotten used to telling customers what they will like and what they will do. Most consumer items I can think of are either greatly improved from their counterparts fifteen years ago or significantly cheaper -- sometimes both. Why are CDs exactly the same and more expensive?
Never use FedEX to ship jewelry unless it is an emergency and must be there overnight. They won't insure it. Granted, they only have 24 hours to lose it, but if you're shipping $10,000 worth of wedding rings (like I did), it's a real tense 24 hours. Luckily, my homeowner's insurance would have covered it if anything had happened -- but I didn't know it at the time.
I would think a lawsuit like this is exactly the kind of thing UPS's corporate lawyers would hate to face. Take them to civil court, where the burden of proof is less, and make sure to get a jury trial. Think about it, if you're sitting on a jury and see pictures like these, who are you going to side with? Some multi-billion dollar company that's probably messed up some of your packages, or the poor guy that got his computer stuff deliberately smashed up?
Is it hard? Yeah, at first. It's real hard knowing you're not going to be buying the latest CD by your favorite artist, and you won't be the first on your street to have it - but really, what is it worth? I still listen to music, I still listen to all my old CDs, and my vast collection of MP3s, which I might add, grows larger every day. I'm not buying the CD, so I'm downloading mp3s wherever I can find them. If I enjoy the music enough, I'll start looking for it at the local used CD store. If I find it, I'll buy it, if not, I'll do without. If I can't find the CD in a reasonable amount of time, I'll send a couple of dollars to the artist or delete the mp3s completely.
It's just a different way of looking at things. Speaking of, if the MPAA keeps insisting on following the "progress" of the RIAA, they'll be next on my shitlist. All I need is one more arrogant action or a decent distribution system for movies.
They want to force you to keep buying the same album. First it was oooh, look, vinyl! Then it was, if you buy a 8-track, you can play it in your car! The 8-tracks broke too much, so here's a cassette. Cassettes wear out, here's a CD. Unfortunately, CD was almost the perfect medium. They've not been able to get people to switch over to DAT or MiniDisk or DVD-Audio. And, barring some fundamental switch in technology, they won't be able to.
Enter electronic music. People want to download digital bits of music to their portable players -- but the RIAA hasn't figured out a way to get them to pay for it. Preferably, pay for it for each player, and pay for it each time it's played.
But, they aren't looking at what people want and are willing to pay. I'd pay $5 for a CD, and I'd think it was fair for something that costs less to make than a cassette that costs an exhorbitantly high $8-10. As it is, I buy no CDs. I'd buy a track online in mp3 format for about $0.25. I'd buy just about everything I want if they were about $0.05. Again, I think this is a fair price for something that costs very little to distribute. I won't pay $1.00 for a track that is in a propriatary, protected format, and I won't pay $0.25 or even $0.05 for a song I can only listen to once or twice.
I'm extremely distressed at the back catalogs I can't buy -- even if I want to, and the music they won't sell me at any price, and don't want me to get, like b-sides on CD Singles released only in Germany. I'm even more distressed by the insane profits the music industry makes, and the way they keep trying to squeeze yet more profit out of the consumers.
Let's examine the bill for a minute.
The bill would bar the sale of any "interactive digital device" that did not have the anti-piracy technology built in.
If you notice, they mean any hardware or software capable of storing, retrieving, processing, performing, transmitting, receiving or copying information in digital form. This pretty much means every piece of software you or I write. Even a very simple program that takes any form of input at least temporarily stores, processes and copies information in a digital form. So, if you write a program, even something very simple like an ftp client, you've got to put this special copy protection in there -- not copy protection against your software, but copy protection against copying other stuff. What do you want to bet this stuff isn't going to be free? What do you want to bet it's not going to be easy to obtain either, because if you hold the keys and the locks, cracking becomes a very trivial matter.
Basically, this kills all free software, all small software shops, all independent developers, all students of computer science -- bascially brings the tech sector to a hault, except for a few very large and very rich companies.
We won't have to worry about stopping them from using Open Source, they won't be able to use it at all -- especially if the new computers won't allow you to run any software that doesn't have the SSSCA stuff in it.
This is a bad, bad law, and will force components to carry the copying protection where it's absolutely not nessessary -- like in the OBD (emissions) computer in your car, as it stores, processes and transmits digital data. Somehow, I don't think anyone's going to be putting their MP3s or Divx's there.
Somehow, we've not only got to create these things, but we have to make Joe Sixpack understand that what we're saying is not hyperbole. Sadly, if we don't act quick, the media providers will do it for us -- only it will be too late.
Some days I wonder why I still buy music from them -- oh wait, I don't. Haven't ever purchased a GM automobile or recently purchased any MS software either. Don't plan on purchasing any of the above any time soon unless I see a fundamental change of business.
Note to the RIAA, if you are listening: I don't want to pay $20 for a CD, especially when only a dollar or two at best goes back to the artist. I don't appreciate not being able to purchase certain items from your back catalog, even in a medium that costs you no money. I really don't like this new "War on Pirates" thing you're pursuing. I'm not a pirate, but you just might make me one.
Many here on Slashdot have wondered why the RIAA and the collective labels aren't considered a racketeering organization, considering they have consistently engaged in racketeering like behavior. This may very well be the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. I am not a lawyer, but if it's true that you lose your rights to copyright if you engage in racketeering behavior may have some serious ramifications -- especially since they've been lobbying to keep it pretty much in their control forever.
I wonder if this means that the songs have to go back to the artist or if they immediately slip into the public domain. I also wonder if they will pursue other legal action in light of this behavior. At the very least, it should be the first thing in a long time that should make the RIAA reconsider it's actions, as well as the MPAA and other organizations with a vested control in copyright.
Give 'em just enough rope to hang themselves, it's never been truer.
is that Congress will sell out the entire technology sector and presumeably everyone and anything else to protect the profits of one sector -- the entertainment sector.
However, most of our songs were listed in this format:
0:12/3:45/0:45 [name of song] F
This meant the song had 12 seconds of lead-in time before the singer started singing, 3 minutes and 45 seconds of actual runtime, and 45 seconds of trailing music where the artist didn't sing at all -- the leading and trailing music could be cut off entirely or talked over, your descretion. Also, sometimes there was a notation, like "start at
In fact, in every hour's playlist (you didn't think the DJ picks the songs, did you? They are all picked by computer) there are always a few very old songs ('C' and 'D' songs) that if there's enough time, they'll be played -- if not, they get dropped.
During it's heyday (late 1998, IIRC), it was my only site for music resources and lyrics. I'd download the mp3, and printout the lyrics for digesting at my leisure. If I really enjoyed hte music, I'd buy it. I find music infintely more enjoyable when I can understand what's being said and can interpret the music.
Then, the Harry Fox Agency decided that lyrics.ch was making money off it's copyright, and that was bad, bad, bad. Never mind that lyrics.ch only made enough money to keep the site open, and never mind that the people downloading these lyrics were primarily doing so for their own fair use.
The ideal thing to do, would have been to say "hey, this thing works, rather well in fact, and people like it." Make sure you're tracking the songs people look at, and charge lyrics.ch for the royalties -- if money became a big problem, make it a subscribtion site. But, no, HFA had to kill it outright. They were so worried that someone would print out their valuable lyrics (even if the royalty was paid) that they crippled the site entirely. First, they took it down for almost a year, which is an eternity in internet time, allowing many people to forget about it and many others to find alternate sources (like google). When it came up, you couldn't print the lyrics, and you couldn't copy and paste them to print them. Add to that, the lyrics scrolled at a rate inconsistent with the beat of the song and was uncontrollable. Utterly useless. So, people stopped coming around. Now, HFA says there isn't enough demand to keep it open. No shit dumbass, I wonder why.
So, HFA could have done it right, gotten itself richer and enriched artists in the process. Instead it insisted on being draconian with it's IP and now artists as well as the HFA are suffering because people haven't stopped looking for lyrics, they just look for them in places other than lyrics.ch -- places where they can actually use the lyrics they download.
When I started, I was instructed to talk over the beginning of the song. The reason for this was that most people don't recognise the beginning of the song (maybe because all the DJ's talk over it?) so listeners might change the station looking for something else, and you're not really wrecking the song, because you don't have two voices competing for attention (crosstalk is very hard to understand). It also kept us from playing background music while we talked (if you notice, almost no DJ just talks without something going on the background -- supposedly it makes the patter more interesting to the ADHD listeners). We all hated the background beats, which were universally lame, so we talked over the song instead. Keep in mind, it was considered really amazing if you could consistently "nail" your patter so it stopped just as the singer starting singing. The problem with is is, sometimes you slip and talk over the beginning of the song -- which was very, very bad. I really don't think that this was some lame form of copy protection, it was just trying to keep listeners.
Which, of course, is the reason they don't tell you what song is playing. Perversely, you usually aren't allowed to "back announce" any songs on the radio. This is because you are supposed to focus on what you are going to be playing, not what you've already played. The logic is, if you talk about upcoming songs, people stick around to hear those songs, if you talk about the ones previously played, they go looking elsewhere because the song they wanted to hear was just played. You also aren't allowed to cut in in the middle of a block of music to announce songs, because people want to hear music, not you talking. On top of that, you're supposed to call attention to the lastest hit (called an 'A' or 'B' song), so you only announce it, and not the songs that follow. Using the logic above, only the first song gets announced, and you never know what's played after it. Of course, you can always call the DJ -- but they never answer the phone, because listeners who call in represent a very small minority and aren't important. As a DJ I was allowed to do whatever I wanted with callers, ignore them, abuse them, ask for nudie pictures, you name it.
Perverse logic, I know, but that's the why of it.
I wish I could say it's working... but I'm not ready to give up yet, though this month will be hard with both Tori Amos and garbage releasing new CDs.