I think what NSI is trying to do is to establish ownership over the database, as opposed to the information that's in it. It's widely known that facts can't be copyrighted, but the presentation of those facts might be a different matter. So I suspect that NSI's thinking is that they don't want anybody to be able to systematically poll the database in order to create a copy of it.
Obviously, if you look up a domain name, you're free to do whatever you want with the results. If you look up ten names, then the same thing probably applies. But if you wrote a script to query all domain names, take the contact info and create your own databse, then that might well fall under copyright protection.
If that's all accurate, then it's probably for the good. I get spam and junk snail mail that obviously originated from my domain registrations. The fewer people who have replicas of the registration database, the better.
I'm not sure how much legal history there is on this stuff, unfortunately.
I wonder though, is it permissable to have banners elsewhere on the site, just not on the download pages?
Interesting question. What defines a "site"? What if I set up a site with banners, etc, and link your free download site within a frame? Legally, I'd argue that I'm not providing the downloads, and you'd argue that you're not making money. You could perhaps sue me, but that wouldn't do the Dead any good.
Fact is, if anybody's looking for clear bright legal lines, they're going to have trouble finding them. This will evolve in a very informal manner. The Dead have expressed their support for trading in non-commercial settings. That gives them the moral authority to decide what's cool and what's not, and their fans have a history or more or less acceeding to what the band wants. For example, if they decided that a "framing" site as described above was not cool, they could take some action. But even if legal action were pursued against a few sites, and whether it were successful or not, the overall effect of the policy will be to keep the number of offending sites to a minimum.
Go to Real's web site, and the press release (http://www.real.com/company/pressroom/pr/99/rj_la unch.html) note that the JukeBox will only encode at 96Kbps.
So, what you have is a player that will play any MP3 format, will play Real streaming content, Real's commercial format, and will do basic radio-quality MP3 encoding. Pretty useful.
If Real can succeed in becoming the default MP3 player for a lot of people, they stand to endear themselves to the music industry. Any CD that gets ripped at 96K instead of 192K is one less headache for copyright holders. It also would provide a boost to Real's streaming formats, and in turn to their proprietary formats. The latter is the new market that they want to develop.
The music industry seem to understand that they can't kill MP3 entirely; instead, the focus is on cooexisting and creating a medium that they can sell. A recent Wall Street Journal editorial on the subject suggested that the industry's approach would be to make it easier to purchase a downloadable file than to find an equal-quality pirate version of a particular work.
By making a player/ripper that the music industry can live with, and which will be useful to a very wide audience, Real seems to have found a good compromise. They know that people will use MP3 anyway, so they want to make sure they use it on Real players.
Of course, to appreciate the strategy, you have to have to let go of the hacker point of view a bit. Remember that in the mass market that the music industry is aiming for, most folks out there just want something that works easily, while quality and flexibility are secondary for most consumers. Real's solution is aimed at the Windows/iMac consumer, the people who go out to CompUSA on a Saturday afternoon and pile a computer, printer, and monitor on top of a shopping cart.
If this study were bought and paid for by Microsoft, it wouldn't be the first time. Still, the only people who would benefit from a breakup are Microsoft's competitors. Consumers wouldn't benefit in aggregate. Many companies want a vertically-owned system, from OS to Office to SQL to Exchange. Microsoft provides it. So let 'em. For those who don't want that, there's already Linux and a zillion Unix variants. There's no way to structure an intellectual property based industry to work the way free software does, no matter how hard they try.
One Microsoft is enough, one Windows product line is already more than most support techs can handle. Forget 'em, or maybe make 'em publish certain interface specs, and get on with life.
It's been interesting watching the media try to link this to the Internet. Even when there's no information, they seem to think these kids must have been "on the Internet". It has become a mandatory angle on every story about every delinquent in our society, even if it isn't relevant.
These kids sound like they had relatively little to do with the 'net, yet everybody is looking for the connection. Matt Drudge fell for AOL hoaxes. CNN reported how you can learn to make a bomb on the 'net (then later explained how pipe bombs are made).
After two days, all they've found is one personal web page of dubious origin. "How could this have been overlooked?" they ask. Well, pretty easily, as anybody who has ever published a personal page will tell you. It's the modern equivalent of putting posters on your dorm room door, except fewer people are likely to see it.
That said, the 'net is a wonderful complement to real life, not a substitute for it. People whose social interactions consist primarily of online chats with strangers can easily lose touch with reality. Friendships that exist entirely on-line rarely have any depth. So, there's some value to keeping an eye on this angle, as more and more people fall off the edge of reality. But the lesson is not that the 'net is bad, it's that real-life human interaction is good.
Slashdot Mirror
I think what NSI is trying to do is to establish ownership over the database, as opposed to the information that's in it. It's widely known that facts can't be copyrighted, but the presentation of those facts might be a different matter. So I suspect that NSI's thinking is that they don't want anybody to be able to systematically poll the database in order to create a copy of it.
Obviously, if you look up a domain name, you're free to do whatever you want with the results. If you look up ten names, then the same thing probably applies. But if you wrote a script to query all domain names, take the contact info and create your own databse, then that might well fall under copyright protection.
If that's all accurate, then it's probably for the good. I get spam and junk snail mail that obviously originated from my domain registrations. The fewer people who have replicas of the registration database, the better.
I'm not sure how much legal history there is on this stuff, unfortunately.
Interesting question. What defines a "site"? What if I set up a site with banners, etc, and link your free download site within a frame? Legally, I'd argue that I'm not providing the downloads, and you'd argue that you're not making money. You could perhaps sue me, but that wouldn't do the Dead any good.
Fact is, if anybody's looking for clear bright legal lines, they're going to have trouble finding them. This will evolve in a very informal manner. The Dead have expressed their support for trading in non-commercial settings. That gives them the moral authority to decide what's cool and what's not, and their fans have a history or more or less acceeding to what the band wants. For example, if they decided that a "framing" site as described above was not cool, they could take some action. But even if legal action were pursued against a few sites, and whether it were successful or not, the overall effect of the policy will be to keep the number of offending sites to a minimum.
It's a nice way to do business.
Go to Real's web site, and the press release (http://www.real.com/company/pressroom/pr/99/rj_la unch.html) note that the JukeBox will only encode at 96Kbps.
So, what you have is a player that will play any MP3 format, will play Real streaming content, Real's commercial format, and will do basic radio-quality MP3 encoding. Pretty useful.
If Real can succeed in becoming the default MP3 player for a lot of people, they stand to endear themselves to the music industry. Any CD that gets ripped at 96K instead of 192K is one less headache for copyright holders. It also would provide a boost to Real's streaming formats, and in turn to their proprietary formats. The latter is the new market that they want to develop.
The music industry seem to understand that they can't kill MP3 entirely; instead, the focus is on cooexisting and creating a medium that they can sell. A recent Wall Street Journal editorial on the subject suggested that the industry's approach would be to make it easier to purchase a downloadable file than to find an equal-quality pirate version of a particular work.
By making a player/ripper that the music industry can live with, and which will be useful to a very wide audience, Real seems to have found a good compromise. They know that people will use MP3 anyway, so they want to make sure they use it on Real players.
Of course, to appreciate the strategy, you have to have to let go of the hacker point of view a bit. Remember that in the mass market that the music industry is aiming for, most folks out there just want something that works easily, while quality and flexibility are secondary for most consumers. Real's solution is aimed at the Windows/iMac consumer, the people who go out to CompUSA on a Saturday afternoon and pile a computer, printer, and monitor on top of a shopping cart.
If this study were bought and paid for by Microsoft, it wouldn't be the first time. Still, the only people who would benefit from a breakup are Microsoft's competitors. Consumers wouldn't benefit in aggregate. Many companies want a vertically-owned system, from OS to Office to SQL to Exchange. Microsoft provides it. So let 'em. For those who don't want that, there's already Linux and a zillion Unix variants. There's no way to structure an intellectual property based industry to work the way free software does, no matter how hard they try.
One Microsoft is enough, one Windows product line is already more than most support techs can handle. Forget 'em, or maybe make 'em publish certain interface specs, and get on with life.
It's been interesting watching the media try to link this to the Internet. Even when there's no information, they seem to think these kids must have been "on the Internet". It has become a mandatory angle on every story about every delinquent in our society, even if it isn't relevant.
These kids sound like they had relatively little to do with the 'net, yet everybody is looking for the connection. Matt Drudge fell for AOL hoaxes. CNN reported how you can learn to make a bomb on the 'net (then later explained how pipe bombs are made).
After two days, all they've found is one personal web page of dubious origin. "How could this have been overlooked?" they ask. Well, pretty easily, as anybody who has ever published a personal page will tell you. It's the modern equivalent of putting posters on your dorm room door, except fewer people are likely to see it.
That said, the 'net is a wonderful complement to real life, not a substitute for it. People whose social interactions consist primarily of online chats with strangers can easily lose touch with reality. Friendships that exist entirely on-line rarely have any depth. So, there's some value to keeping an eye on this angle, as more and more people fall off the edge of reality. But the lesson is not that the 'net is bad, it's that real-life human interaction is good.