Ozzies (which are Australians *and* people from New Zealand)
You might ponder on the other spelling of "Ozzies" ("Aussies"), and reconsider that statement.
I'm afraid that, like it or not, the stereotype of the Americans being insular is well deserved. Considering how far most of the population have to travel before they have to speak a different language, this is understandable. However, it is a shame they can't take a joke - note the "Troll" rating, despite the fact that the rest of the world really does consider the "World Series" as a laughably self-important title considering the number of different countries that participate.
I think the initial post is fair enough, although it does not apply here. The AOL Time Warner merger was investigated before approval because of the known concern of allowing significant business interests from distinct markets combining in such a way as to allow abuse of market position. A cable company and an ISP combining to use their strong position in one market to help control another is bad.
Radio stations not carrying commercials for other stations is an instance of using your position in ONE market to improve/maintain position in the SAME market. Not across markets.
But another couple of posts make that point above. Why have you ignored these posts and why was this one modded up?
I'm looking forward to all the fervent censorship sites having all the words they disapprove of instantly converted into working pr0n links...
Good idea, although I would link all the words they do approve of to a pr0n link.
Use bad words, or use bad links. What's your poison?
Actually, it raises the issue that no doubt most companies would rather "sex" linked, if anything, to a sex education site. There will be a way to control this - perhaps not infallible but it will be there, and for the most part people will approve of it. In other words MS gets popular support in filtering the chosen links for a given word. Even though they state that other people/companies are free to develop their own additions to the list, it will still tend over time to link back to MS.
Note that I would approve of this functionality if the browser company had no particularly strong vested interest in redirecting the consumer in a particular direction. Certainly there are enough reasons to expect abuse of this service that it should not be introduced automatically into the vast majority of computer systems, by a company leveraging market domination to its own ends.
The net is more than just about speech, it cover such areas as publishing, privacy, advertising (hello, spammers of the world), telecommunications (e.g. as the carrier vs publisher debate), copyright, and generally touches upon most if not all facets of human life that have laws set down in the various countries of the world.
Saying that it should not be regulated is like saying people should not be rude to each other, and equally effective. Whether the net should be regulated is a question already answered in the practical terms of, "Like it or not, it is regulated."
So the question just becomes, "To what extent and in what manner should the net be regulated?"
How about we look at the actual data? And that in particular, none of the answers state whether or not the respondant has purchased more or less music as a result of downloading music.
95% of all respondents said that they had never paid for a music download.
Okay, the basis of the whole discussion.
71% said they would not pay for a download.
Doesn't mean much, but does imply that downloads are viewed as a way of paying less for music (which personally I think should be the case but that's not the debate here). Dangerously laying ground for the RIAA'a argument that less money gets spent on CD's as a result of Napster.
Of those who would pay for a download, on average, they would be prepared to pay $3.85 per track
Whether that's a fair price is irrelevant, here the respondents would not be willing to pay for a download what they would for a CD single.
86% of all respondents believe that downloading tracks HAD NOT stopped them buying the album that had featured those tracks.
86% of all respondents said that they HAD purchased a CD album as a direct result of downloading free tracks from it.
Let's deal with these two together. On the basis of the second response, that a sizeable majority had - wonder of wonders - purchased an entire CD album as a result of enjoying a downloaded track or two, the same majority could justifiably state that downloading tracks HAD NOT stopped them from purchasing an album featuring those tracks. In other words, these facts mean absolutely nothing. (If you want to be really predantic, it is not stated as "purchasing the albums that featured those tracks" and so we are indeed talking about a single example, which tends to render all statistics null and void.)
95% of all respondents said that they would purchase concert tickets of an artist whose music they'd downloaded.
So if they like an artist they would go see them live? Amazing - but irrelevant to CD sales. The equivalent question would be, "If Napster allowed you to get into gigs for free, would you spend money on concert tickets?" (aside: the quality of music would probably improve if artists had to be good enough to earn from concerts rather than CD sales, as labels wouldn't be able to fund extravaganzas that cover up poor talent without the revenue for successful CD launches, one of the great arguments for cheaper CD's in my book)
79% of all respondents said they would purchase t-shirts or other merchandise from an artist whose music they had downloaded.
Again, a separate issue to CD's. Currently you can't download a t-shirt for nothing.
The whole thing avoids the central issue, one way of looking at it is this:
An individual buys, say, an album every week. If they use downloads as a way of choosing the next album to be purchased, then no more or less money is spent on CD's by this individual, and they can state both that they purchased albums with those tracks, and that downloading tracks had not stopped them from buying an album. RIAA revenue: unchanged.
Another individual does not have an album budget, they buy an album whenever they think they might like it. Maybe downloads let them hear it, they realise they don't like it, they buy fewer albums than before because they don't experiment with a new purchase. RIAA revenue: reduced.
Another individual again doesn't budget for CD purchases. They buy stuff when they like it, maybe they prefer the improved quality of a CD to an MP3. But they like music, most of the time the MP3 is indistinguishable from CD, and better than radio, they download a lot of music, encounter a lot of temptation, and buy a lot of albums because they get a chance to hear stuff they might not otherwise. RIAA revenue: increased.
There's a hundred ways of looking at this, and similar scenarios whereby for a given individual, more or less money is spent on albums. Because of all the facets, there's a need for a far better dataset than opinion polls.
You're correct, in saying that the government should be obliged to make the law available online. But in terms of rights, this is a completely different case to that in the US. You are saying that you do have the rights to publish the law online, but where you have taken published material that also contains extra content - this content not being part of the law - then this extra content must be removed.
The fact that the law does not state how the law should be made available makes sense. For the most part, laws are about principles and concepts, and it is left for courts and precedents to decide what is "reasonable" or "available" or whatever the qualifying adjective might be. You can't seriously expect a legislative body to have anticipated the Internet (think about it - for example Microsoft missed the boat originally), and even if they had done so ten years ago when it all started to happen, people might complain that it should be available in XML format, or via WAP. The point here is that there should be no need to be more specific than "available".
Of course, we still need government to wake up to the power of the net and the new responsibilities (and opportunities) it presents to them, in this particular example, making the law available online. But in your example, they are not preventing you from doing so, and the law is not copyrighted. (aside: being ISO compliant is not a legal requirement, and therefore that is copyrightable material. I would prefer standards to be freely available, but as we have no country or international body that people would trust to set international standards, I am for now content with ISO standards.)
There's an important difference between making it time-consuming to publish the law (by inaction), and actively making it illegal. Copyrighting the law is pretty reprehensible. It's funny, Europe is slowly waking up to people's rights, while the US is slowly forgetting about them. There seems to be a whole range of issues where one could learn from the other.
Simply because you can't do it by accident - or at least you are extremely unlikely to do so. Focusing on the technology involved would be a mistake. Simple analogy: if you walk up to someone's house, try the door and it happens to be unlocked, it is not an innocent act to then go inside and rifle through their drawers for confidential information.
Now, at least in Europe, were you able to do this then the company may be held liable for not adequately securing their data. But that just makes you both breaking the law (although I would have thought that for an individual, the consequences would likely be minor for a first offense).
Bear in mind, too, that there is a profit motive for a development house poking about another company's site for holes, so it would probably not be viewed in a favourable light either by the law or the (self-righteously offended) company concerned. You are acting as a corporate entity, not a concerned citizen, in this scenario.
But really, apart from the legal side, it's the business aspect that's important. If you find less secure competitors winning contracts when you're going head to head, make security part of your pitch. If you still loose, that's their choice, and any consequences are for them to deal with. In asking the question, it's clear that you want to handle the situation properly, but at the end of the day you get a better reputation by not criticising or hacking your competition (damning by faint praise can be rather effective). Actually, scratch that last, that can vary from culture to culture. But once a deal is signed, be wary of trying to overturn that decision at all. It smacks of desperation.
Probably the best benefit to come, were reliable and pervasive anti-plagiarism methods in place, would be the fact that everyone would feel free to share their work with each other. I've always been open with my own work, but it is annoying when others pester you with questions when you know the intention is to cheat )to a greater or lesser degree). But, if you knew that actively showing and discussing your intended submission would still require that others produce their own original work, I would tend to be even more open. The key word here being "actively" discussing your work - this allows for sharing knowledge, which is always useful in the learning process.
I've always thought it was a shame that many a piece of work I did at university is handed in, comes back with a grade and a few comments, and whether it's a good or bad grade you never really got to discuss it. For instance, imagine that for any given assignment you could look at everybody else's drafts. For any reasonably substantial work, there's little chance two people would independently come up with the same work, and there's still the option of oral discussions to clear up any doubt.
I don't think being the source of copied work is an offence (unless there were some conclusive proof of an actual profit motive) and I would expect it's easy to tell who was the author of a piece of work.
A further benefit would be that the assignments themselves would have to be written to allow proper grading of the responses - anything that has only one real answer or approach is worthless because no matter how bright you are, if someone else happens to mention what the answer is, then all you're doing is trying to find a way of paraphrasing that answer, rather than thinking about how to solve the actual problem. (can you paraphrase an algorithm? whatever the semantic equivalent is for practical assigments.)
Sorry, guys, but for all the strengths of the US, your patent office sucks.
We've been fairly successfully innovating over here for a few centuries - and if this kind of decision is anything to go by, you're going to lose the lead you have on us currently.
No software patents, no business method payments. Swap you for freedom of speech?
What a completely ridiculous post. Are you suggesting that a nation with the ability to develop weaponry on a par with its enemies would decide not to because said enemy had granted itself a patent? Especially something with the power of a nuclear weapon. Presumably you also think that all the espionage of the cold war (some of which continues) is performed with strict adherence to the law by US citizens.
Further, are you actually suggesting a patent should be granted not to an individual but the entire country that produced it? Where's the incentive to the individual or company? Maybe a tax rebate in accordance with the rise in GNP as a result of the patent?
What does your post have to do with reality? Not much, I'm afraid.
Slashdot Mirror
Ozzies (which are Australians *and* people from New Zealand)
You might ponder on the other spelling of "Ozzies" ("Aussies"), and reconsider that statement.
I'm afraid that, like it or not, the stereotype of the Americans being insular is well deserved. Considering how far most of the population have to travel before they have to speak a different language, this is understandable. However, it is a shame they can't take a joke - note the "Troll" rating, despite the fact that the rest of the world really does consider the "World Series" as a laughably self-important title considering the number of different countries that participate.
Wait, what is this? A voice of IDIOCY?
I think the initial post is fair enough, although it does not apply here. The AOL Time Warner merger was investigated before approval because of the known concern of allowing significant business interests from distinct markets combining in such a way as to allow abuse of market position. A cable company and an ISP combining to use their strong position in one market to help control another is bad.
Radio stations not carrying commercials for other stations is an instance of using your position in ONE market to improve/maintain position in the SAME market. Not across markets.
But another couple of posts make that point above. Why have you ignored these posts and why was this one modded up?
I'm looking forward to all the fervent censorship sites having all the words they disapprove of instantly converted into working pr0n links...
Good idea, although I would link all the words they do approve of to a pr0n link.
Use bad words, or use bad links. What's your poison?
Actually, it raises the issue that no doubt most companies would rather "sex" linked, if anything, to a sex education site. There will be a way to control this - perhaps not infallible but it will be there, and for the most part people will approve of it. In other words MS gets popular support in filtering the chosen links for a given word. Even though they state that other people/companies are free to develop their own additions to the list, it will still tend over time to link back to MS.
Note that I would approve of this functionality if the browser company had no particularly strong vested interest in redirecting the consumer in a particular direction. Certainly there are enough reasons to expect abuse of this service that it should not be introduced automatically into the vast majority of computer systems, by a company leveraging market domination to its own ends.
The net is more than just about speech, it cover such areas as publishing, privacy, advertising (hello, spammers of the world), telecommunications (e.g. as the carrier vs publisher debate), copyright, and generally touches upon most if not all facets of human life that have laws set down in the various countries of the world.
Saying that it should not be regulated is like saying people should not be rude to each other, and equally effective. Whether the net should be regulated is a question already answered in the practical terms of, "Like it or not, it is regulated."
So the question just becomes, "To what extent and in what manner should the net be regulated?"
How about we look at the actual data? And that in particular, none of the answers state whether or not the respondant has purchased more or less music as a result of downloading music.
95% of all respondents said that they had never paid for a music download.
Okay, the basis of the whole discussion.
71% said they would not pay for a download.
Doesn't mean much, but does imply that downloads are viewed as a way of paying less for music (which personally I think should be the case but that's not the debate here). Dangerously laying ground for the RIAA'a argument that less money gets spent on CD's as a result of Napster.
Of those who would pay for a download, on average, they would be prepared to pay $3.85 per track
Whether that's a fair price is irrelevant, here the respondents would not be willing to pay for a download what they would for a CD single.
86% of all respondents believe that downloading tracks HAD NOT stopped them buying the album that had featured those tracks.
86% of all respondents said that they HAD purchased a CD album as a direct result of downloading free tracks from it.
Let's deal with these two together. On the basis of the second response, that a sizeable majority had - wonder of wonders - purchased an entire CD album as a result of enjoying a downloaded track or two, the same majority could justifiably state that downloading tracks HAD NOT stopped them from purchasing an album featuring those tracks. In other words, these facts mean absolutely nothing. (If you want to be really predantic, it is not stated as "purchasing the albums that featured those tracks" and so we are indeed talking about a single example, which tends to render all statistics null and void.)
95% of all respondents said that they would purchase concert tickets of an artist whose music they'd downloaded.
So if they like an artist they would go see them live? Amazing - but irrelevant to CD sales. The equivalent question would be, "If Napster allowed you to get into gigs for free, would you spend money on concert tickets?" (aside: the quality of music would probably improve if artists had to be good enough to earn from concerts rather than CD sales, as labels wouldn't be able to fund extravaganzas that cover up poor talent without the revenue for successful CD launches, one of the great arguments for cheaper CD's in my book)
79% of all respondents said they would purchase t-shirts or other merchandise from an artist whose music they had downloaded.
Again, a separate issue to CD's. Currently you can't download a t-shirt for nothing.
The whole thing avoids the central issue, one way of looking at it is this:
An individual buys, say, an album every week. If they use downloads as a way of choosing the next album to be purchased, then no more or less money is spent on CD's by this individual, and they can state both that they purchased albums with those tracks, and that downloading tracks had not stopped them from buying an album. RIAA revenue: unchanged.
Another individual does not have an album budget, they buy an album whenever they think they might like it. Maybe downloads let them hear it, they realise they don't like it, they buy fewer albums than before because they don't experiment with a new purchase. RIAA revenue: reduced.
Another individual again doesn't budget for CD purchases. They buy stuff when they like it, maybe they prefer the improved quality of a CD to an MP3. But they like music, most of the time the MP3 is indistinguishable from CD, and better than radio, they download a lot of music, encounter a lot of temptation, and buy a lot of albums because they get a chance to hear stuff they might not otherwise. RIAA revenue: increased.
There's a hundred ways of looking at this, and similar scenarios whereby for a given individual, more or less money is spent on albums. Because of all the facets, there's a need for a far better dataset than opinion polls.
You're correct, in saying that the government should be obliged to make the law available online. But in terms of rights, this is a completely different case to that in the US. You are saying that you do have the rights to publish the law online, but where you have taken published material that also contains extra content - this content not being part of the law - then this extra content must be removed.
The fact that the law does not state how the law should be made available makes sense. For the most part, laws are about principles and concepts, and it is left for courts and precedents to decide what is "reasonable" or "available" or whatever the qualifying adjective might be. You can't seriously expect a legislative body to have anticipated the Internet (think about it - for example Microsoft missed the boat originally), and even if they had done so ten years ago when it all started to happen, people might complain that it should be available in XML format, or via WAP. The point here is that there should be no need to be more specific than "available".
Of course, we still need government to wake up to the power of the net and the new responsibilities (and opportunities) it presents to them, in this particular example, making the law available online. But in your example, they are not preventing you from doing so, and the law is not copyrighted. (aside: being ISO compliant is not a legal requirement, and therefore that is copyrightable material. I would prefer standards to be freely available, but as we have no country or international body that people would trust to set international standards, I am for now content with ISO standards.)
There's an important difference between making it time-consuming to publish the law (by inaction), and actively making it illegal. Copyrighting the law is pretty reprehensible. It's funny, Europe is slowly waking up to people's rights, while the US is slowly forgetting about them. There seems to be a whole range of issues where one could learn from the other.
Simply because you can't do it by accident - or at least you are extremely unlikely to do so. Focusing on the technology involved would be a mistake. Simple analogy: if you walk up to someone's house, try the door and it happens to be unlocked, it is not an innocent act to then go inside and rifle through their drawers for confidential information.
Now, at least in Europe, were you able to do this then the company may be held liable for not adequately securing their data. But that just makes you both breaking the law (although I would have thought that for an individual, the consequences would likely be minor for a first offense).
Bear in mind, too, that there is a profit motive for a development house poking about another company's site for holes, so it would probably not be viewed in a favourable light either by the law or the (self-righteously offended) company concerned. You are acting as a corporate entity, not a concerned citizen, in this scenario.
But really, apart from the legal side, it's the business aspect that's important. If you find less secure competitors winning contracts when you're going head to head, make security part of your pitch. If you still loose, that's their choice, and any consequences are for them to deal with. In asking the question, it's clear that you want to handle the situation properly, but at the end of the day you get a better reputation by not criticising or hacking your competition (damning by faint praise can be rather effective). Actually, scratch that last, that can vary from culture to culture. But once a deal is signed, be wary of trying to overturn that decision at all. It smacks of desperation.
Probably the best benefit to come, were reliable and pervasive anti-plagiarism methods in place, would be the fact that everyone would feel free to share their work with each other. I've always been open with my own work, but it is annoying when others pester you with questions when you know the intention is to cheat )to a greater or lesser degree). But, if you knew that actively showing and discussing your intended submission would still require that others produce their own original work, I would tend to be even more open. The key word here being "actively" discussing your work - this allows for sharing knowledge, which is always useful in the learning process.
I've always thought it was a shame that many a piece of work I did at university is handed in, comes back with a grade and a few comments, and whether it's a good or bad grade you never really got to discuss it. For instance, imagine that for any given assignment you could look at everybody else's drafts. For any reasonably substantial work, there's little chance two people would independently come up with the same work, and there's still the option of oral discussions to clear up any doubt.
I don't think being the source of copied work is an offence (unless there were some conclusive proof of an actual profit motive) and I would expect it's easy to tell who was the author of a piece of work.
A further benefit would be that the assignments themselves would have to be written to allow proper grading of the responses - anything that has only one real answer or approach is worthless because no matter how bright you are, if someone else happens to mention what the answer is, then all you're doing is trying to find a way of paraphrasing that answer, rather than thinking about how to solve the actual problem. (can you paraphrase an algorithm? whatever the semantic equivalent is for practical assigments.)
"no business method payments"? What have I been smoking? That should of course read, "no business method patents".
Although I guess it's true to say you can't get charged over here just for using a given business method.
Sorry, guys, but for all the strengths of the US, your patent office sucks.
We've been fairly successfully innovating over here for a few centuries - and if this kind of decision is anything to go by, you're going to lose the lead you have on us currently.
No software patents, no business method payments. Swap you for freedom of speech?
What a completely ridiculous post. Are you suggesting that a nation with the ability to develop weaponry on a par with its enemies would decide not to because said enemy had granted itself a patent? Especially something with the power of a nuclear weapon. Presumably you also think that all the espionage of the cold war (some of which continues) is performed with strict adherence to the law by US citizens.
Further, are you actually suggesting a patent should be granted not to an individual but the entire country that produced it? Where's the incentive to the individual or company? Maybe a tax rebate in accordance with the rise in GNP as a result of the patent?
What does your post have to do with reality? Not much, I'm afraid.