Please, not this "theft" canard again. What is being stolen? Nothing. A copy is being made without permission, but that's not theft. Watching a Cubs game from the roof of a neighbouring house is not stealing from Wrigley Field.
The problem is that rights to make copies were codified when the technology to make copies was still expensive and rare, to encourage publishers to make copies. It does not fit the modern age where the ability to copy (and by extension create new works) is in every household.
The publisher may now feel cheated of his compensation, but nothing was taken. Instead, he merely isn't given what he feels he was entitled to.
And remember, though somebody else making money off of your work might be galling, the absolute worst thing is when your artwork goes unnoticed. With DRM, the chances of your creations being lost due to incompatibilities are enormous.
This ought to be a no-brainer, but I'll spit it out for you: physics.
The higher the speed, the greater the damage/risk of injuries and/or fatalities. That is why speed limits play such a large role; they attempt to strike a balance between performance and the risk to all traffic participants (including pedestrians).
Now you may argue that the speed limits where you live are set too low, but that's quibbling over details. Balancing risk and performance is a tricky task, and as you note in some countries people observe a speed limit other than the one printed on the signs. But it doesn't invalidate the concept of speed limits.
I think that is what Vodafone wants, namely that the iPhone be treated like a pre-paid phone, where a nominal fee removes the SIM lock. In other words, they don't care if people buy the phone from T-Mobile or even if they are locked into a T-Mobile contract, as long as they can slip a Vodafone SIM into the phone.
If Vodafone wins and gets a solution similar to France, then I could see them advertising themselves as the better provider, or sending a mail on their current customers that they can now take their contacts and other info with them. Let the T-Mobile shops sell the phone, they probably think, as long as the customers stay in our net.
Although the iPhone does not meet my needs, I wish them luck. I understand and accept the subsidising of a phone purchase by the telecoms, but I also feel the customer should have the right to use his device with whatever network he desires. The same goes for my desire to see certain parts like the battery user-replaceable in the future, as a proposed EU directive demands.
He isn't saying that it isn't criminal illegal or unethical, but it isn't stealing! Theft is a specific sort of crime. Now please, please stop calling it "stealing"!
Ah, but when should you have started? Suing every person who made a cassette copy of the LP for their car? Those kids in the early Eighties who made cassette copies for their friends? Those who would tape radio shows, or even made their own mix tapes?
No, the industry is in a tizzy because it's become so easy to make a copy that they have trouble justifying their existence. Making and distributing copies is no longer as expensive or risk-filled as it was when copyrights were first implemented. Slowly, it has eroded from needing expensive equipment to having the tools to make "good enough" copies for close friends to everyone having the ability to globally distribute, yet the idea behind copyright has not kept pace.
It's best to remember that copyright originated as a way for publishers to ensure that the artist's commission could be recouped. They paid a fee to the writer or artist and swallowed the cost of printing and distribution. Copyright meant a competing print shop couldn't just make their own copies until a set time, when the cost of printing could reasonable be considered amortised. Changing it into a sort of welfare for publishers has been a disaster.
I disagree mainly because it is an unofficial guide. It is more like some of the unofficial guides to video games with the cheat codes and walkthroughs, Though the names and such are listed, it is a reference and not a case of plagiarism. It clearly requires the original works to be of value.
This case does bear strong resemblance to the lawsuits in the 1990's intended to prevent those books, mainly because the game publishers wanted to stifle competition for the "official" guides. I also remember Adobe even got into the act, trying to forbid a "missing manual" publisher of using screenshots.
The hubris and asshattery on both sides aside, there really should not be an issue with the publication of this book. It is just another in a long line of "unofficial guides".
Look, the copyrighted symbol is butt-ugly, and has had the opposite effect of what it intended. It makes people numb rather than increase awareness. It also concentrates too heavily on the Vietnam conflict, spinning a mythology that pretends there were no POW's or MIA's in Korea, the two world wars or any of the conflicts before then. Add to this the corruption of the players behind this symbol (among others, Jack Abramoff), and you can see why I call it "polluting".
This "scandal" about Google's holiday logos is no different. It is all about demonising Google, and not at all about the veterans. The WorldNetDaily producers are con artists out to exploit your feelings of patriotism, little more.
What is missing from your analysis is that those attacking do so because they are trying to change that outrage into dollars. Many of the MIA logos and flags that pollute the USA came about because of a lobbying group that more or less fleeces the families of those who went missing in action. It was a lot cheaper for them to stir up "outrage" and lobby for symbols than to actually do anything that might clear up the MIA status, but that assumes the MIA lobby actually cares.
I was sickened last time I went to the USA at how many of these flags still fly in front of capitol buildings and courthouses. It just seemed like a fetish, like some sort of Orwellian loyalist symbol. To me, this brouhaha about Google is just another case of advocacy groups picking easy fights to justify their endless demands for donations.
Please re-read what he wrote. He wasn't referring to details, but to the concept behind the GUI being similar to the Mac, and used the way Photoshop on the Mac is different from Photoshop on windows. On the Windows platform, you are stuck with either every window of the application having its own menu bar, or having windows within windows. The Gimp UI he referenced took the Apple strategy of putting the menu bar at the top of the screen. He was referring to one aspect of Gimp, not the entire program.
It doesn't contribute much to the discussion at hand though, I will admit, since the GUI ought to be an OS-consistent decision. A good application follows the conventions of the OS rather than try to maintain the same user experience across all OS versions.
Actually, it is equivalent in that an attempt to get more money for "premium" service results in greater operating costs. The handlers now have to use a filter to decide which packets get preferential treatment and which do not. Time is spent selecting and sorting in both cases, increasing complexity in the workflow. In the end, profits don't grow at the expected rate as few people pay for the "gold card" treatment, but the added workers still have to sort out the occasional "gold card" packet.
I should have been clearer. I meant that if I understood the argument correctly, then the argument was that EDGE had less turnaround between request and reply, and UMTS had the faster transfer of the individual files. Whether the argument is actually valid or not is another matter. I just was trying to ensure that I understood correctly how it could be.
My own anecdotal evidence comes from using a Motorola RAZR V3xx as my modem, and it often will start in 3G, bump down to EDGE, then GPRS, then 3G again without losing the connection. Until now I thought it was due to broadcast strength from the cell tower, but this article made me more uncertain.
Translating into "layman's terms", EDGE is more responsive than UMTS or HDSPA, but the 3G protocols are better at shovelling huge files up and down the stream. That means that lots of small data like an IM client will feel faster on EDGE, but downloads and video will be faster on UMTS/HDSPA.
I can accept that argument. If this is true, then Meebo would be faster on EDGE; but YouTube faster on UMTS. Using my cell phone as a modem (no DSL in my neighbourhood), I can say that my experience has been pretty much like that, though I thought it was due to longer "handshaking" at the beginning of a UMTS connection...
Again, you are moving away from the topic. But your protestations are relevant, much like the protests from the studios about how they subsidised the iPod with their offerings. It's the "sour grapes" of one who is being snubbed, who is fading into irrelevance.
I think the situation of fading in to irrelevancy is something that both Vivendi and the current US administration are learning. Just as more and more artists are escaping from the hegemony of RIAA-member studios, so are more countries ignoring the USA and their overstretched military. Europe, for example, no longer fears invasion, and the Euro has made the US Dollar less important for the world economy.
But that's only peripheral. In this case, it's not the money that Vivendi is upset about, but the fact that Apple is calling the shots and robbing them of clout with their signed artists. Newer artists are avoiding the studio contract as first production costs dropped, and also now with internet making marketing easier. It's the last gasp of a dying empire.
I was thinking along the same lines, that the crypto was less about preventing homebrews (though Nintendo probably does want to keep homebrews down), and more about preventing players from hacking into their savegames and "improving" their saved position. But seeing as I don't do much online gaming, I didn't see the point. Now I do.
Now normally I would have nothing against "cheating" in this form: it is more like cheating at solitaire or using house rules an a dinner-table game. But when you are playing with strangers, you need some reassurance that they don't have a whole slew if royal flushes stuffed up their sleeve. If I understand this properly, Nintendo has integrated an encryption method into the savegame routine on the system level for the benefit of the developers, and didn't see enough demand to offer an unencrypted version. After all, homebrew just isn't a part of Nintendo's DNA.
His example of hate speech was a little too vague. Hate speech is rhetoric designed to incite violence against a specific individual or group. Active encouragement to harass, discriminate or even perform criminal acts.
Hate crime laws are less about political correctness, but about making the ringleader who riled up the mob accountable for the mob's actions, and eventually preventing him from engaging in incitement in the first place.
Are you suggesting that Facebook adopt a community ratings system? After all, the hate speech on the Daily Kos is often quickly and mercilessly troll-rated and disappears. Instead of professional moderators, the community polices itself. Reminds me of a similar site whose name escapes me. Begins with slash...
In all actuality, the impression I am getting is that the Facebook admin staff is hopelessly overswamped with abuse reports. On the one hand, they have a Terms of Service that specifically forbids ate crimes, yet they also don't want to assume the role of censors. Trying to correct this with a Slashdot/DKos community moderation could work only for discussion threads, but not entire groups or abusive accounts. The only real solution is to hire and train more admins.
I stand by my point that the paradox remains a paradox only if it assumes an open end in lifespan of a civilisation, as well as an open end in how far a civilisation expands. It is possible that there is a civilisation that existed several million years before ours, and even that it expanded to, say, contact with our own home planet. But they could have died out, moved on to the next level of awareness or whatever long before we achieved the ability to detect them. Any evidence of their visits to our rock would be long gone.
The scale of time we are dealing with is difficult to grasp. After all, what will be left of us in one million years? Not even the pyramids will be recognisable as man-made by then.
One facet I haven't seen considered is the "Looking in the right spot at the right time" factor. If re assume that life forms living on a star 2000 light years away sent a signal 2000 years ago, how long until they got bored and turned off the transmitter? It doesn't help to point the telescope in the right direction if the signal won't arrive for another 100 years, or if that part of the sky isn't scanned until after the aliens gave up and turned off the transmitter.
We have no idea how long a civilisation will be sending radio waves. Perhaps we've already looked at a planet with life, but centuries after they stopped using raw-power radio signals.
It's a bogus argument, because it looks at the wrong segment of music. There are still the same amount of musicians buying guitars, practising their drums, playing the piano, but now there's another whole group who dabble with new forms. The sum total of amateur musicians has gone up, thus making the proportion of acoustic/analog musicians smaller.
I see more than enough local kids practising in the basement, playing at parties, and even went to a party where the bandleader was playing an original Hammond organ. Trumpet players, singers, sax and guitars, they're all still going strong.
No, I think Elton is simply scared because now kids at home can tweak their recordings to sound "good enough", no longer needing an expensive studio or having to bust their chops. But I have little sympathy for his position.
Most Mac users I know tend to use Adobe Creative Suite which is available on Windows (and thusly Linux via Wine) as well, and until CS3 came out, it ran faster on Windows than on OS X. So I don't really get how Macs are "better for graphics" anymore.
Speed is rarely the issue, but other "minor" things like colour correction, printing, and file operations play a large role. Even today, the Mac workspace feels more comfortable to work in than the Windows version of CS3. It means a lot when the printout looks the way you expect on the first try, when the proofs comes back from the printer and don't need any tweaking.
Heck, even little issues like being able to assign files of the same filetype to different applications speeds up work. Sometimes the EPS came from Photoshop, sometimes from Illustrator, and some even come from that old FreeHand MX I still use now and then. My Mac saves metadata, and remembers which program I want to use to open which.
I think that's the main issue. The graphic design workflow just seems more comfortable with Apple and its application metaphor. Little things like dragging and dropping between applications require less actions, and often I will be dragging and dropping from several different applications.
There are three reasons I can think of off the bat.
1. if the document is intended only for reading, then.doc is unsuited. A PDF is smaller, and has better chances of printing like the original author intended. It is far too easy to alter a Word document, then blame the sender for a change you yourself made.
2. Word.doc files are bloated. 99% of the files sent as Word.doc files would be better if sent as.txt or.rtf files, and not overfill my mailbox on the Domino server.
3. The end user may not use Word, and there is no guarantee that Word will still be the preferred word processor in the future. If a document is to be archived or collaborated, then it is best to save it in as open a format as possible to allow for future access.
The point is fooling the routers in between the two end nodes, spoofing until the packet is opened. This makes more sense if, say, a certain VoIP protocol is given priority over a P2P protocol*. The P2P client could be redesigned to spoof the appearance of the VoIP packet, thus sneaking into the higher priority treatment, and only the end computers know the difference. Or if a small ISP had two networks but had to travel across AT&T's network, they could spoof their traffic as high-priority VoIP, removing the fake wrapping once it re-enters their network and then routing it to the proper server.
*for this argument assume it's a legitimate P2P service
Slashdot Mirror
Please, not this "theft" canard again. What is being stolen? Nothing. A copy is being made without permission, but that's not theft. Watching a Cubs game from the roof of a neighbouring house is not stealing from Wrigley Field.
The problem is that rights to make copies were codified when the technology to make copies was still expensive and rare, to encourage publishers to make copies. It does not fit the modern age where the ability to copy (and by extension create new works) is in every household.
The publisher may now feel cheated of his compensation, but nothing was taken. Instead, he merely isn't given what he feels he was entitled to.
And remember, though somebody else making money off of your work might be galling, the absolute worst thing is when your artwork goes unnoticed. With DRM, the chances of your creations being lost due to incompatibilities are enormous.
This ought to be a no-brainer, but I'll spit it out for you: physics.
The higher the speed, the greater the damage/risk of injuries and/or fatalities. That is why speed limits play such a large role; they attempt to strike a balance between performance and the risk to all traffic participants (including pedestrians).
Now you may argue that the speed limits where you live are set too low, but that's quibbling over details. Balancing risk and performance is a tricky task, and as you note in some countries people observe a speed limit other than the one printed on the signs. But it doesn't invalidate the concept of speed limits.
I think that's a more fitting title, really.
I think that is what Vodafone wants, namely that the iPhone be treated like a pre-paid phone, where a nominal fee removes the SIM lock. In other words, they don't care if people buy the phone from T-Mobile or even if they are locked into a T-Mobile contract, as long as they can slip a Vodafone SIM into the phone.
If Vodafone wins and gets a solution similar to France, then I could see them advertising themselves as the better provider, or sending a mail on their current customers that they can now take their contacts and other info with them. Let the T-Mobile shops sell the phone, they probably think, as long as the customers stay in our net.
Although the iPhone does not meet my needs, I wish them luck. I understand and accept the subsidising of a phone purchase by the telecoms, but I also feel the customer should have the right to use his device with whatever network he desires. The same goes for my desire to see certain parts like the battery user-replaceable in the future, as a proposed EU directive demands.
One more time...
He isn't saying that it isn't criminal illegal or unethical, but it isn't stealing! Theft is a specific sort of crime. Now please, please stop calling it "stealing"!
Ah, but when should you have started? Suing every person who made a cassette copy of the LP for their car? Those kids in the early Eighties who made cassette copies for their friends? Those who would tape radio shows, or even made their own mix tapes?
No, the industry is in a tizzy because it's become so easy to make a copy that they have trouble justifying their existence. Making and distributing copies is no longer as expensive or risk-filled as it was when copyrights were first implemented. Slowly, it has eroded from needing expensive equipment to having the tools to make "good enough" copies for close friends to everyone having the ability to globally distribute, yet the idea behind copyright has not kept pace.
It's best to remember that copyright originated as a way for publishers to ensure that the artist's commission could be recouped. They paid a fee to the writer or artist and swallowed the cost of printing and distribution. Copyright meant a competing print shop couldn't just make their own copies until a set time, when the cost of printing could reasonable be considered amortised. Changing it into a sort of welfare for publishers has been a disaster.
I disagree mainly because it is an unofficial guide. It is more like some of the unofficial guides to video games with the cheat codes and walkthroughs, Though the names and such are listed, it is a reference and not a case of plagiarism. It clearly requires the original works to be of value.
This case does bear strong resemblance to the lawsuits in the 1990's intended to prevent those books, mainly because the game publishers wanted to stifle competition for the "official" guides. I also remember Adobe even got into the act, trying to forbid a "missing manual" publisher of using screenshots.
The hubris and asshattery on both sides aside, there really should not be an issue with the publication of this book. It is just another in a long line of "unofficial guides".
Look, the copyrighted symbol is butt-ugly, and has had the opposite effect of what it intended. It makes people numb rather than increase awareness. It also concentrates too heavily on the Vietnam conflict, spinning a mythology that pretends there were no POW's or MIA's in Korea, the two world wars or any of the conflicts before then. Add to this the corruption of the players behind this symbol (among others, Jack Abramoff), and you can see why I call it "polluting".
This "scandal" about Google's holiday logos is no different. It is all about demonising Google, and not at all about the veterans. The WorldNetDaily producers are con artists out to exploit your feelings of patriotism, little more.
What is missing from your analysis is that those attacking do so because they are trying to change that outrage into dollars. Many of the MIA logos and flags that pollute the USA came about because of a lobbying group that more or less fleeces the families of those who went missing in action. It was a lot cheaper for them to stir up "outrage" and lobby for symbols than to actually do anything that might clear up the MIA status, but that assumes the MIA lobby actually cares.
I was sickened last time I went to the USA at how many of these flags still fly in front of capitol buildings and courthouses. It just seemed like a fetish, like some sort of Orwellian loyalist symbol. To me, this brouhaha about Google is just another case of advocacy groups picking easy fights to justify their endless demands for donations.
Please re-read what he wrote. He wasn't referring to details, but to the concept behind the GUI being similar to the Mac, and used the way Photoshop on the Mac is different from Photoshop on windows. On the Windows platform, you are stuck with either every window of the application having its own menu bar, or having windows within windows. The Gimp UI he referenced took the Apple strategy of putting the menu bar at the top of the screen. He was referring to one aspect of Gimp, not the entire program.
It doesn't contribute much to the discussion at hand though, I will admit, since the GUI ought to be an OS-consistent decision. A good application follows the conventions of the OS rather than try to maintain the same user experience across all OS versions.
Actually, it is equivalent in that an attempt to get more money for "premium" service results in greater operating costs. The handlers now have to use a filter to decide which packets get preferential treatment and which do not. Time is spent selecting and sorting in both cases, increasing complexity in the workflow. In the end, profits don't grow at the expected rate as few people pay for the "gold card" treatment, but the added workers still have to sort out the occasional "gold card" packet.
I should have been clearer. I meant that if I understood the argument correctly, then the argument was that EDGE had less turnaround between request and reply, and UMTS had the faster transfer of the individual files. Whether the argument is actually valid or not is another matter. I just was trying to ensure that I understood correctly how it could be.
My own anecdotal evidence comes from using a Motorola RAZR V3xx as my modem, and it often will start in 3G, bump down to EDGE, then GPRS, then 3G again without losing the connection. Until now I thought it was due to broadcast strength from the cell tower, but this article made me more uncertain.
Translating into "layman's terms", EDGE is more responsive than UMTS or HDSPA, but the 3G protocols are better at shovelling huge files up and down the stream. That means that lots of small data like an IM client will feel faster on EDGE, but downloads and video will be faster on UMTS/HDSPA.
I can accept that argument. If this is true, then Meebo would be faster on EDGE; but YouTube faster on UMTS. Using my cell phone as a modem (no DSL in my neighbourhood), I can say that my experience has been pretty much like that, though I thought it was due to longer "handshaking" at the beginning of a UMTS connection...
Again, you are moving away from the topic. But your protestations are relevant, much like the protests from the studios about how they subsidised the iPod with their offerings. It's the "sour grapes" of one who is being snubbed, who is fading into irrelevance.
It's all about the power.
I think the situation of fading in to irrelevancy is something that both Vivendi and the current US administration are learning. Just as more and more artists are escaping from the hegemony of RIAA-member studios, so are more countries ignoring the USA and their overstretched military. Europe, for example, no longer fears invasion, and the Euro has made the US Dollar less important for the world economy.
But that's only peripheral. In this case, it's not the money that Vivendi is upset about, but the fact that Apple is calling the shots and robbing them of clout with their signed artists. Newer artists are avoiding the studio contract as first production costs dropped, and also now with internet making marketing easier. It's the last gasp of a dying empire.
I was thinking along the same lines, that the crypto was less about preventing homebrews (though Nintendo probably does want to keep homebrews down), and more about preventing players from hacking into their savegames and "improving" their saved position. But seeing as I don't do much online gaming, I didn't see the point. Now I do.
Now normally I would have nothing against "cheating" in this form: it is more like cheating at solitaire or using house rules an a dinner-table game. But when you are playing with strangers, you need some reassurance that they don't have a whole slew if royal flushes stuffed up their sleeve. If I understand this properly, Nintendo has integrated an encryption method into the savegame routine on the system level for the benefit of the developers, and didn't see enough demand to offer an unencrypted version. After all, homebrew just isn't a part of Nintendo's DNA.
His example of hate speech was a little too vague. Hate speech is rhetoric designed to incite violence against a specific individual or group. Active encouragement to harass, discriminate or even perform criminal acts.
Hate crime laws are less about political correctness, but about making the ringleader who riled up the mob accountable for the mob's actions, and eventually preventing him from engaging in incitement in the first place.
Are you suggesting that Facebook adopt a community ratings system? After all, the hate speech on the Daily Kos is often quickly and mercilessly troll-rated and disappears. Instead of professional moderators, the community polices itself. Reminds me of a similar site whose name escapes me. Begins with slash...
In all actuality, the impression I am getting is that the Facebook admin staff is hopelessly overswamped with abuse reports. On the one hand, they have a Terms of Service that specifically forbids ate crimes, yet they also don't want to assume the role of censors. Trying to correct this with a Slashdot/DKos community moderation could work only for discussion threads, but not entire groups or abusive accounts. The only real solution is to hire and train more admins.
I stand by my point that the paradox remains a paradox only if it assumes an open end in lifespan of a civilisation, as well as an open end in how far a civilisation expands. It is possible that there is a civilisation that existed several million years before ours, and even that it expanded to, say, contact with our own home planet. But they could have died out, moved on to the next level of awareness or whatever long before we achieved the ability to detect them. Any evidence of their visits to our rock would be long gone.
The scale of time we are dealing with is difficult to grasp. After all, what will be left of us in one million years? Not even the pyramids will be recognisable as man-made by then.
One facet I haven't seen considered is the "Looking in the right spot at the right time" factor. If re assume that life forms living on a star 2000 light years away sent a signal 2000 years ago, how long until they got bored and turned off the transmitter? It doesn't help to point the telescope in the right direction if the signal won't arrive for another 100 years, or if that part of the sky isn't scanned until after the aliens gave up and turned off the transmitter.
We have no idea how long a civilisation will be sending radio waves. Perhaps we've already looked at a planet with life, but centuries after they stopped using raw-power radio signals.
It's a bogus argument, because it looks at the wrong segment of music. There are still the same amount of musicians buying guitars, practising their drums, playing the piano, but now there's another whole group who dabble with new forms. The sum total of amateur musicians has gone up, thus making the proportion of acoustic/analog musicians smaller.
I see more than enough local kids practising in the basement, playing at parties, and even went to a party where the bandleader was playing an original Hammond organ. Trumpet players, singers, sax and guitars, they're all still going strong.
No, I think Elton is simply scared because now kids at home can tweak their recordings to sound "good enough", no longer needing an expensive studio or having to bust their chops. But I have little sympathy for his position.
Apparently not enough people saw that episode of Firefly to get the joke. But I salute you, sir.
(For the record, the quote is from Malcolm Reynolds in "Shindig")
Speed is rarely the issue, but other "minor" things like colour correction, printing, and file operations play a large role. Even today, the Mac workspace feels more comfortable to work in than the Windows version of CS3. It means a lot when the printout looks the way you expect on the first try, when the proofs comes back from the printer and don't need any tweaking.
Heck, even little issues like being able to assign files of the same filetype to different applications speeds up work. Sometimes the EPS came from Photoshop, sometimes from Illustrator, and some even come from that old FreeHand MX I still use now and then. My Mac saves metadata, and remembers which program I want to use to open which.
I think that's the main issue. The graphic design workflow just seems more comfortable with Apple and its application metaphor. Little things like dragging and dropping between applications require less actions, and often I will be dragging and dropping from several different applications.
There are three reasons I can think of off the bat.
.doc is unsuited. A PDF is smaller, and has better chances of printing like the original author intended. It is far too easy to alter a Word document, then blame the sender for a change you yourself made.
.doc files are bloated. 99% of the files sent as Word .doc files would be better if sent as .txt or .rtf files, and not overfill my mailbox on the Domino server.
1. if the document is intended only for reading, then
2. Word
3. The end user may not use Word, and there is no guarantee that Word will still be the preferred word processor in the future. If a document is to be archived or collaborated, then it is best to save it in as open a format as possible to allow for future access.
The point is fooling the routers in between the two end nodes, spoofing until the packet is opened. This makes more sense if, say, a certain VoIP protocol is given priority over a P2P protocol*. The P2P client could be redesigned to spoof the appearance of the VoIP packet, thus sneaking into the higher priority treatment, and only the end computers know the difference. Or if a small ISP had two networks but had to travel across AT&T's network, they could spoof their traffic as high-priority VoIP, removing the fake wrapping once it re-enters their network and then routing it to the proper server.
*for this argument assume it's a legitimate P2P service