"We've had more than 300 companies in the first four business days of this program contact SCO to inquire about SCO's Intellectual Property License for Linux," said Chris Sontag
What kind of questions? What kind of companies, for that matter? Could have been reporters looking for information for their news stories for all we know.
You're right. This article is actually a sting operation by the federal government. Anyone who posts a comment that gets modded up to +5 will be assumed to have RTFA and should expect FBI agents at their door tomorrow morning.
For the record: If anyone from the FBI is reading this, I have not RTFA.
I know of a place that proves your point. It's called "California."
Most people think that before you can produce anything economically you need clean drinking water, Everyone buys bottled water anyway, so would it matter if the "drinking water" coming from the tap wasn't clean?
affordable housing, Two words: Silicon Valley.
and modern hospitals. Every so often the nurses strike over working conditions, not enough time with patients, etc.
Bottom line: You can produce lots of stuff economically without clean tap water, affordable housing, or modern hospitals.
Snapster sounds like a good idea, but the RIAA lawyers will fight it tooth and nail, which would be a problem regardless of whose side the law is actually on... a netflix for CDs would be much the same, except there would be higher distribution costs (offset by lower legal bills). Of course, they would have to make it clear that you shouldn't rent a CD and then rip it to MP3 before sending it back (wink wink).
It's good to see someone making this point. I think Walmart would make a lot of enemies if they started taking the life savings of anyone who shoplifts from their stores - imagine going to Walmart and getting hit with a huge lawsuit because your 10 year old kid stole a candy bar.
I think the RIAA might have avoided making so many enemies if they had done a few things differently:
1. Treat the artists fairly - you won't have artists speaking out in favor of file sharing if they feel they're being treated fairly.
2. Less draconian lawsuits, and warn people first. If the RIAA hadn't messed up point (1), I wouldn't feel sorry for someone who's already received a letter from the RIAA getting hit with a $1,000 lawsuit. Taking Grandma's life savings because her grandson used Kazaa last time he visited isn't a good way to win anyone's support.
3. The $1,000 goes to the artist(s) whose songs the file sharer was caught sharing. The idea is, the labels would be a lot better off if they actually worked for the artists (perceptions are really important here).
As it is now, the RIAA looks like a bunch of greedy lawyers looking out for the interests of corporations loathed by nearly everyone. If they had done a few things differently in the past, perhaps they would be viewed as a group of people helping artists make sure they're compensated fairly. You don't hate the rent a cop at the local Walmart, do you? Why do we hate RIAA lawyers so much?
I would be most interested in applying for the position of RIAA head. I have 24 years of experience in oppressing large populations through intimidation and fear. In my previous role, I was widely recognized as one who could maximize the wealth of the leadership while giving the oppressed population the absolute minimum of resources needed to prevent rebellion.
I feel that I meet all the relevant qualifications for the position. I am already hated by nearly all Americans; I have no idea what American consumers want; my sons introduced me to Madonna, Limp Biskit and Tommy Lee and I like them very much; I have sent many hundreds of thousands of citizens from all walks of life to prison, often for the most trivial reasons; and I'm prepared to sue filesharers or anyone else for as long as I can.
If hired, I will bring my extensive experience in oppression to maximize the percentage of US GDP controlled by the RIAA. I fell that my past actions make it clear that I lack any scruples which may detract from the performance of my duties as RIAA head. I have long admired the RIAA's efforts to oppress the people of the Evil Empire, and would be most grateful for the opportunity to contribute to this effort.
It doesn't take me 60 seconds to determine that "v1agra no prescr1ption needed" is spam. Those take 1 second to hit delete. Even for the cleverly worded ones, it might take 15 seconds to open "you left your umbrella in my office," find the obvious link to a non work safe website, close it, and hit delete. And that's the 10 percent that make it past the filter.
I don't see how the average can be a full minute - the $1/message, if it's for real, must come from something other than employees' time (bandwidth, storage, tech support, paying executives to discuss how to stop spam, reading slashdot discussions about spam, etc).
We'll all be complaining about the CIAA (Car Industry Association of America), CBAA (Coffee Brewers Association of America), BBAA (Beer Brewers Association of America) etc etc etc
If there's a market for organs, and criminals sentenced to the death penalty are required to donate them, you now have an industry that profits from having more capital punishment. They might then lobby the government to expand the death penalty for the same reason a defense contractor might lobby for military expansion or a private prison industry might oppose legalizing marijuana. Scary thought.
That said, death row inmates should be allowed to donate organs if they choose to. I just don't want it to be in some corporation's financial interest to expand the death penalty.
And as a result, all the worms and viruses keep spreading, slowing down the network, and helping spammers. Now they're going to make people pay to download the patches? Imagine some guy rear-ending you on the highway because GM made his car with faulty brakes, and charged money to fix the problem, and the car owner decided he couldn't/wouldn't pay the money. Remember, most of these viruses/worms affect everyone, not just the people with infected boxes. The last thing we want to give people is another reason to not apply the patches.
Speeding is different for two reasons: First, getting a speeding ticket doesn't ruin your life. You lose about $1,000 on fines and extra insurance cost (and the first time around, you might only have to spend a weekend in traffic school). Second, the punishment fits the crime (unless it's small-towns doing revenue enhancement, but that's another discussion).
I guess my point is this - the government rarely deals with minor offenses by punishing only a small percentage of offenders and trying to make up for it by making the punishment really draconian. Instead the punishment more or less fits the crime even if offenders are hard to catch. This is only fair; if I'm dumb enough to shoplift once in my life, I shouldn't get a 5 year prison sentence just because people usually get away with it.
Also if you make a habit of speeding, you're all but guaranteed to be caught eventually. So in the long run everyone - speeders and non speeders alike - gets what they deserve. Contrast with RIAA tactics, where less than 0.1% of file sharers are dramatically overpunished and nothing happens to the others at all.
Somehow I think that if the RIAA hadn't already made enemies with everyone, and the government fined file sharers (ALL people sharing copyrighted stuff not just the unlucky few, and yes I know this isn't technically feasible) $500 or $1000 and gave them a warning the first time around, no one would be complaining.
Part of human nature seems to be that people overestimate the probability of unlikely events. One example discussed endlessly on Slashdot is how so many people are so scared of school shootings. It's also what keeps state lotteries in business.
How is this relevant? On 9/11, we all saw on TV what Al Qaeda is capable of, and most of us were scared that we would be next. But the total number killed were an order of magnitude less than the number of people killed in car crashes every year. People aren't scared to drive cars, but they're scared of terrorism because it's so much more visible. Al Qaeda hoped we would give in to their demands because of this.
The RIAA's tactics work under the same principle. You turn on the news, see hundreds of people losing their life savings, and worry you could likely be next. Never mind that 1,000 lawsuits out of 60 million p2p users is a 1 in 60,000 chance. Once again - the RIAA's goal is to get people to give in to their demands (stop sharing files and then, they hope, buy their CDs).
I'm not saying the RIAA is as evil as Al Qaeda (killing someone is far worse than bankrupting them), just pointing out that the two groups are both exploiting the same part of human psychology.
Your computer belongs to you. What happens with that computer is your responsibility. It should be apparent, but for some reason it isn't to most people.
So if a friend borrows my car, and then drives it drunk (assume they were sober when I gave them the keys) I should go to jail? I think few people would blame the car owner for what happened in this case.
This is quite disturbing, and it ties in to the idea of the USA wanting to impose its values/laws on the rest of the world. It's like when we "certify" whether or not we like another country's drug laws. Who are we to tell some European country they have to throw their citizens in jail for smoking pot?
Going back to the extradition topic, imagine Hugh Hefner being extradited to Saudi Arabia because some guy over there was looking at playboy.com. It would never happen. Americans don't have to obey Saudi Arabian law (unless they actually travel to Saudi Arabia of course); why should Australians have to obey US law? (Exception - if something is illegal in both Australia and the US, I wouldn't have a problem with it).
I like the idea. Perhaps we could also have anti-RIAA ads modeled after the government's anti-drug ads, like what the Detroit Project did.
Is it okay to support corporate greed if it's only a little bit?
So you buy an RIAA CD occasionally.
It's not like you're paying millions of dollars to finance a music cartel and all the poverty and lawsuits it creates.
And you understand the argument that RIAA money contributes to terrible things.
That if you buy an RIAA CD, your money goes to people who are responsible for bankrupting college students, using their influence in Congress to threaten our civil liberties, clogging the courts with lawsuits and forcing musicians into abusive one-sided contracts. That if you stopped buying RIAA CDs, the dealers would go away, the abuse of monopoly would end.
You get all that.
But it's just one CD, right?
Well, here's a secret: You don't pick which side you're on by how much you buy.
You pick which side you're on by buying in the first place.
I ordered some music from CD baby and they're doing a much better job than you might think. Even if you know nothing about independent music you can find something you like. You can click on "search" and look for music that sounds like an [riaa] artist you like, then listen to samples (and the samples are 2 minutes, not 30 seconds like Amazon. No need to waste your money buying crap). Once you find something you like, they give you a couple recommendations. The recommendation engine isn't as sophisticated as Amazon, but it's a much faster way of finding new music than listening to Clear Channel. Also most of the CDs are $10 and most of that goes to the artist.
If you're looking for an alternative to funding the RIAA jihad (or just want to find some music that's interesting and original for a change), you should check these guys out.
From the law firm's website: WHO IS A MEMBER OF THE PROPOSED CLASS?
The class action Complaint was brought on behalf of all persons residing in the United States who have, while operating a computer, encountered an advertising banner like the one illustrated on this website.
If you saw the ads, you're a member of the class. You don't have to have clicked on any of them.
California's in the hole and Microsoft is evil. I say we kill two birds with one stone. California's budget shortfall is 30-40 billion dollars; Microsoft has about that much in cash. We'll never get it just by settling lawsuits $1 billion at a time, especially when 2/3 of it isn't real money anyway.
Everyone meet tomorrow afternoon in Sacramento, in front of the State Capitol. We'll then caravan up I-5 to Redmond. There's more of us than there are of them. We can take them. Once we get the money, we'll take it back to Sacramento and use it to balance the budget.
Most electronic devices are allowed except during takeoff and landing. There's only a few things you can't ever use, like cell phones and portable radios/TVs (because they use broadcast signals). DVD players, video games, etc are acceptable.
SCO is "hoping that even if 99 percent of Linux customers laugh in their face, that there will be sufficient large companies who, for what is presumably going to be a relative drop in the bucket of their IT budgets, can potentially eliminate a cloud over their heads," he said.
99 percent? I think that percentage is a bit low.
This looks like the "sell worthless insurance" business model, and there are already many companies that use it. For example:
- Credit card insurance ("Protect your Citibank account in case you become unemployed or disabled"). Banks make big money on this one.
- Extended warranties. $19 for a warranty on a $99 television from Best Buy? (If the TV does break, it will almost certainly happen before the manufacturer's warranty expires anyway. TV's either break right away or they last forever)
- "WirePro" on your phone line. Pay $2.99 a month and the phone company pays to repair inside wiring. But this is hardly ever needed, and if you live in an apartment this is often the landlord's responsibility anyway.
What's different about SCO is that they are actually creating the "risk" that companies would be insuring against while the others just exaggerate existing risks. But it's still effectively the same business model.
Slashdot Mirror
"We've had more than 300 companies in the first four business days of this program contact SCO to inquire about SCO's Intellectual Property License for Linux," said Chris Sontag
What kind of questions? What kind of companies, for that matter? Could have been reporters looking for information for their news stories for all we know.
You're right. This article is actually a sting operation by the federal government. Anyone who posts a comment that gets modded up to +5 will be assumed to have RTFA and should expect FBI agents at their door tomorrow morning.
For the record: If anyone from the FBI is reading this, I have not RTFA.
I know of a place that proves your point. It's called "California."
Most people think that before you can produce anything economically you need clean drinking water,
Everyone buys bottled water anyway, so would it matter if the "drinking water" coming from the tap wasn't clean?
affordable housing,
Two words: Silicon Valley.
and modern hospitals.
Every so often the nurses strike over working conditions, not enough time with patients, etc.
Bottom line: You can produce lots of stuff economically without clean tap water, affordable housing, or modern hospitals.
Snapster sounds like a good idea, but the RIAA lawyers will fight it tooth and nail, which would be a problem regardless of whose side the law is actually on... a netflix for CDs would be much the same, except there would be higher distribution costs (offset by lower legal bills). Of course, they would have to make it clear that you shouldn't rent a CD and then rip it to MP3 before sending it back (wink wink).
It's good to see someone making this point. I think Walmart would make a lot of enemies if they started taking the life savings of anyone who shoplifts from their stores - imagine going to Walmart and getting hit with a huge lawsuit because your 10 year old kid stole a candy bar.
I think the RIAA might have avoided making so many enemies if they had done a few things differently:
1. Treat the artists fairly - you won't have artists speaking out in favor of file sharing if they feel they're being treated fairly.
2. Less draconian lawsuits, and warn people first. If the RIAA hadn't messed up point (1), I wouldn't feel sorry for someone who's already received a letter from the RIAA getting hit with a $1,000 lawsuit. Taking Grandma's life savings because her grandson used Kazaa last time he visited isn't a good way to win anyone's support.
3. The $1,000 goes to the artist(s) whose songs the file sharer was caught sharing. The idea is, the labels would be a lot better off if they actually worked for the artists (perceptions are really important here).
As it is now, the RIAA looks like a bunch of greedy lawyers looking out for the interests of corporations loathed by nearly everyone. If they had done a few things differently in the past, perhaps they would be viewed as a group of people helping artists make sure they're compensated fairly. You don't hate the rent a cop at the local Walmart, do you? Why do we hate RIAA lawyers so much?
Dear sir,
I would be most interested in applying for the position of RIAA head. I have 24 years of experience in oppressing large populations through intimidation and fear. In my previous role, I was widely recognized as one who could maximize the wealth of the leadership while giving the oppressed population the absolute minimum of resources needed to prevent rebellion.
I feel that I meet all the relevant qualifications for the position. I am already hated by nearly all Americans; I have no idea what American consumers want; my sons introduced me to Madonna, Limp Biskit and Tommy Lee and I like them very much; I have sent many hundreds of thousands of citizens from all walks of life to prison, often for the most trivial reasons; and I'm prepared to sue filesharers or anyone else for as long as I can.
If hired, I will bring my extensive experience in oppression to maximize the percentage of US GDP controlled by the RIAA. I fell that my past actions make it clear that I lack any scruples which may detract from the performance of my duties as RIAA head. I have long admired the RIAA's efforts to oppress the people of the Evil Empire, and would be most grateful for the opportunity to contribute to this effort.
Yours truly,
Saddam Hussein 'Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti
It doesn't take me 60 seconds to determine that "v1agra no prescr1ption needed" is spam. Those take 1 second to hit delete. Even for the cleverly worded ones, it might take 15 seconds to open "you left your umbrella in my office," find the obvious link to a non work safe website, close it, and hit delete. And that's the 10 percent that make it past the filter.
I don't see how the average can be a full minute - the $1/message, if it's for real, must come from something other than employees' time (bandwidth, storage, tech support, paying executives to discuss how to stop spam, reading slashdot discussions about spam, etc).
We'll all be complaining about the CIAA (Car Industry Association of America), CBAA (Coffee Brewers Association of America), BBAA (Beer Brewers Association of America) etc etc etc
If there's a market for organs, and criminals sentenced to the death penalty are required to donate them, you now have an industry that profits from having more capital punishment. They might then lobby the government to expand the death penalty for the same reason a defense contractor might lobby for military expansion or a private prison industry might oppose legalizing marijuana. Scary thought.
That said, death row inmates should be allowed to donate organs if they choose to. I just don't want it to be in some corporation's financial interest to expand the death penalty.
And as a result, all the worms and viruses keep spreading, slowing down the network, and helping spammers. Now they're going to make people pay to download the patches? Imagine some guy rear-ending you on the highway because GM made his car with faulty brakes, and charged money to fix the problem, and the car owner decided he couldn't/wouldn't pay the money. Remember, most of these viruses/worms affect everyone, not just the people with infected boxes. The last thing we want to give people is another reason to not apply the patches.
Speeding is different for two reasons: First, getting a speeding ticket doesn't ruin your life. You lose about $1,000 on fines and extra insurance cost (and the first time around, you might only have to spend a weekend in traffic school). Second, the punishment fits the crime (unless it's small-towns doing revenue enhancement, but that's another discussion).
I guess my point is this - the government rarely deals with minor offenses by punishing only a small percentage of offenders and trying to make up for it by making the punishment really draconian. Instead the punishment more or less fits the crime even if offenders are hard to catch. This is only fair; if I'm dumb enough to shoplift once in my life, I shouldn't get a 5 year prison sentence just because people usually get away with it.
Also if you make a habit of speeding, you're all but guaranteed to be caught eventually. So in the long run everyone - speeders and non speeders alike - gets what they deserve. Contrast with RIAA tactics, where less than 0.1% of file sharers are dramatically overpunished and nothing happens to the others at all.
Somehow I think that if the RIAA hadn't already made enemies with everyone, and the government fined file sharers (ALL people sharing copyrighted stuff not just the unlucky few, and yes I know this isn't technically feasible) $500 or $1000 and gave them a warning the first time around, no one would be complaining.
Part of human nature seems to be that people overestimate the probability of unlikely events. One example discussed endlessly on Slashdot is how so many people are so scared of school shootings. It's also what keeps state lotteries in business.
How is this relevant? On 9/11, we all saw on TV what Al Qaeda is capable of, and most of us were scared that we would be next. But the total number killed were an order of magnitude less than the number of people killed in car crashes every year. People aren't scared to drive cars, but they're scared of terrorism because it's so much more visible. Al Qaeda hoped we would give in to their demands because of this.
The RIAA's tactics work under the same principle. You turn on the news, see hundreds of people losing their life savings, and worry you could likely be next. Never mind that 1,000 lawsuits out of 60 million p2p users is a 1 in 60,000 chance. Once again - the RIAA's goal is to get people to give in to their demands (stop sharing files and then, they hope, buy their CDs).
I'm not saying the RIAA is as evil as Al Qaeda (killing someone is far worse than bankrupting them), just pointing out that the two groups are both exploiting the same part of human psychology.
Your computer belongs to you. What happens with that computer is your responsibility. It should be apparent, but for some reason it isn't to most people.
So if a friend borrows my car, and then drives it drunk (assume they were sober when I gave them the keys) I should go to jail? I think few people would blame the car owner for what happened in this case.
This is quite disturbing, and it ties in to the idea of the USA wanting to impose its values/laws on the rest of the world. It's like when we "certify" whether or not we like another country's drug laws. Who are we to tell some European country they have to throw their citizens in jail for smoking pot?
Going back to the extradition topic, imagine Hugh Hefner being extradited to Saudi Arabia because some guy over there was looking at playboy.com. It would never happen. Americans don't have to obey Saudi Arabian law (unless they actually travel to Saudi Arabia of course); why should Australians have to obey US law? (Exception - if something is illegal in both Australia and the US, I wouldn't have a problem with it).
It's on salon.com. You'll need to get a day pass to read the article if you're not a subscriber.
Someone could go there and gamble. No TV delay in the ballpark.
I like the idea. Perhaps we could also have anti-RIAA ads modeled after the government's anti-drug ads, like what the Detroit Project did.
Is it okay to support corporate greed if it's only a little bit?
So you buy an RIAA CD occasionally.
It's not like you're paying millions of dollars to finance a music cartel and all the poverty and lawsuits it creates.
And you understand the argument that RIAA money contributes to terrible things.
That if you buy an RIAA CD, your money goes to people who are responsible for bankrupting college students, using their influence in Congress to threaten our civil liberties, clogging the courts with lawsuits and forcing musicians into abusive one-sided contracts. That if you stopped buying RIAA CDs, the dealers would go away, the abuse of monopoly would end.
You get all that.
But it's just one CD, right?
Well, here's a secret: You don't pick which side you're on by how much you buy.
You pick which side you're on by buying in the first place.
I ordered some music from CD baby and they're doing a much better job than you might think. Even if you know nothing about independent music you can find something you like. You can click on "search" and look for music that sounds like an [riaa] artist you like, then listen to samples (and the samples are 2 minutes, not 30 seconds like Amazon. No need to waste your money buying crap). Once you find something you like, they give you a couple recommendations. The recommendation engine isn't as sophisticated as Amazon, but it's a much faster way of finding new music than listening to Clear Channel. Also most of the CDs are $10 and most of that goes to the artist.
If you're looking for an alternative to funding the RIAA jihad (or just want to find some music that's interesting and original for a change), you should check these guys out.
Someone gets sued by the RIAA for arranging the objects in their cube the wrong way?
While you're doing that, I'll be at Borders with my cell phone.
From the law firm's website:
WHO IS A MEMBER OF THE PROPOSED CLASS?
The class action Complaint was brought on behalf of all persons residing in the United States who have, while operating a computer, encountered an advertising banner like the one illustrated on this website.
If you saw the ads, you're a member of the class. You don't have to have clicked on any of them.
California's in the hole and Microsoft is evil. I say we kill two birds with one stone. California's budget shortfall is 30-40 billion dollars; Microsoft has about that much in cash. We'll never get it just by settling lawsuits $1 billion at a time, especially when 2/3 of it isn't real money anyway.
Everyone meet tomorrow afternoon in Sacramento, in front of the State Capitol. We'll then caravan up I-5 to Redmond. There's more of us than there are of them. We can take them. Once we get the money, we'll take it back to Sacramento and use it to balance the budget.
Who's with me?
Most electronic devices are allowed except during takeoff and landing. There's only a few things you can't ever use, like cell phones and portable radios/TVs (because they use broadcast signals). DVD players, video games, etc are acceptable.
SCO is "hoping that even if 99 percent of Linux customers laugh in their face, that there will be sufficient large companies who, for what is presumably going to be a relative drop in the bucket of their IT budgets, can potentially eliminate a cloud over their heads," he said.
99 percent? I think that percentage is a bit low.
This looks like the "sell worthless insurance" business model, and there are already many companies that use it. For example:
- Credit card insurance ("Protect your Citibank account in case you become unemployed or disabled"). Banks make big money on this one.
- Extended warranties. $19 for a warranty on a $99 television from Best Buy? (If the TV does break, it will almost certainly happen before the manufacturer's warranty expires anyway. TV's either break right away or they last forever)
- "WirePro" on your phone line. Pay $2.99 a month and the phone company pays to repair inside wiring. But this is hardly ever needed, and if you live in an apartment this is often the landlord's responsibility anyway.
What's different about SCO is that they are actually creating the "risk" that companies would be insuring against while the others just exaggerate existing risks. But it's still effectively the same business model.
The government's mission to destroy the Slashdot terrorist organization has been code-named Government Nuclear Aggressor Annhilation.
Almost looked like it might succeed a few days ago.