You are highly unlikely to get good advice from this forum, which will contain 10:1 or more differing opinions of what should be the case to what actually is the case.
Read the copyright notice on your albums and the relevant sections of the law for whether you are entitled to "replace" those damaged tracks in any way other than buying a new copy of the records.
Cutouts and pawn shop copies are perfectly legal. Cutouts are industry overruns and the like dumped at reduced price, and the *AAs have been rightly spanked down on all previous attempt to stop resale of legitimate copies.
I'm already boycotting the RIAA. If there's a CD i really want, I get a list of the songs, and I download it.
That's not boycotting. That's copyright infringement dressed up with a pseudo-political statement. The point of a boycott is to deprive an entity of income by not buying its product/service. The entirely legal and ethical right to boycott (a form of passive resistance) does not include any justification to acquire that product/service through an illegal channel.
If you have used the FCC form, I assume you've done the research as to information they request, specifically all the contact info for SCO, etc. Could you be so kind as to post that info here so we don't all have to duplicate effort searching these people down?
And thank you for confirming my suspicion that we were not even discussing the same topic.
Re:Dean for President
on
Saving the Net
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
What I said, carefully differentiating the intent behind the network's creation from the culture that evolved on it, was that early Internet culture (i.e. that which emerged after the basic protocols were in place, and people actually started to use the thing) was rife with thinking of it as a revolutionary communications tool that would "level the playing field" for all of its users. As I recall, that was a much more common theme than its use as a global shopping mall. If you need proof of that claim, I will leave it to you to search the archives as far back into history as you desire...
Doubtlessly you will dismiss me for failing to provide you with the requested citation. Since the early network was used almost exclusively by fuzzy-thinking academics, I am not going out on that wild goose chase.
Re:Liberal/Convervative mumbo jumbo
on
Saving the Net
·
· Score: 1
The author spends too much time polarizing this into a liberal vs. conservative issue.
Did we read the same article? It didn't look all that polarizing to me. It looked like he assayed pros and cons of both camp's views of the issues.
Re:Dean for President
on
Saving the Net
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Dear God you're stupid. The Internet was about building a very large network that could withstand physical attack.
Watch the name calling. You're apparently not such a scholar yourself.
The poster said "democratizing..." was "part of what the internet was all about", not that it was created for that purpose. It is not revisionist to point out that in the nascent days of the Net, the cited motivation was a strong component of the network's culture. It is this network that Doc Searle's argues needs "saving" from becoming a crass and commercialized content vector for media giants.
OTOH, If you'd called him out for failing to capitalize Internet, I would have applauded you.;-)
Re:Dean for President
on
Saving the Net
·
· Score: 0, Troll
"This was part of what the internet was all about: democratizing the ability of an individual outside the established powers to enter into competition or publication or public recognition. "
No, actually it was to facilitate the sharing of physics papers.
Nice pedantry from someone who doesn't know the difference between the Internet and the World-Wide Web.
"Copyright Industy" is the term used by my congressman, and clearly indicates how the content side of this issue is perceived by a significant number of the legislature. Considered in light of the entities pushing agenda, it is an industry of copyright ownership, generally having little to do with creation and frequently abusing the creators of original content.
Other than that, it sounds like we share opinions on the matter. I believe that copyright law is good and valid in principle. It has just been stretched beyond practicability and is currently being used to create a sort of corporate paramilitary unbeholden to the constraints of due process.
I think the only part of my understanding that's past yours, is recognizing what doesn't work to change the big issues. (Letter writing.)
And how have you come to this knowledge? How do you think these people learn the will of their consituency?
I'll agree that if I'm just one guy in S. Florida* expressing these views, then I'm not going to get any satisfaction. My point is that if all the people who realize how these issues affect them and are currently disengaged because they don't think the system can work for them would actively communicate with their reps (and hold them accountable in the voting booth) then the representative system would work better than it does now. If we do not speak out, we deserve the unlubricated screwing we receive...
* = Think about that. If there's anyone who should be disillusioned, it's me!:-)
Have you ever "written your congressman" and gotten him to change his views and his vote?
It's hard to say, isn't it? With my current congressman, I have found him to share my views on most all but the tech v. copyright issue, to which I get the usual "I'll keep your views in mind" response. I will say that he has been the most communicative and accessible of any rep I have attempted to contact.
The bottom line is that these people make their decisions in accord with the will of their constituency or they don't get elected, so if the constituency doesn't communicate, then they will only vote for what the lobbyists tell them to, assuming silence is consent. If they know that a significant part of their voting block won't check their ballot next time based on this communication, then they'll think twice before voting against that will.
Writing letters to these kind of people has absolutely no effect. If you're lucky, some might pretend to listen to you, or even pretend to improve things (windows update patch, ineffectual law, etc..) but in reality nothing changes because people at large are not in the loop, and never will be.
Even bread-and-circus gets us bread and circuses. There are plenty of things done for the people who elect the congress (and most lower offices). The problem is the set of big money peripheral issues that the populace at large tends to ignore so long as they have cheap oil and Sunday night HBO. If the voters did pay attention to this issue, there would be representatives to take advantage of that support just as there are with medical malpractice, the environment, etc.
Or accept the truth, and then start doing things differently, to effect REAL change. Hint: Letters ain't it.
Then clue me in, oh enlightened one. You have obviously attained a level of understanding of the true nature of our political reality far beyond my own.
Nice troll. Perhaps you can explain to me what Kim Jong Il, the Mafia, Saddam Hussen, and Bill Gates have to do with my participatory government? If you mean to insinuate that all these communications would have equal likelihood of success, then explain to me how and why anyone gets elected to any office in this country.
NOONE in this thread said that only Replublicans are sold out. Anyone who's paying attention can see that each of the major parties is just sold out to a different set of interests.
Russian saying... tyranny of the majority... minority rationalist... futile enterprise... wheel inside of the capitalist system... self-adjusting mechanism... purge these foreign objects... ideology simply does not belong
So, you've overintellectualized your apathy. I'm not impressed.
You are partly correct. The "tyranny of the majority" you describe is the tyranny of the disengaged. We are not governed by the intent of a majority of citizens, but by a majority of a voting minority. If you are not actively working toward the solution, no matter how much armchair anarchist blather you coat it in, you are still part of the problem. It is the fault of every non-voter that we have the mess we have. The corporate insterests and congresspeople on the take are just taking advantage of a good situation.
As for the self-adjusting free market, we are not talking about the free market here. We are talking about an interventionist government tampering with the market. A free market does not have levies on recording media and protectionist legislation for industries with unsustainable business models. This is a simple case of government for hire.
Here is a simple fact: Corporations do not vote, citizens do. All the industry largesse in the world would be for naught if the population took their duty to their government seriously. The problem is that vague issues like copyright are meaningless to the majority of citizens. Advances in communications technology are making them important and these issues are now galvanizing an immense number of previously apathetic citizens.
If you are not willing to take advantage of our position and fight against the corporate oligarchy, then you are worthy of only derision. You are the reason our country is sold out to the highest bidder.
I know you're being funny, but this "why bother?" attitude on the part of the citizenry is exactly what has been exploited by the corporations (RIAA, big oil and autos, pharmaceuticals and insurance, ad nauseum) and their congressional lapdogs to put us in our current position.
Granted, these corporations are not the US goverment, but the inaction of said goverment, either speaks of a very high degree of inefficiency or a very ingrained corruption.
Inaction? The government is complicit, running a protection racket for the copyright industry. Audio Home Recording Act of 1992, DMCA, and the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, are just three of the most obvious bits of tripe to pass the U.S. legislature in the last decade+1, and more legislation is pending now.
If you are a U.S. citizen, get involved. Write your congressperson and tell him or her it's time to turn copyright protections back into what they were designed to be: a temporary grant of monopoly on the right to reproduce creative works in exchange for an ultimate benefit to the public domain, not a welfare program for multi-billion dollar industries and the great grandchildren of creative people.
I'm with you, and it helps make the point I tried to call out. Misinformed/.ers are better served by the ugly facts of current law than the all to prevelant misinformation/denial.
There is a very interesting article in the new Communications of the ACM that discusses (among many other things impacting the sampling/freeloading/purchasing of music) the lowering of consumer expectations about sound quality. Basically, they show from surveys that the music business' attempt to sell sound quality is failing because people are much more content with degraded quality when the price is right, i.e. free or damn near.
Unfortunately, I don't know of any publicly available sources for the article if you're not an ACM member. If you're interested enough to pursue it, you can probably find the Communications at any University or large public library. It's July 2003, Volume 46 No. 7. The article is "Digital music and online sharing: software piracy 2.0?"
Exactly so, and they are now trying to tweak the law to make it appear that multiple copies are being made just by virtue of posting it once where it can be downloaded n times. In other words, the current law doesn't suit the copyright cartel and their congressional posse, so they will keep adjusting the law until it does.
I never meant to make any apologies for the bill (in fact I decried it elsewhere) I just popped after hearing that sweeping "copyright infringement is civil, not criminal" thing one too many times.
Look, as much as it pains me, I will apologize for dragging this out. Against my better judgement I kept hammering back when I should have just let the matter drop about 6 posts ago. Contrary to appearances, I really don't get off on arguments. I just hate being misrepresented more than I hate misinformation. Besides, you preempted me with the "I give up" post, so you know you really won.;-)
Slashdot Mirror
You are highly unlikely to get good advice from this forum, which will contain 10:1 or more differing opinions of what should be the case to what actually is the case.
Read the copyright notice on your albums and the relevant sections of the law for whether you are entitled to "replace" those damaged tracks in any way other than buying a new copy of the records.
Cutouts and pawn shop copies are perfectly legal. Cutouts are industry overruns and the like dumped at reduced price, and the *AAs have been rightly spanked down on all previous attempt to stop resale of legitimate copies.
So books, software, movies, any creative effort that can be fixed in a medium is free for exploitation by anyone with the capability to make a copy?
Tell me; What do you do for a living?
If you think music should be free, listen to free music.
That's not boycotting. That's copyright infringement dressed up with a pseudo-political statement. The point of a boycott is to deprive an entity of income by not buying its product/service. The entirely legal and ethical right to boycott (a form of passive resistance) does not include any justification to acquire that product/service through an illegal channel.
If you have used the FCC form, I assume you've done the research as to information they request, specifically all the contact info for SCO, etc. Could you be so kind as to post that info here so we don't all have to duplicate effort searching these people down?
And thank you for confirming my suspicion that we were not even discussing the same topic.
What I said, carefully differentiating the intent behind the network's creation from the culture that evolved on it, was that early Internet culture (i.e. that which emerged after the basic protocols were in place, and people actually started to use the thing) was rife with thinking of it as a revolutionary communications tool that would "level the playing field" for all of its users. As I recall, that was a much more common theme than its use as a global shopping mall. If you need proof of that claim, I will leave it to you to search the archives as far back into history as you desire...
Doubtlessly you will dismiss me for failing to provide you with the requested citation. Since the early network was used almost exclusively by fuzzy-thinking academics, I am not going out on that wild goose chase.
Did we read the same article? It didn't look all that polarizing to me. It looked like he assayed pros and cons of both camp's views of the issues.
Watch the name calling. You're apparently not such a scholar yourself.
The poster said "democratizing..." was "part of what the internet was all about", not that it was created for that purpose. It is not revisionist to point out that in the nascent days of the Net, the cited motivation was a strong component of the network's culture. It is this network that Doc Searle's argues needs "saving" from becoming a crass and commercialized content vector for media giants.
OTOH, If you'd called him out for failing to capitalize Internet, I would have applauded you.
Nice pedantry from someone who doesn't know the difference between the Internet and the World-Wide Web.
"Copyright Industy" is the term used by my congressman, and clearly indicates how the content side of this issue is perceived by a significant number of the legislature. Considered in light of the entities pushing agenda, it is an industry of copyright ownership, generally having little to do with creation and frequently abusing the creators of original content.
Other than that, it sounds like we share opinions on the matter. I believe that copyright law is good and valid in principle. It has just been stretched beyond practicability and is currently being used to create a sort of corporate paramilitary unbeholden to the constraints of due process.
And how have you come to this knowledge? How do you think these people learn the will of their consituency?
I'll agree that if I'm just one guy in S. Florida* expressing these views, then I'm not going to get any satisfaction. My point is that if all the people who realize how these issues affect them and are currently disengaged because they don't think the system can work for them would actively communicate with their reps (and hold them accountable in the voting booth) then the representative system would work better than it does now. If we do not speak out, we deserve the unlubricated screwing we receive...
* = Think about that. If there's anyone who should be disillusioned, it's me!
It's hard to say, isn't it? With my current congressman, I have found him to share my views on most all but the tech v. copyright issue, to which I get the usual "I'll keep your views in mind" response. I will say that he has been the most communicative and accessible of any rep I have attempted to contact.
The bottom line is that these people make their decisions in accord with the will of their constituency or they don't get elected, so if the constituency doesn't communicate, then they will only vote for what the lobbyists tell them to, assuming silence is consent. If they know that a significant part of their voting block won't check their ballot next time based on this communication, then they'll think twice before voting against that will.
Even bread-and-circus gets us bread and circuses. There are plenty of things done for the people who elect the congress (and most lower offices). The problem is the set of big money peripheral issues that the populace at large tends to ignore so long as they have cheap oil and Sunday night HBO. If the voters did pay attention to this issue, there would be representatives to take advantage of that support just as there are with medical malpractice, the environment, etc.
Then clue me in, oh enlightened one. You have obviously attained a level of understanding of the true nature of our political reality far beyond my own.
Granted, and taken as my starting point, not conclusion...
It is still not a justification for apathy, but reason to work harder to change the system if you are unhappy with it.
You and your cynical ilk would do well in Congress. You should think about running...
Nice troll. Perhaps you can explain to me what Kim Jong Il, the Mafia, Saddam Hussen, and Bill Gates have to do with my participatory government? If you mean to insinuate that all these communications would have equal likelihood of success, then explain to me how and why anyone gets elected to any office in this country.
NOONE in this thread said that only Replublicans are sold out. Anyone who's paying attention can see that each of the major parties is just sold out to a different set of interests.
So, you've overintellectualized your apathy. I'm not impressed.
You are partly correct. The "tyranny of the majority" you describe is the tyranny of the disengaged. We are not governed by the intent of a majority of citizens, but by a majority of a voting minority. If you are not actively working toward the solution, no matter how much armchair anarchist blather you coat it in, you are still part of the problem. It is the fault of every non-voter that we have the mess we have. The corporate insterests and congresspeople on the take are just taking advantage of a good situation.
As for the self-adjusting free market, we are not talking about the free market here. We are talking about an interventionist government tampering with the market. A free market does not have levies on recording media and protectionist legislation for industries with unsustainable business models. This is a simple case of government for hire.
Here is a simple fact: Corporations do not vote, citizens do. All the industry largesse in the world would be for naught if the population took their duty to their government seriously. The problem is that vague issues like copyright are meaningless to the majority of citizens. Advances in communications technology are making them important and these issues are now galvanizing an immense number of previously apathetic citizens.
If you are not willing to take advantage of our position and fight against the corporate oligarchy, then you are worthy of only derision. You are the reason our country is sold out to the highest bidder.
The RIAA loves you and your apathetic friends.
I know you're being funny, but this "why bother?" attitude on the part of the citizenry is exactly what has been exploited by the corporations (RIAA, big oil and autos, pharmaceuticals and insurance, ad nauseum) and their congressional lapdogs to put us in our current position.
Inaction? The government is complicit, running a protection racket for the copyright industry. Audio Home Recording Act of 1992, DMCA, and the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, are just three of the most obvious bits of tripe to pass the U.S. legislature in the last decade+1, and more legislation is pending now.
If you are a U.S. citizen, get involved. Write your congressperson and tell him or her it's time to turn copyright protections back into what they were designed to be: a temporary grant of monopoly on the right to reproduce creative works in exchange for an ultimate benefit to the public domain, not a welfare program for multi-billion dollar industries and the great grandchildren of creative people.
I'm with you, and it helps make the point I tried to call out. Misinformed /.ers are better served by the ugly facts of current law than the all to prevelant misinformation/denial.
And you're on mine. I can just hear the rubberkneckers who have followed this thread to the end gagging.
There is a very interesting article in the new Communications of the ACM that discusses (among many other things impacting the sampling/freeloading/purchasing of music) the lowering of consumer expectations about sound quality. Basically, they show from surveys that the music business' attempt to sell sound quality is failing because people are much more content with degraded quality when the price is right, i.e. free or damn near.
Unfortunately, I don't know of any publicly available sources for the article if you're not an ACM member. If you're interested enough to pursue it, you can probably find the Communications at any University or large public library. It's July 2003, Volume 46 No. 7. The article is "Digital music and online sharing: software piracy 2.0?"
Exactly so, and they are now trying to tweak the law to make it appear that multiple copies are being made just by virtue of posting it once where it can be downloaded n times. In other words, the current law doesn't suit the copyright cartel and their congressional posse, so they will keep adjusting the law until it does.
I never meant to make any apologies for the bill (in fact I decried it elsewhere) I just popped after hearing that sweeping "copyright infringement is civil, not criminal" thing one too many times.
Look, as much as it pains me, I will apologize for dragging this out. Against my better judgement I kept hammering back when I should have just let the matter drop about 6 posts ago. Contrary to appearances, I really don't get off on arguments. I just hate being misrepresented more than I hate misinformation. Besides, you preempted me with the "I give up" post, so you know you really won. ;-)
Peace?