Legal implications are zero (but IANAL). You'll find "borrowed" images all over the net - name one case where an ISP has ever been sued for webcaching them. Or where a user - or Microsoft - has been sued for caching them in Internet Explorer! In fact, I seem to remember that new EU directives explicitly exempt caches, which is only common sense.
The individual action is not selfish. But that's like saying no grain of sand is a large heap, therefore 9 trillion trillion grains of sand do not make a large heap. The collective punishment action is self-interested, even though your own participation may not be. If that even makes sense!
I still haven't figured this one out myself, but I think it's still more complicated.
It's easily bypassed. The current Windows client has a stupid bug which allows you to increase your share size by rescanning your share directory. DOH! And you can easily double your share size by duplicating or symlinking files. DOH! [Windows 2000 was supposed to have a transparent symlinking feature invoked when you copy a file, but it doesn't work for me.] And, to top it all, an unofficial Java client can't calculate the share size accurately, so it just lets the user type it in. DOH!
But more to the point, who cares about freeloaders? Just log in to Kazaa...
and putting a duty on everybody to know all the laws
In case you haven't noticed, these spammers are:
Engaging in interstate commerce (even if it's black-market stuff)
Often selling physical goods (or claiming to, anyway) which have to be delivered
which means they have to be aware of and follow laws on interstate commerce anyway. I don't see a big difference here.
This is also compelled speech and apparently the defendant didn't even bring that issue up.
I'm not surprised at all - how could they have argued it? We will be irreparably harmed by people choosing not to read our adverts by using filters? WTF?? Which would be a big fat admission that almost everyone hates spam. That's not something they're going to argue unless they're really stupid or desperate.
Crossover is in fact partially closed source, but it's based on wine which is open source. And in fact all the closed-source bit provides (so I've heard) is an easy configurator - it should be possible to play Sorenson QuickTime movies on Linux using wine already, without bothering to buy crossover.
Of course MPlayer is not the "first open source program that seems to work" with Quicktime, that's completely laughable nonsense, as others have pointed out.
Isn't knowing how much software in the country is pirated a bit like claiming to know how many rapes go unreported each year? It's a statistic that is impossible to gather by the nature of the question.
You can't give a precise statistic, but you can give a lower bounds, based on how many people admit to illegally sharing software [yes, people will admit to it, just go on irc] / say they were too afraid to report their rape.
Also, ICQ / IE etc are not made for sending/receiving files.
What? Think before you speak! Obviously IE is made for sending and receiving files. That's exactly what it's made for! (Files are sent in e.g. HTTP uploads, so that's more minor, but definitely receiving files is a core feature).
As another poster said, the key difference is that Kazaa makes sharing and finding music and video files easier. It's often a lot easier to find the mp3 you want on Kazaa than Google, and for a variety of reasons a lot of people prefer to use Kazaa rather than FTP/Usenet/IRC/J-Random-Filesharing-App to share files. But you can in principle share and find music files just using IE and Apache, say. Indeed I have sometimes found good music straight off the web - it's not impossible. (obviously I'm missing out Google, the Internet, Cisco, etc., but it just shows how silly it gets when you get down to that level.)
(I refuse to use the word "piracy" to describe sharing. It's a propaganda word. Using it is tantamount to supporting the oligopolists.)
Yes, spam sucks, but all the legislative proposals I've seen so far are worse
Uh, what about the already existing laws in some states which ban email header fraud? How could anyone possibly object to that? You want people to be able to commit fraud in the name of "free speech"??
Unfortunately they can't have much effect on Chinese-language spam from Asia, or anything from outside their jurisdiction - but they might help a little, and surely couldn't do any harm?
Another example: I right-clicked on the desktop expecting to be able to change my screen resolution, but couldn't find the tool to do it. Actually, I hunted for about 1/2 hour before deciding I'd just deal with the current resolution.
Ctrl+Alt+ keypad [+] or keypad [-]. If that doesn't work, you need to edit/etc/X11/XF86Config-4.
The only bugs that software companies are concerned about are "showstoppers" or "Severity-1" level bugs
You're contradicting yourself. In this sentence you're saying MS only cares about showstopper bugs, and feels free to ignore all the rest?
Well that's even worse than I thought. But it can't possibly be that bad, because MS products aren't usually that buggy.
The bottom line is: given a choice between releasing a quality product, late, or rushing a product out the door, MS has often chosen the latter. No question about that.
If you don't think there is ever any corruption in government contracting in the US - despite all those pages and pages of regulations - you're extremely naive.
Slashdot Mirror
What a load of crud! You are officially completely out of touch. Have you ever heard of homelessness? Rough sleeping?
I still haven't figured this one out myself, but I think it's still more complicated.
But more to the point, who cares about freeloaders? Just log in to Kazaa...
Not likely.
In case you haven't noticed, these spammers are:
- Engaging in interstate commerce (even if it's black-market stuff)
- Often selling physical goods (or claiming to, anyway) which have to be delivered
which means they have to be aware of and follow laws on interstate commerce anyway. I don't see a big difference here.This is also compelled speech and apparently the defendant didn't even bring that issue up.
I'm not surprised at all - how could they have argued it? We will be irreparably harmed by people choosing not to read our adverts by using filters? WTF?? Which would be a big fat admission that almost everyone hates spam. That's not something they're going to argue unless they're really stupid or desperate.
Of course MPlayer is not the "first open source program that seems to work" with Quicktime, that's completely laughable nonsense, as others have pointed out.
You can't give a precise statistic, but you can give a lower bounds, based on how many people admit to illegally sharing software [yes, people will admit to it, just go on irc] / say they were too afraid to report their rape.
What? Think before you speak! Obviously IE is made for sending and receiving files. That's exactly what it's made for! (Files are sent in e.g. HTTP uploads, so that's more minor, but definitely receiving files is a core feature).
As another poster said, the key difference is that Kazaa makes sharing and finding music and video files easier. It's often a lot easier to find the mp3 you want on Kazaa than Google, and for a variety of reasons a lot of people prefer to use Kazaa rather than FTP/Usenet/IRC/J-Random-Filesharing-App to share files. But you can in principle share and find music files just using IE and Apache, say. Indeed I have sometimes found good music straight off the web - it's not impossible. (obviously I'm missing out Google, the Internet, Cisco, etc., but it just shows how silly it gets when you get down to that level.)
(I refuse to use the word "piracy" to describe sharing. It's a propaganda word. Using it is tantamount to supporting the oligopolists.)
Uh, what about the already existing laws in some states which ban email header fraud? How could anyone possibly object to that? You want people to be able to commit fraud in the name of "free speech"??
Unfortunately they can't have much effect on Chinese-language spam from Asia, or anything from outside their jurisdiction - but they might help a little, and surely couldn't do any harm?
Ctrl+Alt+ keypad [+] or keypad [-]. If that doesn't work, you need to edit /etc/X11/XF86Config-4.
You're contradicting yourself. In this sentence you're saying MS only cares about showstopper bugs, and feels free to ignore all the rest?
Well that's even worse than I thought. But it can't possibly be that bad, because MS products aren't usually that buggy.
The bottom line is: given a choice between releasing a quality product, late, or rushing a product out the door, MS has often chosen the latter. No question about that.
Hell, I do that and I'm 22! One of my professors is even worse - slurs words together regularly.
For now, at least.