I'm not sure Slashdot is the place to even ask a question like this. No, taking a midi file of Tubular Bells and sampling in real instruments does not make it an "original creation". Really, did you think for a second it even might be?
Even if the original work is out of copyright, for example Beethoven's works, the rights to the "notation or manuscript" is owned by whoever printed or published it, since classical music can be notated in different ways according to different interpretations. This goes for any piece of music. Also, the midi file, even of an out of copyright piece of music is the intellectual property of the author. I've created my own versions of several pieces of classical music, made them available on the internet and I've noticed in the years since I've come across those files under different names. It's the same midi I made, just someone has put their own name as author\tracker in the file. It's not cool.
I disagree with your point about not having a credit card and\or not willing to pay anything but cash for sensitive items. That's your tough luck. Not the industry's fault or problem, nor is it an excuse for P2P. You're sensitive about buying: condoms? Detergent? Blank discs? Are you kidding me? Battleship Potemkin and Triumph of the Will are classic films owned by many film fans, including myself. No-one is triggering files in any database. Get over yourself. Get over your paranoia. Jesus.
Though I partly agree with your second points about stuff that's not available from the original manufacturer, its yet another of those weak justifications from pirates. We both know that most of what's on bittorrent are commercial movies, music and games that are easily available at any good online store. Even if you do manage to find Mickey Mouse Cartoon #23 it probably has zero seeds, while the latest U2 album, well over a thousand.
While I think this move by the industry is a step too far, you have to wonder who is really to blame over this. I've said this for a long time. Once the industry made it possible to purchase music legally online, thereby putting a stop to the "convenience" argument from the napster days, that they were going to go after pirates with a vengeance, and that they would win.
There will always be a music industry, because despite some artists distributing music for free, it will never be the norm, because in our society, while information might be easy to distribute, material goods like equipment, housing, clothes, food, sadly are not, therefore anyone with talent will use that talent to make money. Anyone with a talent for business will use that talented artist to make them money. In short, there will never be this amazing revolutionary new business model that allows people to get free music and all the artists, musicians, producers and studio technicians to make a nice living.
I'll quickly get to my point. The industry has already made a legal alternative to downloading music. Okay, they were forced to, and that is a good thing. Downloading music is very convenient, and fast. However, the justification for piracy is gone, and any reasonable person will see all that remains is the desire to "get something for nothing". The courts recognise this, the law recognises this, and the government recognises this. As a result, the industry will succeed in using the law against pirates. A good thing I say. However, it has a major downside, which I predicted many years ago.
Because the basic contention of the industry is correct, i.e. "hey, that's our work, you're not supposed to be getting it without paying for it" is a correct one, they will succeed in any legal cases they bring. The only time they might lose is (as in any other legal matter) if they did something illegal to get there (i.e. monitoring somebody's computer files without permission).
In the end, this will only result in the law focusing more and more on software and networks like edonkey and bittorrent, and it will not be good for us. They will create stupider and stupider laws that harm aspects of the internet that have nothing to do with the piracy issue, because they don't understand it, and won't.
The best thing we as geeks could do is discourage piracy, the decent and intelligent among us know its wrong, and those of us from the napster era are smart enough to know that it couldn't last forever. We all know there are always new technological ways to pirate stuff, but those can be made null and void by just a couple of stupid catch-all laws. If we want the RIAA\MPAA to stop trying to influence our wonderful technology we need to stop scumbags abusing our wonderful technology for nefarious purposes...even if we once did it ourselves. The end result is obvious.
Buffy, Lara Croft and Xena are FANTASY characters. Not sci-fi. Fantasy has always been a genre that appealed more to women than men, long before these characters were created.
Very interesting article. This is kind of like how the big movie, software pirates justify their theft of products. It's always "who are we hurting really"
The point of the article if you read it, and not just the obvious anti-microsoft headline is that they're going on the principle that if you give a man a fish you feed him for a day, teach him to fish you feed him for a lifetime. Nobody *NEEDS* free software. No matter where in the world you are. People need food, water, shelter, medical care, good infrastructure, the basic needs of life.
The luxuries of the developed world came about long before Microsoft were formed, and like it says in the article MS aren't in the business of free handouts, but they're happy to provide expertise etc. Despite what a lot of westerners think not all of Africa is poor or famine stricken, and they don't need free anything. What the need is the ability to develop their economy - free software might make that a little easier, but it won't solve the problem. MS not giving free versions of windows and Office programs doesn't make them stupid or bad. It's a smart move, and a pretty generous one for a business which doesn't have to do get involved in this anyway.
This is a press release, not a publication in a scientific journal. These kinds of stories come out all the time in the press, only to die a death on investigation by their pears, if the research even gets published after all.
Anyone surprised that a university comes out with a notion like pot is good for you.:)
Different juries have decided in courts of law for the same crimes for centuries now. Do you have a better system? I don't many on this site are minors anyway, so the story is pretty irrelevent.
This will mean that banks will be forced to put their customers through more and more identification hoops than they already do. We will be inconvenienced even more and all because of the phishers. They are criminals like any other, and it's the governments responsibility to deal with them.
Forcing the responsibility on the banks is only going to encourage the banks to treat the customers worse than they already do.
If you don't like it either return it or sell it. It's not their fault you don't like half their songs. Nobody likes everything. There are enough free samples, radio plays, reviews and word of mouth for an intelligent person to make decision about whether something is worth buying. I'm a huge movie fan, and I haven't seen a movie in 2 years that I didn't regret seeing, because I've finely tuned my decision system on which to judge. I base it on several trusted sources and past history of the director, screenwriter, actors, and production company etc. I do the same now with music. Haven't bought an album I didn't like in years either. Sure, there are songs on it that I don't really listen to, but I don't buy an album for its individual songs, because any idiot would know that if that's what you want you buy the singles, right? When I buy an album I buy it as a whole. I bought for the songs I like, the artwork, the writing by\or about the band. If there are a few songs on it that I don't like that's not a problem to me. I understand that that's the NATURE OF ART. Some you like, some you don't. You don't blame the artist and you use that as an excuse to steal it.
Do you always think you should only buy pits and pieces of products that you like. In the bookshop do you rip out the pages of books you don't like? Do you try and get a paper cheaper because you don't like the sports section?
You can always find excuses to justify getting something for nothing. But anyone with a brain can see through that.
"I delete it. If I like it, I will probably buy the album"
Probably? So there is music that you download instead of buying, like it, and never pay for? Does this happen often. This week? Today? Why don't you buy it kahless2k? Is $13.99 an album too expensive? Is $.99 a download too much for you? Tough. 3D Studio Max is too much for me so I just don't buy it. I'll work something out.
It's pretty funny how despite admitting you own music you like that you haven't paid for you tell him to adapt his business model. How does a business adapt to a model that's getting it for free? How does a business compete with that. You would think the obvious answer is to make it available online as legitmate downloads. Well, it's been here for 2 years yet P2P music sites are still busy as ever.
What do you suggest? It's hardly expensive, unless $.99 for a song is too expensive for you, in which case you've got BIGGER problems. Is it because the quality is bad? No, you've got music you like that you haven't paid for? So what is it? What makes you download music you like and not pay for it, and how is a business meant to adapt to that? They've lowered their prices in the past few years, yet people will still bitch about it. If you don't want to pay for music then try a site like http://epitonic.com/ and check out some indie music which is available at no charge, and the quality is excellent.
Don't they have a huge market research department? Don't they know that people don't want a disc that erases itself after one viewing? What if I want to watch a movie again? What if i want to show it to me friend the next day?
This is without doubt the funniest review of a film I ever read. Did he really compare the creator of Buffy The Vampire Slayer to Shakespeare and Tolkien? Did I imagine that? The guy who writes great Shakesperean pieces of dialogue like this
>i>"Kaylee, what the hell's going on in the engine room? Were there monkeys? Some terrifying space monkeys maybe got loose?
"
Did he really say it was the greatest science fiction film of all time, beating those great ones that I don't even have to mention on slashdot, but do anyway because we're such geeks. 2001, Bladerunner, Metropolis, Alien!
ENDERS GAME may be a classic science fiction novel (I haven't read it, so I always reserve judgement) but one things for sure, OSC has certainly lost his marbles since then.
Lets hope they have the ability to import, manipulate, convert and export all PDF files in the way you can do with most other formats and not just continue with Adobe's painful rendition of it.
Pretty much every application, game etc comes with a PDF manual instead of a printed one. I tend to like to read stuff on my PDA, and it's IMPOSSIBLE to read PDF documents on a PDA with their version of Adobe. Their reflow option is useless. I have never had a PDF document that actually "reflowed". You have to zoom in just to read the text, and only then you can only see the first half of a sentence.
Instead I just convert PDF to HTML, but that doesnt' always work, and it's difficult to find freeware programs to do it.
In the UK this is being marketed as a comedy...
I've never seen the show, but heard it mentioned in the same breath as other intelligent adult sci-fi shows. Surely, it's not some dumb space comedy, right?
This is hardly surprising since the act of downloading requires a distorted sense of what's right or wrong anyway. Since most stuff is available online or a 24 hour delivery away for pretty reasonable prices there are very little excuses for piracy. There are some obvious exceptions mainly regarding television shows or movies that may never air in your particular country, or if it's something that you need to try before you buy.
However, that second reason is very rare. There are enough reviews, free samples, demos, trailers, word of mouth, etc for an intelligent person to form an opinion of something before they buy. So that just leaves the more common reason, wanting something for nothing. It's hardly a big leap of logic to assume that these people also follow those "principles" in other areas of their lives.
This isn't really a complaint or a criticism, but more of an observation of human behaviour. In my experience most people if they knew they'd get away with a crime would have no hesitation committing it.And by anonymously downloading albums on the internet for free you are almost guaranteed to get away with it, every time. This is an old old human trait that probably goes back as far as there has been stuff worth stealing. People often justify this with thinly veiled arguments like
"If X made better movies\music\games then maybe I'd consider buying them"
"Why should I pay for something that I might not like"
"X Company has enough money anyway, what difference would it make if I downloaded it"
I know kids who regularly steal CDs\DVDs from stores because they know that even if they get caught by the security guard they just confiscate what they've taken and rarely call the police. The internet just makes it easier for more people to do it for free.
I think companies that really care for your well being are few and far between, and it's up to you to find your own way of satisfying your goals and accomplishments.
Too many people I know blame their managers, their company, the government, (or: insert authority figure here) for their problems with motivation and lack of achievement, but ultimately when you complain about that you are wasting time that you could spend solving it, and the more you complain about it the more you reinforce it in your mind.
I've found the most successful people I know are people that never complain, and just get on with it, or find ways of solving their problems, and they never blame anyone. Sure it feels good once in a while to blame someone, and it may even be their fault, but even so, they're never going to dig you out of your hole. It's always up to you. If you find a company that really looks out for you (like Tom Cruise's company in THE FIRM!!) then good for you, you're very very lucky.
This isn't really anything new, or unique to the U.S. A lot of countries have this "problem". Even before genetics this has been a long standing argument in the UK and various other countries (probably most). If you are arrested for anything you are automatically fingerprinted, photographed etc.
If you are never convicted of anything it varies from country to country what you have to do have those removed from the permanent records. The authorities usually like to make it as hard as possible, for obvious reasons. If you did something wrong then you can't really complain, but it's a bummer for innocent people who are unfortunate enough to be taken to a police station.
The fact that it's now genetic material doesn't make a huge amount of difference to any existing rights or laws. I'm not clued up on American law but I would bet that chances are it's already difficult in most states to have your records deleted if you turn out to be innocent.
There is an advantage to this. If someone is guilty then this is obviously a VERY GOOD THING that their genetic material (almost impossible to disguise) is on permanent record. They can pretty much be quickly identified at ANY crime scene for the rest of their lives.
Obviously this can be abused, and mistakes made, and innocent people have to put up with the humiliation of having their records on any kind of "suspect" database. But it does no good to jump up and down in anger just because it's genetics that are getting recorded now. It's pretty much the same set of laws that are making it easy for the authorities to keep your data. This bill is just one of many. Stop this one, yes, but that won't stop your problem. You need to attack each of the laws in your respective states that indicate the use of your data in a police or FBI database.
Like I said earlier, many other countries allow you to have this information removed, but they ALL make it very difficult for you. So the US is not alone in this. It's a very common thing
Alright--first, I'll want to tongue your bung while you juggle my balls in one hand and play with my asshole with the other. But don't stick you finger in. Then. I'll wanna pinky you and put it in your friend's brown, while Silent Bob spanks into a Dixie cup. After that, I'll wanna smell your titties, for a while, and you can pull my nutsack up over my dick, so it looks like a Bullfrog. Then I want you to flick at my nuts while your friend spanks me into the same Dixie cup Silent Bob jizzed in. Then we throw the Dixie cup out.
"
- maybe that is...
Slashdot Mirror
Even if the original work is out of copyright, for example Beethoven's works, the rights to the "notation or manuscript" is owned by whoever printed or published it, since classical music can be notated in different ways according to different interpretations. This goes for any piece of music. Also, the midi file, even of an out of copyright piece of music is the intellectual property of the author. I've created my own versions of several pieces of classical music, made them available on the internet and I've noticed in the years since I've come across those files under different names. It's the same midi I made, just someone has put their own name as author\tracker in the file. It's not cool.
Is it just me or is this a completely stupid and pointless question? (including this one!)
Though I partly agree with your second points about stuff that's not available from the original manufacturer, its yet another of those weak justifications from pirates. We both know that most of what's on bittorrent are commercial movies, music and games that are easily available at any good online store. Even if you do manage to find Mickey Mouse Cartoon #23 it probably has zero seeds, while the latest U2 album, well over a thousand.
There will always be a music industry, because despite some artists distributing music for free, it will never be the norm, because in our society, while information might be easy to distribute, material goods like equipment, housing, clothes, food, sadly are not, therefore anyone with talent will use that talent to make money. Anyone with a talent for business will use that talented artist to make them money. In short, there will never be this amazing revolutionary new business model that allows people to get free music and all the artists, musicians, producers and studio technicians to make a nice living.
I'll quickly get to my point. The industry has already made a legal alternative to downloading music. Okay, they were forced to, and that is a good thing. Downloading music is very convenient, and fast. However, the justification for piracy is gone, and any reasonable person will see all that remains is the desire to "get something for nothing". The courts recognise this, the law recognises this, and the government recognises this. As a result, the industry will succeed in using the law against pirates. A good thing I say. However, it has a major downside, which I predicted many years ago.
Because the basic contention of the industry is correct, i.e. "hey, that's our work, you're not supposed to be getting it without paying for it" is a correct one, they will succeed in any legal cases they bring. The only time they might lose is (as in any other legal matter) if they did something illegal to get there (i.e. monitoring somebody's computer files without permission).
In the end, this will only result in the law focusing more and more on software and networks like edonkey and bittorrent, and it will not be good for us. They will create stupider and stupider laws that harm aspects of the internet that have nothing to do with the piracy issue, because they don't understand it, and won't.
The best thing we as geeks could do is discourage piracy, the decent and intelligent among us know its wrong, and those of us from the napster era are smart enough to know that it couldn't last forever. We all know there are always new technological ways to pirate stuff, but those can be made null and void by just a couple of stupid catch-all laws. If we want the RIAA\MPAA to stop trying to influence our wonderful technology we need to stop scumbags abusing our wonderful technology for nefarious purposes...even if we once did it ourselves. The end result is obvious.
Any screenshots or video demo anywhere?
Buffy, Lara Croft and Xena are FANTASY characters. Not sci-fi. Fantasy has always been a genre that appealed more to women than men, long before these characters were created.
Very interesting article. This is kind of like how the big movie, software pirates justify their theft of products. It's always "who are we hurting really"
The luxuries of the developed world came about long before Microsoft were formed, and like it says in the article MS aren't in the business of free handouts, but they're happy to provide expertise etc. Despite what a lot of westerners think not all of Africa is poor or famine stricken, and they don't need free anything. What the need is the ability to develop their economy - free software might make that a little easier, but it won't solve the problem. MS not giving free versions of windows and Office programs doesn't make them stupid or bad. It's a smart move, and a pretty generous one for a business which doesn't have to do get involved in this anyway.
Freedom of Religion is still more welcome on Slashdot than mentioning that the RIAA are right to go after thieves :)
Anyone surprised that a university comes out with a notion like pot is good for you. :)
Just for all the blogs
Different juries have decided in courts of law for the same crimes for centuries now. Do you have a better system? I don't many on this site are minors anyway, so the story is pretty irrelevent.
Forcing the responsibility on the banks is only going to encourage the banks to treat the customers worse than they already do.
Um, then sell it.
If you don't like it either return it or sell it. It's not their fault you don't like half their songs. Nobody likes everything. There are enough free samples, radio plays, reviews and word of mouth for an intelligent person to make decision about whether something is worth buying. I'm a huge movie fan, and I haven't seen a movie in 2 years that I didn't regret seeing, because I've finely tuned my decision system on which to judge. I base it on several trusted sources and past history of the director, screenwriter, actors, and production company etc. I do the same now with music. Haven't bought an album I didn't like in years either. Sure, there are songs on it that I don't really listen to, but I don't buy an album for its individual songs, because any idiot would know that if that's what you want you buy the singles, right? When I buy an album I buy it as a whole. I bought for the songs I like, the artwork, the writing by\or about the band. If there are a few songs on it that I don't like that's not a problem to me. I understand that that's the NATURE OF ART. Some you like, some you don't. You don't blame the artist and you use that as an excuse to steal it.
Do you always think you should only buy pits and pieces of products that you like. In the bookshop do you rip out the pages of books you don't like? Do you try and get a paper cheaper because you don't like the sports section?
You can always find excuses to justify getting something for nothing. But anyone with a brain can see through that.
Probably? So there is music that you download instead of buying, like it, and never pay for? Does this happen often. This week? Today? Why don't you buy it kahless2k? Is $13.99 an album too expensive? Is $.99 a download too much for you? Tough. 3D Studio Max is too much for me so I just don't buy it. I'll work something out.
It's pretty funny how despite admitting you own music you like that you haven't paid for you tell him to adapt his business model. How does a business adapt to a model that's getting it for free? How does a business compete with that. You would think the obvious answer is to make it available online as legitmate downloads. Well, it's been here for 2 years yet P2P music sites are still busy as ever.
What do you suggest? It's hardly expensive, unless $.99 for a song is too expensive for you, in which case you've got BIGGER problems. Is it because the quality is bad? No, you've got music you like that you haven't paid for? So what is it? What makes you download music you like and not pay for it, and how is a business meant to adapt to that? They've lowered their prices in the past few years, yet people will still bitch about it. If you don't want to pay for music then try a site like http://epitonic.com/ and check out some indie music which is available at no charge, and the quality is excellent.
Don't they have a huge market research department? Don't they know that people don't want a disc that erases itself after one viewing? What if I want to watch a movie again? What if i want to show it to me friend the next day?
>i>"Kaylee, what the hell's going on in the engine room? Were there monkeys? Some terrifying space monkeys maybe got loose? "
Did he really say it was the greatest science fiction film of all time, beating those great ones that I don't even have to mention on slashdot, but do anyway because we're such geeks. 2001, Bladerunner, Metropolis, Alien!ENDERS GAME may be a classic science fiction novel (I haven't read it, so I always reserve judgement) but one things for sure, OSC has certainly lost his marbles since then.
Pretty much every application, game etc comes with a PDF manual instead of a printed one. I tend to like to read stuff on my PDA, and it's IMPOSSIBLE to read PDF documents on a PDA with their version of Adobe. Their reflow option is useless. I have never had a PDF document that actually "reflowed". You have to zoom in just to read the text, and only then you can only see the first half of a sentence.
Instead I just convert PDF to HTML, but that doesnt' always work, and it's difficult to find freeware programs to do it.
..it's still not an excuse to pirate them, P2P fans, because if they're so bad then that would make you a hypocrite, right :)
In the UK this is being marketed as a comedy... I've never seen the show, but heard it mentioned in the same breath as other intelligent adult sci-fi shows. Surely, it's not some dumb space comedy, right?
"If X made better movies\music\games then maybe I'd consider buying them" "Why should I pay for something that I might not like" "X Company has enough money anyway, what difference would it make if I downloaded it"
I know kids who regularly steal CDs\DVDs from stores because they know that even if they get caught by the security guard they just confiscate what they've taken and rarely call the police. The internet just makes it easier for more people to do it for free.
Too many people I know blame their managers, their company, the government, (or: insert authority figure here) for their problems with motivation and lack of achievement, but ultimately when you complain about that you are wasting time that you could spend solving it, and the more you complain about it the more you reinforce it in your mind.
I've found the most successful people I know are people that never complain, and just get on with it, or find ways of solving their problems, and they never blame anyone. Sure it feels good once in a while to blame someone, and it may even be their fault, but even so, they're never going to dig you out of your hole. It's always up to you. If you find a company that really looks out for you (like Tom Cruise's company in THE FIRM!!) then good for you, you're very very lucky.
If you are never convicted of anything it varies from country to country what you have to do have those removed from the permanent records. The authorities usually like to make it as hard as possible, for obvious reasons. If you did something wrong then you can't really complain, but it's a bummer for innocent people who are unfortunate enough to be taken to a police station.
The fact that it's now genetic material doesn't make a huge amount of difference to any existing rights or laws. I'm not clued up on American law but I would bet that chances are it's already difficult in most states to have your records deleted if you turn out to be innocent.
There is an advantage to this. If someone is guilty then this is obviously a VERY GOOD THING that their genetic material (almost impossible to disguise) is on permanent record. They can pretty much be quickly identified at ANY crime scene for the rest of their lives.
Obviously this can be abused, and mistakes made, and innocent people have to put up with the humiliation of having their records on any kind of "suspect" database. But it does no good to jump up and down in anger just because it's genetics that are getting recorded now. It's pretty much the same set of laws that are making it easy for the authorities to keep your data. This bill is just one of many. Stop this one, yes, but that won't stop your problem. You need to attack each of the laws in your respective states that indicate the use of your data in a police or FBI database.
Like I said earlier, many other countries allow you to have this information removed, but they ALL make it very difficult for you. So the US is not alone in this. It's a very common thing
Alright--first, I'll want to tongue your bung while you juggle my balls in one hand and play with my asshole with the other. But don't stick you finger in. Then. I'll wanna pinky you and put it in your friend's brown, while Silent Bob spanks into a Dixie cup. After that, I'll wanna smell your titties, for a while, and you can pull my nutsack up over my dick, so it looks like a Bullfrog. Then I want you to flick at my nuts while your friend spanks me into the same Dixie cup Silent Bob jizzed in. Then we throw the Dixie cup out. " - maybe that is...