I've met lots of decent lawyers. When you need one and they save your ass by knowing the rules, you'll thank them. Most are hardworking folks trying to making a living & NYCL is one of them. A little love for the good lawyers? Way overdue.
A license to print money in a fascist society. It seem the day is rapidly approaching when the government will have complete access to and control of every thing you own. Personal property will no longer be truly personal. The potential for abuse is mind boggling and you only have to look at the recent FBI abuse of national security letters to see that this is a really, really bad thing.
I don't think they need a huge amount of staff to do this, but you can still burn through $6M a year pretty quickly if that's the sole source of income.
I'd still like to know about the EMI thing I mentioned previously. Any ideas?
Is there a back-of-the-envelope estimate of the number of settlements and the average amount per settlement? What a racket!
It seems like they lose on crucial points whenever they go to trial. This business can't continue forever and they're probably just making money while they can. Unless the law changes (which it might) they have to reach a point of diminishing returns at which time the lawsuits will end.
IIRC one of the big four dropped support (EMI?) for the RIAA. Would that mean that the RIAA can't continue to sue over EMI (or whomever) copyright infringements?
Sorry, but they pretty much killed subsidized education in my country. Instead I was locked into student loans that lately have been somewhat above the average APR. The government guarantees my loans to the bank but not the interest rate I pay. My local school taxes support a district my kids don't attend because it's substandard so we get to pay double to get them a decent education.
I have plenty of respect for the opinions of a chinese coal miner, though the definition of "risk" is subjective. In my case it also involves occasionally working with infectious materials that are very definitely fatal. Collapsed mine, HIV, what's the difference if you're dead? Oh, the miner doesn't have to worry about being sued by gold diggers.
Greed and selfishness destroy any scheme you can come up with. Have you heard about the UN aid workers in africa trading relief supplies for sex? What makes you think good intentions will change anything? At least in a capitalist country you have a mechanism to harness the ambitions of the greedy. By the way, some of my classmates were Vietnamese immigrants who were VERY glad for the chance to go to school. You see, the communist government there made life rather difficult.
I never mentioned race so who's biased here? My classmates also included Iranians, Lebanese, Nigerians, Ghanans, Koreans, Chinese (sorry, no miners), Taiwanese, Indians, Pakistanis, Russians, Jamaicans, Trinidadians, Barbadians and Canadians. Some stayed, some went back home. Every single one worked their freaking asses off. Every single one took responsibility for their own welfare.
The thing keeping people down in most 3rd world countries is political corruption and oppression, not free market capitalism. One of the most effective methods for spreading wealth around is microloans - check out http://www.kiva.org/ and yes I've donated. The idea of helping entrepreneurs is particularly appealing to me since it goes directly to the people who will use it best. People all over the world prove themselves smart and hardworking once you give them a shot. What's better - giving a man a fish or teaching him to fish? If you just send over a bunch of food aid you end up with dependent refugee populations.
You don't know me and you certainly seem to prefer personal insults instead of reasoned discourse. Unfortunately your approach is rather sophomoric. In fact I'd lay twenty bucks that you're no more than a 2nd year university student, which is rather generous since you seem to be so confused about the definitions of a few simple concepts.
You certainly seem to have a lot of anger to vent. It's ok and I don't mid a bit if it makes you feel better. Unforunately you don't seem to be making any valid points (nor provide any supporting arguments or evidence) once you get beyond the name-calling. For instance, there's no reason to call me an overpriviledged undeserving prick enjoying a life of luxury - allow me to explain:
Once I got done putting myself through school (first in the extended family with an advanced degree), we had a few kids and I started a business that through continuing very hard work has afforded my family and me a modicum of independence and financial security. I bought equipment with my own money and incur both the risks of financial failure and legal liability. If the business continues to do well, it may be possible to use the money I've earmed to expand the business, providing employment for others and contributing increased tax revenue to my community.
I don't need ideology to get to sleep at night since I'm generally too tired from work and family to stay awake much past 9. What keeps me awake is knowing that somewhere there exist dimwits that can't tell the difference between a free market, a monopoly and a corrupt government. What causes me to lose sleep is that the world contains numbskulls who think what I've done to improve my own life, the welfare of my family and my community is somehow wrong. The government takes about 50% of my earnings in various ways and I do admit that I'm annoyed at how that money is often spent. Perhaps I should rejoice instead that so much of the fruits of my labor are given to help those less willing to wor....Oops less fortunate than I.
If you are so sure of yourself, could you please tell me where I've gone wrong in life so I can correct it.
I was specifically trying to differentiate monopolies from free markets, since by definition having a monopoly implies the LACK of a free market & the competition necessary to keep things honest. Besides, tossing a few molotov cocktails is indeed a factor in the market. Whenever somebody does it in an OPEC nation oil prices spike up. Economics is ultimately a description of human behavior in any case. There is no difference, since the assignment of value to goods and services is subjective.
Capitalist economics isn't a shell game, it's human nature. Capital is just a word that means "money". It could also be referred to as a "stake" or "seed money", etc., but it just means money. Take that money, use it to sell goods or services and you have a business. Make money on your endeavor and we call it call it "profit". The aggregate of all people buying and selling is called a "market". "Economics" is just the ebb and flow of market prices for various goods and services. If the market is competetive it's called a "free" market. Follow me so far? Good boy!
Free market economics work because people in the market make "rational" choices. The underlying assumptions may be flawed and the choices may be wrong but this is still part of the market. Make the wrong choice and you go broke because in a free market you are free to be an idiot and go broke. However, if you make smart choices and DON'T go broke, this is STILL the market at work, because the market is still just the composite behavior of people buying and selling things.
The key word here is "free", because if you are the dominant player in a market the most natural thing to do is control the market so it's more difficult to compete by the inherent value of your good or services alone. Various methods can be used to accomplish this and various laws exist to discourage this. If you are successful in eliminating your competitors you have a monopoly. Still with me? Good boy!
This is the tricky part - monopolies can STILL be viewed as part of a free market and the collective behavior of people in response to the monopoly is ALSO part of a free market. For example, Microsoft used every dirty trick in the book to create a virtual monopoly in the operating system market. The market responded with rampant piracy and theft, but also with free open source operating systems. The reason this occurs is because people are smart and don't like being screwed. Microsoft, along with big media corporations use their vast, monopoly generated profits to buy political support for draconian IP protection laws in order to legislatively protect their monopolies. They view this as necessary because the market value of an electronic copy of their products is practically zero. This is due to virtually unlimited production and distribution at extremely low cost. The market continues working.
Still there? Good boy!
There's no practical way to prevent these types of abuses since people are greedy and politicians are whores. However, the market is PEOPLE (kind of, but not exactly like soylent green) who are smart and don't like being screwed. Existing IP monopolies relied on the difficulty involved in copying and ditributing the content; you had to buy a vinyl record or cd or videotape or DVD - essentially that was the SAME as buying a copy of the IP since they couldn't easily be copied or distributed. Oops! Here comes Digital Audio Tape! The monopolists killed that one quick because they knew it would eventually put them out of business. Wait, what's that thing called? The INTERNET? Awww, shit! Instant production and distribution! Our evil schemes are failing! To congress!
So, thank goodness for the market because no matter what kind of IP protection rackets they come up with, people find ways around them. Meanwhile the IP monopolist's traditional business models are failing, since it's possible to produce and distribute alternatives for virtually nothing. What were they selling, a cd or the recorded music/software? What about radio? Ad suppported-a different revenue stream, Hmmm. The ball is in the free market's court right now. These companies will either find a new way to sell their products or die on the vine.
The moral of our little story? Don't confuse capitalist economics or a free market for monopolistic behavior by bad actors in the market. That's like blaming the henhouse for the wolf. Now be a good boy and go to bed.
I get your point about this forcing positive change, but the plan is still bullshit of the worst kind.
1 - Get enough nations to start monitoring foreign email and phone calls, claiming it's only for serious national security issues. Ban use for domestic spying or criminal investigation to appease opponents.
2 - Implement international information-sharing agreement for said national-security information. Implement it so well that the various nations are essentially accessing the same system, effectively bypassing the domestic-use ban since another country gathers the information for you.
3 - Grandstanding politicians running for re-election allow access for domestic issues like kiddie porn while screaming "Think of the children!!!"
4 - Greedy politicians bribed to allow access for DRM violations citing made up numbers about lost revenue for a dying recording industry.
5 - ???
6 - World-wide panopticon-enforced fascist dictatorship. The word "privacy" is removed from dictionaries of all languages. George Orwell's ghost stands slack-jawed from the realization that he vastly underestimated the degree of control governments are now able to enforce.
At this point in history I'd like to see an open source email client that automatically uses nsa-grade encryption. Make it dead simple & make it default. Basically this will be necessary to ensure freedom since corporate controlled government has no further use for it.
We also have an increasingly panopticon society processed with facial recognition datamined by an increasingly fascistic corporate controlled world government. Welcome to the new milennium - exciting times indeed.
I've heard a quote attributed to the ancient chinese: "May you live in interesting times". This was described as a curse.
Socialist democracy seems to work best in smaller countries. The US was originally conceived to have a weak central government and much more latitude for individual states. Since power tends to concentrate, all that went out of the window years ago.
On the good side, places like Flagstaff, Arizona have something like 250 days of sunshine a year and moderate temperatures. Of course if you like arctic conditions, there's always the Aleutian Islands. At least we have a plethora of choices.
Mmmm, you aren't allowing for the fact that without copyright anyone can sell YOUR work without paying you. Spend a few years writing a book and see how fair that seems to you. A free market includes both buyers and sellers. Sellers are free to price their products too high and consumers are free not to buy at inflated prices. Besides, how can you call a pirate a "competitor"? An author's competitor is another author, not a distributor.
Free markets are particularly important for IP. It's only when the system is abused that problems arise. Nobody needs art to live. The current system of distributing music and movies has been dominated by large corporate players that basically collude to keep prices high. Microsoft uses strongarm tactics and exclusionary contracts to maintain market position. Cases like these illustrate how bad actors will distort market prices by preventing rather than allow competition based on the quality of the product. In fact, once you are the market leader it's in your best interest to PREVENT competition by limiting markets any way possible and history shows that very often this is exactly what occurs. This is where competent government regulation to ensure a competetive market becomes essential.
It's not the idea of copyright that is wrong, it's how the current system is rigged.
You make a good point and made me realize why I never bought any music downloads. Basically, I'm completely turned off by the DRM approach offered by the major outlets. Why waste my money? I'm not that organized with my files-some are here and some are there so if it's DRM'd I can guarantee it won't run when I want it.
If they would just break down and sell it all without DRM I might consider it. IF it was cheaper. My feeling is that they've always been too expensive - MP3 files at $0.99 cost almost as much as a CD. CD's are DRM-free, lossless and easily ripped anytime you want to any device at any bitrate. Sell downloads for a dime. At $0.10 it becomes an impulse buy.
I'd download all day and twice on sunday at $0.10/track. They need to adapt to the reality that mp3's are practically free and leverage really cheap downloads with advertising. They might even sell some CD's.
Hey, I'm not rabidly pro-IP, I'm just pointing out that there needs to be a system that allows people to profit from their own labor. I think current copyright law is stupid. Disney gets to profit from mickey mouse exclusively & forever while, for instance, drug companies that invest billions in research to create drugs that cure disease and save lives profit exclusively for what - 15 years? The system is obviously out of whack. Not to say that the drug companies are saints but if the current system didn't exist why would an organization take the risk of investing in R&D? The same logic applies.
Heh. My kids had a 2nd grade norwegian classmate that moved back home. When they sent pictures of their hometown, I couldn't understand why they ever left home in the first place. I'd move there in a heartbeat except I'm too damn lazy.
Here in the US we waste all our extra money on a giant military busy playing world police and give the rest to rich people.
Being born in norway IS the equivalent of winnign the lottery when you consider all that north sea oil money rolling in. When you factor in all those picturesque water-side towns near mountains and fjords populated by all the hot, blond haired, blue-eyed norwegian chicks, it makes me want to start learning norwegian.
OK you make a nice little argument about free production and distribution but you don't address the author's dilemma. What kinds of rules should exist to make him the only person allowed to earn money from his work? HE labored to create it.
Slashdot Mirror
Funny, isn't it? If you like it you'll buy it - that's what I do. If I can't watch it, I won't know that I like it.
Magic water car.
Technobabble explains but
winter is coming.
I've met lots of decent lawyers. When you need one and they save your ass by knowing the rules, you'll thank them. Most are hardworking folks trying to making a living & NYCL is one of them. A little love for the good lawyers? Way overdue.
A license to print money in a fascist society. It seem the day is rapidly approaching when the government will have complete access to and control of every thing you own. Personal property will no longer be truly personal. The potential for abuse is mind boggling and you only have to look at the recent FBI abuse of national security letters to see that this is a really, really bad thing.
I don't think they need a huge amount of staff to do this, but you can still burn through $6M a year pretty quickly if that's the sole source of income.
I'd still like to know about the EMI thing I mentioned previously. Any ideas?
Is there a back-of-the-envelope estimate of the number of settlements and the average amount per settlement? What a racket!
It seems like they lose on crucial points whenever they go to trial. This business can't continue forever and they're probably just making money while they can. Unless the law changes (which it might) they have to reach a point of diminishing returns at which time the lawsuits will end.
IIRC one of the big four dropped support (EMI?) for the RIAA. Would that mean that the RIAA can't continue to sue over EMI (or whomever) copyright infringements?
Sorry, but they pretty much killed subsidized education in my country. Instead I was locked into student loans that lately have been somewhat above the average APR. The government guarantees my loans to the bank but not the interest rate I pay. My local school taxes support a district my kids don't attend because it's substandard so we get to pay double to get them a decent education.
I have plenty of respect for the opinions of a chinese coal miner, though the definition of "risk" is subjective. In my case it also involves occasionally working with infectious materials that are very definitely fatal. Collapsed mine, HIV, what's the difference if you're dead? Oh, the miner doesn't have to worry about being sued by gold diggers.
Greed and selfishness destroy any scheme you can come up with. Have you heard about the UN aid workers in africa trading relief supplies for sex? What makes you think good intentions will change anything? At least in a capitalist country you have a mechanism to harness the ambitions of the greedy. By the way, some of my classmates were Vietnamese immigrants who were VERY glad for the chance to go to school. You see, the communist government there made life rather difficult.
I never mentioned race so who's biased here? My classmates also included Iranians, Lebanese, Nigerians, Ghanans, Koreans, Chinese (sorry, no miners), Taiwanese, Indians, Pakistanis, Russians, Jamaicans, Trinidadians, Barbadians and Canadians. Some stayed, some went back home. Every single one worked their freaking asses off. Every single one took responsibility for their own welfare.
The thing keeping people down in most 3rd world countries is political corruption and oppression, not free market capitalism. One of the most effective methods for spreading wealth around is microloans - check out http://www.kiva.org/ and yes I've donated. The idea of helping entrepreneurs is particularly appealing to me since it goes directly to the people who will use it best. People all over the world prove themselves smart and hardworking once you give them a shot. What's better - giving a man a fish or teaching him to fish? If you just send over a bunch of food aid you end up with dependent refugee populations.
You don't know me and you certainly seem to prefer personal insults instead of reasoned discourse. Unfortunately your approach is rather sophomoric. In fact I'd lay twenty bucks that you're no more than a 2nd year university student, which is rather generous since you seem to be so confused about the definitions of a few simple concepts.
You certainly seem to have a lot of anger to vent. It's ok and I don't mid a bit if it makes you feel better. Unforunately you don't seem to be making any valid points (nor provide any supporting arguments or evidence) once you get beyond the name-calling. For instance, there's no reason to call me an overpriviledged undeserving prick enjoying a life of luxury - allow me to explain:
Once I got done putting myself through school (first in the extended family with an advanced degree), we had a few kids and I started a business that through continuing very hard work has afforded my family and me a modicum of independence and financial security. I bought equipment with my own money and incur both the risks of financial failure and legal liability. If the business continues to do well, it may be possible to use the money I've earmed to expand the business, providing employment for others and contributing increased tax revenue to my community.
I don't need ideology to get to sleep at night since I'm generally too tired from work and family to stay awake much past 9. What keeps me awake is knowing that somewhere there exist dimwits that can't tell the difference between a free market, a
monopoly and a corrupt government. What causes me to lose sleep is that the world contains numbskulls who think what I've done to improve my own life, the welfare of my family and my community is somehow wrong. The government takes about 50% of my earnings in various ways and I do admit that I'm annoyed at how that money is often spent. Perhaps I should rejoice instead that so much of the fruits of my labor are given to help those less willing to wor....Oops less fortunate than I.
If you are so sure of yourself, could you please tell me where I've gone wrong in life so I can correct it.
I was specifically trying to differentiate monopolies from free markets, since by definition having a monopoly implies the LACK of a free market & the competition necessary to keep things honest. Besides, tossing a few molotov cocktails is indeed a factor in the market. Whenever somebody does it in an OPEC nation oil prices spike up. Economics is ultimately a description of human behavior in any case. There is no difference, since the assignment of value to goods and services is subjective.
Capitalist economics isn't a shell game, it's human nature. Capital is just a word that means "money". It could also be referred to as a "stake" or "seed money", etc., but it just means money. Take that money, use it to sell goods or services and you have a business. Make money on your endeavor and we call it call it "profit". The aggregate of all people buying and selling is called a "market". "Economics" is just the ebb and flow of market prices for various goods and services. If the market is competetive it's called a "free" market. Follow me so far? Good boy!
Free market economics work because people in the market make "rational" choices. The underlying assumptions may be flawed and the choices may be wrong but this is still part of the market. Make the wrong choice and you go broke because in a free market you are free to be an idiot and go broke. However, if you make smart choices and DON'T go broke, this is STILL the market at work, because the market is still just the composite behavior of people buying and selling things.
The key word here is "free", because if you are the dominant player in a market the most natural thing to do is control the market so it's more difficult to compete by the inherent value of your good or services alone. Various methods can be used to accomplish this and various laws exist to discourage this. If you are successful in eliminating your competitors you have a monopoly. Still with me? Good boy!
This is the tricky part - monopolies can STILL be viewed as part of a free market and the collective behavior of people in response to the monopoly is ALSO part of a free market. For example, Microsoft used every dirty trick in the book to create a virtual monopoly in the operating system market. The market responded with rampant piracy and theft, but also with free open source operating systems. The reason this occurs is because people are smart and don't like being screwed. Microsoft, along with big media corporations use their vast, monopoly generated profits to buy political support for draconian IP protection laws in order to legislatively protect their monopolies. They view this as necessary because the market value of an electronic copy of their products is practically zero. This is due to virtually unlimited production and distribution at extremely low cost. The market continues working.
Still there? Good boy!
There's no practical way to prevent these types of abuses since people are greedy and politicians are whores. However, the market is PEOPLE (kind of, but not exactly like soylent green) who are smart and don't like being screwed. Existing IP monopolies relied on the difficulty involved in copying and ditributing the content; you had to buy a vinyl record or cd or videotape or DVD - essentially that was the SAME as buying a copy of the IP since they couldn't easily be copied or distributed.
Oops! Here comes Digital Audio Tape! The monopolists killed that one quick because they knew it would eventually put them out of business. Wait, what's that thing called? The INTERNET? Awww, shit! Instant production and distribution! Our evil schemes are failing! To congress!
So, thank goodness for the market because no matter what kind of IP protection rackets they come up with, people find ways around them. Meanwhile the IP monopolist's traditional business models are failing, since it's possible to produce and distribute alternatives for virtually nothing. What were they selling, a cd or the recorded music/software? What about radio? Ad suppported-a different revenue stream, Hmmm. The ball is in the free market's court right now. These companies will either find a new way to sell their products or die on the vine.
The moral of our little story? Don't confuse capitalist economics or a free market for monopolistic behavior by bad actors in the market. That's like blaming the henhouse for the wolf. Now be a good boy and go to bed.
Please, PLEASE go back to digg or reddit or where ever you came from. Please.
Oh hey, a dig at Americans! How ORIGINAL. I'm SO impressed! Did you think of that all by yourself?
I think you guys are confusing slashdot with digg and reddit.
Remember, on the internet black is white, good is evil, zero is one, etc..
I get your point about this forcing positive change, but the plan is still bullshit of the worst kind.
1 - Get enough nations to start monitoring foreign email and phone calls, claiming it's only for serious national security issues. Ban use for domestic spying or criminal investigation to appease opponents.
2 - Implement international information-sharing agreement for said national-security information. Implement it so well that the various nations are essentially accessing the same system, effectively bypassing the domestic-use ban since another country gathers the information for you.
3 - Grandstanding politicians running for re-election allow access for domestic issues like kiddie porn while screaming "Think of the children!!!"
4 - Greedy politicians bribed to allow access for DRM violations citing made up numbers about lost revenue for a dying recording industry.
5 - ???
6 - World-wide panopticon-enforced fascist dictatorship. The word "privacy" is removed from dictionaries of all languages. George Orwell's ghost stands slack-jawed from the realization that he vastly underestimated the degree of control governments are now able to enforce.
At this point in history I'd like to see an open source email client that automatically uses nsa-grade encryption. Make it dead simple & make it default. Basically this will be necessary to ensure freedom since corporate controlled government has no further use for it.
Welcome to the new milennium!
We also have an increasingly panopticon society processed with facial recognition datamined by an increasingly fascistic corporate controlled world government. Welcome to the new milennium - exciting times indeed.
I've heard a quote attributed to the ancient chinese: "May you live in interesting times". This was described as a curse.
Flamebait? Doesn't anyone recognize sarcasm?
But what about the importance of shooting brown people? This alone surely makes it worth it!
Socialist democracy seems to work best in smaller countries. The US was originally conceived to have a weak central government and much more latitude for individual states. Since power tends to concentrate, all that went out of the window years ago.
On the good side, places like Flagstaff, Arizona have something like 250 days of sunshine a year and moderate temperatures. Of course if you like arctic conditions, there's always the Aleutian Islands. At least we have a plethora of choices.
Mmmm, you aren't allowing for the fact that without copyright anyone can sell YOUR work without paying you. Spend a few years writing a book and see how fair that seems to you. A free market includes both buyers and sellers. Sellers are free to price their products too high and consumers are free not to buy at inflated prices. Besides, how can you call a pirate a "competitor"? An author's competitor is another author, not a distributor.
Free markets are particularly important for IP. It's only when the system is abused that problems arise. Nobody needs art to live. The current system of distributing music and movies has been dominated by large corporate players that basically collude to keep prices high. Microsoft uses strongarm tactics and exclusionary contracts to maintain market position. Cases like these illustrate how bad actors will distort market prices by preventing rather than allow competition based on the quality of the product. In fact, once you are the market leader it's in your best interest to PREVENT competition by limiting markets any way possible and history shows that very often this is exactly what occurs. This is where competent government regulation to ensure a competetive market becomes essential.
It's not the idea of copyright that is wrong, it's how the current system is rigged.
You make a good point and made me realize why I never bought any music downloads. Basically, I'm completely turned off by the DRM approach offered by the major outlets. Why waste my money? I'm not that organized with my files-some are here and some are there so if it's DRM'd I can guarantee it won't run when I want it.
If they would just break down and sell it all without DRM I might consider it. IF it was cheaper. My feeling is that they've always been too expensive - MP3 files at $0.99 cost almost as much as a CD. CD's are DRM-free, lossless and easily ripped anytime you want to any device at any bitrate. Sell downloads for a dime. At $0.10 it becomes an impulse buy.
I'd download all day and twice on sunday at $0.10/track. They need to adapt to the reality that mp3's are practically free and leverage really cheap downloads with advertising. They might even sell some CD's.
Hey, I'm not rabidly pro-IP, I'm just pointing out that there needs to be a system that allows people to profit from their own labor. I think current copyright law is stupid. Disney gets to profit from mickey mouse exclusively & forever while, for instance, drug companies that invest billions in research to create drugs that cure disease and save lives profit exclusively for what - 15 years? The system is obviously out of whack. Not to say that the drug companies are saints but if the current system didn't exist why would an organization take the risk of investing in R&D? The same logic applies.
Heh. My kids had a 2nd grade norwegian classmate that moved back home. When they sent pictures of their hometown, I couldn't understand why they ever left home in the first place. I'd move there in a heartbeat except I'm too damn lazy.
Here in the US we waste all our extra money on a giant military busy playing world police and give the rest to rich people.
Being born in norway IS the equivalent of winnign the lottery when you consider all that north sea oil money rolling in. When you factor in all those picturesque water-side towns near mountains and fjords populated by all the hot, blond haired, blue-eyed norwegian chicks, it makes me want to start learning norwegian.
OK you make a nice little argument about free production and distribution but you don't address the author's dilemma. What kinds of rules should exist to make him the only person allowed to earn money from his work? HE labored to create it.