Just a question here, okay? When a (not all, not many, but one) recordcompany-executive automaticly can argu that any decline in sales is due to piracy, isn't he really saying "The only way people can get music, is trough us. We are a fscking monopoly"?
Not to overestimate the intelligence, will or job-commitment of any government official or politician, but I had the distinct impression that monopolies were accounted for as "bad for the people", and was the whole reason we had anti-trust-laws.
So **AAs are saying "We are a monopoly" to the government-officials. Government says "We can't have no freaking monopolies" and then legislate that the entertainment industry shall have a de-facto legally protected monopoly.
Am I missing something here? Or is it that the amount of information in a (relativly) short slashdot post simply is too much information for a politician to handle at any given moment?
The President is authorized to use all means necessary and appropriate to bring about the release of any person described in subsection (b) who is being detained or imprisoned by, on behalf of, or at the request of the International Criminal Court
a.k.a 'The Hague Invasion Act'
Ok. I'll bite. Is this for real?
Jeez. You guys have a fucked up government. Hot damn. Parent should be mod'ed up big-time.
Seriously. You're feeding all my USA as a "New World Order"-paranoia like it'd never ever been fed before.
Please, tell me this is made up. Because if not, I can fully comprehend the nickname "The Hague Invasion Act".
What? A serious and optimistic post? I obviously missed slashdot somewhere around the corner. I thought this were going to be a flamewar of bilical prpotions...
C'mon! Gnome and KDE? Together? What should all those zealots who have arisen from the "Windows vs. Linux" level troll about then?
Not to mention the tight connection (via the kernel, or whatever) between:
Windows Explorer
Internet Explorer
MSN Messenger
Outlook
Windows Media Player
Misc. (Microsoft-owned) websites
I have seen how this evil mess works together.
Start MSIE, visit www.hotmail.com. Boom, without warning MSN-Messenger has been started.
Start some mediafiles with Windows Media Player.. If you're lucky you might get a few IE-windows poping up, even though there are no errors. Don't even ask me how that's done.
With Microsoft's ever interlinking between the operating system and applications, you can bet that anything mediarelated (opening a mp3 in Windows Explorer) will result in a chainreaction of MS-events.
I imagine it will go somewhat like this:
Doubleclick mp3-file in Windows Explorer
File opens in WMP, telling you that "this file isn't protected. You will want a protected file on your computer. Otherwise your computer and data ain't safe no more."
WMP opens MSIE @ MS-musicshop.
Any further attempts in accessing the mp3 folder will be accompanied by constant nagging about the wonders of buying your music from Microsoft.
Ofcourse any mentioning of MP3s in mail or messenger will result in a similar list as that one above.
I'm not saying it'll be a good product, but I expect it to do remarkably well.
can someone please explain how (at least in the long-run) i/we damaged the music industry by this horrific infringement of copyright?
Yes. But you have to follow RIAA-logic on this one (kinda like the equivalent of 420 cd-burners...). The explanation is easy, you just need to read any RIAA-statement with fine print.
Okey, here goes. You caused a potential sales-loss. When you downloaded the music (instead just of buying in the first place), you could have disliked the music and left it at that.
Had you bought the cd in the first place, and then disliked it, the RIAA would still make money. P2P prevents this collosal source of revenue.
All new pop-releases seems based on this ingenious system. And any downloading of (especcialy crappy) music causes a potential sales-loss.
Repeat after me, potential sales loss. This is a "real" thing, btw.
the problem is that people need to be able to protect their work and profit from it if they wish. with out this there is no real incentive for most people to do anything much.
Untrue. Historicly speaking, many of the greatest composers of all time, Bach, Mozart, Wagner and so on, were poor people, and didn't make fortunes making music.
They did create music, because they wanted to create music. Are your blood so purely capitalistic that you see no other incentive for anything, than money?
By your logic, social security creates no incentive for anyone at all to do any actual work. If you care to check in any country with a actual, functioning social security, you may be shocked to find that this is as far from the truth as it gets.
In my opinion, that by granting a de-facto perpetual copyright, you create no more incentive to create than for one single thing, and then nothing more. After that you can sit on your lazy ass.
There is no line of work in the world that has the same protection and reward as being an artist. Not one. They are obviously considered uber-elite, and with current copyright laws, everyone else their drones.
And with the music quality of todays so called "artists"... Had I been an actual artist, I would have felt ridiculed. By those so called "artists". Mozart was an artist dammit, by the definition. The music he created was art.
Britney is not an artist, she does not create art. If she creates anything at all. Actually she is a puppet, nothing more. And she shouldn't get paid any more than one anyway.
Open source communities such as sourceforge and freshmeat would save a lot of bandwidth if the software was downloaded directly from the author, instead of through one of these sites. There should be a p2p search application dedicated for open source software
If we were to develop a new p2p-app that could be used effectivily and seamlessly, I would suggest that it would be universal. Not just for open-source.
Im sorry, but making it open-source only seems like pure zealotry to me. But to stay somewhat on topic, I think BitTorrent is probably a good step towards this "universal" p2p.
The application interface of todays clients may leave some things to be desired, but if this were to be a standard mass-communication protocol, it might work out better. Say, it could be implemented in web-browsers just like http and ftp are today.
Not to say BitTorrent specificly is the future, but the BitTorrent system is ingenious.
If the users never ever even was to see a underlying system, this would catch on like nothing you've ever seen. And centralized databases... This would have to require someone (big) to start a p2p-service and have it marketed as the "new" place to get stuff.
Trough all ages there has always been some people in power and their subordinates. The only thing that has really changed is what means that gives power.
First there was resources. Things like food and shelter.
As humans progressed, the ability to manipulate resources gave new advantages to those who mastered these skills. The knowledge of these skills now gave power.
As this knowledge became more and more common, the power these abilties gave lessened. However being efficient and qualified turned more important as we all know, because quantity and quality counts.
If everyone was able to make weapons, the ones who could create most and (not least) better weapons, could assemble a bigger and more deadly army. Thus more power.
One thing that hasn't changed though, is that anything that threatens the current power will be fought with all means available.
Today many of these things (and many more) give power, however the dominant one seems to be money. And those in charge are scared shitless of anything free. The more things which are available without a price, the more their power is lessened.
And as we can see, the powers of today are fighting with every (legal) resource they can find.
If the ideals of a "free" world should ever be realized, today's powerstructures would collapse. This would open up for creative people to be the new "power", and then by "power" i mean those who are able to steer the directions the development of society would take.
And creativy can not be inhereted, delegated or controlled. This creative "power" would have to be earned and deserved.
Guess who doesn't like that, folks? Guess who will fight that?
Oh, stupid me, I forgot. They're allready doing that. The only thing which is yet to tell, are who's going to win this battle.
I see little benefit for us, the consumers, to download via BT as opposed to the company's servers unless there is some compensation.
1. If the company's connection can only handle so much, you'll probably find out it's faster to download over BT than say ftp or http.
Call me impatient, but I call that a benefit.
2. If the company has to pay for a 100 mbit connection (which wouldn't exactly be free) for pure http download, but could suffice with a 10 mbit connection with BT, that would save them money. Maybe they'd even cut in some slack for you as well, who knows?
But as far as BT goes, your main benefit is speed.
We all say "P2P is the future.", "Distributed ditribution is such a good idea" and so on.. Well, now we got it. We got out way, at least with Blizzard.
So now what's this moaning i hear about "my bandwidth"? Did you guys forget to mention that you didn't want to participate when you said P2P was the future?
Like most of you ever need the upstream bandwidth anyway.
My eyeballs are for sale. So is my money. Just give me a product I am willing to pay for. Yes folks, you need have to have a sellable product to stay in business.
you do not have a right to circumvent the cost factor of these websites
They put up a public website on a public net and I don't have to right to access it as it suits me?
Tell me btw, does Lynx count as circumvention? Last I checked Lynx, does exactly what you say I don't have a right to do. However it is designed to be a lightweight product for lightweight use. Do you consider Lynx-usage ethicly wrong somehow? Then shut up, allready. You have misunderstood the web for something it clearly isn't.
Jeez. It's you putting the site on the net. Consider that advertising enough. Now we know you exist. Now we know you are available.
Most (commercial) websites put on the net which has a actual business apart from this, profit from their sheer presence on the net. Think ecommerce and the like.
If you can't afford to have a website, or a your website isn't profitable, it's your choice to keep it there running or to let it die. Don't blame the people accessing it. If your business is a good business, people accessing your site is good. If it isn't, that's not my bad.
Don't tell me it's my responsebility how you invest your business money. What is it with people these days, taking it for granted that they somehow, magically have a right to profit?
Radio used to be usefull... Then it went commerical. Then all the stations tried to reach the same (most profitable) audience and turned very much alike. Then they turned even more alike as they embraced formating the broadcasts. Then big "evil" business bought all the radiostations and they all uses the same formating. And now they are ad-ridden with intrusive ad's at double the volume (fuck sake) of the ordinary broadcast.
Radio is now useless and braindead.
TV used to be usefull/entertaining. TV went commercial... And blahblahblah..... Now? Useless, braindead shit. And I can't even stand TV any more. Fuck it.
Internet used to be free for everyone and usefull. And it wen't commercial as well... Guess what?
See a pattern forming, anyone?
We'll have to invent a medium commercialism can't ruin. And patent it. And copyprotect it. It's the only way to be sure!
This can not possibly work if the user blocks all PARAM and EMBED tags. Personally (emphasized), I don't see any use for these tags whatsoever for any ordinary web-usage.
So... With plugin-support entirely removed, tell me again, how can this work?
Oh... I forgot. This is probably aimed at the clueless WinXP, MSIE, WMP-users who doesn't mind that their mediaplayer controls you, not visa-verce, and is tied into the kernel and the webbrowser. They probably also doesn't mind that the webbrowser is tied into the kernel and has flawless scripting support for full remote system-access.
I guess we (/.ers) probably won't have to worry about these ad's.
With regards to the full motion video - where do they find the drooling idiots in the test group who want the net to resemble TV more?
Doesn't suprise me at all. People want things simple, let's agree on that at least. And what is more simple than TV? And people so stupid that they don't see anything wrong with things like DMCA, PATRIOT-act and so on... Well, there seems to be a lot of them, and they'll probably want things as dead simple as possible.
Not everyone appriciates the wonders of interactive mediums. You know, it requires the users to have some understanding of the medium itself.
And as far as understanding goes... Let me quote allmighty Bush on this one:
"It's important for us to explain to our nation that life is important. It's not only life of babies, but it's life of children living in, you know, the dark dungeons of the Internet."
But anyway... It doesn't work in Opera nor in MSIE, even on my 100mbit connection. And this is Windows XP, so I dunno...
However I haven't updated Windows Media Player in ages, simply because I don't want any of those new "features" MS keep saying i need in order to enjoy high-quality media.... So it migth be a WMP-issue.
I don't want, nor need, Windows DRM Media, and if the reason the ads don't work is because they use this technology, well I got one thing to say:
To me this seems like a very nice advertising solution:)
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, I know this is /. and that the first person to post an offtopic remark, will spawn at least a 100 others, drowning the actual issue.
Yes, I know this, because it happens every single time.
But can we for the good of whatever good for once just focus on the real issue at hand here:
How can we blame this on sitefinder?!?
Just a question here, okay? When a (not all, not many, but one) recordcompany-executive automaticly can argu that any decline in sales is due to piracy, isn't he really saying "The only way people can get music, is trough us. We are a fscking monopoly"?
Not to overestimate the intelligence, will or job-commitment of any government official or politician, but I had the distinct impression that monopolies were accounted for as "bad for the people", and was the whole reason we had anti-trust-laws.
So **AAs are saying "We are a monopoly" to the government-officials. Government says "We can't have no freaking monopolies" and then legislate that the entertainment industry shall have a de-facto legally protected monopoly.
Am I missing something here? Or is it that the amount of information in a (relativly) short slashdot post simply is too much information for a politician to handle at any given moment?
a.k.a 'The Hague Invasion Act'
Ok. I'll bite. Is this for real?
Jeez. You guys have a fucked up government. Hot damn. Parent should be mod'ed up big-time.
Seriously. You're feeding all my USA as a "New World Order"-paranoia like it'd never ever been fed before.
Please, tell me this is made up. Because if not, I can fully comprehend the nickname "The Hague Invasion Act".
MS never had a shredder. That was OS/2, remember?
Guess that's why we never hear such storries about IBM..? :)
You really don't have any belief in the hacker-culture, do you? :)
One thing that is thourougly proven, is that any copy-protection scheme developed as up to date, has been and can be broken.
Future DRMs might require nastier hacks, but I'd still be surprised if they weren't bypassable or breakable.
What? A serious and optimistic post? I obviously missed slashdot somewhere around the corner. I thought this were going to be a flamewar of bilical prpotions...
C'mon! Gnome and KDE? Together? What should all those zealots who have arisen from the "Windows vs. Linux" level troll about then?
Four words for you: Exact DVD movie backups.
"I see you want to download music from the 60's. Do you want to download our Britney Spears-addon as well?" -No
"You will need the Britney Spears-addon to fully enjoy your 60's-music." -Ok
"Britney Spears downloaded. Was there anything else?"
Ok. That might be a bit harsher than it will be, but hell, it's Microsoft, pun is intended. And MSIE-only goes for obvious, right?
Not to mention the tight connection (via the kernel, or whatever) between:
I have seen how this evil mess works together.
Start MSIE, visit www.hotmail.com. Boom, without warning MSN-Messenger has been started.
Start some mediafiles with Windows Media Player.. If you're lucky you might get a few IE-windows poping up, even though there are no errors. Don't even ask me how that's done.
With Microsoft's ever interlinking between the operating system and applications, you can bet that anything mediarelated (opening a mp3 in Windows Explorer) will result in a chainreaction of MS-events.
I imagine it will go somewhat like this:
Ofcourse any mentioning of MP3s in mail or messenger will result in a similar list as that one above.
I'm not saying it'll be a good product, but I expect it to do remarkably well.
What? No images? Doesn't give much of a beating then...?
What? What havoc? We fake emails and make balogney accounts everywhere we go, in order to avoid spam. So what if we fake the referer as well?
Most sites and services would work just as well.
I guess I just don't understand your definition of havoc...
Yes. But you have to follow RIAA-logic on this one (kinda like the equivalent of 420 cd-burners...). The explanation is easy, you just need to read any RIAA-statement with fine print.
Okey, here goes. You caused a potential sales-loss. When you downloaded the music (instead just of buying in the first place), you could have disliked the music and left it at that.
Had you bought the cd in the first place, and then disliked it, the RIAA would still make money. P2P prevents this collosal source of revenue.
All new pop-releases seems based on this ingenious system. And any downloading of (especcialy crappy) music causes a potential sales-loss.
Repeat after me, potential sales loss. This is a "real" thing, btw.
Now you got it?
Even further (the ultimate sin): anti capitalistic terrorism.
Untrue. Historicly speaking, many of the greatest composers of all time, Bach, Mozart, Wagner and so on, were poor people, and didn't make fortunes making music.
They did create music, because they wanted to create music. Are your blood so purely capitalistic that you see no other incentive for anything, than money?
By your logic, social security creates no incentive for anyone at all to do any actual work. If you care to check in any country with a actual, functioning social security, you may be shocked to find that this is as far from the truth as it gets.
In my opinion, that by granting a de-facto perpetual copyright, you create no more incentive to create than for one single thing, and then nothing more. After that you can sit on your lazy ass.
There is no line of work in the world that has the same protection and reward as being an artist. Not one. They are obviously considered uber-elite, and with current copyright laws, everyone else their drones.
And with the music quality of todays so called "artists"... Had I been an actual artist, I would have felt ridiculed. By those so called "artists". Mozart was an artist dammit, by the definition. The music he created was art.
Britney is not an artist, she does not create art. If she creates anything at all. Actually she is a puppet, nothing more. And she shouldn't get paid any more than one anyway.
Still better than a just hosed server, though?
If we were to develop a new p2p-app that could be used effectivily and seamlessly, I would suggest that it would be universal. Not just for open-source.
Im sorry, but making it open-source only seems like pure zealotry to me. But to stay somewhat on topic, I think BitTorrent is probably a good step towards this "universal" p2p.
The application interface of todays clients may leave some things to be desired, but if this were to be a standard mass-communication protocol, it might work out better. Say, it could be implemented in web-browsers just like http and ftp are today.
Not to say BitTorrent specificly is the future, but the BitTorrent system is ingenious.
If the users never ever even was to see a underlying system, this would catch on like nothing you've ever seen. And centralized databases... This would have to require someone (big) to start a p2p-service and have it marketed as the "new" place to get stuff.
Kinda like suprnova, but legal :)
Trough all ages there has always been some people in power and their subordinates. The only thing that has really changed is what means that gives power.
First there was resources. Things like food and shelter.
As humans progressed, the ability to manipulate resources gave new advantages to those who mastered these skills. The knowledge of these skills now gave power.
As this knowledge became more and more common, the power these abilties gave lessened. However being efficient and qualified turned more important as we all know, because quantity and quality counts.
If everyone was able to make weapons, the ones who could create most and (not least) better weapons, could assemble a bigger and more deadly army. Thus more power.
One thing that hasn't changed though, is that anything that threatens the current power will be fought with all means available.
Today many of these things (and many more) give power, however the dominant one seems to be money. And those in charge are scared shitless of anything free. The more things which are available without a price, the more their power is lessened.
And as we can see, the powers of today are fighting with every (legal) resource they can find.
If the ideals of a "free" world should ever be realized, today's powerstructures would collapse. This would open up for creative people to be the new "power", and then by "power" i mean those who are able to steer the directions the development of society would take.
And creativy can not be inhereted, delegated or controlled. This creative "power" would have to be earned and deserved.
Guess who doesn't like that, folks? Guess who will fight that?
Oh, stupid me, I forgot. They're allready doing that. The only thing which is yet to tell, are who's going to win this battle.
1. If the company's connection can only handle so much, you'll probably find out it's faster to download over BT than say ftp or http.
Call me impatient, but I call that a benefit.
2. If the company has to pay for a 100 mbit connection (which wouldn't exactly be free) for pure http download, but could suffice with a 10 mbit connection with BT, that would save them money. Maybe they'd even cut in some slack for you as well, who knows?
But as far as BT goes, your main benefit is speed.
We all say "P2P is the future.", "Distributed ditribution is such a good idea" and so on.. Well, now we got it. We got out way, at least with Blizzard.
So now what's this moaning i hear about "my bandwidth"? Did you guys forget to mention that you didn't want to participate when you said P2P was the future?
Like most of you ever need the upstream bandwidth anyway.
My eyeballs are for sale. So is my money. Just give me a product I am willing to pay for. Yes folks, you need have to have a sellable product to stay in business.
They put up a public website on a public net and I don't have to right to access it as it suits me?
Tell me btw, does Lynx count as circumvention? Last I checked Lynx, does exactly what you say I don't have a right to do. However it is designed to be a lightweight product for lightweight use. Do you consider Lynx-usage ethicly wrong somehow? Then shut up, allready. You have misunderstood the web for something it clearly isn't.
Jeez. It's you putting the site on the net. Consider that advertising enough. Now we know you exist. Now we know you are available.
Most (commercial) websites put on the net which has a actual business apart from this, profit from their sheer presence on the net. Think ecommerce and the like.
If you can't afford to have a website, or a your website isn't profitable, it's your choice to keep it there running or to let it die. Don't blame the people accessing it. If your business is a good business, people accessing your site is good. If it isn't, that's not my bad.
Don't tell me it's my responsebility how you invest your business money. What is it with people these days, taking it for granted that they somehow, magically have a right to profit?
People like that make me sick.
Here's an exercise:
Radio used to be usefull... Then it went commerical. Then all the stations tried to reach the same (most profitable) audience and turned very much alike. Then they turned even more alike as they embraced formating the broadcasts. Then big "evil" business bought all the radiostations and they all uses the same formating. And now they are ad-ridden with intrusive ad's at double the volume (fuck sake) of the ordinary broadcast.
Radio is now useless and braindead.
TV used to be usefull/entertaining. TV went commercial... And blahblahblah..... Now? Useless, braindead shit. And I can't even stand TV any more. Fuck it.
Internet used to be free for everyone and usefull. And it wen't commercial as well... Guess what?
See a pattern forming, anyone?
We'll have to invent a medium commercialism can't ruin. And patent it. And copyprotect it. It's the only way to be sure!
This can not possibly work if the user blocks all PARAM and EMBED tags. Personally (emphasized), I don't see any use for these tags whatsoever for any ordinary web-usage.
So... With plugin-support entirely removed, tell me again, how can this work?
Oh... I forgot. This is probably aimed at the clueless WinXP, MSIE, WMP-users who doesn't mind that their mediaplayer controls you, not visa-verce, and is tied into the kernel and the webbrowser. They probably also doesn't mind that the webbrowser is tied into the kernel and has flawless scripting support for full remote system-access.
I guess we (/.ers) probably won't have to worry about these ad's.
Because the internet is not a mature medium, until it is as braindead as TV and purely satisfies corporate interests.
A medium that gives the user control is clearly evil and most definetly encourages evil. That will have to be counter-eviled.
How is it that the people making decisions fail to realize that the internet (or web that is) isn't a push-medium, but pull-medium?
You'd think people get that by now? Or am I to optimistic?
Doesn't suprise me at all. People want things simple, let's agree on that at least. And what is more simple than TV? And people so stupid that they don't see anything wrong with things like DMCA, PATRIOT-act and so on... Well, there seems to be a lot of them, and they'll probably want things as dead simple as possible.
Not everyone appriciates the wonders of interactive mediums. You know, it requires the users to have some understanding of the medium itself.
And as far as understanding goes... Let me quote allmighty Bush on this one:
Wow. That is one heck of a url!
But anyway... It doesn't work in Opera nor in MSIE, even on my 100mbit connection. And this is Windows XP, so I dunno...
However I haven't updated Windows Media Player in ages, simply because I don't want any of those new "features" MS keep saying i need in order to enjoy high-quality media.... So it migth be a WMP-issue.
I don't want, nor need, Windows DRM Media, and if the reason the ads don't work is because they use this technology, well I got one thing to say:
To me this seems like a very nice advertising solution :)
Microsoft? Liability? Yeah, that'll happen. About the same time as hell will be hosting the winter-olympics, I guess.