I didn't assume anything. I know that the whole thing breaks down into several groups of people:
1. Those who download or copy a song and then go buy the CD.
2. Those who buy the CD based on some other information or advertising.
3. Those who download the CD but would have bought it they couldn't find it for free.
4. Those who download the CD but would never have bought it.
Despite your assumption that people are largely honest and aquire their music legally (and I would tend to agree with you on that), there really isn't anyway to know for sure how many people fall into each group.
Your right that treating everyone as a thief is bad PR and bad business if that first group is large enough. However simply ignoring the third group in the hopes of some free advertising could be a bad business decision if that group is larger than the first group. Of course the **AA makes the mistake on lumping the fourth group in with the third when throwing out numbers about how much piracy costs them.
Ideally the music industry will begin to offer downloads of some songs for free (and even allow copies of those songs to be redistributed by other means) so that people can hear them and then sell the full album in a DRM free format. Unfortunately I would imagine that so long as people keep putting albums on P2P services and they keep lumping those last two groups together that isn't going to happen.
The problem is not the person who gets one song from a friend or from a download and then goes and buys the CD. The problem is the person who gets the song and then copies or downloads all the other songs and doesn't go buy the CD. Unfortunately there isn't really a good way to allow the first kind of person while stopping the second kind. Recording off the radio is different because the whole CD is not available in that case.
Actually that isn't really DRM in a nutshell. That is one possible implementation of DRM. That is probably the biggest issue with trying to explain it to someone. You basically have to have a way to tell them what it is without using specific examples, since the examples you choose are going to reflect your bias regarding DRM and will in turn affect the other person's opinion.
Actually its not that hard to dial a phone without taking your eyes off the road. Most new phones have voice dial and even those that don't probably have a very standard keypad layout meaning you should be able to dial without looking at the phone.
As for taking your eyes off the road to dial, is it really any worse than taking them off the road to change stations on the radio, to look at the person in the back seat, or to check your rearview mirror (which requires taking your eyes off the road in front of you). Everytime you turn your head to check your blind spot before changing lanes you have to take your eyes off the road ahead of you for a moment.
I think places just need to work on improving laws about not paying attention while driving instead of adding all this extra crap target one particular distraction.
That is true, but no place does it say by what means of transportation. There is nothing stopping Mr. Gilmore from putting on a good pair of shoes and walking to wherever he would like. Or using some other form of personal (not public or privately owned by someone else. "Get it? Probably not.") transportation.
One thing you did not consider though is that the article states he pled guilty to 3 felony counts and not just one. That gets it down to 60 months per charge which puts it below all of the averages listed above. Not too mention that as others have pointed out, that 15 years is a maximum and not an average for this type of crime.
It might not be the same where you are, but in Florida when you sell or trade in a car you keep the license plate. So even if you bought a car that had been used and had a photo of its plate taken, the car would no longer have that plate, so there should be no reason for the cops to come knocking on your door.
While I agree that write protecting OS files might have once been a good idea, it will have little effect on most of the more recent viruses/worms running around right now. Most of them are now there own executables and have no need to modify any of the system.exe or.dll files as far as I know.
Not too mention that as soon as you do write protect them you have to come up with a means of allowing them to be updated by patches and service packs, but not by viruses.
"But Microsoft was allowed to charge for the protocols because servers were not part of the antitrust case. "
Even thought this is Slashdot, at least try and read the article. That goes for whoever modded this up as well.
I gave the articles a quick scan(at work so I can't really read them in depth) and it looks like there is one key difference between what she is doing and what the industry is complaining about it. She is releasing select songs from the CDs for people to hear, which is really no different than radio stations playing some songs from an album. The result of this is that people hear those couple of songs and want to hear more and some of those go and buy the CD. The problem begins when suddenly the entire CD is available for download, which is what I think the industry wants to stop. I would be curious to see what would happen to her CD sales if she posted all of her songs from all of her CDs on the web site.
No they probably wouldn't buy the CD for every song they downloaded, but if they couldn't have downloaded all those songs, I bet they would have at least bought a couple of CDs for the songs they like the most. So yes they are still being deprived of sales, just maybe not in the amounts being claimed.
I would guess the reason that he could be arrested was that it was being distributed with his permission and knowledge which would make him an accessory to the crime.
Try reading the article.
". The Justice Department indicted Dmitry Sklyarov because his employer, ElcomSoft, sold an e-book decoder that he helped to create, triggering the DMCA's criminal penalties. "
Well if Dmitry's company hadn't been selling a product that used his e-book crack then maybe he wouldn't have been arrested.
Around me (Time Warner Tampa, FL) they just charge you extra for the cable modem service if your not a cable subscriber. Of course its probably still cheaper than paying for both.
I'll take issue with the "crawlingly slow" part. I've a K6 233 with both Win2k and Redhat 7.2 w/KDE and Windows runs much faster. I can start up an application in Windows in about half the time.
Of course I have same setup(although Gnome instead of KDE) on a P4 1.3Ghz at work and don't really notice any difference between Win2k and Redhat 7.2 in speed.
There is one little problem with the toaster example and that is the fact that a third person(the hacker) came in and modified the behavior of said software. This would be like suing a car company for not using bullet-proof tires if your car wrecked after someone shot out a tire while you were driving.
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I didn't assume anything. I know that the whole thing breaks down into several groups of people:
1. Those who download or copy a song and then go buy the CD.
2. Those who buy the CD based on some other information or advertising.
3. Those who download the CD but would have bought it they couldn't find it for free.
4. Those who download the CD but would never have bought it.
Despite your assumption that people are largely honest and aquire their music legally (and I would tend to agree with you on that), there really isn't anyway to know for sure how many people fall into each group.
Your right that treating everyone as a thief is bad PR and bad business if that first group is large enough. However simply ignoring the third group in the hopes of some free advertising could be a bad business decision if that group is larger than the first group. Of course the **AA makes the mistake on lumping the fourth group in with the third when throwing out numbers about how much piracy costs them.
Ideally the music industry will begin to offer downloads of some songs for free (and even allow copies of those songs to be redistributed by other means) so that people can hear them and then sell the full album in a DRM free format. Unfortunately I would imagine that so long as people keep putting albums on P2P services and they keep lumping those last two groups together that isn't going to happen.
The problem is not the person who gets one song from a friend or from a download and then goes and buys the CD. The problem is the person who gets the song and then copies or downloads all the other songs and doesn't go buy the CD. Unfortunately there isn't really a good way to allow the first kind of person while stopping the second kind. Recording off the radio is different because the whole CD is not available in that case.
Actually that isn't really DRM in a nutshell. That is one possible implementation of DRM. That is probably the biggest issue with trying to explain it to someone. You basically have to have a way to tell them what it is without using specific examples, since the examples you choose are going to reflect your bias regarding DRM and will in turn affect the other person's opinion.
Actually its not that hard to dial a phone without taking your eyes off the road. Most new phones have voice dial and even those that don't probably have a very standard keypad layout meaning you should be able to dial without looking at the phone.
As for taking your eyes off the road to dial, is it really any worse than taking them off the road to change stations on the radio, to look at the person in the back seat, or to check your rearview mirror (which requires taking your eyes off the road in front of you). Everytime you turn your head to check your blind spot before changing lanes you have to take your eyes off the road ahead of you for a moment.
I think places just need to work on improving laws about not paying attention while driving instead of adding all this extra crap target one particular distraction.
That is true, but no place does it say by what means of transportation. There is nothing stopping Mr. Gilmore from putting on a good pair of shoes and walking to wherever he would like. Or using some other form of personal (not public or privately owned by someone else. "Get it? Probably not.") transportation.
One thing you did not consider though is that the article states he pled guilty to 3 felony counts and not just one. That gets it down to 60 months per charge which puts it below all of the averages listed above. Not too mention that as others have pointed out, that 15 years is a maximum and not an average for this type of crime.
It might not be the same where you are, but in Florida when you sell or trade in a car you keep the license plate. So even if you bought a car that had been used and had a photo of its plate taken, the car would no longer have that plate, so there should be no reason for the cops to come knocking on your door.
While I agree that write protecting OS files might have once been a good idea, it will have little effect on most of the more recent viruses/worms running around right now. Most of them are now there own executables and have no need to modify any of the system .exe or .dll files as far as I know.
Not too mention that as soon as you do write protect them you have to come up with a means of allowing them to be updated by patches and service packs, but not by viruses.
"But Microsoft was allowed to charge for the protocols because servers were not part of the antitrust case. " Even thought this is Slashdot, at least try and read the article. That goes for whoever modded this up as well.
I gave the articles a quick scan(at work so I can't really read them in depth) and it looks like there is one key difference between what she is doing and what the industry is complaining about it. She is releasing select songs from the CDs for people to hear, which is really no different than radio stations playing some songs from an album. The result of this is that people hear those couple of songs and want to hear more and some of those go and buy the CD. The problem begins when suddenly the entire CD is available for download, which is what I think the industry wants to stop. I would be curious to see what would happen to her CD sales if she posted all of her songs from all of her CDs on the web site.
No they probably wouldn't buy the CD for every song they downloaded, but if they couldn't have downloaded all those songs, I bet they would have at least bought a couple of CDs for the songs they like the most. So yes they are still being deprived of sales, just maybe not in the amounts being claimed.
I would guess the reason that he could be arrested was that it was being distributed with his permission and knowledge which would make him an accessory to the crime.
Try reading the article. ". The Justice Department indicted Dmitry Sklyarov because his employer, ElcomSoft, sold an e-book decoder that he helped to create, triggering the DMCA's criminal penalties. " Well if Dmitry's company hadn't been selling a product that used his e-book crack then maybe he wouldn't have been arrested.
Around me (Time Warner Tampa, FL) they just charge you extra for the cable modem service if your not a cable subscriber. Of course its probably still cheaper than paying for both.
Actually they removed the memory from the Athlon machine and not the G4.
I'll take issue with the "crawlingly slow" part. I've a K6 233 with both Win2k and Redhat 7.2 w/KDE and Windows runs much faster. I can start up an application in Windows in about half the time. Of course I have same setup(although Gnome instead of KDE) on a P4 1.3Ghz at work and don't really notice any difference between Win2k and Redhat 7.2 in speed.
There is one little problem with the toaster example and that is the fact that a third person(the hacker) came in and modified the behavior of said software. This would be like suing a car company for not using bullet-proof tires if your car wrecked after someone shot out a tire while you were driving.