Slap me if I am wrong or missing something, but aren't most (re:99.999%) of these "communities" that care about leechers, ratios, and keeping their torrents to themselves going to be trading/torrenting copyrighted content/material?
Linux is copyrighted material. I assume you meant infringing copyright.
I'm not going to slap you, I'll simply ask: Who are you to come in here and try to shout down numerous copyright holders? Infringing copyright without profit motive only became a criminal action after the 1997 NET act. NET was followed by DMCA, CTEA, and a whole host of oppressive, idiotic copyright legislation like SSSCA and INDUCE that was too rotten to even make it through our bought and paid for congress. I'd wager most copyright holders here do not agree with the intent or effects of the NET Act or any of the copyright legislation that followed, because that legislation goes against the spirit of the GPL and the free software movement. Trading files is the new Prohibition, and I, for one, disagree with current copyright law.
But then again, this is slashdot where anything that approaches conservative or rational gets modded down by the mob.
If you are modded down, it will not be because your stated opinion is either conservative or rational. This 'mob' happens to disagree with 1) you, 2) the current state of copyright law, 3) the majority of congress, 4) the RIAA, and 5) the MPAA to name a few. Additionally, this 'mob' only grows larger as regular people who were otherwise disinterested in the topic become aware of such facts as:
It is illegal to sing "Happy Birthday" to your child in a public venue due to current copyright law.
The Girl Scouts of America has a list of songs that girls are not allowed to sing around the campfire due to current copyright law.
Silence is owned by the John Cage foundation due to current copyright law.
Thanks to the 1997 NET Act, children are being hauled into court by the music industry. That displeases me and more than a few other members of this website. I do not consider bringing lawsuits against children who download music to be "conservative or rational."
Obviously, you're poking fun at the study. But isn't this study supposed to send that exact message to Google's advertisers? "Look boss, Google users have more money. We should be targeting them instead of those cheap bastards over at Yahoo." Everyone here is highly critical when another Windows TCO study rolls out showing Windows stomping Linux. In every case I've seen on slashdot, it turns out that Microsoft funded the study. Big surprise. Could it be that Google has funded a third party for a study of their own? Hmmm....
It sounds like constructive criticism to me. He uses Mac only. So obviously it doesn't suck too badly. He doesn't point out any specifics about what sucks, but he lingers on UI design, which has become much less consistent with OS X. First aqua, then brushed metal, then Garageband pops up with some wood grain thing. Now there's a whole new 'Pro' look going into things like Aperture. It's like the Themes from OS 8.5, but now they are app specific. It's a common gripe.
The Dead's backtrack on their standards shows how corrupting law can be. How a band that has made millions over decades could turn is beyond me. The law is culpable -- the temptation to forcibly control what isn't in your possession is that strong.
Check the RIAA members list. See who's on there? Allow me to abbreviate it for you...
Grateful Dead Production
Grateful Dead Records
Why is anyone here still listening to them? You all read slashdot. Surely you know what the RIAA has been doing for the past few years...
Sony, like all megalithic corporations, behaves internally like dozens of smaller, independant companies. They're vying for their shares of the corp's limited resources and trying to justify their continued existence. I work for IBM, and it's the same way.
That said, I wouldn't be surprised if the people who received this warning never had any contact with the people responsible for the rootkit.
Yeah, but here's the funny thing. I haven't heard about anyone getting fired for this yet.
In case you didn't know, marijuana smokers are the most commonly targeted drug demographic these days, and the majority of our tax dollars, go towards fighting marijuana, while proven "bad drugs", such as meth, ruin lives, and run rampant throughout the country
Note, I'm talking real crimes, such as identity theft, phishing, and so on. Not downloading music and videos, which IMHO should be near the bottom of our list of priorities
Which raises and interesting point. How much of this so called 'cybercrime' money is derived from the RIAA's over-inflated numbers? I think the Columbians are still raking in a lot more than the Nigerians.
Not illegal until the 1997 NET Act
on
DMCA Abuse Widespread
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· Score: 2, Insightful
What you call "out of control wanton disregard for copyright law" was not a criminal act in the United States until the 1997 NET Act. File sharing has been happening since the beginnings of the internet. Does alt.binaries.* ring any bells for ya?
Don't try to paint it as something new enabled by P2P. What IS new is the idea that sharing files without making a profit is the domain of hardened criminals. What you are witnessing is the same thing lawmakers witnessed during prohibition. Copyright law has been transformed into complete and utter bullshit and everyone knows it. These are just the same law abiding people doing the same things they always have. As much as you might like to paint a different picture, most people who download music are not the same people who casually shoplift. The law is wrong. Obviously it needs to be repealed. Read all about it:
On December 16, 1997, President Clinton signed HR 2265 -- the 'No Electronic Theft' Act -- into law. The act, sponsored by Representative Goodlatte (R-Virginia), was passed in the House on 11/4/97 and in the Senate on 11/13/97.
HR 2265 was viewed as "closing a loophole" in the criminal law. Under the old statutory scheme, people who intentionally distributed copied software over the Internet did not face criminal penalties if they did not profit from their actions.
The act was strongly backed by the software and entertainment industries but opposed by science and academic groups.
Fuck you very much President Clinton AND both houses of Congress for going with the monied interests instead of the intellectuals when dealing with "Intellectual Property" laws.
The defenders of P2P for LEGITIMATE use lose their credibility if they are not equally realistic and aggressive in condemning and thinking of ways to stop illegitimate use.
No they don't. They have issues with the DMCA and the NET Act and your definition of legitimate, along with the majority of America. "Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." Obviously, we don't consent. When teenagers are being dragged into court on criminal charges for sharing songs, when Girl Scouts have a list of songs that are illegal sing around the campfire, and when I cannot legally sing Happy Birthday to my niece at McDonald's, something is terribly wrong with the law. It's time our lawmakers got tough on the corporate criminals stealing our culture from the public domain.
Someone really doesn't like nyud.net. Parent post is a direct link to a 4.2 MB media file. A crappy WMV3 format that'll require Windows Media Player at that. Sorry nyud.net, I tried to mod AC overrated, but hey, here comes the +5 funny...
Your turn... give me three examples of RIAA members who have stopped taking their customers to court.
Dozens of such sites exist. Hardly anybody goes to them. A few hard-core people do so they can pat themselves on the back for supporting indie bands, but most people fall in love with some fractin of the crap they hear on the radio. Even psuedo-indie acts like Death Cab for Cutie are in the position they are in only because a record label pimped them like crazy.
I would gladly take 6 times the profit on one third of the sales. BTW, Death Cab for Cutie?? Who the hell is that? I guess the RIAA didn't pimp 'em hard enough, because I have no idea who you are talking about. Must be something you picked up on MTV or the radio cleverly hidden among the commercials for beer and stridex. I'd say it takes more effort to 'find' good music through those channels than it does on a website.
One could easilly make the case that the work done by a record label is more important to the financial success of a music act than the work done by the band itself. When you look at it in that light (and realize that the labels take the brunt of most of the financial risk), it really isn't so eeeevil that they take a bigger slice of the pie.
Payola is illegal. So is price fixing. Hell, most of what the record labels 'do' for a band is shady at best.
I mean, David Gibbon just sat in front of a microphone and crooned for a few hours. Behind every album his band has made, there was an army of promotors, engineers, event planners, office staff, and several layers of management, all putting in 40-hour work weeks to make sure that you and as many of your friends as possible buy the album. They all worked just as hard as he did, and for considerably less money. Yet people consider it this horrible injustice when this ONE EMPLOYEE of the record company, who happened to have the most fun job of anybody involved, doesn't get to hog a majority of the profit for themselves.
Yeah, and Brad Sucks does it all with a desktop computer. Your overhead is useless to an entire generation of new musicians.
So yea, if you are a singer and think that's unfair, go out and try to do the work of all those people by yourself. You will probably end up with a much larger slice of a vastly smaller pie, unless you are just as good at music promotion as you are at being a musician.
Do you work for a RIAA member or something? It's music. People have been making it since the stone ages. Why do you think that it's all of a sudden impossible for someone to create, market, and distribute it without a management team? Indies have the internet. The RIAA is toast.
That may have been true before the term "Intellectual Property" was coined. Given the existence of laws against manipulating markets and regulations on monopolies though, I find the assertion highly suspect. The old cliché "The rich get richer" is also strong evidence to the contrary. Had there been no truth to the phrase, I doubt it would have endured for so long.
Maybe the wealthy will buy all the land? How will they maint in it? How will they build on it? How will they clean it, paint it, power it?
Or maybe they'll monopolize information. Digitize it, lock it up, and insist you pay a fief for access to it. Welcome to the digital dark ages.
Here's a solution. Smuggle guns and ammo into countries with no respect for private property.
Careful now. After Kelo, you might get yourself branded a terrorist.
It isn't lock-in. It's poor competitive strategy.
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MP3 Player Shoppers Guide
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· Score: 2, Insightful
(or more harshly) remember what we've been saying for years about having your data in open formats? Consider yourself locked-in.
Did GP poster say Fairplay DRMed AAC? No? Well then, isn't AAC an open format? At least as open as MP3 or anything a Sony 'iPod Killer' is going to support. I know I rip all my CDs to AAC. It isn't lock-in. It's lack of support from vendors. And if those vendors want to steal iPod marketshare, they'd better make switching as painless as possible. Re-ripping an entire CD collection will not be painless. They'd better get on the ball as far as importing from an iTunes library goes too, otherwise, they're going nowhere. And it isn't like reading a simple "iTunes Music Library.xml" file is hard. They're selling half the product you get with an iPod. All they've got is hardware. It's no wonder they all fail.
I was referring to the XCP screwing with your general ability to rip cds, but now, I cannot find the reference. Doh! Disregard me (unless of course, you run across proof of it in your reading)
Regarding Mac DRM... Exactly how is it going to ever execute in the first place? You can't install a kext without asking for an admin password. But while we are on the topic of Apple, consider this...
Why would Sony package DRM that intentionally interferes with CD ripping in general. I'm not just talking about the DRMed CD. This stuff borks your ability to rip ANY CD. Why is that? Could it have something to do with the iTunes Music Store/iTunes.app place in online music? It's public knowledge that the RIAA is unhappy about Apple's dominant position in online music. Could it be that one RIAA member has decided to do something underhanded about it. I think this is an attempt to sour the whole "iTunes/iPod just works" experience. Another poster has already pointed out that this 'fix' from Sony only disables the file hiding aspect of the DRM. It does not remove the DRM or the CD ripping crippleware. I wouldn't be surprised if Apple legal were looking into a suit of their own here.
NOOOO! Don't listen to him. He's trying to get you to put the dull side inside the cap so that your brain waves are amplified and easier to detect by the government mind reading machines! You need a two layer TFH with shiny on the inside AND out!!! It keeps the brain waves in and the mind control waves out! Everyone KNOWS that! Everyone knows...
Universities are the places where revolution has historically started, curtailing student influence merely stops one of the free checks and balances on the system.
Yeah, that's right in the Constitution beside the section on the Supreme Court and Congress I think...:-/ I don't think this is Carnegie Mellon resisting anything. They're sticking their hand out saying "More money please." The government's response will probably run along the lines of "STFU. Raise your tuitions."
The real question isn't "how well is Apple doing right now?", but "would the stockholders be better off if they'd invested elsewhere?"
Short answer: HELL NO.
Long answer: Dec 31, 1997. AAPL closes at 12.75 a share. With $1.3 Billion in the bank, their cash on hand exceeded their market cap. Today, two stock splits later, AAPL closed at 61.15 a share. Overlooking the fact that one of those splits was 3 for 1 where the company kept one share and gave investors two... Split adjusted, that's about 19 times your investment in less than 8 years. Long term, that's a solid 44.7% growth in your investment EVERY year for EIGHT SOLID YEARS. DELL on the other hand has *almost* tripled its 12/31/97 closing value (about 14.7% annual). So, let's see... which would I rather have: $19i or $3i.
If you're suggesting AAPL investors might have been better off with DELL, I'm afraid you're barking up the wrong tree. I don't have the numbers to back it up, but I'd be willing to bet AAPL has stomped every other computer hardware manufacturer in the past 8 years in share value growth. And for investors, that's what counts. Very, very, very few companies have done this well in the past eight years. AAPL is a superstar.
PS. I don't own a dime in AAPL, but I have been watching their stock closely since about 4/97.
Watching your multi-billion dollar media empire crumble because you raised prices while hungry indy podcasters were on a level playing field: Priceless
Posting sarcastic comments isn't doing anything to protect your rights.
No, but posting informative comments peppered with sarcasm might. For instance, did you know a law can be created without discussion these days in America? I certainly didn't. The Family Entertainment and Copyright Act (FECA) has been amended, without published notice of proposed amendments, under the authority of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004. If anyone can navigate that maze of spagetti code to see how these new amendments apply, I'm sure you'll find sharing BMG's latest offerings an offense punishable by death. What next? Taxation without representation?
Thank goodness the lobbyists and power brokers circling the wagons today for the hapless industry wasn't present in the late 19th and early 20th century to protect the horse and buggy industry in the same way... We'd have no cars today (since that would have threatened the established travel industry).
Lobbyists are not a new invention. It appears the term was coined in the early 19th century. It's a shame really. If they were a recent invention, someone would have patented the business method and then we would at least be free of them for about 20 years;-)
Slashdot Mirror
Linux is copyrighted material. I assume you meant infringing copyright.
I'm not going to slap you, I'll simply ask: Who are you to come in here and try to shout down numerous copyright holders? Infringing copyright without profit motive only became a criminal action after the 1997 NET act. NET was followed by DMCA, CTEA, and a whole host of oppressive, idiotic copyright legislation like SSSCA and INDUCE that was too rotten to even make it through our bought and paid for congress. I'd wager most copyright holders here do not agree with the intent or effects of the NET Act or any of the copyright legislation that followed, because that legislation goes against the spirit of the GPL and the free software movement. Trading files is the new Prohibition, and I, for one, disagree with current copyright law.
But then again, this is slashdot where anything that approaches conservative or rational gets modded down by the mob.
If you are modded down, it will not be because your stated opinion is either conservative or rational. This 'mob' happens to disagree with 1) you, 2) the current state of copyright law, 3) the majority of congress, 4) the RIAA, and 5) the MPAA to name a few. Additionally, this 'mob' only grows larger as regular people who were otherwise disinterested in the topic become aware of such facts as:
Thanks to the 1997 NET Act, children are being hauled into court by the music industry. That displeases me and more than a few other members of this website. I do not consider bringing lawsuits against children who download music to be "conservative or rational."
Obviously, you're poking fun at the study. But isn't this study supposed to send that exact message to Google's advertisers? "Look boss, Google users have more money. We should be targeting them instead of those cheap bastards over at Yahoo." Everyone here is highly critical when another Windows TCO study rolls out showing Windows stomping Linux. In every case I've seen on slashdot, it turns out that Microsoft funded the study. Big surprise. Could it be that Google has funded a third party for a study of their own? Hmmm....
Seems like there's prior art to your perpetual motion notion. :-)
It sounds like constructive criticism to me. He uses Mac only. So obviously it doesn't suck too badly. He doesn't point out any specifics about what sucks, but he lingers on UI design, which has become much less consistent with OS X. First aqua, then brushed metal, then Garageband pops up with some wood grain thing. Now there's a whole new 'Pro' look going into things like Aperture. It's like the Themes from OS 8.5, but now they are app specific. It's a common gripe.
Check the RIAA members list. See who's on there? Allow me to abbreviate it for you...
Why is anyone here still listening to them? You all read slashdot. Surely you know what the RIAA has been doing for the past few years...
Boycott the RIAA. ALL OF THEM.
That said, I wouldn't be surprised if the people who received this warning never had any contact with the people responsible for the rootkit.
Yeah, but here's the funny thing. I haven't heard about anyone getting fired for this yet.
Are you suggesting we arrest our men and women in uniform? Terrorist! ... BTW, many states now require an ID to buy over-the-counter cold medicine like Alka-Seltzer.
Which raises and interesting point. How much of this so called 'cybercrime' money is derived from the RIAA's over-inflated numbers? I think the Columbians are still raking in a lot more than the Nigerians.
Don't try to paint it as something new enabled by P2P. What IS new is the idea that sharing files without making a profit is the domain of hardened criminals. What you are witnessing is the same thing lawmakers witnessed during prohibition. Copyright law has been transformed into complete and utter bullshit and everyone knows it. These are just the same law abiding people doing the same things they always have. As much as you might like to paint a different picture, most people who download music are not the same people who casually shoplift. The law is wrong. Obviously it needs to be repealed. Read all about it:
Fuck you very much President Clinton AND both houses of Congress for going with the monied interests instead of the intellectuals when dealing with "Intellectual Property" laws.
The defenders of P2P for LEGITIMATE use lose their credibility if they are not equally realistic and aggressive in condemning and thinking of ways to stop illegitimate use.
No they don't. They have issues with the DMCA and the NET Act and your definition of legitimate, along with the majority of America. "Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." Obviously, we don't consent. When teenagers are being dragged into court on criminal charges for sharing songs, when Girl Scouts have a list of songs that are illegal sing around the campfire, and when I cannot legally sing Happy Birthday to my niece at McDonald's, something is terribly wrong with the law. It's time our lawmakers got tough on the corporate criminals stealing our culture from the public domain.
Someone really doesn't like nyud.net. Parent post is a direct link to a 4.2 MB media file. A crappy WMV3 format that'll require Windows Media Player at that. Sorry nyud.net, I tried to mod AC overrated, but hey, here comes the +5 funny...
Easy:
Your turn... give me three examples of RIAA members who have stopped taking their customers to court.
I would gladly take 6 times the profit on one third of the sales. BTW, Death Cab for Cutie?? Who the hell is that? I guess the RIAA didn't pimp 'em hard enough, because I have no idea who you are talking about. Must be something you picked up on MTV or the radio cleverly hidden among the commercials for beer and stridex. I'd say it takes more effort to 'find' good music through those channels than it does on a website.
Payola is illegal. So is price fixing. Hell, most of what the record labels 'do' for a band is shady at best.
Yeah, and Brad Sucks does it all with a desktop computer. Your overhead is useless to an entire generation of new musicians.
Do you work for a RIAA member or something? It's music. People have been making it since the stone ages. Why do you think that it's all of a sudden impossible for someone to create, market, and distribute it without a management team? Indies have the internet. The RIAA is toast.
That may have been true before the term "Intellectual Property" was coined. Given the existence of laws against manipulating markets and regulations on monopolies though, I find the assertion highly suspect. The old cliché "The rich get richer" is also strong evidence to the contrary. Had there been no truth to the phrase, I doubt it would have endured for so long.
Maybe the wealthy will buy all the land? How will they maint in it? How will they build on it? How will they clean it, paint it, power it?
Or maybe they'll monopolize information. Digitize it, lock it up, and insist you pay a fief for access to it. Welcome to the digital dark ages.
Careful now. After Kelo, you might get yourself branded a terrorist.
Did GP poster say Fairplay DRMed AAC? No? Well then, isn't AAC an open format? At least as open as MP3 or anything a Sony 'iPod Killer' is going to support. I know I rip all my CDs to AAC. It isn't lock-in. It's lack of support from vendors. And if those vendors want to steal iPod marketshare, they'd better make switching as painless as possible. Re-ripping an entire CD collection will not be painless. They'd better get on the ball as far as importing from an iTunes library goes too, otherwise, they're going nowhere. And it isn't like reading a simple "iTunes Music Library.xml" file is hard. They're selling half the product you get with an iPod. All they've got is hardware. It's no wonder they all fail.
I was referring to the XCP screwing with your general ability to rip cds, but now, I cannot find the reference. Doh! Disregard me (unless of course, you run across proof of it in your reading)
Why would Sony package DRM that intentionally interferes with CD ripping in general. I'm not just talking about the DRMed CD. This stuff borks your ability to rip ANY CD. Why is that? Could it have something to do with the iTunes Music Store/iTunes.app place in online music? It's public knowledge that the RIAA is unhappy about Apple's dominant position in online music. Could it be that one RIAA member has decided to do something underhanded about it. I think this is an attempt to sour the whole "iTunes/iPod just works" experience. Another poster has already pointed out that this 'fix' from Sony only disables the file hiding aspect of the DRM. It does not remove the DRM or the CD ripping crippleware. I wouldn't be surprised if Apple legal were looking into a suit of their own here.
NOOOO! Don't listen to him. He's trying to get you to put the dull side inside the cap so that your brain waves are amplified and easier to detect by the government mind reading machines! You need a two layer TFH with shiny on the inside AND out!!! It keeps the brain waves in and the mind control waves out! Everyone KNOWS that! Everyone knows...
Yeah, that's right in the Constitution beside the section on the Supreme Court and Congress I think... :-/ I don't think this is Carnegie Mellon resisting anything. They're sticking their hand out saying "More money please." The government's response will probably run along the lines of "STFU. Raise your tuitions."
Short answer: HELL NO.
Long answer: Dec 31, 1997. AAPL closes at 12.75 a share. With $1.3 Billion in the bank, their cash on hand exceeded their market cap. Today, two stock splits later, AAPL closed at 61.15 a share. Overlooking the fact that one of those splits was 3 for 1 where the company kept one share and gave investors two... Split adjusted, that's about 19 times your investment in less than 8 years. Long term, that's a solid 44.7% growth in your investment EVERY year for EIGHT SOLID YEARS. DELL on the other hand has *almost* tripled its 12/31/97 closing value (about 14.7% annual). So, let's see... which would I rather have: $19i or $3i.
If you're suggesting AAPL investors might have been better off with DELL, I'm afraid you're barking up the wrong tree. I don't have the numbers to back it up, but I'd be willing to bet AAPL has stomped every other computer hardware manufacturer in the past 8 years in share value growth. And for investors, that's what counts. Very, very, very few companies have done this well in the past eight years. AAPL is a superstar.
PS. I don't own a dime in AAPL, but I have been watching their stock closely since about 4/97.
Yeah, that's funny. Two words: Bush. Halliburton.
Wishful thinking?
No, but posting informative comments peppered with sarcasm might. For instance, did you know a law can be created without discussion these days in America? I certainly didn't. The Family Entertainment and Copyright Act (FECA) has been amended, without published notice of proposed amendments, under the authority of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004. If anyone can navigate that maze of spagetti code to see how these new amendments apply, I'm sure you'll find sharing BMG's latest offerings an offense punishable by death. What next? Taxation without representation?
Any ideas on what they plan on logging and censoring 'for the children?'
Nah, without TV they'd just introduce the masses to Slashdot ;-)
Lobbyists are not a new invention. It appears the term was coined in the early 19th century. It's a shame really. If they were a recent invention, someone would have patented the business method and then we would at least be free of them for about 20 years ;-)
From my slashdot journal... War-Porn Webmaster Arrested So much for freedom of speech, eh.