I actually bought a couple songs from the Apple site before I decided I didn't want to support a service that provides:
DRM-impaired files, and
Low-quality bitrates.
When I made that decision, a number of people thought I was basically impossible to please -- after all, the AAC files were "all but" free of DRM.
Now we see that DRM ultimately means the distributor owns you. If they can delete the files for "good" reasons, they can delete the file for any reason. You are totally dependent on their good faith. And as we can see, their idea of fair use may not mesh with yours.
I thought of downloading the song from P2P but then buying it from the iTunes store, but that amounts to giving our mortal enemies, the music industry, a lot of money to attack us with. (Note that I have no such concerns about certain indie labels that are not attacking P2P users. It is unfortunate that they tend to get grouped in with the far more evil big-5.)
Nevertheless, let me emphasize that this does not negate the need to pay the artist. In fact, we absolutely must get "paying the artist" off the table to win the intellectual debate. P2P is not about paying the artist, it is about who is in control of distribution -- the comsumer or the record company. We as P2P users, IMO, must make it a cultural reality that we always pay for MP3s we keep. It's easy to do this: go to MusicLink. You can pay any artist (or almost any artist) with a Paypal account or a credit card.
Once paying the artist is the P2P way of life, it will be very hard indeed to trot out words like "stealing" and "theft". Then it will become clear that the complainers are not really complaining about money, but about loss of control of distribution. When the debate is reduced to that, the other side will have already lost.
In the end, I say: insist on DRM-free files. Insist on high quality, at least as high as you want. And ALWAYS pay for the MP3s you keep. Use your money to support those who create great music, not those who attack you politically and legally.
<rant>
This character gives me a good case of heartburn. I guess in his position he can't come out and say "You're right, the DMCA sucks in many ways, contact your representative to change it." But I don't like the way he tries to dodge personal responsibility for his actions in upholding that obscene law and the other gross injustices of copyright law. HE chooses to spend his time upholding that law, and therefore HE PERSONALLY is responsible for it. Can't pass that off on Congress. He doesn't have to stay there and support that crap. So, Mr. O'Leary, may I suggest you find the balls to just say, yes, I choose to support that law, as do all law-enforcement officials at the DoJ. Yes, ultimately you agree with and support the sentencing guidelines through your actions. That's right, it's YOU, not all those other people.
</rant>
There is however an already substantial, and rapidly growing, movement of spoiled techno-brats who not only think they can enjoy the fruits of other people's labor for free, but also that they're entitled to.
You enjoy the fruits of other people's labors for free all the time, so that can't be a serious criticism.
What I find interesting is the corporate shills who seem to feel they not only can keep their work out of the public domain forever, but also feel they're entitled to. The word "copyright" is very much a misnomer. It's really a temporary privilege granted by society. Society can change the rules to any part of this copy privilege at any time. The right to copy never belonged to holders of the copy privilege -- it was always our right, the people's right, which we have chosen to waive in the past "to promote the Arts and Sciences."
But in this day when so many can publish so easily, via the Internet, the cost of copyright to we the people is much higher. The old deal, in which copyrights last for many years and non-commerical copying is illegal, is no longer a good one. We the people have a right to throw off laws that are unjust in our time and in our circumstances. And we are doing just that.
For the music industry, it's not about money, i.e. paying the artist, and never has been. The industry never gave a rat's ass about paying the artist -- surely you know that. There are many ways to ensure artists get paid, and if the music industry had been primarily about compensating the artist, they could have bought Napster before everything blew up and they would have owned P2P. Charge a reasonable rate, and they would have led the next wave in music
The music industry didn't do this because control of distribution, not money, is their primary goal. Without effective legal mechanisms to force everyone to experience music in exactly the way the industry desires, the industry feels it will lose strategic leverage. People will have options. The music industry is therefore opposed to your interests as a consumer -- they want you to be a slave, and you want to be free. They want to control everything, and you want to have options.
But the music industry is in a fight that they can never win. Their very resistance to Napster created Gnutella and Kazaa. And it is their ongoing demand for control that is now creating 3rd-generation P2P systems that offer IP anonymity. Every attempt at repression will be greeted with ever-more-difficult resistance. Ultimately there is no way to stop P2P short of creating a global police-state, something I am sure record executives would gladly do if they knew how.
More importantly, people like you will soon have to face the real choice. You may disapprove of file-sharing, but one day you will have to choose to either allow file-sharing by consenting individuals, or have a police state to prevent it. And the police-state will be run not by you, but by the same corporate interests who will do anything to anyone if it means more money for them.
Choose your side, and choose well, because you may not get another chance.
And along those lines, according to Buddhism, most of the things you enjoy actually cause suffering.
Laws and moralism are tools used by meddlers to create a "better" society. Of all the many things that cause suffering, surely well-intentioned meddling in the affairs of others is among the worst.
So in short: RIAA is bad, but so is downloading mp3's. Avoid it all and just enjoy the ocassional song, preferably a local band or something. You don't need much more.
Hey, all you need is food, water and shelter. Most of the things you enjoy in life are absolutely unnecessary.
As for filesharing being bad, I wonder when people started coming to the conclusion that they have a moral obligation to not send certain bits of information to other consenting adults. Sounds like the attitude of a slave to me. You can feel free to send or not send any bits you like to anyone, but when you imply that others have a moral obligation to do as you do, you sound like the fox who lost his tail and then tried to convince all the other foxes that being tailless is better.
I am a free adult, and I have a right to say anything I wish in a private communication to someone else who freely chooses to communicate with me -- either verbally, in writing, or over the Internet. This is my right regardless of what moralists such as you may say, and any law that tries to forbid this is simply an immoral law, one that impinges on my rights. Jefferson said the people have the right to throw off such laws, and that is exactly what is happening now.
That is highly debatable. Section 1008 of the 1992 Audio Home Recording Act states that all non-commericial copying of musical recordings by consumers is legal in the US. Napster tried to use this law in their defense, and the court ruled they could not do so because they were a commercial entity. Nevertheless, it should work fine for consumers. Note I am not a lawyer and I do not mean to offer this as legal advice; this is merely my opinion based on a layman's reading of this law.
Assuming I'm right, however, the next question is whether copying music is ethical. I say it is just as ethical as recording songs off the radio, a practice only the most extreme would argue with. If it is OK to copy copyrighted songs off the radio, then why is it wrong to do so on a P2P network?
Some might argue that the key difference is the quality of the recordings; tape recordings from the radio might be of low quality, while MP3s are a much higher quality. Even if one were to make this kind of an argument, we should all at least be able to agree on the immediate legalization of MP3 trading at a low quality level, like 128 Kbps. I daresay that is a concession the RIAA will be loathe to grant; hence the argument as a whole doesn't hold much water.
I don't have the time to go into the many, many flaws and injustices in our copyright system: the virtual destruction of fair-use by the DMCA, the virtual shut-off of the public domain by endless copyright terms. Even if it were outright illegal, I don't think it is in any way unethical to copy songs that are ten years old, for non-commercial use. The copyright interests have had more than a fair opportunity to make money from those properties; it is time for the public in general to benefit from those works.
Finally, from a practical standpoint, file-sharing cannot be stopped. Assuming the RIAA goes after some end-users, the public will simply create and/or enhance a new protocol that protects the identity of original file-sharers. Then the RIAA will be reduced to simply suing people because they are running a given protocol, a protocol that has dozens of legitimate potential uses. This action on the part of the RIAA is another in a long chain of foolish actions that make the RIAA's position ever more untenable. In the end, history will record that the RIAA died by their own hand, that they could have owned the market if they had embraced first Napster, then Kazaa. But they are addicted to power and would rather be dead than lose even a little. If they continue with that attitude, they will get their wish.
I prefer to view this debate as an economic policy question rather than a moraistic argument. P2P is here to stay, so how can we best utilize it to help the music industry? I have purchased lots of music from small artists (and even some from large artists) due to exposure on P2P. P2P is rather like a progressive tax: very helpful to smaller artists, and slightly taxing to larger artists, as opposed to the previous world order, in which only the big acts could ever win in the music business. I predict the music industry as a whole will be larger, not smaller, because of P2P, with many more great musicians able to make a living in the music industry. I predict there will be fewer superstars and more highly successful music careers. Is this really an outcome you wish to fight? If so, then you and I simply disagree about basic values. I think it's better policy to increase the overall value of the music industry than to protect the vested interests of the very powerful. That's why I'm for significant reforms in copyright and patent laws, and why I don't feel too bad when people like you shill for the powerful copyright interests. What you're selling is merely their wish list, not anything either fundamentally right or even better for the economy. That in itself is not a problem, except that you dress up your i
In my experience, it's usually better to take incremental improvements rather than insist on perfection or nothing. The "perfection or nothing" attitude usually results in nothing. Congresswoman Lofgren's bill is way better than what we have now. Like everything, this bill can be improved, and by participating in the process, we can help implement those improvements. But if we walk away from the table, we lose all influence in the process.
Many posters also seem to assume that they have little or no practical influence. In my experience, that is quite untrue. It's the small actions you take every day that make the difference. Do something every day to support freedom on the Internet. Make it a habit. Do it even if it's only sending a single email. Put it in your calendar so that you are reminded every day to do one thing, no matter how small, to support freedom on the Internet. Many days, you will do a great deal to support the cause. Every day, you will do at least a little something. By spending five minutes a day supporting something you care about, you can multiply your influence by a factor of at least 365, more as you gradually learn which actions are the most effective.
Give it a try for a couple months. Once you get used to it, it's easy, quick and pleasant. Focus on creating the right causes, and the effects will take care of themselves. Do the right thing without worrying about the eventual outcome, or how much progress you're making. It's like walking to a far-away city: put one foot in front of the other, and sooner or later you'll wake up and see the city gates in the distance.
I suggest that you hold your ground and leave the company if necessary, which it probably will be. Companies will have to experience a lot of pain to be separated from this tactic, and losing someone in your position would be one such experience. Having said all this, it's not my job to lose, and therefore I do not feel the situation as personally as you do. I am also not in your financial situation. If you are out of money or close to being out, you may have no good alternative.
From what you said, it sounds as if the company popped this requirement on you at the last minute, after you accepted their offer. This happened to me, too, and I believe it is par for the course for companies that do this. This approach suggests that the companies know people will hate this, hence they want to make it as painful as possible for you. If you knuckle, you are in effect telling them that it's OK to use this tactic on yourself and others; it works.
At the company I worked at where this happened, I resisted the invasive credit check and other privacy issues, just as you did. Eventually, the company all but assured me that it was merely a routine check that they did with everyone and that unless I had five bankruptcies in my past, it would have no effect on my employment. I then chose to allow the check. In retrospect, I wouldn't do that again, unless there was no financial alternative. I have since developed a successful consulting business and I have come to realize that in most of the first world, there is no need to have a formal job unless you want one. Skilled people can make plenty of money consulting and never have to deal with the ten-thousand indignities that are part-and-parcel of most full-time employement positions. I suspect in the future I will always either work as an independent consultant, as the proprietor of my own business, or at a very special company that actually respects the privacy and dignity of its employees -- and I think such companies are one in a thousand.
In the short term, if finances permit, I say hold your ground; leave if necessary; and be prepared to accept a job somewhere else where you will truly enjoy the work and where they will have a greater respect for their employees; but you will probably receive a somewhat lower salary. IMO, this is well worth it. I have learned from experience that money is a poor compensation for having miserable work days.
What's unreasonable from keeping the public from copying your work and giving it to friends while you're trying to make money from it within a shorter time frame?
AND keeping people from making backup copies in case the original is damaged, AND keeping people from making personal compilations, AND keeping people from making a copy for the car/office/whatever, AND keeping people from making digital works of criticism or education which quote the original in its original form.
Well said. Even 14 years (really 28 years if renewed) is too long if in exchange we must forfeit all reasonable uses of the material. And if consumers have the ability to make a copy for the office, they have the ability to make any number of copies for any reason, using the sound-out jack if nothing else. No: in general, circumvention for fair-use purposes is absolutely required.
My proposal (which I heard from someone else, but I've forgotten who, so forgive me for failing to provide a credit, and pray don't sue me for copyright infringement):
If you put your copyrighted material in the marketplace with no copy protection mechanisms, then you will receive one 20-year term of copyright protection, non-renewable. Consumers will receive a number of legitimate fair uses of the work, including quoting small sections, time-shifting, space-shifting, backups, playing for family and close friends, even sharing with close friends (like I make a compilation tape and give it to my wife). However, any non-fair-use of the material is a crime, and all copyright crimes will be aggressively punished by authorities. That means sharing a copyrighted work on Kazaa could mean a hefty fine, and enough violations could mean jail time. Kinda like getting a nasty speeding ticket. In other words: create reasonable copyright laws and then do everything within the state's power to enforce them. BTW, I am referring here to casual or non-commercial copyright infringement; for-pay infringement is a different kettle of fish and would probably involve jail time by default.
On the other hand, if the copyright holder uses any form of copy protection, including schemes to lock consumers into approved players or any other nastiness of that kind, that's fine; but the copyright work loses all protection of the laws. In other words, you can rely on copy protection if you wish, but then if the consumer circumvents your protection you are shit out of luck. Attempts to circumvent your protections would be 100 percent legal, and it would also be legal to pass around the cracked work all you liked.
In short: make copyright law reasonable; make fair-use mandatory (at least if you want legal protection for your copyrighted work); and then enforce the reasonable copyright laws aggressively.
This kind of report hurts yet helps. I personally own a Mac and love it, but then I never do rendering. For development or average consumer purposes, the Mac is every bit as good as a Wintel box. But if you have the need for raw crunching, this is not your platform, and it pains me greatly to say this.
But, this may be just the push Apple needs. There are many advantages to releasing OS X on multiple platforms. First, there's the raw speed gain. Second, the price of the boxes drops for the consumer, and this may be the biggest single factor holding Apple back from total domination today. Third, using an Intel or AMD chip opens the door to running Wine and Windows software. Quite a potential gain!
I challenge the idea put forth by some that Apple needs its OS to be on oddball hardware to be successful. The fact is, Apple has switched over to industry-standard hardware in every other area -- USB, Firewire (granted this was introduced by Apple), PCI, IDE. Nothing need stop them from moving also to an industry-standard CPU. Apple boxes do not need to be Windows-compatible to gain the speed advantage of the Intel/AMD chips. And Apple can still guarantee perfect compatibility between the hardware and the OS simply because it can dictate the hardware and sell the boxes. You could try to put together an OS X compatible box today, too, but no one is doing so because Apple isn't releasing some of its technical information. There's no reason to think this would be different on Intel or AMD.
The Classic compatibility layer is out on Intel Macs, but I personally never use it; I actually won't use software that runs only in Classic mode and I have never had a compelling need to do so. Everything good is available for OS X and can be recompiled to Intel/AMD with minimal effort, once Apple puts the pieces in place.
I hope this scares the bejesus out of Steve Jobs, simply because Apple under his leadership has achieved so much and is capable of so much more. I want to see Apple take what I see as its rightful place in the OS market -- a share of 20-30 percent, the BMW of operating systems. OS X is well able to do this, unless it is weighed down by things like overpriced, slow hardware.
Disclaimer: IANAL, but I'll give you my legal opinions anyway.;-)
While I am all for this decision, it seems the major benefit is that it places additional legal hurdles before DVD CCA. They have to sue each non-Californian web site individually, in the state where that site resides. My guess is that the biggest hassle here as far as the DVD CCA is concerned is that each state has different laws, and the plaintiffs would have to show that posting the material was illegal in the state where the web site resides. That not only shoots the legal costs up sharply, but then you also risk having web site operators in states where posting such material is entirely legal and protected. (Never mind federal laws such as the DMCA that might also apply to a case like this.)
Of course, maybe the DVD CCA could sue from another state that has more "liberal" policies on what is within its jurisdiction.
The decision does NOT seem to make any statements about the legality of reverse-engineering CSS, or writing code to implement the DeCSS algorithm, or distributing that code. The court did not find that distributing DeCSS was legal, but rather that under these specific circumstances, Californian courts are not the ones to decide this. Not that I would have expected a more sweeping opinion given the specific focus of the question before the court.
Bottom line: This is a roadblock for DVD CCA and organizations that are similarly evil, but it is far from a conclusive win or even a sweeping victory -- at least that's how it looks from here. Any people with more legal expertise care to add to or correct these thoughts?
Not only is DRM ineffective at stopping real hackers, it actually promotes filesharing. Why? Because of all the things you can't do with a DRM disc:
1. Back it up 2. Make a playlist from it 3. Play it in your car or DVD player 4. Play it on your iPod/Nomad/etc
It's far easier to download your song from any one of a dozen filesharing services. All that's needed is one guy who figured out how to rip it. Many CD-ripping programs, including open-source programs, have already developed ways to circumvent most common forms of CD copy protection.
All DRM schemes are horribly misguided because they make it difficult/unpleasant to be honest, because they are easily circumvented, and because only a few people need to circumvent them for the whole world to benefit.
The ONLY solution that I can think of -- the general solution to piracy -- is to make it not worth the trouble to pirate the songs. If you can get a 320-bit unencumbered MP3 from (say) EMI's site, for $1, without having to hassle with remote queueing, poor quality, getting the wrong file... Most people will pay the $1 and that will be that. I would. But I would never pay a dime for DRM material unless it was for a research project on how to crack it. If I can't put it in my MP3 collection, it's useless to me.
The record industry is like any other evolutionary system -- they'll either adapt or die. I have no doubt some companies will survive and prosper. But those who think they can keep pushing the '70s industry model forever, propping it up with DRM and other nonsense, will spend all their money and then die.
All the current legal efforts are the last desperate attempts of a doomed evolutionary niche to be relevant. They are fighting so hard because they have little time left.
That is, elections will not be decided by candidates' stance on this single issue.
Given the closeness of recent elections, I'm surprised at this point of view. A small, vocal minority can easily tip the balance of an election. Personally, I used to consider myself a Republican. Now I vote for whichever candidate is more synced with my position on "Internet/digital freedom" issues.
So I would take the position almost diametrically opposite of the poster above -- the power of a determined and focused minority has never been greater. Call those representatives and definitely go to the polls. You have tremendous unrecognized power. The only way you're sure to lose is if you decide it's hopeless before you've even tried.
Wow, you're gonna *pay* for your stolen goods? And you're going to stop distributing said stolen stuff?
Copyright is a/privilege/ granted by society in exchange for value, and we as a society have a right to change the deal. And we are. If your position is that I and everyone else must simply honor this same deal forever into the future or it's theft, then we disagree. If you say the law is an absolute, I wonder if you'd say the same thing if the government abrogated all fair use and extended copyright terms to 10,000 years? Is there any point where you say the laws are unfair and therefore, in your mind and action at least, invalid?
Many times an illegal practice is morally necessary, or at least not immoral. Freeing of slaves in the old South was quite illegal but perhaps morally mandated. Running whiskey during the Prohibition was illegal, but I do not feel it was immoral in itself. In a similar vein, I believe our present copyright laws are unfair and inappropriate. They're not on the same level of evil as slavery, but they could be an enormous burden if they continue the way they have been, with the eroding and eventual elimination of fair use and enforced DRM. This trend was well-developed long before Napster was famous. Napster was a reaction to that unfairness, not the cause of it.
Everyone has to decide for themselves what they think is right. I believe it is right to protest the unfair balance of copyright by trading files online, but I also believe it is right to be fairminded toward those who offer a compromise, such as EMI may be doing. You may call it theft; I say it is more akin to the quote from the Declaration of Independence -- "That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it." Disagree if you will. I have chosen to do what I can to alter our current system, and I am satisfied in my own mind with the moral balance I have struck.
If the reality turns out to be as good as the appearance, I definitely plan to reward EMI in two ways:
1. Buy all their music in my collection that is not as yet paid for, and 2. Stop sharing it -- since there is now a cost-effective and convenient way for anyone to get it for themselves.
This is contingent on the following:
1. No DRM in the files, ideally OGG or MP3 files. 2. High-quality recordings (i.e. 128-bit is quite marginal, I'm hoping for 256-bit or at least an option to choose bitrate). 3. Reasonable cost. $5 per song is too much, $1 per song would be awesome.
I don't want to get into the whole you're-a-pirate-no-I'm-not argument, but I do believe there's a balance between producers of content and consumers, and this balance is created not so much by the free market as by a matter of conscious choice in society. It is not theft for the people -- you and I -- to decide we no longer wish to offer the same terms to copyright holders that we once did. It made sense at one time, but as the average individual increasingly gains the ability to copy data, the cost to us as a society in giving absolute protection to copyright holders increases dramatically. This is true not only in enforcement issues, but in the simple ability of millions of people to enjoy from and build on copyrighted works.
This doesn't mean we don't pay the piper anymore, but it does mean the balance has forever changed. Pretending the old rules still make sense just doesn't fly anymore. EMI seems to be making the first concrete move toward acknowledging that reality, and if the details work out, I say kudos to them, and I'll be their best customer.
There are several good reasons for a sophisticated filesharer to buy the original CD. They are:
(1) You encoded your music at 160 Kbps to save on disk space. Now you have lots of disk space and want to encode at 256 Kbps. Finding all your favorite songs at 256 Kbps on Kazaa might be a challenge, not to mention slow.
(2) You just discovered that Fraunhoffer/Thompson has changed their licensing policy and you're pissed. You want to switch to Ogg. Hope you have the original CD, because converting an MP3 to Ogg directly will result in a crappy product. You're way better off re-ripping to Ogg from the original.
(3) I know the whole Slashdot crowd backs up all files on a daily basis. But for those who don't, if your hard disk dies you're in serious trouble. You'll definitely want the original disk as a backup (although I recommend burning your entire library to DVD-R as well, every six months or so).
(4) You just switched your computer and discovered that all those WMA files you created won't play on your new computer because of Microsoft copy-protection. Well, the first thing to learn from this is to never use copy-protection-encumbered formats. The next thing to learn is never throw away your CDs!
Of course, these reasons have to be weighed against the cost of buying the original CD and how much you like the music. I.e., a 128 Kbps MP3 might be plenty for you for recording X, while recording Y demands 256 or better. Again, you might be strongly motivated to move to Ogg -- but not so much so that you'll pay thousands of dollars for original CDs that you only moderately want.
And, this whole logic flips over for copy-protected CDs! Such disks are barely worth the plastic it took to make them. They lack all the usual MP3 benefits and they are essentially useless for backup purposes.
But aside from that, there are still excellent reasons to own the original. If all CDs cost $5, I'd probably own the original CD for everything in my collection.
...because 60 is evenly divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 10. So dividing the day into 60 hours, each of which contains 60 minutes, and each minute of which contains 60 seconds, would probably be more convenient.
For many if not most applications, a cleartext key on the hard disk is not necessary (although a cleartext key in RAM for at least some period of time is probably unavoidable). If you have a situation where you need to decrypt a credit card when a user buys something, or you need to run a billing cycle periodically, you can do this:
Generate a user key randomly; this is used to encrypt the password. This information in turn is encrypted by each system user that needs to access the data. Only the encrypted user key is stored on disk, one encrypted copy for each user who might need to access it. When the user wanted to make a purchase, they'd type in their password, which would be used to decrypt the user key, which in turn would decrypt the credit card number. If a customer service person or billing clerk needed access to the credit card number, they would enter their own password which would decrypt the user key.
If you need the machine to decrypt the password without any human intervention, that's a tougher nut to crack. My guess is that there's no way to do it without having a cleartext key on the machine, or accessible by the machine.
Working for someone else is basically a slave mentality. The whole Dilbert cartoon is founded on this, and it wouldn't be funny if it weren't largely true.
Employment offers only the illusion of security -- not actual security, just the illusion. In order to get that illusion, you are treated like chattel, squeezed into cubeland, placed under the supervision of total idiots, given tasks that make no sense and that you don't want to do, expected to kiss ass, handed long lists of ridiculous rules...every kind of demeaning and petty indignity you can think of. Probably every poster on this thread has experienced this.
Ask yourself if employment has ever really been a wonderful experience for you in all ways. Did you learn and grow as much as you wanted to? Did you feel in control of what you were doing? Were you doing work you loved? Were you appreciated and respected? Was your boss someone who inspired you, someone you respected and liked? Did management have a powerful vision, which they were executing expertly? Did the company go out of its way in deed, not just word, to show employees they were loved? And of course, did you come out of the experience with financial independence?
Hardly anybody can say yes to all these things. Even the best of companies only get half of the above as clear yesses. There is something fundamentally wrong with employment as we know it, and this is evidenced by the bad employment experiences we've all had. Yet we continue to try to fix this thing that is always falling apart. I say it's time to dump the whole miserable mess. Feeling dependent financially on anyone -- any person or any company -- is a slave mentality, and it leads/inevitably/ to being treated poorly and taken advantage of.
You are in business for yourself, whether you are technically working for someone else or not. You want vision? Don't ask someone else for this. Resenting and trying to change your employer is a waste of time. Create your own vision, make something that improves the world and sell it. Bottom line: break out of prison before it kills your spirit. Do whatever it takes to live the way you want to live. Don't accept that this pathetic state we call employment is necessary.
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I actually bought a couple songs from the Apple site before I decided I didn't want to support a service that provides:
When I made that decision, a number of people thought I was basically impossible to please -- after all, the AAC files were "all but" free of DRM.
Now we see that DRM ultimately means the distributor owns you. If they can delete the files for "good" reasons, they can delete the file for any reason. You are totally dependent on their good faith. And as we can see, their idea of fair use may not mesh with yours.
I thought of downloading the song from P2P but then buying it from the iTunes store, but that amounts to giving our mortal enemies, the music industry, a lot of money to attack us with. (Note that I have no such concerns about certain indie labels that are not attacking P2P users. It is unfortunate that they tend to get grouped in with the far more evil big-5.)
Nevertheless, let me emphasize that this does not negate the need to pay the artist. In fact, we absolutely must get "paying the artist" off the table to win the intellectual debate. P2P is not about paying the artist, it is about who is in control of distribution -- the comsumer or the record company. We as P2P users, IMO, must make it a cultural reality that we always pay for MP3s we keep. It's easy to do this: go to MusicLink. You can pay any artist (or almost any artist) with a Paypal account or a credit card.
Once paying the artist is the P2P way of life, it will be very hard indeed to trot out words like "stealing" and "theft". Then it will become clear that the complainers are not really complaining about money, but about loss of control of distribution. When the debate is reduced to that, the other side will have already lost.
In the end, I say: insist on DRM-free files. Insist on high quality, at least as high as you want. And ALWAYS pay for the MP3s you keep. Use your money to support those who create great music, not those who attack you politically and legally.
<rant> This character gives me a good case of heartburn. I guess in his position he can't come out and say "You're right, the DMCA sucks in many ways, contact your representative to change it." But I don't like the way he tries to dodge personal responsibility for his actions in upholding that obscene law and the other gross injustices of copyright law. HE chooses to spend his time upholding that law, and therefore HE PERSONALLY is responsible for it. Can't pass that off on Congress. He doesn't have to stay there and support that crap. So, Mr. O'Leary, may I suggest you find the balls to just say, yes, I choose to support that law, as do all law-enforcement officials at the DoJ. Yes, ultimately you agree with and support the sentencing guidelines through your actions. That's right, it's YOU, not all those other people. </rant>
Thanks, that's all.
You enjoy the fruits of other people's labors for free all the time, so that can't be a serious criticism.
What I find interesting is the corporate shills who seem to feel they not only can keep their work out of the public domain forever, but also feel they're entitled to. The word "copyright" is very much a misnomer. It's really a temporary privilege granted by society. Society can change the rules to any part of this copy privilege at any time. The right to copy never belonged to holders of the copy privilege -- it was always our right, the people's right, which we have chosen to waive in the past "to promote the Arts and Sciences."
But in this day when so many can publish so easily, via the Internet, the cost of copyright to we the people is much higher. The old deal, in which copyrights last for many years and non-commerical copying is illegal, is no longer a good one. We the people have a right to throw off laws that are unjust in our time and in our circumstances. And we are doing just that.
For the music industry, it's not about money, i.e. paying the artist, and never has been. The industry never gave a rat's ass about paying the artist -- surely you know that. There are many ways to ensure artists get paid, and if the music industry had been primarily about compensating the artist, they could have bought Napster before everything blew up and they would have owned P2P. Charge a reasonable rate, and they would have led the next wave in music
The music industry didn't do this because control of distribution, not money, is their primary goal. Without effective legal mechanisms to force everyone to experience music in exactly the way the industry desires, the industry feels it will lose strategic leverage. People will have options. The music industry is therefore opposed to your interests as a consumer -- they want you to be a slave, and you want to be free. They want to control everything, and you want to have options.
But the music industry is in a fight that they can never win. Their very resistance to Napster created Gnutella and Kazaa. And it is their ongoing demand for control that is now creating 3rd-generation P2P systems that offer IP anonymity. Every attempt at repression will be greeted with ever-more-difficult resistance. Ultimately there is no way to stop P2P short of creating a global police-state, something I am sure record executives would gladly do if they knew how.
More importantly, people like you will soon have to face the real choice. You may disapprove of file-sharing, but one day you will have to choose to either allow file-sharing by consenting individuals, or have a police state to prevent it. And the police-state will be run not by you, but by the same corporate interests who will do anything to anyone if it means more money for them.
Choose your side, and choose well, because you may not get another chance.
Laws and moralism are tools used by meddlers to create a "better" society. Of all the many things that cause suffering, surely well-intentioned meddling in the affairs of others is among the worst.
Hey, all you need is food, water and shelter. Most of the things you enjoy in life are absolutely unnecessary.
As for filesharing being bad, I wonder when people started coming to the conclusion that they have a moral obligation to not send certain bits of information to other consenting adults. Sounds like the attitude of a slave to me. You can feel free to send or not send any bits you like to anyone, but when you imply that others have a moral obligation to do as you do, you sound like the fox who lost his tail and then tried to convince all the other foxes that being tailless is better.
I am a free adult, and I have a right to say anything I wish in a private communication to someone else who freely chooses to communicate with me -- either verbally, in writing, or over the Internet. This is my right regardless of what moralists such as you may say, and any law that tries to forbid this is simply an immoral law, one that impinges on my rights. Jefferson said the people have the right to throw off such laws, and that is exactly what is happening now.
That is highly debatable. Section 1008 of the 1992 Audio Home Recording Act states that all non-commericial copying of musical recordings by consumers is legal in the US. Napster tried to use this law in their defense, and the court ruled they could not do so because they were a commercial entity. Nevertheless, it should work fine for consumers. Note I am not a lawyer and I do not mean to offer this as legal advice; this is merely my opinion based on a layman's reading of this law.
Assuming I'm right, however, the next question is whether copying music is ethical. I say it is just as ethical as recording songs off the radio, a practice only the most extreme would argue with. If it is OK to copy copyrighted songs off the radio, then why is it wrong to do so on a P2P network?
Some might argue that the key difference is the quality of the recordings; tape recordings from the radio might be of low quality, while MP3s are a much higher quality. Even if one were to make this kind of an argument, we should all at least be able to agree on the immediate legalization of MP3 trading at a low quality level, like 128 Kbps. I daresay that is a concession the RIAA will be loathe to grant; hence the argument as a whole doesn't hold much water.
I don't have the time to go into the many, many flaws and injustices in our copyright system: the virtual destruction of fair-use by the DMCA, the virtual shut-off of the public domain by endless copyright terms. Even if it were outright illegal, I don't think it is in any way unethical to copy songs that are ten years old, for non-commercial use. The copyright interests have had more than a fair opportunity to make money from those properties; it is time for the public in general to benefit from those works.
Finally, from a practical standpoint, file-sharing cannot be stopped. Assuming the RIAA goes after some end-users, the public will simply create and/or enhance a new protocol that protects the identity of original file-sharers. Then the RIAA will be reduced to simply suing people because they are running a given protocol, a protocol that has dozens of legitimate potential uses. This action on the part of the RIAA is another in a long chain of foolish actions that make the RIAA's position ever more untenable. In the end, history will record that the RIAA died by their own hand, that they could have owned the market if they had embraced first Napster, then Kazaa. But they are addicted to power and would rather be dead than lose even a little. If they continue with that attitude, they will get their wish.
I prefer to view this debate as an economic policy question rather than a moraistic argument. P2P is here to stay, so how can we best utilize it to help the music industry? I have purchased lots of music from small artists (and even some from large artists) due to exposure on P2P. P2P is rather like a progressive tax: very helpful to smaller artists, and slightly taxing to larger artists, as opposed to the previous world order, in which only the big acts could ever win in the music business. I predict the music industry as a whole will be larger, not smaller, because of P2P, with many more great musicians able to make a living in the music industry. I predict there will be fewer superstars and more highly successful music careers. Is this really an outcome you wish to fight? If so, then you and I simply disagree about basic values. I think it's better policy to increase the overall value of the music industry than to protect the vested interests of the very powerful. That's why I'm for significant reforms in copyright and patent laws, and why I don't feel too bad when people like you shill for the powerful copyright interests. What you're selling is merely their wish list, not anything either fundamentally right or even better for the economy. That in itself is not a problem, except that you dress up your i
In my experience, it's usually better to take incremental improvements rather than insist on perfection or nothing. The "perfection or nothing" attitude usually results in nothing. Congresswoman Lofgren's bill is way better than what we have now. Like everything, this bill can be improved, and by participating in the process, we can help implement those improvements. But if we walk away from the table, we lose all influence in the process.
Many posters also seem to assume that they have little or no practical influence. In my experience, that is quite untrue. It's the small actions you take every day that make the difference. Do something every day to support freedom on the Internet. Make it a habit. Do it even if it's only sending a single email. Put it in your calendar so that you are reminded every day to do one thing, no matter how small, to support freedom on the Internet. Many days, you will do a great deal to support the cause. Every day, you will do at least a little something. By spending five minutes a day supporting something you care about, you can multiply your influence by a factor of at least 365, more as you gradually learn which actions are the most effective.
Give it a try for a couple months. Once you get used to it, it's easy, quick and pleasant. Focus on creating the right causes, and the effects will take care of themselves. Do the right thing without worrying about the eventual outcome, or how much progress you're making. It's like walking to a far-away city: put one foot in front of the other, and sooner or later you'll wake up and see the city gates in the distance.
I suggest that you hold your ground and leave the company if necessary, which it probably will be. Companies will have to experience a lot of pain to be separated from this tactic, and losing someone in your position would be one such experience. Having said all this, it's not my job to lose, and therefore I do not feel the situation as personally as you do. I am also not in your financial situation. If you are out of money or close to being out, you may have no good alternative.
From what you said, it sounds as if the company popped this requirement on you at the last minute, after you accepted their offer. This happened to me, too, and I believe it is par for the course for companies that do this. This approach suggests that the companies know people will hate this, hence they want to make it as painful as possible for you. If you knuckle, you are in effect telling them that it's OK to use this tactic on yourself and others; it works.
At the company I worked at where this happened, I resisted the invasive credit check and other privacy issues, just as you did. Eventually, the company all but assured me that it was merely a routine check that they did with everyone and that unless I had five bankruptcies in my past, it would have no effect on my employment. I then chose to allow the check. In retrospect, I wouldn't do that again, unless there was no financial alternative. I have since developed a successful consulting business and I have come to realize that in most of the first world, there is no need to have a formal job unless you want one. Skilled people can make plenty of money consulting and never have to deal with the ten-thousand indignities that are part-and-parcel of most full-time employement positions. I suspect in the future I will always either work as an independent consultant, as the proprietor of my own business, or at a very special company that actually respects the privacy and dignity of its employees -- and I think such companies are one in a thousand.
In the short term, if finances permit, I say hold your ground; leave if necessary; and be prepared to accept a job somewhere else where you will truly enjoy the work and where they will have a greater respect for their employees; but you will probably receive a somewhat lower salary. IMO, this is well worth it. I have learned from experience that money is a poor compensation for having miserable work days.
Well said. Even 14 years (really 28 years if renewed) is too long if in exchange we must forfeit all reasonable uses of the material. And if consumers have the ability to make a copy for the office, they have the ability to make any number of copies for any reason, using the sound-out jack if nothing else. No: in general, circumvention for fair-use purposes is absolutely required.
My proposal (which I heard from someone else, but I've forgotten who, so forgive me for failing to provide a credit, and pray don't sue me for copyright infringement):
If you put your copyrighted material in the marketplace with no copy protection mechanisms, then you will receive one 20-year term of copyright protection, non-renewable. Consumers will receive a number of legitimate fair uses of the work, including quoting small sections, time-shifting, space-shifting, backups, playing for family and close friends, even sharing with close friends (like I make a compilation tape and give it to my wife). However, any non-fair-use of the material is a crime, and all copyright crimes will be aggressively punished by authorities. That means sharing a copyrighted work on Kazaa could mean a hefty fine, and enough violations could mean jail time. Kinda like getting a nasty speeding ticket. In other words: create reasonable copyright laws and then do everything within the state's power to enforce them. BTW, I am referring here to casual or non-commercial copyright infringement; for-pay infringement is a different kettle of fish and would probably involve jail time by default.
On the other hand, if the copyright holder uses any form of copy protection, including schemes to lock consumers into approved players or any other nastiness of that kind, that's fine; but the copyright work loses all protection of the laws. In other words, you can rely on copy protection if you wish, but then if the consumer circumvents your protection you are shit out of luck. Attempts to circumvent your protections would be 100 percent legal, and it would also be legal to pass around the cracked work all you liked.
In short: make copyright law reasonable; make fair-use mandatory (at least if you want legal protection for your copyrighted work); and then enforce the reasonable copyright laws aggressively.
This kind of report hurts yet helps. I personally own a Mac and love it, but then I never do rendering. For development or average consumer purposes, the Mac is every bit as good as a Wintel box. But if you have the need for raw crunching, this is not your platform, and it pains me greatly to say this.
But, this may be just the push Apple needs. There are many advantages to releasing OS X on multiple platforms. First, there's the raw speed gain. Second, the price of the boxes drops for the consumer, and this may be the biggest single factor holding Apple back from total domination today. Third, using an Intel or AMD chip opens the door to running Wine and Windows software. Quite a potential gain!
I challenge the idea put forth by some that Apple needs its OS to be on oddball hardware to be successful. The fact is, Apple has switched over to industry-standard hardware in every other area -- USB, Firewire (granted this was introduced by Apple), PCI, IDE. Nothing need stop them from moving also to an industry-standard CPU. Apple boxes do not need to be Windows-compatible to gain the speed advantage of the Intel/AMD chips. And Apple can still guarantee perfect compatibility between the hardware and the OS simply because it can dictate the hardware and sell the boxes. You could try to put together an OS X compatible box today, too, but no one is doing so because Apple isn't releasing some of its technical information. There's no reason to think this would be different on Intel or AMD.
The Classic compatibility layer is out on Intel Macs, but I personally never use it; I actually won't use software that runs only in Classic mode and I have never had a compelling need to do so. Everything good is available for OS X and can be recompiled to Intel/AMD with minimal effort, once Apple puts the pieces in place.
I hope this scares the bejesus out of Steve Jobs, simply because Apple under his leadership has achieved so much and is capable of so much more. I want to see Apple take what I see as its rightful place in the OS market -- a share of 20-30 percent, the BMW of operating systems. OS X is well able to do this, unless it is weighed down by things like overpriced, slow hardware.
Disclaimer: IANAL, but I'll give you my legal opinions anyway. ;-)
While I am all for this decision, it seems the major benefit is that it places additional legal hurdles before DVD CCA. They have to sue each non-Californian web site individually, in the state where that site resides. My guess is that the biggest hassle here as far as the DVD CCA is concerned is that each state has different laws, and the plaintiffs would have to show that posting the material was illegal in the state where the web site resides. That not only shoots the legal costs up sharply, but then you also risk having web site operators in states where posting such material is entirely legal and protected. (Never mind federal laws such as the DMCA that might also apply to a case like this.)
Of course, maybe the DVD CCA could sue from another state that has more "liberal" policies on what is within its jurisdiction.
The decision does NOT seem to make any statements about the legality of reverse-engineering CSS, or writing code to implement the DeCSS algorithm, or distributing that code. The court did not find that distributing DeCSS was legal, but rather that under these specific circumstances, Californian courts are not the ones to decide this. Not that I would have expected a more sweeping opinion given the specific focus of the question before the court.
Bottom line: This is a roadblock for DVD CCA and organizations that are similarly evil, but it is far from a conclusive win or even a sweeping victory -- at least that's how it looks from here. Any people with more legal expertise care to add to or correct these thoughts?
Not only is DRM ineffective at stopping real hackers, it actually promotes filesharing. Why? Because of all the things you can't do with a DRM disc:
1. Back it up
2. Make a playlist from it
3. Play it in your car or DVD player
4. Play it on your iPod/Nomad/etc
It's far easier to download your song from any one of a dozen filesharing services. All that's needed is one guy who figured out how to rip it. Many CD-ripping programs, including open-source programs, have already developed ways to circumvent most common forms of CD copy protection.
All DRM schemes are horribly misguided because they make it difficult/unpleasant to be honest, because they are easily circumvented, and because only a few people need to circumvent them for the whole world to benefit.
The ONLY solution that I can think of -- the general solution to piracy -- is to make it not worth the trouble to pirate the songs. If you can get a 320-bit unencumbered MP3 from (say) EMI's site, for $1, without having to hassle with remote queueing, poor quality, getting the wrong file... Most people will pay the $1 and that will be that. I would. But I would never pay a dime for DRM material unless it was for a research project on how to crack it. If I can't put it in my MP3 collection, it's useless to me.
The record industry is like any other evolutionary system -- they'll either adapt or die. I have no doubt some companies will survive and prosper. But those who think they can keep pushing the '70s industry model forever, propping it up with DRM and other nonsense, will spend all their money and then die.
All the current legal efforts are the last desperate attempts of a doomed evolutionary niche to be relevant. They are fighting so hard because they have little time left.
Given the closeness of recent elections, I'm surprised at this point of view. A small, vocal minority can easily tip the balance of an election. Personally, I used to consider myself a Republican. Now I vote for whichever candidate is more synced with my position on "Internet/digital freedom" issues.
So I would take the position almost diametrically opposite of the poster above -- the power of a determined and focused minority has never been greater. Call those representatives and definitely go to the polls. You have tremendous unrecognized power. The only way you're sure to lose is if you decide it's hopeless before you've even tried.
Copyright is a /privilege/ granted by society in exchange for value, and we as a society have a right to change the deal. And we are. If your position is that I and everyone else must simply honor this same deal forever into the future or it's theft, then we disagree. If you say the law is an absolute, I wonder if you'd say the same thing if the government abrogated all fair use and extended copyright terms to 10,000 years? Is there any point where you say the laws are unfair and therefore, in your mind and action at least, invalid?
Many times an illegal practice is morally necessary, or at least not immoral. Freeing of slaves in the old South was quite illegal but perhaps morally mandated. Running whiskey during the Prohibition was illegal, but I do not feel it was immoral in itself. In a similar vein, I believe our present copyright laws are unfair and inappropriate. They're not on the same level of evil as slavery, but they could be an enormous burden if they continue the way they have been, with the eroding and eventual elimination of fair use and enforced DRM. This trend was well-developed long before Napster was famous. Napster was a reaction to that unfairness, not the cause of it.
Everyone has to decide for themselves what they think is right. I believe it is right to protest the unfair balance of copyright by trading files online, but I also believe it is right to be fairminded toward those who offer a compromise, such as EMI may be doing. You may call it theft; I say it is more akin to the quote from the Declaration of Independence -- "That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it." Disagree if you will. I have chosen to do what I can to alter our current system, and I am satisfied in my own mind with the moral balance I have struck.
If the reality turns out to be as good as the appearance, I definitely plan to reward EMI in two ways:
1. Buy all their music in my collection that is not as yet paid for, and
2. Stop sharing it -- since there is now a cost-effective and convenient way for anyone to get it for themselves.
This is contingent on the following:
1. No DRM in the files, ideally OGG or MP3 files.
2. High-quality recordings (i.e. 128-bit is quite marginal, I'm hoping for 256-bit or at least an option to choose bitrate).
3. Reasonable cost. $5 per song is too much, $1 per song would be awesome.
I don't want to get into the whole you're-a-pirate-no-I'm-not argument, but I do believe there's a balance between producers of content and consumers, and this balance is created not so much by the free market as by a matter of conscious choice in society. It is not theft for the people -- you and I -- to decide we no longer wish to offer the same terms to copyright holders that we once did. It made sense at one time, but as the average individual increasingly gains the ability to copy data, the cost to us as a society in giving absolute protection to copyright holders increases dramatically. This is true not only in enforcement issues, but in the simple ability of millions of people to enjoy from and build on copyrighted works.
This doesn't mean we don't pay the piper anymore, but it does mean the balance has forever changed. Pretending the old rules still make sense just doesn't fly anymore. EMI seems to be making the first concrete move toward acknowledging that reality, and if the details work out, I say kudos to them, and I'll be their best customer.
There are several good reasons for a sophisticated filesharer to buy the original CD. They are:
(1) You encoded your music at 160 Kbps to save on disk space. Now you have lots of disk space and want to encode at 256 Kbps. Finding all your favorite songs at 256 Kbps on Kazaa might be a challenge, not to mention slow.
(2) You just discovered that Fraunhoffer/Thompson has changed their licensing policy and you're pissed. You want to switch to Ogg. Hope you have the original CD, because converting an MP3 to Ogg directly will result in a crappy product. You're way better off re-ripping to Ogg from the original.
(3) I know the whole Slashdot crowd backs up all files on a daily basis. But for those who don't, if your hard disk dies you're in serious trouble. You'll definitely want the original disk as a backup (although I recommend burning your entire library to DVD-R as well, every six months or so).
(4) You just switched your computer and discovered that all those WMA files you created won't play on your new computer because of Microsoft copy-protection. Well, the first thing to learn from this is to never use copy-protection-encumbered formats. The next thing to learn is never throw away your CDs!
Of course, these reasons have to be weighed against the cost of buying the original CD and how much you like the music. I.e., a 128 Kbps MP3 might be plenty for you for recording X, while recording Y demands 256 or better. Again, you might be strongly motivated to move to Ogg -- but not so much so that you'll pay thousands of dollars for original CDs that you only moderately want.
And, this whole logic flips over for copy-protected CDs! Such disks are barely worth the plastic it took to make them. They lack all the usual MP3 benefits and they are essentially useless for backup purposes.
But aside from that, there are still excellent reasons to own the original. If all CDs cost $5, I'd probably own the original CD for everything in my collection.
...because 60 is evenly divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 10. So dividing the day into 60 hours, each of which contains 60 minutes, and each minute of which contains 60 seconds, would probably be more convenient.
For many if not most applications, a cleartext key on the hard disk is not necessary (although a cleartext key in RAM for at least some period of time is probably unavoidable). If you have a situation where you need to decrypt a credit card when a user buys something, or you need to run a billing cycle periodically, you can do this: Generate a user key randomly; this is used to encrypt the password. This information in turn is encrypted by each system user that needs to access the data. Only the encrypted user key is stored on disk, one encrypted copy for each user who might need to access it. When the user wanted to make a purchase, they'd type in their password, which would be used to decrypt the user key, which in turn would decrypt the credit card number. If a customer service person or billing clerk needed access to the credit card number, they would enter their own password which would decrypt the user key. If you need the machine to decrypt the password without any human intervention, that's a tougher nut to crack. My guess is that there's no way to do it without having a cleartext key on the machine, or accessible by the machine.
Working for someone else is basically a slave mentality. The whole Dilbert cartoon is founded on this, and it wouldn't be funny if it weren't largely true. Employment offers only the illusion of security -- not actual security, just the illusion. In order to get that illusion, you are treated like chattel, squeezed into cubeland, placed under the supervision of total idiots, given tasks that make no sense and that you don't want to do, expected to kiss ass, handed long lists of ridiculous rules...every kind of demeaning and petty indignity you can think of. Probably every poster on this thread has experienced this. Ask yourself if employment has ever really been a wonderful experience for you in all ways. Did you learn and grow as much as you wanted to? Did you feel in control of what you were doing? Were you doing work you loved? Were you appreciated and respected? Was your boss someone who inspired you, someone you respected and liked? Did management have a powerful vision, which they were executing expertly? Did the company go out of its way in deed, not just word, to show employees they were loved? And of course, did you come out of the experience with financial independence? Hardly anybody can say yes to all these things. Even the best of companies only get half of the above as clear yesses. There is something fundamentally wrong with employment as we know it, and this is evidenced by the bad employment experiences we've all had. Yet we continue to try to fix this thing that is always falling apart. I say it's time to dump the whole miserable mess. Feeling dependent financially on anyone -- any person or any company -- is a slave mentality, and it leads /inevitably/ to being treated poorly and taken advantage of.
You are in business for yourself, whether you are technically working for someone else or not. You want vision? Don't ask someone else for this. Resenting and trying to change your employer is a waste of time. Create your own vision, make something that improves the world and sell it. Bottom line: break out of prison before it kills your spirit. Do whatever it takes to live the way you want to live. Don't accept that this pathetic state we call employment is necessary.