Or maybe it's that when you amortize the cost of a video game compared to most other forms of popular entertainment, video games work out incredibly cheaply per unit time of entertainment and so the total spend of a typical gamer per year is actually very low. Furthermore, perhaps you, or if not you then others it this thread, are basing your idea of getting "ripped off" by comparing the free market costs of goods (which is essentially what we have here, despite nonsense or hyperbolic claims of 'addiction') against the "piracy costs" as some of you have conditioned yourself that the cost of digital entertainment "should" be near zero.
I don't play many games. I'm a WW2 enthusiast and there haven't been many shooters lately. But in general for about the price of a decent restaurant meal I could get a WW2 shooter that would keep me occupied for 40+ hours (of my life that I can never get back, but that's a different story). I have no problem with this and I further have no problem in technological means to prevent against re-license - or have you all been asleep to what this has done to prices in the ios app market and also in places like steam?
the idea that youtube somehow benefits big rightsholders is comical. this is why viacom, etc have a multi-billion dollar lawsuit against google/youtube, and rightly so.
Is this going to be more muddling of a complex issue where people contend that swartz was "stealing what the taxpayers had already paid for" because some percentage of the research of JSTOR was funded with grants? are we really going to let people in this thread make that extreme oversimplification of the issue yet again here?
For all the talk of copyright on slashdot and elsewhere on the web, I continue to be shocked and underwhelmed by the basic ignorance people have about it.
I'm confused. Let's say we ban, say, kiddy porn. Does the fact that kiddy porn can be made at home instead of commercially make a kiddy porn ban less correct or viable?
If you disagree with the banning of certain magazines - fine. But the fact that you might be able to print them at home has no theoretical bearing on the issue.
The term clip is commonly used to describe a firearm magazine, especially in newspapers, movies, and on television. Because of this usage, the Merriam-Webster dictionary now defines a clip as "a device to hold cartridges for charging the magazines of some rifles; also:a magazine from which ammunition is fed into the chamber of a firearm".
Language changes. Get over it. Moreover, even while you are technically correct, this distinction has no substantive impact on the underlying discussion.
Also: your definition of clip is wrong. Both stripper and en block clips can hold more than two rounds, and the weapon involved need not be belt fed.
Every year, an average of 9,200 Americans are murdered by handguns, according to Department of Justice statistics. This does not include suicides or the tens of thousands of robberies, rapes and assaults committed with handguns. This level of violence must be stopped.
I do not believe in taking away the right of the citizen for sporting, for hunting and so forth, or for home defense. But I do believe that an AK-47, a machine gun, is not a sporting weapon or needed for defense of a home.
This is a matter of vital importance to the public safety... While we recognize that assault-weapon legislation will not stop all assault-weapon crime, statistics prove that we can dry up the supply of these guns, making them less accessible to criminals.
I think maybe there could be some restrictions that there had to be a certain amount of training taken.
With the right to bear arms comes a great responsibility to use caution and common sense on handgun purchases.
Here's a better one: why don't we focus on the underlying issues rather than basically meaningless terminology that everybody involved understands what is meant anyway.
The idea that europe has "stronger consumer protection laws" is utterly false in practice.
While yes, in europe you have some statutary differences compared to the USA - for example, a categorical right to return items purchase by post, what you do NOT have in europe, in general, is the ability to sue companies directly and/or seek punitive damages except in extremely extraordinary cases that require a myriad of hoops to be jumped through. rather, the mechanisms to go after misbehaving companies relies on public ombudspersons and "trading standards agencies" and the like who tend to go after systemic issues with an eye towards compromise, not correction and who are themselves more often than not very sympathetic to the industries they oversee and their rights to a 'fair profit.' as a result, consumer protection in practice is MUCH weaker in europe than it is in the USA simply because in the USA you can sue.
I could give you hundreds of stories to illustrate this claim. let's pick a few.
medical malpractice is a huge one. i have a friend who went in for laser hair removal on her legs at an expensive private clinic in harley street, london. due to incompetence, they mis-set the temperature of the laser which gave my friend burns/welts which lasted for over 4 years. in the USA, this would be an open and shut case with a several hundred thousands dollar judgement for the plaintiff's pain and suffering and as a punative lesson to the for profit clinic to put in safeguards to ensure that this doesnt happen again. in the UK? as my friend is not employed as a model and she could still work, lawyers advised her that her claim might be worth GBP 1000 if that.. hardly worth the effort. there was no good or likely outcome to obtain a punative result against the clinic (even if the punative amount paid went to charity). in short, the company can keep doing what it's doing.
multiply this accross virtually every industry imaginable. most of europe's product safety standards are simply copied from the US, where they arise due to the US lawsuit culture. of course we all hate there being too many lawyers, but one of the positives of it is that it does lead to safer products (though occasionally over-safe).
Another example: ryanair routinely engages in egregious behavior that would be sued out of existence in the USA. for example, they engaged in wholesale fraud and deceptive business practices to avoid playing volcano-related claims. who went after them? nobody. because a lack of ability to do a class action against them due to the highly consumer unfriendly culture in europe.
hoenstly, i know you're trying to reason from first principles and your sterotype of europe as "over-regulated" or wahtever, but in terms of consumer protection, you're completely and totally wrong.
US GOVERNMENT: “Megaupload’s allegations are baseless, as even a cursory review of Megaupload’s pleading and the search warrant materials at issue disproves the allegation that the government misled the court as part of a conspiracy to entrap Megaupload,” the government wrote, adding: “Yet Megaupload does not cite a single communication between the government and Megaupload or a single instruction from any member of the government to Megaupload; there are none.”
MEGAUPLOAD RESPONSE: “The law requires the ISP in this context engage in evidence preservation, and avoid obstruction of justice by maintaining the status quo until advised otherwise by the government conducting the investigation,” Rothken wrote. “If the government didn’t like the status quo of preservation they could have written Megaupload a followup letter but they didn’t.”
To call this "entrapment" is comical. Megaupload's claim is based on "because you didn't tell us otherwise." Megaupload's claim of "entrapment" will not stand up in court, though this won't stop the myth of 'entrapment' of getting traction among many here who see only what they want to see.
"If that's the case, and the DOJ asked Megaupload to break the law by continuing to share copyrighted materials after a DMCA notice was given, then Megaupload should have demanded the DOJ put their request in writing, and if the DOJ refused, they should have complied with the law and stopped sharing the files. If the DOJ put their request in writing, then Megaupload would be protected now."
I'm confused, is that supposed to be a joke? WHat morons marked you as "insightful?" Or is it "insightful" because some years ago the US president lied about a personal affair and therefore everything the US government does is duplicitous?
This is slashdot. Let's discuss like adults and let's not mark "insightful" this sort of wink-wink conspiratorial context-less innuendo.
"Any company that is not obligated to act for it's customers will eventually be obliged to close it's doors."
bollocks.
this is one of these false truisms like "everybody gets what's coming in the end." it's wishful thinking at its finest--just ask the victims of jimmy saville. it's also incredibly generic, as "act for its customers" can be interpreted in dozens of weasely ways. does ryanair, the most profitable airline in the world, "act for its customers?"
the reality is that the ONLY way that companies make a profit is by exploiting what is known as "market power." the more market power you have,the higher your profits, and the more you are explicitly NOT being as "nice" to customers as you could be.
"1. MIT's investigation is not about just and unjust actions - it is more about the fact that they did not actively stop the justice department from going after Schwartz. JSTOR aggressively responded to the prosecutorial threat and declined to pursue charges, whereas MIT did not. If MIT too had strongly declined, then, the prosecutor would have very little grounds to prosecute Aaron."
I'm sorry,but that's nonsense and there's a very good reason that it's nonsense. We don't allow victims to decide whether or not to prosecute for good reason: it allows perpetrators to buy off or intimidate victims. Case in point: roman polanski raped a young girl. The girl refuses to press charges because she wants to get on with her life and because polanski paid her off. if the prosecution declined to press charges because of the now grown woman's stated desires, this would in effect be sanctioning child prostitution.
this applies equally to all crimes, including copyright crime, as the general feeling is that copyright is a "good" with externalities beyond the ability of two parties to contract, just like child rape.
MIT is not responsible. The Police are not responsible. It's not "copyright law" that should be changed because somebody committed suicide. The MPIAA/RIAA/JSTOR are not responsible.
the young man who chose to engage in illegal activity that he knew clearly constituted criminal copyright infringement, whatever his philosophical rationalizations, and then his inability to come to terms with the likely consequences, are the reason. Even if you believe that he's the 21th century equivalent of Ghandi (which he most certainly was not, but still, if), the whole point of being Ghandi is accepting the consequences of breaking what you feel to be an unjust law. Otherwise, there are plenty of LEGAL ways to press home your case.
As such, the blow hards who claim that "they will revenge [sic]" him have no legitimate target for their utterly misplaced angst.
The "duty of care" argument is nonsense EVEN IF HE WERE A STUDENT - WHICH HE WAS NOT. MIT does not have a duty of care to ensure that students who engage in criminal activities be able to cope with the pressures of being called out on the carpet for them.
The irony is that most of you here would agree that the US is overlawyered as it is. Hell, a huge percentage of slashdot bandwidth is spent complaining about what you perceive to be over-reaches of the legal machinery in the USA And yet, here many of you are, proposing outrageous theories of vicarious responsibility (which would necessarily imply financial accountability) because you happen to personally have sympathy for Mr. Schwatz.
what about HAVING TO PUT A BATTERY CONTAINING ICE CUBE IN YOUR DRINK, genius? It's not hard to imagine a crap, highly generic algorithm that would be effectively useless *even if you knew the alcohol concentration*, but you still have to *PUT A BATTERY CONTAINING ICE CUBE INTO EACH GLASS YOU DRINK.*
I'm sorry, but the basic idea is fatally flawed. I know, it's easy to criticize, but this one, as I said, is "ig-Nobel" quality flawed.
"Ice Cubes that connect to your smartphone." This is not the brave new future that I want.
Honestly, this should be an early contender for the 2013 ig-Nobels (though I'm guessing / hoping this is just an overhyped undergraduate project). What's particularly bad is that the basic idea is flawed - it uses readings from accelerometers as a proxy for how many sips are being taken per unit time and then this as a proxy for rate and appropriateness of alcohol consumption. While I fully will admit that there is certainly a market for some device, perhaps built into a glass, that would allow a commercial bartender somehow detect whether a patron has had too many (though even that would have lots of legal and practical vulnerabilities), this isn't it and isn't even close.
Still, kudos for the inventor for trying compared to playing xbox or going out and having a social life or something.
content owners can and should decide in which formats they decide to license their content. if mpaa decided to not allow for simultaneous mp3 downloads for cd purchases then but do want to do so now based on their perception of changing social dynamics and technological trends, more power to them. they should be under no obligation to license things in formats they dont want to just because it's possible or because some of you have a perception of what constitutes "fair" profit.
the consumer is under no compunction to purchase their entertainment products. the internet allows for any competing startup or self-publisher to do as he will. market forces really do affect the mpaa/riaa no matter how much too many people here try to insist that such companies are under some obligation to personally provide their over-entitled middle class selves with cheaper and/or more entertainment choices simply because technology makes it possible.
For what, AC? For what, exactly, should "the prosecutors... be fired, disbarred, and then thrown in jail?" Please lay out a compelling case based on something other than your circumstantial reasoning, ad-hominem attacks, and naked assertion?
Also: as meaningless as petitions are, they'd be slightly less meaningless if you at least courageously offered those an ability to sign a petition in the opposite direction too. In fact, this should be a moral requirement for all those who ever make a petition.
the only difference will be that because google is a company that slashdotters like (google) as opposed to one they don't (ms), they will argue against the EU in this case. not because of principle, mind you.
Slashdot Mirror
Or maybe it's that when you amortize the cost of a video game compared to most other forms of popular entertainment, video games work out incredibly cheaply per unit time of entertainment and so the total spend of a typical gamer per year is actually very low. Furthermore, perhaps you, or if not you then others it this thread, are basing your idea of getting "ripped off" by comparing the free market costs of goods (which is essentially what we have here, despite nonsense or hyperbolic claims of 'addiction') against the "piracy costs" as some of you have conditioned yourself that the cost of digital entertainment "should" be near zero.
I don't play many games. I'm a WW2 enthusiast and there haven't been many shooters lately. But in general for about the price of a decent restaurant meal I could get a WW2 shooter that would keep me occupied for 40+ hours (of my life that I can never get back, but that's a different story). I have no problem with this and I further have no problem in technological means to prevent against re-license - or have you all been asleep to what this has done to prices in the ios app market and also in places like steam?
"There's no [copyright] protection for a cover?"
bollocks.
citation needed or apologize.
Joe Average gets smacked down? Is this a joke?
Do a youtube search for "Full Movie"
the idea that youtube somehow benefits big rightsholders is comical. this is why viacom, etc have a multi-billion dollar lawsuit against google/youtube, and rightly so.
Will you be willing to retract your words and make a public apology if/when he wins a substantial settlement?
what is the maximum number of possible states for the price of a shave and a haircut?
Is this going to be more muddling of a complex issue where people contend that swartz was "stealing what the taxpayers had already paid for" because some percentage of the research of JSTOR was funded with grants? are we really going to let people in this thread make that extreme oversimplification of the issue yet again here?
why was my rational post which described the troubling effects of such protectionism on foreign direct investment deleted from slashdot?
No, they wouldn't.
For all the talk of copyright on slashdot and elsewhere on the web, I continue to be shocked and underwhelmed by the basic ignorance people have about it.
Hey, intelligent comments have no place on slashdot!
I'm confused. Let's say we ban, say, kiddy porn. Does the fact that kiddy porn can be made at home instead of commercially make a kiddy porn ban less correct or viable?
If you disagree with the banning of certain magazines - fine. But the fact that you might be able to print them at home has no theoretical bearing on the issue.
The term clip is commonly used to describe a firearm magazine, especially in newspapers, movies, and on television. Because of this usage, the Merriam-Webster dictionary now defines a clip as "a device to hold cartridges for charging the magazines of some rifles; also :a magazine from which ammunition is fed into the chamber of a firearm".
Language changes. Get over it. Moreover, even while you are technically correct, this distinction has no substantive impact on the underlying discussion.
Also: your definition of clip is wrong. Both stripper and en block clips can hold more than two rounds, and the weapon involved need not be belt fed.
Here are my views on gun control:
Every year, an average of 9,200 Americans are murdered by handguns, according to Department of Justice statistics. This does not include suicides or the tens of thousands of robberies, rapes and assaults committed with handguns. This level of violence must be stopped.
I do not believe in taking away the right of the citizen for sporting, for hunting and so forth, or for home defense. But I do believe that an AK-47, a machine gun, is not a sporting weapon or needed for defense of a home.
This is a matter of vital importance to the public safety ... While we recognize that assault-weapon legislation will not stop all assault-weapon crime, statistics prove that we can dry up the supply of these guns, making them less accessible to criminals.
I think maybe there could be some restrictions that there had to be a certain amount of training taken.
With the right to bear arms comes a great responsibility to use caution and common sense on handgun purchases.
- Ronald Wilson Reagan
Here's a better one: why don't we focus on the underlying issues rather than basically meaningless terminology that everybody involved understands what is meant anyway.
I'm sorry, but that's completely clueless.
The idea that europe has "stronger consumer protection laws" is utterly false in practice.
While yes, in europe you have some statutary differences compared to the USA - for example, a categorical right to return items purchase by post, what you do NOT have in europe, in general, is the ability to sue companies directly and/or seek punitive damages except in extremely extraordinary cases that require a myriad of hoops to be jumped through. rather, the mechanisms to go after misbehaving companies relies on public ombudspersons and "trading standards agencies" and the like who tend to go after systemic issues with an eye towards compromise, not correction and who are themselves more often than not very sympathetic to the industries they oversee and their rights to a 'fair profit.' as a result, consumer protection in practice is MUCH weaker in europe than it is in the USA simply because in the USA you can sue.
I could give you hundreds of stories to illustrate this claim. let's pick a few.
medical malpractice is a huge one. i have a friend who went in for laser hair removal on her legs at an expensive private clinic in harley street, london. due to incompetence, they mis-set the temperature of the laser which gave my friend burns/welts which lasted for over 4 years. in the USA, this would be an open and shut case with a several hundred thousands dollar judgement for the plaintiff's pain and suffering and as a punative lesson to the for profit clinic to put in safeguards to ensure that this doesnt happen again. in the UK? as my friend is not employed as a model and she could still work, lawyers advised her that her claim might be worth GBP 1000 if that.. hardly worth the effort. there was no good or likely outcome to obtain a punative result against the clinic (even if the punative amount paid went to charity). in short, the company can keep doing what it's doing.
multiply this accross virtually every industry imaginable. most of europe's product safety standards are simply copied from the US, where they arise due to the US lawsuit culture. of course we all hate there being too many lawyers, but one of the positives of it is that it does lead to safer products (though occasionally over-safe).
Another example: ryanair routinely engages in egregious behavior that would be sued out of existence in the USA. for example, they engaged in wholesale fraud and deceptive business practices to avoid playing volcano-related claims. who went after them? nobody. because a lack of ability to do a class action against them due to the highly consumer unfriendly culture in europe.
hoenstly, i know you're trying to reason from first principles and your sterotype of europe as "over-regulated" or wahtever, but in terms of consumer protection, you're completely and totally wrong.
US GOVERNMENT: “Megaupload’s allegations are baseless, as even a cursory review of Megaupload’s pleading and the search warrant materials at issue disproves the allegation that the government misled the court as part of a conspiracy to entrap Megaupload,” the government wrote, adding: “Yet Megaupload does not cite a single communication between the government and Megaupload or a single instruction from any member of the government to Megaupload; there are none.”
MEGAUPLOAD RESPONSE: “The law requires the ISP in this context engage in evidence preservation, and avoid obstruction of justice by maintaining the status quo until advised otherwise by the government conducting the investigation,” Rothken wrote. “If the government didn’t like the status quo of preservation they could have written Megaupload a followup letter but they didn’t.”
To call this "entrapment" is comical. Megaupload's claim is based on "because you didn't tell us otherwise." Megaupload's claim of "entrapment" will not stand up in court, though this won't stop the myth of 'entrapment' of getting traction among many here who see only what they want to see.
"If that's the case, and the DOJ asked Megaupload to break the law by continuing to share copyrighted materials after a DMCA notice was given, then Megaupload should have demanded the DOJ put their request in writing, and if the DOJ refused, they should have complied with the law and stopped sharing the files. If the DOJ put their request in writing, then Megaupload would be protected now."
Internet "lawyers". Gotta love em.
I'm confused, is that supposed to be a joke? WHat morons marked you as "insightful?" Or is it "insightful" because some years ago the US president lied about a personal affair and therefore everything the US government does is duplicitous?
This is slashdot. Let's discuss like adults and let's not mark "insightful" this sort of wink-wink conspiratorial context-less innuendo.
"Any company that is not obligated to act for it's customers will eventually be obliged to close it's doors."
bollocks.
this is one of these false truisms like "everybody gets what's coming in the end." it's wishful thinking at its finest--just ask the victims of jimmy saville. it's also incredibly generic, as "act for its customers" can be interpreted in dozens of weasely ways. does ryanair, the most profitable airline in the world, "act for its customers?"
the reality is that the ONLY way that companies make a profit is by exploiting what is known as "market power." the more market power you have,the higher your profits, and the more you are explicitly NOT being as "nice" to customers as you could be.
"1. MIT's investigation is not about just and unjust actions - it is more about the fact that they did not actively stop the justice department from going after Schwartz. JSTOR aggressively responded to the prosecutorial threat and declined to pursue charges, whereas MIT did not. If MIT too had strongly declined, then, the prosecutor would have very little grounds to prosecute Aaron."
I'm sorry,but that's nonsense and there's a very good reason that it's nonsense. We don't allow victims to decide whether or not to prosecute for good reason: it allows perpetrators to buy off or intimidate victims. Case in point: roman polanski raped a young girl. The girl refuses to press charges because she wants to get on with her life and because polanski paid her off. if the prosecution declined to press charges because of the now grown woman's stated desires, this would in effect be sanctioning child prostitution.
this applies equally to all crimes, including copyright crime, as the general feeling is that copyright is a "good" with externalities beyond the ability of two parties to contract, just like child rape.
MIT is not responsible.
The Police are not responsible.
It's not "copyright law" that should be changed because somebody committed suicide.
The MPIAA/RIAA/JSTOR are not responsible.
the young man who chose to engage in illegal activity that he knew clearly constituted criminal copyright infringement, whatever his philosophical rationalizations, and then his inability to come to terms with the likely consequences, are the reason. Even if you believe that he's the 21th century equivalent of Ghandi (which he most certainly was not, but still, if), the whole point of being Ghandi is accepting the consequences of breaking what you feel to be an unjust law. Otherwise, there are plenty of LEGAL ways to press home your case.
As such, the blow hards who claim that "they will revenge [sic]" him have no legitimate target for their utterly misplaced angst.
The "duty of care" argument is nonsense EVEN IF HE WERE A STUDENT - WHICH HE WAS NOT. MIT does not have a duty of care to ensure that students who engage in criminal activities be able to cope with the pressures of being called out on the carpet for them.
The irony is that most of you here would agree that the US is overlawyered as it is. Hell, a huge percentage of slashdot bandwidth is spent complaining about what you perceive to be over-reaches of the legal machinery in the USA And yet, here many of you are, proposing outrageous theories of vicarious responsibility (which would necessarily imply financial accountability) because you happen to personally have sympathy for Mr. Schwatz.
what about HAVING TO PUT A BATTERY CONTAINING ICE CUBE IN YOUR DRINK, genius? It's not hard to imagine a crap, highly generic algorithm that would be effectively useless *even if you knew the alcohol concentration*, but you still have to *PUT A BATTERY CONTAINING ICE CUBE INTO EACH GLASS YOU DRINK.*
I'm sorry, but the basic idea is fatally flawed. I know, it's easy to criticize, but this one, as I said, is "ig-Nobel" quality flawed.
and no marketability.
"Ice Cubes that connect to your smartphone." This is not the brave new future that I want.
Honestly, this should be an early contender for the 2013 ig-Nobels (though I'm guessing / hoping this is just an overhyped undergraduate project). What's particularly bad is that the basic idea is flawed - it uses readings from accelerometers as a proxy for how many sips are being taken per unit time and then this as a proxy for rate and appropriateness of alcohol consumption. While I fully will admit that there is certainly a market for some device, perhaps built into a glass, that would allow a commercial bartender somehow detect whether a patron has had too many (though even that would have lots of legal and practical vulnerabilities), this isn't it and isn't even close.
Still, kudos for the inventor for trying compared to playing xbox or going out and having a social life or something.
content owners can and should decide in which formats they decide to license their content. if mpaa decided to not allow for simultaneous mp3 downloads for cd purchases then but do want to do so now based on their perception of changing social dynamics and technological trends, more power to them. they should be under no obligation to license things in formats they dont want to just because it's possible or because some of you have a perception of what constitutes "fair" profit.
the consumer is under no compunction to purchase their entertainment products. the internet allows for any competing startup or self-publisher to do as he will. market forces really do affect the mpaa/riaa no matter how much too many people here try to insist that such companies are under some obligation to personally provide their over-entitled middle class selves with cheaper and/or more entertainment choices simply because technology makes it possible.
For what, AC? For what, exactly, should "the prosecutors ... be fired, disbarred, and then thrown in jail?" Please lay out a compelling case based on something other than your circumstantial reasoning, ad-hominem attacks, and naked assertion?
Also: as meaningless as petitions are, they'd be slightly less meaningless if you at least courageously offered those an ability to sign a petition in the opposite direction too. In fact, this should be a moral requirement for all those who ever make a petition.
the only difference will be that because google is a company that slashdotters like (google) as opposed to one they don't (ms), they will argue against the EU in this case. not because of principle, mind you.