I'd agree with you, except I think you're
confusing the organisation IANA with the disclaimer
IANAL. I never misread IANA, but it took a
while for me to grok just what IANAL actually
meant, and until then, "I am not anal" was the
best answer I could come up with too:-/
Hold it! This isn't all that funny. Yours was, tho.
Never mind.
Doh, I forgot to mention the fact that GNUnet's also
searchable (automatically, and from the outset, I mean).
I'd been told something about Freenet recently getting
some sort of search mechanisms added on top (I
don't remember the details, but it sounds as though
at least part of that is manually maintained index
pages), but it's sounding now like some users here
aren't finding them good enough. OTOH, I myself
can't comment on any search facilities Freenet
may now have, as last time I tried it I only
found 1 or 2 index pages of mostly unreachable stuff.
I also don't know if the Freenet project still
makes use of those out-of-band (ie, on the real www)
"key index" sites, where members of the public
submit keys to Freenet content, but many of them
appear to have thought they were giving keywords
to a search engine, and many of the other keys
were in an older, apparently incompatible key
format. Needless to say, I found very few items
in those key indices that actually returned any
content before I gave up on the thing.
Either way, reliance on such a mechanism to
make content ultimately accessible would
sound like a pretty big weakness in a system
that means to supply anonimity and uncensorability.
I tried to install freenet, but it
was written in Java, and hence was total crap and
wouldn't even run.
If you don't like Java (I don't either, although I did manage to get Freenet to just about work a few
months back), be aware that GNUnet is a similar sort of thing, but
written in C. But unless you're using *nix, you'll have
to wait a while before it works for you. Also, it's
under heavy development, and you'll prolly need
to upgrade at certain releases.
It has a few advantages, like far better usage of
(and anonymity for) dial-up users, plus greater
protection against DOS type attacks. It also has
some disadvantages against Freenet, but AFAICT,
none that won't be addressed in future versions.
Though I don't agree with the gun lobby (not that
they affect my life, I live in England) and don't
have much sympathy for their "If guns are outlawed,
only outlaws will have guns" argument, it can be
quite effectively IMHO refitted to this situation:
If copying "intellectual property" is outlawed, only
outlaws will copy intellectual property.
For that matter, it can be extended to "If anything
capable of allowing one to copy intellectual property
is outlawed, only outlaws will own things allowing them
to copy intellectual property".
Put another way, the
DMCA makes any copyright infringement that bit
more likely to be carried out by criminal gangs as
they are significantly more likely to have the
means. Individuals copying things are far less likely
to do so for profit. If you want to get a cheap copy
of FOO, why pay anything at all to some shady
character in the street when you can just get
the thing for FREE from a file-sharing network?
Believe it or not, I do occasionally buy CDs, etc
(not recently because I'm broke), as if I like
something, I feel obligated to reward the creator
of that something. So the mere possibility of
getting things for free doesn't mean that nobody
will pay money to get them legitimately. But
they can significantly reduce the number of
people who will pay for illegal copies of things.
Hehe, I was going to say that too, except it occurred
to me that perhaps he really did mean "explode"
(in the exothermic reaction sense) and not just "burst".
How would that happen? Haven't
a clue, but you never know.
With this patch if a lot of processes
are waiting for a different process then that process
should get CPU time without waiting as long. On
the other hand, if the process ends up taking a long
time, it gets put into batch mode.
Though I read the whole article, it was pretty huge
and so I may have misread some bit- but AFAICT, no,
the point was that the old behaviour was that if
the X server got overloaded, it could easily end up
taking too long and getting rescheduled as a
batch-mode task, which was the thing that could
cause the huge freezes when there's a heavy load
from compilation, etc!
So unless I'm wrong
(I'm sure I'm not), this patch actually stops
the X-server (amongst other things) from getting
turned into a batch mode task, because as you
stated, it can tell that other interactive processes
depend on it (or it could have been that it is
interactive from having other processes depend
on it).
Either way, the patch sounds like a pretty
exciting step forward to me. But does anybody
know if it also stops X from getting similarily
choppy when, eg, CRON starts heavy IO-bound
tasks (like filesystem searches to update the
man-page indices)? My system becomes utterly
unusable when that happens, and it takes a fair
few minutes.
I worry that maybe sometimes, those who set out
to
do things that seem like a really stupid idea to
everybody else, know something that no-one else does.
How can they sue anyone if
they willingly throw thier[sic] code into public
domain?
Why would a company break the GPL just to put
something into the public domain, even if
they were able to? What would that
get them?
...Or are you meaning both "they"s in your
comment are the authors of GPL software? Get
a clue, GPL software is licensed, copyrighted
software. The public domain specifically refers
to stuff that is unrestricted by copyrights and
patents, it isn't just a synonym for "doesn't cost
anything", etc.
Besides, there was also another
moron who decided to sue McDonalds over falling
off the toilet!
I thought that case was an obese person who sued
because the seat actually broke under their weight.
Or was that a separate case? Perhaps I'm mixing
stuff up again.
Yes!! I can fit an 8cm CD in my pocket* without effort. I
can't do that with normal sized CDs unless I first find
a suitable pocket (like in my big coat), and then shove
for a while. Apart from the annoyance, that sort of thing
isn't good for my pockets!
As a pedestrian, the idea of carrying a CD in my
hand on the way to a mate's house is not one to
consider, and I don't want to carry a bag just for a
single CD. I want to put such things in my
pockets, and that is why I really like these
little devils. That and they're funky..
* - Practically any pocket. Shirt pocket, jacket
pocket, jeans pocket if they're in a jewel case..
As do I, but I think you'll find the capacities do vary, as
with normal size CDs.I have one set of 210MB disks,
like yours, and another set that are 180(ish)MBs.
I would take from that that 180MB is the standard.
It's not just you. Not that there's anything really
wrong with her, she just doesn't do that much for me.
Alyson Hannigan and Michelle Trachtenberg, OTOH...
Turing himself only ever called it
the 'Imitation Game'
I remember recently hearing on the radio, someone
saying that
when Turing first came out with the idea of the
Turing Test, he was in fact just mucking about, and
that all the fuss people have made about Turing Tests
was just a mass failure to recognise nerd humour.
I don't know whether he was right or not, but it did strike
me that that explanation made a hell of a lot of sense.
I can't agree with the author of the Salon article on
this stuff, I see the point that Minsky, etc, have about
the test being mostly a waste of time and the big
competition being a distraction.
Butl, what harm can the thing do? Well, from my
limited position as an AI/CS dropout, I do at least
know that any computer program that can be even
remotely as smart as a person is damned far in the
future, and having a system that can merely fake
humanness is IMO utterly worthless. So, we have
a competition that encourages people who could
be doing something else, to either go clutching at
straws hoping to find Brigadoon, or knowing what
is possible, just researching techniques to disguise
the thing's true nature and give the world a Pig in
a Poke.
Now, how is that useful to even
Loebner's misguided aims(more intelligent machines
will mean we can work less? Bullshit. The people
who own them will get wealthier, but they
don't have anything to do less of. Everyone
else will just be less likely to have any work at all)?
Maybe he actually just wants to build himself
a robotic sex-doll to replace those oft-mentioned
prostitutes, but wants it to be that little bit more
convincing as a human. (Now, I expect the next
mention of Turing Tests I hear on Slashdot to
describe the entrants going "Oh, ooh, oh yes", etc...)
Yes, they did have some ports of NT to the Alpha
architecture didn't they. Except I hear they dropped that
support after a while.
And perhaps most importantly, when have you ever seen or even heard of any actual user
software for Windows/Alpha?
Perhaps I just never looked in the right places (after
all, why should I, I don't use windows, and I don't have an Alpha.
Got a little Sparcstation, but that's nowt to be proud of...).
Just to be slightly offtopic, but BBC radio in
the UK has no commercials, it's payed for by the
TV license. But fair enough, they're still getting
payed, so I digress.
They use that money to buy Music
that you listin to.
Yes, they broadcast it. Enabling potentially
about as many people as you can cram into their
transmission range to listen to it. For free. Repeatedly.
Yes, they payed for that music (always? I don't
know, is it never the case that record companies
pay the stations to play some of the music they
want heard?), but generally, people who redistribute
copyrighted music on P2P networks have paid for
their CDs too. If they hadn't, they could in fact, be
prosecuted for plain old theft which has
been an actual criminal offence for rather a long
time, rather than copyright infringement which
has only even existed for around a century and
at least up until recently was a civil offence
(I presume the DMCA, etc changed its status tho).
And what about music shops, that have those
"listening posts" where you go and listen to
somebody's CD? I've never really felt inclined
to bother, but unless I'm mistaken you don't have
to pay them anything, or even ask, you just go and
listen. They do it because they hope it'll encourage
sales- but you could strictly just go in every so
often and listen to some CD without ever buying
it (until it vanishes).
The current situation is way
beyond people taping music off the radio because
distribution of such media never wide scale,
where as file sharing is.
You are suggesting that the majority of people
use P2P and filesharing networks, but only a
minority have a radio and a tape recorder? You
do realise that with taping stuff off the radio, you
don't need to have a few people redistributing
tapes to everybody, everybody can simply make
their own for the cost of the tape (plus electricity).
There, there is the potential for there to be NO
sales except for the tapes, whereas with the
filesharing networks, there is the assumption that
one person somewhere probably paid for a CD.
Unless, again, they actually stole it.
Or as a hybrid approach,
recorded it straight off the radio into their computer.
The fact is it is theft (thats
basically what Copyright infringement is).
No it is not. Copyright infringement is disregarding
the artificial restriction on copying things which
states deem to be only copyable by certain
other people (generally the authors of said
things, but more often some company that buys
that "right"). Theft is taking something from
someone without their consent.
If you have a pencil, and I take your pencil,
I will have your pencil and you will not. If you
have a note with some interesting thing written
on it, and I see that and write it also on some
scrap of paper that I have, I have not
taken something from you, you have
been deprived of NOTHING. You have
lost about as much as if having seen that
pencil, I got one that was like it.
Footnote: original poster's spelling,
grammar, punctuation
and capitalisation copied without permission
as Fair use, allowed by law.
You're arguing more semantics
than the issue itself here.
Because if you put someone on trial for murder
and then send them to the electric chair, it would
be considered, er, a bit unjust, if they turned out
to have just punched someone and not killed them at
all. Apart from whether I think that IP laws are
a good thing or not (I don't), there's the issue that
breach of copyright is not (or at least didn't used
to be) a criminal offence, which theft is.
Well if you don't like that, there's still
the question
I raised of what happens when I hum a tune that
someone else wrote without paying them royalties.
That could well be considered taking advantage
of that persons work for free (especially if I merely
heard the tune on the TV or radio). And once
I've heard a piece of music a certain number of
times, I end up hearing it in my head anyway.
Perhaps the RIAA should make a law that we
should not be allowed to listen to any music
without some means to ensure we can't remember
it afterwards - like some drug, or electric shocks
to the head, or a bullet.
Finally, I quite like Mozart. He never
received a penny from me, and no-one is
going to convince me that even 5% of the
"artists" that the record companies push at us are
remotely as talented as he was. OK, I
suppose this sounds like I'm whinging now.
I probably am. Meh. I do still buy some
CDs, for groups that I think are truly good,
but those are few and far between.
I don't feel like arguing this any further today,
I think I made my main points in the previous
post- If somebody finds over time that their line
of business is becoming less and less workable,
that's very sad for them, but doesn't mean it's OK
for them to stop the rest of the world from turning.
Many industries come practically to a halt,
even today, and many people have to find
themselves new jobs- yet people who go on
about how
fantastic capitalism and the free market are
feel that the IP industry should receive special
treatment. But I doubt I can convince you or them,
and I think we shall have to just agree to disagree.
There are other alternatives.
GNUnet
is just as secure and anonymous as Freenet (if not more so), and
started off from a somewhat different design that IMO
means they have a much better chance of becoming
truly worthwhile. Like for example, the capacity to
search for things is kind of fundamental in
GNUnet (whereas last time I tried Freenet, it
wasn't even possible). Also, GNUnet is able to
make good use of the hordes of dial-up users that
are only a burden to Freenet.
I say GNUnet has a great chance of becoming
truly worthwhile, but of course, it's already
quite usable on *nix systems (possibly
including OSX). Why not have a look (and if you
use Windows, watch out for when they'll have
a port for you). Remember to keep downloading
the new versions, as it is changing rapidly.
Maybe I'm wrong, but it sounds like you're
trying to show up people who use file-sharing
systems as making excuses for something that is
wrong.
Yet,
The artist has the original. How
is it stealing?
and
I was never going to buy it
anyway, so how's it stealing?
are quite relevant points. It is absolutely NOT
stealing.
If you have a car, and I take your car, you no
longer have that car. That is stealing. If I get myself
a car that is exactly like yours, I have not stolen
anything
(unless I stole it from someone else. But I haven't,
this is just an example, I don't even have a car).
I have never felt remotely inclined to buy anything
by, say, George Michael. But what if, for the
sake of argument, I was using a file-sharing
system, and chose to download something by
George Michael. Before I'd even heard of
any of the filesharing networks, I'd felt no inclination
to buy anything by George Michael. I've not heard
anything since I heard of filesharing networks,
that made me think "Hmm, I want a copy of that",
so what then? Simply not buying something is not
stealing. In fact, I could download something
by George Michael, and then, choose the next
day, to go down to the shops and buy it on CD.
It would be no less possible, than me opting
to not buy it in a world without p2p.
Of course, I've never actually downloaded music
by George Michael, what sort of person do
you think I am? This is just another hypothetical.
I often hum tunes that I hear, or try to play along
with them on my bass (yeah, yeah,
with varying success). But I don't pay to have the
priviledge of performing those copyrighted
works to myself, is that stealing?
Or how's this one: If I buy a solar panel (OK, I
mean a huge number of Photovoltaic cells) to
power my house, and get an electric car (that
possibly looks like yours, I don't know), I would
not need to buy petrol from the petrol companies
or electricity from the electricity companies. OK,
sure, I'm living with my parents right now, don't
nitpick. If I didn't have those photovoltaics
and the electric car, I (or my parents) would have
to buy petrol from the petrol companies and
electricity from the electricity companies. Or
we could alternatively not use a car, and live
in the dark. But would the use of that solar
panel and electric car be stealing?
People should not take the sort of crap that groups
such as the RIAA tries to clobber the world with.
I didn't elect them, I don't even live in America,
and yet these groups affect my life. What do I owe
them? "Waah waah, our business model might
not be worth the paper it's written on if people
keep doing this" Well tough shit to them- It's like
candle makers trying to ban light bulbs.
I found out recently there's a project called
SILC that is pretty
much an encrypted replacement for IRC, and is
apparently quite a bit better than the IRC based
alternatives.
you can't try outlawing ftp programs
and http browsers 'cause it is used to dl possibly
illegal content.
IIRC, there was some case taken against the PAN
Usenet newsreader (which is open source, BTW),
on pretty much that basis (it had support for binary
attachments, GOSH how dangerous and
subversive).
AFAICT, it must have been unsuccessful, as they
still seem to be around. Or maybe it hasn't
come to court yet???
Since Kazaa et al are
decentralized
I think you're wrong on that, isn't it multi-layered
with central organisations at the top? Meh, I
could be mixed up about that, I don't use it
meself. True P2P nets
like Gnutella, Freenet, and GNUnet are
decentralized, though, I do know that.
The issue arises, that if such groups manage to make
a few examples (eg, that IP organisation that sued
a bunch of file sharers in Denmark for something like
the equivalent of $150,000 EACH, which was
mentioned on/. about a month or 2 ago), that sort
of thing can probably scare a reasonable proportion
of the people on the networks- either into not sharing
anything themselves, or into stopping using the
networks completely.
Then, those organisations have even fewer targets to
pick from, so it becomes easier for them to decide
which users seem to be contributing most. So then
they can stamp on them. And not only do even
more people get scared off, but the
ratio of contributors to leechers drops badly (it often
tends to be that the minority contributes the majority)
so those trying to download find much less, and
many of the people left sharing stuff find they get
even more traffic, probably putting them off further.
As I keep saying, unless you use a file sharing
network that gives anonymity, this factor can
become an achilles heel. Try
GNUnet, if
you're using *nix (and follow it's progress if you're
using Windows, there'll be a version for you
eventually), it's not yet finished, but it already gives
you anonymous file sharing, and more is to come!
Hmm, I didn't see him make any mention of
the moral highground. I think he was simply making
the very fair and sensible point that it is better to
both deal with and help those groups that
do something for you without trying to kick you in
the balls at the same time. I
don't think that makes him particularly hypocritical.
Of course, it could be argued, that the way to
avoid the possibility of being sued for either (a)paying
money to an organisation that allows one to download
(or share) content that might be copyrighted, or
(b)sharing (or even trying to download) content that
various organisations might claim to be
copyrighted*, is to use a file sharing system that
not only doesn't require a central organisation (either
to pay money to or to get the service from), but also
makes it impossible for any sod to tell which user
is doing what. Like
GNUnet,
for example.
These points also really apply to
Freenet, but IMO, GNUnet is ultimately superior,
like for one thing, any user on dial-up or
with a not-very-permanent connection and IP
is basically a leech on Freenet, whereas GNUnet
allows practically anybody to both benefit and
contribute (not only in uploading files but also
improving effectiveness of the network).
GNUnet has other advantages too, but
is still in development- you can
use it already, but
not on Windows (*yet*), and AFAICT, the
protocols aren't set in stone yet so you have to
keep your GNUnet programs up-to-date to use
it. And if you don't find it good enough for you,
just keep coming back every few weeks, as work
continues (or you can even help out).
*-I say "claim to be copyrighted", as just
because Group X says Person Y is doing something,
and has a log somewhere, it doesn't really follow
that it is true- I could cheerfully tell the world that
Hilary Rosen goes through my dustbin, and
that I drew a picture of the alleged event. Wouldn't
be true, but it'd be my word against hers (OK,
that would be rather unlikely, and I'm in another
country. Blah blah). Further, just because
Person Y appears to be sharing a copy
of There's Something About Hilary Rosen,
it doesn't
follow that that file is what it claims to be. Why
wouldn't it be? Hell, I don't know. But it doesn't
have to be. If you've used Gnutella (you say you
still are. I for one stopped ages ago),
surely you'll have encountered this sort of thing
by now.
It wasn't really a nasty, kick-in-the-balls
kind of piss off,
it was more of a watch-it-what-your-saying-there
kind of piss off. If you see what I mean. Direct
offense was not meant so much as an expression
of annoyance, etc at your comments. Anyways...
Your points on the use of SMTP servers and return
addresses are no doubt good, unfortunately I always
got bogged down with all that From vs Return
to vs X-From vs whatever crap with the
reams of headers that seem to be in emails. And I
was under the impression that ISPs and email
services didn't like people using headers that
implied the email was from somewhere else-
but I suppose that's the From field instead.
Yes, in case you're wondering, I have
tried reading various documents on the
subject of email,
trying to track down such information and more,
but the search seemed fruitless. A lot of the info
seems to be masses of old and irrelevant stuff, you
know.
I often wonder where other geeks/nerds get
their information from. shrug
Because the potential harm done
by spammers outweighs your potential preference
of using an outgoing mail server other than the
one provided by your ISP.
Piss off! I don't know about the other guy, but I
choose to use a separate email service because over
the past few years, I (well, my family) have had to
change ISP several times for one reason or another-
ISPs closing down for instance.
I spotted this trend (us changing, I mean) over a
year ago and so twigged it was a good idea for me to
pay for an address that would stay constant even
if we had to change again. For instance I
might get broadband one day (I certainly intend to).
No, the answer you should have given, is
that many external email services (such as the
one I use), allow an alternative port to connect
through, such as 2525, for those users whose ISPs
do block the SMTP port (which is both a sane and
a reasonable thing to do, I agree). Those
companies that don't provide the alternative
are the people at fault.
FWIW, I pretty much agree with you on most
of the other things you said though. ISPs should be
considerate to people on other networks by
restricting the possibility for their users to wreak
havoc with their accounts. The exact nature of
those restrictions is another matter- blocking
everything non-standard is way out of line,
for example.
Slashdot Mirror
Hold it! This isn't all that funny. Yours was, tho. Never mind.
I'd been told something about Freenet recently getting some sort of search mechanisms added on top (I don't remember the details, but it sounds as though at least part of that is manually maintained index pages), but it's sounding now like some users here aren't finding them good enough. OTOH, I myself can't comment on any search facilities Freenet may now have, as last time I tried it I only found 1 or 2 index pages of mostly unreachable stuff.
I also don't know if the Freenet project still makes use of those out-of-band (ie, on the real www) "key index" sites, where members of the public submit keys to Freenet content, but many of them appear to have thought they were giving keywords to a search engine, and many of the other keys were in an older, apparently incompatible key format. Needless to say, I found very few items in those key indices that actually returned any content before I gave up on the thing. Either way, reliance on such a mechanism to make content ultimately accessible would sound like a pretty big weakness in a system that means to supply anonimity and uncensorability.
It has a few advantages, like far better usage of (and anonymity for) dial-up users, plus greater protection against DOS type attacks. It also has some disadvantages against Freenet, but AFAICT, none that won't be addressed in future versions.
Though I don't agree with the gun lobby (not that they affect my life, I live in England) and don't have much sympathy for their "If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns" argument, it can be quite effectively IMHO refitted to this situation:
If copying "intellectual property" is outlawed, only outlaws will copy intellectual property.
For that matter, it can be extended to "If anything capable of allowing one to copy intellectual property is outlawed, only outlaws will own things allowing them to copy intellectual property".
Put another way, the DMCA makes any copyright infringement that bit more likely to be carried out by criminal gangs as they are significantly more likely to have the means. Individuals copying things are far less likely to do so for profit. If you want to get a cheap copy of FOO, why pay anything at all to some shady character in the street when you can just get the thing for FREE from a file-sharing network? Believe it or not, I do occasionally buy CDs, etc (not recently because I'm broke), as if I like something, I feel obligated to reward the creator of that something. So the mere possibility of getting things for free doesn't mean that nobody will pay money to get them legitimately. But they can significantly reduce the number of people who will pay for illegal copies of things.
Hehe, I was going to say that too, except it occurred to me that perhaps he really did mean "explode" (in the exothermic reaction sense) and not just "burst". How would that happen? Haven't a clue, but you never know.
So unless I'm wrong (I'm sure I'm not), this patch actually stops the X-server (amongst other things) from getting turned into a batch mode task, because as you stated, it can tell that other interactive processes depend on it (or it could have been that it is interactive from having other processes depend on it).
Either way, the patch sounds like a pretty exciting step forward to me. But does anybody know if it also stops X from getting similarily choppy when, eg, CRON starts heavy IO-bound tasks (like filesystem searches to update the man-page indices)? My system becomes utterly unusable when that happens, and it takes a fair few minutes.
I worry that maybe sometimes, those who set out to do things that seem like a really stupid idea to everybody else, know something that no-one else does.
...Or are you meaning both "they"s in your comment are the authors of GPL software? Get a clue, GPL software is licensed, copyrighted software. The public domain specifically refers to stuff that is unrestricted by copyrights and patents, it isn't just a synonym for "doesn't cost anything", etc.
As a pedestrian, the idea of carrying a CD in my hand on the way to a mate's house is not one to consider, and I don't want to carry a bag just for a single CD. I want to put such things in my pockets, and that is why I really like these little devils. That and they're funky..
* - Practically any pocket. Shirt pocket, jacket pocket, jeans pocket if they're in a jewel case..
It's not just you. Not that there's anything really wrong with her, she just doesn't do that much for me. Alyson Hannigan and Michelle Trachtenberg, OTOH...
I don't know whether he was right or not, but it did strike me that that explanation made a hell of a lot of sense. I can't agree with the author of the Salon article on this stuff, I see the point that Minsky, etc, have about the test being mostly a waste of time and the big competition being a distraction.
Butl, what harm can the thing do? Well, from my limited position as an AI/CS dropout, I do at least know that any computer program that can be even remotely as smart as a person is damned far in the future, and having a system that can merely fake humanness is IMO utterly worthless. So, we have a competition that encourages people who could be doing something else, to either go clutching at straws hoping to find Brigadoon, or knowing what is possible, just researching techniques to disguise the thing's true nature and give the world a Pig in a Poke.
Now, how is that useful to even Loebner's misguided aims(more intelligent machines will mean we can work less? Bullshit. The people who own them will get wealthier, but they don't have anything to do less of. Everyone else will just be less likely to have any work at all)?
Maybe he actually just wants to build himself a robotic sex-doll to replace those oft-mentioned prostitutes, but wants it to be that little bit more convincing as a human. (Now, I expect the next mention of Turing Tests I hear on Slashdot to describe the entrants going "Oh, ooh, oh yes", etc...)
And perhaps most importantly, when have you ever seen or even heard of any actual user software for Windows/Alpha?
Perhaps I just never looked in the right places (after all, why should I, I don't use windows, and I don't have an Alpha. Got a little Sparcstation, but that's nowt to be proud of...).
Yes, they payed for that music (always? I don't know, is it never the case that record companies pay the stations to play some of the music they want heard?), but generally, people who redistribute copyrighted music on P2P networks have paid for their CDs too. If they hadn't, they could in fact, be prosecuted for plain old theft which has been an actual criminal offence for rather a long time, rather than copyright infringement which has only even existed for around a century and at least up until recently was a civil offence (I presume the DMCA, etc changed its status tho).
And what about music shops, that have those "listening posts" where you go and listen to somebody's CD? I've never really felt inclined to bother, but unless I'm mistaken you don't have to pay them anything, or even ask, you just go and listen. They do it because they hope it'll encourage sales- but you could strictly just go in every so often and listen to some CD without ever buying it (until it vanishes).
You are suggesting that the majority of people use P2P and filesharing networks, but only a minority have a radio and a tape recorder? You do realise that with taping stuff off the radio, you don't need to have a few people redistributing tapes to everybody, everybody can simply make their own for the cost of the tape (plus electricity). There, there is the potential for there to be NO sales except for the tapes, whereas with the filesharing networks, there is the assumption that one person somewhere probably paid for a CD. Unless, again, they actually stole it.Or as a hybrid approach, recorded it straight off the radio into their computer.
No it is not. Copyright infringement is disregarding the artificial restriction on copying things which states deem to be only copyable by certain other people (generally the authors of said things, but more often some company that buys that "right"). Theft is taking something from someone without their consent.If you have a pencil, and I take your pencil, I will have your pencil and you will not. If you have a note with some interesting thing written on it, and I see that and write it also on some scrap of paper that I have, I have not taken something from you, you have been deprived of NOTHING. You have lost about as much as if having seen that pencil, I got one that was like it.
Footnote: original poster's spelling, grammar, punctuation and capitalisation copied without permission as Fair use, allowed by law.
Well if you don't like that, there's still the question I raised of what happens when I hum a tune that someone else wrote without paying them royalties. That could well be considered taking advantage of that persons work for free (especially if I merely heard the tune on the TV or radio). And once I've heard a piece of music a certain number of times, I end up hearing it in my head anyway. Perhaps the RIAA should make a law that we should not be allowed to listen to any music without some means to ensure we can't remember it afterwards - like some drug, or electric shocks to the head, or a bullet.
Finally, I quite like Mozart. He never received a penny from me, and no-one is going to convince me that even 5% of the "artists" that the record companies push at us are remotely as talented as he was. OK, I suppose this sounds like I'm whinging now. I probably am. Meh. I do still buy some CDs, for groups that I think are truly good, but those are few and far between.
I don't feel like arguing this any further today, I think I made my main points in the previous post- If somebody finds over time that their line of business is becoming less and less workable, that's very sad for them, but doesn't mean it's OK for them to stop the rest of the world from turning. Many industries come practically to a halt, even today, and many people have to find themselves new jobs- yet people who go on about how fantastic capitalism and the free market are feel that the IP industry should receive special treatment. But I doubt I can convince you or them, and I think we shall have to just agree to disagree.
I say GNUnet has a great chance of becoming truly worthwhile, but of course, it's already quite usable on *nix systems (possibly including OSX). Why not have a look (and if you use Windows, watch out for when they'll have a port for you). Remember to keep downloading the new versions, as it is changing rapidly.
Yet,
and are quite relevant points. It is absolutely NOT stealing. If you have a car, and I take your car, you no longer have that car. That is stealing. If I get myself a car that is exactly like yours, I have not stolen anything (unless I stole it from someone else. But I haven't, this is just an example, I don't even have a car).I have never felt remotely inclined to buy anything by, say, George Michael. But what if, for the sake of argument, I was using a file-sharing system, and chose to download something by George Michael. Before I'd even heard of any of the filesharing networks, I'd felt no inclination to buy anything by George Michael. I've not heard anything since I heard of filesharing networks, that made me think "Hmm, I want a copy of that", so what then? Simply not buying something is not stealing. In fact, I could download something by George Michael, and then, choose the next day, to go down to the shops and buy it on CD. It would be no less possible, than me opting to not buy it in a world without p2p. Of course, I've never actually downloaded music by George Michael, what sort of person do you think I am? This is just another hypothetical.
I often hum tunes that I hear, or try to play along with them on my bass (yeah, yeah, with varying success). But I don't pay to have the priviledge of performing those copyrighted works to myself, is that stealing?
Or how's this one: If I buy a solar panel (OK, I mean a huge number of Photovoltaic cells) to power my house, and get an electric car (that possibly looks like yours, I don't know), I would not need to buy petrol from the petrol companies or electricity from the electricity companies. OK, sure, I'm living with my parents right now, don't nitpick. If I didn't have those photovoltaics and the electric car, I (or my parents) would have to buy petrol from the petrol companies and electricity from the electricity companies. Or we could alternatively not use a car, and live in the dark. But would the use of that solar panel and electric car be stealing?
People should not take the sort of crap that groups such as the RIAA tries to clobber the world with. I didn't elect them, I don't even live in America, and yet these groups affect my life. What do I owe them?
"Waah waah, our business model might not be worth the paper it's written on if people keep doing this" Well tough shit to them- It's like candle makers trying to ban light bulbs.
Not used it myself yet, but it sounds neat.
AFAICT, it must have been unsuccessful, as they still seem to be around. Or maybe it hasn't come to court yet???
I think you're wrong on that, isn't it multi-layered with central organisations at the top? Meh, I could be mixed up about that, I don't use it meself. True P2P nets like Gnutella, Freenet, and GNUnet are decentralized, though, I do know that.Then, those organisations have even fewer targets to pick from, so it becomes easier for them to decide which users seem to be contributing most. So then they can stamp on them. And not only do even more people get scared off, but the ratio of contributors to leechers drops badly (it often tends to be that the minority contributes the majority) so those trying to download find much less, and many of the people left sharing stuff find they get even more traffic, probably putting them off further.
As I keep saying, unless you use a file sharing network that gives anonymity, this factor can become an achilles heel. Try GNUnet, if you're using *nix (and follow it's progress if you're using Windows, there'll be a version for you eventually), it's not yet finished, but it already gives you anonymous file sharing, and more is to come!
Hmm, I didn't see him make any mention of the moral highground. I think he was simply making the very fair and sensible point that it is better to both deal with and help those groups that do something for you without trying to kick you in the balls at the same time. I don't think that makes him particularly hypocritical.
These points also really apply to Freenet, but IMO, GNUnet is ultimately superior, like for one thing, any user on dial-up or with a not-very-permanent connection and IP is basically a leech on Freenet, whereas GNUnet allows practically anybody to both benefit and contribute (not only in uploading files but also improving effectiveness of the network).
GNUnet has other advantages too, but is still in development- you can use it already, but not on Windows (*yet*), and AFAICT, the protocols aren't set in stone yet so you have to keep your GNUnet programs up-to-date to use it. And if you don't find it good enough for you, just keep coming back every few weeks, as work continues (or you can even help out).
*-I say "claim to be copyrighted", as just because Group X says Person Y is doing something, and has a log somewhere, it doesn't really follow that it is true- I could cheerfully tell the world that Hilary Rosen goes through my dustbin, and that I drew a picture of the alleged event. Wouldn't be true, but it'd be my word against hers (OK, that would be rather unlikely, and I'm in another country. Blah blah). Further, just because Person Y appears to be sharing a copy of There's Something About Hilary Rosen, it doesn't follow that that file is what it claims to be. Why wouldn't it be? Hell, I don't know. But it doesn't have to be. If you've used Gnutella (you say you still are. I for one stopped ages ago), surely you'll have encountered this sort of thing by now.
Your points on the use of SMTP servers and return addresses are no doubt good, unfortunately I always got bogged down with all that From vs Return to vs X-From vs whatever crap with the reams of headers that seem to be in emails. And I was under the impression that ISPs and email services didn't like people using headers that implied the email was from somewhere else- but I suppose that's the From field instead.
Yes, in case you're wondering, I have tried reading various documents on the subject of email, trying to track down such information and more, but the search seemed fruitless. A lot of the info seems to be masses of old and irrelevant stuff, you know.
I often wonder where other geeks/nerds get their information from. shrug
No, the answer you should have given, is that many external email services (such as the one I use), allow an alternative port to connect through, such as 2525, for those users whose ISPs do block the SMTP port (which is both a sane and a reasonable thing to do, I agree). Those companies that don't provide the alternative are the people at fault.
FWIW, I pretty much agree with you on most of the other things you said though. ISPs should be considerate to people on other networks by restricting the possibility for their users to wreak havoc with their accounts. The exact nature of those restrictions is another matter- blocking everything non-standard is way out of line, for example.