Sparta didn't own Persia. The first "Greek" civilization to successfully invade Persia was the Macedonian empire lead by Alexander. Jesus fucking christ
I live in a community of 6,000. In a county of 90,000 people. The county seat has a population of 20,000. I have to drive 75 to 90 minutes to get to a community with a population larger than 20,000.
We do tend to have a lot of used stores. But the truth is, most music I listen to is so obscure. I have never seen it in a used CD/record store. I have had much better luck at second hand stores like the Good Will.
And by scap metal. I do mean that the stuff I listen to is so out there and has such a small audience. The average CD/Record store would not bother to purchase it because the chances of being able to find someone to buy it are so low. When someone comes across an old cassette tape or CD like that, it is "scrap metal". It wil get sent to the used store or into the trash.
I have to admit that when I downloaded my first mp3 in 1996. I did not give it much thought. I could look at it two ways.
One: This is like listening to the radio, it is free. I would download whatever I could get. Much like recording off the radio.
Two: This is preventing me from buying a new album. Thus I am stealing from the artist or publisher.
Then I realized that the artist did not get much money. That if I bought new, it was because I joined a record club and only bought "Best of" albums and would quit the club as soon as possible. Most music I purchased was at used stores. So neither the studio nor the artist ever saw a dime of money anyways.
In the span of the last 12 years. I have purchased albums of maybe 10 or 11 groups. All independents, none on a major label. I have also purchased via gemm 3 or 4 used albums and had them converted to CD's. This filled in holes in my catalog. Material that I had not run into in used stores, to rare to be seen on line, and could not be purchased from a major label at any price.
This is also part of the reason for the crackdown on net radio. They are not able to make it against the law or stop me as an end user, from using something like streamripper. All I have to do is find a few net radio stations that play what I like, run 5 or 6 copies of streamripper for a few days. Then harvest dozens of songs for my collection. Which is why they are tying to crack down on net radio.
Since the RIAA only represents publishers who's recent stuff is such crap, there is not a FULL album out there worth purchasing. I have decided that I can live without them. There is a lot of good stuff from the last 40 years, that you can not buy new from them. Any money to be spent on music, is to be spent on independents, used record brokers and improved stream ripping software.
I put my money where my mouth is. I tell everyone else that I can, 8 years old and up, WHY I put it where I do. And how they can do the same thing I do. One of my favorite things to do is to share music that is so rare or old no ones heard of it.
Friends don't let friends buy music from companies that support the RIAA.
Question is: why would I, average pop-music fan (for example), care to download some indie's unpopular music? Popular is cool, and labels still have the power to force "coolness" down teenagers' throats through some channels.
Answer: MySpace and YouTube
If Mr. WHY CANT YOU LEAVE BRITTANY ALONE can be discovered. How long do you think it will be till someone is really discovered via MySpace or YouTube? Or whatever cool website the teens jump on next?
At the moment the Labels still have control over traditional media. So While you could theoretically make a living via web distribution it still requires people be aware of who you are. Word of mouth can do it but traditional media has the power of hype. Word of mouth is a natural hype. Traditional media brokers in an artificial hype.
Now, you can't even be considered a real musician without a My Space page. It is trendy and almost a necessity, you are almost even forced to put out a few songs for free on the MySpace mp3 player. It is only a matter of time until a band makes it big WITHOUT the industry from MySpace or YouTube.
Myspace is just 1996's Geocity, with a friends list, an even more locked down and restriced page layout, and some embeded media. Now that many more people have broadband, Myspace works. And I say all of that to say. No one saw Myspace comming. I think it is pretty lame. All the tools to make it have been around for more than a decade. But the kids discover it and boom!!! There is money to be made there.
What is the next idea that is to lame for someone over 30 to think of but the kids will fall in love with it? There is one comming that is going to have the critical mass to kick the lables in the balls and make stars out of musicians WITHOUT the old infrastructure.
Another scam a lot like this is the Internet Speedway. They advertise on net radio alot.
I will leave it as an exercise to the reader to decide if they think the basic website they provide and the products they offer to drop ship for you at the prices they sell to you at, are a good eal or not. The basic site is like $400.00 and a preminum site is like $3000.00.
Part of the fine print on the "free cd" is they ship it to you for $9.95, ONLY payable by credit card. Once the credit card number is given to them, every month, for 5 or 6 months, they will pull $70.00 from your account to pay for your basic site.
Yes, I know, you were just planning on looking at what they had to offer, but to just look, you have signed up for the basic program.
From what research I have done. If you call in for a refund, they hang up on you. If you call and complain that you can't make money with the site selling those products. They try to upsell you the $3,000.00 premium package.
The real answer is doing your job right, and using the right tool - which is not necessarily the easiest tool to use either. We also need to get back to writing applications that have good, if not great, performance with minimal resource requirements
The sad thing is. I have improved a lot in the last 6 months. Any place where I pause in an internetal dialog with myself seems to be the perfect place for a comma.
I am trying to break the habit. However comas are mental comfort food to me. Not sure what to do in a sentence. Think it to yourself and add a comma wherever you pause.
To believe OJ was innocent because he was framed. You had to believe the lead detective took a bloody glove from the scene of the crime, planted OJ's DNA evidence on the glove, and deposited it at OJ's estate. All because he was a raciest, which had to be the case. Because 12 years eariler, someone heard him use the word "nigger" one time.
Generally speaking. When the police find a glove with the blood of the victim, and the dna of the accused. At the accused's residence some miles away from the scene of the crime. The police are not grand standing and usually have a pretty good case.
A better example might be the Michael Jackson case. While most people may believe that Jackson molests young boys under the age of 16. It seems that these 2 boys were NOT molested by him. It was stupid for the DA to bring that case against Michael Jackson. Even Geraldo Rivera was able to show that the DA's case was full hot air only a week after the DA decided to indite.
A reporter is not supposed to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. They are supposed to collect facts and make meaningful determinations about those facts. All information is not to be given the same weight.
As far as you charges against Groklaw. From all the reading I have done there. They would have been open to real evidence. If there had been an article where IBM said they were going to bury SCO with there own code. It would have turned heads. If SCO had actually produced code so the linux maintainers could mitigate the damage. Groklaw would of looked at the code, and I believe had admited that someone was in the wrong for putting it in Linux.
From day one, when SCO said "We are not telling you what lines of code infringe, or you will remove them and say you are not liable." It was pretty clear they were not to be trusted. Step one would have been to ask that code to be removed. Step two would be to prove that IBM put it there in the first place.
You do realize that Dell is already being queezed on the laptop front?
They are good at what they do, they can turn a profit on desktops. Laptops, have a smaller profit margin on the low end. It is really hurting them. MS being 10% to 25% of cost on systems. It would not hurt Dell to be able to sell without Microsoft.
Dell is still a big name. Nvidia, Western Digital, etc, all have warehouses within a few blocks of where Dell puts systems together. Dell does not keep but 6 or 7 days worth of parts on hand. They just call Nvidia and they drive a palet of parts on a forklift a few blocks to Dell.
Dell moves enough stuff, that if the choice between selling to Dell or not selling to Dell is LINUX drivers not OPEN SOURCE drivers. I think companies will either go open source or binary drivers with open-source hooks. Dell still has the clout.
I have had to custom compile kerenls several times, to get around mother board flaws and what not.
What I need is a recepie for that "Responsiveness" we have been talking about. What do I need to do to de-big-ironofy the kernel? Let along figure out what stuff I can drop because I don't really need it.
They don't care about "infringement" and how much each copy is or is not costing or huritng them. They are trying to use the courts and FUD to scare people to stop a behaviour they do not approve of.
People share and download music for whatever reasons they do, and justify it however they justify it.
The RIAA justifies trying to shut it down by saying one thing, and wanting another.
But here is the thing. The RIAA does not care. You could have 50 files shaerd, 10 of them could be junk. But they don't know. They will come after you for all 50. Did they research? Did they check this out?
If I had a store, and was selling counterfit Gucci hand bags. And I had 30 bags on the shelf, 20 counterfit and 10 real. I would not be charged with trying to sell 30 counterfit bags. Only the 20 that are counterfit.
Most songs shared, are in someone's shared folder. So the truth is, there is plenty of junk. Stuff mislabled, intentially unplayable, etc, put there by the industry to discourage file sharing. Is that 2%? 5%? 20%? Who knows?
You still get accused, and pushed throught the system like all of those are copyrighted works that YOU ARE DISTRIBUTING. No one in the US is being sued for downloading a work, only for distrubting. It is not hypothetical that becuase you are accused of distributing, they get to live in this fantasy world, were they don't have to prove that it really, really is your IP. That no one else could of distrubed the work. That you have to turn over everyone who may have touched your computer for a 2 year peroid of time. That every song they list, really was on your compueter, really shared by you. That they are all actually infringing material. That each one, has cost the record company thouands of dollars of sales and you should be liable for hundreds of thousands of dollars of damages.
But no, once someone is accused, all is to be automatically as the RIAA wants it. Everyone should roll, and spend their time and money to help them root out infringment no matter the cost to other parites and society.
That's both morally and legally wrong, unless you are a communist and believe in such things.
Do you even know what you are talking about?
Copyright,is talking about a right. Something may take a tremendous amount of effort to orginally create. Learning how to mix iron with coke to create steel. Or writing "War and Peace". Or writing a piano sonotta. Or telling a joke. But it is the very nature of things, that once something is made, it can be copied. Maybe it is human nature. Once someone figured out how to fly. It was not long till others were doing it.
If you hear a song on the radio, can you wistle the tune? Can you think it in your head? Everytime you think remember your fifth birthday, and you hear "Happy Birthday", is someone entitled to money? Are you using their copyrighted work? It is the nature of things that it is easier to copy. It may be exact, or inexact. It may be deritive. It may cost a lot to produce, but it is more often than not cheeper than producing the original.
It is for the public good, that sciences and arts are advanced. So we give up the "right" by nature to copy. The ability that it is cheaper and easier to remake something that already exists than to create something that has never existed. We give up this "right" for a temporary time. So that the creator from a work has enough of a benefit as an inducement to create a new work. We give up for a limited period of time our right to take advantage of the fact that it is easier to copy than to create something from scratch.
In our society we have fair use, and the term of a copyright.
On the fair use side of the issue. One of the rights that is extend to us, the non-copyright holder is fair use. When you purchase a copyrighted work. You own something. You get bits, or something you can hold and feel. Should the creator of an item you have purchased have total control over something you paid for? The answer is no. In exchange for purcahsing (not necessiarly with money) an item, you have some rights that come with it.
Rights such as the ability to loan that material to someone. The right to tuck a copy of that data away in your brain. Be it what a song sounds like. How a story goes. Or how to hang a door. You have a right to make a copy of music (but not a book). You can even copy music and give that copy to somone. You can resell an item. Which by the way, is the test of weather you own something or not. If you own it, you can legally sell it. If you don't own it, you can't legally sell it.
These are rights you had by nature, and you are allowed to keep, even during the copyrgight period of a work.
On the copyright side. Copyright was for a short period of time. You were not entitled to have exclusive benefit for life. It is a scale. The people, via government, is to weigh their right to reproduce works against benefit of encourging someone to create a work, by allowing them an exclusive right to distribute that work.
The problem is the corporate nazi's. Those who often put very little or no work into creating a copyrighted work but profit from it. They want to extend the copyright period. They want to remove as many fair use rights as possible. They don't care that there are non-infringing uses of p2p. They want it shut down. It is an avenue they do not have total control of. Like they did not want cassette recorders, CD recorders, used record stores. In the perfect world. To them. You would have to pay for physical media, every time it wears out, even better to have a copy at home, and a copy in your car. They would then like to be paid everytime a work is played. In your house, at the grocery store, someone performs it, at chruch, in the park. It does not matter if a some performs it for free. Or someone wants to share something they like. They want a cut everytime you sing, play or in any form, use a copyrighted work. Hell, you create something and want to give it away for free. They don't care. It is still a work. They should be allowed to collect the to
You know, there are many spoofed files on p2p, thanks to the RIAA.
Just because you have a shared folder with a 4meg filed named "Britney Spears - Baby One More Time" does not mean that is what it is. It could be WinAmp, it could be nothing but zeros. Heck, it could even be a sample from Amazon.
Almost everything I find worth listening to, is out of print...and often rare enough, that it does not show up on p2p networks.
Once upon a time. I supported the system. I owned HUNDREDS of cassettes. Then back in the summer of 87, someone was so nice as to break into my parents place and liberated them from me.
So now, I am in a world where the vast majority of that collection is not available. I have contacted some of the artists. They can't get the masters to even do a limited run. Contracts or money always seems to be the issue. Which as a side note sucks. The artist created the music. A profit was made for the record company. Now, they see so little money a particular album that they won't take the time to press it. So I can't do the "right" thing and pay the record company lots of money and the artist a little. It is sitting around for the day when someone uses it in a movie. Or to go on some compilation album when "clogging" or whatever becomes hot. Who knows. Someday it could be hot and make them lots of money. But until that day. It costs them almost nothing to keep it on a shelf. Unused and unheard by anybody.
(not to mention calling anyone a pirate who is not willing to wait until a possible someday when they will re-release it)
Sure, they will let the artist borrow it to cut an album. If they agree to some terms that leaves no doubt they are getting screwed for touching their own material.
I often buy from Gemm where I can run down a dealer whom I can purchase the album as an LP and have them convert it to a CD for me. It gets me my music. But alas, does not support the artist.
Every time you buy a used album. A friend gives you an album they bought and decided they did not like it. Every time you record something off the radio. Every time you shift format. Or make a copy of a song for some. Or email an mp3 to a friend. You are using that music without paying the artist for it again.
Also, all of these things are covered by fair use. Just like getting screwed by a bad recording contract. It is part of the game if an artist wants to be recorded. There are a great many ways you are entitled to use, purchase or be given music where neither the artist or the industry are financially supported.
Now for the questions
Is p2p piracy any worse?
Do the artists get any money from the sale of blank CD and tapes? Or just the record company?
Every time a song is played, moves from person to person, or shifts format. Is a record company really entitled to be paid for it?
Should music by artists that are independent and not represented, have money collected by the RIAA?
Should the RIAA have the right to keep money and not pass it on to the artist?
And most people would be wrong, because it's actually "copyright infringement" instead.
Do you think most people think it is "copyright infringement", or stealing. I wish we would move toward a world where people did see it that way. It is much more likely that this type of behavior will be legalized, and thus not be "stealing".
It seems likely that one of the things that's driving the architectural changes recently, is that people's upgrade cycles seem to have slowed somewhat. I know a lot more people in 2007 that are using 5+ year-old computers, than I did in 1995 or 1992.
The difference is, by 2002, if you purchased a decent computer you could play back full motion video.
Why would most people need a faster computer? They don't edit video, compile software, render cad drawings, etc.
By 2002, a computer with 512mb of RAM running Windows XP with a 40gig hard drive, will do just fine for Joe six-pack. Even today.
I agree that this situation is ridiculous, and when it goes to trial, she probably (hopefully?) won't be punished. But even in this case it wasn't like the recording was incidental. The theater and others involved can't guess intent. Sure, they had the "discretion" to not do anything, but why is that in their lap?
Well, we can start with they pressed charges. From the looks of things if they were willing to drop the charges, the police and the District Attorney's office would do so. So yes it is in their lap. Also, they have to consider goodwill in their community.
If Jhannet recorded the whole movie, they may decide a court is better able to deal with deciding intent. Most people in the community would understand that recording the whole movie is stealing. Even if they considered the amount of punishment dolled out by the court to be excessive.
However, if Jhannet really only recorded 20 seconds or so of the movie. It should be a no brainer on how to handle it. Most people would consider the theater is making to big of deal of it. That the manager was being a jerk. If Jhannet has to go to court, or worse yet loses in court. Well, there could be quite a backlash. All you have to do, is drive to a different theater. The drop in revenue there would encourage the theater chain to help the manager to "do the right thing".
We all have to use judgment and common sense. If I was 10 years old and my 8 year old sister took a candy bar from me. My parents could call the police. If it was someone else in a class at school, the police could be called. If I took it from the grocery store. The police could be called.
Amazingly enough, we all use judgment in situation like that. A store will distinguish between how the handle a first time offender. Depending on whether they are two, or five, or fifteen. The manager of the theater has the same ability. Even if he choses not to exercise reason.
Slashdot Mirror
woosh
I live in a community of 6,000. In a county of 90,000 people. The county seat has a population of 20,000. I have to drive 75 to 90 minutes to get to a community with a population larger than 20,000.
We do tend to have a lot of used stores. But the truth is, most music I listen to is so obscure. I have never seen it in a used CD/record store. I have had much better luck at second hand stores like the Good Will.
And by scap metal. I do mean that the stuff I listen to is so out there and has such a small audience. The average CD/Record store would not bother to purchase it because the chances of being able to find someone to buy it are so low. When someone comes across an old cassette tape or CD like that, it is "scrap metal". It wil get sent to the used store or into the trash.
As far as I know, Good Will does not keep track of their CD, cassette tape and old LP sales.
Also, I have never traded a CD. The "value" we are seeing here is more along the lines of "scrap metal".
One: This is like listening to the radio, it is free. I would download whatever I could get. Much like recording off the radio.
Two: This is preventing me from buying a new album. Thus I am stealing from the artist or publisher.
Then I realized that the artist did not get much money. That if I bought new, it was because I joined a record club and only bought "Best of" albums and would quit the club as soon as possible. Most music I purchased was at used stores. So neither the studio nor the artist ever saw a dime of money anyways.
In the span of the last 12 years. I have purchased albums of maybe 10 or 11 groups. All independents, none on a major label. I have also purchased via gemm 3 or 4 used albums and had them converted to CD's. This filled in holes in my catalog. Material that I had not run into in used stores, to rare to be seen on line, and could not be purchased from a major label at any price.
This is also part of the reason for the crackdown on net radio. They are not able to make it against the law or stop me as an end user, from using something like streamripper. All I have to do is find a few net radio stations that play what I like, run 5 or 6 copies of streamripper for a few days. Then harvest dozens of songs for my collection. Which is why they are tying to crack down on net radio.
Since the RIAA only represents publishers who's recent stuff is such crap, there is not a FULL album out there worth purchasing. I have decided that I can live without them. There is a lot of good stuff from the last 40 years, that you can not buy new from them. Any money to be spent on music, is to be spent on independents, used record brokers and improved stream ripping software.
I put my money where my mouth is. I tell everyone else that I can, 8 years old and up, WHY I put it where I do. And how they can do the same thing I do. One of my favorite things to do is to share music that is so rare or old no ones heard of it.
Friends don't let friends buy music from companies that support the RIAA.
Answer: MySpace and YouTube
If Mr. WHY CANT YOU LEAVE BRITTANY ALONE can be discovered. How long do you think it will be till someone is really discovered via MySpace or YouTube? Or whatever cool website the teens jump on next?
Now, you can't even be considered a real musician without a My Space page. It is trendy and almost a necessity, you are almost even forced to put out a few songs for free on the MySpace mp3 player. It is only a matter of time until a band makes it big WITHOUT the industry from MySpace or YouTube.
Myspace is just 1996's Geocity, with a friends list, an even more locked down and restriced page layout, and some embeded media. Now that many more people have broadband, Myspace works. And I say all of that to say. No one saw Myspace comming. I think it is pretty lame. All the tools to make it have been around for more than a decade. But the kids discover it and boom!!! There is money to be made there.
What is the next idea that is to lame for someone over 30 to think of but the kids will fall in love with it? There is one comming that is going to have the critical mass to kick the lables in the balls and make stars out of musicians WITHOUT the old infrastructure.
Just a matter of time.
In the mean time...get off of my lawn.
More like if you bring a suit and lose, you have to pay the other sides costs. Possibly at a judge or juries discrestion.
I will leave it as an exercise to the reader to decide if they think the basic website they provide and the products they offer to drop ship for you at the prices they sell to you at, are a good eal or not. The basic site is like $400.00 and a preminum site is like $3000.00.
Part of the fine print on the "free cd" is they ship it to you for $9.95, ONLY payable by credit card. Once the credit card number is given to them, every month, for 5 or 6 months, they will pull $70.00 from your account to pay for your basic site.
Yes, I know, you were just planning on looking at what they had to offer, but to just look, you have signed up for the basic program.
From what research I have done. If you call in for a refund, they hang up on you. If you call and complain that you can't make money with the site selling those products. They try to upsell you the $3,000.00 premium package.
A primer on this subject Thinking Forth.
The sad thing is. I have improved a lot in the last 6 months. Any place where I pause in an internetal dialog with myself seems to be the perfect place for a comma.
I am trying to break the habit. However comas are mental comfort food to me. Not sure what to do in a sentence. Think it to yourself and add a comma wherever you pause.
- They got the outcome the wanted...no riots in LA.
- To believe OJ was innocent because he was framed. You had to believe the lead detective took a bloody glove from the scene of the crime, planted OJ's DNA evidence on the glove, and deposited it at OJ's estate. All because he was a raciest, which had to be the case. Because 12 years eariler, someone heard him use the word "nigger" one time.
Generally speaking. When the police find a glove with the blood of the victim, and the dna of the accused. At the accused's residence some miles away from the scene of the crime. The police are not grand standing and usually have a pretty good case.A better example might be the Michael Jackson case. While most people may believe that Jackson molests young boys under the age of 16. It seems that these 2 boys were NOT molested by him. It was stupid for the DA to bring that case against Michael Jackson. Even Geraldo Rivera was able to show that the DA's case was full hot air only a week after the DA decided to indite.
A reporter is not supposed to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. They are supposed to collect facts and make meaningful determinations about those facts. All information is not to be given the same weight.
As far as you charges against Groklaw. From all the reading I have done there. They would have been open to real evidence. If there had been an article where IBM said they were going to bury SCO with there own code. It would have turned heads. If SCO had actually produced code so the linux maintainers could mitigate the damage. Groklaw would of looked at the code, and I believe had admited that someone was in the wrong for putting it in Linux.
From day one, when SCO said "We are not telling you what lines of code infringe, or you will remove them and say you are not liable." It was pretty clear they were not to be trusted. Step one would have been to ask that code to be removed. Step two would be to prove that IBM put it there in the first place.
You do realize that Dell is already being queezed on the laptop front?
They are good at what they do, they can turn a profit on desktops. Laptops, have a smaller profit margin on the low end. It is really hurting them. MS being 10% to 25% of cost on systems. It would not hurt Dell to be able to sell without Microsoft.
Dell is still a big name. Nvidia, Western Digital, etc, all have warehouses within a few blocks of where Dell puts systems together. Dell does not keep but 6 or 7 days worth of parts on hand. They just call Nvidia and they drive a palet of parts on a forklift a few blocks to Dell.
Dell moves enough stuff, that if the choice between selling to Dell or not selling to Dell is LINUX drivers not OPEN SOURCE drivers. I think companies will either go open source or binary drivers with open-source hooks. Dell still has the clout.
I have had to custom compile kerenls several times, to get around mother board flaws and what not.
What I need is a recepie for that "Responsiveness" we have been talking about. What do I need to do to de-big-ironofy the kernel? Let along figure out what stuff I can drop because I don't really need it.
Anyone know of any good guides out there?
Shilling on slashdot is hardly lowing ones standards. I know I would sell one "post" for anything in the $1,00.00 to $99.000.00 range.
Was she a patent troll?
They don't care about "infringement" and how much each copy is or is not costing or huritng them. They are trying to use the courts and FUD to scare people to stop a behaviour they do not approve of.
People share and download music for whatever reasons they do, and justify it however they justify it.
The RIAA justifies trying to shut it down by saying one thing, and wanting another.
If I had a store, and was selling counterfit Gucci hand bags. And I had 30 bags on the shelf, 20 counterfit and 10 real. I would not be charged with trying to sell 30 counterfit bags. Only the 20 that are counterfit.
Most songs shared, are in someone's shared folder. So the truth is, there is plenty of junk. Stuff mislabled, intentially unplayable, etc, put there by the industry to discourage file sharing. Is that 2%? 5%? 20%? Who knows?
You still get accused, and pushed throught the system like all of those are copyrighted works that YOU ARE DISTRIBUTING. No one in the US is being sued for downloading a work, only for distrubting. It is not hypothetical that becuase you are accused of distributing, they get to live in this fantasy world, were they don't have to prove that it really, really is your IP. That no one else could of distrubed the work. That you have to turn over everyone who may have touched your computer for a 2 year peroid of time. That every song they list, really was on your compueter, really shared by you. That they are all actually infringing material. That each one, has cost the record company thouands of dollars of sales and you should be liable for hundreds of thousands of dollars of damages.
But no, once someone is accused, all is to be automatically as the RIAA wants it. Everyone should roll, and spend their time and money to help them root out infringment no matter the cost to other parites and society.
Do you even know what you are talking about?
Copyright,is talking about a right. Something may take a tremendous amount of effort to orginally create. Learning how to mix iron with coke to create steel. Or writing "War and Peace". Or writing a piano sonotta. Or telling a joke. But it is the very nature of things, that once something is made, it can be copied. Maybe it is human nature. Once someone figured out how to fly. It was not long till others were doing it.
If you hear a song on the radio, can you wistle the tune? Can you think it in your head? Everytime you think remember your fifth birthday, and you hear "Happy Birthday", is someone entitled to money? Are you using their copyrighted work? It is the nature of things that it is easier to copy. It may be exact, or inexact. It may be deritive. It may cost a lot to produce, but it is more often than not cheeper than producing the original.
It is for the public good, that sciences and arts are advanced. So we give up the "right" by nature to copy. The ability that it is cheaper and easier to remake something that already exists than to create something that has never existed. We give up this "right" for a temporary time. So that the creator from a work has enough of a benefit as an inducement to create a new work. We give up for a limited period of time our right to take advantage of the fact that it is easier to copy than to create something from scratch.
In our society we have fair use, and the term of a copyright.
On the fair use side of the issue. One of the rights that is extend to us, the non-copyright holder is fair use. When you purchase a copyrighted work. You own something. You get bits, or something you can hold and feel. Should the creator of an item you have purchased have total control over something you paid for? The answer is no. In exchange for purcahsing (not necessiarly with money) an item, you have some rights that come with it.
Rights such as the ability to loan that material to someone. The right to tuck a copy of that data away in your brain. Be it what a song sounds like. How a story goes. Or how to hang a door. You have a right to make a copy of music (but not a book). You can even copy music and give that copy to somone. You can resell an item. Which by the way, is the test of weather you own something or not. If you own it, you can legally sell it. If you don't own it, you can't legally sell it.
These are rights you had by nature, and you are allowed to keep, even during the copyrgight period of a work.
On the copyright side. Copyright was for a short period of time. You were not entitled to have exclusive benefit for life. It is a scale. The people, via government, is to weigh their right to reproduce works against benefit of encourging someone to create a work, by allowing them an exclusive right to distribute that work.
The problem is the corporate nazi's. Those who often put very little or no work into creating a copyrighted work but profit from it. They want to extend the copyright period. They want to remove as many fair use rights as possible. They don't care that there are non-infringing uses of p2p. They want it shut down. It is an avenue they do not have total control of. Like they did not want cassette recorders, CD recorders, used record stores. In the perfect world. To them. You would have to pay for physical media, every time it wears out, even better to have a copy at home, and a copy in your car. They would then like to be paid everytime a work is played. In your house, at the grocery store, someone performs it, at chruch, in the park. It does not matter if a some performs it for free. Or someone wants to share something they like. They want a cut everytime you sing, play or in any form, use a copyrighted work. Hell, you create something and want to give it away for free. They don't care. It is still a work. They should be allowed to collect the to
Just because you have a shared folder with a 4meg filed named "Britney Spears - Baby One More Time" does not mean that is what it is. It could be WinAmp, it could be nothing but zeros. Heck, it could even be a sample from Amazon.
Once upon a time. I supported the system. I owned HUNDREDS of cassettes. Then back in the summer of 87, someone was so nice as to break into my parents place and liberated them from me.
So now, I am in a world where the vast majority of that collection is not available. I have contacted some of the artists. They can't get the masters to even do a limited run. Contracts or money always seems to be the issue. Which as a side note sucks. The artist created the music. A profit was made for the record company. Now, they see so little money a particular album that they won't take the time to press it. So I can't do the "right" thing and pay the record company lots of money and the artist a little. It is sitting around for the day when someone uses it in a movie. Or to go on some compilation album when "clogging" or whatever becomes hot. Who knows. Someday it could be hot and make them lots of money. But until that day. It costs them almost nothing to keep it on a shelf. Unused and unheard by anybody. (not to mention calling anyone a pirate who is not willing to wait until a possible someday when they will re-release it)
Sure, they will let the artist borrow it to cut an album. If they agree to some terms that leaves no doubt they are getting screwed for touching their own material.
I often buy from Gemm where I can run down a dealer whom I can purchase the album as an LP and have them convert it to a CD for me. It gets me my music. But alas, does not support the artist.
Every time you buy a used album. A friend gives you an album they bought and decided they did not like it. Every time you record something off the radio. Every time you shift format. Or make a copy of a song for some. Or email an mp3 to a friend. You are using that music without paying the artist for it again.
Also, all of these things are covered by fair use. Just like getting screwed by a bad recording contract. It is part of the game if an artist wants to be recorded. There are a great many ways you are entitled to use, purchase or be given music where neither the artist or the industry are financially supported.
Now for the questions
So how is that working for them?
Do you think most people think it is "copyright infringement", or stealing. I wish we would move toward a world where people did see it that way. It is much more likely that this type of behavior will be legalized, and thus not be "stealing".
The difference is, by 2002, if you purchased a decent computer you could play back full motion video.
Why would most people need a faster computer? They don't edit video, compile software, render cad drawings, etc.
By 2002, a computer with 512mb of RAM running Windows XP with a 40gig hard drive, will do just fine for Joe six-pack. Even today.
Well, we can start with they pressed charges. From the looks of things if they were willing to drop the charges, the police and the District Attorney's office would do so. So yes it is in their lap. Also, they have to consider goodwill in their community.
If Jhannet recorded the whole movie, they may decide a court is better able to deal with deciding intent. Most people in the community would understand that recording the whole movie is stealing. Even if they considered the amount of punishment dolled out by the court to be excessive.
However, if Jhannet really only recorded 20 seconds or so of the movie. It should be a no brainer on how to handle it. Most people would consider the theater is making to big of deal of it. That the manager was being a jerk. If Jhannet has to go to court, or worse yet loses in court. Well, there could be quite a backlash. All you have to do, is drive to a different theater. The drop in revenue there would encourage the theater chain to help the manager to "do the right thing".
We all have to use judgment and common sense. If I was 10 years old and my 8 year old sister took a candy bar from me. My parents could call the police. If it was someone else in a class at school, the police could be called. If I took it from the grocery store. The police could be called.
Amazingly enough, we all use judgment in situation like that. A store will distinguish between how the handle a first time offender. Depending on whether they are two, or five, or fifteen. The manager of the theater has the same ability. Even if he choses not to exercise reason.
Let me know when the XBox 1 install base hits that point
Then find me again, after the XBox 360 stops bleeding money (let alone making a profit)