The whole outcry against file sharing comes down to control. Most money in music is made on the back catalog. He who owns the distribution channel owns the back catalog and makes the money.
When the next Beatles, or Elvis shows up on the scene, they want to see them signed with a major label, not issuing their CD's via bittorrent, other p2p and their website.
Just like the agents in the matrix, they control all the doors...and they want to keep it that way.
I was always taught that theft was taking someone else stuff without permission.
Copying software is effectively taking more copies than you bought. Whether it cost the owner anything is irrelavent.
Yes, making backups would fall under that categorization, but its pretty much acceptable as long as you don't give them away, or if you do, you delete the other copies.
No, making a backup copy is FAIR USE. On the other hand maybe what you are saying is that downloading an AAC file from iTunes and then converting it into an MP3 so you can play it on a player that does not support AAC is wrong because you have made more copies than you paid for, so it is wrong
I had just posted that copyright violations = civil while theft = criminal. I still stand by that. That does not mean there is no morality involved. I will mention that society does look upon civil and criminal issues differently. For instance, divorce is a civil issue and murder is a criminal. Society does not look at divorced people the same way it looks at murderers....well usually.
Lets get this straight.....
on
RIAA Sues a Child
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
We have:
theft...criminal
copyright infringement...civil
So:
Murder = criminal and jail time
Theft = criminal and jail time
Running a protection racket = criminal and jail time
Copyright infringement = civil no jail time
You can not talk about copyright infringement as "theft" because it is not a criminal offense.
At these prices, I lose money -- but I make it up in volume. (Peter G. Alaquon)
I was not talking about my time to support linux.
I was saying if DELL sells a 200,000 units a month and saves $40.00 a unit. Thats a lot of savings, even if they support linux. How many people will call in? 1 out of 10???
Because if they make distribution "x" their standard distribution, run their own apt/yum repository of software and updates and require decent linux drivers for all hardware they use.
There is a day coming where there will be profits $$$$ for making the switch, and chaffing Microsoft's fanny will not be a big enough issue to keep them from doing it. As I said, Microsoft wants to do software AND hardware. They want Dell's market, at some point, it will be in their best interests to bail.
However if Microsoft and Intuit has problmes with reduced privelaged accounts, how well do you expect other software makers to do?
I can think of several programs at my job that need admin rights to run, even if the data lives on the server.
Face it, a good deal of windows software expects unrestricted rights to the Windows system folders, the Program Files folder, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE in the regsitry and other such nonsence just to be able to run.
In linux, anyone writing anything more complex than a batch script, knows that they will have to deal will users, groups and permissions.
In windows, it is rare to find a develper who makes the statement, "what must I do so that this program can run as a restricted user?"
$40 out of $1200 is 3% of the price the consumer pays.
$40 out of $300.00 is 13% of the price the consumer pays.
Even at $40.00 a license, once computers sell for $250.00 then about 1/5th (20%) of the cost is Windows.
With the number of units that Dell moves, taking Ubntu, FORCING the hardware vendors to provide linux drivers and then offering basic tech support would be cheeper than using windows.
Also don't forget the Microsoft is getting into the branded hardware game and may be leaving intell, Dell and all of their other buddies high and dry.
At some point, it will make more sense to "own' the PC market and wish MS a fond farewell, and not care about losing MS's good will.
Not to mention, Dell supports their hardware. The end user has always been forced to find some local help for software problems.
The end user also ends up with less probems with Virii and has a working non-privelaged user environment.
Well, how often should someone need to get into the registry?
Having done tech support. I can tell you that if you have a failed install of an antivirus product or update/upgrade. 30% of the time or so, it will lead to some massive registry editing. Used to walk end users through it 4 or 5 times a day, 5 days a week 52 weeks a year.
After all. Microsoft may just be joining up with OSDL so they can see what will happen....
You never know who you might be able to hire way, what standard you can hijack, when getting a picture of Bill Gates shaking Linus' hand might come in handy
It is not that copyright infrgement isn't theft. It is how you quantify it's value.
If I have a bakery, and you steal 10 loaves of bread. I have been harmed. I no longer have 10 loaves to sell, and I am out my costs for making those loaves.
The law only lets me "dip" once on that, I am only out what they could be sold for, not Twice as much, because I lost 10 loaves, and the people who got the 10 "pirate" loaves, did not come buy them from me so I have been harmed by "20 loaves".
In reality, there is no way to know that I lost 10 sales. A loaf could have been given to someone who was broke, or leaving town. Or someone who loved it can came and purchaed 20 loaves. We just don't play the "what if" game.
The situation with copyright infrgment, as relating to p2p or mp3 downloads is closer to the "I lost 10 people not comming to buy my bread" than to the "someone stole 10 loaves from me" argument.
Are they "harmed"??? Sometimes. Sometimes a download will cost them a sale, or several sales. Sometimes, it nets them a lot of money. I.E. 1 song downloaded causes someone to purchase several albums.
I think plenty of folks either dont care becauuse they can get it for free without getting caught, or that they are doing no harm, because they did not take a "physical" copy. There are only those out there among the geeky elite that feel justifed because "copyright infringment" is probably not costing the RIAA anything.
In reality, right now piracy acts as a "tax". The more popular your "intelectual proptery" is, the more it is being downloaded and costing you in real sales. That would be for the top 5% of the hottest selling items.
If all you have is a back catalog, every download is more likley to sell an album than to cost a sale. As evidenced by artists who sell from their website. As their songs appear on p2p networks, their sales on their site goes up.
Which bring us to the truth of this. Follow the money....
The current situation is p2p has probably increased sales more than it cost. Some new album sales go down, but the record companies don't make their real money there any more. Back catalog sales are up, and that is their real cash cow.
Now imagine a future, without controls, without you (RIAA). A world where the next Beatles sell their songs directly, via their site, bittorrent, p2p networks or something and do not go thru a major label.
Now imagine some record company exec thinking about every day, 25 or 30 years of back catalog mateiral outselling the current number 1 hit, and they are entitled to "none" of that money, because they group never signed a contract with a major lable.
The noise about p2p is about securing the future, making sure the next Beatles has to go thru the record compnay, instead of having access to their audience via p2p.
Winfax - Creates a temp file in the %windows% directory as well as an.ini file
Quickbooks - Writes to.ini files in the \Program Files\Quickbooks directory
Internet Explorer - Which can not perform SSL enabled sites if ran with reduced privelages on a n administative user account.
So Symantec, Intuit and Microsoft seem to be lacking the technical wherewithall to design and implement software that can run in a LUA environment. As opposed to small time, amature software projects such as. The Gimp, Firefox, Thunderbird, and OpenOffice, which will all run fine in an LUA environment.
Have you ever read the "leaked" Whitepaper Microsoft did on the conversion of HotMail from FreeBDS/Apache to Win2000/IIS?
One of the things they specifically mention is the fact you can build a VERY SMALL minimal *nix system because you can cut all of the cruft. It is humanly possible to figure out the mininum dependancies, libraries, etc.
Whereas with Microsoft, who was doing this as a matter of pride, would not create a striped down version of Windows for themselves. And even stated that you could not strip down a build of windows because there are to many unknown interactions.
It would take a lot of work to figure out what you can remove. More work than Microsoft was even willing to do as a matter of pride on a project they were throwing millions of dollars at and took several years to complete.
I don't think we will see a striped down "core" version of Windows anytime soon.
Have you ever read the "leaked" Whitepaper Microsoft did on the conversion of HotMail from FreeBDS/Apache to Win2000/IIS?
One of the things they specifically mention is the fact you can build a VERY SMALL minimal *nix system because you can cut all of the cruft. It is humanly possible to figure out the mininum dependancies, libraries, etc.
Whereas with Microsoft, who was doing this as a matter of pride, would not create a striped down version of Windows for themselves. And even stated that you could not strip down a build of windows because there are to many unknown interactions.
It would take a lot of work to figure out what you can remove. More work than Microsoft was even willing to do as a matter of pride on a project they were throwing millions of dollars at and took several years to complete.
I don't think we will see a striped down "core" version of Windows anytime soon.
The Commodor 64 had 64k of RAM. the 20K of system rom was "over" the last 20K of RAM, and the 16K of RAM before that could be banked out so a Cartridge ROM could reside there.
The 6510 had the ability to look at several address in zero page memory and use that information to "bank" certain ROM and memory mampped I/O out so that the RAM underneith could be used.
There is only one known and easy to prevent virus/trojan vector in Eudora
The new version of Netscape is based on Mozilla and will not download and run activeX components in the background.
WordPerfect documents dont self destruct like Word documents do, and also do not propogate Word macro viruses.
Untill I started using FOSS, I used all of the above products. With the exception of the calendering features of Outlook vs Eudora. All of these applications are BETTER than Microsofts, in reliablity, security, not getting locked into one vendor, etc.
For those who saw the Bloom County strip back in the 80's where Sean Pean hit a reporter, who to sue?
1. Sean Pean, no he might come back to hit you. 2. Madonna, no, she is even crazier than Sean. 3. The photograper who took the picture and caused you to be hit, No, he is broke. NEVER SUE POOR PEOPLE. 4. The Nikon Camera Corporation...YES! They have lots of money and should of had a warning label on the product warning not to take photos of irate celeberaties.
Rule number one in law, is sue the person who has the most money. So yes, lets look at the offenders.
1. BitTorrent - broke 2. Torrentractor.com - broke 3. Microsoft - 40 billon PLUS in liquid assets.
IBM is not at fault, becuase it was the intention of the AT&T contract that they could do what they want with homegrown code.
IBM is not at fault, because NOVELL waives any wrongdoing in doing what they want with homegrown code.
IBM is not at fault, because even if SCO owns UNIX V, and the NOVELL waiver is no good, and IBM is wrong about the intent of AT&T. SCO is distributing poirtions of UNIX V on their website, therefore they have no right to claim that any UNIX V code in IBM homegrown code that made it into linux is damaging. Since, after all SCO is already distributing it for the whole wolrd to see.
About 2 years ago, I did a stint providing technical support for Norton Anitvirus. NAV does not like to install on a system with less than about 60% resources available.
So when someone was having installation issues, and system resources were low, we would check what is running at startup.
I had 2 or 3 calls a day from people who were 60+ with Kazaa or some other p2p app running on their system.
And before someone says "the grandchildren put it there, and they have no clue about it". I will mention, when disabeling programs that run at startup just long enough to get a good install, they would complain about not being able to run Kazaa.
When grandma and grandpa DONT CARE about copyright issues and pirate mp3's like they are going out of style, I figure that the RIAA have a rather larger uphill battle.
Especially when you consider that AARP is a large voting block with a lot of PAC money.
You will notice, that the RIAA is trying not to go after people over 60......
Slashdot Mirror
Yup
Follow the money
The whole outcry against file sharing comes down to control. Most money in music is made on the back catalog. He who owns the distribution channel owns the back catalog and makes the money.
When the next Beatles, or Elvis shows up on the scene, they want to see them signed with a major label, not issuing their CD's via bittorrent, other p2p and their website.
Just like the agents in the matrix, they control all the doors...and they want to keep it that way.
Oh God, I wish I still had mod points today
Copying software is effectively taking more copies than you bought. Whether it cost the owner anything is irrelavent.
Yes, making backups would fall under that categorization, but its pretty much acceptable as long as you don't give them away, or if you do, you delete the other copies.
No, making a backup copy is FAIR USE. On the other hand maybe what you are saying is that downloading an AAC file from iTunes and then converting it into an MP3 so you can play it on a player that does not support AAC is wrong because you have made more copies than you paid for, so it is wrong
I had just posted that copyright violations = civil while theft = criminal. I still stand by that. That does not mean there is no morality involved. I will mention that society does look upon civil and criminal issues differently. For instance, divorce is a civil issue and murder is a criminal. Society does not look at divorced people the same way it looks at murderers....well usually.
We have:
theft...criminal
copyright infringement...civil
So:
Murder = criminal and jail time
Theft = criminal and jail time
Running a protection racket = criminal and jail time
Copyright infringement = civil no jail time
You can not talk about copyright infringement as "theft" because it is not a criminal offense.
At these prices, I lose money -- but I make it up in volume. (Peter G. Alaquon)
I was not talking about my time to support linux.
I was saying if DELL sells a 200,000 units a month and saves $40.00 a unit. Thats a lot of savings, even if they support linux. How many people will call in? 1 out of 10???
Because if they make distribution "x" their standard distribution, run their own apt/yum repository of software and updates and require decent linux drivers for all hardware they use.
There is a day coming where there will be profits $$$$ for making the switch, and chaffing Microsoft's fanny will not be a big enough issue to keep them from doing it. As I said, Microsoft wants to do software AND hardware. They want Dell's market, at some point, it will be in their best interests to bail.
True it is a problem with the software.
However if Microsoft and Intuit has problmes with reduced privelaged accounts, how well do you expect other software makers to do?
I can think of several programs at my job that need admin rights to run, even if the data lives on the server.
Face it, a good deal of windows software expects unrestricted rights to the Windows system folders, the Program Files folder, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE in the regsitry and other such nonsence just to be able to run.
In linux, anyone writing anything more complex than a batch script, knows that they will have to deal will users, groups and permissions.
In windows, it is rare to find a develper who makes the statement, "what must I do so that this program can run as a restricted user?"
Hmmm
$40 out of $1200 is 3% of the price the consumer pays.
$40 out of $300.00 is 13% of the price the consumer pays.
Even at $40.00 a license, once computers sell for $250.00 then about 1/5th (20%) of the cost is Windows.
With the number of units that Dell moves, taking Ubntu, FORCING the hardware vendors to provide linux drivers and then offering basic tech support would be cheeper than using windows.
Also don't forget the Microsoft is getting into the branded hardware game and may be leaving intell, Dell and all of their other buddies high and dry.
At some point, it will make more sense to "own' the PC market and wish MS a fond farewell, and not care about losing MS's good will.
Not to mention, Dell supports their hardware. The end user has always been forced to find some local help for software problems.
The end user also ends up with less probems with Virii and has a working non-privelaged user environment.
Well, how often should someone need to get into the registry?
Having done tech support. I can tell you that if you have a failed install of an antivirus product or update/upgrade. 30% of the time or so, it will lead to some massive registry editing. Used to walk end users through it 4 or 5 times a day, 5 days a week 52 weeks a year.
We could all be overthinking this.
After all. Microsoft may just be joining up with OSDL so they can see what will happen....
You never know who you might be able to hire way, what standard you can hijack, when getting a picture of Bill Gates shaking Linus' hand might come in handy
It is not that copyright infrgement isn't theft. It is how you quantify it's value.
If I have a bakery, and you steal 10 loaves of bread. I have been harmed. I no longer have 10 loaves to sell, and I am out my costs for making those loaves.
The law only lets me "dip" once on that, I am only out what they could be sold for, not Twice as much, because I lost 10 loaves, and the people who got the 10 "pirate" loaves, did not come buy them from me so I have been harmed by "20 loaves".
In reality, there is no way to know that I lost 10 sales. A loaf could have been given to someone who was broke, or leaving town. Or someone who loved it can came and purchaed 20 loaves. We just don't play the "what if" game.
The situation with copyright infrgment, as relating to p2p or mp3 downloads is closer to the "I lost 10 people not comming to buy my bread" than to the "someone stole 10 loaves from me" argument.
Are they "harmed"??? Sometimes. Sometimes a download will cost them a sale, or several sales. Sometimes, it nets them a lot of money. I.E. 1 song downloaded causes someone to purchase several albums.
I think plenty of folks either dont care becauuse they can get it for free without getting caught, or that they are doing no harm, because they did not take a "physical" copy. There are only those out there among the geeky elite that feel justifed because "copyright infringment" is probably not costing the RIAA anything.
In reality, right now piracy acts as a "tax". The more popular your "intelectual proptery" is, the more it is being downloaded and costing you in real sales. That would be for the top 5% of the hottest selling items.
If all you have is a back catalog, every download is more likley to sell an album than to cost a sale. As evidenced by artists who sell from their website. As their songs appear on p2p networks, their sales on their site goes up.
Which bring us to the truth of this. Follow the money....
The current situation is p2p has probably increased sales more than it cost. Some new album sales go down, but the record companies don't make their real money there any more. Back catalog sales are up, and that is their real cash cow.
Now imagine a future, without controls, without you (RIAA). A world where the next Beatles sell their songs directly, via their site, bittorrent, p2p networks or something and do not go thru a major label.
Now imagine some record company exec thinking about every day, 25 or 30 years of back catalog mateiral outselling the current number 1 hit, and they are entitled to "none" of that money, because they group never signed a contract with a major lable.
The noise about p2p is about securing the future, making sure the next Beatles has to go thru the record compnay, instead of having access to their audience via p2p.
Winfax - Creates a temp file in the %windows% directory as well as an .ini file
Quickbooks - Writes to .ini files in the \Program Files\Quickbooks directory
Internet Explorer - Which can not perform SSL enabled sites if ran with reduced privelages on a n administative user account.
So Symantec, Intuit and Microsoft seem to be lacking the technical wherewithall to design and implement software that can run in a LUA environment. As opposed to small time, amature software projects such as. The Gimp, Firefox, Thunderbird, and OpenOffice, which will all run fine in an LUA environment.
Have you ever read the "leaked" Whitepaper Microsoft did on the conversion of HotMail from FreeBDS/Apache to Win2000/IIS? One of the things they specifically mention is the fact you can build a VERY SMALL minimal *nix system because you can cut all of the cruft. It is humanly possible to figure out the mininum dependancies, libraries, etc. Whereas with Microsoft, who was doing this as a matter of pride, would not create a striped down version of Windows for themselves. And even stated that you could not strip down a build of windows because there are to many unknown interactions. It would take a lot of work to figure out what you can remove. More work than Microsoft was even willing to do as a matter of pride on a project they were throwing millions of dollars at and took several years to complete. I don't think we will see a striped down "core" version of Windows anytime soon.
Have you ever read the "leaked" Whitepaper Microsoft did on the conversion of HotMail from FreeBDS/Apache to Win2000/IIS?
One of the things they specifically mention is the fact you can build a VERY SMALL minimal *nix system because you can cut all of the cruft. It is humanly possible to figure out the mininum dependancies, libraries, etc.
Whereas with Microsoft, who was doing this as a matter of pride, would not create a striped down version of Windows for themselves. And even stated that you could not strip down a build of windows because there are to many unknown interactions.
It would take a lot of work to figure out what you can remove. More work than Microsoft was even willing to do as a matter of pride on a project they were throwing millions of dollars at and took several years to complete.
I don't think we will see a striped down "core" version of Windows anytime soon.
Speak for yourself. I have changed IPS's several times, and still have my email account from 1994
You are refering to "Club Carbie"
I should be awared geek points for knowing this tidbit....never mind, I am already posting on slashdot.
The Commodor 64 had 64k of RAM. the 20K of system rom was "over" the last 20K of RAM, and the 16K of RAM before that could be banked out so a Cartridge ROM could reside there. The 6510 had the ability to look at several address in zero page memory and use that information to "bank" certain ROM and memory mampped I/O out so that the RAM underneith could be used.
Lotus 123 does not get Excell macro viruses
There is only one known and easy to prevent virus/trojan vector in Eudora
The new version of Netscape is based on Mozilla and will not download and run activeX components in the background.
WordPerfect documents dont self destruct like Word documents do, and also do not propogate Word macro viruses.
Untill I started using FOSS, I used all of the above products. With the exception of the calendering features of Outlook vs Eudora. All of these applications are BETTER than Microsofts, in reliablity, security, not getting locked into one vendor, etc.
Well, actually according to Christian Pentecostal theology, there is an encrypted channel for communication with God. :)
For those who saw the Bloom County strip back in the 80's where Sean Pean hit a reporter, who to sue?
1. Sean Pean, no he might come back to hit you.
2. Madonna, no, she is even crazier than Sean.
3. The photograper who took the picture and caused you to be hit, No, he is broke. NEVER SUE POOR PEOPLE.
4. The Nikon Camera Corporation...YES! They have lots of money and should of had a warning label on the product warning not to take photos of irate celeberaties.
Rule number one in law, is sue the person who has the most money. So yes, lets look at the offenders.
1. BitTorrent - broke
2. Torrentractor.com - broke
3. Microsoft - 40 billon PLUS in liquid assets.
Hmmmmmmmmmmmm
Here we go
---------
So when someone was having installation issues, and system resources were low, we would check what is running at startup.
I had 2 or 3 calls a day from people who were 60+ with Kazaa or some other p2p app running on their system.
And before someone says "the grandchildren put it there, and they have no clue about it". I will mention, when disabeling programs that run at startup just long enough to get a good install, they would complain about not being able to run Kazaa.
When grandma and grandpa DONT CARE about copyright issues and pirate mp3's like they are going out of style, I figure that the RIAA have a rather larger uphill battle.
Especially when you consider that AARP is a large voting block with a lot of PAC money.
You will notice, that the RIAA is trying not to go after people over 60......
------
They would always like to lower the cost of their labor, and maintain the same prices, i.e. more profit.
Or in some cases, lower their prices to be more attracitve than their competition.
Both of these forces would be at work, even if Open Source software did not exist.
Also, these firms can use open source software themselves, and thus lower the cost of doing business as well.
------
-------
So people would have a choice.
Because you could not expect that a computer came with software that would let you go on the internet or hook up to an on-line service.
---------