The bit about illegal immigrants is funny.
The state of the UK today, I quite believe that if the "researcher" had asked the participants, "Would you support ID cards if it meant illegal immigrants/asylum seekers [the two seem to be interchangable in a lot of people's minds] would be shot on sight?" about 75% of those asked would have said "yes!" and a further 50% of that sample would have added, "but don't kill them staright away, let them suffer a bit."
It's fucking scary is what it is.
We have a programme on Channel4, called "Without Prejudice" where a bunch of people decide whether one person from another bunch of people get £50,000, and one of the "tests" is asking about their beliefs, and usually the subject of illegal immigrants/asylum seekers comes up, and from the answers of about 95% of these people, you'd think we'd lost the war and the UK was a Nazi fucking state.
It's somewhat depressing.
You make interesting points.
The way I see the last point being addressed, is to seperate the infrastructure from the content, such that the nationalised medium is not responsible for the quality/nature of the private content.
But I'm not sure it's relevant to internet supply. BT for instance in the UK has a bare bones broadband service, which just supplies access, you have to sort out your own mail provider etc.
Re:It's all about the money
on
NARAS vs. the RIAA
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
If you want a little evidence to the character of the music companies as regards their attitudes to money and their attitudes to the enjoyers of music, just look at the recent Brit Award ceremony.
Mastercard was signed up as a sponsor, but they made a condition of their sponsorship that only people aged 18 and over, in other words only those who could lawfully hold a credit card, would be allowed to attend the ceremony.
In previous years, all ages were allowed to attend, and this made a fairly happy time for the teenage fans of all the boybands, the music companies create and tout; getting to see their idols perform live, and share in their recieving awards.
The record companies, the creators of the award ceremony, caved to Mastercard's demands in return for their cash, and essentially gave the finger to all the teenage girls on whom their cocaine habit ultimately depends.
Would all the pro-capitalist/. readers out there please explain to this somewhat socialist/. reader, why this is a bad thing, and why all those private telecom companies that have bought...er, had legislation passed favouring them...er..I mean favouring competition... are so darned wonderful for ultimately denying people very cheap broadband as a service to them rather than as an oppurtunity for personal gain?
Laplanders [I think] gave their reindeer fly-agaric to eat and then drank Rudolph's pee.
Tell you what I like, is those guys with the ponds and reedbeds at the bottom of their gardens for processing their liquid waste. It does urine and dirty water, and after it's been filtered by the reed bed, it's crystal-clear and ready to drink.
Yeah, I don't get that. Surely that sort of thing should be illegal.
I mean, talk about entering into a business deal in bad faith.
Re:They'll never win - Legal fees
on
Kazaa Fights Back
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Can't they just say people in the US are not permitted to download or use their software, and by that claim that US infringers are not lawfully their customers, and so evade prosecution alltogether?
Didn't Kazaa cut off access to users of another FastTrack client [Music City thing?]
If they could do that, what's to stop them cutting off access to the free Kazaa, and only allowing the pay Kazaa service to be accessed, at some point?
Is it only me that sees this, or have I missed something?
A surefire way [no guarantees etc.] to avaid prosecution: Change your Kazaa Username to "Bobby-Sue," "Stargurl," or "Spiceworld47893."
Basically anything that suggests you're a blonde, pretty teenage girl. There's no fucking way the RIAA et al. are going to sue someone like that; the publicity would decimate them.
Oh... you might have to stop sharing all those German Leather Dungeon mpegs, though, just to keep up the facade.
Although, who the fuck knows what teenage girls are into these days...
Will people stop spouting the above nonsense about republics not being democracies? They are!!!!
Take a dictionary, look each up, and you will see that they're BOTH democracies, except that a republic is defined as a democracy which specifically does not have a monarch.
I like Brian Eno stuff. I wanted a copy of his Vocal 3 cd box-set. I've been trying to get shops to exchange my money for one for about 2 years, no one will give me what I want for my money.
I have, however been able to download a copy of one of the rare songs [not on his albums] from the box-set on Kazaa [Seven Deadly Finns.]
I also have about a dozen Alanis Morissette songs I never even knew existed, thanks to Kazaa. They were not and are not available for purchase, or if they are, I've never been able to find them [except through Kazaa.]
Also, the US edition of "My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts" has a track called Qu'ran, which the EU version doesn't have. Who knew!? I didn't, but thanks to some nice person on Kazaa, with a good taste in music, I have a copy.
Am I comfortable with all of that?
Well, yes, why on earth wouldn't I be?
Is there anyone out there who would be uncomfortable with my above catalogued use of P2P?
I subscribe to AOL [yeah yeah... whatever] and for an experiment I decided to check out their music download site; give it a go, see what they're offering.
I listened to the new Lou Reed single streaming. That was ok, apart from the "You're listening to AOL First Listen" stamped here and there over it.
So I try to check out their other stuff; download a few tracks - their servers are busy, try again later.
I do, and though there's nothing there to interest me, I download some track by someone I've never heard of.
First the thing takes over my browser [you have to use AOL's own] and won't let me do anything. Then it opens a crappy status dialogue, with no time estimate, and it looks pretty crappy.
Then it starts downloading some DRM thing, which they didn't tell me about up-front. I mean I know I should have expected something like that, but they made no mention of it, which isn't on, I don't think.
When that downloads, they open up a link to say they've downloaded the DRM that'll let me listen to the song for 5 days, and I press play on the AOL media player they opened up for me [so thoughtful] and.... nothing happens. It won't work.
I open up my own version of WinAMP instead, and click to launch the file, and the fucking thing opens up 40+ [according to Zone Alarm] browser windows trying to connect to some shithead DRM people's site, all at once, and when I try closing them, more pop-up! My pc nearly collapsed!
The government should appoint a team of unbiased experts to study the benefits and downfalls of differing lengths and mechanisms of copyright, come to a final conclusion about what would most "promote the progress of science and useful arts," and go with that.
This would be the government that's financed by copyright holding corporations, would it? First we have to cross that bridge; but what you say is sound.
I think the problem is that "copyright" is screwed; if that's a problem.
Not entirely, of course, the Law can still, relatively easily, sue commercial infringers, but as far as personal infringement; individuals infringing someone's copy right, for no commercial gain; Copyright has been decimated by new technology.
In this area, the real way that copyright was upheld, was by the copyright holders having both the means of production and the means of distribution.
People don't need presing plants and trucks to make and ship CDs anymore, they use the internet as the means of distribution, and the inexpensive cd-rw drive as the pressing plant.
The limitation was not one of law, but of ability, and now that limitation is no longer in place.
The result: copyright against personal use is pretty much screwed.
The loom is now miniaturised and in the posession of everyone who wants one. Star Trek replicators in every home. The old business model has been replaced, subverted, undermined, transcended, made obsolete.
The main difference with the change this time, is that it's no longer the mill-workers or car production-line workers who are being turfed out on their ear, as new technology replaces them; it's the mill owners & the Gerald[?] Ford's that are being given their papers and ejected from the premises, and they have the money and the contacts such that we hear their death-rattle that much louder.
Say I was some nasty terrorist (which I'm not, better stress that one!)...
"No, I'm sorry, Sir, we have to take your first answer.
"Boys! Come and take Mr. White to the car.
"Have you tried Cuban cuisine before, Mr White?" ~shark grin~
ps. You really shouldn't store your private key on your harddrive.
The difference is that there isn't one pool; there are millions of pools, each sharing water with the others, sure, but and each has a crude, but effective filtration system: "Woah.. that's f***ed..." #delete#.
I think what they're doing won't be very effective.
Fuck the record company who takes an artist's copyright, forces them to muzzle their originality and put out radio-friendly crap, to sell themselves into debt and take all the financial risks while skimming the rewards from them so they can shove it up their septum-deficient, coke-raddled noses.
Let artists go to independent labels, and let the days of the Mega-Starosaurus come to an end. Musicians will still become famous and very rich, but it'll happen more slowly, and organically.
And who cares if they don't? They can still live a comforable, middle-class lifestyle, so I've heard, without being the next Michael Jackson/Britney/Maradonna/Elton John.
An album that sells less than a million copies, can make a profit if it has lower production costs.
Slashdot Mirror
The bit about illegal immigrants is funny.
/rant
The state of the UK today, I quite believe that if the "researcher" had asked the participants, "Would you support ID cards if it meant illegal immigrants/asylum seekers [the two seem to be interchangable in a lot of people's minds] would be shot on sight?" about 75% of those asked would have said "yes!" and a further 50% of that sample would have added, "but don't kill them staright away, let them suffer a bit."
It's fucking scary is what it is.
We have a programme on Channel4, called "Without Prejudice" where a bunch of people decide whether one person from another bunch of people get £50,000, and one of the "tests" is asking about their beliefs, and usually the subject of illegal immigrants/asylum seekers comes up, and from the answers of about 95% of these people, you'd think we'd lost the war and the UK was a Nazi fucking state.
It's somewhat depressing.
You make interesting points.
The way I see the last point being addressed, is to seperate the infrastructure from the content, such that the nationalised medium is not responsible for the quality/nature of the private content.
But I'm not sure it's relevant to internet supply. BT for instance in the UK has a bare bones broadband service, which just supplies access, you have to sort out your own mail provider etc.
If you want a little evidence to the character of the music companies as regards their attitudes to money and their attitudes to the enjoyers of music, just look at the recent Brit Award ceremony.
...then an awful lot of other stuff does! :D
Mastercard was signed up as a sponsor, but they made a condition of their sponsorship that only people aged 18 and over, in other words only those who could lawfully hold a credit card, would be allowed to attend the ceremony.
In previous years, all ages were allowed to attend, and this made a fairly happy time for the teenage fans of all the boybands, the music companies create and tout; getting to see their idols perform live, and share in their recieving awards.
The record companies, the creators of the award ceremony, caved to Mastercard's demands in return for their cash, and essentially gave the finger to all the teenage girls on whom their cocaine habit ultimately depends.
If that doesn't define them as scum...
"Ha ha ha, sigh, ohh... it's funny because it's true." ~ Homer Simpson et al.
That's why it's imperative we develop a new information delivery device that runs on gas.
Would all the pro-capitalist /. readers out there please explain to this somewhat socialist /. reader, why this is a bad thing, and why all those private telecom companies that have bought...er, had legislation passed favouring them...er..I mean favouring competition... are so darned wonderful for ultimately denying people very cheap broadband as a service to them rather than as an oppurtunity for personal gain?
:)
Just curious.
"Maybe the original DVDs everyone bought have degraded?"
Looks like these ones already have been, too:
"Marilyn Manson music video."
Laplanders [I think] gave their reindeer fly-agaric to eat and then drank Rudolph's pee.
Tell you what I like, is those guys with the ponds and reedbeds at the bottom of their gardens for processing their liquid waste. It does urine and dirty water, and after it's been filtered by the reed bed, it's crystal-clear and ready to drink.
Yeah, I don't get that. Surely that sort of thing should be illegal.
I mean, talk about entering into a business deal in bad faith.
Can't they just say people in the US are not permitted to download or use their software, and by that claim that US infringers are not lawfully their customers, and so evade prosecution alltogether?
Didn't Kazaa cut off access to users of another FastTrack client [Music City thing?]
If they could do that, what's to stop them cutting off access to the free Kazaa, and only allowing the pay Kazaa service to be accessed, at some point?
Is it only me that sees this, or have I missed something?
A surefire way [no guarantees etc.] to avaid prosecution: Change your Kazaa Username to "Bobby-Sue," "Stargurl," or "Spiceworld47893."
Basically anything that suggests you're a blonde, pretty teenage girl. There's no fucking way the RIAA et al. are going to sue someone like that; the publicity would decimate them.
Oh... you might have to stop sharing all those German Leather Dungeon mpegs, though, just to keep up the facade.
Although, who the fuck knows what teenage girls are into these days...
Will people stop spouting the above nonsense about republics not being democracies? They are!!!!
Take a dictionary, look each up, and you will see that they're BOTH democracies, except that a republic is defined as a democracy which specifically does not have a monarch.
That is the only difference!
Hmmm... What about this:
I like Brian Eno stuff. I wanted a copy of his Vocal 3 cd box-set. I've been trying to get shops to exchange my money for one for about 2 years, no one will give me what I want for my money.
I have, however been able to download a copy of one of the rare songs [not on his albums] from the box-set on Kazaa [Seven Deadly Finns.]
I also have about a dozen Alanis Morissette songs I never even knew existed, thanks to Kazaa. They were not and are not available for purchase, or if they are, I've never been able to find them [except through Kazaa.]
Also, the US edition of "My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts" has a track called Qu'ran, which the EU version doesn't have. Who knew!? I didn't, but thanks to some nice person on Kazaa, with a good taste in music, I have a copy.
Am I comfortable with all of that?
Well, yes, why on earth wouldn't I be?
Is there anyone out there who would be uncomfortable with my above catalogued use of P2P?
I subscribe to AOL [yeah yeah... whatever] and for an experiment I decided to check out their music download site; give it a go, see what they're offering.
I listened to the new Lou Reed single streaming. That was ok, apart from the "You're listening to AOL First Listen" stamped here and there over it.
So I try to check out their other stuff; download a few tracks - their servers are busy, try again later.
I do, and though there's nothing there to interest me, I download some track by someone I've never heard of.
First the thing takes over my browser [you have to use AOL's own] and won't let me do anything. Then it opens a crappy status dialogue, with no time estimate, and it looks pretty crappy.
Then it starts downloading some DRM thing, which they didn't tell me about up-front. I mean I know I should have expected something like that, but they made no mention of it, which isn't on, I don't think.
When that downloads, they open up a link to say they've downloaded the DRM that'll let me listen to the song for 5 days, and I press play on the AOL media player they opened up for me [so thoughtful] and.... nothing happens. It won't work.
I open up my own version of WinAMP instead, and click to launch the file, and the fucking thing opens up 40+ [according to Zone Alarm] browser windows trying to connect to some shithead DRM people's site, all at once, and when I try closing them, more pop-up! My pc nearly collapsed!
Fuck that.
Bye bye AOL Time Warner. Hello Kazaa.
"You do realize that if all everyone did was leech then the entire system would collapse right??"
You talking about Kazaa, or the music industry?
The government should appoint a team of unbiased experts to study the benefits and downfalls of differing lengths and mechanisms of copyright, come to a final conclusion about what would most "promote the progress of science and useful arts," and go with that.
This would be the government that's financed by copyright holding corporations, would it? First we have to cross that bridge; but what you say is sound.
"...Geroge W. Bush isn't an idiot..."
Y'know, I was right with you up until that.
I think the problem is that "copyright" is screwed; if that's a problem.
Not entirely, of course, the Law can still, relatively easily, sue commercial infringers, but as far as personal infringement; individuals infringing someone's copy right, for no commercial gain; Copyright has been decimated by new technology.
In this area, the real way that copyright was upheld, was by the copyright holders having both the means of production and the means of distribution.
People don't need presing plants and trucks to make and ship CDs anymore, they use the internet as the means of distribution, and the inexpensive cd-rw drive as the pressing plant.
The limitation was not one of law, but of ability, and now that limitation is no longer in place.
The result: copyright against personal use is pretty much screwed.
The loom is now miniaturised and in the posession of everyone who wants one. Star Trek replicators in every home. The old business model has been replaced, subverted, undermined, transcended, made obsolete.
The main difference with the change this time, is that it's no longer the mill-workers or car production-line workers who are being turfed out on their ear, as new technology replaces them; it's the mill owners & the Gerald[?] Ford's that are being given their papers and ejected from the premises, and they have the money and the contacts such that we hear their death-rattle that much louder.
Say I was some nasty terrorist (which I'm not, better stress that one!)...
"No, I'm sorry, Sir, we have to take your first answer.
"Boys! Come and take Mr. White to the car.
"Have you tried Cuban cuisine before, Mr White?" ~shark grin~
ps. You really shouldn't store your private key on your harddrive.
Damn you. That gave me the hiccups.
The difference is that there isn't one pool; there are millions of pools, each sharing water with the others, sure, but and each has a crude, but effective filtration system: "Woah.. that's f***ed..." #delete#.
I think what they're doing won't be very effective.
"Why waste my time and bandwidth on a bunch of amateurs when I could be doing business with respectable professionals?"
:D
Yeah, but how long are you going to be waiting for someone like that to come along?
Who cares?
Fuck the record company who takes an artist's copyright, forces them to muzzle their originality and put out radio-friendly crap, to sell themselves into debt and take all the financial risks while skimming the rewards from them so they can shove it up their septum-deficient, coke-raddled noses.
Let artists go to independent labels, and let the days of the Mega-Starosaurus come to an end. Musicians will still become famous and very rich, but it'll happen more slowly, and organically.
And who cares if they don't? They can still live a comforable, middle-class lifestyle, so I've heard, without being the next Michael Jackson/Britney/Maradonna/Elton John.
An album that sells less than a million copies, can make a profit if it has lower production costs.
"better the known devil than the unknown angel"
Modded as Interesting? Interesting?
There's never a modearation option of bullshit when you need one, is there?