Hey Anonymous Coward, a) I'm an Indian, and have used my Indian credit card to purchase at Amazon.com and zzounds.com, I don't suppose they sell without checking the card first. b) I'm guessing one of your most popular sites is hotmail.com. And with your superior American knowledge, I'm sure you're aware that Microsoft *bought* Hotmail from the *Indian* who developed it, for about $400,000,000 of American money?
Ummm.....I'm an Indian, and guess what? I'm not a programmer....yes!!! We do exist (Indian non-Programmers, that is), even though we're a paltry 98.8% or something of the total population....
Oh sure.....ban P2P. But then, you can still write the mp3's you've already downloaded illegally, so the next logical step would be....ban the CD-writers, too? People also download porn from the internet. Block internet access for everyone except research scientists? (as if *they* don't.....) People buy bootlegged VCD's and DVD's. Outlaw DVD players? How far can these people go trying to block off new technology, just to protect their profits? Napster was inherently an mp3-sharing service, which made the RIAA's case strong. But Gnutella isn't a music sharing service; it's a *file* sharing service. If I want to share a Word document with someone across the Internet, should I be disallowed just because a *possible* use of this service is the illegal download of songs?
The RIAA wil try that anyway, though; somehow "Logic" is just not as good an argument as "Oodles of Cold, hard cash" is. And the courts allow them to get away with it, too. If I want to record my own voice on a blank cassette and pass it around to friends, the Recording Association gets a part of what I pay for that cassette, just because copying music is one of the major uses of blank tapes.
And now we hear that ARIA may get a blanket payment from the CD-copying kiosks opening up in Australia. Whether I copy music, software, my own documents or photos of me doesn't matter; let's just assume that I'm pirating music, for argument's sake.
The question is, why do we let them get away with it?
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Hey Anonymous Coward,
a) I'm an Indian, and have used my Indian credit card to purchase at Amazon.com and zzounds.com, I don't suppose they sell without checking the card first.
b) I'm guessing one of your most popular sites is hotmail.com. And with your superior American knowledge, I'm sure you're aware that Microsoft *bought* Hotmail from the *Indian* who developed it, for about $400,000,000 of American money?
Talk about cheap labour.
Ummm.....I'm an Indian, and guess what? I'm not a programmer....yes!!! We do exist (Indian non-Programmers, that is), even though we're a paltry 98.8% or something of the total population....
Oh sure.....ban P2P. But then, you can still write the mp3's you've already downloaded illegally, so the next logical step would be....ban the CD-writers, too?
People also download porn from the internet. Block internet access for everyone except research scientists? (as if *they* don't.....)
People buy bootlegged VCD's and DVD's. Outlaw DVD players?
How far can these people go trying to block off new technology, just to protect their profits? Napster was inherently an mp3-sharing service, which made the RIAA's case strong. But Gnutella isn't a music sharing service; it's a *file* sharing service. If I want to share a Word document with someone across the Internet, should I be disallowed just because a *possible* use of this service is the illegal download of songs?
The RIAA wil try that anyway, though; somehow "Logic" is just not as good an argument as "Oodles of Cold, hard cash" is. And the courts allow them to get away with it, too. If I want to record my own voice on a blank cassette and pass it around to friends, the Recording Association gets a part of what I pay for that cassette, just because copying music is one of the major uses of blank tapes.
And now we hear that ARIA may get a blanket payment from the CD-copying kiosks opening up in Australia. Whether I copy music, software, my own documents or photos of me doesn't matter; let's just assume that I'm pirating music, for argument's sake.
The question is, why do we let them get away with it?