"Come on, how many icons and groupings can a default win2k have wrong? I doubt they have 10,000 help pages."
Doesn't sound like ya know, does it? I don't know how you can leap from an "I doubt" comment to a "this is clearly..." statement.
"This is why Windoze 2000 can't run more than a few days in a row."
Funny, I had a home-made Tivo running Windows 2000 that had an average up-time of 3 months. I've got an NT4 Exchange Server that's been up for 80 days here. We used to have an IIS webserver running gon NT4. It was up for well over 6 months. We never needed to restart it, but we did have to physically move it a couple of times. My desktop machine has been running for about 13 days now. It'd have gone longer but my UPS is flaking out on me. Not bad for a machine that I do 3D animation and play games on.
" Trust your observations to tell you that software simply sucks."
Think I'd be defending 2K if I had 'observed' that the software 'simply sucks'?
"Balderdash! Windows2000 runs on intel 386. Wince runs on ARM. That's it. What do you think this is, free software that's compiled to specific x86 processor families, Motorola, ARM, Alpha, "
A machine is not a processor, it's a complete setup. Never heard of the old "Windows is on 90% of desktops" stastic before?
"you will always be at the mercy of the service patch that requires you to give up hope of privacy."
Actually, if you had read the EULA instead of going by the sensationalized Slashdot version of it, you'd know that the purpose isn't for MS to go sniffin around your machine. The reason it's there is to support a number of the features they added to Windows to deal with the virus problems that have been plaguing it. Go read it.
"Pull your head out of your closed source place please."
I would suggest you do a little thinking on your own instead of repeating all the stuff you've heard on Slashdot that gets modded +5 Insightful.
"Free software has fewer bugs and does more than any dinky windoze distro will ever. "
That's a myth. I'll give the Open Source community credit for responding to bugs in a timely manner, but you need to face facts that Open Source Software is rarely both well designed and bug free. Run a few commercial apps in front of an ordinary user and then run a few free apps in front of an ordinary user, most of the time he or she will be able to tell you which is which. "well, the commercial one seems to be friendlier to me while the free one is confusing to use."
" The complextiy you are thinking of is a legacy of all the dirty tricks M$ used over the years to kill of software rivals. That does not exist in free software and never will. "
Yeah, that's scientific. Heh.
"This is why free software PCs don't have to be turned off until the power fails."
Riiiiiiiight. We'll see how stable your Linux machine gets when games start becoming available. You'll find out just how 'rock-solid' it is then. Linux machines are not being used like Windows machines are, so drawing comparisons like that is not very informative.
Nice bit of Linux propoganda tho. Bucking for a +5 Insightful?:)
You're talking about processors, I'm talking about general hardware. Linux certainly deserves praise for being portable, however, it has not been run on near as much hardware as Windows has. Few companies make mass-market type PC products for anything but Windows.
Note: I'm not saying Linux won't run on as much stuff as Windows. I'm saying that Windows, because it's the de-facto standard out there, has the most hardware made for it. Sorry to bring it up.
Lik-Sang will also provide a velco mod for your GB to attach the GameBoy to the palms of their Winding Handle Charger customers. "We were very surprised at how many of these customers had the right amount of hair on their palms to make the velcro mod work."
"The Scary part is, I've found Win2000 to be the most stable and reliable Windows ever released. 63,000 defects?"
I wouldn't read too deeply into the 63,000 number of defects figure without considering a few things:
- A defect does not always mean "Will cause Windows BSOD". Some defects are an interpretation of a problem. Fictional example: "Defect #24013: There's a post-it note icon on Internet Explorer 6 that is mileading. It looks like the notes icon in Outlook 2000." A lot of them are probably design considerations.
- 63,000 is a huge number, but you have to remember that Windows runs on a very broad range of machines. Not only that, but there are tons and tons of people running it who are supplying defect reports.
- We each only use a small part of Windows. You'll probably never know if there's a bug in the Win32 API unless you're a programmer.
I wouldn't these types of statistics too seriously. There'll be a day when Linux has that many defects, if it doesn't already. All it takes is complexity.
"No one has yet mentioned security, but it will be a big problem."
No one has yet mentioned that not everything made for Windows is available on Linux. A computer, no matter how secure, is useful at all if it doesn't run what you need it to run.
Since we don't have the details about what prompted the decision, I don't see what all this judgement is about.
" I have produced lengthy evidence which you have chosen to ignore..."
Psst. No you didn't.
You're really full of shit, you know that? Here you are, calling NG an idiot, and lying through your teeth throughout it all. Ironically, if you were to call yourself a fucking idiot, I wouldn't come to your defense!
"If I understand you correctly, your basis for this whole argument is this:"
Yep, you pretty much nailed it. If the customers are being strongarmed, then how can their reaction be actually considered 'stealing'? I've been thinking about your arguments and in one way I can find myself agreeing with you, but in another sense I see a difference. I could see it as stealing in the sense that they're taking without giving, and then making the concept of doing this available without educating the people they're sharing with. At some point, people will just see free music and not think about the larger conflict. Habit forming? On the other hand, though, the consumers have built something that is causing the RIAA to have to actually compete with. They're filling in a void that nobody else is managing to do. In that case, it seems more like the RIAA is getting back what it dished out. If somebody steals a loaf of my bread, so I steal a loaf of their bread, am I a thief? The answer to that is either yes or no depending on how you weigh it. I think that sort of explains why we're having trouble coming to an agreement.
"A staunch capitalist would reply that consumers aren't forced into buying the music, thus they are not being strongarmed...with the current barriers to entry for startup labels and with the fact that nearly *everyone* needs music "
Would they? It seems to me like common sense in the economic world. Granted, I'm no economy expert, but when I think about the way the RIAA is dealing with this issue I'm surprised they could be making such a bone-headed mistake. If the consumers can put together a huge network to trade music with, why couldn't a company or even a new organization do that? Seems to me that they face this problem either way, forcing it to be illegal will open the door for new independent artists to rise. Bye bye RIAA either way. What they should be doing is competing with the net instead of fighting with it. They would insure their survival with that approach.
"1) I do not have a moral problem sampling their music or even downloading and keeping entire CDs without paying for them."
I'm seriously curious about how many indie artists are getting stolen from. I've never been able to find out about this. If a band puts music on the web for download and then asks for payment for it, I wonder how many people stop and thing "Yes I want to pay this person, I think it's only fair."? I think people are honest. I think they'll pay for stuff. And when they acquire something but aren't given a fair way to pay for it, they don't see it as their fault. Why can't I send a list of songs to the RIAA and get a royalty estimate I can pay for?
"You got me to take things I'd already known and really put together the big picture: these folks are as bad as Microsoft (the similarities are stunning, no?)."
Well, the way I see it, if you have a little more insight into why somebody would download music, then I'm satisfied. To say they're as bad as Microsoft is probably a different conversation. I personally think the the RIAA is worse than MS.
This post would probably double in length if I explained why, so I'll give you two simple examples of what MS does right that the RIAA does not.
1.) MS isn't trying to make Linux illegal. Now I'll grant you they've made moves that'd make Linux harder to adopt, but the flip side of that equation is that the competition will ultimately make Linux a better product. (or MS'll have to improve.)
2.) Despite MS being a monopoly, they're still moving. XP is a huge update from 2K. 2k is a much better product than 98. (Too bad they released ME. That OS was awful.) Then, there's things such as optical mice, Tablet/PocketPCs, and a bunch of other things that MS has pushed through which has caused the market to keep growing.
Yep, MS did shitty stuff, but when has the RIAA done anything besides sell overpriced CDs? Heck, we're just now getti
"Are they breaking the law if they have a disclaimer that says you must own this CD to download it?"
Probably. I don't know this for fact, but I do know that the RIAA wouldn't like such an obvious loophole.
"What are your thoughts on those?"
I'm an artist. One day, I will release my own animated series. I care about copyright. So what do I think about people who make stuff available and educate the user on the conditions of downloading stuff? I think it's great!
Here's what bothers me about the RIAA's approach with P2P: They're treating the symptom, but not the problem. The problem, as they see it, is that people are downloading instead of buying. (Note: That's questionable. I can't help but think a lot of people are downloading music just because they hate the RIAA now.) They're trying to make it impossible to trade music files, but they're not trying to find out why on earth somebody'd want to download music instead of paying for it.
Let's say I make a series. Let's say you have to go to the store and buy episodes of my series on DVD. Let's say that the series is reasonable successful, but there are quite a few people downloading DivX rips of it. Should I crack down on that and start using anti-ripping technologies? My answer is no. I don't think everybody downloading rips of the series was a sale that could have happened. Some of those people are downloading the DivX copy because they want a backup of their disc. Some people have lost or damaged the disc and don't feel they should need to buy another one. Some people can't afford the price. Some people can afford the price, but can't afford it if they don't like it. If I only launch it in the USA, then some people simply cannot buy it. Some people are just shitheads and will do anything to save a buck.
Now, when broken down like that, it seems there are problems that I can fix. Need a backup of your disc? If it doesn't cost me anything for you to find a copy, heck go for it. I want you to be satisified. You're buying content, not a pretty shiny disc. Can't afford it? Are my prices too high? Okay, show me a student ID and I'll knock n% off. Don't live in an area where you can buy it? Damn, I better work on my distribution.
The sale of DVDs would be important, but repeat business would be even more imporant. If I have to compete with internet piracy, then I have to consider that I'm not offering enough value to my customers. The idea of forcing them to pay for it seems like a huge waste of money. Why would I sue a pirate? No matter what the judgement is for, there's no realistic way that I'll collect any significant money from them. Worse, if I sue somebody satisfying my audience, what kind of damage can I expect from that?
So, to answer your question, I really don't have a problem with people sharing content. Heck, if they're saying "The only way you can do this legally is if you already have paid for it", then they're already doing more to educate the user than the RIAA is. Meanwhile, they're providing an avenue for legitimate downloaders to explore. In my case, I'd secretly like to have them around. If my series is good, then people will buy it just because they don't want to wait a few days for the internet version to be availalbe. Those who are curious about what the hype is about can go find out about it at no expense, not even to me! Bitchin!
"does anyone remember the fact that only months after this suit was filed, more(CNN December 1997) than (CNN September 1997) one postal worker opened fire on his co-workers?"
It's overlooked because it's doubtful any of those dudes are playing the games.
Maybe I'm just a little too close to it, but I don't really see a correlation here. My dad works for the post office, and from what he tells me, it's basically a breeding ground for this type of behaviour. He tells me a LOT of stories of management really making life tough for employees.
For example, they switched to a metric time system that everybody has a hard time reading. Despite this, you still have to clock in within so many seconds of the start of your shift. The margin of error was like 90 seconds. So if your start time was 9 am, you had to clock in between 9:00 am and 9:01:30 am. You cannot clock in early because they're not going to pay you to work longer, and they're not going to let you leave before the time you're scheduled to leave.
It sounds Dilbertian, right? The problem is that we're not talking about dimwittedness here, we're talking about flat-out hostility. It doesn't help that they typically attract job applicants who are fascinated with guns.
"If it was about money, they would sue the DOWNLOADERS."
It's not as simple as that. If it were to come down to suing the people downloading the music, then the resulting court case would rock the RIAA's oligopolistic (sp?) boat. A few arguments could be made in their defense:
- RIAA's not responding to supply and demand, nor does it have the competition to light a fire under it to do so.
- Prices too high. No option to buy individual songs.
- No education about music trading legalities. (No "FBI Warning" like movies have, for example.)
- No way to find out what's on the CD before buying it.
- No way to return unsatisfactory music.
- Copy protection schemes that prevent people from using what they've purchased.
I'm not saying these are right or wrong, just saying they're defenses. The Uploaders are definitely violating the law just by making the content available. The Downloaders, though, are in a gray area that's not necessarily a slam dunk.
"I judge based only on the information I am presented with."
You judge with incomplete information? I personally wouldn't brag about that. Afterall, what do you think somebody would think of you who calls people 'fucking idiots' repeatedly? That's really all the information I have about you, so would you like me to make a judgement based solely on that?
"When was the last time you used KDE? When was the last time you used OSX? Windows XP is harder to use than both."
Um, no, XP still kicks KDE's butt from the "I've never used a computer before" point of view. Problem number one is that too many choices come up when you go to run programs. Worse, a lot of them begin with K. KOffice. Killustrator. Kedit. Konqueror. Etc. I'm familiar with how a computer works and I had a terrible time learning what the various apps do. Painful.
Problem #2 is that system configuration is harder to decipher. I couldn't believe how hard it was to change the resolution on my RedHat box! I had to log in as root and then run KDE. WTF?
Now I will give the KDE team credit, they've improved considerably over the years. If somebody from the not-too-distant future were to say to me "KDE's interface will beat Microsoft's", I wouldn't be stunned at all. But I do take issue with your comment about XP's interface being harder to use than KDE. I've watched people try to adjust to KDE from both 2K and XP. All I can say is that I'm glad I'm not one of them.
"Just tell me how fast Lightwave renders. That is where time actually equals money for me."
Quake benchmarks to compare CPUs always amuse me. Faster framerates are a video card upgrade away. Processor, though it affects overall performance, is not the component of the machine that keeps you up to date.
" Still, I think you'll agree, this is taking material against the wishes of the seller who says "You want to listen? You buy the whole thing." They might not take a loss for your download if you would have never bought it in the first place, but it still is taking something without permission, which I would equate to stealing. That said, I think sampling is perfectly fine.
I might side with that argument if not for a couple of things. You cannot take an opened CD back if you don't like it. Also, I it isn't appropriate to sell a customer something where he doesn't realize what he's getting. The seller is trying to take advantage of you. Are you stealing, or are you finding out what you get into?
So is that stealing? I'd be happy to call it violating the ToS, but stealing still implies loss to the the seller. What the seller lost was his chance to sell you something you may or may not like. I think you make a good argument, but it's hard to imagine MP3 trading getting off the ground if buying music wasn't a painful experience. Think about the dial-up days. 15-60 minutes to download a single song?
"You can't take a few skittles out of a bag, not pay for the bag and not call it theft."
There's a small problem with your argument. 1.) You only need to taste one Skittle (or maybe the whole rainbow, I don't remember if each color tastes different or not) to know what the rest of them taste like. Also, read the Skittles package. It says "if you find this candy to be unsatisfactory, return the unused portion for a refund." (Note: I don't know if it says this today, but most candy bars at least used to say that.
Also, there is plenty of competition in the candy market. As a result, prices are satisifactory to the customer. There's little need for people to take a few Skittles, eat them, and not pay for anything. And, to top it all off, a package of candy was opened. That package cannot be sold, so a measureable loss befell the seller.
Yes, your example describes theft. However, I'd argue that with you if:
a.) The candy companies banded together and said "we only sell 5 lb bags of candy @ $30 a pop."
b.) Skittles was constantly introducing new flavors, some of which could make you gag.
c.) You could duplicate some skittles without taking any of their inventory.
"It all rolls back into, "How much control of a product should a corporation have?" Off-hand, I'd say all of it."
Assuming they're operating fairly, yes. However, the RIAA is best described as an oligopoly. As such, the ideals of a free market won't level their business plan into fairness. In this case, the market demonstrated demand (compressed music delivered by individual songs) and the oligopoly felt no need to move to address it. It took somebody like Apple to come along and make it a business.
In other words, I feel that a business should have control, provided they are fair to their customers. The RIAA should be able to say "you can only buy albums", provided they have competition that says "we won't screw you like that". The RIAA should NOT be able to say "You cannot do research on what you're buying."
"However, if you break the CD, you have to buy another licence in many cases."
Ridiculous, isn't it? They can't decide what they want to make it, so they just grab both. Somehow, they managed to get the leverage to do this. Incidentally, you've just described another legit use of P2P. (Not that I feel you're against it, but I was afraid to bring up that point before.) A friend of mine had all her CDs stolen. What she licensed was IP, but it's invalid without the plastic? WTF? "Oh you can just re-purchase it all."
"I wonder if you could pay a minimal fee to get a replacement disk? Many companies offer this."
Actually, I did contact them on this. It would have been roughly $20 (that included S&H btw), but it would have been several days before recieving it. I
"I suppose our definition of "copyright violation" differs. Please correct me if I am in the legal wrong for IANAL, but if you've bought a CD, downloading the tracks is legal by the fair use act. Maybe not by the DMCA (indirectly), but that's not a copyright violation, per se. Am I misunderstanding you?"
Yes, I was alluding to your reference, but I'll warn you right now that I may be in the wrong. I'm not clear on what the DMCA says about downloading Mp3s. It's been explained to me that making them available on-line is a violation of the DMCA. At one point I did read through it, but the legalese blurred itself up in my head.
However, I need to clarify my point a little more. Even if the DMCA says "You cannot download a copyrighted MP3 for any reason without expressed consent of the copyright holder", it's still not stealing. Is it a violation of the law? Oh absolutely, I don't mean to imply otherwise. However, to do something that actually equates to stealing, you have to do more than download an Mp3. You have to download all the Mp3s in the album, since the RIAA does not sell individual songs much anymore. (Mp3s did kill of singles.) If you don't download the songs in the album, then you've only really got an excerpt. (The RIAA would have had a much stronger case had they had a lot more singles available...)
Then, there's the whole matter of whether or not you'd actually buy the song. Thanks to the lack of a satisfaction guaranteed return policies, people are afraid to sink money into albums. Mp3s are very attractive in that case because you could download music you'd never thought of before and see how you like it. That's not stealing, that's sampling. The RIAA takes 0 loss but gains free visibility and consideration for that. That's one thing that really irks me about the numbers that the RIAA has published about how many songs are being traded. It's ridiculous to think that people actually keep all the songs they download. It's even more ridiculous to think that they'd actually buy all those CDs, even if they had an infinite amount of money.
Stealing implies that the RIAA didn't recieve money. With P2P music trading, that is not an absolute case. Not every Mp3 represents money the RIAA would ordinarily have made. A lot of Mp3 downloads have strong potential (provided the artists live up to their end) to turn into revenue either directly or indirectly. Only in a few cases could one describe the Mp3 downloads as 'stealing'. Even then, that line is blurred. If people are willing to buy $400 iPods, then they're willing to spend the money, they just want the overall best deal. In that case, is 'stealing' really a justifiable term?
"True. I agree. I've downloaded a few myself and don't buy CDs. That said, downloading something without paying for it is still stealing, regardless of how moral it is. That said (meh), in this case, I still don't mind stealing from theifs."
I wouldn't call you a theif over it until the RIAA put out a service that'd fill the common demand. If it cost the RIAA money (like bandwidth or something) for me to download an Mp3, then yeah I'd reluctantly agree. In this case, though, the RIAA has flat out rejected consumer demand and used it's monopoly to make sure we get gouged. The way this market is supposed to work is competition. P2P provides competition for the RIAA and could potentially put it into check. Maybe I just have delusions of grandure.;) I just don't think this would have happened if the RIAA actually had competition in the marketplace. I think somebody would have come along and did what Apple is doing back in 97.
" a large limitation falls to the sheer size of the game."
Yes, you're right. There's also cracking the game and concern over virus potential. However, there are a ton of DVD's and TV shows that barely fit on CD out there. Games were really hard to come by. I scratched my GTA3 CD and wanted to download a cracked versio
Slashdot Mirror
"Come on, how many icons and groupings can a default win2k have wrong? I doubt they have 10,000 help pages."
:)
Doesn't sound like ya know, does it? I don't know how you can leap from an "I doubt" comment to a "this is clearly..." statement.
"This is why Windoze 2000 can't run more than a few days in a row."
Funny, I had a home-made Tivo running Windows 2000 that had an average up-time of 3 months. I've got an NT4 Exchange Server that's been up for 80 days here. We used to have an IIS webserver running gon NT4. It was up for well over 6 months. We never needed to restart it, but we did have to physically move it a couple of times. My desktop machine has been running for about 13 days now. It'd have gone longer but my UPS is flaking out on me. Not bad for a machine that I do 3D animation and play games on.
" Trust your observations to tell you that software simply sucks."
Think I'd be defending 2K if I had 'observed' that the software 'simply sucks'?
"Balderdash! Windows2000 runs on intel 386. Wince runs on ARM. That's it. What do you think this is, free software that's compiled to specific x86 processor families, Motorola, ARM, Alpha, "
A machine is not a processor, it's a complete setup. Never heard of the old "Windows is on 90% of desktops" stastic before?
"you will always be at the mercy of the service patch that requires you to give up hope of privacy."
Actually, if you had read the EULA instead of going by the sensationalized Slashdot version of it, you'd know that the purpose isn't for MS to go sniffin around your machine. The reason it's there is to support a number of the features they added to Windows to deal with the virus problems that have been plaguing it. Go read it.
"Pull your head out of your closed source place please."
I would suggest you do a little thinking on your own instead of repeating all the stuff you've heard on Slashdot that gets modded +5 Insightful.
"Free software has fewer bugs and does more than any dinky windoze distro will ever. "
That's a myth. I'll give the Open Source community credit for responding to bugs in a timely manner, but you need to face facts that Open Source Software is rarely both well designed and bug free. Run a few commercial apps in front of an ordinary user and then run a few free apps in front of an ordinary user, most of the time he or she will be able to tell you which is which. "well, the commercial one seems to be friendlier to me while the free one is confusing to use."
" The complextiy you are thinking of is a legacy of all the dirty tricks M$ used over the years to kill of software rivals. That does not exist in free software and never will. "
Yeah, that's scientific. Heh.
"This is why free software PCs don't have to be turned off until the power fails."
Riiiiiiiight. We'll see how stable your Linux machine gets when games start becoming available. You'll find out just how 'rock-solid' it is then. Linux machines are not being used like Windows machines are, so drawing comparisons like that is not very informative.
Nice bit of Linux propoganda tho. Bucking for a +5 Insightful?
You're talking about processors, I'm talking about general hardware. Linux certainly deserves praise for being portable, however, it has not been run on near as much hardware as Windows has. Few companies make mass-market type PC products for anything but Windows.
Note: I'm not saying Linux won't run on as much stuff as Windows. I'm saying that Windows, because it's the de-facto standard out there, has the most hardware made for it. Sorry to bring it up.
"Is emergency game boy power worth the 10 minutes of wrist stress?"
Let the customers decide that.
"Get another damned battery."
I personally remember how nasty the battery problem was while camping with my parents. Rechargables helped, but were still problematic.
It's a niche product for a niche customer. Don't get excited over it.
On a side note, I agree with your sig. I'm sick of getting modded 'off-topic' when responding to somebody who didn't get modded down.
Lik-Sang will also provide a velco mod for your GB to attach the GameBoy to the palms of their Winding Handle Charger customers. "We were very surprised at how many of these customers had the right amount of hair on their palms to make the velcro mod work."
"The Scary part is, I've found Win2000 to be the most stable and reliable Windows ever released. 63,000 defects?"
I wouldn't read too deeply into the 63,000 number of defects figure without considering a few things:
- A defect does not always mean "Will cause Windows BSOD". Some defects are an interpretation of a problem. Fictional example: "Defect #24013: There's a post-it note icon on Internet Explorer 6 that is mileading. It looks like the notes icon in Outlook 2000." A lot of them are probably design considerations.
- 63,000 is a huge number, but you have to remember that Windows runs on a very broad range of machines. Not only that, but there are tons and tons of people running it who are supplying defect reports.
- We each only use a small part of Windows. You'll probably never know if there's a bug in the Win32 API unless you're a programmer.
I wouldn't these types of statistics too seriously. There'll be a day when Linux has that many defects, if it doesn't already. All it takes is complexity.
If you did, it's obscure. I'm not spotting it. I see you saying you have evidence, but nothing lengthy like you claim.
"I would rather have that laptop for four years then burn through two PDAs over the same period of time."
That would be awfully hard on your pocket.
"Now, if only we could breed, we would rule the world! "
Oh please. Like any of you would stop at breeding once. "Better milk this one while I can!"
"...real-life adventures compared to card games with mis-understood analogies."
A friend of mine learned that the other day when he said "hit me!"
"No one has yet mentioned security, but it will be a big problem."
No one has yet mentioned that not everything made for Windows is available on Linux. A computer, no matter how secure, is useful at all if it doesn't run what you need it to run.
Since we don't have the details about what prompted the decision, I don't see what all this judgement is about.
" I have produced lengthy evidence which you have chosen to ignore..."
Psst. No you didn't.
You're really full of shit, you know that? Here you are, calling NG an idiot, and lying through your teeth throughout it all. Ironically, if you were to call yourself a fucking idiot, I wouldn't come to your defense!
"If I understand you correctly, your basis for this whole argument is this:"
Yep, you pretty much nailed it. If the customers are being strongarmed, then how can their reaction be actually considered 'stealing'? I've been thinking about your arguments and in one way I can find myself agreeing with you, but in another sense I see a difference. I could see it as stealing in the sense that they're taking without giving, and then making the concept of doing this available without educating the people they're sharing with. At some point, people will just see free music and not think about the larger conflict. Habit forming? On the other hand, though, the consumers have built something that is causing the RIAA to have to actually compete with. They're filling in a void that nobody else is managing to do. In that case, it seems more like the RIAA is getting back what it dished out. If somebody steals a loaf of my bread, so I steal a loaf of their bread, am I a thief? The answer to that is either yes or no depending on how you weigh it. I think that sort of explains why we're having trouble coming to an agreement.
"A staunch capitalist would reply that consumers aren't forced into buying the music, thus they are not being strongarmed...with the current barriers to entry for startup labels and with the fact that nearly *everyone* needs music "
Would they? It seems to me like common sense in the economic world. Granted, I'm no economy expert, but when I think about the way the RIAA is dealing with this issue I'm surprised they could be making such a bone-headed mistake. If the consumers can put together a huge network to trade music with, why couldn't a company or even a new organization do that? Seems to me that they face this problem either way, forcing it to be illegal will open the door for new independent artists to rise. Bye bye RIAA either way. What they should be doing is competing with the net instead of fighting with it. They would insure their survival with that approach.
"1) I do not have a moral problem sampling their music or even downloading and keeping entire CDs without paying for them."
I'm seriously curious about how many indie artists are getting stolen from. I've never been able to find out about this. If a band puts music on the web for download and then asks for payment for it, I wonder how many people stop and thing "Yes I want to pay this person, I think it's only fair."? I think people are honest. I think they'll pay for stuff. And when they acquire something but aren't given a fair way to pay for it, they don't see it as their fault. Why can't I send a list of songs to the RIAA and get a royalty estimate I can pay for?
"You got me to take things I'd already known and really put together the big picture: these folks are as bad as Microsoft (the similarities are stunning, no?)."
Well, the way I see it, if you have a little more insight into why somebody would download music, then I'm satisfied. To say they're as bad as Microsoft is probably a different conversation. I personally think the the RIAA is worse than MS.
This post would probably double in length if I explained why, so I'll give you two simple examples of what MS does right that the RIAA does not.
1.) MS isn't trying to make Linux illegal. Now I'll grant you they've made moves that'd make Linux harder to adopt, but the flip side of that equation is that the competition will ultimately make Linux a better product. (or MS'll have to improve.)
2.) Despite MS being a monopoly, they're still moving. XP is a huge update from 2K. 2k is a much better product than 98. (Too bad they released ME. That OS was awful.) Then, there's things such as optical mice, Tablet/PocketPCs, and a bunch of other things that MS has pushed through which has caused the market to keep growing.
Yep, MS did shitty stuff, but when has the RIAA done anything besides sell overpriced CDs? Heck, we're just now getti
"Are they breaking the law if they have a disclaimer that says you must own this CD to download it?"
Probably. I don't know this for fact, but I do know that the RIAA wouldn't like such an obvious loophole.
"What are your thoughts on those?"
I'm an artist. One day, I will release my own animated series. I care about copyright. So what do I think about people who make stuff available and educate the user on the conditions of downloading stuff? I think it's great!
Here's what bothers me about the RIAA's approach with P2P: They're treating the symptom, but not the problem. The problem, as they see it, is that people are downloading instead of buying. (Note: That's questionable. I can't help but think a lot of people are downloading music just because they hate the RIAA now.) They're trying to make it impossible to trade music files, but they're not trying to find out why on earth somebody'd want to download music instead of paying for it.
Let's say I make a series. Let's say you have to go to the store and buy episodes of my series on DVD. Let's say that the series is reasonable successful, but there are quite a few people downloading DivX rips of it. Should I crack down on that and start using anti-ripping technologies? My answer is no. I don't think everybody downloading rips of the series was a sale that could have happened. Some of those people are downloading the DivX copy because they want a backup of their disc. Some people have lost or damaged the disc and don't feel they should need to buy another one. Some people can't afford the price. Some people can afford the price, but can't afford it if they don't like it. If I only launch it in the USA, then some people simply cannot buy it. Some people are just shitheads and will do anything to save a buck.
Now, when broken down like that, it seems there are problems that I can fix. Need a backup of your disc? If it doesn't cost me anything for you to find a copy, heck go for it. I want you to be satisified. You're buying content, not a pretty shiny disc. Can't afford it? Are my prices too high? Okay, show me a student ID and I'll knock n% off. Don't live in an area where you can buy it? Damn, I better work on my distribution.
The sale of DVDs would be important, but repeat business would be even more imporant. If I have to compete with internet piracy, then I have to consider that I'm not offering enough value to my customers. The idea of forcing them to pay for it seems like a huge waste of money. Why would I sue a pirate? No matter what the judgement is for, there's no realistic way that I'll collect any significant money from them. Worse, if I sue somebody satisfying my audience, what kind of damage can I expect from that?
So, to answer your question, I really don't have a problem with people sharing content. Heck, if they're saying "The only way you can do this legally is if you already have paid for it", then they're already doing more to educate the user than the RIAA is. Meanwhile, they're providing an avenue for legitimate downloaders to explore. In my case, I'd secretly like to have them around. If my series is good, then people will buy it just because they don't want to wait a few days for the internet version to be availalbe. Those who are curious about what the hype is about can go find out about it at no expense, not even to me! Bitchin!
"does anyone remember the fact that only months after this suit was filed, more(CNN December 1997) than (CNN September 1997) one postal worker opened fire on his co-workers?"
It's overlooked because it's doubtful any of those dudes are playing the games.
Maybe I'm just a little too close to it, but I don't really see a correlation here. My dad works for the post office, and from what he tells me, it's basically a breeding ground for this type of behaviour. He tells me a LOT of stories of management really making life tough for employees.
For example, they switched to a metric time system that everybody has a hard time reading. Despite this, you still have to clock in within so many seconds of the start of your shift. The margin of error was like 90 seconds. So if your start time was 9 am, you had to clock in between 9:00 am and 9:01:30 am. You cannot clock in early because they're not going to pay you to work longer, and they're not going to let you leave before the time you're scheduled to leave.
It sounds Dilbertian, right? The problem is that we're not talking about dimwittedness here, we're talking about flat-out hostility. It doesn't help that they typically attract job applicants who are fascinated with guns.
" GTA3 is probably the 'edgiest' game that has managed to provide a good gaming experience (although I'm open to hearing about others)."
Vice City!
"If it was about money, they would sue the DOWNLOADERS."
It's not as simple as that. If it were to come down to suing the people downloading the music, then the resulting court case would rock the RIAA's oligopolistic (sp?) boat. A few arguments could be made in their defense:
- RIAA's not responding to supply and demand, nor does it have the competition to light a fire under it to do so.
- Prices too high. No option to buy individual songs.
- No education about music trading legalities. (No "FBI Warning" like movies have, for example.)
- No way to find out what's on the CD before buying it.
- No way to return unsatisfactory music.
- Copy protection schemes that prevent people from using what they've purchased.
I'm not saying these are right or wrong, just saying they're defenses. The Uploaders are definitely violating the law just by making the content available. The Downloaders, though, are in a gray area that's not necessarily a slam dunk.
"I judge based only on the information I am presented with."
You judge with incomplete information? I personally wouldn't brag about that. Afterall, what do you think somebody would think of you who calls people 'fucking idiots' repeatedly? That's really all the information I have about you, so would you like me to make a judgement based solely on that?
"Why cant we try to use Wine or something like it to trick the Xbox into running the Microsoft gaming live software from withinn Linux?"
RAM, output, and interface limitations? Do you really want to run Quake in swap mode on a 720 by 480 interlaced screen with an XBOX controller?
"When was the last time you used KDE? When was the last time you used OSX? Windows XP is harder to use than both."
Um, no, XP still kicks KDE's butt from the "I've never used a computer before" point of view. Problem number one is that too many choices come up when you go to run programs. Worse, a lot of them begin with K. KOffice. Killustrator. Kedit. Konqueror. Etc. I'm familiar with how a computer works and I had a terrible time learning what the various apps do. Painful.
Problem #2 is that system configuration is harder to decipher. I couldn't believe how hard it was to change the resolution on my RedHat box! I had to log in as root and then run KDE. WTF?
Now I will give the KDE team credit, they've improved considerably over the years. If somebody from the not-too-distant future were to say to me "KDE's interface will beat Microsoft's", I wouldn't be stunned at all. But I do take issue with your comment about XP's interface being harder to use than KDE. I've watched people try to adjust to KDE from both 2K and XP. All I can say is that I'm glad I'm not one of them.
"Just tell me how fast Lightwave renders. That is where time actually equals money for me."
Quake benchmarks to compare CPUs always amuse me. Faster framerates are a video card upgrade away. Processor, though it affects overall performance, is not the component of the machine that keeps you up to date.
Open Source: The re-writing of already released software in order to avoid paying for it.
Man I hope people are in good humor today.
"Antitrust beat the hell out of movies like Hackers and The Net."
Yeah, afterall any movie that illustrates Bill Gates being arrested and Microsoft going down the tubes is bound to be considered a 'good movie' here.
" Still, I think you'll agree, this is taking material against the wishes of the seller who says "You want to listen? You buy the whole thing." They might not take a loss for your download if you would have never bought it in the first place, but it still is taking something without permission, which I would equate to stealing. That said, I think sampling is perfectly fine.
I might side with that argument if not for a couple of things. You cannot take an opened CD back if you don't like it. Also, I it isn't appropriate to sell a customer something where he doesn't realize what he's getting. The seller is trying to take advantage of you. Are you stealing, or are you finding out what you get into?
So is that stealing? I'd be happy to call it violating the ToS, but stealing still implies loss to the the seller. What the seller lost was his chance to sell you something you may or may not like. I think you make a good argument, but it's hard to imagine MP3 trading getting off the ground if buying music wasn't a painful experience. Think about the dial-up days. 15-60 minutes to download a single song?
"You can't take a few skittles out of a bag, not pay for the bag and not call it theft."
There's a small problem with your argument. 1.) You only need to taste one Skittle (or maybe the whole rainbow, I don't remember if each color tastes different or not) to know what the rest of them taste like. Also, read the Skittles package. It says "if you find this candy to be unsatisfactory, return the unused portion for a refund." (Note: I don't know if it says this today, but most candy bars at least used to say that.
Also, there is plenty of competition in the candy market. As a result, prices are satisifactory to the customer. There's little need for people to take a few Skittles, eat them, and not pay for anything. And, to top it all off, a package of candy was opened. That package cannot be sold, so a measureable loss befell the seller.
Yes, your example describes theft. However, I'd argue that with you if:
a.) The candy companies banded together and said "we only sell 5 lb bags of candy @ $30 a pop."
b.) Skittles was constantly introducing new flavors, some of which could make you gag.
c.) You could duplicate some skittles without taking any of their inventory.
"It all rolls back into, "How much control of a product should a corporation have?" Off-hand, I'd say all of it."
Assuming they're operating fairly, yes. However, the RIAA is best described as an oligopoly. As such, the ideals of a free market won't level their business plan into fairness. In this case, the market demonstrated demand (compressed music delivered by individual songs) and the oligopoly felt no need to move to address it. It took somebody like Apple to come along and make it a business.
In other words, I feel that a business should have control, provided they are fair to their customers. The RIAA should be able to say "you can only buy albums", provided they have competition that says "we won't screw you like that". The RIAA should NOT be able to say "You cannot do research on what you're buying."
"However, if you break the CD, you have to buy another licence in many cases."
Ridiculous, isn't it? They can't decide what they want to make it, so they just grab both. Somehow, they managed to get the leverage to do this. Incidentally, you've just described another legit use of P2P. (Not that I feel you're against it, but I was afraid to bring up that point before.) A friend of mine had all her CDs stolen. What she licensed was IP, but it's invalid without the plastic? WTF? "Oh you can just re-purchase it all."
"I wonder if you could pay a minimal fee to get a replacement disk? Many companies offer this."
Actually, I did contact them on this. It would have been roughly $20 (that included S&H btw), but it would have been several days before recieving it. I
"why the fuck would I want to post anonymously?"
Because few numb-nutted loud mouthes want to protect their identity.
"You're a fucking idiot."
You're judging a dude you don't even know? Yeah, he is the idiot. Suuuuuuuuure.
"I suppose our definition of "copyright violation" differs. Please correct me if I am in the legal wrong for IANAL, but if you've bought a CD, downloading the tracks is legal by the fair use act. Maybe not by the DMCA (indirectly), but that's not a copyright violation, per se. Am I misunderstanding you?"
;) I just don't think this would have happened if the RIAA actually had competition in the marketplace. I think somebody would have come along and did what Apple is doing back in 97.
Yes, I was alluding to your reference, but I'll warn you right now that I may be in the wrong. I'm not clear on what the DMCA says about downloading Mp3s. It's been explained to me that making them available on-line is a violation of the DMCA. At one point I did read through it, but the legalese blurred itself up in my head.
However, I need to clarify my point a little more. Even if the DMCA says "You cannot download a copyrighted MP3 for any reason without expressed consent of the copyright holder", it's still not stealing. Is it a violation of the law? Oh absolutely, I don't mean to imply otherwise. However, to do something that actually equates to stealing, you have to do more than download an Mp3. You have to download all the Mp3s in the album, since the RIAA does not sell individual songs much anymore. (Mp3s did kill of singles.) If you don't download the songs in the album, then you've only really got an excerpt. (The RIAA would have had a much stronger case had they had a lot more singles available...)
Then, there's the whole matter of whether or not you'd actually buy the song. Thanks to the lack of a satisfaction guaranteed return policies, people are afraid to sink money into albums. Mp3s are very attractive in that case because you could download music you'd never thought of before and see how you like it. That's not stealing, that's sampling. The RIAA takes 0 loss but gains free visibility and consideration for that. That's one thing that really irks me about the numbers that the RIAA has published about how many songs are being traded. It's ridiculous to think that people actually keep all the songs they download. It's even more ridiculous to think that they'd actually buy all those CDs, even if they had an infinite amount of money.
Stealing implies that the RIAA didn't recieve money. With P2P music trading, that is not an absolute case. Not every Mp3 represents money the RIAA would ordinarily have made. A lot of Mp3 downloads have strong potential (provided the artists live up to their end) to turn into revenue either directly or indirectly. Only in a few cases could one describe the Mp3 downloads as 'stealing'. Even then, that line is blurred. If people are willing to buy $400 iPods, then they're willing to spend the money, they just want the overall best deal. In that case, is 'stealing' really a justifiable term?
"True. I agree. I've downloaded a few myself and don't buy CDs. That said, downloading something without paying for it is still stealing, regardless of how moral it is. That said (meh), in this case, I still don't mind stealing from theifs."
I wouldn't call you a theif over it until the RIAA put out a service that'd fill the common demand. If it cost the RIAA money (like bandwidth or something) for me to download an Mp3, then yeah I'd reluctantly agree. In this case, though, the RIAA has flat out rejected consumer demand and used it's monopoly to make sure we get gouged. The way this market is supposed to work is competition. P2P provides competition for the RIAA and could potentially put it into check. Maybe I just have delusions of grandure.
" a large limitation falls to the sheer size of the game."
Yes, you're right. There's also cracking the game and concern over virus potential. However, there are a ton of DVD's and TV shows that barely fit on CD out there. Games were really hard to come by. I scratched my GTA3 CD and wanted to download a cracked versio