The flaw with your analogy is that no one is losing money because of the action of the speeders. The violations you are referring to are criminal violations, and it's up to the govt. to determine whether or not Ford bears some responsibility for the action of the product user. People have tried to sue gun companies for deaths where their products were involved, but none have been successful, that I know of. In the case of Kazaa, they are profiting in a trade which can arguably show a direct correlation to loss of revenue by a copyright holder (which can be an individual like Paul McCarntney, not just the RIAA) due to illegal activity from their product. The same arguement was used to shut down Napster.
It's illegal to reverse engineer DVDs for the same reason it's illegal to reverse engineer prescription drugs. The company that developed the technology needs a reasonable amount of time to recover their R&D money. In the case of DVD players they are collecting royalties to recover their costs. Without this type of protection against reverse engineering, you kill incentive for developing this technology, since money can't be made, and therefore, the financial risk becomes too great for the reward. Eventually, the patent will run out, and it will be legal to have free DVD player software, assuming the DMCA is struck down, which goes way beyond the bounds of protecting copyright in my opinion.
What Kazaa does isn't legal. They make money from advertising. Advertisers pay them because lots of people use Kazaa. Most Kazaa users are trading illegal copyrighted material. Therefore, Kazaa is profiting from illegal activity. What they do is therefore illegal. They either need to work out a system whereby the copyright holders get a percentage of the take (which will never happen) or expect to be put out of business.
That lame comment gets modded up to 5. I think it's time slashdot comes up with a new unbiased moderation system. When there is a six point difference between telling George Bush to go fuck himself and Richard Stallman to go fuck himself, dispite the fact that both comment deserve a -1, it becomes pretty apparent that there is a need for change since this is not an isolated incident, but the norm around here.
Breaking laws that you disagree with is not a legitimate form of protest, regardless of what famous author espoused it. Such actions lead to anarchy. If you don't like a law, legitimate forms of protest include picketing, write congressmen, voting for different leadership, etc. Also, free Linux players should be illegal because you're not paying the developers of DVD the appropriate royalty. It discourages innovation when people steal technology from companies that spend money to develop that technology.
Regardless of what the DMCA says you can and cannot do, I wouldn't go against the RIAA on this one. To do so shows that you're not really interested in individual rights to crack media formats for fair use. Instead you look like your protecting piracy, since that's what this case is about. By going against the RIAA on this case, you're proving their point, i.e. that people don't like the DMCA because they want to freely share copyrighted material on the web. I think this is a bad message to send, and subverts the true reasons we are fighting against the DMCA.
One comment from a judge who hasn't made a ruling yet hardly seems newsworthy at all. Doesn't surprise me someone had to go searching to find this article. Of course this comment isn't anti-RIAA, so I will stay at 1 instead of getting modded up to 4.
The RIAA has the right to get the illegal activity stopped pending a court decision. I for one would rather have this stuff fast tracked than have my tax dollars spent paying judges to look at each case of p2p sharing of copyrighted music/movies.
This not about the DMCA (which I am opposed to) but about the rights of a bunch of companies to get together and decide how they want the pc of the future to look. As a consumer, you have the right to not buy it. The govt. shouldn't be involved at all. So your comment is basically off-topic.
Consumers have already shown they don't want pay per play. That's why DIVX is dead. They won't give up cds for DRM alone. Even if they wanted to, who gave you the right to tell them they can't. It's their product. They can sell it anyway they want.
I read the article. It is illegal to sell a product whose sole use is for an illegal activity. That's what the company selling the mod chips is doing. That's why MS is shutting them down. It's illegal.
Legal bs aside, if the the RIAA has sufficient evidence that someone on Verizon is sharing copyrighted material, they should be able to go to a juge, get a subpoena, and get the info from Verizon. This is no different than subponaeing phone records, etc.
If Russia did the same thing to the US, I doubt they would feel sorry for the criminal caught by Russia. Maybe they'd want 1st dibs on prosecuting him, but nothing more
What if people start incorporating open source software into proprietary code and violate the GPL? Not so ok anymore when the shoe is on the other foot. But when MS does it, everyone's up in arms.
If the slashdot community spent half as much time fighting music and movie piracy as they do bashing the RIAA/MPAA, maybe the proble would go away. They don't care about fair use, they care about piracy. If there were no piracy, there would be no DRM and DCMA. It costs the RIAA/MPAA a lot of money to support these types of things, and they wouldn't spend the money if they didn't think it would help them lose less revenue from lost sales.
Technology is not the issue. Enforcing copyright is. It is not any more legal to p2p mp3 files than to photocopy a friend's book. Just because technology makes it easier to steal something, doesn't make it right or legal. The RIAA shouldn't even have to worry about this stuff. It's the music pirates who have forced this on us. Why isn't anybody complaining about them? If they went away, so would DRM.
Class action lawsuits. That's assuming you can prove any real damage. Most people can't since they aren't losing revenue by not being able to surf the web. Besides, do you really think they are going to DoS people who aren't guilty? The only question is collateral damage, which is where the class action lawsuit comes in
How do you define bogus file. I think that statement only relates to DoS attacks. I doubt bogus files even count. How do you define bogus anyway? I'd like to see you go to court and tell the judge how you tried to illegally download a file and got spam about Britney Spears instead of the song of hers you wanted
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The flaw with your analogy is that no one is losing money because of the action of the speeders. The violations you are referring to are criminal violations, and it's up to the govt. to determine whether or not Ford bears some responsibility for the action of the product user. People have tried to sue gun companies for deaths where their products were involved, but none have been successful, that I know of. In the case of Kazaa, they are profiting in a trade which can arguably show a direct correlation to loss of revenue by a copyright holder (which can be an individual like Paul McCarntney, not just the RIAA) due to illegal activity from their product. The same arguement was used to shut down Napster.
It's illegal to reverse engineer DVDs for the same reason it's illegal to reverse engineer prescription drugs. The company that developed the technology needs a reasonable amount of time to recover their R&D money. In the case of DVD players they are collecting royalties to recover their costs. Without this type of protection against reverse engineering, you kill incentive for developing this technology, since money can't be made, and therefore, the financial risk becomes too great for the reward. Eventually, the patent will run out, and it will be legal to have free DVD player software, assuming the DMCA is struck down, which goes way beyond the bounds of protecting copyright in my opinion.
told you so.
What Kazaa does isn't legal. They make money from advertising. Advertisers pay them because lots of people use Kazaa. Most Kazaa users are trading illegal copyrighted material. Therefore, Kazaa is profiting from illegal activity. What they do is therefore illegal. They either need to work out a system whereby the copyright holders get a percentage of the take (which will never happen) or expect to be put out of business.
That lame comment gets modded up to 5. I think it's time slashdot comes up with a new unbiased moderation system. When there is a six point difference between telling George Bush to go fuck himself and Richard Stallman to go fuck himself, dispite the fact that both comment deserve a -1, it becomes pretty apparent that there is a need for change since this is not an isolated incident, but the norm around here.
Breaking laws that you disagree with is not a legitimate form of protest, regardless of what famous author espoused it. Such actions lead to anarchy. If you don't like a law, legitimate forms of protest include picketing, write congressmen, voting for different leadership, etc. Also, free Linux players should be illegal because you're not paying the developers of DVD the appropriate royalty. It discourages innovation when people steal technology from companies that spend money to develop that technology.
Regardless of what the DMCA says you can and cannot do, I wouldn't go against the RIAA on this one. To do so shows that you're not really interested in individual rights to crack media formats for fair use. Instead you look like your protecting piracy, since that's what this case is about. By going against the RIAA on this case, you're proving their point, i.e. that people don't like the DMCA because they want to freely share copyrighted material on the web. I think this is a bad message to send, and subverts the true reasons we are fighting against the DMCA.
One comment from a judge who hasn't made a ruling yet hardly seems newsworthy at all. Doesn't surprise me someone had to go searching to find this article. Of course this comment isn't anti-RIAA, so I will stay at 1 instead of getting modded up to 4.
Isn't this off topic? Slashdot moderators are biased. If this had been pro-Bush, he would've been modded down to -1 as a Troll.
The RIAA has the right to get the illegal activity stopped pending a court decision. I for one would rather have this stuff fast tracked than have my tax dollars spent paying judges to look at each case of p2p sharing of copyrighted music/movies.
The constitution says nothing about fair use, or copyright for that matter. These are simply laws considered in line with the constitution.
This not about the DMCA (which I am opposed to) but about the rights of a bunch of companies to get together and decide how they want the pc of the future to look. As a consumer, you have the right to not buy it. The govt. shouldn't be involved at all. So your comment is basically off-topic.
DoSing someone who's currenting sharing your copyrighted material p2p is hardly a week later.
Consumers have already shown they don't want pay per play. That's why DIVX is dead. They won't give up cds for DRM alone. Even if they wanted to, who gave you the right to tell them they can't. It's their product. They can sell it anyway they want.
I read the article. It is illegal to sell a product whose sole use is for an illegal activity. That's what the company selling the mod chips is doing. That's why MS is shutting them down. It's illegal.
Legal bs aside, if the the RIAA has sufficient evidence that someone on Verizon is sharing copyrighted material, they should be able to go to a juge, get a subpoena, and get the info from Verizon. This is no different than subponaeing phone records, etc.
If Russia did the same thing to the US, I doubt they would feel sorry for the criminal caught by Russia. Maybe they'd want 1st dibs on prosecuting him, but nothing more
What if people start incorporating open source software into proprietary code and violate the GPL? Not so ok anymore when the shoe is on the other foot. But when MS does it, everyone's up in arms.
Well, DRM isn't stopping anyone from doing that. CD's aren't encrypted and have no DRM management. Neither do mp3 files.
If that's so, why does an iPod cost so much more than a Rio player?
If the slashdot community spent half as much time fighting music and movie piracy as they do bashing the RIAA/MPAA, maybe the proble would go away. They don't care about fair use, they care about piracy. If there were no piracy, there would be no DRM and DCMA. It costs the RIAA/MPAA a lot of money to support these types of things, and they wouldn't spend the money if they didn't think it would help them lose less revenue from lost sales.
Technology is not the issue. Enforcing copyright is. It is not any more legal to p2p mp3 files than to photocopy a friend's book. Just because technology makes it easier to steal something, doesn't make it right or legal. The RIAA shouldn't even have to worry about this stuff. It's the music pirates who have forced this on us. Why isn't anybody complaining about them? If they went away, so would DRM.
Class action lawsuits. If enough people lose files wrongfully, there are plenty of lawyers willing to take some money from the RIAA.
Class action lawsuits. That's assuming you can prove any real damage. Most people can't since they aren't losing revenue by not being able to surf the web. Besides, do you really think they are going to DoS people who aren't guilty? The only question is collateral damage, which is where the class action lawsuit comes in
How do you define bogus file. I think that statement only relates to DoS attacks. I doubt bogus files even count. How do you define bogus anyway? I'd like to see you go to court and tell the judge how you tried to illegally download a file and got spam about Britney Spears instead of the song of hers you wanted