I think you're ignoring common network topology. It "may" be more efficient if someone in your ISP's local network has the entire specific file you're looking for, or most of it, otherwise you're still routing out and back anyway. The "local" bandwidth from peers in CA, NY, KY, and AL may be "unused", but all of those packets still need to be routed from there over the backbone to, say, your parent's basement in OH.
Now, if a kid on a local college campus posts a torrent of the latest pop song that everyone is looking for, then you may have major local "efficiencies"...;)
To another point, ISPs do setup those kinds of things for "free" if it gives them certain advantages. AOL, for one, caches frequently accessed internet files so the user's requests stay in their network. All giving better perceived latency and reduced out-of-network bandwidth costs.
And Linux distros are probably a bad example, as any company large enough to publish a complete distro probably already has plenty of servers and mirrors at its disposal. Same for other large-scale "popular" programs like mySQL.
Again, and for the last time, it will be interesting to see how far the perceived benefits outweigh the perceived abuses. (Something still not commented on, btw.)
So more bandwidth is wasted making requests across the internet to download the same result, but overall it's more "efficient"... got it.
Still, the primary benefit, to which you also alluded, is the small server over-saturation issue. Then again, the need for such could also be negated by ISPs implementing smarter "edge" caches for heavily requested files not already served by Akamai, et.al..
Like I said, it will be interesting to see if that sole benefit outweighs the technologies' perceived abuses in the courts...
Perhaps not widely to the public? I didn't know the "public" at large was committed to hacking web sites and servers. So one may ask again, how likely would it have been that a hacker would have discovered this vulnerability without having had access to the source code?
I think characterizing the entire interent as "peer-to-peer" is equally misleading, as the majority of cases are in fact not P2P, but client to server. POP, SMTP, HTTP, and so on.
BT and its ilk also have an unfortunate characteristic in that it's designed to break files into little pieces, with one of the original "benefits" the fact that, in doing so, no one has to have all of an infringing file on their system.
One other misconception is the "bandwidth-accelerating" aspects. It may just be my perspective from looking at the code, but perhaps you can tell me how sending out thousands of requests to thousands of servers asking for bits and pieces of a file is more "efficient" bandwidth-wise?
Especially from a end-user's perspective, as having just "part" of a requested web page or half of my email does me no good whatsoever. The entire document must be gathered and transmitted, one way or another.
It's only benefit there, truly, lies in allowing smaller servers from being swamped from requests for popular files.
As earlier models (servers, mirrors) also enabled large file distribution, it will be instructive to see if that sole benefit is enough to outweigh its other more "disturbing" mis-uses...
Personally, the two-pane, tree view, file view in Windows XP beats both of them, from the lack-of-organization side in the 128K Finder to the how-far-do-I-have-to-horizontally-scroll Finder in OSX.
Windows Movie Maker, a poor rip off of iMovie, is so crappy it does not count...
Unfortunately, this is sort of a no-win situation. Should MS upgrade Movie Maker to a fully functional application, everyone will start crying again about how MS is trying to take out the rest of the market.
On the flip side, I've noticed that for quite a few of those few applications on the Mac there's a distinct lack of alternatives.
Not many people can build a business competing with free...
I'll take your at your word that you're a lawyer. (Your tone is certainly supercilious enough.)
And you're correct where you say, "Someone making one copy illegally..." will not make a major diference in returned value.
But where your argument falls down counsellor, is that not just ONE person is making a copy. The effect of each person, acting immorally and alone, builds until there is a major and dramatic impact on those returns.
And depending upon the level of investment involved in the creation of the work, even a small impact can make the difference between a successful project that's in the black, and one in the red.
While it may be true that no one truly knows the extent of the damage caused by those acting against the law and the wishes of the authors/creators/musicians/etc., it's equally true that they're making the choice to ignore those wishes and to enjoy the benefits of said works without fair and due compensation.
To put it bluntly, from a moral, ethical, and legal standpoint, they're parasitic assholes...
BTW, while I applaud Baen for their free books, I will remind you that the authors listed therein chose to release those (older) titles in that fashion, and that they did so in anticipation of future sales.
Again, their decision, and one that should be respected.
So why is it that you are somehow entitled to benefit from my work, and I am not?
And it's not like it's something you had to have, like food or water, and it's not like there are no alternatives available.
Fundamentally, you have a choice, and if you copy and benefit from my work you've made the choice to steal the results of my efforts. Something for nothing.
And forgive me, but if you steal my work I can only assume that the "advertising" you might give to your friends would be to do the same.
The job of the judicial branch (SC) is to apply the body of law and the constitution to the subject at hand. They cannot create law, though they can create precedent in how a law is interpreted, or strike down what they feel is bad or unconstitutional law.
That said, if you don't like how a law is interpreted, or feel a ruling is vague, then petition your congress-critter for better laws.
If you believe in sharing your work, and wish, say, to publish something under the GPL, then that is your choice, and I will respect your wishes in that regard.
If, on the other hand, I want (in order to do something selfish like feed my family) to attempt sell my work, then that is MY choice.
Your options are to respect my wishes and pay my price, find an alternative, or do without. If enough people choose not to pay, I will try something else.
You, however, are not entitled to the results of my endeavors, simply because you want them.
... that the copyright holder had that value beforehand.
The author of that work CREATED that value beforehand. And spent time, effort, resources, and dollars doing so.
From my perspective as an author, artist, and developer, if you copy my work you are stealing the results of my labors, and benefiting unjustly from the value I created.
It's a bit amazing how your perspective changes when it's YOUR work being stolen. And how it differs from those who can't create anything at all...
So what? If someone can compete commercially with a totally free version, they're obviously providing SOME addtional value. Otherwise people wouldn't pay for it.
Personally, I find the/. crowd to be somewhat hypocritical on the subject.
For some reason it's okay to ignore an author's wishes and license agreements when it suits them (downloading commercial software), but it's not okay when someone wants to ignore the author's wishes when software is published under, say, the GPL.
Either you respect their wishes and agreements... or you don't.
But the very act of being called unprofessional or inept over a misspelling when the message is loud-and-clear just means that someone's a tight ass that wants everyone to play by their rules.
As opposed to a wise-ass who's too stupid, ignorant, or uneducated to know those rules exist in the first place?
Or worse, believes that he's too "special" for them to apply to him?
Sounds exactly like the type of person I want working for me and representing my company...
Uh huh. And which half of the family fortune have you given away to charity recently?
One may not like how he got there, but one does need to give credit where credit is due.
And personally, if I had been responsible in the early days for promoting my products and making my company successful, I'm not sure how many things I would have done differently...
Actually, Apple started it. Each block of memory had associated with it flags such as locked, purgeable, resource, etc, and these were stored in the high 8 bits of each address in the master pointer table.
As far as speed and sound and all those other things you're cutting out, systems for the blind depend rather heavily on text-to-speech and speech recognition systems...
As Paki indicates, however, take out a critical node or cable or two and you throw all of the traffic back onto the other lines... and a good portion of the flag lines are undersea.
Slashdot Mirror
Now, if a kid on a local college campus posts a torrent of the latest pop song that everyone is looking for, then you may have major local "efficiencies"... ;)
To another point, ISPs do setup those kinds of things for "free" if it gives them certain advantages. AOL, for one, caches frequently accessed internet files so the user's requests stay in their network. All giving better perceived latency and reduced out-of-network bandwidth costs.
And Linux distros are probably a bad example, as any company large enough to publish a complete distro probably already has plenty of servers and mirrors at its disposal. Same for other large-scale "popular" programs like mySQL.
Again, and for the last time, it will be interesting to see how far the perceived benefits outweigh the perceived abuses. (Something still not commented on, btw.)
You're spending quite a bit of time defending your non-defense...
Still, the primary benefit, to which you also alluded, is the small server over-saturation issue. Then again, the need for such could also be negated by ISPs implementing smarter "edge" caches for heavily requested files not already served by Akamai, et.al..
Like I said, it will be interesting to see if that sole benefit outweighs the technologies' perceived abuses in the courts...
Perhaps not widely to the public? I didn't know the "public" at large was committed to hacking web sites and servers. So one may ask again, how likely would it have been that a hacker would have discovered this vulnerability without having had access to the source code?
BT and its ilk also have an unfortunate characteristic in that it's designed to break files into little pieces, with one of the original "benefits" the fact that, in doing so, no one has to have all of an infringing file on their system.
One other misconception is the "bandwidth-accelerating" aspects. It may just be my perspective from looking at the code, but perhaps you can tell me how sending out thousands of requests to thousands of servers asking for bits and pieces of a file is more "efficient" bandwidth-wise?
Especially from a end-user's perspective, as having just "part" of a requested web page or half of my email does me no good whatsoever. The entire document must be gathered and transmitted, one way or another.
It's only benefit there, truly, lies in allowing smaller servers from being swamped from requests for popular files.
As earlier models (servers, mirrors) also enabled large file distribution, it will be instructive to see if that sole benefit is enough to outweigh its other more "disturbing" mis-uses...
So? A question. Would the vulnerability have been apparent, or the hack possible, without access to the blog source code?
My opinion, and I've used ALL of them.
Unfortunately, this is sort of a no-win situation. Should MS upgrade Movie Maker to a fully functional application, everyone will start crying again about how MS is trying to take out the rest of the market.
On the flip side, I've noticed that for quite a few of those few applications on the Mac there's a distinct lack of alternatives.
Not many people can build a business competing with free...
And you're correct where you say, "Someone making one copy illegally..." will not make a major diference in returned value.
But where your argument falls down counsellor, is that not just ONE person is making a copy. The effect of each person, acting immorally and alone, builds until there is a major and dramatic impact on those returns.
And depending upon the level of investment involved in the creation of the work, even a small impact can make the difference between a successful project that's in the black, and one in the red.
While it may be true that no one truly knows the extent of the damage caused by those acting against the law and the wishes of the authors/creators/musicians/etc., it's equally true that they're making the choice to ignore those wishes and to enjoy the benefits of said works without fair and due compensation.
To put it bluntly, from a moral, ethical, and legal standpoint, they're parasitic assholes...
Again, their decision, and one that should be respected.
So why is it that you are somehow entitled to benefit from my work, and I am not?
And it's not like it's something you had to have, like food or water, and it's not like there are no alternatives available.
Fundamentally, you have a choice, and if you copy and benefit from my work you've made the choice to steal the results of my efforts. Something for nothing.
And forgive me, but if you steal my work I can only assume that the "advertising" you might give to your friends would be to do the same.
With the expectation that by doing so they'd increase future sales.
And you chose to give away a copy of an older book to increase sales.
I notice you didn't give ALL of them away. Or allow all of them to be downloaded "illegally".
Odd the measure of "control" you wanted to maintain...
The job of the judicial branch (SC) is to apply the body of law and the constitution to the subject at hand. They cannot create law, though they can create precedent in how a law is interpreted, or strike down what they feel is bad or unconstitutional law.
That said, if you don't like how a law is interpreted, or feel a ruling is vague, then petition your congress-critter for better laws.
Bitching on /. apparently...
If, on the other hand, I want (in order to do something selfish like feed my family) to attempt sell my work, then that is MY choice.
Your options are to respect my wishes and pay my price, find an alternative, or do without. If enough people choose not to pay, I will try something else.
You, however, are not entitled to the results of my endeavors, simply because you want them.
The author of that work CREATED that value beforehand. And spent time, effort, resources, and dollars doing so.
From my perspective as an author, artist, and developer, if you copy my work you are stealing the results of my labors, and benefiting unjustly from the value I created.
It's a bit amazing how your perspective changes when it's YOUR work being stolen. And how it differs from those who can't create anything at all...
"Commit" piracy, however, or create and distribute the means to do so, AND advocate doing such, and you could be in a spot of trouble...
I completely disagree. You've aquired the VALUE of said work without fair or due compensation.
Or on the merchant.
You provide the credit line, you eat the loss when it's a problem.
Personally, I find the /. crowd to be somewhat hypocritical on the subject.
For some reason it's okay to ignore an author's wishes and license agreements when it suits them (downloading commercial software), but it's not okay when someone wants to ignore the author's wishes when software is published under, say, the GPL.
Either you respect their wishes and agreements... or you don't.
As opposed to a wise-ass who's too stupid, ignorant, or uneducated to know those rules exist in the first place?
Or worse, believes that he's too "special" for them to apply to him?
Sounds exactly like the type of person I want working for me and representing my company...
One may not like how he got there, but one does need to give credit where credit is due.
And personally, if I had been responsible in the early days for promoting my products and making my company successful, I'm not sure how many things I would have done differently...
Actually, Apple started it. Each block of memory had associated with it flags such as locked, purgeable, resource, etc, and these were stored in the high 8 bits of each address in the master pointer table.
As far as speed and sound and all those other things you're cutting out, systems for the blind depend rather heavily on text-to-speech and speech recognition systems...
As Paki indicates, however, take out a critical node or cable or two and you throw all of the traffic back onto the other lines... and a good portion of the flag lines are undersea.