Canadians pay a special levy on music CD-R's, flash memory cards and HD-based music players such as iPod. The $299 regular price in the States translates to about $356 CDN, but you can't get a 20 gig iPod for less than $429.99. Plus, we have to pay PST and GST.
This is so our benevolent overlords can give royalties to Anne Murray, Shanaia Twain and Rush. Afterall, buying an iPod must mean that these fine Canadian musicians are losing money to private copying.
I hate going to websites and trying to find out why I can't connect. There's no quick and easy way to look up to find out what sites tried to send cookies. Many service providers and e-commerce sites require you to accept cookies from
third parties, or even other pages of the site with similar, but different URL's.
For example, if you want to use the e-commerce functions of buycrap.com, you would have to somehow determine that cookie requests from both www.buycrap.com and annoying.marketer.com were both being blocked by the browser. If you just remove the www.buycrap.com entry from the block list, you still get rejected when trying to proceed.
If the user could somehow see for every web page
a report on what cookies the browser blocked, then it would be easy to go into your preferences and adjust cookie settings for those individual sites, without forcing you to allow everything, and have crap like Doubleclick infecting your machine.
Using the above example, I'd have a way of knowing that I needed a cookie from annoying.marketer.com, and could decide to accept it only for the session. Right now that's impossible without firing up IE to find out the source of the evil cookie.
There is a little "eye" icon on the Microsoft Internet Explorer browser that does this function, and in that window, it allows you to change the cookie settings for that URL to always accept, always block or use default setting. Firefox would be just about perfect with this little addition.
"
In the event that the Company successfully produces a certified hypo-allergenic cat, the $250.00 deposit provided herein shall be credited towards the Purchase Price."
Oh yeah, the $250 is non-refundable too. And if they do come up with a cat, they don't guarantee that it's $3500 - it could be WAAAAY more. Scam, perhaps, or ingenious way to raise funds for the research?
Most new users discovering digital music for the first time are using either the software provided with Microsoft Windows, or the free software that is provided for the iPod - iTunes. Both of these programs use.WMA and.AAC as their default formats. How many of these users actually think to change the default setting on iTunes from.AAC to.MP3?
Frankly, I'll wager most of these users think that they are actually copying their tunes to MP3's, and don't give a crap about the file format, as long as their player can play them. They won't realize the difference, unless they try to share with others using the incompatible format.
Looks like Microsoft has finally found a way to give people a reason to upgrade to Longhorn - content that (presumably) won't be available to other OS.
I think the DOJ just might have another case for collusion and abuse of monopoly power in the works, here.
I was looking for a way that I can have my iPod close at hand while sitting outside the house in the backyard, and playing the music through speakers in the backyard, without having to use a computer or a remote control to do it, and without having to keep an amp/receiver outdoors.
iTrip can do it, but only with the degradation of sound quality that comes with broadcasting low power FM signals. And I want the full functionality and ease of use of my iPod - a PC/remote control setup wouldn't do, since a remote with an LCD would cost almost as much as the iPod does.
Since there are products that allow music to be WiFi'd from a PC to a stereo, having an outbound Wi-Fi signal sending music out from the iPod to the stereo is the next step. Of course, someone from the RIAA will find some way to make it more difficult for me to have such a convenient way to enjoy my entire CD collection. Neighbourhood WiFi music sharing, anyone?
"I can quite live with a game that boots from CD and only works when booted from the original CD provided I can obtain a spare of the CD in case it breaks."
Exactly - I don't know why taking a CD out of its case and sticking it in the drive is such a big deal. I've probably purchased over 100 games in my lifetime, and not once has a CD become damaged so I couldn't play. The chances of the CD being damaged before the next sequel comes out is miniscule.
What bugs me more is how the game companies are putting long advertisements/splash screens at the start (EA Sports, anyone) which can't be bypassed, at least with the regular executables.
Exactly - I discovered this with my G2 on a trip out west, saw a moose grazing on the side of the road, so I slow down the car, took out the camera, removed the lens, turned it on and took a picture. 2 seconds after I press the shutter, the moose is high-tailing it for the bush, and I end up with a nice photo of a tree.
Digital cameras suck badly for taking shots that are only there for a split second. If you're doing any wildlife photography, you need either a dSLR or film.
Everyone seems to be ignoring the fact that some of this stuff has tremendous value that may be useful and valuable after we're gone.
Lets say I die, and I own a copy of Windows XP Professional, and a library of 5000 songs purchased (legally) from iTunes, as well as a bunch of CD's which I've also converted to mp3's.
Who gets the digital media? If my wife doesn't want to keep the computer around, does she have the right to sell the digital songs to at least get some use out of them? Would title automatically pass to her like physical property does? Can she uninstall XP and use it on her own computer? Or is the licence tied to me, and when I expire, the licence expires. Do the CD's have to go with the digital files created from them? Many products today, such as iTunes, seem to be tied to the physical devices the media is located on. If the hard drive crashes and I get a new computer, that reduces the allowable computers for that media, and if you're only allowed one (like with XP) then tough luck, buddy.
Do I have the right to will these things to someone else? When I run off to meet the choir invisible, I want my heirs to be able to access all of the information that I have paid for.
These are assets which over a person's lifetime, can accumulate and become very valuable. Knowing that the media will have a life beyond the life of the current owner is an important question that few seem to have grasped or provided any relevant solutions for.
"The ongoing investigations were assisted"
financially "by various intellectual property trade associations, including the Business Software Alliance, the Entertainment Software Association, the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America. "
That one sentence tells you all you need to know about this story.
According to this, if leaving songs in a shared directory is legal, then so would the following:
- Leaving the doors to my place of business open and advertising Free Music!
- Put out some burners and my CD collection
- Sell snacks & drinks & blank CD's at somewhat inflated prices
Afterall, I'm only making it easy for others to copy for personal use!
that if I write an essay or a term paper, it should belong to me. I should not have to give up my ability to profit from (either to get a higher mark in class, or provide the knowledge and theories that I have researched to build upon or profit from at a later date.
Students who hand in their essays automatically give up their rights to their work to turnitin.com. This company is assembling a massive database of content, which can then be turnd around and sold to businesses for big bucks, without giving credit to the students who created the material. These guys are worse than the RIAA is when it comes down to compensating the creators for their efforts.
"The plight of copyright
holders must be addressed in the first instance by the Congress; only the Congress has the constitutional authority and the institutional ability to accommodate fully the varied
permutations of competing interests that are inevitably implicated by such new technology."
Looks like the next phase is to lobby Congress for a rewrite or amendment to the DMCA in favour of the RIAA. I shudder to think what other problems that could entail.
It looks like what Microsoft, etc. are trying to do are to ensure that no matter where you get the media from, they get their cut. They no longer need to invest in distribution, just let the media market itself through the P2P network like a virus. And for every user that downloads, they get their fee automatically.
Definitely makes P2P more legal and viable long-term as a legitimate business, but without the ability to negotiate and enter into a decision to pay knowingly, this would be a nightmare.
It adds cost to the provider, and reduces value to the buyer (I'd pay more for non-DRM media than I'd pay for DRM). A lose-lose proposition either way.
Customer: "I'd like to purchase one of those new gee-bee-one-five-six-two-nine-dot-eleven-dash-two- thousand-and-three routers"
What would the Chinese character for GB15629.11-2003 be?
The United States sells more than twice as many goods to Canada, a market of 30 million people, as to Japan, a market of over 125 million people. Canada is a larger market for the US goods than all 15 members of EU combined.
Why is it, that whenever companies based in other countries sell something in the U.S. cheaper than what it cost to make (steel, softwood lumber, textile products to name a few), it's considered "dumping" and the U.S. puts up punitive duties.
However, it's OK for U.S. movie and media producers to sell their products overseas at prices that American consumers can only dream of?
Sure -- because I don't trust the IP owners with my stuff. If I buy a car from you, I will neither give you a spare key nor access to my garage. If I buy a book from you, I will never allow you to insist that I only read it under the light that you specify.
That's exactly the level of freedom that I, and I would expect most people are absolutely unwilling to give up - the ability to do what we want, when we want to do it with the data that we have legitimately acquired.
The problem is, with that level of freedom, in addition to the freedom to distribute data at will over P2P applications that are designed in such a way that make piracy easy for the masses, we have the status quo, where it is easier and more useful for the average Joe to log on to Kazaa to get a pirated song or movie for free than it is to go to the store and buy a CD or to logon to a paid site and buy a file that only works with certain players and can't be changed to other formats.
Corporations are increasingly applying pressure to install Palladium and other DRM schemes on our computers which restricts us from doing these very things, and forces us to use the media in only the ways specified by the creators.
I would be more willing to give up the ability to share my information over P2P networks with anyone and everyone interested, then to give up my fair use rights to use my media in my own home or car as I please. Both of these freedoms are under heavy attack right now.
You're probably right in that putting restrictions on P2P will be a difficult task, but I don't think it will be impossible. What I expect is some kind of government legislation that any person or company making software used to transmit data in a peer to peer manner must have some kind of logging system which enables someone (preferrably in law enforcement, not Hollywood) to see what files were transmitted, from whom, to whom, with the ability to positively identify both parties. I'm sure that such a law will be introduced as "required to go after pedophiles and terrorists", but it will be more designed to curtail the use of P2P for pirating copyrighted works.
The problem with the current P2P model is that it is causing the RIAA and MPAA, etc. to fight against piracy on two fronts. Fighting against the mass use of P2P services to distribute copyrighted files is one thing, but fighting against our rights to use the material we have paid for in whatever media we choose (by implementing DRM and attempting to reduce the capabilities of our computers and media playing equipment through things linke the Fritz chip) is a wholly different matter.
Ideally, the content creation industries and the computing community would be able to come to an agreement where all P2P applications would be required to provide some accountability as to the source of any file available on the system, and in return, the content industry would give up on trying to implement DRM that stops consumers from shifting format or location on the stuff we have acquired legitimately.
Currently, the community is too fragmented to offer such a truce, and the likely outcome is that P2P will become regulated, while industry will continue to shove DRM and broadcast flags down our throats.
I guess the two houses of ill repute in the core game were able to make the cut as "teen" content. I guess that's why none of the NPC's in there would offer my character their services.
Operating a vehicle on public roads is a privilege, not a right. Requirements for vehicles including safety features such as seatbelts, crumple zones, etc. are all reasonable regulatory measures by government to act in the public interest.
How does this differ from the following?
"Operating a computer on the public internet is a privilege, not a right. Requirements for computers including safety features such as DRM, Palladium chips and NSA backdoors are all reasonable regulatory measures by government to act in the public interest."
We don't really understand what freedom is, until we lose it. Then, it's too late.
Thanks! Just downloaded and installed Mozilla 1.5 - it's working very well indeed, much better than the previous version I installed. Cookies are prompted the first time I visit a site, and now no more popups at all (unless I want them)!
Slowly but surely being weaned from the teat of MS.
Does Mozilla allow you to accept pop up windows from specific websites though? Many sites I use will open a new browser window - important apps like web brokerage and banking functions that I don't want to lose. I do want to lose these popups that ask me to fill out some stupid survey every time I visit Slashdot or a hundred other websites.
I installed Mozilla a while back, found the same situation with the cookie manager - it was either an all or none thing, while IE allows me to accept all cookies from trusted sites, and reject from sites are not trusted. If a site comes up that it doesn't recognize, it promts me.
Slashdot Mirror
Canadians pay a special levy on music CD-R's, flash memory cards and HD-based music players such as iPod. The $299 regular price in the States translates to about $356 CDN, but you can't get a 20 gig iPod for less than $429.99. Plus, we have to pay PST and GST. This is so our benevolent overlords can give royalties to Anne Murray, Shanaia Twain and Rush. Afterall, buying an iPod must mean that these fine Canadian musicians are losing money to private copying.
For example, if you want to use the e-commerce functions of buycrap.com, you would have to somehow determine that cookie requests from both www.buycrap.com and annoying.marketer.com were both being blocked by the browser. If you just remove the www.buycrap.com entry from the block list, you still get rejected when trying to proceed.
If the user could somehow see for every web page a report on what cookies the browser blocked, then it would be easy to go into your preferences and adjust cookie settings for those individual sites, without forcing you to allow everything, and have crap like Doubleclick infecting your machine.
Using the above example, I'd have a way of knowing that I needed a cookie from annoying.marketer.com, and could decide to accept it only for the session. Right now that's impossible without firing up IE to find out the source of the evil cookie.
There is a little "eye" icon on the Microsoft Internet Explorer browser that does this function, and in that window, it allows you to change the cookie settings for that URL to always accept, always block or use default setting. Firefox would be just about perfect with this little addition.
Oh yeah, the $250 is non-refundable too. And if they do come up with a cat, they don't guarantee that it's $3500 - it could be WAAAAY more. Scam, perhaps, or ingenious way to raise funds for the research?
Most new users discovering digital music for the first time are using either the software provided with Microsoft Windows, or the free software that is provided for the iPod - iTunes. Both of these programs use .WMA and .AAC as their default formats. How many of these users actually think to change the default setting on iTunes from .AAC to .MP3?
Frankly, I'll wager most of these users think that they are actually copying their tunes to MP3's, and don't give a crap about the file format, as long as their player can play them. They won't realize the difference, unless they try to share with others using the incompatible format.
I think the DOJ just might have another case for collusion and abuse of monopoly power in the works, here.
I was looking for a way that I can have my iPod close at hand while sitting outside the house in the backyard, and playing the music through speakers in the backyard, without having to use a computer or a remote control to do it, and without having to keep an amp/receiver outdoors.
iTrip can do it, but only with the degradation of sound quality that comes with broadcasting low power FM signals. And I want the full functionality and ease of use of my iPod - a PC/remote control setup wouldn't do, since a remote with an LCD would cost almost as much as the iPod does.
Since there are products that allow music to be WiFi'd from a PC to a stereo, having an outbound Wi-Fi signal sending music out from the iPod to the stereo is the next step. Of course, someone from the RIAA will find some way to make it more difficult for me to have such a convenient way to enjoy my entire CD collection. Neighbourhood WiFi music sharing, anyone?
Exactly - I don't know why taking a CD out of its case and sticking it in the drive is such a big deal. I've probably purchased over 100 games in my lifetime, and not once has a CD become damaged so I couldn't play. The chances of the CD being damaged before the next sequel comes out is miniscule.
What bugs me more is how the game companies are putting long advertisements/splash screens at the start (EA Sports, anyone) which can't be bypassed, at least with the regular executables.
Digital cameras suck badly for taking shots that are only there for a split second. If you're doing any wildlife photography, you need either a dSLR or film.
Lets say I die, and I own a copy of Windows XP Professional, and a library of 5000 songs purchased (legally) from iTunes, as well as a bunch of CD's which I've also converted to mp3's.
Who gets the digital media? If my wife doesn't want to keep the computer around, does she have the right to sell the digital songs to at least get some use out of them? Would title automatically pass to her like physical property does? Can she uninstall XP and use it on her own computer? Or is the licence tied to me, and when I expire, the licence expires. Do the CD's have to go with the digital files created from them? Many products today, such as iTunes, seem to be tied to the physical devices the media is located on. If the hard drive crashes and I get a new computer, that reduces the allowable computers for that media, and if you're only allowed one (like with XP) then tough luck, buddy.
Do I have the right to will these things to someone else? When I run off to meet the choir invisible, I want my heirs to be able to access all of the information that I have paid for.
These are assets which over a person's lifetime, can accumulate and become very valuable. Knowing that the media will have a life beyond the life of the current owner is an important question that few seem to have grasped or provided any relevant solutions for.
According to this, if leaving songs in a shared directory is legal, then so would the following: - Leaving the doors to my place of business open and advertising Free Music! - Put out some burners and my CD collection - Sell snacks & drinks & blank CD's at somewhat inflated prices Afterall, I'm only making it easy for others to copy for personal use!
Students who hand in their essays automatically give up their rights to their work to turnitin.com. This company is assembling a massive database of content, which can then be turnd around and sold to businesses for big bucks, without giving credit to the students who created the material. These guys are worse than the RIAA is when it comes down to compensating the creators for their efforts.
It looks like what Microsoft, etc. are trying to do are to ensure that no matter where you get the media from, they get their cut. They no longer need to invest in distribution, just let the media market itself through the P2P network like a virus. And for every user that downloads, they get their fee automatically. Definitely makes P2P more legal and viable long-term as a legitimate business, but without the ability to negotiate and enter into a decision to pay knowingly, this would be a nightmare.
It adds cost to the provider, and reduces value to the buyer (I'd pay more for non-DRM media than I'd pay for DRM). A lose-lose proposition either way.
Customer: "I'd like to purchase one of those new gee-bee-one-five-six-two-nine-dot-eleven-dash-two- thousand-and-three routers"
What would the Chinese character for GB15629.11-2003 be?
However, it's OK for U.S. movie and media producers to sell their products overseas at prices that American consumers can only dream of?
That's exactly the level of freedom that I, and I would expect most people are absolutely unwilling to give up - the ability to do what we want, when we want to do it with the data that we have legitimately acquired.
The problem is, with that level of freedom, in addition to the freedom to distribute data at will over P2P applications that are designed in such a way that make piracy easy for the masses, we have the status quo, where it is easier and more useful for the average Joe to log on to Kazaa to get a pirated song or movie for free than it is to go to the store and buy a CD or to logon to a paid site and buy a file that only works with certain players and can't be changed to other formats.
Corporations are increasingly applying pressure to install Palladium and other DRM schemes on our computers which restricts us from doing these very things, and forces us to use the media in only the ways specified by the creators.
I would be more willing to give up the ability to share my information over P2P networks with anyone and everyone interested, then to give up my fair use rights to use my media in my own home or car as I please. Both of these freedoms are under heavy attack right now.
You're probably right in that putting restrictions on P2P will be a difficult task, but I don't think it will be impossible. What I expect is some kind of government legislation that any person or company making software used to transmit data in a peer to peer manner must have some kind of logging system which enables someone (preferrably in law enforcement, not Hollywood) to see what files were transmitted, from whom, to whom, with the ability to positively identify both parties. I'm sure that such a law will be introduced as "required to go after pedophiles and terrorists", but it will be more designed to curtail the use of P2P for pirating copyrighted works.
The problem with the current P2P model is that it is causing the RIAA and MPAA, etc. to fight against piracy on two fronts. Fighting against the mass use of P2P services to distribute copyrighted files is one thing, but fighting against our rights to use the material we have paid for in whatever media we choose (by implementing DRM and attempting to reduce the capabilities of our computers and media playing equipment through things linke the Fritz chip) is a wholly different matter. Ideally, the content creation industries and the computing community would be able to come to an agreement where all P2P applications would be required to provide some accountability as to the source of any file available on the system, and in return, the content industry would give up on trying to implement DRM that stops consumers from shifting format or location on the stuff we have acquired legitimately. Currently, the community is too fragmented to offer such a truce, and the likely outcome is that P2P will become regulated, while industry will continue to shove DRM and broadcast flags down our throats.
I guess the two houses of ill repute in the core game were able to make the cut as "teen" content. I guess that's why none of the NPC's in there would offer my character their services.
How does this differ from the following?
"Operating a computer on the public internet is a privilege, not a right. Requirements for computers including safety features such as DRM, Palladium chips and NSA backdoors are all reasonable regulatory measures by government to act in the public interest."
We don't really understand what freedom is, until we lose it. Then, it's too late.
That must be an example of prior art - maybe you can invalidate their patent!
Thanks! Just downloaded and installed Mozilla 1.5 - it's working very well indeed, much better than the previous version I installed. Cookies are prompted the first time I visit a site, and now no more popups at all (unless I want them)! Slowly but surely being weaned from the teat of MS.
Does Mozilla allow you to accept pop up windows from specific websites though? Many sites I use will open a new browser window - important apps like web brokerage and banking functions that I don't want to lose. I do want to lose these popups that ask me to fill out some stupid survey every time I visit Slashdot or a hundred other websites. I installed Mozilla a while back, found the same situation with the cookie manager - it was either an all or none thing, while IE allows me to accept all cookies from trusted sites, and reject from sites are not trusted. If a site comes up that it doesn't recognize, it promts me.