KLAMATH FALLS, Ore. -- Leslie Maxfield has got a case of the downloading blues.834 rock and country songs. With a Saturday deadline approaching, Maxfield has yet to pay the settlement, and he's not sure if he can. "I've got about a week and they'll be wanting their money, and I don't know what to do," said Maxfield, a 51-year-old cabinet maker. "They're trying to get blood out of a turnip. "I feel like I'm in a nightmare."...
"They act like I went out intentionally to rob them," Maxfield said. "Now, they're using the court system to rob us."
Maxfield agreed to pay a $4,080 settlement as well as $420 court costs and processing fees, a copy of the settlement states. He also agreed to destroy all the files... The suits accuse them of "songlifting," the process of sending or receiving copyrighted music over the Internet through peer-to-peer services not authorized by recording companies. Songlifting violates federal copyright laws, and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously last year that those who use the unauthorized services can be liable for copyright infringement...Since starting its campaign in September 2003, the RIAA has filed more than 18,200 copyright infringement cases across the country on behalf of record company giants such as Capitol Records, Warner Bros. and Sony.Engebretsen declined to discuss specific cases. But the association has settled more than 4,900 cases, with the remaining "in various stages of litigation." No case to date has made it to trial.
As MS Windows restricts what can and can't be done on their OS, Linux should get their crap together and work on hardware support and on making an user friendly distribution to get the average joe on board (it was painful and took MANY tries for me to learn linux from scratch and this was just a year ago). We generally won't get the older Mom and Pops to install Linux but the average Joe is all we need.
To the average user DRM is simply the price of access to content from the major providers. There will be no great rebellion if he can't feed gigabytes of protected content to the P2P nets.
Joe expects his DVD drive to work out of the box. He'll expect to find in Linux products and services like iTunes that he knows from Windows and the Mac. When they are not there he will take a pass.
it's far from a guide to survival. It's a translation into Laymanese of how you're going to be screwed by the RIAA's gaming of the legal system
I tend to a somewhat different take on things:
1 The RIAA only has to show that is more reasonable than not to believe that you downloading without a purchase or uploading without a license to distribute.
2 The chances are pretty damn good that you or someone in your household has been making heavy use of BT and the P2P nets. It's your account and your responsibility.
3 The evidence doesn't have to be rock solid, just persuasive enough to argue for a settlement out of court.
4 Talk of "malacious prosecution," abuse of process, is so much hot air. You won't be able to prove malice in a legal sense and it will be very expensive even to try.
5 You are not a hardship case. You not going to become the next poster child for the EFF.
People who visit w3 schools are interested in things like making sure their sites work as many browsers as possible, including ie7. Their browser statistics tell very little about the general population.
How often did you hear this argument last year, when the trend lines for Firefox were looking very, very good?
most OEMs are sick enough of Microsoft's pressure tactics over the years that they may choose to bundle something else
In the U.S. Walmart has all but abandoned its efforts to make OEM Linux mass-market. Windows is easy to place and easy to sell on-line and in big box retail. You can cry all the way to the bank. But you will not change the default install.
I believe that they are just hoping that IE remains the standard as it will come pre-installed with Vista and will be going out on automatic update, so the vast majority of windows users are going to move over to IE7 with-in a year or two.
The w3schools stats show no growth for the alternative browsers in 2006.
Microsoft doesn't get any money from IE, as far as I can tell. They spend lots of money and time doing something that doesn't make a profit for them, when they could just leave the creation of free web browsers to the Open Source community. Why do they do this? This is a serious question.
The web browser has become a standard part of any OS distribution. It tends to take on the look and feel of the OS experience as a whole. This is generally considered a plus by the non-technical end-users. who are Microsoft's core market.
I vote for webmasters to insert code at every page that displays a dialog box, saying "WARNING: Internet Explorer is wholly inadequate for a proper Web browsing experience. Please use either the Opera or Firefox browser before proceeding further."
Your client's competitor's are never more than one click away. You do whatever is necessary to reach and hold his target audience or you find employment elsewhere.
Even though 85kbps is no good for VOIP and video streaming, it is more than sufficient for the average Internet user. You can check your e-mail, send instant messages, and browse the headlines at that speed.
This is the strangest of all Geek fixations, the most divorced from reality.
The web appliance tanks whenever it is tested in the marketplace. AOL bleeds red ink with the death of dial-up. Fully half of Apple's revenues come through sales of the iPod and iTunes...
I could go on and on and on. P2P. Games. Communities like MySpace, Subscription services of every sort.
The article indicates it is the neighbor's fault and asks for help. People are giving advice for a problem.
Neighborhood conflicts like these can easily escalate into violence: a shotgun blast from an old man who is simply tired and hurting. You don't begin by offering advice. You begin by asking the right questions. You assume nothing, if you are wise.
Of course, this is unconstitutional. The Constitution requires that patents only be granted to an inventor. An inventor is the first person to develop a discovery or technology. The second guy to do so, even if he does so independently, is ultimately just an also-ran
You can look it up in your Funk and Wagnalls. But the definitions which count for something in american law are strictly pragmatic, defined by the legislature, the executive, and the courts.
First-to-File may offend your standards of perfection. But that doesn't make it unconstitutional.
It specifically gives legislative authority to congress only, but this didnt stop the formation of the FCC..It also called for limited terms to copyright, but we all know who won in eldred vs ashcroft (so instead of infinity, it's infinity - 1.. which only those educated in calculus or higher know is still infinity)
There are other ways of defining infinity than mathematics.
To paraphrase Holmes, the life of the law is experience not logic, only in the broadest of strokes does the Constitution set limits on what the Congress and Executive can and cannot do.
There is something darkly amusing about the techno-Geek who misquotes Gandhi at every opportunity, but whose gut instinct is slash-and-burn, to immeadiately take sny real-life conflict to the next level.
Vendors should start offering systems with both Windows and Linux pre-loaded
You'll see dual boot when a direct seller or big box retailer on tight margins thinks it's worthwhile to maintain a dual inventory and support structure in the mass consumer market. Meaning, never,
I wonder if the price of that laptop will come down since there won't be a cost of licensing any Windows products. Or will they keep it up and pocket the extra profit.
There are giant economies of scale in a market which is 95-98% Windows. One of the reasons why OEM Linux has all but disappeared from Walmart.com.
Nice logic, good point....NOT. For every minor vendor that commited to preloading Linux and never became major, there are thousands of vendors that are commited exclusively to Windows and never became major
You can be insignificant in the Windows market when compared to giants like Dell and still outweigh your Linux competitors.
Besides, Windows started out as just a "work" OS (as all computer were for "work" back in those days). People got used to Windows and when computers became more common in homes they went with what was familiar (or the only thing available), which was Windows
I still have Commander Keen on this system. It didn't take very long for people to discover that the IBM was a solid platform for both work and gaming. That cut the heart out of the "home pc," the competing 8-bit micros.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm guessing that since you don't know how his system is confiqured or how he uses it your guesses are worthless.
August 8th. This AP story just in: Family owes $4,080 for music download-- Oregonians say they didn't know practice was illegal
KLAMATH FALLS, Ore. -- Leslie Maxfield has got a case of the downloading blues.834 rock and country songs. With a Saturday deadline approaching, Maxfield has yet to pay the settlement, and he's not sure if he can. "I've got about a week and they'll be wanting their money, and I don't know what to do," said Maxfield, a 51-year-old cabinet maker. "They're trying to get blood out of a turnip. "I feel like I'm in a nightmare."... "They act like I went out intentionally to rob them," Maxfield said. "Now, they're using the court system to rob us." Maxfield agreed to pay a $4,080 settlement as well as $420 court costs and processing fees, a copy of the settlement states. He also agreed to destroy all the files... The suits accuse them of "songlifting," the process of sending or receiving copyrighted music over the Internet through peer-to-peer services not authorized by recording companies. Songlifting violates federal copyright laws, and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously last year that those who use the unauthorized services can be liable for copyright infringement...Since starting its campaign in September 2003, the RIAA has filed more than 18,200 copyright infringement cases across the country on behalf of record company giants such as Capitol Records, Warner Bros. and Sony.Engebretsen declined to discuss specific cases. But the association has settled more than 4,900 cases, with the remaining "in various stages of litigation." No case to date has made it to trial.
To the average user DRM is simply the price of access to content from the major providers. There will be no great rebellion if he can't feed gigabytes of protected content to the P2P nets.
Joe expects his DVD drive to work out of the box. He'll expect to find in Linux products and services like iTunes that he knows from Windows and the Mac. When they are not there he will take a pass.
I tend to a somewhat different take on things:
1 The RIAA only has to show that is more reasonable than not to believe that you downloading without a purchase or uploading without a license to distribute.
2 The chances are pretty damn good that you or someone in your household has been making heavy use of BT and the P2P nets. It's your account and your responsibility.
3 The evidence doesn't have to be rock solid, just persuasive enough to argue for a settlement out of court.
4 Talk of "malacious prosecution," abuse of process, is so much hot air. You won't be able to prove malice in a legal sense and it will be very expensive even to try.
5 You are not a hardship case. You not going to become the next poster child for the EFF.
How often did you hear this argument last year, when the trend lines for Firefox were looking very, very good?
It was the trend lines that interested me here, But alternative sources do not paint a brighter picture; Usage share of web browsers, Browser News Stats
They will be long gone before they even look at your picture. There's always another site just one click away that renders well in IE.
In the U.S. Walmart has all but abandoned its efforts to make OEM Linux mass-market.
Windows is easy to place and easy to sell on-line and in big box retail. You can cry all the way to the bank. But you will not change the default install.
The w3schools stats show no growth for the alternative browsers in 2006.
While the IE7 beta has a slight edge on Opera and is growing at the rate of 1% every two months. Browser Statistics Month by Month
You can argue the details, but it is not so easy to ignore the trend lines.
The web browser has become a standard part of any OS distribution. It tends to take on the look and feel of the OS experience as a whole. This is generally considered a plus by the non-technical end-users. who are Microsoft's core market.
Your client's competitor's are never more than one click away.
You do whatever is necessary to reach and hold his target audience or you find employment elsewhere.
This is the strangest of all Geek fixations, the most divorced from reality.
The web appliance tanks whenever it is tested in the marketplace. AOL bleeds red ink with the death of dial-up. Fully half of Apple's revenues come through sales of the iPod and iTunes...
I could go on and on and on. P2P. Games. Communities like MySpace, Subscription services of every sort.
Neighborhood conflicts like these can easily escalate into violence: a shotgun blast from an old man who is simply tired and hurting. You don't begin by offering advice. You begin by asking the right questions. You assume nothing, if you are wise.
Orrin Hatch is also a respected singer-composer and publisher with deep roots in Christian music. The Music of Senator Orrin Hatch. Orrin Hatch - LDS Musician, Composer/Senator Orrin Hatch.
You can look it up in your Funk and Wagnalls.
But the definitions which count for something in american law are strictly pragmatic, defined by the legislature, the executive, and the courts.
First-to-File may offend your standards of perfection. But that doesn't make it unconstitutional.
There are other ways of defining infinity than mathematics.
To paraphrase Holmes, the life of the law is experience not logic, only in the broadest of strokes does the Constitution set limits on what the Congress and Executive can and cannot do.
News At Eleven: World Trader Adopts The Legal Standards of Its Major Trading Parters.
Better or worse is subjective. The game is simply easier to play and to win if everyone agrees on the rules.
The inventions that transform the world are more likely to come from men like Lee De Forest than idealists like Thomas Jefferson.
I am beginning to understand why my high school teachers in the small business classes always ended the day with a blinding headache.
My first thoughts exactly.
There is something darkly amusing about the techno-Geek who misquotes Gandhi at every opportunity, but whose gut instinct is slash-and-burn, to immeadiately take sny real-life conflict to the next level.
You'll see dual boot when a direct seller or big box retailer on tight margins thinks it's worthwhile to maintain a dual inventory and support structure in the mass consumer market. Meaning, never,
There are giant economies of scale in a market which is 95-98% Windows. One of the reasons why OEM Linux has all but disappeared from Walmart.com.
They have. In their XPS and Alienware lines.
You can be insignificant in the Windows market when compared to giants like Dell and still outweigh your Linux competitors.
or maybe they can arrest you for incitement to commit a crime: Advocacy of Unlawful Action and the "Incitement Test"
for which the penalty is likely to be greater than simple trespass.
I still have Commander Keen on this system. It didn't take very long for people to discover that the IBM was a solid platform for both work and gaming. That cut the heart out of the "home pc," the competing 8-bit micros.