It's perhaps worth mentioning that this is what I was waiting for to try it out. And if it's good, then I'll tell people. As long as they have SOME means of making money, increased adoption is usually a good thing.:)
My entire point is that I DON'T want to use the analogy of stealing. It's a silly, oversimplified analogy, because nobody is deprived of physical goods when you copy data. There is no record store that had hundreds of thousands of copies of these 200 songs and now doesn't have them anymore because of the actions of this defendant. Record companies try to associate sharing with stealing because most people already think stealing is wrong. Sharing data, however, is completely different. You may argue that sharing results in lots of lost revenue for the labels, but that's separate. It is not stealing. And if the record companies insist that it is, they should be punished for this false advertising.
Please note that the above discussion is entirely separate from whether or not sharing data is legal, or should be.
No, I get that. I don't think you understand what I mean. If sharing is the record companies problem (and it is), they would make more sense if they launched a massive campaign against "distributing" music than if they launched one against "stealing" music. They're trying to oversimplify the issue to convince people that sharing data is wrong by comparing it to something entirely different (stealing) that people generally consider wrong already.
"the primary use of patents these days is to keep new competitors out of the market" Exactly. The original idea behind patent law was to encourage innovation. I fail to see how this use is doing so. As such, patent law desperately needs a complete overhaul if it is to carry on even a facade that it's helping the general population.
She "stole" 200 songs, yes? Say 15 albums. What do you think the punishment is for busting a store window and stealing 15 albums? I'd wager it's far less than $150,000 per song. If the record companies are going to oversimplify things and call it stealing, they should be forced to accept the same penalties as judgement.
Heh, the country with a sex tourism trade that will probably have a penis-shaped museum certainly couldn't be more porn-friendly than the fundamentalist US.
Regardless, being porn-friendly does not equate to being child-porn-friendly.
Can't say much about the iPod, having never had one to play with, but Ubuntu is a huge improvement on the ease-of-use front. In some (note the word some before jumping on me please) ways, it is even easier than Windows. One example that shocked me is that it came with built-in drivers for my SATA controllers, whereas WinXP required me to load a driver during installation (which it would only accept on a floppy disk, mind you - annoying).
As someone else pointed out, nobody really said it is. I'm personally tempted to say that the making of it is worse, as I suspect forcing or coercing children to sex causes more suffering than terrorism does. I'm also tempted to say that the possession of it doesn't concern me much, because I don't think that possessing it will really change the amount of suffering involved.
Aside from that, though, I worry about the word "unquestionably". Anyone who thinks terrorism is unquestionably heinous should really read 1984, or, if you prefer movies, try V For Vendetta.
On a more serious anti-current-USA note, this quote is from the article and is used to justify detaining the children: "in an area where there have been reports of anti-social behaviour". Seriously, what the fuck? So if my neighbours happen to stay inside all the time, that makes it okay to threaten my kids with jail for breaking a few branches? Damn.
Well, yeah, a government of the people and by the people isn't going to work so well for the people when, by and large, the people are retarded and apathetic.
"I've said it before and I'll say it again: Democracy simply doesn't work." -Kent Brockman
I think the ones that are hungry are the ones that WANT people to download their stuff. And I think that labels are a monument to mediocrity and mistreatment. Let's not forget the guy from Creedence Clearwater, who got sued for copyright infringement OF HIS OWN WORK because the record label owned the copyright. Or, much as I may hate them, the Backstreet Boys, who, after several hugely popular albums, testified that they hadn't ever received a royalty cheque. Or DMX, who compared the music business to legalized slavery. Let's not forget that the major labels were convicted of price-fixing, and got the tiniest penalty imaginable. This is a short beginning of a very long list, but I'm not going to type it all. The point is: pretty much anything that results in the major labels getting more money is bad. And this likely will.
You were lucky. We lived for three months in a paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six in the morning, clean the paper bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down t' mill, fourteen hours a day, week-in week-out, for sixpence a week, and when we got home our Dad would thrash us to sleep wi' his belt.
"There is nothing inherently wrong with being rich." Actually, distribution of wealth is a major problem. An even bigger problem is the fact that money apparently buys the rich the ability to push a political agenda that will make them more money and worsen the already problematic distribution of wealth.
1. I'm in a band. I don't bitch about people sharing my music. 2. Most "big" bands also don't bitch about people sharing their music. 3. I don't bitch about wanting those peoples efforts for less money, most recorded music is shit, and I either buy or download the rest depending on various factors. 4. I don't bitch about outsourcing either.
Yes, this is why our leaders have summit meetings these days. To protect the interests of the rich bastards that finance their campaigns. Somebody hurry up and get a Pirate Party up and running. Oh right, there's no such thing as proportional representation in most places. Wonderful.
The phrasing in the article implies that you're wrong:
"In one example, an Indian driver here said Western Union prevented him from sending $120 to a friend at home last month because the recipient's name was Mohammed."
True. It's worth mentioning that in the US at least, the penalties for copyright infringement are FAR harsher than those for stealing. Compare the max penalties for sharing a CD worth of songs (hundreds of thousands of dollars per track, if I remember correctly) to stealing a CD (I don't know, but I guarantee it's not hundreds of thousands).
...But he seems kinda not all there. Don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking him, hell, maybe it makes him better at what he does. But I just get this sense that he does NOT think like me, in a way I don't normally get from reading interviews. Is it just me?
Well, yeah, but... Why would Sophos want people to switch? This is kinda ingenious marketing on their part, really. If by some fluke, lots of people switch to Macs, Windows' own antivirus/antispyware stuff won't be such a threat to the AV industry. And even if nobody switches, they are creating more fear in the hearts of Windows users ("Oh shit, I don't have a Mac, I better get some antivirus").
Good points. They bring up a couple big questions for me:
1. How does the RIAA control the media so well? Are the big papers and news channels really lazy enough to only report things that have press releases? 2. For a group of companies that makes their money by essentially making idiots look cool, why are they so incapable of making non-piracy cool?
You are of course correct. It should be noted, though, that at least in the States the penalties for such copying are FAR worse than those for stealing. Despite being Canadian, I don't know too much about Canadian law on the subject except for the fact that there was a judge last year that said downloading and uploading music both qualified under personal use.
More important than definitions of the word "theft", however, is the point that the government is funding a lobby group? How do I convince them to fund me to spread my message that infringing copyright is a good thing?
Re:And this is indeed a serious problem with EBay.
on
How to Win on Ebay: Snipe
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
As the article says, sniping will only help you if the bidder you're trying to beat was willing to raise his own bid but didn't have the chance. This will only happen if the bidder you're trying to beat is inexperienced, stupid, untrusting of the automatic bid system, etc. However, since many such people bid on ebay, sniping certainly helps from time to time.
Slashdot Mirror
It's perhaps worth mentioning that this is what I was waiting for to try it out. And if it's good, then I'll tell people. As long as they have SOME means of making money, increased adoption is usually a good thing. :)
My entire point is that I DON'T want to use the analogy of stealing. It's a silly, oversimplified analogy, because nobody is deprived of physical goods when you copy data. There is no record store that had hundreds of thousands of copies of these 200 songs and now doesn't have them anymore because of the actions of this defendant. Record companies try to associate sharing with stealing because most people already think stealing is wrong. Sharing data, however, is completely different. You may argue that sharing results in lots of lost revenue for the labels, but that's separate. It is not stealing. And if the record companies insist that it is, they should be punished for this false advertising.
Please note that the above discussion is entirely separate from whether or not sharing data is legal, or should be.
No, I get that. I don't think you understand what I mean. If sharing is the record companies problem (and it is), they would make more sense if they launched a massive campaign against "distributing" music than if they launched one against "stealing" music. They're trying to oversimplify the issue to convince people that sharing data is wrong by comparing it to something entirely different (stealing) that people generally consider wrong already.
Fine, but then the record companies shouldn't be complaining about "stealing" music in an attempt to stupidly oversimplify things.
"the primary use of patents these days is to keep new competitors out of the market"
Exactly. The original idea behind patent law was to encourage innovation. I fail to see how this use is doing so. As such, patent law desperately needs a complete overhaul if it is to carry on even a facade that it's helping the general population.
She "stole" 200 songs, yes? Say 15 albums. What do you think the punishment is for busting a store window and stealing 15 albums? I'd wager it's far less than $150,000 per song. If the record companies are going to oversimplify things and call it stealing, they should be forced to accept the same penalties as judgement.
Furthermore, who does this 3rd party IP belong to, and can ATI/Nvidia pressure them a bit to release it?
Heh, the country with a sex tourism trade that will probably have a penis-shaped museum certainly couldn't be more porn-friendly than the fundamentalist US. Regardless, being porn-friendly does not equate to being child-porn-friendly.
Can't say much about the iPod, having never had one to play with, but Ubuntu is a huge improvement on the ease-of-use front. In some (note the word some before jumping on me please) ways, it is even easier than Windows. One example that shocked me is that it came with built-in drivers for my SATA controllers, whereas WinXP required me to load a driver during installation (which it would only accept on a floppy disk, mind you - annoying).
As someone else pointed out, nobody really said it is. I'm personally tempted to say that the making of it is worse, as I suspect forcing or coercing children to sex causes more suffering than terrorism does. I'm also tempted to say that the possession of it doesn't concern me much, because I don't think that possessing it will really change the amount of suffering involved.
Aside from that, though, I worry about the word "unquestionably". Anyone who thinks terrorism is unquestionably heinous should really read 1984, or, if you prefer movies, try V For Vendetta.
On a more serious anti-current-USA note, this quote is from the article and is used to justify detaining the children: "in an area where there have been reports of anti-social behaviour". Seriously, what the fuck? So if my neighbours happen to stay inside all the time, that makes it okay to threaten my kids with jail for breaking a few branches? Damn.
Heh, now if only America worked, you might have a useful point.
;)
The general idiocy and apathy of the public still causes problems in a Constitutional Republic.
Also, the lamb in Franklin's quote is clearly a terrorist.
Well, yeah, a government of the people and by the people isn't going to work so well for the people when, by and large, the people are retarded and apathetic.
"I've said it before and I'll say it again: Democracy simply doesn't work."
-Kent Brockman
And no, I haven't got a better idea. Sigh.
I think the ones that are hungry are the ones that WANT people to download their stuff. And I think that labels are a monument to mediocrity and mistreatment. Let's not forget the guy from Creedence Clearwater, who got sued for copyright infringement OF HIS OWN WORK because the record label owned the copyright. Or, much as I may hate them, the Backstreet Boys, who, after several hugely popular albums, testified that they hadn't ever received a royalty cheque. Or DMX, who compared the music business to legalized slavery. Let's not forget that the major labels were convicted of price-fixing, and got the tiniest penalty imaginable. This is a short beginning of a very long list, but I'm not going to type it all. The point is: pretty much anything that results in the major labels getting more money is bad. And this likely will.
You were lucky. We lived for three months in a paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six in the morning, clean the paper bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down t' mill, fourteen hours a day, week-in week-out, for sixpence a week, and when we got home our Dad would thrash us to sleep wi' his belt.
"There is nothing inherently wrong with being rich."
Actually, distribution of wealth is a major problem. An even bigger problem is the fact that money apparently buys the rich the ability to push a political agenda that will make them more money and worsen the already problematic distribution of wealth.
1. I'm in a band. I don't bitch about people sharing my music.
2. Most "big" bands also don't bitch about people sharing their music.
3. I don't bitch about wanting those peoples efforts for less money, most recorded music is shit, and I either buy or download the rest depending on various factors.
4. I don't bitch about outsourcing either.
Yes, this is why our leaders have summit meetings these days. To protect the interests of the rich bastards that finance their campaigns. Somebody hurry up and get a Pirate Party up and running. Oh right, there's no such thing as proportional representation in most places. Wonderful.
The phrasing in the article implies that you're wrong:
"In one example, an Indian driver here said Western Union prevented him from sending $120 to a friend at home last month because the recipient's name was Mohammed."
True. It's worth mentioning that in the US at least, the penalties for copyright infringement are FAR harsher than those for stealing. Compare the max penalties for sharing a CD worth of songs (hundreds of thousands of dollars per track, if I remember correctly) to stealing a CD (I don't know, but I guarantee it's not hundreds of thousands).
...But he seems kinda not all there. Don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking him, hell, maybe it makes him better at what he does. But I just get this sense that he does NOT think like me, in a way I don't normally get from reading interviews. Is it just me?
Well, yeah, but... Why would Sophos want people to switch? This is kinda ingenious marketing on their part, really. If by some fluke, lots of people switch to Macs, Windows' own antivirus/antispyware stuff won't be such a threat to the AV industry. And even if nobody switches, they are creating more fear in the hearts of Windows users ("Oh shit, I don't have a Mac, I better get some antivirus").
Good points. They bring up a couple big questions for me:
1. How does the RIAA control the media so well? Are the big papers and news channels really lazy enough to only report things that have press releases?
2. For a group of companies that makes their money by essentially making idiots look cool, why are they so incapable of making non-piracy cool?
You are of course correct. It should be noted, though, that at least in the States the penalties for such copying are FAR worse than those for stealing. Despite being Canadian, I don't know too much about Canadian law on the subject except for the fact that there was a judge last year that said downloading and uploading music both qualified under personal use.
More important than definitions of the word "theft", however, is the point that the government is funding a lobby group? How do I convince them to fund me to spread my message that infringing copyright is a good thing?
As the article says, sniping will only help you if the bidder you're trying to beat was willing to raise his own bid but didn't have the chance. This will only happen if the bidder you're trying to beat is inexperienced, stupid, untrusting of the automatic bid system, etc. However, since many such people bid on ebay, sniping certainly helps from time to time.