Who's picking which songs will be downloaded with the turned-in codes? How do we not know that this isn't being set up by a group of artists who want to boost their own sales? Is there any way for additional artists to sign up to get a cut of this money?
Even the Tune Recycler site admits that Pepsi and Apple are expecting that a majority of the "winning" bottlecaps are going to be ignored and unclaimed. If this kind of site encurages more returns than antisipated, might this prevent there from being a repeat of this promotion in the future?
Re:Don't forget the ad CBS is refusing to air.
on
Superbowling
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· Score: 1
That issue isn't considered debatable. There's no credible organization claiming that marijuana is not connected to terrorism, and anti-marijana messages are generally acceptable in society.
Anti-budget-deficit messages aren't quite as in as clear of a territory...
Re:Hey, if we're talking about CBS...
on
Superbowling
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· Score: 1
The ad itself isn't contraversial, but the issue that it brings forward, are deficits bad for the future, is. CBS doesn't want their football coverage to become a political forum, because then people will get upset and might not be inclined to watch the program, which devalues all of the ad space. By comparision, more people are likely to be attracted than repelled by Britney, Pink, and Beyonce wearing small outfits...
Re:Hey, if we're talking about CBS...
on
Superbowling
·
· Score: 1
There's no credible organization stepping forward to say that there is no link between illegal drugs and terrorism... and anti-illegal-drugs messages aren't that socially unacceptable.
The contraversial issue that the MoveOn.org ad basically brings forward is "Running a budget deficit is bad for the future." That's a point that can be debated, there's plenty of people out there willing to argue that having a deficit today is actually a good thing for our future. And that's a fight CBS would rather not get itself in the middle of. They fear that some anti-MoveOn.org group might come forward and suggest a boycott of CBS programs... and suddenly taking MoveOn.org's ad is a bigger loss to the network than not taking it. Nobody's ever going to boycott the network most Pepsi ads, and the network will turn Pepsi away if they're ever dumb enough to hand in a politically incorrect one.
Re:How many IP infringements in the /. article?
on
Superbowling
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· Score: 1
There are zero. You can use the trademarks in news coverage of the event, or in this case/. seems to be doing metacoverage of the coverage... you just can't use trademarks to market anything, including news coverage.
Re:Don't forget CBS is helping MoveOn
on
Superbowling
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· Score: 1
Let's also note that MoveOn.org is making a big deal about their $1 million ad buy on CNN, despite the fact that it takes $2 million+ to buy a Super Bowl ad this year...
Most cases involving the "Super Bowl" trademark never make it to court because the NFL sends out a letter, and the other company takes it to their lawyers who say "The NFL's right, we can't fight them." The NFL's PDF file pretty clearly lays out where the line is in the law, and the lack of any high-profile cases proves that they're pretty much right on.
The trademark can be used in news coverage, but it can't be used in the marketing of news coverage. For example, a newspaper can't call a special section of the newspaper "The Super Bowl Section"... but they can call that section "The Pro Football Championship Game Section" and then use the phrase "Super Bowl" within the articles in that section.
Re:Hey, if we're talking about CBS...
on
Superbowling
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· Score: 1
Not true, they air such ads all the time when they come from the Democrats and/or the Republicans.
Be more specific, they air issue ads when they come from a Republican or Democrat running for an elected office. In those cases, the networks are faced with an all-or-nothing situation, they must take all ads pertaining to that election at the same "lowest" rate for the timeslot, or turn all ads for that election away.
Re:NFL = No Fun League
on
Superbowling
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· Score: 1
What did the Palms plan in was also the fact that they planned on charging admission to see the game on their big movie screen... and that's an illegal commercial use of the broadcast.
Re:Don't forget the ad CBS is refusing to air.
on
Superbowling
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
they should air this ad (which doesn't even promote a candidate).
Actually, if any of the democratic candidates were willing to pay for the ad from campaign funds (and as required, appear in the ad and indicate their approval) then CBS would be required to either accept the ad or reject all campaign ads for that election cycle. The lack of a candidate or ballot issue actually does this ad in...
Re:Hey, if we're talking about CBS...
on
Superbowling
·
· Score: 1
Actually, it's CBS's decision that's protected by the First Amendment. Only in very rare cases can anybody force CBS to broadcast something in doesn't want to, the freedom of the press goes to the owner of the press.
Re:Copyright and Trademark Laws
on
Superbowling
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Trademarks can be used in news coverage, but it cannot be used to market news coverage, or anything else for that matter. That's why newspapers can write about the events of the Super Bowl, but they can't publish a "Super Bowl section" unless they buy the rights to the name.
A prediction mechanism that succeeds despite a 99.61% chance of failure is usually considered a reliable in most scientific fields. Calling 8 consecutive coin flips correctly usually indicates some better-than-flat-chance prediction going on.
Of course, this could be the one year that the video game prediction indicator goes bust. Video games tend to accent star players, and that clearly happened in this year's "Game before the game" when the same player for the Panthers scored 4 touchdowns and rushed for a total of 317 yards on only 10 plays. Those individual numbers are simply unheard of in real play. The Patriots offense is based on unpredictablity, with many potential ball carriers so that the defense does not know which players to double team, which therefore doesn't translate to any super-hot players in the video games...
Re:Hey, if we're talking about CBS...
on
Superbowling
·
· Score: 1
It was a pretty safe bet that no matter what ad won the "Bush in 30 Seconds" contest, CBS would reject it. CBS has a long standing policy of rejecting ads "for the advocacy of viewpoints on controversial issues of public importance."
Re:Radio Contests
on
Superbowling
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
What's even further ironic is that KROQ is owned by Infinity Radio, the radio arm of Viacom whose CBS network will be airing the Super Bowl this year...
Re:Don't forget the ad CBS is refusing to air.
on
Superbowling
·
· Score: 1
For the record, CBS's reason for not accepting that ad is because they don't accept any debatable political issue issue ads. They would have accepted ads from candidates because they have to, but none came forward with the money to do so.
The Internet's greatest strength is also its greatest weakness. At a technical level, everything with an IP address is a peer to all other devices with IP addresses... no special license is needed to make somebody a server. When it comes to e-mail, the same SMTP protocol that your favorite e-mail program uses to reach your outgoing mail server is the same SMTP that server is going to use to relay the message to the next server. You don't need anything special if you want to set up a mail server for your organization... but that also means nothing prevents a virus-infected PC from being an e-mail relay that starts spewing Spam on behalf of the virus writer.
Any "secure" system needs a "root of trust", someone or something that is a trustworthy party from which all other relationships can be traced back to. Most things on the Internet don't have a central authority, and that's by design to prevent censorship. However, e-mail is one thing that we want censorship for... we want abusers of the system thrown out.
However, to reliably kick out abusers, there needs to be a central authority. In short, there needs to be some sort of approval body for e-mail servers to prove that they're trustworthy operators, so that any e-mail that passes through them is sure to not be spam, with reprocussions for the server operators who do let spam through their system. In short, a closed system, where membership for servers is by approval, and therefore those who operate e-mail services have to enforce limits on their customers.
Unfortunately, that's so incompatable with the e-mail system we have today... any dreams of creating a No-Spam-Allowed e-mail system can go sit between IPv6 and the Devorak keyboard design in the pile of ideas that look good on the drawing board but will never be put into widespread use.
No branch of the U.S. Government has the power to actually stop spam, but just like the FDA puts out nice public relations campaigns about what we should be eating, the FTC puts out campaigns about what businesses should be doing. The FTC can't exactly stop open e-mail relays, but they can label that as a bad idea.
Yes, even if it's a toothless government standard, it's a government agency's name that can be dropped. Maybe this project should have a clever-sounding acronym so ISPs can say "It's a violation of the FTC's SPAM-SEAL standards... no ISP in their right mind will tolerate you if you don't change your settings."
Nearly any textbook can be had for less than the list price the bookstores sell them for so long as the student obtains the ISBN number and does a little web searching. However, there are a lot of situations where teachers are paid kickbacks for every book sold under their course identifier in exchange for providing their course number textbook associations to the local bookstore...
Sister group NYPRIG in New York State had the same racket going at Syracuse University when I was there a few years ago. They were the only organization who got their share of the student fee before the student government got their hands on it, and they successfully fought an effort to try to make them wait in the same line as everybody else for funding. A ballot measure actually made it as far as a vote of the student population on the issue... the irony of the situation was not lost on many people.
Most bookstores have policies that say once you break the seal on the software that's included in a book, it moves from the book return policy over to the software return policy that just isn't as friendly. Therfore, adding a useless CD with nothing but open source software trips that policy, and cuts down on the number of returns...
It's a monopoly racket, it always has been and it's going to take something dramatic to break it up.
- Book publishers and authors don't want there to be used textbook competition, they only get paid when a new copy is sold. Therefore, they'll gladly do anything in their power to force a new edition, even if it's simply changing a few image sizes so the page numbers change in a ripple effect with no meaningful content change.
- Professors don't care. In fact in some cases they are paid to select the more expensive of two options by bookstores who offer them a kickback based on a percentage of the sales. (Just face it, what's standing in the way of a professor including an Amazon.com affiliate URL on the course's website, knowing that at least a few students will by the required book that way?) And, often the professor is the author of the book, so every student in their course equals a textbook royalty coming their way.
- Universities often either own the bookstore, or at least own the building that the bookstore operation is renting. Therefore, anything that's good for the bookstore is good for the university.
Unless students vote with their feet by boycotting classes that require overpriced textbooks, and threatening to switch schools or majors if a required course requires the overpriced textbook, there's never going to be any change. So long as new books are required every year, and the publishers can keep it that way, the market for used textbooks will dry up.
Slashdot Mirror
Who's picking which songs will be downloaded with the turned-in codes? How do we not know that this isn't being set up by a group of artists who want to boost their own sales? Is there any way for additional artists to sign up to get a cut of this money?
Even the Tune Recycler site admits that Pepsi and Apple are expecting that a majority of the "winning" bottlecaps are going to be ignored and unclaimed. If this kind of site encurages more returns than antisipated, might this prevent there from being a repeat of this promotion in the future?
That issue isn't considered debatable. There's no credible organization claiming that marijuana is not connected to terrorism, and anti-marijana messages are generally acceptable in society.
Anti-budget-deficit messages aren't quite as in as clear of a territory...
The ad itself isn't contraversial, but the issue that it brings forward, are deficits bad for the future, is. CBS doesn't want their football coverage to become a political forum, because then people will get upset and might not be inclined to watch the program, which devalues all of the ad space. By comparision, more people are likely to be attracted than repelled by Britney, Pink, and Beyonce wearing small outfits...
There's no credible organization stepping forward to say that there is no link between illegal drugs and terrorism... and anti-illegal-drugs messages aren't that socially unacceptable.
The contraversial issue that the MoveOn.org ad basically brings forward is "Running a budget deficit is bad for the future." That's a point that can be debated, there's plenty of people out there willing to argue that having a deficit today is actually a good thing for our future. And that's a fight CBS would rather not get itself in the middle of. They fear that some anti-MoveOn.org group might come forward and suggest a boycott of CBS programs... and suddenly taking MoveOn.org's ad is a bigger loss to the network than not taking it. Nobody's ever going to boycott the network most Pepsi ads, and the network will turn Pepsi away if they're ever dumb enough to hand in a politically incorrect one.
There are zero. You can use the trademarks in news coverage of the event, or in this case /. seems to be doing metacoverage of the coverage... you just can't use trademarks to market anything, including news coverage.
Let's also note that MoveOn.org is making a big deal about their $1 million ad buy on CNN, despite the fact that it takes $2 million+ to buy a Super Bowl ad this year...
Most cases involving the "Super Bowl" trademark never make it to court because the NFL sends out a letter, and the other company takes it to their lawyers who say "The NFL's right, we can't fight them." The NFL's PDF file pretty clearly lays out where the line is in the law, and the lack of any high-profile cases proves that they're pretty much right on.
The trademark can be used in news coverage, but it can't be used in the marketing of news coverage. For example, a newspaper can't call a special section of the newspaper "The Super Bowl Section"... but they can call that section "The Pro Football Championship Game Section" and then use the phrase "Super Bowl" within the articles in that section.
Not true, they air such ads all the time when they come from the Democrats and/or the Republicans.
Be more specific, they air issue ads when they come from a Republican or Democrat running for an elected office. In those cases, the networks are faced with an all-or-nothing situation, they must take all ads pertaining to that election at the same "lowest" rate for the timeslot, or turn all ads for that election away.
What did the Palms plan in was also the fact that they planned on charging admission to see the game on their big movie screen... and that's an illegal commercial use of the broadcast.
they should air this ad (which doesn't even promote a candidate).
Actually, if any of the democratic candidates were willing to pay for the ad from campaign funds (and as required, appear in the ad and indicate their approval) then CBS would be required to either accept the ad or reject all campaign ads for that election cycle. The lack of a candidate or ballot issue actually does this ad in...
Actually, it's CBS's decision that's protected by the First Amendment. Only in very rare cases can anybody force CBS to broadcast something in doesn't want to, the freedom of the press goes to the owner of the press.
Trademarks can be used in news coverage, but it cannot be used to market news coverage, or anything else for that matter. That's why newspapers can write about the events of the Super Bowl, but they can't publish a "Super Bowl section" unless they buy the rights to the name.
Lies, damn lies, and statistics....
A prediction mechanism that succeeds despite a 99.61% chance of failure is usually considered a reliable in most scientific fields. Calling 8 consecutive coin flips correctly usually indicates some better-than-flat-chance prediction going on.
Of course, this could be the one year that the video game prediction indicator goes bust. Video games tend to accent star players, and that clearly happened in this year's "Game before the game" when the same player for the Panthers scored 4 touchdowns and rushed for a total of 317 yards on only 10 plays. Those individual numbers are simply unheard of in real play. The Patriots offense is based on unpredictablity, with many potential ball carriers so that the defense does not know which players to double team, which therefore doesn't translate to any super-hot players in the video games...
It was a pretty safe bet that no matter what ad won the "Bush in 30 Seconds" contest, CBS would reject it. CBS has a long standing policy of rejecting ads "for the advocacy of viewpoints on controversial issues of public importance."
What's even further ironic is that KROQ is owned by Infinity Radio, the radio arm of Viacom whose CBS network will be airing the Super Bowl this year...
For the record, CBS's reason for not accepting that ad is because they don't accept any debatable political issue issue ads. They would have accepted ads from candidates because they have to, but none came forward with the money to do so.
The Internet's greatest strength is also its greatest weakness. At a technical level, everything with an IP address is a peer to all other devices with IP addresses... no special license is needed to make somebody a server. When it comes to e-mail, the same SMTP protocol that your favorite e-mail program uses to reach your outgoing mail server is the same SMTP that server is going to use to relay the message to the next server. You don't need anything special if you want to set up a mail server for your organization... but that also means nothing prevents a virus-infected PC from being an e-mail relay that starts spewing Spam on behalf of the virus writer.
Any "secure" system needs a "root of trust", someone or something that is a trustworthy party from which all other relationships can be traced back to. Most things on the Internet don't have a central authority, and that's by design to prevent censorship. However, e-mail is one thing that we want censorship for... we want abusers of the system thrown out.
However, to reliably kick out abusers, there needs to be a central authority. In short, there needs to be some sort of approval body for e-mail servers to prove that they're trustworthy operators, so that any e-mail that passes through them is sure to not be spam, with reprocussions for the server operators who do let spam through their system. In short, a closed system, where membership for servers is by approval, and therefore those who operate e-mail services have to enforce limits on their customers.
Unfortunately, that's so incompatable with the e-mail system we have today... any dreams of creating a No-Spam-Allowed e-mail system can go sit between IPv6 and the Devorak keyboard design in the pile of ideas that look good on the drawing board but will never be put into widespread use.
No branch of the U.S. Government has the power to actually stop spam, but just like the FDA puts out nice public relations campaigns about what we should be eating, the FTC puts out campaigns about what businesses should be doing. The FTC can't exactly stop open e-mail relays, but they can label that as a bad idea.
Yes, even if it's a toothless government standard, it's a government agency's name that can be dropped. Maybe this project should have a clever-sounding acronym so ISPs can say "It's a violation of the FTC's SPAM-SEAL standards... no ISP in their right mind will tolerate you if you don't change your settings."
Yep, you're exactly right. Therefore, most students just grumble then pay up..
Nearly any textbook can be had for less than the list price the bookstores sell them for so long as the student obtains the ISBN number and does a little web searching. However, there are a lot of situations where teachers are paid kickbacks for every book sold under their course identifier in exchange for providing their course number textbook associations to the local bookstore...
Sister group NYPRIG in New York State had the same racket going at Syracuse University when I was there a few years ago. They were the only organization who got their share of the student fee before the student government got their hands on it, and they successfully fought an effort to try to make them wait in the same line as everybody else for funding. A ballot measure actually made it as far as a vote of the student population on the issue... the irony of the situation was not lost on many people.
Most bookstores have policies that say once you break the seal on the software that's included in a book, it moves from the book return policy over to the software return policy that just isn't as friendly. Therfore, adding a useless CD with nothing but open source software trips that policy, and cuts down on the number of returns...
It's a monopoly racket, it always has been and it's going to take something dramatic to break it up.
- Book publishers and authors don't want there to be used textbook competition, they only get paid when a new copy is sold. Therefore, they'll gladly do anything in their power to force a new edition, even if it's simply changing a few image sizes so the page numbers change in a ripple effect with no meaningful content change.
- Professors don't care. In fact in some cases they are paid to select the more expensive of two options by bookstores who offer them a kickback based on a percentage of the sales. (Just face it, what's standing in the way of a professor including an Amazon.com affiliate URL on the course's website, knowing that at least a few students will by the required book that way?) And, often the professor is the author of the book, so every student in their course equals a textbook royalty coming their way.
- Universities often either own the bookstore, or at least own the building that the bookstore operation is renting. Therefore, anything that's good for the bookstore is good for the university.
Unless students vote with their feet by boycotting classes that require overpriced textbooks, and threatening to switch schools or majors if a required course requires the overpriced textbook, there's never going to be any change. So long as new books are required every year, and the publishers can keep it that way, the market for used textbooks will dry up.