Ok, in all likelihood, you're probably right, however:
Really, some suspicion and vigilance of any government is a good and healthy thing. But it's amazing that supposedly technical people here at Slashdot can look at the robots.txt file in question (assuming they looked at it) and not see that it's an obvious scripting or search/replace error and are trying to turn it into something sinister.
If *I* were going to use robots.txt to stop crawlers from crawling sensitive issues and thus preventing search engines from having access to this stuff, *I* would try to disguise it as a script bug or something like that, so that I could call up any number of technical experts (non-partisan, I might add) to testify accordingly.
Of course, if *I* were programming a search engine, I would ignore robots.txt on a.gov site.:) It's only a convention, and I would like to have my engine back up the government web sites.
I'm so sorry I expended my mod points earlier in the day. What a bunch of flamebait bullshit this line of crap is. "Dictatorship?" Get fucking real. Let me ask this in non-partisan terms:
Yeah, so what? I don't know about you, but part of my governmental conditioning program, er, public education, included a long history lesson attached to the flimsy statement of "Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it." Noticing that many of the things going on in this country during Bush's term as president are reminiscent of things that happened in Germany in the '20s and '30s isn't "bullshit". It's trying not to repeat the past.
You can disagree with it all you want, of course, and there are plenty who want to portray this country as a dictatorship when it's not--yet. It may not become one, either. One thing we have that the Germans of the '20s and '30s did not have is the history of Germany in the '20s and '30s. We can apply the hindsight and use the lessons in the present to prevent this country from becoming this "Fourth Reich".
But we can't do it if we spend our time in denial of history and present events. It may well turn out that there's no correlation, and that all that's really happening here is an incompetent president during a time of crisis (after Homeland Security failed to become the Gestapo upon inception, I'm inclined to think our president's just incompetent, and I recall from his governorship that it's a documented fact). But we have to be prepared for the worst, and hope for the best. Reality, as always, will be somewhere in the middle.
Pardon me, monopoly was the wrong word. I apologize. I'm still not entirely sure what the right word is, so a little verbiage and maybe I'll get my point across.:)
Members of the RIAA--labels--dominate the recording industry completely. Sure, you can sign with small labels, but there are many risks. After recording Volume 8, the label Anthrax was with went under. The label before that (Epic, I believe) failed to support them, preferring the Seattle scene to an established money-making metal band. Anthrax is now with Sanctuary, and doing better, but for quite awhile it looked like it might be the end of Anthrax. The risk? The small label. The large label screwed them, looking for the golden needle in the haystack. The small label screwed them because they couldn't stay in business, for whatever reason. They had some friends in a few bands (Megadeth, Judas Priest, Kiss) who helped 'em out with touring, to raise money. They recorded their most recent album without even having a label! They basically took a complete album to Sanctuary and said "Don't fuck us and you can distribute this". Point is, Anthrax is a well-established band with millions of fans the world over, and because of problems with record labels they almost sunk into bankruptcy. I don't actually know how close they came.
Why is this important to the discussion? When Anthrax was on a major label (Island), they had all kinds of label support. The problem was that they were also stuck on the treadmill. They wanted off the treadmill and went to Epic, who did them much better than Island--for one album. For the second under Epic, they were screwed, as I mentioned. They didn't own the music, and they didn't collect royalties until all the stupid debts were paid to the label.
People sign to major labels because they want to be rich and famous--not because they want to make a decent living as musicians. That's what the major labels do for them (actually, an ever-shrinking percentage of their total musicians), and the major labels spend a lot of time and money trying to convince people that the only way they'll ever make money is to go with a major label, and that being rich and famous is what playing music is all about. Then they have this trade organization out picking fights with all the indy labels trying to drive them down, shut down the distribution chain for indy labels, and so forth. This same organization does periodically target larger indy labels and the bands that record under them. They also lobby congress, I understand, for laws that benefit the recording industry but screw musicians and consumers. Why do you think their standard 6-record rape contract is still legal? All the time they're doing this, they cry about how so few of their signed bands ever make it, how they invest so much money into every band signed, and how 5% of the bands signed support the other 95%. They don't support most of their bands (can't, judging from the amount of unique material I hear on the radio, there's not enough time in the day!), and then drop them when they don't make any money. This is contrary to their position that a major label provides distribution, marketing, and promotion for the band.
It's probably not possible to become rich and famous without a major label. Indy labels don't have the pure cash to do what a major label can do for you. But the major labels are very conservative with their investments. That's why we wind up with Britney Spears who's not all that different from Paula Abdul, and it's been this way for decades. If you're a woman, you have to be a Madonna-look-alike-and-sound-alike to be a star. Thanks, Madonna. There's payola, which probably gets pulled with Mtv also. There's a matter of getting onto a tour with a band that's already hit it big--not possible if you're not on a big label. (There are probably exceptions to this) Payola's the big thing, because it's the key to getting played on the radio. No amou
You cannot plead ignorance to the law. It is a citizen's responsibility to know, be aware of, and obey the laws of the country.
Not to mention, with the media covering this as much as they have been, you cannot possibly be unaware that piracy is illegal.
Actually, I've run into quite a few people who don't know that filesharing copyrighted material over P2P networks is illegal. Not exactly a statistical representation of anything, but there are people who are unaware. In any case, I agree that it is a citizen's responsibility to know and obey the law. I just think that in many cases, like this one, it's harsh to punish someone who didn't know the law with the same penalties as someone who did. As a point of fact, many judges (most, I'd say) are lenient against first-time offenders in minor cases like shoplifting, traffic tickets (if you actually challenge it, which I have) and so forth. But if someone really didn't intend to break the law, a slap on the wrists is probably better than suing them into oblivion, because they will stop. If the RIAA isn't just trying to stop people, then what are they trying to do?
You are taking something being offered for sale, without paying for it. So you are ripping companies off, which affects their bottom line, which affects their employees. When you are affecting someone's livelihood and potentially taking their job away because you want free music, that's pretty fucking selfish and borders on evil.
I'm also talking about people ripping off companies who have ripped off consumers, musicians, and just about everyone else throughout their entire history. The music industry hasn't exactly shown itself to be friendly in any way, and they expect us to be friendly now? At what point does the Golden Rule get enforced?
Really? So if someone stole a 911 from a Porsche dealership, the dealership should send cease and desist letters, and have a talk with them?
No comparison. While both are against the law (copyright infringement and car theft), car theft is a criminal case. That means the dealership doesn't sue them, usually, they report the crime to the police and the police try to catch the guy and prosecute him. The dealership isn't likely to recover the loss, even if they did sue the thief, but they can get something called "justice".
The argument can be made that the pirates fired first -- they don't want to resolve the issue of paying for things they took, they want to conquer RIAA and own. I'm not naive enough to think that all of these music pirates sent letter to RIAA companies to complain about high prices, because let's be honest here, they haven't. Most of them said "Oh, I can get music for free online? Cool!" and then did so.
The argument can be made, but when it comes down to it, it's not reasonable to argue with "he hit me first!". At least, I don't take that from my kids, I won't take it from the RIAA either. If they want to claim the moral high ground over filesharers, they need to behave accordingly.
In other news, Actor Kurt Russell has been sued by the RIAA. A spokesperson for the RIAA said "It's pretty obvious what he did. Unfortunate that he went and bragged about it on a piracy advocate web site, but we caught him."
In addition, without a publishing company, all the initial costs of touring, first presses of CDs, et al, will fall on somebody else -- either the band, or some other entity willing to lend them money.
*sigh* I always wind up posting this link in these discussions:
Fact is, Artists pay ALL of that. When you sign a record contract and get your million dollar advance, that's to pay for the tour. The record company charges you (later on) for the presses of the CD, production of the CD (including post-production, of course), marketing (including payola), and so forth. And they won't give you *any* of your earned royalties until you've paid up your debts, i.e. the million dollar advance+publishing costs+marketing & promotion costs.
You don't just give up your music when you sign with a major record label, you give up your freedom and spend the rest of your years toiling to satisfy the label. Previously, Americans defined that as slavery. Now it's called "business".
Every time these stories come up, people should focus on promoting sites and services that allow P2P and download of non-restricted material. Slowly-but-surely, we'll turn people towards artists that are grateful that their work is being heard instead of hoarded by the copyright mafia. Most artists don't make squat off of publishing royalties anyway, so 99% of most artists would actually benefit from more distribution of their material. We need to encourage artists to release material in an unrestricted manner and introduce more to the less-mundane music that is out there that Clear Channel and other monopolies are ignoring.
Heh, I post in every one of these discussions because my sig has a link to stuff I make available with no restrictions. I realize it's not he greatest stuff in the world. But if enough people wrote me email to tell me it was good enough to pay money for, I'd kick it into high gear and finish all the recordings and put an actual studio album together. I just need to know that people will pay for it for me to make it a priority over other things, otherwise it's at my own priority when it gets done.
They could send out their joint forces of gestapos to destroy computers of file sharers like Orrin Hatch wants. I hope that nevers happens (obviously I got a little carried away).
Ironic that Styx sang about this years ago. (Ironic because Styx is one of the worst sellout bands in history) Rush also wrote to this storyline, iirc.
In other words, I want to put completely legal and freely distributable music online in order to bait the RIAA. I want to make sure that I am competely, 100% legal when I do this.
You're gonna be short out of luck with this. You're going to have to settle with someone, and it's likely going to be the copyright owner, which is usually the business the RIAA is trying to protect. Your best bet, in my opinion, is to record your own music and make it freely available.
If you really want to bait the RIAA somehow, I would suggest intentionally writing music to be poopular, and writing the music to specific targets (like 12-year-old girls). Then promote it as much as you can, but give it away. If the point is to provide alternatives to the RIAA-protected music, then you need to provide it in the genres that are the biggest money-makers for the RIAA's members, and in such a fashion that people won't care if you're signed with the label or not.
If you really want to enforce rules of grammar, then you should use proper grammer yourself. No sentence fragments, and proper punctuation (there shouldn't always be a comment after the word "so". Your sentence would have been a misused comment if it had been a complete sentence, but it wasn't)
Note: I don't give a shit if people screw up their grammar during a discussion, so I don't expect to be held to the rules of grammar in my own posts.
If you want to better your chances of scoring a date, play it cool and leave them guessing as to how much you want to see them. Instead of giving them your number, take control by getting their number. Then wait a few days to call so they're surprised and happy when you do call. We hate when girls play games like that with us, but girls seem to find it exciting and mysterious. Suddenly they feel like they need to put some effort into raising your interest. They see you as a challenge.
Offtopic, but...
Is this how you wind up with a girl that you break up with after 5 years? You know, I don't put up with these bullshit games, and I've been married for almost 8 years now, and still going...
You're absolutely correct, and I was never trying to change what you said. Quite the contrary, I was quite surprised to see you sum up the situation so well and wanted to respond and add to it. I wasn't trying to make out your position, because you hadn't offered one of your own, just an answer to the parent post.:)
That doesn't mean you can't feel that copyright law ought to be changed to fall in line with your wishes though.
I talk about it so that people will hear me and read what I say. I vote in that direction with my political right to vote as well as with my wallet. Yes, I want copyright law to be changed to better fulfill the intent of the law. I don't think copyright law was created to prevent people from copying original stuff over P2P, and I think that it's wrong to apply the law to the existing P2P situation. So, I seek to get my point of view across to as many people as possible in as many ways as I can. Like most people, though, I have limited resources to do so. If someone wanted to sponsor me without censoring me, I'd be happy to go further.:)
Inappropriate? That is totally appropriate. The comparison was not between the action intended to be stopped, but the fundamental impossibility of stopping it from happening at all. There will always be rapes and murders and there will always be copyright infringement. The comment highlighted that just because you can't stop it doesn't mean you should try. But I guess that concept was too much for you, slashbot.
Quite the contrary, slashbot. There is no comparison between making an exact copy available to thousands of downloaders and forcing your dick into a woman, violently if necessary. In the first case, the worst that you've done is cost the creator of the work a few bucks (or a lot). In the second case, you've exposed the woman to countless diseases, some of them deadly, as well as put her at risk for a pregnancy (I used to know a guy who's mother was raped, and that's how he was conceived), and given her some serious emotional trauma. Some women never recover emotionally from being raped. There's no comparison. If you really want to make your point, pick something that makes a bit more sense. I'll do it for you, so you don't have to think that hard.
Shoplifting costs the company money, but doesn't hurt anybody in any other way, and it can't be stopped either, so why bother trying?
E.g. perhaps some of the/. crowd feel that copyright infringement ought to be a remedy available only against commercial infringers.
Bingo, Captain! Copyright exists to allow the creator (or the company that forced the creator to sign over their rights to their creation, which is what actually happens in the music business) and only the creator to exploit the commercial value of their creation. If I made a thousand copies of the newest Metallica album and sell them without having a prior agreement with Metallica to do so, THEN I am infringing on their copyright. Only then am I infringing on their copyright. If I copy the newest Metallica album for a thousand people and give it to them free, without intending to use it to promote my own commercial business, then I am not infringing copyright.
For example: if I make an advertisement for my big-dick serum, and I use one of Metallica's songs (say, Whiplash) to advertise it without having an agreement, then I am committing copyright infringement. But if I tell someone I have a big dick, and then give them a copy of Whiplash, I am not committing copyright infringement.
Your choice of the word trivial is interesting to me. See, for many decades, music sharing went on offline and noone got sued. In that time the amount of copyright infringement going on could be, and was, considered trivial. Hell, it was probably good free advertising. One would have to be an idiot to call the amount of illegal filesharing going on at any given time today trivial. Does it mean the best thing to do is sue? Probably not. Did your comment expose a lack of perspective? Oh yes.
So, what proof is there that there is more copyright infringement going on today than ever before? I ask because I've noticed that I don't exchange CDs with my friends anymore. If I hear something they've got that I like, I ask them what it is, and then I go P2Ping for it. That way, my friend isn't troubled with loaning/copying the CD for me, and I still get to hear more from the artist. In the old days, this would've led to me ultimately purchasing an album or three. In the new days, of course, I don't give any of my hard-earned money to the legal mob of gangsters that is the RIAA.
I realize it's very easy to look at the numbers and think "Oh boy, this guy's sharing 15,000 songs! What a pirate!". But how does that mean the total amount of copyright infringement is any greater than it was 10 years ago? (Accounting for population increases, of course, and normalizing accordingly) So what if people are always lined up in his queue to download? WHY are they downloading it? WHERE did they hear it? And WILL THEY BUY IT? As before, music sharing among friends was the #1 method people heard about new bands and heard new music. How has that paradigm changed, exactly?
I find that ironic coming from the man who cowrote the following lyrics: (quoted under FAIR USE RIGHTS)
Freedom of choice is made for you my friend
Freedom of speech is words that they will bend
Freedom with their exceptions
That fucking hypocrite. I haven't given Metallica any of my money since the Napster crap started, and I've even refused to play it on my guitar when people ask me to. Fuck 'em.
Alright, Evil Adrian, let's go at it again.:) You're my new flame war partner since TheBungi hasn't appeared recently to flame about Windows/Linux.
Well, they shouldn't have been pirating music now, should they? It's hard to feel bad for people (let alone want to give them money) when they've been breaking the law, and know they've been breaking the law.
Hmm, where do I start? You're assuming they know they've been breaking the law. I do agree that not knowing isn't a valid defense, but it should be taken into consideration, IMO. The reason it's not a valid defense is because then everybody would say "Oh gee, I didn't know" and get off the hook. The reason it should be considered, though, is because if someone really didn't know they were screwing up, they can't really be responsible for it. To be responsible for your actions, you have to first know that they're wrong, right?
Second, I'm sure you've seen this question before, but how exactly does making a copy of someone's file on a computer compare to sailing on the high seas, firing cannons at everything that moves, raping and pillaging and generally destroying everything you come across? Come now, piracy is truly a destructive, evil thing. Copyright infringement doesn't even compare to what piracy really is.
Callous and unwarranted? Well, call it callous if you want, but you can't dare say unwarranted -- people are pirating RIAA member companies' music, it's clear as crystal.
Any time a company resorts to litigation without trying to resolve the issue in a more peacable fashion, it is unwarranted. It's morally comparable to you copying the fancy gnomes in my yard for your own yard, and me sticking knives in your side until I'm satisfied. Cease and Desist letters, however annoying they might be, are the first proper course. First, identify the perpetrator. Second, send them a letter telling them what you think they did, and that you'd like them to stop. You also inform them that you would like to resolve the issue peacably, but that you will defend your "intellectual property". If they don't stop, you will pursue further action. It's really very simple. How many letters should a person receive before they get served? Depends on how nice you want to be about it. But when someone attacks someone else without warning, that means they don't want to resolve the issue, they want to conquer and own.
As I've said a thousand times, if you don't like RIAA, don't support them, but the moment you start pirating things, you've broken the law, and I don't feel sorry for you.
I agree, actually. I don't think it's appropriate to feel sorry for these people. Pity is a useless feeling, in general. Want to help? Help. Don't want to help? Don't. But pity doesn't help at all. I would add to the statement about not supporting the RIAA by pointing out that supporting the artists that record under RIAA-"protected" labels in any way, including file sharing and attending performances, will ultimately support the RIAA in some fashion or other. For the reasons you shouldn't copy Windows you shouldn't copy RIAA-protected music.
Extortion would be like "pay up or I'll tell people you're gay" or something like that.
That's not extortion, at least legally, I don't think. I think extortion requires some sort of violence, like "Pay me this protection fee and my guys won't tear up your shop." That said, I heard a story once about a shop owner in New York who paid his dues to the mob so they wouldn't tear up his shop. Then, one night someone broke into his shop and stole some shit. The shop alarm went off, so the cops were notified by the security company. Or something like that. Anyway, the mob somehow found out about it (either the guy called them, or one of their guys just saw it) and had the perpetrator in their hands by morning, asking the shop owner what he wanted them to do with him. Interesting stuff.
Anyway, "Pay up or I'll tell people you're gay" sounds more like blackmail than extortion. I realize that morally it's the same thing, pay me or I'll do something to you that you won't like, but law has never been much of a representation of morality.
Let's not forget these are people who are listening to music from artists without paying for it first.
So are we supposed to go into a music store and just buy random shit without ever listening to it first? How are we supposed to filter all the crap (and there's a lot of it) so that we can spend our hard-earned money on the music that we really like? Listen to the radio? Oh my, then we have to listen to the commercials, to pay for the music. Remember, the RIAA tried to shut down music stores that provided listening booths. If the RIAA had their way, nobody would listen to a single musical note without paying their royalty to a record company. Is that the world you want to live in?
When I first heard this argument, seeing as this was then and still is an Open Source Friendly sort of crowd, I expected an Open Source type solution to this problem. The obvious answer to this (to me) would be to simply stop listening to bands that were contracted with RIAA afiliated record labels (presumably all of them). And ONLY listen to groups that release their music freely. (GNU-type Music, as it were). And I expected/. to become a great place to go if you were looking for tips on good indie bands. But I NEVER hear talk like that around here.
There are difficulties in this.
As a monopoly, the RIAA has successfully suppressed a great deal of music. One thing they conveniently leave out of their sales figures is the fact that indie labels have been breaking sales records, more or less across the board. (Sorry, I don't have a link right now to show this)
Social conditioning at this time is that in order to become successful you must:
Learn to play an instrument (optional)
Perform publicly
Record a demo tape
Send demo tape to record company, knowing it'll get thrown in trash
Wait to be "discovered"
Musicians tend to be conservative where technology is concerned. This makes them late adopters of new technology. Many musicians still prefer analog recording technologies, and its digital recording that has made it possible to record cheaply
Due to the fact that musicians are still addicted to analog recording, many still don't realize that digital distribution is possible through services like Mixonic, and others.
All that said, consider that I am a musician who is attempting to work within a new paradigm for music promotion, but I'm not professionally-oriented. I'd be happy to offer help to any musician who is professionally-oriented.
Also, any odds on how long it'll be before they're flying helicopters around this and shooting at giant primates clutching big-breasted and scantily-clad women?
The average not-so-tech-savvy users don't know a thing about `atp-get' or whatnots. All they know is to click here, click there, and perhaps change the background picture.
I don't see why I have to cater to an aggregate of individuals who have all decided to be stupid. Further, I don't see why I have to accept excuses for these people in the form of "not-so-tech-savvy users". As a matter of fact, my mother is hardly tech savvy, and she understood perfectly how to type:
READY LOAD "*",8,1
SEARCHING FOR * LOADING
Yes, I realize that GUIs are supposed to make life easier for us. Just like calculators are supposed to make math easier for us. With calculators, though, you still have to know the underlying principles. Why should GUI be any different? In fact, I can give you one reason why GUI should be different:
The average not-so-tech-savvy users also made up of the vast majority of computer users in the world, believe it or not.
During one of my archaeology classes, the standard phrase was "when in doubt, label it as 'ceremonial purpose'".
One of my archaeology professors used to say "Archeology is the pursuit of fact, not truth. If it's truth you're looking for, check out the philosophy class down the hall."
Hmmm, come to think of it, that was the same archaeology professor who recovered the Ark of the Covenant. He was cool. Looks just like Harrison Ford!
You did a fair job summarizing what I said, I don't understand where the disagreement occurs.
With the minor exception that when I say I owe my allegiance to my country, I'm not talking about the government. The government is a part of the country to be replaced as needed when it no longer serves the country. There is a difference between patriotism (what I'm spouting) and nationalism (what it appears you're trying to spout). Nationalism leads to fascism. Fascism leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering. Patriotism leads invariable to liberation. It's a good thing our founding fathers were patriots, rather than nationalists. Otherwise, we'd still be flying a British flag.
Slashdot Mirror
Ok, in all likelihood, you're probably right, however:
Really, some suspicion and vigilance of any government is a good and healthy thing. But it's amazing that supposedly technical people here at Slashdot can look at the robots.txt file in question (assuming they looked at it) and not see that it's an obvious scripting or search/replace error and are trying to turn it into something sinister.
If *I* were going to use robots.txt to stop crawlers from crawling sensitive issues and thus preventing search engines from having access to this stuff, *I* would try to disguise it as a script bug or something like that, so that I could call up any number of technical experts (non-partisan, I might add) to testify accordingly.
Of course, if *I* were programming a search engine, I would ignore robots.txt on a .gov site. :) It's only a convention, and I would like to have my engine back up the government web sites.
I'm so sorry I expended my mod points earlier in the day. What a bunch of flamebait bullshit this line of crap is. "Dictatorship?" Get fucking real. Let me ask this in non-partisan terms:
Yeah, so what? I don't know about you, but part of my governmental conditioning program, er, public education, included a long history lesson attached to the flimsy statement of "Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it." Noticing that many of the things going on in this country during Bush's term as president are reminiscent of things that happened in Germany in the '20s and '30s isn't "bullshit". It's trying not to repeat the past.
You can disagree with it all you want, of course, and there are plenty who want to portray this country as a dictatorship when it's not--yet. It may not become one, either. One thing we have that the Germans of the '20s and '30s did not have is the history of Germany in the '20s and '30s. We can apply the hindsight and use the lessons in the present to prevent this country from becoming this "Fourth Reich".
But we can't do it if we spend our time in denial of history and present events. It may well turn out that there's no correlation, and that all that's really happening here is an incompetent president during a time of crisis (after Homeland Security failed to become the Gestapo upon inception, I'm inclined to think our president's just incompetent, and I recall from his governorship that it's a documented fact). But we have to be prepared for the worst, and hope for the best. Reality, as always, will be somewhere in the middle.
How is the RIAA a monopoly?
Pardon me, monopoly was the wrong word. I apologize. I'm still not entirely sure what the right word is, so a little verbiage and maybe I'll get my point across. :)
Members of the RIAA--labels--dominate the recording industry completely. Sure, you can sign with small labels, but there are many risks. After recording Volume 8, the label Anthrax was with went under. The label before that (Epic, I believe) failed to support them, preferring the Seattle scene to an established money-making metal band. Anthrax is now with Sanctuary, and doing better, but for quite awhile it looked like it might be the end of Anthrax. The risk? The small label. The large label screwed them, looking for the golden needle in the haystack. The small label screwed them because they couldn't stay in business, for whatever reason. They had some friends in a few bands (Megadeth, Judas Priest, Kiss) who helped 'em out with touring, to raise money. They recorded their most recent album without even having a label! They basically took a complete album to Sanctuary and said "Don't fuck us and you can distribute this". Point is, Anthrax is a well-established band with millions of fans the world over, and because of problems with record labels they almost sunk into bankruptcy. I don't actually know how close they came.
Why is this important to the discussion? When Anthrax was on a major label (Island), they had all kinds of label support. The problem was that they were also stuck on the treadmill. They wanted off the treadmill and went to Epic, who did them much better than Island--for one album. For the second under Epic, they were screwed, as I mentioned. They didn't own the music, and they didn't collect royalties until all the stupid debts were paid to the label.
People sign to major labels because they want to be rich and famous--not because they want to make a decent living as musicians. That's what the major labels do for them (actually, an ever-shrinking percentage of their total musicians), and the major labels spend a lot of time and money trying to convince people that the only way they'll ever make money is to go with a major label, and that being rich and famous is what playing music is all about. Then they have this trade organization out picking fights with all the indy labels trying to drive them down, shut down the distribution chain for indy labels, and so forth. This same organization does periodically target larger indy labels and the bands that record under them. They also lobby congress, I understand, for laws that benefit the recording industry but screw musicians and consumers. Why do you think their standard 6-record rape contract is still legal? All the time they're doing this, they cry about how so few of their signed bands ever make it, how they invest so much money into every band signed, and how 5% of the bands signed support the other 95%. They don't support most of their bands (can't, judging from the amount of unique material I hear on the radio, there's not enough time in the day!), and then drop them when they don't make any money. This is contrary to their position that a major label provides distribution, marketing, and promotion for the band.
It's probably not possible to become rich and famous without a major label. Indy labels don't have the pure cash to do what a major label can do for you. But the major labels are very conservative with their investments. That's why we wind up with Britney Spears who's not all that different from Paula Abdul, and it's been this way for decades. If you're a woman, you have to be a Madonna-look-alike-and-sound-alike to be a star. Thanks, Madonna. There's payola, which probably gets pulled with Mtv also. There's a matter of getting onto a tour with a band that's already hit it big--not possible if you're not on a big label. (There are probably exceptions to this) Payola's the big thing, because it's the key to getting played on the radio. No amou
You cannot plead ignorance to the law. It is a citizen's responsibility to know, be aware of, and obey the laws of the country.
Not to mention, with the media covering this as much as they have been, you cannot possibly be unaware that piracy is illegal.
Actually, I've run into quite a few people who don't know that filesharing copyrighted material over P2P networks is illegal. Not exactly a statistical representation of anything, but there are people who are unaware. In any case, I agree that it is a citizen's responsibility to know and obey the law. I just think that in many cases, like this one, it's harsh to punish someone who didn't know the law with the same penalties as someone who did. As a point of fact, many judges (most, I'd say) are lenient against first-time offenders in minor cases like shoplifting, traffic tickets (if you actually challenge it, which I have) and so forth. But if someone really didn't intend to break the law, a slap on the wrists is probably better than suing them into oblivion, because they will stop. If the RIAA isn't just trying to stop people, then what are they trying to do?
You are taking something being offered for sale, without paying for it. So you are ripping companies off, which affects their bottom line, which affects their employees. When you are affecting someone's livelihood and potentially taking their job away because you want free music, that's pretty fucking selfish and borders on evil.
I'm also talking about people ripping off companies who have ripped off consumers, musicians, and just about everyone else throughout their entire history. The music industry hasn't exactly shown itself to be friendly in any way, and they expect us to be friendly now? At what point does the Golden Rule get enforced?
Really? So if someone stole a 911 from a Porsche dealership, the dealership should send cease and desist letters, and have a talk with them?
No comparison. While both are against the law (copyright infringement and car theft), car theft is a criminal case. That means the dealership doesn't sue them, usually, they report the crime to the police and the police try to catch the guy and prosecute him. The dealership isn't likely to recover the loss, even if they did sue the thief, but they can get something called "justice".
The argument can be made that the pirates fired first -- they don't want to resolve the issue of paying for things they took, they want to conquer RIAA and own. I'm not naive enough to think that all of these music pirates sent letter to RIAA companies to complain about high prices, because let's be honest here, they haven't. Most of them said "Oh, I can get music for free online? Cool!" and then did so.
The argument can be made, but when it comes down to it, it's not reasonable to argue with "he hit me first!". At least, I don't take that from my kids, I won't take it from the RIAA either. If they want to claim the moral high ground over filesharers, they need to behave accordingly.
In other news, Actor Kurt Russell has been sued by the RIAA. A spokesperson for the RIAA said "It's pretty obvious what he did. Unfortunate that he went and bragged about it on a piracy advocate web site, but we caught him."
In addition, without a publishing company, all the initial costs of touring, first presses of CDs, et al, will fall on somebody else -- either the band, or some other entity willing to lend them money.
*sigh* I always wind up posting this link in these discussions:
Courtney Love does the math
Fact is, Artists pay ALL of that. When you sign a record contract and get your million dollar advance, that's to pay for the tour. The record company charges you (later on) for the presses of the CD, production of the CD (including post-production, of course), marketing (including payola), and so forth. And they won't give you *any* of your earned royalties until you've paid up your debts, i.e. the million dollar advance+publishing costs+marketing & promotion costs.
You don't just give up your music when you sign with a major record label, you give up your freedom and spend the rest of your years toiling to satisfy the label. Previously, Americans defined that as slavery. Now it's called "business".
Every time these stories come up, people should focus on promoting sites and services that allow P2P and download of non-restricted material. Slowly-but-surely, we'll turn people towards artists that are grateful that their work is being heard instead of hoarded by the copyright mafia. Most artists don't make squat off of publishing royalties anyway, so 99% of most artists would actually benefit from more distribution of their material. We need to encourage artists to release material in an unrestricted manner and introduce more to the less-mundane music that is out there that Clear Channel and other monopolies are ignoring.
Heh, I post in every one of these discussions because my sig has a link to stuff I make available with no restrictions. I realize it's not he greatest stuff in the world. But if enough people wrote me email to tell me it was good enough to pay money for, I'd kick it into high gear and finish all the recordings and put an actual studio album together. I just need to know that people will pay for it for me to make it a priority over other things, otherwise it's at my own priority when it gets done.
They could send out their joint forces of gestapos to destroy computers of file sharers like Orrin Hatch wants. I hope that nevers happens (obviously I got a little carried away).
Ironic that Styx sang about this years ago. (Ironic because Styx is one of the worst sellout bands in history) Rush also wrote to this storyline, iirc.
In other words, I want to put completely legal and freely distributable music online in order to bait the RIAA. I want to make sure that I am competely, 100% legal when I do this.
You're gonna be short out of luck with this. You're going to have to settle with someone, and it's likely going to be the copyright owner, which is usually the business the RIAA is trying to protect. Your best bet, in my opinion, is to record your own music and make it freely available.
If you really want to bait the RIAA somehow, I would suggest intentionally writing music to be poopular, and writing the music to specific targets (like 12-year-old girls). Then promote it as much as you can, but give it away. If the point is to provide alternatives to the RIAA-protected music, then you need to provide it in the genres that are the biggest money-makers for the RIAA's members, and in such a fashion that people won't care if you're signed with the label or not.
So, one last time:
If you really want to enforce rules of grammar, then you should use proper grammer yourself. No sentence fragments, and proper punctuation (there shouldn't always be a comment after the word "so". Your sentence would have been a misused comment if it had been a complete sentence, but it wasn't)
Note: I don't give a shit if people screw up their grammar during a discussion, so I don't expect to be held to the rules of grammar in my own posts.
If you want to better your chances of scoring a date, play it cool and leave them guessing as to how much you want to see them. Instead of giving them your number, take control by getting their number. Then wait a few days to call so they're surprised and happy when you do call. We hate when girls play games like that with us, but girls seem to find it exciting and mysterious. Suddenly they feel like they need to put some effort into raising your interest. They see you as a challenge.
Offtopic, but...
Is this how you wind up with a girl that you break up with after 5 years? You know, I don't put up with these bullshit games, and I've been married for almost 8 years now, and still going...
You're absolutely correct, and I was never trying to change what you said. Quite the contrary, I was quite surprised to see you sum up the situation so well and wanted to respond and add to it. I wasn't trying to make out your position, because you hadn't offered one of your own, just an answer to the parent post. :)
That doesn't mean you can't feel that copyright law ought to be changed to fall in line with your wishes though.
I talk about it so that people will hear me and read what I say. I vote in that direction with my political right to vote as well as with my wallet. Yes, I want copyright law to be changed to better fulfill the intent of the law. I don't think copyright law was created to prevent people from copying original stuff over P2P, and I think that it's wrong to apply the law to the existing P2P situation. So, I seek to get my point of view across to as many people as possible in as many ways as I can. Like most people, though, I have limited resources to do so. If someone wanted to sponsor me without censoring me, I'd be happy to go further. :)
Inappropriate? That is totally appropriate. The comparison was not between the action intended to be stopped, but the fundamental impossibility of stopping it from happening at all. There will always be rapes and murders and there will always be copyright infringement. The comment highlighted that just because you can't stop it doesn't mean you should try. But I guess that concept was too much for you, slashbot.
Quite the contrary, slashbot. There is no comparison between making an exact copy available to thousands of downloaders and forcing your dick into a woman, violently if necessary. In the first case, the worst that you've done is cost the creator of the work a few bucks (or a lot). In the second case, you've exposed the woman to countless diseases, some of them deadly, as well as put her at risk for a pregnancy (I used to know a guy who's mother was raped, and that's how he was conceived), and given her some serious emotional trauma. Some women never recover emotionally from being raped. There's no comparison. If you really want to make your point, pick something that makes a bit more sense. I'll do it for you, so you don't have to think that hard.
Shoplifting costs the company money, but doesn't hurt anybody in any other way, and it can't be stopped either, so why bother trying?
E.g. perhaps some of the /. crowd feel that copyright infringement ought to be a remedy available only against commercial infringers.
Bingo, Captain! Copyright exists to allow the creator (or the company that forced the creator to sign over their rights to their creation, which is what actually happens in the music business) and only the creator to exploit the commercial value of their creation. If I made a thousand copies of the newest Metallica album and sell them without having a prior agreement with Metallica to do so, THEN I am infringing on their copyright. Only then am I infringing on their copyright. If I copy the newest Metallica album for a thousand people and give it to them free, without intending to use it to promote my own commercial business, then I am not infringing copyright.
For example: if I make an advertisement for my big-dick serum, and I use one of Metallica's songs (say, Whiplash) to advertise it without having an agreement, then I am committing copyright infringement. But if I tell someone I have a big dick, and then give them a copy of Whiplash, I am not committing copyright infringement.
Your choice of the word trivial is interesting to me. See, for many decades, music sharing went on offline and noone got sued. In that time the amount of copyright infringement going on could be, and was, considered trivial. Hell, it was probably good free advertising. One would have to be an idiot to call the amount of illegal filesharing going on at any given time today trivial. Does it mean the best thing to do is sue? Probably not. Did your comment expose a lack of perspective? Oh yes.
So, what proof is there that there is more copyright infringement going on today than ever before? I ask because I've noticed that I don't exchange CDs with my friends anymore. If I hear something they've got that I like, I ask them what it is, and then I go P2Ping for it. That way, my friend isn't troubled with loaning/copying the CD for me, and I still get to hear more from the artist. In the old days, this would've led to me ultimately purchasing an album or three. In the new days, of course, I don't give any of my hard-earned money to the legal mob of gangsters that is the RIAA.
I realize it's very easy to look at the numbers and think "Oh boy, this guy's sharing 15,000 songs! What a pirate!". But how does that mean the total amount of copyright infringement is any greater than it was 10 years ago? (Accounting for population increases, of course, and normalizing accordingly) So what if people are always lined up in his queue to download? WHY are they downloading it? WHERE did they hear it? And WILL THEY BUY IT? As before, music sharing among friends was the #1 method people heard about new bands and heard new music. How has that paradigm changed, exactly?
Ulrich's favourite word was "control".
I find that ironic coming from the man who cowrote the following lyrics: (quoted under FAIR USE RIGHTS)
That fucking hypocrite. I haven't given Metallica any of my money since the Napster crap started, and I've even refused to play it on my guitar when people ask me to. Fuck 'em.
Alright, Evil Adrian, let's go at it again. :) You're my new flame war partner since TheBungi hasn't appeared recently to flame about Windows/Linux.
Well, they shouldn't have been pirating music now, should they? It's hard to feel bad for people (let alone want to give them money) when they've been breaking the law, and know they've been breaking the law.
Hmm, where do I start? You're assuming they know they've been breaking the law. I do agree that not knowing isn't a valid defense, but it should be taken into consideration, IMO. The reason it's not a valid defense is because then everybody would say "Oh gee, I didn't know" and get off the hook. The reason it should be considered, though, is because if someone really didn't know they were screwing up, they can't really be responsible for it. To be responsible for your actions, you have to first know that they're wrong, right?
Second, I'm sure you've seen this question before, but how exactly does making a copy of someone's file on a computer compare to sailing on the high seas, firing cannons at everything that moves, raping and pillaging and generally destroying everything you come across? Come now, piracy is truly a destructive, evil thing. Copyright infringement doesn't even compare to what piracy really is.
Callous and unwarranted? Well, call it callous if you want, but you can't dare say unwarranted -- people are pirating RIAA member companies' music, it's clear as crystal.
Any time a company resorts to litigation without trying to resolve the issue in a more peacable fashion, it is unwarranted. It's morally comparable to you copying the fancy gnomes in my yard for your own yard, and me sticking knives in your side until I'm satisfied. Cease and Desist letters, however annoying they might be, are the first proper course. First, identify the perpetrator. Second, send them a letter telling them what you think they did, and that you'd like them to stop. You also inform them that you would like to resolve the issue peacably, but that you will defend your "intellectual property". If they don't stop, you will pursue further action. It's really very simple. How many letters should a person receive before they get served? Depends on how nice you want to be about it. But when someone attacks someone else without warning, that means they don't want to resolve the issue, they want to conquer and own.
As I've said a thousand times, if you don't like RIAA, don't support them, but the moment you start pirating things, you've broken the law, and I don't feel sorry for you.
I agree, actually. I don't think it's appropriate to feel sorry for these people. Pity is a useless feeling, in general. Want to help? Help. Don't want to help? Don't. But pity doesn't help at all. I would add to the statement about not supporting the RIAA by pointing out that supporting the artists that record under RIAA-"protected" labels in any way, including file sharing and attending performances, will ultimately support the RIAA in some fashion or other. For the reasons you shouldn't copy Windows you shouldn't copy RIAA-protected music.
Extortion would be like "pay up or I'll tell people you're gay" or something like that.
That's not extortion, at least legally, I don't think. I think extortion requires some sort of violence, like "Pay me this protection fee and my guys won't tear up your shop." That said, I heard a story once about a shop owner in New York who paid his dues to the mob so they wouldn't tear up his shop. Then, one night someone broke into his shop and stole some shit. The shop alarm went off, so the cops were notified by the security company. Or something like that. Anyway, the mob somehow found out about it (either the guy called them, or one of their guys just saw it) and had the perpetrator in their hands by morning, asking the shop owner what he wanted them to do with him. Interesting stuff.
Anyway, "Pay up or I'll tell people you're gay" sounds more like blackmail than extortion. I realize that morally it's the same thing, pay me or I'll do something to you that you won't like, but law has never been much of a representation of morality.
Let's not forget these are people who are listening to music from artists without paying for it first.
So are we supposed to go into a music store and just buy random shit without ever listening to it first? How are we supposed to filter all the crap (and there's a lot of it) so that we can spend our hard-earned money on the music that we really like? Listen to the radio? Oh my, then we have to listen to the commercials, to pay for the music. Remember, the RIAA tried to shut down music stores that provided listening booths. If the RIAA had their way, nobody would listen to a single musical note without paying their royalty to a record company. Is that the world you want to live in?
When I first heard this argument, seeing as this was then and still is an Open Source Friendly sort of crowd, I expected an Open Source type solution to this problem. The obvious answer to this (to me) would be to simply stop listening to bands that were contracted with RIAA afiliated record labels (presumably all of them). And ONLY listen to groups that release their music freely. (GNU-type Music, as it were). And I expected /. to become a great place to go if you were looking for tips on good indie bands. But I NEVER hear talk like that around here.
There are difficulties in this.
All that said, consider that I am a musician who is attempting to work within a new paradigm for music promotion, but I'm not professionally-oriented. I'd be happy to offer help to any musician who is professionally-oriented.
I find your blatantly Islamophobic attitude to be disgusting, and unworthy of a science and technology oriented news site.
Hmmm, so how was the original post blatantly islamophobic, as you say?
What was the talled building before this one?
Also, any odds on how long it'll be before they're flying helicopters around this and shooting at giant primates clutching big-breasted and scantily-clad women?
oh yeah, and first post.
The average not-so-tech-savvy users don't know a thing about `atp-get' or whatnots. All they know is to click here, click there, and perhaps change the background picture.
I don't see why I have to cater to an aggregate of individuals who have all decided to be stupid. Further, I don't see why I have to accept excuses for these people in the form of "not-so-tech-savvy users". As a matter of fact, my mother is hardly tech savvy, and she understood perfectly how to type:
Yes, I realize that GUIs are supposed to make life easier for us. Just like calculators are supposed to make math easier for us. With calculators, though, you still have to know the underlying principles. Why should GUI be any different? In fact, I can give you one reason why GUI should be different:
The average not-so-tech-savvy users also made up of the vast majority of computer users in the world, believe it or not.
During one of my archaeology classes, the standard phrase was "when in doubt, label it as 'ceremonial purpose'".
One of my archaeology professors used to say "Archeology is the pursuit of fact, not truth. If it's truth you're looking for, check out the philosophy class down the hall."
Hmmm, come to think of it, that was the same archaeology professor who recovered the Ark of the Covenant. He was cool. Looks just like Harrison Ford!
You did a fair job summarizing what I said, I don't understand where the disagreement occurs.
With the minor exception that when I say I owe my allegiance to my country, I'm not talking about the government. The government is a part of the country to be replaced as needed when it no longer serves the country. There is a difference between patriotism (what I'm spouting) and nationalism (what it appears you're trying to spout). Nationalism leads to fascism. Fascism leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering. Patriotism leads invariable to liberation. It's a good thing our founding fathers were patriots, rather than nationalists. Otherwise, we'd still be flying a British flag.