On top of that, my MS Intellimouse keeps locking up.
Let me guess, is it optical? I had this problem for ages, in Slack. I'm not a hacker, and never found out what was the cause. My workaround was, not to move the mouse until the X is finished loading.
After I switched to the 2.6 kernel, the problem went away for good.
What you are saying makes sense. In the parent post I was referring to the establishment of the copyright law in general, which took place decades ago, and by "we" I mostly meant Americans.
But seeing that the Canadian RI is still trying to sue p2p users, may be they too need an amendment of some sort, to clarify what constitutes a legal sharing of the music on the Internet.
Because, I think, deep in our collective mind there's a notion which we call the "free speech", an understanding that everyone benefits when a valuable piece of information enters the public domain and is distributed to the people, regardless of their wealth and/or social standing. Libraries were created for that very purpose.
A conflicting notion depeloped throughout the years, that of an "intellectual property", and its proponents want us to think that the availability of the interesing information will increase if we place monetary incentives on the creation - like the exclusive distribution rights that we have today. They seem to ignore a fact that most of us are poor, and often cannot afford that valuable information anymore, and hence an opposite result is achieved.
I think that those who compared the sharing with installing a photocopier in the library are on to something. The trick questions is: what is distribution? IMHO, we should re-evaluate what consitutes a "distribution", given that it became so cheap an simple with the advent of the Internet.
Just like people noted before, when I share a file on a p2p network, I'm not really distributing it. Every downloader had to 1. get a computer 2. get an Internet connection 3. get a p2p client 4. find the file 5. initiate the downloading. Understandably, there's an illusion of a distribution here, because a p2p network beats any library by its size, and all of them put together by its content, but I am still willing to argue that downloaders do more for the "distributing" than the sharers.
Sharing was made possible by a technology that could not be envisioned when the copyright law was created, and we won't get far by suing people who engage in it. A legal change is what we desperatly need: a kind of a copyright law that would allow artists to get paid, while all people are able to share the information in an unrestricted manner, for non-commercial purposes. I'm am of opinion that art will survive even if we go all the way and declare information free, but heck, I'll settle for a voluntary collective licensing scheme too.
Having said all that, the minister seems to be moving in just the opposite direction, but after I've seen RIAA, I'm not surprised anymore...
'artists should make their money doing live gigs': sure that may work for your favorite musician, but it doesn't for mine. I actually spoke to quite a few moderately famous musicians, and a lot of them don't like performing live. At the very minimum, they see their effort of recording a song very seperated from live performances.
They will be supported by donations from people like you.
In fact, I'll go as far as saying that the concept of musicians having to make their money through live gigs is very similar to the Open Source concept of software manufacturers having to make their money through support (vs. charging for the software).
Here I agree completely - people are paying for the service. No one feels ripped off.
The only difference being that musicians will have to do the live performance themselves, whereas the programmers potentially have the luxury of having someone else take care of the support.
What is the problem with selling the right to perform publicly? Alice writes the music, and Bob performs it on a stadium. He can't hide it, and so has to pay the fee. Artists have been collaborating in this way for decades. Sharing and p2p do not affect this scheme.
I'm not trying to slide to far off topic here, but can you see the problem with saying that software should be funded by support (like lots of Open Source advocates say)?
As a Linux user and a geek, I'm certainly biased, but... no.
The first problem is that there is an incentive to make software such that it requires support. Whereas in an ideal world software wouldn't need support at all.
That would indeed be an ideal world. Are we now to demand a car that requires no support? Even Zippo offers a life-time warranty - and we are talking about a mechanism with 6 or so parts. OTOH, if you look at Legato Networker (I use this obscure example because I know people who work there) you'll see that there is but a handful of people in the company who know what is happening under the hood.
The second problem is that support != development. Someone has to pay for the development.
But I, consumer, don't want to pay for the development. Nothing will be produced, they say? We need incentives for the common good, they say? I disagree. Linux proves that FOSS has a chance of catching up with the commercial software. If placed in a robust free market economy (not the MS economy we have today) and backed up by service companies, it will serve us just fine. (Here, of course, I make reservations. It looks like we are getting there, but only the time will tell.) And with music I have an even stronger case: the pre-recording era.
Conclusion: there's no good reason to restrict the non-commercial distribution of any information. None except that guys in RIAA and MS won't be able to get paid for telling us where we want to go today.
Downloading music withot paying for it is morally equivalent to using the GPL in closed source products.
Similar, but not equivalent. First of all, downloading is out of the picture, because it can't be morally compared to the "distribution" mentioned in GPL. In downloading, you are not a distributor - you are on the receiving end.
But even sharing is different, because GPL ensures that certain information is not kept secret, whereas RIAA's copyright use hinders the (non-commercial) distribution of what already is made universally available!
I do not deny that pirates are breaking the law, but, IMHO, the prohibition of the distribution of the information that was made public by the creator becomes more and more immoral. In large part, because of the new technology. Look at the Freenet: the information is almost distributing itself - people who chose to share have no idea what's being stored on their winchester - and that is by design. Can they still be blamed?
I heard it before: musicians deserve to get paid for their labour. My answer is: open your eyes, the market for the phonographic record is shrinking. It's a free market, remember? Adjust. Play live. Get a day job. Get famouse by writing good music, and people will give you money because they dig you. This may sound scary, but that is exactly how the musicians were sustained before the recording technology.
I'm a musician myself, and I manage to remain one although I'm totally broke. More than that: I am at the point when I'm almost ready to record, right here at home, with some used recording equipment and an Audigy sound card. I know better than anyone else: we don't need a cartel to make music, nor do we need a lot of money - just an inspiration.
Cheers.
If people are going to insist on analogizing it to something else, I would suggest TRESPASSING. If I put my foot in your yard, I've trespassed. But you still have your yard; you just aren't enjoying it exclusively.
I don't wonna stop here. I think, it's more like they build towers and then insist on charging money for looking at them. We are not even trespassing on their property, just enjoying it, because they've made it so wildly accessible. Their only argument is "if you don't pay us, who will build these beautiful towers for you too look at?" We are consumers, after all; what happened to our right to chose?
And there's a huge difficulty of a different sort here. The pirate is now an individual, and the "theft" is happening in the privacy of our houses. The whole idea of p2p is that there's no middle man (except the ISP, and they alredy washed their hands). To fight piracy effectively, they will need to tap our wires, to know what we are doing behind the closed doors. I hope you'll agree, they shouldn't succeed at that. I believe, the change is coming.
Broadband for everyone? That's just what RIAA needs to stop the music pirates. I heard that 50 million figures for p2p networks are way overblown, but with the help of W they will become a reality.
But if *I* want to make music and sell it then at what point exactly do you think *you* have a right to take it without paying?
Legally, in US, I have no such right, but that doesn't mean it's unethical. Really, a pirate did not request you to create/record/publish the music, you did it yourself. (And while I'm on it, you did it because the RI lied to you, saying that your copyrights are protected. They forgot to mention that the law was unenforceable.) Moreover, a pirate pays for the distribution out of her own pocket, and does not deprive anyone else from listening to the music. I don't see why she should feel guilty or should ever pay you anything.
Comparison with a theft does not stand, because a pirate doesn't "take" your music. When she makes a copy, there's more of it, not less.
It can't? I thought innovation (having a technical lead on your competition) was a cornerstone of the modern industrial economy.
It is not clear to me how much the Copyright law helps the innovation. Take Linux as an example. It was written by the enthusiasts who took no advantage of the Copyright law, and today it competes with the commerical flavours of UNIX.
And then, like you said, it's not even relevant, for what "innovation" are we talking about in music? So, all we have left is this:
If, however, you want someone else to make music for you, then you should expect them to want to be paid for their services. Is there something unfair about that?
I don't like how this question is asked. What I have today is an ocean of music I never asked for, and I'm being told that I'm a criminal, although I pay my own money and produce my own private copies without taking them away from anyone. Imagine just for a second that there's no copyright law, and tell me whose rights and/or freedoms I'm violating. Artists get themselves heard, without paying a dime for the distribution. If they didn't want to be heard, why did they record? I assert that music piracy, as it stands, is illegal, but not unjust, and the law should be changed to reflect that.
As for the earlier comment about no market for live music... I believe this will change when artists start using freely distributable records for promotion and save more content for the live performances. Even if it doesn't work that way, it will just mean that the market for the recorded music disappeared, and market for the live music didn't grow. Big deal. Artists and music will still be around. I don't see any problem with that, and I'm getting tired of people telling me that they should have the right to make money in a way that is convenient to them.
I see many people are asking: if we drop the restriction on file sharing, how will artists get paid?
Clue train is coming! Just how they were getting paid before sound recording was invented. Those who think that no good music will be writted/played are just spreading the propaganda for the recording industry. No matter how easy it is to share the files, artists will always get paid for the live performances and for endorsing stuff (given they are famous).
Actually, I'm not advocating the piracy (I'm not that evil), but I certainly stand for a new legal standard. The biggest problem with the modern copyright law is that it's unenforceable. We could let the industry sue us for sharing what we bought in the store (I stress that pirates have NO commercial interest while sharing), or we could look for ways to set the law straingt: we pay artists for playing live, artists pay RI for recording. Everyone is happy.
The fact is, tools like KaZaa have shown we don't need record companies anymore
That certainly is true. I don't wan't to hear the words "distribution cost" anymore, because it goes as low as zero. "Recording industry?" Why would I need that if I have a burner and an.ogg player? Why are these guys still insist on charging us 65~85 cents for yeach song on iTunes? What exactly do they do for us? I want my money to go directly to the artist, for creating the music. If I choose a service like iTunes over p2p, I'll pay iTunes for making the files highly available. Other than that, I don't see any need for a middle man. If artist chooses to buy marketing, he can pay out of her/his own pocket.
Artists can earn money by performing (concerts and such), mp3's should be seen as advertising their trade.
I will not go as far as to say "all music should be free". An artist deserves to get paid. What I fail to see is the reason to pay the artists in proportion to the number of listeners. I don't see the artist swetting when I legally download his mp3; rather, I paid for broadband & iTunes with my own buck. Are the artists that special? I say, let them work for their wages.
This paragraph above is just MHO though; I'm far from proposing a practical solution.
If we want free or dirty cheep music that is legal (I know I do) piracy is not an answer. p2p is an answer, but only as a distribution model. We will drive the nail in RIAA's coffin when we saturate the market with actual free music. Even if it's not quite as polished as the commercial product, its price will be impossible to beat (think Linux, gcc, Apache). If you really hate RIAA, stop pirating and start creating:P
Slashdot Mirror
On top of that, my MS Intellimouse keeps locking up.
Let me guess, is it optical? I had this problem for ages, in Slack. I'm not a hacker, and never found out what was the cause. My workaround was, not to move the mouse until the X is finished loading.
After I switched to the 2.6 kernel, the problem went away for good.
A beowulf cluster of helicopters.
What you are saying makes sense. In the parent post I was referring to the establishment of the copyright law in general, which took place decades ago, and by "we" I mostly meant Americans.
But seeing that the Canadian RI is still trying to sue p2p users, may be they too need an amendment of some sort, to clarify what constitutes a legal sharing of the music on the Internet.
Because, I think, deep in our collective mind there's a notion which we call the "free speech", an understanding that everyone benefits when a valuable piece of information enters the public domain and is distributed to the people, regardless of their wealth and/or social standing. Libraries were created for that very purpose.
A conflicting notion depeloped throughout the years, that of an "intellectual property", and its proponents want us to think that the availability of the interesing information will increase if we place monetary incentives on the creation - like the exclusive distribution rights that we have today. They seem to ignore a fact that most of us are poor, and often cannot afford that valuable information anymore, and hence an opposite result is achieved.
I think that those who compared the sharing with installing a photocopier in the library are on to something. The trick questions is: what is distribution? IMHO, we should re-evaluate what consitutes a "distribution", given that it became so cheap an simple with the advent of the Internet.
Just like people noted before, when I share a file on a p2p network, I'm not really distributing it. Every downloader had to 1. get a computer 2. get an Internet connection 3. get a p2p client 4. find the file 5. initiate the downloading. Understandably, there's an illusion of a distribution here, because a p2p network beats any library by its size, and all of them put together by its content, but I am still willing to argue that downloaders do more for the "distributing" than the sharers.
Sharing was made possible by a technology that could not be envisioned when the copyright law was created, and we won't get far by suing people who engage in it. A legal change is what we desperatly need: a kind of a copyright law that would allow artists to get paid, while all people are able to share the information in an unrestricted manner, for non-commercial purposes. I'm am of opinion that art will survive even if we go all the way and declare information free, but heck, I'll settle for a voluntary collective licensing scheme too.
Having said all that, the minister seems to be moving in just the opposite direction, but after I've seen RIAA, I'm not surprised anymore...
'artists should make their money doing live gigs': sure that may work for your favorite musician, but it doesn't for mine. I actually spoke to quite a few moderately famous musicians, and a lot of them don't like performing live. At the very minimum, they see their effort of recording a song very seperated from live performances.
They will be supported by donations from people like you.
In fact, I'll go as far as saying that the concept of musicians having to make their money through live gigs is very similar to the Open Source concept of software manufacturers having to make their money through support (vs. charging for the software).
Here I agree completely - people are paying for the service. No one feels ripped off.
The only difference being that musicians will have to do the live performance themselves, whereas the programmers potentially have the luxury of having someone else take care of the support.
What is the problem with selling the right to perform publicly? Alice writes the music, and Bob performs it on a stadium. He can't hide it, and so has to pay the fee. Artists have been collaborating in this way for decades. Sharing and p2p do not affect this scheme.
I'm not trying to slide to far off topic here, but can you see the problem with saying that software should be funded by support (like lots of Open Source advocates say)?
As a Linux user and a geek, I'm certainly biased, but... no.
The first problem is that there is an incentive to make software such that it requires support. Whereas in an ideal world software wouldn't need support at all.
That would indeed be an ideal world. Are we now to demand a car that requires no support? Even Zippo offers a life-time warranty - and we are talking about a mechanism with 6 or so parts. OTOH, if you look at Legato Networker (I use this obscure example because I know people who work there) you'll see that there is but a handful of people in the company who know what is happening under the hood.
The second problem is that support != development. Someone has to pay for the development.
But I, consumer, don't want to pay for the development. Nothing will be produced, they say? We need incentives for the common good, they say? I disagree. Linux proves that FOSS has a chance of catching up with the commercial software. If placed in a robust free market economy (not the MS economy we have today) and backed up by service companies, it will serve us just fine. (Here, of course, I make reservations. It looks like we are getting there, but only the time will tell.) And with music I have an even stronger case: the pre-recording era.
Conclusion: there's no good reason to restrict the non-commercial distribution of any information. None except that guys in RIAA and MS won't be able to get paid for telling us where we want to go today.
Downloading music withot paying for it is morally equivalent to using the GPL in closed source products.
Similar, but not equivalent. First of all, downloading is out of the picture, because it can't be morally compared to the "distribution" mentioned in GPL. In downloading, you are not a distributor - you are on the receiving end.
But even sharing is different, because GPL ensures that certain information is not kept secret, whereas RIAA's copyright use hinders the (non-commercial) distribution of what already is made universally available!
I do not deny that pirates are breaking the law, but, IMHO, the prohibition of the distribution of the information that was made public by the creator becomes more and more immoral. In large part, because of the new technology. Look at the Freenet: the information is almost distributing itself - people who chose to share have no idea what's being stored on their winchester - and that is by design. Can they still be blamed?
I heard it before: musicians deserve to get paid for their labour. My answer is: open your eyes, the market for the phonographic record is shrinking. It's a free market, remember? Adjust. Play live. Get a day job. Get famouse by writing good music, and people will give you money because they dig you. This may sound scary, but that is exactly how the musicians were sustained before the recording technology.
I'm a musician myself, and I manage to remain one although I'm totally broke. More than that: I am at the point when I'm almost ready to record, right here at home, with some used recording equipment and an Audigy sound card. I know better than anyone else: we don't need a cartel to make music, nor do we need a lot of money - just an inspiration. Cheers.
If people are going to insist on analogizing it to something else, I would suggest TRESPASSING. If I put my foot in your yard, I've trespassed. But you still have your yard; you just aren't enjoying it exclusively.
I don't wonna stop here. I think, it's more like they build towers and then insist on charging money for looking at them. We are not even trespassing on their property, just enjoying it, because they've made it so wildly accessible. Their only argument is "if you don't pay us, who will build these beautiful towers for you too look at?" We are consumers, after all; what happened to our right to chose?
And there's a huge difficulty of a different sort here. The pirate is now an individual, and the "theft" is happening in the privacy of our houses. The whole idea of p2p is that there's no middle man (except the ISP, and they alredy washed their hands). To fight piracy effectively, they will need to tap our wires, to know what we are doing behind the closed doors. I hope you'll agree, they shouldn't succeed at that. I believe, the change is coming.
Broadband for everyone? That's just what RIAA needs to stop the music pirates. I heard that 50 million figures for p2p networks are way overblown, but with the help of W they will become a reality.
I say, kudos to the president Bush.
But if *I* want to make music and sell it then at what point exactly do you think *you* have a right to take it without paying?
Legally, in US, I have no such right, but that doesn't mean it's unethical. Really, a pirate did not request you to create/record/publish the music, you did it yourself. (And while I'm on it, you did it because the RI lied to you, saying that your copyrights are protected. They forgot to mention that the law was unenforceable.) Moreover, a pirate pays for the distribution out of her own pocket, and does not deprive anyone else from listening to the music. I don't see why she should feel guilty or should ever pay you anything.
Comparison with a theft does not stand, because a pirate doesn't "take" your music. When she makes a copy, there's more of it, not less.
It can't? I thought innovation (having a technical lead on your competition) was a cornerstone of the modern industrial economy.
It is not clear to me how much the Copyright law helps the innovation. Take Linux as an example. It was written by the enthusiasts who took no advantage of the Copyright law, and today it competes with the commerical flavours of UNIX.
And then, like you said, it's not even relevant, for what "innovation" are we talking about in music? So, all we have left is this:
If, however, you want someone else to make music for you, then you should expect them to want to be paid for their services. Is there something unfair about that?
I don't like how this question is asked. What I have today is an ocean of music I never asked for, and I'm being told that I'm a criminal, although I pay my own money and produce my own private copies without taking them away from anyone. Imagine just for a second that there's no copyright law, and tell me whose rights and/or freedoms I'm violating. Artists get themselves heard, without paying a dime for the distribution. If they didn't want to be heard, why did they record? I assert that music piracy, as it stands, is illegal, but not unjust, and the law should be changed to reflect that.
As for the earlier comment about no market for live music... I believe this will change when artists start using freely distributable records for promotion and save more content for the live performances. Even if it doesn't work that way, it will just mean that the market for the recorded music disappeared, and market for the live music didn't grow. Big deal. Artists and music will still be around. I don't see any problem with that, and I'm getting tired of people telling me that they should have the right to make money in a way that is convenient to them.
I see many people are asking: if we drop the restriction on file sharing, how will artists get paid? Clue train is coming! Just how they were getting paid before sound recording was invented. Those who think that no good music will be writted/played are just spreading the propaganda for the recording industry. No matter how easy it is to share the files, artists will always get paid for the live performances and for endorsing stuff (given they are famous). Actually, I'm not advocating the piracy (I'm not that evil), but I certainly stand for a new legal standard. The biggest problem with the modern copyright law is that it's unenforceable. We could let the industry sue us for sharing what we bought in the store (I stress that pirates have NO commercial interest while sharing), or we could look for ways to set the law straingt: we pay artists for playing live, artists pay RI for recording. Everyone is happy.
The fact is, tools like KaZaa have shown we don't need record companies anymore
That certainly is true. I don't wan't to hear the words "distribution cost" anymore, because it goes as low as zero. "Recording industry?" Why would I need that if I have a burner and an .ogg player? Why are these guys still insist on charging us 65~85 cents for yeach song on iTunes? What exactly do they do for us? I want my money to go directly to the artist, for creating the music. If I choose a service like iTunes over p2p, I'll pay iTunes for making the files highly available. Other than that, I don't see any need for a middle man. If artist chooses to buy marketing, he can pay out of her/his own pocket.
Artists can earn money by performing (concerts and such), mp3's should be seen as advertising their trade.
I will not go as far as to say "all music should be free". An artist deserves to get paid. What I fail to see is the reason to pay the artists in proportion to the number of listeners. I don't see the artist swetting when I legally download his mp3; rather, I paid for broadband & iTunes with my own buck. Are the artists that special? I say, let them work for their wages.
This paragraph above is just MHO though; I'm far from proposing a practical solution.
If we want free or dirty cheep music that is legal (I know I do) piracy is not an answer. p2p is an answer, but only as a distribution model. We will drive the nail in RIAA's coffin when we saturate the market with actual free music. Even if it's not quite as polished as the commercial product, its price will be impossible to beat (think Linux, gcc, Apache). If you really hate RIAA, stop pirating and start creating :P
I wonder if they fixed the OpenAL driver. In Demo, I was never able to enable my mike, although the sound worked perfectly.