God!Awful's 3rd rule of Slashdot:/. readers aren't against people making a profit in principle. They are merely against any way of making a profit in practice.
To state that the increase in CO2 is undeniably causing the increase in temperature is just bad science. There's no evidence to back it up. We need experiments and more data before any sound scientific conclusion like that can be made.
Good point.
Let's do a giant experiment using the Earth as a testbed. If the Earth is still habitable in 50 years, you were probably right.
"I can find web pages about Apple MacIntosh and I can find pages about growing Apple MacIntoshes, but it's hard to separate the pages about computers from those about cookery."
Have you tried adding the words "computer" or "fruit" to your query?;-)
Interestingly enough... from Friday's NYT crossword puzzle:
Having said all that, your point about the ISP being able to route directly to your internal IPs is a good one. Luckily (because I hadn't really thought about it), my iptables setup will reject any such packets.
Right... because your ISP is *so* likely to do this.
Ahh, that explains it. I couldn't understand why my Hotmail account kept saying that I was running out of storage every time I logged on (and that further e-mails to me would bounce). Then I noticed all the 200kb attachments in my junk failure. What I can't figure out is how Hotmail correctly interprets these e-mails as spam, but they still leave them in the spam folder instead of auto-deleting them. I had to change my spam preferences just because of this worm.
The lack of addiction or especially bad long-term effects means that when they "go clean", they recover.
Actually, the most recent study I read showed that pot use does retard learning, and after you quit, you never really recover. Quitting smoking does apparently allow your lungs to recover, though.
"I don't think anyone is claiming that you can't make money with open source."
Not now, they aren't.
Okay, haha...
But seriously,/. readers tend to take everything too literally. "You can't make money with open source" means "in general", not "there's no possible way".
I can't speak for everybody, but I was making the exact same point 5 years ago. In fact, read my sig; I make the same comment in my article.
Oh... I see... You "replied" to the only comment that is currently moderated at +5, so you hope that your statements will be more visible there, and hopefully moderated up. How is this called again? Karma whore!
Actually, strangely enough I replied to this comment when it was scored "+1, Insightful". (I give ACs +1 as well, so that makes it +2 for me.)
There's something in the posting guidelines for this site about it being preferable to post to existing threads rather than create new ones. So I picked a comment that was in a similar vein to mine and replied to that.
Anybody remember the days when the naysayers said you couldn't build a viable business model centered around open-source software?
I don't think anyone is claiming that you can't make money with open source. The problem is that fewer companies will be profitable and those that are profitable will make less money.
Look at it this way, Red Hat is the poster child for open source and everyone here thinks it's a huge success when they make piddily amounts of money. What about the >$100 million they have already lost?
To put this in perspective, Red Hat made $200k from selling software and services last quarter. They made $3M in interest from all that money they have sitting in the bank. Practically speaking, they aren't so much a software company as they are an underperforming mutual fund.
Well, my post wasn't really about the ills of the RIAA. It was more about how/. readers flock to extremist solutions.
Personally, I think the RIAA is bad, but not as evil as everyone else seems to think. It seems to be that in every business there are two categories of people: those who do the work and those who front the money. The labels' attitude seems to be that they can take any Joe Schmo singer/dancer and turn them into the flavour of the month. And maybe they are right... so in that case, who deserves most of the credit for the success: The musicians or the people who market them?
I don't personally like how music is packaged that way, but who am I to complain about their business model? Apparently, a lot of people do like that kind of music. If bands don't like it, they can go join an indie label, but they will suffer a much reduced chance of success. However, saying that, the RIAA/MPAA have painted a beauuuutiful picture of how P2P and pirates like me, will kill the industry. Just like Radio would. Just like the VCR. Just like Blockbuster. Just like Diamond's RIO.
Yeah, but this time they may be right. Anyway, keep in mind that in each of the above cases, new legislation was created to regulate the industry./.ers are arguing against any legislation.
I agree. There seems to be a million people here who obviously just want to download music for free. And their arguments are weak. I for one just want to see the penalty fit the crime. It would be easier, cheaper, and safer to just shoplift the CD's from the store. There's something wrong with that.
That's a perfectly reasonable observation to make. What bugs me is that the/. solution is always the radical overthrow of the establishment. Personally, I'm not a big fan of radical solutions because (quite frankly) they rarely work. Radical solutions are typically based on superficial reasoning, but they also tend to be hard to refute because they are such moving targets. Show me a rational solution to a specific problem and I'll be all for it.
E.g.:
- RIAA tricks new bands into signing one-sided, seven-album deals?
Solution: Pass a law restricting the maximum length of a first contract.
- RIAA takes 90% of profits from CD sales?
Solution: That's fine for the first couple of albums albums. Once they are well known, bands will have the leverage to renegotiate.
- RIAA wrongfully accusing users based solely on filename?
Solution: RIAA required to download the song and do a heuristic comparison or MD5sum before obtaining a warrant.
- P2P networks shouldn't be shut down because they have substantial non-infringing uses?
Solution: Filesharers are allowed to operate P2P networks so long as they bear part of the responsibility for policing said networks.
Unfortunately, the/. solution always involves abolishing copyright, giving away your work free to your competitors, or granting absolute freedom to everybody.
Oh... no... wait a minute "Americans" and "politicians" are not a single organism, but collectives housing many differing views.
It's more than that. The/. moderation system helps turn the opinions stated here into a hybrid, mostly homogenous output. But as I pointed out earlier, the hybrid opinion usually doesn't make sense.
Despite all the "logic" used here, this is at odds with the scientific method. In order to consider a theory (of say... chemistry) "proven", the proponents have to agree not just on the outcome, but also on the mechanism.
Here on/., one person can prove A->B, the next person can prove B->C, and a third person can prove C->D. Now, the group has proven A->D... never mind that A and C or B and D might be mutually incompatible. Person 1 will say "I don't believe C" and person 3 will say "I don't believe A". You can reach a silly conclusion because people are willing to accept any results that suit them even if they don't accept the lemmas.
Bah. Privacy and Piracy even sound the same (when I'm tired). This is about having it both ways. The/. mob opinion is like a lawyer's argument:
"File sharing is not wrong, but even if it is wrong, it's still helping bands more than it's hurting, and even when it does hurt them, the labels have no right to sue the services, just the specific offenders, but even if they do catch a file-sharer, they have no right to sue them unless the offender just happens to volunteer his name and address."
Whenever politicians ignore the suggestions that are popularized here, people always accuse them of being crooked and in the hands of industry. No one ever admits it's because the/. opinions are just completely nonsensical.
Most of the people I know and have talked to are perfectly willing to buy an album, if they think the pricing's fair. Now, the definition of "fair" is debatable
As far as I'm concerned, your right to decide what is a fair price ends when you pirate the product. If you are cheap, there is music available for $13, $7, and even $1. In fact, a lot of indie bands have free music available on the net.
But in general (as with anything else), you get what you pay for. I also tend to balk at paying $20 for a CD, but I back that up by not pirating CDs. (Then again, accounting for inflation, $20 is probably equivalent to what I was paying 10 years ago.) but I think $13 is getting much closer to it than the $18-20 a disc that's pretty much standard now.
I have learned that the/. mob likes to always compare the most expensive price they can find for CDs to the cheapest price for DVDs. Anyway, I don't know where $18-20 comes from, but here are the prices of the "top ten sellers" from www.amazon.com:
Here in Canada, the CDs I want now seem to cost about $20 (whereas a few years ago they were only $14-15). But I think we are being screwed by the Internet and globalization. Back then, every label used to do separate Canadian release for each album (which would be sold at an equivalent price relative to the cost of living.) Now we have to buy imports at American prices (so your $14 CDs cost us $20.) Universal's price drop to $12.98 is a positive sign, but the only reason it ever happened is because file sharing has broken the lock on the distribution channel
That's ridiculous. If there was no piracy, the labels would have supported digital music distribution ages ago. Look at indie labels... their prices are no cheaper than the RIAA. Try buying a CD off a band's website for less than $15.
Speaking of technicalities, isn't the law dependent on who makes the copy? Every song on my hard drive comes from a CD in my collection or from a CD in someone else's collection which I have found on a P2P network. In either case I will have made the copy and will claim safe harbor under the "private copying" provision. If you find that song in my shared folder and make a copy this will also be "private copying." I have not made you a copy, rather you have downloaded the song yourself.
If I am sharing a file and you download it, who is really copying the file. My computer still has to copy it from one medium (disk storage) to another TCP packets. So who is really making the copy... And legally, does it matter?
Screw file trading. Canada is more free in ways that *really* matter, like drugs. In Canada, if you want to ingest pot, you can without being arrested by jack-booted Ashcroft thugs and thrown in prison for the rest of your life. Canada seems to be a lot better in other ways too. Just watch "Bowling for Columbine"...
I should mention that the current state of affairs in Canada where pot possession is completely legal is only a temporary situation due to a dispute between the government and the courts. But then again, we were planning to decriminalize it.
Also, while Canada is clearly less violent than the US, Bowling for Columbine is still kind of slanted.
[1] -- (I understand your attack now: you singled out the word "replicator" and figured that it could only mean one thing. Sorry to give you that impression; I'm talking about reality, not a fictional TV show.)
I'm aware of Eric Drexler and the Foresight institute. I read many of those articles at one point. Trouble is, a lot of it is hot air. I don't believe we'll see a universal replicator in the next 100 years (if ever). In fact, I am convinced that if we focus on builing nanomachines, we will surely eradicate the human race in the process.
P.S. I always laugh when people mention buggy whip manufacturers. It's such a flawed analogy because it equates a general need (music, transportation) with one specific "obsolete" technology for fulfilling that need (horse-drawn carriages, CDs). As an outspoken opponent of arguing by analogy, let me state that this is *exactly* the kind of thing I'm talking about.
I wasn't aware that I was slinging condescending flames. The most biting remark I made was "poor baby". Not exactly on a par with comparing your opponent to Hitler. Oh well...
Based on my own experience, your argument doesn't add up. I don't buy CDs much any more, but I'm sure that I must have bought more than 90% of my ~300 CDs by the time I was 25. How did I do it? I bought a lot of the used. Many of them were Christmas gifts. Others, I bought at the post-Christman sales. And while I was never exactly a poor starving student, I still managed to do this while paying my own way through university. The labels are failing to grasp that when the cost of their product is significantly higher than the consumer's perceived value of the said product, revenue is going to fall, often to levels lower than they would have been at a lower price point simply because sales volume drops *that* much.
It is easy for you to hypothesize about what the ideal price point for CDs is, but you have exactly zero facts to go on. If you don't believe that the labels know exactly how the Laffer curve works then you are sadly deluded. Rest assured that they have researched CD pricing in great detail.
I know, it's easy to pick on America, and like many nations, we've screwed up a lot. But don't undercut our accomplishments, either.
America is not exactly making any friends right now.
Anyway, my criticism at the moment would be that you're not exactly leading the way on gay rights or religious tolerance. Likewise for freedom of religion; many Western nations still have state churches and state indoctrination into those churches in schools, and some still consider blasphemy a crime.
You seem to be describing the American South. We're one of the few nations in the world where you can still wave a Nazi or Communist flag.
Poor baby. I'm sorry to hear that you only have a finite disposable income, but last time I checked, the ability to buy the latest CD of your 10th favorite band is not a basic human right.
I'm not heartless. I do think that everyone needs access to music. There are a few people who literally can't afford to buy *any* CDs, but last I checked they can still listen to the radio.
I'm not defending the patriot act. I was only criticizing the general technique of citing chilling effects as a justification for striking down every unpopular law (as is often done on/.).
Speaking as a non-American, let me say that the entire rest of the world has been appauled at the attitude of the American public since 9/11. Passing the Patriot act is part of it. But the fact that a bumbling idiot was suddenly granted free reign to run the country as he pleased simply because it became unpatriotic to have a dissenting opinion is simply shocking to me.
I don't think this is extortion because I don't literally make demands on buying a cd. I don't pirate over the web either. I just do without. Just like I do without a BMW. I think I've bought maybe 2 cds in the past 4 years.
Doing without is fine. If everyone did what you do, I can state beyond a shadow of a doubt that the prices of CDs would come down in response to market pressures. That's exactly how the free market is supposed to work. And what you are doing is not extortion; it would be extortion if you threatened to pirate the music if they didn't lower the cost.
It's fine to budget your money according to your personal assessment of relative worth. I don't buy many CDs either, simply because I already have so many that the marginal cost is not worth it. If they were only $7 then I would buy more, but I would still buy a bunch at $15 if I didn't have any. Personally, I don't understand the modern fascination with buying DVDs. I rent a movie, watch it once, and then I'll maybe watch it again a few years later when it comes on TV.
I'm not talking about cause and effect. I'm talking about evidence and proof./.ers like to present threatened lawsuits as evidence that a law is bad. This is also one of your favorite arguments (the chilling effect).
We may disagree as to whether a law is good or bad in principle, but if a law leads to a lot of bad convictions then I'll agree that it's a bad law. But if the law leads to a bunch of charges that don't stick then that proves nothing.
Any time there is a rule, someone is going to test its limits (or just plain lie). That's human nature. We can't abolish all laws against rape and murder just because someone might make a false accusation.
He is saying (and I agree) that the music industry would solve so many problems by selling their music for a realistic price of between $5 and $8, instead of the current inflated price of between $15 and $18 (US Dollars). This would allow consumers of a much larger econimic status to start buying their products, which we would all rather own the original of anyhow.
Well, at least consumers of a much larger economic status who can already afford to buy a $1000 computer and a $30/month broadband connection.
Slashdot Mirror
God!Awful's 3rd rule of Slashdot: /. readers aren't against people making a profit in principle. They are merely against any way of making a profit in practice.
-a
To state that the increase in CO2 is undeniably causing the increase in temperature is just bad science. There's no evidence to back it up. We need experiments and more data before any sound scientific conclusion like that can be made.
Good point.
Let's do a giant experiment using the Earth as a testbed. If the Earth is still habitable in 50 years, you were probably right.
-a
"I can find web pages about Apple MacIntosh and I can find pages about growing Apple MacIntoshes, but it's hard to separate the pages about computers from those about cookery."
Have you tried adding the words "computer" or "fruit" to your query?
Interestingly enough... from Friday's NYT crossword puzzle:
Apples, but not IBMs (5 letters)
-a
Having said all that, your point about the ISP being able to route directly to your internal IPs is a good one. Luckily (because I hadn't really thought about it), my iptables setup will reject any such packets.
Right... because your ISP is *so* likely to do this.
-a
Ahh, that explains it. I couldn't understand why my Hotmail account kept saying that I was running out of storage every time I logged on (and that further e-mails to me would bounce). Then I noticed all the 200kb attachments in my junk failure. What I can't figure out is how Hotmail correctly interprets these e-mails as spam, but they still leave them in the spam folder instead of auto-deleting them. I had to change my spam preferences just because of this worm.
-a
The lack of addiction or especially bad long-term effects means that when they "go clean", they recover.
Actually, the most recent study I read showed that pot use does retard learning, and after you quit, you never really recover. Quitting smoking does apparently allow your lungs to recover, though.
-a
"I don't think anyone is claiming that you can't make money with open source."
Not now, they aren't.
Okay, haha...
But seriously,
I can't speak for everybody, but I was making the exact same point 5 years ago. In fact, read my sig; I make the same comment in my article.
-a
Oh... I see... You "replied" to the only comment that is currently moderated at +5, so you hope that your statements will be more visible there, and hopefully moderated up. How is this called again? Karma whore!
Actually, strangely enough I replied to this comment when it was scored "+1, Insightful". (I give ACs +1 as well, so that makes it +2 for me.)
There's something in the posting guidelines for this site about it being preferable to post to existing threads rather than create new ones. So I picked a comment that was in a similar vein to mine and replied to that.
-a
Anybody remember the days when the naysayers said you couldn't build a viable business model centered around open-source software?
I don't think anyone is claiming that you can't make money with open source. The problem is that fewer companies will be profitable and those that are profitable will make less money.
Look at it this way, Red Hat is the poster child for open source and everyone here thinks it's a huge success when they make piddily amounts of money. What about the >$100 million they have already lost?
To put this in perspective, Red Hat made $200k from selling software and services last quarter. They made $3M in interest from all that money they have sitting in the bank. Practically speaking, they aren't so much a software company as they are an underperforming mutual fund.
-a
Well, my post wasn't really about the ills of the RIAA. It was more about how /. readers flock to extremist solutions.
/.ers are arguing against any legislation.
Personally, I think the RIAA is bad, but not as evil as everyone else seems to think. It seems to be that in every business there are two categories of people: those who do the work and those who front the money. The labels' attitude seems to be that they can take any Joe Schmo singer/dancer and turn them into the flavour of the month. And maybe they are right... so in that case, who deserves most of the credit for the success: The musicians or the people who market them?
I don't personally like how music is packaged that way, but who am I to complain about their business model? Apparently, a lot of people do like that kind of music. If bands don't like it, they can go join an indie label, but they will suffer a much reduced chance of success.
However, saying that, the RIAA/MPAA have painted a beauuuutiful picture of how P2P and pirates like me, will kill the industry. Just like Radio would. Just like the VCR. Just like Blockbuster. Just like Diamond's RIO.
Yeah, but this time they may be right. Anyway, keep in mind that in each of the above cases, new legislation was created to regulate the industry.
-a
I agree. There seems to be a million people here who obviously just want to download music for free. And their arguments are weak. I for one just want to see the penalty fit the crime. It would be easier, cheaper, and safer to just shoplift the CD's from the store. There's something wrong with that.
That's a perfectly reasonable observation to make. What bugs me is that the
E.g.:
- RIAA tricks new bands into signing one-sided, seven-album deals?
Solution: Pass a law restricting the maximum length of a first contract.
- RIAA takes 90% of profits from CD sales?
Solution: That's fine for the first couple of albums albums. Once they are well known, bands will have the leverage to renegotiate.
- RIAA wrongfully accusing users based solely on filename?
Solution: RIAA required to download the song and do a heuristic comparison or MD5sum before obtaining a warrant.
- P2P networks shouldn't be shut down because they have substantial non-infringing uses?
Solution: Filesharers are allowed to operate P2P networks so long as they bear part of the responsibility for policing said networks.
Unfortunately, the
-a
Oh... no... wait a minute "Americans" and "politicians" are not a single organism, but collectives housing many differing views.
It's more than that. The
Despite all the "logic" used here, this is at odds with the scientific method. In order to consider a theory (of say... chemistry) "proven", the proponents have to agree not just on the outcome, but also on the mechanism.
Here on
-a
Bah. Privacy and Piracy even sound the same (when I'm tired). This is about having it both ways. The /. mob opinion is like a lawyer's argument:
/. opinions are just completely nonsensical.
"File sharing is not wrong, but even if it is wrong, it's still helping bands more than it's hurting, and even when it does hurt them, the labels have no right to sue the services, just the specific offenders, but even if they do catch a file-sharer, they have no right to sue them unless the offender just happens to volunteer his name and address."
Whenever politicians ignore the suggestions that are popularized here, people always accuse them of being crooked and in the hands of industry. No one ever admits it's because the
-a
Most of the people I know and have talked to are perfectly willing to buy an album, if they think the pricing's fair. Now, the definition of "fair" is debatable
As far as I'm concerned, your right to decide what is a fair price ends when you pirate the product. If you are cheap, there is music available for $13, $7, and even $1. In fact, a lot of indie bands have free music available on the net.
But in general (as with anything else), you get what you pay for. I also tend to balk at paying $20 for a CD, but I back that up by not pirating CDs. (Then again, accounting for inflation, $20 is probably equivalent to what I was paying 10 years ago.)
but I think $13 is getting much closer to it than the $18-20 a disc that's pretty much standard now.
I have learned that the
$14, $13, $13, $14, $14, $20 (double album), $14, $14, $14, $15.
Here in Canada, the CDs I want now seem to cost about $20 (whereas a few years ago they were only $14-15). But I think we are being screwed by the Internet and globalization. Back then, every label used to do separate Canadian release for each album (which would be sold at an equivalent price relative to the cost of living.) Now we have to buy imports at American prices (so your $14 CDs cost us $20.)
Universal's price drop to $12.98 is a positive sign, but the only reason it ever happened is because file sharing has broken the lock on the distribution channel
That's ridiculous. If there was no piracy, the labels would have supported digital music distribution ages ago. Look at indie labels... their prices are no cheaper than the RIAA. Try buying a CD off a band's website for less than $15.
-a
Speaking of technicalities, isn't the law dependent on who makes the copy?
Every song on my hard drive comes from a CD in my collection or from a CD in someone else's collection which I have found on a P2P network. In either case I will have made the copy and will claim safe harbor under the "private copying" provision. If you find that song in my shared folder and make a copy this will also be "private copying." I have not made you a copy, rather you have downloaded the song yourself.
If I am sharing a file and you download it, who is really copying the file. My computer still has to copy it from one medium (disk storage) to another TCP packets. So who is really making the copy... And legally, does it matter?
-a
Screw file trading. Canada is more free in ways that *really* matter, like drugs. In Canada, if you want to ingest pot, you can without being arrested by jack-booted Ashcroft thugs and thrown in prison for the rest of your life.
Canada seems to be a lot better in other ways too. Just watch "Bowling for Columbine"...
I should mention that the current state of affairs in Canada where pot possession is completely legal is only a temporary situation due to a dispute between the government and the courts. But then again, we were planning to decriminalize it.
Also, while Canada is clearly less violent than the US, Bowling for Columbine is still kind of slanted.
-a
[1] -- (I understand your attack now: you singled out the word "replicator" and figured that it could only mean one thing. Sorry to give you that impression; I'm talking about reality, not a fictional TV show.)
I'm aware of Eric Drexler and the Foresight institute. I read many of those articles at one point. Trouble is, a lot of it is hot air. I don't believe we'll see a universal replicator in the next 100 years (if ever). In fact, I am convinced that if we focus on builing nanomachines, we will surely eradicate the human race in the process.
P.S. I always laugh when people mention buggy whip manufacturers. It's such a flawed analogy because it equates a general need (music, transportation) with one specific "obsolete" technology for fulfilling that need (horse-drawn carriages, CDs). As an outspoken opponent of arguing by analogy, let me state that this is *exactly* the kind of thing I'm talking about.
-a
I wasn't aware that I was slinging condescending flames. The most biting remark I made was "poor baby". Not exactly on a par with comparing your opponent to Hitler. Oh well...
Based on my own experience, your argument doesn't add up. I don't buy CDs much any more, but I'm sure that I must have bought more than 90% of my ~300 CDs by the time I was 25. How did I do it? I bought a lot of the used. Many of them were Christmas gifts. Others, I bought at the post-Christman sales. And while I was never exactly a poor starving student, I still managed to do this while paying my own way through university.
The labels are failing to grasp that when the cost of their product is significantly higher than the consumer's perceived value of the said product, revenue is going to fall, often to levels lower than they would have been at a lower price point simply because sales volume drops *that* much.
It is easy for you to hypothesize about what the ideal price point for CDs is, but you have exactly zero facts to go on. If you don't believe that the labels know exactly how the Laffer curve works then you are sadly deluded. Rest assured that they have researched CD pricing in great detail.
-a
I know, it's easy to pick on America, and like many nations, we've screwed up a lot. But don't undercut our accomplishments, either.
America is not exactly making any friends right now.
Anyway, my criticism at the moment would be that you're not exactly leading the way on gay rights or religious tolerance.
Likewise for freedom of religion; many Western nations still have state churches and state indoctrination into those churches in schools, and some still consider blasphemy a crime.
You seem to be describing the American South.
We're one of the few nations in the world where you can still wave a Nazi or Communist flag.
Just don't wave the French flag.
-a
Poor baby. I'm sorry to hear that you only have a finite disposable income, but last time I checked, the ability to buy the latest CD of your 10th favorite band is not a basic human right.
I'm not heartless. I do think that everyone needs access to music. There are a few people who literally can't afford to buy *any* CDs, but last I checked they can still listen to the radio.
-a
I'm not defending the patriot act. I was only criticizing the general technique of citing chilling effects as a justification for striking down every unpopular law (as is often done on /.).
Speaking as a non-American, let me say that the entire rest of the world has been appauled at the attitude of the American public since 9/11. Passing the Patriot act is part of it. But the fact that a bumbling idiot was suddenly granted free reign to run the country as he pleased simply because it became unpatriotic to have a dissenting opinion is simply shocking to me.
-a
I don't think this is extortion because I don't literally make demands on buying a cd. I don't pirate over the web either. I just do without. Just like I do without a BMW. I think I've bought maybe 2 cds in the past 4 years.
Doing without is fine. If everyone did what you do, I can state beyond a shadow of a doubt that the prices of CDs would come down in response to market pressures. That's exactly how the free market is supposed to work. And what you are doing is not extortion; it would be extortion if you threatened to pirate the music if they didn't lower the cost.
It's fine to budget your money according to your personal assessment of relative worth. I don't buy many CDs either, simply because I already have so many that the marginal cost is not worth it. If they were only $7 then I would buy more, but I would still buy a bunch at $15 if I didn't have any. Personally, I don't understand the modern fascination with buying DVDs. I rent a movie, watch it once, and then I'll maybe watch it again a few years later when it comes on TV.
-a
I'm not talking about cause and effect. I'm talking about evidence and proof. /.ers like to present threatened lawsuits as evidence that a law is bad. This is also one of your favorite arguments (the chilling effect).
We may disagree as to whether a law is good or bad in principle, but if a law leads to a lot of bad convictions then I'll agree that it's a bad law. But if the law leads to a bunch of charges that don't stick then that proves nothing.
Any time there is a rule, someone is going to test its limits (or just plain lie). That's human nature. We can't abolish all laws against rape and murder just because someone might make a false accusation.
-a
I get the impression you're the kind of person who gets a little too obsessed about Star Trek.
-a
He is saying (and I agree) that the music industry would solve so many problems by selling their music for a realistic price of between $5 and $8, instead of the current inflated price of between $15 and $18 (US Dollars). This would allow consumers of a much larger econimic status to start buying their products, which we would all rather own the original of anyhow.
Well, at least consumers of a much larger economic status who can already afford to buy a $1000 computer and a $30/month broadband connection.
-a