Actually what really killed Atari can be linked to several factors:
1) The 2600 cartridge glut. This is the prime error Atari made. Back in the day, they let everyone make carts for the system. At first this was great becuase it quickly built up a game base for the console. However, by 1982-83 things were out of hand. There was rampant piracy (look at Pitfall by Activision and Tomboy by Imagic), companies that had no business making games were making some of the shittiest games of all time, and no one could tell if any one game was better tahn another. Eventually the market reached saturation and then became over saturated reulting in no company with the exception of a few stars like Activison (which still took a hit) being able to make money. Among the biggest losers was the part of Atari that made the games (remember ET?).
2) The console remained on the market too long. They didn't update the things oon enough. What you want to do is get people hooked on the first console and then come out with another while taht interst is peaked. Atari sat on its ass until sometime around late 83-84.
3) Tramiel's bumbling. Jack Tramiel proved in 1983 that he was the worst manager in recorded history. He took a company that controlled 95% of its market and flushed it down the crapper. In 1983, Atari lost over 500 million dollars (and the whole industry at the time was only worth about (3 billion at best). At some points Atari was losing millions of dollars a day. This can be associated with a lot of his decisions, among them complicating the atari buecracy to a rdiciulous degree. You could never get things done if you tried to follow his rules and if you didn't you were fired. People who had been working for the company since '74 were being fired for the mere fact that they bent the rules in order to actually get work done.
4) Tramiel's late '80's policies. Atari was dying by '85 but Jack Tramiel's main poilicies were what drove the nail in the coffin. Jack Tramiel had, I believed, designed one of the odesseys in the late 60's and he had based his market policies on that experience. Back in the 60's the press had gone to him for news about his game system. As a result Tramiel in the mid to late 80's decided that a good a product sells itself and so, while other companies like Nintendo and Sega were dropping fortunes into advertising, Atari was basically eliminating advertising. By the tiem Jaguar came out, the kids didn't even know Atari still existed.
5) The jaguar. Good concept, bad timing. They designed the 64 bit system but made one critical error - 64 bit games take more time and money than 16 bit games. The developement process for a single game was about 6 months (with a massive team) where Nintendo was coming out with games by the truckload and since no one else wanted to make games for it (or could afford to with cash geysers liek Nintendo games), Atari was left with a system that they could not possibly make profitable. It's software library was never going to be more than a couple dozen titles and in order to offset developement costs each would have had to cost 200-300 a piece. Through almost no advertising and you get a flop.
6) Tiem warner. Atari during Bushnell had a monopoly on the type of chips that made the Atari 2600 as good as it was. There were about 9 companies that made the chips that could compete with Atari's systems and Bushnell had the foresight to go and make exclusive deals with them all. Bushnell understood the game business. Time warner did not. They tried to sell video games like they did records. They saw these deals and didn't understand that there was a monopoly, only that they were overpaying for supply and so they dropped the contracts. Result: those businesses went out and sold the chips to Atari's competitors.
In the end, Atari made a couple dozen mistakes taht we would say are obvious now but back then when the market was relatively new were not nearly so apparent. Even as late as '85 people though Atari was indestructible. But they got c
Simply put, the RIAA suing pirates is a phyric victory.
1) The lawyers fees are a lot more than what the RIAA will ever get from these people (especially if you look at it in total.)
2) The pirates that don't buy music aren't now going to suddenly go out and start buying. In other words, the RIAA is suing people that not only don't buy their products and never will with little finicial gain on the RIAA's part. Suing a person for 150,000 and getting them to pay that are completely different things.
3) The pirates who do buy music most likely stop or at least do so less frequently, if for nothing else, disgust at the RIAA's tactics.
4) The moment these suits stop, the file swappers will just pop up again. It happened with the warez community, it happens all the time with the hacking community. They have to continually litigate for the rest of our lives if they hope the keep piracy down (not destroyed, at best just down) and that finicial burden will be far worse than anything they are lsoing through file swapping pirates.
5) The non-pirates are seeing these heavy handed tactics and becoming unfriendly to the RIAA as well. If your brother or your friend gets sued by someone, will you continue to like the suers? No, you will probably boycott them nearly as vehemently.
6) The more litigation that goes on in the hacking community, the more young people want to become hackers. Why? Who knows. Rebelious youth maybe. The file swapping will rpobably be the same, once the litoigation ends the swapping community will rpobably pop up twice as strong.
In the end, the RIAA can only lose. If the lawyers fees don't get them and they somehow surive public backlash, they just wind up with the same if not magnified problems down the road. You can dam the river but the moment you remove the dam, the waters will just come back. And if you don't the water will eventually overwhelm you anyway. Die or ease up. Guess the RIAA is choosing the former.
Q:LIf it's crappy porn, why do people download it.
A:Cause its porn.
And for those who wonder why one would bother to steal something they aren't willing to buy, remember that an item is only as valuable as the work you are willing to do to attain it.
"30sec samples of every track in their catalog"
You'll get a lot of songs with real good openings and after 32-33 secs the songw ill become complete crap.
In my area one of the local university used to play great stuff. Real calypso music from a guy from jamacia (you haven't heard calypso till you have heard it with star trek TOS dubbed into it), acid, noise, techno... it used to rock; it was the best in the area. Then about three to four years ago the rap ppl took over and the radio station went to hell. Now all you get throughout the day is rap, rap, and more rap. And it wouldn't be so bad but it is the most mainstream redundent garbage you have ever heard. They also decided they had to play mainstream teen stuff to so when it isn't rap you get bands like creed and spears/aquilera/whatever where every song they make sounds just like the last. I go to that university now and only the freshman listen to taht crap and even they get tired of it by sophmore year.
The indies are like the mainstream bands, the moment they get famous they suck. You want an alternative to the mainstream stuff, do what I do: find the most obscure stuff you can and get into that group. Everyone talks about 'the underground' which as it turns out isn't underground at all anymore. The real underground is till out there - just got to search for it. Personally, I recommend the japanese acid rock bands. Some of their stuff is just insane.
But seriously, they have it in my area, I don't get it. Why? $50 a month. That's for crappy service. Good service will cost you $80. Can't afford it. Make it $20 a month and it will become popular but right now? For most people it is simply too much.
I agree.
In addition:
Sure consumer prices have risen, but look around! The products the movie industry is selling are a hell of a lot better than the crap they were producing in 1983! Just about every product in every industry is better! Sure, I'll pay $800 for a computer now. why? Cause it is a hell of a lot better than the $500 1983 model. Cd's haven't gotten better. If anything, Cd's are actually worse. If Cd's improved as much as the other products like movies, we would get not only the songs but the videos to each and every song, a video about the making of the music videos, a behind the scenes interview with the band, the producers, and the guys who actually made the cd, a video of a live performance of each of the songs, and a book written by the band detailing their entire creative process in the making the songs. Instead we are getting the same old crap. Would you pay $800 for a TRS-80 or $300 for an atari 2600? You are doing the equivalent each time you buy a cd.
The music industry for the last two years seems to be trying to raise the prices of cds without anyone noticing. In 2000 I could get the newest cd for 20. By 2002 it costs me 22. Now I routinely see them selling at 24. At this rate, by 2010, cds will cost 36 dollars a piece. And they aren't getting any better. Enhanced cd's? All of em should already be enhanced. In fact, even then cds would still be behind.
"Music is a product, it takes time and energy to create, people deserve to be able to make money at it"
In law that is known as 'sweat-equity'. It was argued before (in fact I believe the supreme court made a ruling dealing with it) and it was thrown out. Copyright does not promise you profits from your idea, only the possibility of profits. Whether you deserve it is highly debatable. Just becuase a person works does not mean they will be sucessful. Is it unfair? Welcome to earth.
According to the RIAA, that means you have more valuable assets than their entire industry! Hmm... the average person makes let's say $40,000 a year. That means that if your an average person, it will take you only 60,873 years and 9 months to pay off a suit (assuming you give them 100% of your paycheck.) If you started when modern humans first evolved, you would nearly have payed it off by now. Start today, and in all likelihood humanity will have evolved into a whole new species before you finished. Better pray for hyper inflation...
Its a form letter. Levin's PR guy probably wrote it and Levin just glanced at it before he signed it. In all liklihood, he didn't even read the whole thing let alone understand it. At least we know Levin's PR guy knows something...
First, when the RIAA went after Napster, and the p2p software makers, you people were crying for them to go after the individual pirates, instead of the technology that facilitates the piracy."
Yeah, go after the pirates. But this is ridiculous. $150,000 a song? For that much, I could buy a whole record store and still have tens of thousands left to spare. I could buy the rights to the song itself for that much! Even the rights to use a song (non ownership) are less than $150,000. This is insane. An equivalent scenario is if the business your working for is paying your insurance out of your paycheck, they become tardy for a month, and you say 'hey, I'll pay that one month of insurance myself' and so the insurance company decides to take your home, your car, and your children as payment.
"It's wrong, it's bad, or, or something."
It's extortion (pay up now or we'll sue you for more later), its unjust, its a violation of the spirit of the law, it is against just about everything this country is for. When the founding fathers drafted the bill of rights, they wrote an admendment that prohibitted cruel and unusual (and excessive) punishments. That is basically what the RIAA is doing. Going into debt for the rest of your life becuase of something that you did when you were 14 is ludicrous. In ancient Mesopotamia, if you went into debt to a certain degree, the government supported a system that allowed your creditor to make you a slave in compensation for the debt. It would be nice to think we have become more civilized in the last 5,000 years. It seems the RIAA is out to prove that thought wrong.
"What's the deal here? Do you people just don't care about copyright infringement? You people have no idea what it takes to create something and try to make money on it."
They are picking on the weakest cause they think no one will care. The RIAA in this situation is guilty of a far greater injustice than copyright violations. Copyright was created in the mid-1500's in England becuase it served the public good (actually the 1700's version did, the 1500's version was a form of royal censorship but you get the idea). It was a balance between the good that the private ownership of writing would faciliate and the good of the public as a whole. This balance has been broken and this was never so obvius as it is now with these suits. These suits harm the public far more than it gains from copyright. The government, as all democratic governments are, are obligated to serve the public good over the good of and even at the expense of the indivisual (with the exception of the given rights of the constitution - I could get into a long phisophical argument as to how taking away those rights from one indivisual harms the public good as a whole far more tahn any could possibly gain but I won't. And if you think copyright is a right, you need to go read a book on it - its a policy, not a right.) These suits by far serve the private indivisual at the expense of the public good. The good results that society gains from such authoritarian copyright persacution is far outweighed by the negative effects. A few rich executives can act like fools and live as kings in exchange for 10,000s if not 100,000s living in poverty and in debt for the rest of their lives cause of what they did before they were old enough to vote... can anyone say 'french revolution'?
"You people have no idea what it takes to create something and try to make money on it."
Put the word 'legally' or 'ethically' or 'fairly' or (my personal favorite) 'honestly' before the word 'make' and the RIAA has no idea either.
Persoanlly, I think there needs to be a maximum limit any person can be sued and especially one for the young. They are not adults. they do not have the maturity or the mental faciltiies of an adult. They cannot be expected to make adult decisions. Treating them like adults for any action, especially a legal one, is so positively ridiculous that it boogles the mind how sane adult would allow it to continue. What's next? Being p
"First, when the RIAA went after Napster, and the p2p software makers, you people were crying for them to go after the individual pirates, instead of the technology that facilitates the piracy."
Yeah, go after the pirates. But this is ridiculous. $150,000 a song? For that much, I could buy a whole record store and still have tens of thousands left to spare. I could buy the rights to the song itself for that much! Even the rights to use a song (non ownership) are less than $150,000. This is insane. An equivalent scenario is if the business your working for is paying your insurance out of your paycheck, they become tardy for a month, and you say 'hey, I'll pay that one month of insurance myself' and so the insurance company decides to take your home, your car, and your children as payment.
"It's wrong, it's bad, or, or something."
It's extortion (pay up now or we'll suee you for more later), its unjust, its a violation of the spirit of the law, it is against just about everything this country is for. When the founding fathers drafted the bill of rights, they wrote an admendment that prohibitted cruel and unusual (and excessive) punishments. That is basically what the RIAA is doing. Going into debt for the rest of your life becuase of something that you did when you were 14 is ludicrous. In ancient Mesopotamia, if you went into debt to a certain degree, the government supported a system that allowed your creditor to make you a slave in compensation for the debt. It would be nice to think we have become more civilized in the last 5,000 years. It seems the RIAA is out to prove that thought wrong.
"What's the deal here? Do you people just don't care about copyright infringement? You people have no idea what it takes to create something and try to make money on it."
They are picking on the weakest cause they think no one will care. The RIAA in this situation is guilty of a far greater injustice than copyright violations. Copyright was created in the mid-1500's in England becuase it served the public good (actually the 1700's version did, the 1500's version was a form of royal censorship but you get the idea). It was a balance between the good that the private ownership of writing would faciliate and the good of the public as a whole. This balance has been broken and this was never so obvius as it is now with these suits. These suits harm the public far more than it gains from copyright. The government, as all democratic governments are, are obligated to serve the public good over the good of and even at the expense of the indivisual (with the exception of the given rights of the constitution - I could get into a long phisophical argument as to how taking away those rights from one indivisual harms the public good as a whole far more tahn any could possibly gain but I won't. And if you think copyright is a right, you need to go read a book on it - its a policy, not a right.) These suits by far serve the private indivisual at the expense of the public good. The good results that society gains from such authoritarian copyright persacution is far outweighed by the negative effects. A few rich executives can act like fools and live as kings in exchange for 10,000s if not 100,000s living in poverty and in debt for the rest of their lives cause of what they did before they were old enough to vote... can anyone say 'french revolution'?
"You people have no idea what it takes to create something and try to make money on it."
Put the word 'legally' or 'ethically' or 'fairly' or (my personal favorite) 'honestly' before the word 'make' and the RIAA has no idea either.
Persoanlly, I think there needs to be a maximum limit any person can be sued and especially one for the young. They are not adults. they do not have the maturity or the mental faciltiies of an adult. They cannot be expected to make adult decisions. Treating them like adults for any action, especially a legal one, is so positively ridiculous that it boogles the mind how sane adult would allow it to continue. What's next? Being put in debt for multiple generations? M
"The concerns of the thousands of Americans whose livelihoods depend on intellectual property protection are not being fully debated or addressed,"
They are already ignoring the concerns of the millions of americans who livelihoods don't depend on intellectual policy, why care about another few thousand?
I just don't believe this! This has got to be the dumbest, stupidest, most retarded thing I have ever seen! Lyrics have been on the web since 1995 and now they have a problem with it? Give me a break.
Out of kindness, I won't rant on about Intellectual policy. The world does not need another flame war.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually what really killed Atari can be linked to several factors:
1) The 2600 cartridge glut. This is the prime error Atari made. Back in the day, they let everyone make carts for the system. At first this was great becuase it quickly built up a game base for the console. However, by 1982-83 things were out of hand. There was rampant piracy (look at Pitfall by Activision and Tomboy by Imagic), companies that had no business making games were making some of the shittiest games of all time, and no one could tell if any one game was better tahn another. Eventually the market reached saturation and then became over saturated reulting in no company with the exception of a few stars like Activison (which still took a hit) being able to make money. Among the biggest losers was the part of Atari that made the games (remember ET?).
2) The console remained on the market too long. They didn't update the things oon enough. What you want to do is get people hooked on the first console and then come out with another while taht interst is peaked. Atari sat on its ass until sometime around late 83-84.
3) Tramiel's bumbling. Jack Tramiel proved in 1983 that he was the worst manager in recorded history. He took a company that controlled 95% of its market and flushed it down the crapper. In 1983, Atari lost over 500 million dollars (and the whole industry at the time was only worth about (3 billion at best). At some points Atari was losing millions of dollars a day. This can be associated with a lot of his decisions, among them complicating the atari buecracy to a rdiciulous degree. You could never get things done if you tried to follow his rules and if you didn't you were fired. People who had been working for the company since '74 were being fired for the mere fact that they bent the rules in order to actually get work done.
4) Tramiel's late '80's policies. Atari was dying by '85 but Jack Tramiel's main poilicies were what drove the nail in the coffin. Jack Tramiel had, I believed, designed one of the odesseys in the late 60's and he had based his market policies on that experience. Back in the 60's the press had gone to him for news about his game system. As a result Tramiel in the mid to late 80's decided that a good a product sells itself and so, while other companies like Nintendo and Sega were dropping fortunes into advertising, Atari was basically eliminating advertising. By the tiem Jaguar came out, the kids didn't even know Atari still existed.
5) The jaguar. Good concept, bad timing. They designed the 64 bit system but made one critical error - 64 bit games take more time and money than 16 bit games. The developement process for a single game was about 6 months (with a massive team) where Nintendo was coming out with games by the truckload and since no one else wanted to make games for it (or could afford to with cash geysers liek Nintendo games), Atari was left with a system that they could not possibly make profitable. It's software library was never going to be more than a couple dozen titles and in order to offset developement costs each would have had to cost 200-300 a piece. Through almost no advertising and you get a flop.
6) Tiem warner. Atari during Bushnell had a monopoly on the type of chips that made the Atari 2600 as good as it was. There were about 9 companies that made the chips that could compete with Atari's systems and Bushnell had the foresight to go and make exclusive deals with them all. Bushnell understood the game business. Time warner did not. They tried to sell video games like they did records. They saw these deals and didn't understand that there was a monopoly, only that they were overpaying for supply and so they dropped the contracts. Result: those businesses went out and sold the chips to Atari's competitors.
In the end, Atari made a couple dozen mistakes taht we would say are obvious now but back then when the market was relatively new were not nearly so apparent. Even as late as '85 people though Atari was indestructible. But they got c
For some noob hacker to rig a national election...
Kevin Mitnick coming to a white house near you!
Simply put, the RIAA suing pirates is a phyric victory. 1) The lawyers fees are a lot more than what the RIAA will ever get from these people (especially if you look at it in total.) 2) The pirates that don't buy music aren't now going to suddenly go out and start buying. In other words, the RIAA is suing people that not only don't buy their products and never will with little finicial gain on the RIAA's part. Suing a person for 150,000 and getting them to pay that are completely different things. 3) The pirates who do buy music most likely stop or at least do so less frequently, if for nothing else, disgust at the RIAA's tactics. 4) The moment these suits stop, the file swappers will just pop up again. It happened with the warez community, it happens all the time with the hacking community. They have to continually litigate for the rest of our lives if they hope the keep piracy down (not destroyed, at best just down) and that finicial burden will be far worse than anything they are lsoing through file swapping pirates. 5) The non-pirates are seeing these heavy handed tactics and becoming unfriendly to the RIAA as well. If your brother or your friend gets sued by someone, will you continue to like the suers? No, you will probably boycott them nearly as vehemently. 6) The more litigation that goes on in the hacking community, the more young people want to become hackers. Why? Who knows. Rebelious youth maybe. The file swapping will rpobably be the same, once the litoigation ends the swapping community will rpobably pop up twice as strong. In the end, the RIAA can only lose. If the lawyers fees don't get them and they somehow surive public backlash, they just wind up with the same if not magnified problems down the road. You can dam the river but the moment you remove the dam, the waters will just come back. And if you don't the water will eventually overwhelm you anyway. Die or ease up. Guess the RIAA is choosing the former.
No, when there are no pirates lefta nd still no profits they'll probably balim the artists.
Q:LIf it's crappy porn, why do people download it.
A:Cause its porn.
And for those who wonder why one would bother to steal something they aren't willing to buy, remember that an item is only as valuable as the work you are willing to do to attain it.
"30sec samples of every track in their catalog"
You'll get a lot of songs with real good openings and after 32-33 secs the songw ill become complete crap.
In my area one of the local university used to play great stuff. Real calypso music from a guy from jamacia (you haven't heard calypso till you have heard it with star trek TOS dubbed into it), acid, noise, techno... it used to rock; it was the best in the area. Then about three to four years ago the rap ppl took over and the radio station went to hell. Now all you get throughout the day is rap, rap, and more rap. And it wouldn't be so bad but it is the most mainstream redundent garbage you have ever heard. They also decided they had to play mainstream teen stuff to so when it isn't rap you get bands like creed and spears/aquilera/whatever where every song they make sounds just like the last. I go to that university now and only the freshman listen to taht crap and even they get tired of it by sophmore year.
The indies are like the mainstream bands, the moment they get famous they suck. You want an alternative to the mainstream stuff, do what I do: find the most obscure stuff you can and get into that group. Everyone talks about 'the underground' which as it turns out isn't underground at all anymore. The real underground is till out there - just got to search for it. Personally, I recommend the japanese acid rock bands. Some of their stuff is just insane.
Actually you can get a mustang cobra with 390 horsepower for 40 grand so screw the lexus.
forgot 'get' as in 'get over here'
Over here....
But seriously, they have it in my area, I don't get it. Why? $50 a month. That's for crappy service. Good service will cost you $80. Can't afford it. Make it $20 a month and it will become popular but right now? For most people it is simply too much.
I agree.
In addition:
Sure consumer prices have risen, but look around! The products the movie industry is selling are a hell of a lot better than the crap they were producing in 1983! Just about every product in every industry is better! Sure, I'll pay $800 for a computer now. why? Cause it is a hell of a lot better than the $500 1983 model. Cd's haven't gotten better. If anything, Cd's are actually worse. If Cd's improved as much as the other products like movies, we would get not only the songs but the videos to each and every song, a video about the making of the music videos, a behind the scenes interview with the band, the producers, and the guys who actually made the cd, a video of a live performance of each of the songs, and a book written by the band detailing their entire creative process in the making the songs. Instead we are getting the same old crap. Would you pay $800 for a TRS-80 or $300 for an atari 2600? You are doing the equivalent each time you buy a cd.
The music industry for the last two years seems to be trying to raise the prices of cds without anyone noticing. In 2000 I could get the newest cd for 20. By 2002 it costs me 22. Now I routinely see them selling at 24. At this rate, by 2010, cds will cost 36 dollars a piece. And they aren't getting any better. Enhanced cd's? All of em should already be enhanced. In fact, even then cds would still be behind.
"Music is a product, it takes time and energy to create, people deserve to be able to make money at it"
In law that is known as 'sweat-equity'. It was argued before (in fact I believe the supreme court made a ruling dealing with it) and it was thrown out. Copyright does not promise you profits from your idea, only the possibility of profits. Whether you deserve it is highly debatable. Just becuase a person works does not mean they will be sucessful. Is it unfair? Welcome to earth.
According to the RIAA, that means you have more valuable assets than their entire industry! Hmm... the average person makes let's say $40,000 a year. That means that if your an average person, it will take you only 60,873 years and 9 months to pay off a suit (assuming you give them 100% of your paycheck.) If you started when modern humans first evolved, you would nearly have payed it off by now. Start today, and in all likelihood humanity will have evolved into a whole new species before you finished. Better pray for hyper inflation ...
Its a form letter. Levin's PR guy probably wrote it and Levin just glanced at it before he signed it. In all liklihood, he didn't even read the whole thing let alone understand it. At least we know Levin's PR guy knows something...
Blizzard allows you not only to return scratched cd's, you can return the disks and they will give you new disks and a new cd key.
First, when the RIAA went after Napster, and the p2p software makers, you people were crying for them to go after the individual pirates, instead of the technology that facilitates the piracy."
Yeah, go after the pirates. But this is ridiculous. $150,000 a song? For that much, I could buy a whole record store and still have tens of thousands left to spare. I could buy the rights to the song itself for that much! Even the rights to use a song (non ownership) are less than $150,000. This is insane. An equivalent scenario is if the business your working for is paying your insurance out of your paycheck, they become tardy for a month, and you say 'hey, I'll pay that one month of insurance myself' and so the insurance company decides to take your home, your car, and your children as payment.
"It's wrong, it's bad, or, or something."
It's extortion (pay up now or we'll sue you for more later), its unjust, its a violation of the spirit of the law, it is against just about everything this country is for. When the founding fathers drafted the bill of rights, they wrote an admendment that prohibitted cruel and unusual (and excessive) punishments. That is basically what the RIAA is doing. Going into debt for the rest of your life becuase of something that you did when you were 14 is ludicrous. In ancient Mesopotamia, if you went into debt to a certain degree, the government supported a system that allowed your creditor to make you a slave in compensation for the debt. It would be nice to think we have become more civilized in the last 5,000 years. It seems the RIAA is out to prove that thought wrong.
"What's the deal here? Do you people just don't care about copyright infringement? You people have no idea what it takes to create something and try to make money on it."
They are picking on the weakest cause they think no one will care. The RIAA in this situation is guilty of a far greater injustice than copyright violations. Copyright was created in the mid-1500's in England becuase it served the public good (actually the 1700's version did, the 1500's version was a form of royal censorship but you get the idea). It was a balance between the good that the private ownership of writing would faciliate and the good of the public as a whole. This balance has been broken and this was never so obvius as it is now with these suits. These suits harm the public far more than it gains from copyright. The government, as all democratic governments are, are obligated to serve the public good over the good of and even at the expense of the indivisual (with the exception of the given rights of the constitution - I could get into a long phisophical argument as to how taking away those rights from one indivisual harms the public good as a whole far more tahn any could possibly gain but I won't. And if you think copyright is a right, you need to go read a book on it - its a policy, not a right.) These suits by far serve the private indivisual at the expense of the public good. The good results that society gains from such authoritarian copyright persacution is far outweighed by the negative effects. A few rich executives can act like fools and live as kings in exchange for 10,000s if not 100,000s living in poverty and in debt for the rest of their lives cause of what they did before they were old enough to vote... can anyone say 'french revolution'?
"You people have no idea what it takes to create something and try to make money on it."
Put the word 'legally' or 'ethically' or 'fairly' or (my personal favorite) 'honestly' before the word 'make' and the RIAA has no idea either.
Persoanlly, I think there needs to be a maximum limit any person can be sued and especially one for the young. They are not adults. they do not have the maturity or the mental faciltiies of an adult. They cannot be expected to make adult decisions. Treating them like adults for any action, especially a legal one, is so positively ridiculous that it boogles the mind how sane adult would allow it to continue. What's next? Being p
"First, when the RIAA went after Napster, and the p2p software makers, you people were crying for them to go after the individual pirates, instead of the technology that facilitates the piracy." Yeah, go after the pirates. But this is ridiculous. $150,000 a song? For that much, I could buy a whole record store and still have tens of thousands left to spare. I could buy the rights to the song itself for that much! Even the rights to use a song (non ownership) are less than $150,000. This is insane. An equivalent scenario is if the business your working for is paying your insurance out of your paycheck, they become tardy for a month, and you say 'hey, I'll pay that one month of insurance myself' and so the insurance company decides to take your home, your car, and your children as payment. "It's wrong, it's bad, or, or something." It's extortion (pay up now or we'll suee you for more later), its unjust, its a violation of the spirit of the law, it is against just about everything this country is for. When the founding fathers drafted the bill of rights, they wrote an admendment that prohibitted cruel and unusual (and excessive) punishments. That is basically what the RIAA is doing. Going into debt for the rest of your life becuase of something that you did when you were 14 is ludicrous. In ancient Mesopotamia, if you went into debt to a certain degree, the government supported a system that allowed your creditor to make you a slave in compensation for the debt. It would be nice to think we have become more civilized in the last 5,000 years. It seems the RIAA is out to prove that thought wrong. "What's the deal here? Do you people just don't care about copyright infringement? You people have no idea what it takes to create something and try to make money on it." They are picking on the weakest cause they think no one will care. The RIAA in this situation is guilty of a far greater injustice than copyright violations. Copyright was created in the mid-1500's in England becuase it served the public good (actually the 1700's version did, the 1500's version was a form of royal censorship but you get the idea). It was a balance between the good that the private ownership of writing would faciliate and the good of the public as a whole. This balance has been broken and this was never so obvius as it is now with these suits. These suits harm the public far more than it gains from copyright. The government, as all democratic governments are, are obligated to serve the public good over the good of and even at the expense of the indivisual (with the exception of the given rights of the constitution - I could get into a long phisophical argument as to how taking away those rights from one indivisual harms the public good as a whole far more tahn any could possibly gain but I won't. And if you think copyright is a right, you need to go read a book on it - its a policy, not a right.) These suits by far serve the private indivisual at the expense of the public good. The good results that society gains from such authoritarian copyright persacution is far outweighed by the negative effects. A few rich executives can act like fools and live as kings in exchange for 10,000s if not 100,000s living in poverty and in debt for the rest of their lives cause of what they did before they were old enough to vote... can anyone say 'french revolution'? "You people have no idea what it takes to create something and try to make money on it." Put the word 'legally' or 'ethically' or 'fairly' or (my personal favorite) 'honestly' before the word 'make' and the RIAA has no idea either. Persoanlly, I think there needs to be a maximum limit any person can be sued and especially one for the young. They are not adults. they do not have the maturity or the mental faciltiies of an adult. They cannot be expected to make adult decisions. Treating them like adults for any action, especially a legal one, is so positively ridiculous that it boogles the mind how sane adult would allow it to continue. What's next? Being put in debt for multiple generations? M
And where do you work exactly? hehe
But in the words of Mary Boppins(?) solve the problem the American way... by doing a reaaly half-assed job.
Does this mean that, from now on, when IE crashes the OS crashes too? Windows stability going down...
The government is still trying to live our lives for us and protect us from ourselves...
"The concerns of the thousands of Americans whose livelihoods depend on intellectual property protection are not being fully debated or addressed,"
They are already ignoring the concerns of the millions of americans who livelihoods don't depend on intellectual policy, why care about another few thousand?
I just don't believe this! This has got to be the dumbest, stupidest, most retarded thing I have ever seen! Lyrics have been on the web since 1995 and now they have a problem with it? Give me a break.
Out of kindness, I won't rant on about Intellectual policy. The world does not need another flame war.
Forget to take your medication again?
Either you haven't been on /. long or that fact speaks volumes about how much thought goes into the comments here.