What I mean is this. These high damages assume that I rip and share a track (through the magic of Congressional mathamatics) with 10 people who share to an additional 10 people each etc. until through the power of P2P my single ripped track has become $150K of lost sales/damages. So I'm sued for that $150K/each track.
But wait...
What if the track I'm sharing (assuming that I do this at all for purposes of illustration only) came from not my own rip, but instead from an original infringer only one level up from me. Since he owes the $150K, does that mean he has already paid for me too?
In short, how can they legally or morally claim that every sharer has damaged them for the entire $150K as they are now doing? Yes it is nearly impossible to trace who got which shared file from whom, however I would expect any reasonable court to throw out such ludicrous claims of attempting to charge everybody for the same entire infringment.
Looks like Kobe Bryant was screwed again on the $4 megabuck rock he bought his wife. Probably didn't even feel as good as the one he got in Colorado. Anyone want to send him these articles?
Re:Blood Diamonds - Another reason to take them nw
on
Diamonds & the RIAA
·
· Score: 1
Illicit diamonds make fabulous profits for terrorists and corporations alike. The trade illustrates with the hard clarity of the gem itself that no matter where human rights violations occur, the world ignores them at its peril.
Yet another reason to destroy the diamond monopoly ASAP.
The copied CD will... be in a slightly lossy format.
Not true if the copy is made from the original CD, or ripped.wav files. As bandwidth goes up, I'd expect to see MP3 replaced by WAV for the discriminating audiophile.
I'm sorry, but IBM (the company that has made billions in revenue off GNU/Linux) should be floating the bill.
IBM already is footing the bill in the process of defending themselves. An IBM win against SCO in the suit already in progress is all anybody should need. If SCO loses to IBM, the only people they can ever hope to collect from afterwards are anyone so poor that they can't mount a defense in court to start with. And those people have no money to collect afterwards anyway!
The key political priority is heading off the RIAA's schemes for a "music tax", where the music industry gets a royalty on blank CDs or something similar.
Once this happens the RIAA should never be allowed to sue again for any music downloaded and burned to CD since you've already paid for it.
How long before that tax is extended to hard drives?
3. Sue. Use the political clout they've been cultivating over the years and make money by taking it from others, and stifling innovation in the process. This has worked for the oil companies for decades.
Option 3 looks like it has the best potential for short term profit and a lingering continued existance.
Why not? It is exactly the same model empolyed in an entirely different business (unless you consider music to be software for your player) by SCO. Too many businesses consider suing more desirable than trying to compete more effectively. This tells me the so-called free market ideals are giving in to too many special interests that permit them this course of action.
What should be illegal is extending existing copyrights after they are issued. The copyright term in effect at the time of creation has served its purpose by the very fact that the work was created. While copyright terms might be reduced in the future, no copyright term should be allowed to be extended -- ever!
This way Americans might feel the copyright system is more fair than many obviously feel it is now.
For Mickey to really be useful, start by telling me which attractions have the shortest lines at the moment.
The marketing data is likely distorted by this because after you've spent $50 for Mickey you're probably eating fast food for the rest of the day, rather than splurging in one of the nicer restaurants. (IMHO, half the fun of WDW is eating in the many fascinating restaurants there.)
Having Mickey recite the specials of the day for each restaurant passed would certainly be fun.
What I NEVER want to hear my Mickey tell me:And right here is the very spot Michael Eisner was standing on when he realized the need to throw Disney's resources behind lobbying for what became the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act.
This idea has merit in several areas that deserve more than the condemnation so far in this discussion.
First, this opens up the door of digital music distribution and licensing wider than it has ever been opened up before. It drags the record companies and the RIAA into the 21st century. That alone is a positive step.
Even if this includes DRM, this is a positive step. Remember how copy protection was part of many early PC software programs. It was dropped as the industry matured and they determined that customers would both pay more, and buy from different vendors, to avoid it. Even Lotus 1-2-3 once lost a big government contract to SuperCalc because they wouldn't drop the copy protection at the time. The market works in the long run. Competition over time will favor companies who let the consumer do what they want with their music, but it has to start somewhere. Here is the best starting point currently under serious consideration.
If the colleges and universities are even halfway smart they will determine a licensing model that reasonably accounts for the expected number of users. If half the students will use this new service, then the university should be charged half as much as they would be charged if every student used it. This can be adjusted by semester, and like other activity fees, yes some will pay towards what they don't use. However those students will [likely] use fee-supported activities paid for by other non-using students as well. This fee should also be adjusted down in price for the students based on how much the university will save by not having to be concerned about lawsuits anymore or tracing users anymore. Remember these days more students are probably interested in downloaded music than most other fee-supported activities, so this is actually a more reasonable charge than most other charges made for student activities.
It makes college kids into legal consumers again -- which they aren't now -- and expands their interest in music. It lets some of the most interested music fans experience more music than they can otherwise afford without the current, and highly over the top IMHO, legal consequences. Removing casual disregard for a law that many consider unreasonable given the eternal copyrights now being granted is a good thing for society as a whole, since casual disregard for one law too easily translates to disregard for laws in general which is bad for us all.
If it can be licensed to colleges and universities, there will be a demand that it be licensed to the public at large on reasonably non-discriminatory terms. This gets a legal model out into the world, which we don't have now. It may not be the best model in its first iteration, but is the necessary starting point. This is a good thing.
Lastly, the money shouldn't go to the RIAA. It should -- for now -- go to the record companies whose content is being licensed including all the independent labels! Later it might be improved to account for and distribute directly to each individual copyright holder. Computers make many such things doable.
For all of the above reasons I think exploring this idea of licensing music to universities is a good thing and should be encouraged, rather than condemned.
the act removes the copyright's holders ability to present its art as it sees fit.
Excuse me BUT, does an artist have the right to tell you what wall you must hang his painting on after you purchase it? And what color that wall must be painted?
Can a record company tell you that because this is "driving music", that you can only listen to it in your car? Or that the tracks must be listened to only in the specified order? Or that you cannot listen to this CD and another artist's CD in successive order because it will corrupt your appreciation of the music otherwise?
No one seems to address the question of what would happen if Snapster -- or original Napster -- had been successful. What is successful? For these purposes, survived court challenges and continued to operate.
If the RIAA and music companies had not closed down Napster in the courts then they would have had to compete with it. Real competition finally. If that happened, I'd say we'd be getting better products at better prices today. I doubt the record companies would have just gone out and died. Instead I feel the music market would be expanded in the same way lowering prices in other markets expands the consumer base. And there would never have come a time where Napster replaced the record companies entirely since some people for a variety of reasons would never use it regardless of price. (And btw, Napster was never free to use. It cost time, internet connection fees, disc space, lower quality, and other trade-offs.)
I feel the biggest and best result of a successful Snapster x.0 will be the same. The record companies would have to work harder for less money since some money in the market would go to Snapster. Yet anyone who feels there isn't a lot of fat to cut in the recording industry is not a student of history (and I don't mean the obscene advance given Michael Jackson for HIStory). There is no reason to believe the recording industry is any different from any other industry.
Snapster in any surivivable form would be good for us all.
It's no different than setting up a bootleg cd market in the middle of town square, at least privacy-wise
But is is very different when you are not profiting from it. The law has long treated profiting from copyright infringment as a different class of crime.
A solution for customer privacy and avoiding subpoenas is to quit keeping this information longer than necessary. AFAIK, there is no legal requirement in the USA (unlike some other countries including the UK) that this information must be preserved. If you have it, you must provide it when subpoenaed, but beyond tracking down complaints on troublesome users, for all the systems that refuse to assign static IPs, why keep it beyond a couple days after the IP is rotated?
Could make a good argument against having a static IP.
Open source your SIG! Don't you know where you are??
While you make an excellent point, I'd really like to see this on my own t-shirt before I see it on someone else's.
(Actually, it's my subtle anti-**AA statement. My personal belief is that a copyright should not be allowed to be extended on any item once it is registered. At that point it has served it's purpose to foster creativity. I think people are sharing movies and music because they have come to realize that they are going to be screwed forever otherwise and this is the only way to reasonably fight back. So I've turned my sig into a dual-use signature in protest.)
Slashdot Mirror
"Sharing MP3s on the Internet..."
And they all moved away from me there on the Group W bench."
"...and beating up helpless women and children."
And they all moved back down next to me again, and we had a fine old time...
What I mean is this. These high damages assume that I rip and share a track (through the magic of Congressional mathamatics) with 10 people who share to an additional 10 people each etc. until through the power of P2P my single ripped track has become $150K of lost sales/damages. So I'm sued for that $150K/each track.
But wait...
What if the track I'm sharing (assuming that I do this at all for purposes of illustration only) came from not my own rip, but instead from an original infringer only one level up from me. Since he owes the $150K, does that mean he has already paid for me too?
In short, how can they legally or morally claim that every sharer has damaged them for the entire $150K as they are now doing? Yes it is nearly impossible to trace who got which shared file from whom, however I would expect any reasonable court to throw out such ludicrous claims of attempting to charge everybody for the same entire infringment.
Looks like Kobe Bryant was screwed again on the $4 megabuck rock he bought his wife. Probably didn't even feel as good as the one he got in Colorado. Anyone want to send him these articles?
Yet another reason to destroy the diamond monopoly ASAP.
Buxum.
Not true if the copy is made from the original CD, or ripped .wav files. As bandwidth goes up, I'd expect to see MP3 replaced by WAV for the discriminating audiophile.
Would Arnold put up with this garbage if he was on the court?
And what happened to James R. Kirk?
IBM already is footing the bill in the process of defending themselves. An IBM win against SCO in the suit already in progress is all anybody should need. If SCO loses to IBM, the only people they can ever hope to collect from afterwards are anyone so poor that they can't mount a defense in court to start with. And those people have no money to collect afterwards anyway!
17-year-old-son: I downloaded it illegally with KaZaA.
Father: Thank God you aren't supporting those organized bullies out there marketing dodgy music.
17-year-old-son: The Mafia?
Father: The RIAA!
Once this happens the RIAA should never be allowed to sue again for any music downloaded and burned to CD since you've already paid for it.
How long before that tax is extended to hard drives?
Option 3 looks like it has the best potential for short term profit and a lingering continued existance.
Why not? It is exactly the same model empolyed in an entirely different business (unless you consider music to be software for your player) by SCO. Too many businesses consider suing more desirable than trying to compete more effectively. This tells me the so-called free market ideals are giving in to too many special interests that permit them this course of action.
This way Americans might feel the copyright system is more fair than many obviously feel it is now.
The marketing data is likely distorted by this because after you've spent $50 for Mickey you're probably eating fast food for the rest of the day, rather than splurging in one of the nicer restaurants. (IMHO, half the fun of WDW is eating in the many fascinating restaurants there.)
Having Mickey recite the specials of the day for each restaurant passed would certainly be fun.
What I NEVER want to hear my Mickey tell me: And right here is the very spot Michael Eisner was standing on when he realized the need to throw Disney's resources behind lobbying for what became the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act.
First, this opens up the door of digital music distribution and licensing wider than it has ever been opened up before. It drags the record companies and the RIAA into the 21st century. That alone is a positive step.
Even if this includes DRM, this is a positive step. Remember how copy protection was part of many early PC software programs. It was dropped as the industry matured and they determined that customers would both pay more, and buy from different vendors, to avoid it. Even Lotus 1-2-3 once lost a big government contract to SuperCalc because they wouldn't drop the copy protection at the time. The market works in the long run. Competition over time will favor companies who let the consumer do what they want with their music, but it has to start somewhere. Here is the best starting point currently under serious consideration.
If the colleges and universities are even halfway smart they will determine a licensing model that reasonably accounts for the expected number of users. If half the students will use this new service, then the university should be charged half as much as they would be charged if every student used it. This can be adjusted by semester, and like other activity fees, yes some will pay towards what they don't use. However those students will [likely] use fee-supported activities paid for by other non-using students as well. This fee should also be adjusted down in price for the students based on how much the university will save by not having to be concerned about lawsuits anymore or tracing users anymore. Remember these days more students are probably interested in downloaded music than most other fee-supported activities, so this is actually a more reasonable charge than most other charges made for student activities.
It makes college kids into legal consumers again -- which they aren't now -- and expands their interest in music. It lets some of the most interested music fans experience more music than they can otherwise afford without the current, and highly over the top IMHO, legal consequences. Removing casual disregard for a law that many consider unreasonable given the eternal copyrights now being granted is a good thing for society as a whole, since casual disregard for one law too easily translates to disregard for laws in general which is bad for us all.
If it can be licensed to colleges and universities, there will be a demand that it be licensed to the public at large on reasonably non-discriminatory terms. This gets a legal model out into the world, which we don't have now. It may not be the best model in its first iteration, but is the necessary starting point. This is a good thing.
Lastly, the money shouldn't go to the RIAA. It should -- for now -- go to the record companies whose content is being licensed including all the independent labels! Later it might be improved to account for and distribute directly to each individual copyright holder. Computers make many such things doable.
For all of the above reasons I think exploring this idea of licensing music to universities is a good thing and should be encouraged, rather than condemned.
So is the RIAA hoping everyone will get exhausted by their one-step-at-a-time process to get to that point...
And what if people actually do start going to court over this? Lots of people?
There's a rough ride ahead boys.
Excuse me BUT, does an artist have the right to tell you what wall you must hang his painting on after you purchase it? And what color that wall must be painted?
Can a record company tell you that because this is "driving music", that you can only listen to it in your car? Or that the tracks must be listened to only in the specified order? Or that you cannot listen to this CD and another artist's CD in successive order because it will corrupt your appreciation of the music otherwise?
I don't think so.
If the RIAA and music companies had not closed down Napster in the courts then they would have had to compete with it. Real competition finally. If that happened, I'd say we'd be getting better products at better prices today. I doubt the record companies would have just gone out and died. Instead I feel the music market would be expanded in the same way lowering prices in other markets expands the consumer base. And there would never have come a time where Napster replaced the record companies entirely since some people for a variety of reasons would never use it regardless of price. (And btw, Napster was never free to use. It cost time, internet connection fees, disc space, lower quality, and other trade-offs.)
I feel the biggest and best result of a successful Snapster x.0 will be the same. The record companies would have to work harder for less money since some money in the market would go to Snapster. Yet anyone who feels there isn't a lot of fat to cut in the recording industry is not a student of history (and I don't mean the obscene advance given Michael Jackson for HIStory). There is no reason to believe the recording industry is any different from any other industry.
Snapster in any surivivable form would be good for us all.
Thought about doing the same to the RIAA, but I'd need a whole tanker truck load at least there.
But is is very different when you are not profiting from it. The law has long treated profiting from copyright infringment as a different class of crime.
Could make a good argument against having a static IP.
While you make an excellent point, I'd really like to see this on my own t-shirt before I see it on someone else's.
(Actually, it's my subtle anti-**AA statement. My personal belief is that a copyright should not be allowed to be extended on any item once it is registered. At that point it has served it's purpose to foster creativity. I think people are sharing movies and music because they have come to realize that they are going to be screwed forever otherwise and this is the only way to reasonably fight back. So I've turned my sig into a dual-use signature in protest.)
Isn't music software for your hardware music player? Can we now archive MP3s without fear?
10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD"
20 GOTO 10
30 END
At which point you have created your first programming boo boo.
If you're going to preserve software, doesn't it make sense to preserve the hardware to run it on as well? Emulation is less than perfect.