Maybe you did benefit the artists, but trot this argument out in court and you'll be laughed all the way to the jail cell. It is considered theft, because theft is defined by the courts and not you.
Let me make something very clear: What I'm doing when I download music is completely illegal, and I know this. It's piracy. What I argued in my post was that it's neither theft, nor wrong, but it is definitely illegal. Theft is substantially different from piracy, however, and in my opinion, should carry stiffer penalties. (It doesn't.)
Shareware was crippled. It expired after X time or it was missing features. It was a SAMPLE.
Not all shareware is crippled, yet shareware companies seem to be doing just fine.
As for research, expensive market research may not have happened yet, but here's an analysis of some publicly available numbers:
It could be argued that MP3s are the greatest marketing tool ever to come along for the music industry. If your music is not being downloaded, then you're in trouble. If you can't give it away, you certainly can't sell it. Daniel Bedingfield recently had a top 3 song on the radio, with "Gotta Get Thru This." However, his music was hardly available through any of the P2P networks. His record lasted on the Billboard Top 200 for less than a month, even though the single had been on radio playlists all over the country for several months. It's also been widely reported that the most downloaded album of all time was "The Eminem Show," by Eminem. It was downloaded so heavily that Interscope took the unusual step of releasing the album a week early due to the rampant online sharing of tracks from the album. Fast-forward to the end of 2002, and "The Eminem Show" is the best-selling album of the year. This seems to indicate the opposite of what the RIAA would have you believe. When people share MP3s, more music is sold, not less. (full article here) (Note that correlation does not imply causation, so this is weak support. Real research is still required.)
Go in front of a court and try to argue that point and you'll be shot down before you finish the thought.
I'm not saying these arguments will keep me out of prison if the RIAA decides that's where I should be; I'm saying that my actions are neither morally reprehensible, nor detrimental to those who would try to stop me. In fact, what I'm doing seems to be benefiting those who would try to stop me, so I wish they would just let me keep doing it so I can continue to fund the creation of new, good music (it's not quite an oxymoron yet) with my small amount of disposable income!
I agree completely. The concept of a graphical interface is still the biggest advance in interface design ever seen, and it happened how many decades ago? Going from tapes to disks was a huge leap, but if (and it's a big if) we ever see such a huge conceptual leap in data storage techniques again, there's no way we'll ever see such incredible performance (meaning speed, reliability and capacity) increases from a single advance.
That's not to say we won't see large, gradual advances...as your analogy implies, the difference between today's storage and tomorrow's could be the difference between a slime mold and a sparrow.
There's some HARD EVIDENCE where "free advertising" in exchange for "free distribution" failed that counteracts your anecdotal evidence.
That's not hard evidence, it's a quote from a Web site. It's far less valid as a reason for believing something than even anecdotal evidence. Actually, the general success of shareware is support for my argument.
The argument doesn't hold water, not because the exposure is ineffective for the artists, but because it's still not an excuse for theft.
Well, to me, the definition of stealing involves depriving somebody of something. If I walk into your home and steal your TV, it's stealing because now you no longer have a TV. You paid for that TV, so now you're out a certain amount of money because of what I did.
Let's analyze the different uses of music piracy, and the extent to which I've stolen from the musician in each case:
a) I wasn't going to buy the album, I downloaded the music, and now I'm not going to buy the album.
I haven't deprived the artist or label of anything, whether I continue to listen to the music or not. If I enjoy the music and listen to it, I've gained, making my actions at least a little questionable, but nobody else lost by my gain, so labelling my actions "theft" is unreasonable.
b) I wasn't going to buy the album, I downloaded the music, and now I'm going to buy the album.
I've actually benefited the artist by my actions in this case. There is no way this can be considered theft.
c) I was going to buy the album, I downloaded the music, and now I'm going to buy the album.
Obviously I haven't deprived the artist or label of anything in this case. My motives may be a little questionable, but if I ultimately bought the album I can't be considered to have stolen it.
d) I was going to buy the album, I downloaded the music, and now I'm not going to buy the album.
This is the only case where I'm depriving the artist and label of something. If I proceed to listen to and enjoy the music regularly, and keep the recordings, obviously I have thoroughly cheated someone out of some money they deserve. If I proceed to delete the music because it turns out I didn't like it as much as I expected, the ethics of the situation are less obvious but it's still pretty clear I've done something wrong.
This is something of a simplification, since what is done with the music afterwards makes a difference as well, as far as morality is concerned, but for the most part 3/4 of the possible ways to "pirate" music involve no detriment to...anyone. In the face of a complete lack of any research into this, there is no reason to believe that one or another of these possibilities is more likely than the others in practice, so until such research is done the only logical assumptions are:
a) The probabilities are equal, so that 3/4 of all music piracy causes no harm, while the amount that causes harm is exactly balanced by the amount that causes benefit to the same people; or
b) Anecdotal evidence gives an accurate view of the situation, and people buy more CDs if they download music than if they don't, so the RIAA's position is indefensible.
These are the only defensible positions; the RIAA's statement that music piracy is eating into their profits is sheer speculation until some market research shows one way or another. I suspect that if research into this is ever conducted, the RIAA's position will go from being speculation to being wrong...unless the research is funded by the RIAA, in which case they have the option of only publishing results that favor them.
Frankly, I'm surprised no real research has been done into the effects of music piracy on CD sales, considering the amount of press the subject has received.
Sorry, but the free advertising argument holds water. I would not have bought the last 100 CDs I bought if I hadn't been able to sample the music online first. The original poster's argument about broadband is also flawed; I and most of my friends have broadband, and we all buy much more music than we otherwise would because we can sample it first via P2P systems.
That's anecdotal evidence, I know. But there's no hard evidence out there that disagrees with it, and until there is I take the evidence available to me as telling the story.
As far as "stealing music is stealing music is stealing music", I would say that if the supposed victim of my crime is actually benefiting by my actions, then no crime has been committed.
The RIAA's attempts to suppress P2P file-sharing are short-sighted attempts to preserve the status quo, without realizing that the situation threatening to replace it is much better, even for them.
This should come as no surprise to those of us who actually pirate MP3s. Yes, I have 60 gigs of music on one of my hard drives. No, I did not pay for most of that music. However, if it hadn't been for Napster and its successors, I wouldn't have bought most of the 150 or so CDs I own. Most of my friends download music from the Internet, yet I know of no one who has stopped buying CDs just because they can get everything online. Instead, the Internet serves, as it does in all aspects of its use, to expose people to new things--and then, predictably for denizens of a consumer society, we buy those new things.
For that matter, it should come as no surprise to people who know the history of VHS. The movie industry was up in arms when tape recorders came out, saying people would no longer go to movies because they could just pirate a friend's copy. Today, most of the movie industry's revenue comes from sales and rentals of video tapes and DVDs. The VCR caused a boom in the movie industry, and if it weren't for a) the current economic slump and b) the RIAA's stubborn opposition of new technology, P2P would be causing a boom in the music industry.
It's amazing how ubiquitous these little things have become. Sometimes, on my way across town on a bus, I see as many as three or four people on one bus using iPods at the same time. It always makes me think that those people could be talking to their fellow passengers. As cool as these things are (and as much as I want one!) they do seem to cause people to dissociate from their environment to a disturbing degree.
Not to be a Luddite or anything...whoo, progress, yay!...
I haven't been busted yet because I just started sharing. It'll happen soon, I bet, especially at the rate at which I'm advertising (entirely on/.--it's very effective, and free).
Yes, this is my own collection. I've taken some stuff from friends via portable hard drives/laptops and LANs, but mostly it's a result of ripping stuff with iTunes, browsing LimeWire and, back in the day, using Napster. People are free to upload, but no anonymous users have uploaded anything as yet.
BTW, how did my original comment get moded "Troll"? Some moderators take offense way too easily...
My parents are finally trying to cancel AOL service, which they have not used in a long time. My dad claimed last time he was home that he had called over a month ago and cancelled, but that he had just found their bill in his credit card statement.
I have to say, though, that back when AOL was the only good ISP, they were a good ISP. It's difficult finding a good ISP these days--we switched our broadband from ComCast cable to Ameritech DSL because ComCast, besides being generally shitty, didn't offer static IP addresses, and we wanted to serve my dad's Web site from our home.
The reason we wanted to serve from home was that our original Web hoster, mich.com, was bought by bignet, and service went all to hell. But once we switched to Ameritech, we found that the static IP address the telemarketer had said came free with the service actually cost $15/month. On top of that, in November our address became dynamic again. They said it was some temporary server troubles, but it still hasn't become static again, despite more than one call by my dad. We're still paying for it, so they owe us some money.
Even my university's IT department can't seem to get it right--every once in a while (at least once a week) I get completely disconnected, or service just becomes spotty, for a few hours at a time. Why can't ISPs just provide their services as advertised without a bunch of bullshit and strongarm tactics?
The film in its entirety? Do you know how many hundreds of hours of footage they shoot for a movie? You're saying they should just give us all of that on fifty DVDs and let us decide what parts we like the best. I'd rather let them go through it for me and select the parts I'm most likely to like--it's a lot less time-consuming on my end.
The other computer doesn't have to be correct--that's the beauty of it. Each computer isn't checking some particular other computer at regular intervals, they're choosing a different computer to check with each time.
So let's say a computer named Louise is trying to stay in sync with the group as a whole. At some point it checks with another computer, Virginia, to see how far ahead it is (it's a very fast computer, it knows it'll be ahead). It finds that it's not very far ahead at all, so it corrects just a small amount. Next time it wants to check itself, it checks with Algernon. Algernon is a 7 year old Macintosh Performa. Louise finds itself to be way, way ahead, and holds itself back a lot.
The point is that the average amount by which Louise finds itself to be ahead will depend directly on the average amount by which it's ahead, so while it'll always be a bit out of sync, it'll keep itself from ever getting too far off. It's a matter of statistics and keeping errors within acceptable ranges, rather than achieving perfection.
Okay, so this is the stuff that if you throw it in the landfill it'll be around for a million years (give or take), but if you make a disc out of it it'll decompose in two years. Pretty uncooperative of it, if you ask me.
Well, personally I don't worry about DVDs degrading. I just rip them to my hard drive, bit for bit, minus copy protection (so come arrest me, why doncha). Takes up a lot of space, but what the hey...it's cheaper than buying them, especially twice!
Hrm, maybe I should be a little less hasty next time I post a link to myself on/.. Apparently the link in the parent comment won't work because my ftp server program doesn't support transfers of files larger than 2 gigs...or at least that's how I interpret this error that many users have reported (and that I saw myself upon testing):
550 I can only retrieve regular files
Oh well, I'll fix it as soon as I can. Meanwhile there are 60 gigs of MP3s there for your listening pleasure...and bookmark that link, with any luck it will be working fine soon.
On a related note, can anyone tell me how to get Pure-FTPd to support transfers of files larger than 2 gigs?
From what I understand, this is similar to a single state trying to overturn a law enacted by the U.S. Federal Government. If Michigan decided they didn't like the DMCA, nobody would really care...it wouldn't have any effect on the outcome of, well, anything. Finland's case sounds like it's different only in the specifics.
Here's what we do: Stop paying taxes. Every last one of us.
If everyone refuses to pay taxes, the government will be completely cash-starved. They can't jail all of us, right? They can't even afford the first investigation. So they'll just have to do without the money.
This means a huge (100%) decrease in the budget. Then we tell the senators and representatives to get dayjobs, because we'll only start paying taxes again if they give up their salaries completely, and amend the constitution to make it permanent.
Now, two things happen. First, eventually all the politicians will be poor folk like the rest of us, so they'll make laws that favor the poor folk rather than the rich--such as allowing fair use, including making backups since that's cheaper than buying a second copy of something.
Second, eventually nobody will really want to be a career politician. Since the only people fit to rule are those who don't want to (who am I quoting? I forget the source at the moment), and there will be nobody around who wants to rule, we'll have rulers who are fit for the job, almost by definition.
With the political parties/machines gone, people will vote for their next-door neighbors...or themselves. It'll be chaos, and I think we'll come out with a better government than we have now because of it.
Then we get around to such things as repealing the DMCA and really skewering Microsoft.
Finally, once again the U.S. will be a leader of the free world! No longer will we have to follow the lead of pioneering countries like Finland--we'll be the pioneers! Glory to this great nation!
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Maybe you did benefit the artists, but trot this argument out in court and you'll be laughed all the way to the jail cell. It is considered theft, because theft is defined by the courts and not you.
Let me make something very clear: What I'm doing when I download music is completely illegal, and I know this. It's piracy. What I argued in my post was that it's neither theft, nor wrong, but it is definitely illegal. Theft is substantially different from piracy, however, and in my opinion, should carry stiffer penalties. (It doesn't.)
Shareware was crippled. It expired after X time or it was missing features. It was a SAMPLE.
Not all shareware is crippled, yet shareware companies seem to be doing just fine.
As for research, expensive market research may not have happened yet, but here's an analysis of some publicly available numbers:
It could be argued that MP3s are the greatest marketing tool ever to come along for the music industry. If your music is not being downloaded, then you're in trouble. If you can't give it away, you certainly can't sell it. Daniel Bedingfield recently had a top 3 song on the radio, with "Gotta Get Thru This." However, his music was hardly available through any of the P2P networks. His record lasted on the Billboard Top 200 for less than a month, even though the single had been on radio playlists all over the country for several months. It's also been widely reported that the most downloaded album of all time was "The Eminem Show," by Eminem. It was downloaded so heavily that Interscope took the unusual step of releasing the album a week early due to the rampant online sharing of tracks from the album. Fast-forward to the end of 2002, and "The Eminem Show" is the best-selling album of the year. This seems to indicate the opposite of what the RIAA would have you believe. When people share MP3s, more music is sold, not less. (full article here) (Note that correlation does not imply causation, so this is weak support. Real research is still required.)
Go in front of a court and try to argue that point and you'll be shot down before you finish the thought.
I'm not saying these arguments will keep me out of prison if the RIAA decides that's where I should be; I'm saying that my actions are neither morally reprehensible, nor detrimental to those who would try to stop me. In fact, what I'm doing seems to be benefiting those who would try to stop me, so I wish they would just let me keep doing it so I can continue to fund the creation of new, good music (it's not quite an oxymoron yet) with my small amount of disposable income!
I agree completely. The concept of a graphical interface is still the biggest advance in interface design ever seen, and it happened how many decades ago? Going from tapes to disks was a huge leap, but if (and it's a big if) we ever see such a huge conceptual leap in data storage techniques again, there's no way we'll ever see such incredible performance (meaning speed, reliability and capacity) increases from a single advance.
That's not to say we won't see large, gradual advances...as your analogy implies, the difference between today's storage and tomorrow's could be the difference between a slime mold and a sparrow.
There's some HARD EVIDENCE where "free advertising" in exchange for "free distribution" failed that counteracts your anecdotal evidence.
That's not hard evidence, it's a quote from a Web site. It's far less valid as a reason for believing something than even anecdotal evidence. Actually, the general success of shareware is support for my argument.
The argument doesn't hold water, not because the exposure is ineffective for the artists, but because it's still not an excuse for theft.
Well, to me, the definition of stealing involves depriving somebody of something. If I walk into your home and steal your TV, it's stealing because now you no longer have a TV. You paid for that TV, so now you're out a certain amount of money because of what I did.
Let's analyze the different uses of music piracy, and the extent to which I've stolen from the musician in each case:
a) I wasn't going to buy the album, I downloaded the music, and now I'm not going to buy the album.
I haven't deprived the artist or label of anything, whether I continue to listen to the music or not. If I enjoy the music and listen to it, I've gained, making my actions at least a little questionable, but nobody else lost by my gain, so labelling my actions "theft" is unreasonable.
b) I wasn't going to buy the album, I downloaded the music, and now I'm going to buy the album.
I've actually benefited the artist by my actions in this case. There is no way this can be considered theft.
c) I was going to buy the album, I downloaded the music, and now I'm going to buy the album.
Obviously I haven't deprived the artist or label of anything in this case. My motives may be a little questionable, but if I ultimately bought the album I can't be considered to have stolen it.
d) I was going to buy the album, I downloaded the music, and now I'm not going to buy the album.
This is the only case where I'm depriving the artist and label of something. If I proceed to listen to and enjoy the music regularly, and keep the recordings, obviously I have thoroughly cheated someone out of some money they deserve. If I proceed to delete the music because it turns out I didn't like it as much as I expected, the ethics of the situation are less obvious but it's still pretty clear I've done something wrong.
This is something of a simplification, since what is done with the music afterwards makes a difference as well, as far as morality is concerned, but for the most part 3/4 of the possible ways to "pirate" music involve no detriment to...anyone. In the face of a complete lack of any research into this, there is no reason to believe that one or another of these possibilities is more likely than the others in practice, so until such research is done the only logical assumptions are:
a) The probabilities are equal, so that 3/4 of all music piracy causes no harm, while the amount that causes harm is exactly balanced by the amount that causes benefit to the same people; or
b) Anecdotal evidence gives an accurate view of the situation, and people buy more CDs if they download music than if they don't, so the RIAA's position is indefensible.
These are the only defensible positions; the RIAA's statement that music piracy is eating into their profits is sheer speculation until some market research shows one way or another. I suspect that if research into this is ever conducted, the RIAA's position will go from being speculation to being wrong...unless the research is funded by the RIAA, in which case they have the option of only publishing results that favor them.
Frankly, I'm surprised no real research has been done into the effects of music piracy on CD sales, considering the amount of press the subject has received.
Sorry, but the free advertising argument holds water. I would not have bought the last 100 CDs I bought if I hadn't been able to sample the music online first. The original poster's argument about broadband is also flawed; I and most of my friends have broadband, and we all buy much more music than we otherwise would because we can sample it first via P2P systems.
That's anecdotal evidence, I know. But there's no hard evidence out there that disagrees with it, and until there is I take the evidence available to me as telling the story.
As far as "stealing music is stealing music is stealing music", I would say that if the supposed victim of my crime is actually benefiting by my actions, then no crime has been committed.
The RIAA's attempts to suppress P2P file-sharing are short-sighted attempts to preserve the status quo, without realizing that the situation threatening to replace it is much better, even for them.
I just posted a rather lengthy reply to the article below, then read yours and realized something: Brevity can be a virtue.
Well put, sir (or madam).
This should come as no surprise to those of us who actually pirate MP3s. Yes, I have 60 gigs of music on one of my hard drives. No, I did not pay for most of that music. However, if it hadn't been for Napster and its successors, I wouldn't have bought most of the 150 or so CDs I own. Most of my friends download music from the Internet, yet I know of no one who has stopped buying CDs just because they can get everything online. Instead, the Internet serves, as it does in all aspects of its use, to expose people to new things--and then, predictably for denizens of a consumer society, we buy those new things.
For that matter, it should come as no surprise to people who know the history of VHS. The movie industry was up in arms when tape recorders came out, saying people would no longer go to movies because they could just pirate a friend's copy. Today, most of the movie industry's revenue comes from sales and rentals of video tapes and DVDs. The VCR caused a boom in the movie industry, and if it weren't for a) the current economic slump and b) the RIAA's stubborn opposition of new technology, P2P would be causing a boom in the music industry.
It's amazing how ubiquitous these little things have become. Sometimes, on my way across town on a bus, I see as many as three or four people on one bus using iPods at the same time. It always makes me think that those people could be talking to their fellow passengers. As cool as these things are (and as much as I want one!) they do seem to cause people to dissociate from their environment to a disturbing degree.
Not to be a Luddite or anything...whoo, progress, yay!...
I haven't been busted yet because I just started sharing. It'll happen soon, I bet, especially at the rate at which I'm advertising (entirely on /.--it's very effective, and free).
Yes, this is my own collection. I've taken some stuff from friends via portable hard drives/laptops and LANs, but mostly it's a result of ripping stuff with iTunes, browsing LimeWire and, back in the day, using Napster. People are free to upload, but no anonymous users have uploaded anything as yet.
BTW, how did my original comment get moded "Troll"? Some moderators take offense way too easily...
My parents are finally trying to cancel AOL service, which they have not used in a long time. My dad claimed last time he was home that he had called over a month ago and cancelled, but that he had just found their bill in his credit card statement.
I have to say, though, that back when AOL was the only good ISP, they were a good ISP. It's difficult finding a good ISP these days--we switched our broadband from ComCast cable to Ameritech DSL because ComCast, besides being generally shitty, didn't offer static IP addresses, and we wanted to serve my dad's Web site from our home.
The reason we wanted to serve from home was that our original Web hoster, mich.com, was bought by bignet, and service went all to hell. But once we switched to Ameritech, we found that the static IP address the telemarketer had said came free with the service actually cost $15/month. On top of that, in November our address became dynamic again. They said it was some temporary server troubles, but it still hasn't become static again, despite more than one call by my dad. We're still paying for it, so they owe us some money.
Even my university's IT department can't seem to get it right--every once in a while (at least once a week) I get completely disconnected, or service just becomes spotty, for a few hours at a time. Why can't ISPs just provide their services as advertised without a bunch of bullshit and strongarm tactics?
The film in its entirety? Do you know how many hundreds of hours of footage they shoot for a movie? You're saying they should just give us all of that on fifty DVDs and let us decide what parts we like the best. I'd rather let them go through it for me and select the parts I'm most likely to like--it's a lot less time-consuming on my end.
...but apparently not yet, seeing as how the site is thoroughly down.
When I get it, I'll rip it, and you can download it here.
I don't have The Matrix on DVD yet, just a DivX version I downloaded from LimeWire, so this seems like a good buy to me.
The other computer doesn't have to be correct--that's the beauty of it. Each computer isn't checking some particular other computer at regular intervals, they're choosing a different computer to check with each time.
So let's say a computer named Louise is trying to stay in sync with the group as a whole. At some point it checks with another computer, Virginia, to see how far ahead it is (it's a very fast computer, it knows it'll be ahead). It finds that it's not very far ahead at all, so it corrects just a small amount. Next time it wants to check itself, it checks with Algernon. Algernon is a 7 year old Macintosh Performa. Louise finds itself to be way, way ahead, and holds itself back a lot.
The point is that the average amount by which Louise finds itself to be ahead will depend directly on the average amount by which it's ahead, so while it'll always be a bit out of sync, it'll keep itself from ever getting too far off. It's a matter of statistics and keeping errors within acceptable ranges, rather than achieving perfection.
Okay, so this is the stuff that if you throw it in the landfill it'll be around for a million years (give or take), but if you make a disc out of it it'll decompose in two years. Pretty uncooperative of it, if you ask me.
Well, personally I don't worry about DVDs degrading. I just rip them to my hard drive, bit for bit, minus copy protection (so come arrest me, why doncha). Takes up a lot of space, but what the hey...it's cheaper than buying them, especially twice!
Sorry for the repeated replies to my own comment, but I solved the problem--everyone should be able to download The Two Towers now.
The bad news: You have to turn off passive mode in your FTP client to download it. Ah well. A better fix may be coming in due course.
Hrm, maybe I should be a little less hasty next time I post a link to myself on /.. Apparently the link in the parent comment won't work because my ftp server program doesn't support transfers of files larger than 2 gigs...or at least that's how I interpret this error that many users have reported (and that I saw myself upon testing):
550 I can only retrieve regular files
Oh well, I'll fix it as soon as I can. Meanwhile there are 60 gigs of MP3s there for your listening pleasure...and bookmark that link, with any luck it will be working fine soon.
On a related note, can anyone tell me how to get Pure-FTPd to support transfers of files larger than 2 gigs?
Or how a 16:9 widescreen-format movie can require subtitles in the body of the movie instead of BELOW it?
Hey, some people have real <drool>wide-screen displays</drool>.
I think that's the point.
Do not dangle the mouse by its cable or throw the mouse at co-workers.
You're not supposed to do that? I do that all the time, thought it was perfectly normal!
A geek? No, no...he's a slashdotter! Oh, wait...
Personally, I found them both riotously funny. What does that make me? <insidejoke>A musician?</insidejoke> He-he-he...
At the risk of /.ing myself, I'll say that I have a really excellent bootleg of the Two Towers on my computer:
/.ers, bring it on...high traffic hasn't crashed my dual-1.25 GHz Power Mac G4 yet, and it won't do it this time!
ftp://louise.dhs.org/Movies/Two%20Towers.mpg
It's ripped from four VCDs I got from a friend of a friend, originally ripped from the DVD given to the people who review movies for the Oscars.
Okay,
From what I understand, this is similar to a single state trying to overturn a law enacted by the U.S. Federal Government. If Michigan decided they didn't like the DMCA, nobody would really care...it wouldn't have any effect on the outcome of, well, anything. Finland's case sounds like it's different only in the specifics.
I've got the perfect solution to our problems.
Here's what we do: Stop paying taxes. Every last one of us.
If everyone refuses to pay taxes, the government will be completely cash-starved. They can't jail all of us, right? They can't even afford the first investigation. So they'll just have to do without the money.
This means a huge (100%) decrease in the budget. Then we tell the senators and representatives to get dayjobs, because we'll only start paying taxes again if they give up their salaries completely, and amend the constitution to make it permanent.
Now, two things happen. First, eventually all the politicians will be poor folk like the rest of us, so they'll make laws that favor the poor folk rather than the rich--such as allowing fair use, including making backups since that's cheaper than buying a second copy of something.
Second, eventually nobody will really want to be a career politician. Since the only people fit to rule are those who don't want to (who am I quoting? I forget the source at the moment), and there will be nobody around who wants to rule, we'll have rulers who are fit for the job, almost by definition.
With the political parties/machines gone, people will vote for their next-door neighbors...or themselves. It'll be chaos, and I think we'll come out with a better government than we have now because of it.
Then we get around to such things as repealing the DMCA and really skewering Microsoft.
Finally, once again the U.S. will be a leader of the free world! No longer will we have to follow the lead of pioneering countries like Finland--we'll be the pioneers! Glory to this great nation!
Doesn't that violate the DMCA?
Watch out! You're probably not liable, though, just the company that manufactures the thing.
You didn't even get any funny mods: 50% flamebait, 50% off-topic, 0% funny.
Moderators! Can't live with 'em...can pretty much do without them.
There's just no accounting for tastes, I guess.
Is that what it smells like??
Then why does everyone covet it so?