Is Viacom dying like Microsoft is always said to be dying on Slashdot?
If so I had better go buy some Viacom stock because over the last 5 or so years I have been hearing that rubbish Microsoft's revenue has gone up and up.
The fact that they are easily circumvented does not make it RIGHT to do so.
What kind of idiotic argument is that.. it is also easy to hit someone with my car but that doesn't mean the laws protecting people from being hit are a dead status quo.
Give me a break.
IP laws are very important unless you want all movies to be low budget filipino horror movies. Personally, I have no problem with paying to see Batman this weekend instead.
Viacom cannot let a competitor have their content for free while they are trying to generate revenue using the same content and paying to make it in the first place!
However, Viacom's position doesn't seem to allow for sites that allow me the responsibility for my own content. If they did, they wouldn't be going after YouTube like that.
Viacom's position is that Youtube is knowingly using Viacom's content to drive traffic to the site and collect ad revenue. And they are going to get the data that the Google-borg collects about everyone to prove it.
If you would like to tell me how YouTube or a similar business is supposed to function while accepting liability for copyright infringement, with no safe harbor provision, I'll stop with the "sky is falling" analysis. Bear in mind that YouTube can't be making much money per video, and statutory damages for one infringement are an absolute minimum of $750. Figure that, on any such site, at least one percent of the submissions will be copyright infringements, minimum. Tell me how this is to work.
Off the top of my head: Create a system that allows users to moderate their peers postings to take out the copyrighted content if you want to do it on the cheap, or hire people to screen the content before it is posted. Google has deep pockets and all those brains everyone is always talking about.. surely they can figure something out.
I am positive if Youtube was a Microsoft-run site everyone would suddenly have a different perspective on all this..
That might be true in a technical sense.. but at the end of the day the decision is going to rest with the people who OWN the content. What is the incentive for ABC/NBC etc. to allow Google to make money from their content for nothing? Despite what you think, that *does* hurt the property holder because basically they are giving Google money for nothing.
If the networks have a plan to introduce their content on their own sites, and they have slowly started making more and more available as you said, it makes no sense at all to allow a competitor to use their unique content without the associated costs from developing it. After all it does cost a lot of money to produce tv shows and movies.
If they want to use their own sites, of course they want to drive traffic to them instead of Youtube. It is a no brainer.
So, where is that "wherever you like" that you speak of?
What place on the Web should I use to post videos of a cat with his face in a coffee cup?
In order to prevent any possible gain from unauthorized use of copyrighted works, Viacom is proposing to destroy any place where individuals can gather to post cat videos or pictures.
How about your own site? Or your section of a site that allows you the responsibility for your own content?
The DMCA safe harbor provision, as long as it is enforced, allows sites like YouTube, or, for that matter, website providers, to continue without disastrous legal consequences.
Which is all fine and dandy until Youtube starts generating money using content that doesn't belong to Youtube OR the user that uploaded it.
In other words, litigation like this, if successful, will devastate the internet as a source for anything not provided by large corporations.
Uh.. no it won't. You can still upload your videos of your cat doing something funny wherever you like..
The media companies are catching on and starting their own sites. They have some that are based on fees and some that are based on ad revenue. They can't let Youtube use their content for nothing and compete against them in these ventures because, and I know this is a shock, it takes money to make stuff.
I'm explaining why, in the ordinary sense of the word 'steal', hiding GPL code away that you've agreed to release is 'stealing', and different from copying without permission, which isn't. (And if you get it without making such an agreement, it's copying without permission, and not stealing)
Nope.. I don't agree with it but here it is in your own words and mirroring the popular slashdotspeak: I didn't deprive you of anything you didn't already have so it isn't "stealing".
Seriously though, you can't honestly be arguing that one case is more like stealing than the other. At the end of the day in both cases you are basically taking the efforts (in return for nothing) of the people who created the original item whatever that may be.
In both cases it takes these people time/money/inspiration to make this stuff and just because they have a difference in philosophy on how to be compensated doesn't magically make one form of compensation more right than another.
Copyright infringement exists because no deal was made. GPL theft exists because an agreement was made and subsequently broken. Neither is right, but they are different.
You can NOT have one without the other. The GPL relies on copyright for it's teeth. Sorry.
Picking and choosing when you technically accept the agreement is a joke of an argument.
I can just as easily say that I downloaded the source and didn't accept your agreement.
God damn you guys live in a reality distortion field only rivaled by Steve Jobs.
If you want to sell me some software, and I copy it from someone else, you've not been deprived of anything which you had in the first place (only expected income).
ohhhhkay.. granted you didn't physically take anything.. but basically it boils down to you taking someone else's work for nothing simply because you can easily copy it. But I understand the argument.
In the latter example the modifications are as much mine as yours, they don't become 'not mine' just because you've retained them in your sole posession, by depriving me of them, you are stealing them
LOL - This is EXACTLY what I meant in my previous post. I want my cake and want to eat it too! Guess what! By the prevailing slashdot piratelogic you said above: I didn't deprive you of anything you already had either! (only expected modifications). You still have the original source without my modifications.. Nah nah nah.. by your own logic I can take all that sweet GPL source code and do anything I want and not give it back. Yay! Information wants to be freeeeee! [/sarcasm]
This is why I will never, ever, understand how people so zealously pro-GPL can at the same time rain down hate on artists/coders/movie studios/software companies and the others that create work that just happens to be easily copied. The fact that it is easily reproduced does NOT mean it was cheap in terms of time or money or inspiration to make in the first place.
That is why copyright exists.. so these people can recoup their investment.
You can't justify one and not the other no matter how you try.. sorry.
As a society we either protect people's work or we don't. Can't have it both ways.
what exactly about gun powder, the gutenberg press, beethoven, mozart, da vinci, linux, mplayer, the bsd core of osx, firefox, and the internet have to do with fantasy?
Thanks for pointing out a bunch of stuff that is either way too old to be protected by any sort of copyright/patent or that the authors CHOSE to allow others free use of..
Unlike for example, Viacom, the owner of the works in question, (whether you like it or not we have property laws) who did not CHOOSE to allow those works to be broadcast for free on Youtube.
The radio example was also a perfect analogy. Like youtube/google, a station uses the content (songs) to attract people to listen to ads that are targeted to their demographic etc. Exactly the same as what google hopes to do. However, the radio station also PAYS any applicable royalties for the songs they use in agreement with the owner of the content! Novel concept, I know.
In the Youtube case Google uses the content to attract viewers, tracks their usage to gather data to target the ads, sells the adspace.. and then keeps ALL money generated FOR THEMSELVES.
I know it isn't a popular view with all the people that have terabyte drives filled with stolen music/video.. you can call me all the names you want, and make fun of trade organizations looking out for their members (MAFIAA) but if you can't see the problems here well.. I hope you pour your time and money into something unique that others take and use without your permission (giving you nothing) so you will finally understand.
I know that it is hard for you to grasp, since you live in a fantasy land where everyone enjoys both working for free and giving the fruits of their labour away for others to profit from... but PAYING the people that do the science and make the art is a probably a good way to start "promoting science and the useful arts".
Youtube is really just napster 2.0 (remember that cultural phenomenon??) a nice central repository to get sued into oblivion for using work that doesn't belong to them without permission.
This is a great package for the majority of Windows users. Especially if you are someone who is paying 40-50 dollars a year for an antivirus subscription already.
Hopefully Viacom get some money out of Google in return for the content that they had to invest in making.
Google/Youtube should not be able to broadcast content which they don't have the rights to and profit from the eyeballs watching it. Sorry I know the fanboys will be angry but it is true.
You are the same people that get up in arms when someone uses some GPL code against the license terms.. you can't have it both ways.
Maybe because Google does not *actually* allow you to use these services for free.
They don't charge money but instead track your habits and use that to target the ads.
I have to agree with a lot of the other posters. Linux is at a crossroads if it wants to make an impact on the desktop. There are a few areas that need addressed in my mind:
1) Being useful on the desktop means that packaging methods, configuration files etc need to be standardized. The way to get Linux in the door for desktop use is in simple needs corporate desktops or kiosks, and for those to be supported at a lower cost than Windows, standards are needed to minimize the time spent.
2) Consistent, thorough and up to date documentation for programs. Everyone likes to say RTFM, check the newsgroups or what have you. To that I say useless. Half the time you do that the manual is for three revisions previous and in the newsgroups you have no idea of the person actually knows what they are talking about.
3) Number 1 and 2 will help in the other major stumbling block. Support for hardware. Getting some hardware to work under Linux is a painful procedure.
And for all those of you who are saying that you don't want it to get to this point, fine. You like your choices and spending hours upon hours in text config files that is great.
One word of caution though is that while Linux is trying to make improvements to make it onto the desktop, Windows is improving on servers.
I constantly see people here putting down Windows uptime and reliability. That is not an issue since 2000. Anyone who says otherwise doesn't know that they are doing. On good hardware and with good drivers Windows 2000 can run just fine for months at a time. I dislike Microsoft and their licensing as much as anyone, but Linux's biggest strength - reliability - isn't as much a factor now.
Slashdot Mirror
Is Viacom dying like Microsoft is always said to be dying on Slashdot?
If so I had better go buy some Viacom stock because over the last 5 or so years I have been hearing that rubbish Microsoft's revenue has gone up and up.
The fact that they are easily circumvented does not make it RIGHT to do so.
What kind of idiotic argument is that.. it is also easy to hit someone with my car but that doesn't mean the laws protecting people from being hit are a dead status quo.
Give me a break.
IP laws are very important unless you want all movies to be low budget filipino horror movies. Personally, I have no problem with paying to see Batman this weekend instead.
Google isn't looking out for the little guy.
Google is looking out for Google.
The only thing that Google wants with the little guy is to collect personally identifiable data from him and try to sell him stuff.
If it were Microsoft in question I bet it would be good enough.
Google does not care about your privacy rights.
Google is anti-privacy in every aspect of their business. That is why they collected all that information in the first place.
Bingo.. someone GETS it.. Finally!
Viacom cannot let a competitor have their content for free while they are trying to generate revenue using the same content and paying to make it in the first place!
However, Viacom's position doesn't seem to allow for sites that allow me the responsibility for my own content. If they did, they wouldn't be going after YouTube like that.
Viacom's position is that Youtube is knowingly using Viacom's content to drive traffic to the site and collect ad revenue. And they are going to get the data that the Google-borg collects about everyone to prove it.
If you would like to tell me how YouTube or a similar business is supposed to function while accepting liability for copyright infringement, with no safe harbor provision, I'll stop with the "sky is falling" analysis. Bear in mind that YouTube can't be making much money per video, and statutory damages for one infringement are an absolute minimum of $750. Figure that, on any such site, at least one percent of the submissions will be copyright infringements, minimum. Tell me how this is to work.
Off the top of my head: Create a system that allows users to moderate their peers postings to take out the copyrighted content if you want to do it on the cheap, or hire people to screen the content before it is posted. Google has deep pockets and all those brains everyone is always talking about.. surely they can figure something out.
I am positive if Youtube was a Microsoft-run site everyone would suddenly have a different perspective on all this..
They can co-exist.
That might be true in a technical sense.. but at the end of the day the decision is going to rest with the people who OWN the content. What is the incentive for ABC/NBC etc. to allow Google to make money from their content for nothing? Despite what you think, that *does* hurt the property holder because basically they are giving Google money for nothing.
If the networks have a plan to introduce their content on their own sites, and they have slowly started making more and more available as you said, it makes no sense at all to allow a competitor to use their unique content without the associated costs from developing it. After all it does cost a lot of money to produce tv shows and movies.
If they want to use their own sites, of course they want to drive traffic to them instead of Youtube. It is a no brainer.
So, where is that "wherever you like" that you speak of?
What place on the Web should I use to post videos of a cat with his face in a coffee cup?
In order to prevent any possible gain from unauthorized use of copyrighted works, Viacom is proposing to destroy any place where individuals can gather to post cat videos or pictures.
How about your own site? Or your section of a site that allows you the responsibility for your own content?
Stop with the sky is falling hyperbole.
Actually the law is not neutral. It is there to specifically prohibit certain behaviours so it obviously isn't neutral.
The application of the laws is what is supposed to be fair.
The DMCA safe harbor provision, as long as it is enforced, allows sites like YouTube, or, for that matter, website providers, to continue without disastrous legal consequences.
Which is all fine and dandy until Youtube starts generating money using content that doesn't belong to Youtube OR the user that uploaded it.
In other words, litigation like this, if successful, will devastate the internet as a source for anything not provided by large corporations.
Uh.. no it won't. You can still upload your videos of your cat doing something funny wherever you like..
The media companies are catching on and starting their own sites. They have some that are based on fees and some that are based on ad revenue. They can't let Youtube use their content for nothing and compete against them in these ventures because, and I know this is a shock, it takes money to make stuff.
I'm explaining why, in the ordinary sense of the word 'steal', hiding GPL code away that you've agreed to release is 'stealing', and different from copying without permission, which isn't. (And if you get it without making such an agreement, it's copying without permission, and not stealing)
Nope.. I don't agree with it but here it is in your own words and mirroring the popular slashdotspeak: I didn't deprive you of anything you didn't already have so it isn't "stealing".
Seriously though, you can't honestly be arguing that one case is more like stealing than the other. At the end of the day in both cases you are basically taking the efforts (in return for nothing) of the people who created the original item whatever that may be.
In both cases it takes these people time/money/inspiration to make this stuff and just because they have a difference in philosophy on how to be compensated doesn't magically make one form of compensation more right than another.
I just wanted to point out AGAIN
Copyright infringement exists because no deal was made. GPL theft exists because an agreement was made and subsequently broken. Neither is right, but they are different.
You can NOT have one without the other. The GPL relies on copyright for it's teeth. Sorry.
Picking and choosing when you technically accept the agreement is a joke of an argument. I can just as easily say that I downloaded the source and didn't accept your agreement.
If you want to sell me some software, and I copy it from someone else, you've not been deprived of anything which you had in the first place (only expected income).
ohhhhkay.. granted you didn't physically take anything.. but basically it boils down to you taking someone else's work for nothing simply because you can easily copy it. But I understand the argument.
In the latter example the modifications are as much mine as yours, they don't become 'not mine' just because you've retained them in your sole posession, by depriving me of them, you are stealing them
LOL - This is EXACTLY what I meant in my previous post. I want my cake and want to eat it too! Guess what! By the prevailing slashdot piratelogic you said above: I didn't deprive you of anything you already had either! (only expected modifications). You still have the original source without my modifications.. Nah nah nah.. by your own logic I can take all that sweet GPL source code and do anything I want and not give it back. Yay! Information wants to be freeeeee! [/sarcasm]
This is why I will never, ever, understand how people so zealously pro-GPL can at the same time rain down hate on artists/coders/movie studios/software companies and the others that create work that just happens to be easily copied. The fact that it is easily reproduced does NOT mean it was cheap in terms of time or money or inspiration to make in the first place.
That is why copyright exists.. so these people can recoup their investment.
You can't justify one and not the other no matter how you try.. sorry.
As a society we either protect people's work or we don't. Can't have it both ways.
Hard drives are getting bigger? Wow.. what news.. that hardly ever happens.
LOL I want to have my cake and eat it too please... copyright is what gives the GPL it's teeth. You people CAN'T HAVE IT BOTH WAYS.
what exactly about gun powder, the gutenberg press, beethoven, mozart, da vinci, linux, mplayer, the bsd core of osx, firefox, and the internet have to do with fantasy?
Thanks for pointing out a bunch of stuff that is either way too old to be protected by any sort of copyright/patent or that the authors CHOSE to allow others free use of..
Unlike for example, Viacom, the owner of the works in question, (whether you like it or not we have property laws) who did not CHOOSE to allow those works to be broadcast for free on Youtube.
The radio example was also a perfect analogy. Like youtube/google, a station uses the content (songs) to attract people to listen to ads that are targeted to their demographic etc. Exactly the same as what google hopes to do. However, the radio station also PAYS any applicable royalties for the songs they use in agreement with the owner of the content! Novel concept, I know.
In the Youtube case Google uses the content to attract viewers, tracks their usage to gather data to target the ads, sells the adspace.. and then keeps ALL money generated FOR THEMSELVES.
I know it isn't a popular view with all the people that have terabyte drives filled with stolen music/video.. you can call me all the names you want, and make fun of trade organizations looking out for their members (MAFIAA) but if you can't see the problems here well.. I hope you pour your time and money into something unique that others take and use without your permission (giving you nothing) so you will finally understand.
I know that it is hard for you to grasp, since you live in a fantasy land where everyone enjoys both working for free and giving the fruits of their labour away for others to profit from... but PAYING the people that do the science and make the art is a probably a good way to start "promoting science and the useful arts".
Youtube is really just napster 2.0 (remember that cultural phenomenon??) a nice central repository to get sued into oblivion for using work that doesn't belong to them without permission.
Cheers
This is a great package for the majority of Windows users. Especially if you are someone who is paying 40-50 dollars a year for an antivirus subscription already.
Great value.
Hopefully Viacom get some money out of Google in return for the content that they had to invest in making. Google/Youtube should not be able to broadcast content which they don't have the rights to and profit from the eyeballs watching it. Sorry I know the fanboys will be angry but it is true. You are the same people that get up in arms when someone uses some GPL code against the license terms.. you can't have it both ways.
Maybe because Google does not *actually* allow you to use these services for free. They don't charge money but instead track your habits and use that to target the ads.
Ken Lay (Enron)and Bernie Webbers (WorldCom) are in jail?
Has OJ found the real killer?
If you don't think that money has some serious influence on the legal system of the US then you are a little naive.
I think you forgot that Linux is a collection of thousands of small projects, almost all of which are going largely in their *own* direction.
It's a different philosophy.
I have to agree with a lot of the other posters. Linux is at a crossroads if it wants to make an impact on the desktop. There are a few areas that need addressed in my mind:
1) Being useful on the desktop means that packaging methods, configuration files etc need to be standardized. The way to get Linux in the door for desktop use is in simple needs corporate desktops or kiosks, and for those to be supported at a lower cost than Windows, standards are needed to minimize the time spent.
2) Consistent, thorough and up to date documentation for programs. Everyone likes to say RTFM, check the newsgroups or what have you. To that I say useless. Half the time you do that the manual is for three revisions previous and in the newsgroups you have no idea of the person actually knows what they are talking about.
3) Number 1 and 2 will help in the other major stumbling block. Support for hardware. Getting some hardware to work under Linux is a painful procedure.
And for all those of you who are saying that you don't want it to get to this point, fine. You like your choices and spending hours upon hours in text config files that is great.
One word of caution though is that while Linux is trying to make improvements to make it onto the desktop, Windows is improving on servers.
I constantly see people here putting down Windows uptime and reliability. That is not an issue since 2000. Anyone who says otherwise doesn't know that they are doing. On good hardware and with good drivers Windows 2000 can run just fine for months at a time. I dislike Microsoft and their licensing as much as anyone, but Linux's biggest strength - reliability - isn't as much a factor now.