OK, I didn't read the article yet, but how can they claim PCs and email were innovations from the past 25 years? That only goes back to 1980, and both PCs and email were around years before then. In email's case, long before then. Re-writing history, are we? Or does it only count as a PC when IBM came out with their version? That would ignore the Commodore, Tandy, Apple, and others. All were PCs, in the sense that they were Personal Computers.
All right, I'm not a teen interested in talking to other teens on the "Dude, what's up?" level. That's just an experience thing, and I plead guilty to outgrowing that stage.
But in general I have little use for personal blogs, blogs that are about someone. There are six billion people on this earth. Many of them have fascinating stories to tell. Once they have truly fascinating experiences, I'll be glad to read about it in a biography or autobiography. But until then, they can keep their day-to-days to themselves or others who like to pore over meaningless details. Want to know what I had for breakfast today? Dude, not even I am interested any more.
I do like blogs that are news aggregating sites. That is really useful to me, so it's not as if I ignore all blogs. But blogs as "home pages"? I ignored those too back in the day. And by the way, for a while I tried running my site in parallel as a blog along with the regular URL. It was fun to get comments on the headlines, but it wasn't really blog material. Just felt out of place. So I dropped the blog.
If blogs speak to you, that's wonderful. Have fun. I'll snooze this one out.
"This is a new feature I'm particularly proud of, 007. Now pay attention. This paint is peelable. Watch this demonstration while I strafe your car with a flamethrower."
(Car is enveloped in flames. Paint begins to peel off.)
"Uh, Q, won't all paint peel if you apply fire to it?"
"Oh, grow up, 007, this is a breakthrough. I applied the process to my wife's convertible just the other day and we used it to great advantage on holiday."
"Please re-read my question to you: "...going to Wal-Mart, buying a cd, burning..."
Yes, you are quite right, I misread your question and I apologize for that. And so to answer your original question, no, I don't think it would be morally right to buy a CD, burn it, and distribute it freely on the streets. On the other hand, the courts have found in the past that if you make a copy of a song on a cassette tape for your friend, that's free use. Oh, probably not if it reached the courts today, but that was pre-Net and pre-IP hysteria. So this is not an open-and-shut question. There is a range of activity, and somewhere along that range it begins to turn morally wrong.
"I believe I understand your point, I just don't agree. If a bunch of artist got together, put all their art work in a museum and charged $15.00 per person to view their work, I would think it ethically wrong for someone to pay to get in, take a bunch of high quality digital pictures and display them for free somewhere else. You seem to suggest there is nothing wrong with that."
Not exactly, but I can see where you would think that. In fact, I know it would be legally wrong to do that, and I also would consider that morally wrong. My point is that the very culture that encourages locking up of artistic work except for those who can pay has gone too far. It has created a new artificial reality. I would like to see things rolled back a bit.
"But you are ignoring the fact that there are artists/software developers/companies that are developing and marketing their material expecting to make some money off of their work. The fact that it is as easy to steal their work as it is to look up at the sky does not make it right."
I'm not ignoring that fact, I'm pointing out that this fact is built on a foundation of an artificial market. If you could charge people for looking at the sky, there would be industries that would spring up to charge people. Then people would say, "But you're taking money from their children's mouths." While there might be an argument to be made for that, it still wouldn't mean it was originally right to start charging for looking at the sky.
Now I'm not saying it's wrong to charge for playing music. This is a more complicated issue than saying, "You're right, I'm wrong." All I was saying is that the way we think of intellectual property is a very modern concept. And not necessarily entirely the correct one.
"My question to you is "Would you be so quick to defend these people if they were going to Wal-Mart, buying a cd, burning copies and distributing them freely on the streets?"
No, for now we are talking theft of a physical object that cannot be replaced except at greater cost. Download a song, the orginal owner still has his copy. Steal a CD from a store and that CD is no longer in the store's inventory. Big difference.
"How long will it be till it's labeled a terrorist tool and banned? "
It just happened. At least for those who know enough to use Google, but don't have enough common sense to handle context issues. Which sounds remarkably like those congressfolk who go around labeling things terrorist tools. Except for the knowing how to use Google bit.
"You can get as legally technical as you want but ultimately people are taking stuff they did not pay for."
But that's not the question. The question is if that is wrong to do, and are fundamental rights being infringed upon. Do you look at the sky on a sunny day and think how beautiful the blue looks with those contrasting puffy clouds? Do you pay anyone for that visual input? Of course not. But what if the laws in the land became so messed up that Sherwin Williams could claim copyright infringement on that particular shade of blue and white, and demanded payment every time you stared at the sky? What if you looked anyone, and then someone self-righteously spouted, "Pirate! You are taking stuff you did not pay for!"
Now turn from that example of visual input being artificially locked up and look at the real example we are dealing with: Audio input being artificially locked up. It is only in the last hundred years or so that the idea of copyright ownership of particular sounds has taken hold. For the previous several thousand years of human music, people played, people listened, no money changed hands. But in the most recent tiny sliver of human existence a group of laws have come into existence that allows companies to lock up certain streams of audio input. And then we get people so conditioned into thinking this is a normal and correct form of behavior, we get lectured about being honest and admitting that people are "taking stuff they did not pay for."
Yes, you are right, they are taking stuff they did not pay for. The bigger question becomes: Is this the way things should be? Sometimes laws become corrupted by commercial interests and are not they way they should be. That's what's being talked about here. We all know what the laws are. The question is are those laws fundamentally sound?
Under Popular Consumer Brand Name it lists companies such as EBay and Amazon. Huh? Is there a person alive who doesn't know how to get to EBay or Amazon? (hint, the word you're typing in Google? Try it in your Address bar of the browser). This is almost as inane as print ads that list AOL keywords that are identical to their URL ("www.nbc.com AOL Keyword: nbc")
"Hmmm..I sure have heard a lot about this there Amazon thing. I wonder how to find it online. I know, I'll ask that Google thingamabog."
"iTunes seems to reorganise your collection into a bizarre, twisted file structure comprehensible to no human mind"
To the ordinary reader at home, for "bizarre, twisted file structure compehensible to no human mind," please substitute the phrase, "sorted by band and then by album."
"The number of really good productions, whether movies or games or whatever, stays pretty constant. It's the refuse pile you have to sift through to find the good ones that's getting larger."
I've long thought that it makes sense now to have a rider attached to your will listing your various online personas and accounts, along with passwords, and instructions about notifying your online communities of your demise. Play in a fantasy sports league? Might be nice to let the commish know you won't be getting back to him on that trade offer. You're the talk of a discussion board? Might be nice to let your old friends know that you died but thought enough of them to have them notified of your death.
Plus think of the flaming possibilities. You could instruct your surviving loved ones to flame as much as you want, knowing full well no one can touch you in return (unless you believe you are experiencing literal flaming after death, but that's just the risk flamers take).
Seriously, put it in your will if it's important enough.
It's a valid point to make: the entertainment industry is larger than just the box office receipts. You can even go farther and say the entertainment dollar is spent on movie tie-ins and merchandise, theme park rides tied to movies, lots of stuff.
At the same time, $10B is a lot of dough, no matter what you are comparing it to. The movie industry is "only" twice as big? Yeah, well, they have had over a hundred years to build that up. How long has it taken for the game industry to reach the halfway mark? At that rate, how long before it passes the $20B mark? It is impressive no matter how you look at it.
Hey, I deliberately picked Fun With Headlines.net instead of.com (though I got that too to avoid confusion, and auto-route back to.net), because I wanted to do what was right. I am not a company, just an individual. I am not making money off my jokes, so I am clearly not a.com in my book. I am a web site, and nothing more, so it made sense for me to be a.net even though I knew some people would get confused and assume.com.
So why are they going to pick on us first? What's that about?
"Michael, quite your whining. You chose to go to the movie. No one forced you to do this."
Actually, it's just the opposite. Since Michael paid his money, he has the right to comment on the service. And since the customer is always right, his voice should be heard.
Slashdot Mirror
...are confident in their comprehension ability, even though this number exceeds the number who say they read the underlying article.
OK, I didn't read the article yet, but how can they claim PCs and email were innovations from the past 25 years? That only goes back to 1980, and both PCs and email were around years before then. In email's case, long before then. Re-writing history, are we? Or does it only count as a PC when IBM came out with their version? That would ignore the Commodore, Tandy, Apple, and others. All were PCs, in the sense that they were Personal Computers.
I know. As I replied to the AC, mea culpa. But at least I did point out that I like blogs that gather the news, which certainly applies to /.
Mea culpa!
But in general I have little use for personal blogs, blogs that are about someone. There are six billion people on this earth. Many of them have fascinating stories to tell. Once they have truly fascinating experiences, I'll be glad to read about it in a biography or autobiography. But until then, they can keep their day-to-days to themselves or others who like to pore over meaningless details. Want to know what I had for breakfast today? Dude, not even I am interested any more.
I do like blogs that are news aggregating sites. That is really useful to me, so it's not as if I ignore all blogs. But blogs as "home pages"? I ignored those too back in the day. And by the way, for a while I tried running my site in parallel as a blog along with the regular URL. It was fun to get comments on the headlines, but it wasn't really blog material. Just felt out of place. So I dropped the blog.
If blogs speak to you, that's wonderful. Have fun. I'll snooze this one out.
(Car is enveloped in flames. Paint begins to peel off.)
"Uh, Q, won't all paint peel if you apply fire to it?"
"Oh, grow up, 007, this is a breakthrough. I applied the process to my wife's convertible just the other day and we used it to great advantage on holiday."
Sure:
FUD
Corporate-speak FUD
Slick FUD
Unbelievably clumsy and obvious FUD
Laughable FUD
Bone to the FOSS community
FUD
Conclusion: FUD
When you pick the wrong ice cream, you make the baby Jesus cry.
Yes, you are quite right, I misread your question and I apologize for that. And so to answer your original question, no, I don't think it would be morally right to buy a CD, burn it, and distribute it freely on the streets. On the other hand, the courts have found in the past that if you make a copy of a song on a cassette tape for your friend, that's free use. Oh, probably not if it reached the courts today, but that was pre-Net and pre-IP hysteria. So this is not an open-and-shut question. There is a range of activity, and somewhere along that range it begins to turn morally wrong.
"I believe I understand your point, I just don't agree. If a bunch of artist got together, put all their art work in a museum and charged $15.00 per person to view their work, I would think it ethically wrong for someone to pay to get in, take a bunch of high quality digital pictures and display them for free somewhere else. You seem to suggest there is nothing wrong with that."
Not exactly, but I can see where you would think that. In fact, I know it would be legally wrong to do that, and I also would consider that morally wrong. My point is that the very culture that encourages locking up of artistic work except for those who can pay has gone too far. It has created a new artificial reality. I would like to see things rolled back a bit.
I'm not ignoring that fact, I'm pointing out that this fact is built on a foundation of an artificial market. If you could charge people for looking at the sky, there would be industries that would spring up to charge people. Then people would say, "But you're taking money from their children's mouths." While there might be an argument to be made for that, it still wouldn't mean it was originally right to start charging for looking at the sky.
Now I'm not saying it's wrong to charge for playing music. This is a more complicated issue than saying, "You're right, I'm wrong." All I was saying is that the way we think of intellectual property is a very modern concept. And not necessarily entirely the correct one.
"My question to you is "Would you be so quick to defend these people if they were going to Wal-Mart, buying a cd, burning copies and distributing them freely on the streets?"
No, for now we are talking theft of a physical object that cannot be replaced except at greater cost. Download a song, the orginal owner still has his copy. Steal a CD from a store and that CD is no longer in the store's inventory. Big difference.
Should it be cleared or set? and why?"
Just set it a little bit...
It just happened. At least for those who know enough to use Google, but don't have enough common sense to handle context issues. Which sounds remarkably like those congressfolk who go around labeling things terrorist tools. Except for the knowing how to use Google bit.
But that's not the question. The question is if that is wrong to do, and are fundamental rights being infringed upon. Do you look at the sky on a sunny day and think how beautiful the blue looks with those contrasting puffy clouds? Do you pay anyone for that visual input? Of course not. But what if the laws in the land became so messed up that Sherwin Williams could claim copyright infringement on that particular shade of blue and white, and demanded payment every time you stared at the sky? What if you looked anyone, and then someone self-righteously spouted, "Pirate! You are taking stuff you did not pay for!"
Now turn from that example of visual input being artificially locked up and look at the real example we are dealing with: Audio input being artificially locked up. It is only in the last hundred years or so that the idea of copyright ownership of particular sounds has taken hold. For the previous several thousand years of human music, people played, people listened, no money changed hands. But in the most recent tiny sliver of human existence a group of laws have come into existence that allows companies to lock up certain streams of audio input. And then we get people so conditioned into thinking this is a normal and correct form of behavior, we get lectured about being honest and admitting that people are "taking stuff they did not pay for."
Yes, you are right, they are taking stuff they did not pay for. The bigger question becomes: Is this the way things should be? Sometimes laws become corrupted by commercial interests and are not they way they should be. That's what's being talked about here. We all know what the laws are. The question is are those laws fundamentally sound?
...it's human landing without killing yourself that's the tricky part.
"Hmmm..I sure have heard a lot about this there Amazon thing. I wonder how to find it online. I know, I'll ask that Google thingamabog."
(Slamming my head against my desk repeatedly)
To the ordinary reader at home, for "bizarre, twisted file structure compehensible to no human mind," please substitute the phrase, "sorted by band and then by album."
You have just rediscovered Sturgeon's Law.
Plus think of the flaming possibilities. You could instruct your surviving loved ones to flame as much as you want, knowing full well no one can touch you in return (unless you believe you are experiencing literal flaming after death, but that's just the risk flamers take).
Seriously, put it in your will if it's important enough.
At the same time, $10B is a lot of dough, no matter what you are comparing it to. The movie industry is "only" twice as big? Yeah, well, they have had over a hundred years to build that up. How long has it taken for the game industry to reach the halfway mark? At that rate, how long before it passes the $20B mark? It is impressive no matter how you look at it.
That's because the editors who tested that last year were unavailable for comment this year.
Oops, I just scanned it, not read it, so you were right to call me on this. Thanks for explaining.
So why are they going to pick on us first? What's that about?
Cool, I've received a proper québécois swearing.
Actually, it's just the opposite. Since Michael paid his money, he has the right to comment on the service. And since the customer is always right, his voice should be heard.
Oui.