That's really fricken asinine. Even for an anonymous coward. Back in 1997 people were downloading music via the internet. It was already happening. The distribution system that will replace the internet is not being used right now. In fact, it has not even been invented as of right now. God you're an idiot.
But you are right, I did know exactly how this would turn out because back in the 90s I was one of those people downloading music off the net and loving it. I knew it was the future of music distribution, not because I'm intelligent or anything like that, I knew merely because it beat the previous model hands-down.
As to the bet of a billion dollars... sure I would have bet a billion on dumping the current music business model. Considering the industry has lost much more than a mere one billion dollars, it would have been an easy bet to make. God, do you even read the news?!
Oh god yes. If this service would have been started back in 1997 the music business would be a lot healthier. P2P would never had a chance to grow as it did because it could not have competed to the quality and search capabilities that Amazon offers. Of course back then the music industry would have called this plan insane. Just goes to show you that it's being run by idiots with no vision.
"Coincidently bypassing anti-circumvention devices does make it easier for some* to violate copyright."
Incorrect. it'd be easier without having to bypass. However, creating an artificial barrier with anti-circumvention is only a short term solution for protecting copyrights. Which means it's not really a solution at all.
"And it's the policy I signed with Farmer's insurance that's "forcing" me to follow their business model. Darn I wished there was no contract law making me."
Wow, that's not even remotely analogous. The protection of Apple's business model has nothing, absolutely nothing to do with contract law. A better analogy would be General Motors forcing you to only use General Motors parts. Or a refrigerator manufacturer forcing you to only use particular brands of foods. Merely because the government enacted a law which allows such a practice.
"It's also a part of COPY-right."
Actually no. We used to have a fair use right to copy software, but due to encryption we no longer do. Thus, the the encryption is given more protection than the actual copyrighted material. It's the same with a music CD. We in the US have a fair use right to make non-commercial mix tapes for friends and family. But if the CD is encrypted, that right disappears. Once again, it's not protecting the copyrighted music, it's the encryption that it given higher protection.
"And yet no one seems to have a problem with buying cheap printers or cellphones. How odd."
I don't even understand how that's even relevant. Are you saying that the government should be in the business of protecting business models that would never survive without protection? I long for the good old days when Conservatives wanted the government out of the way, not interfering with our daily lives.
"The thing with the decay of a society isn't the "I'm in it for myself". Nor is it the "I'm doing it for others". It's the imbalance between the two were the former ultimately subsumes the later.
Once again, pure nonsense. My point, which you failed to refute, is that the DMCA does not protect copyrights. it protects business models. The overwhelming success of P2P and bittorrent proves that. And furthermore, if anything is causing the decay of our society it's governments locking up of thoughts and ideas... not the use of those thoughts and ideas.
I wouldn't call this consequence unforeseen. I think the purpose of the anti-circumvention clause is not to protect copyrights, but to protect business models.
It's the DMCA that keeps you from taking songs from iTunes and using them on non-Apple portable players. That forces you to follow Apple's vertical business model.
Selling multiple copies of the same DVD is a part of the movie industry's business model. If you can back up your discs, you'd only buy one.
Others have attempted to use the DMCA to force you to buy a certain manufacturer of printer ink or garage door openers.
If anyone has ever checked out the Pirate Bay they'd learn that the DMCA has not made any dent in the actual protection of copyrights.
I remember back in the 90s I bought a hard drive for a new system I was building and it developed bad sectors the first day. I called Maxtor's support number to get an RMA but was told that the problem was my fault because I installed MS Office. I politely informed the support person that installing software does not cause bad sectors. But she refused to give me an RMA.
During the conversation I finally remembered I didn't need the RMA because I had bought it locally and could simply take it back to the store and exchange it. I told her that then hung up on her.
I'd like to say that I've never bought a Maxtor drive again, but they're just so darned cheap!
Read what I wrote idiot. I wrote about my experience with Vista and multimedia and games. I wrote that in my experience Vista is worse at multimedia and games than either XP or W2K on much slower systems. God, do the world a favor and think before mashing that keyboard!
Why should Vista have any problems playing audio and videos?! I have an ancient 550Mhz PIII with only 256 megs of ram running W2K and it plays MP3s and video (divx and xvid) much more smoothly than my wife's Vista system (2600+ AMD, GeForce 6800XT 512MB 256-bit GDDR2, 1.5 gigs Ram). My wife's system used to run XP Pro and it rocked for everything, including games. Now even old games such as Sonic Heroes will barely run on Vista.
I gave it an honest chance, but Vista is a turd. If it can't play decades old MP3 technology MS should really give it up.
Piracy is not an absolute term, it is a legally defined concept which can vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. If the government of Canada defines the non-commercial use of P2P as not infringing copyrights, then by its very definition it is not piracy. The music industry can call it piracy. But that does not make it piracy.
You must not be familiar with Uri Geller, but he claims he can really do this stuff without any magician styled tricks. That's why people like Randi go after him, because he is a fraud. (Damn, now he's going to sue ME for defamation!)
Everyone is talking about how the music industry is in the dumps. But, the problem is not really new. Whenever there is a lack of exposure to new music the music industry takes a dive. Some of you might be old enough to remember when the music industry crashed back in the early 80s. Experts and pundits at the time laid the blame on piracy and video games. The theories were that kids were sharing music via cassette tapes and that kids were too distracted by video games to buy music. Sound familiar?
So the early 80s had Tom Petty shooting an arcade video game with a gun in one of his videos and Bow Wow Wow pissing off the industry with their pro-copying song "C30, C60, C90, Go." It all seems so incredibly naive now.
Of course the music decline had nothing to do with either cassette tapes or video games. It was that white kids were sick of what radio was playing. (I'm guessing black kids were sick too, but I cannot speak from their experience.) They were sick of faceless corporate rock featuring bland music by such groups as Styx, Journey, and Reo Speedwagon. They wanted their own music, but no one was playing it.
However, once MTV got into enough homes it started exposing kids to new music and the industry took off big time. MTV brought black music to white kids along with English new-wave, metal, and alternative. (And the surge was certainly helped by the release of the CD format which made plenty of people re-buy their music collections.)
That huge wave continued until the 90s when MTV stopped playing new music. About that same time the radio industry started consolidating and extremely narrow play lists killed off any music diversity heard on the radio. The music industry was stuck exactly where it was back in the 80s: Radio stations playing bland corporate music and fans not giving a damn because they had nothing worth giving a damn about.
It was also at that time that I stopped buying new music. Most of the music I had been exposed to was via word of mouth, sharing mix tapes among friends. Artists such as Husker Du, John Zorn and Fishbone. Once I went to law school and didn't have time to hang out and share music with friends my exposure to new music ended.
That changed with Napster. The cool thing about the original Napster was that it more than peer-to-peer, it was actually person to person. With modern P2P programs you're not downloading from one person, but from several people all at once. But with Napster you were connected to one person and they were connected to you. When you saw someone download one of your favorite songs, you'd think, "Gee, if they like that song, they might have something I would like."
I'd check out share lists of those people and would be exposed to music I had never heard. And I'd chat with people all over the world about music. I went from buying no new music to buying about two or three CDs a month. Bands such as Wilco, the Old 97s, and Pizzicato Five, to name a few.
Of course that ended when Napster pulled its plug. And because other P2P programs didn't have the same person to person feel, I stopped being exposed to new music and stopped buying new music again. Modern P2P programs are only good when you already know what you want. They're not designed to expose you to music you've never heard. And we have the music industry to blame for that.
The music industry has to accept that the vast majority of people only buy music they're exposed to. People will see a movie based solely on a commercial, but they will not buy a CD based on a commercial, unless they've heard at least one song enough times to actually like it. Marketing music is odd because you basically cannot sell it until after the person has already "used" the product. Nowadays the music industry is holding its assets so tightly that they're killing themselves off.
If the industry really wants to save itself, here's what they should do. First, come out strongly against radio consolidation. In fact, press the FCC and Congress to backtrack and open up radio ow
Buy what works, not what is promised to work sometime in the future. Before you buy something do a little research. Does it satisfy your needs? If yes. Buy it. If not, then don't buy it.
If you want a computer that runs "real" Vista, and if Vista is not available at that time, then don't buy a fricken computer! Wait until someone is selling a Vista computer that suits your needs and then buy it!
This is so much better than choosing from the 60 thousand movies and TV shows Netflix offers, ripping them myself without any DRM, and paying less than a buck a disc.
There's an easy solution to this. Simply bid the maximum price you're willing to pay. eBay will automatically increase your bid for you until the maximum is reached. And at that point, if someone does outbid you, it simply doesn't matter because it was more than you were willing to pay in the first place.
"but if you tell them why you want to cancel and don't get all pissed off about it, it's over quickly."
Why should anyone have to explain why?! If I want a service cancelled merely telling them I want it cancelled is sufficient. Do you explain to the waitress why you don't want the daily specials?! Do you explain to the oil change person why you don't want your radiator flushed?! Do you explain to the phone solicitor why you don't want to switch your phone plans?!
Maybe you love wasting time and talking about yourself to complete strangers. But the rest of us are too busy for such bullshit!
Slashdot Mirror
As we all know that Internet Explorer 7 is the most secure browser on the planet!
No company wants to provide free support. So if a company can get away with not supporting some customers, it'll do it.
That's really fricken asinine. Even for an anonymous coward. Back in 1997 people were downloading music via the internet. It was already happening. The distribution system that will replace the internet is not being used right now. In fact, it has not even been invented as of right now. God you're an idiot.
But you are right, I did know exactly how this would turn out because back in the 90s I was one of those people downloading music off the net and loving it. I knew it was the future of music distribution, not because I'm intelligent or anything like that, I knew merely because it beat the previous model hands-down.
As to the bet of a billion dollars... sure I would have bet a billion on dumping the current music business model. Considering the industry has lost much more than a mere one billion dollars, it would have been an easy bet to make. God, do you even read the news?!
I guess that it is too little too late.
Oh god yes. If this service would have been started back in 1997 the music business would be a lot healthier. P2P would never had a chance to grow as it did because it could not have competed to the quality and search capabilities that Amazon offers. Of course back then the music industry would have called this plan insane. Just goes to show you that it's being run by idiots with no vision.
"Coincidently bypassing anti-circumvention devices does make it easier for some* to violate copyright."
Incorrect. it'd be easier without having to bypass. However, creating an artificial barrier with anti-circumvention is only a short term solution for protecting copyrights. Which means it's not really a solution at all.
"And it's the policy I signed with Farmer's insurance that's "forcing" me to follow their business model. Darn I wished there was no contract law making me."
Wow, that's not even remotely analogous. The protection of Apple's business model has nothing, absolutely nothing to do with contract law. A better analogy would be General Motors forcing you to only use General Motors parts. Or a refrigerator manufacturer forcing you to only use particular brands of foods. Merely because the government enacted a law which allows such a practice.
"It's also a part of COPY-right."
Actually no. We used to have a fair use right to copy software, but due to encryption we no longer do. Thus, the the encryption is given more protection than the actual copyrighted material. It's the same with a music CD. We in the US have a fair use right to make non-commercial mix tapes for friends and family. But if the CD is encrypted, that right disappears. Once again, it's not protecting the copyrighted music, it's the encryption that it given higher protection.
"And yet no one seems to have a problem with buying cheap printers or cellphones. How odd."
I don't even understand how that's even relevant. Are you saying that the government should be in the business of protecting business models that would never survive without protection? I long for the good old days when Conservatives wanted the government out of the way, not interfering with our daily lives.
"The thing with the decay of a society isn't the "I'm in it for myself". Nor is it the "I'm doing it for others". It's the imbalance between the two were the former ultimately subsumes the later.
Once again, pure nonsense. My point, which you failed to refute, is that the DMCA does not protect copyrights. it protects business models. The overwhelming success of P2P and bittorrent proves that. And furthermore, if anything is causing the decay of our society it's governments locking up of thoughts and ideas... not the use of those thoughts and ideas.
I wouldn't call this consequence unforeseen. I think the purpose of the anti-circumvention clause is not to protect copyrights, but to protect business models.
It's the DMCA that keeps you from taking songs from iTunes and using them on non-Apple portable players. That forces you to follow Apple's vertical business model.
Selling multiple copies of the same DVD is a part of the movie industry's business model. If you can back up your discs, you'd only buy one.
Others have attempted to use the DMCA to force you to buy a certain manufacturer of printer ink or garage door openers.
If anyone has ever checked out the Pirate Bay they'd learn that the DMCA has not made any dent in the actual protection of copyrights.
I remember back in the 90s I bought a hard drive for a new system I was building and it developed bad sectors the first day. I called Maxtor's support number to get an RMA but was told that the problem was my fault because I installed MS Office. I politely informed the support person that installing software does not cause bad sectors. But she refused to give me an RMA.
During the conversation I finally remembered I didn't need the RMA because I had bought it locally and could simply take it back to the store and exchange it. I told her that then hung up on her.
I'd like to say that I've never bought a Maxtor drive again, but they're just so darned cheap!
Fair use is not a consumer right. It is a statutory and Constitutional right of US citizens.
Read what I wrote idiot. I wrote about my experience with Vista and multimedia and games. I wrote that in my experience Vista is worse at multimedia and games than either XP or W2K on much slower systems. God, do the world a favor and think before mashing that keyboard!
Why should Vista have any problems playing audio and videos?! I have an ancient 550Mhz PIII with only 256 megs of ram running W2K and it plays MP3s and video (divx and xvid) much more smoothly than my wife's Vista system (2600+ AMD, GeForce 6800XT 512MB 256-bit GDDR2, 1.5 gigs Ram). My wife's system used to run XP Pro and it rocked for everything, including games. Now even old games such as Sonic Heroes will barely run on Vista.
I gave it an honest chance, but Vista is a turd. If it can't play decades old MP3 technology MS should really give it up.
Piracy is not an absolute term, it is a legally defined concept which can vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. If the government of Canada defines the non-commercial use of P2P as not infringing copyrights, then by its very definition it is not piracy. The music industry can call it piracy. But that does not make it piracy.
You must not be familiar with Uri Geller, but he claims he can really do this stuff without any magician styled tricks. That's why people like Randi go after him, because he is a fraud. (Damn, now he's going to sue ME for defamation!)
Everyone is talking about how the music industry is in the dumps. But, the problem is not really new. Whenever there is a lack of exposure to new music the music industry takes a dive. Some of you might be old enough to remember when the music industry crashed back in the early 80s. Experts and pundits at the time laid the blame on piracy and video games. The theories were that kids were sharing music via cassette tapes and that kids were too distracted by video games to buy music. Sound familiar?
So the early 80s had Tom Petty shooting an arcade video game with a gun in one of his videos and Bow Wow Wow pissing off the industry with their pro-copying song "C30, C60, C90, Go." It all seems so incredibly naive now.
Of course the music decline had nothing to do with either cassette tapes or video games. It was that white kids were sick of what radio was playing. (I'm guessing black kids were sick too, but I cannot speak from their experience.) They were sick of faceless corporate rock featuring bland music by such groups as Styx, Journey, and Reo Speedwagon. They wanted their own music, but no one was playing it.
However, once MTV got into enough homes it started exposing kids to new music and the industry took off big time. MTV brought black music to white kids along with English new-wave, metal, and alternative. (And the surge was certainly helped by the release of the CD format which made plenty of people re-buy their music collections.)
That huge wave continued until the 90s when MTV stopped playing new music. About that same time the radio industry started consolidating and extremely narrow play lists killed off any music diversity heard on the radio. The music industry was stuck exactly where it was back in the 80s: Radio stations playing bland corporate music and fans not giving a damn because they had nothing worth giving a damn about.
It was also at that time that I stopped buying new music. Most of the music I had been exposed to was via word of mouth, sharing mix tapes among friends. Artists such as Husker Du, John Zorn and Fishbone. Once I went to law school and didn't have time to hang out and share music with friends my exposure to new music ended.
That changed with Napster. The cool thing about the original Napster was that it more than peer-to-peer, it was actually person to person. With modern P2P programs you're not downloading from one person, but from several people all at once. But with Napster you were connected to one person and they were connected to you. When you saw someone download one of your favorite songs, you'd think, "Gee, if they like that song, they might have something I would like."
I'd check out share lists of those people and would be exposed to music I had never heard. And I'd chat with people all over the world about music. I went from buying no new music to buying about two or three CDs a month. Bands such as Wilco, the Old 97s, and Pizzicato Five, to name a few.
Of course that ended when Napster pulled its plug. And because other P2P programs didn't have the same person to person feel, I stopped being exposed to new music and stopped buying new music again. Modern P2P programs are only good when you already know what you want. They're not designed to expose you to music you've never heard. And we have the music industry to blame for that.
The music industry has to accept that the vast majority of people only buy music they're exposed to. People will see a movie based solely on a commercial, but they will not buy a CD based on a commercial, unless they've heard at least one song enough times to actually like it. Marketing music is odd because you basically cannot sell it until after the person has already "used" the product. Nowadays the music industry is holding its assets so tightly that they're killing themselves off.
If the industry really wants to save itself, here's what they should do. First, come out strongly against radio consolidation. In fact, press the FCC and Congress to backtrack and open up radio ow
Buy what works, not what is promised to work sometime in the future. Before you buy something do a little research. Does it satisfy your needs? If yes. Buy it. If not, then don't buy it.
If you want a computer that runs "real" Vista, and if Vista is not available at that time, then don't buy a fricken computer! Wait until someone is selling a Vista computer that suits your needs and then buy it!
This is so much better than choosing from the 60 thousand movies and TV shows Netflix offers, ripping them myself without any DRM, and paying less than a buck a disc.
There's an easy solution to this. Simply bid the maximum price you're willing to pay. eBay will automatically increase your bid for you until the maximum is reached. And at that point, if someone does outbid you, it simply doesn't matter because it was more than you were willing to pay in the first place.
"Sony CEO admits to having sex with JonBenet while Karr choked the life out of her."
.... when you have room to store it is nonsense.
...welcome our Giant Parking Robot overlords!
... safe from asinine celebrity rumors?!
From what I've read of the guidelines, my website gopher://gopherrulez.org just won't cut it!
...that all Netflix users had burners, or at the very least, knew out to rip to divx!
"but if you tell them why you want to cancel and don't get all pissed off about it, it's over quickly."
Why should anyone have to explain why?! If I want a service cancelled merely telling them I want it cancelled is sufficient. Do you explain to the waitress why you don't want the daily specials?! Do you explain to the oil change person why you don't want your radiator flushed?! Do you explain to the phone solicitor why you don't want to switch your phone plans?!
Maybe you love wasting time and talking about yourself to complete strangers. But the rest of us are too busy for such bullshit!
Didn't Microsoft also call the original Xbox unhackable?!
I agree. I had to convince myself I wasn't reading Digg!