I'm sorry, but "you didn't fix the problem yourself" is not a defense against liability in the real world, exactly why should it be in relation to software?
Can you imagine GM arguing that to a jury? "Oh yeah, our gas tanks leaked causing our trucks to explode, killing everyone in a three block radius. But heck, why didn't the owner detect the problem himself and fix it?!"
I like movies so much that I even enjoy watching stuff I don't like. For example, this year I re-watched the originals and the remakes of Walking Tall and The Longest Yard. All four movies sucked, boy did they suck!, but I find it interesting to see how different directors will treat the same material. Even though I hate horror movies, I finally got around to watching the Evil Dead Trilogy, and now I finally understand all those Ash lines/jokes. And I recently watched the recent Star Wars trilogy, even though I hated the original trilogy. I got tired of criticizing them without actually seeing them, and now I can tell fans in excruciating detail why those movies sucked.
It's the same thing with music, I just fill up my 20 gig MP3 player with random stuff and let god sort it out with shuffle.
Seriously, you don't really like movies. You like some movies. There's a huge difference and someone like you should not subscribe to two services, let alone one!
"For either service... there really are not enough good movies to make either service worth while"
Have you considered the possibility that maybe you don't actually like watching DVDs?! I've been a Netflix user for probably two years now, at 8 movies at a time, and my queue consistently has 100+ DVDs. I've long since given up the notion that eventually I'll run out DVDs to get.
The shocking thing is that you apparently do not like movies but you're using two services?!
Oh come one. Half the "news" on digg is not really news. It's some dude's blog. If we're lucky those blogs link to real news stories from months ago.
I used to love Digg when it was a tech site. But now that it has been discovered by the ignorant masses and dumbed down with crap, it's essentially worthless.
What someone needs to do is create combination Slashdot/Digg. Where the stories are submitted and posted by users like Digg, but where editors can go through and weed out the asinine crap like on Slashdot.
Very interesting. Thanks! I guess it's not "little known" anymore.
This point should be stressed: "There is no private right of action for violations of customs law." Thus, the RIAA still could not come after an Allofmp3 user directly.
The RIAA is going ballistic over allofmp3. But they are trying to handle it via the governments involved, not directly with the users. Considering that the RIAA has no problem suing customers, I find that very informative.
My guess is that the RIAA does not want to risk an unfavorable ruling regarding 17 U.S.C. 602(a)(2). Can you imagine if that occurred? Suddenly downloaded music from foreign servers, even on P2P, would not be infringement. The shit would really hit the fan.
Thus, the RIAA's first step is to get Russia to shut the site down but pressuring the US government. When and if that fails I'd guess that they'll have Congress amend 17 U.S.C. 602(a)(2) to specify that it does not apply to downloaded music. Heck, their probably already working on that! Once that is amended, then they'll start suing Allofmp3 users.
Actually, in the US it is not illegal. Actually, there is a little known loophole in US law that allows you to import music from outside the US without any copyright violation.
17 USC 602(a)(2) says that "importation, for the private use of the importer and not for distribution, by any person with respect to no more than one copy or phonorecord of any one work at any one time" is NOT infringement.
Thus, if you "import" one song from say, allofmp3.com, or from some other foreign server, for personal use, and do not distribute it to anyone else, the RIAA could not legally come after you.
While that is normally true, music is not a free market. The music industry has both a macro and micro monopolies over music. By that I mean only a few music companies control the vast majority of music and set prices accordingly. And then each individual music company has exclusive monopolies over particular artists. So if you want to buy Rage Against the Machine, you have to buy it from Sony.
If you want evidence that the music industry ignores supply and demand, look no further than CD prices. Despite the enormous drop in CD sales the prices have not dropped. In fact, the music industry has raised prices over the same time period.
"It's all a matter of it you have the time to spend messing with it to get it to do what you want."
Yeah, there's nothing quite as fun as spending hard earned money on something you have to work really hard to get to work as advertised.
Gee, it's a damn thing Nokia doesn't make cars, "I know a guy who got the Nokia SUV to make left turns, he spent a few days messing with it, but it works! His next task is getting it to get to go in reverse."
"I think it would be considered a creative work in this respect."
Although Congress has tried numerous times, the facts contained in databases cannot be copyrighted. For example, you can take information from the phone book to make your own phone book without violating any copyrights.
Back in the old days when I was on Comcast I could actually download at 500kb. Then they clampped us down to no more than 50kb. If I was downloading from multiple sources, the overall download was 50kb.
Now I'm on charter's 3megabit plan, and I'm still locked at no more than 50kb for downloads.
And I'm not talking about P2P or bittorrent. I'm talking about downloading from HTTP or FTP servers. The fact that when I combine downloads, and they are still capped, lets me know its Charter doing the throttling, not the host sites.
I don't think hardware manufacturers were bullied. If DRM is mandated, e.g., to watch HD on a computer you need a certain videocard and a certain monitor, then users will have to upgrade. If they upgrade, they'll have to buy all new stuff. This is a huge boon to manufacturers and software companies.
The show flopped. It was cancelled. If someone can't be bothered to watch a show when it's on his TV in his lown iving room, why in the world would he be bothered to leave his house, get in his car, drive several miles to a theater, wait in line for tickets, watch the movie, and then drive back home?!
I'm not saying the show was bad or that the movie was bad. I've seen either. But a flop via broadcast will almost certainly lead to a flop in the theater. Why anyone would think otherwise is beyond me.
I must not be doing a good job explaining. I know Fedex offers different services at different prices. Broadband companies offer different rates as to the amount of bandwidth you're buying too. But those have nothing to do with the CONTENT of what's being sent. Issues that have to do with speed or quality are irrelevant to what I'm talking about.
What's relevant is that ISPs are telling us that they can tell which data comes from P2P, or VoIP, or whatever, and throttle up or down that data. In other words, and THIS is the important part, ISPs ADMIT they can turn off offending parts of the internet.
Now let's turn to one of the first court cases which determined that ISPs are not liable for copyright infringement, Religious Technology Center v. Netcom On-line Commun. Svcs., Inc., 907 F.Supp. 1361 (N.D.Ca. 1995)
It held...
"Billions of bits of data flow through the Internet and are necessarily stored on servers throughout the network and it is thus practically impossible to screen out infringing bits from non-infringing bits. Because the court cannot see any meaningful distinction (without regard to knowledge) between what Netcom did and what every other Usenet server does, the court finds that Netcom cannot be held liable for direct infringement."
Now let's change those facts. Let's now admit that ISPs CAN screen out infringing bits from non-infringing bits, i.e., throttle back P2P to the extent that it no longer works. Under those facts, the same court WOULD find Netcom (the ISP) liable for direct infringement.
It's not nonsense. At one time, way long ago, ISPs (and BBSes) were held liable for copyright infringement. The analogy was the good old fashion flea market. There are numerous cases where the owners of flea markets are contributory negligent for copyright infringement (bootleg music and movies) merely because they control the space where the materials are sold AND they profit from the sales. Like I said, courts made the analogy that ISPs were like flea markets and thus were too contributory negligent for copyright infringement.
Eventually the ISPs were able to change the courts to their own point of view by hammering the "common carrier" argument. I.e., "Hey all we do is transfer bits. We don't know what we're transferring, we can't stop it, and we shouldn't have to control it." Like I said, courts started accepting those arguments and then ISPs gained immunity.
However, once ISPs start controlling their bits, which they now admit they can do, e.g., allow and or limit P2P traffic to occur over their network, their common carrier status goes away.
That's NOT true of places like Fedex, because Fedex has no way to determine what is in each box. Fedex should not be under a duty to open and look into each and every box. But if they did, their common carrier status would disappear too. Do you really think the Feds would allow Fedex to knowingly ship cocaine into the country and accept payment without any consequences?!
ISPs admit they can "know" what those bits are and they plan on limiting and promoting certain bits accordingly.
Like I said, maybe Congress will grant ISPs immunity. The cable companies seem to have Congress in their back pocket. But that's really the only chance they have.
...is that the ISPs want it both ways. By that I mean they want to be considered nothing but common carriers. So when someone wants to sue for defamation or copyright infringement, they can escape liability because all they do is transfer bits. But now they also want absolute control over those bits, in addition to the near absolute immunity.
They won't be able to have it both ways. Unless Congress gives them some sort of statutory immunity, which I doubt will happen, expect the lawsuits to start from the RIAA, the MPAA, anti-pornography nuts, etc.
You WANT hacked robots running around your house?! Elementary chaos theory tells us that all robots will eventually turn against their masters and run amok in an orgy of blood and the kicking and the biting with the metal teeth and the hurting and shoving.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sorry, but "you didn't fix the problem yourself" is not a defense against liability in the real world, exactly why should it be in relation to software?
Can you imagine GM arguing that to a jury? "Oh yeah, our gas tanks leaked causing our trucks to explode, killing everyone in a three block radius. But heck, why didn't the owner detect the problem himself and fix it?!"
Oh fucking god that was funny!
I like movies so much that I even enjoy watching stuff I don't like. For example, this year I re-watched the originals and the remakes of Walking Tall and The Longest Yard. All four movies sucked, boy did they suck!, but I find it interesting to see how different directors will treat the same material. Even though I hate horror movies, I finally got around to watching the Evil Dead Trilogy, and now I finally understand all those Ash lines/jokes. And I recently watched the recent Star Wars trilogy, even though I hated the original trilogy. I got tired of criticizing them without actually seeing them, and now I can tell fans in excruciating detail why those movies sucked.
It's the same thing with music, I just fill up my 20 gig MP3 player with random stuff and let god sort it out with shuffle.
Seriously, you don't really like movies. You like some movies. There's a huge difference and someone like you should not subscribe to two services, let alone one!
"For either service... there really are not enough good movies to make either service worth while"
Have you considered the possibility that maybe you don't actually like watching DVDs?! I've been a Netflix user for probably two years now, at 8 movies at a time, and my queue consistently has 100+ DVDs. I've long since given up the notion that eventually I'll run out DVDs to get.
The shocking thing is that you apparently do not like movies but you're using two services?!
Oh come one. Half the "news" on digg is not really news. It's some dude's blog. If we're lucky those blogs link to real news stories from months ago.
I used to love Digg when it was a tech site. But now that it has been discovered by the ignorant masses and dumbed down with crap, it's essentially worthless.
What someone needs to do is create combination Slashdot/Digg. Where the stories are submitted and posted by users like Digg, but where editors can go through and weed out the asinine crap like on Slashdot.
The moral quandry of "ripping off" the RIAA?! God, you're hilarious! When is your HBO special airing?!
Very interesting. Thanks! I guess it's not "little known" anymore.
This point should be stressed: "There is no private right of action for violations of customs law." Thus, the RIAA still could not come after an Allofmp3 user directly.
The RIAA is going ballistic over allofmp3. But they are trying to handle it via the governments involved, not directly with the users. Considering that the RIAA has no problem suing customers, I find that very informative.
My guess is that the RIAA does not want to risk an unfavorable ruling regarding 17 U.S.C. 602(a)(2). Can you imagine if that occurred? Suddenly downloaded music from foreign servers, even on P2P, would not be infringement. The shit would really hit the fan.
Thus, the RIAA's first step is to get Russia to shut the site down but pressuring the US government. When and if that fails I'd guess that they'll have Congress amend 17 U.S.C. 602(a)(2) to specify that it does not apply to downloaded music. Heck, their probably already working on that! Once that is amended, then they'll start suing Allofmp3 users.
Actually, in the US it is not illegal. Actually, there is a little known loophole in US law that allows you to import music from outside the US without any copyright violation.
17 USC 602(a)(2) says that "importation, for the private use of the importer and not for distribution, by any person with respect to no more than one copy or phonorecord of any one work at any one time" is NOT infringement.
Thus, if you "import" one song from say, allofmp3.com, or from some other foreign server, for personal use, and do not distribute it to anyone else, the RIAA could not legally come after you.
While that is normally true, music is not a free market. The music industry has both a macro and micro monopolies over music. By that I mean only a few music companies control the vast majority of music and set prices accordingly. And then each individual music company has exclusive monopolies over particular artists. So if you want to buy Rage Against the Machine, you have to buy it from Sony.
If you want evidence that the music industry ignores supply and demand, look no further than CD prices. Despite the enormous drop in CD sales the prices have not dropped. In fact, the music industry has raised prices over the same time period.
Oh god, that means Slashdot is turning into digg!!! The horror!
I find Allofmp3 to be quite reasonable! About 10 cents per song with no DRM. You can't beat that.
"It's all a matter of it you have the time to spend messing with it to get it to do what you want."
Yeah, there's nothing quite as fun as spending hard earned money on something you have to work really hard to get to work as advertised.
Gee, it's a damn thing Nokia doesn't make cars, "I know a guy who got the Nokia SUV to make left turns, he spent a few days messing with it, but it works! His next task is getting it to get to go in reverse."
Product Activation completely killed the warez market for Windows XP. Seriously, why does Microsoft even try?!
"I think it would be considered a creative work in this respect."
Although Congress has tried numerous times, the facts contained in databases cannot be copyrighted. For example, you can take information from the phone book to make your own phone book without violating any copyrights.
Back in the old days when I was on Comcast I could actually download at 500kb. Then they clampped us down to no more than 50kb. If I was downloading from multiple sources, the overall download was 50kb.
Now I'm on charter's 3megabit plan, and I'm still locked at no more than 50kb for downloads.
And I'm not talking about P2P or bittorrent. I'm talking about downloading from HTTP or FTP servers. The fact that when I combine downloads, and they are still capped, lets me know its Charter doing the throttling, not the host sites.
King of the double entendre! I had to read that title three times before I figured out it WASN'T about sex!
... it was beautiful!
I don't think hardware manufacturers were bullied. If DRM is mandated, e.g., to watch HD on a computer you need a certain videocard and a certain monitor, then users will have to upgrade. If they upgrade, they'll have to buy all new stuff. This is a huge boon to manufacturers and software companies.
The show flopped. It was cancelled. If someone can't be bothered to watch a show when it's on his TV in his lown iving room, why in the world would he be bothered to leave his house, get in his car, drive several miles to a theater, wait in line for tickets, watch the movie, and then drive back home?!
I'm not saying the show was bad or that the movie was bad. I've seen either. But a flop via broadcast will almost certainly lead to a flop in the theater. Why anyone would think otherwise is beyond me.
I must not be doing a good job explaining. I know Fedex offers different services at different prices. Broadband companies offer different rates as to the amount of bandwidth you're buying too. But those have nothing to do with the CONTENT of what's being sent. Issues that have to do with speed or quality are irrelevant to what I'm talking about.
What's relevant is that ISPs are telling us that they can tell which data comes from P2P, or VoIP, or whatever, and throttle up or down that data. In other words, and THIS is the important part, ISPs ADMIT they can turn off offending parts of the internet.
Now let's turn to one of the first court cases which determined that ISPs are not liable for copyright infringement, Religious Technology Center v. Netcom On-line Commun. Svcs., Inc., 907 F.Supp. 1361 (N.D.Ca. 1995)
It held...
"Billions of bits of data flow through the Internet and are necessarily stored on servers throughout the network and it is thus practically impossible to screen out infringing bits from non-infringing bits. Because the court cannot see any meaningful distinction (without regard to knowledge) between what Netcom did and what every other Usenet server does, the court finds that Netcom cannot be held liable for direct infringement."
Now let's change those facts. Let's now admit that ISPs CAN screen out infringing bits from non-infringing bits, i.e., throttle back P2P to the extent that it no longer works. Under those facts, the same court WOULD find Netcom (the ISP) liable for direct infringement.
It's not nonsense. At one time, way long ago, ISPs (and BBSes) were held liable for copyright infringement. The analogy was the good old fashion flea market. There are numerous cases where the owners of flea markets are contributory negligent for copyright infringement (bootleg music and movies) merely because they control the space where the materials are sold AND they profit from the sales. Like I said, courts made the analogy that ISPs were like flea markets and thus were too contributory negligent for copyright infringement.
Eventually the ISPs were able to change the courts to their own point of view by hammering the "common carrier" argument. I.e., "Hey all we do is transfer bits. We don't know what we're transferring, we can't stop it, and we shouldn't have to control it." Like I said, courts started accepting those arguments and then ISPs gained immunity.
However, once ISPs start controlling their bits, which they now admit they can do, e.g., allow and or limit P2P traffic to occur over their network, their common carrier status goes away.
That's NOT true of places like Fedex, because Fedex has no way to determine what is in each box. Fedex should not be under a duty to open and look into each and every box. But if they did, their common carrier status would disappear too. Do you really think the Feds would allow Fedex to knowingly ship cocaine into the country and accept payment without any consequences?!
ISPs admit they can "know" what those bits are and they plan on limiting and promoting certain bits accordingly.
Like I said, maybe Congress will grant ISPs immunity. The cable companies seem to have Congress in their back pocket. But that's really the only chance they have.
...is that the ISPs want it both ways. By that I mean they want to be considered nothing but common carriers. So when someone wants to sue for defamation or copyright infringement, they can escape liability because all they do is transfer bits. But now they also want absolute control over those bits, in addition to the near absolute immunity.
They won't be able to have it both ways. Unless Congress gives them some sort of statutory immunity, which I doubt will happen, expect the lawsuits to start from the RIAA, the MPAA, anti-pornography nuts, etc.
You WANT hacked robots running around your house?! Elementary chaos theory tells us that all robots will eventually turn against their masters and run amok in an orgy of blood and the kicking and the biting with the metal teeth and the hurting and shoving.
Everyone be quiet. We don't want W. to hear about this idea!
Sony engineers can do this, but they have to outsource their DRM to a third party who steals it from open source.