I hated getting a new office PC with XP on it. I know the IT guys would not choose it if they could lease the new PCs with Win2k instead... but they can't. Sure, you can turn off the fancy UI, but when you go map a drive for somebody else, it stinks. Why would anyone really buy this stuff if they weren't "forced" to take it with their new Dell/Gateway/Compaq/IBM? Somehow it reminds me of the MPAA complaining about the text messaging. Everybody sends out the early warning that XP Home is junk, but with Micro$oft's deal with Dell and the rest, people get it anyway.
You're right - I remember hearing the warning on sports broadcasts. It just seems like the determination of whether or not you've broken the law is largely subjective in this area. I mean, would the RIAA care if you distributed a low quality 36kbps recording... you say yes? how about 12kbps? At some point, you should arguably be able to say that what you are distributing is not exactly what they copyrighted.
I guess I might just be confused by their selective prosecution. Maybe the laws are quite objective, and the low number of prosecutions makes it seem subjective. But, I still think a top dollar lawyer (can you afford anything less when being sued $100M) would win the case.
Consider this: When you try to record a DVD to VHS you get a bad picture (dims in and out, etc). If they don't care if you make these "bad" copies, then doesn't that imply that the "bad" copies are not equal to the original and therefore not a violation of copyright? Granted, no one would be satisfied with "bad" copies if near perfect ones are available. But, if "bad" ones are technically legal, then....
All this made me wonder if free broadcast is copyrighted. I mean, you never see that FBI warning at the beginning of a movie on broadcast (free) tv. You never hear any copyright warning announced on the radio before or after a set of songs. So, if you recorded FM broadcast, and parsed the songs out as mp3s, could you trade those? It's more work, but would it be legal? Most of the mp3s out there are 128kbs anyway - I imagine the radio rips would be comparable. So, we leave our computers on recording the genre of choice, save them all as decent quality mp3's, and after a little p2p, the only songs the RIAA cares about are available. So, the only problem (if recording radio is legal) is proving that your particular song came from radio... and getting enough people to participate.
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I hated getting a new office PC with XP on it. I know the IT guys would not choose it if they could lease the new PCs with Win2k instead ... but they can't. Sure, you can turn off the fancy UI, but when you go map a drive for somebody else, it stinks. Why would anyone really buy this stuff if they weren't "forced" to take it with their new Dell/Gateway/Compaq/IBM? Somehow it reminds me of the MPAA complaining about the text messaging. Everybody sends out the early warning that XP Home is junk, but with Micro$oft's deal with Dell and the rest, people get it anyway.
You're right - I remember hearing the warning on sports broadcasts. It just seems like the determination of whether or not you've broken the law is largely subjective in this area. I mean, would the RIAA care if you distributed a low quality 36kbps recording ... you say yes? how about 12kbps? At some point, you should arguably be able to say that what you are distributing is not exactly what they copyrighted.
....
I guess I might just be confused by their selective prosecution. Maybe the laws are quite objective, and the low number of prosecutions makes it seem subjective. But, I still think a top dollar lawyer (can you afford anything less when being sued $100M) would win the case.
Consider this: When you try to record a DVD to VHS you get a bad picture (dims in and out, etc). If they don't care if you make these "bad" copies, then doesn't that imply that the "bad" copies are not equal to the original and therefore not a violation of copyright? Granted, no one would be satisfied with "bad" copies if near perfect ones are available. But, if "bad" ones are technically legal, then
All this made me wonder if free broadcast is copyrighted. I mean, you never see that FBI warning at the beginning of a movie on broadcast (free) tv. You never hear any copyright warning announced on the radio before or after a set of songs. So, if you recorded FM broadcast, and parsed the songs out as mp3s, could you trade those? It's more work, but would it be legal? Most of the mp3s out there are 128kbs anyway - I imagine the radio rips would be comparable. So, we leave our computers on recording the genre of choice, save them all as decent quality mp3's, and after a little p2p, the only songs the RIAA cares about are available. So, the only problem (if recording radio is legal) is proving that your particular song came from radio ... and getting enough people to participate.