IANAAE (I am not an ad executive) but I have been working in the ad industry for a few months, so I read the comments on this thread with great interest because I'm always wondering what the future of advertising is going to be like. I mean, like most people here, I block every intrusive online ad that I see and if I had TiVO you can bet I would skip past the commercials, so given that the number one issue in my industry is ad advoidance, I'm wondering what kind of advertising slashdotters are okay with? Certainly companies require advertising to keep the wheels of the economy moving, but the challenge is to come up with advertising that people want to spend time with. I think this means that more advertising has to become opt-in but I also think it means that the distinction between 'advertising' and 'content' as two seperate things has got to go. Ultimately, I think that there's got to be no qualatiative distinction between those two things, but I'm curious what y'all think.
How do you know if you're downloading a copyrighted work the owner wants me to download? You know because it's available for download, therefore you must assume it is supposed to be available for download.
After all, if I walk into a store, say Best Buy, I assume that they are selling legal copies of the music in the store. If they gave it away for free, I assume they have the right to give it away.
If I download music, I just have to assume that it is being offered for download by someone who has the right to distribute it. How else am I to know which music is legal to download or not?
I just don't see how it can be illegal to receive illegally copied material. If it turned out Best Buy was selling illegally copied discs, I might have to destroy them, but I can't imagine they would ask *me* to pay a fine.
Slashdot Mirror
Extremely informative and insightful, thank you for posting.
IANAAE (I am not an ad executive) but I have been working in the ad industry for a few months, so I read the comments on this thread with great interest because I'm always wondering what the future of advertising is going to be like. I mean, like most people here, I block every intrusive online ad that I see and if I had TiVO you can bet I would skip past the commercials, so given that the number one issue in my industry is ad advoidance, I'm wondering what kind of advertising slashdotters are okay with? Certainly companies require advertising to keep the wheels of the economy moving, but the challenge is to come up with advertising that people want to spend time with. I think this means that more advertising has to become opt-in but I also think it means that the distinction between 'advertising' and 'content' as two seperate things has got to go. Ultimately, I think that there's got to be no qualatiative distinction between those two things, but I'm curious what y'all think.
How do you know if you're downloading a copyrighted work the owner wants me to download? You know because it's available for download, therefore you must assume it is supposed to be available for download. After all, if I walk into a store, say Best Buy, I assume that they are selling legal copies of the music in the store. If they gave it away for free, I assume they have the right to give it away. If I download music, I just have to assume that it is being offered for download by someone who has the right to distribute it. How else am I to know which music is legal to download or not? I just don't see how it can be illegal to receive illegally copied material. If it turned out Best Buy was selling illegally copied discs, I might have to destroy them, but I can't imagine they would ask *me* to pay a fine.