I wonder if a class-action lawsuit against the *AA's could be filed. Something perhaps seeking settlement damages for every individual they have bullied into paying them off...
I'm pretty sure they already do this. The copies of console games (and movies) that companies like Blockbuster and Hollywood Video purchase are under a different license than the copies a casual consumer purchases. This is the reason that if you've ever lost something you rent, the cost to replace is much higher than simply buying a new copy from Best Buy.
I do share a similar faith in our judicial system. However, I must disagree with you on this point. The reason for that is because while the courts have in the past have had an impact in interpreting policy with regards to civil liberties we now live in a world where anything done "as a matter of national security" is being blocked from judicial review. Just look at the NSA wiretaps and datamining efforts - the administration simply plays the national security card and all of the sudden doesn't have to answer to anybody.
That's really the thing that is starting to scare me, too. While data retention is nothing new (I can contact my phone company and find out who I called 6 months ago), it's the current policy of the powers-that-be to hijack any information they deem relevant without any sort of oversight whatsoever. Once it becomes law, and all email, access to social networking sites, and telephone logs is closely monitered, what is to prevent an agency such as the NSA from harvesting this information and essentially building a personal network profile of every American that uses the internet? It's ironic that the people fighting for liberty and freedom abroad are the same ones who are taking that away at home.
Guilty until proven low-risk....
tdk
So, the "blinding" process uses "visible white light". I don't know about anybody else, but if I were in a theater watching a movie, and kept seeing little flashes of white light comming from the direction of the screen, it would be a pretty big distraction - Kind of like when kids bring in laser pointers.
tdk
I think this is just the product of the ever-rising climate of litigation in our country. This country has politicized our schools. Now, instead of putting the responsibility of a student's actions on the student or his/her parents, we've put the responsibility of their actions on the school themselves. Look at some of the recent stories that have been in the news in the last several years. One recent story that comes to mind was featured in TIME http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1 194020-1,00.html magazine. The article basically describes how universities are being held responsible if a student commits suicide. The argument (not that I agree with it) is that the school could have done something to save the student, but they didn't try hard enough.
Granted, this deals with universities, but it wouldn't surprise me if a guy in high school was posting "inappropriate" comments about a girl he banged or something, and the parents of the girl sued the school for not intervening with disciplinary action. We've basically sent the message to schools that "We want control over ourselves and our kids - but if they do something wrong its your fault for not stepping in."
Even so, this concept of signing a pledge barring participation in illegal and inappropriate activities outside of school is nothing new. If anybody recalls, about 7 years ago there was a lot of ferver over random drug testing of students involved in extracirricular activities. If the school found out that you were using drugs outside of school, you could be subjected to disciplinary action. This went so far as to include something like being at a party with beer.
In the end, though, American's have ultimately put schools in this position. If you discipline our kids too much - we'll sue you. If you don't discipline our kids and something happens - we'll sue you.
IANAL, however we studied this case in one of my political science classes. The precedent set by court rulings deams that if you yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater, you are creating a clear and present danger. If you incite panic amongst other patrons needlessly, and everybody rushes for the doors, then people can get trampled, hurt, etc...
Also, i'm pretty sure if you yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater, and emergency personnel arrive, then you violate more than a handful of laws.
tdk
"The security and privacy threats posed by certain peer-to-peer networks extend beyond users inadvertently enabling a hacker to access files. Millions of copies of the most popular peer-to-peer works contain software that could allow an independent company to take over portions of users' computers and internet connections and has the capacity to keep track of users' online habits."
I guess this means they'll be targeting Microsoft, for releasing software that allows individuals with malicious intent to break in and control a users' computer. Since when did intellectual property legislation extend to protecting these ubiquitous rights they keep talking about?
The funny thing about all these reports and statistics on how many people die due to a certain drug is that they are frequently taken out of context. More often than not, death or serious injury happens when people begin to mix drugs that have adverse chemical interactions. The only thing I can think of off the top of my head has to do with controlled substances - MDA and MDMA. A lot of people go to clubs looking for Ecstacy, and when they find some and take the pill it doesn't hit them right away (which means its usually MDA which takes about twice as long to have an effect). They aren't getting the desired effect, so they buy another pill from somebody which happens to be MDMA. They take it, thinking the first pill was fake. Once the chemicals are absorbed into the system, fatal results usually occur.
Then everybody thinks the kid died from an overdose when it was really just a bad combination. This probably happens frequently with online pharmies where people take two things that just don't sit right and causes serious side effects. The interaction isn't documented, just the fact that some drug caused a fatality.
The free market, BTW, does the same thing. The free market (with lots of little independent companies that buy sell and trade goods) creates a mutually profitable self organizing system where people exchange ideas and grow prosperous together.
When people self-organize and exchange ideas to become prosperous together, buyouts and mergers happen.
The monopolist rules by capital he has aquired through the years.
The capital he acquired from people who gave him money for the products he produced. Namely people like you and me.
BTW, I don't fall for the argument of wonderfullness of altruism. Gates uses altruism to destroy his enemies. Gates altruistically "gave" the world ie to destroy a serious rival Netscape. Altruism in business is generally a sign of ulterior motives.
Of course he developed a product to destroy a rival. Isn't that what free market is about? If FreshAir Corp. sells air fresheners for my car, and in response Ford decided to ship cars with their own air fresheners, what's the problem?
Of course, in this world where the U.S. government makes no effective effort to address monopolies, the free market breaks down, and most of us are left in a world where we have no choice but to follow the revolutionaries.
I guess you missed the anti-trust lawsuit along with the article mentioning how fighting the justice dept. has taken resources away from microsoft. What you don't seem to see is that a free market (which is defined by laissez-fair, or no government intervention) is an incubator for monopolies to exist. The same monopolies exist because people like us bought their products. If everybody flocked to OS/2, we'd be having the same discussion about IBM. A market with only small companies sounds like it would need to be heavily regulated by the government, to prevent companies started by college-dropouts from becomming too successful. I think you could loosely define that as a communist society.
Microsoft is the epitome of a free economy. Nobody ever thinks about it as a rags-to-riches story, about some kid who stayed up all night in his garage making software who finally hit it big. People think some dark power miracled Gates' ass into power, and now he is an evil, blood-sucking tyrant. He's a competetive businessman whose company is funded by our money that we willfully gave to him in turn for his products.
I think all this clamor over the way Nora has presented HP's AE exposes the void between management and IT people. The people that have the potential and desire (not to mention the need) to understand what a system like "Adaptive Enterprise" actually is are not the people in charge of whether or not a company is going to adopt that system.
While HP has made mistakes, they are by no means a stupid company. They pay people a lot of money to tell them what they need to say to make anything sound good. And they know that by using this vague and seemingly cutting-edge vocabulary in their speeches that its going to appeal to those who make the decisions about what sort of system they need to use (IE not engineers working in the IT dept).
This interview is unique in that a top-ranking VP from HP was forced to answer some technical questions about the way her product works. She probably has no idea how AE works, and you couldn't explain it to her in terms she understands because like many others have said she doesn't understand "tech talk". What she does understand is what to tell the people in charge to get them to buy into her idea. That's her job. When they get a company interested and go to close the sale, they probably send a few techies along with some salespeople to explain to some managers IT pet that their product really is worth it.
I personally think this interview was unfair. It would be like interviewing a programmer at microsoft about what he see's for the future of the company, what directions they are taking, etc... He'd probably be just as dumbfounded. Before the interview, it even says "CNET News.com recently met with Nora Denzel, senior vice president of HP's Adaptive Enterprise, to find out what she sees on the IT horizon from the computing giant's perspective." I dont recall anything in the interview regarding the future of HP and where they want to go, but instead trying to bleed technical details out of a marketing rep.
The article should have been titled "Investigation into the details of HP's new Adaptive Enterprise Solutions" and then maybe HP would have been given a fair chance to represent themselves.
I don't have anything to back that up, its pure speculation. It just seems strange that they would develop technology that conveniently can't play anything recorded on older media - thus facilitating the need to upgrade everything.
The problem with your second point is addressed in the article. The writer explains that the new devices that take advantage of this HDTV flag will not play anything recorded on current-generation devices. It seems that, in the absense of the flag setting, the recorder simply does not play the content.
I wonder how far this goes - if it extends past home recordings and the like. Does this mean that i'm going to have to buy new HDTV enabled DVD's if I ever get one of these heinous devices? If this is true, it's not that far off than what the record labels did when CD's were released - force everybody to buy CD versions of casettes they already owned.
I'm not sure as to how long various flavors of linux have been around, but I was just pointing out that a single company that has been working on the same general idea for over a decade should have gotten it right by now. And by 'right', I mean that XP is the first release of Windows that I have ran which decently accomplishes tasks like plug and play, intuitive networking (albeit not always secure), and overall something I don't need to reboot three times in one day. All of the above features were heavily touted in '95, '98 and ME.
With all of the resources MS has, it seems preposterous to entertain the thought of other companies developing software that is on the same level of MS. It's along the same lines as paying Contracter A to build you a house, and in the course of ten years you need to have them come back to fix the plumbing, locks, and electricity - When you could ask Contracter B to do the same thing for you and not have to pay him anything.
I don't think that Microsoft would go so far as to hire any 'consultants' to write cracks for linux. While an arrogant company, they know that with all of the corporate scrutiny right now with the american economy it could lead to another Enron / Worldcom scandal.
However, with enough money you could hire any team of 'experts' to find whatever you wanted them to. Like that famous lines from Reservoir Dogs; "If you beat him enough he'll tell you he started the goddamn San Francisco fire!"
You have to admit that the entire fiasco between microsoft, a multi-billion dollar a year company is being so shaken by a community of rogue hobbyists is really quite amusing. Microsoft should have a superior product. After all, they've been doing this for over a decade, pretty much have access to unlimited resources, and in the face of all that there are rival products out there that cost next to nothing to use.
I think that in the next few years we are going to see some major economic shifting in the IT world. I think that the market is going to move towards supporting various services, and not charging for the actual software itself. Thats the glory of the internet - it gives power and recognition to those who earn it and not to those who buy it.
While I agree the actions taken by the RIAA are ridiculous, your comment on an ISP's liability as a provider is, from a legal standpoing, wrong. While common carriers are not responsible for listening in on voice communications, ISP's are not expected to report large amounts of P2P activities. In this situation, ISP's are merely being asked for the information regarding their customers. This is much akin to the way any investigation is conducted regarding other crimes - police getting the phone history / records of suspects in homicide cases would be an example. Granted, in the ladder example the police need to obtain a warrant from a judge, whereas the DMCA allows a subpeona for private information without the oversight of a judicial officer.
One thing people need to keep in mind is that a subpeona is not a lawsuit. What the RIAA has been telling people is that they will sue you, unless you agree to their settlement fee. It's mostly a scare tactics telling people that they are liable for millions in damages for a couple of songs. Then they conveniently give you the option to avoid all the trouble and pay a few thousand dollars - which sounds much sweeter than a million dollar lawsuit. What they don't tell you is that they need to prove all of this first - which I think would be interesting to see how they would go about proving all the music on your computer is stolen.
Have you tried using a program by MathSoft called MathCad? It lets you set up functions, calculus, algebra, graphs (Just about anything Math/Physics/Engineering Related) and it looks very nice. You also have the ability to save your equations as Rich Text Format, so they can be used in programs like Word and still look the same.
I thought one of the tenets of American culture was that everybody living in this country was innocent until proven guilty. By the looks of things, members of our congress with vested interests in these companies are launching dragnets based on the assumption that anything uploaded on a P2P network is stealing and we need to lock those people up.
with the RIAA planning to file a reverse class action lawsuit
(Press Release), as well as proposed bills to eliminate any anonymity on the internet (Wired Article), it appears that we are being stripped of the very freedoms this country was founded on by the people who have sworn to protect it.
Fine then. Take away our right to privacy. Lock up anybody who uses P2P networks, or distributes any type of material on the internet. Make every internet user out to be a criminal. Then we will be left with people who only use the internet for E-Mail and AIM, led by power-hungry politicians, to drive us into the next century.
As a side note, I'm interested to see the provisions provided in this bill with regards to the actual verification of copyrighted material. We probably already know the answer, throw everybody in court, and let them prove otherwise.
Sales are down maybe not as a sole result of p2p's, but they definately have a significant impact. Everywhere you go, people don't buy cd's, they download them. I'm not saying we should stop p2p, I would hate to have to start buying music again, too, but I think it's ridiculous for people to still say P2P networks aren't used for copying music and it's not affecting the music industry.
It appears to me that this dispute is over the royalties that the RIAA has set for playing their licensed music (As opposed to a few posts I read which claimed the RIAA expected royalties on anything played over the internet).
However, to be commercially viable, the Alliance believes that small webcasters need a mix of Mainstream Material and Independent Material. The Alliance is concerned that recent developments in the market for Mainstream Material have seriously jeopardized the commercial viability of its members by eliminating the ability to stream a commercially significant amount of Mainstream Material
I personally think its these "Alliance" members who are in the wrong. They claim that in order to run a successful business, they need to play Mainstream music which belongs to other people, and that those other people are charging them too much to play something they don't own.
In a capitalist society, the RIAA has the right to set whatever price they wish, and enter into agreements with whomever they wish and on whatever grounds they agree on. I don't think that because i've managed to develop a successful company, I should be forced to charge people a lesser rate for my product because people can't afford it. These 'Alliance' members realized that they aren't going to make any money off of artists nobody has heard of, and so now they want a piece of what the RIAA has built.
These webcasters should look into an alternative business model, or try to find a new way to do something that would have value to people, instead of looting from an established company. Oh wait, I forgot, hardly any webcasters make a profit... so why are we here in the first place?
I'm all for cooperating with law enforcement officials, but I don't see why eBay should offer information to anybody without a warrant. Isn't that the purpose of due process, to act as a check on police power?
Police officers use eBay too, and what should stop one of them from getting pissed off, faxing eBay a letter, and taking things into their own hands with the information they are given. As much as i'd like to have faith in officers, there are corrupt ones out there, and I don't see a problem with requiring a court-ordered warrant.
Unless you actually live on a college campus and use one of these file indexing services, I doubt you can adequately judge the usefulness of them. Our campus uses an indexing service called Seek42, and while it is possible to get the MP3's that others decide to share, there are loads of other things that I can get that are perfectly legal. A few of these things include lecture notes, programming assignments, Design Architect drawings, etc. I am also able to put my computer on the network and easily access it remotely from the labs to listen to the music that I paid for and ripped to my harddrive.
Case in point is that these services aren't illegal (Grokster/Morpheus case), just as google isn't illegal even though Emenim is one of the most popularly searched subjects. Windows SMB networks, which provide the fundamental functionality of these services, has been around for quite some time. While the RIAA is at it, why don't they sue Microsoft, Linksys, D-Link, 3Com, and any other company associated with networking, because, as we all know, anybody who shares anything on the internet is doing something illegal.
Why Fuck America? While corrupt in many respects, people like us have the power to change the face of the nation, but instead we sit on our asses and bitch about this kind of stuff on/. How many letters have we mailed to your legislators? What type of education (not aggressive slandering, mind you) have we provided to those outside of our social circles about right's issues such as these?
I've seen a few post proclaiming that they wish this were in every publication, that the media needs to speak out. I think thats a great idea, and if this got that kind of publicity it would generate interest in the subject. But would it motivate anybody? Would mass coverage really make a difference? More than likely, people would just bitch ang moan about it even more.
To those who say "Fuck America", if you don't like it you have the right to speak out against it and take actions to change it. Go out and vote during the next election, stay current on who is representing your state / county and tell them how you feel. Help others do the same. And if you still don't like the way it is, move.
And even pertaining to this case, America didn't do anything, yet. They settled independently of the judicial system.
Even crooked politicians are elected by us.
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I wonder if a class-action lawsuit against the *AA's could be filed. Something perhaps seeking settlement damages for every individual they have bullied into paying them off...
"And we are at war"
Damn, you must have missed Bush's 'Mission Accomplished' speech a few years ago. Don't you remember - all major hostilities have ended and we won!
tdk
I'm pretty sure they already do this. The copies of console games (and movies) that companies like Blockbuster and Hollywood Video purchase are under a different license than the copies a casual consumer purchases. This is the reason that if you've ever lost something you rent, the cost to replace is much higher than simply buying a new copy from Best Buy.
I do share a similar faith in our judicial system. However, I must disagree with you on this point. The reason for that is because while the courts have in the past have had an impact in interpreting policy with regards to civil liberties we now live in a world where anything done "as a matter of national security" is being blocked from judicial review. Just look at the NSA wiretaps and datamining efforts - the administration simply plays the national security card and all of the sudden doesn't have to answer to anybody. That's really the thing that is starting to scare me, too. While data retention is nothing new (I can contact my phone company and find out who I called 6 months ago), it's the current policy of the powers-that-be to hijack any information they deem relevant without any sort of oversight whatsoever. Once it becomes law, and all email, access to social networking sites, and telephone logs is closely monitered, what is to prevent an agency such as the NSA from harvesting this information and essentially building a personal network profile of every American that uses the internet? It's ironic that the people fighting for liberty and freedom abroad are the same ones who are taking that away at home. Guilty until proven low-risk.... tdk
So, the "blinding" process uses "visible white light". I don't know about anybody else, but if I were in a theater watching a movie, and kept seeing little flashes of white light comming from the direction of the screen, it would be a pretty big distraction - Kind of like when kids bring in laser pointers. tdk
I think this is just the product of the ever-rising climate of litigation in our country. This country has politicized our schools. Now, instead of putting the responsibility of a student's actions on the student or his/her parents, we've put the responsibility of their actions on the school themselves. Look at some of the recent stories that have been in the news in the last several years. One recent story that comes to mind was featured in TIME http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1 194020-1,00.html magazine. The article basically describes how universities are being held responsible if a student commits suicide. The argument (not that I agree with it) is that the school could have done something to save the student, but they didn't try hard enough.
Granted, this deals with universities, but it wouldn't surprise me if a guy in high school was posting "inappropriate" comments about a girl he banged or something, and the parents of the girl sued the school for not intervening with disciplinary action. We've basically sent the message to schools that "We want control over ourselves and our kids - but if they do something wrong its your fault for not stepping in."
Even so, this concept of signing a pledge barring participation in illegal and inappropriate activities outside of school is nothing new. If anybody recalls, about 7 years ago there was a lot of ferver over random drug testing of students involved in extracirricular activities. If the school found out that you were using drugs outside of school, you could be subjected to disciplinary action. This went so far as to include something like being at a party with beer.
In the end, though, American's have ultimately put schools in this position. If you discipline our kids too much - we'll sue you. If you don't discipline our kids and something happens - we'll sue you.
IANAL, however we studied this case in one of my political science classes. The precedent set by court rulings deams that if you yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater, you are creating a clear and present danger. If you incite panic amongst other patrons needlessly, and everybody rushes for the doors, then people can get trampled, hurt, etc... Also, i'm pretty sure if you yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater, and emergency personnel arrive, then you violate more than a handful of laws. tdk
"The security and privacy threats posed by certain peer-to-peer networks extend beyond users inadvertently enabling a hacker to access files. Millions of copies of the most popular peer-to-peer works contain software that could allow an independent company to take over portions of users' computers and internet connections and has the capacity to keep track of users' online habits." I guess this means they'll be targeting Microsoft, for releasing software that allows individuals with malicious intent to break in and control a users' computer. Since when did intellectual property legislation extend to protecting these ubiquitous rights they keep talking about?
The funny thing about all these reports and statistics on how many people die due to a certain drug is that they are frequently taken out of context. More often than not, death or serious injury happens when people begin to mix drugs that have adverse chemical interactions. The only thing I can think of off the top of my head has to do with controlled substances - MDA and MDMA. A lot of people go to clubs looking for Ecstacy, and when they find some and take the pill it doesn't hit them right away (which means its usually MDA which takes about twice as long to have an effect). They aren't getting the desired effect, so they buy another pill from somebody which happens to be MDMA. They take it, thinking the first pill was fake. Once the chemicals are absorbed into the system, fatal results usually occur.
Then everybody thinks the kid died from an overdose when it was really just a bad combination. This probably happens frequently with online pharmies where people take two things that just don't sit right and causes serious side effects. The interaction isn't documented, just the fact that some drug caused a fatality.
The capital he acquired from people who gave him money for the products he produced. Namely people like you and me.
Of course he developed a product to destroy a rival. Isn't that what free market is about? If FreshAir Corp. sells air fresheners for my car, and in response Ford decided to ship cars with their own air fresheners, what's the problem?
I guess you missed the anti-trust lawsuit along with the article mentioning how fighting the justice dept. has taken resources away from microsoft. What you don't seem to see is that a free market (which is defined by laissez-fair, or no government intervention) is an incubator for monopolies to exist. The same monopolies exist because people like us bought their products. If everybody flocked to OS/2, we'd be having the same discussion about IBM. A market with only small companies sounds like it would need to be heavily regulated by the government, to prevent companies started by college-dropouts from becomming too successful. I think you could loosely define that as a communist society.
Microsoft is the epitome of a free economy. Nobody ever thinks about it as a rags-to-riches story, about some kid who stayed up all night in his garage making software who finally hit it big. People think some dark power miracled Gates' ass into power, and now he is an evil, blood-sucking tyrant. He's a competetive businessman whose company is funded by our money that we willfully gave to him in turn for his products.
I think all this clamor over the way Nora has presented HP's AE exposes the void between management and IT people. The people that have the potential and desire (not to mention the need) to understand what a system like "Adaptive Enterprise" actually is are not the people in charge of whether or not a company is going to adopt that system.
While HP has made mistakes, they are by no means a stupid company. They pay people a lot of money to tell them what they need to say to make anything sound good. And they know that by using this vague and seemingly cutting-edge vocabulary in their speeches that its going to appeal to those who make the decisions about what sort of system they need to use (IE not engineers working in the IT dept).
This interview is unique in that a top-ranking VP from HP was forced to answer some technical questions about the way her product works. She probably has no idea how AE works, and you couldn't explain it to her in terms she understands because like many others have said she doesn't understand "tech talk". What she does understand is what to tell the people in charge to get them to buy into her idea. That's her job. When they get a company interested and go to close the sale, they probably send a few techies along with some salespeople to explain to some managers IT pet that their product really is worth it.
I personally think this interview was unfair. It would be like interviewing a programmer at microsoft about what he see's for the future of the company, what directions they are taking, etc... He'd probably be just as dumbfounded. Before the interview, it even says "CNET News.com recently met with Nora Denzel, senior vice president of HP's Adaptive Enterprise, to find out what she sees on the IT horizon from the computing giant's perspective." I dont recall anything in the interview regarding the future of HP and where they want to go, but instead trying to bleed technical details out of a marketing rep.
The article should have been titled "Investigation into the details of HP's new Adaptive Enterprise Solutions" and then maybe HP would have been given a fair chance to represent themselves.
I don't have anything to back that up, its pure speculation. It just seems strange that they would develop technology that conveniently can't play anything recorded on older media - thus facilitating the need to upgrade everything.
The problem with your second point is addressed in the article. The writer explains that the new devices that take advantage of this HDTV flag will not play anything recorded on current-generation devices. It seems that, in the absense of the flag setting, the recorder simply does not play the content.
I wonder how far this goes - if it extends past home recordings and the like. Does this mean that i'm going to have to buy new HDTV enabled DVD's if I ever get one of these heinous devices? If this is true, it's not that far off than what the record labels did when CD's were released - force everybody to buy CD versions of casettes they already owned.
I'm not sure as to how long various flavors of linux have been around, but I was just pointing out that a single company that has been working on the same general idea for over a decade should have gotten it right by now. And by 'right', I mean that XP is the first release of Windows that I have ran which decently accomplishes tasks like plug and play, intuitive networking (albeit not always secure), and overall something I don't need to reboot three times in one day. All of the above features were heavily touted in '95, '98 and ME. With all of the resources MS has, it seems preposterous to entertain the thought of other companies developing software that is on the same level of MS. It's along the same lines as paying Contracter A to build you a house, and in the course of ten years you need to have them come back to fix the plumbing, locks, and electricity - When you could ask Contracter B to do the same thing for you and not have to pay him anything.
I don't think that Microsoft would go so far as to hire any 'consultants' to write cracks for linux. While an arrogant company, they know that with all of the corporate scrutiny right now with the american economy it could lead to another Enron / Worldcom scandal.
However, with enough money you could hire any team of 'experts' to find whatever you wanted them to. Like that famous lines from Reservoir Dogs; "If you beat him enough he'll tell you he started the goddamn San Francisco fire!"
You have to admit that the entire fiasco between microsoft, a multi-billion dollar a year company is being so shaken by a community of rogue hobbyists is really quite amusing. Microsoft should have a superior product. After all, they've been doing this for over a decade, pretty much have access to unlimited resources, and in the face of all that there are rival products out there that cost next to nothing to use. I think that in the next few years we are going to see some major economic shifting in the IT world. I think that the market is going to move towards supporting various services, and not charging for the actual software itself. Thats the glory of the internet - it gives power and recognition to those who earn it and not to those who buy it.
While I agree the actions taken by the RIAA are ridiculous, your comment on an ISP's liability as a provider is, from a legal standpoing, wrong. While common carriers are not responsible for listening in on voice communications, ISP's are not expected to report large amounts of P2P activities. In this situation, ISP's are merely being asked for the information regarding their customers. This is much akin to the way any investigation is conducted regarding other crimes - police getting the phone history / records of suspects in homicide cases would be an example. Granted, in the ladder example the police need to obtain a warrant from a judge, whereas the DMCA allows a subpeona for private information without the oversight of a judicial officer. One thing people need to keep in mind is that a subpeona is not a lawsuit. What the RIAA has been telling people is that they will sue you, unless you agree to their settlement fee. It's mostly a scare tactics telling people that they are liable for millions in damages for a couple of songs. Then they conveniently give you the option to avoid all the trouble and pay a few thousand dollars - which sounds much sweeter than a million dollar lawsuit. What they don't tell you is that they need to prove all of this first - which I think would be interesting to see how they would go about proving all the music on your computer is stolen.
Have you tried using a program by MathSoft called MathCad? It lets you set up functions, calculus, algebra, graphs (Just about anything Math/Physics/Engineering Related) and it looks very nice. You also have the ability to save your equations as Rich Text Format, so they can be used in programs like Word and still look the same.
Your assuming our congressmen have enough technical knowledge to read email. Now thats going out on a limb, don't you think?
I thought one of the tenets of American culture was that everybody living in this country was innocent until proven guilty. By the looks of things, members of our congress with vested interests in these companies are launching dragnets based on the assumption that anything uploaded on a P2P network is stealing and we need to lock those people up.
with the RIAA planning to file a reverse class action lawsuit (Press Release), as well as proposed bills to eliminate any anonymity on the internet (Wired Article), it appears that we are being stripped of the very freedoms this country was founded on by the people who have sworn to protect it.
Fine then. Take away our right to privacy. Lock up anybody who uses P2P networks, or distributes any type of material on the internet. Make every internet user out to be a criminal. Then we will be left with people who only use the internet for E-Mail and AIM, led by power-hungry politicians, to drive us into the next century.
As a side note, I'm interested to see the provisions provided in this bill with regards to the actual verification of copyrighted material. We probably already know the answer, throw everybody in court, and let them prove otherwise.
Sales are down maybe not as a sole result of p2p's, but they definately have a significant impact. Everywhere you go, people don't buy cd's, they download them. I'm not saying we should stop p2p, I would hate to have to start buying music again, too, but I think it's ridiculous for people to still say P2P networks aren't used for copying music and it's not affecting the music industry.
It appears to me that this dispute is over the royalties that the RIAA has set for playing their licensed music (As opposed to a few posts I read which claimed the RIAA expected royalties on anything played over the internet).
However, to be commercially viable, the Alliance believes that small webcasters need a mix of Mainstream Material and Independent Material. The Alliance is concerned that recent developments in the market for Mainstream Material have seriously jeopardized the commercial viability of its members by eliminating the ability to stream a commercially significant amount of Mainstream Material
I personally think its these "Alliance" members who are in the wrong. They claim that in order to run a successful business, they need to play Mainstream music which belongs to other people, and that those other people are charging them too much to play something they don't own. In a capitalist society, the RIAA has the right to set whatever price they wish, and enter into agreements with whomever they wish and on whatever grounds they agree on. I don't think that because i've managed to develop a successful company, I should be forced to charge people a lesser rate for my product because people can't afford it. These 'Alliance' members realized that they aren't going to make any money off of artists nobody has heard of, and so now they want a piece of what the RIAA has built. These webcasters should look into an alternative business model, or try to find a new way to do something that would have value to people, instead of looting from an established company. Oh wait, I forgot, hardly any webcasters make a profit... so why are we here in the first place?
I'm all for cooperating with law enforcement officials, but I don't see why eBay should offer information to anybody without a warrant. Isn't that the purpose of due process, to act as a check on police power?
Police officers use eBay too, and what should stop one of them from getting pissed off, faxing eBay a letter, and taking things into their own hands with the information they are given. As much as i'd like to have faith in officers, there are corrupt ones out there, and I don't see a problem with requiring a court-ordered warrant.
Unless you actually live on a college campus and use one of these file indexing services, I doubt you can adequately judge the usefulness of them. Our campus uses an indexing service called Seek42, and while it is possible to get the MP3's that others decide to share, there are loads of other things that I can get that are perfectly legal. A few of these things include lecture notes, programming assignments, Design Architect drawings, etc. I am also able to put my computer on the network and easily access it remotely from the labs to listen to the music that I paid for and ripped to my harddrive. Case in point is that these services aren't illegal (Grokster/Morpheus case), just as google isn't illegal even though Emenim is one of the most popularly searched subjects. Windows SMB networks, which provide the fundamental functionality of these services, has been around for quite some time. While the RIAA is at it, why don't they sue Microsoft, Linksys, D-Link, 3Com, and any other company associated with networking, because, as we all know, anybody who shares anything on the internet is doing something illegal.
Why Fuck America? While corrupt in many respects, people like us have the power to change the face of the nation, but instead we sit on our asses and bitch about this kind of stuff on /. How many letters have we mailed to your legislators? What type of education (not aggressive slandering, mind you) have we provided to those outside of our social circles about right's issues such as these?
I've seen a few post proclaiming that they wish this were in every publication, that the media needs to speak out. I think thats a great idea, and if this got that kind of publicity it would generate interest in the subject. But would it motivate anybody? Would mass coverage really make a difference? More than likely, people would just bitch ang moan about it even more.
To those who say "Fuck America", if you don't like it you have the right to speak out against it and take actions to change it. Go out and vote during the next election, stay current on who is representing your state / county and tell them how you feel. Help others do the same. And if you still don't like the way it is, move.
And even pertaining to this case, America didn't do anything, yet. They settled independently of the judicial system.
Even crooked politicians are elected by us.