I used to buy some stuff on pricewatch.com a few years ago. They were a really good site for scanning low prices from online stores--similar to what bizrate does. Recently, though, I looked at some stuff on there, and they totally do not police their sellers. There is a policy statement that they will ban sellers that are fraudulent, but check the comments on some of them. There are many of their merchants (obviously the ones with the lowest prices so they get listed first) who have about equal numbers of positive and negative feedback. The negative feedback are complaints from people who have been scammed and are pretty detailed about what the problem was. The positive feedback goes like this:
10:22PM Good service! 10:24PM Received merchandise. 10:29PM Very fast shipping. 10:35PM Would buy from again.
They need to kick those companies off their site. The best way to weed through the crap is to find places that have very low negative feedback. If you look into those negative feedback comments then, it's usually some kind of inconvenience thing like, "They told me it would ship Saturday, but it didn't ship til Monday."
The most frequent scam that's reported from these online sellers is that when you place an order for something, they call or email you to try to sell you other stuff in addition to what you ordered or try to convince you to buy this more expensive model. If you refuse, they cancel your order, and sometimes charge a few bucks for a "restocking" fee for the merchandise. If they don't charge the restocking fee, it's a pretty safe scam for them because they don't have to sell anything cheap, but they also are not in trouble because you're not out any money.
Bottom line, it's going to get worse for the RIAA.
They profit from the wastes in the system, and the system just keeps getting better at not buying things that can't be sold to consumers...
So here's an interesting thought: In these last hard economic times almost every large business or company in this country has had to do some layoffs because of losses--sometimes very steep losses. They have had to make cutbacks in services, salaries, and/or workforce to keep alive. I haven't heard of the record labels or RIAA making any cutbacks. Their PROFITS start going down a little, and listen to them whine! No mention of, "We're going to have to tighten our belts." Instead it's all someone else's fault, and it's apparently totally unacceptable that they might not make as much money when their customers are losing their jobs and livlihood.
I know that their prices are too high. I know that music piracy is cutting into their profits some, but not as much as they make it out to be. I know that if CDs were priced at $5 or whatever, many P2P downloaders say they would buy instead, but would they? Or would they say it's still too high, or just buy the one every other month that they really really want, while downloading three or four others?
There is such a large outcry that the RIAA should change their business model, and until they do, they're forcing you to download free instead--yeah, right. There are some of you that have the correct idea with recommendations to boycott (that means don't USE as well as don't buy) RIAA or to support indie bands instead. For the unauthorized P2P downloaders, though, you have no right to claim any moral high ground when you will not do without the product as part of your protest. Listen to the music you have instead of "acquiring" new, or if there's a new song you really like, buy that track from iTunes.
If you want to protest them, but do the right thing, cut your music consumption. If P2P downloading of their music decreases, and they still only get a few dollars a year from each person by buying individual tracks, they will get the message. (Not that they will honestly present message in the media, though)
Wow, thanks for those links. I have been reading the statements from these people. The stuff against the bill is Chicken Little, BS, FUD with some great quotable lines. Here is one of my favorites from Jack Valenti: "Second, and more fundamentally, back-up copies of DVDs are not necessary. As said earlier, an encrypted DVD is well nigh indestructible.[...]And if by some very rare happening a DVD should malfunction, another can be bought at ever-lowering prices." Um, "ever-lowering"? What a crock!
I thought Chris Murray of the Consumers' Union had the best commentary. My favorite part of his talk was where he was talking about how the triennial review for potential exemptions was not working. He quoted the copyright Register office about the problem of not having a licensed DVD playing software for Linux: "While it is unfortunate that persons wishing to play CSS-protected DVDs on computers have few options, the fact remains that that they have the same options that other consumers have. The Register concludes, as she concluded three years ago, that the harm to such persons is de minimis, amounting to no more than an inconvenience." TRANSLATION: We're sorry that the interstate highways only allow Ford or Chevy vehicles on them, but everyone has the same opportunity to buy one of those cars.
You know, I would have thought such a thing, but I've seen some of the stupid laws that have come out of congress in the past year. They're not focusing on important international and economic issues. Maybe they're dealing with real issues, too, but there sure is a lot of frivilous stuff getting attention in congress.
Thank you for telling me about that. I didn't know the EFF had that. I just went to their site and sent a FAX to my representative. It's way easy, so I encourage everyone here to do the same. I especially like that you don't have to manually look up the address and such of your representative. The EFF has a database, where they coorelate it to your zip code to look up who your rep is.
Wow. I'm lobbying the mods for U.S.-legal-code-quoting-guy. He printed it out for you in an exact quote, and you still think it doesn't matter because it doesn't match your opinion. So if you don't agree with gravity, you're going to float away, huh?
You asked for correction. I think music CDs and game CDs fall under the same provisions, so I don't think one is legal and the other illegal. If you are not circumventing a copy protection, then neither is illegal to copy. I think the same applies to DVDs if you could copy them without bypassing some security feature.
I lent a CD I had to a friend who got a deep scratch right on my favorite song, so that it could play every other song but that one. Fortunately I married someone who also had that CD, so I got a backup copy in the deal.
How is the sand thing a problem? The vast majority of Egypt is covered by a desert. Alaa did have to say that they have crowded all the housing and development onto about 2% of the land area, which is not desert, so without knowing that, it's an understandable question. Even with that aside, Alaa did also state that they have excessive dust, which causes them to have to open up and blow out their PC's every month because of the desert climate, even if they don't live directly on sand.
I know there were some other ones that were myopic, and many that didn't get submitted were probably much worse, but lighten up a little. In the words of my father in law, "Ya don't know what ya don't know." So if the people who submitted these questions learned something to inform them better, then that's a good thing.
One more thing: In case anyone's interested, I found these sections from the Usage Rules agreement on the Wal-Mart music store.
You are entitled to download, export, burn or copy Products solely for personal, noncommercial use in accordance with the terms of this Agreement. Any burning or exporting capabilities are solely an accommodation to you and shall not constitute a grant or waiver of any rights of the copyright owners in any Product or in any content, sound recording, underlying musical composition, artwork or other copyrightable matter embodied in any Product. No right, title or interest in any downloaded Products or software is transferred to you as a result of any downloading or copying or otherwise. All rights in the Products are owned by WALMART.COM or its licensors and you have only a limited, nontransferable, nonexclusive,
revocable, nonsublicensable right to use the Products for personal use in accordance with the terms of this Agreement.
Hmm, revocable license? I guess that's all the more reason to burn and re-rip^H^H^H^H^H^H^H back up your license files so WMP9 will always be able to play them.
You may not reproduce (except as noted above), publish, transmit, distribute, display, broadcast, re-broadcast, modify, create derivative works from, sell or participate in any sale of or exploit in any way, in whole or in part, directly or indirectly, any of the Products, the Service or any related software. You may not reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble, modify or disable any copy protection or use limitation systems associated with the Products.
You may not play and then re-digitize any Products, or upload those Products to the Internet. You may not use the Products in conjunction with any other third-party content (e.g, to provide sound for a film). You may not sell or offer to sell the Products, including but not limited to, posting any Product for auction, on any Internet auction site. All Products are sublicensed to you and not sold, notwithstanding the use of the terms "sell," "purchase," "order," or "buy" on the Service or in this Agreement.
Well, they are specifically prohibiting re-encoding the files. [HAL voice]I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave.[/HAL voice] That's trying to prevent fair use rights to get them into a format that my mp3 discman can play. I also see they're trying to shut down the issue of testing out "first sale doctrine" like the guy who tried to sell an iTunes song on Ebay.
OK, I'll save some time here by answering my own questions. I went to the Wal-Mart music store page to get some info on their service. Here is the stuff. Basically, it's similar to iTMS, but the price is 88 cents instead of 99, and it uses a different file format than iTunes.
What file format do Music Downloads come in?
Music Downloads from Walmart.com are 128-bit WMA files. The WMA format allows record companies to protect their music by using Digital Rights Management (DRM) encryption. This means that music downloads are legal, safe, and easy to use. The 128-bit WMA files also offer superior sound quality.
Heh, ya gotta love that--using a comparative word like "superior" with no indication of what they're comparing it to.
How many times can I burn a song onto a custom CD?
You are licensed to burn a song to a CD 10 times. If you try to burn a CD after that, Windows Media® Player 9 will deliver a message indicating that you are not licensed to make any more burns to a CD.
Where can I play the CD that I burn?
When you burn an audio CD, you can play the CD on any optical CD player that plays music (e.g., your car stereo, home audio system, boom box, or portable CD player). Please remember that music downloads from Walmart.com are for personal use only and not for resale or commercial use, as indicated in the End User License Agreement & Usage Rules.
There ya go. They've got the same workaround that iTMS has. You can burn to a CD and re-rip if you want ogg, or mp3 or whatever.
What are the system requirements for using Music Downloads at Walmart.com?
1. A Windows PC Most computers manufactured in the last few years will easily meet the minimum system requirements. If you have an older computer, here's what you need: 233 MHz or higher processor (most computers meet this requirement) At least 64 MB of RAM A sound card Speakers or headphones (if you want to play music on your computer) An Internet connection If you're not sure about your computer, open the Control Panel and click on the icon for "System" (for Windows XP, you will find this in the "classic view"). A window will open that displays your computer's system profile, including processor speed, RAM and other information.
2. A recent version of the Windows® Operating System. Your computer must be running the Windows 98se, 2000, Millennium Edition or XP operating system. (Note: Music you download from Walmart.com will not play on the Mac or Linux operating systems.) If your computer comes with Microsoft Internet Explorer already installed, please make sure you are using version 5.5 or higher.
3. Microsoft Windows Media Player 9. Download the latest Windows Media Player from Microsoft for free. Windows Media Player 9 is able to play the WMA music files available at Walmart.com that have been protected by Digital Rights Management (DRM) encryption.
The note about not playable on Mac or Linux because they use Media Player 9 to support the protected WMA format. Also they note specifically that iPods are not compatible since they don't play WMA format. They do allow you to transfer to a portable music device an unlimited number of times if it will play WMA format files. (which excludes the iPod)
OK, granted. I did mention that Wal-Mart would be the only exception I could think of because they are cheaper. What format do they sell in? Are they some kind of mp3 with copy protection or something?
I'm torn between supporting Apple, a company I respect, or using another music service where I can get my music cheaper and supports my portable player.
OK, I gotta hear the answer on this one. Name me a music store that is cheaper than iTMS, where you can get un-DRMed music that you can keep. I really want to know because up til now I haven't heard of any that are better than iTMS. These monthly subscription places that let you stream all the music you want, but not keep it don't count to me since I can't take it where I want in the car or whatever. I know it's a little inconvenient to have to burn the songs to a CD-R and then rip them to get DRM-free files, but that's better than anyone else is offering. If you're worried about using up CD-Rs, just check OfficeMax's website each week. About every other week they have 50 or 100 packs of them for free after rebate. (frequently with slim cases free after rebate, too)
By letting you convert them to plain CD audio format, they are giving you an out, and I think that's more than any other store is doing. (possible exception the new Wal-Mart music store, but I haven't heard much of anything about it--format, ease of use, terms, etc.)
That's something I have never even understood. Why would someone even need to burn the same playlist 7 or 10 times? Burn it once and start making copies of the disc with Nero, jeez.
Oh, man! It's YOU 3, SLASHBOTS 0. Those were awesome. Um yeah, root console, echo...something, shell scripts, and the thought of getting your mom to set up a vnc server is great. Yet again someone reminds the technophiles what it's like in the real world.
I don't have a laptop, so I had never tried a sleep or suspend mode until fairly recently. I've never tried it on Linux. I did it several times on my WinXP machine, and stopped because it would only come out of it half the time. I wonder why it is so difficult for them to get this kind of thing right.
Orbitz is a con. They sell [product] at an undisclosed markup
Uh, yeah, so does ThinkGeek, so does Intel, so does HP, so does Ford... What the heck is your point with that? I've never seen a store that posts their markup on the price sticker.
You laugh, but you should know that not all credit cards are the same, and not even all Visas are the same. The bank that issues the card is the one you deal with. They just license use of the Visa name and transaction system, but any charges or customer service issues are handled by your bank. AMEX I think is more centralized, but if you want good service, get a Visa or Mastercard from a good bank. Citibank is notably very good, and there are many others. I have used Citibank, and they have good service. I have also used Chase, and they are decent.
Slashdot Mirror
I used to buy some stuff on pricewatch.com a few years ago. They were a really good site for scanning low prices from online stores--similar to what bizrate does. Recently, though, I looked at some stuff on there, and they totally do not police their sellers. There is a policy statement that they will ban sellers that are fraudulent, but check the comments on some of them. There are many of their merchants (obviously the ones with the lowest prices so they get listed first) who have about equal numbers of positive and negative feedback. The negative feedback are complaints from people who have been scammed and are pretty detailed about what the problem was. The positive feedback goes like this:
10:22PM Good service!
10:24PM Received merchandise.
10:29PM Very fast shipping.
10:35PM Would buy from again.
They need to kick those companies off their site. The best way to weed through the crap is to find places that have very low negative feedback. If you look into those negative feedback comments then, it's usually some kind of inconvenience thing like, "They told me it would ship Saturday, but it didn't ship til Monday."
The most frequent scam that's reported from these online sellers is that when you place an order for something, they call or email you to try to sell you other stuff in addition to what you ordered or try to convince you to buy this more expensive model. If you refuse, they cancel your order, and sometimes charge a few bucks for a "restocking" fee for the merchandise. If they don't charge the restocking fee, it's a pretty safe scam for them because they don't have to sell anything cheap, but they also are not in trouble because you're not out any money.
more specifically, FBI agents.
I know that their prices are too high. I know that music piracy is cutting into their profits some, but not as much as they make it out to be. I know that if CDs were priced at $5 or whatever, many P2P downloaders say they would buy instead, but would they? Or would they say it's still too high, or just buy the one every other month that they really really want, while downloading three or four others?
There is such a large outcry that the RIAA should change their business model, and until they do, they're forcing you to download free instead--yeah, right. There are some of you that have the correct idea with recommendations to boycott (that means don't USE as well as don't buy) RIAA or to support indie bands instead. For the unauthorized P2P downloaders, though, you have no right to claim any moral high ground when you will not do without the product as part of your protest. Listen to the music you have instead of "acquiring" new, or if there's a new song you really like, buy that track from iTunes.
If you want to protest them, but do the right thing, cut your music consumption. If P2P downloading of their music decreases, and they still only get a few dollars a year from each person by buying individual tracks, they will get the message. (Not that they will honestly present message in the media, though)
Excellent response. You have been added as "friend".
Wow, thanks for those links. I have been reading the statements from these people. The stuff against the bill is Chicken Little, BS, FUD with some great quotable lines. Here is one of my favorites from Jack Valenti:
"Second, and more fundamentally, back-up copies of DVDs are not necessary. As said earlier, an encrypted DVD is well nigh indestructible.[...]And if by some very rare happening a DVD should malfunction, another can be bought at ever-lowering prices."
Um, "ever-lowering"? What a crock!
I thought Chris Murray of the Consumers' Union had the best commentary. My favorite part of his talk was where he was talking about how the triennial review for potential exemptions was not working. He quoted the copyright Register office about the problem of not having a licensed DVD playing software for Linux:
"While it is unfortunate that persons wishing to play CSS-protected DVDs on computers have few options, the fact remains that that they have the same options that other consumers have. The Register concludes, as she concluded three years ago, that the harm to such persons is de minimis, amounting to no more than an inconvenience."
TRANSLATION: We're sorry that the interstate highways only allow Ford or Chevy vehicles on them, but everyone has the same opportunity to buy one of those cars.
You know, I would have thought such a thing, but I've seen some of the stupid laws that have come out of congress in the past year. They're not focusing on important international and economic issues. Maybe they're dealing with real issues, too, but there sure is a lot of frivilous stuff getting attention in congress.
I'd rather start hitting Valenti & Co.
Is it just VB 3.0 that you can't get anymore then? I still have a system disc from Gateway that has DOS 6.22 and WFW 3.11 on it.
I'm just a bill,
Yes, I'm only a bill,
and I'm sitting here on capitol hill.
Schoolhouse Rock rocks!
I was really hoping he had been an "assistant head" of something, so I could have abbreviated his position title.
Thank you for telling me about that. I didn't know the EFF had that. I just went to their site and sent a FAX to my representative. It's way easy, so I encourage everyone here to do the same. I especially like that you don't have to manually look up the address and such of your representative. The EFF has a database, where they coorelate it to your zip code to look up who your rep is.
Wow. I'm lobbying the mods for U.S.-legal-code-quoting-guy. He printed it out for you in an exact quote, and you still think it doesn't matter because it doesn't match your opinion. So if you don't agree with gravity, you're going to float away, huh?
You asked for correction. I think music CDs and game CDs fall under the same provisions, so I don't think one is legal and the other illegal. If you are not circumventing a copy protection, then neither is illegal to copy. I think the same applies to DVDs if you could copy them without bypassing some security feature.
I lent a CD I had to a friend who got a deep scratch right on my favorite song, so that it could play every other song but that one. Fortunately I married someone who also had that CD, so I got a backup copy in the deal.
How is the sand thing a problem? The vast majority of Egypt is covered by a desert. Alaa did have to say that they have crowded all the housing and development onto about 2% of the land area, which is not desert, so without knowing that, it's an understandable question. Even with that aside, Alaa did also state that they have excessive dust, which causes them to have to open up and blow out their PC's every month because of the desert climate, even if they don't live directly on sand.
I know there were some other ones that were myopic, and many that didn't get submitted were probably much worse, but lighten up a little. In the words of my father in law, "Ya don't know what ya don't know." So if the people who submitted these questions learned something to inform them better, then that's a good thing.
Hmm, revocable license? I guess that's all the more reason to burn and re-rip^H^H^H^H^H^H^H back up your license files so WMP9 will always be able to play them.
Well, they are specifically prohibiting re-encoding the files. [HAL voice]I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave.[/HAL voice] That's trying to prevent fair use rights to get them into a format that my mp3 discman can play.
I also see they're trying to shut down the issue of testing out "first sale doctrine" like the guy who tried to sell an iTunes song on Ebay.
Heh, ya gotta love that--using a comparative word like "superior" with no indication of what they're comparing it to.
There ya go. They've got the same workaround that iTMS has. You can burn to a CD and re-rip if you want ogg, or mp3 or whatever.
The note about not playable on Mac or Linux because they use Media Player 9 to support the protected WMA format.
Also they note specifically that iPods are not compatible since they don't play WMA format. They do allow you to transfer to a portable music device an unlimited number of times if it will play WMA format files. (which excludes the iPod)
OK, granted. I did mention that Wal-Mart would be the only exception I could think of because they are cheaper. What format do they sell in? Are they some kind of mp3 with copy protection or something?
You mentioned using beer to cool Linus, but these guys used beer to cool the computers!
By the way, these are the same guys who run
http://www.microsith.com
By letting you convert them to plain CD audio format, they are giving you an out, and I think that's more than any other store is doing. (possible exception the new Wal-Mart music store, but I haven't heard much of anything about it--format, ease of use, terms, etc.)
That's something I have never even understood. Why would someone even need to burn the same playlist 7 or 10 times? Burn it once and start making copies of the disc with Nero, jeez.
Oh, man! It's YOU 3, SLASHBOTS 0. Those were awesome. Um yeah, root console, echo ...something, shell scripts, and the thought of getting your mom to set up a vnc server is great. Yet again someone reminds the technophiles what it's like in the real world.
I don't have a laptop, so I had never tried a sleep or suspend mode until fairly recently. I've never tried it on Linux. I did it several times on my WinXP machine, and stopped because it would only come out of it half the time. I wonder why it is so difficult for them to get this kind of thing right.
What the heck is your point with that? I've never seen a store that posts their markup on the price sticker.
You laugh, but you should know that not all credit cards are the same, and not even all Visas are the same. The bank that issues the card is the one you deal with. They just license use of the Visa name and transaction system, but any charges or customer service issues are handled by your bank. AMEX I think is more centralized, but if you want good service, get a Visa or Mastercard from a good bank. Citibank is notably very good, and there are many others. I have used Citibank, and they have good service. I have also used Chase, and they are decent.