I know that this post will probably never be read, but for the record...
Aren't boundary condititions the point at which functions go non-linear and get chaotic? I think we have a parallel in the real world. It's amazing how often I've seen people claim the IP is the same as Physical Property as well as the opposite.
My point is that they are, at their extremes very different, and at some intersection, very similar, but in a complex way. I don't think that we'll ever have sane IP laws until we have justices who know a Mandelbrot from a Mandelbaum. Until that point, everyone needs to do their part to convince others that we need balance in Intellectual Property laws. If enough people are concerned, a fair balance will be reached, but if everyone is blase, the balance may be shifted forever into the hands of coporations.
I agree that time is expensive, but a PC with the Required specs is a commodity that could be set up as a standalone kiosk at the mall requiring lower rent and lower salary costs. These may offset the time factor.
Knowledge - You're right, downtime will kill sales and increase costs. I don't have an answer besides get it right the first time
Quality and compatibility are still issues. It's probably possible to add some artwork at burn time (I personally like to add fractal art from fractalus.com to my mix discs. I don't have any preference for burnt versus pressed since all of my CD players recognize the CD-Rs. Actually, I typically only "play" a CD once to encode it and put it on my Nomad Jukebox.
The Retailer and Customer fraud cases are both possible. I don't have a good answer for this one. Bruce Schneier, someone whose opinion I trust in security matters, seems to think that it's impossible to have a foolproof system in the hands of end-users.
You've bought up some interesting points. I don't think that they are entirely insurmountable and I think that it's entirely possible to come up with a touchscreen CD kiosk that even my Mother could use. Currently, the convenience stores in my location use touchscreens for sandwich orders, so the UI should be easy enough. Someone will be able to overcome this issue and that person will probably make a fair share of money. I'd be surprised if the entire concept hasn't been patented yet.
I don't know why music publishers waste money pressing a godzillion CDs that will take up warehouse space and may never be sold when they could authorize Retailers to burn CDs on the premises.
There's negligible distribution cost
It's easier to react to fickle consumer demand
There's no need to have a bargain bin to free up warehouse space - although artists who've fallen out of vogue may choose to lower their CD rates.
End users may have the option of buying mix CDs
It's a lot easier to impose DRM on a partner than on a end-user.
Granted, they would also need a way to provide the liner notes, but that could be an after market service provided by the label or by the artist directly.
This actually makes a fair amount of sense. I'm years out of college, but I imagine that it would be fairly simple to create a peer to peer app that listed your collection and a contact email/phone. Running on a non-routable address space it would allow you to browse others collections and perhaps have an opportunity to contact them to trade CDs for a short time. This solution would only work in a community where people actually wanted to meet others however.
I know that there are laws about renting CDs, but there shouldn't be anything against trading CDs. Both users are deprived of their copies for while the exchange takes place. There's obviously an opportunity to copy the CD while it's in your possession, but that same opportunity exists with books and movies.
There's always the Music CD mutual fund concept where everyone purchases ownership in a library of CDs and can borrow one of those CDs at any time. Your funds entitle you to existing CDs and purchase new CDs for the collection. RIAA contributions could be minimized by avoiding duplicate copies of works that have proven themselves unworthy. The more popular titles would probably require duplicates to cover demand and wear-and-tear. Call it NetTunes and allow users to check out as many CDs at one time as they've purchased for the mutual fund. The more I look at this previous paragraph, the more I agree with Cringely.
Of course they don't expect to win - it's called SCOicide.
Comment to ESR: Can I have credit for this in the next version of the Jargon File. Of course I didn't invent the term, someone else did, but it's a propos for me to claim ownership of something that I have no claim to in this context.
On a more serious note, why aren't U.S. linux sysadmins shutting down their sites in protest of SCOs activities. Something along the lines of what the European sites did to protest the patent laws. Optionally, you could assign all but one of your processors to cracking the Microsoft XBOX private key. "This is your server. This is your server running SCO Unix."
I can't tell you what it will cost to implement, but I'll tell you what I'd pay. If someone with a catalog like CDBaby's offered:
$10/month - Tier 1
* an MP3 or OGG Vorbis stream (perhaps filtered by genre, but even as a simple shuffle of titles), and provided it without DJ's and commercials annoying me.
* License to download and burn one or two of the songs that I heard and enjoyed on the stream.
$15/month - Tier 2
* Stream plus one album of downloads per month
$25/month - Tier 3
* Stream plus one physical CD per month.
* Perhaps some additional downloads
Do you know what I really enjoy about the public domain and efforts such as Project Gutenberg? The texts that have been made available are the ones that are most important to read when debating topics such as this. The U.S. Constitution, and The Autobiography of Thomas Jefferson are two great places to start. Once you have digested the basic ideas, try reading The Psychology of Revolution
If you read all of this, you may find that you haven't the time to watch The Bachelor, American Idol, or Fear Factor. Personally, I think that's a good thing.
The public domain is a threat to media giants. Not only does it remind us of why our forefathers founded a new nation, it also competes directly with them for our eyes and minds.
I can hear Orrin Hatch now: "I really think that these textile pirates have to understand that RFID tags subsidize their clothing purchases. Disabling these tags should be punishable by death."
The Klingons (user community) is in the middle of a civil war between those loyal to Gowron (Linux/Linus) and those loyal to Duras (McBride/SCO). The Duras clan (SCO) is lasting much longer than expected due to behind the scenes support from the Romulans(Microsoft).
All we need now is for the Federation (/.) to implement some sort of Tachyon Detection Grid to uncover the source hidden support and stop it in its tracks.
Maybe I'm really stupid. Check that - I know I'm really stupid.
If we have a mesh of enough of these access points, why can't we eventually use that as a network. My trivial understanding of the original purpose of the internet is that it was designed in this way, albeit with cables connecting each node.
I know that 11MB/s or even 54MB/s is not going to be equivalent to the fiber running cross country. What is the highest theoretical speed of a wireless network?
<Dream>I would expect that it could be the basis for the most awesome P2P network ever conceived. If you have no ISP, who will the RIAA contact for your address?</Dream>
Slashdot Mirror
I didn't read the subject at first, and I thought he meant that he was from Microsoft! I'm not sure which is funnier.
I know that this post will probably never be read, but for the record...
Aren't boundary condititions the point at which functions go non-linear and get chaotic? I think we have a parallel in the real world. It's amazing how often I've seen people claim the IP is the same as Physical Property as well as the opposite.
My point is that they are, at their extremes very different, and at some intersection, very similar, but in a complex way. I don't think that we'll ever have sane IP laws until we have justices who know a Mandelbrot from a Mandelbaum. Until that point, everyone needs to do their part to convince others that we need balance in Intellectual Property laws. If enough people are concerned, a fair balance will be reached, but if everyone is blase, the balance may be shifted forever into the hands of coporations.
IANAL, but isn't it possible for someone to take this to court and win with Jury Nullification?
It seems to me that this is the intent of the law - to allow our peers to overrule the Tyranny of Law when the Law itself is found to be unjust
This is why I hope OpenOffice never achieves perfect harmony with Microsoft Office.
You've bought up some interesting points. I don't think that they are entirely insurmountable and I think that it's entirely possible to come up with a touchscreen CD kiosk that even my Mother could use. Currently, the convenience stores in my location use touchscreens for sandwich orders, so the UI should be easy enough. Someone will be able to overcome this issue and that person will probably make a fair share of money. I'd be surprised if the entire concept hasn't been patented yet.
I don't know why music publishers waste money pressing a godzillion CDs that will take up warehouse space and may never be sold when they could authorize Retailers to burn CDs on the premises.
- There's negligible distribution cost
- It's easier to react to fickle consumer demand
- There's no need to have a bargain bin to free up warehouse space - although artists who've fallen out of vogue may choose to lower their CD rates.
- End users may have the option of buying mix CDs
-
It's a lot easier to impose DRM on a partner than on a end-user.
Granted, they would also need a way to provide the liner notes, but that could be an after market service provided by the label or by the artist directly.This actually makes a fair amount of sense. I'm years out of college, but I imagine that it would be fairly simple to create a peer to peer app that listed your collection and a contact email/phone. Running on a non-routable address space it would allow you to browse others collections and perhaps have an opportunity to contact them to trade CDs for a short time. This solution would only work in a community where people actually wanted to meet others however.
I know that there are laws about renting CDs, but there shouldn't be anything against trading CDs. Both users are deprived of their copies for while the exchange takes place. There's obviously an opportunity to copy the CD while it's in your possession, but that same opportunity exists with books and movies.
There's always the Music CD mutual fund concept where everyone purchases ownership in a library of CDs and can borrow one of those CDs at any time. Your funds entitle you to existing CDs and purchase new CDs for the collection. RIAA contributions could be minimized by avoiding duplicate copies of works that have proven themselves unworthy. The more popular titles would probably require duplicates to cover demand and wear-and-tear. Call it NetTunes and allow users to check out as many CDs at one time as they've purchased for the mutual fund. The more I look at this previous paragraph, the more I agree with Cringely.
Of course they don't expect to win - it's called SCOicide.
Comment to ESR: Can I have credit for this in the next version of the Jargon File. Of course I didn't invent the term, someone else did, but it's a propos for me to claim ownership of something that I have no claim to in this context.
On a more serious note, why aren't U.S. linux sysadmins shutting down their sites in protest of SCOs activities. Something along the lines of what the European sites did to protest the patent laws. Optionally, you could assign all but one of your processors to cracking the Microsoft XBOX private key. "This is your server. This is your server running SCO Unix."
I can't tell you what it will cost to implement, but I'll tell you what I'd pay. If someone with a catalog like CDBaby's offered: $10/month - Tier 1 * an MP3 or OGG Vorbis stream (perhaps filtered by genre, but even as a simple shuffle of titles), and provided it without DJ's and commercials annoying me. * License to download and burn one or two of the songs that I heard and enjoyed on the stream. $15/month - Tier 2 * Stream plus one album of downloads per month $25/month - Tier 3 * Stream plus one physical CD per month. * Perhaps some additional downloads
Do you know what I really enjoy about the public domain and efforts such as Project Gutenberg? The texts that have been made available are the ones that are most important to read when debating topics such as this. The U.S. Constitution, and The Autobiography of Thomas Jefferson are two great places to start. Once you have digested the basic ideas, try reading The Psychology of Revolution
If you read all of this, you may find that you haven't the time to watch The Bachelor, American Idol, or Fear Factor. Personally, I think that's a good thing.
The public domain is a threat to media giants. Not only does it remind us of why our forefathers founded a new nation, it also competes directly with them for our eyes and minds.
I can hear Orrin Hatch now: "I really think that these textile pirates have to understand that RFID tags subsidize their clothing purchases. Disabling these tags should be punishable by death."
--
"Ulch - that meat was tainted! You feel deathly sick."
--------------
Is is just me, or is that sig in - er - bad taste considering the current topic?
The Klingons (user community) is in the middle of a civil war between those loyal to Gowron (Linux/Linus) and those loyal to Duras (McBride/SCO). The Duras clan (SCO) is lasting much longer than expected due to behind the scenes support from the Romulans(Microsoft).
All we need now is for the Federation (/.) to implement some sort of Tachyon Detection Grid to uncover the source hidden support and stop it in its tracks.
Screw the Berne Treaty
If Bush can decide that he wants to pull out of treaties designed to keep the peace, I have no problem pulling out of treaties designed by corporations to keep the profits.
Maybe I'm really stupid. Check that - I know I'm really stupid.
If we have a mesh of enough of these access points, why can't we eventually use that as a network. My trivial understanding of the original purpose of the internet is that it was designed in this way, albeit with cables connecting each node.
I know that 11MB/s or even 54MB/s is not going to be equivalent to the fiber running cross country. What is the highest theoretical speed of a wireless network?
<Dream>I would expect that it could be the basis for the most awesome P2P network ever conceived. If you have no ISP, who will the RIAA contact for your address?</Dream>