"Why godaddy? Why could people not chose what register to transfer to?"
Because the more options people are provided, the more complex the solution becomes, making it harder to implement and harder to understand, which means it takes longer to go live and creates greater levels of confusion when it does.
This is a simple solution (hopefully) that clears things up as quickly as possible (hopefully), and when everything has settled down (hopefully), people will be able to transfer their domains from GoDaddy to wherever they want.
Jesus frickin' Christ. This is the second article in three days where Slashdot says someone sued someone else, and all they did was threaten a suit if certain actions weren't taken.
APPLE HASN'T SUED THEM. THEY SENT THEM A LETTER!!
Why is it that Slashdot submitters AND the editors, fail to recognize that to sue someone, YOU ACTUALLY HAVE TO FILE A LAW SUIT?!?!?!?!? Just sending a C&D or a strongly worded objection does not qualify as suing someone!!! Dumbass dumbfuck dubmshits!
First, the title of this article is a misnomer. He's threatening to sue. He hasn't sued yet.
How is Microsoft supposed to take drastic measures to ensure retailers don't sell its games to people under 17? I wouldn't be upset if Microsoft started a "17 means 17" program, where if they received proof of a retaler selling "M for Mature" games to people under 17, they would cut off that retailer from all shipments of Microsoft products for 6 months. But is it practical?
If it was Wal-mart, would Microsoft cut them off or give them a stern warning? When I was young and working temp gigs at Disney, I spent a few days calling video stores that had broken street date on video releases, getting a store manager on the line, then handing them over to a Disney manager to chew them out and threaten them with not getting future releases.
But one thing that was interesting was one of my co-workers told me how Costco got away with it all the time. They were such a huge retail channel for Disney videos, Disney couldn't afford to threaten Costco, so they just had to take a "grin and bear it" posture in those cases, filing a protest but unable to make threats.
I'm sure Microsoft doesn't want to see young kids getting their hands on violent games and they're not doing tobacco industry style strategy sessions on how to sell "Halo 3" to 10-year-olds. OTOH, how much can they actually do when they're not the ones actually controlling the point of sale?
In an epiphany, Bill Gates realized that the lackluster sales of Vista were due to all the bad things he's done in his life. So now he's got a list of them on a sheet of yellow paper and he's going around making up for them. Having Microsoft back ODF is helping him make up for #38 on his list: "Screwed over consumers with proprietary formats."
Come on, couldn't you see Ballmer playing Randy?:-)
Inoffensive? Beware. I once included a political joke in a post. It would get a downmod, then an upmod, then a downmod, then an upmod...
Every time the anti-bushies raised my score, that allowed the pro-bushies to expend more negative mod points to try to knock my post down. All in all, I got like 27 positive mods and 25 negative mods. And for getting 25 negative mods, I got my posting privileges suspended for almost a month.
Now, if none of the anti-Bush crowd had modded me up, the pro-Bushies could have given me a max of 3-6 negative mod points. But because of all the upmods, it allowed for dozens of downmods, triggering an automatic suspension.
Thing is, it's not just your opponents trying to shout you down that causes you trouble. It's all the people trying to cancel them out that creates the opportunity for you to get so many downmods on a single post that you get suspended.
So being close to Redmond was what saddled me with this crap DVR software? I never switched back to Tivo for two reasons... 1: Dual tuner HDTV capable DVR, 2: cost was $5 a month more than a regular box. For a long time, Tivo's offerings just couldn't offer the "record two shows at once" or "record HDTV" capability. By the time they did, the cost for a new box and the service was so prohibitive.
But the "Microsoft Powered" box would take a command (like fast forward) and get stuck for a minute or two, seemingly ignoring all input from the remote (which it instead buffered and executed in rapid sequence once it unstuck itself). I'm tempted to trade in the crappy box, but Verizon is laying fiber just down the street. I may be able to avail myself of FIOS TV (anf FIOS broadband) within a couple of months. Not sure if it's worth upgrading a cable box I may be rid of before Summer ends.
The only reason you have given is the false premise that without these restrictions, no-one will produce knowledge-products.
No, I said *some* wouldn't produce them and *some* would produce less, leading to an overall decline in quantity and quality. Those who want to GPL their work, or put it in the public domain, or use another open license... are doing it. Some creators, with no option of copyright would still create (some at the same pace, some at a slower pace). Others would leave the marketplace and take their talents with them. Plus with a reduced profit motive and the ability of anyone to steal and misuse their work, fewer new creators would enter the marketplace.
But if you abolish copyright instead of fixing it, you abolish the right of the creator to choose an open license like the GPL or Creative Commons. Everything goes into the public domain. And if you don't establish some new laws to replace copyright, then here's the fun part... without copyright, someone can take your work and claim authorship.
For a lot of people, that becomes a disincentive to create, or at least a disincentive to publish and share. "Why should I play my new song for people? Someone's just going to steal it." At least now, if someone steals your work, you can sue. Abolish copyright and you have no rights to enforce.
As for the GPL projects you cite... What about them? The fact that they're all GPL instead of public domain proves my point. As I said before, if you were truly anti-copyright, you'd be demanding they all abandon the GPL and put their work in the public domain. Even though the GPL allows more freedom on copying, it still has rules and restrictions about the *legal* obligations of those who use the code. If you support the GPL then you support the right of creators to control certain aspects of how their creation is used.
So if you support the GPL, then the punch-line of an old joke applies: "We've established what kind of girl you are. Now we're just haggling over the price."
You bring up a good point. But when you state that the contract has been amended "with no public agreement" you invalidate the concept of representative democracy. It's like saying there was no public agreement to a tax cut or a tax increase and therefore you get to renege on the social contract of paying taxes. It doesn't work that way. Try it with the IRS.
The contract needs to be fixed, not scrapped. That's done through grass roots political action and public demonstrations of civil disobedience (i.e. standing up and being counted, not just breaking the law secretly). The HD-DVD hack incident on Digg forced them into an act of civil disobedience. If only as many people could get as excited about flooding Congress with protests as they got about flooding Digg with posts, they might actually change something. But if Digg has to stand alone and fight this out while all the users merely gripe in online forums, Digg's in for a bad time.
These social contracts are created to serve a public good. Until the social contract of copyright was amended to the detriment of the public, it served it. So why is the response to those amendments that the contract must be sacrificed entirely and the public good it served sacrificed? Why isn't the response an effort to remove the amendments and get back to where the contract was serving a public good? Why isn't Congress feeling the pressure that Digg felt?
Bring back good and reasonable "fair use" rules, shorten the period of personal copyright, outlaw DRM or make it a "DRM or copyright, but not both" choice, shorten the period of corporate copyright to 50 years only. I'm all for that. Copyright should be fair to creators and society.
Copyright needs to be fixed. The concept still serves a social good and that social good will be lost in some large part if it's scrapped instead of fixed.
First, it's not the modern age, it's the post-modern age.. we live in the greatest technological era ever to occur in human history. If you want a mass market, go build it, and use the power of that technology to find people who are willing to pay you to create, instead of trying to force people to pay you after you have already created.
But they only have to pay me if they wish to use what I created. Someone brought up the concept of the chef. Let's extend it to the cafeteria or the "all you can eat" buffet. They don't cook to order. They make what they think you'll buy, make it in advance, and then put it out in trays. If you choose to dine in their establishment and eat their food, you have to pay them.
People only have to pay me after I've created if they eat the food I made. They can even come in, smell it, look at it, maybe get a small "taster" on a toothpick. If they decide they don't want to eat one of the 8,000 potato pancakes I made, then they don't have to buy it. But if they want to eat it, they have to pay for it.
Now they didn't ask me to make potato pancakes. They didn't pay me in advance. I invested my own money to make 8,000 potato pancakes because I thought I could sell them. I've already created the potato pancakes. Does the fact that I created them before someone said "may I have a potato pancake, please" mean that they're entitied to it for free?
Secondly, you'll note the person you are replying to will not reply. That's because you broke Godwin's Law.
I didn't vote for Godwin or his Law. And if you can ignore copyright as a limitation on your free speech, why can't I ignore Godwin as a limitation on mine?
Indeed. And when the only way to properly enforce copyright is to invade everyone's privacy and give some small group ultimate authority over everyone's PC, should not their right give way, particularly when it was a right created for the good of society?
Why do you have to invade everyone's privacy and give some small group ultimate authority over everyone's PC? You accuse me of using extremes, then use them yourself.
Again, and for the last time... Copyright law is not perfect and gets abused. But you're going at it like if a concept is poorly implemented and gets abused, we should just chuck the whole thing instead of trying to fix it. You're looking at this as a black and white situation rather than one with shades of gray. A binary worldview is dangerous.
Do I think it sucks that WMA DRM music can't play on an iPod and AAC DRM music can't play on a non-iPod? Yes. Once you buy it, you should be able to play it on any player. But do I think the solution to that is to abolish copyright rather than abolishing DRM that limits fair use? No.
Do I think that once I've bought a movie on DVD, I should be able to back it up to a personal media server or another disc so when the original DVD I bought wears out or gets scratched, I can continue to enjoy the content I purchased? Of course. But should that be done via abolishing copyright altogether or abolishing stupid anti-copy protections? The latter.
When you abolish stupid copy protections and bad DRM, the potential for piracy goes up... and so should the penalty. But when you make it possible for people to actually enjoy the content they paid for, more people will pay for it.
My first post on this story was pointing out that the video content producers were approaching the problem of digital distribution with the same stupidity and narrow-mindedness that the music industry demonstrated as MP3 began to rise. Rather than respond to their customers with innovation, they responded with draconian measures to try to stifle innovation. And that creates binary thinkers like you, so pissed off about the draconian measures that they rail against the concept of copyright instead of railing against the poor implementation of the concept that allows the draconian measures.
There is a middle-ground. Copyright is not bad in and of itself. It is the current state of copyright law that is bad. That state needs to be changed. But if your method of changing it is to destroy it, you create an environment in which those who agree with you on many points must end up opposing you, because if you make this an argument with only two sides, you make it a choice of the lesser of two evils. And at least for me, anarchy is always the greater evil.
You do realize that there are other ways to make money from works of art and imagination (not mere "content" one might stuff into a box with a price tag), no? Or that something called the Renaissance happened outside the domain of copyright, no?
So you're saying that I should base my ability to make a living on patronage from merchant princes and the Catholic Church? That only the rich can and should be able to decide who produces art and what they produce? That's what happened during the Renaissance.
Modern technology means my choices of what I create (if I wish to create for a living, not just for the joy of creation) are limited not by what a small group of people who can afford a unique work wish to commission, but what I can make or find a mass market for.
But if I create something and then that market is allowed to copy my work freely without having to pay me, then my choices are once again limited to creation merely for the joy of creation or creation on commission for wealthy patrons who are under no obligation to share my work with the public.
A lot of Renaissance paintings, other than those commissioned as public art by churches and city governments, sat in castles and private homes for centuries until the long-distant descendants of the patrons donated or sold them to museums. It was only then that those works entered the public consciousness.
You're a poor student of history if you cite the Renaissance model as an ideal or even superior to the modern model. Far from ensuring the freedom of art, it locks it away in the homes and office buildings of the rich, and the general public is left with that art produced by artists not good or politic enough to enjoy patronage.
The *minute* you start to enforce a restriction on information in any way,
is the minute you start to limit free speech. Copyright is a restriction
on free speech, as is censorship. Don't agree? Witness the recent uprising
about a *number* being transmitted *AND SHUT UP*.
Should I point out the irony of you blabbering about free speech and then telling me to shut up, or would that limit your freedom of hypocrisy? It's amazing how many proponents of free speech only seem to believe that their speech should be free and tell their critics to "shut up".
Again, I'll point out that copyright law is not perfect and does get abused. I am not against copyright reform or the eradication of copyright abuse. But a lot of people participating in that uprising were protesting against an abuse of copyright law, not against the concept of copyright itself.
And furthermore, we limit free speech all the time. Ever heard of laws against incitement to riot, yelling "fire" in a crowded theater, municipal noise ordinances.... Even though you can go up on stage in a night club and say the word "fuck" over and over for 4 hours, and call it performance art, if you tried doing that over a bullhorn in front of an elementary school, I guarantee you that the cops could arrest you and that even the Supreme Court would uphold that arrest.
I value my free speech
far more than I value my right to get paid.
Tell me that when you have no food or shelter and no money to pay for them.
Isn't after all, caveat emptor?
How does "let the buyer beware" have anything to do with free speech? "Caveat emptor" means you need to inspect something before you buy it, so you're not ripped off by false representations. It does, on the other hand, have a lot to do with your elected representatives who help create copyright law. I'd heartily endorse a "caveat emptor" policy on election day, no matter what your political leanings.
Repeal the libel, the slander, the dmca, the copyright, the patents.
Please reply to this post with your photo and your full, real name and address so I can plaster your neighborhood with posters about how you're a child rapist and a danger to all children in your neighborhood. If you truly believe in the repeal of slander and libel laws, and you're all about freedom of speech, you'll not only take no legal action, you won't even pull the posters down (because that would be censoring me). You'll just suffer through your neighbors throwing rocks through your windows as the price of your ideals.
Lawyers, go fuck yourselves. You create nothing but misery.
And when you get get tossed in a cell in Guantanamo, I want you to tell that to the lawyers who are trying to get the government to let you go and stop torturing you.
I take long hours to make content too.
I GPL it.
Your point is refuted.
How is it refuted? I never said that money is the ONLY reason that people create, just an important driver of creation. Your choice not to charge money for your content has no bearing on the motivations or actions of others. Could you sell the content you GPL? Could you find or make a lucrative market for it? Do you forego riches out of public spirit or an inability to monetize the work you give away?
Furthermore, how does your GPL'ing your content refute my point? You'd only be refuting my point if you put it into the public domain. The GPL cannot exist without copyright. Copyright gives you the right to decide how your work can be used, be it a $600 per seat license fee or the GPL, because it gives you the right to license it and to choose the license terms.
The GPL isn't public domain. It imposes certain restrictions on how and where your content can be used. And it's copyright that allows you to impose those restrictions.
If you really wanted to refute my point, you'd put your work into the public domain and not bother with licenses at all. As long as you do bother with licenses, then you're admitting that copyright laws have value, otherwise you wouldn't be using them.
Death To women's Rights.
And this part of your message does nothing to help prove you a sane, competent, or non-evil person.
Most likely the players wouldn't make so many millions per year, but I'm sure somebody would still be willing to do the job.
"Somebody would still be willing to do the job." Of course. But have you ever watched minor league baseball? Ever gone out to see the Cucamonga Quakes at the Epicenter? Entertaining to be sure, but nothing compared to major league baseball.
The thing that keeps some of the best in any business doing what they do best is the fact that they can make loads of money doing it. If you take away the money, you take away their contribution. And that doesn't just decrease the quantity of creation, it decreases the quality of creation.
No, the English Premier League wouldn't shut down. But it might become crap, or less good than it is. Some of the best players might be working as college coaches or car salesmen or lawyers because the money was better. And the quality would suffer. Perhaps the game might be more "pure", but some of the artistry of play that the best players bring to the game would be gone.
Perhaps you'd prefer to live in a blander, more flavorless world where we have more car salesmen and lawyers, but I don't.
Great interpretation of how just the law is from someone who obviously profits from it.
And, as I said... you don't create, so you don't understand. So I'll break it down for you...
My contribution to culture, however small, was done because I had the expectation of being able to trade that contribution for enough money to pay my rent, feed my kids, etc. If there was no expectation, you know what I would have done? Become a lawyer.
The long hours, sweat, and money I have put into creating art and paying others to create art... gone. The hours, sweat, and money thousands like me put into it... gone. The only reason you have as much content to copy, particularly good content to copy, is because copyright encouraged others to create it.
We have a right to be free.
One which was only secured for you by good people who made great sacrifices. And furthermore, freedom is not absolute. Your freedom is limited at the point where it stops someone else from being free.
We have a right to copy.
No, you have an ability to copy. You only have a right to copy something you PAID for and then only to copy it for personal use. Proclaiming a right to any copying that goes beyond that is like me saying I have a right to steal your car merely because it's stealable.
Slave owners quoted the bible to prove they had a "right" to own slaves. There are people who think their rights as parents extend to beating their kids unconscious and that the government arresting them for breaking a four-year-old's arm is a violation of their rights.
You can proclaim all the "rights" you want. That doesn't mean they're legal, ethical, or moral.
We no longer want these laws.
There are people in Germany who no longer want laws prohibiting the Nazi party. There are CEOs who no longer want laws prohibiting insider trading. There are pedophiles who no longer want laws prohibiting the possession or distribution of child pornography.
The dislike of a law doesn't make it unjust, just inconvenient to criminally-minded people like yourself.
Our numbers are growing.
Sadly, so are the numbers of Nazis, corrupt CEOs, and pedophiles. But growing numbers doesn't make be accept their causes, arguments, or criminal behavior, nor will they make me accept yours.
Copyright is not an unjust law. It exists to spur creation and innovation, and for a lot of artists, it's the only thing that allows them to afford to create the content you unjustly enjoy.
It is not a perfect law and it does get abused. The concept of a creator being able to exert some control over their creation so that they can profit from it and prevent its adulteration to a certain extent is not wrong. And without copyright, anyone could take a GPL'ed project, incorporate it into closed source products, and no one could say boo to them.
The concept of copyright is not only just, it is necessary. There are a lot of people who, if they didn't have copyright laws to protect their creations, wouldn't create them, either because those creations cost too much or simply because there was a more profitable use of their time. The dream of being rich and famous spurs a lot of artists, and while you might argue that the "true artists" would create anyway... how much less would they create when the only reward was personal satisfaction?
You're a fringe ideologue who probably creates nothing and is only looking for an excuse to commit intellectual gluttony on someone else's dime. If you created stuff and actually were good enough to have a hope of doing that for a living, you wouldn't try to take that hope away from others.
It seems to be the business model of large media companies... restrict access to content, refuse to make it available to the users who want it, then start suing when it escapes your control.
For years, people told the record companies: "things are changing, the way we listen is changing, the way we collect music and manage our collections is changing. Get with the times and provide solutions that suit us or we'll just find our own."
Now, with broadband expanding and compresssion/streaming technologies improving, the companies that provide video media are starting to get hit with the same problems Napster brought to the record companies 10'ish years ago. With a decade to learn from the plight of the record companies, adapt, and profit... the video media companies are making the same mistakes, thinking they can solve their problems with lawyers instead of adapting to the new circumstances.
In a world where we have debates as to whether "sponsored" content on web sites needs to be marked as such, it's not surprising that this happened.
I have personally seen instances where the choice of the "of the day" or "of the week" featured product was taken out of the hands of Editorial and became a sellable placement without any disclaimer.
They call it "advertorial", but when it's not disclaimed as such, it's the death of editorial integrity. But when the competition is hot and heavy for ad dollars and you have popular competitors who are willing to prostitute their editors... you can't send your bank a note about your solid ethics in lieu of a mortgage check.
This might raise a small tempest in a teapot, and for a brief time create some editorial/advertorial transparency in response to the backlash. But that will merely be the same as a cancer that seems to go into remission.
In an automated age such as this, particularly if you're focusing on smaller net broadcasters, it seems you have your answer. Just put up a simple click-wrapper form front and center on your web site. Broadcasters fill out the necessary information and a script creates whatever notices you need to submit to SoundExchange.
The broadcasters who want to forego royalties on your music would probably be happy to hit your web site and be done with all the rigamarole in 60 seconds.
The U.S. Gov't gave themt he right to do this. It's not theft, it's not criminal, it's just corrupt. Your anger should not be aimed at the unnelected construct of law who's only legal purpose for existing is profit - it should be aimed at the assholes in gov't who did this. I'll bet you your congressman dosen't know about this.. maybe you should tell him.
IANAL, but I figure you could still sue SoundExchange and argue that the LOC doesn't have the right to create a national monopoly that not only violates the Taft Act and RICO, but constitutes tortious interference (an illegal interference with your right to enter into a contract, such as a contract via which you grant a net broadcaster a right to stream your content without royalty payments) on an unheard of scale. But you'd have to have some pretty big bucks to file and pursue the case, because it would probably have to go through a couple of rounds of appeals and eventually be argued before the Supreme Court.
OTOH, as is the argument with many monopolies, in trying to justify their existence, they'll argue back about how their monopoly creates efficiencies and prevents chaos, and is actually a benefit to the people.
But it's the fact that SoundExchange doesn't allow that royalty exemption that will be their undoing, because a court can rule that their monopoly has been abused and creates a greater harm to the public than any good their monopoly creates. They should neither have the ability to force you to sign up with them and pay fees to get your content heard or collect royalties against your will. And because they do so, they create a public harm that goes against the intent of any law that allows the LOC to grant such a monopoly. At minimum, a court could tell them that they must amend their anticompetitive practices and policies or face being stripped of their monopoly.
I guess if Kodak doesn't underprice the printers, they won't be as hurt by cartridge remanufacturers and cartridge cloners as the outfits that sell printers at a loss, looking to make it up in ink. Still, even at their low prices... everyone loves a bargain. If someone can profitably undercut Kodak on cartridges or DIY refill kits, will they find that they've just changed the tempo of the game rather than changing the game itself?
If you don't touch-type, you will never type fast, regardless of which layout you use.
My right pinky is seriously odd, so a standard touch-typing solution never really worked for me, and it's not like it's an otherwise crippling oddness, so it's not like I or anyonw else felt the need to get me specialized typing lessons.
I just learned to hunt and peck really fast. And after 25 years of two-fingering computer keyboards, I can type without looking at the keys (yes, I can two-fingered touch type) but I get my best speeds when looking at the keys.
But getting back on topic, it's the social engineers that we should all be afraid of. These guys may not be really hackers (at least not in traditional sense), they're really just con artists.
Phishing is just a form of social engineering. It doesn't take much technical skill at all... more than my mom has, but way less than I do, and I'm no guru. As a matter of fact, the way most people get pwned is not through a clever worm that finds them and nails them just because they're online. It's by being tricked into opening an attachment (and thus launching the virus) or visiting a malicious web site (that exploits a known security hole to install malware). And half of the time it's not even clever. Remember how many people got infected by the virus promising nude pics of Anna Kournikova? Sheesh.
Slashdot Mirror
"Why godaddy? Why could people not chose what register to transfer to?"
Because the more options people are provided, the more complex the solution becomes, making it harder to implement and harder to understand, which means it takes longer to go live and creates greater levels of confusion when it does.
This is a simple solution (hopefully) that clears things up as quickly as possible (hopefully), and when everything has settled down (hopefully), people will be able to transfer their domains from GoDaddy to wherever they want.
Greg
Jesus frickin' Christ. This is the second article in three days where Slashdot says someone sued someone else, and all they did was threaten a suit if certain actions weren't taken.
APPLE HASN'T SUED THEM. THEY SENT THEM A LETTER!!
Why is it that Slashdot submitters AND the editors, fail to recognize that to sue someone, YOU ACTUALLY HAVE TO FILE A LAW SUIT?!?!?!?!? Just sending a C&D or a strongly worded objection does not qualify as suing someone!!! Dumbass dumbfuck dubmshits!
</rant>
First, the title of this article is a misnomer. He's threatening to sue. He hasn't sued yet.
How is Microsoft supposed to take drastic measures to ensure retailers don't sell its games to people under 17? I wouldn't be upset if Microsoft started a "17 means 17" program, where if they received proof of a retaler selling "M for Mature" games to people under 17, they would cut off that retailer from all shipments of Microsoft products for 6 months. But is it practical?
If it was Wal-mart, would Microsoft cut them off or give them a stern warning? When I was young and working temp gigs at Disney, I spent a few days calling video stores that had broken street date on video releases, getting a store manager on the line, then handing them over to a Disney manager to chew them out and threaten them with not getting future releases.
But one thing that was interesting was one of my co-workers told me how Costco got away with it all the time. They were such a huge retail channel for Disney videos, Disney couldn't afford to threaten Costco, so they just had to take a "grin and bear it" posture in those cases, filing a protest but unable to make threats.
I'm sure Microsoft doesn't want to see young kids getting their hands on violent games and they're not doing tobacco industry style strategy sessions on how to sell "Halo 3" to 10-year-olds. OTOH, how much can they actually do when they're not the ones actually controlling the point of sale?
What's "the" standard programming language?
BASIC
What's "the" standard webserver?
Wildcat BBS
What's "the" standard OS?
DOS
BTW -- offtopic -- but a question popped into my head. If Redhat hired Britney Spears' ex-husband, would they issue a distro called "K-Fedora".
- Greg
In an epiphany, Bill Gates realized that the lackluster sales of Vista were due to all the bad things he's done in his life. So now he's got a list of them on a sheet of yellow paper and he's going around making up for them. Having Microsoft back ODF is helping him make up for #38 on his list: "Screwed over consumers with proprietary formats."
:-)
Come on, couldn't you see Ballmer playing Randy?
--Greg
Inoffensive? Beware. I once included a political joke in a post. It would get a downmod, then an upmod, then a downmod, then an upmod...
Every time the anti-bushies raised my score, that allowed the pro-bushies to expend more negative mod points to try to knock my post down. All in all, I got like 27 positive mods and 25 negative mods. And for getting 25 negative mods, I got my posting privileges suspended for almost a month.
Now, if none of the anti-Bush crowd had modded me up, the pro-Bushies could have given me a max of 3-6 negative mod points. But because of all the upmods, it allowed for dozens of downmods, triggering an automatic suspension.
Thing is, it's not just your opponents trying to shout you down that causes you trouble. It's all the people trying to cancel them out that creates the opportunity for you to get so many downmods on a single post that you get suspended.
- Greg
So being close to Redmond was what saddled me with this crap DVR software? I never switched back to Tivo for two reasons... 1: Dual tuner HDTV capable DVR, 2: cost was $5 a month more than a regular box. For a long time, Tivo's offerings just couldn't offer the "record two shows at once" or "record HDTV" capability. By the time they did, the cost for a new box and the service was so prohibitive.
But the "Microsoft Powered" box would take a command (like fast forward) and get stuck for a minute or two, seemingly ignoring all input from the remote (which it instead buffered and executed in rapid sequence once it unstuck itself). I'm tempted to trade in the crappy box, but Verizon is laying fiber just down the street. I may be able to avail myself of FIOS TV (anf FIOS broadband) within a couple of months. Not sure if it's worth upgrading a cable box I may be rid of before Summer ends.
- Greg
The only reason you have given is the false premise that without these restrictions, no-one will produce knowledge-products.
No, I said *some* wouldn't produce them and *some* would produce less, leading to an overall decline in quantity and quality. Those who want to GPL their work, or put it in the public domain, or use another open license... are doing it. Some creators, with no option of copyright would still create (some at the same pace, some at a slower pace). Others would leave the marketplace and take their talents with them. Plus with a reduced profit motive and the ability of anyone to steal and misuse their work, fewer new creators would enter the marketplace.
But if you abolish copyright instead of fixing it, you abolish the right of the creator to choose an open license like the GPL or Creative Commons. Everything goes into the public domain. And if you don't establish some new laws to replace copyright, then here's the fun part... without copyright, someone can take your work and claim authorship.
For a lot of people, that becomes a disincentive to create, or at least a disincentive to publish and share. "Why should I play my new song for people? Someone's just going to steal it." At least now, if someone steals your work, you can sue. Abolish copyright and you have no rights to enforce.
As for the GPL projects you cite... What about them? The fact that they're all GPL instead of public domain proves my point. As I said before, if you were truly anti-copyright, you'd be demanding they all abandon the GPL and put their work in the public domain. Even though the GPL allows more freedom on copying, it still has rules and restrictions about the *legal* obligations of those who use the code. If you support the GPL then you support the right of creators to control certain aspects of how their creation is used.
So if you support the GPL, then the punch-line of an old joke applies: "We've established what kind of girl you are. Now we're just haggling over the price."
- Greg
You bring up a good point. But when you state that the contract has been amended "with no public agreement" you invalidate the concept of representative democracy. It's like saying there was no public agreement to a tax cut or a tax increase and therefore you get to renege on the social contract of paying taxes. It doesn't work that way. Try it with the IRS.
The contract needs to be fixed, not scrapped. That's done through grass roots political action and public demonstrations of civil disobedience (i.e. standing up and being counted, not just breaking the law secretly). The HD-DVD hack incident on Digg forced them into an act of civil disobedience. If only as many people could get as excited about flooding Congress with protests as they got about flooding Digg with posts, they might actually change something. But if Digg has to stand alone and fight this out while all the users merely gripe in online forums, Digg's in for a bad time.
These social contracts are created to serve a public good. Until the social contract of copyright was amended to the detriment of the public, it served it. So why is the response to those amendments that the contract must be sacrificed entirely and the public good it served sacrificed? Why isn't the response an effort to remove the amendments and get back to where the contract was serving a public good? Why isn't Congress feeling the pressure that Digg felt?
Bring back good and reasonable "fair use" rules, shorten the period of personal copyright, outlaw DRM or make it a "DRM or copyright, but not both" choice, shorten the period of corporate copyright to 50 years only. I'm all for that. Copyright should be fair to creators and society.
Copyright needs to be fixed. The concept still serves a social good and that social good will be lost in some large part if it's scrapped instead of fixed.
- Greg
First, it's not the modern age, it's the post-modern age.. we live in the greatest technological era ever to occur in human history. If you want a mass market, go build it, and use the power of that technology to find people who are willing to pay you to create, instead of trying to force people to pay you after you have already created.
But they only have to pay me if they wish to use what I created. Someone brought up the concept of the chef. Let's extend it to the cafeteria or the "all you can eat" buffet. They don't cook to order. They make what they think you'll buy, make it in advance, and then put it out in trays. If you choose to dine in their establishment and eat their food, you have to pay them.
People only have to pay me after I've created if they eat the food I made. They can even come in, smell it, look at it, maybe get a small "taster" on a toothpick. If they decide they don't want to eat one of the 8,000 potato pancakes I made, then they don't have to buy it. But if they want to eat it, they have to pay for it.
Now they didn't ask me to make potato pancakes. They didn't pay me in advance. I invested my own money to make 8,000 potato pancakes because I thought I could sell them. I've already created the potato pancakes. Does the fact that I created them before someone said "may I have a potato pancake, please" mean that they're entitied to it for free?
Secondly, you'll note the person you are replying to will not reply. That's because you broke Godwin's Law.
I didn't vote for Godwin or his Law. And if you can ignore copyright as a limitation on your free speech, why can't I ignore Godwin as a limitation on mine?
Indeed. And when the only way to properly enforce copyright is to invade everyone's privacy and give some small group ultimate authority over everyone's PC, should not their right give way, particularly when it was a right created for the good of society?
Why do you have to invade everyone's privacy and give some small group ultimate authority over everyone's PC? You accuse me of using extremes, then use them yourself.
Again, and for the last time... Copyright law is not perfect and gets abused. But you're going at it like if a concept is poorly implemented and gets abused, we should just chuck the whole thing instead of trying to fix it. You're looking at this as a black and white situation rather than one with shades of gray. A binary worldview is dangerous.
Do I think it sucks that WMA DRM music can't play on an iPod and AAC DRM music can't play on a non-iPod? Yes. Once you buy it, you should be able to play it on any player. But do I think the solution to that is to abolish copyright rather than abolishing DRM that limits fair use? No.
Do I think that once I've bought a movie on DVD, I should be able to back it up to a personal media server or another disc so when the original DVD I bought wears out or gets scratched, I can continue to enjoy the content I purchased? Of course. But should that be done via abolishing copyright altogether or abolishing stupid anti-copy protections? The latter.
When you abolish stupid copy protections and bad DRM, the potential for piracy goes up... and so should the penalty. But when you make it possible for people to actually enjoy the content they paid for, more people will pay for it.
My first post on this story was pointing out that the video content producers were approaching the problem of digital distribution with the same stupidity and narrow-mindedness that the music industry demonstrated as MP3 began to rise. Rather than respond to their customers with innovation, they responded with draconian measures to try to stifle innovation. And that creates binary thinkers like you, so pissed off about the draconian measures that they rail against the concept of copyright instead of railing against the poor implementation of the concept that allows the draconian measures.
There is a middle-ground. Copyright is not bad in and of itself. It is the current state of copyright law that is bad. That state needs to be changed. But if your method of changing it is to destroy it, you create an environment in which those who agree with you on many points must end up opposing you, because if you make this an argument with only two sides, you make it a choice of the lesser of two evils. And at least for me, anarchy is always the greater evil.
- Greg
You do realize that there are other ways to make money from works of art and imagination (not mere "content" one might stuff into a box with a price tag), no? Or that something called the Renaissance happened outside the domain of copyright, no?
So you're saying that I should base my ability to make a living on patronage from merchant princes and the Catholic Church? That only the rich can and should be able to decide who produces art and what they produce? That's what happened during the Renaissance.
Modern technology means my choices of what I create (if I wish to create for a living, not just for the joy of creation) are limited not by what a small group of people who can afford a unique work wish to commission, but what I can make or find a mass market for.
But if I create something and then that market is allowed to copy my work freely without having to pay me, then my choices are once again limited to creation merely for the joy of creation or creation on commission for wealthy patrons who are under no obligation to share my work with the public.
A lot of Renaissance paintings, other than those commissioned as public art by churches and city governments, sat in castles and private homes for centuries until the long-distant descendants of the patrons donated or sold them to museums. It was only then that those works entered the public consciousness.
You're a poor student of history if you cite the Renaissance model as an ideal or even superior to the modern model. Far from ensuring the freedom of art, it locks it away in the homes and office buildings of the rich, and the general public is left with that art produced by artists not good or politic enough to enjoy patronage.
Sir, the problem is simple.
The *minute* you start to enforce a restriction on information in any way,
is the minute you start to limit free speech. Copyright is a restriction
on free speech, as is censorship. Don't agree? Witness the recent uprising
about a *number* being transmitted *AND SHUT UP*.
Should I point out the irony of you blabbering about free speech and then telling me to shut up, or would that limit your freedom of hypocrisy? It's amazing how many proponents of free speech only seem to believe that their speech should be free and tell their critics to "shut up".
Again, I'll point out that copyright law is not perfect and does get abused. I am not against copyright reform or the eradication of copyright abuse. But a lot of people participating in that uprising were protesting against an abuse of copyright law, not against the concept of copyright itself.
And furthermore, we limit free speech all the time. Ever heard of laws against incitement to riot, yelling "fire" in a crowded theater, municipal noise ordinances.... Even though you can go up on stage in a night club and say the word "fuck" over and over for 4 hours, and call it performance art, if you tried doing that over a bullhorn in front of an elementary school, I guarantee you that the cops could arrest you and that even the Supreme Court would uphold that arrest.
I value my free speech far more than I value my right to get paid.
Tell me that when you have no food or shelter and no money to pay for them.
Isn't after all, caveat emptor?
How does "let the buyer beware" have anything to do with free speech? "Caveat emptor" means you need to inspect something before you buy it, so you're not ripped off by false representations. It does, on the other hand, have a lot to do with your elected representatives who help create copyright law. I'd heartily endorse a "caveat emptor" policy on election day, no matter what your political leanings.
Repeal the libel, the slander, the dmca, the copyright, the patents.
Please reply to this post with your photo and your full, real name and address so I can plaster your neighborhood with posters about how you're a child rapist and a danger to all children in your neighborhood. If you truly believe in the repeal of slander and libel laws, and you're all about freedom of speech, you'll not only take no legal action, you won't even pull the posters down (because that would be censoring me). You'll just suffer through your neighbors throwing rocks through your windows as the price of your ideals.
Lawyers, go fuck yourselves. You create nothing but misery.
And when you get get tossed in a cell in Guantanamo, I want you to tell that to the lawyers who are trying to get the government to let you go and stop torturing you.
- Greg
I take long hours to make content too.
I GPL it.
Your point is refuted.
How is it refuted? I never said that money is the ONLY reason that people create, just an important driver of creation. Your choice not to charge money for your content has no bearing on the motivations or actions of others. Could you sell the content you GPL? Could you find or make a lucrative market for it? Do you forego riches out of public spirit or an inability to monetize the work you give away?
Furthermore, how does your GPL'ing your content refute my point? You'd only be refuting my point if you put it into the public domain. The GPL cannot exist without copyright. Copyright gives you the right to decide how your work can be used, be it a $600 per seat license fee or the GPL, because it gives you the right to license it and to choose the license terms.
The GPL isn't public domain. It imposes certain restrictions on how and where your content can be used. And it's copyright that allows you to impose those restrictions.
If you really wanted to refute my point, you'd put your work into the public domain and not bother with licenses at all. As long as you do bother with licenses, then you're admitting that copyright laws have value, otherwise you wouldn't be using them.
Death To women's Rights.
And this part of your message does nothing to help prove you a sane, competent, or non-evil person.
- Greg
Most likely the players wouldn't make so many millions per year, but I'm sure somebody would still be willing to do the job.
"Somebody would still be willing to do the job." Of course. But have you ever watched minor league baseball? Ever gone out to see the Cucamonga Quakes at the Epicenter? Entertaining to be sure, but nothing compared to major league baseball.
The thing that keeps some of the best in any business doing what they do best is the fact that they can make loads of money doing it. If you take away the money, you take away their contribution. And that doesn't just decrease the quantity of creation, it decreases the quality of creation.
No, the English Premier League wouldn't shut down. But it might become crap, or less good than it is. Some of the best players might be working as college coaches or car salesmen or lawyers because the money was better. And the quality would suffer. Perhaps the game might be more "pure", but some of the artistry of play that the best players bring to the game would be gone.
Perhaps you'd prefer to live in a blander, more flavorless world where we have more car salesmen and lawyers, but I don't.
Great interpretation of how just the law is from someone who obviously profits from it.
And, as I said... you don't create, so you don't understand. So I'll break it down for you...
My contribution to culture, however small, was done because I had the expectation of being able to trade that contribution for enough money to pay my rent, feed my kids, etc. If there was no expectation, you know what I would have done? Become a lawyer.
The long hours, sweat, and money I have put into creating art and paying others to create art... gone. The hours, sweat, and money thousands like me put into it... gone. The only reason you have as much content to copy, particularly good content to copy, is because copyright encouraged others to create it.
We have a right to be free.
One which was only secured for you by good people who made great sacrifices. And furthermore, freedom is not absolute. Your freedom is limited at the point where it stops someone else from being free.
We have a right to copy.
No, you have an ability to copy. You only have a right to copy something you PAID for and then only to copy it for personal use. Proclaiming a right to any copying that goes beyond that is like me saying I have a right to steal your car merely because it's stealable.
Slave owners quoted the bible to prove they had a "right" to own slaves. There are people who think their rights as parents extend to beating their kids unconscious and that the government arresting them for breaking a four-year-old's arm is a violation of their rights.
You can proclaim all the "rights" you want. That doesn't mean they're legal, ethical, or moral.
We no longer want these laws.
There are people in Germany who no longer want laws prohibiting the Nazi party. There are CEOs who no longer want laws prohibiting insider trading. There are pedophiles who no longer want laws prohibiting the possession or distribution of child pornography.
The dislike of a law doesn't make it unjust, just inconvenient to criminally-minded people like yourself.
Our numbers are growing.
Sadly, so are the numbers of Nazis, corrupt CEOs, and pedophiles. But growing numbers doesn't make be accept their causes, arguments, or criminal behavior, nor will they make me accept yours.
Copyright is not an unjust law. It exists to spur creation and innovation, and for a lot of artists, it's the only thing that allows them to afford to create the content you unjustly enjoy.
It is not a perfect law and it does get abused. The concept of a creator being able to exert some control over their creation so that they can profit from it and prevent its adulteration to a certain extent is not wrong. And without copyright, anyone could take a GPL'ed project, incorporate it into closed source products, and no one could say boo to them.
The concept of copyright is not only just, it is necessary. There are a lot of people who, if they didn't have copyright laws to protect their creations, wouldn't create them, either because those creations cost too much or simply because there was a more profitable use of their time. The dream of being rich and famous spurs a lot of artists, and while you might argue that the "true artists" would create anyway... how much less would they create when the only reward was personal satisfaction?
You're a fringe ideologue who probably creates nothing and is only looking for an excuse to commit intellectual gluttony on someone else's dime. If you created stuff and actually were good enough to have a hope of doing that for a living, you wouldn't try to take that hope away from others.
- Greh
It seems to be the business model of large media companies... restrict access to content, refuse to make it available to the users who want it, then start suing when it escapes your control.
For years, people told the record companies: "things are changing, the way we listen is changing, the way we collect music and manage our collections is changing. Get with the times and provide solutions that suit us or we'll just find our own."
Now, with broadband expanding and compresssion/streaming technologies improving, the companies that provide video media are starting to get hit with the same problems Napster brought to the record companies 10'ish years ago. With a decade to learn from the plight of the record companies, adapt, and profit... the video media companies are making the same mistakes, thinking they can solve their problems with lawyers instead of adapting to the new circumstances.
In a world where we have debates as to whether "sponsored" content on web sites needs to be marked as such, it's not surprising that this happened.
I have personally seen instances where the choice of the "of the day" or "of the week" featured product was taken out of the hands of Editorial and became a sellable placement without any disclaimer.
They call it "advertorial", but when it's not disclaimed as such, it's the death of editorial integrity. But when the competition is hot and heavy for ad dollars and you have popular competitors who are willing to prostitute their editors... you can't send your bank a note about your solid ethics in lieu of a mortgage check.
This might raise a small tempest in a teapot, and for a brief time create some editorial/advertorial transparency in response to the backlash. But that will merely be the same as a cancer that seems to go into remission.
- Greg
In an automated age such as this, particularly if you're focusing on smaller net broadcasters, it seems you have your answer. Just put up a simple click-wrapper form front and center on your web site. Broadcasters fill out the necessary information and a script creates whatever notices you need to submit to SoundExchange.
The broadcasters who want to forego royalties on your music would probably be happy to hit your web site and be done with all the rigamarole in 60 seconds.
- Greg
The U.S. Gov't gave themt he right to do this. It's not theft, it's not criminal, it's just corrupt. Your anger should not be aimed at the unnelected construct of law who's only legal purpose for existing is profit - it should be aimed at the assholes in gov't who did this. I'll bet you your congressman dosen't know about this.. maybe you should tell him.
IANAL, but I figure you could still sue SoundExchange and argue that the LOC doesn't have the right to create a national monopoly that not only violates the Taft Act and RICO, but constitutes tortious interference (an illegal interference with your right to enter into a contract, such as a contract via which you grant a net broadcaster a right to stream your content without royalty payments) on an unheard of scale. But you'd have to have some pretty big bucks to file and pursue the case, because it would probably have to go through a couple of rounds of appeals and eventually be argued before the Supreme Court.
OTOH, as is the argument with many monopolies, in trying to justify their existence, they'll argue back about how their monopoly creates efficiencies and prevents chaos, and is actually a benefit to the people.
But it's the fact that SoundExchange doesn't allow that royalty exemption that will be their undoing, because a court can rule that their monopoly has been abused and creates a greater harm to the public than any good their monopoly creates. They should neither have the ability to force you to sign up with them and pay fees to get your content heard or collect royalties against your will. And because they do so, they create a public harm that goes against the intent of any law that allows the LOC to grant such a monopoly. At minimum, a court could tell them that they must amend their anticompetitive practices and policies or face being stripped of their monopoly.
- Greg
I guess if Kodak doesn't underprice the printers, they won't be as hurt by cartridge remanufacturers and cartridge cloners as the outfits that sell printers at a loss, looking to make it up in ink. Still, even at their low prices... everyone loves a bargain. If someone can profitably undercut Kodak on cartridges or DIY refill kits, will they find that they've just changed the tempo of the game rather than changing the game itself?
Just FYI - just took a typing test. 53 WPM, no errors, two-fingered... Beeyotch!
- Greg
If you don't touch-type, you will never type fast, regardless of which layout you use.
My right pinky is seriously odd, so a standard touch-typing solution never really worked for me, and it's not like it's an otherwise crippling oddness, so it's not like I or anyonw else felt the need to get me specialized typing lessons. I just learned to hunt and peck really fast. And after 25 years of two-fingering computer keyboards, I can type without looking at the keys (yes, I can two-fingered touch type) but I get my best speeds when looking at the keys.
- Greg
But getting back on topic, it's the social engineers that we should all be afraid of. These guys may not be really hackers (at least not in traditional sense), they're really just con artists.
Phishing is just a form of social engineering. It doesn't take much technical skill at all... more than my mom has, but way less than I do, and I'm no guru. As a matter of fact, the way most people get pwned is not through a clever worm that finds them and nails them just because they're online. It's by being tricked into opening an attachment (and thus launching the virus) or visiting a malicious web site (that exploits a known security hole to install malware). And half of the time it's not even clever. Remember how many people got infected by the virus promising nude pics of Anna Kournikova? Sheesh.
- G